kthompsen

I certainly could be emotional about the subject, but I don't recall feeling anything when typing that.. nor did I write it with any passion. It's kind of strange that you went there, of all things. Not sure what's misogynistic about anything I wrote either. My concept of "life" above is about as generic and abstract as it gets. All I did is adopt the same notion of "choice" that others do - and simply added a parameter. Freedom is great. But the whole notion of individual rights comes with a social contract. One should have freedom to, say, to purchase and build one's home. But that freedom doesn't extend to bulldozing over someone else's property and violating their own freedom in the process. But with abortion, the habit is to just depersonalize and remove all notion of rights of the unborn, and prop up only one person's freedom. This is a sleight of hand to me. And if someone like me raises questions, you get slandered with strange accusations like above (such as misogyny). You're not even allowed to say "Hey, wait a second" without looking like the villain. When all I'm doing is celebrating life. Male or female. :) These sleights of hands have always existed too. It's nothing new. I don't see it as any different than how people once viewed slaves, when they justified buying and purchasing people by simply sidestepping the issue and saying those slaves weren't actually people at all, or only "2/3rds of a man". It's how they the Germans managed to stomach their murder factories for Slavs and Jews, by indoctrinating their soldiers to treat these people as literally vermin or subhuman. They literally believed that it was OK and they were just getting rid of trash. And once society in general starts accustoming itself to this detached viewed of life, you get what Hannah Arendt called the "banality of evil".. the day-in, day-out routine process of death. I'd rather just stay away from things that get me in that habit.

I used to love Dragon Age, but even that is dead to me. I can't stomach EA anymore.. but without them, DAI disappointed me both story and gameplay wise. I used to always think I was equal parts Bethesda and Bioware fan, but it turns out it's just the former. But it's especially apparent with EA in the mix, who make a habit of killing studios and now even say that single player games aren't worth their investment. lol. Bethesda keeps it real even all of these years:

To be fair, the Irish were originally Orthodox themselves. I wouldn't say it's entirely different. St. Patrick and St. Brigid are great saints to the Orthodox too. They just have nothing to do with the Vatican. I'll just close by saying that I respect the notion of Choice and Freedom greatly... but this is what actually pushes me to be Pro-Life. I believe conceptions are "persons" who deserve their choices to be respected too. I hold that being Pro-Life is actually Pro-Choice itself - it just includes an extra parameter of choice that people ignore: That of the fetus' choice. I can only assume that they want to live themselves. All life seeks to "Be" something..and fight for it. And this is a form of Life that isn't criminal or trying to harm yet. It hasn't forfeited it's own life by violating others. And even if I detached and depersonalized them as cells and their organic makeup, it's still an amazing example of "cells". The most amazing example that we know. Some odd form of life that seeks not only to live, but to understand the universe itself. One should never get so used to the idea of Life that it becomes passe and you take it for granted. It's a rare thing afaik. The day a society starts to think it isn't is when all hell breaks loose. It's the gateway to all kinds of routine carelessness and death. So even if I acknowledged the need for abortion in some cases, it's not wise to get in the habit of taking on a purely mechanistic and/or materialistic mentality. History has shown the consequences of that, once it becomes the foundation for a society. Be it with wars, industrialization, slavery, etc., etc..

All you need to know honestly is that TES kind of revolves around duality.. starting with the primeval forces of light and dark, creation and void (Anu and Padomay). And on Tamriel, this duality mostly manifests itself as a conflict between Elves and Humans. Starting with their main gods, Auriel and Lorkhan. The spin on it from a human - specifically Nordic/Skyrim -- perspective is that Lorkhan is Shor for the Nords. A warrior type of god. While to the elves, he's a trickster and betrayer. It's like the same exact god is both Loki and Thor, depending on who you ask. This difference in opinion and/or misunderstanding has led to endless conflict, that keeps manifesting itself with slight differences throughout the ages. This is what is really behind the Talos controversy in the Skyrim story. To make matters worse (or better, depending on who you ask), Lorkhan seems to manifest himself in Tamriel every so often and creates a pile of corpses. Talos was one of them. I suspect our Dragonborn is another form of him. And you yourself could actually play this eternal conflict out, as a sort of avatar of Shor. Or maybe in this eon, he's insane and actually siding with elves, depending on the player. It doesn't matter. For now, we do what is fun to us.. He'll just come back in another life and probably forget the compulsion (us, the player). Maybe he's so insane this time around that all he does is run around naked and collect cabbages. That particular player doesn't need to know any of this lore!

STEP was the best stepping stone for me at one point (it doesn't entirely apply to SE, of course.. but much of it still does). From there, you can build your own preferences, but it's a good base to enhance vanilla Skyrim.

Fair enough. They could have definitely eased the situation without those drills, but it would seem that talks may in fact commence again. Strange. Kim is obviously in need of something, to even do any of this. I just don't know what it is. The bigger picture is between the US and China, not North Korea. China themselves must be putting pressure on him. Why? I'm not sure of that. Despite people thinking Trump is a nitwit, he actually seems to be weaving a tangled web here with multiple players. No doubt China would prefer resolving trade relations with the US. This is all probably part of it.

Supernatural... rewatching season 12, because 13 just came out and I forgot some bits. I can't believe this show still has life in it. Most die out after 7 seasons or less.

Thanks for your thoughts. I'm not sure what to add myself other than what I already did. I am religious myself, so it's hard to sidestep that entirely with this subject (but I was trying). One reason I wouldn't want to be associated with the Vatican though is they have problems respecting the lives of grown children (rather than the unborn). I know there are many decent Catholics completely unassociated with that tragedy, but it's best if the leadership stays quiet and sort out their own affairs. As for the Irish, one of my favorite singers to this day is Sinead O'Connor. She called out the Vatican long ago about this, before it was popular. Good on her. As for Presdestination, that's more of an Augustinian/Calvinist thing (at least when it comes to the more systematic outlooks on it). I am Orthodox. We acknowledge predestination, but don't bother trying to figuring it out. Trying to systematize anything is kind of popular in the West in general, I would say.. be it Religious or Secular. I wouldn't incorporate it into my thinking, personally.

I don't know what to congratulate them about. I understand that it needs to be dealt with more on a case-by-case basis and things shouldn't be extremely rigid... but either way, abortion is not a happy event for anyone. Be it Pro-Life or Choice. The whole public debate on abortion lately has gotten just plain obnoxious. Like Lena Dunham saying she WISHED she could have an abortion. lol.. who the hell wishes for that? This is the definition of "trying too hard". Trying too hard to be as opposite to the Pro-Life side as possible.. As if being Pro-Choice is about WANTING abortions. The average women would never enjoy it. Or the financial or hopeless situations or whatever extenuating circumstances that put them there. It's about as stupid as saying a hiker who got trapped under rocks and had to cut off his foot was doing a GOOD thing. It was just survival and doing what was necessary. The "good thing" he would have wished for is never having been in that situation in the first place. edit: I'm not defending the Vatican or trying to engage in a religious debate btw. They have their own slew of problems. This is just my rant on one aspect of contemporary abortion debates. And strangely, Roy Batty is on my screen at the moment. Tears of Rain. lol. I think even he... a murderous AI and the product of pure materialism.. embraced life more than the Lena Dunham types. Go figure. These vapid people aren't helping their side at all. The implications of what they say displays a truly wasteful mentality.

I don't know the details of these military exercises. I bet anything could have set him off though. Even routine base functions. I live and grew up around military bases. They're always training in one way or another.

For me, up till recently it was because of SKSE.. but even that is out the window now. I'm happy more SKSE enabled mods are making their way back on SE.. and am porting some mods myself for private use as well.

Kim got mad that SK and the US were practicing military drills, and then threatened to pull out of talks. He wanted to signal that WE'RE in his good graces, not the other way around. So Trump decided to not to play along and just pulled out himself. It's just more games, and each side testing each other's "neediness". I can't really blame Kim for trying, because the US always has blinked first when his dad was in charge.

Just in the past week Trump has intentionally shut down all negotiations and existing peace plans with both North Korea and Iran. John Bolton strikes again. He's never been elected to a public office in his entire life yet has absolutely no problem sending countless thousands of other people's kids to their deaths, to fight for Halliburton and ExxonMobil. The sky won't be falling for most Americans until it actually does. It's what happened in Ger... oh forget it. :wink: What is the point of talks with NK in any event? Not like we haven't talked to them before, gave concessions, reached an agreement, only to have it broken in six months. This is standard procedure for NK. Belligerence, talks, concessions, good for a little while, then, right back to belligerence. We have seen this MANY times. It ALWAYS goes the EXACT same way. Why on earth would you expect this time to be any different?? It's a good question. The main good thing that would come out of it is for SK and JP mostly.. and the US further holding influence in that part of the Pacific (as opposed to China). I hate to say it, but the people of NK themselves are secondary. It would be GREAT to do something that benefits them, but that's not the main goal, I think. And what the Kims (Son/Father/Grandfather) know is that they can't really coexist in this scheme. They sit fat on top of the hill and thrive on being like gods to their people. There's little reason they'd ever want to change that. They're nowhere close to some other despots in history, who felt a threat from their own people either. Sometimes you could convince these types to leave by giving them refuge somewhere. But from what I can tell, North Korea is completely normalized. So the Kims have little to fear. I don't know what you could really do to convince that Peace is truly for their benefit.

Just in the past week Trump has intentionally shut down all negotiations and existing peace plans with both North Korea and Iran. John Bolton strikes again. He's never been elected to a public office in his entire life yet has absolutely no problem sending countless thousands of other people's kids to their deaths, to fight for Halliburton and ExxonMobil. The sky won't be falling for most Americans until it actually does. It's what happened in Ger... oh forget it. :wink: That's not Bolton, I think. It's Trump. He's not a neocon, and Bolton is a tool rather than the other way around. He's just signaling that NK needs the world/the US rather than vice versa. They've operated for a long time thinking they have leverage and use it to their advantage every time. Korea thinks that Americans are timid and can get what they want just by presenting the mere specter of War. And they're partly correct. It's worked for them time and time again. It's how they've made deals with the likes of Clinton and Carter. Trump doesn't work like them. It seems that NK realized this, but soon forgot.

Honestly, I never liked them to begin with.. except for C&C's soundtrack. Heh I've been bemoaning the lack of TBS over the years, so now we're all in the same boat.

I didn't vote for Trump, but it's tiresome just how irrational the media (and it's listeners) are about him. No one wants to hear grown people whine. Not me anyways. Besides, the sky isn't falling yet. He's definitely got character issues, but it doesn't help if you go overboard about him.

Cool.. have fun!

It's a constant cashflow. Especially for those who manufacture and/or play for both sides. It's not about victory or winning any conflict - or anything silly like that. But selling goods and weapons... ideally to BOTH sides. People made a killing in WW1 like nothing else in history.. and it died off once the war ended. No way were they going to let that opportunity slip by again. So they agitated the situation enough to bring on WW2. The downside was how catastrophic WW2 was.. You don't want to ruin things with TOO MUCH war, so they learned some lessons. Now it's like a slow drip, of constant threats and the manufacturing to "stop" them. Do you think it's any accident that the Cold War and the War On Terror are so hard to define, in comparison to the big World Wars? They're the perfect cashcows, that drag on for decades. Not like those damn 5 year type of wars that destroy everything. They breed unease and boil situations enough to make the world an unsafe place, but not enough to blow up into world wars anymore. Just enough to insure constant weaponization and scare populations into funding it. edit: And I'm not just talking firearms btw.. The most non-obvious businessman can be war-profiteers. Look at the American companies who set up the Nazi's infrastructure, for example: AT&T built state-of-the-art communications, Ford helped build many of their vehicles, IBM built their databases that helped them catalogue Jews and other "undesirables". They helped BUILD the Nazi threat. They knew Hitler was crazy.. It doesn't take a genius to know how bad he was.. But he was useful for them. They wanted war. Do you think that guy got his country out of debt, rebuilt infrastructure within a decade, and took on THE WHOLE WORLD because he was uber-competent or something?

I don't know about "bad word", but in America, it makes people recoil because we generally like government/society to be as diffuse as possible. Americans historically have an inherent pessimism about governments. Our very founding was based on trashing our government and the taxes it imposed. Then we drew up a constitution that separated branches of power and gave rights to individuals. Trying to control it all is like trying to play whack-a-mole. And Americans generally like it that way. They're comfortable with the chaos. Communism is centralized and monolithic...It has some good ideals, but being centralized scares the above type of people. Anything centralized is easier to control. It doesn't take a genius to realize once a powerbase is in one spot, then there are less steps to take it all. Communism puts all it's eggs in one basket. He who controls the basket controls the people. I think even the current trend of Leftist Antifa kids are just faux "communists" themselves. At the end of the day, they'd hate it.. as they're mostly individualists at heart themselves. Especially anyone involved with identity politics. They may *think* they want control now (simply because having Power is tempting), but at the end of the day, they want an open and diffuse society just like a lot of others. They have more in common with the people they hate more than they realize. They'd kill themselves in a society like Khmer Rouge era Cambodia, that literally turned everyone into a robot. That's what true Centralized Power inevitably does - sets out a program and tries to make everything exact and uniform. No way they could handle it. They'd be the first to be lined up at the wall and shot, for trying to "be themselves". The kind of cultures that slip into Communism are the ones that didn't know any better in the first place. Which is countries that were Monarchies before. Russia simply traded a Czar for a Poliburo, China traded an Emperor for a Commitee, etc. These were ALREADY centralized cultures - so they didn't stand a chance when another centralized system took over. It's just the same thing, by another name. But in America, it's more of a "bad word", because we don't have a good history with being treated like "children" of the King/State. And even if it did gain a foothold, it'd die off even quicker than "New Coke". I almost want to see it happen though.. just because it's a lesson some people need to see for themselves.

Anything by Beth Studios themselves would be big news to me. Like those Starfield rumors. But I'm skeptical of all of it. As for TES, I think Beth themselves knows how frickin big the expectations for another TES would be after Skyrim. They won't announce anything until they get absolutely everything right. This will be a loooong time.

It's way older than Skyrim in general. People were doing this as far back as Oblivion and breaking their games even then. It's never been safe to raise it past 5. My bad, I suspected as much. Anyhow, the basic Lodgen is pretty easy to use. I understand being scared by DyndoLOD though (I don't use it myself, because I use your Open Cities mod, in fact.. One day I'll have the patience to configure it).

It seems to me that ugrids is 2011 news. Like some people didn't get the memo on Lodgen tools. Or am I missing something?

If it makes you feel better, I was a noob once too. Still am in most respects (like altering landscapes and other graphical aspects of mods). You just gotta dive in, if you know the result will be more convenient :) You could leave things as it is though, for the most part. It's not too large a load order, and SE can handle a lot that you throw at it.

Most MMOs I see have pretty good character options. Too bad the games themselves suck. Other than that, anything sports, funnily (including Wrestling or Skating). It's funny that they do this better than any RPG. I don't know any single player RPG that truly satisfies me though.

Not sure why the guy in that vid needs to archive the scripts for a mod manager. You just drag n drop to Data folder. It's the same thing as the mod manager, in less steps. I mean, I guess if you wanted to uninstall SKSE at some point, it's useful.. but it's unlikely I ever would uninstall it. Nor are those scripts likely to change names across future versions. If there are new SKSE versions of those scripts, you'll just drag and overwrite the others.. but I don't think the names themselves would change. Too much relies on their naming as it stands.