Look forward to discussing this further with the remaining active members (0) of this forum. 

I'm hesitant to have heroes because they may... is milk-shake duck still known?

But at what cost! I want heroes now and I'll just not agree with everything they do or say. I'm clearly celebrating something they are doing rather than everything they do. And I'm going further and further into the idea that heros are not actually achieving what they are famous for, but they are convenient personifications of a bunch of effort from many coming together.

So, for my first hero I'm going to shout out Baba Amte who helped start a leprosey colony that turned into a large commune that seems to focus on accessibility.

So, I'll go first: currently I have UNKLE's War Stories in very heavy rotation. If you watched the new series of Top Gear on Sunday night, they used 3 tracks from that album for one segment alone.

Little obvious electronica, plenty of grungy instrumentation and some great lyrics--it's fucking brilliant!

I learned that the guy I was in the sauna with is sleeping on his mom's couch with multiple kids that are not school-age yet getting 4am calls from his ex that he broke up with and that he kinda misses her but wants to get sober and knows he can't if he gets back together with her.

Most of the chat will likely take place in the #cooking channel in slack, but if we could keep our photos and logs here that would be great to document.

This week: Since seizing power i have become lazy and fat, but i'm not afraid to wield that power to unilaterally nominate a throwaway comment from lastair as this weeks club. 

Week* 1: Reheat gently over a medium flame (dibs)

Week 2: Pick something you usually buy and make it instead (lastair)

*For approximate values of the word week

• 1984
• Fahrenheit 451
• Brazil
• Soylent Green
• Logan's Run
• They Live
• Hunger Games
• Lord of the Flies
• Minority Report
• A Scanner Darkly
• In Time (staring Justin Timberlake totally underrated movie
• The Walking Dead games
• Sleep Dealer
• The Matrix
• The Stand
• Cerebus
• X-Men
• the Neuromancer series
• Cloud Atlas

With the exception of Cloud Atlas, when I look back on how these works have affected me, I think they have encouraged paranoia and distrust rather than some sort of reasonable and helpful skepticism. It is worth noting that Cloud Atlas has a hope that doesn't rely on individualism and also that I was exposed to it when I was older than the other pieces of fiction I've listed here.

I'm becoming more and more confident in pacificism and empathy. I'm starting to wonder if the effects of dystopia fiction in an individualistic, capitalist society is for folks to basically exaggerate their disconnection and trust of others---while adding an attractive spectacle that we tend to want to create in reality---rather than to warn us about something that could go wrong so that we can avoid it.

What are your thoughts? As you consider where you are and how you got here, how has dystopian fiction affected you?

Here is mine for today:

I went to the bathroom and as I looked down at my dong waiting for the stream to flow, I noticed that I tend to press down on my weiner with my thumb like one would do with a bottle of cheese whiz. That spawned 2 thoughts. First, I think the creators of cheese whiz made this comparison long ago and it might be one of the biggest inside jokes in the food industry. Second, I will never be able to look at my junk without thinking of cheese whiz ever again.

Here are some of the latest experiments.

And my latest attempt at cartoon face rigging:

And this thing, whatever it is:

Anyway, STAY TUNED! for further attempts at 3D shit.

For fun, here's my first ever 3D art ever posted online, back in 2002.

• If you previously had a display name that was separate from your login name, you'll find that they've now been merged and your old display name is now the only username for your account. You can also log in with your email address now, if that's easier.
• As of when I'm posting this, there's a job running to reindex all existing content in the forum for the new version. Until it finishes, you may see some weirdness around the forums. Notably, bbcode that isn't being displayed correctly, broken search, and so on. These should resolve themselves over the next several hours as the index job runs.
• There's no longer a mobile theme, the new software uses a responsive design instead.
• The header art and some of the styling is a bit messed up at the moment, because I am not a frontend person. Chris and Jake will hopefully be along shortly to make them look less terrible.

Thanks for bearing with us through the downtime tonight, and hopefully the newer software is a smoother and more modern experience for everyone

Don't pretend otherwise, everyone likes to post links to their own work in anticipation of adoring comments. I write about games in my spare time; here are some of the better examples.

This thread isn't entirely self-serving... . Honestly though, I'd like to see what the rest of you guys do, professionally or otherwise. What I've seen so far of random links in posts or sigs has been cool, so it might be nice to have everything collected in one place and with the potential for explanations or constructive criticism without worrying about derailing some other topic. Who knows, maybe we can all learn something!

Last year i got an amazing gift set from the wonderful Dibs. socks, tasty chocolate money (which is now probably more expensive than real money), and a real cute sheep magnet. It was awesome! Much <3 dibbles

Anyways, who's in for more santa this year? As usual, post on this for questions, and PM me to join. I'll update the thread with number counts. I'm closing the entry a tad earlier this year so that we can hopefully get presents sorted by xmas!

Entries are closing on the 27th.

As per usual, rules:

How to enter:

• PM me with your name, Address and country before the 27th November.
• In the PM, also state if you are up for: shipping (i.e. physical present), international shipping (i.e. present from abroad), digital, or all/mix of the above!
• Also state any important information like food allergies.
• If you are wanting a digital present, also include your steam ID/email address.

Rules:

• Present(s) should cost no less than $20 - $25, excluding shipping (note: I have no idea how much international shipping costs, so if this'll cost too much, let me know!)
• You must be an established forum member to enter (50+ posts). This is to prevent flakey flakers flaking out at the last minuet, meaning someone doesn't get a present and being sad. They'll probably cry. I know I would.

After the 27th, I shall randomly assign people according to their shipping options, and then hopefully people will send off stuff and it'll all be fun and games. You shall get the address of your secret Santa by the 28th/29th Post on this thread what you get! Or don't! (but do)

For me, alright, we're going to Glasgow with some family friends for today and tomorrow, so should be an enjoyable wee diversion if nothing else

You?

We've set up a Mastodon instance just for Idle Thumbs at https://idlethumbs.social

What is Mastodon? It's basically decentralized Twitter. You can follow people from other instances, but your local timeline will always show you post from just the Idle Thumbs instance. It's a delight. Also it's free and you can just go sign up.

I've been taking this series of photos for about 7 years or so. It first started when I was unemployed and bored at home and started taking photos of the scale models I build attacking my brother's cat. Over the years this hobby has evolved for me and I've graduated from taking these pictures with my phone to using a Canon Rebel T6 and I've even managed to get some paid work here and there.


You can find my work at http://armymenaroundthehouse.ca
https://www.instagram.com/armymenaroundthehouse/
https://www.facebook.com/armymenaroundthehouse/







I've also started taking a series of Film Noir themed photos, since that genre peaked shortly after world war two, and there are a pretty good selection of 1:35 scale civilians for me to work with.




I've found lately for the noir stuff in particular that building scenery and using it much the way film sets would be built in the studio at the time to be a very practical approach.

Are there any other gaming podcasts you listen to? What are they? I didn't listen to any before the Idle Thumbs podcasts started, but lately I've also been listening to Brainy Gamer, which is more serious but the guests (including Hot Scoops) often have really interesting things to say. Occasional poor audio quality, though.

Also, I've listened to a couple of RPS episodes, but they sure talk about themselves a lot (at least in the last episode). Which isn't necessarily bad, but I wasn't expecting that.

Sadly because of the amount of annoying spam we got, we set it so that new forum members cannot make new threads until they have been members for a short while, or accumulated some posts in other forums.

So post here and say "hi!"

if this thread gets spammed, It will say "goodbye"

no but really, just post a bit and you'll be able to make new threads later.

p.s idle banter posts do not count towards your post-count, also please do not post just 10 random posts or we will use the hammer on you.

Hey, I guess there's also discord for all your gaming and voipish needs

Whenever I listen to one of the Idle shows on Soundcloud and an episode ends, the next one will always be from some arabic christian prayer playlist. Does anyone else get this? 

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/249716/september-22-2009/tip-wag---guns-on-amtrak--fake-lesbians---battleship-audition

After the recent discussion on the podcast, a recent reddit thread has popped up. All you need to know about the Big Dog program and other abominations:

http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/bnp2l/i_dont_know_about_you_but_i_find_this/c0nntu2

This isnt formally announced (we're pluggging it for real in this week's episodes!) but we wanted to drop it off here in the forums (and Reader's Slack) ahead of time as a sort of "soft launch," while Chris and I figure out how Patreon works. 

The gist of it is you can become a patron of Idle Thumbs for any amount a month, but if you pledge $5, you get a special advertisement-free feed of Important If True, and 10% off when you shop at the store each month. (For $9 we'll also send you a dumb unique postcard each month, and the store discount is 15%!)

We're looking for more things to do with the Patreon over time - it seems like a good opportunity to do weird things for backers - but that's still being sorted out and it's just the big stuff above for now. 

This'll be announced properly this week as part of Thumbs 300, and the first full episode of Important If True, but for now check it out, become a patron if you'd like (we'd appreciate it!), and let us know what you think and share any feedback here. 

Thanks all for being here forever and supporting us all this time.

EDIT: First goal achieved!

EDIT: SECOND GOAL ACHIEVED!

Lego mother-loving-Lord-of-the-Rings

I recommend watching the designers videos for each set, some really thoughtful stuff gone into the details.

And yes there is a game on the way.

Now this: