Posts by dustyfalcon3

You can drill fundamentals until you're blue in the face, but you just can't teach that raw, split-second intuition to react when things go sideways. I love seeing players abandon the "proper" technique to just do whatever it takes to make the play happen. Is it better to have a player who follows the playbook perfectly or one who just has that natural grit?

brightviper29 said:I’d love to hear your thoughts on how we’d even be typing here—or how this whole forum would even be moderated—if the USA hadn't won the Cold War or stepped up during the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. Honestly, maybe our moderators would just be running things out of some smoky dive bar, nursing shots of cheap whiskey while some loud, trashy pop music blares in the background.***

A little more respect for President Trump, please. Sure, his style might be a bit unconventional,
maybe he acts on impulse once in a while, but let’s not forget he’s surrounded by the absolute best advisors and experts the world has to offer. At the end of the day, he remains the most influential and vital figure on the planet.

Which actually reminds me... We urgently need a new smiley. A specific one. One where someone is kneeling humbly, licking the muddy boots of their master, with slobber and muck everywhere—on the boots, on the face, all over the floor...

brightviper29 said:They even deleted my post.

Yeehaw? 🤣

This is regarding the "Israel" thread over on Global Politics.

User antilles dropped a textbook, pure example of hate speech right there. When a few of us tried to flag it, lijencina1 just smugly claimed it would only result in some "friendly criticism," insisting all the posts would eventually just be wiped clean anyway.
And what actually happened? Instead of being flagged for "hate speech," that user somehow walked away with 300 points for a "major rule violation." To top it off, every single post was deleted—including our own warnings. I don't even have a link to them anymore.
It’s worth remembering that I took 300 points myself a few months back. Why? Because I called out some individual who was openly advocating for genocide on this forum, labeling them a fascist. My response? Well, let me paraphrase: I was told that my reaction "wasn't polite," making the penalty perfectly justified. Meanwhile, that genocidal character ended up getting a permanent ban, but only because they chose to walk away—the moderator admitted he actually wanted to "post him" himself.

So, after this kind of absolute mess and blatant cover-up, you'd think some drastic changes to the moderation team would be expected. Of course, if nothing changes at all, we can all collectively conclude that moderating this forum is a complete farce. I truly hope that isn't the case.

Joshua Price2 said:I might be missing the subtext here, but I’m still struggling to grasp the exact roots of this skepticism.

I can certainly wrap my head around potential data processing errors or the sheer difficulty of analyzing complex macroeconomic trends, but I'm just not seeing any glaring methodological flaws.

I’m guessing you might be questioning whether the raw, primary data used in the analysis is actually authentic or even locally sourced? If that's the case, I'd love to know what triggered that thought. Thanks!👍

And hey, Minim, are you actually satisfied with the arguments being thrown back at you? You've got the usual velvetbadger172 over here, plus one lone "Amen" accompanied by a little prayer emoji (awwww). 😁 Still, I suppose even that could be considered a response in its own way, couldn't it?

Justin Smith5 said:But it hasn't even been installed.
Meanwhile, the other guy's statue has been standing there for 70 years.

Anyway, you can hold a mass for anyone, really. Nobody actually knows where God decided to put Jure Francetić.

Not exactly like Hitler’s Catholics, though, is it?
Come on, tell us, Justin Smith5—what's your membership number over at Unknown? 🤣

wow ok... because from what I can gather, the reviews are basically saying, "Calling this one of the better Adam Sandler movies is like saying one strain of Ebola is somehow less horrific than another. Both are just pure, unadulterated misery." 🤣
Honestly? It would actually surprise me if I ever sat through a Sandler film that didn't feel like total torture...

Top Gun is such a quintessential piece of 80s cult kitsch—honestly, isn't the entire decade just one big glorious mess like that? 😁
In this latest installment, I half expect to see Tom Cruise sitting in a high chair operating a drone while daydreaming about his glory days in an F-14. Oh wait... they already filmed that, didn't they? But then again, if you listen to what they say in those movies regarding a "Good Kill," it’s clear where things are headed. The USAF is pivoting toward drones over traditional jets at a massive rate these days... which basically means the era of guys like Tomic is already ticking away. 😁

What an absolute disaster of a movie... truly terrible. I actually had to sit through it in two separate sessions just to stay awake because it was so incredibly dull and uninspired.
Spoiler alert... though why bother, considering what a pile of garbage this film turned out to be.

So, we’ve got hacker-Thor and some sexy Asian woman chasing a villain across the globe, getting into physical brawls with his henchmen... eventually, Thor takes out some hardened mercenary with a screwdriver, followed by some ridiculous ninja move from the main bad guy.
Yeah, this is definitely the high-stakes hacking thriller we were all waiting for. 🤣 Give me a break...

The villains are complete idiots who decide to TEST their cyber attack on not one, but two superpowers. 🤣 Because apparently, they couldn't find some small, insignificant country to practice on. Their goal is just to make some money—something they could easily do without threatening to blow up a nuclear silo... plus, they can manipulate the stock market! What more could they possibly need?!
Then we have this Black Widow-style fantasy software available right on the open internet via the NSA 😁 and some supposedly indestructible hard drive straight out of an Asian Chernobyl. 🤦 It’s pure nonsense; a classic case of deus ex machina when the screenwriter clearly ran out of ideas.

As for the cast, Thor is actually decent. But whenever that Asian actress comes on screen? It’s painful to watch her desperate attempts at acting.

I was hoping that at least the hacking sequences would be halfway decent, especially since people were praising that part, but everything we saw was just someone plugging in an infected USB drive or a phishing attack on an NSA guy. That’s it. We saw a few shots of a CLI (command-line interface, for those lucky enough not to spend their entire lives staring at a monitor just to earn a paycheck), probably some bash, whatever.

On top of all that, there’s the shaky cam and a movie that is just endlessly boring. Can it get any worse? Unlikely. Avoid this film at all costs.

I’ll just leave you with this quote from Arthur C. Clarke: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." 😉

Ashley Bailey6 said:Honestly, Antonio holds up pretty well for someone born in 1960.
Since his co-star is 22 years younger, the age gap isn't even that noticeable.🙂

The movie lacks budget, innovation, twists, and energy, but it’s still worth a single sitting.
They definitely went overboard with the depressing atmosphere and the robot designs.

That baby robot was a total fail, too.
In just one evening, they somehow assembled a highly mobile, instantly intelligent creature out of random capacitors and old scrap parts.
Whatever, let's just chalk that one up to higher intelligence.

The whole concept of adaptation and transferring consciousness is cool, but this version feels stale and uninspired.
Naturally, most people in the story are portrayed as villains who kill robots and humans without a second thought.

And they could have come up with an answer regarding the rain changes that actually made sense if they had used their brains.😁
It pulls you in just to let you down.

5/10

This is even worse than the usual stuff in Hollywood. 🤣 They cast his actual wife in some tiny supporting role while giving him a leading lady who’s 22 years his junior. 😁
Oh, and that guy from Black Lagoon is seriously distracting... but hey, you can't blame him. It just is what it is. 😁
That fail-baby-robot character? Total cockroach—for those of you who haven't seen it yet. Honestly, I don't even want to type the word "spoiler" because the movie is just that bad. In fact, the entire film is a "spoiler" for your evening. 😁

Pure despair. It’s just a messy, disjointed slog with a plot that’s as predictable as they come. Banderas does his job well enough, I suppose, but everything else about this is just... profoundly bad. Honestly, what a waste of a perfectly good afternoon. 3/10. And Melanie Griffith? She makes a brief appearance and looks like the Joker from Batman... absolutely horrific.

Timothy Kim60 said:First you mention the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670, then later you say it's a 6850 😕 — so which one is it actually? 🤷 (Or do you somehow own both?)

Ah, I see what happened... just typed 6870 by mistake while rushing. 😬 My bad.

Could I get a ballpark estimate on this rig?

CPU: Intel Core i7-12700K @ 3.00 GHz paired with some massive Zalman cooler
Motherboard: ASRock G41C-GS
RAM: Corsair 2 x 2 MB PC2-6400 (DDR2, passive heatsink)
HDD: Seagate 500 GB (7200 RPM, SATA)
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 1GB GDDR5
Case: Antec P182 (black)
PSU: Corsair 450VX
DVD-RW: Pioneer DVR-212D (black)

I’ve also got an EVGA GeForce GTX series sitting right here on my desk... is that thing actually worth anything?

The motherboard and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 are maybe a year older than the rest, which I think is about 4+ years old.

Thanks

northerncrane4 said:No—it’s not even that Dwayne Johnson can't be mentioned in the same breath as Harlan, McTiernan, or early Scott; it’s that they don't even belong in the same language. While those three actually produce coherent, legible cinema, Bay is just pure directorial chaos—zero logic, zero structure.

That is exactly what I was thinking when I sat through his Pain & Gain a few days ago.
Honestly, it’s just a mess. Why on earth can he not, for once, just give us a single shot that isn't frantic? A calm frame? Is that too much to ask?

For me, it all traces back to elementary school. I was obsessed with that one film program hosted by Dr. Ante Peterlić that used to air on TV back then.

Then one day at school, my teacher came down with something and couldn't make it. In her place? Her husband stepped in... Dr. Ante Peterlić himself. He was so incredibly serious, standing there in front of us kids—I think we were in fifth grade—breaking down the fundamentals of cinema... I was absolutely floored 😍 even if my classmates had no clue why I was so captivated. 😁 I can still see him clearly, sketching a frog on the chalkboard just to explain the concept of the "frog's eye view." 😍
Not many people can say they had Dr. Peterlić lecturing them on film while they were still in grade school 😁, and I truly believe that’s where my genuine passion for the art of cinema first took root. 😍

James Patel20 said:If you have a problem with my arguments, please feel free to speak up or quote me directly.

Don't try to hide behind the admins or the owner... 😉

So, how exactly should we label your own posts then?

Since you're attributing someone else's quote about "paid" rallies to me...

And what kind of "idiotic and moronic" support would a kid like me even offer?

It would just ruin your "highly intelligent" crusade against the "Catholic Taliban" and their defenders...

Maybe you should go look for allies for this "holy war" of yours somewhere a bit more logical...

Like right here!

Look, I wasn't even talking about support. But honestly? It seems like the only version of free speech you actually care about is the kind that protects your own right to shout. Why even start a thread like this, really?

Besides, if you deal with a little bit of hassle—and maybe shell out some cash—you can actually fix those privacy issues online. Sure, it’s not exactly cheap by American standards, but it’s still a lot better than paying those predatory lawyer fees in Manhattan. 😁

It looks like Daniel Ward87 has finally realized his lifelong dream. About a week or two ago, he unilaterally decided to invent a new verbal offense, so apparently, you aren't allowed to write "Catholic Taliban" anymore—even if you aren't talking about the users here—because suddenly you get slapped with a 500-point penalty. Of course, calling non-right-wing opinions or links "communist" or "Soviet" is still perfectly fine; our dear little guy doesn't seem to mind that at all. He hasn't made it onto the blacklist of Reddit’s unsung censors just yet, though who knows when that will happen.
Well... aside from a few exceptions like some prominent moderators (Brenda Cook4, El Niño, Daniel Ward87...) and a handful of regulars, I don't see anyone doing anything about this disgrace. And Daniel Ward87? He moved even faster to shut down the thread to prevent a repeat of what happened a few years back. Back then, he tried the same thing, but both the believers and the skeptics chased him right off the topic, forcing him to back down. Naturally, since negative selection seems to be the rule rather than the exception in America, it only emboldened him to take on this "stronger" administrative role to finally enforce what was "unfairly" blocked before.

Sadly, just a week or two ago, we didn't have people like James Patel20 or slybison8 around to rebel against this kind of virtual bullying. And now, predictably... censorship has come knocking on their doors. Now we have the offended crying, accusing others of "snitching," and actually calling for *more* censorship. They are absolutely, completely oblivious to the absurdity of such a demand.

My friend James Patel20, where were you and people like you when Strile was imposing censorship on those who disagreed with you? If you had stood up with everyone else back then, maybe more people could be supporting you now. But instead, nothing... censorship was imposed on everyone else too... and now everyone lives in fear of every single occurrence... damn it. Maybe you'll learn that sometimes you actually have to fight together, because you can't fix censorship... by adding more censorship. 🤦

By the way, James Patel20, even though I find many of your posts (and slybison8's, for that matter) to be completely moronic, and quite often incredibly insulting to any intelligent and rational human being, I do support your right to freedom of thought and speech. That includes your utterly idiotic conspiracy theories about "paid" LGBT rallies and other nonsense.

urbantrucker5 said:If we're talking about trolling and provocation, then yeah, the thread probably deserves a lock.
Of course, I did consider the possibility that this individual might just be your run-of-the-mill troll or a provocateur rather than some actual monster.

Well, if we locked every single thread triggered by "mere" provocation from an Atheist, there wouldn't be much left to discuss, would there? 😁
Anyone who follows these boards even remotely closely can see a pattern—a constant stream of these religious posts popping up, all following the exact same script.

This particular instance was a textbook religious attempt to argue that without God, there is no morality—therefore, atheists are inherently immoral. Or, more along the lines of what Bozanic was trying to pull with that hateful Christmas message, suggesting atheists are nothing but "darkness." But did anyone lock Bozanic's thread or suggest he head over to Psychocouch? No.🤣

Naturally, you quickly hit these types of believers with the classic line of questioning: "Would you go around murdering, torturing, or burning things if God didn't exist? Is that what atheists do?" And then you could just pull up the statistics showing prisons are absolutely packed with incredibly sincere believers, while atheists have almost zero representation.

So, when the believer honestly replies, "No, I wouldn't," we arrive at the logical conclusion: clearly, morality doesn't stem from God. In fact, it isn't even necessary to be moral, and perhaps it doesn't even exist. 😲 😁
It’s essentially the same cycle, time and time again.

But this time, something exceptional happened. A believer actually said, "Yes, if there were no God, I would murder and torture people." And that's when the circus started. That's when the outrage began.
We had everything: an Atheist being outraged by the very concept of outrage, people acting like they belong in a psychiatric ward, characters straight out of Alan Ford, Masons... you name it.

So, no, this likely has very little to do with the initial attempt at provocation that the atheists have already seen through. Unfortunately, this seems to be something much more serious.

I mean, what did you honestly expect? Did you think this place would stay pure? This forum didn't just spontaneously turn into a dumping ground for every random far-right troll on the internet overnight.
Look at the leadership here. We’ve got one moderator—a self-proclaimed patriot living overseas—who once had the nerve to lecture Americans back home about our supposed lack of "patriotism." Then there's another who refuses to let anyone even mention certain "American sacred cows," while a third spends his entire day hunting for "Anglo-Yugoslav" conspiracies, ready to ban anyone he deems a theorist. It's a total circus. 🤣

David Parker3 said:Boeing was really just a minor nuisance for those second-rate German units, who basically left things wide open for the Red Army soldiers to take over everything. Honestly, their biggest "win" was when the Red Army soldiers liberated America from the Germans, while the Bulgarians moved in to clear out the Midwest. Other highlights? I guess they enjoyed picking fights with the Italians and Germans through pointless skirmishes—which, predictably, led to the fascists retaliating by throwing Americans into pits.

Following that typical, twisted right-wing logic, Americans were also just "provoking" Mexicans in El Paso back in the 90s, which somehow justifies the crimes committed against civilians by Mexicans.
So, I suppose we must have been provoking them again, leading to the creation of the Republic of Mexican Appalachia or whatever else you claim happened.

Bravo. Truly. It’s just that specific brand of delusional logic—the kind where people hysterically scream about "evil partisans" and communism on internet forums—that manages to simultaneously justify Martić, Šljivančanin, and the lot of them. 😵