What's on your mind?

[ISNAN]

14 hours ago, RitualClarity said:

Those in power, don't want you to start to think that way... that would mean you aren't distracted from each other and focused on a single goal. A goal that is counter to the "powers" goals...

 

The times in history that this occurred major social shifts happened.

Great post. I agree 100%. It's like those in power are trying to purposefully divide us into groups. When they do that, it gets harder to rally support for a cause because everyone is on a "team" against each other. 

[Reginald_001]

I'm wondering why my sleeping rhythm has been fucked for 6 weeks now..

[steelpanther24]

On 4/25/2019 at 8:15 PM, ISNAN said:

I'm really not liking this whole "us vs. them" mentality that is trending these days. Race, gender, class, sexuality, politics, age, and nationality. We focus too much on these things that people have no control over. What we should be focusing on is how we view each other as human beings. That is the ONE thing we all have in common. Let's start there and forget about the rest since those are more or less man made concepts. There is pros and cons to everything. The only way to have balance is to have both even if both are not necessarily positive or negative. The concept of Yin/Yang should be taught in schools...it really should. It applies to everything we see around us. 

 

Everyone wants to be heard, but bashing one side to get your view across only causes the other side to not care. I used to care, but it's getting harder and harder these days. 

Yep and as one of my managers told me once "Rules are for those without power"

[GimmeBACON]

May have overworked myself this month... yesterday I didn't have the energy to do jack shit and even now I'm struggling to find the energy to get up for work.

 

Also, I feel like my dog is going to pass soon. He's already like 11, and lately he's been acting his age. I remember the day I saved him from dog fighters; the days that we were homeless sleeping in my car. He's been my most faithful companion for so long...

[MrEsturk]

- So I picked up the new Resident Evil 2 remake while it was on sale.

- Tried to start a new game with Claire.

- Realized I might be getting too into character playing a young female since I can't decide what I want to wear...

[KoolHndLuke]

43 minutes ago, MrEsturk said:

Realized I might be getting too into character playing a young female since I can't decide what I want to wear...

Ughh.......men invented lingerie and bikinis you know. Soo deciding how to dress your waifu should be no trivial matter, lol! Won't wear anything that covers my sweety's ass too much. Tight leather is fine. 

[2dk2c.2]

6 hours ago, KoolHndLuke said:

 wear anything that covers my sweety's ass too much. Tight leather is fine. 

[MrEsturk]

You know, I thought I would have ended up settling for something sexy, yet still fairly modest and practical for that game.

 

How the hell did I get here, lol?:

 

Then again those that have seen my Skyrim characters/mods are probably just surprised I didn't jump on one of the BDSM costume sets. But I wasn't feeling it for this game. Probably for the same reason I didn't install any dragur sex mods in Skyrim ?

 

Now if this costume ever finally gets released on the other hand. There is already Jill Nemesis costume available, but something about the way it was rendered bugged me too much to use it. There was something off about the cloth, like it was sewn out of old raincoats or something.

[KoolHndLuke]

4 minutes ago, MrEsturk said:

Now if this costume ever finally gets released on the other hand. There is already Jill Nemesis costume available, but something about the way it was rendered bugged me too much to use it. There was something off about the cloth, like it was sewn out of old raincoats or something.

Wow, that takes me back. I always hated that fucking thing! I think that should be termed the "Boss Dance". A lot of dodging, slice, slice, shoot, shoot to conserve precious ammo. Your choice of attire looks A#1 to me. 

[FauxFurry]

9 hours ago, MrEsturk said:

You know, I thought I would have ended up settling for something sexy, yet still fairly modest and practical for that game.

 

How the hell did I get here, lol?:

 

Then again those that have seen my Skyrim characters/mods are probably just surprised I didn't jump on one of the BDSM costume sets. But I wasn't feeling it for this game. Probably for the same reason I didn't install any dragur sex mods in Skyrim ?

 

Now if this costume ever finally gets released on the other hand. There is already Jill Nemesis costume available, but something about the way it was rendered bugged me too much to use it. There was something off about the cloth, like it was sewn out of old raincoats or something.

I opted for the sexy underwear set for Leon myself. Having a character dress in something that they might actually wear to a club or a party isn't as off-putting as having them just show up out of the blue wearing nary a stitch of clothing in a modern setting (or not at all if it completely fits the character. See Bayonetta for an example).

[ToJKa]

At the risk of sounding like a grandpa, i'm quite content with just her jacketless outfit. The classic one, it shows more cleavage

 

Just the way i work, it can be sexy, but needs to at lest resemble something practical. Like Jill's combat suit in RE5:

[MrEsturk]

3 hours ago, FauxFurry said:

I opted for the sexy underwear set for Leon myself. Having a character dress in something that they might actually wear to a club or a party isn't as off-putting as having them just show up out of the blue wearing nary a stitch of clothing in a modern setting (or not at all if it completely fits the character. See Bayonetta for an example).

Well personally I can't see anyone wearing the outfit I put on Claire in public, outside of waiting tables at a strip club. The micro shorts maybe, but in that shirt she'd be about one too quick motion away from her boobs exploding out for the whole world to see?

 

1 hour ago, ToJKa said:

At the risk of sounding like a grandpa, i'm quite content with just her jacketless outfit. The classic one, it shows more cleavage

 

Just the way i work, it can be sexy, but needs to at lest resemble something practical. Like Jill's combat suit in RE5:

I understand. I actually set out looking for something more like Jill wore in Nemesis (or one of those cute and sexy denim knee skirts the girls in the northwest like to wear). I ended up settling for dressing her like a titty club bartender simply because I didn't like any of the more modest costumes available. Even the costume I used is a composite of several texture sets and a face mod.

 

Since you like the vest-less classic outfit you might check out this mod. It offers a set of variants on the design:

https://www.nexusmods.com/residentevil22019/mods/92

She also has a bodysuit mod similar to Jill's:

https://www.nexusmods.com/residentevil22019/mods/146

 

In other news I just watched Avengers Endgame and:

Spoiler

It was entertaining enough. However going forward I think Guardians of the Galaxy, guest starring washed up Thor, is about the only thing MCU is offering in the future that holds my interest. The mercifully few scenes involving Captain Marvel just made me feel vindicated in not seeing her film (I kind of made an involuntary ass of myself when the first scene of her with the butch cut played). No interest in anything involving the torch being passed in that direction, that little girl power scene towards the end was so forced and cringey.

 

[KoolHndLuke]

RE3 Nemesis was the first that I played in the series. I drooled over Jill in this costume soo bad! She's still my fave. Can't wait for that release.

[ToJKa]

15 hours ago, MrEsturk said:

She also has a bodysuit mod similar to Jill's:

https://www.nexusmods.com/residentevil22019/mods/146

 

Sweet! Thanks ?

[FauxFurry]

After watching the Battle of Winterfell in Game of Thrones, I was practically on the verge of tears. Not because my favorite characters died or anything but because the tactics were so brain dead when they were present at all that any and all deaths were completely meaningless. It was almost as if a wight came up with it to increase their numbers. 

 

I'm thinking that it was sabotage but by who? A character in the show itself, the directors or by George Martin himself? He did leave them notes to use for the final season but there is no way of knowing if he gave them anything other than his discarded ideas.

[GimmeBACON]

Watched Endgame yesterday... kinda irks me that they tugged on our heart strings with Iron Man and Spiderman at the end of Infinity Wars, but there was no follow-through with it.

 

Like if I wrote the script, I'd have had Stark tell aunt May that Peter was dead... some kind of heartbreaking moment that would have led to Stark "needing" to fix what happened.  

[KoolHndLuke]

On 5/3/2019 at 8:19 PM, Alkpaz said:

The LOTR battle was better IMO. 

Yeah, because their battle plans and tactics made sense.

 

The battle with the WW's didn't. The cavalry they had shouldn't have been wasted the way it was and when facing vastly superior numbers, they needed several lines deep of defenses stretching back to the walls with at least a shitty moat around the walls- making enemies pay dearly for every inch while giving your troops as many advantages as possible. But, no. They just lined up to be overwhelmed and destroyed like they didn't know the first thing about siege tactics or something. We'll see if the writers do any better with the final battle.

[27X]

On 3/7/2019 at 12:21 PM, serPomiz said:

do mussels have a concept of hunger, or do they just open up and filter the water randomly just because that's all they do?

The latter as far as is known. Their nervous system is super super basic. However they react to stimuli in very animated ways, and they may react to internal stimuli in the same fashion, where it's not "i need food to live" but more that the sensation of hunger simply starts the filtering cycle automatically, without the concept of hunger or starvation in the conventional sense.

 

We know that plants actually do communicate even to other non-similar plants in a communal ultra slow chemical fashion, bivalves might be in a similar mode of existence, complete nervous system or not.

On 3/8/2019 at 2:52 AM, Pork Type said:

You really ought to be stuffing that socket full of something

That's how people end up with kids they don't want.

 

GoT

 

The shark is getting jumpy. Very jumpy.

[Jazzman]

Now, we're all just Hollywood-hardened armchair tacticians, so what's epic or not in an ancient looking infantry battle is largely understood with the eyes and much less with our knowledge of tactics in antiquity. And warfare in pseudo-antiquity on screen is what we always see, the larger the number of combatants, the more epic it appears to us. We are easily to be impressed. Well, according to Clausewitz, the Prussian father of Western tactics in our time, firepower is everything - the major doctrine not just but especially of the US military since WW-2. On the surface of things there's thus no contradiction...

 

However, that's not how an ancient infantry battle was actually fought on the ground, no matter if we look at a Greek hoplite phalanx, a Roman Republican maniple, later Imperial cohort or the more or less loose formation of so-called barbarians at the periphery of the Roman Empire, let alone those adversaries that had developed their own, unique military tactics like the Carthaginians (war elephants similar to the Haradrim in LotR and a cavalry worth the name), the much feared Parthians (mounted archers that could needle a Roman legionary literally to the ground and heavy-armed riders - Cataphracts - that swept trough an infantry formation like butter just as Gandalf rushing to the rescue in the battle at Helm's Deep... light-armed as he was).

 

But how was such an epic battle in antiquity actually? How did it feel and what was felt before and after the run, the push and the collapse of the formation by the one warrior or another? The ancient tacticians tell us a lot about it cos they were still there where the action was, and that's not in the academic ivory tower. They didn't need any advice, instead they advised many generations in military strategy and tactics. The times they are a changin'.

 

So I'd recommend reading the leading military historian in the West for an introduction into the mystified, sometime glorified world of blood, dust and tears:

Victor Davis Hanson - The Western Way of War - Infantry Battle in Ancient Greece, Oxford University Press 1989, paperback (my birth year, yeah).

[Grey Cloud]

41 minutes ago, Jazzman said:

Well, according to Clausewitz, the Prussian father of Western tactics in our time, firepower is everything

Clausewitz wrote 'On War' which is concerned withwarfare and politics not tactics. He did nt maintain that firepower was everything. I have read the book at least twice.

 

43 minutes ago, Jazzman said:

Greek hoplite phalanx

There was no such thing as a 'hoplite phalanx'. The phalanx was introduced by the Macedonians and used the sarissa. The hoplon is a type of shield.

 

Maniple and cohort are just units of a specific size.

 

51 minutes ago, Jazzman said:

Cataphracts - that swept trough an infantry formation like butter

Cataphract comes from a Greek word and can be applied to any heavily armoured cavalry but is particularly associated with the Byzantine Empire (hence the Greek word). Cataphracts, and cavalry in general, do not 'sweep through an infantry formation like butter'. Or even like a knife through butter. Horses will not charge a solid object and a shield wall or any closely packed body of infantry looks like a solid object.

Also, you would not risk damaging your mount by ramming it into several lines of humans. Cavarly ride down fleeing infantry and fight other cavalry.

 

Victor Davis Hanson is not even close to being 'the leading military historian in the West'. His name means nothing in this country (UK) and probably even less in France and Germany.

[Jazzman]

20 hours ago, Grey Cloud said:

Clausewitz wrote 'On War' which is concerned withwarfare and politics not tactics. He did nt maintain that firepower was everything. I have read the book at least twice.

 

There was no such thing as a 'hoplite phalanx'. The phalanx was introduced by the Macedonians and used the sarissa. The hoplon is a type of shield.

 

Maniple and cohort are just units of a specific size.

 

Cataphract comes from a Greek word and can be applied to any heavily armoured cavalry but is particularly associated with the Byzantine Empire (hence the Greek word). Cataphracts, and cavalry in general, do not 'sweep through an infantry formation like butter'. Or even like a knife through butter. Horses will not charge a solid object and a shield wall or any closely packed body of infantry looks like a solid object.

Also, you would not risk damaging your mount by ramming it into several lines of humans. Cavarly ride down fleeing infantry and fight other cavalry.

 

Victor Davis Hanson is not even close to being 'the leading military historian in the West'. His name means nothing in this country (UK) and probably even less in France and Germany.

Clausewitz' has coined the Prussian style - the way of modern Western war. That war is a political tool isn't his invention, this was always the case.  I question whether you have already read enough related to warfare tho but leave it at that atm. Gen. Clausewitz' work On War is conveniently subtitled 'about strategy and tactics'.

 

Maniple and cohort are two different manifestations of Roman battle tactics developed along the timeline from Republic to Empire. They are rooted in the Greek Phalanx as was the Macedonian version with its longer spear, called sarissa.

 

Cataphracts did exactly that - charging infantry with a lance (and the Romans didn't easily give up their formation). Unbelievable, huh? That's why they were infamous back then, heavily armored as they were, and their horses as well. This was the privilege of the upper class, a costly privilege. To understand it in full one should read the references in Roman sources, esp. in Cicero's letters (he was governor of Cilicia and thus within reach of Parthian cavalry) and about the Battle at Carrhae / biblical Haran in which Crassus the Rich lost his legions when trying to intervene Parthia to become even wealthier. The Romans never really could shed their fear of Parthians afterwards. The Parthians are coming! Sounds somehow familiar to our ears, no? Not by chance the so-called Parthian shot from behind (by mounted archers) became a negative metaphor in the West. In the 2nd CE Rome incorporated mercenary cataphracts as auxiliary in the legions in the Levant and Asia Minor. There they lacked the required support of mounted archers who indeed killed everyone leaving the broken up formation and who got permanently resupplied by camel trains that followed the cavalry hard on.

 

Our cattle horses won't do that tho, not even for Hollywood. But that goes w/o saying. A special, year-long training is required, and a special breed as well. And knowledge of the number of files a hostile infantry information is made of - eight men deep isn't that deep at all, sixteen could be and many more is, most likely. So the combination of mounted light archers, cataphracts and supply on the fly was the perfect match for the invincible, yet slow moving Roman legions and their comparable weak foreign auxiliary cavalry (largely made of Gauls and Germans).

 

Well, from symposia I know that Hanson is the leading American figure in ancient military history in the West and not just because today both Brits and French are just auxiliaries for the US army, I dare to say, but because he actually quotes the ancient tacticians verbatim and brings 'em into a convinient historical context instead of making things up by thinking backwards, always starting with the era of Queen Victoria or Napoleon...

 

As much as I admire Hanson's military source knowledge and interpretation skills, I despise his political understanding of the US in the here and now. But I, at least, pay respect to a man of knowledge. That's no contradiction imo.

 

 

[Grey Cloud]

You don't know what you are talking about.

[Jazzman]

10 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

You don't know what you are talking about.

Wanna play the village idiot here?  That's fine by me.

[Grey Cloud]

5 hours ago, Jazzman said:

Wanna play the village idiot here?  That's fine by me.

Righty-ho, the village idiot reporting back.

 

One 'coins' a phrase not a style.
Clausewitz did not invent any 'Prussian style'. What 'Prussian style' is this? What is the 'way of modern western war'?
I did not say that Clausewitz invented 'war is a political tool' which he didn't say in any case. He said that war is a continuation of politics by other means, which is not the same thing at all.

 

I have studied military history for over 50 years. How can you question what I have read when you do not know me?

"Gen. Clausewitz' work On War is conveniently subtitled "about strategy and tactics" Really? Can you point me to a book cover which calls it that?

 

A maniple is a Roman unit of approx 120 men. It is not a battle tactic. A tactical unit, yes. The same with a cohort. A cohort is a unit of several hundred men (the actual number varied). Tactical unit, yes. Tactic, no.

 

"Cataphracts did exactly that - charging infantry with a lance (and the Romans didn't easily give up their formation). Unbelievable, huh?"
Yes, it is unbelievable. What is your source? The Romans did not give up which formation?

 

"To understand it in full one should read the references in Roman sources, esp. in Cicero's letters (he was governor of Cilicia and thus within reach of Parthian cavalry) and about the Battle at Carrhae / biblical Haran in which Crassus the Rich lost his legions when trying to intervene Parthia to become even wealthier".
And you have read Cicero's letters have you? Or are you just regurgitating what Hanson says? What letters are these anyway? Could you provide a link?

 

"Our cattle horses won't do that tho, not even for Hollywood. But that goes w/o saying. A special, year-long training is required, and a special breed as well. And knowledge of the number of files a hostile infantry information is made of - eight men deep isn't that deep at all, sixteen could be and many more is, most likely. So the combination of mounted light archers, cataphracts and supply on the fly was the perfect match for the invincible, yet slow moving Roman legions and their comparable weak foreign auxiliary cavalry (largely made of Gauls and Germans). "
I have absolutely no idea what you are waffling on about here.

 

"Well, from symposia I know that Hanson is the leading American figure in ancient military history in the West and not just because today both Brits and French are just auxiliaries for the US army, I dare to say, but because he actually quotes the ancient tacticians verbatim and brings 'em into a convinient historical context instead of making things up by thinking backwards, always starting with the era of Queen Victoria or Napoleon..."
Again. it is extremely difficult to understand just what you are going on about here.
What 'symposia'? You originally called Hanson "the leading military historian in the West". Now he is "the leading American figure in ancient military history in the West".
Do you think he is the only historian who quotes from original sources? Some of us read those original sources.
What does 'the Brits and French are just auxillaries for the US army'mean? And what has it got to do with the writing of ancient history? What do you mean about 'thinking backwards'?

 

I repeat: You do not know what you are talking about. You have read one book by this Hanson and think it makes you some sort of authority.

 

EDIT: I found this on Cicero and his letters.

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/cicero-as-a-source-for-parthian-history

[27X]

11 hours ago, Jazzman said:

Western tactics in our time, firepower is everything - the major doctrine not just but especially of the US military since WW-2

Fire, Fixate, Destroy has been the doctrine since 1916, with exceptions for stealth aviation and tanks.