arch_8ngel

Yeah, I brought the specifics of Pence's unfitness, in particular, into it. Though I agree that any political filter on this kind of news is bad for everybody. CDC should be providing their own reports, at a level of detail they believe to be useful/actionable, without any political interference.

Giving Pence a hard time over it isn't being disingenuous, at all. At the time Pence dragged his feet on the issue, the medical science was already clear that needle exchanges worked. Doesn't mean it wasn't POLITICALLY controversial, from the view of his supporters, but it was certainly not "controversial" when it came to the science supporting rolling those programs out faster and on a less limited basis.

To act like the studies are unclear in their conclusions is similarly disingenuous.

Do you not recognize that as being a clear marker of a person who doesn't accept the conclusions reached by studies from the medical community, in preference to their own biases? There is a lot of supporting research that comes to the clear conclusion that needle exchanges effectively combat blood-borne diseases and cut down on discarded needles in public places. (aside from serving as an avenue to connect addicts with better support services through having a contact-mechanism) Pence dragging his feet (though eventually capitulating and having limited needle exchanges) materially worsened an AIDS outbreak in his state. That kind of doofus isn't the person you want in charge of a national response to a potential epidemic of any kind.

You get the flu every two years even WITH a flu shot? Or do you not bother to get vaccinated every year?

What do you consider "fairly lethal"? Current statistics (which presumably under-count the true number of infected due to asymptomatic carriers and low-symptom infected) show an approx 2% mortality rate overall, skewed heavily by a 15% mortality rate for the over-65 bracket. The percentage of people that need hospital intervention is a good bit higher than that, though. (10-15% overall)

I was basing my negative assessment of his competence for the job on how there was an AIDS explosion in his state, on his watch, due to actions he had some level of authority over.

Under 10 actually seems like the safest group, so far, for this particular illness.

That is why I said "who knows" at this point since the diagnosis rate is almost certainly lower than the reality, since asymptomatic people can spread it which probably implies a large number of people mistaking it for any other cold and not pursuing an explicit diagnosis or treatment, to end up as part of the larger statistic. By contrast, the baseline for getting the flu lays you out on your ass in a pretty unmistakable way, if you weren't vaccinated. But the other side is that this one is currently estimated as being more transmissible than flu (2+ vs 1.3). Now that it is in the USA, with people turning up with unknown sources, give it two or three weeks and we will ideally have a much better understanding of the numbers without the filter of untrustworthy data from China. Then again, with Pence at the helm as a news filter..."who knows" whether we get full disclosure.

What's crazy is that Pence has WORSE than zero experience in the form of having experience actively making medical crises worse than if he had simply maintained the status quo.

Well, the official stats so far implies a death rate 10x higher than standard strains of the flu. But since it is apparently spread by asymptomatic or low symptom carriers, who knows what the real number is. But yeah, definitely not as bad as SARS or MERS in terms of death rate, just considerably more infectious than either.

Yeah, that along with the whistleblower complaint about health and human services not using adequate protective gear when they repatriated people is really concerning. At this stage the news is almost certainly going to get worse before it gets better. Long term, it will all "be fine" but in the meantime I expect a bit of panic. Heard on the radio that the first case in Rhode Island has been confirmed, so now the east coast is in play. Add to that the apparent news that it spreads without symptoms. The good news in all of this is that no children have died from it at all and apparently tend toward very mild symptoms (including with infants). So practically speaking, parents really only need to worry about the severity of their own symptoms and can at least expect their kids to be fine. Pretty concerned about a guy like Pence being the filter for official news on health related issues though.

I dabbled back in 2nd edition and the beginning of 3rd edition, but I go strictly with boxed games nowadays.

Great movie that everyone should watch twice.

Level 8 was a burned bush. Had multiple mini-bosses (manhandla a couple of rooms over from the entrance, a ghoma - the crab - mid-level, and a 4-headed Gleeok as the boss).

Is there a mobile version? I can't imagine it would work very well if there was. But the PC version is going to have the "longest legs", IMO.

PC?

Shovel Knight includes all of the extra content (Treasure Trove is just the latest add-on that is being advertised, there are multiple others at this point -- all included). The core game is "easy" to beat (assuming you are good at Mega Man and Ducktales), sufficiently challenging to get all of the achievements from playing levels with particular equipment handicaps. The expansion games are quite a bit harder than the core game, due to the unique mechanics and the inherent handicap of playing as the individual bad guys with their idiosyncracies. It is a game that is WELL WORTH the price of admission. Very few games in the last 20 years have managed to strike the balance of being so nostalgic while being so original.

I picked it up, new, in probably 1996 or 1997 for $5 in a computer shop that sold all kinds of miscellaneous components. I was the only one of my friends that still had a 5 1/4" floppy drive, so I remember copying the game to 3 1/2" floppies to share. One of my buddies figured out, pretty early on, that you could age up an alchemist/potion-maker to 85 years old, so that he had TONS of abilities, but then you have to keep him out of combat while he supports your crew with all kinds of potions you'd otherwise never learn how to make. I don't think we ever got very far in the game, though, because there was some kind of critical failure in the game that it would always crash when you ran into some demon encounter. I have it in my GOG catalog now, and I keep meaning to get back into it.

One of these days I'll get around to getting BS Zelda to actually play properly. Back when I first heard of it/downloaded it, the state-of-the-art for getting it to run properly was pretty poor, and I never revisited it. That said, Outlands will always be my "third quest" and "fourth quest"

Meticulous note taking and exploration... I remember when my dad and I beat the 2nd quest and immediately started a new game after the credit roll hoping for a THIRD quest!

Great looking stuff! Even has Darklands! Those shelves really do cover the range of PC RPG and Strategy from the 90's.

Very cool of you to do! Thanks!

Even with "standard-to-the-console" genres, there is a lot of fresh air that new homebrews bring to the table. The toolchains (and hobbyist timelines) that exist nowadays really do a lot to free up creative energy into design nuances that would have been swept aside on the budgets and timelines of the 80's. Now we get to see the real best-of-the-best, in terms of what you get when someone dedicates effectively unlimited "design budget" to a game on the console -- where because it is "a hobby", they can just keep going with it until they get the product where they want it to be. There is still plenty of technical constraint, and then some, of course -- but shifting the equation on deadlines/timelines really does lead to a different class of outcomes, IMO.

It seems like a tricky proposition. But I am definitely in the camp of loving new concepts brought to the old system -- seeing things that nobody either thought of (as a game mechanic) or could figure out (from a technical perspective) back-in-the-day. Enjoying the "what might have been".