It’s a shame smart people abandoned the Church. Romans makes it clear that Gentile Christians are not to be held to the Law of Moses, but that rather extensive part of Deuteronomy that deals with bodily fluids and rashes and stuff makes it equally clear that, even if we’re not meant to follow those exact rules, basic sanitation and disease control is part of the unwritten Law of God. Coupled with the idea that all authority comes from God (not just their particular authority, as this was written at a time when Rome was still ruled by pagans with pretentions of personal godhood), a compelling argument could have been made that staying home, masking up, and getting the vaccine is what Jesus wants you to do.

But there is nobody left who is either able or willing to make that argument.

What’s interesting is how this contradicts Deuteronomy. In that, if a man has “a semenal emission”, he is unclean, and must depart the camp until nightfall, at which point he must wash himself, his clothes, and his bedding with water, at which point he can re-enter. Deuteronomy basically says you have to leave any time you contact any kind of bodily fluid., with the only exception being the blood of a “clean” (kosher) animal that you know how it died. Roadkill: gotta stay outside until nightfall, and then clean up.

That’s because their chief weapon is surprise… surprise and fear.

Although, and I haven’t watched the video, usually when people are singing the praises of the Inquisition, they are usually explicitly not talking about the Spanish Inquisition. Instead, they are talking about the Papal Inquisition, which was a separate institution.

The idea is that, prior to the Papal Inquisition (the professionalization of inquisition), “Heresy” was a charge that was often levied by secular authorities against political enemies, with the “heresy” being a vague charge that could mean anything. The Papacy took that out of their hands, requiring that charges of heresy be investigated and tried by church officials supported by Rome.

Of course, there were definitely problems that the apologists don’t talk about. The accused weren’t told exactly what they were accused of, nor were they allowed to face their accuser. They are often imprisoned for months with no idea why, expected just to confess to whatever it is they did (which resulted in quite a few unrelated confessions). Torture was often used to extract confessions, and though confessions extracted through torture were not allowed to be used as evidence, they had no problem accepting formal confessions given the following day (based on information gained through torture).

That said, if, not knowing who was accusing, you managed to name your accuser as someone who had beef with you, that was often enough to exonerate you. And if you did confess to heresy, all you had to do was say “I won’t do it again”, and you were off the hook… the first time. If they had to come back, you were turned over to secular authorities for punishment… and the secular punishment for heresy was burning (on the Continent; in England it was often hanging).

That said, back to the Spanish inquisition, which was a real piece of work, itself. It was under the control of the King, not the Church, and so was just as political as the ad-hoc institutions of the past. And though Jews were officially not under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition (since the Inquisitions mandate was to investigate heresy, and heresy is deviation within a particular religion, not being a totally different religion), Spain had required all their jews to convert or leave, and so Conversos were often targeted for investigation.

All they have to do is, instead of calling it a “law”, call it “militia regulation” instead. “Militia” is the entire arms bearing populace; if you own a gun, you are, by definition, part of the Militia. And the 2nd amendment doesn’t merely say “everyone has a gun”; it does so in context of maintaining a “well regulated militia”. All the right to “keep and bear arms” does is prevent them from requiring we store our arms in a central armory (which was one of the controversies over the matter in England when the right was in development).

I would say we also have a right to own a car. That doesn’t prevent them from requiring we maintain the capacity to bear responsibility if we should accidentally exercise that right improperly.

Something tells me this isn’t exactly religious.

I’ve probably seen it here more than on Reddit, but that’s because I spend more time in the general gaming community here, while on Reddit I was in the fan community specifically… particularly teslore, where “Duh, TES lore is stupid and random” doesn’t get much traction.

Would you recommend NMS to someone who:

1. Really wants to play Starfield but probably won’t have the necessary hardware for at least a year.

2. Is an old Bethsoft fan, having played, and thoroughly enjoyed, every TES game from Daggerfall to Online, excepting only Battlespire and the phone games.

3. Has been jonesing for some space sandbox for probably a decade at least.

Crypt of the Necrodancer: Roguelike to the beat! Dance pad compatible.

I don’t know much about specs. I just find it fascinating that people are actually defending Bethesda in this post. Where’s the standard anti-Bethesda fandumb pile on?

Is the ban on genetic modification a Federation thing, or is it just a Starfleet thing? They may not be the same thing.

Mario games are all right, except for all the platform jumping.

You don’t need the biggest map ever to make a good game. You do, however, need the biggest map ever to make a good Elder Scrolls game. People referring to BG3 don’t really understand the essence of the Elder Scrolls, a vision the series has pursued all the way back to Arena.

I agree with everything he said. But I’ve also been saying things like that for thirty years. I remember when Morrowind came out complaining about companies using extra processing for shitty 3D graphics instead of sticking with high quality 2d that works perfectly fine and putting that extra processing power to work on better AI or something.

I think the problem is that better graphics is the one thing they can do that will please a mass audience. Sure, there are plenty of other things they could be doing, but I would bet that each of them has a niche appeal that will have fewer fans to spread the cost among. Thus producers of “AAA” titles pretty much by definition have to pursue that mass audience. The question is when they reach that point of diminishing returns and be becomes more profitable to produce lower cost niche titles for smaller audience. And we also have to factor in that part of that “profit” of pleasing that assumption our society has that anything with niche appeal is necessarily “lower” in status than mass appeal stuff.

I think we are approaching that point, if we haven’t already reached it. Indie stuff is becoming more and more popular, and more prevalent. It’s just hard to tell because indie stuff tends to target a smaller but more passionate audience. For example, while I am looking forward to trying Starfield out, I may be too busy playing yet more Stardew Valley to buy it right away, and end up grabbing it in a sale. (I haven’t even really checked if it’ll run on my current gaming laptop.)

We have multiple generations of developers releasing like this. With a few rare exceptions (which are the only games from 15+ years ago most people remember), all games release buggy. Even on console, for every Super Mario Bros. that played the way it was supposed to, there were ten unplayably buggy examples of licensed shovelware. And half of “Nintendo Hard” was just that these games were janky as fuck.

Games are hard to make. Ridiculously huge and complex games are even harder to make. If you think you can do better, please do so.

Murderous at each other, not the player.

Their games have always been as wide as an ocean and shallow as a puddle. That’s what we like about them. Get out of my giant splashy pool!

And yet you keep buying them?

Goddamn, stop doing that and get out of our fandom!

Because fandom is basically a bunch of entitled brats with nothing better to do.

“Whatever reason” being that without the dumbing down, the NPCs were so murderous that, however hilarious it was, it rendered the game unplayable.

People talk about it all the time. Longtime fans just don’t care. I’ve been playing these since Daggerfall. Bethesda Softworks makes a very particular kind of game this is very appealing to some of us, and nobody else makes them like that, not that I’m aware of. You think Skyrim was buggy on release? It’s got nothing on Daggerfall, but I loved it anyway.

Mods make the game better, give them a longevity they wouldn’t otherwise have. Skyrim with Frostfall and a needs mod is almost my dream game. But I was perfectly satisfied with the game on Day 1.