Badfinger

Danielle you are my favorite Thumbs. Every other Thumbs you're second favorite. The Harry Potter discussion was merely one jewel in the crown of this crusted episode. However, I am shocked so many people aren't familiar with Harry Potter outside of Internet Memes. It's one of those things I just assumed everyone either actively sought out or was unable to avoid (see: Me and Twilight). I didn't know Dumbledore was gay, or if I did I didn't internalize it as a Harry Potter Fact. I am from just south of Philadelphia, but I definitely do not have a Philly accent. I feel like my accent is mostly neutral, but I know for sure that there are some distinctive things that aren't Generic American. I know there are little word/sound choices in my speech that I HATE and wish I could remove. I also sometimes slip into a stereotypical New York Jewish accent even though I have never lived there. My grandmother, bless her heart, vehemently denied she had a regional accent when it came up in conversation one time. She is from Iowa, has lived there all her life with summers in Minnesota, and has the most adorable Midwestern old lady accent. I am curious, do non Americans or non-native speakers find it easier to parse through certain American dialects more than others?

I love the Dota spectator presentation, but as a player it drives me nuts. There's far too much wasted space, especially vertically. As nit picky as that sounds, the inability to shrink/move/remove the garbage around the edges of the screen is what drives me away every time. vvv It's just that Valve of all companies should know how valuable vertical space is. It turns a 1080 screen into a 720. It frustrates me. Sorry for ranting. It's just that I feel like I check in every 6-8 months and it doesn't appear they'll ever change the thing that's dumb but I care about that keeps me from playing the game.

The only thing you'd get out of a compendium you actually need to play the game is progress towards unlocking all the game modes. Other than that it's all cosmetic and throwing money at Valve.

Is there a way to adjust the interface at all? Every time these tourneys (especially casted by Ayesee) roll around I say "no I could actually play Dota maybe", and then I log into the game and 40% of the vertical space is taken up by rocks and character portraits. I want the rocks to go away. I want to move the teams to the sides. How do I do this?

I finally finished Far Cry 3! I was about halfway through it already (16 hours played when I jumped back in, said Steam) and aside from the towers and outposts MOSTLY mainlined it to the end. The things that were great about it were still great- freedom of movement and weaponry, choice of stealth or action, stabbing bears. The story to finish it was mediocre at best. I will say I liked Sam. I never really heard anyone bring him up when the game was in more discussions. I'm glad I picked the ending I did, because I watched the other ending and holy shit is it laughably bad. Made me boot up FC2. After about 20 minutes I was motion sick and couldn't play it any more. I also bought and beat SHOVEL KNIGHT! Really good. Even enjoyed the story parts. Music was phenomenal. Platforming was surprisingly difficult in parts. Would recommend! I was not a huge platformer player back in the 8/16 bit era. Never owned or beat Mega Man, ducktales, etc. I think the platformers I played the most were Sonic 1 and Aladdin, and I found a love of Castlevania and Metroid later on. But I loved Rogue Legacy and I really liked Shovel Knight. I think there's about one about every year or 18 months that really puts it together for me where I get all the nostalgia about having nostalgia but also get good platforming and systems.

That's just a thing people from the UK do. They also say "just about" when a thing actually happens, not when it narrowly fails to.

Go Germany, Boo Brazil. Go Netherlands!

Face Space sounds like Law and Order writers pretending they have any idea what the internet is.

You want to play Minerva's Den, though! I know you don't need GFWL anymore to play it, I forget if it's now just part of the game on PC.

watching the newbie stream. It is much better than it was earlier in the day. Pretty subpar previously. Lots of instruction. Much more in depth than "this is a carry" while being spoken to in basic terms but respectfully.

Oh my god why did you spoiler these this is the most insane video game thing I've ever seen.

Steam Sale Fugue State is the name of my new Rock Band group.

I loved the concept and ideas of AC1, but yeah I only made it through about a third of the game. AC2 and especially Brotherhood were exactly what I was looking for from a game of that style.

Eesh, I really don't agree with you. In basically every competitive discipline that's been broadcast, there are people who understand and can communicate the nuances of the display much better than the people who are actually proficient in doing those things ever can. The crossover from players at the absolute pinnacle to (good) broadcaster is relatively quite low. One of the things that's generally suggested is the people who are the very best have so much natural talent that they don't know how to communicate it outside of themselves. I am hopeful they'll have people who are good at broadcasting on the beginner stream, rather than amazing DOTA players. I'd rather miss out some of the subtleties than just get a garbled mess from a pro who is parsing everything but can't spit it back out. I also hope it's not like American curling broadcasts where they cut out a quarter of the game for commercials and it takes 2 ends for them to describe what curling is to what they assume is an ignorant audience. So whatever the equivalent for LOMAs is, I don't want that.

Does anyone know a way to cancel an expired trade notification? A friend wanted to trade some summer sale cards, for whatever reason when I pressed accept it wouldn't work, and then he canceled and did another trade. But the first trade didn't leave my notification bar. So an expired trade is sitting there every time I check the bar, and I can't do anything to cancel or remove it as far as I know.

I played the ARMA 2 mod and I got the SA very close to when they launched it. Sometime in December, I think? I have not played as compulsively as then, but I still have more than 100 hours of game time into it (which feels like so few, to be honest). The really big questions are: are you ok with the game not being as fully featured as the comparative mod scene, and does being along for the ride of the development and release of new features on a regular basis excite you? If the answers are yes to both or enthusiastically yes to the second one then from one vet to another I recommend it without reservation. I know what it's like with money being tight, but I think as a game and as an entertainment expenditure it's well worth the money. I mean if it's the difference between games and eating then don't be silly, but if it's just a big chunk of your entertainment budget I think it's in a good place, especially if you want to see new stuff get released like every 3 weeks. There are at least two full cities to explore I guarantee you've never seen before.

Yeah I've backed off a little on my fired up state from "this is very clearly the scammiest scam" to "this is very clearly a doomed Kickstarter to back, regardless of legitimacy". Which is a shame, because it's not like the world can't have two different takes on branching out from STALKER.

I have never even seen a 3DS in person, let alone own one, and due to Giant Bomb I can hum along almost bar for bar with that theme.

you can't see it, but it reroutes you to naturediaps.com before instantly routing you to idlethumbs.net. (Don't worry I got this) RE: Dirk Gently conversation, there is some on the Book Club summer reads podcast! Jake read it and talked about it!

I appreciate this, and you, Jake. I also appreciate Junior Mints' unofficial official on-cast welcome to the cast! It is great to hear you and knowing there's more Minty freshness in the future. I also also appreciate Nick, Nick being around making 5 cast members, and Nick's crazy neuroses in general and particular.

That's not precisely a Titanfall issue, and a bit unfair to leverage it against Respawn. Played some Marked for Death today. Got right into a match, played 3-4 rounds. Quite fun!

I do think it's a scam. They're using STALKER footage and concept art, which is... not legal at worst and unethical at best. There are literally no names on their website aside from Eugene Kim, and man if you are going to claim to have worked on STALKER games maybe it would be good if more than just one person showed up in the credits for any of them! And one of their employees wasn't a stock photo! Considering that when GSC collapsed a bunch of people created Vostok Games and have been working on a spiritual successor to STALKER for 2 years now, it's weird that "the creators of STALKER" are just now kickstarting a spiritual successor. Plus, and this isn't an indictment so much as just something weird, that website is absolute garbage. It's basically a template site with nothing but a kickstarter announcement and links to STALKER art with no history for a company that says it's existed for a year. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-06-25-definitive-spiritual-successor-to-s-t-a-l-k-e-r-hits-kickstarter http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/06/26/areal-kickstarter-raises-huge-red-flags-backers-beware/ And if I'm wrong and it's totally real, you still shouldn't give them any money because 50k is completely unrealistic and their statements don't match their outputs as far as development goes. Which is to say, even if it's on the up and up it is a bad kickstarter and poorly run which spells trouble.

Twig: Every once in a while I'll have lower back pain. My sister's an osteopathic doctor and her One Simple Trick was just to stretch really often. Stretch right when you wake up AND before you go to bed, stretch after exercises. I was keeping it really simple- bending over as far as I could and hanging down until my back loosened up, touching my toes, and side bends. It helped immensely. I'm considering trying a new exercise set (the Stronglifts 5x5), but as crazy as it sounds my gym doesn't have a power rack. I'm trying to find substitute exercises, and I'm also debating talking to the gym owner about adding one. I don't know if that's a faux pas or anything. Because I'm in between two different workouts, it's sort of sapped my desire to do the old one. Which is probably quite weird.

The video from that guy said a week, and I'd imagine that's fairly accurate. I'm willing to bet if you let it cure for more than 48 hours it'll keep slightly longer, because by the skin you could see the difference between how thoroughly it's cured. I may also have used too much weight. My filet was about a pound and a quarter, so in practice... it'll last until maybe tomorrow if I can manage to not eat it continuously. Dibs, those are great pictures. I'd be interested in how you made the orzo and the pork belly.

I enjoyed this episode. I wish I got more out of Mad Men chat. It's just another show on the pile that's too long to list that one day I might watch. I still enjoy you guys expounding on it.