Merus

Here's Arthur Chu talking about disco, which turns out to be alarmingly relevant. Also my spell checker is convinced 'Chu talking about' should be spelled 'talkin bout'. I'd be impressed if it wasn't wrong.

My housemate, who has a bet going on whether fusion reactors will happen before 2030, points out that Lockheed Martin hasn't actually explained how it works, and hasn't actually built their prototype, and plenty of other companies have made grand pronouncements that fusion is twenty years away.

I'm like this except great writing gets me over the line, so I enjoyed Psychonauts and I enjoyed Brutal Legend until it got a bit rough. Wayforward are equally as rough but have much worse writing, and I'm not a fan of the character design.

ok

The vending machine at my last job had a sensor that detected if something fell, and if it didn't after enough time, it refunded you. Why is this not standard.

Nah, he's an economist specialising in Asian economies (which is his full-time job) so he was always interviewed about economics, but they'd tell him what they wanted to talk about and frequently it wouldn't have much to do with what he was doing at work. He's not a full-time TV expert. (I tried looking for his TV appearances but the ABC doesn't put them up on YouTube because you foreigners don't deserve it apparently.)

In case you guys didn't see it, Penny Arcade did a dickwolves defence all over again for this "I cannot believe I have to say to not make death threats, but obviously gaming journalism hates you". I am pretty glad I do not turn to Penny Arcade for news, I tell you what.

And in the short term! Smog from coal plants is an actual problem that we have now, and the most visible corruption in Australian politics comes from coal magnates.

I just love the timing here: literally three days ago our (dumbass) Prime Minister claimed coal was the future of energy. If Lockheed Martin have cracked fusion then coal is dead.

A friend of mine became a TV and radio expert. What it apparently entailed was that they'd ask him to talk about something he knew nothing about that was somewhat vaguely adjacent to what he actually did, and he'd have to start studying quickly. Obviously he did well because he is the smartest guy I know, but yeah. That's how experts work!

Goddamn it I was just about to point out that the retweet is supposedly insulting us but we have the perspective to realise that we're not making death threats so obviously we're not who that tweet is making fun of-- yeah probably good that he was banned. I had a doctor's appointment My heart's fine, it turns out

I would have to get up at 5am to play. Not keen.

I feel like you didn't even read my post. Like, you're talking about how specificity is important and it's not always the same kind of thing that's involved, and then decide that in the case of the WBC it has to be the media they consume i.e. the Bible, when I just said that yes, there is a reduplicative feedback loop but it's because they're a more extreme version of the Southern Baptist movement, which is in itself a shitty echo chamber trying to reconcile the Bible and systematic racism and coming to all sorts of bullshit conclusions as a result. And then I start talking about how you actually get people out of movements that are driven mostly by self-reinforcing beliefs, and here you are saying that isn't important and we have to stare at these games real hard. No, we have a pretty good idea of how these work. You can make it out of basically anything, so long as you have a group (even as small as two) alienated from more stabilising influences, that have a strong unifying bond, that will push each other to ever more extreme acts. The whole reason people are tying it to the bigger picture is because we have lots of examples of these movements happening over and over again, and that gives us a picture of what we're dealing with in a form that means we can actually learn from history.

No market for long-form games on mobiles, Japanese players aren't as fond of consoles any more. There's basically only two choices, the PSP/Vita and the Game Boy/DS line, and now that Nintendo has Monster Hunter, the Vita is done for.

This seems like awful thin ice, given that there are plenty of Christians who read the Bible entirely differently and see how it's about protecting and embracing those that have been marginalised. I think you're taking the Phelps-Ropers at their word when they say that their conception of the Bible is an accurate one, which has exactly the same problems as taking gamergaters at their word when they say they're for gamers, or about ethics in journalism. There is a bilateral component to the Westboro Baptist Church, but it's feeding off the Southern Baptists. They're an extreme expression of the evangelical idea that your relationship with God is the only important part, and your relationship with society that Jesus spent an awful long time talking about was basically a typo. I like to ruin parties by explaining, in great detail, with sources, how evangelism is the world's largest cult. This is also why I was so heartened to see ex-gamergaters coming out of the woodwork. If we're smart, we can set up a quick exit counselling for gamergaters - demonstrate how reactionaries and hate groups work and their rhetoric, then present examples of what gamergaters have been doing that looks incredibly shitty when keeping in mind how hate groups work, and then finally have ex gamergaters ready to explain their story, so they don't cognitive dissonance their way right back into the heart of the shitmachine. It's how they get people out of cults these days, and it feels like a concrete way to actually do something.

There's no union in Australia, I know this because Team Bondi was able to operate with impunity.

Well, considering Adam Baldwin started the hashtag, it's not surprising. (Also it is a reactionary movement, much like the Tea Party.)

I think it's fine that different reviewers have different priorities. We don't really need reviewers to tell us if a game is playable any more, most games are. Whether or not a game will be worth the time these days depends mostly on taste.

City Spends Months Debating Smoking Ban In Public Parks, Discovers Smoking Was Already Banned In Public Parks

Better than Coraline, you say? I didn't care for Paranorman, though, it felt very American in a way I don't think it realised it was.

Wouldn't put it past him to do it to spite John Scalzi but yeah your reactionary campaign has really rounded up the usual suspects hasn't it guys.

Well obviously everything they do is legitimate because if it wasn't legitimate they wouldn't do it. Because they're principled.

I just found out that the audio diaries attract the alien. So pleased.

I'm assuming this is a Planet Hollywood. Planet Hollywoods don't seem to do very well - the one in Sydney closed down years ago and got converted to a bar.

As the song goes, "this shit is | ananas | *cough* A N A N A S"