Stackbabbin' Bumscags

While most likely well-meaning, Caveson's posts come off as extremely arrogant because he makes a number of assumptions about my life and my family that he claims is from a position of understanding when he doesn't truly understand me or my family. The most egregious of that being the "my parents made almost all the right choices, your parents made almost all the wrong choices", trying to attribute the decisions my mother has made in order to simply keep a roof over our heads and food in the kitchen as "right" or "wrong" without actually understanding and knowing the events that led us to our present situation is insulting and arrogant. His comments comes off as ignorant and arrogant because it seems like he's just willfully ignoring the fact that the economic landscape of the US has changed significantly to the point where it's not that simple to just "work hard" to escape poverty. You can work hard 'till your heart gives out, but there are so many other outside factors beyond your control that will influence whether or not you'll actually be able to make a living for yourself. The article he cited was amazingly arrogant, and the author is just another old white man who honestly thinks that work and marriage are all you need to "join" the middle class. But at this point the damage is done and I'm not interested in keeping this topic afloat any longer. I'm off to go murder a bunch of things in various universes.

Wow, Caveson. Just.. wow. The sheer amount of arrogance in your post is absolutely astounding, you honestly think with a post like that I'm ever going to consider for even a fraction of a second confiding in you for anything, or be interested in discussing anything with you? All I can say is congratulations on your blind delusion, I'm sure all those child-less high-school and college graduates with full-time jobs that are still stuck in poverty would love to hear such an inspiring talk.

Well, first off, my mother chose to keep me instead of aborting, since she got pregnant at 18, accidents are fun - but I wouldn't really call that something done to "give me a better future", especially since - in a way - keeping me negatively impacted her future. My father is from a family of nurses and doctors - your typical Asian family - so he didn't grow up even remotely poor. My mother was never "poor" but was most certainly not well off either, I think she was squarely in the lower-middle class, not quite poor, but still not enough to sustain a family, especially in today's economy. My parents divorced when I was around 7 or 8 because they weren't happy with their marriage, my mom got custody of me. My father's side of the family kicked the two of us out of the townhome we were living in shortly after, forcing us to move in with my grandparents. It was their townhome, they were certainly within their rights to evict us. My father didn't do much to try and maintain a relationship with me, nor did I actively seek one out when I disliked how he sometimes would treat his then-girlfriend's daughter better than me, eventually I told him I didn't want to see him anymore. I have cut off my father's side of the family entirely, so he's done nothing to "give me a better future" except not be a dick when we needed to file papers allowing me to move out of state as I was still under 16 at the time. My mother's side of the family wasn't particularly there for us much either, aside from when we had to live with my grandparents. I only ever saw my cousins, aunts, and uncles during Thanksgiving and Christmas, and after we moved out of my grandparent's home, that list included my grandparents as well. My mother's side of the family has pretty much let us go since we moved states. The only thing my mother has done to "give me a better future" has been to provide for me as best as she can as she always has, even though it was difficult then, and difficult now that she's providing for me and her disabled fiance, as well as two cats. We have always just gotten by in life, we've never had the opportunity to make any kind of investment into our future. Seeing how I have a possibility of requiring disability in the potentially near future - I am at risk for two kinds of arthritis, and I may already be exhibiting early onset - my prospects for jobs has diminished severely as I cannot be on my feet for more than 2 hours at a time before I need to sit down for a while. These questions aren't hard to swallow, they're just simply the facts of my life, and none of this can be attributed to simple laziness or being unwilling to work. Don't project your family's success story on anyone else, for every anecdote of someone making it big, there are more than plenty to match of someone struggling or just barely getting by in life even though they too work hard and are just as determined, maybe even more.

What part of do you not understand, Caveson? It's not "months" of saving, it's almost always years. If it takes you mere months to save up enough cash to move to a new fucking state, you're obviously not doing that bad in life to begin with. I'm going to be extremely blunt - and in doing so be an asshole - but I don't give a damn about your father's story and I sure as hell didn't ask for it. Because it's exactly the same kind of bullshit that I've been hearing everywhere else about why "The left just wants everything handed to them" "Millennials are so entitled" "Kids these days want the world for nothing". It's always "My parents grew up poor, but they worked and reaped the benefits of their hard work and blah blah blah blah blah" with words like "personal responsibility", "dedication", and "determination". Caveson, you're not this bloody stupid, the entire environment of the United States was vastly different than what it is now, it's why your father was able to actually accomplish that. I don't give a damn what you believe, lack of money is precisely the reason to not move, coming from someone who is currently in a situation where moving is impossible due to financial reasons, you're looking through Red, White, and Blue filtered lenses. Thanks for dropping the pretenses. Fuck the "Free Market". Actually, this more falls into "The internet is a utility - akin to electricity, water, gas, etc. - and should therefore be treated as such instead of letting corporations have unabated control over the internet", nowhere did I ever mention the internet as a "right". Except the states won't be able handle it! The moment a state - and, let's face it, it's going to be California - attempts to actually enact and enforce their own form of Net Neutrality, one of the major ISPs is going to sue that state. And the courts will have no choice but to side with the company because if the FCC repealed Net Neutrality, that means they obviously intended for corporations to be able to do what they're going to do, and therefore the states have no right to try to stop them. It's better than the complete clusterfuck you're asking for. You're assuming a lot about what kind of pricing they're going to offer. Things that use less bandwidth will not necessarily cost an appreciable amount less, and you'll still potentially be making internet access unaffordable for people who regularly use the internet for both "low-bandwidth" and "high-bandwidth" purposes. Gee, gotta love how you immediately jump to some kind of negative assumption of me just because you can't think of a reason so I must be lazy and don't want to do any work. I've already been impacted by differing standards across state lines. Technically I failed the 10th grade according to Georgia's standards, even though by Florida's standards I passed. In the grand scheme of things, it's rather insignificant - that could be said about just about anything - but I remember seriously questioning how and why the standards of education varied enough just across a single state border. The reason I'm making this argument is because the United States has hardly changed over the decades, even centuries. We're still trying to govern on a system that worked perfectly okay in the US' infancy and for some time after its formation. But we've grown tremendously since then, we're now 50 states and ~323 million people strong. Our system of governing has been showing cracks and faults for decades now, and yet, year by year, the wedges keep being driven deeper and we keep adding more wedges. At some point - be it in the near or distant future - those wedges are going to get hammered all the way through the foundations and everything's going to crumble. 2016 was a rather brilliant display of how the low the general landscape the US has reached. You can't always say no to a corporation. For example, I don't really like doing my grocery shopping at Wal-Mart, they're not the greatest company. But there's no place around me that has prices as low as theirs, or a wide enough selection of goods my family either needs or would be willing to buy. There's a Publix closer to my house, but they're typically more expensive on just about everything my family needs and uses. There's an ALDI somewhere around here, but it's far enough out and out of the way enough that we'd be spending every potential penny we saved on gas. So I bite my tongue and get my groceries from Wal-Mart, because they're cheaper and we can save that money in case something happens. Corporations don't need to outright force you to buy their products, they can still get you to buy their stuff in a number of indirect ways. And I'd thank you to not make such generalizing statements about my life when you know nothing about it. Disconnecting from the internet entirely would likely drive me to suicide - I'm an introvert and suffer from anxiety, I don't want to go out and meet with people, I dislike being alone in large crowds, so I don't want to go "experience the real world", whatever the fuck that means, and certainly not for any lengthy period of time - the "simpler things" in my life are chatting and gaming with friends I've made across the globe online. I don't have "my friend"s outside of the internet anymore - I don't have anyone I can call up or text and say "Let's hang out" or "Mind if I come over?" - I have "our friend"s, and even then I see them about once a month now. As edgy as it sounds, I don't have anything out there for me aside from some leisurely stuff I can't do at home. As pathetic as it sounds, my life is online. I already suffer from depression and feelings of loneliness, I don't need my one connection I feel the most comfortable with fucked with by some greedy conglomerate that's only interested in money I don't have.

Oh yes, "just move to another state"! It's just a "hassle"! For many people - myself included - moving that far is impossible for one reason or another, primarily money. I mean, at this point all you're saying is "Well, if that's what happens then too bad, it's what The Free Market wants." This could literally leave whole swaths of people with no internet in the likely event that ISPs decide to do what they've done in the past. Just because some people would still have it doesn't excuse the fact that there'd still be people without. "Well, wouldn't you rather have some people be without instead of everyone being without?" Fuck no, I'd rather that nobody be without without their own choice in the matter, and this is taking the choice out of the people's hands. Corporations should not have that much control over something that has become a pillar of the nation's - and global - society. We don't need ISPs deciding they want to create their own "soft" versions of the Great Firewall of China to gate you into content that's only Comcast/Verizon/AT&T/Dish/etc. Approved - Purchase a two-week pass for just $14.99 and get faster speeds! Dear god, no! We're already having to deal with the consequences of having so many different sets of laws and regulations - the easiest examples are the wildly varying minimum wages, education standards, and gun laws - we don't need to add more hammers to the cracking foundations! We don't need more individual sets of laws and regulations, we don't need to add NN to the list of state-by-state variances! The "freedom of choice to live where you want" is not so free, Caveson, you cannot honestly expect people to just pack up and move out because of some of the things you just listed about yourself moving. What about those who can't move? Are they supposed to just suffer in silence until they can oust everyone responsible for preventing NN from being established in their state? That would take years, maybe even decades! You can't boycott the major ISPs, you'll find yourself out of options, the smaller ISPs either can't deliver the same kind of service, or get indirectly shut down by the well-established giants and life gets more difficult if you can't get internet in some fashion. I'll say it again. Corporations should not have that much power over something that's become a pillar of today's society.

This wouldn't exactly be that great of a choice either, then our Net Neutrality would be like our gun laws. You can do these things in one state, but a few states over you can't, or you have to jump through extra hoops. I am not convinced one iota about "state's rights", especially considering just how large the US is and that we've split such a large landmass into 50 separate, smaller territories. Perhaps if we consolidated areas so that each "state" would be roughly the size of 4 or 5 shoved together, depending on region - the northeast US could easily consolidate all those small states into one larger state without much problems - and have maybe 7-10 states as opposed to 50, I'd feel differently. But as it is, having 50 different states each with their own different sets of laws and regulations while still somehow being loosely overseen by a higher level of government is asking for a clusterfuck - and we already have one. Even if a handful of states mirror their legislation after one another, that's still far too many differences in application across the nation. You'd be asking for all these states that have governors and senators who oppose NN to allow ISPs to run rough-shod over their constituents and hold ransom their ability to stay connected. We need one set of rules that the entire nation has to follow, which means it has to be at the federal level.

I only wanted to add that they can only if you get your internet from their Google Fiber service - which is only out in a few highly populated areas - but otherwise, I pretty much agree with this. While Amazon, Netflix, and co.'s reasons may not necessarily be altruistic in nature - I don't know how they think, maybe it is for all we know - we've already seen ISPs do things against sites/services they don't like or that potentially cuts into their bottom line. - Verizon blocked text messages from pro-choice group NARAL, calling them controversial. - AT&T limited its use of FaceTime to incentivize people to get more expensive data plans. - AT&T apparently censored a portion of a live-stream of Pearl Jam's Lollapalooza set that contained criticisms of then-president Bush. - Comcast blocked BitTorrent, which was ruled illegal by the FCC at the time - now Ajit Pai says it wasn't a big deal And there's still more! And this is just some of the shit we know about, there could be many more instances that haven't been published yet. Trying to compare ISPs to content producers and providers is stupid. On the one hand, you have companies whose primary service is to sell you connectivity. They sell you access to the internet through their infrastructure. On the other hand, you have companies who create content or provide services - shows, streaming, social media, online marketplaces, webcomics, art, games, etc. - that are delivered to you through the internet. While I won't discount that the potential for reduced revenue, lower sales/usage, and not having to pay out for "priority" or for higher bandwidth caps is a large driving factor in content providers' push to keep net neutrality, that's a pill I'm willing to swallow compared to letting our ISPs have the power to control what we see and do online. If our market for ISPs wasn't so monopolistic - with most places having only one or two, maybe three, ISPs to choose from - it might not be so bad, there would be some potential for The Free Market™ to finally do something useful. But we don't. So it won't. The internet is a necessity at this point, even if you're just connected through your phone carrier's mobile network. We need to have some kind of protections in place to keep consumers safe from the predatory practices of the companies that control our ability to access the internet. Full stop. We are far beyond the ability of The Free Market™ to do anything useful in regards to ISPs, the only thing we have left is government regulation.

Battle Royale? I mean, the Conclave's been there for a while, but I don't see any battle royale mode. The Plain of Eidola - I mean, there's really only one singular plain and there are supposed to be more than one kind of eidolon - is just an open world area.

I probably should have done Plague Star a bit more, but I was so tired of the 5 minute transition between Cetus and the Plains. I at least got both Arcanes, and 1 of every plague weapon part, and a complete Hunter set. I can't complain too much.

Ooo, nice. Yeah, I did some buying of stuff in the labs, and donated my ~50 Hemocyte Cystoliths

RNG was kind to me today, I got the last two pieces of Nekros Prime I needed with little grief involved. Oberon and Trinity Prime are sitting in my Foundry waiting to be claimed, but right now I'm just trying to get my MR up before I worry about seriously building up new Frames. Still only MR6 and dammit I want to fuck around with the Lenz but it's locked at MR8.

I had the goddamn drone get glitched and stop moving toward the boil. The first time, we had a Nova just use wormhole to move it to the boil, it unfucked itself when it was close enough to it, the 2nd time, we had to push it along until it unfucked itself at the boil, took like 20 minutes. This damn thing wouldn't be so bad if I could use my Asswing for travel, but no clan means no Asswings in the plain. :T

Hahaha, holy fuck it takes me like 5 minutes to go from Cetus to the plains. At least I was able to get Hunter Munitions, although I may at least attempt to get the Arcanes. :v

It seems like BF2 is just inconsistent. I've see people have no problems whatsoever, and then watched the Jimpression where Jim randomly started floating up towards the ceiling, had stuttering TIE Fighter movement, had non-ability damage not count while flying, and some MP lag.

Apparently the CEO of EA got a call from the CEO of Disney. No clue what the call was about, but I'm sure we can all guess, maybe Disney might start exerting a little more control over its properties in games, which could be a good thing, but also could be rather bad.

Looks like EA disabled microtransactions for now. Wonder just what changes they're going to make, and how badly they'll fuck this up.

Supposedly it's just how Origin's refund system works for pre-orders?? I dunno, I don't buy things from Origin. :T

I don't buy into this one sodding bit. It's not about being able to produce content and "support", it's just a way for them to make extra cash off of people instead of putting out actual content that people would be willing to pay for. Consumers have shown publishers it's much easier and simpler to just create a micro-transaction or lootbox centered system than it is to create content that gives people a tangible reason to give them their money that isn't "You'll get this thing now instead of in an indeterminate number of hours!" Not only are they getting your $40-$100 - depending on the publisher and what fancy version you buy - they're also getting a few extra dollars here and there from some players, and making double, triple and much more off of others - the so-called "whales". With the amount of money they're drowning in from shit like this, of course they can squeeze out an extra map or two every so often. They could instead spend time to create something that actually adds more to the game to also draw in new buyers. Instead, we're saddled with AAA pricing with an extra monetization scheme in which consumers throw money at publishers to not play the game in some cases, and in others, to unlock content that is otherwise inaccessible for no good reason, and incentivizes the creation of new content just to lock away in loot boxes and/or force the player to spend multiple hours - or even days - to obtain a single item. Overwatch event skins, anyone? Blizzard skates by on rather thin ice because everything in Overwatch's lootboxes are cosmetic and there's credits to outright buy cosmetics, but they're still on very thin ice. Heroes of the Storm is pushing a more aggressive attitude with lootboxes because the game is F2P, but it used to be that all cosmetic items - save a small few that could be bought with gold, which was also used to unlock Heroes - were cash only until Heroes 2.0 was released and they added a bunch of unnecessary cosmetics to pad out the introduction of lootboxes to the game. Hell, in the upcoming big overhaul of Heroes of the Storm, there's going to be "Gem only" cosmetics - with Gems being the game's premium currency - meaning you cannot buy those items with the secondary currency - Shards - that was introduced in Heroes 2.0 even though the sole purpose of Shards is to unlock cosmetics, in a game that has hundreds of cosmetic items. Now, as a F2P game, HotS gets away with more simply because there is no entrance fee to it, but pay-to-play games don't get any excuses for lootboxes or micro-transactions. Especially when games decide to double down on a leveling system plus lootboxes/micro-transactions. The game industry was doing just fine without micro-transactions and lootboxes a decade ago, aside from the advancements in technology and game development, and corporate culture evolving, not enough has changed since then to suddenly necessitate the ham-fisted milking of consumers' wallets.

My knees really hate the cold and I wake up with them hurting. Goddamn genetic lottery bullshit making me feel old.

Not to mention the uber special event skins that'll just fucking disappear from the in-game market once the event is over, and you'll just have to wait until next year to get them. Hope that RNG takes pity on you if you can't play enough to get a decent number of event loot boxes, or just straight up buy some for cash.

I don't, that's why I was confused as to why Steam was throwing a Write error and not installing anything. Regardless, the problems are gone now, so who knows what the fuck was happening :v

So, my computer fucked itself up last night, and tonight has spontaneously unfucked itself in what Case and I can only assume is a chance happening of multiple bugs popping up at the same time and simultaneously self-resolving. I am now simultaneously relieved and paranoid. I need a new fucking computer.

I wouldn't be completely useless, but until I get a new computer, you really wouldn't be able to depend on me for much. And I have no freaking clue, I have turned off every fancy setting I could and lowered everything to its lowest, and I still have performance issues. :v

Only problem is that I'm not going to be very helpful in events until I get a new computer. If they decide to pop that meteortumor in PoE, I'm not gonna be able to do anything about it as my performance tanks heavily there, FPS drops down to like 17.