Bay 12 Games Forum

Florida can probably be blamed on either inbreeding, drugs (alcohol counts), or the heat. Which ones are the largest contributors depends on which part of the state you're in.

No. I melted my spatula, somehow. Didn't even realize until after the fact. Wish I owned tongs. This wouldn't be a problem if I had tongs.

Have... have you tried using a fork? Was taught to flip bacon with fork, then probably eat whatever was being cooked with same fork. Less cleaning afterwards. Maybe little spatters of grease burns, but only a little and they don't even cause skin damage, usually. Stings more than anything~

Not sure where spatulas or tongs come in to the bacon cooking process, except maybe for getting them onto a plate or somethin'...

Tend to bake bacon nowadays, anyway. Little better for you, still tasty (pleeennty of grease/fat in bacon). Takes a bit longer to cook, but eh.

All the food in amusement parks ever, especially Disneyland, is mad overpriced. $3 for a bottle of water that I could have bought for less than a third of that price? Just.. no.

Oh man, bottled water tends to be even worse than bottled sodas, especially the single bottles. Straight up gallon of water tends to be around or less than 1 USD. The dollar+ priced water bottles are just insane

I've been seeing a fair number of restaurants/fast food joints transitioning from free water to the dollar stuff, actually. Gets annoying to have to specify, hum.

Some day I'll actually go and check the how of that stuff's pricing. Maybe it's the plastic or refrigeration that's jacking it up so far (well, and the situation-based price gouging, of course~).

Quote from: kaenneth on June 13, 2012, 03:06:58 pm

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/skype-calls-to-feature-ads-big-enough-to-interrupt-any-conversation/

'hurf durf, it gives you something to talk about!'

yeah, it lets you talk about how annoying that advert is that interrupted your present conversation.

No, no, it will lead to discussion on how to find those responsible, so that you may track them down and lay an ancient curse upon them, damning them to misfortune unto the sixth generation.

This misfortune will manifest as an inability to stop themselves from purchasing whatever every sixth advertisement they observe offers. Each generation, the frequency will decrease (Every twelfth, every eighteenth, etc.), until the seventh (assuming their progeny still exist) is free from the curse.

Intercene conflict before the beta even beings? This bodes... well.

All tantrum spiral, all the time. Act one of b12 outfit formation: Mass gib the other members, preferably while taking out some innocent bystanders.

Sounds good to me.

Welcome to the uncanny valley.

Besides, solving hunger (and many other problems) requires not goodwill from rich people, but political and structural changes. Develop farming, make water and electricity and sewage accessible, give everyone access to a job, etc. Which is the poor countries' responsibility.

Yeah, that's pretty much my point as to the outside the monkeysphere thing. Not my in-group, not my problem. Other peoples in-groups should deal with their own problems. Nevermind the suffering involved, et al, or that the net influence on our species qua species is negative. Nationalism/regionalism isn't exactly a moral stance. Not necessarily immoral, but anything that dehumanizes (even mildly, by doing things such as separating responsibility) sections of our species walks a really fine line, albeit a very natural one.

Which isn't a positive thing, mind, that it's natural. It's a flaw in our species we need workarounds for, sooner or later. Or at least better workarounds than we currently have.

The best thing we can do is removing as much foreign pressure on them as possible (debt issues, etc) so they can do the changes they need to do - and it's not the rich citizen's role, it's the politic's role. Do we really want rich people to meddle with politics ? After all, they can. But I don't think anybody will agree that it's a good thing, however noble their intentions.

That's almost a hilarious statement, honestly. It's not a can, it's a do. Name me a politician above the absolute local level (and even then, outside larger population centers) that is not raking in over 200k or better a year, and I'll be able to name you several dozen more that are. There is a near absolute stranglehold by the wealthy on first world politics. Which, yeah, causes some pretty damn notable problems at times.

As for foreign pressures, that depends pretty heavily on the situation. When the governing power of the area is artificially causing things like starvation or infrastructure degeneration in order to maintain power, keeping outside influences out isn't going to help anything. At the same time, when it's outside influence causing the destabilization, well...

And, of course, that's the whole artificial in-group delineation thing, too. Until we as a species starts seeing ourselves as we as a species, there will necessarily be problems, for the simple reason that we're building our systems off a fundamentally flawed axiom. No "nation" exists in a vacuum, no matter how hard they try to close the (imaginary) borders.

So yeah. The best thing you can do to help people is not to give away stuff (even if that too helps, and can be needed in certain situations, such as helping Haiti after the earthquake) but invest in their country.

I'd mostly agree with this, though. Problem being that you have to figure out a way to encourage investment that isn't sickeningly exploitative (which generally does more harm than good, on the net), which there currently isn't really incentive to do. Better thing would be not to invest, but simply improve the infrastructure, bloody gratis until the area can support itself, then engage in fair (Fair, dammit.) trade from there. Level the playing field, and then see where it goes from there. If we wanted to actually help, anyway.

Chances of that happening in the current climate are precisely zero, of course, if not somehow negative. The dominate powers have no reason to surrender that dominance, after all, and sympathy for something beyond the in-group isn't really sufficient reason for humans in aggregate.