Re: [Official!] Project Horizons Comment Crew Chat thread.

[Frost]

Yeah, I was actually thinking about a scenario where the Iron Giant replaces the Numidium in the early Third Era backstory for ES--with Tiber Septim as Hogarth Hughes, naturally.

"Thu'um's kill. And you don't have to be a Thu'um."

[Harmony Ltd.]

Cool story from an artist I like:

http://english.bouletcorp.com/2015/02/02/24-hours-comic-the-gaeneviad/

[Harmony Ltd.]

On another subject, do we know when Season 5 is supposed to start airing?

I never watch the season trailers and generally avoid the speculations that follow. Helps keeping things "fresh" when they finally come out.

[Guest]

We were talking about spartan sexuality a while back and I forgot to link this.

http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Maria-062

Maria is a notable exception when it comes to Spartans. Not only does she express wanting to start a family which points to her having some kind of sexuality but she claims to have retired. Something I didn't think was even an option for spartans.

Still pretty certain the Chief is asexual.

[Whiskey Rebellion]

Still pretty certain the Chief is asexual.

I'd rather think he's a depraved pansexual who is forced to hide his true self by the medieval Don't Ask Don't Tell regulations of the UNSC. Also, he's a furry.

On another subject, do we know when Season 5 is supposed to start airing?

I never watch the season trailers and generally avoid the speculations that follow. Helps keeping things "fresh" when they finally come out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Little_Pony:_Friendship_Is_Magic_%28season_5%29

It's gonna be airing at some point in the second quarter of this year.

[Harmony Ltd.]

So from April onward?

And given it's the friggin' 26th century and even the current day US Armed Forces repealled DADT, I kind of doubt the UNSC would have instituted such policies.

... Unless the United Earth Government instuted some kind of drastic pro-life policies to sustain the colonization of new worlds?

[Whiskey Rebellion]

So from April onward?

Unless Hasbro has been taking lessons from Valve, which would actually be amazing now that I think about it, yeah.

And given it's the friggin' 26th century and even the current day US Armed Forces repealed DADT, I kind of doubt the UNSC would have instituted such policies.

... Unless the United Earth Government instuted some kind of drastic pro-life policies to sustain the colonization of new worlds?

I figured that what with all the neocolonialism happening, everyone would get back to their roots as savages pretending to be civilised. Their government is controlled by the military, so that's a check. They kidnap children and use them as fierce warriors, that's a check. They're racist as fuck, that's a big ol' check. I don't see why the deep-set homophobia in our society wouldn't come to the surface, especially if the Islamic states had any say in the matter.

[Guest]

They're racist as fuck, that's a big ol' check.

Citation needed.

[Whiskey Rebellion]

They're racist as fuck, that's a big ol' check.

Citation needed.

Let's take a look at the Sangheili, shall we?

"They resent that the humans have assigned the label "Elite" to them (along with many other, far more derogatory names, such as Squid-head, Split Lip, etc)."

Sauce: http://www.halopedia.org/Sangheili#Naming

This is similar to the practice to the American military referring to the Koreans as "gooks", which is racist.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Semantic pedantry, but that'd actually be straight-up colonialism, as neo-colonialism is defined as the means by which ex-Empires continue to exploit, in indirect ways, their now nominally independent ex-colonies.

This aside, I'm not sure you would even need to start going back socially like that to promote demographic growth. Even if 15% of the population somehow didn't make kids (and I suspect but have no proofs that the proportion may actually be higher in current day 1st world countries), for whatever reasons; you'd just need the right incentives to push people to have more than 4 kids per couple - so two kids per capita for 85% of the population.

With 1st world standards of healthcare (so not the US' :v ), and the associated rate of infant mortality, that mean that the population would nearly double each generation.

If you promote early marriage / pregnancies, that'd mean something like your population growing something like 16 times in size every centuries.

And that's just for an average fertility rate of 4 kids per woman, assuming a sex ratio of 50%.

I'll let you do the math for a fertility rate of 5 to 8 kids.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Ps: that rhythm of growth (16 times growth per century) means a human population being 65,536 times what in was in 2100 by 2500.

It is left at the reader's appreciation what it might mean in the context of a space-faring, colonialist species.

[Guest]

I figured that what with all the neocolonialism happening, everyone would get back to their roots as savages pretending to be civilised. Their government is controlled by the military, so that's a check. They kidnap children and use them as fierce warriors, that's a check. They're racist as fuck, that's a big ol' check. I don't see why the deep-set homophobia in our society wouldn't come to the surface, especially if the Islamic states had any say in the matter.

But here you seem to be claiming the UNSC is being racist towards it's own species (Again citation needed), not the aliens who have been known to corral humans for food. I think not being PC towards them is rather kind considering.

[Whiskey Rebellion]

Semantic pedantry, but that'd actually be straight-up colonialism, as neo-colonialism is defined as the means by which ex-Empires continue to exploit, in indirect ways, their now nominally independent ex-colonies.

Actually didn't know that.

Learned.

10/10 would learn again.

This aside, I'm not sure you would even need to start going back socially like that to promote demographic growth. Even if 15% of the population somehow didn't make kids (and I suspect but have no proofs that the proportion may actually be higher in current day 1st world countries), for whatever reasons; you'd just need the right incentives to push people to have more than 4 kids per couple - so two kids per capita for 85% of the population.

With 1st world standards of healthcare (so not the US' :v ), and the associated rate of infant mortality, that mean that the population would nearly double each generation.

If you promote early marriage / pregnancies, that'd mean something like your population growing something like 16 times in size every centuries.

And that's just for an average fertility rate of 4 kids per woman, assuming a sex ratio of 50%.

I'll let you do the math for a fertility rate of 5 to 8 kids.

That's a lot of kids. I remain unable to do simple multiplication (thanks, American educational system), but I can tell that that is a very large number. Maybe even unnecessarily large.

Ps: that rhythm of growth (16 times growth per century) means a human population being 65,536 times what in was in 2100 by 2500.

It is left at the reader's appreciation what it might mean in the context of a space-faring, colonialist species.

Oh, free math. Yeah, unnecessarily large. This is especially egregious when one takes into account the fact that we're already overpopulated. I feel like there might be too many people for even the colonies.

Unless you take into account the presumably statistical numbers of fatalities from the war. WWII helped us stave off overpopulation in Europe, so maybe that worked in the same way. Many colonies were glassed, after all. Let's look at the statistics:

http://www.halopedia.org/Earth

Population:

• Approx. 10 billion (pre-Battle of Earth)
  
• Approx. 200 million (Post-Battle of Earth)
  
• Several billion (late 2553)
  

Yeah, I think we're good.

But here you seem to be claiming the UNSC is being racist towards it's own species (Again citation needed), not the aliens who have been known to corral humans for food. I think not being PC towards them is rather kind considering.

Didn't mean to imply that. They seem to be just as, if not more racially egalitarian than our current society.

As for not being PC, it's still racist, even if it's justified. The Aztecs sacrificed children to their gods, but calling them "dirty redskins" or whatever would be just rude.

[Whiskey Rebellion]

With 1st world standards of healthcare (so not the US' :v )

Not entirely related, but I've been wondering recently about the viability of my current plan of moving to a country with universal healthcare should I, my spouse or child end up with a seriously expensive illness like cancer.

Not positive about this, but I'm fairly sure that most of them require you to have citizenship.

I know that the UK doesn't. I know a British guy who's really mad about this, since the Romanians are coming in and leaching off their tax pounds.

So, if it happens, go to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

This One:

[Stringtheory]

Ps: that rhythm of growth (16 times growth per century) means a human population being 65,536 times what in was in 2100 by 2500.

It is left at the reader's appreciation what it might mean in the context of a space-faring, colonialist species.

And yet in sci-fi humans are usually middle of the pack when it comes to birth-rate, nope I want to see a universe where we're the Zerg in the minds of other races.

[Guest]

As for not being PC, it's still racist, even if it's justified. The Aztecs sacrificed children to their gods, but calling them "dirty redskins" or whatever would be just rude.

You mean people slurring others because of their ancestry and not their own actions? That doesn't apply to the UNSC.

http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/MJOLNIR_Powered_Assault_Armor/Helioskrill

They don't refer to the creator as the hinge head prodigy, the squid face prodigy, or the split lip prodigy. They refer to her as the Sangheili prodigy.

[Whiskey Rebellion]

As for not being PC, it's still racist, even if it's justified. The Aztecs sacrificed children to their gods, but calling them "dirty redskins" or whatever would be just rude.

You mean people slurring others because of their ancestry and not their own actions? That doesn't apply to the UNSC.

http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/MJOLNIR_Powered_Assault_Armor/Helioskrill

They don't refer to the creator as the hinge head prodigy, the squid face prodigy, or the split lip prodigy. They refer to her as the Sangheili prodigy.

The US government never referred to the Koreans as "gooks". That was the job of the common soldier. The government usually isn't the one saying that. Let's take another example:

"Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons."

The Constitution didn't explicitly state that "all other Persons" were the black slaves. That would have been impolite.

[Harmony Ltd.]

On the other hand, if we assume an average fertility rate of 2.01 kids per women, (France current fertility rate - of note, Turkey's is 2.06, the US' is 1.88, and the UK's is 1.9 according to google), expanded to all women (so taking into account the proportion of non-fertile women); assuming both kids are born by the time the mother is 25 and handwaving infant mortality...

This gives us a 0.5% natural growth rate per 25 years. A roughly 2% growth rate per century.

A 2.5 fertility rate (equivalent to India's according to wikipedia), gives us a 25% rate of natural growth per 25 years, or 244% per century. That's a 34-35 times growth in the span of 4 centuries.

In reality, if we take into account the various death & other variables, the actual growth would likely be less. I'd eye-ball it as 2 times growth per century, so 16 times growth for 4 centuries.


I suspect that Halo-verse humanity may wang to build additional pylons to sustain its growth. But there's no need to ban abortions or non-hetero relationships for that. Just offer money for babies and / or a good social safety net for parents to be able to raise kids easily.

[Harmony Ltd.]

With 1st world standards of healthcare (so not the US' :v )

Not related, but I've been wondering recently about the viability of my current plan of moving to a country with universal healthcare should I, my spouse or child end up with a seriously expensive illness like cancer.

Well, as a nuclear industry worker you may be able to find a job in France. That'd be a must if you want to live here.

As far as I know, foreigners need to have a worker permit and a stable job to "officially" emigrate in European countries. Not sure about that, though.

The other alternative is marrying a European Citizen, but I somehow doubt that's the solution you're looking for.

[Whiskey Rebellion]

So, no polygamy? What about arranged marriages of infants?

http://bit.ly/1zUu82H

[Harmony Ltd.]

I think there might be quite a number of job openings in cyber-security, yes. I suppose most of them will involve either big corporations or the public sector. Either way, your best chance would be to look up toward the companies specialized in renting people working in the fields of IT and CS to other companies - AFAIK most companies have for policies to outsource large part of their IT to these companies (see: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_technology_consulting )

As for bigamy and polygamy, it is illegal in France, and I suspect in the rest of the UE. Arranged marriage as well, I think.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Speaking of demographics, apparently we're already something like 200 millions people short of being 8 billions people on Earth at this date.

Let us remember that we weren't even 7 billions fifteen years ago...

[Harmony Ltd.]

I retract my previous post, my informations were false.

[Frost]

As for not being PC, it's still racist, even if it's justified. The Aztecs sacrificed children to their gods, but calling them "dirty redskins" or whatever would be just rude.

We also tend to call Islamic insurgents "Hajis", since anyone who makes the pilgrimage to Mecca is afforded the honorific of "Haj-". We also called Germans "Krauts", Chinese "Chinks", Russians "Ivans" and Japanese "Japs". We attach nicknames to everything--LMG's are "pigs", APC's and tanks are "tracks", Artillery is "Arty" and Cavs are "Gay". The nicknames are no more racist slurs than calling an American a "Yankee" or "Yank". They just (still) implicitly carry the vitriol from the time when they were commonly used--when said "Gooks" and "Yanks", "Krauts" and "Ivans", "Japs" and "Chinks" were all trying to shoot each other in the fucking face (Which seems a touch more rude than insensitive ethnic nickname to me, personally)

And if it's not PC.....okay? The Army, at the basic level, has never been PC, even when it's not being malicious. An ongoing joke is my (black) team leader banning any more than two white dudes from gathering without a non-white supervisor to prevent lynch mobs from forming. An Asian team leader and a redneck squad leader call each other "Miyagi" and "Bubbles". Every time that team leader mentions dying, I tell him "It's okay, there's two billion more where you came from."

The military isn't polite, isn't PC and isn't particularly nice. That's it's nature. I think the UNSC can be forgiven for not being racially sensitive to the people whom, on what by all accounts is a unilateral species-wide level, they are currently stopping from obliterating humanity

[Harmony Ltd.]

Ps: that rhythm of growth (16 times growth per century) means a human population being 65,536 times what in was in 2100 by 2500.

It is left at the reader's appreciation what it might mean in the context of a space-faring, colonialist species.

And yet in sci-fi humans are usually middle of the pack when it comes to birth-rate, nope I want to see a universe where we're the Zerg in the minds of other races.

Warhammer 40K?

[Frost]

Ps: that rhythm of growth (16 times growth per century) means a human population being 65,536 times what in was in 2100 by 2500.

It is left at the reader's appreciation what it might mean in the context of a space-faring, colonialist species.

And yet in sci-fi humans are usually middle of the pack when it comes to birth-rate, nope I want to see a universe where we're the Zerg in the minds of other races.

Considering the birthrate of developing vs. developed nations, I'd think that the outrageous expansion would only be on the newly-formed colonies (which would be fairly few, due to expenses and such) while the developed worlds would have far more stable populations with maintained numbers or controlled growth.

[Scienza]

Hey Scienza!

I can't even handle my want.

I should probably grab that bundle before it's gone since I heard that Analogue is fantastic.

[Katarn]

@Sicked
It's still optional you just found the place where you can use them. That's it.

[Katarn]

Go through mine, that's right under waterfall (near one of your camps) and take to the left in mine. You will know if you took the right way, if upon exit from mine you'll find observer skull. Take to the left on ridge, below you'll find enemy's camp..big doors to the left is temple.

[Valikdu]

I am not a particularly good finder;

No, it's just that the map is really convoluted. I've spent like 4 hours trying to find everything on that map, then took a break from DA:I (still on the break).

The shards aren't a real plot point, I think. They're just used to unlock rooms in that temple, and you find loot in each room. Maybe there's a ton of epix in the last room (can't really imagine myself reaching that...)

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