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I just bought Kingdom of Dragon Pass from the apple app-store for $6. Gormongous claimed that it's the definative version of a favorite game.

I stare out a window to make sure that people are throwing their trash away properly and also keeping an eye out for anyone having difficulty throwing away their trash due to a physical disability or lack of information. If there are no cars in the lot, I doodle surrealist landscapes in my sketchbook.

Elysium I expected it to be bad. It's possible that my low expectations increased my potential of enjoyment. I liked it. The metaphors lacked subtility. For the first 30 minutes, that distracted me from suspension of disbelief; but once I adopted the perspective of "Oh, this is a cyberpunk movie", It was kinda good. I was saying things like The complaints I've heard about Elysium are that Jodie Foster didn't act well and that the allegory was tacky, but I'm not sure that those two things can be assumed to affect the film poorly. I think that Jodie Foster was fine, but that she was supposed to have an accent that would be foreign to us and sound like it evolved in after generations of authoratative and affluent exclusion. Putting the rich nations in space and turning barges of illegals into space-shuttles of economic refugees isn't graceful, but it has it's advantages. Cyberpunk benefits from extreme sci-fi versions of the haves and the have-nots. And what seemed like a reduction to heroes-and-villians eventually panned out beyond honor-among-thieves and treasure-in-the-monster-lair once divisions in ideologies were shown within both socio-economic levels. I like thinking of the allegory as the artistic perspective of an ex-patriot of a region with low purchasing power rather than a simplistic allegory. Still, it suffers from

May I suggest Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light.

I love the Venus of Willendorf; so fertile. You must not be in the UK, I heard they block that shit now.

The aesthetic of of that Zagar music-video is inspirational. It's like they made a montage of live-action re-dramatizations of sci-fi cover-art from the 70's and 80's.

Does anyone know what they are doing wrong? The loss inherent within change is always difficult for me too. Everytime something changes, I can't go back. I can tell you that buying a cup of coffee and finding a place to watch a building be torn down for an hour or two tends to help me accept loss.

I'll be putting articles I enjoy here. Very much. Thank you.

Last night I dreamt that I was going to a movie with a woman my mom's age. When I stole a couple of apples by shaking an apple-tree in someone's yard on the walk to the theatre and gave her one, I realized that she thought it was a date ( not the fruit, but a romantic engagement). This is on a dirt road and we come to a crossing. At the crossing (I shit you not, I really dreamt this last night), fuckin Nick Breckon comes up to us and is like "So what time is the movie?" This makes since because I had invited nick to the movie. The woman I'm with (who by the way is a frequent customer where I work, but I don't know her name or nothin) shows her disappointment on her face that it isn't a date because Nick Breckon is going with us so Nick plays it cool and says that he can't go. Somehow this leads to us going to the house from which I stole the apples and it's Nick's house and we are having a party. It's not like a "Party!" though, it's just a bunch of people hanging out. Me, Nick and another guy go out a different door than we came in from and we are now ( filming?) a movie. A guy who looks like a younger version of Frank Costanza is playing Nick's dad and he is building a house. There is saw dust on the screen of the screened patio and to clean it off, he lights a match. The saw dust burns off like lint on a sweater. Then he decides to clean the oil off the metal roof by dropping a match in a gutter and there is this anticipatory pause as if it's a bad comedy before he drops the match and it sets the entire house on fire. We go back inside the house and it's time to go home and I'm like " I'll help you clean up" and Nick (who is sleepy-drunk) is like. "No, don't worry about it, I got it guys." and I insist, but then he reminds me that Ihave to give three people a ride home and they don't want to wait for me.

Maybe they could very publically ask for help from a coalition of anti-oppression oriented minority members within the gaming community.

How about a game-jam with the theme "My experience at PAX". Well known names can be especially encouraged to participate along with developers that have been critical of Penny Arcade in the past. The resulting games can be played at PAX and they are also available for download and include exclusive Steam-cards. I'm just shooting these out because I'm not confident about what they should do.

Would a panel where Penny Arcade's founders and their critics discuss grievances and concerns encourage diversity?

I don't know my age or my zip-code.

Let's brainstorm some ideas for how PAX can more effectively address their exclusionary tendencies.

I thought this was interesting. Based on what Thomas Sowell is saying here, it seems that income-disparity is still a growing problem even as the racial income-disparity is being corrected. As I look through the Libertarian section of Youtube, I becoming increasingly frustrated with the tendency to end the video before someone can respond to Milton Friedman's punchlines.

I'm interested in hearing more about it TheLastBaron.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun wrote some retrospective thoughts on Spelunky that I enjoyed reading: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/12/17/the-amazing-astonishing-rps-advent-calendar-day-17/#more-178076 Here's an excerpt: Harbouring as I am aspirations to be a game designer myself, Spelunky is perhaps the worst game I should be playing, for it leaves me wracked with doubt, even panic, that I could ever plan so well, devise and implement so many inter-related systems, have such a raft of consequences and side-effects, have second-guessed so many player decisions, construct a design that creates such order from such chaos, make an infinite adventure simulator that doesn’t fall prey to either tedium or impassible sadism. Neat, careful, layered, endless: Spelunky is the smartest guy in the room this year. I admire it enormously.

What a burn.

I didn't know there was another way to beat Olmec, cheap or not. Boss-battles are always cheap.

Wired put out an article about some of the Oculus development process. http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/12/oculus-rift/

I get the impression that I would enjoy talking with this Stephen fellow.

Besides, we all know who really ruined video-games. Obama. He's taking all our guns away and establishing the One-World-Wet-Nurse-State right around the time all these not-games are showing up on Steam. Coincidence? Or Conspiracy?

Apparently she has said that she has feminist values and such in various places on the internet. The mob seems very upset with a a woman with a small amount of power identifying as a feminist. Also, there's some twitter status where she says that she designed robots so she may have some input into the game. Next thing we know someone on the team will turn out to be a muslim. Then we will see the shit-storm yelling that Mega-man CAN'T fast on Ramadan. I want a refund. I want to get into my thoughts on how currency is exacerbating the problem, but I will just mention it for now.

Here is a link to the comments in the Mighty no. 9 forum to get an idea of the overall tone (and a few people who try to evoke rationality). Also this odd Youtube video's comment section presents some of the overt misogyny that is running rampant.