Merus

Also I've seen Last Week Tonight, and I know that if GG try anything, the writers will turn it into a segment in which GG are made to look like dipsticks for reacting.

But then Hugh Hefner was (to an extent unusual for the 50s but would be seen as weaksauce or problematic now) arguing against homophobia in Playboy. Given how easy it would be for a brand to stay politically neutral, I'm not going to begrudge them this fleeting moment of pinkwashing. It's just as easy to accuse the people changing their avatars to rainbows of being johnny-come-latelys as well, but that's a dangerous road. I'd prefer to focus on the idea that - well, I think even most homophobes acknowledge the hurt that same-sex couples feel at this point, it's just that they believe the cost of changing society is much greater than the cost of gay people changing themselves. In this specific issue, at this specific time, that big statement does mean something, as it's a bunch of brands starting to pay that cost of changing society, and it's nowhere near as onerous as homophobes make it out to be. We tend not to handle the idea of society changing particularly well - more than one person has commented how if you'd said in 2005 that in ten years America's black president would bring in universal healthcare and same-sex marriage would be legal, you'd have been scoffed at - so I think it's unreasonable to expect that people should be acting as if we already live there.

Does Hearthstone count as its own franchise or as part of Warcraft?

I think my favourite part of Scalia's dissent is when he reveals that he is in a loveless marriage and assumes that everyone else is too. It is nice that the dissents are, on the whole, several different flavours of trainwreck.

I definitely remember noting it at the time, because I stole it from someone else noting it at the time on Twitter.

http://molleindustria.org/booFlag/

Oh miffy, you remembered my birthday!

Yeah, I left that as subtext, but the question is whether visibility on an E3 stage is good for a personal career. My suspicion is that it's not: an E3 stage is good for a studio, and if that studio is diverse then when those people will see success with their game they'll be able to be hired in more senior positions and present their own E3 segments. So the pressure to diversify E3 presentations is fine, but meaningless without a corresponding push for diverse hiring, which also means that either feeder schools like Full Sail will have to also diversify their entrants (without there being a bunch of minorities in places like E3 stages making it clear that there you can succeed even if you're not a white dude), or studios will have to endeavour to not hire many people from feeder schools. It's not directly analogous to diversity on conference panels, where there is a more clearer feedback loop between being on a panel and being seen as notable.

There's two ways this can go: either you feel the pressure to put more women and minorities on stage, and their increased presence means they find it easier to move into roles where they get to have a say. Or: you put women and minorities on stage, and then when someone else puts white guys on stage it's read as being more genuine because they're putting the actual project leads on stage instead of spokespeople.

As Anita Sarkeesian pointed out, it's kind of ironic for a game that treats its female characters so poorly to be making cracks about GG.

Somehow they managed to find a way to take the Wind Waker theme and make it even more Celtic.

The Clock Town performance is so good I want an Irish festival in the next Zelda with the Clock Town music.

Aren't all the Summer Monster cards expired?

Speedy Kits got combined with another trait, now it's called Streamlined Kits. Jesus that Lion's Arch jumping puzzle is a hell of a thing.

Horizon: Zero Dawn. Maybe they asked the person who writes Square Enix's trailer dialogue to come up with that name.

In general, give notice when you have a job offer in hand. Most employers will be fine with you working out your notice with your current employer. Actually, it can be a good sign because it tells them how you're going to treat them when you move on.

Yes, but now we're talking about a trade deal, not free trade agreements. One is a subset of the other. The TPP, for instance, contains both free trade agreements and a deal that limits workers' rights (along with a bunch of other terrible shit). There's nothing inherent in a free trade deal that necessarily has to strip workers' rights, is my point. You could argue that trade negotiators are far too willing to throw the needs of individual citizens under the bus to help exporters, and I wouldn't object to that. It's just I feel that the ire should be in the right place. Part of the problem here is that there's some really dumb tariffs, like the chicken tax America places on all foreign-made pickup trucks in retaliation for Germany placing a tariff on imported American chicken in the 1950s. Free trade deals are the only way these tariffs get cleared. While it's easy to paint doing this as hurting workers, in reality these tariffs probably should not exist and these workers are essentially in zombie jobs, making a product that shouldn't exist.

I don't know if free trade actually has a lot to do with workers' rights. Certainly, it does take out some industries, but it also bolsters others and the idea is that you're hoping the deal will help the industry you're good at more than it hurts the industry you're bad at. But industries deteriorate all the time, free trade or no - it's pretty hard to do any kind of simple manufacturing in developed countries now that China and India have an economy at the point where their workers can do simple manufacturing. So you need strong worker protections anyway. If you have strong worker protections, it seems like a free trade deal would be unlikely to strip them away, because it'd be a concession from the country that has them that drives the price of the good they're exporting even lower, which is not in the interest of the importers.

I talked about this with my housemate, and he mentioned that the game does heavily imply molotovs are to be saved for taking out clickers.

And you're saying that Aisha Tyler was more insufferable than Day9? Wow.

It seems like a real eye-opener that not even the US is thrilled with the TPP. I mean, the reason I live in a country that's not America is so corporations are not able to ride roughshod over the laws of the land, which are entirely happy to completely fuck over corporations if they think that's going to lead to a better outcome for its citizens (see: plain packaging laws for cigarettes). Also moving is expensive.

Turns out people were jonesin' to see some mother fuckin' dinosaurs also Chris Pratt

So now that E3's done, time to check how the bingo cards went! I was reminded of this by seeing a picture of how Microsoft still managed to get a fucking car on stage despite them doing their conference in an arena with no way to drive it on stage.

He's prepared if anyone ever calls him which is clearly not going to happen

On expansion pricing: thinking about it further, it reminds me a little of Ratchet & Clank, in a way. Like, I'm buying the new Ratchet & Clank sight unseen, and they'll probably ask $50 for it (well, in Australia $80) and I'll gladly pay that, because previous Ratchet & Clanks have been great games and they press all my buttons. Sure, they're a bit samey in places but what I want out of them they do well. I think the problem I'm having here is that the expansion is essentially asking me to separate my love for the potential of Guild Wars 2 from the reality of Guild Wars 2 at this moment. I don't know if they did, is the thing. After the end of season one, they went on a hiatus for about 6 months with I think one major update three months in that brought in the traits system (which they are removing tomorrow), had two months of episodes, two months hiatus, another three episodes ending on a dumb cliffhanger, the Christmas update, and then the last episode which set up Heart of Thorns instead of concluding. Like, say what you will about Scarlet and the spotty writing but at least that storyline ended properly. (I think they mostly erred in introducing Scarlet too early, I think because of concerns that the start of the story didn't seem to be building to anything.