Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@Tyranexx Sorry to hear, indeed that does happen. Personally, I usually just do voice chatting with my friend we play, it leaves out the players who behave that way. If it's with randoms, I usually avoid using chat.

@NEStalgia I'm in Japan for a few reasons, but going to school sick isn't one of them. lol

No, I would say the most important factor was the fact that my parents didn't allow me to slack off. I was raised in a very cost-benefit manner. If I did well at school I was rewarded, if I did poorly I was punished. As a result it taught me to want to do well because it would earn me things I wanted.

On the other hand though, it has totally killed my motivation to do anything that lacks a reward and I have no respect for any rules that lack a clear punishment. shrugs

The fact that Japan isn't big on the punishment/reward thing in school has been a source of constant frustration to me. I find myself silently agreeing with misbehaving students because from their point of view, they have no reason to listen to teachers if they don't care about their grade. Until the end of jr. high school, unless the student does something bad enough to warrant police involvement, the worst thing a teacher can do is yell at the student or tell their parents - and probably 9 times out of 10 students who misbehave at school already have apathetic parents...

#rambling

@HobbitGamer glad to hear your mom's doing better and getting in some links awakening in. 3 more days for me. My wife has pneumonia now and caught what I had. What a combo. Poor thing.

@BruceCM Well... not as bad in the UK... even over here across the pond, we know all about the infamous BBC cutting room floor...

On a side note: corrected the Star Trek kerfuffle...

@Tyranexx I'm just going to assume that the whole eggplant thing, besides being incredibly infantile, is also a sign on the wall, regarding the ever so steadily growing march of the vegetarian and vegan army...

People using vegetables instead of meat-like metaphors for people's appendages and so on, pffff...

I saw YT vids of Untitled Goose Game today..... I NOW MUST HAZ GAME

Soo many sick people. Hope everyone gets to feeling better! And we haven't even hit fly season just yet.

@BruceCM With my now better internet, online gaming is an experiment I'm more willing to try.

@Sunsy For me it depends. I often don't do voice chat due to privacy reasons, but things like dungeons in games like WoW do require some text communication.

@ThanosReXXX I'm assuming that was the first emoji someone thought of lol. It was a playful conversation between some acquaintances. One was being a (intentional word swap here) self-professed duck. Someone else in the channel then responded with the eggplant. XD

I could survive short term as a vegetarian I think - I have a "plant day" every once in awhile just for the heck of it - but could not ever be vegan. I like some types of meat too much lol.

@Tyranexx Understandable. Though voice chat is just me and my friend (this is someone I know in real life), it's usually through my laptop. I could see that, I'd imagine dungeons in WoW take a bit of work.

@Ninfan Remember getting that much VR in 7 to rev up my golden swag kart to have when I streetpassed people at the New York Comic Con that one year. Also it's rare now to see "Join game" on my 3ds friends list nowadays, so I decided to swooce right into the race.

@SheldonRandoms how long is the new nintendo 3DS out , I thought there would still be alot of friends still to join in on . Are you an actor ???

@SheldonRandoms 3DS at conventions was such a fun time. Back in 2014 I was at a convention in San Antonio, Texas and no lie, I could sit on a bench and had endless streetpasses. By the time I finished checking on batch of 10, another 10 were waiting! Streetpass is probably my all time favorite gimmick. Over the years I carried my 3DS everywhere I managed over 5000 passes, collected every prefecture in Japan, most American states, and about half of Europe. Something like 360 birthdays too.

@Heavyarms55 maybe you really should be in Korea......

I'm the opposite of that in that i tend to be now interested in the journey than the result. The result is either boring or depressing. I'm just interested in whatever interests me rather than a reward.

I'm totally opposite in punishment as well. For me "should" comes above all else.... Punishment shouldn't even be a consideration. The "Its only wrong if you get caught" mentality is the worst thing to infect civilization since the great pestilence.

@Ninfan New 3ds has been out for years now, however most have switched (switch noise) over to the Switch as their portable gaming device (myself included). My friends list shows hardly anyone has been online within the last 10 days on their 3ds.

@Heavyarms55 Indeed! The green light would never stop glowing back when I went to the NYCC which was swell for 3ds games I hardly got hits for, however when I passed by the convention years later with my 3ds on me, didn't get a single hit or anything. I'd imagine now the amount of streetpasses would be way smaller compared to back then, but at least I got all the puzzle pieces I needed for those panels (which were lost when my 3ds broke).

@NEStalgia Oh don't misunderstand, I absolutely love Japan and wouldn't trade it for the rest of the world.

And it's not the "It's only wrong if I get caught" mentality, it's cost vs benefit or consequence vs reward. Looking at my situation is doing A going to be more beneficial than harmful and I consider that statement in general, not just to me because my actions affect more than myself, but I understand that because I was taught it. It was made clear to me that rules exist for a reason, that doing certain things has a negative impact on myself or those around me. That's the purpose of punishments and rewards or cost/benefit.

If there is no negative impact for doing something bad or reward for doing something good, how is one to judge something? A rule with no consequences for violating it or rewards for following it is nothing more than an empty suggestion.

If a student in school is allowed to misbehave and is not punished for it, what reason does said student have for changing their behavior? A teacher can hope that the misbehavior will annoy other students sufficiently that they will pressure the trouble maker into behaving but in my experience that just demonstrates to students that they too are free to break that rule. On the other hand, a lack of reward for good behavior strips motivation to excel.

You talk about "should" but how are kids expected to learn what is acceptable in the absence of punishment or reward? The way I understand "should" is entirely based on cost benefit both to myself and those around me. Rules serve as a guideline in that process. Punishment is just one factor.

Let me give you an example: I wake up for work in the morning. I'm tired, grumpy and don't feel like going in. But I understand that I should still do it, despite the temptation to lie and call in sick. I understand that breaking those rules about lying and skipping work would inconvenience my coworkers, set a bad example for my students, jeopardize my employment and generally be a bad idea. On the other hand I know that being a good worker helps others and myself, it's beneficial to me not to lie and skip work more than it would be to do so.

I do not understand how people can learn "should" without that benchmark.

@Heavyarms55
You are japanese ?
Or living there for work? Study? Love?

@DenDen I live and work here. From the US originally.

I have a pretty good internet connection, @Tyranexx .... But it's effectively only the XBox games that have that side I could do While I haven't played much of games which really have that, yet, so want to do more offline, so I have an idea what I'm doing
Was that auto-correct that changed it to start @ThanosReXXX ?

@Tyranexx Well, I'll go one step further and say that the vegan/vegetarian army has also infiltrated Google, much as it has already invaded Apple, thanks to literal nutcase and fruitarian Steve Jobs. Brilliant man, yes, but also brilliantly insane at the same time.

I'm only half-serious, though. But it IS strange that the fruit and vegetable emojis, especially those like the eggplant, were available before there was ever an emoji of a hotdog or a sausage, which retro-thinking me would think to be far more appropriate.

Totally agreed on variation in diet, although I actually do try to have more meat-less days. Sometimes
I semi-cheat by replacing meat with fish, and sometimes by simply having less meat ingredients like ground beef/minced meat or chicken morsels in my stir fry dishes, so that it's more like a vegetable stir-fry with some meat, instead of the other way around or equal parts meat and vegetables. And on some days, I skip meat altogether.

In these ways, I've already reduced my overall meat intake by around 30 percent, which is more than good enough, far as I'm concerned.

I already eat more than enough fresh foods and vegetables, and I'm mindful of the environment as well, separating my waste/garbage into paper, plastics and organic waste, and at some point, mindfulness turns into a rigid diet, which I don't want to have or do. We also actually have to enjoy live, it's already short enough as it is, without putting all kinds of restrictions on ourselves.

And where it concerns things that are considered bad or less healthy for you, I always apply moderation, which also works perfectly. I don't eat pizza or burgers and fries every week, but probably only once or twice a month, and I generally only drink alcohol in the weekend, mostly on Saturday, unless there's a party or a birthday somewhere, in which case it might be two days, but never more than that.

So, unless I'm going to be suffering from some kind of meat allergy in the (near) future, I will never turn full vegetarian, let alone vegan. WAY too rigid, and not at all an enjoyable way of living. If I remember correctly,
I would probably be what some label as a "flexitarian".

@BruceCM No, just an overlooked typo. I don't post comments on NLife with my smart phone, only from my PC.
I find the mobile site user-unfriendly in regards to scrolling through comments and replying to multiple people at once. And I prefer an actual keyboard.

Oh, right, @ThanosReXXX .... My only access to the internet for years was my Android phone, so I'm used to that It's a lot easier than Edge on XBox, with only the controller!
My parents have tablets & Dad insisted on getting a Bluetooth keyboard for his, which he likes for emails but otherwise touch-screen works well

@Heavyarms55 I think these two paragraphs convey fundamentally different ideas:
"If there is no negative impact for doing something bad or reward for doing something good, how is one to judge something? A rule with no consequences for violating it or rewards for following it is nothing more than an empty suggestion."

"If a student in school is allowed to misbehave and is not punished for it, what reason does said student have for changing their behavior? A teacher can hope that the misbehavior will annoy other students sufficiently that they will pressure the trouble maker into behaving but in my experience that just demonstrates to students that they too are free to break that rule. On the other hand, a lack of reward for good behavior strips motivation to excel."

The first reminds me of a conversation I once had with a philosophy & sociology professor many eons ago. She posited that relying on reward/punishment as a means of determining behavior was effectively the limits of the simple minded masses, and the result of a lack of a high level of intellectual reasoning. It's a basic level of reasoning on the level of animals and small children. She was as dismayed as I that that seems to be the limits of most people's reasoning in the world. I always consider that topic with clenched fists. I understand that is how most people operate, and thus requires reward/punishment in place to stay in line. And yet I lament that reality and am continuously infuriated by it.

That applies to properly raised adults, however. The second paragraph, though, is a little different. When speaking specifically of children, they do need to be trained with such a system, as they certainly have not yet developed a high level of reason. For children and dogs, I support the idea that you need punishments in place to train them. For adults, I would hope their level of reason should move beyond that childhood training.

Or put broader: I'd agree that a rule needs to be enforced to be effective, however, a civilization that relies on the enforcement of said rules to keep the population in line, as opposed to a society that simply chooses to adhere to those rules regardless of enforcement isn't really a civilization at all.

So, ideally, @NEStalgia ... No laws or police, etc? I don't think society will ever get to that point! Although most people, generally, are law-abiding, it's hard to say how much the consequences make them so If there weren't laws, police, etc, would they still carry on the same way?