Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@HobbitGamer - I hope you know those v2 Joy Con do exist, but they’re a Jerk Store exclusive.

@Anti-Matter I did see it, but as I'm kinda hoping you'd know by now, I'm not really interested in DDR games, or any kind of dance game. I still think your high scores are impressive, but it's just not my kind of game, I'm afraid.

@bimmy-lee Well, I'd argue that if they'd have such a kind of a weapon stowed away there, then they'd used it already in any of their recent wars/altercations abroad, instead of wasting so much equipment and manpower, and not to mention tax dollars.

But regardless of that, other than a nuke, there's nothing on the market or in development right now, that could dispose of a million people all at once, without collateral damage, so that could only be used in areas far removed from your own stronghold or base.

Heh I got a new charging cable for my brother's old iPad (og gen 1) and it's quite fun to install whatever games it can run and comparing them with the same games in my more modern mini 4.

Hah, farming simulator 14 looks like the I'm playing the 3ds version, and Minecraft is like a super old version, so nostalgic.

@ThanosReXXX I'll look it up. I think I've heard of it.

@bimmy-lee I've heard of it, but suspect it's simply some kind of man made drone, perhaps from another nation. America would sooner admit to aliens than admit another human nation has better military tech.

@ThanosReXXX America doesn't get credit for my friends or family, my friends and family get credit despite being American.

please try to put as many replies as you can in a single post, to decrease the amount of consecutive posts you make

@bimmy-lee Ah, you saw that 😁
@ThanosReXXX I was thinking of the “Venus” song being used in Venus/Gillette commercials

@ThanosReXXX - Well, if a government’s concern is its people, ours should be very concerned. There’s a lot of us, and we have a lot of weaponry. The device I think would be in place to protect an area of utmost importance would not be a war time device, but rather something to subdue huge groups of people. Either stop them in their tracks, or convince them to turn around. They can’t go starting a war with us, and they can’t just chop us down with all the world watching the entire rest of the world at all times; but they can persuade us to change our minds using other brute tactics.

@HobbitGamer - Yep. Now you know to never come to a forum looking for conversation and knowledge. Forums are there for people who already know everything about something to gather and not say anything about that thing because they already all know it.

@ThanosReXXX A little of that previous comment was tongue-in-cheek, but it still surprises me sometimes how some people, though they've been given the education and tools to do so, amazingly fail at reading. I'll sometimes post a little blurb related to an article's tagline or something, but I do make an effort to read (or at least scan, depending on the subject) the text. The general exceptions here for articles that I do click into are reviews; if it's something I'm very interested in, I'll read the whole thing. If I'm mildly interested, I'll at least skip to the conclusion and read the rest of the review from there if it sounds like something I'd enjoy. I used to read almost every review here, but as things IRL have become busier....cough

Thanks for the glass link! I'll definitely have to look into picking one up and mixing my own Bacardi & Coke when my budget is a little more under control. The only rum that I believe I've had is Captain Morgan mixed with pineapple juice at a wedding I attended a couple of years ago.

I do drink, but not often. I consider it a rare treat now and again.

@bimmy-lee Oh yes, meat shields! Not only is it a classic scare response we're trained to recognize, but it's so funny how often we see it. Some people really do put self-preservation above their friends and significant others. XD The runners-up are the sprinters who try to barrel through the attraction without even taking in the sites, as well as the groups that come through in train formation.

A lot of these people just make it harder on themselves based on their own reactions. Open mouth, insert foot....

@StableInvadeel I didn't run across an actual Purrloin but saw the silhouette. I never pictured it standing on only two feet....The in-game sprite from BW 1/2 was always on all fours IIRC.

@Tyranexx yeah I wasn't expecting that at all, and surprisingly it's been like that since gen 6.

It's also pretty much the background story of Scientology, so ... yeah.

Meanwhile, i'll join you in waiting for our Zentradi overlords. Khyron Did Nothing Wrong!

@Tyranexx - Haha, I’m sure you see the meat shield so much. I’ve seen it many times, my friends and I used to laugh about it. It’s funny every time. There was one large scale haunted house in my town when I was in HS, and I went nearly every weekend it was open. It took a good 35-40 minutes to get through, and the line was hours long on weekend nights. You’re right, the line really was a party in itself. I’ll admit to taking part in some festivities while waiting to get in, but I was a good patron, I was there for the fun, and was staunchly against anyone breaking the show/atmosphere once inside. I took my daughter through a carnival funhouse this summer, and it made me nostalgic for a big haunted house, and super excited to take my kids some day.

@BruceCM That's very true. It is entirely possible that would could detect signals from a civilization that died a billion years ago. Imagine how depressing that would be, we finally detect a signal, decipher it, and it's a distress signal from a civilization on the verge of destruction a million years ago... We find proof of life only to learn said life is already long dead.

@StableInvadeel Sorry about that, I usually try to but sometimes when I'm in a hurry I forget.

But on that note, if you don't tag me, I'm not likely to see you're comment. Especially on such an active thread.

@StableInvadeel Since Gen 6 eh? Seems i missed that, though Purrloin isn't really one of my favorites. I normally just collect some of my favs in each generation. I don't believe I've completed a Pokedex since Pokemon Diamond.

@bimmy-lee Ours only takes about fifteen minutes or so to get through depending on the group and the general line length; they tend to send groups through a little more frequently on very busy nights. There are line actors (typically those who have been involved for years) whose purpose is to both entertain patrons and to subtly test them out to see if they're suited to the attraction or may cause any problems. While we can't touch customers, they can be touched by props. 😈

It's also amazing how some patrons can't follow the rules even though they're clearly posted and gone over before entering the house. One guy who was higher than a kite was extricated a couple of years ago after opening a lighter in one of the dark maze sections so that he could see. Indoor attraction with flammable materials + open flame = definite nope. There were also two ambulance calls my first year due to epileptics somehow missing the warnings that there were strobes. (This year is my fifth)

Except for emergencies, we aren't allowed to break character. We want people to have a good time - heck, I don't mind if someone isn't scared as long as they're enjoying themselves - but following the rules and letting yourselves have fun goes a long way. XD

@bimmy-lee I think it is honestly kind of hilarious that people still talk about Area 51 like there is anything there. It's such a pop culture phenomenon at this point that if anyone in the US government/military has even 2 functional brain cells, they'd have long since moved whatever secrets they had to a different location. And I am pretty sure the US military has at least one dude smart enough to do that. At least one. Probably.

I doubt they have any actual aliens or alien tech anywhere, that's just too big a secret to keep, it would get out. But it wouldn't surprise me if they had a secret location like Area 51 where all sorts of ultra secret military research takes place. The military is always looking for new ways to carry out more mass murder somewhere.

Well, we were talking not just about there being life elsewhere, @ThanosReXXX. ... It's got to be intelligent & advanced to interstellar space-exploring stage! & I'm certainly not arguing there isn't such an alien civilisation out there, either! Maybe they're coming from somewhere thousands of light-years away as we speak? There's another reason for apparent lack of contact!
@Heavyarms55, & here's another thing to consider; what if aliens are trying to make contact but it's with technology we can't recognise at all & we can't even detect the signals?

@BruceCM I think in one of the other comments I mentioned that. One of the ideas explaining the Fermi Paradox is the idea that technological civilizations either develop beyond electromagnetic communications (radio basically) rather quickly, or rely on some form of communication technology we cannot recognize.

Another potential possibility is, if a species evolved a natural biological means of communication over long distances they may never develop the sort of communication tech we would recognize.

It's also entirely conceivable that while life may be common, intelligence or sapience might be exponentially more rare.

Well, yeah, @Heavyarms55 ... We're not really interested in there's life out there, which there definitely must be It's intelligent life-forms & sufficiently developed to be exploring space, bearing in mind they're probably in other solar systems, at least hundreds, probably thousands & possibly millions of light-years away!
So, unless there is any way around the light-speed limit, they also have to think it's worth spending that time travelling this way & would have to be that long ahead of us to be here yet
They might well be busy exploring their own area, which we only see before life really got going, if it's that far away....

@BruceCM If there is no way around the speed of light either literally or by "cheating" with something like a warp drive, wormhole or some other device or method, then there is still the sleeper ship concept and the generation ship concept. The sleeper ship is the idea of building a ship that would travel at conventional speeds for likely tens, hundreds, or even thousands of years, through the dark of space toward a solar system with a planet believed to be viable for colonization. It would use some form of suspended animation to bring people people to their destination with a minimum of aging. The Generation ship is a mix of the sleeper ship idea combined with something like an O'Neil Cylinder, basically a fully self sufficient city in space making the same trip, so that several generations later it would arrive at a solar system fit for colonization and exploitation.

In this scenario both us and other potential intelligent life would only be concerned with one another on the slim chance we both went after the same solar system.

Such a colonization plan would be a more extreme version of when Europeans took a one way trip to colonize the Americas, there would be no going home on vacation in a few years. lol

Yeah, that's what I'm getting it, @Heavyarms55 .... They have to think it's worth travelling for that long & be heading this way as well! The Alien films sort of touched on the difficulties with that but it would be hundreds or thousands of years, not decades
I think that would not be used for simple exploration; it'd be if their home planet was becoming unlivable or something, so they had to do it