i do appreciate the comments here from people who actually have firsthand experience with this. i think a lot of people on HN find this story interesting because it's so far from their experience, but feel like commenting anyway.
and it's valuable because the writers at the atlantic can't say "boy this sure is stupid, it's obviously X or Y." they have to write in this awkward tone as if they genuinely can't tell if these people are really possessed or not.
I didn’t finish reading the article. One, because it’s long (normally not a problem for me) but two: because it pisses me off how churches are taking advantage of this.
I had anger problems after leaving my family. I never sought counseling, but I probably should have. I did break down during work one day (in the military no less!) and yeah...
Point is, when kids grow up in families like this, it’s a real shitty situation. The fact that people can’t, or won’t, try to seek real help for their loved ones when they “act out”, and the fact that religion preys and even profits from this, just really grinds my gears.
And why are these people having issues? Probably because of their family, or medical condition. Although I’m convinced most of it stems from families that are super-religious, fanatics, or radicals.
My family is self-proclaimed as “radical “ Christians. Everything , literally everything is not from god and is demonic.
dota 2 is not as extreme about this as, say, starcraft. in starcraft, most "strategies" are heavily scripted build orders that almost never deviate from a handful of openings (similar to opening moves in chess) and a large amount of winning comes from the ability to quickly give orders to your troops ("micro"). This is an example of a strategy that is not viable without superhuman reactions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKVFZ28ybQs if you directly attack 20 siege tanks with 100 zerglings you will only kill about two siege tanks, but an AI can kill all the siege tanks with some zerglings left over.
There's some of this in dota, but there's a cap on the skill level for most playable characters that pros generally get "close enough" to, and beyond that the strategic depth comes from area control decisionmaking. Theres over 100 heroes and many of them have really weird abilities, like the possibility of creating a temporary wall (earthshaker) or the ability to teleport anywhere on the map every 20 seconds (furion). I could be wrong though, maybe the AI is winning games by playing heroes with long range and perfectly microing them to harass and prevent the other team from ever getting gold/xp.
> in starcraft, most "strategies" are heavily scripted build orders that almost never deviate from a handful of openings (similar to opening moves in chess) and a large amount of winning comes from the ability to quickly give orders to your troops ("micro")
As somebody who plays StarCraft casually (gold/low plat in ladder), this is not true. It's even less true for pro players. The level of strategy in StarCraft is impressive, it's really hard to guess in which direction games will go when two very good players are playing against each other.
Sure, perfect execution when it comes to one strategy (say, mech-heavy Terran) will give you the largest advantage against your opponent, but failing to scout appropriately and guess what your opponent is up to means your strategy is dead. You also have to decide when to attack, how much you're willing to sacrifice to damage somebody's economy, when you want to focus one economy vs building units, ...
The video you sent with zerglings is a gimmick made for fun (it's a hard-coded AI using the siege tank's aim logic to divert zerglings from that). That would not win you a game. (because most likely a pro Terran would have destroyed your base before that)
What does "macro perfectly" mean? If it does the same strategy over and over, you just scout, find its strategy, and go for the counter. Its macro will be useless if it has the wrong type of unit.
In a way, the built-in AIs "macro perfectly", but they are terrible at strategy and fighting (because even fights are not just a matter of gimmicks, you need to split units in a special way, send diversions, attack at the same time from multiple fronts, etc.)
My impression is that nicotine is "essentially" harmless but caffeine is actually harmless, maybe even good for you (kind of like a glass of red wine a week).
The dose makes the poison and tablets are about the only way you could overdose on caffeine. Your stomach will be telling you to stop long before you get to 40 cups, which isn’t enough for a healthy adult to overdose on.
One thing that bugs me about ecigarettes is that the flavoring chemicals are totally untested. Vegetable glycerin is essentially harmless and is even used in asthma inhalers, and nicotine is way less harmful as well. However it's already been shown that certain flavoring agents like a particular butter flavoring are harmful (https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/11/e-cigaret...). I know a couple "juice" makers and they basically just throw in random flavoring chemicals that are meant to be ingested.
It's possible to get unflavored e-cigarette juice, and when I was using an e-cigarette (i switched to gum) i tried to get it as often as I could. But it's really uncommon, most shops don't even have one, and the one i went to was often sold out.
The 'popcorn lung' bit is BS. There are no known instances of ecig users contracting it. People also fail to mention that the levels of the chemical in question (diacetyl) is >700x higher in traditional cigarettes.
I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist but I have to wonder if tobacco company PR agencies have anything to do with the proliferation of that particular talking point.
