Merus

Or you could play as the SPY PRINCESS THERE IS A SPY PRINCESS SHE HAS GOGO BOOTS AND A TRIDENT

Wow, yeah, that's not how I use Twitter at all. I think, as a celebrity, you're kind of obligated to play nice, but I mostly use it as a way to put a dumb thought up. It's a little like IRC in that regard, to me, except more entertaining because it's not in real-time. Also I think Google shut down Reader because they didn't know what they were doing with it and wanted to force everyone onto Google+.

The punchline: he's still going to repeal the carbon tax, in favour of an emissions trading scheme with the price held at $0 until Australia's major trading partners, the US and China, also introduce emissions markets with links to Australia. However, in return he wants Abbott to introduce legislation that will guarantee a reduction in people's power bills in some unspecified fashion, which Abbott has been saying that repealing the carbon tax will do all along (remember that there's been a lot of rorting going on by the power companies). He will vote to save the independent climate change advisory, the VC fund for clean energy, and won't vote to scrap the renewable energy target with this government. And apparently he thinks climate change is real now, and credits Al Gore for setting him straight. The conservatives have been outplayed; Abbott gets what he's been claiming he wants, but he'll have to guarantee that the carbon tax was exactly as bad for power bills as he'd always claimed, and still leave an ETS ready to be reactivated so he has to explain to the climate deniers that helped him into power why he's left the next government the ability to just turn on the carbon price again. The liberals and Greens have been outplayed; Australia will have no effective climate change legislation, but if they vote against it they'll kill the ancillary measures, particularly the VC fund which was seeing actual results, and Clive Palmer looks like a hero for bringing in an ETS, when the fixed carbon price was going to start floating in a couple of years anyway, and the liberals wanted to do it early. Also Al Gore was there. Fucking nuts.

Australian politics decided to just go off the deep end again. This is over climate change, so a primer on Australian politics and how climate change has increased the chaos to almost farcical proportions: Back in 2007 new liberal leader Kevin Rudd announced that climate change was the greatest moral issue of our time, and crafted legislation to introduce an ETS (emissions trading scheme with a cap-and-trade element). The then conservative opposition leader, Malcolm Turnbull, announced that his party would support the legislation, which his party decided was the last straw and they moved to oust him. He was replaced by climate change denier Tony Abbott, winning by a single vote. The ETS didn't make it out of the upper house (killed by, of all people, the Greens). Copenhagen didn't go well either, and Rudd abandoned the ETS. Voters, in turn, abandoned Rudd, as this and other visible backpedals exposed him as a man who talked a big game but couldn't actually get things done, and his party took the extraordinary step of ousting him as leader and installing his deputy as leader, Julia Gillard. They got hammered in the next election for this (and also because Rudd leaked tons of damaging documents to the press during the election). Gillard had convinced Rudd to drop the ETS in the first place, and her own proposal was to put together a citizen's committee to decide if Australia should care, but her government wouldn't introduce a carbon tax or anything. This was obviously bullshit, but Abbott (nicknamed the Mad Monk) was describing climate change as 'crap' and was running on policies that just didn't matter to people. So they both lost: neither party got enough seats to form government as a majority, and they'd have to form government by convincing independent members of parliament to pass their budget bills. The liberal party could realistically get three members onside, but one was the Greens' first lower house member. Guess what he wanted in return. If you said 'actual carbon change legislation', you'd be right. So Gillard was forced into reviving the ETS, except with a guaranteed minimum price. They also introduced a raft of measures to ensure this'd work out - an independent body that would advise the government on climate change, a cut to income tax and extra payments for people on benefits, a renewable energy target, and a VC fund for clean energy. Abbott went on the warpath, calling her Juliar and making out that her statement that she wouldn't introduce a carbon tax was a solemn vow and not something over which she lost the election. There are photos of him behind banners saying 'ditch the witch' at rallies that he didn't organise but was happy to endorse, and he made a huge deal about people's power bills being enormous because of the climate tax (nevermind that the power companies were encouraged to spend the government's money on over-engineering their infrastructure, the maintenance of which they passed onto customers). Gillard continued to be unpopular because she was seen as having her hands dirty over the disposal of an elected leader, and she didn't prove to be an adept enough politician to sell her good policies, or notice the bad ones before they built budgets around them. This was the period where she gave the famous misogyny speech in parliament, which is an uncharacteristically good speech from her. The election loomed, and Abbott's relentless negative attacks had taken their toll. They were heading towards a wipeout at the polls, and so the party leadership went to their plan B folder: they ousted her and put Kevin Rudd back in. And then panicked when the first thing he did was introduce new party rules that meant the party leadership had to be voted on by the entire member base (how this was not already a rule I have no idea) and then started making up ridiculous new policies on the campaign trail. Kevin Rudd turned out to be as insane as his party members had secretly thought he might be; it took him three years to alienate the rest of his party with his constant sabotaging of their work, until they eventually got rid of him, but he was so charismatic that the voters didn't twig. So the Greens are rubbing their hands with glee because they'll finally get their chance in the sun, but that's when billionaire coal magnate Clive Palmer announces he's starting a political party, and they're running in every electorate of Australia. This is the guy who decided he'd build the Titanic II, and a dinosaur park. People joked that instead of Jurassic Park he'd been watching The West Wing and decided that looked like fun. He's calling his party the Palmer United Party, and guess what he thinks about climate change! (Hint: he's a billionaire coal magnate.) So the liberal party loses and Prime Minister Abbott (who is, hilariously, also the Minister for Women and Indigenous Australians, and by 'hilariously' I mean 'distressingly') immediately starts dismantling climate change bodies in the name of fiscal responsibility. There is no Minister for Science for the first time in decades. Apparently climate change is real and he's always said that, except that he's also left climate change off the G20 agenda and has been buddying up to Stephen Harper. Instead of an actually effective and revenue-neutral cap-and-trade system, Abbott wants a "Direct Action" scheme, which apparently involves a reverse auction where companies bid for funding to reduce their emissions, which basically no-one thinks will work and will cost tons of money when the conservative party have been freaking out about the budget deficit. In the upper house, the Greens lose a couple of seats, and suddenly the Palmer United Party gets the balance of power: if the conservatives want something, and the liberals and Greens don't, the numbers fall out so that Clive Palmer gets to decide whether or not it passes. The senators are just about to take their seats (and the Greens have been voting down any climate change bills in the meantime - it wouldn't be inaccurate to say that the Greens' voting patterns are significantly influenced by spite). But before that, the conservative party has to pass the budget, and the reaction from the electorate could only be described as horror. A compulsory fee for doctor's visits. A six-month waiting period for unemployment welfare, and a six-month maximum before payments stop. Deregulation of universities, to make it a US style system. Retirement age of 70. Foreign aid slashed. Funding for schools slashed. The national broadcaster's funding slashed. Hospital funding slashed. But lots of funding for the military and for getting chaplains in schools! Reactions were somewhere from 'wow, that's an awful lot of cuts' to 'this is unAustralian'. It's been a month and a half, the conservative government is still at around 30% approval rating, and if the Palmer United Party don't take their seats and start passing their budget measures soon, the Abbott government will collapse and everyone - lower and upper house - goes back to the voters. But while Clive Palmer isn't going to approve the changes to Medicare or to welfare, his party ran on repealing the carbon tax (as well as getting a fairer deal for all Australians or something) and he's maintained that he's still going to do that, and that he'd announce his party's opinions on the actual legislation they'll be voting on just before they take their seats in the upper house. That announcement happened today, jointly announced by Al Gore.

Oh, that reminds me of this slice of crazy from NeoGAF: "I don't know how much you know about {blank} - I'm an expert" became an in-joke on the forum I was on at the time. It's just perfect.

I've been to an American cinema and it crystallised immediately why Americans complain about going to the movies and no-one else does. All the ritual of the cinema has been stripped out and replaced by advertising, transitioning slowly into the actual movie so gradually that no-one takes it seriously. You're not connecting with a bunch of strangers who are all sharing the experience with you; there's a cinema full of douchebags getting in the way.

true! whoops.

There used to be more buy-in to Scientology; I think by the 90s it was seen as 'weird but harmless', but Anonymous turning up with their weird-ass protests kind of loosened the floodgates enough that it's not controversial for celebrity gossip magazines to really lay into Scientology where they might have made nice.

I have an irrational hatred for applying fandom words that described something specific and useful and broadening them so that they also encompass perfectly good existing words. For instance, brkl here describes matchmaking and why can't we just call it fucking matchmaking arrrrrgh

For what it's worth, TVTropes describes fanservice as something that came out of anime, where it exclusively meant gratuitous sexualised imagery that wasn't exactly nudity. Or fandom, for that matter; as far as I remember, the Star Trek fandoms and conventions were started by women.

No I think you're right Jake. Which raises the question: why did we decide that fanservice meant any kind of pandering when we already have a perfectly good word for that?

Here's something fun*: there are items that let you change teams, which naturally are available to buy because Steam turned their store into a free-to-play game without anyone noticing or caring. *and by "fun" I do of course mean "gross, like Steam basically always is these days"

I played a lot of Rayman Legends. I got awesomeness level 11, which involves about three months of playing the daily challenges as well as full completion of the main game and the Origins throwback levels.

Psychonauts was a Microsoft Games Studio project. They cancelled it, and it was picked up by Majesco for release.

The role I remember him in most, having not seen much of his pre-Game of Thrones work, is as the executive in Elf that Will Ferrell's character unintentionally insults.

Miis in Smash Bros. make a ton of sense, because they have three different loadouts and they look vaguely like you whereas the other fighters don't. I agree that they have no place in Mario Kart.

I could probably make that argument, but Idle Thumbs has a very long history that's important to the podcast network it became. The gender bias in the heyday of adventure game sites was far more pronounced, and the idea that games had any kind of social responsibility was a laughable idea. Expecting Idle Thumbs to be formed according to the standards of today is not an argument I'm going to make! The guest list, though, is pretty much a sausage fest (I'm not counting the snippet we heard during the second death of the podcast with Whitney Hills, nor am I counting people involved with the Idle Thumbs news site as guests, but I am counting future hosts who were introduced first as guests): Brad Shoemaker Chuck Jordan JP LeBreton Max Schaefer Erich Schaefer Mac Walters Chet Faliszek Ron Gilbert Sean Vanaman Christina Norman Tom Francis Derek Yu Bennett Foddy, who never gets interviewed about Cut Copy for some reason Kirk Hamilton Evan Lahti Olly Moss Shawn Elliott Ryan Davis Danielle Riendeau Jeff Green Zack Johnson Nels Andersen Greg Kasavin Will Smith All of these people are friends, people who you get along with, and people you want to cast a pod with for an hour, and that is fine! Having friends is not the problem here. The Idle Thumbs podcast network is also a good example of what I'm talking about. We have Idle Thumbs/the Book Cast, TMA, Dota Today, Terminal 7 and Tone Control. All of the hosts of these shows are people you can vouch for. Here's the problem: why are these people the people you can vouch for, that you made friends with? If you were making friends entirely randomly, you'd expect them to resemble the population they were drawn from: half men, half women (one quarter Chinese). That's not what's happening here; without thinking about it, or intending to, you've got a list of friends that mostly looks like you, instead of a list of friends drawn from the population of people who are cool people. Cool people who do not look like you were excluded without you even meaning to. I want to reiterate that this isn't an attack or an accusation. It is a systemic problem. That is a problem, but I disagree that it's so bad that it's not achievable to have a majority of panels with at least one woman on them. Part of getting women in prominent game positions is making the positions they're already in prominent; forcing there to be room for them has this kind of effect. Regarding your example about the conference: the distress you felt that you felt obligated to have more representation but you didn't know anyone is the point of the exercise, as it's supposed to highlight that you're smart and aware of this kind of thing but there's a lack of diversity in the professional circles you're drawing from. It's trying to force the problem upstream, because it's fighting against a problem that's made up of a thousand perfectly reasonable decisions.

I am not entirely sure what the actual valuable conversation is that's being crowded out here. I don't think the existence of this campaign is making it particularly difficult to talk about entrenched sexism here, for instance, and I see a few names on the list that will force action (Anthony Burch, for instance, will force basically any future Borderlands panels to have women, which means they'll need to have influential women at Gearbox, which hopefully means we won't get another Duke Nukem game). But the idea of this pledge (which isn't a new idea by any means) is that it forces the people booking panels to evaluate their process for picking people to be on panels, and the lack of diversity amongst people they're comfortable with. Basically, this reaction. (Just noticed that the same person here seemed to trigger both Klepek's reaction and this pledge.) Increasing the visibility of women (and minority cultural backgrounds) working in the game industry and having opinions also has a measurable effect on future representation (the ol' Lt. Uhura effect), so it's worthwhile as a goal in and of itself. Making a transparent nod to token diversity isn't particularly great, but then that opens the question of why the pool of people a panel organiser or podcast host knows that might have a good rapport (a result of familiarity more than anything else) is so gender-skewed. As Klepek and the Thumbs and Steve with Tone Control have proved, you can be firmly in favour of equal representation and still drop the ball, because when it comes to people you actually know it's still mostly people who look like you. It can be painful to acknowledge that latent sexism in your own thinking because we tend to think of sexists as other, bad people instead of basically everyone, including everyone in this thread. I'm also reminded of John Scalzi's similar pledge a few years ago to not go to cons that don't have harrassment policies, because he was a successful sci-fi author at that point and could afford to be choosy. I think there's inherently going to be a whiff of egotism around these kinds of pledges because the whole point of them is for people with privilege to throw their weight around. (That said I'm looking at that list and there's very little chance anyone's inviting Aaron Diaz onto a video game panel. There's a few people on there that I know might not seem like they go on panels, but do, like Nich Maragos.)

I put Looper in front of Brick and Brothers Bloom but honestly I think we all agree that Rian Johnson is a talented and versatile director.

Yeah, and there are people who for whatever reason aren't equipped to make rational decisions with their money. I find the market really uncomfortable, with all the things that have a price on them that are essentially invented to have a price on them. It's Ayn Rand's wet dream. Literally the only thing that gives me pause is that what is an uncomfortable micro-transaction for me is the opportunity for someone who's poor to get a free game, and I'm a big believer in making gaming more accessible to those in lower socio-economic classes.

The gameplay is competent, but it's essentially a gorgeous-looking narrative-driven game. DmC's the first Ninja Theory game where I felt like it all came together, which is what made the fans trying to sabotage that game so sad.

Rian Johnson attached as director of Star Wars 8 (and 9?) is literally the first thing that piqued my interest about these films. I mean, three quarters of 12 Years a Slave's cast involved is vaguely interesting, but Rian Johnson gets story in a way that JJ Abrams doesn't so it's really the first sign that the cast might actually have something worth doing.

Is it me, or do people consistently overstate the value proposition of the Steam sale? I'm not seeing a lot of 75% discounts here - the best it gets is 50%, which is good, but it's not 75%/90% off raining from the sky. I'm also pretty uncomfortable with their whole trading card thing. Edit: okay, it's my wishlist that's got the okay discounts, and the ones people are remembering are on the front page.

If you wanted to start a company that said it was the opposite of Fullbright right in the title, then Dim Bulb would be a pretty good name to pick.

Oh there was cricket talk in here. From what I understand, there's a big money problem; you'd basically need either a British or Australian team to make a good cricket game, and neither has the money without America. Anyway, I was all ready to not care about the World Cup but then Australia had to go and play like they deserved to be there. No wins, unfortunately, but we gave Chile and the Netherlands a good scare, Tim Cahill scored a cracker of a goal to put him in the history books, and Spain is apparently garbage enough that we might even go home with some points. More importantly, it's the first time for a while that we've seen the Australian team play soccer like Australians, instead of the sad waste of time Pim Verbeek had them playing. Let's hope we see that form outside of the World Cup.