Tali'Thread vas Clan Zorah nar BSN 6.0

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb3ldoiHIIg

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL-8rOIDPGM

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HodmyMp1EhY

[Vol]

My skin is odd. A few hours of sunlight, and freckles gone since childhood are breaking out over my arms and faintly on my face.

I suppose I've been a cave dweller for a long time then.

~*Jappohongo lesson-o of the day*~

Decided to sit in the sun a bit and review some basic Japanese vocabulary, since I've been doing solely kanji this year thus far.

"Itte kimasu" - I'm going out, but I'll be back, very common when leaving the house.
"Itterasshai" - The proper reply, meaning is obvious. However those double consonants are tricky.
"Tadaima" - I'm home/back, the counterpart to "itte kimasu."
"Okaerinasai" - Welcome home/back. The trick here is that phonetically, it's said, "Oh-kah-eh-rlee-nah-sigh" (r's are pronounced as a cross of r and l in English, same tongue position as in d). Saying it slowly, easy, but in practice at conversational speed, my tongue goes retarded trying enunciate the first half, then the transition from the "ri" to "na" it feels thick with mud.

[SciFlyBoy]

Practicing my 'r' in Japanese is a daily chore, but it's nice looking at the words you wrote knowing I can somewhat say them.

Learning my Kare wa/Kanojo wa right now. Pronouncing it 'ka-day' because of that 'r'.

Kore wa nan desu ka. Pronouncing that 'ko-day'


On another note, I've been reading about dinosaurs lately along with everything else we've discovered in the fossil record and it's amazing how absolutely far from a complete picture we have of how many species of dinosaurs existed. Of the possible millions we have barely scratched the surface.

[magnuskn]

Can't say that the whole Avatar game interests me overmuch.

I'd much rather have a good game in the other Avatar franchise. ^^

[Alienmorph]

And we're back doing these, I see. Neat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x7iJ4jQEg8&list=PLCbOivu5Z0Vbi0tX6HpH_JypDP3lKvL9f&index=2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5hjSwCXGUI&list=PLCbOivu5Z0Vbi0tX6HpH_JypDP3lKvL9f&index=1

The amargasaurus is thicc as heck and the head shape is all wrong, but for a JP/JW-style beast he looks good.

[Dragaros]

[Dragaros]

[Dragaros]

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l92zUZliCTU

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_c0qfBmItA

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_UXdWeP8p4

Now that's Chaos Theory.

[Vol]

Practicing my 'r' in Japanese is a daily chore, but it's nice looking at the words you wrote knowing I can somewhat say them.

Learning my Kare wa/Kanojo wa right now. Pronouncing it 'ka-day' because of that 'r'.

Kore wa nan desu ka. Pronouncing that 'ko-day'


On another note, I've been reading about dinosaurs lately along with everything else we've discovered in the fossil record and it's amazing how absolutely far from a complete picture we have of how many species of dinosaurs existed. Of the possible millions we have barely scratched the surface.

The way my professor taught it to me was, literally, as a cross between "l" and "r", which explains their difficulty in pronouncing either. Though what helped a lot was _hearing_ spoken Japanese, so even if I'm sure I have a tremendous accent, I'm at least in the phonetic wheelhouse.

これは何ですか？

Man, we've actively lost knowledge in the last 70 years. Much less 500, 1000, a million, a billion. We know so incredibly little, it's great. Every new dinosaur we find is like adding a grain of sand to a bucketful that hopes to become a beach.

[SciFlyBoy]

Every new dinosaur we find is like adding a grain of sand to a bucketful that hopes to become a beach.

A beach we'll never see or walk on. It's impossible that every species of dinosaur that ever existed got fossilized. And even if they were we'd have to turn over every rock on earth everywhere to find them.

I have to find the passage in the book I'm reading to quote here, but of what we've found, like half of the fossils are of just a few dinosaurs. Let me fact check that and respond later with the actual passage.

edit...here it is. This is from Bill Bryson's 'The Short History of Nearly Everything' Published 2003, there might be a few more dinosaurs discovered since.

"The fact is, we don't really know a great deal about the dinosaurs. For the whole Age of the Dinosaurs, fewer than a thousand species have been identified (almost half of them from a single specimen), which is about a quarter of the number of mammal species alive now. Dinosaurs, bear in mind, ruled the Earth for roughly three times as long as mammals have, so either dinosaurs were remarkably unproductive of species or we have barley scratched the surface (to use an irresistibly apt cliche).

For millions of years through the Age of Dinosaurs not a single fossil has yet been found. Even for the period of the late Cretaceous-the most studied prehistoric period there is, thanks to our long interest in dinosaurs and their extinction- some three quarters of all species that lived may yet be undiscovered... Until very recently everything known about the dinosaurs of this period came from only about three hundred specimens representing just sixteen species."

[Alienmorph]

It's part of why I find it such a fascinating topic. There's so much to uncover that we'll literally not be able to ear the last of it within our lifetime, and by a long shot too. There's always going to be some new surprise. And that's only if you look specifically into dinos, or in the Mesozoic. If you also look at the rest of deep time and the fossil record it's... mind-boggling almost.

[TTTX]

It's part of why I find it such a fascinating topic. There's so much to uncover that we'll literally not be able to ear the last of it within our lifetime, and by a long shot too. There's always going to be some new surprise. And that's only if you look specifically into dinos, or in the Mesozoic. If you also look at the rest of deep time and the fossil record it's... mind-boggling almost.

not to mention we are also discovering new animal species all the time, not to mention we have barely seen anything what is under our oceans and let's not forget the universe itself with it's trillions if not more planets, stars etc. also to be discovered and explored.

the age of discovery is far from over, I go as far as to say it's not even truly begun yet.

[Alienmorph]

the age of discovery is far from over, I go as far as to say it's not even truly begun yet.

That's a good way to put it, for sure.

[Ragabul]

I came here to post an article on human evolution I found that is really interesting but it happens to fit in neatly with the conversation above.

Namely, all the stuff we have learned about human evolution in the last 20 years because of ancient DNA studies has thrown a lot of conventional thinking on end. The stuff about us breeding with Neanderthals was just the tip of the iceberg. We knew much less about where we thought we came from than we thought we did.

Here Be Humans

[Vol]

What an odd way of getting modern man. "We" blindly seeded the planet with a more distant ancestor form, evolved into genetically distinct, but still cross-fertile, populations, and then hundreds of thousands of years later, after a population bottleneck, we _then_ spread out again to fuck all our long lost cousins back into the family. It'd be like if sabertooths, tigers, lions, panthers, cheetahs, and so on, all coalesced back into a single line before they drifted too far apart to breed.

It's a wild narrative. In 20 years, it'll probably be found that man _really_ originated in an English swamp, swam to France, then migrated down to Africa chasing easily domesticated kitties or something, based on a couple finger bones and a DNA analysis, plus some fur tufts stuck to a primitive comb.

Though it seems crazy we even survived at all. Behavioral modernity wasn't until the last 50k years (Or longer, depending on which anthropologist's grand narrative on what a handle of seashells, bone, and rocks means), anatomical modernity 150k, and then we had all these genetic cousins wandering around. But before behavioral modernity, we'd have been getting our asses kicked, no? No tailoring, no fire, no cooking, no agriculture, no language, no writing, no abstract reasoning, no large-group cooperation, no complex tools, just furless, weak apes, giant heads, and simple stone tools and pelts to wear. That us, and our cousins, held on as long as they did before whatever enabled us to "become" human kicked on and we spread out again, seems incredibly lucky. And fortunate!

[magnuskn]

History is a long string of fortunate (or unfortunate) coincidences and lucky breaks. Look at the battle of Midway, how many times the Americans got lucky to get the huge win they got, as just one example. They lose that battle and the war goes another way completely.

[Dragaros]

It's part of why I find it such a fascinating topic. There's so much to uncover that we'll literally not be able to ear the last of it within our lifetime, and by a long shot too. There's always going to be some new surprise. And that's only if you look specifically into dinos, or in the Mesozoic. If you also look at the rest of deep time and the fossil record it's... mind-boggling almost.

not to mention we are also discovering new animal species all the time, not to mention we have barely seen anything what is under our oceans and let's not forget the universe itself with it's trillions if not more planets, stars etc. also to be discovered and explored.

the age of discovery is far from over, I go as far as to say it's not even truly begun yet.

Aye. One the best things of a universe so vast in size and rich in history is that there will always be a new horizon to gaze upon, a new frontier to explore, new secrets to unearth, new discoveries to be made, new journeys to travel, new phenomenon to unlock and master, etc. Wether digging in the rock for what came before or dreaming of means to map the galaxies, and everything in-between and beyond, the quest for knowledge and better understanding will be a never-ending one, and that's actually fantastic in my book.

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BHfXKpcCik

[Dragaros]

That looks like the Chozo individual who killed the survivors fleeing the Metroids from in the Chozo Memories from Samus Returns. A Chozo warrior-general still in the prime of his life with arms and armor from the height of their old empire? That would truly be a worthy foe for Samus.

[Dragaros]

"Blue-Eyes White Dragon 20th Anniversary Gold Edition Yu-Gi-Oh! card reached $13.4M at auction before shutting down. The card was originally seized in a Chinese embezzling case from a man serving life in prison. Only 500 copies of the pure gold card exist."

[Dragaros]

[Dragaros]

[SciFlyBoy]

History is a long string of fortunate (or unfortunate) coincidences and lucky breaks. Look at the battle of Midway, how many times the Americans got lucky to get the huge win they got, as just one example. They lose that battle and the war goes another way completely.

All mammals were of a size from mice to small cats until they were allowed to roam free from the dinosaurs. All it took was a little extinction event. Fortune and luck is the real reason we exist, for sure.

It's also neat reading about evolution as not 'from the beginning to us' but as 'life changes to adapt and there are happy accidents'.

[Alienmorph]

All mammals were of a size from mice to small cats until they were allowed to roam free from the dinosaurs. All it took was a little extinction event. Fortune and luck is the real reason we exist, for sure.

Even mesozoic mammals were a lot more diverse than we first thought, actually. By the time of K-T extinction there were otter-like mammals, for example. And something like a good half of the early mammals went down with the rest of the mesozoic life, too.

[Dragaros]

[Dragaros]

[Dragaros]

[Dragaros]

[Alienmorph]

I have a bunch of PNSO and Beasts of the Mesozoic figures (was a backer of the first two series' KS). Thei're both very good ranges of models, tho thei're so prolific at this point getting everything is nigh impossible unless you focus only on them. I think I'll have to pick one or another moving forward, in fact.

[Vol]

Whatever happened to those claims that dino soft tissue was being found? We ever get intact DNA out of that?

[Alienmorph]

Whatever happened to those claims that dino soft tissue was being found? We ever get intact DNA out of that?

Soft tissue was indeed found, although in very minute quantities, but DNA just doesn't survive for tenths of millions of years. If they managed to extract anything, it'd be extremely damaged and fragmentary.

[magnuskn]

So, uh, Subnautica Below Zero is, overall, a disappointment and I am well into half of the storyline, I'd say. The disappointment comes not from the story itself, which is a bit better told, with a protagonist who actually speaks sometimes, but rather with the ressource management and technology advancement. Ressources are more scattered and therefore much less accessible than before (staying hydrated is astonishingly frustrating now) and the discovery of new technologies is overall much more haphazard than in the first game. There, you knew what to do: Hit wreckages, rummage through the claustrophic interiors, sometimes find an abandoned base. Here, some abandanoned bases are still around, but the random bits and bobs for your equipment are scattered all over the map with no really clear pattern I could discern. Henceforth, I am still missing stuff by simply swimming by it dozens of time. The entire map is also much less easy to nagivate, which makes the experience less enjoyable as well.

And the sea truck... ugh. That clunky vehicle replaces the sea moth from the first game, which was a much more maneuverable vehicle. And the sea truck is what you are stuck with until the end of the game, no getting your own big submarine later on.

I'll still finish the game, but it will be more of a chore rather than a joy.

My recommendation: If you feel like you'd like to try out a survival underwater game with a story, get the first part, which is at 50% price at the moment due to the Steam summer sale. I'd actually definitely recommend the first part. Don't get the second one, it repeats a lot of the first game, but less well done.

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMy8Ah4eQ8g

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTrROtf9zdg









ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED? IS THIS NOT WHY YOU ARE HERE?

[TTTX]

well I'm official retired, my autism is bad enough I can't work so I guess I don't have to worry about getting money I suppose.

[Alienmorph]

Well, beggars can't be choosers. I'll take Mii-Shantae over no Shantae at all.

Bet the people who were campaigning for Dante or the Dragonborn to be added in Smash won't be so chill, tho...

[Alienmorph]

well I'm official retired, my autism is bad enough I can't work so I guess I don't have to worry about getting money I suppose.

Ouch. Sorry to ear that. At least you know for sure how bat it is, I guess.

[TTTX]

Ouch. Sorry to ear that. At least you know for sure how bat it is, I guess.

yeah, it is what it is, now I have to make the best of it.

[Deano]

well I'm official retired, my autism is bad enough I can't work so I guess I don't have to worry about getting money I suppose.

That must feel frustrating. Do you get financial help from the government?

[magnuskn]

Best of luck TTTX, I hope things work out for you.

I actually uninstalled Subnautica Below Zero. It got too frustrating with the lack of directions and the constant traveling about. Oh, well. On to something else, probably Mechwarrior 5: Heroes of the Inner Sphere. Time to get out my HOTAS!

[TTTX]

That must feel frustrating. Do you get financial help from the government?

yeah, need to fill out some paper work then I will get some financial help.

Best of luck TTTX, I hope things work out for you.

thank you.

[TTTX]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbYm0oTXw9c&ab

[Deano]

yeah, need to fill out some paper work then I will get some financial help.

Hope that isn't too much of an issue. Also hope you can get into your stride quickly with this lifestyle change.

[TTTX]

Hope that isn't too much of an issue. Also hope you can get into your stride quickly with this lifestyle change.

I have been approve for early retirement it's just some info they are missing about to determine the money I'm going to get.

as for life style changes, well I'm going to get my own place (in a special place for people like me obviously) and start somewhat living for myself since well most of my family has a foot in the grave and chances of living in my childhood home is low unless I manage to find a woman to live that can help to pay the bills.

[Vol]

I have been approve for early retirement it's just some info they are missing about to determine the money I'm going to get.

as for life style changes, well I'm going to get my own place (in a special place for people like me obviously) and start somewhat living for myself since well most of my family has a foot in the grave and chances of living in my childhood home is low unless I manage to find a woman to live that can help to pay the bills.

Congratulations, I suppose. If your condition warrants early retirement, it must have been very difficult trying to work. But I'm glad your government is going to be providing you help, and hope your life improves greatly now.

Well, beggars can't be choosers. I'll take Mii-Shantae over no Shantae at all.

Bet the people who were campaigning for Dante or the Dragonborn to be added in Smash won't be so chill, tho...

For a relatively tiny franchise, evening a Mii is pretty impressive.

My recommendation: If you feel like you'd like to try out a survival underwater game with a story, get the first part, which is at 50% price at the moment due to the Steam summer sale. I'd actually definitely recommend the first part. Don't get the second one, it repeats a lot of the first game, but less well done.

I watched a bit of Subnautica gameplay the other day, and read up on the story. Honestly, the enticing part of a game like that would be the romance of it. Whereas the game appears more to be about the creative design, the relatively realistic biosphere, crafting. I'd rather be diving and see _something_ move that's so big I cannot see the full scope from a mile away, and flee back to the light, than upgrade my diving mech with super-duper struts so I can go down there and find a giant skull with a lore entry, you know?