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Topics - Turkey
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« on: February 12, 2017, 12:54:53 PM »
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« on: February 06, 2017, 01:35:17 PM »
Saw this on a practice GRE and thought it would piss off some people here.
Edit: Forgot the other two answers from the test.
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« on: February 04, 2017, 07:31:21 PM »
We're some kind of Sep7agon?
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« on: February 03, 2017, 06:56:29 PM »
5 minutes in and a naked old lady has kidnapped a baby, mashed it up with a big stick, and covered herself in the baby goo
so that's nice
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« on: February 01, 2017, 12:09:27 PM »
Spoilers for Split and Unbreakable  So Split ended with Bruce Willis' character from Unbreakable mentioning Mr. Glass. Shyamalan has also confirmed that his next film will be a sequel to Unbreakable. So, David Duff vs. Mr. Glass and The Horde in Unbreakable 2? Other possible connections: -Mr. Glass caused the train crash that gives David his abilities; Kevin's father presumably dies in a train accident -Kevin leaves flowers at the subway station before turning into the beast, possibly in memory of his dad -At the end of Unbreakable, when David goes to the subway to find a villain to stop, he sees an abusive mother with her child -Kevin's mom becomes abusive after his dad dies/leaves -David explicitly states that 15 years have elapsed between the events, so the timelines work
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« on: January 31, 2017, 03:02:16 PM »
Link in the spoiler; it is not an ISIS-affiliated site or shady content host. It contains explicit video of prisoners being murdered. The video depicts ISIS-trained children clearing a building with bound prisoners used as human targets. Obviously it is almost entirely staged, and it looks like most of the deaths or shots taken are fake, but the warning still stands. In case the cacophony of politics for the past four months has drowned out how serious a threat ISIS remains. And as tragic as these kids' lives are, I didn't mind seeing how shitty their tactics are and how often they flagged each other.
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« on: January 22, 2017, 05:09:36 PM »
Logistically speaking. Everything's internal, so there's not much to grab onto (especially for men with tiny hands). If you go up from a lower angle, you risk getting a finger in their butt, which no bigly christian man would ever do.
What other mystical secrets might Trump hold?
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« on: January 20, 2017, 09:56:37 PM »
Went to a local art museum last week. Saw a lot of good stuff. Classical paintings like baroque portraits and scenes, Greek statues, etc, I am in complete awe of. Contemporary art with giant blank canvases, paint thrown around, simple designs made with a couple primary colors and painter's tape? Nope, I don't get it. Can anyone fill me in on what I'm supposed to appreciate?
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« on: January 20, 2017, 06:26:05 PM »
My commentary will be brief, since I'm not at all an expert in any field related to this. Maybe Flee can hop in, but I don't believe it's been discussed here. Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution contains what is known as the Foreign Emoluments Clause, which reads, “no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” An emolument is defined by Merriam-Webster as “the returns arising from office or employment usually in the form of compensation or perquisites.”
http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2017/01/trump-addresses-emoluments-clause-but-will-it-be-enough/ tl;dr Trump owns businesses all over the world and any profits generated by foreign governments at those businesses may be considered a 'present' or 'Emolument'. Without consent from Congress, this is unconstitutional, and the Left are making a very large stink about Trump supposedly violating the constitution immediately upon swearing in. A few examples of upcoming potential conflicts to this clause include: For example, the Kuwait National Day celebration, thrown by the Kuwaiti embassy, will be held at Trump’s downtown D.C. hotel in February.
The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd. (ICBC), which is controlled by the Chinese state, is currently paying rent for tenancy in the Manhattan Trump Tower (according to mortgage documents filed in 2012, it is the Tower’s largest office resident).
And, for some foreign politicians and foreign diplomats in town for the inauguration, Trump’s Washington hotel is the place to be this weekend, according to reporting from the New York Times.
Each of these represents an incident in which the President of the United States will, effectively, be receiving payment from a foreign government.
https://thinkprogress.org/trump-constitution-first-day-office-55d1f0668c27#.dx24cnf9d So what has Trump done? “Just like with conflicts of interests, he wants to do more than what the Constitution requires,” Dillon said. “President-elect Trump has decided and we are announcing today that he is going to voluntarily donate all profits from foreign government payments made to his hotels to the United States Treasury.”
Dillon also explained that that Trump is having his two oldest sons run his company during his time in the White House. His oldest daughter, Ivanka, will also have no connection to the company. Recent federal election documents show that Trump has financial interests in more than 500 domestic and foreign firms.
Trump’s assets will be placed into a type of trust that isn’t a blind trust, since it will be partially managed by his sons, but it will “completely isolate him from the management of the company,” Dillon said.
Trump’s company won’t start any new deals abroad and all domestic deals will be subject to an approval process, Dillon added. A new ethics officer will also join the company to be involved in a vetting process. She also explained that a complete liquidation of Trump’s assets into a blind trust would cause more potential conflicts. “President-elect Trump should not be expected to destroy the company he built,” Dillon said.
http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2017/01/trump-addresses-emoluments-clause-but-will-it-be-enough/ However, Dillon’s claim is, at the least, debatable among experts of government ethics.
"If any of Trump’s business arrangements involve the receipt of payments from foreign governments, I believe that he, or his entities from which he receives money, would have to forgo those payments, or he would have to detach from those entities," Kathleen Clark, an expert on legal ethics and a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, previously told us.
Trump, noted above, has said he will resign from the Trump Organization.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/jan/11/live-coverage-donald-trumps-first-press-conference/ In short, Trump is donating these profits to the treasury, and divesting himself of his businesses by handing control over to his sons and vowing to stay isolated from their dealings. Worst case, Congress will have to establish a committee that tracks and approves these emoluments as they occur, which is probably very tedious, but Constitutional. Thoughts on this issue?
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« on: January 20, 2017, 03:17:49 PM »
So starting July 1, the US military will be completely open to transpeople. It currently is now for those currently serving, but recruiting begins then.
It was super boring, but here are a few things that stood out:
-In the database of personnel files, there will be one sex identifier: "gender marker", rather than two (one for sex, one for gender). I assume medical records have an extra entry for biological sex.
-Tricare will pay for treatment, including hormone therapy and potentially sex reassignment surgery
-In order to be considered a different gender, and have one's gender marker changed, that person must be diagnosed with gender dysphoria by a DoD doctor
-Transgenderism is considered a medical condition/disorder, and is synonymous with gender dysphoria
-Upon completion of the treatment/transition period, the person has a certain amount of time until they switch to their new gender's regulations (fitness, uniforms, grooming)
-Stuff like bathrooms were easy: you use the facilities dictated by your gender marker.
It was unclear how much treatment is required to change one's gender marker. It seems very bizarre for a FtM to be held to male fitness standards when they possess, ostensibly, no male traits beside some ephemeral social/personality characteristics. I also thought it was unusual that the DoD considers transpeople as being afflicted with gender dysphoria; I was under the impression the current social (not medical) consensus is that not all transpeople are dysphoric. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Anyways, there was some other stuff but this info stood out as noteworthy. Overall the emphasis was on being respectful to transpeople. Thoughts?
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« on: January 15, 2017, 10:22:53 AM »
Seems like it really jumped the shark this time around. It's been getting progressively cheesier and cliche, especially with the garbage plotline with Mary, but at this point it's basically Sad Doctor Who. They treat the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories as jokes, essentially (the first episode had him solving dozens with single text messages). Mary's story gets even more unbelievable and uninteresting. The audience has no hope of solving the mystery with the characters, as it's a jumbled mess until it's solved in the last 5 minutes with a quick stream of exposition.
Episodes 1 and 2 are 4/10 so far. At least Martin Freeman is fun to watch.
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« on: January 15, 2017, 09:35:44 AM »
http://www.movieinsider.com/movies/genres/sequel/2017http://www.imdb.com/list/ls056448769/Look at all these shitty fucking sequels. Pirates 5? Hancock 2? Fast and Furious fucking 8? Stop going to these movies. Even if you're kind of interested in them in a car-accident-witness sort of way, just don't. Pirate them or watch them on Netflix or Redbox if you feel morally obligated to financially support the downfall of cinema. Make 2017 the year you stop supporting reboots, sequels, remakes, movies based off of kids' toys, comic book movies, and generally unoriginal ideas. Go see weird indie movies, low-budget character dramas, and original films.
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« on: January 10, 2017, 07:14:54 PM »
Got an old iPad from my parents and I'm going to use it for .cbr and ebooks, but goddamn Apple sucks at designing operating systems. It doesn't have a file browser (unlike virtually every other mobile device in existence), meaning you have to download an appropriate app, connect to iTunes, access that app from the program, and load individual files -- not folders -- directly into the app. Deleting the app, of course, deletes these files.
What the fuck were they thinking, that nobody using an iPad would have a need to sort files? That effectively means apps can't share files. What an unbelievably asinine way to design a tablet. And it has no native apps for viewing pdfs or other common documents.
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« on: January 10, 2017, 06:14:24 PM »
what the fuck is this
Keanu Reeves is in it, and there's a bunch of trippy shit going on
Has anyone seen this? Is this worth the watch?
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« on: January 10, 2017, 04:06:27 PM »
This is the guy that shot up a church in 2015.
I won't advocate for the death penalty, but I'm not opposed to the sentence.
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« on: January 09, 2017, 04:29:24 PM »
Link vs. random pc from any Souls game.
The master sword is equivalent to a +5 magic straight sword.
Chosen undead can be any build (but not a mix like the soul of cinder).
Who wins?
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« on: January 07, 2017, 08:29:21 PM »
Just finished 1-1 and killed Phalanx. For Souls fans that haven't played it, it's similar to 2/3/Bloodborne in that it has a central Nexus with 5 separate worlds with 3-4 levels each, which can be tackled in any order after the first area, 1-1, which is basically Undead Burg.
My starting class is Royalty, because I always like to start as a pyro to experience a good mix of dex and magic the first time around, and this is the closest to pyro in DS. I killed the demon in the tutorial pretty easily with the starting spell. And I accidentally rolled off the top floor of the nexus after killing the boss, so now I'm back in soul form, which blows.
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« on: January 06, 2017, 02:01:46 PM »
Maybe I'm the only one annoyed by this, but so frequently people just post breaking or trending news stories, copy the article, and provide little to no insight or opinion. Meta is probably the biggest offender right now, though he's certainly not alone and he sometimes provides additional sources for consideration.
Only ten of the 30 threads on the current front page are not simply walls of text with a huge article quoted below a source link, and about 3 of those are basically the same as what I'm talking about, and roughly half of those ten are just shitposts.
I get that everyone wants activity, but maybe we should be trying to have real discussions instead of just posting flippant responses to whatever news is currently breaking?
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« on: January 02, 2017, 10:27:16 PM »
Preferably cut off with a blunt knife.
Someone already called dibs on LC.
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« on: December 31, 2016, 06:28:48 PM »
Hello friends. Superhot is one of the most innovative shooters that has ever come out, you should try it, it is fun. But really, it's little more than a flash game that relies on an entertaining but limited gimmick, which is that time only moves when you move (with the small exception of aiming). It results in a quick FPS experience that can lead to some really cool combos reminiscent of Hotline Miami. The campaign is about 45 minutes of gameplay interspersed with a really obnoxious meta narrative about video games consuming your mind. It does some really neat things, and would be a fun game to pick up for $5-10, but definitely not the $25 standard price (on sale on Steam for $17). It has some challenges after the campaign, but it's just the same rooms you've already played with unending spawns, or a gimmick such as limiting your weapon or movement. All in all it was a fun game that is probably a must-try, but is significantly overpriced right now. If you like supporting indie devs doing cool stuff, give it a go.
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« on: December 30, 2016, 11:02:39 PM »
I just finished a really interesting Chinese-translated science fiction novel called The Three-Body Problem. The title refers to the classic physics problem regarding the motion of three equal masses in space and their gravitational interactions. First of all, the translation is very good, though it keeps the original meaning and cadence of the Chinese script, and in that sense it may feel stilted and often cold. The characters are all flat, and I believe that's a reflection of the author's culture rather than a lack of writing talent. The most disappointing aspect is that the main character basically doesn't exist but to show or explain things to the audience. At its best though, the book is a deeply compelling and original first-encounter adventure with a frame story set inside a hyper-realistic VR game that simulates human history in the backdrop of a three-sun solar system experiencing unpredictable chaotic periods that frequently wipe out all of civilization, creating a slowly progressing atavistic groundhog day. The novel is true hard science fiction, and those without much technical background may find themselves glossing over long sections of mathematical explanations, but they're often prefaced with simple explanations for novices. If you're interested in it, I would encourage you to not look up plot details, as there are multiple twists and revelations that will disrupt the tension it builds through flashbacks and allegories in the VR game.
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« on: December 30, 2016, 10:34:30 PM »
Next year I'm thinking about starting a part-time master's degree between deployments. Currently considering either a pure engineering field (mechanical or aerospace), or a continuation of my bachelor's degree, Systems Engineering. If I go aero or mech I'd have to do some undergraduate pre-reqs like thermo and fluids. I'd be attending Old Dominion University, and if I apply for Virginia residency tuition would cost $487/hr, for a minimum of 30 hours of credit.
Are any of you pursuing/have a master's degree? Career goals are somewhere in the defense industry or other large technology firms. Engineering at JPL or NASA would be my dream job.
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« on: December 25, 2016, 09:22:01 AM »
Lotteries today are ostensibly taxes on the poor without any form of recourse in legislative bodies. In 2014, legal lotteries brought in $70 billion across the states in which it's legal, yet you've never heard of a politician fighting for that money staying in citizens' pockets. It's also important to note that this amount is higher than the cost of basically every other form of entertainment in the country. The real kicker is that the poorest third of households (the same folks Romney called out for not paying taxes) account for half of all lottery sales: $35B as of 2014. Lottery tickets are also heavily advertised in poor neighborhoods. In 11 of the 43 legal states, the lottery brought in more than corporate taxes, and the payout itself is taxed at 45%. So ought the lottery be abolished? It's an overtly predatory institution that targets the vulnerable poor, and is state-run to boot. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/lotteries-americas-70-billion-shame/392870/
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« on: December 18, 2016, 03:02:30 PM »
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/melissa-stockwell/melissa-stockwell-veterans-day_b_12540174.html?1478620380(...)With at least eight hours of sleep per night and the ability to adjust my Sleep Number bed to provide the optimum rejuvenation from the day’s workout, I was able to start each new day of training knowing that I was putting my best self forward.(...)
Just like diet and exercise, sleep is unique to each person and important for optimal health. Sleep Number® beds adjust on each side to your ideal level of firmness, comfort and support — your Sleep Number® setting. And when you add SleepIQ® technology, you’ll know what to adjust for your best possible sleep. If only FOBs and ships had Sleep Number beds. That'd solve everything!
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« on: December 15, 2016, 10:06:25 PM »
Jesus that show sucked, but I really like Wentworth Miller and his cheesy acting, so it was okay. I had to skip a lot of the last season because it was just terrible.
I thought it was pretty ballsy to kill Michael off-screen, and it was a good ending, but I guess there's a fifth season coming out to retcon his death. Anyone else a fan of the show?
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« on: December 15, 2016, 06:35:50 PM »
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« on: December 09, 2016, 12:35:31 PM »
I bought Witcher 2 on Steam a long time ago, played it for a day, and gave it up. I can't remember specifics, but it felt clunky overall. The alchemy/potion thing involved a lot of menu surfing, which I hated. Combat and story didn't seem very fun.
Witcher 3 is widely recognized as fantastic, and with the GotY out I figured I might give it a shot. Was I completely wrong about Witcher 2? Should I give 3 a shot?
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« on: December 09, 2016, 12:17:29 PM »
 She gets me. Also got a sous vide oven but I assume nobody cares about that here. Have you guys given/gotten anything early yet? We're exchanging big stuff at home since we're flying home for the holiday.
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