Bjorn

Apparently if you actually make new friends with other players in Unity, they game just stops working completely (causes the game to crash at the title screen).

There's something about muh soggy knees that's fairly discomforting, that I'm assuming was just a lucky coincidence on the part of whoever coined it. It's got a kind of sexual submission element to it, that you can imagine being used in some other context. gg's latest targets seem to be focused on the IGDA and the woman who created the autoblock list. It honestly was a poor decision for the IGDA to actively suggest people use the autoblocker, but of course KiA is blowing it way the hell out of proportion. Randi Harper, who created the list, tweeted out the email of someone who had either been harassing her, or had emailed her boss in an effort to get her fired (not sure which). For which KiA is screaming DOXX! Around the same time, Big Mike ran a piece (archived) about how she as arrested once, which has now led to multiple high profile gg folks as labeling her a criminal. Because she got arrested and booked once (for what looks to have been expired tags or some other minor offense). Both Milo and Big Mike used her Encyclopedia Dramatica (storified exchanged between Milo and Harper) page as a source. Milo also tweeted out a picture of Harper's dead sister photoshopped in front of a Nazi flag "asking" if they were both neo-Nazis. Now that's journalism! Journalism, ethics, sources, facts, doxxing. These fucking people don't know what words mean.

Some of the difficulty definitely changes as you get the Donation Machine to higher levels (more items in the store makes it far more likely to have something you want) and get some of the Challenge items unlocked (particularly the most useful runes), compared to starting a new save file. Oh, and being able to bomb the Donation Machine to withdraw money is huge, especially on early levels, where picking up a Humble Bundle or Red Candle can make the first half of a run much, much smoother. After playing a couple of dozen runs on Hard, I think it feels the most like old Isaac difficulty. Ultimately I think it's all a change for the positive. There were plenty of people who put a ton of time into Isaac who never even reached the Chest. I think that's a lot less likely now. And it's not like Rebirth is easy, I just think you're more likely to get an easier run thanks to a higher prevalence of certain items than you were on old Isaac.

The Grand Jury is finished and it is suppose to announce the decision this afternoon sometime. I'm shocked they aren't holding it until after Thanksgiving.

Yeah, and it probably shouldn't, as it's one of the most ridiculously broken things in the game. Blank Card would still be one of the most powerful items in the game even if it didn't work with Runes. All you need is one battery to drop in a level, and you can pretty easily max out keys, bombs, money and Soul Hearts. Chests with items in them dupe to more chests with items in them. On this same run, I had the Left Hand for awhile and got a Key Beggar to drop a bunch of red chests, which I then duped multiple times and walked away with all the Guppy items plus some Devil Room items. I also had the Credit Card for a while, so could just strip every Devil Room and Store of all their items. That run took more than 2 hours because I was just having fun making myself ridiculous. I've thought a lot about whether Rebirth is easier than original Isaac, and I'm quite convinced that it is a lot easier, for a bunch of reasons (and that being easier isn't a bad thing). It just runs much better, which ultimately makes it easier to play from a raw mechanics stand point. But then I think there are more individual items that can break a run open that are fairly easy to acquire (Blank Card and Krampus' Head would be two).

And this is my favorite comment from that thread: Also, I'm guessing that thread might have been even uglier before the banhammer waded in. There's a bunch of "[This message was deleted at the request of a moderator or administrator]" comments. The comments on the linked article though are particularly depressing.

Finally remembered to take some screenshots last night! I got to the Chest with Blank Card + Jera and 70+ keys. Hijinks ensued. I'd have killed to have found the Paperclip on this run. I don't know what all I had exactly, but Fire Mind, Cursed Eye (the charge shot), Quad Shot, Ipecac, Loki's Horns and Rubber Cement were all in there. Thank god I had the Wafer, as I did not pick up Pyromaniac to protect me from explosions. And I finished off the last of the character unlocks last night, which I think only leaves topping off the Donation Machine to 999 as the last couple of unlocks I have left. Plus there are some items I haven't seen yet. But I don't really care that much about getting Platinum God. I'll probably take a break from it for awhile now. Every night I've played, I've ended up staying up later than I intended, starting "just one more run" around the time I should have been heading to bed.

The SP stuff is way more my wife's type of game, so I end up watching her play more than I do play it myself. But DAI has already fulfilled my criteria for being a good spectacting game. She wandered into some valley, and spotted a baby dragon, at which point she went all kitten dumb over it. Then mother showed up, dropped a fireball on the party, there was much screaming (by my wife) and running away hijinx. Watching something go hilariously wrong is my favorite thing about watching other people play.

I get super bored when I go in to the dentist (which I do every 4 months because my teeth stain so quickly from being a heavy coffee drink and smoker). So as I'm stuck in the chair listening to the buzzing of the weird tool that makes my teeth white again, I practice times tables, particularly focusing 13-20. I am a dork.

If a Devil or Angel room appears, you should definitely check them out. That's interesting, I could completely believe that Polyphemus is the rarest item in the game based on my experience.

Along with all the other Christmas movies already mentioned, I have a fondness for The Ref.

Thanks for sharing that, she's in part addressing some of what I was trying to say earlier but in a more eloquent and informed way.

TFYC seem pretty ignorant about transgender stuff, particularly that certain terms can be understood multiple ways, and do a shitty job of explaining what they actually mean. Of course they've had fucking months now to take the 5 or 10 minutes and read through some good resources.

Weirdly enough, I have not seen Polyphemus yet. It's probably the only item that starts unlocked that I haven't seen. I just had a cool run with the Blue Baby. Have been trying him on Hard, and got a Basement XL start, which had a Forget Me Now plus a surprising amount of money for a Hard beginning. Was able to get two boss items, another treasure and a couple of store items, then use the FMN to reset the level, which became a regular Basement I, so I got to get all the items from both Basement levels again. Nothing game breaking, but making it to Caves I just had a bunch of decent stuff, which ultimately let me get all the way to the Chest. The Paperclip is now my favorite trinket on Hard. Keys are so sparse that having a trinket that lets you open gold chests without a key is amazing.

The vitriol against DF really seemed to ramp up after the Broken Age Kickstarter. Something about a successful Kickstarter just seems to piss certain people off. Tim is also someone who is personally willing to directly call out shit like misogyny and criticize gamergate, so more recently there are people who are going to use any opportunity to try and paint him as a piece of shit out of some misguided payback for him not agreeing with their bullshit war.

I'll bite. What do you call a Sonic Convention?

Ha! That's awesome. I've been trying for a max luck run, and haven't even got close yet. The runs where I for sure get a Luck Up Pill, I don't end up finding enough (or being able to duplicate or manufacture them) to actually get it all the way up. Azazel vs the Dark Room is my last non-Hard unlock I have left, and for some bizarre reason I cannot get to the boss with him. He should be the easiest run, and yet things just keep completely falling apart for me in Sheol, leaving me too weak for the Dark Room.

You've made me want to play it even more than I did before. How long did this trainwreck take to get through?

Oh, I think they're both completely eligible targets for criticism, absolutely (I particularly agree with some of the commentary about cultural appropriation on both of them). And even how they structure their image should be part of that. But I'm unconvinced that the image that Swift portrays to her audience is any healthier or better than the image portrayed by someone like a Cyrus now (or a Madonna in the 80s or a Joplin in the 60s). And yet in analyses of pop stars, it's rather consistent that you'll see women like Swift praised for their more wholesome image, declaring they are doing it right, while other women are condemned for being risque. And I'm someone who is often quite critical of the sexual objectification of women. But I think there's also a fine line between sexual objectification, and a young woman owning her own sexuality and portraying it the way that she wants to. To me, the cultural angle on some of this criticism is that rebellion by young women is almost universally condemned. Because teen and young adult rebellion are often viewed as going hand in hand with sex, using booze/drugs, risky behavior and going against cultural norms. And these tend to be decisions that young women are far more condemned for than young men are. So a Cyrus gets criticized for challenging cultural norms, while a Swift gets praised for upholding a more traditional vision of femininity. If anybody wants to go down a bit of a bigger rabbit hole on this, I was pretty fascinated by the response to Cyrus around the release of Bangerz, and how wildly vitriolic it was. I think part of the reason for that reaction actually had to do with Cyrus' look not just being sexualized, but being sexualized in a way that people are uncomfortable with. There's an element of genderqueerness going on. Wrecking Ball is drawing on some lesbian kind of imagery (throwing gay slurs at her became pretty popular on social media around that time). She didn't violate any cultural norms because of her nudity or sexuality, it's specifically that they were presented in a way to challenge how young female celebrities are typically sexualized. So a phrase like "go full Miley" is actually carrying a lot of meaning about needing to adhere to a bunch of different cultural norms, the norms that Swift embodies. My opinion is that its fine to have pop stars who represent a range of images for their fans, from someone like Swift at one end of the spectrum to women like Cyrus and Gaga on the other end whose image is actually pretty challenging to traditional femininity. But I was frustrated with what I took to be a very un-nuanced view of sexuality and image in regards to the current wave of pop stars when this was all brought up on the 'cast. *minor side note, I took a more than hour break while writing this to watch a ton of videos by Swift, Cyrus, Gaga, Madonna and some other female pop stars. I kinda shifted track a little bit after that break, but hopefully it still makes sense. Also, I haven't watched any of Gaga's videos for awhile. Fuck those are good.

Wasn't sure if I wanted to comment on the Taylor Swift stuff or not, but I gotta say that using words and phrases like "tart it up", "going full Miley" and tawdry left kind of a bad taste in my mouth, at the end of what was an otherwise excellent 'cast. So far as I know, there's equal evidence that both Cyrus and Swift have a fair amount of agency and control over the decisions they're making about their music and their image. And yet Swift is authentic, while someone like Cyrus, by implication, isn't. Does that make Cyrus calculating? Is Swift's image any less calculated? If they are both being true to who they feel they are, why does one get praise while the other gets scorn? Is there a right kind of authenticity? I know you guys were speaking off the cuff, and it's not like you prepared to do an in-depth dive about the nature of pop music, femininity and the sexualization of young female celebrities, so I'm not condemning you for using that kind of language. But it makes me uncomfortable, because I feel like it's echoing the kind of sentiments regularly made about being the right kind of girl versus being the wrong kind of girl. And maybe that wasn't intended at all, but the kind of language I cited in the first line set it up to feel that way.

Whoops, wrong topic.

Using a controller on PC is fine, but the KB/M controls are just a mess.

That's awesome!

Apple (along with an earlier Google decision [i think]) has changed the button on the App store from "Free" to "Get". Small, but subtle change. I wonder if it has an effect?

That seems like a pretty even tempered response given the nonsensical bile he was spewing.