Bjorn

Skin Game, book 15 of the Dresden Files, comes out in about a month. Wooo! The only disappointment I have with a new DF book is that I usually chew through it in about 2 days, which leaves me wanting more. I actually reread the entire series after the release of the last book, because I wanted more Dresden and because a ton of long running loose threads were beginning to be pulled together and I wanted to revisit a bunch of stuff to see how many plans had been started years ago and were just coming to fruition. Chapter 1 has been posted online as a preview if you want to read it. I wasn't going to read it...but then I did.

I really fucking hate people.

Wait, what? Pratchett and Luddington were getting shit because of decisions completely out of their control that a bunch of men in suits made?

On the automation of food production, I actually got to play with a self-driving tractor the last time I was home. My father-in-law has one of the systems installed in his tractor. It was a pretty fascinating experience to work a field and only have to give a fraction of the attention to the process as I would have had to 20 years ago. It's more accurate than manual driving as well, which was the big selling point for him when he had it installed a couple of years ago. But the huge surprising benefit for him has been the improvement in quality of life. He can take care of other things now (particularly phone calls) on the tractor that he wouldn't have been able to do before safely, freeing up more of his day. It was also a really weird sensation as I realized that his tractor is now, for all intents and purposes, a robot.

What's the theory you're talking about? Sometime around book 2 (maybe even in book 1), I thought that Snow was

I went to a small Episcopalian church in a rural town as a kid, and we didn't have a lot of the pomp and circumstance that a lot of bigger churches would have had. I didn't see my first smoke orb until...probably 10-12 years old when they were dedicating a new outdoor alter for open air services. It was a really confusing service for me, because they brought out all the Catholic-style service theatrics for it, which were quite different from our normal services.

I think that might actually be illegal in some states. It should fall under store credit/gift card laws, and shit like that has been banned in some places.

Reading through other news this morning, there's this story about what to do about wild/feral horse herds in New Mexico. This quote jumped out at me: I'm just trying to imaging what would happen if a bunch of legally armed black people decided to descend on Ferguson to show off their rights and "protest" government overreach. It'd be a fucking bloodbath. The police would just fucking shoot everyone.

When the song Hot Blooded comes on, do you sing Hot Livered instead?

Worth quoting this: Four years of prioritizing not having an all white police force, and they made it all the way to 94 percent white. It'll only take a few more decades to have a good 20 or 30 non-whites on the force at this rate. Of course, by then Ferguson will probably have a police force of a couple of hundred.

Sweet, early afternoon cast. I'm feeling droopy today at work and need something to keep my brain moving forward. Also really curious to hear how The Last Express is discussed. I've tried to play it a couple of times now, and just find that it does not hold my attention at all.

I'm not familiar with anime porn at all, other than the odd clip here and there that I've seen. Does it tend to be like most live action porn, where it's just sex scene after sex scene, or does it have more to it than that? It bothers me that our culture devalues work whose main purpose is sexual arousal. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, to me, although I do recognize the real world ethical issues with both porn production and consumption. Also, Oglaf is one of the best things ever born out of webcomics.

I'd be down with that. My fuzzy memories of the older KQ games kind of make me think that they were already like a Big Fish story.

I'm waiting until all the DLC has dropped.

I like grok, it has an emotional connotation to internalized knowledge to me that is lacking from other words. Lots of languages have words that simultaneously communicate an idea and an emotion, something that American English by and large attempts to divorce. I think having a few of those words is useful. I also think it's an extraordinarily silly word that I only use when around my hardcore sci-fi nerd friends.

Those are good questions, but at this point I'm willing to give Ancel the benefit of the doubt that the mechanics will be compelling and that more will be revealed about it. For a teaser, it did it's job. I am teased.

The Idle Thumbs Puffin Flock, a video games clan exclusive to Wild, exclusive to the Playstation 4, exclusively designed by Michel Ancel.

It may be that I'm a bit older than a lot of the commenters here, so grew up watching a ton more tv and movies from the 50s-80s, establishing the image that it's a trope involving women. Whereas if someone grew up mostly watching stuff from the late 80s through early 00s, then they would see it mostly being used against men. So, ummm, don't go searching for "slapping a hysterical woman" on YouTube. It will do nothing for your faith in humanity. I'm going to go drive around and not be near the Internet for the next couple of hours now.

Wild is the most interesting thing I've seen shown so far.

I can't give a definitive answer, I just know in my head it's associated with slapping a hysterical woman. Could well be that it's be a relatively non-gendered trope over the years.

Mythbusters found that slapping someone in an impaired state improved measurable performance versus the non-slapped impaired state. It's MythBusters, so it's not like it's perfect research, but there may be something to it. Of course the trope is mostly used to slap women it seems, so that's gross. I can't think of slapping someone without the clip from Airplane: The Movie playing through my head.

I bought a PS3 mostly because it had a Blu-ray player, and it was comparable to all the other players when I bought it. Also because I was going through a real period of PS1 nostalgia, and it was an easy way to play those games. I wonder how data driven these decisions are, if the marketing push from a true or timed exclusive actually has an impact, or if it's just throwing money way.

Have any of you ever bought a console predominantly because of an exclusive game? I bought a PS1 because of FF7, but beyond that, I can't think of any other consoles I bought because of exclusives.

I'd occasionally play Unreal Tournament with my flight stick just for the hell of it.