Reality vs Adventure

You are right, turns out anyone can own however many number of corporations they want. To me that's ridiculous. Pretty much someone with enough money can buy up a corporation in absolutely every department. Why there aren't laws against that, I don't know. Maybe that's a big problem with the world. I didn't think it was possible to own an auto industry, satellite, space x, neural ink, and possibly Twitter. Where does it end for people like that? Can one person own the brand of everything you use on a daily basis? Fuck that!!! Monopoly laws need to change to include this kind of crap.

Elon Musk just bought 9% stake in Twitter and just offered $43 billion to buy the social media giant. First, there has to be laws against that sort of thing because this is an obvious monopoly attempt which is illegal in the U.S. Second, he might have broken the law in buying up 9% stake in the company. "The complaint in New York federal court accuses Musk of violating a regulatory deadline to reveal he had accumulated a stake of at least 5%. Instead, according to the complaint, Musk didn’t disclose his position in Twitter until he’d almost doubled his stake to more than 9%. That strategy, the lawsuit alleges, hurt less wealthy investors who sold shares in the San Francisco company in the nearly two weeks before Musk acknowledged holding a major stake." https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/elon-musk-accused-breaking-law-buying-twitter-stock-84045275 Another issue about Musk owning a large stake in Twitter, is the influence of what that crazy yolkal will have. I personally believe he's crossed the path into fantasy world by the things he says lately, and he's being investigated for torturing monkeys in his Neuralink experiments. As far as Twitter, he's already said it would be better for Twitter to be privately owned. No it wouldn't. Under his influence, he has said he would make changes to free speech. And people are already trying to get him to un-ban trump if Musk bought Twitter. I have no doubts that he would turn Twitter into some extremist social media where free speech and inciting violence are considered the same.

Now that I think about it, wouldn't mind a ham and jelly beans

In Days Gone there are several ways to pit zombies against human enemies or against each other. You could shoot them with a berserk arrow and they will attack whoever. Or you could throw an attractor around humans which is a really loud noise that attracts the zombies. And you can watch a group of armed men shoot it out with a bunch of zombies running after them. And the more gun sounds they make, the more zombies come. You can even shoot a bear with a berserk dart and it'll attack zombies. I miss playing that game.

That's cool! Are you going to play through the series with AC 3 next? I need to catch up to you!

Oh yeah, you are right about that; I completely forgot which is the right order to play. I have the Story So Far collection and it has several games on there. That would be tons of hours to play to catch up to the new releases.

I actually feel like doing a speed run through the first couple games to get caught up. The story was interesting to me from what I remember and fun characters. I’d rather just jump into KH3 but not sure if it would make any sense.

Corporations also tend to want to overwork employees, fire them without justification, and even make them work a shift they didn't even sign up for. Warehouse jobs like Amazon and Walmart force you to work a different shift if they need the help. I don't even see how that's legal. Walmart even makes you stay on the job however long it takes to finish, even up to 14-15 hour shifts in their major warehouse hubs. Many of those positions don't get holidays off and even are forced to work during natural disasters. Look at what happened when the Amazon warehouse was destroyed by a tornado recently and killed employees who were forced to work in even in a high natural disaster risk. These things can be prevented in unionization.

Labor unions allow employees to negotiate salaries, benefits, and working conditions which are legally bound. Corporations tend to be against it because they want to set their own wages and benefits which are usually sub standard and doesn't change much over time. Unions also get pensions instead of 401k. The difference is in a pension you have no risk of losing money while a 401k basically is a gamble. Labor unions treat jobs as a blue collar job where you can live as the middle class. Greed is usually the basis of anti unionization. Here is some research on benefits of labor unions in the U.S. "A 2018 study in the Economic History Review found that the rise of labor unions in the 1930s and 1940s was associated with a reduction in income inequality.[100] A 2020 study found that congressional representatives were more responsive to the interests of the poor in districts with higher unionization rates.[101] Another 2020 study found an association between state level adoption of parental leave legislation and labor union strength.[102] A 2021 study in the ILR Review found that state union density was associated with a reduction in poverty in both unionized and non-unionized households.[103]" "A 2020 study in the American Journal of Political Science suggested that when white people obtain union membership, they become less racially resentful.[104]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_the_United_States

It's useful if you are in stealth mode and you don't want to bring the whole village down on you because civilians can turn on you too. Plus if you got a couple bounty hunters on your trail, last thing you want to do is fight 10 soldiers, 5 civilians, and 3 bounty hunters. Unless of course you want to oil down and sharpen your blade with blood and bones.

Republicans are trying to pass a whole sleuth of bills now from K-12 and colleges. As mentioned before about republicans wanting to ban workplace training to prevent racial discrimination, I was worried they would also ban the prevention of sexual harassment training, well guess what: They actually want to ban all workplace training of racial AND sexual harassment prevention of all staff from K-12 schools as well as staff in colleges and universities. Really? I'm speechless. Why would you want to do that? What sinister complex do these republicans hold bringing themselves to want to do that? At the same time pass the Don't Say Gay bill where you can't mention gender identity or sexual orientation in schools. What logic am I missing here? Do republicans have some sort of gender identifying phobia? Some sort of racial identifying phobia? Every job I have ever worked at has this kind of workplace training to make a better work environment. Why on Earth would you take that away from school staff? Is sex and HIV education next to go? I assume it is. Charter schools and vouchers: The next big thing for republicans is to eliminate all public schools from grade school to colleges. It's no secret that Betsy Devos who was education secretary under trump wanted to eliminate public schools. She even found loop holes to distribute funding from public schools to private schools. Why do republicans want private and religious schools instead? That way it's run privately and they can teach and set whatever rules they want including indoctrination of students. This whole anti CRT is the foundation to lay the groundwork to grow private schools so that those schools get funding and absolutely no restrictions to their future indoctrination attempt. Remember the private school that allowed a teacher to force kids into a chant against Biden? The school did not punish the teacher whatsoever. They want that sort of thing in schools. Meanwhile black teachers are getting fired based on accusations with no proof. And look at my past post of the confederate flags and trump flags at an elementary school. Does that look like they are concerned by any CRT? Nope. They only want unwavering support for their own ideas. Private schools will allow their coming indoctrination. They want to establish a cult like presence in the country while hiding behind religion to mask their racist and genocidal tendencies. Charter schools basically allow for public funding, but operated privately and that is their new platform to bring their extremism into classrooms if it is run privately. That's dangerous, illegal, and is against the constitution to take public funds for private schools. Republicans are trying to pass bills to toss out current state boards of education and implement their own which would again give them the opportunity to use funds from a public institution and set up a charter school instead. What's up with vouchers? Devos has now found a loophole to take funds from public colleges and have it go to private colleges instead. Vouchers allow private donors that would have gone to state funding of colleges, to get tax breaks to set up scholarships that would go to private colleges instead of public ones. So they are finally attacking courses in universities which we all new they would. I've just been waiting for it, and this is just the beginning. Republicans want to offer a U.S. Constitution course to replace any course that has an ethnic studies requirement as part of its core curriculum. The constitution is a government class, not an ethnic studies class. That doesn't seem that bad, but it pretty much skirts the reason to have an ethnic studies class. I don't know what programs require ethnic studies besides psychology and probably medical; maybe business. But why the phobia in the first place? I wouldn't want someone graduating in a field that requires ethnic studies and refuses to take a course because they may be racist or a political extremist. And it's ironic substituting a constitution course when republicans just banned any talk of five different amendments to the U.S. constitution in grade schools. Republicans are just gravely incompetent leaders. This is just evil at play. Republicans also want to legalize concealed guns in all schools. Guns are more important than gender identity and history. Arizona and Texas have a huge shortage of teachers in their states. Arizona has a third of teaching positions un-filled, and half of the filled positions don't have permanent status, instead are substitutes. So what is the republican solution? They are proposing bills to lower the standards of teaching dramatically. You would think teaching should be held to a more prestigious status and not just fill vacancies with just anybody. And this goes into their plan to dumb down public schools so they have lower testing results, which would make private schools even more enticing. Democrats want to increase salaries of teachers and provide better training while republicans want to fire teachers, make them fear for their jobs, fear their lives, be surrounded by guns, and lower their standards. An update to the destruction of universities and colleges by republicans: 1) Sue the universities 2) Mandatory surveys 3) Ban racial/sexual discrimination staff policy training 4) Get rid of tenure policy 5) Transfer public funds to private charter schools 6) Courses to replace ethnic studies course in required programs

We can just throw the whole CRT out the window when schools allow this sort of thing; selling confederate flags and trump flags at a damn elementary school!!! Who's pushing what? Can't talk about slavery or racism, but you can sell confederate and trump flags! Yeehaw! Welcome to klanville.

He is a great mod and we all share in frustration of people posting nothing but bullshit all the time. This forum is for expression of ideas, not robotic chit chat. If you caught the shit end of the stick, man the fuck up. You want a regime, go to fucking Russia!!! Don't throw around that kind of talk lightly like it's nothing. I'm greatly offended and I'm sure others are too by that shit talk. I've been in your boat. And I realized I'm a conceited idiot. You and anyone else with the same mentality should look in the mirror. I've had respect for you, and I never would have thought you would stoop to this. Swallow your pride and man the fuck up.

Thanks for the link; I knew she writes for VGR but I never really paid attention. I do now though.

Humans might think that swimming in poo like maggots is disgusting, but we swim, drink, bathe, grow food using water that is laced with all kinds of toxic chemicals from industrial waste. In other words, we swim in our own shit like maggots do. Then you have Native Americans protesting about oil pipelines passing through their territory and contaminating their water and soil. The Keystone Pipeline has already spilled oil twice in a two year period contaminating soil and water with almost 400,000 gallons in 2019 and 200,000 gallons in 2017. I know the pharmaceutical industry has contaminated the water supply a lot over the years. And all the household products we use that goes down the drain is bad. Even shampoos has all sorts of forever chemicals. Everything goes down the drain. Even fluoride is supposedly an essential nutrient and is oversupplied in our water. We do need fluoride, but we are fooled. There are many different types of fluoride, but we are all led to believe there is only one. All those other types of fluoride is actually waste products that goes into our water. And since we don't want to clean it up, or regulate, then we just allow toxic byproducts in the fluoride family to go unchecked in water. This is just another one of those things that leads me to believe that humans are parasites. Everything we need to survive, we destroy. We're our own demise. And you actually have people out there doing everything they can to support all this harm. Human intelligence really isn't that intelligent at all. How can you make a space shuttle, then poison your resources? The irony. I mean, if you can make super clean labs and have all kinds of protective measures for microorganism/viral research and radiation use, then why not have clean factories that don't shit in our water?

One of the character NPC you can play after finishing some assassin missions is Darcy, who has assassin gear and cool abilities. Darcy unlocks in the story, but you need the season pass to be able to play her. Meanwhile, playing AC Syndicate is even more interesting now because now I'm thinking about how Victorian London and the fight with the templars, is now a horror filled dystopian London in WD Legion trying to get back the city. And comparing the scenery of the two games is interesting too. AC Syndicate still has some of those landmarks in futuristic London. So it's like a couple hundred years apart. I like things like that to compare differences of past, present, future even if it's fiction. To be able to play as an assassin all geared up in WD Legion to me is a major treat. It just brings a level of immersion that is legendary in my personal gaming experience.

Another thing I’ll add is that even though a person has the right to not press charges, cops can still take you to jail for assault. That happened to me. I assaulted someone, caused bodily harm, and they didn’t want to press charges because I defended myself. Cops through me in jail for assault anyways and beat me in jail. Years later, I was assaulted, I did the right thing and called the cops instead of fighting back, and the cops let him go even with a witness that saw what happened. Later on another incident happened with that same person and I go to jail for assault by threat. So hell, if you assault I might agree or might not agree with it, but there should always be consequences. If society feels that assault and murder is ok, then that becomes a broken society. We are seeing terrorist acts go unpunished in the USA for christs sake.

That’s a good point, and yes Chris Rock has the right to not press charges, but in the real world a person would at least get cuffed for an assault, cause it’s not like Chris Rock yelled into the mic “I won’t press charges.” Or at least have Will Smith escorted outside. But everyone went about their business and pretended like nothing happened. It’s just unfair all the things people go to jail over, and celebrities and politicians don’t live under the same standards.

I figured it would come to this how people are turning it into a racial issue and cancel culture issue. Of course the racists will be racists and of course others get sucked into the elephant's rabbit hole. What we should see is that Will Smith committed assault on stage on live tv with no consequences. Anyone else would have been arrested and thrown in jail. So my problem is that a celebrity gets treated different. So to see people lash out w/o consequences only shows people that it's ok to do and those people usually repeats assault if there are no consequences. And I'm not saying Will Smith is like that. I'm saying in the domestic life, that usually is the way it is.

It's interesting to see how some potential recruits I have saved react to how I interacted with others. If I injure or kill an NPC, turns out that was a friend, associate, or family member of a potential recruit I have saved. Next thing I know that bastard gets revenge and kidnaps one of my crew members. Then I have to go on a special mission to save them. And it surprises me to find out it's a potential recruit I have saved that went and did it. Then they put me on their hate list and I have to decide if I want to pursue recruiting them still or not. That kind of interaction with the world is very unique.

Due to the LGBTQ policies in Texas and Florida on classifying gender affirming care as child abuse and 'Don't Say Gay' bill, Los Angeles has banned all business travel to Texas and Florida. Business travel is tax payer funded so that's why L.A. can get away with it. The reason is because the bills against transgender in those two states is discriminate. There are other states pushing those same bills, so I guess L.A. will have the travel ban against all red states eventually. This kind of thing I would expect during the Covid crisis since red states don't believe it exists. But the way things are going, red states are becoming increasingly hostile and eventually we will have blue and red state travel bans across the board. Florida governor just said Florida will be in a 'cold war' against Georgia if a democrat is elected governor. Even Disney is standing up against Florida's governor and his anti LGBTQ bill. Republicans are even attacking Mickey Mouse LOL. I don't know about travel bans, but businesses should rethink setting up shop and even consider relocating from states like Texas and Florida.

What? You clean your feet a few times a day? 😄Actually, I wouldn't mind soaking my feet in a massager. You would hate my feet then. Dirt is the essence of my body now. I bathe in mud. I'm in Texas. We're all pigs. Oink oink

I don't see how that's considered flaky parents. Flaky is when they forget to pick you up from school or leave you at the grocery store. Parents who want to parent everyone has controlling issues. Lack of anger control usually goes with it. And they aren't good working as a team.

A lot of items in games have nothing to do with completionism, it's just there just to be there. That's what breaks immersion for me. Games try too hard to have all sorts of things to craft, potions to make, and that type of design takes away from the scenery. I even find myself missing out on what a character is saying because I'm looking around for stuff before the character leads me off somewhere. I walk into a room, and I have to remind myself to STOP, just look around the room first before searching for things. Games that don't have so many things to look for end up being much more immersive for me. It's those times when I can break away from robotic gameplay and pay attention to surroundings and put some thought into that instead, is when I enjoy the game the most. That's what brings about memories, not the dizzying haze of looking which way for items.

I want to watch the new Vikings Valhalla so bad but I don’t have whatever cable it’s on. I gave up on shows and movies because everything is on Netflix now. I just have no interest in subscribing cause I have satellite internet and only allowed a number of gb a month. Can’t download a bunch of shows. Oh well. Gaming it is.