Hm.

Something tells me that reading the fuckers would have more effect. Now pardon me, I have to study up on the arrrrdvark. 

Ugh, that sucks. I mean, the baby chicks death sucks not the part about making you laugh so hard that you cried. That part was actually cool. Animal cruelty is the crappiest of the craptastic. Now I need to throw the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica at someone. 

Wait, "Male Chicks + Grinding Machine" as in little baby chickens in a combine, or transsexuals on a vicious mechanical dildo?

If it's the former, that's horribly tragic  . If it's the latter, that's ridiculously tragic  .

This is a great idea! Love it!

Anyone brave enough to click this want to summarize this? I heed the warning, and the follow up comments about needing a barf bag. If this is something like "Two Girls+ One Cup=Less Stress", than I shall proudly embrace my gross-out avoidance tendencies.

Thanks, CatOfWar! That would be wonderful. I couldn't find the links to another story about video games that relieve stress in test subjects. Tetris was, once again, listed. So was Katamari Damacy (aka-electronic bubble wrap), and a certain "digital dollhouse" game by EA that no one has ever heard of and only frat boys and ex cons play... I think it was called, like, "The Blips" or something. Who knows.  

Also, hearing a lot of stories about people's various experiences with depression:Last year I studied vitamin's effect on mood and decided to give it a try. Although initially dubious, I started a regiment that consisted of an adult multivitamin, calcium, Omega 3, Folic acid, and most importantly vitamin D (with the multi, I take about 2200 mgs of vitamin D a day. It took 6 weeks, but it actually worked. I felt about as good as when I was on a low-dose paxil, but without the anhedonia and zombified affect. I still get angry, or down, or cranky, but in relatively healthy doses (SOME negative affect on occasion is perfectly normal and doesn't take away the emotional range I need for doing art). If anyone might want to give this a try, discuss it with your doctor and GET YOUR VITAMIN D LEVELS CHECKED--deficiencies are rampant and D is hugely related to mood.

The best part is that I can't swallow big pills so I take everything in candy form (chocolate calcium chews, gummi everything else). It's like a handful of candy for breakfast every morning.  

Also, for those looking into therapy, look into art therapy. This is one of my concentrations in school (the other being integrative psychotherapies (such as CBT, psychodynamic, existential... etc), and it works really well with creative personalities. CBT is very effective, but it's not the "most" effective therapy--it's just the most popular because it's usually the only one insurances will cover. Actually, no approach is the "most" effective as effectiveness is subjective and based on the individual's needs. Plus, studies have proved that all therapeutic interventions are therapeutic (it's a matter of finding the right therapist and an approach that fits your objectives and personality). Art therapy is just like many other "talk therapy" approaches, but instead of using words to make meaning out of feelings, experiences, and subjective realities, you use art and imagery. It's really very cool.

The moral of the story: the Vita+Art mod speeds up the erosion of the negative moodlets, and it's compatible with Awsomemod (or Rum).

I'm also putting in a vote for splitting the threads.

Hm. Interesting study. Allow me to offer my retort:

http://www.virtua.org/page.cfm?id=pressroom_showrelease&pressID=1338

http://www.mercybehavioral.org/poc/view_doc.php?type=news&id=116042&cn=109

http://www.disaboom.com/Living/militarylife/video-game-helps-disabled-veterans-conquer-ptsd.aspx

Having a childhood mired in abuse and neglect, and being totally powerless in my family system because nobody cared enough to ask how I felt about anything ever is what made me fat and depressed. And if creating a fantasy world filled with things I love and where I have total godlike control offers a healing polar extreme experience to my shit-ass childhood, then I'll take the "self-medication". It's either that or hard drugs and booze.

And the the rebuttal of the CDC study pretty much states my initial reaction-it doesn't seem confounding variables were accounted for, and the population studied seemed largely self-selected (i.e.-why would fit, happy people who enjoy video games volunteer for a study? They're too busy being fit, happy gamers. The depressed ones are going to volunteer because they're the ones who are more likely to seek self-inquiry. If there's one way to make validity questionable, it's have a self-selected sample). Lastly, I'd like to read the actual peer-reviewed study WITH the data, so I can see if they're just reporting numbers that support a predetermined hypothesis, of if they created hypothesis based on their findings (the latter is preferred to account for experimenter bias).

Just my .02... Oh, and always be skeptical of government/corporation sponsored studies. Self-interest and sociopolitical agendas too often seeps into those because of where the grant money comes from (that accounts for my rebuttal too). University funded studies overseen by an Institutional Review Board tend to show less bias... tend, not always.

LOL! Oh sure, help yerself.

I don't know what the big deal is regarding the Carla Niven dress. It looks perfectly realistic. I mean, I always look like a heart floating in a jar of formaldehyde when I go swimming. Always. I make a point of it. Doesn't everybody?

CatofWar, thanks for posting that link-didn't see the request for it 'till now. And while on the topic, the pattern is now free.

Thomas & DOT both commented:
Thomas:
DOT
Well, good. It was appalling that it was a pay item. HOWEVER, that doesn't change the fact that 160+ people still actually PAID for it... and probably the same people that send money to needy millionaires in Nigeria. The mind, it boggles.

And Thomas's comment leads me to believe that being released as a pay item was a gaff. In which case, DOT still could have acknowledged the gaff with a little integrity instead of defensiveness by admitting it shouldn't be pay, and that the pay item designation is a mistake. Oh well. There's no accounting for self-awareness and social grace.

EXACTLY! Egads, I thought maybe I was interpreting the presence of that PAY item incorrectly. I'm glad I can stand by my initial reactions, which was, "Guh? Buh? Wuh? Fluh? GAH!"

Okay, this hardly counts as "ugliest", but I need to address this pattern from TSR anyway because it just offends my sensibilites:





...Um...

WHY does this cost money? I mean, is it just me, or is it just a FRIGGIN 1 PALETTE SOLID COLOR? And what's more, it's been downloaded 102 times so far. That's, like, a sucker born approximately every 10 minutes!

Pardon my ignorance, but I've seen RYG used a few times while following this thread but I have no idea what it is. Google search was a bust. Would someone kindly enlighten, plzthx.

Never said it was malicious or intentional. Perhaps "back-burnering" is a poor choice of words, but when you're a mac user wanting to be more involved in the cc community, it feels that way. I wouldn't expect someone with a PC to run out and get a mac just to covert their utilities any more than I'd expect a mac user (such as myself) to buy a PC for cc-making purposes. I'm more astounded that there aren't more existing mac programmers/creators jumping in with mac versions of stuff, especially considering the gain in Apple's popularity. There's a few people putting mac stuff out, yes, but I'm surprised there's not more. It's an "it is what it is" situation, but it's still a bummer.


BLLLEEEAAAGH!! Sorry, Lady Vader, it's an involuntary response to this age-old debate. LOL. And I'm sorry for getting off topic too, but I'll be brief.

The "they're glitchy, awkward" was in reference to the sims3 programs created for mac, not mac themselves. I find macs to be elegant, very user-friendly, safe, and reliable. But despite being a mac advocate, there are advantages and disadvantages to each kind of platform. I'm an artist, and my husband is a film maker. Therefore, the mac platform is better equipped for our particular artistic needs and preferences. We've done our work on PCs and found them to be laggy, hangy, and slow. And being that we use internet resources for much of my art, we can download without fear of getting any viruses (which is VERY important because I need my system to be spyware free due the confidentiality of some of my work). However, as video game players, the mac falls WAY short. I played Sims on PC and it's just a smoother better gaming experience. Macs also falls short in terms of affordability. They're freakin' expensive, man. I'm sure I could make a whole list of pro and con differences for both platforms, but I said I'd keep this short. So... yeah.... I prefer macs due to my work, but if I could afford a gaming PC, I'd get one.

Okay, sorry for the digression. But in the spirit of the topic: I'm opposed to the suspicion of TSR putting malware crap in their stuffs out of sheer principle, and in defense of other people having to deal with it. It doesn't actually effect me at all because I'm on a mac. Same with the Secu-Rom thing someone mentioned earlier. I could just say "neener neener neener" and ignore this thread. But  that's oppositional to my sense of social justice.

EDITED: I saw I double posted, so I edited the two posts together. Sorry 'bout that.