Open Thread

Open Thread #143

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47 thoughts on “Open Thread #143

  1. Aaron,
    Quick question…. I have always been curious how people manage to travel all over the world without ever having to work a 9 to 5 job. I saw this early during the heydays of PUA, but I also see this with other YouTubers. Is this something people do at an early age in their 20s into their 30s sacrificing a long-term career, or is this just a short-term goal of traveling the world in 5 years.

    The challenging part of traveling is getting the time off from work. Corporate America doesn’t give its employees much vacation other than the standard of two weeks. Fortunately, in my situation I’m able to get a lot than that. I can easily take a whole month off all at once and travel. Its nice to travel since it rejuvenates me. Of course, there’s a lot of see in the world from nature to historical buildings. What has your experience been like?

    1. There are few aspects:
      1) In Europe, having around 30 vacation days is quite common.
      2) Some people are independently wealthy, i.e. old money, but may not tell you about it.
      3) Some people study a b.s. subject at university which means that they hardly need to make an effort to graduate with good grades.

    2. Chris,

      -Some people also have jobs where they live somewhat paycheck to paycheck and then travel on their spare time and not spend any money anywhere else
      -if you live in Europe, you can travel around Europe a lot easier and on a whim compared to someone in the US
      -Some people have gig type jobs: massage therapist, eye lash technician, nail “Technician” lol, where they can set there own schedule
      -i know lots of graphic designers and such that can work from a coffee shop and just take contractual work online.

    3. There are also some jobs in tech that have a large travel component such as B2B sales for a big corporation. I also know of a 1000+ B2B tech company with a global footprint that has a department with “integration engineers”. Those people sometimes have to spend two or three weeks at a time abroad, helping new clients getting set up. This is not often glamorous as some of those clients may be in fairly uninteresting geographic regions, but you could end up in in a big metropolis.

  2. I was hanging out with two of my friends recently and they were watching YouTube. I can’t believe the stupid shit that people watch. An entire channel about a Filipino-American who goes to Japan and eats food and tells you how great it is.

    To be fair I liked Anthony Bourdain, former Chef who explored the cultures of different societies. But he was a unique character. And the show was about way more than food.

    This YouTube show was just plain stupid. Like McDonalds in Japan. Looked like shitty McDonald’s food with soy sauce on it. This dude had like 250,000 subscribers. I mentioned to my friend that he was giving McDonalds free advertisement.

    Do you guys understand this fascination with watching other people eat things?

    1. Mainstream culture is hard to fathom for me. For instance, I don’t understand how a guy like PewDiePie can have 100 million subscribers. It is also odd to me that video-game streaming has turned into such a big industry. I prefer playing games rather than watching some dude play. Maybe this is related to guys spending too much time whacking off to porn where they watch some dude doing the fucking. It could well be that zoomers have been conditioned to a passive life of consumption, in all aspects of life.

    2. I worked with a guy who watched people online play the Madden American football game against each other. I was puzzled and he said, “well, you like watching the NFL, right?” As if that’s the same thing.

    3. A big misconception I had about video gaming streams was that they focused on people who are either very good or simply entertaining to watch. Then I watched a few streams and realized that plenty are neither. As I was told, it is about “community”, i.e. typing an emoji-laden message in a chat window that gets 10 messages per second.

    4. Also, you have “reality” shows now where they show people watching people. People watching people, watching people……..

    5. I worked with a guy who watched people online play the Madden American football game against each other. I was puzzled and he said, “well, you like watching the NFL, right?” As if that’s the same thing.

      From my perspective they are the same thing. As in, equally ridiculous.

      Why would you watch other people play a game?

      Whether it’s a game of tennis between two digital characters or a video stream of two meatspace people playing a game of tennis, same thing.

      Replace tennis with football, baseball, basketball, anything.

      You’re watching someone else play a game instead of playing it yourself.

    6. I don’t watch sportsball myself, but the best argument would be that it is about athleticism and supreme performance. This would apply to the best teams or players in their respective top leagues, or to watching, for instance, world championship matches of Starcraft II. This does not seem to be the primary motivation of viewers, however. After all, even mediocre teams have solid fanbases because they are “local”. The best explanation is probably the need of those people to be part of some kind of tribe.

    7. “t is also odd to me that video-game streaming has turned into such a big industry.”

      The way to capitalize on it is to buy TFUEL and THETA and stake both on gpool(dot)io
      No slashing, no giving up of ownership. Stake directly with your Nano Ledger S, 72hours to unbond.

      Future Samsung TVs will come with a Theta Edge node in them. Theta has a USD 6billion market cap, Tfuel 1.8b (BTC has USD 650b). There’s room to grow.

      Check it out.

    8. I believe the tribal explanation is the most logical one. After all, as you said, most people watch and root for local teams that are nowhere near the peak of human ability.

      With that said I do see how watching someone else play makes sense if it’s watching the highest tier and watching a level of ability you could only dream of. In that sense it can be like watching a movie for entertainment or watching something for inspiration (like in the case of watching the worlds best StarCraft player).

    9. Yep, Aaron nailed it. It’s about athleticism and tribalism. Fans tend to be split on where they lean. Some cheer for the best players/teams while most are loyal to their local team (or the closest team to their city). When I first took a cursory interest in sports I just liked the best. As I dove into it I only liked the home teams. This happened shortly after I started playing organized sports. It’s like sticking up for your family or friends even when they are wrong. Or staying loyal to your wife when you meet hotter women etc.

    10. Fans of only the best are derisively refered to as “bandwagoners” in the sports community.

    11. Sports betting is also surprisingly prevalent. That is why people watch random leagues. They think they are smart enough to make money from it. It is like a stock market&crypto gambling for the masses.

    12. Exactly. Some guys think they can make money based on their sports knowledge. As if they can outsmart the bookies in Las Vegas. If they could, they would be hired as bookies, just like Wall Street hires investigators who are on to them. Just recently I was watching a show on Fox News about stock trading. And it dawned on me that if any of this were valuable information it would be illegal. It was simply a show advertising corporations nonstop. Gambling in general is perplexing.

    13. This is a good point. I remember a few guys who told me that they are making bank via day trading, telling me about how they can multiply their money with leverage, and so on. Quite often, this is simply posturing. One guy I knew told me for years that he doesn’t need a job because of his day-trading gainz. The last time I met him, though, he didn’t mentions stocks at all and was working a regular job. As it turned out, he exaggerated his profits, and probably suffered a severe loss with a margin trade.

    14. One of my friends used to routinely ask me to join his currency trading money making scheme. I immediately saw it for what it was. Today pyramid scams front as legitimate businesses. He had to ask me what the currency in Canada is FFS. I was like “mmmmmm Canadian dollar.”

  3. I came across two more PS3 games that seem quite solid:

    1) Virtua Fighter 5. There is now a remake for PS5 out but since I don’t have a PS5, this isn’t really an option for me. I picked up the PS3 copy for little money and more on a whim. Normally, I don’t enjoy fighting games but this one I find quite appealing. It is a more cerebral game as it’s slower than others, less flashy, and is not built on flashy special moves. The graphics are (still) great, the presentation is top notch, and the fighting styles are grounded in the real world. There is a meaty single player mode where you fight CPU opponents in some kind of campaign in order to improve your rank. I have to spend a bit more time learning the game, but eventually I think it would make for a very nice game to play while listening to podcasts.

    2) Resident Evil Revelations. This is a remaster of an early 3DS game. I have only played about an hour, but it really hooked me. Sure, the graphics are a bit lacking, but it’s a high-quality Capcom game nonetheless. The opening draws you in, the controls are really good, and, as an added bonus, the women in the game look very attractive. This game features Jill Valentine, which is much better looking than in the Resident Evil 3 remake for PS4, in my opinion. The few Resident Evil games I played I found a bit too slow and sluggish (RE4 was great but the controls are too stiff nowadays, RE5 has horrible controls and the co-op mechanics are horrible), but this one is fun to play. Story-wise, it seems to be standard Resident Evil fare.

    A very cool touch of RE: Revelations is that the mission select screen records your best time. This indicates that the game was built with replayability in mind. Nothing I have seen from this game would contradict this impression. In contrast, however, modern games with a heavy story-focus are oftentimes too long to replay, and are commonly not interesting enough from a gameplay perspective anyway. It’s almost as if you endure the game to progress the story. I have little doubt that I’l get my money’s worth from RE: Revelations.

    1. I briefly demoed Revelations (maybe it was the sequel?) on my friend’s Switch a couple years back and I do remember the nice hip swivel animation they had on Jill’s juicy ol’ ass. I was checking out Prince of Persia for PS3, and even though the gameplay looks quite nice I became pretty disinterested when learning that it was made by Ubisoft.

      I’m about halfway through MGR:R and ended up needing to look up a tutorial for the advanced mechanics. Once you start getting familiar with them and learning to exploit enemy weaknesses the game becomes pretty thrilling. This might be one of the best action games I’ve ever picked up. I even managed to break the game a couple times in a hilarious way. Once was during a boss fight (Monsoon) and I managed to glitch the game somehow to where I could still deal damage, yet I was invincible. Another time, I executed a fodder enemy and he kept exploding over and over for a couple minutes. All in all, this is a really good game. Too bad there won’t be a sequel.

    2. Glitches are, sadly, par for the course for non-Nintendo games. The ones you mentioned I did not encounter, but I ran into a few in Sleeping Dogs or, yesterday, when I fired up Spec Ops: The Line. The latter I loved it when it came out but the mechanics sadly don’t hold up. It’s one of the very rare instances of a story-driven FPS.

      Sony hinted at a sequel for MGR:R years ago. It’s a shame it won’t happen. Also, considering Platinum’s recent performance, the game would likely be not nearly as good as we’d expect.

    3. Speaking of story driven FPS games, have you by chance looked into Metro: Last Light?

    4. This game is only on PS4, I think. I vaguely recall that I either played it briefly and didn’t like the gloomy atmosphere or that I watched part of a playthrough and reached the same conclusion. Overall, I find excessively dark games off-putting, and I’m strictly referring to color, not tone. Bloodborne is another example: it’s apparently just black and brown from start to finish; I only played part of it. Every game doesn’t have to be as colorful as Mario games, but a little bit of variety isn’t too much to ask for.

    5. It is in fact for PS3. Interesting you mention the brown color scheme. I believe it was popularized by RE4 and many games thereafter began copying that same aesthetic. I think one of the Dead Space games even tried it before going back to the more bluish filter.

    1. Biden’s cognitive decline is at a point where his self-censoring doesn’t properly work anymore. This is also why his handlers only allow him to talk to preselected journos. I saw a longer clip of the conference call you posted. It was apparently a rare off-the-cuff meeting behind the scenes where he spoke to “black leaders”. We’ll see fireworks in a few decades because there is no other race you can guilt trip, and even among young Whites the effect seems to be slowly waning. Zoomers are apparently a pretty based bunch.

    2. With zoomers, they’re trying hard to beat them into submission. Zoomers still in school and the younger generations here the US will be subjected to critical race theory in public schools, I believe it’s been made official by NEA. Even if the pushback fails I have to imagine there will be a natural rebellion against the establishment teachings, yet at the same time you’ll see polarization in the opposite direction. The zoomers will be simultaneously gay and obnoxious as hell, as well as having a section of very right-leaning individuals. I just hope shit hits the fan before quantum computers and an adequate AI gets rolled out.

    3. He’s not based, it was just taken out of context. It’s the same “racial justice” stuff as ever. Here’s the context:

      “If we cannot make significant progress on racial equity, this country is doomed. It is doomed, not just because of African Americans, but because by 2040 this country is going to be minority white European. Hear me? Minority white European. And you guys are going to have to start working more with Hispanics, who will make up a larger portion of the population than y’all do.”

    4. Oh, okay. That does sound out of context. He meant to say that America was doomed, not just because of African Americans, meaning that racial issues have much further to go than just black issues. He probably means that the Hispanic population will need to be kept in check in the future, for it’s possible groups of them might become ‘far right extremists’.

      Btw, it’s funny that it even has to be said that I don’t honestly believe that Biden is based. I mean, realistically, he probably is pretty based and just knows how to cover it up to appease his (((masters))). Is this taken out of context as well? It doesn’t look like a slip or a fall, it looks exactly like a subservient kneel. Though, I suppose he could be wiping up some ice cream droppings:

      https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=62353

    5. It’s still a petty based statement. When do you ever see a politician tell the blacks that they need to get their act together? Biden would not make similar statements in public. The most popular man who ever lived, after all, who gets about 10,000 views on YT if he’s lucky, is very concerned about his image.

    6. Hey Aaron,

      Would you mind sharing/expaning your thoughts on the below bits? (picked form you and Pickernanny). Would love to hear more on how you view GenZ and how you see the AI and the quantum computing space.

      “Zoomers are apparently a pretty based bunch”

      “The zoomers will be simultaneously gay and obnoxious as hell, as well as having a section of very right-leaning individuals.”

      “before quantum computers and an adequate AI gets rolled out.”

    7. Could you please elaborate a little bit? By the way, I’m not convinced that quantum computing is more than b.s. marketing at this point.

    8. “By the way, I’m not convinced that quantum computing is more than b.s. marketing at this point.”

      Ok, thanks. That answers my third question. 🙂

      Now, to the zoomers. What’s your opinion on this narrative that GenZ is a more conservative right-leaning kind of demographic? Also, what do you mean by saying they are apparently a pretty based bunch? I’m a bit out of touch with the wording.
      My point is, I don’t trust the narratives anymore. PJW was calling GenZ a group which will embody an opposing position to the boomers’ libtard nonsense and that right-wing is the new punk. I don’t know. I see a lot of “zero-fucks-given” attitude in GenZ, a lack of political engagement other than Fridays for Future and all kinds of shit that is just a continuation of what we know and what we’ve seen to date.
      So, are we living in a bubble of a small group of GenZers pumping AMC and GME, but this group being totally unrepresentative or are we really onto something here with those born after 2000? If so, why would that be the case?

    9. Based is the opposite of woke, kind of like anti-woke. Imagine a person that rolls their eyes when woke ads or feminist drivel comes on.

    10. Have to kudos you for bringing that vid up. Obviously whites are becoming a minority now.

      But I think it is an irreversible trend, because immigrants stop pouring into the US from UK, France, Germany or Italy. Economic progresses and the lack of religious persecutions play a great part to that.

      Water falls from high places to low ground. Men ascend from low place to higher plane. Such is the simple wisdom.

    11. He was telling white people to get their act together, Aaron. Same “woke” bs as usual. 🙁

  4. I am currently binging on the Berserk manga, and recently made it past chapter 200 out of around 380. Overall, the manga is quite good, but at times there is very little actual story development. As great as the drawings are, it feels a bit dissatisfying if a fight between Guts and some monster spans three chapters. The pacing of the anime is often a lot better, albeit this may sound blasphemous to some.

    1. What fucks with me the most about this article is that the harpee in it has managed to spawn 12 children while simultaneously juggling whatever political career she has going on. Meanwhile, white Western women can’t be bothered to squeeze out 2 or 3 kids before 30, and probably have significantly less demanding jobs if I had to guess.

    2. I don’t know what’s more inappropriate, Biden submitting and handing off his coin pouch to this woman or that hyena cackling for the photo has he does so. I imagine he must have said something hilarious on his way down, sort of like he regularly does. “C’mon man, I’m an old geezer and this is a tough position to be in. I haven’t bent down this far since the other day when I went for a good sniff of that Mexican-speaking girl.”

    3. There is more to Biden’s supplication to ZOG. Look at this picture:
      https://twitter.com/QuarantinedCoof/status/1412723623509569538/photo/1
      Imagine presenting as the “leader of the free world” in public and getting humiliated like this behind closed doors!

      That lady is Biden’s Secretary of the Interior, though. She’s a Native American. I’m not sure why he’s kneeling to her, but maybe because she’s the first Native American Congresswoman and department Secretary?

  5. I had a chance to play some of the RE8 campaign last night. We played on a PS5 hooked to a wide 4k monitor via hdmi 2.1 with surround sound. I didn’t happen to ask how much that particular setup cost, and even though I can’t personally justify the expense it was a joy to experience. I remember looking down at the baby at the beginning of game and thinking that it was the best looking virtual baby I had ever seen. I maybe made it through about 1/3 of the story and thought it was pretty good.

    1. This sounds great. We can be glad that Capcom is still around. They are probably the best third-party studio in the world in terms of quality. Did you play Resident Evil VII? Both VII and VIII are quite a detour from the classic formula, so much so that they could be their own series.

    2. that does sound like fun. such a killer setup. what a shame that there’s a dearth of titles coming out for gamers to properly make use of that kind of setup.

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