Luftmensch

I, and others, think there's plenty of doubt.

I dunno, TF2 really benefits, if you're not specifically playing with friends, from the goofy narrative that comes out of its weird characters doing shenanigans. Maybe that's more a product of personality than style. Also the Jet thing: That sounds like it could be great. I don't know how the game works so this may just not work at all, but if when you steal a jet the other pilot had to eject manually, forcing both players into a game of chicken over who'll eject first, that'd be phenomenal.

I actually agree more with Jeremy Smith's take. I think, if Ferris Bueller was actually the protagonist, and the point of the movie was just to cheer him on for being a shit, I wouldn't like it at all. But he's not the protagonist, he's just the narrator. On the one hand, if you want to take it that way, FBDO is a wish-fulfillment fantasy, but the way I read it, it's actually about Jeane, Cameron, and Rooney, and how they get over, deal with, and come to terms with their problems (If you look at it like that, I think the first critic was completely missing the point).

Ferris Bueller's Day Off is on Netflix so I watched it recently. I haven't seen it since I was pretty young so it came as a surprise to me that 1.) Ferris Bueller isn't the protagonist and 2.) the film is basically a fable in Objectivism. Also that movie is really slow. Despite all that I really enjoyed it. I don't mean to give the impression I'm some kind of grumpy critic who likes to shit on classics.

If it were big enough to be a ship, I could call it The Fruitcake.

Still lacking a name.

I don't think you own a 40" HDTV because there's a world of difference on mine. If all things were otherwise equal (controller, game catalogue, online support) and I actually wanted to get a console, I'd definitely go for the one that could pull off the full resolution.

It did just occur to me, that sort of stylistic homogeneity is why I don't really like steampunk all that much. Except I really love Castle in the Sky and Howl's Moving Castle, which are totally steampunk, but they feel more organic; there's a cultural gradient between the rural folk and the dudes living in airships. I feel like in steampunk fiction I've read, it's all just about Victorian aristocrats in a world full of steam-powered cyborgs. The point of the genre I guess is just to be self-indulgent with that setting, but it's still kinda bland. Wild Wild West is cool.

I usually let that shit slide because each of the races is really just a proxy for a human archetype, which is fine from a narrative standpoint. Still, I like the idea that every species that makes it to spacefaring technology went through an intense eugenic homogenization, so everyone looks and acts the same. Hey, maybe that's what genetic engineering will do to us!

I think you could replicate it, even within something like Simcity, just as a sort of challenge or template mode, that generates a city and lets you develop on top of it within certain constraints. If Simcity gave you a map of San Francisco and then let you play with it, that'd be cool by itself. What would be really awesome is if it tied a hand behind your back keeping you from just demolishing the nice historical neighborhoods. 99% Invisible had an episode recently (ep. 72 New Old Town) about rebuilding downtown Warsaw, and what Chris was talking about with weird bland uniformity reminded me of that. The story goes, when the Nazis invaded Warsaw, they burned the city to the ground. When Russia invaded later and occupied Poland long-term, they decided to build good faith with the Poles by rebuilding their historic capital city, ostensibly brick for brick. The problem for the Russians was: Warsaw was a very organically grown city, built-up gradually over centuries. It was very capitalistic and uneven. Since capitalism and uneven distribution both go against Communist ideals, the Russians revised the city by making all the buildings the same height:

I was doing it and found everything in a few seconds, but then I kept looking for a minute before I read the description and found out so already found it all.

It's been painted:

Or less, if you've ever had to live somewhere without a kitchen. Although a pressure cooker is still a valid way to go.

Pretty much an unlimited supply of goofy mistakes here, without fucking shitloads of banner ads and icanhascheeseburger bullshit http://hadonejob.com/

I've started reading aloud lately. It started as a sort of vocal exercise kick, and it turns out reading out loud a different skill than just reading to yourself. If you're just skimming to yourself, you can digest information in context after you read it without actually reading over every word, but when you read aloud you'll trip over yourself a lot if you try to do that. If you ever have trouble focusing (as I often do), reading out loud gives you a nice combination of structure and physical activity to keep you on track. It's a great way to approach new material or poorly-punctuated technical manuals. And it does help your voice a lot if you talk for an hour straight.

Eat More Bikes

Ugh I want that dog. My dog (my sister's dog really) just whines until you scratch his greasy butt. I want a dog that just smiles when I jam.

That's an interesting observation, because with cartoons, even when they're ostensibly for kids, there's usually layers of themes and humor for different audiences. Sometimes it's more broad and symbolic, like Adventure Time famously deals with issues like suicide, pregnancy (and pregnancy complications), dementia, &c. Sometimes it's just subversive you'll-understand-when-you're-older jokes: I think the case with games is interesting because nothing in the thematic context of a game needs to specifically appeal to one audience or another if the gameplay itself is really good.

Very apt avatar, Brannigan.

That reminds me of an interesting talk I went to back in school where an archaeologist was comparing the written history of Judaism in Rome against the archaeological evidence. His point was basically that the class of Jews who were writing letters and documents that were preserved to this day were ideological prudes engaging in petty debates about how "real" Jews attempt to separate themselves from the gentile population, while in reality the artifacts and graves we find show Jews living in Roman neighborhoods, taking Roman names, and being buried alongside Romans. Much more often than not, too.

Listened to Baby Geniuses because Jillian Tamaki (of Supermutant Magic Academy) was on it. I never would have heard of or listened to that show otherwise, but I was delighted to hear not only gross humor that comes with podcasts but also the two hosts (both women) discussing how state of gender roles in dating is affected by men's fear of sexual assault charges, and then stopping the discussion because talking about gender roles on the internet is (and I paraphrase) "a rabbit hole with a can of worms inside and then there's also Pandora's box which is also full of worms, and then there's a big sack full of cats and the tie unravels and the cats all pour out and their mouths are all full of worms". Dunno if I'll keep listening to this podcast much since it is basically just people talking, but I dunno, I still listen to Idle Thumbs and Talkin' Toons.

Same with music, although accurate and consistent musical notation goes back quite a ways. I think it's interesting that, unlike dance, music notation was perfectly precise for most of its history. As far as I know lead sheets didn't even exist until after Jazz. It's pretty fascinating to me that even in literate societies (or at least societies with literacy), folk dance and music were entirely passed down by direct teaching. With replay recording as widespread as it is, that'd be fantastic if someone did just record all of that. Going back to the Brewster Kahle talk I mentioned earlier, he said that the Internet Archive started recording all TV broadcasts in the world since so much of it was being lost forever, even though it was just data. From a history standpoint it's phenomenal: You can watch a full week of news from the week following 9/11. The whole 168 hours, uncut and annotated, from 19 different TV stations across the world. Here's a link. That would be incredible if the IA, for example, recorded full stretches of time of major events in WoW or other MMOs, especially the final weeks, and created a server where you could go on any time and play back a day or week or hour of the whole world on loop. Inevitably you couldn't interact with it, but my god, that would be the most incredible experience to walk in, read conversations in real-time, just follow someone's ghost. Holy shit, this needs to happen.;

One thing about the legality issue, the law often gives a lot of special considerations to archivists. Brewser Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, has had a lot of interesting experiences running a completely digital library, and dealing with weird copyright issues. I recommend listening to his Long Now Seminar, where he makes a lot of really interesting points about not just preserving the content but even the functionality of the internet. It's really fascinating stuff, he basically addresses (albeit inconclusively) everything feelthedarkness said.

This is all the things that animation can and should be. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hq0-i8GQbgw

Apparently they made the change while I was viewing the page. I followed the link, tried individually viewing the screenshots (which look like a modern indie game to my amusement), and halfway through I got the error message and couldn't view the page anymore (this all happened this morning)