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Anyone have any opinion on Chris Hedges, considering one of his new books came out this year? I read a collection of his columns last year called "The World As It Is" and enjoyed them. To be honest, however, part of me was worried that he was going too far with the doom and gloom and I was lapping it up. The other day I revisited his column on Obamacare and I realized this guy is spot on. Hedges said things about the ACA that I never heard from too many other media sources. Basically he says the law is garbage that forces people to buy defective products. Now that more of the law has been implemented, we can see this. The law also does not stop insurance companies from jacking up their prices - and they will be shooting up in 2016. This is right wing healthcare reform, folks, donned in the progressive costume. A drat shame Hedges was correct in 2010: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/obamas_health_care_bill_is_enough_to_make_you_sick_20100712
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Dec 13, 2015 18:14
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Hedges is a great writer who hasn't had a new thought in over a decade.
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Dec 13, 2015 18:15
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Chris Hedges is a plagiarist.
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Dec 13, 2015 18:28
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Swan Oat posted:Chris Hedges is a plagiarist. I confuse him with the man who ran for the Democratic nomination, but already dropped out.
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Dec 13, 2015 18:30
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Swan Oat posted:Chris Hedges is a plagiarist. I heard he only copies his own work?
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Dec 13, 2015 18:32
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Accretionist posted:I heard he only copies his own work? That counts.
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Dec 13, 2015 18:32
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Yeah he does good work but then just repeats it ad nauseam. He doesn't just do this in writing either. I've listened to podcasts where he's a guest and it's literally the exact same spiel over and over again, word for word.
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Dec 13, 2015 18:45
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berzerker posted:There are about a billion PhDs each year willing to give their efforts to generating valuable, interesting content if the History Channel actually gave a poo poo. There are infinite awesome historical stories out there to be told. Check out Extra History! they just completed a series about John Snow's efforts to curb the London cholera outbreak.
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Dec 13, 2015 18:47
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Luigi Thirty posted:So a "privacy" group is trying to get a ballot measure on the California ballot in 2016 that would let you sue both businesses and people for "violating your privacy" by making you afraid to use the bathroom because there's a transgender person in there. Effectively a $4,000 bounty on reporting people using the "wrong" bathroom. quote:“There’s just a sense when you go into a bathroom, into a stall where you’re disrobing to use a toilet, there’s a sense you should have people of the same gender around you.”
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Dec 13, 2015 19:06
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When was the last time the Iowa primary actually chose the candidate who became the Republican nominee? I'm pretty sure in 2012 they chose Santorum or Ron Paul.
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Dec 13, 2015 19:09
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Gail Wynand posted:Wow, women must go to the bathroom totally differently than I thought. I mean honestly who doesn't enjoy a good pants-down peepee? But that's just taking it too far. It gets chilly in bathrooms.
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Dec 13, 2015 19:09
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Rename to the George Constanza Law
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Dec 13, 2015 19:10
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My impression of Iowa voters is their bizarre sense of entitlement mean that the metrics they vote for candidates are no way representational of anywhere else in the country.
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Dec 13, 2015 19:10
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limp_cheese posted:When was the last time the Iowa primary actually chose the candidate who became the Republican nominee? I'm pretty sure in 2012 they chose Santorum or Ron Paul. George Dubya
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Dec 13, 2015 19:10
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Gail Wynand posted:Wow, women must go to the bathroom totally differently than I thought. Besides being petty and dumb, this is infinitely ripe for abuse. If it passes, look forward to older/stronger/not-conventionally-attractive women to be rotinely accused and have to drop trou in front of some sort of state observer, I guess? To prove they are women. Small government rules. And let's not even get into the bullying potential. "Jen is juch a lesbo bitch, let's serially report her as trans in every bathroom in town!"
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Dec 13, 2015 19:14
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Sephyr posted:Besides being petty and dumb, this is infinitely ripe for abuse. If it passes, look forward to older/stronger/not-conventionally-attractive women to be rotinely accused and have to drop trou in front of some sort of state observer, I guess? To prove they are women. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFfKvP4vSL0 (at 1:20)
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Dec 13, 2015 19:23
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It's really a total disaster of a haircut though.
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Dec 13, 2015 19:28
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Gail Wynand posted:Wow, women must go to the bathroom totally differently than I thought. And here I was thinking that stalls were meant to give people privacy.
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Dec 13, 2015 19:28
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Raenir Salazar posted:Check out Extra History! they just completed a series about John Snow's efforts to curb the London cholera outbreak. there is a good american history podcast thats funny as hell called the dollop. I learned alot from it and they have an amazing episode on the Iraq war and how hosed it was from the word go. http://thedollop.libsyn.com/ the once and while do stuff with other comedians like patton oswalt and some Australian dudes.
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Dec 13, 2015 19:34
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Rhesus Pieces posted:Yeah he does good work but then just repeats it ad nauseam. Doing the broken record routine is part of modern politics - it is exhausting - I'm glad I don't do it for a living.
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Dec 13, 2015 19:36
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Gail Wynand posted:Wow, women must go to the bathroom totally differently than I thought. I guess pointing out that, for example, trans women are the same gender as other women, that's the entire loving point, is lost on them.
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Dec 13, 2015 19:40
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Cabbit posted:I guess pointing out that, for example, trans women are the same gender as other women, that's the entire loving point, is lost on them. No poo poo. They don't accept the idea that gender is a social construct.
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Dec 13, 2015 19:47
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blue squares posted:No poo poo. They don't accept the idea that gender is a social construct. There's only two genders in the bible.
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Dec 13, 2015 19:52
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On Terra Firma posted:New Vegas is exactly what you're describing above though. It's probably longer than Fallout 3 is in terms of hours of content. This is exactly my point. Fallout: New Vegas was released as a full price individual title. Back in the 90s gaming culture was different; If a studio released a game reusing so many assets as a full priced title it would have been an outrage. Expansions were priced at generally half of the original because you were essentially buying the same game again with a part 2 of the storyline. Now, reusing assets is much more acceptable so instead of making a part 2 of the story studios create new characters in the same game world for a new story and sell the game at full price for the same development cost that they would have put in on an expansion.
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Dec 13, 2015 19:57
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Alzion posted:This is exactly my point. Fallout: New Vegas was released as a full price individual title. Back in the 90s gaming culture was different; If a studio released a game reusing so many assets as a full priced title it would have been an outrage. Expansions were priced at generally half of the original because you were essentially buying the same game again with a part 2 of the storyline. Now, reusing assets is much more acceptable so instead of making a part 2 of the story studios create new characters in the same game world for a new story and sell the game at full price for the same development cost that they would have put in on an expansion. Oh thats bullshit. How many games in the 90s reused assets? off the top of my head: Baldur's Gate 2 A whole loving lot of the Command & Conquer series All of Microsoft's flight sims
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Dec 13, 2015 19:58
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Alzion posted:This is exactly my point. Fallout: New Vegas was released as a full price individual title. Back in the 90s gaming culture was different; If a studio released a game reusing so many assets as a full priced title it would have been an outrage. Expansions were priced at generally half of the original because you were essentially buying the same game again with a part 2 of the storyline. Now, reusing assets is much more acceptable so instead of making a part 2 of the story studios create new characters in the same game world for a new story and sell the game at full price for the same development cost that they would have put in on an expansion. Majora's Mask was sold at a higher price than Ocarina of Time.
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Dec 13, 2015 20:15
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US Politics' hottest topic: 15 Gaming Debates ONLY 90s KIDS Will Get!!
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Dec 13, 2015 20:18
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RZA Encryption posted:Majora's Mask was sold at a higher price than Ocarina of Time. well it was the better game. or so a bunch of nerds have said on the internet. I guess I was too young to appreciate its beauty. Instead the drat timer stressed me the gently caress out. I was having heartburn at 11.
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Dec 13, 2015 20:23
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Nearly all studios reused assets (Origin was a notable exception). Its the ratio of reused assets and the expectations of improvements for a full new title that have changed. Now you have new release games selling for $60 that are little more than mods of the previous title released a year ago and that is considered the norm.
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Dec 13, 2015 20:24
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Alzion posted:Nearly all studios reused assets (Origin was a notable exception). Its the ratio of reused assets and the expectations of improvements for a full new title that have changed. Now you have new release games selling for $60 that are little more than mods of the previous title released a year ago and that is considered the norm. When did the NFL2kwhatever or Madden series start? Boy let me tell you about actual professional sports teams! My god, they just reuse last year's assets and expect fans to pay higher prices to attend games. Surely this business model will fail any day now
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Dec 13, 2015 20:28
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blue squares posted:No poo poo. They don't accept the idea that gender is a social construct. Not quite. There are three concepts at play here - physical sex, which is your genitalia and the hormones and chromosomes that cause them to develop the way they do, gender, which is your internal sense of things, aligning with physical sex in most but not all cases, and gender roles, which are social constructs. Gender expression is tied very closely to your culture's gender roles, so it can be hard to differentiate the two, but you need only look at the long list of cultural trappings which were masculine in one century and feminine in another to see how meaningless they are for defining gender. This is also why transvestites shouldn't be confused with transsexuals - playing with gender expression doesn't change your gender identity, because they're two different things.
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Dec 13, 2015 20:39
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Majoras Mask is best Zelda game and I wished Nintendo would make a sequel to it. Also a real Metroid game. And an F-Zero game. Any way on the topic of transgender, Radio Lab had an interesting piece about a small town and its transgender mayor(woman) I guess it's a bit  but it still doesn't change my opinion on small town America being poo poo.
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Dec 13, 2015 20:40
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PhazonLink posted:Majoras Mask is best Zelda game and I wished Nintendo would make a sequel to it. Also a real Metroid game. And an F-Zero game. Small towns are really interesting, because if they're small and isolated enough, they either miss what makes their local minority different from the rest of the town, or they shrug and take it in stride and categorize being gay or trans or nonwhite or nonchristian in with all the other local color - just another benign weirdo to chuckle at. I mean, it's not quite acceptance, but it beats getting dragged behind a truck.
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Dec 13, 2015 20:46
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Alzion posted:This is exactly my point. Fallout: New Vegas was released as a full price individual title. Back in the 90s gaming culture was different; If a studio released a game reusing so many assets as a full priced title it would have been an outrage. Expansions were priced at generally half of the original because you were essentially buying the same game again with a part 2 of the storyline. Now, reusing assets is much more acceptable so instead of making a part 2 of the story studios create new characters in the same game world for a new story and sell the game at full price for the same development cost that they would have put in on an expansion.
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Dec 13, 2015 20:49
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Alzion posted:Fallout: New Vegas was released as a full price individual title. Back in the 90s gaming culture was different; If a studio released a game reusing so many assets as a full priced title it would have been an outrage. You mean like Fallout 2?
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Dec 13, 2015 20:57
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Reusing assets is good because it means you don't have to spend money literally reinventing the wheel in your video game.
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Dec 13, 2015 21:12
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In Japan, Super Mario Bros 2 was literally Super Mario Bros 1 with a few new sprites, a couple added or modified mechanics, and different levels using the same assets.The only reason it didn't get released in America was that it was too hard, instead they took an entirely unrelated game and put a Mario Bros skin over it and released it as Super Mario Bros 2
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Dec 13, 2015 21:17
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This has gone off topic enough so I won't go through 10 billion examples and exceptions to the rule. Here is my point, The general trend is getting to more frequent releases of full title games with with larger percentages of reused assets and smaller incremental improvements in each release. This has come to be because games have become far more complex and expensive to build from the ground up, and because publishers have found that the consumer base is willing to engage in this monetization scheme.
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Dec 13, 2015 21:24
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SpiderHyphenMan posted:Did Sonic & Knuckles not cost just as much as Sonic 3? Hey now, because of lock-on shenanigans Sonic & Knuckles probably has more content than the rest of all Sega Genesis games combined!
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Dec 13, 2015 21:26
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Fallout 2 is litterally using the same sprites as Fallout 1. Still would have payed 50$ at launch for it.
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Dec 13, 2015 21:26
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