Zeusthecat

I just recently learned that it is supposedly rude to recline your seat on a flight. That is one of the more ridiculous things I've heard lately. If I'm paying a few hundred dollars to sit in a human version of a dog crate for 4 hours, I'm fucking utilizing one of the few "luxuries" I'm afforded. Besides, my knees are crushed by the same amount regardless of whether or not the person in front of me reclines so I'm really doubtful that people's knees are up high enough for that tiny degree of incline to bother them that much. And if it does, I guarantee that if they just relax and recline themselves, they will experience less pain than this weird scenario they want where everyone is supposed to sit in a rigid 90 degree position for crazy lengths of time.

This post really resonates with me. I've also barely listened to any music over the last couple years and instead have shifted exclusively to podcasts, mostly catching up on old bombcasts these days.And yeah, I much prefer to listen to entire albums than just random singles in a playlist so all these fancy music services just haven't really clicked with me. I'm still that guy that just goes back and listens to some subset of the thousands of mp3s I've accumulated over the years whenever I'm in the mood for some music and I kind of hit a point where I've gotten bored of it. Artists I like don't put out much new stuff anymore and I have no idea which new artists are worth listening to. At least techno rarely lets me down though. I can usually get a fresh injection of good techno every couple years and it's always easy to enjoy.

I'm exactly the same way. Most of my favorite stuff took at least 5 or so listens before it really sunk in and became a thing I loved.

Well that's no fun. I hope they patch that out quickly.

And somehow, even after they found no evidence of any wrongdoing whatsoever, he still remained suspended from school. That is the strangest part of all of it. Even though he did nothing wrong the school is basically like "Well fuck you anyways, you're still suspended, neener neener!".

When I finally got to the Dreadnaught for the first time last night, I had to stop everything I was doing so I could just stare out at Saturn and its rings for about a solid 5 minutes. The lightning flashes in Saturn's clouds and all of the little detail in the backgrounds is absolutely beautiful. I did this same thing when I originally arrived on Venus as well with that volcano in the background. The background art in Destiny never ceases to amaze me and it evokes such a strong sense of wonderment.

That's a pretty solid explanation. I think you swayed me.

Yeah, I pretty much agree with what Twig said. I mean, aren't we getting to the point where we want people to be able to physically identify with how they feel on the inside without having to disclose "who they really are"?

This is so true. And I think I even saw an article yesterday pointing out all the instances of white kids doing this exact same thing without anyone batting an eye.

Wait, are we seriously arguing that this may have looked bomb-like enough that the school and police may have possibly been justified in their reaction? Maybe I'm misunderstanding the tone of the posts here but it seems ludicrous that we would even be having this debate when it's clear from virtually every report that this kid did nothing more than make a clock that he was proud of and wanted to show to his teachers. This is getting weird.

Please forgive me for this possibly super naive question but, why would "race reassignment" not be an acceptable thing when gender reassignment is? At first thought, there does seem to be an awful lot of parallels between the two.

Yep, this is correct. Over the weekend we started to notice new things getting unlocked as soon as we met the criteria you mentioned.

I played this a ton over the weekend with my daughter and it truly is remarkable how fun it is to just mess around and create levels. The presentation is top notch. I'm not quite ready to upload any of mine yet as I'm still trying to find the right balance between making an engaging and interesting level without relying too much on making things super difficult. I am just not really a fan of the super difficult bombastic stuff and the automated levels that so many people seem to be gravitating towards making.

Oh maybe they did then? We played quite a bit today and never unlocked anything beyond a few items at the beginning so I assumed that lockout was still there. And yeah, the 10 Mario Challenge is more or less the story mode in this game with a barebones story and mini world with 8 random levels that culminate in a boss style level. Another thing worth mentioning, the music and sound effects are just mesmerizing. It's got kind of a cool, trancey feel to it and every item you place has a robotic bark that identifies the item. Kind of like someone talking through a talk box. Then if you drag the item across the screen to place a bunch of elements, the voice repeats in a different note each time that matches the background music resulting in a really cool robotic sounding Mario theme. It's hard to describe so just trust me, it's super cool. I am very very impressed by this game.

Absolutely. I hate editing a shared document and finding out the previous person used freakish double spaces after every period. Your sentences don't need that much room to breathe.

Yes, the book comes with the game. It's pretty damn impressive. Also, this game is really great you guys. We already created five levels and did a couple sets of the 10 Mario Challenge and just everything about it feels perfect. The only downside is that it will take some time before all the tools are unlocked.

It's so beautiful.

Yeah, that's a whole other argument. I'll stick with my stance that given the capitalist system we live in, there is little we could change that would be an across the board improvement for everyone. It will always work out in the corporations' favor. Maybe we can shorten the duration of copyrights and make other minor tweaks that would sway the balance of power a little further away from big entities. But at a fundamental level, I think our copyright system does about as much as it could do to protect the small people in a capitalistic society like ours.

That's fair. But I'm sure you realize that finding a way to legally make that distinction between the starving artist and the person in a position of entrenched power and then enact a system that works differently for people under each category would be a very difficult thing to do.

If there was an easy way to make the distinction between an artist and a corporation, then maybe it would be easier to navigate this conversation. Yeah, you would think the distinction would be simple but I'm not sure that it is. Clearly, a single artist is pretty distinguishable from a corporation but let's say an artist creates a successful IP and then they start hiring a bunch of people to build on that IP further. Is that when they've become a corporation and must ethically treat other artists differently than when they were just an 'artist'?

Dude, your last post literally said: So I don't get how you can say that that's a shit place to start an ethics debate from when a big crux of your argument is how bad things are now because of how it favors big corporations and screws over the small guy. If you're now saying that this whole conversation is pointless, then sure, I agree with that.

Okay, so either way, everything is heavily weighted in the favor of big corporations. I don't see this alternate scenario of people not having the right to control their IP necessarily being better for the small guys. Because in that scenario, big corporation gets to come in and profit off of the small guys' IPs and the small guy would actually have no legal recourse to stop it. I think it is better to have these protections in place because it actually does more to protect the small guys than a situation where big companies can freely use any IP they want and throw all of their millions of dollars at it, possibly devaluing the work of the original artist.

Also, in this case, Nintendo isn't exactly annihilating these things from existence. They are just trying to get them removed from a highly visible space where millions of people can easily stumble upon hacked up versions of their IP (and yes, I realize a lot of these are quite awesome). These things can and will still exist but I don't think Nintendo is necessarily in the wrong for wanting to control the image of their IP on one of the most popular locations on the internet. I mean yeah, it's kind of a bummer for these guys that are getting their videos taken down but that is an inherent risk when your line of work relies on the owners of the various IP's looking the other way. Well, what's the line in the sand for some of you guys arguing the opposite? Should artists not have any ownership over their IP because at some level it is derived from something else? If you agree that artists should have some level of ownership over their IP and have the right to prevent other people from profiting off of it, then where do you draw the line on what is "derivative enough"?

I imagine most of you have probably seen this but I just have to post it here. It is magnificent and really hilarious.

I think I'm going to pick up Super Mario Maker today. If I do, it will be the first game I've purchased on release day since probably Halo 3.