gregbrown

The thing that worries me about the PA kickstarter is how it's essentially ditching the "project" requirement of Kickstarter—and Kickstarter approving it because they're getting a 5% slice of what's bound to be a big project. Kickstarter is already in this weird place where they've cultivated the idea of it as a pre-order QVC, but without any of the protections you have when dealing with any other merchant. They've created this expectation at their peril, because eventually one of these projects is going to blow up and damage their reputation. Now, on top of that, you have PA's venture which seems to skim by on being a project just by virtue of having an arbitrary end-point of 1 year (something that I imagine was added in their back-and-forth with Kickstarter to get it approved, along with some of the ancillary stuff). And while they're promising some additional content if several beyond-the-requirement funding figures are met, they're tacked-on and not the core concern of the project: removing ads. A good way to ask yourself whether this qualifies as a "project" under the Kickstarter guidelines is to ask if anything would not be created if they didn't breach the number they're asking for; as PA admits themselves on the Kickstarter page, "things stay how they are now." And all the ancillary add-ons are ancillary: the clear thrust of the project is in simply removing ads— and an empty ad slot doesn't count under any conventional idea of something that's "created". How big PA is or the snarky tone of the rewards are asinine—who would expect anything else from the creators of dickwolves?—but they're beside the point in that this is a proposal that should never have made it onto Kickstarter. This should have been handled on their own site or elsewhere, and I'm sure they would have still made plenty of money there.

Like Orvidos says, if you dig this you'll REALLY dig the Director's Cut. To give you an idea how drastically the theatrical edition was cut down and impoverished, in the full cut Eva Green's character has a son that's in the line of succession behind Edward Norton. And that drama is the driving force of the middle-third.

Kept thinking of Borges' "On Exactitude in Science" listening to the Civ V adventures:

Are there any Bioshock spoilers? I'm only partway through the game, and have somehow managed to not spoil the end for myself all these years.

Hearing Remo describe his Civ experience made me really hanker for a sandbox mode like SimCity, where the biggest threats are your own unintended consequences and not crazy-ass warlike AI or underhanded players. It would require a crazy pivot to build new gameplay systems, etc. to fill out the hole left by conflict with other Civs, but you could do some really cool stuff pulling in macro-versions of SimCity problems. You could have a five-year plan like Stalin! (Thomas Friedman could finally reach climax!)

The Prestige is one of the more radical (and I think, successful) adaptations out there because the film completely reworks the epistolary structure and drops the modern-day frame story. While the stories are somewhat similar, the Nolans changed one of the central elements to enable their own frame story and show Angier's obsession even better. It's a great study for how adaptations can change stories to fit the needs of film (as compared to literature) and succeed marvelously. I dug it enough that I tackled one of Priest's earlier novels Inverted World and enjoyed it immensely having gone in blind.

"Show, don't tell" is one of the pieces of advice I feel like gets wheeled out way a bit too much, as the latter can be successful when used properly. (John Williams in introspection mode is all-tell, and my favorite writer. Everyone should check out Stoner!) At the end of the day, it's become an ideological stance favoring minimalist writing. While that saying challenges the most lazy writing, it also excises an entire class of solutions.

Ugh now you guys are making me feel guilty about not reading philosophy since college. Rorty and Cavell are on my to-do list, and I really want to get a handle on Kripkestein sometime too.

Whoa, and World on a Wire was released by Criterion earlier this year. I have no idea why that wasn't a bigger deal. Thank you so much for the heads up!

As someone who works from home, I use twitter as a replacement for office chat. It's also incredibly handy as a weird ambient awareness of everything else that's happening elsewhere in the world. You just have to be really judicious about keeping your twitter list clean, and finding out what works best for you. I tend to read everything, but others treat it like a firehose and not an inbox.

I actually kind of dig this because that whole portion of the movie feels staged like a play—probably why they got Branagh to direct. The overall effect sort of like how you always sound super-articulate in your head, but when you write it down it turns into something less. It heightens the feeling of the Asgardian portions as almost dreamlike, the sort of psycho-drama that Mad Men also takes a turn towards at times (specifically the way ).

It appeared to be a universal message sent to the moon they were visiting, like Voyager's golden disc. Just watched Witness for the Prosecution last night, and it was really good! I saw it in high school as a treat in our mock trial class, but luckily forgotten how it played out. Are there any other cool, older mystery/surprise movies like this? I've already seen a lot of the more modern ones like The Game, etc.

The credits music was so off-tone, and the score was pretty bad as a whole. The gearing-up music that sounded like oboe meets fuzzy bass was ok, but the "this shit is wondrous" Williams stuff was always playing at the wrong moments and inappropriate and a bad imitation anyways.

If you'd seen Alien, you'd know how little this is like a prequel to Alien. There are some callbacks and one structural quirk near the end that's similar, but they're all more echoes than anything. Most of what was inscrutable and awesome about Alien stays inscrutable and awesome, which is one reason I was so pleased with the Prometheus after having been worried all this time. Plus Alien has aged almost perfectly and is still a stunning-looking film today. (Also I really need to watch Lawrence of Arabia now!)

Really dug Prometheus, as it fiercely resisted falling into any of the genres it skips across and occupies this strange, inscrutable middle in the process. I actually found it to be a strength, and satisfying in that it basically frustrates almost everything you'd want from an Alien prequel except for a dumb, condescending, tacked-on scene that's easily separable from the rest of the film's success. It certainly feels like an echo of the original, of what was left behind when Cameron got involved. There's a little bit of speeching towards the end that's kind of annoying, but the rest is marvelous. Also, you MUST see it in 3D, if only for the vistas and gorgeous holographic displays. It really showcases the strengths of the tech, though I'm still not convinced of its widespread application.

The fictional FPS being named "Hero's Duty" gives me hope that this movie knows what's up.

Hah, didn't mean to be so negative. It's just that I found 1% is a way more useful figure that, like you said, accurately communicates that this is a huge task ahead of us. So much old hardware out there; I bet we'd be shocked at the number of 802.11b routers out there still plugging along.

Yep, and they had a big fanfare about even hitting that number a week or two back. http://www.comcast6.net/ Of course, on the PR blog post they instead describe it as "hundreds of thousands" to sound better.

It turns out that I'm not amongst the 1% of Comcast customers with IPv6. :

I'll second this, and add that Perlstein's writing is so incredible for me not just because he knows how to capture the politics and the personalities, but that he can seemingly recreate the culture of the moment. Nixonland is actually a sort-of-sequel to his earlier book Before the Storm, which covers the presidential campaign of Goldwater and how a bunch of activists essentially engineered his nomination within the GOP and started the shift rightward that has lasted for almost 50 years now. Even though the backbone of the book is the planning and the bureaucratic hurdles and tactics used to push Goldwater within state party organizations and the like, Perlstein takes time off to discuss things like nuclear scares, and people writing about finding Strontium in children's teeth. Perlstein's a deeply liberal writer, but his books work because he makes you see why the other side was so appealing, in most cases making a better argument for it than many modern conservatives. It's a tremendous achievement, and why I think he's one of the best historians working today. His next book The Invisible Bridge, will cap off the trilogy by covering the leadup to Reagan winning the presidency. So excited, though I think it won't be until around 2014 if he keeps up the current pace. I actually prefer Before the Storm by a little bit over Nixonland, as it has a stronger through-line compared to Nixonland (which kinda slips into general-zeitgeist-mode for a chunk before Nixon's second political rise really takes hold). (You can also see that Perlstein seems to be one of the first post-search-engine historians, able to call up evocative little details and facts from the news at the time. It's really remarkable, and goes a long way towards making his technique work so well.)

Those aren't even anywhere close to the two best bits. For example, at one point Cage literally cries by saying "BOO HOO" because he wanted to see if he could get away with it. Also his accent is so affected as to be hilarious. A++ comedy. I don't even want to spoil most of the crazy stuff that happens because it's best to just see how far he takes the role.

This is because the market UI is so bad that people usually have an easier time selling their stuff at higher prices than at lower ones. Very frustrating to dump 10 items on the AH at low prices (think 1.5-2x what I'd get from selling them to a vendor) and have them all come back unsold.

Vampire's Kiss is my favorite Cage spectacle. It's astounding how he takes what would be an otherwise humdrum film and seems to be the only one who gets the joke and commits to it. Like, he literally ate live roaches as part of his acting.

Money-sink to stem in-game inflation.