memfree

I’ve played this game enough that I’m tired of it. New DLC won’t change my mind.

The game got me to figure out that I don’t want to play a game where the people are always going to be really unhappy no matter how far I advance. If I’m playing a city/world builder, I want a game where my advancment also means things are better for the NPCs. In this game, my advancement means I can start with some tiny different perks, but nost of those are wiped out by Prestige runs, so the NPCs have really brutal conditions all the time. And if things start going well? Poof! You’re on to the next town before you can enjoy the last one.

Ah, yes, I remember those days with the text-only LYNX browser from the unix terminal and the joy of Netscape Navigator on machines that could handle windows. Searching was difficult until there was Alta Vista, which was AMAZING compared to the competition, but even it failed for D&D-style gamers who tried to search for “role playing games” and got back a list of a million sex sites and zero visible pen/paper/dice games. Happily, you could add boolean operator rules to get rid of some of that (NOT sex NOT babes NOT XXX) – but you’d either be typing a lot of naughty words to skip or you’d have to remember the sites that catered to RPGs because searching could be very hit or miss.

Compared to who? Pelosi? Trump?

Oliver is not qualified.

Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution sets three qualifications for holding the presidency. To serve as president, one must:

• be a natural-born citizen of the United States;
• be at least 35 years old;
• be a resident in the United States for at least 14 years.

as if he’d ever sun bathe

Imagine a, say, Star Trek episode that is set on some planet we don’t know with some species we don’t know, where some characters we don’t know occasionally mention Star Fleet and The Federation, but are mostly just doing their jobs and concerned with their own issues. At the end of the episode, they’ve had a dramatic arc in their relationship and – oh yeah – in the middle, they finished that work-thing as an incidental. At the end of the episode, we see the cast we know on the starship we know and final shot closes in to emphasize that the work-thing is on board. We didn’t NEED to know the backstory of the people that worked on the thing, and their story doesn’t matter at all for using the work-thing, but the audience has a deeper view of the show’s universe.

Is that sort of show filler, bridge, or neither?

Edit: Dr. Who’s Love and Monsters was a little like what I mean, but that had more Doctor than my hypothetical would allow.

If any of y’all watch The Last of Us, I’m curious about what you think of S1E3, “Long Long Time” where the main characters are absent for most the episode, which is mostly about Bill and Frank. Where does that fit in the world of ‘filler’ or ‘bridge’ or whatever?

I agree that there is too much unnecessary age discrepancies in TV and film, but sometimes that is the point the authors are trying to explore. I may be misremembering, but I think I even Humphrey Bogart thought he was too long to be the love interest of just-back-from-private-school Sabrina in the movie of the same name, so that works as an example of where the ages should have been closer. There was no reason for the disparity.

In contrast the disturbing relationship in L.I.E. between a teen and a pedophile had to have that age disparity (I’m not recommending this movie and I do not think it appropriate for most audiences – I saw it as part of a film festival and was not ready for it, but I do feel it has a right to exist).

I have not seen the webtoon in question here, but from the title, it sounds like the whole point of the show is the age disparity – but that is not an appropriate subject for kids. That’s something that should only be tackled in an NC-17 style drama because as soon as you make it light entertainment, you normalize a bad behavior.

To me, Léon feels more Don’t Stand So Close To Me than My Sharona, which is to say that in the former song, the male character recognizes his attraction is inappropriate and in the latter the guy is proclaiming, " Never gonna stop, give it up, such a dirty mind. I always get it up, for the touch of the younger kind. "

More explicitly, Léon has a moral objection to killing woman and kids. He isn’t looking to lure in children for exploitation, he just wants to get paid to murder adult men. His morals are not our morals. While he absolutely falls for Mathilda, I see no evidence that Léon has a pattern of sexualizing kids.

I can see your point of view that by teaching Mathilda how to assassinate people Léon was in fact grooming her, but he was not the one coaxing his too-young neighbor to hide in his house and learn his trade to avenge her family. She is making these demands of him and he is initially reluctant. That is not to say his attraction to her is appropriate. He is a villainous ‘hero’, and like so my of the archetype, must pay for his years of immorality with his life.

TL;DR: I think you stretch the definition of ‘Grooming’ when the adult is trying to keep distance and the child makes the demands.

You are correct, but I mow kinda high and my lawn has lots of low flowering weeds and flowering shrubs. In the spring, there is patch of … probably purslane? and daffodils on the border. Then the comfrey has its first bloom, then the clover and dandelions. Right now there’s more dandelions and comfrey’s second bloom. Next comes the invasive morning glorys and rose of sharon. There are a bunch of other things that flower, like wild strawberries, wild violets, and yarrow that is stanted by getting chopped down every week or two – but there’s more and I don’t know all their names.

We also have some type of carpenter/bumble bee trying hard to destroy the edge of the porch overhang. I’m just letting them do their thing and plan on repairing it if/when it becomes a structural issue.

While I tend to agree, I want to point out that it’s a very modern view point.

American pet stores these days are pet supply stores. Way back when (1970s and before), they were stocked with all kinds of creatures; some that were probably illegally imported as well as a mix of cats, dogs, rabbits, mice, canaries, and the like that were partially from people whose pets gave birth. You fancy canaries and some of hatch chicks? A nice side hustle was to sell the excess offspring back to the store. Same for mice. Stores were offered enough rabbits, guinea pigs, and kittens that they’d be overstocked if they took them all – especially kittens.

Spaying/Neutering was not common. Cats and dogs roamed off-leash and got pregnant. When you went to the grocery store, there was a fair chance someone was out front with a box of “Free Puppies!” filled with mongrels that pet stores did not want because they weren’t pure. The same was true for “Free Kittens!” but that, again, was because no store wanted as many kittens as the supply. That’s also why there were so many kill shelters: supply far exceeded demand.

I like it better now that most pets are NOT allowed to uncontrollably breed, but I do miss the chance to find some adorable mutt that isn’t half pit bull.

My lawn isn’t totally natural because I mow it, but I don’t use any chemicals. Despite some trees and shrubs, my yard doesn’t have ticks. We have grubs, mice, shrews, squirrels, birds, and occasional poison ivy that we pull up, but no ticks. They are in the park (with forest) a couple blocks away, but not in the trimmed lawns in my chunk of suburbia.

from Wikipedia:

Ticks like shady, moist leaf litter with an overstory of trees or shrubs and, in the spring, they deposit their eggs into such places allowing larvae to emerge in the fall and crawl into low-lying vegetation. The 3 meter boundary closest to the lawn’s edge are a tick migration zone, where 82% of tick nymphs in lawns are found.

I agree wirth you, but since I’m not a hydrologist nor any other type of expert, I included that contrary piece as an opposing view on whether better planning could have helped. Since we now know that there’s been a plan to have warning sirens in the works for years, I think it obvious that the area is a known flood risk and at least that much COULD have been done.

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?” – George Orwell (book link)

Oh there;s lots of new experiences in getting old: going through social security rigmarole, turning grey (or bald), finding yourself unable to do stuff you used to do, arthritis, gout, bone loss, needing a cane, getting up several times a night for the sake of your bladder…

Kerrville is too small to get cited as an example in a big national report on Texas flood issues, so my citations are meant to show this is a problem for the whole state rather than a particular town. If you go to USGS, you’ll see they don’t even have a flow gauge upstream of Camp Mystic. The closest is downstream at gauge:hntt2(click dot on map to see readings). Simple link without map: https://water.noaa.gov/gauges/HNTT2

We’ve known for decades that Texas has loose regulations allowing development to ignore flooding concerns. "Texas shoulders the most urban stormwater runoff of any state in the country ". After Hurricane Harvey flooded Houston in 2017, everyone was talking about the development issue, but alas, mostly just about Houston instead the state as a whole.

Post Harvey, The Atlantic had a big piece on how, “The combination of climate change and aggressive development made an event like this almost inevitable.”

Also from that 2017 disaster, The Washington Post concluded:

Thus, to ensure acceptable stormwater-system performance, jurisdictional agencies and officials must ensure that the type, timing and amount of real estate development are in sync with the capacity and configuration of the jurisdiction’s storm system. Many communities are at risk because of overbuilding or for allowing building in areas with inadequate infrastructure.

Some argued that “Houston isn’t flooded because of its land use planning” … but while the author there is an expert in urban planning, he is not an expert in hydrology.

Of course the recent tragedy was no where near Houston. It was closer to Austin and San Antonio. On Austin: “Flash flooding is a pressing concern for Austin, so much so that it has been labeled the “Flash Flood Alley” of Texas.” On San Santonio:

San Antonio is a populated area in one of the most flash-flood prone regions in North America. SARA manages a series of structural controls (dams and drainage systems) to help prevent and/or reduce flood problems. For example, the San Antonio River Tunnels (see illustration) proved invaluable as they diverted water safely underneath downtown during the 1998 and 2002 floods.

I don’t want to hear “No warning at all.” This was a risk known for decades where the state and municipalities decided they’d rather allow an eventual catastrophe than spend the money needed to prevent one.

The article does not got into specifics. It only states the percentage of breeders in each sector that have had violations in the last five years, and the whole thing is basically a reprint from this source . The time spans feel wonky. For the last five years, 41% of the licenced breeders they tracked had a violation. For the last three years, the violation rates of tracked licensed breeders have been: Breeders to stores: 36%, Puppy stores: 63%. Rather than any number of years they only say ‘currently’ for these rates: Breeders to brokers: 34%, Online sales: 42%.

I haven’t been thrilled with series TV this year. The best have been on subscription services with not much on broadcast networks. My personal favorite has been ‘North of North’ about a native woman in an artic native town (contaminated with white hosers). I did not like ‘Paradise’ but I watched it. I could not sit through ‘Suits LA’ or ‘Doctor Odyssey’. My mom likes ‘Grosse Pointe Garden Society’ but I don’t care for it. She gave up on ‘Sherlock & Daughter’, but I ended up liking it.

Here’s an unsorted list of the new stuff I’ve at least kinda liked.

• North of North (Netflix)
• Bad Thoughts (Netflix)
• Common Side Effects (HBO)
• Dying for Sex (FX/Hulu)
• Watson (CBS)
• Sherlock & Daughter (CW)

Sure, you’re getting worked up about her misrepresenting the number of illegals, but I’m over here all incensed that she’s saying a person is just ONE meal for an alligator? As if gators wouldn’t join in and make a party of it? How dare she! An adult alligator will eat 20 pounds of food a week during warm weather but can go for weeks without eating during the winter. That means a generic 100 pound human should feed at least 3-4 gators (or up to 5 if we don’t count bones as food). Suggesting a person is only one alligator meal is like suggesting a person isn’t unemployed once they’re run out of unemployment benefits – and who’d be stupid enough to suggest that?