Woot

Vote Bear for a lot of idle talk and not voting.

What Alex said. There's not much to do on day one but posting is better than not posting.

On 3/10/2016 at 0:06 AM, LSU Tiger Josh said:

My mafia games do not give out the setup because that severely affects the chances of mafia or third parties being able to win.

Very mysterious.

Confirm

If we're in a situation where we need an extension, it's probably because not enough people have been online and talked. In which case it's unlikely that a majority will log in and vote for the extension before the turn changes. But maybe we're not doing time limits anymore, just going until a majority lynch vote.

Are ayyliens real? Of course, how dare you.

Illegal aliens? Yes, but not for long, we're going to build a great, great wall.

Space aliens?

I don't think there's any more evidence of alien encounters than there is for ghosts or bigfoot - just hoaxes, anecdotes, unexplained events, and all sorts of indirect observations that are interpreted to fit the theory.

So we can only estimate what the probability is that an alien civilization has developed somewhere else in the universe. This leads to something like the drake equation - take the number of planets in the universe, multiply it by the probability that conditions on the average planet are hospitable to life, times the chance that life happens, times the chance a species intelligent enough for civilization evolves...

The problem is that once you reach the probability that life is generated, you're pretty much speculating wildly. Almost any kind of made up numbers can plausibly be used to get any result you want. 

are you trying to spy on our dank memes you son of a bitch

CleathHiff

Donald J. Trump

Mr. Lairotut

xXx§ephirothxXx

Doctor Dong

that's all I've got

It's a shame the Trump ads were banned. They were causing such a shitstorm back when he was low in the polls and the odds against him were 15 to 1. I can't even imagine what it would be like now that his nomination is almost certain.

1 hour ago, Konakaga said:

#MakeDonaldDrumpfAgain

Of all the things he could possibly make fun of Trump for, John Oliver goes with a slight variation of his name from 400 years ago? Drumpf doesn't even sound much sillier than Trump already does.

I assume we'll limit the length of turns, kill whoever has the most votes against them by the end of a 24 hour period or something like that.

I've wasted a significant fraction of my life on Total War games. No other game lets you simulate ancient battles and have 10,000 soldiers on the field.

Rome: The greatest thing ever when it was released 12 years ago. Dated but I still play it. There are many good mods to choose from, especially hardcore ones that go for extreme historicity and realism and make the battles a lot more interesting, like Roma Surrectum II. There's an expansion and mod that brings it forward in time to the barbarian invasions if you're into that.

Medieval II: Pretty solid game. Has a lot of variety, technology changes over time, interesting things like crusades and Mongol invasions. But it's always felt smaller and less authentic than Rome to me. Everyone plays the Stainless Steel mod.

Empire: People criticize this one, but I like the time period and the game. Everything about being an 18th century imperial power is fun. Added naval battles to the series. The AI is dumber than usual in this one. Everyone plays Darthmod, it's a vast improvement, but I've heard a few people recommend Imperial Splendour now.

Napoleon: Better mechanics and better multiplayer than Empire but the singleplayer campaign is a lot less interesting.

Shogun II: Extremely polished game, plays well, nice graphics, everyone likes it. But it gets repetitive, it's always the same units on the same few maps, every faction is the same and so on. This is also where Total War starts becoming arcade-y, every battle is over in 3 minutes flat and it feels like rock paper scissors. There's mods but nobody agrees on the best one, vanilla is okay by itself. The Fall of the Samurai expansion is also popular, it goes forward in time to the Meiji period and guns.

Rome II: I played 4 hours of this when it came out and then I quit and started a Rome 1 campaign. But I've heard patches improved it a lot, and now people have had time to develop mods which might fix most of its problems. The Atilla expansion has gotten a lot of praise, though the time period doesn't interest me as much.

We do have a lot of people at the very bottom, even though the median and average are better it's not the best country to be dirt poor in. It might make me more popular in this thread to say that raising tax rates for the top and lowering them for the bottom is efficient economic policy if you want to redistribute money, and the right is usually guilty of bullshit when that issue comes up.

3 hours ago, Konakaga said:

Does that look balanced to you?

 

The value of the goods themselves arriving and leaving can be unbalanced, but the payments are always balanced. Currency held abroad can only be used to buy our goods or invest in our economy. Even if there was a way to send out empty ships and have them come back full for free, that could only be to our advantage. Now you can debate fiddling with these balances in the short term, but that's a different argument. Sanders and Trump think free trade is a bad thing, period, they want to cancel the agreements and put up permanent tariffs to stop it.
That is simply bad policy. The consensus among economists that free trade is a net positive is nearly unanimous. When polled >90% support taking down existing barriers and oppose putting up new ones. It's the economic version of the climate change 'debate'.

3 hours ago, Konakaga said:

maternity leave

 

There's two parts to that video: whether employers should be required to allow time off for maternity, and the employee should be paid during it. The first thing is good, we already have that. The second thing - well, it depends on how it's implemented, but in the simplest form there's no reason it would lead to the average woman earning anything more in total, in effect it would just be a way of paying them on a different schedule. (For non-minimum workers, in the long run). I'm not against it, I just don't care that much because anyone who can budget their own money already has it.

3 hours ago, Konakaga said:

problems

 

There's not a nation in the world you can't type up a paragraph of problems with. Just have some perspective - take a walk outside and you're not going to see a bunch of mentally ill homless veterans who got unfairly fired from their jobs get shot and then get arrested for being shot and then sent to a private prison but die on the way there from a bridge collapse. You'll see a bunch of people working and consuming, you'll see the ordinary economic activity that is 99% of life. At the start of this you asked if I really think the economy is really the most important issue facing politics - well, generally, yes, I do.

3 hours ago, Konakaga said:

 

It's one thing to regulate banking, it's another thing to go to war against it as if it's an evil force to be stopped and not a vital part of the economy.

If our foreign factory jobs were worse than what the people there could get otherwise, then nobody would accept those jobs. The factory jobs are an improvement, and taking them away just screws those workers, and makes both countries poorer. You could instead be humanitarian by setting up laws to require higher standards in the foreign factories, but that's a whole other discussion, Bernie mainly talks about restricting trade as a way to "bring back jobs". (Which is pretty much economic nonsense, trade is balanced).

Unions can sort of be a solution to some problems, but it's just a nicer word for 'labor cartel', they're inefficient, anything else is better. Changes taxes, regulations, welfare, anything, but please no unions. The public ones alone in my state are an infuriating extortion racket. There's more efficient ways to do anything that a union does.

Paid vacations / maternity leave don't mean a lot to me because changing the way something is paid for doesn't change it's price. You'd end up being paid the same amount total: less when working to cover the cost of being paid on vacation. (In the long run and for non-minimum wage workers).

2 hours ago, Piratemonkey said:

Most, if not all, of Sanders policies have worked in at least one place on the planet...Every American policy has been shit...

I don't know where the idea comes from that America is a failure of a country, because the typical American is pretty well off by international standards. Only the richest small bits of Europe could really be argued categorically better. In median disposable income per capita America is #1, by before-tax income we're in the top 10, compared to big European countries like Germany or France we blow them out of the water. (You can find a lot of interesting charts on the Wikipedia articles for median income, household income, etc, they're all adjusted for purchasing power which includes things like healthcare).

America could be improved, but I kind of like this place, and it doesn't appeal to me when candidates say we should turn it into Europe. But that's personal preference, some people like the European system better.

I hope I'm not making too many enemies by shit talking Bernie. I'm not on any party or candidate's side, I don't hate all Bernie's policies, and just because I don't agree with how he wants to do something doesn't mean I'm against it happening.

I think Bernie is a frightening candidate, but nobody realizes it because the details of economic policy are so little understood and rarely brought up. Few people know or care that he wants to put up protectionist tariffs, tax all trades of financial instruments, dismantle banks, force unionization, etc. Say what you will about the other candidates, but until I catch them trying to pour gasoline on the GDP, I can live with them. Except Trump, his economics suck too - he's exactly the same as Bernie as far I'm concerned, they're both just populists.

I'll bet any amount of P&W money against Bernie. 5 to 1 against him getting the nomination and 10 to 1 against him winning the final election.

55 minutes ago, Alex Taylor said:

Lol I've heard this question like 6 times. There's actually a mathematically correct answer.

Most people figure that there's 2 possibilities: either you choose the right door first and switching is bad, or you choose the wrong door first and switching is good. So switching is 50/50 and there's no point doing it.

The simple error everyone makes is forgetting that there's more wrong doors than right ones. The door you choose first is wrong 2/3rds of the time, so switching is right 2/3rds of the time.

It's some guy who's sitting at 15 nation score, making a lot of money raiding inactives that no one else can raid, and spending everything he gets on Trump ads.

As far as I'm concerned he's winning Politics and War.

I sent him $1,000,000 yesterday.

At this point it's easier to list the old IP that's isn't being dug up and squeezed.

If your beloved childhood movie is not E.T, Jaws, Princess Bride, or Back to the Future, then modern sequels and reboots have been made or are being made.