Prison RP has highest votes? Kek.

I see everyone likes cell based passive RP for no reason.

particular

As I am sure most of you know, the new 'thing' as of late has been something for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Dumping a bucket of ice cold water over your head as a means to raise awareness and calling upon others to do the same. If they challenged parts fails to accept and perform this challenge within a span of 24 hours, they must donate $100 to ALS to help find a cure. Now, I want to start off by saying that this is a great cause in my opinion. Raising awareness for any kind of disease is truly admirable and inspiring -- however, I also want to state that this ice bucket tom foolery is completely autistic. The premise behind this challenge is wonderful, but the reasons it has become to popular disgusts me. The way I see it, it's no longer a thing to do in order to actually raise awareness, (which, by the way, if you didn't know: the reason it is actually ice cold water is because supposedly the effects of the cold water is supposed to be a (albeit, likely inaccurate) simulation of what Lou Gehrig’s disease is actually like for those afflicted by it) but rather something that people are doing because everyone else is doing it and because it's all over the internet and they all want to be edgy. Just how all those Gangnam Style video and stupid fucking Harlem Shake videos went viral, then everybody and their paraplegic grandmother was doing it. On top of that, if this is a drive to actually gain research for money, and the water dumping to something you do in order to NOT have to donate, as an actual, quote on quote, "supporter" of this cause which you are participating in, wouldn't doing the challenge itself be a non-issue since you would have donated? I mean, sure, you could donate and do it anyway just for shiggles, but there are people that are not even doing that -- which I have a problem with.

Thus far on Facebook, I have been challenged a total of 3 times this week by family and friends. I personally don't give a rats ass about Lou Gehrig’s disease and have no desire to donate to it even if this Ice Bucket challenge wasn't a thing, but that's neither here nor there. But never the less, I decided to look into it despite not wanting to actually do it just to be informed. What really sparked my interest to know was a video this one man made after he was challenged and decided to research. He pulled up the ALS Associations annual financial report and it turns out that out of the over $55 million dollars they raised, only 7.71% ($3 million) actually went to research purposes. So out of the $100 donated, only about $7 goes to research. Of course, this was just in 2012; two years ago. I reposted this video to show have the people doing this were, in my opinion, a little silly. The comment I received was that the numbers had to be out of date, being from 2012. So I looked into it further and pulled up the 2013 annual report and did the math myself. Here is what I wrote in reply:

In 2012 they generated $55,446,772 in total combined revenue. They put in approximately $3,904,240 of the revenue into research making for about 7.71% of the generated income going into the actual cause of finding a treatment for this disease. In 2013, they generated a staggering $64,661,521 of total combined revenue. That's $9,214,749 more than their 2012 income. According to their 2013 financial report that I am looking at right now, they spent a bit more for research; $ 6,616,367. If you do the math, that is roughly 10.23% of the income that they generated. Of the $100 that people are donating for this 'cause', only $10.23 are actually going to what they say it is going to. The rest, go to the following --
Other program activities: $ 40,164,177
Fundraising: $ 9,137,186
General & administration: $ 5,414,990

That was just last year. The numbers are increasing, but by far too pitiful amounts to seem fair.

All in all, this fund raiser -- well no...that would be false to say that. It's not the fundraiser that pisses me off. I mean, at the end of the day, a fund raiser is a fundraiser and since it is a facility, it's only natural that they'd have other motives. I mean, at least they are actually donating even if it's only a little amount. What pisses me off is how this thing exploded and took a complete sharp right from what it was initially intended to be. Maybe I'm just talking out of my ass? Maybe I'm just being a dumb, insensitive hipster? I don't know, but this really rustled my jimmies.

What do you guys think about all this?

According to an article my Uncle's girlfriend (who is one of those, 'Love & Peace! The government is keeping us down! The social and financial elites are the cancer of society" types) posted, Obamacare will require all American's by law to have a microchip implanted in their palm. Estimated by the year 2017, all Americans will have a microchip implant.

According to the report, the technology is used to answer one question, “Am I who I say I am?”

Now, looking at the comments, there's a bunch of bible thumpers talking about how this is "the mark of the beast" and "666" and all kinds of other, but I can't really take those seriously. I read into the document myself that was provided and the more I read, the more I realized some things. Roughly 80% of the people in the comment section were completely autistic, for one. Secondly, this claim was utterly ridiculous. Chipping 100% of the American population would be pretty much undo-able, especially if they didn't have insurance, not to mention the ungodly slew of complaints and utter outrage that would roll in from all the 'OH MY GOD! THEY'RE VIOLATING MY PRIVACY' screamers wailing like banshee's in every corner of the US. Thirdly, if you actually read the bill, it says at around page 1014, and I quote:

8 ‘‘National Medical Device Registry
9 ‘‘(g)(1) The Secretary shall establish a national med-
10 ical device registry (in this subsection referred to as the
11 ‘registry’) to facilitate analysis of postmarket safety and
12 outcomes data on each device that—
13 ‘‘(A) is or has been used in or on a patient; and
14 ‘‘(B) is—
15 ‘‘(i) a class III device; or
16 ‘‘(ii) a class II device that is implantable,
17 life-supporting, or life-sustaining.

What does the mean? This bill is essentially about implantable medical equipment, not some distopian sci-fi ID chip that Big Brother stuck inside of you to watch your every move and know everything about you at all times. It's a fucking national device registry for the following (and probably many other) items:

implantable cardiac pacemakers
implantable defibrillators
leads, electrodes, adaptors for the above
implantable nerve stimulators
bladder stimulators
sphincter stimulators
diaphragm stimulators
cochlear implants
implantable active drug administration device
catheters, sensors for item above
implantable active monitoring devices
programmers, software, transmitters.

In my opinion, this is honest to goodness bullshit and clearly just some shoddy Facebook propaganda to give people an unreasonable start. What do you guys think? Do you actually believe this? If so/not, why? How do you feel about the crap people are talking about in the comments in those sections? Would you actually have a problem with an "Implantable MicroID Chip", if this was hypothetically true? Do you think it would be more beneficial, or more harmful?

Sources:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/medical/microchip.asp

http://dcgazette.com/all-americans-will-receive-a-microchip-implant-in-2017-per-obamacare/

If only the hammer we use now had the features of Source Engine 2. ;.; Resizing would be so convenient, it's not even funny especially since I have a thing for making rats maps. With the being said, I haven't really seen much of the new hammer editor, but what I have seen of it looks really nice, I'd probably have to play around with it.

I'm still pretty new with the whole 3ds Max stuff. I don't know what half of the stuff in there does other than like, extrude, boolean and the basic tools like resizing, moving and rotating. Hell, it wasn't until after I spent like 4 hours making that harp out of a crap ton of cylinders  and already done with it that I figured out -- Hey...I could have made the coil design around the Pillar out of a spring in the Dynamic Objects tab and saved myself about half an hour of cylinder positioning...fml.

Exactly my point. Wanting to be part of a culture other than your own is not a bad thing -- in fact, it's a great thing. It's a very open minded step one can take in order to deepen your understanding of another's way of life...walking in someone else's shoes, if you will. But to go to the point of saying that you're one ethnicity trapped in another's body just seems the opposite. Shallow, even.

Reason I bring this up is because of a Reddit post I read a while back and just recently found again about a 16 year of white girl who swears up and down that she's actually Japanese. She's a "Japanese woman trapped in a western tainted body"

I don’t want to be transethnic; this isn’t a choice.I didn’t wake up one morning and say “I want to be Japanese!”

I am very excited to renounce the American citizenship that’s been hanging over my head and threatening my happiness.

Have I ever been to Japan? Every single day in my head.
I had developed enough self-confidence in myself because of anime to believe I deserve to belong to such a perfect place.
I was a depressed child who hated America and had no hope because of the meat industry.
thank the kamisama

source: http://www.reddit.com/r/weeabootales/comments/20ujjb/i_am_finally_going_to_come_out_as_a_transethnic/

This is the kind of shit that makes me cringe so hard that it makes me not even want to be associated with a lot of the things that I like. Just taking a step back from the fact that I am interested in similar things and taking this from a completely objective stand point, this makes absolutely no sense what so ever.

First off, her reasoning behind the things she says are so ignorant and blindly ethnocentric, it's disgusting. Second, she has no basis for anything she is saying other than made up "facts" that are all misguided at best. And finally, she clearly has a case of blatant over glorification of a place she has never been to or probably so much as seen outside of pictures and fictitious animations that are very rarely accurate. Just like a lot of the comments there in that thread say, it's just another place. It's really not that serious.

This is the only real example I know of off the bat, though I'm sure there's more. I know this girl's tumblr is no longer available, as to the reason I don't know. She probably got trolled into oblivion and took it down, lol.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBZ4kJEFSiA" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBZ4kJEFSiA</a>

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDtPtXXHj5I" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDtPtXXHj5I</a>

The first row of white and red cherry trees honestly have to my most favorite and probably one of the most scenic parts imo. Though I owe the particle effect to someone else. I hadn't thought of replacing the original dust mote particles with flower blossoms.

You all realise we reinstated HL2RP at the worst time Real Life wise right? Everybodies got exams and stuff coming up now (finals in america or whatever it is?) and all RL shit that is 100% more important than CG. Wait until about July and you will all see an increase in the playerbase, like it does every single year at catalyst gaming


/thread

Actually, the server was fine at launch. What seemed to do the most damage was the constant crashes and lag. (Which of course, was no ones fault in particular.) On launch and a week or so after we had at least 30ish players a day, maybe less maybe more depending on the day. But I mean, after the constant crashing and lag every 20 minutes, I'd have been surprised if the population didn't diminish.

That aside, I'm honestly not surprised about the inactivity complaint of RAZOR. Not here to point fingers or anything, but .apex has always been like that, even from when I was OfC in APEX and he was my DvL. Gaming Zealot and I were always the ones really doing all the heavy lifting while he got on every blue moon and basically wagged his finger and gave the occasional thumb up or thumb down for things. We were the ones mostly pulling the strings. Now, whatever reason he has for his inactivity is his own and I particularly do not care, but I'm just saying how it is. He was the less ideal choice for the position, as I have always noted him as particularly inactive. Though in all likelihood, he was mostly likely chosen because either nobody else applied for the position, or those that did were much worse choices.

Never the less, pointing fingers isn't going to solve much, mates.