Brick Fight

Suicide Squad is going to suck despite having a good premise for comics. One of the problems with DC's characters is that they are by nature one-dimensional and nearly impossible to write well. Hell, the Nolan Batman movies pretty much succeeded the same way other Batman media do: Focus on Batman as little as possible while keeping him in the story. It's not necessarily true for all of their heroes, but most of them. I feel like Harley Quinn could be a much better character if an actual good writer got their hands on a story for her.

I feel like Dark Souls should have chopped off some of the less interesting areas of the latter third or so of the game, but that's just me. I preferred when it was taking place in areas that were part of, or provided context to, the dead civilization, and places like Great Hollow just felt like padding to me. That's just my opinion though, as I enjoyed the game most when it felt like a medeival combat sim, and fighting beasts felt more like you were testing the limits of the collision detection.
 
This gif shows off what I genuinely loved about Dark Souls 1:
 

Thanks for the tip. The rattle doesn't bother me as much as comfort does. This one digs right into my shoulder in a way I don't like. Also the mag that came with it feels like it was made from the rattliest old lunchboxes, but the rifle itself feels really nice.
 
After handling nothing but antique militaria since I was like 8, I keep catching glimpses of it, thinking it's an airsoft or something. I'll probably take the gun to the range this weekend.

I am now officially a 21st century Dingus:
 

I am now officially a 21st century Dingus:
 

I've been reading up to get my mind back to finishing my Political Science degree, and one of the things to get me on a reading is when a Goon on SA was putting a report together for his law class examining the history of the modern Sovereign Citizen movement:
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen_movement#2010
 
While I'd read stories mocking their views as early as the Bush Administration, the movement was invigorated by the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Their large mainstream debut was during the FBI standoff against Cliven Bundy in regards to letting his cattle illegally graze on government land that came to a head in 2015, and the armed occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in 2016
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliven_Bundy#Standoff
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Malheur_National_Wildlife_Refuge
 
There's a whole bunch of subtext to the movement, but the main gist is that they don't believe in a Federal, or sometimes even State Government. This usually results in members of the movement participating in illegal activity that they believe they can get away with. The most common illegal acts include tax/mail/financial fraud (with tax fraud numbering in tens of millions over one-to-several years in some cases), violence against police, purchasing/owning illegal weapons and explosives, conspiracy to kidnap/commit acts of violence against government employees/officials, and a host of other felonies and misdemeanors. Essentially, they believe that there are loopholes in state and federal law where if they feel they can complain about courts using the wrong flag, administering oaths more than once, or claiming themselves as certain entities, etc. will let them get out of any prosecution. For example, one of the most infamous of loopholes for SovCits deals with US Code Title 18 - Part I - Chapter 1 - Section 7:
 
 
While many would read the bold selection in Layman as "Any vessel owned by the Government of the United States or any citizen of the USA," SovCits (with varying degrees of intention) misinterpret it as "Any vessel... or citizen of the United States" is subject to Maritime Law and cannot be subject to state or federal law. So basically:
 

 
A recent case wherein the SovCit defendant claims that taking an oath twice, even under different circumstances, in unconstitutional: http://arnoldlawfirm.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/motion-to-dismiss-medenbach.pdf
 
An attempt at a psychological profile of Sovereign Citizens based on select court cases: http://www.jaapl.org/content/42/3/338.full.pdf
START report claiming Sovereign Citizens among the top concerns for law enforcement in regards to domestic terrorism: https://www.start.umd.edu/pubs/START_UnderstandingLawEnforcementIntelligenceProcesses_July2014.pdf(specifically mentioned on page 1, paragraph 4)
 
My big thing lately is tracking the history of the modern movement, which seems to go back to the Posse Comitatus movement of the '60s. I'm currently trying to find the overlapping connections between the two.

I've been reading up to get my mind back to finishing my Political Science degree, and one of the things to get me on a reading is when a Goon on SA was putting a report together for his law class examining the history of the modern Sovereign Citizen movement:
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen_movement#2010
 
While I'd read stories mocking their views as early as the Bush Administration, the movement was invigorated by the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Their large mainstream debut was during the FBI standoff against Cliven Bundy in regards to letting his cattle illegally graze on government land that came to a head in 2015, and the armed occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in 2016
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliven_Bundy#Standoff
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Malheur_National_Wildlife_Refuge
 
There's a whole bunch of subtext to the movement, but the main gist is that they don't believe in a Federal, or sometimes even State Government. This usually results in members of the movement participating in illegal activity that they believe they can get away with. The most common illegal acts include tax/mail/financial fraud (with tax fraud numbering in tens of millions over one-to-several years in some cases), violence against police, purchasing/owning illegal weapons and explosives, conspiracy to kidnap/commit acts of violence against government employees/officials, and a host of other felonies and misdemeanors. Essentially, they believe that there are loopholes in state and federal law where if they feel they can complain about courts using the wrong flag, administering oaths more than once, or claiming themselves as certain entities, etc. will let them get out of any prosecution. For example, one of the most infamous of loopholes for SovCits deals with US Code Title 18 - Part I - Chapter 1 - Section 7:
 
 
While many would read the bold selection in Layman as "Any vessel owned by the Government of the United States or any citizen of the USA," SovCits (with varying degrees of intention) misinterpret it as "Any vessel... or citizen of the United States" is subject to Maritime Law and cannot be subject to state or federal law. So basically:
 

 
A recent case wherein the SovCit defendant claims that taking an oath twice, even under different circumstances, in unconstitutional: http://arnoldlawfirm.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/motion-to-dismiss-medenbach.pdf
 
An attempt at a psychological profile of Sovereign Citizens based on select court cases: http://www.jaapl.org/content/42/3/338.full.pdf
START report claiming Sovereign Citizens among the top concerns for law enforcement in regards to domestic terrorism: https://www.start.umd.edu/pubs/START_UnderstandingLawEnforcementIntelligenceProcesses_July2014.pdf(specifically mentioned on page 1, paragraph 4)
 
My big thing lately is tracking the history of the modern movement, which seems to go back to the Posse Comitatus movement of the '60s. I'm currently trying to find the overlapping connections between the two.

"The concept of a wholesome and superior past was invented largely to aid in the salesmanship of canned stew and politics"

I'd argue against the Mosin, because it goes against the Nate's two points in that if they're not the rifles you don't want nor need, then why get it? Because it's cheap? Then why not just save up a few more hundred and get the gun you actually want or need. Also, the world can do with less Mosins being tacticloled.

Maw maw where's my paw.

Call me.
 
I actually get more of a Mussolini vibe from Trump, what with the exaggerated facial expressions and exaggerated gestures.

Trump's finances are supposedly a mess and nothing like he makes them out to be. I don't like the practice of Romney's former business, but I wouldn't say he's anything but a very intelligent man.

John Wick 2 on track.

I think framing what we perceive of the subject helps, because several different people are going to look at "aerial automatic hunting"  and are each going to envision it in several different ways. Someone may think about the heli scene from Full Metal Jacket, just some guy firing indiscriminately at groups of animals. Other people may be seeing it as someone carefully putting the rounds down on individual targets with degrees of success.
 
I've been watching videos, looking up different methods, and checking on businesses that hire out their services and do hunting tourism, and haven't made up my mind on what the trends point to.

I don't understand what your reasoning is, here. He never said either of those things excluded each other, and has some reasonable points that different hunting methods are better than others.
 
I did some reading on this years ago when I first heard about it, and these are the methods I've read about specifically:
 
Snaring and trapping: Argued by the Texas Animal Damage Control Service as the most effective methods that account for over half of the culling of the boar population. At this point, it seems to be property owners' preferred method due to effectiveness.
 
Fencing: There's no way to measure effectiveness that I've seen carried out on this, but there are suggested fencing techniques that seem to work. This is one of those "Evidence of absense" cases until someone compares properly fenced property to non. This one obviously carried logistical nightmares due to terrain and land size, too. This has an added effect though of keeping farm hogs on farms, as one of the most common cited reasons for their stable-to-growing populations are escaped pigs (the other being illegally introducing them to new environments).
 
Aerial Hunting: Still debated on its usefulness. It's seen as a way of monitoring herds and being able to give chase, but killing an animal is really hard, and flying a plane/helicopter to allow for accurate shooting is really hard. The former requires a well-placed shot, and as any GC will tell you, there are animals that you can pump rounds into all day and not reduce their lifespan too much. Flying a plane carries the same restrictions as it always does vis a vis weather, lack of vision in dense terrain, and requiring ground parties to coordinate with. Then there's the issue of flying well enough to not freak out a pack or being able to give someone a good enough shot (which is why they seem to recommend things like shotgun slugs over any other kind of weaponry). The TADC puts this as much less effective than trapping and snaring, and more useful than traditional hunting or baying.
 
Poisoning: Currently, there are no approved methods of poisoning hogs. Some methods are being trialed while certain chemicals are being tested and developed. The most promising methods involve taking advantage of their digging instincts to poison things like potatoes to specifically target the hogs.
 
Hunting itself is apparently not helping the overall problem greatly. There's nothing to say it hasn't helped individuals protect their property by diverting the population, but what I've read says hunting needs to cull around 50-70 percent of the hog population per year to properly address the problem, but hunting has overall done around maybe 20% per year. It's not ineffective, but it's obviously not the single solution. There are low-cost, high-payout options in animal population control that can result in a better long-term solution. Hell, Kansas and Arkansas outlawed forms of hog hunting due to cases of people illegally introducing more of these hogs into the environment.

Dude, flip your propaganda switch to the off position to a second and re-assess. I'm South African. Nearly every adult male I know hunts - either every once in a while or regularly. My country makes a goodly chunk of its money from farming and hunting, and I was trained by ecologists who advocate for commercial hunting as a means of preserving wildlife. So don't put words in my mouth regarding the ethics and utility of hunting (which is to say: fuck off). 
 
My problem with the specific scenario we're describing is that damn near all of the hunters I know would be aghast at it. It is unethical, because it wounds rather than kills. It is indiscriminate. It is unsporting. To these people (again, a large number of persons in my acquaintance) what you're describing would be viewed in the same light as a catholic priest detailing how he got into the business to diddle kids.
 
Even viewed as animal control it is inefficient, crude and inexact. And, again, would be viewed as unethical for all the reasons described above. Far better here to deploy traps, poison (carefully), biocontrol or damn near anything other than blazing away from the animals on high with weapons of insufficient killing power.
 
So, in short: get the fuck off your high horse about this, and stop pretending that I'm arguing with you because I don't understand the fundamental issues or something. This thing is retarded, and no regard for the need to control wildlife or secure farming livelyhoods is going to serve as a fig leaf for such stupidity and cruelty.

This is what a lot of people don't understand about tone management. You can't keep up intense tone over a long period of time and not turn off most people out there. It becomes absolutely tiresome to the average person who can forget to just come home and care. When anger is the new hotness, you can get those people who will be angry when they are introduced to it. Maintaining rage like that is just fucking hard when you've got so many other things to do, and are a well-rounded human being.
 
The right-wing media and poltical machines are being eaten alive by their own Bush-era monsters right now. They thought there'd be no way their angry supporters would stop Freeping and sitting mad in their houses. Then they start fights with the FBI, elect people outside the party comfort zone, and change the prominent right-wing discussion to disastrous things like 6 page budgets and 10% flat tax. The Dems ran into this with trying to appeal to both young liberals and the old Southern racists, which irrevocably changed the party in the '60s.

It's funny, if a little frightening to see how unstoppable Trump is, despite having the obvious weaknesses in pure statistics. Someone like Trump rarely gets this far. For years, both sides of the media love to wheel out nutbags that their base would hate or love, but are safely powerless. They're usually 100% harmless to the political machine at worst, and good at keeping a small devoted base at best. Trump was shown on Fox as a hero speaking against "political correctness" and liberal media outlets showed him as an example of why their base should continue to hate Republicans. He became a ratings booster, and the media helped legitimize him to their own ends. He wasn't taken seriously, but then the Republicans fucked up hard. Their penchant for having massive primary races that were being used to gain media exposure for the candidates' careers backfired. All of a sudden, running a 20-30% poll might help a candidate win because he's up against two "frontrunners" who are polling 20% range, and a shitload of others polling a cumulative 20-30%. The media is still going:

"It's happened with people like Palin and the weird Pizza Guy who want to sell themselves, but they all eventually bow out. They're unelectable and the party structure doesn't want them, so let's run a reality show for ratings. We've done it with weird little outsiders before, but mostly just jabs here and there to make it interesting. Surely one of the sixteen nominees taking votes away from Rubio/Cruz will bow out eventually. They'll show sense and realize that even their single digit polls will send their party to ruin by helping Trump, right?..."

*Trump wins some states with less % than Bernie Sanders*

"....right?"
 
It was a perfect storm of bad Republican decisions and their media circus that created a viability in Trump. I don't think the media can do much more to fix it at this point. Even Fox is just trying not to mention him while retaining their viewership. The ball is in the Republican leadership court. They've got to pick Rubio or Cruz, and cut the rest of the chaff completely if they want a chance of salvaging the situation.

It's funny, if a little frightening to see how unstoppable Trump is, despite having the obvious weaknesses in pure statistics. Someone like Trump rarely gets this far. For years, both sides of the media love to wheel out nutbags that their base would hate or love, but are safely powerless. They're usually 100% harmless to the political machine at worst, and good at keeping a small devoted base at best. Trump was shown on Fox as a hero speaking against "political correctness" and liberal media outlets showed him as an example of why their base should continue to hate Republicans. He became a ratings booster, and the media helped legitimize him to their own ends. He wasn't taken seriously, but then the Republicans fucked up hard. Their penchant for having massive primary races that were being used to gain media exposure for the candidates' careers backfired. All of a sudden, running a 20-30% poll might help a candidate win because he's up against two "frontrunners" who are polling 20% range, and a shitload of others polling a cumulative 20-30%. The media is still going:

"It's happened with people like Palin and the weird Pizza Guy who want to sell themselves, but they all eventually bow out. They're unelectable and the party structure doesn't want them, so let's run a reality show for ratings. We've done it with weird little outsiders before, but mostly just jabs here and there to make it interesting. Surely one of the sixteen nominees taking votes away from Rubio/Cruz will bow out eventually. They'll show sense and realize that even their single digit polls will send their party to ruin by helping Trump, right?..."

*Trump wins some states with less % than Bernie Sanders*

"....right?"
 
It was a perfect storm of bad Republican decisions and their media circus that created a viability in Trump. I don't think the media can do much more to fix it at this point. Even Fox is just trying not to mention him while retaining their viewership. The ball is in the Republican leadership court. They've got to pick Rubio or Cruz, and cut the rest of the chaff completely if they want a chance of salvaging the situation.

So the ARES SCR. A ban on AR-15s results in what looks like a smaller, lighter rifle with an ugly stock.

If I had to pick what are the most promising developments in the culinary industry, here's some of the top ones that wouldn't be terribly obvious:
 
Seasonal closings: There are several big reasons why businesses end up closing, and one is slow seasons. There's always this weird demand to keep a place open for a handful of customers a day for no real good reason. Lots of places now are just going "fuck it" and closing their doors for a few months. One place where we're friends with the chef pretty much just went "No work for a few months, but we'll give employees a stipend and a little bonus to come in and clean and help maintain the place during the closing." They're saving assloads by not operating at a loss and wasting money on energy, food waste, wearing down equipment, etc. Employees aren't run ragged like other restaurants and actually get time to set aside for family or personal lives, and they're even thinking about using the extra money to send employees to school/culinary internships.
 
Vacuum Pack Machines: This has been a game-changer on our food truck, and for other vendors I've talked to as well. One of the big things is that it legitimizes freezing a lot. While freezing food got a lot of (deserved) shit in the industry over the past few years, it can still be a legitimate way of preserving food when done right. We can strike on certain foods when prices are low or make complicated things like mole negro when we have free time, then vac it and freeze it. We're neighbors with a guy who goes to Alaska to catch fish, and he has a large-scale vacuum-packing and flash-freezing setup on his boat. Since he does it right, it's the best fish I've had outside of a coastal area. It's so far saved us in the neighborhood of thousands in food cost for a business that only runs half the year.
 
Immersion Cookers/Vape ovens: Back when these were rare, I hated them. They always broke and it was usually just another way of making boring steaks. Now, I can just set up a bunch of these in the pots, set a timer, and walk the hell away instead of having to nurse an oven so that the food doesn't get too dried out. Chicken is soft and juicy again, and there's less food waste from burning food/inconsistent cooking.

I don't hate Chinese-American food. I like it as much as anybody. It's just different from the real stuff is all. Every country has the same deal. The big thing in Mexico now is Japanese food, and the combinations from the two are great, but I'm sure a few people miss the traditional forms of the Japanese food or want to at least try it there.
 
I just want to try everything. If I don't like it, then that's just something I didn't like the taste of, big whoop. Maybe it's from being born in a neighborhood where my family were the only EFLs, but I'll never understand how guys think they're just the toughest fucking shit in the world, but throw an absolute fit if they're invited to someone's house and throw a hissy because things aren't what they eat every day of their lives. I don't want to sit around worrying what people think about what I eat, and I don't want to die being proud of all of the things I didn't do. I miss the raw, wriggling stuff I ate and learned how to make in Asia, and I get a craving for sesame chicken from the place by the Amish furniture shop. Loving both helped me expand what I know about flavors and combinations and dig into good food anywhere.