The RPG Duelling League
Social Forums => General Chat => Topic started by: Grefter on January 06, 2013, 01:03:53 PM
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http://twinbeardstudios.com/frog-fractions
So this game is Alex.
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Dalí in New York, 54 min, 1965.
http://ubuweb.com/film/dali_ny.html
Movie.
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The government has released their response to building a Death Star.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov//response/isnt-petition-response-youre-looking
It is pretty spot on everything you could hope for.
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That was surprisingly awesome.
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http://props.punishedpixels.com/2012/12/10/borderlands-2-handsome-jack-mask/
Someone made a replica of Handsome Jack's mask from Borderlands 2. I want one.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Eaj8IT63pok#!
The new FF. Final Fantasy: Sprite Porn
Edit: I had played Frog Fractions before, it's pretty great edutainment. I was stuck on the first screen for 30 minutes locking/unlocking my homing tongue.
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Almost seems like FF Patapon.
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Who the fuck does that much meth?
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Who the fuck does that much meth?
It's their newest attempt to appeal to Western audiences.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Eaj8IT63pok#!
The new FF. Final Fantasy: Sprite Porn
This looks hilarious.
Potentially unplayable, but hilarious.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Eaj8IT63pok#!
The new FF. Final Fantasy: Sprite Porn
Edit: I had played Frog Fractions before, it's pretty great edutainment. I was stuck on the first screen for 30 minutes locking/unlocking my homing tongue.
I'd so play that if I had an Iphone.
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Nah dude Frog Fractions is something you can play in your web browser.
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I don't think it will work in iOS on Safari, too bitchy about running Flash stuff.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Eaj8IT63pok#!
The new FF. Final Fantasy: Sprite Porn
Edit: I had played Frog Fractions before, it's pretty great edutainment. I was stuck on the first screen for 30 minutes locking/unlocking my homing tongue.
I'd so play that if I had an Iphone.
I might buy it if its under 8 bucks or so. Odds of it being less than 15 are slim.
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It only costs 4 bucks Rob. Why did you expect Squaresoft to release an expensive game on ios one day after its first launch trailer!?
http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/final-fantasy-all-the-bravest-on-ios-is-a-steaming-pile-of-in-app-purchasin
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Woooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
I looked at it and saw the top 10 purchases (which I consider Not A Good Sign tm) and noted that you can't see the full list of what purchases there is and what they actually mean.
Mixing Freemium game design with an entry fee.
Literally somehow managed to make even worse mobile game than their other bad ones.
Y U NO MORE FF:DD??!?!?
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Nice job Square, you made a liar out of me in record time.
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Wow. When I saw that, it looked vaguely interesting but I wasn't really sure how the gameplay worked.
Finding out it's bullshit and to get more out of it costs more money doesn't surprise me too much. Ffs, Squenix, what happened to being good at what you did? :/
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Milking as much money out of your nostalgia as possible you mean? They still seem to be doing a decent job.
If you have something that plays it just buy Final Fantasy Dimensions instead.
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Wow. When I saw that, it looked vaguely interesting but I wasn't really sure how the gameplay worked.
Finding out it's bullshit and to get more out of it costs more money doesn't surprise me too much. Ffs, Squenix, what happened to being good at what you did? :/
They don't know how to adapt to changes in the industry? That's how FF13 and 14 were so train wreck. So they're trying to squeeze other markets for cash.
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http://pitchfork.com/news/49216-megaupload-founder-kim-dotcoms-new-filesharing-service-mega-to-launch-tomorrow/
Mega Upload -> Mega "DOTCOM!"
To those interested. Was never a fan of MU, but knew that nerds placed tons of goodies on it.
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http://www.rpgamer.com/news/Q1-2013/012113b.html
It's getting translated.
Yay!
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God dammit, life, stop making me buy a 3DS.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEUvEDfWWTM
Wah.
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www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMRGNwMMFro
Marth summons Satan. Roy vs. Narukami on who can pimp the most chicks. Permadeath meets multitarget instant death spells.
what the fuck
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It's like real life started writing fanfic for the DL.
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http://www.fempop.com/2012/12/10/feminism-isnt-the-problem-the-word-is/
Neat article, and while a bit anecdotal it's evidence of something I suspected years ago when introduced to feminism properly; the word itself has become so loaded that it's poison.
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http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/weiner/science-ruining-everything-since-1543-an-smbc-coll
The SMBC guy has a Kickstarter up where if you donate ten bucks you get copies of all his ebooks, including the CYOA thing from last year that's supposed to be pretty awesome.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2013/jan/28/pride-and-prejudice-video-game?commentpage=1
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
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I am picturing either an adventure game as unforgiving as I Have No Mouth or a rogue like where combat is either dialogue trees, dancing or horse riding depending on the enemy type.
Alternately it is just Dangerous Highschool Girls in Trouble.
Either way, never change MC. Never change. :)
Edit - if it was the rogue like I would hope there was an undocumented alternate route of being a stone cold bitch to everyone that pays off in dividends in the late game if you are lucky. That would be pretty sweet.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2013/jan/28/pride-and-prejudice-video-game?commentpage=1
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
<3<3<3
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/30/cisco_security_report/
So this is a piece of news I had been expecting to come up for years. Glad to finally see a report confirming it.
Porn sites are less likely to be loaded with malware than ads are. As always, crime follows where the high yield targets are and goddamned everything has ads these days. What this does mean though is that the Internet is no longer for porn. It is for corporate shilling.
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http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/cans-fresh-air-sale-china-234302171.html
Literally China
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China = Planet Spaceball?
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(NSFW language)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2F3ZWEEbF4
It's much better than Surgeon Simulator 2012!
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http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/a-blog-around-the-clock/2013/01/28/commenting-threads-good-bad-or-not-at-all/
makes a lot of sense.
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http://comicsalternative.com/
This comics podcast is really good. Two literature professors do weekly comics podcast. It is always interesting.
One specific episode I want to link to while I listen to it is episode 20. They have two guests on and discuss teaching comics. I don't know who the link is for (am I the only one nerdy enough to find that topic fascinating?) but it is super interesting regardless.
http://comicsalternative.com/Episodes/ComicsAlternative-20.mp3
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http://comicsalternative.com/
This comics podcast is really good. Two literature professors do weekly comics podcast. It is always interesting.
One specific episode I want to link to while I listen to it is episode 20. They have two guests on and discuss teaching comics. I don't know who the link is for (am I the only one nerdy enough to find that topic fascinating?) but it is super interesting regardless.
http://comicsalternative.com/Episodes/ComicsAlternative-20.mp3
Yeah, gonna have to check this out stat.
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http://comicsalternative.com/
This comics podcast is really good. Two literature professors do weekly comics podcast. It is always interesting.
One specific episode I want to link to while I listen to it is episode 20. They have two guests on and discuss teaching comics. I don't know who the link is for (am I the only one nerdy enough to find that topic fascinating?) but it is super interesting regardless.
http://comicsalternative.com/Episodes/ComicsAlternative-20.mp3
I grade my comics podcasts on how many episodes get a Hawkguy mention. How many times have they discussed Hawkguy?
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Marriages can work:
http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/free/20130206connecticut-longest-married-couple-betar.html
80 year anniversary! Good news!
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http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/29/surprisingly-good-evidence-that-real-name-policies-fail-to-improve-comments/
So...you know that whole theory of "anonymity on the internet makes people jerks"? Turns out it doesn't. (Actual cause: being a jerk makes someone a jerk).
I had long been skeptical given that I'm...not any more mean when I'm anonymous....
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I dunno. Attaching names on the internet doesn't reduce what I would consider "anonymity" significantly. The big thing, to me, is that you can be a jerk on the internet, name attached or not, and then return to your actual life where nobody knows you've been a jerk, i.e. there are no consequences.
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Hawkeye got discussed in a few of the previews issues I think. They specifically avoid talking about Super Hero books though because podcasts about capes are easy to find (they both read and love them though and where they can talk about it they do plug Fraction's Hawkeye from memory). Once a month they might give it a quick nod when the talk about stuff that is coming out.
http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/29/surprisingly-good-evidence-that-real-name-policies-fail-to-improve-comments/
So...you know that whole theory of "anonymity on the internet makes people jerks"? Turns out it doesn't. (Actual cause: being a jerk makes someone a jerk).
I had long been skeptical given that I'm...not any more mean when I'm anonymous....
Sample bias at play here in my opinion. How much more mean on the internets am I than in person as a counter example?
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I dunno. Attaching names on the internet doesn't reduce what I would consider "anonymity" significantly. The big thing, to me, is that you can be a jerk on the internet, name attached or not, and then return to your actual life where nobody knows you've been a jerk, i.e. there are no consequences.
I have to agree with NEB on this one. I mean, people you know in real life might not look at the same websites as you, and unless your name is really uncommon they probably won't even match you with the comments. If you're a John Smith? There's millions of you out there, nobody's going to know which one of you is being a jerk on the internet. What I'd be interested in is the stats on trolling comments on websites that use Facebook for their commenting, where every message that people post can be seen by their Facebook friends, including people they know in real life. That's the closest thing to a lack of anonymity there is on the internet, really, and even then I'm sure there's people that make 'fake' accounts.
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There are actually frequent cases of highschoolers taking IRL bullying onto facebook, so...geography certainly doesn't turn off nasty behavior.
What DOES have a known effect is the number of people you're interacting with:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
So...somewhere like the DL where there's less than 150 people who could be described as being DL regulars, you tend to form stable relationships instead of treating people like strangers. (And I don't think the DL became more or less civil after DLcons when we actually met each other and knew IRL names).
Sample bias at play here in my opinion. How much more mean on the internets am I than in person as a counter example?
Some people turn into an introverted ball IRL, but are decently outspoken on the internet. I'm a little like that myself. The internet lets me be solitary and write an essay--and maybe 10 people would read it. But I don't enter a social gathering of 20 people and start telling a story while most of them listen--I'm too introverted for that. So...IRL I sit politely and listen.
Doesn't mean that I'm not thinking stuff I'm not saying when IRL, or that if I was more extroverted I might say some of the stuff I'm thinking. (The example jumping to mind is my extroverted sister, who tends to pretty much think out loud).
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I tend to be careful about what I say under my real name, even when the people I'm talking to don't know me IRL, but the fact that nobody else has the same name as me weighs heavily on that.
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A couple of things jump out at me on that link:
The people who are likely to post abusive, trolling comments and are worried about it can easily make alternate accounts and get around it that way. Transient sites like youtube where a user does not build up connections with irl people are even easier to exploit in that regard. Flipside, the person who is going to scream profanity on youtube channels may just not give a flying fuck *anyway*. As the article notes, the behavior that was actually changed were occasional users, not hardcore users.
I really loathe the idea of people's real names being attached to everything on the internet. No, I don't want a comment I made a decade ago to be googleable by any person who wants to know.
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I googled "superaielman cocks" and it took me to a forum post with Poppy Bros Sr. Sounds legit.
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https://medium.com/reporters-notebook/d63ecca43e35
A story about Fred Phelps's granddaughter leaving the WBC and going to church elsewhere for the first time in her life.
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https://medium.com/reporters-notebook/d63ecca43e35
A story about Fred Phelps's granddaughter leaving the WBC and going to church elsewhere for the first time in her life.
Intense.
Not just a random granddaughter, either (her sister left with her--not much fanfare about her sister). But this was arguably one of the three most important mouthpieces of the church.
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/11/michelin_guides_url_slip/
You know what I love? Businesses getting rolled by cheap jokes.
In other things, we are covered for domain registration this year yeah?
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I wouldn't call it cheap, some of those photoshops were pretty good!
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbqiiY_Pam8
WBC dating site parody. The best part is that the domain name they talk about has been bought since... and turned into a gay dating site.
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Remember Haloid (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL-mR79GErU) from several years back? That guy has a new series coming out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYW2GmHB5xs
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https://twitter.com/_floridaman (https://twitter.com/_floridaman)
Every news tweet that uses the words "Florida man." It is as gloriously trashy as you would expect from denizens of America's biggest festering boil.
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And yeah I'm upset that Texas dropped to 3rd biggest festering boil this year. Fuck you Colorado we want our spot back!
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https://twitter.com/_floridaman (https://twitter.com/_floridaman)
Every news tweet that uses the words "Florida man." It is as gloriously trashy as you would expect from denizens of America's biggest festering boil.
How? How is it that every single one of these is hilarious? Do florida men never get arrested for anything normal?
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Not for anything that gets published and posted on Twitter.
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"Guy shoots dude" might get ink in Connecticut but in Florida you have to do something weird, because if you are a Florida Man it's expected you'll kill someone.
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http://www.themarysue.com/academic-study-game-harassment/
So...academic study of harassment of female gamers. Females get harassed on XBox live--no surprises to anyone here. What is surprising is the following: while gender is a factor in getting nasty comments online, skill is NOT a factor. Skilled males and sucky males get about the same negative comments. Skilled females and sucky females get about the same negative comments.
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I wish I could say I was surprised by that.
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Everyone sledges everyone on X-Box Live is pretty much the thing I take from that. This aligns to everything I have seen in online gaming (competitive or not).
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Every time you post one of these I want to find out how people manage to get paid to do a study that tells people something they already know. My study will conclude that pizza is delicious and fat people in fedoras and anime t-shirts are made of ham.
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Every time you post one of these I want to find out how people manage to get paid to do a study that tells people something they already know. My study will conclude that pizza is delicious and fat people in fedoras and anime t-shirts are made of ham.
Speak for yourself, but I find the skill aspect of these results at least somewhat surprising. I figured, say, low-skill males would get yelled at more than high skill males, for example.
Females at least I can think of reasons why there's less of a skill correlation. With low skill females you get some males who are going to react "must defend helpless female". With high skill, some males freak out if a girl is better than them. So sure, I'm not too surprised that there's no skill correlation for females, but I really would expect a skill correlation for males.
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We have previously established you don't know anything about being a dude, so there you go. Being good just means you get people yelling about how you cheat/hack/are cheap and are, thus, gay. Whereas if you are bad the yelling is that you are terrible and need to get off live forever and you suck a thousand ducks and are, thus, gay. There is a sizable amount of people who use it as an Internet-enabled console-facilitated yelling service wherein as much of the world as possible can be informed of the reasons and severity of their own specific gayness.
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If you are good you are often yelled at for being shit even as you stomp the opposition or outperform.
Pretty much it is just yelling or trolling while a bunch of other people try to playing the goddamned game.
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Pretty much. The fact that the term tryhard is used unironically by large swaths of the gaming community as an insult is kind of indicative.
But yeah. If you're worse than me, you are a shit player and should kill yourself. If you are better than me, you are a cheater/hacker/tryhard and should kill yourself.
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We have previously established you don't know anything about being a dude, so there you go.
XD, yeah, fair.
If you are better than me, you are a cheater/hacker/tryhard and should kill yourself.
Oh that's true: I have been called cheater and/or tryhard from time to time, typically from people who don't know my gender. (Although once funnily enough from a friend I skype with fairly regularly, who likes me and knows I don't cheat, but just doesn't handle losing that well and says stuff as a coping mechanism).
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1d6z4QoyQE
So papa, how do you like the iPad we got you?
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http://www.buzzfeed.com/h2/shfke/briangalindo/25-cereals-from-the-80s-you-will-never-eat-again
Yet another reason to miss the 80's and early 90's
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http://www.buzzfeed.com/h2/shfke/briangalindo/25-cereals-from-the-80s-you-will-never-eat-again
Yet another reason to miss the 80's and early 90's
I actually don't remember most of those existing, and don't remember wanting most of the ones that do remember. Exceptions being ice cream cone cereal, and Nerds cereal (I don't think I actually ate either of those, but I remember wanting to).
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A general announcement: if you don't remember C-3P0's then you are a clownshoes-wearing knuckle-whuffing Chumbawumba. You probably ate a bowl of poop instead.
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I pity the poor fool who don't eat my cereal!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffD1RlO87O4
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Americana you want to put in your mouth but can't.
I will stick with porridge like a good Comrade thanks.
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>_> <_<
I'm just going to leave this here; 2v2 SC2 game I played...
http://drop.sc/306255
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Americana you want to put in your mouth but can't.
I will stick with porridge like a good Comrade thanks.
I hope you die.
I hope we both die.
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Video games! In action! Don't tell Wayne la Pierre though, he might have a breakdown.
http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/syria022013/s_s20_58020753.jpg
(Full article, which is mostly all photos, here at the Atlantic (http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/02/diy-weapons-of-the-syrian-rebels/100461/). )
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http://mobile.theverge.com/2013/2/22/4017160/fan-made-super-mario-video-first-person-perspective-final-world
Just gonna put this here...
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http://www.buzzfeed.com/jwherrman/the-sublime-storm-on-the-surface-of-the-sun
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http://www.buzzfeed.com/jwherrman/the-sublime-storm-on-the-surface-of-the-sun
At first I was like "ok, it's a solar flare, that's cool." Then I was like "oh, it's big compared to the earth, but the earth is pretty small, whatevs." Then I was like "...Wait, the Sun looks really round in this picture. Like...we see fully a fourth of the sun. This thing is like...10% of the size of the sun. OMFG"
Can you even imagine that on earth? A volcanic eruption that was so big that when viewed from space it was 10% the size of the earth? That went fifteen times as far as the ozone layer, and four times as far as the international space station?
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Yeah, it's pretty nuts.
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Fun fact about the Photosphere: We have no idea why it works like it does, or what's really going on there.
Okay that's not actually that fun. But there's lots to explore and figure out. I think my favorite currently open mystery is this one. In general, the closer you are to a heat-emitting object, the hotter it gets, right? Common sense. Holding your hand far from the stove is cool, closer to the stove is hot, and on the stove is yeowch. But... that isn't exactly true in the Photosphere. As you go up, there are "layers" that are HOTTER than the ones beneath them, closer to the core of the sun. WTF?! How is this even possible?
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Lies and complete and total bullshit.
That fun fact was indeed fun.
Science is a better mystery novel than all the Charlie Brown detective books rolled into one.
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Fun fact about the Photosphere: We have no idea why it works like it does, or what's really going on there.
Dunno about the first part, but Wild Arms tells me the second part involves a demon invasion.
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Fun fact about the Photosphere: We have no idea why it works like it does, or what's really going on there.
Dunno about the first part, but Wild Arms tells me the second part involves a demon invasion.
Wild Arms, again proving Jim doesn't know what he's talking about.
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Do I look like a scientist?
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Well, you -do- have a doctor title...
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hush.
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Well, you -do- have a doctor title...
I hear all of snow's posts in Rarity's voice now.
And it fits SO WELL.
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I still suspect Rarity was created by Lauren Faust via delving into my mind while I slept and filtering out the X-rated content.
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How was there enough left to get a character out of it, then?
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Ask Lauren Faust, not me.
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http://bombermine.com/#/play
can't stop killing people
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http://civic.mit.edu/blog/petey/sorry-nerds-but-obama-was-right-about-the-jedi-meld-and-metaphysics
The seriousest sequester discussion.
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It's true. I sort of remember Outbound Flight, but no one else really does. People sort of lost sight of the EU after the Yuuzhan Vong and the new trilogy. Shame that.
Though I wonder if this was him being more unintentionally right or genuinely right.
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I almost said when this came about "ALthough I think Jedi Mind Meld is, in fact, a thing" but decided that was a little too niche. Good to know someone followed up on that.
Outbound Flight came out after the Vong stuff finished as I recall, when they got to Jacen Solo, Badly Immitating His Grandfather. I'm not 100% though because aside from KotOR2, I kinda consider the EU to have ended with Vision of the Future.
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That's a good call. The Solo children are all fucking awful and Jaina, who gets the most page time, is the worst of them.
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Star Wars expanded universe ended after Heir to the Empire trilogy. ijs
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Outbound Flight came out after Vong, but takes place pre-Rebellion. Features Thrawn and Palpatine.
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I bellieve Zahn wrote it in fact? I actually should have picked it up, just was kinda over it all at the time.
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Star Wars expanded universe ended after Heir to the Empire trilogy. ijs
That would exclude the Allston novels and KotOR2. Fucking subnormal.
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I am honestly ok with that. KotOR2 never got a fair deal to start with. Why should it there either?
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/04/japan_smart_pants_iphone_knickers/
A weird tech accessory article rather than JAPAN Y U WEIRD article despite what the URL suggests.
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http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2013/059/b/1/pixel_trip_by_futzi01-d5wiemn.swf
Fun little flash game.
At first I was like "pfft platforms; dozens of games like this". Then I was like "Wow, I'm really bad; I feel like I've never played something like this before."
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That's pretty elegant in its simplicity.
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Pretty decent. Not so much reaction dependent as tracking what's upcoming.
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http://drfaustusau.deviantart.com/art/The-Call-of-Cthulhu-Pages-00-01-276565195
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http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera
For all that I'm dubious about supporting a kickstarter when the other kickstarter hasn't produced fruit yet, I figure there will be some in this crowd who will care about this.
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Days left 30. Money raised, 1 million. Oh Internet.
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That's right - the quality of writing for Torment is so important that we have a professional editor on the team.
Holy shit, they're going to edit their dialog? Well, they've convinced me!
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Honestly amazing.
But this kind of thing needs to stop:
(https://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/assets/000/425/184/08e4d3169a39812aafb983685b87ac20_large.jpg?1362526115)
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Meh, if there's a market for that let them have it. You're just jealous nobody will use their non-evening and weekend minutes to have a phone conversation with you, let alone lay out ten grand.
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No fooling, if I had the money to burn I would spend 10k to talk to Fenrir.
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Isn't 10000 Australian bucks only enough to buy not Mass Effect 3, but just one of the DLCs?
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I think you're mixing them up with Canadian lollars.
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As an American any money that has an old woman who reminds me of Elton John on it looks the same to me.
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It is actually a dude.
(http://www.quotecollection.com/author-images/dame-edna-everage-2.jpg)
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obnoxious large image pls ban
edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFD4NWueIZk
no grls allowed kxthx
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http://www.thumbsandammo.blogspot.co.uk/
Guns? Guns are for cowards. We just need to be happy!
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http://www.milanoo.com/Lycra-Spandex-Zentai-Suits-c323
I...uh...what?
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Green Man!
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The best part is the way it is completely random if they Power Ranger rip offs will be labelled as such. The worst part is when you realise there is 10 pages of them.
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In completely unrelated news, I know what my Halloween costume is going to be this year.
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Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, part 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6p5AZp7r_Q)
This is the first installment of the web series that kicked up a hornet's nest of utter morons when the author/presenter funded it through kickstarter last year, if you remember that.
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http://storiesaus.bandcamp.com/album/void
Mostly linking for myself when I get home from work. Friend of a friend's band have an EP up on bandcamp. Friend has good taste, but can't vouch for it yet. Check it out though.
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The terrible price of working the Chrom x Olivia marriage, which requires a truly crazy tactician out to cock-block Chrom at every turn. (http://hckleinman.tumblr.com/post/45116782437/from-wifey-fire-emblem-awakening-chrom-gets-no-love#_=_)
Written by a friend of mine. I have to say, she's got a point. People would notice that Chrom's new friend seems to be sentencing any female who dares to flutter her lashes at Chrom off to an arranged marriage. That would lead to some *weird* conversations.
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I wasn't sure at first I'm pretty sure at this point that ChromxOlivia-as-a-good-idea is a joke foisted upon unsuspecting players by mischief-making fans.
Still an amusing read though.
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A Kickstarter board game project: The Emperor's New Clothes (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/springboard/emperors-new-clothes)
Posted without comment. Thoughts?
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Mind: blown.
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This is a really amazing game concept. I can't wait for the finished version. I'm going to try the print-and-play version with my friends this weekend!
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Honestly, the more I think about the project, the more it kind of bugs me. I think Ash stated it best when she said that the problem with it is, no matter what the punchline is, it is on the people who don't get it, which just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
The distressingly easy to arrive at "English Major" conclusion that this is mocking Kickstarter in general is also a bit bothersome.
I'm curious to see what the actual punchline is, but the whole thing just doesn't sit well with me.
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The first part of the punchline is parting people from their money.
The second part of the punchline is that when you do things ironically you're still in fact doing it. Which is more of a life lesson than a punchline.
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Honestly, the more I think about the project, the more it kind of bugs me. I think Ash stated it best when she said that the problem with it is, no matter what the punchline is, it is on the people who don't get it, which just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
The distressingly easy to arrive at "English Major" conclusion that this is mocking Kickstarter in general is also a bit bothersome.
I'm curious to see what the actual punchline is, but the whole thing just doesn't sit well with me.
If punch lines coming at the expense of the stupid makes you uncomfortable you must be squirming uncomfortably 24/7.
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Honestly, the more I think about the project, the more it kind of bugs me. I think Ash stated it best when she said that the problem with it is, no matter what the punchline is, it is on the people who don't get it, which just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
The distressingly easy to arrive at "English Major" conclusion that this is mocking Kickstarter in general is also a bit bothersome.
I'm curious to see what the actual punchline is, but the whole thing just doesn't sit well with me.
If punch lines coming at the expense of the stupid makes you uncomfortable you must be squirming uncomfortably 24/7.
:thejoke:
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The confusing part is that they explain the mechanics some. Games are not clothes. A complete description of a game amounts to the existence of a game; a complete description of clothing does not amount to jack shit.
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Honestly, the more I think about the project, the more it kind of bugs me. I think Ash stated it best when she said that the problem with it is, no matter what the punchline is, it is on the people who don't get it, which just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
The distressingly easy to arrive at "English Major" conclusion that this is mocking Kickstarter in general is also a bit bothersome.
I'm curious to see what the actual punchline is, but the whole thing just doesn't sit well with me.
If punch lines coming at the expense of the stupid makes you uncomfortable you must be squirming uncomfortably 24/7.
Not at the expense of the stupid -- at the expense of the uninformed or uninitiated. Board gaming has a real elitism problem, and this project seems to enjoy poking fun at people who aren't "in the know" by writing a joke that is accessible only to those who are already in the know and understand the problem. Based on a few of the publicity articles I've read, the "idea" behind the "game" is for you and another initiate to go out and play it in the wild. And then... I don't know, laugh at the people who ask you what the hell you're doing?
I am not a fan of modern art, so it is safe to say I'm not the target market for this anyway. I am especially sensitive to things that prey upon trust, and Emperor's New Clothes seems hell bent on abusing the trust of people who want to support board games. All of the "thatsthejoke.jpg" rejoinders to the protest against what they're doing only infuriates me more, and I fully realize that my being furious about it only adds to their enjoyment. Fuck it.
They're exploiting Kickstarter, exploiting backers, exploiting gamers, and making a joke at the expense of people who have no hope to understand it and who, once they did understand, would have no interest in joining the community that left such a bad taste in their mouth. It has nothing to do with a sense of humor.
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Dude, you're not seeing the clothes? They're beautiful! What's wrong with you people?
To be fair, a set of blank everything for a board game seems a good starter kit for making your own board game. Just use markers and stuff to draw on them!
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Others have made that point. There are already places that exist to supply that market, too. Fun stuff for rapid prototyping.
But you're buying a story here, buying into a joke, not just buying materials.
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I don't see it that way at all. To be "in the know" about the joke, you need to have some familiarity with the story of the emperor's new clothes. But pretty much everyone does, and for those who don't, the youtube video at the top explains it. I have trouble seeing how this is preying on the stupid - or the credulous - because it is hard to imagine anyone so stupid or credulous that they believe there is really content there that they somehow are unable to see. I would venture to say that anyone who claims to have been fooled into believing that is a troll, or someone who funds kickstarters without even taking a cursory glance at the content.
I don't see this as mocking kickstarter any more than lo those many faked facebook pages explaining Downton Abbey through likes, unfriending and the like is making fun of facebook. The joke is in transporting an existing piece of fiction into a new setting, to humorous effect, and talking about the subject matter in a way that iterates the subject matter's unique characteristics. (There must be a term for that because it's a technique that is used all the time - One of my History teachers once left a comment on my paper, "Good writing, but you made to many spelling mistakes" - but I'm drawing a blank.)
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Yes, but take another step further: you know the joke, so what is it saying when it's applied to the board game in this way? And why use Kickstarter to do it?
Mocking Kickstarter is a stretch -- but they are exploiting it. Kickstarter is doing well, but it's still in a vulnerable balancing point (perceptual and functional) between legitimate way of funding a business too risky to be commercially viable in a traditional market; and as an easy front for con-men to fleece the unsuspecting. That's painting with broad, bold strokes, but you get the gist. A project like this, where the thing you are funding isn't the thing it says it is, where you are "paying" money to contribute to a joke and participate in a guerilla theater performance under the guise of contributing to the production of a new game, is precisely what Kickstarter does not need.
Kickstarter has a unique problem in that it is nothing more than a patronage system, but a lot of contributors complain when the product they paid for (not "the project they funded," mind -- the "product they paid for") does not appear, or takes longer to appear than what they were promised. If you have ever heard the word "scam" thrown about in conjunction with Kickstarter, you have seen this at work. They usually aren't talking about how that person took their money and ran away with it; they're talking about how that person took their money, tried the idea in a way they thought would produce results, then had nothing to give to their backers. It's inherent in the "backer rewards" system to expect the quid pro quo, but Kickstarter explicitly promises nothing. Kickstarter is modern patronage. You invest, you do not purchase -- or at least that's how Kickstarter wants to be. Kickstarter is fully aware that they make money because there are plenty of businesses willing to pay a premium to have proof-of-market with no risk.
In one way, Emperor's New Clothes is pretty clever at using Kickstarter in a most literal way: they are taking money in exchange for participation in a piece of art. In another, ENC is proving to those folk who want product they pay for that some things on Kickstarter take a lot more thought than just putting down some cash. As much as it may not be in tune with the idealist version of Kickstarter's purpose, it needs those people who are happy to drop money on every project that catches their fancy. Transparency and building trust are Kickstarter's keystones.
I do not dislike ENC as an idea. I dislike ENC in its execution on Kickstarter.
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Throw an unattainable goal (1 BILLION dollars) on there and I imagine the joke would be in better taste.
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In one way, Emperor's New Clothes is pretty clever at using Kickstarter in a most literal way: they are taking money in exchange for participation in a piece of art. In another, ENC is proving to those folk who want product they pay for that some things on Kickstarter take a lot more thought than just putting down some cash. As much as it may not be in tune with the idealist version of Kickstarter's purpose, it needs those people who are happy to drop money on every project that catches their fancy. Transparency and building trust are Kickstarter's keystones.
I do not dislike ENC as an idea. I dislike ENC in its execution on Kickstarter.
I just don't see this as an erosion of transparency or trust like you do. Like pretty much every Kickstarter out there, whether a person who browses the page gives money or not is based on whether they like what they see, whether the pitch is effective. The presentation is satire, tongue firmly planted in cheek, but at the end of the day they HAVE made a promise: you give us money and we'll give you a box full of blank cards - call it a gaming kit or a souvenir or a campaign t-shirt or whatever - and you get product updates sent to your email. It's tangible, and it will take actual work on the part of the developer. That is what they are selling. I believe every single person who contributed money understands that that is what they're buying.
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Honestly, the more I think about the project, the more it kind of bugs me. I think Ash stated it best when she said that the problem with it is, no matter what the punchline is, it is on the people who don't get it, which just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
The distressingly easy to arrive at "English Major" conclusion that this is mocking Kickstarter in general is also a bit bothersome.
I'm curious to see what the actual punchline is, but the whole thing just doesn't sit well with me.
If punch lines coming at the expense of the stupid makes you uncomfortable you must be squirming uncomfortably 24/7.
Not at the expense of the stupid -- at the expense of the uninformed or uninitiated. Board gaming has a real elitism problem, and this project seems to enjoy poking fun at people who aren't "in the know" by writing a joke that is accessible only to those who are already in the know and understand the problem. Based on a few of the publicity articles I've read, the "idea" behind the "game" is for you and another initiate to go out and play it in the wild. And then... I don't know, laugh at the people who ask you what the hell you're doing?
I am not a fan of modern art, so it is safe to say I'm not the target market for this anyway. I am especially sensitive to things that prey upon trust, and Emperor's New Clothes seems hell bent on abusing the trust of people who want to support board games. All of the "thatsthejoke.jpg" rejoinders to the protest against what they're doing only infuriates me more, and I fully realize that my being furious about it only adds to their enjoyment. Fuck it.
They're exploiting Kickstarter, exploiting backers, exploiting gamers, and making a joke at the expense of people who have no hope to understand it and who, once they did understand, would have no interest in joining the community that left such a bad taste in their mouth. It has nothing to do with a sense of humor.
Seems like you are the problem, then, because all that stuff you said is what makes it funny. It does, in fact, have everything to do with your sense of humor if you need to get all uppity about PREYING ON TRUST!!! when people make a game that is clearly 50% performance art. Nobody is going to get their fucking box and shout "BUT THESE CARDS ARE ALL BLANK! I WAS LIED TO!" Anyone who doesn't get the joke probably doesn't have control of their own bank account in the first place.
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blah blah blah
I just don't see this as an erosion of transparency or trust like you do. Like pretty much every Kickstarter out there, whether a person who browses the page gives money or not is based on whether they like what they see, whether the pitch is effective. The presentation is satire, tongue firmly planted in cheek, but at the end of the day they HAVE made a promise: you give us money and we'll give you a box full of blank cards - call it a gaming kit or a souvenir or a campaign t-shirt or whatever - and you get product updates sent to your email. It's tangible, and it will take actual work on the part of the developer. That is what they are selling. I believe every single person who contributed money understands that that is what they're buying.
You verify a physical product is being offered and are dodging the marketing of it, which you shouldn't ignore if you're also trying to make the point that the use of the story in this project -- the marketing -- is the point.
a different blah blah blah
Seems like you are the problem, then, because all that stuff you said is what makes it funny. It does, in fact, have everything to do with your sense of humor if you need to get all uppity about PREYING ON TRUST!!! when people make a game that is clearly 50% performance art. Nobody is going to get their fucking box and shout "BUT THESE CARDS ARE ALL BLANK! I WAS LIED TO!" Anyone who doesn't get the joke probably doesn't have control of their own bank account in the first place.
As I said, I am definitely not the "target market" for the joke. This project obviously wasn't going to be one I would spend my money on. But I do regularly use Kickstarter and support projects, including board games.
And you're missing the core of it: it is not bad that they are selling a box of blank cards and some blank dice. It's not even about "getting the joke." It's about who the joke is on, and who it's aimed at, and what they're trying to accomplish by making it.
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It's pretty clear I'm in the minority on this. Most people are plenty willing to go "Oh, the whole thing is like Emperor's New Clothes, but with a game! And I'm not fooled! Hahah! Look at the puns -- ROOS and Hoke's Games!" and move on, either pledging money or not as they see fit. So, fine. I asked!
I do not see it that way, though, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Hopefully I am in the minority.
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I see it as an unfunny joke that made someone a cool 4k on top of production costs.
It is a pretty douchey joke that is being made in a total dick way. Bonus points to parting other douches with their money to do it.
So hooray for circle jerk of bland joke?
Edit - obviously if it was a dick joke it would be far more flavorful. A good dick joke is always salty.
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I'm not missing the core of anything, you're just overreacting. Were you expecting everyone to say "oh but you're right, weird postmodern jokes dressed up as games are wrong and infringe upon the SACRED BOND OF TRUST that Kickstarter is based on!" or something? This board has an entire thread devoted exclusively to mocking strangers who are dumber than the poster. A game based on the idea of seeing how far people will go along with something that is patently ridiculous is not even going to register with most of us. You have to do a lot more than "gag disguised as a product" to trip my alarm. Let me know when someone is kickstarting sequels to Swap.avi and I'll get all up in arms.
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I was hoping someone could explain that it was making a point I was missing. The answer seems to be no, it's exactly what it looks like. Which is impressively ironic.
Mostly:
I see it as an unfunny joke that made someone a cool 4k on top of production costs.
It is a pretty douchey joke that is being made in a total dick way. Bonus points to parting other douches with their money to do it.
So hooray for circle jerk of bland joke?
Edit - obviously if it was a dick joke it would be far more flavorful. A good dick joke is always salty.
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http://www.jp.square-enix.com/dod3/#/story
Somehow, Drakengard 3?
- Same director as Drakengard 1/2/Nier
- Main character 1 is probably younger Kaine from Nier with a flower growing out of her eye
- Main Character 2 is Manah from Drakengard
- Graphics are terrible
- Hoping for: Babies, weapon stories, Nier music and a translation.
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Not sure I mentioned this before.
Fully realized Mario 64 music
The video makes me laugh everytime:
http://www.p4rgaming.com/?p=530
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Drakengard 3 better come out on 360. Maybe after Nier the battle system will upgrade from being tolerable to good.
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http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=3220746
Discussion is vaguely interesting, to me, at least. How to best deal with the sticky issue of champ selection with 5 random strangers and minimize toxic behavior.
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http://www.jp.square-enix.com/dod3/#/story
Somehow, Drakengard 3?
- Same director as Drakengard 1/2/Nier
- Main character 1 is probably younger Kaine from Nier with a flower growing out of her eye
- Main Character 2 is Manah from Drakengard
- Graphics are terrible
- Hoping for: Babies, weapon stories, Nier music and a translation.
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Not sure I mentioned this before.
Fully realized Mario 64 music
The video makes me laugh everytime:
http://www.p4rgaming.com/?p=530
It's too bad that when you said the main character was Kaine with a flower growing out of her eye, you meant it metaphorically. It would have been the first game with a character who was confirmed to be hermaphroditic. And, judging by the alt costumes that came with the DLC, Kaine packs.
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/14/nuclear_reactor_salt/
Science! Old concept but great to see it looking usable.
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That fact about Kaine is maybe the best thing about Nier. Gaming news outlets were thinking this was a mistake.
I like how "Kaine" is metaphoric and "a flower growing out of her eye" isn't.
I'm sure it's her daughter or a clone or something though. Maybe? Ok, Manah and something related to Kaine, being together at the same time, is extremely unlikely, but whatever. I'm glad Manah is back anyway. I missed her.
Nier's composer is working on it too. We'll have to get the OST.
Literally the only full price games I've bought day 1 since... FF12, are Dark Souls, Dragon's Dogma and Nier.
Hype.
Sorry Trips, PS3 only
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Ridiculous. The best thing about Nier is the great and powerful Grimoire Weiss!
That said, the more I think about it the more sense it makes they they might bring Kaine back. She and Emil aren't Repilcants like everyone else so they continue living, and unlike Emil, Kaine's not established to be hanging out in the same place for the next 5000 years.
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And, judging by the alt costumes that came with the DLC, Kaine packs.
Bwuh, Nier had DLC?
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It had one. Added in a bunch of challenge fights, two sets of alternate costumes, and three totally overpowered weapons. The inter-level scenes are, of course, super-cryptic statements that allude to shit from Grimoire Nier. You also play as the other, shittier Nier and not the awesome Dadass, which is the only way to do so with a US copy.
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The whole DLC is a vague tie in to Drakengard 1 too. You get Caim's weapons IIRC. But really it's mostly challenge fights (and new music!!)
Zero looks like she has the same personality as Kaine, and the flower is probably the same as Nier's.
Also: Emil and sister were number 6 and 7, Drakengard 3's two sisters are 0 and 1. I doubt they'll just ignore Nier alltogether.
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You ever read the translated stuff from Grimoire Nier? Kaine's grandmother was pretty important in the end of days. 0 could be her.
E: the original her.
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I wanted to but then completely forgot about it.
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The story about Kaine and her grandmother before society collapsed is in here:
http://youtu.be/74DCfV5fYr0 (http://youtu.be/74DCfV5fYr0)
It's part of the drama CD. Kaine's grandmother is a bonafide historical figure!
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http://www.comicsalliance.com/2013/03/22/ducktales-remastered-capcom-wayforward-video-game/ (http://www.comicsalliance.com/2013/03/22/ducktales-remastered-capcom-wayforward-video-game/)
Now, we all know that Ducktales for NES is one of the best games ever, licensed or not. Capcom has decided they're going to do a shot-for-shot remake of it that will be a downloadable game. I'm optimistic.
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http://hellmode.com/2013/03/21/this-isnt-the-article-i-wanted-to-write-about-tomb-raider/
re: the new Tomb Raider
Better for feminism than Other M?
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Isn't everything?
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Yoichi Wada is stepping down today, several years too late, from the leadership of Square-Enix. Hopefully most of the higher-ups will go with him after Square posted a loss of 10 billion yen (http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/26/4148056/square-enix-expects-to-incur-extraordinary-loss-this-fiscal-year) this FY.
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http://www.amazon.com/The-Assassination-Orange-Foreworld-ebook/dp/B00B797JAM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1364831288&sr=8-1&keywords=assassination+of+orange
So one of my best freinds has gotten his first published story that's fully him instead of part of a group. It's just a short story, and still part of the Foreworld/Mongoliad setting, but I figured I'd toss the link around. Joe is a pretty good writer(better then me by miles), so it's defintaly worth a look if you like historical fiction.
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/03/iain_banks_cancer_diagnosis/
Another respected author dying.
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France: Our political scandals are easily the best
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/02/jerome-cahuzac-france-offshore-account
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Re: Gref. Fuckity fuck fuck fuck.
Also, Disney killed LucasArts. (http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/03/technology/disney-lucasarts/) Not that they'd been making good games since, oh, the 1990s, but it's still a sad end to a studio with a great history. Hopefully they license out the adventure IPs along with the orgy of Star Wars games.
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I have a bad feeling it'll end with a lot of Good Idea, Bad Idea.
Good idea: Ressurrecting X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter
Bad idea: Giving that license to EA.
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France: Our political scandals are easily the best
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/02/jerome-cahuzac-france-offshore-account
Oh man, French right wing reaction to this must be amazing.
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Everybody's acting super shocked now but the right actually defended him before he confessed. Just about every politician defended him!
That's because the exact same thing happened with the right wing government last mandate, and it directly involved former president Sarkozy. (But there hasn't been any proof yet) Both former budget ministers were close too.
I can't even joke about Italy anymore
Interestingly, the same online newspaper revealed both scandals. It has said from its beginning that it has chosen to live on a subscription based model, to stay truly independent and be able to resist political pressure, unlike every other news source.
Medias are looking about as bad as politicians to me now
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EDIT:
Actually, this article is more interesting, so I'm putting it first:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/psysociety/2013/04/02/benevolent-sexism/
You know, I always wondered if there would be a scientific study some day that said "men are actually better at doing X, that's why the gender gap in that field has never really gone away." Funny story...
http://www.fastcoexist.com/1681690/women-have-better-decision-making-abilities-than-men-make-better-corporate-leaders?partner=newsletter
Well that's awkward....
(Although I don't know if this necessarily indicates a gender disparity, so much as it indicates that the kind of women who climb to a CEO position are people who question the status-quo, and it turns out questioning the status quo is good for business).
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I don't deny benevolent sexism doesn't exist, but what goes behind writing obituaries and including information is completely lost in that article. Glaringly deficient is the response of the family. What if her stroganoff was a strong family reference to simply knowing her as an individual beyond accomplishments? Anyway, there are bizarre statements made about males in obituaries, and even weirder references occur when an individual isn't nearly as "accomplished" in awards, research and other shiny things.
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Dunno about the Obituary bit, but the OMG UR HOT SCIENCE GIRL!!!! bit definitely rings true to the point.
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It's sort of hilarious that a study necessitated propelling this conversation, since it's existed early 20c without this psychosocial label that second-wave fems brought to national discourse. The author (and whoever else) choosing an obituary to continue a not-new conversation is very dumb though.
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Obit section: Real goddamn dumb.
Section about the science blogger: I'm torn. The part about judging women (And people) unfairly based on their looks and what they do is true, but I also don't see a way to stop it. Suppose the problem isn't in noticing how people look, but commenting on it and defining it as the most important part of them as a person. I also take umbrage with basically all of Fiske's paper, but that is getting pretty far afield.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/06/health/judge-orders-fda-to-make-morning-after-pill-available-over-the-counter-for-all-ages.html?hp
Age limit removed from Plan B (no prescription necessary for girls 16 and under). I very much agree with the principle in doing so. I will be curious to see if there is a "difference in numbers" with underaged pregnancy, and I do hope to see a change. From a simple perspective, I'm relieved that girls from difficult families and parents, can, perhaps, circumscribe relying on their approval. I don't disagree with anything about the Plan B pill. I wonder if pharmacists will still be required to say things to younger girls. I know they had a brief procedure with 18+ photo ID.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/05/senate-bill-too-big-to-fail-banks-draft_n_3023645.html?utm_hp_ref=business
Making it Hard for Banks?
The draft calls for bank regulators to look to the 19th century—before the Federal Reserve, deposit insurance and the income tax—when setting capital equity levels, and seems to rule out risk-weighting as a way to dilute the rules. By that standard, none of America’s largest banks would have reached the bill’s proposed minimum capital requirement of 10% in the second quarter of last year (pdf). And that’s not even counting the additional 5% capital surcharge on banks with more than $400 billion in assets.
A buffet for lobbyists?
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I can't even joke about Italy anymore
Oh yes you can. They can never take your bunga bunga away.
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http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-league-stew/sandlot-turns-20-stories-cast-film-20th-anniversary-212016264--mlb.html
Because The Sandlot is still one of the best, most quotable movies ever.
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http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2013-04-20/evangelion-9-patty-burger-comes-with-fork-of-longinus
Zenny. Get me this fork and there's a bottle of tequila in it for you when you get back to the states.
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http://www.gameskinny.com/m8gve/best-gamer-setups-and-furniture/?utm_source=pm&utm_medium=nl&utm_content=link&utm_campaign=nl99
Ultimate gaming setups.
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Guillermo del Toro is developing Monster, yes, that one, as a live-action series for HBO. (http://www.comicsalliance.com/2013/04/25/guillermo-del-toro-monster-hbo-naoki-urasawa-manga)
Wha?
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:O
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I'm in
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The true FFT sequel we were all waiting for. Look, there's Agrias over there.
http://www.jp.square-enix.com/ffts/
(It is a social card game for smartphones)
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It was on Kotaku already (http://kotaku.com/spot-your-favorite-fire-emblem-character-in-this-amazin-482778871), but this is a pretty sweet work of fanart for Fire Emblem Awakening:
http://hasuyawn.deviantart.com/art/Peace-367844442
Complete with Stalker Tharja, Falchion the royal fruit cutter, embarrassed Libra, and Cynthia & Sumia about to do the same thing that always happens around them. Frederick & Kjelle look weird and barely recognizable without their armor, though.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUed7HZtTNA
You bet your ass I subscribed.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLPkKZS6q9k
TF2 and Futurama, together just as God intended.
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For the MtGers: SLIVERS IN M14 HRRRRNNNNNNGH
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152787820210307.1073741829.201120755306&type=1
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Those aren't slivers. =(
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http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/05/amanda_berry_and_gina_dejesus.html
Three women, missing for 9, 10, and 11 years, were found alive by a neighbor who thought domestic violence was occurring and decided to intervene.
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Adding to Ciato's link, I'm posting the video that will most likely be the internet meme du' jour. In a forum where we lambast the multitudinous Idiots of the Day, sometimes it's nice to celebrate an average guy who does the right thing when it matters.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axCn04iXkBg&feature=youtube_gdata_player
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In our culture of fake, staged interviews and the expectation of insincerity in the media, a man who is honest and tells it like it is is great. He is great. I want to hug him forever.
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Haha, I got linked to that interview earlier and, yeah, my first thought was this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AG5iVRyGtk
In other news, oh gods Eternal Darkness successor how am I only finding out about this today? o_o;
http://www.precursorgames.com/shadowoftheeternals/
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Some anime OP quizzes for people, music only. Mostly to give some people (mostly Andy) something to kill time with at work.
http://www.sporcle.com/games/5camp/20-years-of-anime-openings-quiz-1992-2012
The next three are by the same person, so while there is some overlap with the first one, they don't overlap with each other.
http://www.sporcle.com/games/amaranth/clip_anime#
http://www.sporcle.com/games/amaranth/clip_animeii#
http://www.sporcle.com/games/amaranth/clip_animeiii#
52, 42, 42, and 29, respectively.
First one kinda puts you at ease then hits you hard. I was batting .900 in the first half, but the second half killed me. Mrfed at the third one, missed a bunch I should have gotten. Last one is just a killer.
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If you are on the Internet and like movies you've probably seen this already, but just in case:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF-4c8U-mUI
Trailer for The World's End, the conclusion of the Cornetto Flavours/Blood And Ice Cream trilogy that started with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. YES.
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FENCE GAG SIGHTED
-
FENCE GAG SIGHTED
ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL.
-
If you are on the Internet and like movies you've probably seen this already, but just in case:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF-4c8U-mUI
Trailer for The World's End, the conclusion of the Cornetto Flavours/Blood And Ice Cream trilogy that started with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. YES.
Initial reaction, "Only 12 beers in one night? Is that supposed to be a lot?"
-
If you are on the Internet and like movies you've probably seen this already, but just in case:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF-4c8U-mUI
Trailer for The World's End, the conclusion of the Cornetto Flavours/Blood And Ice Cream trilogy that started with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. YES.
Initial reaction, "Only 12 beers in one night? Is that supposed to be a lot?"
Should I be concerned that's the same initial reaction I had?
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo
You can all stop whatever it is the you are doing. We are finished. Human civilization has peaked. We have a cover of David Bowie played by an Astonaut on the International Space Station. There is nothing left to do.
-
I don't think we can say that until Bowie gives an actual concert on Mars.
-
I seem to recall David Bowie being one of the aliens shown on the screens behind Zed in Men in Black headquarters, so that has probably already happened.
That was a very cool video though!
-
Well, he was The Man Who Fell to Earth, so that shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone.
-
http://www.destructoid.com/pok-dex-entries-must-have-been-written-by-children-237137.phtml
Making fun of pokedex entries.
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lol http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDtiH6gLgG0
I hate his music but this was funny
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15/a-fascinating-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-racially-tolerant-countries/?hpid=z1 Link title says it all. (Poor Fenrir)
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http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2013-05-17/blazblue/calamity-trigger-fighting-game-gets-anime-green-lit
Proof God loves Andrew and wants him to be happy
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Hoping against hope for the Bang and Tager Show guest starring some other guys occasionally I guess
-
Hoping against hope for the Bang and Tager Show guest starring some other guys occasionally I guess
-
Speaking of ASW...
http://www.siliconera.com/2013/05/19/guilty-gear-xrd-sign-announced-by-arc-system-works/
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God dammit if this is a next-gen exclusive I will be very upset. And also poor.
-
Pretty cool considering I thought the series was straight-up dead. I hope all the music doesn't sound like that though.
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They actually just released yet another XX rebalance last month, so they've at least been keeping it warm.
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Did they finally find a way to make Anji not suck?
-
Hasn't Anji not been in his own tier for a while? I thought he already got fixed in one of the last two releases.
-
Speaking of ASW...
http://www.siliconera.com/2013/05/19/guilty-gear-xrd-sign-announced-by-arc-system-works/
Ok, I'm reasonably impressed on the technical side of things. This is the first time I've looked at a 3D fighter and thought "I can't tell it's not sprites."
-
Really? The animation looked clunkier than say, the recent Naruto 3D fighters. But this is still in development so it may get better.
-
http://io9.com/amazon-is-going-to-start-selling-fan-fiction-legal-fa-509364648
See URL.
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http://something-very-special.tumblr.com/post/50660410181/weapon-stories-masterpost
Unused weapon stories from Nier, slowly translated. They're pretty great.
The Cavia games have a lot of weapons you get at level 1, with a small blurb. Level the weapon up and you get access to more of the story. (Very addicting in game, also the only good thing about Drakengard 2 IIRC) Those are the ones not in the game due to time constraints.
Relevant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCQ0vDAbF7s
Drakengard 3 is looking weird as hell BTW. The main character has four allies in battle that also happen to be her sexual partners, one of them being a small old man wearing stilts. I don't know yet whether it's going to end up horribly sexist or the opposite.
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All those weapon stories are reposts of the stuff from Grimoire Nier's translation team, whose work is here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vEP2iZ52P-DWhQBQ2Is6R8Wjao99AGi0YuWShTvA-tA (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vEP2iZ52P-DWhQBQ2Is6R8Wjao99AGi0YuWShTvA-tA)
It also includes the audio cd translations, a bunch of info about the characters that wasn't in the game, the final fate of Emil, and a bunch of stuff about Kaine and her grandmother, who is crazy for the same reason Yonah has the Scrawl.
-
They're a new translation but yeah.
Man weapon stories are so great. They're the Lost Odyssey dreams of Cavia games (except obviously way shorter and completely grimdark)
My favourites:
Phoenix Sword
This is an old story. A beautiful bird with brightly shining feathers lived silently and carefully in the depths of a forest.
One day, a child abandoned as a burden wandered into the depths of the forest. The bird took pity on the starved and sunken child, and pecked off one of its feathers to give to the child. The child brought it back and pleased his relatives, and he was able to live with his family again.
Hearing the story, people barged into the forest one after another, and told the beautiful bird of how poor, how unfortunate and how unrewarded they were. The beautiful bird took pity on them, and gave them one shining feather after another, and when it gave its last feather, the bird’s beautiful body was reduced to a sorry state. However the ugly bird did not have any regrets.
The ugly bird that lost its feathers was freezing in the cold, and the child from before appeared in front of it. He told it that he was searching a brightly shining and beautiful bird to repay his debts. The ugly bird was overjoyed, and told the child of its desire. “That was me. Please, would you not keep me warm in your chest?” But the child merely took one glance at the ugly bird and called it a liar, killing it with a huge sword and eating the burnt bird, afterwards he continued to search for the beautiful bird.
Nirvana Dagger
Ever since her birth, the girl has been told that she had a fiancée. She was brought up being taught how to be a proper wife, and at night, she offered prayers for her fiancée while facing the scenery outside her window. “Lord XX, I eagerly await the day of your arrival.”
Several other girls lived in the house that she lived in. They were all brought up being taught how to be proper wives, and at night, they offered prayers for their fiancées while facing the scenery outside their windows. “Lord XX, I eagerly await the day of your arrival.”
One day, the girls had an argument about whether or not the most brilliant of them will be the only one chosen by their fiancée. The girls stubbornly clung to their claim that they were best suited as a fiancée, and their caretaker spoke to them gently. “Don’t worry, you will all be Lord XX’s wives.” Hearing that, all the girls broke out into smiles.
On the day of the wedding, the girls were brought to a place with stone pavements that could be seen from their windows. One dagger was given to the girls. They were told that to meet their fiancée, they have to kill themselves right here. Hearing that, the girls fought for the dagger and committed suicide. Afterwards, a temple was built on where the girls died. The temple’s name was the name of their fiancée.
Faith
There was a famous singer living in a city in the far east. However, he was no longer able to sing in his later years. A monk appeared by his side out of nowhere and whisper to the singer: “you should pick up this sword.”
“If you kill a single person you’ll be able to sing one song. I you kill two people you will sing two songs. Go ahead and sing some unparalleled songs!” The singer picked up the song from the monk, hid in the night, and slashed at two bystanders. The next day, the singer can produce beautiful songs, and regained fame and fortune.
Afterward the singer sang a song for each person he killed, and sang two for every two he killed. He continually attained more fame and fortune. However, his desires could no longer be suppressed. If he killed his most important person, what kind of marvellous song would be produced?
And so the singer killed his wife and sang a song. He killed several of his children and sang multiple songs. He killed everyone in his family and he sang and sang and sang. He killed so many people on the streets that he cannot even sing fast enough. He killed and killed and killed and killed. In the end he didn’t sing anything as he killed himself. All that is left is a blood stained sword.
Moonrise
There is a legend of a blade that cooled a country wrapped in a hellish conflagration. Out of the misery of the endless flames came the people’s savior; a sword, surrounded by thousands and thousands of status made entirely out of ice.
A man searching for the world’s legendary weapons came across the sword. He bundled the sword tightly in a long roll of cloth, and took it in hand. But as he placed the sword in his pack and left, unbeknownst to him, the sword began to freeze the cloth; and, soon, froze him, too.
A priestess traveling the world came across the sword. She offered a prayer to the gods, and attempted to draw the blade. But frost quickly spread from her fingertips, up her arm, and all across her body. As she cursed the gods she had invoked, the sword froze her, too.
A slave woman, working in a cave, came across the sword. Hoping to escape her painful life forever, she gripped the handle of the sword and drew it out. But she did not freeze, nor was she able to thrust the blade into her breast. That night, the blade’s edge gleamed in the moonlight as she was beaten to death by her rapidly freezing master.
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Iron Pipe's three weapon stories are journal stuff from before the game's intro but other than that, I think they are all just really fucked up stories.
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Really? The animation looked clunkier than say, the recent Naruto 3D fighters. But this is still in development so it may get better.
I haven't looked at Naruto.
That said, I think the clunkiness might be part of what makes it look sprite-like to me. Instead of doing smooth sweeping motions that are the default of 3D animation, they will hold a stylish stillframe for quite a long time. This is something that used to be done for bugetary reasons (fewer frames of sprites to draw? less expensive!) but that they seem to have chosen to do for artistic reasons.
It's kind of like...a lot of early NES era characters were chosen to have big heads compared to their bodies (Mario...Sonic...) and in interviews the creators said that this was due to technical limitations because you wouldn't see their face at all otherwise. But now chibi is just an accepted thing that is popular in games (and looking to other mediums, hey, mickey mouse had a big head and small body too; it's not that crazy).
Freezing animation for several frames with an artificial motion trail might just become a thing that is done for artistic style reasons and has a group of people who like that artistic style.
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http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/05/29/goodness-humble-bundle-8-has-hotline-miami-proteus/
New Humble Indie Bundle has Hotline Miami, which is the best simulation of heroin crack acid let's just go with drug-fueled rampage (and drug-fueled nintendo) I have encountered.
Also Little Inferno, which is similar to Hotline Miami only to the extent that it also is about staring obsessively at a screen until the real world seems like an abstraction, or would if it would occur to you to think of it. Also similar in that I played it a few months back and enjoyed it.
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Also they're doing a pay-what-you-want sale for half of Telltale's catalog. Monkey Island and Walking Dead sadly not included, but a Sam & Max Season, the Puzzle Agents and Back To The Future are worth a couple of bucks.
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http://rpgfan.com/news/2013/1352.html (http://rpgfan.com/news/2013/1352.html)
Releasing ToS and ToS2 on the same game on the PS 3 with Western release. Too bad it's not a game that we didn't already get/just a better game period.
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http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/28/4371618/final-fantasy-9-side-quest-rediscovered-after-thirteen-years
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I was the first person to discover how to get the Kornago Gourd in the English version of Final Fantasy V. I want an internet article written about me.
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If anything we need a massive underground revival of Valkyrie Profile, and subsequently internet articles dedicated to the only legible guide on the matter.
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http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/10145834
Now I no longer need to buy HotS if I want to LAGGY. Neat.
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http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/10145834
Now I no longer need to buy HotS if I want to LAGGY. Neat.
Oh wow, I'm definitely going to use that. I like how it's starter edition too.
In other news, imagine nuns in the Himalayans performing Kung-Fu. Get yourself a mental image. Or a range of mental images.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8618325.stm
This is what it actually looks like.
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New Deus Ex game.
....
Episodic and only on iOs devices
On the other hand Double Fine has another successful kickstarter for a new SRPG
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doublefine/double-fines-massive-chalice
So far it looks really cool. I'm sure there's going to be a crippling gameplay flaw or two though.
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The latest gritty game where you're a white dude shooting zombies has come out
10/10 scores everywhere. An idiot reviewer compares it to Citizen Kane.
Polygon gives it an 7.5/10 instead.
EVERYBODY GOES CRAZY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko1sklmOR9E
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I was the first person to discover how to get the Kornago Gourd in the English version of Final Fantasy V. I want an internet article written about me.
I found ti completely on my own back in '98 with no guide myself, I want a cookie :(
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Save the Date
http://paperdino.com/games/save-the-date/
Visual Novel
Free
Plenty of great surprises
Someone else play it please
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http://www.smashbros.com/us/
Smash bros dojo is back. While I didn't end up loving brawl as much as the dojo made me think I would, I can't fault the dojo for being pretty much the best preview website ever.
Also, apparently megaman.
http://www.smashbros.com/us/characters/mega_man.html
Capcom has decided to stop trolling?
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Pft, it's all about Villager.
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Also, apparently megaman.
http://www.smashbros.com/us/characters/mega_man.html
Capcom has decided to stop trolling?
Capcom just finding a new way to troll UMVC3 fans.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBoL1Ic9uWw
Okay we don't need any more characters now.
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Alright, credit where it's due. That one deserves mad props.
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Wow.
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http://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2013/06/11-1/funny-japanese-twitter-reactions-to-forthcoming-mac-pro
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http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1288561702/alan-moore-and-mitch-jenkins-his-heavy-heart
Alan Moore wants your money.
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http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2013/06/21/science-prairie-dog-language-decoded.html (http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2013/06/21/science-prairie-dog-language-decoded.html)
The description is maybe a little overboard, but incredible stuff nonetheless.
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http://www.thenation.com/article/174851/strange-case-barrett-brown#axzz2Wm1jk9Ys
http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Endgame_Systems
Why hello there secret information-military-industrial complex. Complete with a company that makes maps of airports, etc, maps out where all the computers are along with what software they use, and sells that information along with an extensive list of zero-day exploits for said software.
What a wonderful world we live in.
Also our metadata is now being watched by the NSA just that much more closely now than it was before. You're welcome.
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http://gawker.com/texas-lawmaker-braving-backbreaking-filibuster-to-stop-575168871
In Texas, they are trying to pass this law through a special session, which allows them to vote it in at a lower threshold than they would otherwise. This woman is basically trying to filibuster them out the special session. There are a thousand women in Austin protesting.
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Excuse me, I have to go rape Jodie Laubenberg. It's cool, the rape kit will make it okay for her afterward.
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The filibuster was stopped because TALKING ABOUT SONOGRAMS IS NOT RELEVANT TO A DEBATE ABOUT ABORTION. (When you want every woman to get one before them, of course!)
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Look I don't think you understand how this giving birth thing works Ciatos. You haven't been through it like most of these senators have.
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Right now they are debating Texas senate semantics to see if stopping her filibuster was allowed. They need to burn about 80 more minutes.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/26/us/politics/senate-democrats-in-texas-try-blocking-abortion-bill-with-filibuster.html?_r=0
The filibuster was interrupted shortly after 6:30 p.m. when Senator Tommy Williams, a Republican from The Woodlands, called for Ms. Davis to be found in violation of the filibuster rules because Senator Rodney Ellis, a Houston Democrat, had tried to put a back brace on her for assistance.
“The tradition of this filibuster in the Senate has always been that you had to do it on your own,” Mr. Williams said. “Senator Ellis, you’re well aware of that, I believe.”
Senators convened with Mr. Dewhurst. Though Democrats noted that Ms. Davis had not ultimately put on the back brace, senators voted to uphold Mr. Williams’s objection. It was Ms. Davis’s second violation of Senate rules; after a third, senators would be asked to vote on whether to allow her filibuster to proceed.
Not... sure that's how that works?
That said, I forget how stupid filibuster rules are. Seriously.
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She can't eat, drink, go to the bathroom, sit down, or get assistance. Assistance with a back brace is loleyeroll though.
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Well near as I can tell, they upheld his objection DESPITE HER NOT HAVING THE BACKBRACE. Which is kinda... wrong to me?
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I wouldn't worry too much about that abortion bill. Middle class girls can still just take a trip to another state to get their abortion, it's only those poor brown people who don't matter who'll be seriously affected.
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You mean those poor brown people that, effectively, make up 60%+ of the state?
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Even middle class girls should worry, anyone who lives in the northern part of the state has Oklahoma to rely on. And frankly, Oklahoman women have relied on north Texas for abortions for years!
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5 AM. Austin still in chaos. The protest group that was going at 3 AM is still out there, although mostly just socializing now.
.... at 5 AM, in the far north suburbs, nowhere near the capitol or anything important.
You can get the main story on any news site tomorrow, I'm sure, but the local fallout is if anything more intense. Austin city police were actively clashing with state troopers for a while over the arrests of protestors, and reports are that someone firebombed Wendy Davis' office. Kirk Watson (our local senator, and the guy who mainly kept up the objections for the 3 hours after Davis was ordered to stop) isn't going home and is sheltering other senators from both parties who feel unsafe trying to leave the capitol.
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Oh by the way this entire incident got buried on page 7 of the Corpus paper. Redistricting maps got a lot of coverage though!
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https://twitter.com/erinfaye/status/350261723531464704/photo/1
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https://twitter.com/erinfaye/status/350261723531464704/photo/1
Amazing.
They also played this on the radio the day after (a song I hadn't heard before, but would love if it got more radio play).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1TBgcctcco
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It had already been getting airplay. You know, on the good pop stations.
-
Hell, I'm honestly sick and tired of Same Love >_>. Its been getting serious play on both my local pop and alternative station for the past... god. Month or three? Whenever Ceiling Can't Hold Us started getting play.
-
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/brainwaves/2013/07/15/is-sugar-really-toxic-sifting-through-the-evidence/
An interesting article about sugar. Seems that sugar is not specifically bad for people aside from being in a lot of unfilling, high calorie stuff. Some people believed that it specifically contributed to disease.
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Hey, remember The GIA from before they closed down twelve goddamn years ago and now I feel old just writing that? Well. (http://www.thegia.com)
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Crazy.
-
Also pretty awesome.
-
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/brainwaves/2013/07/15/is-sugar-really-toxic-sifting-through-the-evidence/
An interesting article about sugar. Seems that sugar is not specifically bad for people aside from being in a lot of unfilling, high calorie stuff. Some people believed that it specifically contributed to disease.
Hmmm
A more compelling criticism is that concern about fructose is based primarily on studies in which rodents and people consumed huge amounts of the molecule—up to 300 grams of fructose each day, which is nearly equivalent to the total sugar in eight cans of Coke
Pfft Coke? I had a coworker once who consumed 8 cans of Dr Pepper per day. He was freakishly skinny too.
In all seriousness, though, I think this article mentions but doesn't make a big enough deal about an important point. The part where fructose doesn't make you less hungry and in fact might even make you more hungry? Yeah, that is a little bit alarming, and seems like it might be a relevant part of overeating.
Although...really, anything that screws with the brain's way of determining how much food it's getting is a concern. Like...MSG, while almost every study on it has shown it to be harmless, there have been some studies in China that linked it to weight gain. Which on the surface doesn't make any sense--it's a spice that stimulates the "fresh protein" taste bud and does basically nothing else in the human body. But in practice if you're messing with people's sense of how much protein they're consuming, I could see how that might result in overeating, I guess?
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When almost every study shows one thing and a small minority shows another, it's probably best to approach the latter with some skepticism. Not that the premise is wrong for sure, but the data doesn't really support it, I'm pretty sure.
In the particular case of MSG (excluding allergic reactions to it), for instance: there certainly isn't data to support banning or regulating it, so the only question left is... should you (the individual) try to limit it? Eh... maybe. Experiment with it and if you find it helps, sure, go for it. But it seems unlikely to be something that would be a big help. For many small dietary changes (likely including this one), it feels sometimes to me that people make them to avoid the serious, underlying issues of "eat less sodium/sugar/saturated fat than you probably currently do, eat less in general, eat more of the things your body actually needs, exercise more" which I see the article even retreats to at the end.
On the specific topic of sugar, it's... bad, but not directly bad, if that makes sense? Debating whether it is a "toxin" (wtf does that word even mean) is pointless. It's unhealthy mostly because you can eat a lot of it very easily without sating your appetite and thus get way more calories than is healthy. This isn't really news and to some extent I feel trying to debate just "how responsible" it is for obesity or diabetes doesn't accomplish much. As individuals we all know it is something we should try to eat in moderation (or if we don't know this then we need more education so that people do... I'd actually be interested in a study about that). As a state, eh. That depends on your politics somewhat. There is probably enough evidence to merit consideration for the idea of taxing/regulating it in some way (assuming one is open to this idea in general), but we would have to be very careful that any policy doesn't have unexpected consequences, so I am somewhat leery about this.
-
Nice overview article that was linked from a women in game development list:
http://junkee.com/flip-it-and-reverse-it-how-to-fight-the-gender-wars/15081
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http://comicsalliance.com/jason-david-frank-power-rangers-interview-sdcc-2013/
In which he posits the possible success of a Green Ranger solo spin off movie. I say, why not?
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Thought we already determined lone Ranger movies don't sell.
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I'd watch it.
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Nice overview article that was linked from a women in game development list:
http://junkee.com/flip-it-and-reverse-it-how-to-fight-the-gender-wars/15081
Why are these so much better than the actual costumes? http://www.themarysue.com/fully-clothed-superhero/#0
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Yeah, seen those. Still a fan of all of them except baggy khakis Wonder Woman.
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I find those generally hit and miss. There are some very nice looking ones (dig the Zatara), but a few (khakis Wonder Woman) look pretty eh.
That said, and I think I discussed this with Ash, actually turns to far the other direction. The degree of fully clothedness actually almost feels a bit silly to me. It was part of the challenge to him, admittedly, but if people are gonna hold it up as a political statement, I'm gonna say it does feel going around to the prudish end of things.
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As a design point though it shows that the characters are still recognisable as who they are even dressed that much. Iconic swimsuit costumes being necessary for visual reference is kind of debunked.
Anything to get Wonder Woman in pants though, I will take the kakhi trousers over 1940s circus performer getup.
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The khakis probably seem off because male superhero costumes almost invariably have form-fitting leggings. Especially the JLA lineup.
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It's not that they're khakis, it's that they are BAGGY khakis. Given the rest of her costume, it just looks bizarre.
-
I just don't think the khaki's roll with the upper bit of it. I dunno what it is, it just looks like cosplay gone lazy.
-
Just gonna echo that Wonder Woman's looks the most off of them. The pants just really don't match her outfit at all, and that alone just messed up the look. A few other things look off but can't quite say why. Yeah, "cosplay gone lazy" fits that description.
Power Girl is another case that feels off, I guess feels like they put too much on her that wasn't necessary. Like if they just took her standard outfit, put the blue undershirt thing she has in that image to cover her iconic hole, and put on pants, that'd be enough, but they went the extra length and...eh, dunno, feels off, can't say why.
Most of the others are fine though.
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Power Girl is another case that feels off, I guess feels like they put too much on her that wasn't necessary. Like if they just took her standard outfit, put the blue undershirt thing she has in that image to cover her iconic hole, and put on pants, that'd be enough, but they went the extra length and...eh, dunno, feels off, can't say why.
Interestingly enough, I didn't know what power girl's default outfit looked like, so I looked it up, and in browsing found an alternate outfit that actually made it to print and is actually pretty sensible:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Worlds_Finest.jpg
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Checking stuff, that was her New 52 redesign. Got rolled back to boob window Feb this year. So lasted about 12 months. Longer than pants/jacket Woner Woman did.
-
You mean the blatantly ripped off of Rogue outfit?
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Power Girl is another case that feels off, I guess feels like they put too much on her that wasn't necessary. Like if they just took her standard outfit, put the blue undershirt thing she has in that image to cover her iconic hole, and put on pants, that'd be enough, but they went the extra length and...eh, dunno, feels off, can't say why.
Interestingly enough, I didn't know what power girl's default outfit looked like, so I looked it up, and in browsing found an alternate outfit that actually made it to print and is actually pretty sensible:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Worlds_Finest.jpg
It's odd because I keep remembering "She got a new outfit in New 52" (if temporarily as Grefter notes), yet I keep forgetting it's actually a sensible outfit as you illustrate there.
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What are we defining "sensible" as here?
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You mean the blatantly ripped off of Rogue outfit?
You say that like it is bad thing.
http://www.geekosystem.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/new-wonder-woman-costume.jpg
Take 90s Rogue outfit and get rid of neon green and you have a kind of legit costume.
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That...is a fantastic costume.
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Interestingly enough, I didn't know what power girl's default outfit looked like, so I looked it up, and in browsing found an alternate outfit that actually made it to print and is actually pretty sensible:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Worlds_Finest.jpg
That's not Power Girl. Boobs are *way* too small.
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Which one Jim? The Power Girl new 52, Wonder Woman one that was >:Oed out of existence before it saw the light of day (or normal Power Girl)?
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What are we defining "sensible" as here?
Something that could be worn while doing athletic activities. (Specifically ones that might involve combat).
The combat part makes it a little unusual that her arms aren't covered, but otherwise that looks like a pretty reasonable athletic outfit. Like...if I had one of those that fit, (and somehow didn't look really bad on me) I could be talked into wearing that while doing something athletic.
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Which makes the baggy khakis on WW even more baffling, really.
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Which makes the baggy khakis on WW even more baffling, really.
You can do athletic combat activities in baggy clothing. Look at US army outfits:
http://www.militaryspot.com/images/acu1.jpg
Not exactly form-fitting.
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http://www.bof6.jp/pc/
It's a smartphone game. That plays like Maple Story. Life is suffering.
-
http://comicsalliance.com/sailor-moon-doom-2-video-game-mod-video/
Abandon all hope, the Ko has won and his dark works are come to this world to collect the debt of blood owed from the deals none of us made.
If you accept his dark gift in worship you may ensure that you are amongst the first; for the risk is to become one of the last.
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http://www.bof6.jp/pc/
It's a smartphone game. That plays like Maple Story. Life is suffering.
Capcom of Japan needs to be smacked...repeatedly. Finally giving something people have been asking for about a decade and it's in the most middle fingery way possible.
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Do we have video of gameplay or something? I've found one off-hand comment that it looks like a tap based Maple Story, but can't find any actual... anything, really.
That said, it'll prolly turn out like that shitty PS2 dungeon crawler/survival hybrid game. Fucking Capcom!
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It's possible it just ends up being an FFD style RPG, which would be nice, but the word "online" is hard to ignore.
If this was a Spin Off, I'd be like "oh look, Capcom's just teasing the fans with another Breath of Fire Mobile Phone game, whatever, nothing to see here" but calling it BoF6 just...ugh.
Yes, BoF5 did seem bad on paper, but at least it showed effort and was put on a console that made sense (PS2.) People who wanted BoF6 are people who are going to be identified as "not casuals", so why put it on probably the most casual on consoles (Tablets and Smartphones)? It really comes off as "playing it super safe by making a low budget game that hopefully will break even because people have been begging for this game!" If it ends up being an FFD style game, then I just question "Why isn't this on the 3DS?"
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BoF5 was the only good Breath of Fire game. That the fanbase rejected it is an indictment of them, not that game. If I was Capcom, I'd give them the middle finger too for wanting to go back to their boring-ass generic shitpile.
-
Yeah. BoFV getting such poor reception was a serious shame. Hell, that game would have been pretty good for a direct follow-up title.
Or, ironically, a browser MMO.
<_<
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Fuck everything.
-
http://www.baseballcardvandals.com
Terrible jokes but funny anyway. Mostly linking for Jim, but guess someone else might enjoy.
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Mostly posting this here so I have it handy later and so it is somewhere easy to find when it becomes relevant:
http://www.twitch.tv/dapuffster (http://www.twitch.tv/dapuffster)
In short, about a week from now (I'll get exact dates soonish), I'll be helping at a charity marathon where we play games and such. It's like SGDQ and AGDQ only a fraction as cool. I'll give you more details closer to the date, this is mostly place holder that will become obsolete in about a week when a more substantial post is made.
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http://www.baseballcardvandals.com
Terrible jokes but funny anyway. Mostly linking for Jim, but guess someone else might enjoy.
Brilliant. http://www.baseballcardvandals.com/post/55362574234/how-much-you-wanna-make-a-bet-i-can-throw-this-bat
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I should have expected that.
Edit - Since Holidays = actual time to read stuff I am finally reading funny people on Twitter every day, so I have some gems.
http://shop.wwe.com/Randy-Savage/superstar-alumni-machoman,default,sc.html
This is a thing that exists.
and This is a dialogue exchange that happened.
https://twitter.com/theisb/status/364209772603510784
Other things I recommend, following comedians. Paton Oswalt is pretty much a guaranteed 4 or 5 laughs a day bare minimum.
Edit 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-VKaA8ruf4 Ko is at it again.
-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtHh_QUCYhA
(Dark Souls)
I don't have the context for this video but it's great.
Especially the ending. I didn't know the Force pell was so cool.
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http://amydentata.com/yourswimsuit/
EDIT: Re: Fenrir's link: If the sports days at my schools here involved my students performing challenges in Dark Souls instead of exercising I think I would be a lot more interested in the sports days. (The layout of the competition apes Japanese school sports days pretty hard.)
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Life is worth living again. (https://twitter.com/NintendoAmerica/status/365114063119847425)
-
Not sure if I'll be getting that or not because I never touched a Professor Layton game, but I won't deny it was a pleasant surprise to hear it's getting localized after so many people kept bitching about it not coming stateside.
-
http://www.serebii.net/xy/megaevolutions.shtml
Pokemon has become like Digimon. Also Gamefreak seems to actually care about Absol and Mawile.
-
http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-simpsons-fast-food-boulevard-at-universal-stud,101263/
Time to get fat, Soppy.
-
New Humble Bundle. (https://www.humblebundle.com/) Five bucks gets you eight pretty high-profile EA games. EA's cut: zero point zero percent. I was not expecting that.
-
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/08/15/hempfest_doritos_seattle_pd_to_hand_out_chips_at_pro_pot_rally_to_education.html
This is the way!
-
If it's a repost, sorry.
Snippets of battles in X.
http://vimeo.com/58145874
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edit: moving to IotD where I meant to put it
-
For those who haven't seen yet, Junpei and Yukari will be in the next P4 Arena game. Also for some reason Yukari is a Power Ranger.
http://shoryuken.com/2013/08/17/persona-4-arena-sequel-location-test-footage-of-junpei-iori-and-elizabeth-new-character-command-list-images/
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Nixon! http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=14450
MoW! http://nyti.ms/1fae7rd
-
http://commonplacebooks.com/welcome-to-night-vale/
Been hearing about this for a while now, decided to check it out now that I am catching bus to work again.
It is a radio show for a town that is full of Lovecraftian horrors, X-Files stuff and Twilight Zone style scenarios. It is a comedy podcast. Good times had. I think the polish picks up after a few episodes as well Sopko.
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http://www.zenspath.com/home/2013/8/26/the-gamepad-helped-my-daughter-play-her-first-game-and-shes.html (http://www.zenspath.com/home/2013/8/26/the-gamepad-helped-my-daughter-play-her-first-game-and-shes.html)
Article title should say everything, but it is kind of a touching, heart-warming story nonetheless.
-
http://commonplacebooks.com/welcome-to-night-vale/
Been hearing about this for a while now, decided to check it out now that I am catching bus to work again.
It is a radio show for a town that is full of Lovecraftian horrors, X-Files stuff and Twilight Zone style scenarios. It is a comedy podcast. Good times had. I think the polish picks up after a few episodes as well Sopko.
I think my favorite part is probably the two-parter that involves travelling through a portal (which is, I think, episode 17?) or any time the subterranean city beneath the pin retrieval mechanism of Alley 4 at the bowling alley comes up.
-
I just discovered Night Vale and am trying not to just burn through all the episodes in a row on my commute. It's not easy. So far the glow cloud episode has been the best at everything.
-
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/27/travel/eva-air-kitty-jet/index.html?sr=fb082813kittyjet7p
Paging all Snows
-
http://www.the-broad-side.com/why-our-rules-for-pregnant-women-could-be-a-feminist-issue
This is probably more interesting to me than ya'll as someone who one day could get said advice, but still linking it. Being given blind advice without reason is frustrating, and pregnant women get a lot of this. (Kitty litter, for example, is only a problem if you let feces get all over your hands and don't wash them. Well, duh?)
-
Seems all pretty legit to me. I wish "not even a medical doctor" could be phrased better when discussing someone doing meta analysis of data. Especially one that does that kind of thing for a living in the health industry.
She is in fact exactly the person that should be doing that kind of research and Doctors and their patients should review for final conclusion.
-
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/a-colored-mans-constitution/?ref=opinion&_r=0
-
http://www.the-broad-side.com/why-our-rules-for-pregnant-women-could-be-a-feminist-issue
This is probably more interesting to me than ya'll as someone who one day could get said advice, but still linking it. Being given blind advice without reason is frustrating, and pregnant women get a lot of this. (Kitty litter, for example, is only a problem if you let feces get all over your hands and don't wash them. Well, duh?)
This is actually very thoughtfully written and a good thing to think about regarding pregnancy. The paternalism surrounding pregnancy sometimes borders on hysterically driven control anxiety.
-
People have funny psychological weak points. Hand-wringing over every little thing that is done during pregnancy is a lot like the anxiety you get on an airplane. Airplanes are safe. Pregnancy is certainly a delicate time for the development of a child, but for the most part, stuff parents do after the baby is born is going to have longer-term effects. Maybe. Babies, man.
-
Solution: nobody has babies ever. Problem SOLVED.
-
https://www.usenix.org/blog/my-daughters-high-school-programming-teacher
Really good article on things teachers in tech-y fields should watch out for.
-
Mostly good suggestions, but the entire context of the article makes me more than a little mad.
Pay attention. I don't know what you were doing during class, but you weren't paying attention, otherwise you would have noticed that my daughter was isolated and being harassed. Do you expect girls to come tell you when they are being harassed? Well, don't count on it. Instead, they pull away, get depressed, or drop out completely, just like they do in IT careers. You want to know what happens when women speak up about verbal abuse or report harassment? Backlash, and it's ugly. Best case, she'll get shunned by classmates or colleagues. And hopefully she won't read any online comments...ever. But it can get much worse, with the vulgar emails and phone calls, and home addresses posted online, and threats of violence. Sadly, this isn't rare; this happens all the time, from high school on up into our careers. Don't believe me? That's because you aren't paying attention.
So lemme get this straight. You, mom, knew in real time about the miseries your daughter was experiencing in programming, you suspected the teacher was not aware of what was going on, and you did not tell the teacher, and then, after the semester, you send the teacher a furious salvo, complete with this straw-man "don't believe me?" crap, about what a bad teacher they are for not noticing. Assuming, of course, that the teacher did not notice, or take any steps to intervene, which may well be true but isn't something mom can attest to because mom never asked.
I was bullied as a kid. I get that the daughter wasn't comfortable talking with the teacher. I get why the daughter (presumably) asked her mom not to intervene. That hopeless sense that it won't help, will only make things worse. But mom had the ability to intervene in her own way, to try to make things better by talking with the teacher. To do what would be best for her daughter even (presumably) against her daughter's wishes. But mom held back, decided it was better to seethe with righteous fury on behalf of her daughter and unleash it from a safe distance once the semester ended than to try and intervene and possibly make things better. She should be mad at herself for failing to do what she could to help her kid but instead she's patting herself on the back as a great parent. It's hard to stomach.
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Well I have some thoughts about that too (also bullied as a kid).
First, I'm not entirely convinced a constant interventionalist policy as a parent is a good idea. I'm going to use the example of...homework. My parents nagged me to work on my homework, kept tabs on what my homework schedule looked like well into university, and partially as a result I felt very weak on time management for a very long time. Someone else I knew, who was very smart, had parents telling the teacher he didn't need to do particular homework assignments because they were "beneath him and he was studying calculus at home." That kid hit a wall sometime around high school when he did need to start doing actual homework, and it kicked his ass. Handholding and parental intervention is not always the best way to raise a kid. I agree that retrospectively, in this case, it probably would have been the right move, but hindsight is 20-20. Especially for a parent who is probably a socially inept nerd herself, just like the rest of us computer nerds, and so did not instantly figure out the right response to a non-obvious social situation.
Second, there's no guarantee that parental intervention will necessarily get a response from teachers. Cause my parents did intervene, a lot. Only decades later did I hear that my mother was usually dismissed, and told things like "don't you think you're a smother mother?" Teachers tend to think they know better (and in a number of cases they actually do). My father had a bit more luck, because he was a university professor, and was able to say things like "well, at the university when we have students with special needs, we do X". Although, honestly, neither of them were ultimately able to get the teachers to properly control the class, including not preventing violent bullying against me.
I dunno, to use an example that actually happened to a friend of mine, there was a high school in Vancouver. This school cared about getting a high score on standardized tests in order to attract more students. So...they encouraged lots students to drop out of math (to get a higher average). And my friend did drop out under such pressure. And my friend's father was pissed, and went on a years long campaign to get the school to change its policy. I have a lot of respect for my friend's father, and feel he went further and cared more about the issue than the parents of hundreds of other students affected by the policy. Yes, sure, theoretically my friend's father could have been some kind of superparent, figured out that the school had shady policies before they became a problem for his kid. But seriously? No, my friend's father is an absolutely fantastic parent for whom I have tons of admiration.
Bottom line, as a parent you have to trust schools and let them operate in their own way at some level, especially when you're a working parent frequently on the road. But even if you're a stay at home parent, the school won't let you have more than a certain amount of influence. And when you trust schools you make certain assumptions about professionalism, like "a school would never encourage kids to drop out of math" and "surely, a school will recognize the problems that could arise when there is only one girl in a computer class, and would step in if things got out of hand."
Remember, if you actually go to parent teacher night, or write letters to the school, you're still putting in more participation and oversight than 80% of parents.
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I dunno, mc, I agree with almost everything you say in that post but I don't think you addressed what Jim said, really. While you can debate the level of intervention a parent should take, it is not cool in my books for a parent to not intervene at all, until after the course ends and then write an angry letter. Like, seriously? No, you forfeit the right to be enraged with someone else's work when you also had the opportunity to help with the problem and don't.
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I hear ya, mc. There's certainly a balance between pestering a teacher and letting them do their jobs without interference, and I'm usually an advocate of a hands-off approach (I say, never having been a parent). But mom didn't think the teacher was even aware of what was going on, so it's not a matter of merely disagreeing with the teacher's choice of how to handle the situation. Mom believed that the teacher wasn't even aware of the situation, so it was incumbent on her to inform him, and hypocritical of her to complain after the fact.
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For tea-loving USicans:
http://pantry.twiningsusa.com/?utm_source=GoodHousekeeping&utm_medium=Ad&utm_campaign=Pantry2013
Three free bags of Twinings teas. Woo!
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Went with White, Christmas Black, and English Afternoon
-
Christmas Black, darjeeling and cold brew green with mint for me.
-
http://www.rappler.com/nation/38767-lawmakers-pdaf-scam-plunder
lol philippines
lol corruption
-
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/14/us/california-schools-monitor-social-media/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
This is seriously fucking creepy.
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You and I have talked about school stuff in private a lot over the years super and we are both in general agreement. So yeah you know just how straight up missing the point I find this quote to be.
"When was the last time you sent a kid to the principal's office for talking in class too much? I just don't think it happens too much. So what we kept seeing is the chasm keeps building between how students communicate and the ability to tell adults about what's going on in their lives," he said. "I thought we could bridge that gap."
Don't trust the kids or talk to them like an adult. Go completely over their heads and just spy on them! Prepare them for the real world.
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I thought that was a pretty money quote for just how goddamn dumb and offensive the entire idea is.
-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGYrRUrHz9Q
Friend's band have a new video out for a new song. It is good but heavy so not sure how many down for it, but hey want to spread word how I can.
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http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/10974978/
Well that might be enough to make me bite on the expansion.
-
Neato. I think.
I was kinda hoping that link would be "hey guys we heard you like Belial so we are here to say that henceforth all boss fights will be that awesome."
-
Sounds like they might be doing what I had hoped and rolling the console loot style in to the expansion. Expected approach, hope that is what it is (more frequent loot drops with tidier loot tables essentially)
-
Supposedly they're going for less frequent drops but of substantially higher quality, so you sift through less garbage to find more good stuff. Also they're looking at weighting the bonuses to be more useful for the class that finds it.
-
That would be the kind of thing I was trying to say yeah. That is how I understand the console loot works.
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http://deadspin.com/every-glorious-angle-of-the-astros-buttslide-1340747499?utm_campaign=socialflow_deadspin_twitter&utm_source=deadspin_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow
Thanks Obama
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http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=680925 (http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=680925)
I'd post this in IotD but people will cry about that.
GUESS WHAT? Square is remaking FF4: TAY. Because that masterpiece really needs to be brought to a whole new audience. Most companies would have the good sense to be ashamed of making something like TAY, but not Square.
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Eh, it's a better game than Final Fantasy IV, and they keep making that over and over.
-
TAY is just a remake of FF4 already.
-
It really comes off as Square-enix is desperate to milk FF4 for all its worth and then some. They've basically reached a point where they can't do anything more with FF4 in it's current state, so opt to its sequel.
Its weird because I don't think the game was even THAT successful, and to make a remake like this that would actually have something resembling a budget (well, ok, probably reusing a lot of assets from other 3D FF4 versions, so that will cut down a lot)...I dunno, seems silly. Maybe I'm overestimating how much is needed to break even on this.
-
http://comicsalliance.com/hello-kitty-beer/
Entirely for Snow.
-
http://comicsalliance.com/wonder-woman-sailor-moon-vogue-dancing-video-lasseindra-inxi/
Likewise.
-
Square-enix is desperate
Brevity, dude. And yes, they are.
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http://themetapicture.com/how-to-recognize-the-artists-of-paintings/
For teh Iduns. 100% Truth.
-
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/09/rep-mark-takano-best-democrat-social-media-twitter-tumblr
(http://www.motherjones.com/files/BU9EG5-CQAIBTda.jpg_large.jpg)
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I know its comics stuff, but kind of generic news.
http://comicsalliance.com/sex-criminals-launch-party-matt-fraction-chip-zdarsky-club-nipple-piercing-photos/
Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky's new comic launched this week, it is called Sex Criminals. It is about a couple that stop time when they have simultaneous orgasms. They use this to steal shit.
To celebrate this comic's first issue they rented out a sex club in Toronto. Chip Zdarsky wore a Garfield costume all night and Matt Fraction got his nipple pierced on stage.
-
I wasn't sure if this ( http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1041514 ) belonged in IOTD.
It might do, but not for entirely obvious reasons, or for maybe entirely obvious reasons.
Either way, it's some food for thought. Good night.
-
Quick answer to the question posed in the headline: yes it's legal to fire someone for being a brony, unless their contract or collective bargaining agreement provides that they may only be fired for enumerated reasons, none of which are "likes kids' shows and dolls." if we're talking about a government employee, the answer is "maybe," because government employees enjoy some measure of speech protection thanks to the First Amendment.
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Even if it's not illegal, it's pretty damn stupid. If you read the story, you see that over a series of months he has three small instances of "hey, I enjoy that show" that get turned into people being wary that he might be a pedophile.
Blah blah blah other side of the story blah, but isn't there some concern about being fired/addressed in a manner that strongly implies something illegal is being done (ie, that he's chasing after little girls looking for sexual contact) and that's why they're being let go?
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In San Francisco I met someone in a bar who occasionally crossdressed on weekends, but never mentioned it at work (he was a schoolteacher). He was flying somewhere and had some women's clothing in his suitcase; the airline searched it, and asked him if the stuff was his, and then asked for his employer's number, which he gave. They called his employer, and his employer...didn't fire him, because it was California where you actually can't be fired over that, but he was subjected to harassment and physical violence from the custodian, principal, and staff until he quit. (In Texas they could have just legally fired him, of course). And this is even less grounds for dismissal than the brony above--literally never mentioned at work. We encouraged the guy to file a lawsuit, of course, but he seemed too depressed about the whole situation to take action.
If this doesn't sound like the San Francisco you know and love, that's probably because being white in San Francisco is very different from being black in San Francisco, and he was black.
On a more positive and upbeat note, if you're even slightly into computers, you should read this all the way through, it's hilarious:
https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1309_14-17_mickens.pdf
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(http://www.motherjones.com/files/blog_exchanges_open.jpg)
If there is any justice in the world of internet memes, this (http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/09/sorry-republicans-obamacare-just-went-live) young lady smirking at GOP tryhards will replace the url-camping lady.
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Also that Batman is willing to violate HIPAA privacy guidelines if that's what it takes to defeat The Joker.
https://www.healthcare.gov/index.php
Error from: https%3A//www.healthcare.gov/sdfjkdfkdjdghdg%2Chtml/
Reference ID: 0.NaNNaNNaNa28.BATMAN!.1380666976.11178cd4
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http://seananmcguire.tumblr.com/post/62420830548/thetrekkiehasthephonebox-the-reboots-uniforms
Overthinking Star Trek reboot? Maybe, but it's a fun analysis.
-
So late on that FF 4 thing, but the most baffling thing is not remaking TAYs, but it's that this is the 3rd (4th?) variant of FF 4 they have released since the last FF 6 release, and yet this is what they are giving us.
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That particular trough of hot, frothy diarrhea makes more sense when you figure it is primarily for the Japanese market, who will suck it down just like they do everything else that they tie in to FF4. They gotta milk that base some more so they can try and avoid bankruptcy without actually examining their dysfunctional AAA model.
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http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/cockblocked-by-redistribution
Damnable socialism, ruining the days of pick up artists everywhere.
"What’s blocking the pussy flow in Denmark? The country’s excellent social welfare services. Really."
I feel like 85% amused and 15% horrified.
-
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/cockblocked-by-redistribution
Damnable socialism, ruining the days of pick up artists everywhere.
"What’s blocking the pussy flow in Denmark? The country’s excellent social welfare services. Really."
I feel like 85% amused and 15% horrified.
That makes me pretty much 100% amused, just because I was already aware this existed from some of the E3 horror stories this year, so I had already been 100% horrified earlier in the year:
http://kotaku.com/the-creepy-side-of-e3-513484271
ctrl+f pick-up artist.
-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGm_YBFohrA
Extra Credits has been doing a piece on choice in gaming for aw hile, but this one is easily the most interesting to me. The important thing isn't providing the choices or even making the player think they have a choice even if they don't (the earlier videos in the series address those). Instead, it's that if you appear to present an option to the player, you damn well better give them something for exploring it.
-
Wait wait wait.
You are saying there should be both choice and consequence.
-
Not necessarily. Just acknowledgement.
-
Consequence just being anything happening at all. It doesn't have to be a bad thing, it doesn't have to be a reward. It just is something happening because of something you did before.
-
Consequence just being anything happening at all. It doesn't have to be a bad thing, it doesn't have to be a reward. It just is something happening because of something you did before.
But Grefter, are you sure that's what you want? Maybe you would prefer a Suikoden choice instead.
Yes
No
-
Yes
Correction, maybe later
-
Eh. Consequence implies strictly narrative to me. I'm talking more broadly.
-
Yes
Correction, maybe later
Where's my food.Consequence just being anything happening at all. It doesn't have to be a bad thing, it doesn't have to be a reward. It just is something happening because of something you did before.
But Grefter, are you sure that's what you want? Maybe you would prefer a Suikoden choice instead.
Yes
No
You know I can't say no to you.
-
Consequence just being anything happening at all. It doesn't have to be a bad thing, it doesn't have to be a reward. It just is something happening because of something you did before.
No Grefter, every choice must have some massive effect on gameplay that completely turns the game on its head. Just referencing and giving results is not good enough. </Mass Effect 3>
-
Red, blue, or green?
-
Countering with the actual legit complaint is so unfair.
-
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/04/steam_machine_hardware_specs/
Specs for the Steam Machine test systems covered. Nothing terribly shocking in the announcement if you are following stuff (using off the shelf parts so systems are modular for end users).
It kind of reads to me like Valve identified a market for custom built gaming machines in a less technically oriented market and are going to capitalize while pushing their thrust into Linux. Can't say I disapprove. Anything they develop for streaming content from another networked system is gravy.
-
The best/worst skinner box:
http://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/
-
Nope.
-
Ok.
The best/worst skinner box that doesn't eat your life for days.
-
But really it's pretty great. I love how the game becomes increasingly more hostile about the monster you've created. Grandma's all " You could have stopped it" and "You make me sick." Then you get "Achievement: Child Labor" for creating a bunch of cookie factories[size]
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Shameless plug time! It's gonna be fantastic!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/afarcrymusic/kickstart-dreams-and-prayers-a-far-crys-new-album?ref=live
Oh you don't believe me?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUmxHXsxsug
Crank that mother up.
-
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/10/10/rabbis-plotted-to-kidnap-husbands-force-divorces-fbi-says/?hpt=hp_t3
There's a little more context to this than the title, but good lord. *That title*.
-
So the background here is that some exceedingly slimy orthodox Jewish men (I think orthodox, not entirely sure which types of Judaism this extends to) will divorce their wives civilly but refuse to give their now ex-wives a "get" - a document voiding their marriage as a religious matter, so that the ex-wife can remarry according to the laws of the United States but as a practical matter cannot do so because her religion and community still consider her married. They do this for the sole reason that they are worthless, petty, vindictive assholes. In New York, part of the Domestic Relations Law allows judges to force Jewish men who initiate civil divorce into consenting to a religious divorce as well. That law is probably an unconstitutional violation of free exercise of religion, but looking at plan B here, sure does seem like a good one to have on the books.
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The best/worst skinner box:
http://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/
Reminds me a little of of Probes vs Zealot, except it encourages you to spam clicks mindlessly, and isn't really designed to be replayed/experimented with to optimize your build.
EDIT: ok, so the way it works is that prices for things scale up by (1.15)^n. I actually don't like this system. In something that feels like it should be an exponential growth system (and is at small values) it actually becomes a logarithmic growth system (in terms of how many cookies per second are increasing). Like...when you first get a portal, it's a massive econ boost, which lets you buy the next portal faster, but eventually the exponential cost increase starts outpacing how much your income is increasing, so it takes longer and longer to buy a portal. It's fine during the main progression, but kinda broken once you complete the main progression, and there are achievements like "get 100 antimatter condensers". Like....that sounds probably not doable within a human lifetime....
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You are thinking way too much about cookie clicker.
Walk away from the Abyss mc. There are things worse than Shoggoths there.
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In a wonderful example of what I have decided to spend my precious moments on, I've actually played Cookie Clicker through to 99.9% completion. That is: all the achievements (but one), and all of the upgrades. And then some game+ as well.
Your calculations are overlooking a very, very important part of the game: the upgrades to your purchases. They increase cookie production by percentages, or double the output (multiple times), and so on. Getting achievements also adds to your cookie production (a certain percentage). And then soft-resetting the game gives you an automatic bonus in the form of a reward for total cookies baked at time of reset, in addition to the same bonuses you were receiving from achievements from your last game.
So no, not objectively lifetimes. I played for about 5 days.
My coworkers, on the other hand, have been warring in the office over it for 15 workdays...
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In a wonderful example of what I have decided to spend my precious moments on, I've actually played Cookie Clicker through to 99.9% completion. That is: all the achievements (but one), and all of the upgrades. And then some game+ as well.
Your calculations are overlooking a very, very important part of the game: the upgrades to your purchases. They increase cookie production by percentages, or double the output (multiple times), and so on. Getting achievements also adds to your cookie production (a certain percentage). And then soft-resetting the game gives you an automatic bonus in the form of a reward for total cookies baked at time of reset, in addition to the same bonuses you were receiving from achievements from your last game.
So no, not objectively lifetimes. I played for about 5 days.
My coworkers, on the other hand, have been warring in the office over it for 15 workdays...
I've been playing for 3 days, but I haven't left my computer on the whole time or anything, so realistically maybe 10 hours of the game running.
Not sure how many more upgrades might exist that I simply haven't unlocked. But even something that doubles cost efficiency...if something was borderline worth buying before the upgrade, it'll be cost efficient 5 times after the upgrade, and after the 5th time the price has already more than doubled so it's back to the same cost-efficiency. But sure, I guess it does depend on how many upgrades are in the game.
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As you get more golden cookie upgrades, strategy shifts to them.
There's slightly less than one golden cookie per minute, and you have roughly half a chance to get as many cookies as you'd have cooked in 20 minutes. (If you have ten times that already waiting in the cookie bank)
(I kinda stopped there)
*ENDGAME COOKIE CLICKER SPOILERS*
Incidentally this is why the Grandmapocalypse is a big deal. It makes worthless red golden cookies appear instead of regular golden cookies and does nothing else.
Edit: Then later there are prestige cookies
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SPOILERS also gives you three achievements!
And then the couple added weird things for game+, some of which are triggered based on when you perform the soft reset.
I wouldn't exactly call it a compelling game, but it's hardly undoable, and there's room for strategy -- or at least optimization.
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I wouldn't exactly call it a compelling game, but it's hardly undoable, and there's room for strategy -- or at least optimization.
Click faster? >_>
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More like which upgrades to buy in which order at which times. Also paying close attention to the game so you can catch all the lucky cookie bonuses.
But yeah, sure, click faster.
(Although clicking is really, really inefficient after a short time. Probably only worth it during a lucky cookie frenzy.)
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http://www.vulture.com/2013/10/25-best-morrissey-book-quotes.html?mid=facebook_vulture
S.N.O.W.
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Dear Square: do something smart for once. (http://www.p4rgaming.com/final-fantasy-committee-starts-off-poorly-after-members-begin-playing-xenoblade-instead) The best quote that doesn't involve Toriyama whining about how he wanted to play a game with his waifu in it.
When asked about the Final Fantasy series as a whole, Yoshida responded, “I am just part of a committee overseeing the longevity of the franchise. It is probably better that I play less of the Final Fantasy series so that I can bring something new to the table. I think I can be more inspired if I keep playing Xenoblade.”
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I had a power outage tonight and lost my Cookie Clicker progress.
Excuse me while I go kill myself.
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Maaaaan should have told you you could save by just keeping your URL.
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Dear Square: do something smart for once. (http://www.p4rgaming.com/final-fantasy-committee-starts-off-poorly-after-members-begin-playing-xenoblade-instead) The best quote that doesn't involve Toriyama whining about how he wanted to play a game with his waifu in it.
When asked about the Final Fantasy series as a whole, Yoshida responded, “I am just part of a committee overseeing the longevity of the franchise. It is probably better that I play less of the Final Fantasy series so that I can bring something new to the table. I think I can be more inspired if I keep playing Xenoblade.”
And linked from that was this: http://www.p4rgaming.com/square-enix-forces-all-staff-to-play-super-mario-rpg-in-order-to-learn-how-to-make-good-rpgs-again/ (http://www.p4rgaming.com/square-enix-forces-all-staff-to-play-super-mario-rpg-in-order-to-learn-how-to-make-good-rpgs-again/)
Maybe they should just consider hiring more workers who actually seem to be competent? (Random snipe: Their second "good" game was Secret Mana. Plan was bound to fail.)
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Dear Square: do something smart for once. (http://www.p4rgaming.com/final-fantasy-committee-starts-off-poorly-after-members-begin-playing-xenoblade-instead) The best quote that doesn't involve Toriyama whining about how he wanted to play a game with his waifu in it.
When asked about the Final Fantasy series as a whole, Yoshida responded, “I am just part of a committee overseeing the longevity of the franchise. It is probably better that I play less of the Final Fantasy series so that I can bring something new to the table. I think I can be more inspired if I keep playing Xenoblade.”
And linked from that was this: http://www.p4rgaming.com/square-enix-forces-all-staff-to-play-super-mario-rpg-in-order-to-learn-how-to-make-good-rpgs-again/ (http://www.p4rgaming.com/square-enix-forces-all-staff-to-play-super-mario-rpg-in-order-to-learn-how-to-make-good-rpgs-again/)
Maybe they should just consider hiring more workers who actually seem to be competent? (Random snipe: Their second "good" game was Secret Mana. Plan was bound to fail.)
That article is fake.
P4rgaming is basically the Gaming Equivalent of the Onion. They make exaggerated, silly articles like this all the damn time, and people keep thinking they're serious when they're not. Someone posted this in chat a while back and many of us were skeptical, but I can safely say now it's flat out bogus.
So yeah, that entire article is false. No one got fired for highlighting that point of SMRPG's game design. They never planned on having people play Secret of Mana. They never planned had such a project.
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Good thing Meep is here to tell us that joke articles are fake as part of his greater quest to defend Square-Enix as he clings to its rotting cock.
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Stop being an ass, dude.
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I can't help it, dat ass so fine.
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http://zacharyernst.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/why-i-jumped-out-of-ivory-tower.html?m=1
Interesting read from a tenured professor at a US college.
Edit - http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/powerful-ads-use-real-google-searches-show-scope-sexism-worldwide-153235
Siigghhhh not that I want to link to articles on a news site dedicate to advertising, but this is actually a pretty neat campaign even if it is using an old concept (it is nice design).
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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/20/young-people-japan-stopped-having-sex
Have a thing.
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That's a fascinating and unsettling read.
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It's true in many animal species including humans: large, secure populations feel less desire to reproduce. Within human population this is easily observed in a few ways, such as which societies have lower birth rates and which ones are more tolerant of non-reproducing folk. This is just another aspect of that. It's less "yay sunshine!" than increased gay rights, and I understand some of the misgivings one might have about some people missing out on what is often seen as a key part of the human experience, but it is still part of an overall good thing.
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Less good is the part where seemingly it's becoming conflated with an avoidance of human contact altogether.
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It's true in many animal species including humans: large, secure populations feel less desire to reproduce.
Can I get a source for this?
Also if anyone's interested in reading more about the problems the youth of Japan are facing Shutting Out the Sun (http://www.amazon.com/Shutting-Out-Sun-Generation-Departures/dp/1400077796) by Michael Zielenziger is a good explanation of things like the hikkomori phenomenon.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_breeding
Unfortunately I haven't been able to find the stuff I read about how some bird species (crows in particular) will engage in this practice when their population is stable and will start breeding like mad if the population is threatened. So I dunno how common it is. I got the impression it was a fair bit more common than the Wikipedia article suggests buuut there are a huge number of species whose behaviour we haven't extensively studied so *shrug*.
The parallels to human behaviour are fairly obvious regardless.
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http://m.koco.com/news/samesex-oklahoma-couple-marries-legally-under-tribal-law/-/17423340/22553184/-/utpvgc/-/index.html
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Neat.
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http://the-toast.net/2013/10/22/sunday-sauce-jessica-valenti/
This article is why I am pretty firmly pro-choice. Sniff...
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http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/10/22/making-sense-of-the-jp-morgan-settlement/
Rhetoric has been flying about the giant-size JPM settlement. Two days after it made headlines, someone has calmed down enough to bother explaining what it's all about.
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Odds are someone has seen this before, but...
PBS Idea Channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/pbsideachannel?feature=watch)
Fun little bits of pop academia from PBS. Worth a watch, and the host is reasonably entertaining.
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http://kotaku.com/wrong-about-japan-and-sex-1450567428
Counterpoint to my last link, Kotaku though so mileage may vary.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303902404579149542886151358.html
Far more interesting article for me though while I try to understand humans and why they do interpersonal relationships. Why people fuck.
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Candy Box 2.
Awesome.
http://candybox2.net/
Right now I'm stuck.
Can't beat the forest, octopus king, gorilla, medusas or big sharks.
Farming more lollipops for more candies to build HP right now.
Edit: Nevermind I beat the octopus king and got a sweet cauldron and pogo stick
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Have you eaten a burrito before? You may experience sympathy pangs. It's normal.
Dear Guy Who Just Made My Burrito (https://medium.com/comedy-corner/fd08c0babb57)
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http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/metrics-emily-haines-pays-tribute-to-lou-reeds-integrity-and-humor-20131028
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Good stuff.
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http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/sex-myths-without-substance-mislabelling-japan-8911325.html (http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/sex-myths-without-substance-mislabelling-japan-8911325.html)
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For Halloween, the 10 most gruesome injuries in sports. Not for the weak of stomach.
http://www.rr.com/articles/2013/10/29/t/the-10-most-gruesome-sports-injuries
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http://www.boston.com/news/source/2013/10/gif_jacoby_ellsbury_rundown_escape_mashed_up_with_benny_hill.html
I care about my sparts. You may not, but I hope you will agree that this is great. Warning: sound.
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http://www.knoword.org/
Fun little word game where you have the guess the word based on its dictionary definition and the first letter. More challenging than you'd think. Oh, and you're timed. Good luck.
My high score: 690 points from 36 words
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http://dicetowershowdown.libsyn.com/ (http://dicetowershowdown.libsyn.com/)
Whee! My episode of the Dice Tower Showdown is up. Want to hear a bunch of amateur chumps argue about boardgames? Click on the Podcast button for episode 4 and hear me trash talk Arkham Horror. From inside a cave, apparently.
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Sexy Nibelung Valesti?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqGvkbeBSY0
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Honestly, that was near the bottom of my list of games I expected to ever get localized.
But hey, can't deny a fightan games with Underwater Ray Romano in it.
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Move over, RWBY?
http://observationdeck.io9.com/heres-the-official-internet-explorer-anime-youve-alwa-1459547468/@laurendavis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHTUlF7NA2o&feature=player_embedded
wat
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fitness quotes over pictures of people drinking
http://imgur.com/a/i0Wt7?gallery
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http://mannequindepressed.tumblr.com/
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From a friend who mentioned when I linked the above.
http://meowtfit.tumblr.com/
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http://xkcd.com/1283/ (http://xkcd.com/1283/) See the Webcomic that's making every Internet Advertiser Pissed Off!
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I can't say that is inaccurate at all though!
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http://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2013/nov/07/climate-change-keystone-galilee-queensland-coal-mining
"Two Queensland mines would emit triple the greenhouse gas emissions of the Keystone XL pipeline, or six times the UK's annual footprint"
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"I'll cover you."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlGrkX_1EGY
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So the new Phoenix Wright game deals with gender identity; reception is divided, though certainly worth reading.
(spoilers, though non-critical ones, are present in both the link itself and to a lesser extent in the link URL)
Link (http://retrocombine.tumblr.com/post/65641724866/is-robin-newman-a-bad-character)
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Sounds like this one is going to be a big debate over interpretation and might end in authorial intent shit fight.
Edit - http://allmarios.tumblr.com/post/64100614618/phoenixsbigassmouth-and-what-do-you-want-to-be
For the Ciatos.
Edit Edit - Holy shit browsing this tumblr
http://allmarios.tumblr.com/post/62874932438/livingbeard-sighs-wistfully
WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME AND WHY DO YOU PLAY AS MARIO IN THIS GAME
Edit Edit Edit - http://allmarios.tumblr.com/post/62040656500/sirensongfashion-jasmine-tookes-for-dsquared
Oooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmgggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg you guys.
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/14/look_at_how_many_ways_we_ruin_your_life_redmond_boasts/
Corporate life. Remember these kinds of things every time you think my job sounds like I have done anything positive with my life.
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http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/education/2013/11/death_of_duquesne_adjunct_margaret_mary_vojtko_what_really_happened_to_her.html Interesting article I cribbed from another person's FB. Hey OK, any comments! IIRC you went to undergrad here, did you know the teacher?
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Some crazy person on the Internet went and made a giant spreadsheet of game rankings and ran it through some formulas and came up with this list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_considered_the_best
Pretty heavily slanted toward AAA big budget titles, which isn't surprising, although many of said AAA titles are actually good, so whatever. The use of "best game of the most recent gen" lists gives a rather noticeable slant for PS3/360 games, too, but I am vaguely amused that the poor PS2 - which sold way better than the XBox or GC - just gets the multiplatform GTA3, while XBox gets Halo & GTA3 & KOTOR, and GC gets Wind Waker / Metroid Prime / Resident Evil 4. The article talk page has the aggregate "scores" if that floats your boat. (Critics really love BioShock & Half-Life 2, it seems.)
Anyway... does anyone know solid Asian sources for their top 100 lists? You'll surely note the WRPGpremacy of the recent era according to North American / European critics as well (Fallout 3, The Elder Scrolls, ME2, etc.) and clearly we need to find an excuse to stick more anime drama in or something. I mean, I'm sure I could find some Japanese lists and use Google Translate, but I'm not sure they'd be the "right" lists. (Not that I imagine there's THAT much overlap, there'll be fairly little backing for top of all time ranking DQ5 or ToHeart 7 or whatever. But it might help out Final Fantasy X, who knows.)
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Resident Evil 4 was a PS2 game as well (and PC?), and I'd be stunned if that isn't where the plurality of its sales were.
I am disappointed with that list in a lot of ways (the only Mario game of the past 16 years being Super Mario Galaxy 2?) but my being disappointed with reviewers is nothing new.
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The PS2 port was kinda shit from a technical standpoint and that turned a lot of people off if I recall. Then again, shit ports apparently allow you to net acclaim sometimes (like the Xbox KotOR port) so who knows.
Still I think the lack of representation last gen is pretty fair. It was a gen that kind of lacked standouts, outside of the GameCube's astonishingly solid first-party lineup and maybe a handful of other games (whatever flavor of GTA3 you prefer, RE4, MvC2 are the only ones that come to mind).
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http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?cid=94989&pid=83397&tid=3622
A radiation research scientist discusses Fukushima and the concerns associated with it. The conclusion being that it is a problem but not as hyped, as you might expect.
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Yeah, I know that RE4 technically came out on the PS2 & Wii as well, but much later, and it was a pretty iconic GameCube game.
And yeah, for all that the PS2 is great, it weirdly kind of lacked an A-List headliner "you must buy this system for this game" title, like Halo was for XBox or SoulCalibur was for the Dreamcast. The next runners up for a broad-consensus PS2 title are probably something like Shadow of the Colossus, Metal Gear Solid 3, Final Fantasy X, and other flavors of GTA3. Longshots being God of War, Silent Hill 2, ICO, and the cross-platform Okami. And all of the above have issues - SotC is a tad too arthouse, MGS3 has backlash from MGS2 combined with lower sales than MGS2 despite being awesome, FFX doesn't quite have unanimous support among RPG fans (some people hated the voice-acting and characters, even if they're wrong), etc. Of course this really shouldn't matter as at least some of these should be able to matchup to the likes of Fallout 3, but whatever. (Also insert usual sigh that Fallout 3, not New Vegas, is the one that gets the nod.)
So what's the Elf list of favorite Mario games post-64, then, filtered for public consumption (e.g. would recommend to a random gamer rather than personal favorite)? From the critics, SMG1 was right on the bubble, actually, but the next Mario game after that was SNES Super Mario Kart I believe, although it was notably a bit below the bubble (7 points when 9-10 are needed). After that the Smash games which sort of count, and after that it gets really misty. I personally haven't played enough recent Mario games to say if the critical opinion is rational or not - I played uh New Super Mario Bros. DS, and that's about it. (and these best-of lists seem to have huge amounts of portable disrespect for some reason.)
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http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?cid=94989&pid=83397&tid=3622
A radiation research scientist discusses Fukushima and the concerns associated with it. The conclusion being that it is a problem but not as hyped, as you might expect.
Good read. My two concerns regarding Fukushima are: what are the chances and what would the potential be of an event that would destabilize the reactors? I know there have been some sensationalist answers floating around that grossly overstate the danger, but certainly there IS danger. I would feel a lot better if someone would come out and say that there's no risk of disaster if a 30-year storm hits. And, what are the dangers, if any, of the amount of radiation from Fukishima combined with the probability of contamination from future nuclear disasters causing long-term harm? Radiation is scary because it lasts a long time, so is Fukushima priming the pump, in essence, so that future disasters which would not have been harmful in any meaningful way standing alone will now be harmful?
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To answer the second question, cesium-137 is the primary long-term concern because most of the other radiation products have a low half-life(meaning that they turn into non-toxic stuff quickly). From what I've read, in practical terms, the biggest problem with respect to cesium-137 is making sure that fish and other aquatic things don't have an excess of it, although even the fish with the highest level of cesium recorded near Fukushima had like... 0.74 MBq of radiation and the lethal dose is 140 MBq(I'm not sure how rigorous the studies about long-term effects are). You can also treat cesium poisoning reasonably effectively and it leaves the body relatively quickly. Obviously you don't want to expose yourself to more of this shit than you have to but it's gotta be a lot worse than the Fukushima incident to be truly deadly.
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Yeah, I know that RE4 technically came out on the PS2 & Wii as well, but much later, and it was a pretty iconic GameCube game.
And yeah, for all that the PS2 is great, it weirdly kind of lacked an A-List headliner "you must buy this system for this game" title, like Halo was for XBox or SoulCalibur was for the Dreamcast. The next runners up for a broad-consensus PS2 title are probably something like Shadow of the Colossus, Metal Gear Solid 3, Final Fantasy X, and other flavors of GTA3. Longshots being God of War, Silent Hill 2, ICO, and the cross-platform Okami. And all of the above have issues - SotC is a tad too arthouse, MGS3 has backlash from MGS2 combined with lower sales than MGS2 despite being awesome, FFX doesn't quite have unanimous support among RPG fans (some people hated the voice-acting and characters, even if they're wrong), etc. Of course this really shouldn't matter as at least some of these should be able to matchup to the likes of Fallout 3, but whatever. (Also insert usual sigh that Fallout 3, not New Vegas, is the one that gets the nod.)
So what's the Elf list of favorite Mario games post-64, then, filtered for public consumption (e.g. would recommend to a random gamer rather than personal favorite)? From the critics, SMG1 was right on the bubble, actually, but the next Mario game after that was SNES Super Mario Kart I believe, although it was notably a bit below the bubble (7 points when 9-10 are needed). After that the Smash games which sort of count, and after that it gets really misty. I personally haven't played enough recent Mario games to say if the critical opinion is rational or not - I played uh New Super Mario Bros. DS, and that's about it. (and these best-of lists seem to have huge amounts of portable disrespect for some reason.)
Now that I take the time to look it up... the PS2 version of RE4 came out less than a year after the GameCube release, and sold more copies. I actually think of it as primarily a PS2 game... I had the mistaken belief that the two came out at the same time and that of course it is primarily a PS2 game as such, because duh, system with 150M install base versus system with a fifth that. Anyway I'd certainly say it qualifies as multiplatform.
For Mario games? SMG1 is the one which is ground-breaking in its use of 3D platformer physics and kind of a big deal I thought, and New Super Mario Bros. Wii deserves note I think, as "the multiplayer Mario game" just had riciulous broad appeal... in fact as far as a "would recommend to random gamers" game there are few you can go less wrong with than that. (It also had something like six times the sales of SMG2.) NSMB DS I'm quite a big fan of personally but it's not as important a game as those two, although still more important than SMG2... it deserves note for putting Mario games back on the map after the dud that was Sunshine and selling 30 million copies or whatever. (Though it's a portable game and as you note critics hate portables for some reason.)
I wasn't talking about spinoff Mario games, but yeah Super Smash Bros. Melee was arguably the GameCube game (and I say this as someone who merely likes the game, and has tended to find it a bit overrated at times), outselling the system's freaking Mario title and generally being widely loved. Super Mario Kart is pretty much the same for the SNES, and I'm old enough to remember it getting basically universal critical acclaim when it was released as well. I think more recently there is a tendency to not think of these (partially) multiplayer games as "real" gamer games for real gamers (with the exception of traditional fighting games and FPS apparently), which might explain them being left off some lists.
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And yeah, for all that the PS2 is great, it weirdly kind of lacked an A-List headliner "you must buy this system for this game" title, like Halo was for XBox or SoulCalibur was for the Dreamcast. The next runners up for a broad-consensus PS2 title are probably something like Shadow of the Colossus, Metal Gear Solid 3, Final Fantasy X, and other flavors of GTA3. Longshots being God of War, Silent Hill 2, ICO, and the cross-platform Okami. And all of the above have issues - SotC is a tad too arthouse, MGS3 has backlash from MGS2 combined with lower sales than MGS2 despite being awesome, FFX doesn't quite have unanimous support among RPG fans (some people hated the voice-acting and characters, even if they're wrong), etc. Of course this really shouldn't matter as at least some of these should be able to matchup to the likes of Fallout 3, but whatever. (Also insert usual sigh that Fallout 3, not New Vegas, is the one that gets the nod.)
It's really the same problem that you see with exclusives not really existing in the current gen. Porting to and from PS2 is pretty simple so why WOULDN'T you go cross-platform? Nintendo has in-house studios but other than that...
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To answer the second question, cesium-137 is the primary long-term concern because most of the other radiation products have a low half-life(meaning that they turn into non-toxic stuff quickly). From what I've read, in practical terms, the biggest problem with respect to cesium-137 is making sure that fish and other aquatic things don't have an excess of it, although even the fish with the highest level of cesium recorded near Fukushima had like... 0.74 MBq of radiation and the lethal dose is 140 MBq(I'm not sure how rigorous the studies about long-term effects are). You can also treat cesium poisoning reasonably effectively and it leaves the body relatively quickly. Obviously you don't want to expose yourself to more of this shit than you have to but it's gotta be a lot worse than the Fukushima incident to be truly deadly.
That's quite reassuring, thanks.
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I've linked this before, but apparently the old megaupload expired or whatever, so making a new link.
https://mega.co.nz/#!Ao1RnSbR!cZI8Gw_LUzAYy9DQu02sVQhk-L9AFEVYHjNLvJtSPc0
Orig. SO & GI.ppt
Pretty good collection of statistics on a number of LGBT studies--links between embryonic development and LGBT, etc.
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Porting to and from PS2 is pretty simple so why WOULDN'T you go cross-platform?
PS2 won, then, because it had the best controller. Right?
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Porting to and from PS2 is pretty simple so why WOULDN'T you go cross-platform?
PS2 won, then, because it had the best controller. Right?
It was a bad generation for controllers in general. The prominent placement of the D-Pad on the dual shock is a shitty relic but they keep doing it.
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Really? I find the placement of the analog sticks to be ideal, given that they stick out, so I don't see much point in relegating the D-Pad even though it doesn't get a ton of use.
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Having an asymmetrical position for your default controller grip is just bad design. The 360 and Dreamcast controllers, for instance, are better because the things you spend the most time with (the left analog stick and the face buttons) are in the same place. And how often do you even use the D-pad? There's no rational reason for it to be in such a prominent spot while you jam the left analog stick (usually THE most important button) in such an awkward place.
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In general I agree with you re the assymetry; I hated the N64 controller and that was a big part of why. That said, I myself do use the D-pad in lots of games (obviously anything with a menu, but I also significantly prefer it for fighting games, for instance... YMMV), and I think the PS2 left analog isn't in a terribly awkward position... I have to move my left thumb less than one inch from the symmetric position. Notably this means I can easily switch between D-pad and left analog, too.
By comparison, the GameCube controller not only has the D-pad in a worse (less symmetrical) position than the the PS2 left analog, but the D-pad itself actually kinda sucks.
I don't really remember the XBox (original) controller beyond that it was too large. 360 controller is cool, though.
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The original XBox controller was basically a DC controller that had put on some weight. Also instead of a VMU it had a big green circle in the middle to remind you what system you were playing
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By comparison, the GameCube controller not only has the D-pad in a worse (less symmetrical) position than the the PS2 left analog, but the D-pad itself actually kinda sucks.
Mmm, yeah, Gamecube d-pad is awful. I do actually prefer Gamecube to PS2 for games that just use the analog stick, though. But I'll agree the PS2 analog stick isn't that bad, whereas the Gamecube D-pad IS that bad.
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In other news BoXeR and YellOw in a skit on the Korean SNL.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pBCKHmS2t0
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http://blackfridaydeathcount.com/
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sztWWoEcVQ
So Borderlands Adventure Game is happening. That's a thing.
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http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-pirates-play-a-game-development-simulator-and-then-go-bankrupt-because-of-piracy/
Ok, this is a pretty funny way of dealing with piracy.
94% is still pretty shocking, though. Especially since I'm sure the non-pirate executable was shared at least a little as well.
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That article never ceases to amuse me.
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http://business.time.com/2013/12/10/pantene-powerfully-breaks-down-every-sexist-workplace-stereotype-in-one-ad/
Pretty good ad about business stereotypes of women.
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http://i.imgur.com/31R6s3d.jpg
Today I found out that Grefter, RICHARD, Shaggy!Andy, ManJaw!Super, Meeple-and-I-Had-a-Kid, EmoHair!Xeroma, and Fat!Alex were all members of the Duke Nukem 3D development team.
You're welcome.
See you in another 3 months.
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...well, I can't say that's an inaccurate description...
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Is that Erik Estrada?
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I played in a female SC2 tournament, and all of my matches got casted in English, by one of the more talented casters in the scene!
http://www.twitch.tv/zombiegrub/b/487352263
Won my first round match, and then faced Maddelisk (second best female player in the world) round 2 and lost (unsurprisingly).
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I just ran into this randomly but the guy who did the initial menu patch for Brigandine GE seems to have picked interest back up in it and has been posting in a thread about continuing the translation as recently as this month.
http://www.swordofmoonlight.com/bbs/index.php?topic=684.0
Here's the old patch, which I haven't used since I know the menus inside and out.
http://www.romhacking.net/translations/1836/
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I've used the disk 1 patch for the multiplayer mode. It gets the job done.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72RqpItxd8M
HACKING TOO MUCH TIME!!!