Merus

I remember that this was the exact premise for the Klutz board games book - what board games would be suitable for a long journey through space. It was a pretty good book, it had some games that I think should be more widely known. It was the first place I ever saw Fanorana, which most people know from the board games in the later Assassin's Creeds.

Justice Points had an interesting discussion around Zarya (who is apparently based on a Blizzard employee): note how Zarya has really large legs, which is something that makes sense for a tank character who's constantly hunched and carrying a Very Heavy Gun, but it's not generally something this kind of character ends up having. The boobplate is maybe not necessary. I think some of cliched nature of it can be excused by the existence of an actual person at Blizzard who fulfils several of those stereotypes.

The naming of the game's covered in the documentary. The game didn't have a moment where Schafer was clear that he'd found the perfect name; he made a big list of potential names, pared it down to the least worse ones, and Broken Age was the least worst of those.

I love April Fool's. There's an art to a good April Fool's joke; an opportunity to acknowledge your weaknesses and in so doing point out the weaknesses of your target. It's a day tailor-made for making satire reality, which of course means that some people will use it to be dicks, missing the point that a) you're supposed to be fooled and you're supposed to enjoy it afterwards, and others will declare themselves above it all, as if laughing at yourself is something to be endured rather than celebrated. Screw those guys, though. They're jackasses. Let's talk about goofs today. Taking an early lead is, of course, Google. The Maps mobile team announced this: It actually extends to the Maps app on mobile devices, as well.

He did, and he is very sorry because it was supposed to be supplanted by a better name.

this just in: McMillen edgy for edgy's sake, willing to pretend to be a thoughtful artist when it suits him, full report in tonight's bulletin edit: Tyrone Rodriguez is saying that the Nintendo Binding of Isaac isn't changed from other platforms. Still happy with throwing Edmund McMillen under the bus

my mistake, didn't intend to magesplain

you're a mage, they're completely different approaches to magic

...that's the kind of April Fool's joke that people who don't get April Fool's try and do.

I remember that Jeremy Parish would frequently canvas vox pops from the personal forum he runs. This is basically the same thing, except that Depression Quest is a genuinely notable game and so calling it a 'standout' is accurate. It is a standout. It's a Twine game on Steam.

From what I understand, romantic attraction is just a specific kind of feeling love. I imagine there would be people who don't feel "romantic" love as Hollywood would define it, but they'd still feel attachment and derive belonging from someone who's not their family, so from their perspective, what's the difference. There are people who don't feel attachment to other humans, because they're incapable of seeing the response to those other humans. Our society is not set up to accommodate these people, and they're capable of doing a lot of damage to others' lives because the system as it stands also bizarrely rewards people who are capable of making detached decisions. Generally we ask that they become aware that they're missing an expected part of the human experience before they do too much damage. Even these people, though, have a psychological need to belong. Like Bjorn said, I've seen no evidence to suggest that social isolation is anything but harmful in the long term. One of the problems I have with attempting to have these discussions while being inclusive is that it requires a lot more work than I'm willing to put into a forum post to make something be specific enough to read well but general enough to not be dismissive. It's nice when the occasional sloppy post is ignored because you have a reputation.

So I got a job; a little nepotism, I guess, as it's doing IT work for the organisation my mum founded, but it's working with their current IT guy who's grown too busy to do a lot of the improvements he wants to do, and so I'm working with/for him. Corporate governance!

From what I understand, being asexual doesn't rule out romance, either. It's just that you don't have a pressing need to acknowledge intimacy with your genitals. Further, I understand that a lack of interest in attraction or other people in general is a disorder that should probably be addressed.

I've actually heard really good things about the ending of Episode 2, for what it's worth.

I am so pleased that they've found big success, particularly because Australian comedy is awfully small. It bodes well for the TV show they're writing together.

It's clear that you didn't see his letter and immediately take step to correct the problem for him, the consumer. So therefore he needs to send another letter directly to you so that you are aware that you're not holding up the end of this contract. But Patrick he's the consumer. If you don't do what he says then all the other listeners will stop too

I am glad that someone else is making that point, although these days I prefer to approach the issue in terms of public participation, to draw a line between hate speech and strategic defamation lawsuits. Someone is using a legal tool to threaten others, to make them fearful to speak. I have had more than enough 'but more speech is better because marketplace of ideas' arguments for one lifetime.

Yeah, but it's like being an asshole. You might have done something assholish, and someone might describe you as an asshole at that moment, but to reach a permanent state of assholishness you have to embrace your asshole behaviour. TB is owning his transphobic behaviour, and based on experience we know he's not going to suddenly decide he needs to apologise or feel shame, therefore he's transphobic. (I figured I should look up if gay and trans panic are accepted defences in Australia. Turns out we got rid of them relatively recently.)

So we had an election today! It was weird because it was actually good. I voted because it's my responsibility to vote as a citizen (and if I don't I get fined), but it was a fucking hard decision. The current government basically went to the electorate saying 'guys, we want to spend a ton of money, and to pay for it we want to sell off the power grid'. The election stayed on policies and issues throughout the entire campaign, to the point where it was really difficult to decide who to vote for because both candidates had positives and negatives. The Greens also made big gains, taking a new seat in Sydney as well as two rural seats, because they decided to contest them properly. It seems like coal seam gas exploration will be banned in NSW, which to me is a good thing. It's nice to see minor parties winning seats and proving they're capable of representing the people, because three parties keeps everyone on their toes; I had written the Greens off after they proved incapable of increasing their primary vote after the major left-wing party was caught in a huge corruption scandal. In my electorate, the candidate for the other major party used to hold the seat before the last election, so they cheekily put 'Re-elect' on his posters as if he was the incumbent. That led to the weird situation where you had two different candidates, one saying 'Re-elect me' and the other saying 'Let's keep me'. It was really nice to not vote for the Christian Democrat Party or the No Land Tax Party, as well. (Australia has preferential voting, and in the upper house, proportional representation. Unfortunately that means Fred Nile and the Shooters and Fishers Party will take seats in the upper house.)

Justice Points has a lot of nice gets, it's kind of impressive.

Love is a battlefield, after all I'm so glad I got to this first

My only contribution to this trainwreck of a discussion is to get 'notorious weedlord' on this page as well.

How is that different to previous Inspector Gadgets unless you're saying that Penny's actually front and centre in this one and her secret secret-agenting is only a part of her life now? 13-year-old me would be most interested to know

From what I understand, a lot of those frameworks work simply by forcing you to reconsider the problem from a different angle. One I've heard of is if you're trying to choose between two different options with their own pros and cons, you make a list on paper of all the criteria you have for deciding (close to home, cheaper, good experience, etc.), rank them out of ten based on how important they are to you, then rank each alternative out of ten by how much it fulfils each criteria. Then, multiply each ranking by how important each criteria is to you, add them all up for the criteria, and pick the you decided to do once you actually started doing the multiplications.

How dynamic is it compared to something like GW2? It sounded like someone had wedded the WoW quest structure to something more modern and thus made a game that can't do interesting quests because it has to keep the world static.