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14:00
Martin the Warrior was the best
I liked the Redwall books as a kid. As with most fiction, I remember almost nothing about it, though.
@fredley Sunflash? Not sure.
I feel like the books I remember most about are the Ender books, but only because of how off the rails they get
@StrixVaria Yeah.
Xenocide is where it gets bonkers I think. Or maybe it was Speaker for the Dead?
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14:00
I read a lot of the Redwall books in HS, everything up to The Taggerung I think
@twobugs Ender's Game is great. Speaker for the Dead is great. The rest of that series is nope.
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but yeah, forgotten most of it
@twobugs Speaker for the Dead is already pretty bonkers.
But it's also really good.
Ferret kid is a jerk in the beginning sure, but who wouldn't be a jerk when everyone you grew up with treats you like trash? And then they're all surprised when he goes villainy.
@StrixVaria Yeah, I really liked it until a few completely nonsense things happened
It was probably Xenocide that got me out of it
14:01
It's too bad Orson Scott Card turned out to be a sociopathic fuckhead.
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@StrixVaria My friend is born-again, I'm not sure if her cousin is or not. My friend's rather conservative in those regards. I think her cousin's less so, but I just wanted to get an idea. Thanks for the info!
Yeah. Card is completely insane. Guy should just stick to writing sci-fi instead of trying to comment on anything.
@FAE I don't actually know what that implies, so I'll let you make the final judgment with the info I gave. Regardless of your recommendation for your friend, you should read it.
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I refuse to recommend Card to anyone anymore if it means they'll be giving him money.
He was even being considered to write Superman comics, but thankfully DC caved after the huge backlash
I say "considered", but he was announced as the new writer I think
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14:03
Like, I'm okay with separating an artist from their work, etc. etc. if their values aren't coming through their work as if they're just using their characters as mouthpieces (OSC in the Ender's Shadow series or anything Terry Goodkind) but OSC is an activist with his money, and that makes a difference to me.
@FAE Yeah, I agree.
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@StrixVaria Yeah, I want to, I've got like a to-read bookshelf and right now I've been mostly on a sci-fi kick. Currently working my way through John Scalzi's Old Man's War series, among other things.
@FAE I've read the first two Sword of Truth books and didn't notice much of this. It has to be really blatant for me to pick up on it, though. Like in Ender's Shadow!
I see it just like with Chik-Fil-A. They're entitled to their own views, but if they're going to be using my money towards causes I don't support, I'm going to eat elsewhere.
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@StrixVaria It gets worse later on. Are you a fan of Objectivism?
aka Ayn Rand's thing?
14:05
I've looked into it a bit, but never quite understood what it is.
@FAE Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Please tell me this is a joke.
The wikipedia description is too wordy.
> 1. Be a jerk to everyone.
> 2. ???
> 3. Profit
@StrixVaria I hate reading, especially about books
Does OSC really turn a sci fi series into Atlas Shrugged
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14:06
@StrixVaria I can sum it up for you. CAPITALISM GOOD, COMMUNISM BAD, BE SELFISH ABOVE ALL ELSE.
@FAE No
@FAE Ew.
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@StrixVaria It's very popular among American Libertarian Conservatives. Rand Paul was named after Ayn Rand, if that gives you any idea.
@StrixVaria Yup. Basically the premise is you should put yourself first in all situations and screw people over with abandon, because you're better than them.
I have... let me see. About half a dozen messaging apps installed on my phone
14:07
@FAE He claims he wasn't, but he thoroughly enjoys the comparison, which is hardly any better.
@FAE As far as I can tell, the only problem with communism is that it doesn't account for human nature.
WhatsApp. Facebook Messenger. Google Hangouts. Android Messages. WeChat. Steam.
And is thus hopelessly flawed.
@PrivatePansy RIP privacy
And I also chat with you guys through my browser
14:08
@FAE Is he like the opposite of Bernie Sanders?
Atlas Shrugged, if memory serves, is about a bunch of business owners who decide that they're the most important people in the world and start their own retreat and the rest of the world explodes without them and this goes on for hundreds of pages of really awful and preachy tirades
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It's a philosophy that also tends to be very popular with teenagers when they first are exposed to it through her books because, well, face it, when we're teens and immature and still figuring ourselves out, we're pretty drawn to the idea that we, as Special Snowflakes, should be putting ourselves before everyone else.
@twobugs Sounds about right.
0
Q: How to automatically go to the next level?

NukesPlusI have seen people on Twitch switching to the next level of Clicker Heroes when they are AFK. I would really want to have this feature as I think that it is quite troublesome to click to the next stage every time I finish it. Do I need to type a code? Please include it if I need one. I am play...

I really wish Windows Phone's unified messaging was in Android
14:09
Here's a famous quote I'll just leave here
> “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
5
Incidentally, BioShock's story was based on one of Ayn Rand's books... I think it was Atlas Shrugged, which @twobugs just mentioned.
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@twobugs So fun story, I had to choose an author to write my 11th grade term paper about and I wasn't sure who to choose, so my teacher recommended Ayn Rand to me. I read The Fountainhead and tried to make it through Atlas Shrugged and couldn't. It was the only book I used Cliff's Notes for in HS. It is one of only two books I have ever stopped reading.
@FAE It's the opposite of socialism, where the rich are expected to give a portion of what they don't need to support the poor. Objectivism is basically "Fuck over the poor as much as possible, become richer."
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@fredley Yep. It's pretty horrifying.
> "But it's something you're supposed to grow out of, like ska music or handjobs."
14:10
@Powerlord If the main antagonist's name didn't give it away...
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Anyway, my point, @Strix, is that Terry Goodkind is an Objectivist and that's what SoT ends up focusing on. He also claims that SoT "isn't fantasy" because "it's an Objectivist series".
@Powerlord Yeah, Andrew Ryan is clearly influenced by Objectivism. But there are people who think Andrew Ryan was a good guy, and it was everyone else who ruined his perfect utopia...
@PrivatePansy ...or the fact that the guy telling you about the place is named Atlas?
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@twobugs Yeah, Andrew Ryan was also named after Ayn Rand.
@FAE I guess he probably ramps it up past where I got, then.
The first book had a character acting pretty selflessly at one key plot point.
14:11
@FAE So Bioshock is a R63 fanfic... gotcha
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@StrixVaria Yeah, especially by book 6 and afterwards. I read up through book 9. I still sometimes feel like I should finish the series (sunk cost fallacy) but then I remembered that I really wasn't enjoying it at that point.
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@StrixVaria I was a really big fan of the series for a while too. I even got a t-shirt way back from their website that says "Wizard's First Rule" on the front and "People are stupid" on the back.
@fredley To be fair, the quote divorced from the speaker isn't half-bad.
@PrivatePansy Well, it basically uses that as a backdrop for the distopia
14:13
@fredley i would expect nothing less from walt
Walter White Disney
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The SoT series ends up getting super preachy and his characters end up just mouthpieces for Objectivist philosophy and yeah, I didn't enjoy that.
@FAE It's hard to imagine a book you can't finish ... I'm trying to thinking of one, and can't. I made it through the whole Bible (yes, both testaments), through Mein Kampf, through 20-something books of the Gor series, through Malleus Maleficarum (translated, though; my Latin isn't good enough for the original), ... It wasn't always easy, but I did it.
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@MartinSojka That's a lot of Gor. I've never read it myself, but I'm familiar with it. Houseplaaaaaaant.
14:16
@MartinSojka The last book I didn't finish was Moby Dick in middle school
@MartinSojka Sounds like you have the literary equivalent of masochism
@PrivatePansy :D
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@MartinSojka I have not finished Atlas Shrugged and I also did not finish The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer.
@MartinSojka If a book is boring me, then I stop reading it. Because there is an effectively infinite supply of other books that I can choose from to try instead.
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Even though the latter is supposedly some sort of masterpiece of American literature.
14:17
> Comcast is working hard to reduce those negative customer experiences we keep hearing about.
@Powerlord ah, they're working on censorship?
A user comment about why Comcast bought Vox Media
0
Q: Is there any disadvantage to promoting early?

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I'm trying really really hard to get into China Mieville's Iron Council right now, and I just can't
@PrivatePansy Speaking of which, I should read Venus in Furs one day. Still missing that one.
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14:19
But I found it boring and unengaging to read and I couldn't stand reading about anyone in it and it made me just start dreading reading, and I was like ugh, okay, no more.
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@MartinSojka That's on my to-read as well.
@StrixVaria yes
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The Executioner's Song won a Pulitzer and everything but I just couldn't do it.
@FAE Reminds me of reading through Death of a Salesman. By the middle I wished it was Horrible, Painful, Gruesome Death of Every Single Character As Well As the Author.
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14:20
Also the only reason I made it through Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was because I had it in audiobook and could somewhat zone out.
@FAE This is another tell for me. If a book makes me try to find anything else to do other than read that book, then it's time to find a new book.
That happened with Wheel of Time.
That also happened with The Blade Itself, which I can't recommend against reading enough.
I have no idea how that book has good reviews.
I literally threw my copy in the garbage.
Because I didn't want some unfortunate soul at the library to find it if I donated it.
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@MartinSojka The Executioner's Song is non-fiction but sort of fictionish, it's weird. The author took a lot of creative liberties in telling the story and the whole story behind the story would be interesting if everyone in it maybe weren't so reprehensible. Maybe that's how they really were, maybe all those people really were that awful, but I don't have to keep reading about them.
You guys are making me want to get back into reading
Haruki Murakami?
14:23
I love his stuff. Cool guy.
@twobugs School destroyed every interest I had in reading
I should branch out more, though.
I love it. It takes me out of my comfort zone, but I'm still hooked.
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@fredley I keep meaning to read his stuff
I recently finished GoT,t hey were fun
but I'm not as well read as you guys :/
14:24
@FAE Try some of his short stories.
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I'm not really interested in reading GoT, myself
@5pike I guess I'm lucky because I had a pretty positive school reading experience. The worst stuff was probably really old philosophical texts
Easy place to start
@FAE That was a bit too much of a chore for me.
@djsmiley2k The 4th book put me to sleep.
Magical realism is a great genre, though. Murakami, Borges, etc...
14:25
So much of what was going on was only indirectly related to stuff.
I could never get past it.
Great and accessible fiction
@StrixVaria which was the 4th?
Also, another one for the "I read through it, and I wish the main character all the worst" list: Effi Briest. I guess that's mostly a warning for those here who can read German though.
I'm thinking boat fight
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14:25
@fredley He's got kind of an excessive amount of unnecessary rape that I don't really want to read about and his opinions in regards to writing rape are pretty ugh to me, so yeah.
with giant chain
@djsmiley2k Feast for Crows. It's the one where Arya has about 3 chapters and no other interesting characters have any chapters ever.
@twobugs We had to read from the "beginning" of literature to the "end" starting with the epos Parzival. It was the abridged version, but damn, was that hard
@StrixVaria Yeah, I slept through that one. None of the characters were engaging.
@5pike Barf. That sounds awful
14:27
@twobugs It was not all bad, but we had to read a book a month and then review it, which was really fucking painful.
@FAE I actually don't remember that much in that series (other than one minor character where I'm pretty sure it happened off camera), but I fell asleep somewhere in book 4 and never continued.
The show, on the otherhand, seems to have a lot more of it
While they are "classics", many of them are boring as fuck
In other news, Doctor Sleep is the least frightening book ever.
I will attempt to find music.
14:28
It's like Stephen King writes Gersberms
@Yuuki pls no.
@Sterno Stephen King is so bad at endings.
@StrixVaria that's fair
yes, yes he is
sadness.
14:29
Walk into chat. See 'heavy Ned-al'... Slowly back out of chat.
@twobugs I think I have the notebooks with the reviews somewhere. Can't remember all of them but the majority were painful to read.
@Yuuki I should star this one to make @fredley sad
@StrixVaria Everyone is bad at endings
In fact I will
14:30
:(
2
@Sterno Not Sanderson! (So far.)
I guess that's subjective, but I like them.
What also didn't help was that our teacher was a self-righteous prick that discredited everything that was written by an author that was still alive.
@5pike Yeah, I can understand that. I love a lot of older literature like that but when it's stuff written hundreds of years ago it's just so semantically different.
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@Sterno There's over 4x as much in the books as the show (Spoiler and trigger warnings, obviously)
@5pike BARF. People like that can go die.
14:31
@twobugs Go back far enough and the older literature wasn't written in English.
@twobugs That and it is freaking outdated.
the books
@FAE Oh, yeah. I hadn't considered all the stuff that happened in the "past" of the books before "present day". That's a good chunk
near the end of the current one
.... Ramsey Bolton
urgh
@JasonBerkan How about Beowulf? Which is technically English, just not the English spoken by any human for a long time.
14:32
Man, reading this page is terrifying
Beowulf was legit, though.
Huh, it's "only" 1000 or so years old. I thought it was older.
-1
Q: How do I install minecraft 1.9 on mac?

m04merlinHow do I install minecraft 1.9 on mac? I have looked at the option slider and it goes only up to 1.8.8 how do I get 1.9?

Like, seriously - the turmoil of the bourgeois and nobility of the 17~18 hundreds were not interesting for 17 year old me.
It's interesting to learn about it, but not read a whole freaking play about it
I feel dirty just reading that page.
@5pike Heh. That was my thought when I read Pride and Prejudice. Good book, but I wanted to throttle each and every character.
14:36
Desire to read future books dropped from near-zero to zero.
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@Sterno Yes, yes it is. And Martin has gone on record saying he'll never write a rape from the victim's POV. So the readers get to see what it's like through the perpetrator's POV fairly often, but never how the victims suffer. The victims don't get to have their stories told.
I always found plays poetry harder to read. I feel like it adds another layer of complexity.
Maybe I'm just insane :P
I like Goethe, though, because his work, while old, has a timeless message.
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And for people who go "but it's historically accurate", I have to give them a severe side-eye when we're talking about a series with literal dragons.
Dragons confirmed to be real.
14:37
@FAE And the undead! And magic!
Sounds like a lot happened right after the point where I stopped reading, too
Do you mean to tell me that @KevinvanderVelden is not actually a dragon, or do you mean to tell me that @KevinvanderVelden does not exist?
I remember feeling sick just from being on twitter when one of the numerous rape scenes happened.
@Unionhawk I met her in real life and did not eat her: Confirmed, I am not a dragon
No one likes you, IE9
5
14:38
@Unionhawk Neither: he's real but connecting to our SE from an alternate universe
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@twobugs But all that stuff is okay to ignore for not being historically inaccurate as long as we keep the assumed level of rape and violence intact! :|
@twobugs I KNEW IT
@twobugs also acceptable
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@KevinvanderVelden Maybe you're just biding your time to subsume me into your hoard.
I think we established that @KevinvanderVelden collects things with no monetary value:
11 hours ago, by Unionhawk
#Dragon #Hoarders http://t.co/zKwWs9aSRs
14:40
This is still my favorite:
user image
2
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@twobugs Seriously though, I've had to have debates with people over this because they will vociferously defend the rape and violence and the way women are treated with the "historical accuracy" argument, even though last time I checked, medieval England did not have actual dragons or wildlings or unholy shadow demons.
I think numbering my Vault 404 is proving difficult, explorers cant find it
@FAE Pretty sure @fredley is an unholy shadow demon.
0
Q: Second Monitor Lag

Josh LsI am having an issue with intermittent lag on my second monitor since I upgraded to Windows 10. I only notice it when I've launched a game though and it's not every time. I have all my windows updates, and I just installed the latest drivers for my Gigabyte GTX 770(released today). It's been so i...

14:42
@Sterno yeah but he doesn't live in medieval england now does he?
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@Sterno No, he's made of marmite, that's an entirely different kind of unholy.
@FAE Yeah, people will go a long way to defend the weirdest shit. I don't care if it's historically accurate... it's not something I want in my fiction.
Yeah, only modern England has unholy shadow demons
@Unionhawk So what you're saying is that Hellgate: London wasn't a game?
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14:43
@Yuuki Ugh. Uggggggggh.
@Yuuki I bought lifetime for that. Damn you, Bill Roper.
@Unionhawk See: Houses of Parliament
Exactly
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@fredley Speaking of which, is it true that it's illegal to burn CDs now in the UK?
@Yuuki I thought it was common knowledge that it's a documentary
This seems probable
14:45
@FAE I feel your pain.
:(
@FAE Yes, it is
@5pike It was actually a real life simulation. "Players" connected to an UGV (unmanned ground vehicle) in London
It is illegal to make digital backups of any copyrighted material
@FAE For a second that I read that as literally burning CDs.
I should have known better, too. I played the beta and watched them ignore all the feedback and bug reports. AND I STILL BOUGHT THE FOUNDER'S MEMBERSHIP
14:46
Be it a book, film, music or anything at all.
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@Sterno Me tooooooo. I've still got the big CE box too.
@fredley this would also make it illegal to make backups of, say, your wedding pictures.
@KevinvanderVelden Probably
Uuh, would, what am I saying, this made it also illegal
@fredley Does the UK have as strong copyright and IP lobbies as the US does?
Basically, Mickey Mouse will never enter public domain
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14:47
@Sterno It burned me forever on lifetime memberships of stuff. The next couple MMOs that had them were also Bill Roper (like Champions Online). Guess what's free to play now?
They'll just keep extending the time limit
@fredley unless you hold the copyright (hint, the copyright holder is the person taking the picture)
@FAE :(
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@fredley That is insanity.
@KevinvanderVelden Yes
@FAE No, it's not, it's stupidity. The two are hard to tell apart sometimes.
> As reassurance, the Government notes that that people shouldn’t be too concerned because copyright holders are not known to come after people who make a backup of their computers.

“The Government is not aware of any cases of copyright holders having prosecuted individuals for format shifting music solely for their own personal use,” the IPO spokesperson says.

However, copyright holders can take people to court over both CD-ripping and computer backups, if they want to.
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14:48
@fredley True. I hear the tube strikes are much the same thing.
@fredley is an expert in the difference between stupidity and insanity (he is British, after all)
@FAE Don't get me started
@fredley I love when legislators just go through with their crazy ideas with reckless disregard
@Yuuki A second. I spent five minutes trying to figure out why someone would light a CD on fire.
I think I need more coffee.
Because that would probably produce some cool looking smoke or something
14:49
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@JasonBerkan Breathing in those fumes would not be good.
@FAE coffee fumes are indeed terrible
> Don't breathe this!
@FAE That's where my thought process was going. Maybe the UK has strong anti-pollution laws?
@fredley Ohohoh, high times for lawyers that are in the admonishing business.
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14:50
@KevinvanderVelden I actually like the smell of coffee, just not drinking it.
And I like coffee-flavored things.
But not actual coffee.
"don't worry, just because this is illegal doesn't mean anyone will care"
Laws like this are scary, because it means the police (having bashed down your door and taken your things) will always have a charge they can level against you.
@fredley But don't worry, they didn't do that in the past!
Arg, TortoiseSVN is still using SourceForge for downloads
I blame @Wipqozn
4
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14:51
@MBraedley Ew.
@MBraedley @WipqoSVN
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Okay, need to head off to do some adulting, later all
@FAE Booo, adulting
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@SaintWacko After adulting, I fully intend on Minecrafting, which is significantly more entertaining
@FAE Yay, Minecrafting!
I've been Terrariaing lately
14:54
@fredley Yeah, and it also opens doors for lawyers/scammers to send out monition letters, demanding payment.
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@SaintWacko I've been doing that a lot too, haha, just with different people. Jochem and I are playing an adventure map in Minecraft together. I'm playing modded Minecraft for the first time.
I don't see any contact information for the maintainers either.
@FAE I can't play Minecraft vanilla anymore
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Like for reals mods and not just texture packs, like Thaumcraft and Botania and Witchery and stuff.
@5pike And for scummy legal trolls to scare people into paying money to make non-existant claims go away.
@FAE Took you a long time!
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14:55
@SaintWacko I've never done it! I thought it would be too overwhelming. But I'm having a lot of fun!
@FAE That's what LadyWacko and I were doing
@fredley Exactly. But now they have somewhat legal ground, because who doesn't have a backup of something around?
I was mostly doing Thaumcraft, and she was doing Witchery
Especially with the addons
Thaumcraft gets super OP, though
@FAE planning on playing on the server? :o
@5pike Literally everyone below the age of 30 will have a ripped CD
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14:56
@fredley Yeah, I mostly just liked spelunking in vanilla. I never even messed with redstone then.
@FAE wow
I haven't played Minecraft for years
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@SaintWacko Yeah, Jochem's mostly doing Thaumcraft, I'm doing a bunch of Botania and Witchery.
I made a self-fixing piston powered cobblestone bridge
Spelunking is what Minecraft should be all about
@fredley People don't use CDs anymore. Music is on your phone.
14:56
@FAE Sounds like LadyWacko and I
I think she'd like Botania
@badp Do you play Terraria?
@SaintWacko I tried a little bit of that, but it was a little obtuse.
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@KevinvanderVelden You guys usually play kinda sandbox-y, I never really know what to do in a sandbox environment. I log in, look around, and then just never get around to doing anything. I'm not much of a builder in MC.
@badp I love the increased focus on exploration
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@SaintWacko I've been really enjoying Botania. Also Agricraft.
@JasonBerkan All my music (much of which originated on CDs) is now in Google Music
14:57
@FAE Hm, haven't heard of that
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@SaintWacko Crop breeding shouldn't be so fun but it hits the right parts of my brain.
My fondest world in Minecraft was finding a cave that started from the top of a mountain and went all the way down to bedrock. I cleared the area, lit it up and made it my house, farmed, etc.
You should look into the Lay of the Land modpack
That's what LadyWacko and I used
Well, somewhat modified
@badp A friend and I found something like that once
@badp My favourite was the massive castle I built by hand in @Thomas whatisface's server
I had a strange fascination with finding natural caves in minecraft, then digging just enough to make them into smooth halls with stair access.
14:59
It wound way through the mountain
Sadly the world corrupted and I lost about half of it :(
Although my base on the FTB server was pretty cool too
My absolute favorite, though, was one time when I found what was essentially a hollow mountain
@SaintWacko yes! yes. I had at least six different entrances to the base.
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@badp Yeah, I loved finding huge cave systems and just wandering and exploring.
Also on older versions, fire spread really, really crazy. We started a fire in the woods and it consumed that biome.
14:59
None of this is too amazing - underground Minecraft is nothing but caves. Have you ever looked at a world with a mapping program? Caves all the way down.
It was like a huge crater

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