Merus

Yeah, calling Birdman Oscar bait does disservice to what people are trying to express by calling movies Oscar bait - there's a glut of milquetoast, creatively bankrupt movies, frequently biopics, that try and coast on the assumption that the Academy won't really understand the significance of this person's work but because they had a Personal Tragedy they deserve recognition. These movies are running a con. Whatever you might say about Birdman, it's not creatively bankrupt, and it had something to say other than 'isn't this actual person inspiring'. It might be accurate to say that it's myopic, or decadent, but they're not Oscar bait and we already have appropriate, resonant words to describe what's wrong with a work that is far too focused on the opinions of actors, or a work that is so steeped in the works that have come before it that it's less accessible to anyone who isn't familiar with those works.

It's the thing that bothers me the most about Mega Man and I'm glad that Shovel Knight's take on the concept put them in tiers - an acceptable compromise over having each level ratchet up the difficulty for each boss defeated.

The podcast also covers the Spanish-American war, which the host credits for giving America an appetite for foreign conquest, and brings up the Revolution. I did a little more reading and remembered that the podcast I listened to is focused specifically on America's rise as a world power, and acknowledged the prevalent anti-immigration racism while glossing over it - it'd have been better had I mentioned it, but my point was largely that I disagree that the anti-immigration and racism of the period doesn't conflict with expansive imperialism, largely because during the period they did come into conflict. I can't imagine Columbia wouldn't have been divided on whether the opinions of the 'foreign hordes' are relevant, and yet the politics of the city are focused mostly on Fink vs Comstock and on Daisy Cutter's rebellion.

I was actually mentally linking otakukin to the Napoleon complex and should have twigged that I've read a rebuttal to that comparison before.

I think Echoes has fairly weak map design except Sanctuary Fortress is, I think, one of my favourite locations in the Metroid series. That's kind of a low bar - Metroid's locations usually range from okay to generic - but Sanctuary Fortress feels weird and different and cool. I never minded the jumping from safe spot to safe spot, although I think it probably should have been a separate bar.

I'm hearing a lot of people say they don't like boss battles recently. I fuckin' love boss battles. That might just be because I haven't played enough games with bad ones - Nintendo often gets it right, although I think my favourite boss battle was actually in Darksiders 1, which had a boss in an arena with something that would clearly hurt the boss in the wrong hands, but it took steps to keep you away from it and it had attacks that were nastier if you were in position to hurt the boss. Boss fights don't usually feel like the boss is noticing your tactics and responding to them, but that one did.

That's a failure of a pompadour though your willingness to accept pompadours of such poor quality speaks to your general lack of character so ashamed to know you right now

The thing I wonder about transgender people, and this is probably going to sound offensive, is whether there's a relationship between them and otakukin and otherkin. Otakukin are patently ridiculous, yet otakukin self-report as being very definitely Sephiroth or Goku or someone from a fictional medium. Is there a difference in the self-reporting, or a difference of degree? (Otakukin and otherkin often have their self-image bleed over into their personalities, which doesn't seem to be much of a factor for transgender people, but my experience is limited.)

have a look at RPGNet, you'll find some quality bad faith arguing there. And not just from Zak S!

So I've listened to enough Hardcore History to know that I intend to keep listening to Hardcore History. There is no way I'm going to listen to an episode all at once, but I can very easily listen to 30 minutes to an hour as I go and work through it over a week or two. Interestingly, it gave me a new perspective on Bioshock Infinite. One of the criticisms of the game is how it presents its alternate history, with Columbia interfering in the Boxer Rebellion, in a reductionist and racist way - but the time period where this happened is where jingoism overtook the American character, with the idea that America could be an imperial power that really cared about hose it subjugated. It's odd that they don't show the Phillipines-American War anywhere, which in reality was the second war America got into and killed America's appetite for being an 'enlightened' conqueror. Columbia would have interfered in that war, and then floated onto the Boxer Rebellion, and brought freedom and self-determination to the poor people unable to truly handle democracy properly for themselves. The idea that they were 'guarding themselves against the foreign hordes' isn't a particularly accurate way to depict American racism, to my mind.

I imagine the subtitle of Up is The Benefits Of Exercise.

I like to think you took up boxing because it involves activities that contain the word 'pun'

No I meant 'what do you mean Paul Thomas Anderson is a pariah' because that's the first I've heard about it. I know about how it's a thinly veiled rip on Scientology.

It's not as bad as in America, where this process seems to be mostly complete. We've got time and a history of daring progressivism. New Zealand and Australia were right on the vanguard of universal suffrage, after all. I suspect that the TPP has taken so long to be ratified because every time it leaks they stop negotiations until they think we've forgotten about it. It's vile.

Well, honestly we're bound to be supporting voices that are kind of not great just because the bar of 'you can't harass and terrify people online because they're female or have opinions' is so low. We're also not that desperate to find supportive voices because we already have Stephen Colbert and I can't imagine we're going to do better, unless we rope the cast of Game of Thrones in somehow. Roosh isn't trying to call out the rape culture hysteria, though, in the same way that bears don't advocate for people to not be scared of bears... listen this metaphor isn't working but I'm saying Roosh is a rapist and he justifies it by saying he deserves to do it. The idea that good satire is close to the real thing is just the worst. If you're being accurate in your satirical depiction you're leaving no room for your commentary, and the fucking commentary is the fucking point of fucking satire so you've made a hollow shitty copy of something you already know is shitty you are the worst

From what I understand the fear of "worldly things" runs rampant amongst evangelicals as well. I forget whether there was important context missing from the line they're drawing from or whether it's one of those things that people should just be ignoring, like how there's two origin stories in the Bible that are mutually incompatible. It's incredibly convenient for keeping people in line, though, being able to say that anything that makes you uncomfortable or question the faith should be shunned.

Here's that 'field of grass' from a different angle:

wait what

'Should not' I understand, but 'are not'? Uber runs rampant through the transport industry, almost certainly making it more expensive for people on fixed and limited incomes - who use taxis most - and taking away taxis in favour of rich fuckwits. Apple has, almost singlehandedly, transformed the way we sit down with others, as long as you stretch the definition of 'with' to also mean 'in close proximity to but ignoring'. Facebook killed off the school reunion. Twitter's fucked with news, and in Australia and elsewhere, with politics. And that's just in the last ten years! There's countless examples of businesses deciding that it's cheaper to warp society to fulfil their financial goals, or even actively setting out to change society by selling lots and lots of their product (e.g. Microsoft, General Electric/Westinghouse, even something like Goldieblox), that to discount business' ability to change the world to suit its ends seems churlish. They're not the only ones capable of doing so, of course. But even putting aside capitalism as an agent for change, it's also worth considering how poorly organisations deliberately set up to improve society tend to do, as their idealism often gets in the way of acknowledging that their solution doesn't scale, is only relevant for their pilot area, or that their solution introduces a host of other problems. Humanitarian work, particularly in the poorest nations, has had to shift rapidly and become more localised as they've grown more aware of their failings, and at least part of that is due to the failures to make that work at scale. Of course, doing so leads to a smattering of humanitarian organisations as healthcare providers, with no ability to co-ordinate, sucking the oxygen out of any efforts to repair the existing healthcare system. This is why I referred to the kind of problems we're talking about as 'wicked' problems, which is a social policy term for problems that are not clearly defined and don't have easy solutions that are clearly win-win. Social injustice is a wicked problem, for instance, as is climate change. Given that corporations are capable of bending the world to their will, for any of these wicked problems we care about, they're going to throw their weight around in the direction that will make them the most money. Getting an outcome we want is going to be much easier if corporations throw their weight in a direction we prefer, even if it's not perfect, even if it could be better, because things are hard enough as they are without trying to dismantle capitalism at the same time. (My perspective on capitalism might be a bit different because I don't live in a capitalism-riven society like America. I imagine it'd be a little more pressing for Americans.)

So the guy who crashed his car while supposedly driving to Brianna Wu's house? Is in fact a avant-guard comedian, playing a character. And making actual threats as part of that act, might I add.

Here's some Canberra, directly above Parliament House: Billy Connolly once pointed out how Australia has the right idea by making it possible to walk up Parliament House, so you're figuratively stomping all over politicians. They tend to not allow people up when they're feeling vulnerable, though, like when polls are down and they want to make a fuss about terrorism.

See, it's worth remembering that they didn't ship the controller or Steam Machines either so this VR project's not going anywhere that Oculus won't get to first.

As far as I understand it, Thor is on the goofy end of the superhero spectrum. Having a character announce that they're a misogynist so they can get beaten up is the kind of tone they're shooting for. Businesses do wield huge influence, though, and they have an alarmingly good record at forcing changes in the world. We might not care for it but we can't expect to solve all the world's problems in one fell swoop. All we can do, really, is to make things better and hopefully push things to the point where it isn't such a wicked problem.

Buried?

I think asking all the hosts to do a full five hours during GDC week is going to be rough. You've got five hosts, you can cycle them.