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Messages - brujon

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1
Play By Post / Re: Any games vacant? Thinking of getting back into PBP...
« on: November 27, 2019, 08:47:51 PM »
I'm really familiar with D20 (3.5) and WoD (2nd Edition), but i'm open to learning new stuff as well

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Play By Post / Any games vacant? Thinking of getting back into PBP...
« on: November 19, 2019, 10:54:36 PM »
Title says it all!

Lemme know if you have a spot for me in your game!

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Off Topic Fun / Re: The Small Rants Thread XII: The Folly of Life
« on: September 25, 2019, 08:16:43 PM »
Goddamn it all

Life has a way of sucking donkey balls sometimes

And it doesn't even get to the moneyshot.

Thanks, i loled  :lmao

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Off Topic Fun / Re: The Small Rants Thread XII: The Folly of Life
« on: September 25, 2019, 06:17:23 PM »
Goddamn it all

Life has a way of sucking donkey balls sometimes

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Off Topic Fun / Re: The Small Rants Thread XII: The Folly of Life
« on: September 11, 2019, 11:55:35 PM »
Being bipolar sucks. I'm managing it, but goddamn do i have to take the stairs instead of the elevator on shit everytime, it's killing me. People that don't go through this shit have such an easier time, if only they knew what it was like... But i guess it's like when you never really think anything about how awesome it is to breathe with both nostrils unobstructed, and then you get a cold and suddenly you feel fucking horrible because you can't breathe properly. Only those who really walked these shoes will know how it is.

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Off Topic Fun / Re: The Small Rants Thread XII: The Folly of Life
« on: September 02, 2019, 11:18:16 PM »
Life's hard ya'll

Also don't do drugs they will warp your view of reality and you'll forever not be able to face everyday life the same way, and that includes alcohol

8
Off Topic Fun / Re: Awesome stuff you have to share, V4
« on: August 13, 2019, 05:40:10 AM »
This guy's whole channel is amazing

I can't tell if it's self aware satire or if he's really serious about the whole thing and that's what makes it so good!


In other news, i got drunk last week and accidentally agreed to appear on a stand-up open mic night today, so that's going to be amusing and cringe!

9
Off Topic Fun / Re: The Small Rants Thread XII: The Folly of Life
« on: July 10, 2019, 11:51:01 AM »
I'm quite sure they see the big picture. If you've ever seen the minutes of a shareholder meeting it's pretty clear that they actively encourage NOT helping people get better because sick people are a continual revenue stream.

Insurers don't want sick people, though. I remember reading that the top 1% of sick people are responsible for over 80% of an insurance company's spending... The healthier you are, the more profitable you are for the insurance company, especially if what makes you healthy costs them zero... That's why i don't understand why many people over there have the same experience as you do. Why would insurance companies not cover things that cost less and can prevent bigger spending later? Seems dumb.

10
Off Topic Fun / Re: The Small Rants Thread XII: The Folly of Life
« on: July 09, 2019, 11:44:00 PM »
Pretty upset with how Kaiser is handling mental health services lately. After leaving me hanging for 6+ months last time I needed a therapist (they tried to outsource my therapy and I was told to wait for the 3rd party to assign me someone) they have fucked me over yet again. My therapist quit Kaiser due to excessive red tape making it hard to treat patients, but one of the last things she did was note that my symptoms had been particularly severe in the previous months and I needed a case worker assigned. Kaiser has apparently lost that instruction and I still have no replacement therapist months later.

It really does feel like they are entirely incapable of providing mental health services unless the person is either stable in the first place or dangerous enough to be institutionalized.

Sad that in this day and age people still don't realize mental wellbeing is as important or even MORE important than physical health.

If you're not well in the mind, it leads to risk-taking and risk-seeking behavior, bad eating habits, lack of exercise and motivation, trouble sleeping and a host of other detrimental effects to overall health longterm.

Health Insurance probably would end up SAVING money if they increased coverage for mental problems.

It's just dumb. Maybe algorithms haven't advanced enough, they don't see the bigger picture and only advise insurance providers on short term monetar gains...

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Off Topic Fun / Re: The Small Rants Thread XII: The Folly of Life
« on: June 29, 2019, 02:49:10 PM »
REALLY small rant, but I wish I could find a good wireless controller for the PC with a decent battery. Stupid Xbox packs last NOTHING and cost a lot around here.

Portable batteries, man. Cellphone chargers. You probably already have one. They work on controllers. I do this all the time.

12
Off Topic Fun / Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe
« on: May 15, 2019, 02:33:43 AM »
I disagree. They'd seen how much it'd taken the Hulk to un-do snap. Then Stark died using stones just to kill Thanos. They definitely did not have enough time to tinker with the stones and find out who'd be both able to use it to bring back Tony and other assorted deceased, and that would also not be at risk of getting corrupted by Ultimate Cosmic Power (tm) to also use it for their own purposes.

Oh, i'm sure Captain Marvel in her MCU incarnation could probably handle the gauntlet without getting obliterated, especially if it only meant bringing back those who died in the battle. But she's also very much of an unknown quantity. Doesn't seem to care nearly as much about Earth as she does about the universe at large, and who knows what she'd do if she got her hands on the stones.

Other candidates are equally not as trustworthy as one would like with Cosmic Power and, frankly, at that point most of everyone involved who had a say on the matter had probably had enough of tomfoolery with the unpredictable and too-powerful-for-their-own good stones that they just agreed to let bygones be bygones.

They'd won, took some losses, but overall made it out on top, and any additional fuckery with powers beyond human comprehension had, frankly, about a 50-50 of ending up with more harm than good, so they just cashed in on their hard earned victory and started on mending damage done and getting over a universe-traumatizing 5 years dealing with the fallout of the snap.

Here's to hoping that future scripts addresses how the world and universe at large dealt with a sudden 100% increase in population universe-wide after economy and farming had 5 years to bounce back to the newly 50% decrease in population.

I sure wouldn't want to be a judge in a post-snap world where i had to un-do that many inheritances and property claims.

In fact, being brutally realistic, everyone coming back after 5 years gone would almost assuredly have a bigger impact than 50% of everyone disappearing at once, especially if the economy has had time to readjust somewhat to the very much decreased population.

Just absolute madness, through and through. It'd take double that time to bounce back to a semblance of stability and that's accounting for super-powered superhero cops and sci-fantasy tech.

But passing a 10s reference in a future movie, i don't think they're going to get that deep into the fallout of post-snap reordering of the whole universe. Whole can of worms there, i think they're just going to gloss over it and 99,9% of audience won't think too deeply of it and so they'd be ok.

13
Off Topic Fun / Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe
« on: May 14, 2019, 01:54:33 AM »
Is it O.K to spoil Endgame already?

I'll wager it's already safe and pitchforks and torches are secured and stashed...

(click to show/hide)

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Off Topic Fun / Re: Awesome stuff you have to share, V4
« on: March 01, 2019, 08:58:06 PM »
Gotta give it to the ancient romans, they built infrastructure that's still working nowadays. In my home country there was even a still used roman bridge in my region then the local government made a big fanfare about building a new modern bridge so the peple wouldn't need to depend in the who-knows-how-old bridge.

And they built it.

And then winter came and there was a big storm.

And when the sky cleared the fancy new bridge had collapsed and the roman bridge was still standing in one piece!

They also developed special concrete for coastal areas that's actually reinforced by the salt from the water so that stuff is also still standing despite a millennia and half of being hammered by waves!

LMAO

romans op

pls nerf

oh wait

patch 0.476 already nerfed the Holy Roman Empire, carry on

15
Off Topic Fun / Re: Awesome stuff you have to share, V4
« on: February 24, 2019, 12:41:39 PM »

... But honestly ...

That level of honesty and detail, will serve you and yours well.

The economist Jeffrey Sachs worked on Russia's transition out of their old system.  He did OK, they didn't do as well.  But he learned from his mistakes.  He has said the number 1 thing developing economies can do to help themselves, is to do real Sewage systems.  It's my understanding Sao Paulo is nearly complete in it's upgrade, and then they can branch out to Rio and the rest of the country.  It should work and the benefits are real.

Basic infrastructure and roads/trains make a great nation. You simply can't become great unless you have that. The USA wouldn't be what it is today if it hadn't laid the foundation all those years ago.

16
Off Topic Fun / Re: Awesome stuff you have to share, V4
« on: January 31, 2019, 10:20:30 PM »
Grats to Nytemare, load off your mind.


Brazil can probably recapitulate all of the science, and almost all of the simulations, for a space program.  But right now those physics phds can get way more $$ from the local big banks setting up the same stuff wall street has recently done.  USA ran as high as 4% of the gov during the moon race, but generally below 1% since.  It wasn't just a drag on the economy from too much military spending, rather it was research and development.  Necessary and how do you tell what the benefits are? (especially if focused on ultra short term only).

What i see as the problem here in Brazil is how science and research spending here makes absolute zero sense.

FOR EXAMPLE:

We have two government organizations that sponsor prospective Masters and Doctorate students: CAPES and CNPq. Both pay a pretty piss poor amount of money per month to the students, and impose some pretty serious restrictions. For example, they can't teach while they receive the money. Its considered that they are in exclusive dedication to the research program and therefore can't have obligations outside of the program. But what they pay is PITIFUL, really, you can't live on that alone. So you have future doctors and masters of sciences working entry level jobs or teaching high school biology under wraps just to keep themselves afloat while they finish the program.

Meanwhile, every promising research student in Brazil is quickly approached by members of universities overseas, from USA to Europe and Asia, who offer much much much better opportunities for them, with free housing of actual good quality, a monthly income that affords them a decent standard of living, and in some cases, a contract promising them a position to teach in the University at the end of the program.

So, what ends up happening is, almost EVERYONE that actually has a research that shows promise quickly leaves Brazil, and many, maybe even most of them, never come back to live here again. Job prospects, research prospects, the money, the standard of living, EVERYTHING is better, and the government isn't doing fuck all to keep all of these very valuable brains inside Brazil.

It's a massive crisis. To make matters worse, CAPES and CNPq demand that all graduate students that are sponsored by them publish a number of papers per year, as well as maintaining a given rating on their papers.

Well... Since many don't really have the time to actually publish those papers because the actually important research takes so long, and because the research is going to take a very long time to actually produce publishable results, what ends up happening is the co-signing of papers.

Yes, really.

Graduate Student A has a paper they'll be publishing, and they know Students B and C. He knows B and C will be publishing soon. They all talk it out and agree that all three of them will sign together on every one of the papers. So now, as far as CAPES and CNPq knows, they all published 3 papers each, and doesn't rescind their sponsorship.

Another consequence of this utterly dumb system is papers of pitifully poor quality are produced to meet the quota. It's bad, it's really really bad.

But i digress.

This is only ONE symptom of a much, MUCH larger issue with education in Brazil...

The fact is, we don't really have one. On most of the country, education is from non-existent to very poor. Only in major cities and capitals you have public education that goes from mediocre to actually very good, but mediocrity is the rule and the very good schools end up as hotly contested as private schools and you end up with rich kids that could pay for private education "stealing" the opportunities away from poorer students.

I work with people in a poor area of my city... I see many more illiterate people in their 20's and 30's than the government statistics would seem to indicate. Some of them can actually read, but don't. They don't read books, magazines, newspapers...  They don't read anything, and only sign their names. The result is, they are literate as far as making a sound from written symbols is concerned and using Whatsapp and Tinder, but they don't understand shit. They're functionally illiterate, and the amount of functionally iliterate people here is mind bogglingly high.

A space program wouldn't fix anything. If anything, it'd make things worse. Brazil needs a reform from the ground up. People that live here know this, but most of the international community doesn't.

Our universities are good, but some, not all of them, and they serve a very, VERY small number of the population, mostly those who can afford the private education needed to score high enough to actually get in. And when they graduate, they leave the country, or stay for 2 to 8 years pursuing graduate degrees and THEN leave the country. Meanwhile, elementary, middle and high-school education continues to be shit.

Sanitation is shit. Public transport is shit. Police is shit. Politicians are shit. EVERYTHING.

Could Brazil whip up a space program out of the ass and have it done in 10 years if someone really wanted it? Yeah, we probably could, yeah. Brazil is a large economy, after all. It's also a large country, and funds would have to be diverted from other important things, but they already are, so it wouldn't make much of a difference.

It also wouldn't help much of anything, really. We need reforms from the ground up, we need infrastructure, sanitation, and we need to develop the interior, that still lives more or less in the 1900's, if not the 1800's. A nation can't really become relevant if 90+% of its territory is more or less a shithole that nobody cares about and produces nothing of value whatsoever. We also need to grow out of being a granary state, we rely too much on agriculture, on selling meat and eggs. We have to take raw materials and produce resources, and right now, we don't.

We export our national riches and get a living wage off of it that goes straight to the pockets of the corrupt, and is never spent on actually making the country better.

But honestly, we're the ones to blame. Brazilians don't really get angry enough at the government. Shit like what's happening here goes on in the US of A and you'll have a government takedown by force in no time, blood would flow and order restored. But here we're all about peaceful protests, we never had a bloody civil war, hell, we barely even had any wars at all. The ones we did have over here we were vastly superior, like the Paraguay War or War of the Triple Alliance, and the troops we sent to WW1 and WW2 were very small dettachments if compared to what other countries sent, and lost. And our coast never saw much action at all, just a few ships sunk by nazi U-Boats and not much of anything else of note.

The problem lies within Brazilian culture, and until that changes, and culture takes a long long time to do so, we're not really going to fare much better than we have so far. Japan is what it is because of the culture of its people. Same as China and India. They were all shitholes not that long ago but look at them now. People love to put Brazil in the same bin as China and India, but i feel like we're very very far from that still, even if India has as many shitholes and many of the same problems as Brazil.

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Off Topic Fun / Re: The Small Rants Thread XII: The Folly of Life
« on: January 28, 2019, 06:17:53 PM »
I wonder how hard it really is to become NORMAL

I guess i don't want to

This is the really bad part

My disability is such a huge part of what makes me who I am that the idea of being normal terrifies me.

I've got no idea what it's like to have an actual physical disability... But mentally, i just feel like almost nobody ever gets me...

I function in society alright, some might even say i'm successful... But i don't know. Sometimes i wish i'd fit in better.

But sometimes i feel that my weirdness is what makes me unique, dare i say, even what makes me somewhat successful.

I'm almost 100% onboard with my weirdness. It's like at 97%, but, sometimes, i still question everything.

18
Off Topic Fun / Re: Awesome stuff you have to share, V4
« on: January 28, 2019, 05:57:10 PM »
Good news! My friend's boyfriend works on diesel vehicles and was able to change my glowplug, saving me a MINIMUM of $400. He also refused payment, so I gave his girlfriend a bunch of MTG cards and told them to come abuse my free movie pass thing for working at the theatre.

Wanna be my friend?

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Off Topic Fun / Re: The Small Rants Thread XII: The Folly of Life
« on: January 28, 2019, 05:55:49 PM »
I wonder how hard it really is to become NORMAL

I guess i don't want to

This is the really bad part

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Off Topic Fun / Re: The Small Rants Thread XII: The Folly of Life
« on: January 25, 2019, 03:20:35 AM »
I'll miss him, that's for sure.

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