badger

Very famous video here haha.

Can you understand him?

My grandfather might as well have been God Almighty. 

I get the farm, but it's rented to solar power for the next 30 years and probably after, construction to start this year. But I guess I was thinking in terms of the health of the thing, were your words for it. It will be worth money, but there will be nothing of the riches in it that I saw. It's a frustrating thought, I guess. I guess I had your whole de-scaled idea in mind writing that also. 

I had a poetical granduncle fairly well regarded walked the land when my grandfather first got it, said of it that it was "undiscovered". My grandmother I heard that from, his sister, I guess she was proud of what she had made too. And then I come along 40 years later. 

I got memories in my head like, we had the biggest bull in our province at one point. A real monster. But one day I was in the top yard with my father and my uncle comes around the corner of an open front shed, the bull the other side of the wall facing us. He gave the bull a heart attack. The bull leapt up, jumped around, gave a roar, had to walk it off out in the yard. No danger, you know, just pure comedy.

We had three rams for guard dogs. They had to go eventually for assault on a postman, typical story. But my uncle had got a new car and was babying it, had it all washed out one day and doors left open to dry. Obviously he came back to the three rams made themselves nice and comfortable in his new car. Uproar.

I woke early one weekend morning on April Fool's. I guess I was 7 or 8. I found a bunch of goats outside in our lawn. Went into the room to my parents, informed them, was shooed off. Was eating cereal and watching TV in the sitting room when I heard my father learn the truth of it. Bastardí my nana called them. Irish for bastards I guess.

We had every sort of animal for a while. My granddad would wash down the yard and the ducks would congregate where the drain would block. We had pigs, geese, chickens, horses, donkeys, sheep. My grandmother would even take greyhound puppies from trainers, raise them up until the time they were ready to start training. You know, it wasn't just livelihood. It was an abundance of life. There's still cats everywhere. Bit murderous those. 

My dad told me a story once about the horses. Back when they were workhorses, come winter, my grandfather would bring them down the forest and set them loose, not to be looking after them over winter. Then came spring and he'd go down again and stand at the edge of the forest and give a whistle and they'd come back to work. Doesn't that sound like magic. I would have loved to see it. Reminds me of fucking Gandalf and Shadowfax.

We've got fields of this type of grass, looking down along them on a summer's day and the sun down on the them, they look to have all the depth of the ocean. 

A taxman thinking he had claim to any of that might be found a thousand years later perfectly preserved in bogland. 

And it's all gone soon. My dad and I worked in power stations. I'm a programmer since. Soon there will be tar roads down through the land. A substation. The fields will be covered over with solar panels. There will be no use for the yard and the houses and they were already falling into disrepair. I spent my childhood on that farm. I had a thousand shortcuts, I don't know if I carved them out myself or what. I had a hundred trees to climb and every one of them mapped out. Was I rich or what. What in the fuck am I gonna give my kids.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. 

I hope this young man finally found some sense. I tried my best with him on DDO, but I'm afraid he did seem a bit of a lost cause. 

All suits and pornographic philosophies. It's a shame, he really did start out such a nice young fellow. 

Seamus Finnegan joins the IRA. Gerry Adams takes up Dumbledore's mantle of finding out the horcruxes. 

thett, you are an artist. 

The shift is making out, yeah. Drunkenly rather than sloppily but same difference, I suppose. 

I jumped on call to work one morning with an Indian lad. Older fellow. He asked me how was that morning and well I was bit hungover too, I answered "not so bad". 

I swear he fell of his chair laughing. "Yep, won't kill myself today, Radha." That's bridging a cultural divide. 

Not so bad, can't be arsed. What in the fuck lol. Where'd you learn it?

You were always my favourite of that mean girls clique, Seventh. 

Legend haha. What's up buddy. 

Who are you? Let me vote for thett. 

11 days later, I am negative. Thank fucking Christ. 

Fuck, I'm bored. 

I went on DDO like yesterday when I saw Danielle reappear wondering how long do I know this chick. 12 years, we're fucking ancient lol. 

Where does the time go, eh. 

The awards system is definitely something. Post likes too. But you could do so much more. An actual trophy/tournies functionality. Maybe a yearly leaderboard as well as an all-time and trophies there too. It is that sort of stuff that makes a website before anything social. Maybe ask Danielle but I remember DDO's leaderboard being hotly contested in early days. Like it's what the site was about. 

I'ma stop, but. A clique or a hangout doesn't much appeal to me, and I don't think it would appeal to many. I come on Dart because people are interesting not friendly. Friendly helps, sure. 

I agree.

Step 1 is to make this site appear on google search.

Step 2 is making it a leaderboard focused site. 

Step 3 is games and all the rest. 

A trophies functionality is a good idea when you go thinking down those lines. Let people fight for their own gold, silver, and bronze trophies to be displayed on their profiles. Gives people hills to crest outside of a leaderboard. But really Dart was birthed from an already dying DDO and shit's on life support ever since, not like to make it lol. I'm just having fun with ideas of what actually makes a website like this successful. 

They shift the focus of the website to something more social. People aren't getting what they click for.

Not saying we shouldn't be friends either, but. 

I think maybe that's just the way of websites like this tbh. I've seen it on mafia websites too. First it's the leaderboard which is the real draw and competition and life of the website. Then once that gets a wall too high to climb the site becomes more of a social thing. But then that's a dying website. I don't really know how you fix that either or should you fix it. 

Dunno.

Visually, I think the site is a work of art tbh. I really hate CSS lol. 

Debate definitely came before community on DDO. Elections are fun and play on cliques and friendships and everything else, and there's carryover here, I mean look at what's participating in this election. It's Burial and Athias and the rest is old DDO. But I guarantee you elections are barrier to entry in the large. If you googled debate, you're looking to debate. Friends comes after. 

I miss old DDO haha. I really do. 

As to site functionality, I think this site is a long ways off. I don't have too much experience with web development and it is a neat bit of CSS and I guess PHP and AJAX. It really is a neat bit of CSS and I hate CSS, so. But I don't think this site ever turns up on a google search and DDO did. If you want this site to grow, that's first stop. Page rank algorithms, rewrite the whole thing in C++, I dunno. I got no idea how you fix it lol. But that is what needs fixing. Then no front page either. There's definitely a huge programming effort to be made there. And I guess that's all too much of an ask really, but then Phil did it once upon a time. If you could leverage a presidency that way, that's what you do. I dunno, I think our problems are too many here lol. I think too much playing house was an issue too, it just was. I get what you're saying too TUF and I don't doubt I would have liked a lot of you, you had your right wing ideologies and I had drug abuse lol. But I don't know. This site needs to be a debate site first. It needs generality. Debate has got that. Elections don't. 

Actually, when I think of DDO's golden age it was a little bit before you guys. We were a very diverse bunch once upon a time. It was more real debaters, I guess, and from all over the globe. Eggleston, Roy Latham, Puck. Danielle, Queen of DDO, of course. We had an-caps and communists, actual cliques around this shit. There would be a new user appear every day wanting to fight about whatever idea. There really would some quality users show up on DDO, and not wanting to play mafia or vote on silly elections, but to debate, to fight for their ideas in debates or in the forums. Really, I think you lot were a detriment to that in a way. It did become cliquey in a more general sense, ended up just a bunch of North Americans, all of an age range, mostly male. I mean, maybe it's nostalgia, but DDO really used to be something. It wasn't just a hangout.

I mean, I don't want to come across too harsh either, there was fun in it too, and maybe it was natural enough. People make friends, that's all. But actually I do think what a site needs for it to grow in the first place is generality. Later DDO lost that. You got any thoughts on that? I don't mean to attack you here either, but I guess I did get a bit hopeful seeing you back lol. I would be interested to hearing your thoughts on it. I do think you guys were a detriment to this site. Elections and hangouts were never what DDO needed. 

Hey Max, long time no see dude. 

\Why do you think this place hasn't yet achieved what DDO did in terms of community? 

I hope you're fucking vaccinated dude lol. Seriously. 

I'm fond of you, Mr. Parrot. 

You must be the chosen one who will do final battle with Bill Gates for all humanity. 

You have actually fallen for the trap here,  Mr. Parrot. This wasn't Bill Gate's big move. Actually, that's still in the works. But he's taken a genius preparation step here in leveraging your mistrust of him during this real pandemic. He put his face behind every vaccine and mandate. He wanted you to push back, he wanted you not to be vaccinated, he wanted you to resist the mandates. And now you're all dead and we're without our champions for what's the come. We're in big trouble. It was 4D chess all along. 

I grew up on a farm wondering after the work that my grandfather did to make it what it was. No diggers, rotavators, none of the modern day machinery that I'm accustomed to. There's stone houses all over the farm, still standing, they boggle my mind even looking at them. It's like a monastery up there. Ditches, dikes, perfectly flat fields. A huge expanse of land. He made hay by hand. He cut turf with the slean. No slotted houses, no milking machines, no slurry spreaders. And the place was immaculate until the day he died. My dad brought him a power hose when he was old and not much left in him and we could have buried him with it. He never left it out of his hands. Long way to come from handpumps and shallow wells. He died of farmer's lung. I couldn't put a number on my inheritance.

I don't much know what the moral of that story is, but I think about it a lot. Especially as a programmer these days. I put hours and hours of work into a thing and there's nothing there. I'll leave behind a bank account. 

You're looking for the presidential campaign threads. 

Yes, unless you yourself are in the porn, that's cheating. 

Still in awe of this post. 

If you get a rise out of one the older guys, it's +5 likes. 

Group masturbation, now a forum game.

Most upvotes = sexiest user.

No under 18's. 

Islam is a religion of terror.

Please more fighting.

I will also say that I think the solutions she writes to her mysteries are completely ludicrous. But characters she does got. 

I just googled some shit and found people trying to make the "I am Lord Voldemort" anagram equivalent from Ron's name.

Ronald Bilius Weasley

I, wise Lord Unslayable

Draco Malfoy plays the foil for Harry, but actually it's all just smoke and mirrors.

Ron Weasley might have been the next Dark Lord. 

I will say that I think J.K. Rowling did some really fascinating things with her characters. Even years later, I can still wonder about them sometimes. There's just this super interesting "better natures" kind of idea permeating the entire series. 

The more I think about it then, the more I think Ron is the point of the entire series. He's the big case study. He's the one with an actual romance. He's the one with the family. He's the actual wizard. Hermione is a muggle-born. Harry is an orphan that's been locked up in a cupboard for so long. It's Ron's life we're getting a look in at. And then he's mostly quiet and in the background. He makes a funny face every now and again. The whole thing is super fucking sneaky. But I honestly think he's such a deep character.

Look, I'm not going to prove it. My brain is too much disorder for writing posts like oro and others do. 

Harry and Voldemort are the extremes. Ron Weasley is everything in between. J.K. Rowling writes really cool characters. 

Cormoran Strike is also pretty cool. 

I have absolutely no idea what you just wrote at me but I expect it was clever. 

You might suppose then that the anxiety of some propels them to spend their days on the internet, in some religion forum, attempting to quash all arguments as to a "God". But they can't escape from themselves.

There's something of an animal caught in a trap chewing off its own leg about it. 

I think that's a lot of fun. 

I would say this is a spectacularly unimaginative argument. The big failing here is working backwards from the idea of some imagined "God". Rather you should work forwards from the idea of a "free will".

We are instincts become thought then projected into eternity. We got nothing innate left in us, except us. Hellfire, then, is the same question of the hot plate, just instead of one action it's every action. Free will is the reason for God. It's the anxiety of being left alone with ourselves. 

I judge Alfred Hitchcock much the same, although I've only ever seen North by Northwest. 

Actually, I nearly watched Psycho one night only my ex walked in on me and another girl. Long story. "Psycho's got nothing on her," was a memorable quote from the night. 

I read The Screwtape Letters and it was a fun book. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe always seemed too limitedly imaginative to me or something. Dorothy and her Tin Man and a yellow brick road kinda shit. I hated that movie. 

Death Note and Code Geass were written for lonely egomaniacs. The former is pretty watchable though.

All I can remember from that movie is the bone scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avjdKTqiVvQ

A Clockwork Orange and Dr. Strangelove are definitely in my top 20 though. 

The first book and a half of Dune are good. The rest is one big galactic wank. 

The prescience stuff is pure nonsense. Literally unreadable. 

Wylted is the Joe Biden of this election. RM is Trump and Hillary. 

Americans really have elevated farcical elections to an artform. 

For me, it's the Sword of Truth series. I don't remember where or when I read it. I know a disappointing series came out, but I remember nothing about it. I remember that people couldn't touch each other for some reason. I barely remember Darken Rahl who I had conflated with old DDO user Ragnar_Rahl. I don't believe I ever did ask him if that's what he was named for.

I've tried to read Sanderson a million times at this stage. I don't know where I'm failing with him, but I will break through eventually. I absolutely loved Sabriel, Lirael, and Abhorsen as a kid. Googled Nix there to find there's a million others, so definitely thanks for that. I got no real recommendations to give really. I'm just sick of waiting for Rothfuss' third book haha. 

Cheers, buddy. 

My big fear about RM is that he will turn this place into some sort of haven for the gays.