Gormongous

I love the phrase "intent is magic" for how well it captures people's belief in the power of their own perceptions, and I hate that it's gradually getting unpopular for the "fuck you" undertone that many people find in it.

This might just be me being a perv, but does anyone else ever have intensely sexual dreams about someone in whom they have no sexual interest, totally screwing up their interactions with that person for several days? It's basically been a problem for me every four or five months for my entire adult life, having to ignore an entirely imagined history with a given person. Like Bjorn says, it feels like it shouldn't be legal. If I ever put my own money into it, it'll effectively be trapped in Google's system forever unless I put even more money into it.

Interacting with people in public does not volunteer you as a target for whatever harassment the internet deems appropriate. I don't care that you "want to know who they are." Right now, the real experience of privacy being brutally violated is more important than the incredibly hypothetical need for ethics to be adhered to, especially considering that Quinn is not the person who allegedly violated said ethics. Also, there are reasons that actual journalists aren't covering the "scandal" surrounding Quinn's sexual life. Not only is it small-as-fuck potatoes, but it's complete hearsay and legitimizing it through journalistic coverage does more to harm the people involved (all the people, but especially Quinn) than leaving it unaddressed. That's journalistic ethics, choosing not to rake the muck of someone's personal details without any benefit to you or your readers besides schadenfreude.

Just to deepen your analysis a little, St. Louis is a ridiculous mosaic of unincorporated municipalities, each with their own legal code, police, and administrative structure. I'm saying this as someone who comes from Dallas, which is a pretty decentralized city to begin with. In my experience, a lot of police revenue comes from exploiting the confusion of people expecting the rules of one municipality to apply one street over in another. It's bad enough that I have to be careful to park on one side of the street and not the other when visiting a certain friend, because a street-cleaning-day ticket costs $10 in Olivette and $80 in Ladue. Theoretically, there's political pressure that the state of Missouri and St. Louis city could exert to encourage uniformity, but St. Louis city operates at a dramatic loss (free parks, museums, and shows abound), to the point that it regularly borrows from the county, and therefore has no incentive to bite the hand that feeds (and the state's not going to make an effort to influence the county without the city's backing). I'm white and pass as comfortably middle-class, so I have never had any interaction with the police of any municipality, but I have probably paid over three hundred dollars in parking tickets in five years here (although none of them were actually for parking illegally, just getting me for technicalities and unposted day-rules). It's a bizarre and awful situation, more so I imagine for people who'd struggle to pay a fifty-dollar ticket.

I don't have the time to go into a properly nuanced response, but I think timing makes all the difference. How we interpret the different theaters of World War 2 is a question for academics. How we interpret the militarization of the police is a question for everyone. You're certainly right that a lot of the jingoistic "modern warfare" games of the past few years have mostly gotten a pass from ideological criticism, but that's never sat right with me, even though the consensus was that they were too absurd to take seriously. It might just be that hypothetical oorah military action halfway across the globe is far enough away to be taken less than seriously, while Hardline is close to home.

We're all bad steampunk.

I agree. I think the consensus among people aiming to appear reasonable is, "Yeah, it's her own business, but what did she expect," as if there's some quiet justice in all of this. There's nothing that makes me angrier than the implicit acceptance of the internet as a privacy-invading hate machine that we all just have to live with. Is there any of us who'd come out of a 4chan raid looking spotless? Ugh. Personally, I know of no one who's so good in bed that they'd change my opinion of their unrelated work on the public record. It's just man-babies who've wanted a reason to hate Quinn for a while and have now found "hard evidence" of her "feminine duplicity."

I think the main issue was that the HD ports removed the fog and upped the view distance for some reason, in the process destroying one of the most defining visual choices of the series.

From what I've experienced of Ferguson, which is in no way authoritative, I'm pretty sure that these cops are home-grown boys or thereabouts, all of whom have gotten used to their word being law to whomever they meet. Many of them probably figure that, being the most tangible representatives of local government, they have the power to tell reporters to turn off their cameras or anything else that displeases or discomforts them, and it hasn't even occurred to them that they might be in the wrong, which is pretty disturbing considering current events.

It's actually coffee in the early afternoon and she has plans later that day (which is part of why I was worried about miscommunicating my intent), but if I dwell any longer on deep-seated fears of not being dateable, I'll become a parody of myself. Thanks anyway, everyone!

Yeah, I'm pretty sure he meant it in an archaic sense to heighten the irony of its use. Still probably more of a marginal case than I'd be comfortable with myself, but... History has shown that the powers that be are happy to gun down specific white people if they are foolish enough to throw in their lot with people of color. In my opinion, that makes the system even more fucked up. It's not just irrational hate against a group that's a majority in many parts of the US, it's an organized effort to keep them in their place, however brutal.

I'd love for her to read this article. Maybe your child is pulled over for an unrelated reason, the officer feels his holster snag on something, he assumes someone's going for his gun, and he has his partner hold your child down while he puts a gun to their temple and fires. Jesus, the absolute faith some people have in legal authorities...

I actually think this will be the first time we've spent time together alone, besides walking to the parking lot after department events. We get along conspicuously well in group settings, but I've always been bad about telling whether that's friendliness or something more. I do know that we're not allowed to play a husband-and-wife team in Ladies & Gentlemen anymore because we work too well together. I know, I'm just navel-gazing now. I am looking forward, I'm just being a goober about it. I spent a while on a couple different dating sites and eventually gave up because of this phenomenon. I found a lot of women who wanted to chat as long as I was willing, but if I showed more concentrated interest, they'd peace out. I think a lot of people like to flirt with the safety and distance that the internet provides, I don't know.

Nooooo, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokémon in the same post, you're crossing the streeeeeaaams!

I have a very, very similar post about my ex-girlfriend that I've been writing and deleting for weeks, so I got something out of reading it, even if it was just catharsis for you. You have my sympathy, as someone with ways of construing self-worth that are clearly also fucked. Thanks, I just needed someone to say what I've been thinking in the back of my head. She is very... ebullient, that's the word, but not someone who kisses people for no reason, I don't think. I'm really just psyching myself out, and the fact that I asked her out (in an even more low-key, some would say cowardly, fashion) when we first started hanging out like two years ago and got blown off has me constructing paranoid theories to explain the discrepancy, when it's probable that she's just gotten to know me better.

Oh, I'm definitely showing up. She's a fun person to be around and is one of the few people I know who likes to challenge others' opinions in interesting ways, so worst-case scenario I get to argue Peter Gabriel vs. Phil Collins for a couple hours, but my mojo's been a bit fucked by the residual thrill of a girl I like coming on to me, albeit temporarily and drunkenly. Like you said in your (now deleted) original post, it's all just girl trouble. Sorry, Thumbs!

So we went out for Asian-style karaoke on my birthday Friday (private room, pass around the mic and buzz the wait staff for food and drink) and had a great time. They had the whole Hedwig and the Angry Inch soundtrack on the machine, so I got to prove to everybody there that "Midnight Radio" is well out of my vocal range. It was possibly the best way to celebrate the last year of my twenties. After we checked out, things took an unexpected turn. A girl from my program, of whom I've always been fond but never done anything because I know I'm too quiet and shy to be her type, was very friendly apropos of nothing when we drove her back to her place. She laid in my lap holding my hand the whole car ride, then we stayed up for three hours talking, during which she lent me three different books and kissed me on the cheek (though aiming for the mouth, I think) out of nowhere at one point. She was definitely drunk though, so I just made sure she got to bed and went home, but texted her about a date the next day. She said yes for something on Tuesday, but hasn't seemed very enthusiastic about it since, and now I'm doubting myself, because 1) it's likely she thinks we're just catching up on the summer over some coffee rather than "going out," and 2) it's been two years since I've seriously pursued anyone romantically and I don't really believe that I'm relationship material anymore. Also, 3) intradepartmental dating, ugh. It's really funny how I'm now twenty-nine and still nothing stresses me out like the opposite sex.

The tonal dissonance (and the animation choices that support it) is even greater in the original show and lasts longer, nearly until the final act. It makes Fullmetal Alchemist a weird series to recommend, because a lot of people specifically enjoy the emotional range it has, but even fifty or sixty-dd episodes isn't enough to keep some of the shifts from being jarring.

I wonder, is a part of the growing willingness for many in the police to accept escalation through violence the fact that a .38 revolver is seen as so much less "violent" than an M4, riot gear, and a MRAP? Not to mention that when you're given hammers by the government for free, every problem looks like a nail...

This is going to sound incredibly cynical, but no one in power has to listen. All they have to do is hang fire for two or three more weeks, in which time a major company will make some shitty PR choice or another celebrity will die, and their problem will go away. There's less effort and less risk for them to wait and see, so that's almost certainly what they'll do.

Definitely sucks for you, Jon. The internet is full of filth and no one can use it without getting dirty. In other news, apparently Google Play Store credit can't be applied to a purchase unless your balance is greater than the price of what you're buying, and they only sell it in five-dollar increments. I knew that the Google Surveys promotion that gave you ten or twenty cents for every survey you answered was somehow a scam. My $1.24 balance is effectively worthless for any of the games I want.

The Penguin Hawkes-Minford translation is essential, in my opinion. I read a chapter or two of several different free ones and they just don't hold a candle. Hawkes (along with his son-in-law Minford, although to a slightly lesser extent) translates in a warm and effusive style that feels like a mid-century English novel rather than an eighteenth-century Chinese one. I used my university library for reading them, but I am going to get the five-volume set for my birthday tomorrow. I'd also like to read the Four Classics (I guess you're counting The Plum in the Golden Vase, according to Wikipedia) sooner rather than later, but I feel very strongly that Dream of the Red Chamber is the best of the four and I wouldn't want the rest to be a rote exercise.

Double post for Gamescom announcement: the new DLC is all about Charlemagne. It'll extend the timeline back to 769, add a large number of events, allow for "custom" titles (whatever that means), and cost 20€. Forum response is lukewarm. This seems to continue Paradox's recent trend of giving its customers not quite what they want but close enough that complaining seems entitled. For instance, the most demanded DLC is a Holy Roman Empire politics/improvement pack, so Charlemagne isn't too far off...

I'm coming late to this, but I want to tease this out. I think one of the things that makes Battlefield: Hardline more than a little troublesome is that it depicts criminals as heavily armed and organized. In the world of Hardline, which will be realized for the average player in greater detail than the news broadcasts from Ferguson, the militarization of the police is entirely appropriate, because there are criminals with AK47s and C4 out there blowing up entire buildings. In reality, the police are just as heavily armed as they are in the game, but they're deployed against unarmed protesters and news reporters. That's some virulent propaganda, whatever the original intent.

That... wasn't my point at all. Interrogating and understanding language as a component of social and political power structures is a useful and worthy enterprise. I've never argued anything else. I just feel that people who resist all language change out of a belief that not just language but meaning itself is somehow being weakened by imprecise word choice, as several people have explicitly stated in this thread, are missing the forest for the trees. There's a big difference, in which no one else seems interested, between choosing not to use "IP" (or finding it annoying) because it advocates a corporate-based concept of idea ownership and choosing not to use "grok" (or finding it annoying) because it's not useful to you or you don't identify with groups that use it. They aren't the same. I'd even argue that insistence on the latter detracts from an effective response to the former. Honestly, I have no idea how the anti-jargon crowd could claim the side of social justice, when one of the greatest tools of social justice is a robust and informed jargon, which gradually trickles down into popular consciousness. Look at "privilege" of all things, which has become an actual social concept very distinct from its original meaning and is even used by opponents of feminism.