pkirkner

Cloud Imperium Games live-streamed an event from Los Angeles last night celebrating the second anniversary of the crowd-funding campaign, and announced quite a bit. Some highlights: All ships currently in the alpha can be played by all users with alpha access from now until the 17th and there are plans for similar temporary ship unlocks for testing purposes in the future. The Drake Cutlass got its full release, complete with and brochure. The planetside environments got their first live demo, which I thought was quite impressive. I've embedded that portion of the livestream below.

Scarcity is what gives collectors items value and I'm not sure how compatible that is with the promise they've made from the start that all of these ships that are selling for hundreds or thousands of dollars now can be had for free by playing the game upon release. I don't envy the sort of tightrope walk they'll have to perform to satisfy both the most financially-invested portion of the player base that has spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on ships and the much larger portion of the player base that backed for a more modest sum and have been promised from day one that the final release won't be pay-to-win. edit: As far as the consumption model being patterned after the super-rich, I just visited their website and saw that the latest ship on sale is literally a luxury space yacht that will set you back $600.

A big part of that article is about the real-world profits folks are making off of selling ships. I don't think it's sustainable and it doesn't make any sense to me, but I was able to offload my kickstarter pledge at roughly triple what I paid for it.

Eurogamer posted a look at the grey market for Star Citizen ships this week. I found some of the quotes from Chris Roberts on the value of virtual spaceships interesting:

I guess there might be an Independence Day sequel now, with Goldblum reprising his role. I assume they'll try to time its release for the 20th anniversary. That interview also included a link to this little gem:

Anyone looking for a copy of consulting detective could also take a look at used book stores. I was able to track down one of the printings from the 1980's for about $40 online. There was also a Raymond Chandler-esque sequel that seems like it could be interesting but has proven harder to track down a reasonably-priced copy of. edit: It also seems like the original publisher of the game was based in San Francisco. An ISBN search from that image turns up some really inexpensive copies on Amazon.

I usually play support, but I'll try just about anything that doesn't require a ton of micro. I tend to play random draft and captain's draft because the limited hero pool forces me to try new stuff all the time. Did you see they added an all-hero challenge with the Techies update?

That's literally the first safety rule the NRA teaches. It's the second, of a whopping four, basic firearm safety rules that the US Navy / Marine Corps teach. The fact that numerous cops were blatantly disregarding the most basic of firearm safety rules, with press everywhere, was shocking.

Yeah, it is.

You'll see folks leave games a lot more in Limited Heroes because there's no penalty for doing so.

Trailer looks really good. I enjoyed the panel livestream, but had a real tough time picking up the dialogue during the demo. Maybe the sound will be better on the archived video.

And given what she's had to endure for studying these issues, the odds are much worse that we'll see similar analysis from other contexts. Among all of the other counterproductive nonsense this particular mob has accomplished, they've managed to make it far more likely that Anita's analysis will stand alone as the authoritative take. We'd all benefit from more voices applying critical analysis to games, both from a feminist perspective and others, but why in the world would anyone want to at this point? The stakes seem way too low to put up with constant threats of violence.

Assuming you're playing Limited Heroes, Lion is also a very straight-forward support that shouldn't be too hard to pick up.

There's a cell phone video out there that captures the entire police shooting of Kajieme Powell from this Tuesday in St. Louis. http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/st-louis-police-release-video-calls-city-shooting

It sounds like police didn't take any supplies from the church. Were supposedly investigating reports that people spent the night in the church, which is about the most ridiculous "crime" I've ever heard of. Is there any church on Earth that hasn't sheltered people under its roof during times of personal or community crisis? edit: Still lots of conflicting reports about what went down, so who knows? edit2: http://instagram.com/p/r7feCuD9Fr/

I know Centaur Warrunner's return and stampede skills scale with his strength.

Make some Irish potatoes. http://www.teacher-chef.com/2012/03/15/irish-potatoes/

That the reefer madness nonsense persists against all evidence, but only when applied to black and brown folks, is maddening.

There's also the fraught history of past uses of the National Guard by governors, such as Arkansas using them to keep the Little Rock Nine from going to school, which forced Eisenhower to call in the 101st Airborne to escort the kids to school or the Ohio national guard shooting student anti-war demonstrators at Kent State. Basically every productive domestic use of the guard has been either in response to a natural disaster or when under federal control, whether it was Eisenhower taking the Arkansas guard out of the governor's control or LBJ eventually deciding to protect the marchers from Selma.

The Missouri governor is sending in the National Guard today. I briefly served with folks from the Puerto Rican Guard on one of my deployments and they seemed like decent folks. Looking into the Missouri National Guard, I'm not getting the same vibe. http://m.columbiatribune.com/news/local/tarnished-reputations-a-national-guard-officer-in-columbia-alleges-retaliation/article_5c15b492-7e0c-11e3-a774-001a4bcf6878.html

The fact that the cop in that video was willing to threaten to shoot someone over turning off a light while obviously being recorded is about as clear an illustration of the utter lack of accountability as there could be.

I disagree. Patchwork reform that keeps police from shooting people with impunity is worthwhile. Holding police officers that murder people accountable doesn't solve every systemic problem in society but it should save innocent lives and is a worthwhile, reasonably achievable step towards further reform. Everything can't be fixed at once through the political process, but that's no reason not to fix what we can when we can.

I'm somewhat encouraged that the FBI has devoted 40 agents to canvas the area and conduct interviews with witnesses to the shooting. With a week having passed since the shooting, the local authorities have still given zero sign that they're interested in either opening a murder investigation or telling the public why they believe the shooting may have been justified given the circumstances. Their press conference in which they named the shooter and then proceeded to respond to media requests for police reports about the shooting with this packet of information that barely even mentions the shooting was a huge red flag regarding their intentions and priorities. Hopefully the Feds can have a positive impact on the situation.

Even in that case, all police needed were a couple hunting rifles with which they could land an accurate head-shot from a distance and some quality time at the range (police fired about 650 shots during the North Hollywood Shootout and landed zero headshots - neither robber was wearing a helmet). Instead, police departments bought tons of AR-15's (at the time) and now M4s. There's basically no reasonable police application for an AR-15 that isn't better served by a semiautomatic hunting rifle and the only reasonable police application for an M4 would be for hostage rescue teams that need to storm buildings or vehicles (planes, trains, ships, etc.). Since our lawmakers have decided that no-knock warrants are a thing, that's another police application for M4s, however unreasonable I feel it is. I'm not sure whether the weapons choices are more a case of poor decision making on the part of police leadership or a case of the perverse incentives created by making AR-15s and M4s essentially free, but I suspect it's a bit of both. I would assume that police departments also have access to surplus military rifles more suitable for designated marksmen in a law enforcement context like the M-14 or the M1 Garand, the latter of which the US Government donates to a non-profit for sale to civilians. I just don't think police leadership wants to bother with dedicated marksmen to call on when there's a crazy North Hollywood Shootout-type problem. They'd rather their rank-and-file that can't shoot straight be armed like soldiers. edit: Given the rumored political machinations that resulted in the release of the surveillance footage yesterday and the removal of the state highway patrol, there's a chance this move was taken primarily to revoke the authority of county and local police and put the state police back in charge.