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CatBus

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Join date
18-Aug-2011
Last activity
4-Jan-2026
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5,990

Post History

Post
#1174394
Topic
Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo
Time

Warbler said:

yhwx said:

Warbler said:

suspiciouscoffee said:

I’m in high school. I have many wonderful teachers. I don’t think any of them should be armed. Some of my teachers, and again, I love them, can hardly even operate a DVD player. I do not want any of them to be given firearms.

What about police officers that are extremely well trained and especially for a school environment and whom had been extremely background checked?

yhwx said:

https://twitter.com/markpopham/status/964157761427787777

Every time another one of these mass shootings happen - right when the Republicans start telling us that the answer is more guns, guns for everyone, guns for teachers, guns for students - I think about Chris Kyle.

https://twitter.com/markpopham/status/964157915056803840

Chris Kyle was the American Sniper guy - a highly decorated Navy Seal sniper with 150 confirmed kills in the Iraq War. Whatever else is true about him, he definitely was very good at shooting guns and used to being in combat environments.

https://twitter.com/markpopham/status/964158367697723392

Kyle knew that the man he was with was dangerous. He knew he was armed - he armed him! To the degree that anyone could be forewarned and prepared for a situation, Kyle was. And yet the other guy shot two armed and trained men dead, got in a car and drove away.

https://twitter.com/markpopham/status/964158835043774470

Today a bunch of men are going to go to a gun store and they’re going to buy their third or 10th or 25th gun, because this scares them, and they think the gun is going to keep them safe.

You tell me in which scenario does a nut with gun have a better can at killing a lot of people.

  1. Going into a school where no one is armed.
  2. Going into a police station full of armed cops.

Or instead of hypotheticals, let’s use real numbers:

23 percent of emergency department shootings involved a perpetrator taking a gun from a security officer

But that’s in hospitals. Maybe schools are different.

Post
#1174385
Topic
Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo
Time

Collipso said:

Warbler said:

suspiciouscoffee said:

I’m in high school. I have many wonderful teachers. I don’t think any of them should be armed. Some of my teachers, and again, I love them, can hardly even operate a DVD player. I do not want any of them to be given firearms.

police officers that are extremely well trained and especially for a school environment and whom had been extremely background checked?

I’ve never even heard of such specimen.

TBH I’m not sure how the security guard at my school would have checked those various boxes, but even if security guards are not necessarily the solution, they’re not necessarily bad. The guy at my school was a former cop, but seemed to do very well with the whole “beat cop” thing. Walking around, chatting and joking with kids, knowing their names, gaining their trust and respect. Definitely never got called in to deal with regular school discipline issues, was strictly for security. Which, to be honest, meant I can’t think of a time he actually did anything security-related beyond breaking up the occasional fistfight, but that’s how security is. Most of the time, you’re paying people just to be there. Unfortunately I think this guy and his relationship with the school was pretty exceptional. I hear a lot about other security guards who get dragged into student discipline, and that’s a bad road to go down. But so’s the “sit at your desk and watch cameras all day and none of the kids even know who you are” option. There’s a lot of ways to do security wrong.

Post
#1174322
Topic
Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo
Time

suspiciouscoffee said:

I’m in high school. I have many wonderful teachers. I don’t think any of them should be armed. Some of my teachers, and again, I love them, can hardly even operate a DVD player. I do not want any of them to be given firearms.

If any of my high school teachers were armed, I would have flat-out refused to go to school. And I really liked most of my teachers. I can’t even imagine how I’d feel if I had an adversarial relationship with them.

Post
#1174308
Topic
The Official All-Purpose Board Game Thread
Time

chyron8472 said:

We named the diseases after Star Wars characters based on saber colors. Yellow was Katarn, Red was Maul, Blue was Kenobi.

Funny, black was our COdA too. We just came up with names that sounded like stuff we wouldn’t want to catch in real life. Yellow was weeping pox, blue was creeping ennui (hey, it’s what Europeans get, okay?), and red was crimson slough.

What month are you currently on?

We’d just finished May, faded spilling outside the black borders, so, so, very screwed.

I’ve only played the mobile app, and I didn’t enjoy it very much. I might have liked it better as the physical version, because at least then I’d be playing it with other people.

Oh yeah, that part where you build your spaceship and watch the universe pulverize it with random crap… that’s a lot of fun because people are with you laughing at your completely arbitrary misfortune. Alone I think it would just be dumb and frustrating.

Post
#1174019
Topic
Lets try to predict your age thread?
Time

darth_ender said:

My guesses of the same people

Mark’s Down On Your Syntax said:

My age is a prime number but I feel inferior as it’s not one of the small ones.

I’ve no idea if these have already been guessed correctly but here’s a few predictaguesses from me:

yhwx = 21

Ender = 35

Warbler = 41

Dahmage = 29

oojason = 45

greenpenguino = 33

Silverwook = 48

Ray = 28

Possessed = 24

Chyron = 33

Nice try. You’re still 44.

Post
#1174005
Topic
The Official All-Purpose Board Game Thread
Time

Just played Web of Spies a couple times. Dead simple gameplay, goofy at times. In terms of strategy, it’s a simple deckbuilder merged with Kill Doctor Lucky and all his Family and Friends and Casual Acquaintances and Anyone Who Ever Said Anything Nice about Him on Facebook. Easy on the brain, beer-friendly, bloodthirsty, highly recommended. You can kill people with a speedboat, what’s not to like about that?

Interested to hear more about Pandemic Legacy: Season 2. I’m in the middle of a multiplayer-logistics-stalled campaign of Season 1 and it’s fun and interesting (I hadn’t played any other “Legacy” games before), but I wouldn’t yet recommend it without some reservations. More importantly, what did you name your diseases? Inquiring minds.

Anyone ever played Galaxy Trucker? I’ve only played it a few times but it was a complete riot. Fair warning: I think I may have a soft spot for audacious game design, regardless of how well it actually works out in practice.

Post
#1173967
Topic
Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo
Time

There’s background on this: basically, back in the day, play used to be a matter of “Hey kids, have fun and be back before dinner!” and chores used to be a matter of “Could you bike down to the corner store with this money and buy us some milk?” Things are different now: kids unattended by adults in public places for long periods of time are assumed to be neglected. Police have been called on parents because they trusted their kids to stay safe (and the parents were right), and this triggered a whole “free range parenting” advocacy … er, I wouldn’t say movement, but let’s say discussion.

Is the world more dangerous for unattended kids in public spaces now than it used to be? Not significantly. Our culture has just become a lot more risk-averse, and isn’t very tolerant of people who don’t live the same risk-averse lifestyle, possibly because “free range kids” now stand out, whereas they used to be just “kids”. I’m not even sure risk-averse is the right word, since IMO your kid’s more likely to end up in some sort of serious trouble by using the Internet in their bedroom than by spending the day skateboarding in an empty lot with their friends, and people don’t usually have any problem with the former (neither are really likely to cause harm either way, I’m just saying actual risk isn’t correlated with perceived risk).

Post
#1173864
Topic
Harmy's STAR WARS Despecialized Edition HD - V2.7 - MKV (Released)
Time

Cedric T Sealion said:

towne32 said:

Cedric T Sealion said:

Is version 3 going to be created using scans of 35mm prints? Or is it derived from the official blu-ray like previous versions?

This project will always have a blu-ray (or highest quality available) backbone.

Ah. So version 3 will have fairly similar colour timing to the previous versions?

The color timing is not directly related to the primary source material. i.e. the Blu-ray could be used for the highest-quality image, but it is always retimed to approximate the color of a 35mm print. The Blu-ray hasn’t changed, but the available color references and tools used to match colors have changed quite a bit, at least since the latest release of Star Wars. Star Wars is probably in for the biggest color changes, Jedi is probably not likely to see much color change at all.

Post
#1173395
Topic
Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo
Time

Mrebo said:

TV’s Frink said:

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-court-guns-20180220-story.html

The Supreme Court made clear again Tuesday that the government has broad power to restrict and regulate firearms, dismissing a 2nd Amendment challenge to California’s 10-day waiting period for new gun purchases.

While the court has ruled that the 2nd Amendment protects the right of law-abiding citizens to own guns, the justices have repeatedly refused to go further by blocking strict gun regulations, including state bans on the sale of semi-automatic weapons or limits on who can carry a weapon in public.

Dissenting alone, Justice Clarence Thomas said “the 2nd Amendment is a disfavored right in this court.”

In 2008 and 2010, the high court struck down ordinances in Washington, D.C., and Chicago that prohibited the private possession of handguns as violations of 2nd Amendment. Americans have a right to have guns at home for self-defense, the court said in 5-4 decisions.

But since then, the justices have turned down gun rights advocates who have sued to challenge gun regulations based on the 2nd Amendment.

The first sentence isn’t correct because the Court only declined to hear the case, and the Justices can have all kinds of reasons beyond the merits. I don’t think the 8 other Justices would vote to uphold the law if they decided to hear the case. But this is a good example of the leeway states have had (so far) in passing gun control laws.

Agreed. Declining to hear the case may, and often does, have nothing to do with the merits of the case itself. Thomas trying to insert an opinion into a procedural matter isn’t really unusual either.

Post
#1172969
Topic
Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo
Time

Mrebo said:

CatBus said:

Mrebo said:

CatBus said:

https://twitter.com/JohnCornyn/status/954739322388930562

Not enough facepalms in the world. I don’t know what’s worse: that after a US Senator was informed he was personally helping spread Russian propaganda, the Senator’s first instinct was to pretend he wasn’t just personally implicated and yell “Fake News!” at the media, or that, for his followers, that’s probably a good enough reaction.

Favorite Twitter response to his suggestion that “the Press” in particular needs to work to avoid spreading so much Russian propaganda on Twitter:

Funny. Most people only use one “s” when abbreviating “president.”

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/rich-noyes/2018/02/19/flashback-cnn-and-msnbcs-enthusiastic-coverage-russian-sponsored-anti

😮

Right, NewsBusters: “Exposing and Combating Liberal Media Bias”. Let’s see how that works, shall we? So Russia sets up TWO opposing rallies, one in support of Trump, and one against him, in an attempt to cause tensions or violence or some such thing. So far, so good, that much is in the Mueller indictments. News organizations cover both events as “large political rallies in the middle of New York around a major US election” are newsworthy items, and nobody yet knows the Russians helped set them up. So NewsBusters comes in for the scoop–by showing that the media reported on the anti-Trump rally, and completely glossing over their coverage of the pro-Trump rally. Yep, typical NewsBusters. Manufacturing a liberal bias so they can posture against it.

Muahaha. Firstly, I don’t know if both events were covered the same way - in terms of time and tone - and that is important to the bias question. Secondly, NewsBusters is one-sided and the indecorousness of posting the link gave me a cheap thrill. (And I would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for you meddling kids). Thirdly, how important was it that the media was unwittingly giving the Russians a megaphone for their propaganda?

Heh. Well I don’t have any Tivo’d recording or whatnot, but they were both covered for sure (I remember the whole week was duelling rallies, in multiple cities), and I’m certain a fair share of strident and loudmouthed folk on both sides were broadcast and/or quoted, whether there was quote-for-quote parity is not something I think is really all that worth getting into. Especially because then you’ll get into arguments like “if one rally was a quarter the size of the other, shouldn’t it get a quarter of the coverage by unbiased media?” and it’s all downhill from there, especially because I’m pretty certain the attendance discrepancy was more like 500:1 in most cities, simply due to voter demographics – you’d have to resort to bribery to get an equivalent-sized pro-Trump turnout in a major metropolitan area.

The media unwittingly spreads disinformation all the time, which is how everyone takes advantage of it (politicians, corporations, and hostile foreign powers). Just covering a rally really doesn’t do much for spreading a message, when it sounds like both events were the sort of disorganized flash-mob response you’d get for such things. People yell outrageous things, and so on, and sometimes it gets on camera or elicits a reaction from a reporter.

I think there are degrees of unwitting. Fully unwitting is completely forgivable. You literally have no idea. Fully witting is Pravda, you’re literally just a tool of propaganda. But there’s a lot in between. Stuff you know isn’t true but you report it because people are saying it and that in itself is news (voter fraud stories, etc). Stuff you’re pretty sure isn’t true but you have to report it because you want to provide “both sides of the story” (and now we hear from an expert saying not all Nazis are necessarily racist). Things you wish were true so hard that you forward the e-mail to all your friends in spite of the fact that any degree of examination would reveal it’s untrue (Pizzagate). Those things, the media has done all of, and needs to own up to, and not just with disinformation coming from Russia.

But the rallies? I’m not seeing it. The people attending the rallies maybe, but not the people behind the cameras.

Post
#1172958
Topic
Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo
Time

Mrebo said:

CatBus said:

https://twitter.com/JohnCornyn/status/954739322388930562

Not enough facepalms in the world. I don’t know what’s worse: that after a US Senator was informed he was personally helping spread Russian propaganda, the Senator’s first instinct was to pretend he wasn’t just personally implicated and yell “Fake News!” at the media, or that, for his followers, that’s probably a good enough reaction.

Favorite Twitter response to his suggestion that “the Press” in particular needs to work to avoid spreading so much Russian propaganda on Twitter:

Funny. Most people only use one “s” when abbreviating “president.”

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/rich-noyes/2018/02/19/flashback-cnn-and-msnbcs-enthusiastic-coverage-russian-sponsored-anti

😮

Right, NewsBusters: “Exposing and Combating Liberal Media Bias”. Let’s see how that works, shall we? So Russia sets up TWO opposing rallies, one in support of Trump, and one against him, in an attempt to cause tensions or violence or some such thing. So far, so good, that much is in the Mueller indictments. News organizations cover both events as “large political rallies in the middle of New York around a major US election” are newsworthy items, and nobody yet knows the Russians helped set them up. What’s missing from this set of facts is some sort of controversy OTHER than Russians meddling with US political affairs.

So NewsBusters comes in retroactively for the scoop–by showing that the media reported on the Russian-backed anti-Trump rally, and completely glossing over their coverage of the pro-Trump rally. Yep, typical NewsBusters. Manufacturing a liberal bias so they can posture against it. The takeaway? Big political rallies are considered newsworthy. Covering Charlottesville doesn’t make you a Nazi, covering a big Russia rally doesn’t make you a Russian, even if the Russian ambassador is right there up front claiming credit. News is still news. Certainly the media had a role in over-credulously spreading disinformation around the election, particularly on the subject of voter fraud, but this covering big rallies as they happen doesn’t seem like anything atypical.

Post
#1172565
Topic
you meen hes a....mormon?
Time

There was a recurring character on the Bob Newhart show, Norman the doorman. Quite a few episodes into the show, Norman announces he’s got plane tickets to go on a trip. Bob looks at his tickets and says, “Oh, I never knew your last name before. Corman. Norman Corman. The doorman.” Norman nods, and say how happy he is to finally get to see his brother, who’s usually very busy. He’s in construction, you see. “He’s a… foreman?” guesses Bob. Norman nods. He grabs his tickets, tips his hat, and says, “Okay, good-bye, off to Utah!”

Post
#1172419
Topic
Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)
Time

Okay, here’s some more current screenshots of the new no-longer-condensed font. Current version 10.0 is on top, new version 10.1-beta is on bottom, and they are all clickable for larger image. You’ll see that the new font is actually smaller in terms of point size but at the same time still thicker in terms of stroke width. I did check this out on my classic “small TV, sitting far away” test, and it still checked out as comfortably readable, so I think it’s close to an even trade. Actually I think the previous size was a little extra large to assist with the DVD format, which used to be more of a thing around here, but the new one works well on DVD downscales too. There are still the font scaling scripts for less common cases where larger or smaller text would be preferable.

The SDH subtitles have also undergone a couple of revisions. I’d initially done them with a black outline and the black background, but that was too distracting. I finally just made the black background a little more opaque and dropped the outline.

Project Threepio: Spanish double-dialogue
Project Threepio: Spanish double-dialogue

Project Threepio: SDH subtitles
Project Threepio: SDH subtitles

Post
#1172278
Topic
Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo
Time

Believing preposterous things merely makes you spectacularly ill-informed – but you can be that without also being an idiot or an asshole. Thus, while Frink is correct that both Trump and Bevin are saying things that are completely unsupportable by any conceivable interpretation of the available evidence, his “idiot” and “asshole” designations did not logically flow from that factual assessment. They were either an injection of political opinion, or they were based on a longer-term analysis of other facts that do support those designations.

Not to mention, you can say preposterous things without actually believing them, but that does make the case for the “asshole” designation a little more clear-cut.

EDIT: It should also be noted that an early draft of Silence of the Lambs had Hannibal Lecter escaping the FBI by calling in to have them check on a teenager’s threats of violence. With the FBI’s resources completely focused on that, he just booked a flight and left. So I guess it’s not that preposterous.

Post
#1172223
Topic
Info Wanted: Curious about plans for long term cultural legacy of the efforts here
Time

solkap said:

(The films were shot in 4K resolution, right? So there wouldn’t be much point as far as preservation goes to try to get any higher resolution than that, correct?)

It gets weedy there. 35mm negatives are presumably 4K-equivalent, but that varies a bit based on filmstock quality (little known fact–Star Wars and Empire were both shot on photosensitive lunch meat, only Jedi used actual film) and other factors (optical effects, etc). 35mm projection prints, the actual movies as seen in theatres, were significantly lower resolution, as they are a few generations removed from the negatives (also varying based on process–normal, Technicolor, or 70mm blow-up). Sometimes more than 2K, sure, but not likely anywhere near 4K in any way. The DeEds may already show more detail than people actually saw in theatres, in some spots. So the question is (as with any Blu-ray transfer), what exactly are you preserving? Negatives have levels of detail nobody ever saw. 4K is definitely more than enough. 2K, from a good enough source, though, could be close enough.