Merus

I never fly cheap because I don't want to start a holiday with a shitty experience. It means I take fewer holidays, because I've got to budget for the added expense, but honestly it's accommodation that ends up being the big expense. Airbnb's made holidays way more affordable for me.

See I think this might be the crux of the problem here. You familiar with big data, Cordeos? The phenonema where you have so much goddamn data that drawing any conclusions from it is nigh-on impossible? The non-fiction you prefer does also present a fictionalised view of the world, except they're essentially pretending they're real. Sometimes what they describe is real, sometimes it's illusory. This is the way conspiracy theories work; clearly fictional, but made up out of real parts. For most people, fiction allows people to cut through the noisy data to the emotional signal. I'm reminded of the fictionalised movie Milk, based on Harvey Milk's life; in order to create a good story, it had to fill out the personality of Milk's murderer in a way that's hard to do in a fact-based account, where the fact that the man killed a beloved gay rights campaigner overwhelms every other fact about him. In fiction, doing that makes the story worse. Humans are storytelling creatures, we think in terms of cause and effect, so this is a natural way of thinking about the world to most people. Maybe not for you?

I started ranting about how the poem should have gone, and in looking up the correct sequence of groups rounded up, the Wikipedia page basically says the poem is supposed to be read more or less how I wanted to rewrite it - 'I was not a Socialist' isn't a statement of an inability to empathise, but a statement of satisfaction that your ideological opponents got what was coming to them. It's on my mind because of the ridiculous story about David Cameron fucking a pig, which is clearly a dude with an axe to grind but it's something that people so badly want to be true. People share it because it's tantalising, and, well, what if it is true? What if Obama is a socialist Muslim terrorist? What if that bitch that put her dumb Twine game on Steam slept with five guys for positive coverage? What if it's true? If your ideological opponents were that clearly depraved, that clearly immoral? How wonderful would it be to live in a world where such awful things were normal and accepted and only we were brave enough to see the truth (and not do much other than be awful on the Internet). How satisfying that someone would round them up and deal with them. Okay I've convinced myself now, it's bullshit that people keep misinterpreting that poem.

excellent

Saving Western civilisation entirely through arguing about video games because if it was important they wouldn't get a fucking look-in What irritates me the most about the culture wars is that it's just the most stupid shit, except that somehow it gets weaponised and actual human beings suffer and die from this dumb shit

I keep confusing George Pataki with George Takei and I do a double-take every single time.

So I've been kicking around a question that I want to put out there to see if there's an obvious answer: are racism and fear of the other equivalent? What does the Venn diagram of those two look like? I ask this because if they are equivalent, that makes it a lot easier to explain why something like 'reverse racism' isn't racism, or why, say, arresting a Muslim kid for bringing a clock to school can necessarily have a racial component (because it's much easier to explain how fears compound).

It is a shoe for Chris Remo. Shame they're not Vans.

Yeah, the rules of the game are that you cannot play through the entirety of the game with one character and only then switch to the other character. If you don't like those rules, don't play that game. I don't play LOMAs because I don't like their rules.

I think it'd have to be at least a little different; Ingress's faults arise from fairly subtle problems with its basic design, and even some minor adjustments to fit the theme would probably result in a better game. For instance, Pokemon Go will almost certainly map collecting pokemon to visiting specific locations, just like Ingress. However, if each location holds a different pokemon, the core loop goes from 'walk to portal, hack, repeat ad nauseum' to 'walk to specific "habitats" to find a pokemon you don't have yet'. They could very easily do something like have water types appear on shorelines and rivers, electric types in industrial areas, etc. etc. Then there's levelling pokemon; presumably, because you can battle pokemon, there'll be a training element, so then what's that going to be? Will they tie it to steps, or do you grind up pokemon by going to "habitats" and battling? Is it "battling" or a Pokemon-style battle, with moves and mechanics? Will they implement the EV system from the Game Boy games, where the way your pokemon levels depends on what it fights? I can imagine using the basic framework of Ingress and making something much, much more interesting.

I tend to think of them as Gamerghazi, and they're not that different because they largely come from the same place: here are these immutable principles, everyone we talk to agrees with these, they're what make us good, and everyone who does not share them is monstrous. I beat this drum a lot, I know, but it's because I think it's an important point: you can be a nutjob about anything, and it's easier than ever.

How things change in four days: Australia has once again knifed a Prime Minister mid-term, although this time it was a dangerously incompetent one and not a merely unpopular one. The new guy is Malcolm Turnbull, one of the few relatively level-headed people in the current cabinet, and his deputy is Julie Bishop, who's done a pretty great job as Foreign Minister. He will continue to be surrounded by the kind of people who put Tony Abbott forward as an opposition leader, so he's probably going to be deeply disappointing, but I'll take what improvements I can get. To commemorate the passing of one of our worst Prime Ministers ever, here's his greatest moment as an Actual World Leader.

How to Fail to Win An Argument With An Anti-Vaxxer: http://www.vox.com/2015/9/4/9252489/anti-vaxx-wife

Stifling of particular opinions is a sign of maturity. It's hardly a sin to decide to maybe don't share certain opinions because you know they're just going to upset some folk.

Well, sure, but I was thinking about bringing up the Gamergater arrested under terrorism charges. (The Gamergater identity was Moon Metropolis, because it's not clear.)

From what I understand, there's a 10 Mario Challenge which draws eight random levels created by Nintendo and gives you ten lives to finish them, and there's a 100 Mario challenge which draws, I think, 64 random levels made by the community. (You can redraw a community level whenever you want.)

I think I missed the part where this tedious argument is relevant to Gamergate.

That was what made me sit up and take notice: Niantic's already made an augmented reality game. They take what they learned from Ingress, do it better, and couple it with a license that really, really fits with the design of Ingress, then they have the potential to make something really special.

It's been two years of this stupid-ass Australian government, and we have very few prospects for the next government being much better (although let's be honest, they'll probably be better than crypto-fascists). Unfortunately, both sides of politics have worked out that they can use wedge issues to force the opposition's hand.

Film Crit Hulk is pretty much always trying to do a charitable reading, because it seems like he's well over that phase of his life where he's willing to dismiss people entirely based on shitty attitudes. He took a long hiatus after Gamergate, which is where his usual stance falls down. I read his argument as Kingsman being a little like this Tim and Eric sketch: It's weirdly discordant after about 30 seconds in, and the sketch very carefully acknowledges the role of the audience here in enjoying the punchline. This is for you, it's saying. You wanted this. This is what you wanted and now we are giving it to you. What do you mean you don't want this. You liked it before. I think people who were already queasy about the sexual politics and violence of spy films were put off by Kingsman very consciously jamming that button out of nowhere, in the same way that Tim and Eric doesn't work for everyone.

It still bothers me that games don't react with alarm to you killing one person. That's why MGS5 seems so interesting - even though you're a soldier in a war zone, every death hurts you because that's one more person you can't recruit.

Fair enough. Can you give me examples of works outside games that play with pacing in the way you're interested in? For me, at least, this kind of pacing is elemental. It's essentially combining intensity ramping up over time, which is essentially going to happen in a work the more time you spend in it, multiplied (in the mathematical sense) with a series of peaks and troughs, to provide contrast between the things that happen. I can imagine is a work without peaks and troughs, which smoothly ramps up in intensity in a way that feels like a prolonged action sequence, like the last half of a Transformers movie. I could also imagine a movie that sabotages the intensity ramping up over time, like The Tree of Life, but that's hard to do in games because the interactive nature of them usually means you can't provide the disconnect required. That said, actually, MMOs have a parabolic intensity curve; most people quit MMOs because they bore of them. That might not be what you're looking for.

I want to make sure this line's preserved for when Ninety-Three realises he has the self-awareness of a cat hissing at a mirror and deletes the post

Hmm. Part of the problem is that the 'three-act' structure is kind of a misnomer - even movies that supposedly have three acts have a 'second act' that takes up two thirds of the movie. In games, it's harder because the player is in control, but also because games that don't have a solid pacing mechanic often feel subtly wrong, so that usually, only very bad games visibly diverge from some kind of peak-and-trough pacing. For instance, most Mario levels are built with a four-act approach: the first act introduces an element, usually without much risk, the second elaborates on it, making it a little riskier, the third act subverts it by introducing something dissonant, and the fourth act harmonises the two. The vast majority of Mario levels are built with this approach, and as Super Mario Maker is demonstrating, Mario levels that don't follow this structure feel a little off somehow. Then you have games that build unusual pacing arcs into the mechanics itself - Minecraft, for instance, has a story-like pacing mechanism when exploring caves. You have a desire for materials, be it iron, gold, diamonds, what have you, and descend into a cave; you explore the cave (and sometimes become trapped); it becomes clear you need to leave the cave; you emerge a little wiser, or you're trapped too far down and die. Roguelikes tend to allow the random generation to create peaks and troughs for it, and some roguelikes build explicit breathing room into their progression. So I guess what I'm saying is that I don't know if we can help? (Also, I've finally started watching through the back catalogue of Extra Credits, and it's amazing how much that show's dated in five years.)

The Guardian? Running contrarian pieces in Comment is Free? They wouldn't.