Luftmensch

@shivoa I wish I understood the underlying architecture, basically all I got out of the Blender discussion was "man programming GPUs sure is weird". Apparently the OpenCL standard is implemented differently by every vendor too which is weird. @everyone else: people can be gross, that comment in particular is pretty egregious. I don't really know how the game specifically treats it, but in the snippets I've seen--never having played a Tomb Raider game in my life or even seen an ad for a Tomb Raider game--It feels to me like on the one hand there's a bunch of gross teenage boys with torture fantasies, and then on the other hand it seems like a lot of you are completely incapable of viewing violence against women as equivalent to violence against women, in any context. The bits and pieces I'm hearing sound like, if this was a male hero, it'd be an interesting, albeit poorly executed, story about a dude who winds up in a crazy adventure, but instead of jumping across chasms with feline grace, he misses and scrapes his knees, which is what makes the stories interesting. Getting impaled was one of the key exciting moments in Conspiracy Theory, stepping on glass was critical to the plot of Die Hard. It sounds to me like the problem is just that the story didn't follow through with the small tragedies. The fact that when the hero is a woman you think it's a torture fantasy sounds like a fault in your perception. But I don't know about this particular case. I'm seeing a lot of generalizations and the word "problematic"--a vague code for "makes me uncomfortable if I imagine a pervy kid jerking off"--which rustles my jimmies.

Come off it kid, we don't need you egging on more arguments. That was my first and favorite VHS I owned as a wee lad. I was shocked when I went back years later, found it in an old shelf of tapes, and discovered it was the winner of the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Somehow, I guess because it wasn't Disney and didn't have all the marketing hype around it, it never occurred to me that my favorite tape was a great award-winning classic.

It's worth noting that two of the people haven't played the game at all, and can't comment much on the specific portrayal of the violence. As for your points about moaning being inherently sexual, I don't buy that because that's not how I read it because I'm not a middle school boy. To me, saying that because she used to be the sex symbol of video games ca. the late 90s is like saying you couldn't take Eternal Sunshine seriously because Jim Carrey's a whacky goofball. Until I see a statement from the director or voice actor saying that she was specifically supposed to be in sexy pain, it just sounds to me like pain (albeit acted pain). Obviously it draws a reaction from people like you so it seems fair to ask the developers to specifically try to tone down the elements people object to. I still don't buy the crap about everything she does being inherently titilating (I paraphrase, but you made some pretty broad claims to that effect).

I've never been to a theater that wouldn't refund tickets, as long as you left before the movie was over. If you sit through an entire film and then decide to demand your money back, well fuck you, but if you came in, hated it after a half-hour and decided you'd rather not sit through the rest, fuck yeah you should be allowed a refund. Hell, when my brother was a little kid, he was scared to death by The Rescuers Down Under and had to be taken out when the villain showed up. Some people are Arachnophobic. So I take issue with the policy, and I think posting notes lecturing people is obnoxious anyway. It probably wouldn't make me hate the theater enough to not go anymore but it'd leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Our local British Import store, the Curiosity Shop, closes today. It was a great place, they sold a huge variety of teas, they had imported groceries, Doctor Who merch, a swell deli, a neat selection of books, Celtic jewelry, and tartans, among other things. Apparently, talking to the owners, they were too successful for their own good: British imports became so chic in town that all the big stores in town have British aisles (oh man that's a good pun), and the Curiosity Shop couldn't compete (bigger stores don't need to make a profit on Digestives). The store's been around for 15 years, expanded twice, and now it's finally gone. Or will be in a couple hours.

Either way, listening to ep. 43 revealed that Chris' memory was completely bullshit, which is hilarious and wonderful. I have piles and shelves of old journals and sketchbooks that are frightening to read for the same reason.

I dunno if Illuminatus! made me not like Crying of Lot 49, but I couldn't help comparing my experience between the two. I think the comparison just exacerbated it because for whatever reason I just didn't enjoy reading lot 49.

I had trouble reading this, it just never gripped me. I think part of it was I was preoccupied with other things, and then part because I was already familiar with so many of the themes in the book (it's referenced so much in real life) that I wasn't surprised by any of the developments. Another thing is that I had already read (most of) the Illuminatus! trilogy, which isn't entirely similar (and Robert Anton Wilson is deservedly not as renowned an author as Pynchon), but it deals with so many of the themes of conspiracy, uncertain information, and general lunacy, and it's so much denser and more fun, so Lot 49 just felt short and dull in comparison. I'm a terrible person probably for enjoying Illluminatus! Over Lot 49, but that's how it was.

I was just listening to the Blender podcast today, and they were talking about programming GPUs to accelerate rendering (which sounds kind of obvious). Apparently ATI GPUs are completely incapable of running function calls, which is weird and interesting to me. I want to note that I imagine that The Internet Archive would probably totally be all over recording MMOs. Those guys love to preserve things that seem totally irrelevant. I've mentioned them before though. Like I said before, Archive.org has stated they're interested in exactly the kind of archival you were all talking about, the preservation of services and information when the websites go dark.

My iPhone downloaded two copies, of slightly different lengths. What's the difference?

Maybe someone mentioned it before, but Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a terrific doc on perhaps Japan's most renowned Sushi chef. The Japanese work ethic is something incredible.

"Let's just say, things could get choppy."

I forgot how much this theme was played in Raising Arizona. What a great film and song.

"Listen kid, I'd love to help you out, but you're gonna hafta run this one on Max Settings. He knows what to do."

I'm sure everyone's seen this but what the hell.

This probably sounds like I'm missing the point, but I saw the trailer for the new Die Hard movie when I went to see Django Unchained, and I thought that the Die Hard action looked a lot more impressive and exciting (the big highlight being when the heroes fall through several floors of a building while a helicopter tracks them outside the window). I'm not expecting Die Hard to be better than Django, or for its action to be more exciting in context, but damn, shot for shot these modern filmmakers know how to make a pretty picture. I should go to the movies more. I dig.

SteamTribble.com, from the creators of SteamFruitcake.com.

I dunno how much a difference a dedicated chip makes, but as far as PS4 having features built right into the OS, that's kind of necessary as a closed platform, and you have to hope that Sony is able to keep the OS up-to-date. So is the separate streaming chip able to run any other OS software you want to run parallel to your games?

One thing I like about rating movies on Netflix is that its star ratings are each tied with a description. Three stars is "good". Four is "great". It's not too fancy, but it's more meaningful to me than just judging strictly numerically.

Haven't watched any James Bond movie in too long to make any comment on him, but you've missed out on Indy. Indiana Jones begins his journey because he wants the Ark, and by the end he discovers that he needs Marion Ravenwood, and only by making sacrifices to save her does he finally get the Ark. Also something about belief and whatever, I haven't seen this movie in a while either. But it's about him changing from being in pursuit of the thing to the protection of people. Jeanie wants to take down Ferris because she's jealous. In the end, she really needs to forgive and help Ferris, because that's how she can let go of her jealousy and live for herself. Robert Parr begins The Incredibles feeling dissatisfied with his mundane home life. He thinks that to be happy he has to go out seeking vigilante thrills, reminiscing over the "glory days". In the end, he needs to let go of the past and embrace his family, celebrating their abilities instead of griping that they can't use them like they used to. Gilgamesh leaves his city looking for the secret for eternal life, because he wants to life forever. By the end of his journey, he discovers that he simply needed to go on the journey itself, because his story would live on in mankind's memory. This really applies to most stories. It's how I've always understood it anyway, and it makes things more interesting when you reach glaring contradictions to the usual notions of good guy=hero=protagonist/bad guy=villain=antagonist (Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Princess Mononoke).

Yet Chris Remo, whom you called out earlier, thought that theme exactly was stupid. I don't remember exactly what he said, but it was along the lines that, in trying to make a game about how war games are stupid, they ultimately just made a stupid war game. If you think games about war are dumb, why aren't you willing to not make one?

Good job reading Wikipedia. I don't consider John August's interpretation a redefining, just a refining. As a long-time professional screenwriter, he has his own sense of what ideas make sense and are useful in storytelling, and the protagonist, as he explained it, is part of that.

I read that as saying that it wasn't done interestingly, not that it wasn't ramming it down his throat.

I didn't provide a definition, you did. I'll go by John August's definition since it's more interesting that yours, which can arbitrarily flip who's the protagonist or antagonist based on what you decide counts as "something" (and following your logic, Indiana Jones and Mr. Incredible aren't protagonists). By this, I wouldn't argue that Ferris Bueller isn't the Hero, because for most people he certainly is (though I rooted more for Jeanie). Main Character is debatable, but he is the Title Character by definition. Protagonist, on the other hand, doesn't in any way include Ferris. This definition isn't final or absolutely authoritative, but it's useful and interesting and does a better job describing what people actually mean when they're talking about heros and protagonists. Your definition doesn't seem to apply to anything.

It's perfectly up for interpretation and debate, which clearly proves that no, Ferris Bueller is not doubtlessly the protagonist. It's one way of interpreting the story. I argue that Cameron, Jeanie, and Rooney are all the protagonists because they all have a shared goal of thwarting Ferris because they all feel like it's not fair that he can get away with whatever he wants. Ferris Bueller isn't the antagonist either, exactly, which is kind of the point; each of the protagonists redeem themselves by letting go of their jealousy. For a film that "never asks you to identify with Rooney," it spends a lot of time focusing on his story. All the obstacles, trials, and failures in the film are against one of these three antiheroes; the only times that Ferris almost gets in trouble are the moments when Cameron and later Jeanie have to make sacrifices to save him. If you took out the parts where Matthew Broderick narrates to the audience, it'd be completely ridiculous to call him the protagonist, because the story never really follows him. But that doesn't mean it's completely invalid to call him the protagonist. It's debatable.