Shoblongoo

...college is going to be a very interesting time in your life. Rezzy already went full den-mother on this thread. I can't really speak to the female experience--but I can maybe speak to the shared experience of late bloomers, high school wierdos, and young adults. I was one of those guys that did a complete 180 between high school and college. My high school experience was World of Warcraft, Magic: The Gathering, and AP/Honors Class. Never went to a school dance. Never went to a party. Didn't drink. Didn't smoke. Didn't date or flirt or do any sex stuff. Was too timid to really talk to girls. ...my college experience was just one giant blur of sex, drugs, and rock n' roll... And I wasn't a frat boy--that wasn't my scene. Went to a few frat parties. The whole crowded house full of "bros" trying to prove their manhood through assorted feats of getting black-out drunk, blasting their playlists, and "tryin' to get muh dick wet" just never did anything for me. No. I found my scene and discovered my people--randomly backdoored my way into it through the political science and campus activist crowd--when I fell in with the kinksters, the burners, and the new-age hippies. Frat boys drank and fucked and made alot of noise. These guys partied. All day, everyday, until the end of days. Like the sex and the drugs wasn't even something you did to prove you were "cool"--it was just a part of the lifestyle. They had their own "vineyard" off-campus where they did their thing. -the weed was homegrown (it wasn't a vineyard) -the clothing was optional -there was no such thing as "behind closed doors"--if you and like five of your friends wanted to drop acid, whip out the paddles and floggers, and have a big ol' drug-fueld kinkster orgy. You could just do it in the middle of the living room--no one would bat an eye. -the only rule was "Don't Judge." ...it was a different time... Now I had a good enough head on my shoulders and a strong enough moral compass that I still got my work done, graduated with full honors, went to law school, and wound up where I am today. Married in my late-20s with a house, a job--hopefully some kids soon. Why am I telling you this??? I'm telling you this because you are approaching those magical years where you have all the privileges of an adult, and none of the responsibility. As you grow older you come to appreciate that there are--for lack of a better term--"seasons of your life." For all things, a season. Your late teens and early twenties--that is the season for testing your boundaries. Indulging the newfound priviliges of adulthood. Doing the things you're not going to be able to do once you have a house. A job. A family. A pile of bills to pay, sitting on your kitchen table. ...and you'll be there one day... Before you get there--live. Have the time of your life. Once those years are gone you don't get them back; use them to their fullest. You don't want to be pressured into doing anything you don't want to do. You don't want to do something just to fit in or just because its "cool." You don't want to be unsafe, and you certainly don't want to do anything you aren't ready to do. But in your own time. When you get there. Just go for it. Don't be so afraid of doing something you'll regret that your biggest regrets later in life become the things you didn't do. You're still so young. You're going to grow so much as a person in the next few years--the awkward 17 year old you are today is not the woman you are going to become. So enjoy it. Set your own pace. Be your own person. But don't get to settled into your comfort zone and don't be too afraid to jump into something new and wild--you're only young once! That's my advice to you When I used "dirty" language as a child, my mom would put soap in my mouth and scrub it out. But my grandma from Brooklyn would watch me when my parents worked. She had a New York City mouth on her. ...so I'd be sitting on my grandma's lap at three-years-old. She'd be singing me nursery rhymes. And her lyrics would go: Behind the 'fridgerator there was a piece of glass. Ms. Susie sat upon it. And broke her big fat ass. Ask me no more questions. I'll tell you no more lies. A man got hit with a bag-of-shit, right between the eyes. I was getting some weird mixed-messages.

...maybe even a nod to how uniquely and annoyingly tricky she was to recruit in FE4. w/e Pulled a 5 Star Sigurd. That's one focus unit from his banner I didn't want (there's an overabundance of competent swordsmen in my roster--dammit, I want mages!) I'lll use him for the 40% bonus on TT and then probably bench him forever, unless I randomly pull another Hector or the game releases some other way to inherit distant counter. (I'm not sold on the usefulness of a res-tank that can't counter at 2-range) Xander's super-duper benched if Sigurd ever gets Distant Counter.

Save your coins to Forge Killer Bows (iron forges up to steel, steel to silver, and silver to killer). Give all your archers killer bows. There is a skill on the Killer Bow called [Hunter's Volley]. When you see it, you'll shit bricks. Like Archer Atlas is actually busted. [Hunter's Volley] is good on all archers and makes all archers good. But Atlas in particular is built for abusing it.

Huh. Exact opposite on our side of the pond. Language is weird. So is "Piss-Flaps" just like an Irish thing? I use to have an Irish roommate who said it all the time, and I've never heard that from anyone else.

...really??? Pussy is considered more vulgar than c**** in British English??? C*** is like N-word level you can't say that in America.

OBJECTION: 4 letter word that begins with "C" That's funny though.

ahhhhhhh. I see. I'll try it with Linde I guess. If all else fails, I'll break out that xander/rein/B!Lyn/Dancer squad. Mage emblem seems like a better way to go then horse emblem for this one, but I see some people here vouching that horseemblem works.

Haven't tried it on Infernal yet, but glad to hear it holds up. Brave Lance user as a Linde replacement eh??? Thats interesting. Might have to give that a try. Think 5 Star Effie with the Brave Lance / Death Blow / Wary Fighter combo can get the job done, or is the 1-movement on armor too much of a handicap?

Cheesed Lunatic with Desperation + Life and Death offense on Linde and Nino, and two dancers + wings of mercy shenanigans (Green Azura + Olivia) Gronnblade's stat boosts are added to damage affect with the +3/+3/+3/+3 buff from Azura’s song is absolutely disgusting.

Yeah not gonna lie. I don't ever see myself using Arden over BK, Ryoma, or Xander.

Kind of underwhelmed that Arden is the F2P 5-star giveaway for a 30,000 point trial run. ...i mean we just got the motherfucking Black Knight... Arden???

Hey--I got to post something informative and make fun of New Jersey. Its all good.

Correct. ...so a [county] and a [district] are two very different things. A "district" is a political subdivision of a state that gets one (1) congressman in the United States House of Representatives. All districts in every state are supposed to have equal population, so that every congressman represents the same number of constituents. And no constituent is under-represented or over-represented. A "county" is a political subdivision of the state that has its own sheriff, its own police department, its own Court, its own prison system, its own judges, and its own jurisdiction to make arrests within the County + hear cases in County Court + send criminals to County Jail. They do not need to be the same size, because they are completely irrelevant to apportionment of legislative representation. A county is a judicial subdivision. Not a congressional one. By way of example: ...This is a county map of New Jersey... ...this is the district map of New Jersey... So if you live in Cumberland or Cape May County or Salem County , you are represented by the Congressman of the 2nd District of New Jersey and that is the congressional election you vote in. But if you arrested for armed robbery in Cumberland County your case goes to Cumberland Superior Court, if you are arrested for armed robbery in Salem County your case goes to Salem Superior Court, and so on and so forth. ...and just for the sake of lightening the mood...this is a real map of new jersey...

Might do some number crunching tomorrow. Generally the main thing you want to look for is the urban/agrarian divide; that's your best predictor of democratic vs. republican voter base. You could almost even make the case that religious distribution flows as a derivative of that prime factor, with high religiosity + church attendance corresponding to rural values. And secular humanism + rejection of traditional closed-community orthodoxies corresponding to urban values. ...and then the distribution of churches in Republican vs. Democratic districts really just becomes another way of expressing how urbanized or countryside your population is. IDK. I'll think about it. Gotta get some sleep. I have court in the morning. Thanks for cleaning up all the spambots btw. I'm assuming that was your diligent efforts.

They have it jerryrigged so that those three (3) blue districts are all 60-70% Democrat super-majorities. So they can just easily carry those three districts every election cycle but can't put up the numbers to be competitive anywhere else. Even though there's 13 districts, and Democrats are almost half the state. ...its literally just this...

It happens so often though. North Carolina is the worst offender. You were asking earlier if any of the redistricting actually effects the make-up government--ohhhhhhh yes it does. 49.3% vote for Republicans vs. 46.2% vote for Democrats in the 2016 election 10 North Carolina Seats in the US House of Representatives to the Republicans vs. 3 North Carolina Seats to the Democrats How in the hell does that happen??? This is how...look at this shit... ^^^ Forget Paid Trolls and Russian Collusion. That's how you rig an election.

Well that's an interesting question now, isn't it? When lawmakers can make their own districts: do voters choose their elected officials, or do elected officials choose their voters? ...what can I even say here about Trump... Trump's unpopularity stems more from his character than from his positions or policies; first-and-foremost, the man is despised because he is a petty, emotionally-damaged narcissist who built his career on tragically marketable talents for lying, exaggerating, and turning his own pathological ego into an industry brand. Everything beyond that is just words from a man whose proven time and again that his word means nothing. ...but the idea that he was going to appoint conservative judges... That helped him. That definitely helped him. That helped him because at the end of the day, Republicans came home for Trump in the general. Even the ones that didn't like him, didn't support him in the primaries, and were disturbed by his lack of presidential behavior on the campaign trail--they were willing to be single issue voters on the issue of 4-4 split without Scalia--our conservative champion on the bench--who do I want to fill that seat? For movement conservatives, that was the single most important issue up for vote in 2016. And even if they could not in any other way rationalize a vote for Trump, the promise of a Republican president filling that seat instead of Hillary was enough to get them there.

thats...debatable... There is another case pending before the Supreme Court--Gill v. Whitford. The Supreme Court has long taken your position; that districting is a political issue for lawmakers. Not a question of law for judges. To that extent, they have never directly ruled on whether or not gerrymandering is a violation of civil rights for persons in affected districts. Now for the first time, however, they have agreed to hear a case on this very issue. The Court is expected to issue a ruling either by the end of its 2017 term, or sometime in early 2018. The argument in favor of intervention by the Courts is that where a state enacts a law that has the purpose and effect of subjecting a group of voters to disfavored treatment, the state has violated fundamental principles of equal protection at law. ...We'll see... Precedent says this case will probably go the way you think it should, and that I'm probably going to be disappointed. You never know though.

...so this is basically the approach that the Supreme Court took in Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 2 (2013); a case involving a constitutional challenge to one of the landmark pieces of antidiscrimination law to come out of the Civil Rights Movement. Specifically, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Shelby County (Alabama) challenged a provision of The Act banning the Southern States or any political subdivision thereof (counties, cities, townships...) from changing their voting laws, without first receiving federal approval from the Department of Justice. And directing the Department of Justice, as the threshold issue for approval or disapproval, to evaluate whether the change of law was intended as a form of voter suppression or discrimination against minority voters. In a party-line split 5-4 opinion, the majority held that such laws had been Constitutional at the time of their passage. Given the clear and pressing need for them in the Jim Crow era South. However, they were only Constitutional so long as there was a reasonable need for them. And there was no longer a reasonable need for them, because institutional racism was a thing of the past. It wasn't a problem that still existed or that the law in modern 21st century America was needed to fix. ...with that ruling, the court gutted key provisions of the law that had been protecting minority communities since the 1960s. Anddddddd almost immediately, the usual suspects started pushing through changes to their voting laws ahead of the 2016 elections; changes that had previously been disallowed without federal oversight and proof of non-discriminatory intent. ...Alabama. ...North Carolina. ...Texas. Alabama in particular is a slap-in-the-face visual illustration of the kind of the shenanigans going on here: ...prior to the 2014 redistricting in Alabama, you had two (2) majority black congressional districts electing Alabama representative so send to Congress, in District 32 and District 36. What Alabama did in 2014--after the Supreme Court's decision in Shelby took away federal oversight--was redraw the district map, so that District 32 would be majority black by higher margins (53% vs 60%). District 36 would be majority white. And now--just like that; same population; different voting laws--you have one (1) majority white district sending an elected representatives to Congress and one (1) super-majority black district sending an elected representative to Congress, instead of two (2) majority black districts sending elected representatives to Congress. There is absolutely no reason you make that change-of-law unless you are trying to fuck minority communities out of representation in Congress. And in a state with the civil rights record of ALABAMA. That's immediately suspect. But it went through. It went through by-and-with-the-aid of a Supreme Court that ruled that Voter Rights Laws are no longer necessary--States don't try to disenfranchise minority voters anymore. And surprise, surprise: it wasn't that racism disappeared. It was that it was constrained by a robust set of laws, and the moment those laws were lifted, racists once again set about the work of imposing racism as a public policy to every extent permitted by law. ...and we want to start getting rid of So I would argue that the changes we've seen in government and business today as compared to the 1960s isn't proof that antidiscrimination laws are no longer reasonably necessary. The changes we've seen in government and business today as compared to the 1960s are proof that antidiscrimination laws work.

...That's not even a baseline standard. Because if the threshold for [protected class] vs. [unprotected class] under antidiscrimination law is is it a static attribute or something you can freely choose to change?, then religion shouldn't be a protected class. And all forms of religious discrimination should be completely legal. (i.e. "Ohhhhhhhh; you believe Jesus is Lord and Savior? That's cute. I believe you can get-the-hell out of my store. Hail Satan, ya dumb goober!") Religion isn't a static attribute; its a choice. ...You can be brought up as a believer and then choose to leave your faith. ...You can be brought up as a non-believer and then join a religion. ...You can be brought up following one religion and then choose to convert to another. If you're one religion your entire life, its because you chose to be. A Jew can become a Catholic. A Catholic can become a Muslim. A Muslim can become an atheist. An atheist can become a Sikh or a Buddhist or a Hindu. There's nothing immutable about it. And yet we still hold religious discrimination to be wrongful + religion to be a protected class. So the standard is literally just whatever we deem worthy of protection from popular prejudice in an open, pluralistic society. And its telling as to where we are morally as a society that we've just flat out refused to acknowledge the LGBT community in that regard (we deem it more important we respect and protect the reasons WHY people discriminate against homosexuals). And still get pissy at the suggestion that discrimination against gays should be treated the same way as discrimination against Jews or Blacks or Catholics, or any other protected group. Good thing [Nazi] isn't a protected class!

support moves and abilities could be translated into skills i.e. [sword dance] gives you a +8 strength boost if you use "wait" on player phase instead of attacking or taking some other action action. [dragon dance] gives +4 strength / +4 speed. [calm mind] gives +4 magic/+4 res. etc, etc, etc. intimidate puts a [seal attack] debuff on everything around you. damaging moves would take the place of weapons; physical/special split = strength and def vs. magic and res. Moves like Shadow Ball and Psychic have their secondary effect replaced with "chance to inflict seal res." Moves like Crunch and Iron Tail have their secondary effect replaced with "chance to inflict seal def." ...a lot of this stuff can probably eventually be done via romhack...

It can and it does--that is the domain of antidiscrimination law. We today have those protections at the federal level for discrimination on the basis of: Race, Religion, National Origin, Sex, Age, and Disability. LGBT status is the last form of socially acceptable discrimination where as a matter of public policy we've said ...well it really isn't any of the federal governments business whether or not this happens. Just leave it to the States. The purported justification being religious liberty (except that if it's your sincerely held religious belief that blacks should be separate from whites the federal law still says fuck off; you can't do that. So that's a cop out argument). We've just decided as a society that we don't want to take anti-LGBT discrimination as seriously as other forms, and I have yet to hear a reason why that isn't itself a mental exercise in discrimination against homosexuals.

Black man walks into a bakery. Baker says "We don't serve your kind. Find yerself a colored bakery, boy" and refuses service. Capitalism at work and something the general economy should take care of, or something that should be against the law?

Russia does a lot of really shady shit. America may have the best conventional army. But they have the best cyber ops, propoganda, and disinformation campaigns--bar none.

The thing about fates is that I find myself not wanting to use units like reina not because they're prepromotes, but because they can only support with Corrin. Ideally--if I'm not grinding but just trying to use all the resources and opportunities for growth that the campaign gives me optimally--I want my active roster to be a 50/50 split of males and females that can all pair off into S-supports, so that I can maximize the number of paralouges that I'm hitting and the number of gen 2 units that I'm unlocking.