What are you thinking? (Part 2)

[Deleted member 21244]

Sony: Ghost of Tsushima Has Sold 5 Million Copies, God of War Franchise at 51 Million

An article from the New York Times has today revealed commercial milestones for Ghost of Tsushima and the God of War franchise.

twinfinite.net

Happy to see god of war (2018) had sold 20 milion copies in two years only on ps4, almost the same amount of copy made by red dead 2, meaning the franchise is more alive than ever, can't wait to play Ragnarok

 

[Romero]

In Denmark they have a mutated version of the Corona virus, infecting minks. The government wanted to show action and ordered farmers to kill all minks. They have 17 million minks. (The order was illegal and now they have political chaos in Denmark.) Farmers are now mass-killing the animals in provisorial gas chambers so they have piles of cadavers, more than they can handle in a safe and dignified manner.

We saw similar things when cows had foot and mouth disease (MFD) some years ago. Piles of cattle was burned so you could almost see the pyres from the Moon. FMD is making animals very ill but they survive, and for humans it's harmless. Of course measures needs to be taken to stop the disease, but kill the animals? It's not one of the more serious diseases like rabies.


Now we have a pandemic, it's mostly affecting humans.
Could we not ask the minks and the cows how to control and stop covid amongst humans........?

 

[Rain611]

In Denmark they have a mutated version of the Corona virus, infecting minks.

Wow, I didn't know this. From what I understand it's kind of a big deal any time a virus mutates to allow it to infect a new species (insert disclaimer, not a virologist) as it makes it even harder to control with more ways to spread and mutate.

Interesting, I never saw this in the news though, all I continue to see in election shenanigans.

 

[Romero]

Yea. Viruses mutate all the time. Almost all mutations are "fails" and dies out by themselves. If a mutation makes a virus that infects easier, this mutation tends to take over. It's also beneficial for the virus if their host do not die, so a virus disease tends to get less deadly as the virus mutates and evolves, but this is a tendency and there can be exceptions. I'm not a virologist either but this is what's been explained on the news and it makes sense.

It's nothing new that corona infects animals, there was some tigers in a New York zoo that got it. But maybe they got the same virus as people did.

What's worrying about the mutated virus that infects minks, is that vaccines seems less effective against this mutation. But to issue and order (illegal, even) to kill all animals of the affected species seems irrational to me.

It reminds me how Taliban wanted to kill the one pig that was in an Afghan zoo during the "pig flu" 10-12 years ago.

 

[Romero]

Why support pulling out of the Paris Agreement? According to Trump, his main reason for leaving the Paris Agreement was because the US was following strict pollution guidelines when other countries weren't and should be able to destroy the environment as much as possible in order to be competitive from a business standpoint. I think that's an incredibly selfish viewpoint. Even if other countries aren't following their end of the agreement, we should help save the environment in any way possible. Climate Change is a real issue and there needs to be guidelines to follow. If China doesn't want to follow them, we should deal with them separately and NOT encourage other countries to increase pollution. Of course, there could be other factors here that I am not aware of, but this is how the media (left wing and right wing) presented the argument here. The only difference is that left wing media agencies scolded Trump for desiring to further the destruction of our Planet... and some (not all) right wing media agencies applauded Trump for being tough on the World stage and promoting business.

I'm against the Kyoto and Paris agreements because they are either unrealistic or too severe. I do not want to change my way of living that much.
Am I a non-believer in man-made global warming? No. But I am a non-believer in the solutions offered.

Enviromentalists have rubbed me the wrong way all my life so I'm very much anti to anything and everything that they can come up with. I live in my country and I have my experience, you live in another country and have different experiences.

I will show you an example of what they do to meet this kind of agreements:
Biofuel may destroy 470k car engines (and this is in a small country with 5 million citizens). That was 3 years ago but it's just an example.
"Storting" is the name of our parliament. That's where all the nut heads are holed up.

 

[KManX89]

The disinformation that has been filtered through Social Media has really brainwashed people on both sides of the aisle. Social Media platforms have the largest share of blame for people sharing false facts and it is disheartening to see people fall in to these traps so often. The election process was explained by most major media outlets as it occurred. NPR released article after article letting people know that in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, the mail in ballots wouldn't be counted until after the election. This is a fact and people are still furious that Biden "stole" the election. It would be naive to think that no voter fraud occurred at all. There are multiple cases of people sending in ballots of deceased loved ones and mail men stealing ballots, but there is no evidence of a large scale voting scam.

I want to know how to unite the people. Unite Democrats and Republicans. And I feel strongly that fact checking websites and hard non political news sources is the best way to give the people the information. Good luck to the next President, but we can't entertain real politics until people have real information.

Sorry to say, but there's literally no proof of any kind of voter fraud. None. There's a reason all his pathetic attempts at overturning his bigly ED loss (using his words against him, where have I heard that one before?) have been thrown out without so much as an eyeroll from the courts. Actually, no wait, that probably did happen, unlike the 23,000 documented things he's lied about. And the election being stolen.

But Trump's brainwashing holds no bounds as we saw with all the baseless cries of voter fraud and MAGAts trying to shoot up the polling stations after spouting them and holding maskless superspreader rallies after Trump's bungled response to the pandemic. Now, we actually have MAGATs saying they'll refuse to get vaccinated because, according to them (wait for it), the virus isn't deadly enough to warrant it. 240,000+ deaths encounting and over a million cases in the US alone isn't deadly enough for these zealots, you can't f*cking make this sh!t up. Yeah, I wonder what gave them THAT idea? Biden can try to unite them all he wants, but the damage has been long done at this point thanks to their Orange Manchild-in-Chief. When they f*cking say a Covid vaccine isn't needed to keep the public or themselves safe (!), they're clearly beyond help.

And now, 12+ thrown out cases later, the orange idiot STILL refuses to concede, throwing his toys and crying voter fraud in another one of his childish tantrums and putting national security at risk in doing so. This ON TOP OF trying to repeal the ACA, causing over 20m people to lose their health insurance in the middle of a pandemic that he greatly exacerbated by dismissing it, allowing Iran to develop nuclear weapons by stupidly repealing the Nuclear Weapons deal, tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations that, starting next year, will raise everyone else's taxes so they get to keep a little bit more, separating kids from their parents by locking them in cages to which they STILL haven't been returned after falsely promising they would be at a certain date, filling the DOJ and the military with yes men, doing nothing about Russia trying to put bounties on our troops' heads, putting our trade deficit at an all-time high, the list goes on.

 

[KManX89]

All that venting out of the way, we finally have an update on Todd McFarlane's Spawn reboot. Jason Blum says work IS being made, but apparently, it's taking longer than usual to get the story right.

While I'm glad to hear it's happening, someday, maybe? and am anxious to see what they mean by "edgy and different", I can't help but feel cautious at them saying it's taking longer than usual at them working out the story. That probably points to McFarlane's script being a mess as a lot of us feared going in, sad to say that writing movie scripts is a lot different from writing comics as good as his comics he writes are.

 

[Angel]

Anti-vaxxers and their conspiracy theories are the reason we have lost our Measle-free status as a country. What a brag

PopTarts are NOT a suitable diet food

Loving the cold days we're having lately - getting me into the winter mood

Finished my first book...need to think about how to begin a new one and what type to write

Two more weeks of Lockdown 2.0 to go

Am betting that as soon as Boxing Day is done, the government will impose another lockdown

Dominic Cummings is FINALLY gone. 7 months too late but him and his law-breaking nonsense is over with. Still think he should be fined, though.

 

[Romero]

PopTarts?
PopFarts

 

[UniqTeas]

Romero - I am glad you explained your position. I at least understand your point of view. But I am not sure that adopting new methods of helping the planet will effect the average individual all that much. Here is an article I found from Penn State University which goes in to detail about BioFuel and the degradation of diesel engines: https://extension.psu.edu/using-bio...ort-term engine,long run when using biodiesel.

But this a new concept and will have to be worked on. There are probably even better ways of helping the environment than switching to BioFuel. And trust me, I have been annoyed by environmentalists before too. But I have to believe that we have an obligation to help the future generations in any way possible.

Additionally - POP TARTS - My brother in law who was staying with me for a week while in quarantine as one of his housemates got COVID just left this morning from not feeling well. We had him quarantined in his room with endless water and poptarts. haha. We also catered to him without opening the door to the spare room.

 

[Romero]

Romero - I am glad you explained your position. I at least understand your point of view. But I am not sure that adopting new methods of helping the planet will effect the average individual all that much. Here is an article I found from Penn State University which goes in to detail about BioFuel and the degradation of diesel engines: https://extension.psu.edu/using-bio...ort-term engine,long run when using biodiesel.

But this a new concept and will have to be worked on. There are probably even better ways of helping the environment than switching to BioFuel. And trust me, I have been annoyed by environmentalists before too. But I have to believe that we have an obligation to help the future generations in any way possible.

I read fast through that article and it looks good. I knew much of what it says but it's nice to see it confirmed by a university. And some things I didn't know but nothing surprises me. It all makes sense.

But the key is the percentage of biofuel. 20% biofuel is crazy.

Biofuel also contain less energy and that increases consumption. How much the consumption increases largely depends on the % of biofuel. Many years ago I saw examples of the consumption increase by 10%, so while biofuel was cheaper per liter, the total cost for the consumer was about the same as for pure fossil fuel. That was around 5% biofuel I think I can recall.

A transport carrier in the more mountainous regions of Norway reported that their trucks consumed 1 liter more per 10 kilometer when they tested biodiesel 12 years ago. I'd imagine it's an increase of around 30% of consumption, if they normally use 2 liter per 10 kilometer.
Cold temperatures increases this problem. There are probably places where biofuel have less bad side effects than in Norway, but we're the ones who wanted diesel and petrol containing 20% biofuel.

Use of biofuel also requires more frequent service and you need to change the motor oil 3 times more often than before. (5% biofuel.)

But now you cannot choose. Every fuel contains biofuel, and it's more than 5%.

Biofuel contains sediments that clogs fuel filters and you get "mud" on the bottom of the fuel tank.

Biofuel have less CO2 emissions. Right. I mean, wrong. You know why the emissions are lower? Because of a technicality. The CO2 emissions from the biofuel are not calculated, because it is assumed that the plants it came from will quickly grow back again and bind up CO2. Will it work? Maybe, I'm not sure. But the biofuel plants should not grow back, because it was wrong to grow them in the first place. Other things should be grown instead. Like food. Lack of food is a bigger problem and it will get worse as a lack of bees and insects.



I can go on and on.

In Norway we have many fjords, where the ferryes are a part of the roads. To use the ferryes are not free, unlike in our neighbor country Sweden where they are free. Travellers have to buy tickets, but the county subsidises the ferryes. The ferryes ran on diesel. But now, our crazies in power have decided that we need fully electric ferryes. The electric ferryes were so expensive that tickets went through the roof. People can't afford to use them. Many people, who depend on the ferry to get to work, could not afford to use them. It was better for them to quit the job and go unemployed.

Norway is an oil nation. We have a long coastline with many offshore oil fields. An oil platform needs a lot of energy, and they used to produce this energy locally, by burning gas from the wells. Many years ago, it was decided that oil platforms had to get electricy by underwater powerlines from land. Super expensive. And as a bonus: They take so much electricity from the mainland that there is a power shortage many places. Some businesses could not locate themselves where they wanted because there would not be enough power for them, it is barely enough for the locals already. The price for electricity went up. A lot.


A lot of examples will be difficult to use because it will take a lot of explaining unless you really know Norway.


Our politicians, who are devoted to make life better for everybody, are doing more harm than a lot of the guys who are, or should have been in prison.

I'm so sick. Trump and Bolsonaro was refreshing. I just wish we could have had one of them. They may both be idiots, but I welcomed it. After so many years, I want a different idiot to run my country.

 

[UniqTeas]

I can see the validation in your reasoning. I just wish there was a better way to go about all of this than "continue to damage the planet" or "local economy is destroyed". We really do need to continue scientific research in to better forms of energy in order to avoid all of this. After all, they say that the energy contained in a single bean is enough to power an entire city for days when used properly. But that seems like far future reasonings.

I could go on and on about reasons why Trump was a bad leader and top Historians are already preparing to place him in the bottom 5 US Presidents of all time, but we don't have to continue that here. We all know the pros and cons about dictators like him and we have to be able to move on from the conversation at some point. I look forward to a more civil US in the future.... HOPEFULLY.

 

[Romero]

The climate have natural cycles, human activity are just making it go faster. The tundra is melting. It is releasing enormous amounts of climate gases, and gases that are worse than CO2. The CO2 from road traffic are peanuts in comparison. The ice caps are melting, they reflect a lot of heat from the Sun, so that's bad too.

But it's so easy to say that driving less will save the planet, and add another 5% to the already high fuel taxes. People don't drive for fun a lot, they drive because they need to. And the tax is doing nothing for the planet, but it helps fund the government spending.

We can go into hibernation, all of us. That will probably slow down the global warming, but not even that can stop it.

The planet is overpopulated, that's the real problem. We can reduce our carbon footprint, but as the population keeps growing we'll be at status quo.

Instead of adding taxes on fuel, add tax on sex. That will do more to save the planet.

 

[UniqTeas]

China did that from 1970-2013 and I remember thinking it was not a great policy. But I know why they did it at least! haha.

There are plenty of things going wrong with the climate. And I am sure we don't have the right answers yet. Most vehicles will probably be electric in the future - but there are more permanent solutions on the horizon. One of the hottest debates I have with my family right now is that I am pro-lab made meats. They think it is disgusting, but I don't see how it's much different than meat off the animal. Besides, lab grown beef (once proven safe for large consumption) can be better than what we currently eat. They can customize the level of the fat, thus adding flavor or making it more lean and healthy. Additionally, the meat industry is pretty gross. I am really carnivorous, but I think it is pretty obvious that large scale slaughterhouses are not always focused on the well being of the animals they raise. Some are, but we can do better. And finally - once we have a large supply of lab made meat, we can reduce the amount of cows on the planet to safer levels for the environment.

I eat lab made chemicals all day and I am not sure I see much of a difference. haha. My fiancee is a vegetarian and even she thinks lab made meats are grosser than natural meats. But it is an interesting idea at least.

 

[Romero]

Lab made meat? I'm not sure what that is. If it is the same as artificial meat that is soya based, then I have tried it, and it was disgusting to eat.

Governments across Europe are worried about us not producing enough children. A decline in population is seen as very bad.

They want our population to keep growing. At the same time they are desperate to slow down global warming.

Seriously, what are these politicians smoking?

 

[UniqTeas]

As far as I know, lab made meat is meat created based on actual animal proteins. It's like when they grow a human heart or liver from healthy living tissue. They place it in a growth hormone broth and it grows in to the original organ. So, they would take a prized piece of beef, culture tissue samples, place it in this growth hormone broth, and actually scientifically grow new pieces of beef on a large scale. I don't know the EXACT specifications of how it is done, but the article I read a few years back made it seem like it was completely safe, more ethical, and will lower methane levels due to less of a reliance on beef cows.

Opponents of this concept claim that the lab made meat could prove to be hazardous (it's still in testing phases to see if this is true, and if it is capable of being done in an efficient manner), but they also dislike the fact that these meat labs would end entire meat industries. Generations of farmers would suddenly be without a source of income. Fairy farmers would still have a role in mass farming, but the meat industry would be essentially gone assuming this could be done widespread and cost effectively.

But I think I am for it in the long run because the good outweighs the bad to me.

 

[Angel]

Fairy farmers would still have a role in mass farming

I WANT TO BE A FAIRY FARMER!!!!!!

 

[Romero]

As far as I know, lab made meat is meat created based on actual animal proteins. It's like when they grow a human heart or liver from healthy living tissue. They place it in a growth hormone broth and it grows in to the original organ. So, they would take a prized piece of beef, culture tissue samples, place it in this growth hormone broth, and actually scientifically grow new pieces of beef on a large scale. I don't know the EXACT specifications of how it is done, but the article I read a few years back made it seem like it was completely safe, more ethical, and will lower methane levels due to less of a reliance on beef cows.

I've seen something similar. But it was in South Park...... A penis was running around in town.

On a serious note, I find much of the meat (or food processing in general) gross when I can see it or smell it. But I don't think about that when I eat. Lab made meat sound kinda gross too, but to me it doesn't seem more gross than what's already out in the grocery shelves.

I've heard a few times that the solution for the future is to eat plants and insects. Because the population keeps growing, and lack of bees can reduce food production. I hope I won't live to see that day.

 

[Romero]

In Denmark they have a mutated version of the Corona virus, infecting minks. The government wanted to show action and ordered farmers to kill all minks. They have 17 million minks. (The order was illegal and now they have political chaos in Denmark.) Farmers are now mass-killing the animals in provisorial gas chambers so they have piles of cadavers, more than they can handle in a safe and dignified manner.

We saw similar things when cows had foot and mouth disease (MFD) some years ago. Piles of cattle was burned so you could almost see the pyres from the Moon. FMD is making animals very ill but they survive, and for humans it's harmless. Of course measures needs to be taken to stop the disease, but kill the animals? It's not one of the more serious diseases like rabies.


Now we have a pandemic, it's mostly affecting humans.
Could we not ask the minks and the cows how to control and stop covid amongst humans........?

Something more gross again. The minks that they buried in mass graves, under 1 meter of soil (3 feet). They are coming up. The large numbers of gas filled cadavers are making their way through the soil to see daylight again.

Dead minks coming up from the ground (News article run through Google Translate. Warning: Some of the pictures are gross.)

I hope some of them turn into mink zombies, but no reports of that happening. Not yet.


Edit
Some of them had a mutated corona virus. It could mutate some more, into a T-virus or something.

 

[KManX89]

The other day I was watching one of my Blu-Rays and I lazily left it running all the way through the end credits while surfing the internet, and the long Piracy Warning scroll text came up after the end credits and something (or somethingS) really caught my eye:

I just felt it was somewhat odd that they felt the need to explicitly mention oil rigs in the (long) FBI piracy warning. You could name a number of similar scenarios like campgrounds, RVs, outdoor projection screens, etc., all of which it'd be far more likely to be shown to others.

Also any school or flight is technically committing a crime every time they show movies to students or passengers even though we know they do this all the time and none have been criminally or civilly prosecuted AFAIK. And who hasn't brought movies over to their friend's house or a hotel to watch? That's technically illegal as well by letter of the law (that just came to my attention), but who would seriously prosecute that in the off-chance the FBI/police found out about it unless you charged admission?