feelthedarkness

Yeah, it's hard not to be sad about the possibilities of the growing "mid sized indie" scene and what they could bring to it. Sean's a great writer and as the Lords Management fanatic I can't help but think he's on their auto-chess thing now? bleh! Maybe Alyx will be a return to the Origin style of game development where each new game meant a new computer? haha.

Hey congratulations! That is huge!

I'm so sorry. I hope you guys are okay/it can be handled at home.

Is anybody playing? Does this game have guilds? I also did the open beta and had enough fun to feel it's worth a shot.

Haha, are people going to restart 40 man raiding guilds? Are they going to find old versions of Discursive? We used to have to hold like BUSINESS MEETINGS to maintain our schedules and roster.

I can't imagine going to back to WoW Vanilla (stopped playing after Cat(we we're at the farming legendary staves part)), unless you could promise all the friends I used to play with were also going to become as crazy about it again? Like, are they relaunching it so my warlock can get stunlocked to death by some random rogue and death coil is back to its 10 minute cooldown, and doesn't even have the fear? The Naxx event is probably my #1 favorite MMO memory, because our server was the only PvP server in the mix, and we finished 2nd. We would have finished 1st, but a bunch of hardcore open world people were like "we don't need you guys getting better gear to make it easier to kill us" and tried to sabotage the opening, and the ensuing war repeatedly crashed the server during the unique bosses, and especially while Zakhur was trying to ring the bell. Also, because it looked like we might take it a lot of people made alts and marched them to the gates. Hmm. though I just checked the wiki and it looks like we did it 5 days later than Medivh, but my recollection was much closer. weird.

Man, Gaynor era IT is/was one of my absolute favorite media things in this world, and it breaks my heart a little that it's gone-ish. Though. I also felt pretty sad as they lost interest in games generally, mostly through the lens of being an older person who has not experienced that. Haha. It's a bummer that nothing came together for the 10 year anniversary, given the history of one offs and goofs Random memory I always come back to for a laff: 1) Chris saying I'mnickbreckon in a really gruff voice in the early episodes, and the one two-part XMAS spectacular where the recap was just them saying scoops and a fart noise or whatever.

I also recently ripped off the band-aid and played through this. I can be a pretty easy mark, and I want to like basically anything Mass Effect but I struggled to keep the joy. I found it both novel and weird that in many ways the hivemeind on this was sort of right? There were a lot of bright parts under the muck. I think the basic setup of liferafting humanity, and the turn it takes when you arrive are pretty novel. I really dug the outlaw planets, and there is a lot of good Krogan stuff, which I think is some of their most compelling material. The crew clicked for me, Drax, Vetra, and Jaal most of all, though the personal missions are usually a highpoint, but these are mostly just ok. However, I have a marginal completionist mindset and the frequent quest structure of "find X objects" at random spawn points are just PUNISHING, and they're pretty buggy. It's just hostile game design.

How I'd describe Important if True: science inspired improv comedy.

A lot of great stuff has been covered! All Japanese: One of my favorite Kurosawa movies, not yet mentioned is Red Beard. I'll second High & Low as well. Basically everything he ever made is worth the watch. Tetso the Iron Man: landmark Cronenbergian body horror movie The punk films of Sogo Ishii. Two cool ones are: Burst City - kind of post apocalyptic, low plot, Warriors vibe. Exceptional footage of 1982 Tokyo punk/hardcore bands especially THE STALIN featuring the original brick throwing madmen. Electric Dragon 80,000V - 2001 movie starring Tadanobo Asana (Kikihara in Ichi the Killer). Kind of like a Godzilla or comic book movie of two electric throwing dudes having a showdown. Ishii & Asano also made a cool blown apart garagey punk band March 1.67 to support the movie.

Wax Houses of Baby: I've got a lot of records, and in the last few years there has been an increasing focus on reissuing unearthed obscurities, and I've started suspecting much of it is fake. There are a few notable instances of this. Tax Scam Records: For a short window in the late 70s a loophole let labels write off unsold inventory. A bunch of record labels sprung up and generated these extensive catalogs, 10 of labels with hundreds of "releases". They would print up inventory lists, then press SOMETHING (or in some cases not at all? not all have been discovered). They'd only a handful of copies and send them to distributors as samples. Aspiring bands would release multiple records under different names, they would just press bootlegs or unfinished records. Sometimes the artists didn't know. The most notorious is Tiger Lily records, connected to the Genovese crime family. One of their best releases is Stonewall, psych/hard rock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h6NehjFvds It's been repressed a few times in recent years, but in the insanely unlikely case you ever stumble across a battered old copy, grab it. There are less than 10 known copies and the only one that was sold went for 5k. There is also a Richard Pryor record on Tiger Lily which was pressed in a regular quantities. If you liked the TV show Fringe (side note: stats pretty bad, gets excellent, ends pretty well), one of the main characters is a drug addled scientist who does a lot of hallucinogens and occasionally references his favorite psychedelic record by a band called Velvet Sedan Chair. Long story short, the producers actually made a VSC lp, and hid them randomly in record stores. To my knowledge there have been about 5 copies located and none have hit the open market in the last 5 years or so. I desperately want one: https://www.discogs.com/Violet-Sedan-Chair-Seven-Suns/release/2847380 In the world of punk scum there was a long running compilation series called Killed by Death. They exclusively comped songs by increasingly impossibly obscure US bands from the 77-79. This in many cases was done by people to boost the value of something they discovered in an effort to flip their cornered inventory. Of course, by the 11th release it was entirely made up bands: https://www.discogs.com/The-Frothy-Shakes-Killed-By-Death-11/release/2690201

If there is ever a Thumbscon I hope Cool Nick Breckon is a popular cosplay.

has nobody tried a modern, ironic take on the john romero ad? also, i bet "video game designer" would actually be a very useful skill in some kind of robot war for the fate of the earth? we'd probably need to abstract the battlefields, or use clever software to befuddle the enemy.

So I'm not sure if i just skipped a part of this cast, or just am forgetting an older story, but Nick says something about "like the time I knocked over the Krispy Kreme" sign. Is this part of the greater Thumbs ARGverse?

For the exercise inclined, I think this is one of my favorite on the web: http://www.exrx.net/Lists/Directory.html GIFs detailing good form, and hard to understand medical explanation of anything you might want. They have guides to any type of routine you might want. I've only ever really done 3 Day Splits (this version: Chest/Triceps, Back/Biceps, Shoulders/Legs).

Oh man, we just finished American Vandal, and it is exceptionally good. Funny, tragic, and impeccably built and acted. I love the way it turns in on itself.

in the interest of nick being full of it all the time i think the jury is way out on stretching, and i believe the consensus is that if you're just lifting weights it does more harm than good.

And Abyss Odyssey, which is like outsider metroidvania. I think it was discussed on Thumbs, maybe Danielle era? I dig their games, because of their rough edges, as much as in spite of. They're also based in Chile, so a little off the front lines of software development.

Oh man, thanks! I wish I had picked up R100 in time. That looks right on too.

Oh man, I love Stargate! (not Atlantis so much though) There is a remarkable amount of gas in the SG1 tank for a show that went on for like 10 years, and managed to get stronger in its last years after RDA burnt out. I also really liked Dark Matter. I haven't seen Travelers on Netflix yet. I also am ambivalent to the movie, or maybe hostile because Roland Emmerich is kind of a hacky bummer. Has anybody plunked down the All Access money? Are they widescreen episodes, which I think you get on the DVDs or the old TV 3:4s that are on Hulu?

I just started this episode but one tiny aside that stuck with me. Chris started by mentioning the unresolved stories, etc. A weird one for me is how Nadine DOES resolve hers. She shoveled her way out of the shit, and is living a fulfilling life and lets Ed/Norma live theirs, which is just kind of funny until you view it through the whole season and how the opposite turned out for the Coopers. How the obsession unwinds their lives.

haha. A+! man, I died at the 1 star LGA read. To close, here is a news story unrelated to pooping or robots that might be of some use, though the headline is probably better than the reality: http://www.wbrz.com/news/photos-show-blood-leaking-from-ground-behind-baton-rouge-funeral-home/?ncid=edlinkushpmg00000313

Thanks everyone! These are great selections!

Hey all, help! End of the month is my annual 24 hour nerd-a-thon some friends and i have been throwing for 25 years, and I need movie recommendations. Preferred parameters: Newish (or newly found/released (Samurai Cop was a fun hit when it was resurrected)) Remarkable/Unusual/Terrible/Disturbing/Weird! Ultra violence is A-Ok, salacious torture and/or sexual violence is not! Ideally not streaming on common services (but this is an older rule and obviously getting harder to abide) Previous hits: Hard to Be a God, Upstream Color, Turkish Star Wars, Neil Breen's Double Down, Hard Ticket to Hawii, The Visitor, The Raid I've slacked a bit this year, so far I only have Neil Breen's latest: Pass-Thru

At this point, the resistance will have failed or succeeded, no thanks to me. Old friends have been silenced, or fallen by the wayside. I no longer know or recognize most members of the research team, though I believe the spirit of rebellion still persists. Kind of heartbreaking. Boy I'd love to a series of multimedia somethings on games that might have been. All the versions of Diablo 3 before the thing that shipped, Half Life, BioShock Infinite. Videos of the parts that worked, interviews about the things they wanted but didn't. So really at this point if there is ever another HL, it's going to be "New Half Life" for the Vive, right?