The Open Thread is a place for open discussion among my readers. Post anything you feel like sharing! From now on, the Open Thread will no longer be monthly. Instead, there will be a new Open Thread whenever it is adequate. The stage is yours. Go ahead!
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Today I decided to drop Rygar: The Legendary Adventure (PS2). I really enjoyed the atmosphere. The locales and music are great. What is not so good is that the controls are clunky and imprecise. Sadly, the game falls apart towards the end, when there is a larger focus on platforming. When you play a Nintendo game, you take basics like platforming for granted but when I look at how rarely other developers can put together solid mechanics, this is clearly a lot more difficult than it looks. The final nail in the coffin was a boss fight against some Hydra-like creature (Typhon). The camera is so bad that you frequently do not see when one of the heads prepares to launch a fireball. Based on what I have watched of a playthrough on YouTube, the latter phases are even worse, with enormous fireballs that seem very difficult to dodge.
I tried to like Rygar but in the end the negatives were too difficult to ignore. I consider it a 5/10. The next game I’ll play is most likely the ARPG he Bard’s Tale, yet another of the supposed hidden gems of the PS2 library. Often, there is a good reason why “hidden gems” did not achieve widespread acclaim, but I am quite optimistic about it as I quite liked Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance II, which was made by the same studio.
The Bard’s Tale did not make a good first impression so I shelved it. Also, I was misinformed. This game uses the same engine as the Dark Alliance games, but the studio is different. Instead of playing this game, I started a playthrough of Devil May Cry. I played it when it came out, about two decades ago, and loved it. It seems to hold up very well.
Lex Fridman is such a tool: https://youtu.be/f_lRdkH_QoY?si=9apRtfp38Kyzisj5
Lex Fridman is in the same category as Ben Shapiro: mid-wits who have been relentlessly pushed by the mainstream. I find this guy really tedious to listen to.
You’re being more than kind, Aaron. Friedman is literally, no joke good for an insomniac like me. Makes Jordan Peterson seem like Mr. Excitement.
He is maybe boring and is not , but he has an absolutely amazing guests. Donald Knuth, one of the best computer scientists that has ever lived. John Danger, considered as the best Brazilian jiu jitsu coach in history. A lot of very accomplished professors. And many, many more.. What podcaster can claim having so much variety of fantastic guests?
I have watched very little of this guy but he did not come across as a good interviewer. Joe Rogan is arguably the top guy in this field and unlike it is the case with Fridman, he surely does not get his guest due to ethnic nepotism. I even recall coming across claims that about 3/4 of Fridman’s guests are fellow Jews. Nothing to see here, move along!
and is not of exceptional intelligence*
On that topic, there is another big podcaster, Ethan Klein, who comes across as downright stupid. It is a total mystery how he got so big. Surely, it has absolutely nothing to do with connections.
I think you meant John “Danaher”,not Danger. lol.
To get off topic a bit,BJJ has sadly had a history of bad teaching methodology. Its really great to see there’s been a big push to change that in recent times. I’ve had the pleasure of speaking to one of the spearheaders of that movement; Josh Wentworth (known as “Kintanon” on reddit). I think he’s one of the founders of a website called BJJ Mental Models,where he and folks dedicated to the mission are gathered.
I’m planning to re-try taking BJJ again after next week. Unfortunately,its the typical gym with all the usual mainstream issues. I would loved to make use of the BJJ Mental Models’ services,but money is a bit tight right now. I’ll just pay for individual classes and see how much benefit I can get for the moment I suppose. I’ve gotten (relatively speaking that is,I definitely don’t consider myself a representative of a trained fighter,lol) well-accustomed to Striking. Its grappling experience that I need more of right now. haha.
Gerd not cool to just post that link. I clicked on it thinking there was a short clip of lex being a tool or somebody explaining why he is a tool. Instead I gave lex Friedman unnecessary click and I have no idea why you think he is a tool and why you linked to that video.
Note: I also think he is a tool. He is clearly a Joe Rogan rip off. But compared to Joe Rogan he is 0 contrarian at all. Plus you could see Joe Rogan build his brand organically while Fridman just was made famous thanks to some powerful folks.
I agree with OTP. I clicked that link and kept scrolling back and forth trying to figure out what minutes in the hour long video might be a sample of what you were talking about. Nine out of 10 attempts id fall on a part where tucker is talking.
Btw I have no idea who this lex guy is, and the link wasn’t an easy digestible representation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_Fridman
He is naive to no end. His monotonous narrative style is boring. He only invites Jewish guests half the time and rarely asks interesting critical questions. His Ukrainian bias is the final straw. He is quite probably a puppet of the establishment.
Could be partially due to his Russian accent, Russian intonation is generally more flat and monotonous than the English one.
Hehehe, peak Joe Biden:
https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/1766821279410073951
Latam Airlines takes a nosedive. Officials are sayin that the cause was due to technical problems. I have a hunch that the pilot wasn’t paying attention to the instruments in the cockpit.
There’s a show called Mayday about aircraft disasters. You come to learn that a lot of these aircraft disasters are often causes by human error.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/mar/12/latam-airlines-flight-injuries-technical-problems-plane-drop-new-zealand-sydney-to-auckland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mayday_episodes
I have the impression that there are a lot more issues with airplanes than in the past. Boeing’s 737 Max has been a complete disaster but even just maintenance seem to be beyond the capability of the workforce their hire. Just the last few weeks we have had cases of a door flying off mid-air or a plane losing a tire while taking off. There was another incident with the landing gear of a passenger plane just collapsing. I really wonder what the root cause of all of this is. It surely cannot have anything to do with DIE initiatives and the management doctrine of trying to squeeze every last penny out of a company.
Alos, the schizo in me wonders if the airplane problems are merely a means to an end. After all, if there is a increased incidence of airplane accidents or travel incidents, then people would be less inclined to fly. Recall how during Covid air travel was severely limited, except, of course, for the elites with their private jets. I wonder if the Davos crowd gets boners when discussing a future in which air travel is once again only available to the super rich. It is also good for the environment to never leave your 15-minute city, so let’s not get uppity, goy!
I’m just going to post this article…
https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/boeing-whistleblower-john-barnett-found-dead-days-testifying-against-company.amp
Let’s not jump to conclusions here! I am sure there is a perfectly rational explanation that does not involve Big Corp shenanigans. After all, when did Big Corp executives ever get involved in any kind of conspiracy?
Remember the AF447 idiot pilots who flew the plane too high and then didn’t notice the continuous stall? End result: jelly bodies in 4 kilometers of deep sea water. 228 people dead.
The previous open thread had an interesting subthread about women rewriting memory. I once heard a guy decide to bulk up and get rich just to make his ex regret dumping him. (That’s a poor motivation, so I doubt he followed through.) Anyway, in retrospect, this was a case of projection. Men look back at where they screwed up, especially with women, and feel regret. Women revise history in their own minds instead. Their behavior in a given situation is guided less by (actual) prior experience and more by simple calculation of personal advantage in that moment (by male standards this is called a lack of integrity.)
In other words, if this guy had bulked up and gotten rich and then run into his ex, she wouldn’t have thought “I should never have dumped him.” She’d be more likely to think, “Okay, now that he’s hot and rich, how can I get back aboard the train?”
That’s probably also why they repeat the same mistakes endlessly, until they no longer can, due to fading sexual market value.
This is actually similar to a theme on the HBO show Girls. The girls would dump the guy, his life would get better across the board, the girls would come back, then the guys would refuse. The difference is that it wasn’t their motivation, rather these dudes were just better off without the cluster bitches. Lena Dunham may be a fat, crazy, feminist bitch, but her depiction of the men on the show was actually favorable when compared to the female characters. It may have even been unintentional.
This is an excellent comment. I just gave it more visibility by turning it into a separate post:
https://blog.aaronsleazy.com/index.php/2024/03/12/male-and-female-approaches-to-dealing-with-the-past-by-aj/
Very true. Though I have seen one exception. I have seen women talk about a (now) rich or famous guy, and how he pursued them, and they can’t believe they rejected him and feel regret seeing how well he’s doing now.
Though I suspect in such cases the motivation is to bragplain, not admit a mistake. It’s an excuse to brag how this (now) popular guy used to pursue her despite her constantly rejecting him.
Women do this only in order to elevate their status. Thus, if they do not have a high-status boyfriend, at least they can point to some high-status guy who was once into them. This kind of behavior is downright bizarre. Once, I met a woman whose favorite pastime seems to have been getting railed by musicians and DJs. She pulled up her phone and tried to impress me by showing me text messages of guys in some band (“Do you know band X? Their singer banged me, tehe!”). She also bragged about having gotten fucked by over 200 guys. I did not find this impressive at all, though. In fact, I was quite disgusted by this and thus did not pursue her. Something must have gone horribly wrong during her upbringing.
According to this comparison of side views of Lara Croft, female representation in Western video games peaked in 2008:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Hd2DaAbbY6A
The last game in this franchise had disappointing sales, which is probably completely unrelated to the female protagonist having undergone rather heavy breast-reduction surgery.
A logical inconsistency that struck me this morning.
Woman sees suspicious activity outside her house at night, calls cops. Black cop shows up, she goes out to talk to him, he guns her down in her nightgown. Cop is found guilty of murder. Post-George Floyd, blue state supreme court rewrites law to let him off.
Women: this is fine
Female nursing student Laken Riley joins Kate Steinle and Mollie Tibbets in being murdered by illegal invader. “President” botches her name, then apologizes not for that but for referring to her killer as illegal.
Women: this is fine
Men can put on panties and destroy women’s sports and barge into women’s restrooms.
Women: this is fine
Women should use contraceptives or avoid drunken hookups with douchebags whose kids they don’t want to bear.
Women: BURN IT ALL DOWN
THE MUSLIM REFUGEE SOLUTION?! Douglas Murray, Sam Harris & Jordan Peterson
https://youtu.be/xDizujUtWZE?si=4c8k8MxLq2VV_7ed
Why won’t rich Muslim countries take the bulk of Muslim refugees?!
Muslims want to conquer the world with their “birth jihad”. Thus, there is on gain for them if they settle in other Muslim countries.
Candace Owens fully endorses the conspiracy theory that Macron is married to a tranny:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v81g1tldi4c
On a side note, it seems that she has modeled her speech after Tucker Carlson.
what do you think of Candace Owen?
I think she is a grifter, trying to drain conservatives of their shekels. My impression is that she got some free mainstream publicity years ago in an attempt to set her up as the black counterpart to Lauren Southern. Her content does not appeal to me as there is simply very little of note in it. Her promoting the hypothesis that Macron’s wife is a tranny, however, is quite something. Yet, you could also argue that the evidence is so overwhelming at this point that this is not edgy anymore.
I mostly agree with you. My big issue with her is that she is just not that smart.
The Macron rabbit hole goes deep:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240316195447/http://pressibus.free.fr/gen/trogneux/indexgb.html
If you are inclined to dismiss the hypothesis that he is married to a tranny then at least skim this page.
That’s in Germany. That country has completely lost it: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/10-year-old-kids-denied-drinking-water-class-because-three-muslims-observing-ramadan
If that’s the rationale then that’s messed up.
I’m wondering why the kids were drinking water in class in the first place, though? When I was a kid we certainly weren’t allowed to eat or drink (no, not even water) during class.
There were a few diabetic kids in school who sometimes had to eat or drink outside the regularly scheduled breaks and meals. They were of course allowed to do that since they had a valid medical reason, but then they had to leave the classroom to do so.
So we had the debate recently on how to handle people who argue in bad faith. I know people agreed here that you shouldn’t argue with them.
But I just wonder how do you pull that off mentally?
Because I find the other person so infuriating and I just want to refute their points and unmask their fraud… but the consequence of that is that the arguing goes on and on….
This depends a lot on context. Can you just walk away or do you often find yourself in company with people who act like that? I have been able to get to the point where I can just keep my mouth shut. Sometimes, I just thank them for sharing their opinion and leave it at that and if a colleague tries to involve me in an inane conversation, I obviously would love to discuss this at some later point but not now because I unfortunately have to take care of something rather urgently.
It’s actually, quite pathetically, online discussions. I should be able to walk away by just ignoring the other poster but I just have an urgent to debunk him/her and then if the other poster argues in bad faith it escalates.
It’s just a matter of self-control, man. It’s hard sometimes. We all get sucked in from time to time. 🙂 It gets easier to resist over time as you get used to it.
Nietzsche had some good advice in Thus Spake Zarathustra, “The Flies in the Market-Place”:
“Thou hast lived too closely to the small and the pitiable. Flee from their invisible vengeance! Towards thee they have nothing but vengeance.
Raise no longer an arm against them! Innumerable are they, and it is not thy lot to be a fly-flap.
Innumerable are the small and pitiable ones; and of many a proud structure, rain-drops and weeds have been the ruin.”
On another blog, I think VD’s, someone said there are three kinds of arguments:
1. Person A and B are arguing to try to determine the truth, which both are open to. As you can imagine, this is rare.
2. Person A and B are arguing to try to convince each other. This is rarely worthwhile, because each person’s ego gets in the way of his accepting the other’s argument.
3. Person A is trying to either determine the truth or convince person B. Person B, however, is only pretending to argue, but really rallying the audience to silence person A. This is obviously the worst kind of bad news. You can see conservatives being person A and leftists being person B on social media every day. Person B also tends to be well-equipped with logical fallacies, shaming language, gotcha questions, etc.
Great -thanks for the responses. It was actually 3. the opponent tried to get his friends on board by linking to them during the debate. I guess I just need have better self control next time and drop it.
Do you guys recall Cheeky James? I got suckered into arguing with this troll. She was posing as a male clandestinely promoting PUA. I kept going and going until Aaron finally banned her.
It happens man.
The Cheeky James saga had an interesting follow-up: He booked a consultation session with me after several months had passed, and we had an honest conversation about dating as a mature guy. In this context, he also apologized for his behavior in the comments section on my blog.
So, it’s actually a dude? Damn. I’m glad you helped him, because he sure needed it. We all thought he was a chick. Also, didn’t Cheeky troll you for years? Going way back?
Ah, all is well that ends well 🙂
I just double-checked his comment history. In 2020 he left a few comments but then disappeared. In 2023 he reemerged and went full-bore. Effectively, he was very active for a few months. This is based on his email address. It is of course possible that he used a different name in between those periods.