The Gamer's Quarter

dhex · Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 2:04 pm Post subject:

gee, nwn2 has a lot of patches.

i think i'm up to something like 400mb worth of updates so far.
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dhex · Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 2:34 pm Post subject:

that only took about 45 minutes. whew. now onto motb.

edit: they spent all this money getting the manuals perfect-bound - with nice glossy covers and all - and then they don't shrink or bump the page layouts out of the gutter. sheesh.

greyscale layouts with lots of nonsense in the background = fail.
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dhex · Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 8:16 am Post subject:

dhex · Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 10:26 am Post subject:

http://www.soviet-empire.com

this place is a bad sig goldmine. (presuming it's not a giant joke i'm missing)

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dhex · Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 10:52 am Post subject:

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/125385.html

mr. balko keeps on keeping on.
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Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

What's weird is that people choose to react to the stuff from that post by being the people in the post above that.

Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

The Church is fucking retarded.

dhex, how do you feel about all this AGW business?
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

dhex · Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 4:41 pm Post subject:

Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

I know I am!

Wait.

Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

http://www.carm.org/islam/Jesus_Muhammad.htm

my messiah can beat up your messiah
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dhex · Posted: Tue Mar 11, 2008 8:08 am Post subject:

i like it when people present odd arguments in chart form. it helps keep things straight.

dhex · Posted: Tue Mar 11, 2008 9:39 am Post subject:

a poem for governor spitzer during his dark times:

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
fuck you
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
fuck you
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Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

dhex · Posted: Tue Mar 11, 2008 11:08 am Post subject:

explosions are bad for the environment.

unrelated:
spitzergate is great if, like me, you enjoy the suffering of partisans.

http://pandagon.blogsome.com/2008/03/10/breaking-ny-gov-eliot-spitzer-admits-connection-to-prostitution-ring/#comment-498229

http://feministing.com/archives/008775.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/11/51123/3435/851/474082

man, god was right - tears really do make the best lube.
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dhex · Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2008 8:15 am Post subject:

a brief dose of schadenfreude this morning - 80k? ha ha ha ha fuck you spitzer. also, i'm disappointed that his whole thing was sans condoms and not, say, dressing them up like rudy giuliani. (i'd actually figured it was choking or something along those lines, though i was hoping it might be a more germanic vice, if you catch my drift. cause that'd be funny.)

but back to the slightly more real world: it would be nice if a discussion about the legality of prostitution and the impact of black markets on everyone's lives came about because of this. it would be even neater if it had some kind of nuance. somewhere between the "legalize it and all problems go away!" and "all sex work is a form of rape." there's a middle ground where people have both autonomy and limited choices, like the rest of real life.

semi-related: if you survey 800 girls, and then extrapolate that 1/4 of the population of young women in the us have an STI, you may be a dipshit.
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dhex · Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2008 8:22 am Post subject:

"Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children," wrote Justice H. Walter Croskey in a Feb. 28 opinion signed by the two other members of the district court."

hey if the state doesn't give you that right, you don't have it! whee!

fuck the teacher's union.
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dhex · Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2008 9:50 am Post subject:

http://westernstandard.blogs.com/western_standard_radio/

good interview with jacob sullum up top on drugs and the general use v. abuse dichotomy.
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dhex · Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2008 10:20 am Post subject:

http://draginol.joeuser.com/article/303512/Piracy_PC_Gaming

from the other direction, but with feeling.

were i on the ground floor in some company, i would probably steal some of his points. i do think it's the most realistic operational breakdown of the situation.

i still want to punch the "bad games cause piracy" gang. just out of principle. after i steal their shoes.

because information wants to be free!
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Redeye · . Joined: 02 Oct 2006 Posts: 986 Location: filth

Think of piracy as a LARP where you play a thief.

Who steals things.

Oh you thiefy thief, you!

hardcore
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I felt sheer anarchic joy when I ran over my first pedestrian.

dhex · Posted: Thu Mar 13, 2008 7:12 am Post subject:

information wants to be free of shoes!
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dhex · Posted: Thu Mar 13, 2008 9:43 am Post subject:

Mason is accused of going with Ambrose on Dec. 31, 1999, to Agriculture Hall on the Michigan State University campus in East Lansing. The indictment says they intended to destroy federally funded plant genetic research being conducted by university employees.

on the one hand, i think using the term "terrorism" to describe stuff like this is a bit much.

on the other hand, it's hard to argue that setting peoples' shit on fire isn't meant to inspire terror.

hmmm.
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dhex · Posted: Thu Mar 13, 2008 10:16 am Post subject:

not nearly as idiosyncratic as one might initially think.

<ethnocentrism>also, completely fucking crazy</ethnocentrism>
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dhex · Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 8:02 am Post subject:

http://www.ratemycop.com/

oh ho ho ho ho

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/125503.html

the saga is quite interesting.

as an aside, i grew up in a union family and all, but the cops union and the teacher's union both seem to be staffed solely by sanctimonious assholes whose only job is to take issue a and conflate it with the worst tragedies of human history whenever possible.

i find it funny that ratemyteacher (and related sites) and ratemycop get similar responses.
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seryogin · Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 9:50 am Post subject:

Decency still lives, art is not dead!

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dhex · Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 10:07 am Post subject:

that is fucking amazing.

fucking amazing.
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Where'd you get that new sig from?
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

dhex · Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 12:40 pm Post subject:

something from an icewind dale game, i believe. apparently there's a quest to bring squirrels back to a super magical tree or something.
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dhex · Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 7:56 am Post subject:

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080316/COL04/803160557

dhex · Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 12:49 pm Post subject:

tonight is today is the day at knitting factory.

i haven't been out on a st. patrick's day in a very long time, and for good reason. and i'm coming down with a cold or something.

i'm hoping i show up around 8:30 or so and i only have to sit through a band or two before titd.

but go see them!

http://www.supernovarecords.net/site/tour
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dhex · Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 1:27 pm Post subject:

http://www.theartofthepossible.net/2008/03/13/libertarianism-and-liberalism-what-went-wrong/
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Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

dhex · Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 2:02 pm Post subject:

basically, yeah.

unrelated (or is it??!?!?):

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/04/formalist-manifesto-originally-posted.html

it is long, but i heartily recommend it.
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Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

http://www.xxlmag.com/online/?p=20332

BARACK? THAT AIN'T NO NAME FOR A NIGGAH
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dhex · Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 8:37 am Post subject:

he's too busy kicking it direct to video style with segal.

unrelated:
show was fucking awesome. saw mouth of the architect as well, and they're quite good. i was pleasantly surprised, it's not often you hear four part harmonized screaming.
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dhex · Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 10:05 am Post subject:

http://www.volokh.com/archives/archive_2008_03_16-2008_03_22.shtml#1205819923

unrelated:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0308/The_speech.html
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dhex · Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 8:03 am Post subject:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080318/od_afp/healthindiapopulationfamilyplanningguns_080318162858;_ylt=Ao8XJMkQh9KlwNWLGFSVpdmgOrgF

guns for snip snip?
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dhex · Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 11:02 am Post subject:

general public service announcement #407

fuckups should be euthanized.
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dhex · Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 11:24 am Post subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitna_(film)

i am torn with stuff like this. on the one hand, it seems entirely artless and almost pointlessly provocative. a chocolate jesus level of mentation.

on the other hand, that even a 15 minute screed provokes seemingly dozens of promises of violence against dutch civilians for a fucking movie...

chalk it up to western parochial shortsightedness, i guess. or not.
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dhex · Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 10:53 am Post subject:

http://www.fbo.gov/spg/DOJ/BATF/APMD/840400000029/Amendment%20to%20Combined%20Synopsis%5FSolicitation%2003.html

oh me oh my.

dhex · Posted: Fri Mar 21, 2008 10:07 am Post subject:

dhex · Posted: Sat Mar 22, 2008 9:21 am Post subject:

http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2008/03/21/8027
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dhex · Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 3:52 pm Post subject:

i wonder what would happen to government measurements if a substantial portion of folks put their tax rebates into black markets and other unreported economic transactions.

or would it be negated by above ground usage by recipients?
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Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

dhex · Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:59 am Post subject:

yeah, henley and crew end up attracting the worst of teams red and blue, depending on whose ox is being gored.
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dhex · Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 8:53 am Post subject:

out of context quote of the week:

"you can't take on lacan!"
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dhex · Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 10:18 am Post subject:

in the wake of the spitzer bonanza (calling it a fiasco undercuts the sheer joy involved) it has struck me that while the various reactions - ranging from ridiculously awesome to hysterically conspiratorial in all the best ways - i was most fascinated by the conception of prostitution as a largely monolithic manifestation of [social ill XYZ] was the most common approach. even my libertizzles were largely in the "it's a side-effect of the black market" which while partly true, glosses over larger complications. the feministing axis and the social conservative axis tended to fall in the same pool, though they came from different directions. and there was a few holding onto the "it's a republican conspiracy" angle as well, which deserves either a hearty laugh or an open-handed slap - or perhaps both.

as someone who is dreadfully grossed out by strippers in the same way most people are afraid of spiders, prostitution isn't something i'm probably ever going to find myself involved with, peripherally or not. so it's very easy for me to say "x is this" or "y is that." i would prefer a world where people could make their own arrangements without fear of the state, and have recourse to courts and whatnot for things like contractual violations and the like. that goes for a lot of things, of course, but i neither understand the need to classify all sex work as a form of victimhood OR as something whose abuses and unequal power arrangements will magically disappear.

as a side note, i find it odd that many conservatives (mostly male) get hung up on a relatively marginalized view of male-female sexual interactions (a la blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com, etc) and feel the need to run the same durn victimhood script that everyone else in this culture - most of whose members are pretty fucking far away from being victimized anywhere but in their own minds. if one insists on taking this melodramatic road, i can only reply by saying "listen, it's really simple - you are like jews to them. you caused the collapse of the glorious german reich, and you don't even realize it. every day your jewishness - by sheer dint of its magical force - causes the collapse and reallignment of the lives of hard-working german men and women who otherwise want to just mind their own businesses. you are a cancer."

the joke within that joke is that she's never going to actually effect anyone's life. your marginalized racialist types may some day blow up a post office or attack a synagogue...maybe. is the woman who writes that blog going to up and stab some white dudes? probably not. and if she did, shit, so what? no doubt her aversion to firearms would keep the body count hovering at zero. the real damage would be done culturally. but more seriously, it's not going to happen. it's just words. yes, she's pretty crazy. but you're not really her audience, so much as an idealized target. not only do you embody the qualities required to make a good jew for her, but you're genuinely offended at what she writes and the fact that she "censors" comments. so what? go find a new blog to read. there are plenty of assholes out there. go argue with the emotionally damaged ettins at feministing, or go play paddycakes in the giant public pool at kos. better yet, accept there are a lot views out there which are, at the very least, things you don't agree with, and move on.

hell, i laugh at some of her jokes sometimes. taking utopic thinkers too seriously is generally a route to bad, bad things. (hi lew!) taking it to the point of self-injury is absurd. unless you're working post-grad in certain segments of the humanities you will almost never run across that kind of thinking in any way that will directly effect your life. and if you're already in there and you're either shocked or unable to engage with emotional rhetoric then you're fucked and need to find a new life path, bucko.
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dhex · Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 12:15 pm Post subject:

this is fucking terrible.[/url]
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Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

dhex · Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 7:12 am Post subject:

in terms of long-term cultural change?

probably.

there are those who would argue the war on poverty led to worse things. i am not one of them.
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dhex · Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 8:22 am Post subject: