Bjorn

Slightly tangential to the topic, but I always find that a potentially good metric for judging someone's character is how they talk about their exes. If every single ex is the worst person ever, and they mostly shit on them, then that tells me a lot more about that person than it does their exes. If they have a wide range of opinions about their various exes, some fondness, some distaste, again, I've learned more about them than I have the people they once dated. I'm very leery of people who speak of all their exes universally negatively.

Hey y'all, I don't think we have a general politics thread here. For those who don't hang out in the politics room in slack chat, Kansas politics has been getting more and more unhinged since Brownback was elected, to the point now that the governor and legislature are trying to figure out how to gut and disempower the Kansas Supreme Court, because the court won't rubber stamp their unconstitutional laws. One of the reactions to this has been to challenge whether or not Kansas still qualifies as a state because it will have failed to maintain a "republican government" if the Supreme Court is ultimately stripped of power or fundamentally altered to restrict its ability to do its job. A guy from Wichita has started a White House petition requesting the federal government to invoke Article 4, Section 4 and strip Kansas of statehood. Now, realistically I don't believe this will happen. However, if the White House petition can reach the threshhold at which the White House has promised to at least acknowledge and respond to a petition, it will shine a larger, national spotlight on the shenanigans that have been going on here. You can find the White House petition here. I'd appreciate it if y'all would sign it and help put some fire to the feet of the people who are systematically destroying my state.

I have a friend who has recently become an elementary school teacher, and from his experiences so far are that the bigger districts in places like KC and Wichita are okay, but the rural districts are struggling to find and retain teachers. This has been a trend for years, but feels like it's accelerating. That's anecdotal though, I don't know that anyone has the data to back that up.

The other interesting thing about that mechanic is the visual look, you glow when embered rather than looking dead and desiccated when hollow. It's another positive re-enforcement rather than a something that feels like a negative punishment.

Weirdly enough, I think Stardew Valley of all thinks helped kill it. I'm sure I'll come back to it, but I wasn't finding that my second playthrough had enough differentiation to it to really keep me invested. I imagine once the DLC packs drop and mods continue to become more robust and refined, it will justify another run or two at it.

Combat, and siphoning off spells from enemies, is a real killer for FF8 for me. They should have just made all the combat based on that card game. I loved the card game in 8 so much.

I liked that they were setting stuff up for the future in this game, hinting at story and lore stuff that didn't quite fit yet. It felt appropriate to the context to, where a band of refugees fleeing a war aren't going to end up with all the loose ends tied up.

I feel like I can be quite a bit more aggressive in this so far vs DS1 and to a lesser degree DS2 (I got pretty aggressive in it after my initial playthrough). This sure is a Dark Souls game. Which isn't a complaint, it's exactly what I was expecting and wanting so far. My only real complaint is that I've found multiple Dex weapons within the first few hours, and no Str weapons. I don't really want to invest my limited titanite right now in my starter weapon, but I might have to .

And Kobach gave an interview recently claiming credit for Trump's plan to build the border wall. Because that's something to be proud of. Oh, and another one of his high profile supposed voter fraud cases fell apart on him again, but I'm sure another failure to find real voter fraud won't stop him from trying.

2 Dope Queens has really impressed me as well, and I'm pretty much the same on comedy podcasts, I always bounce off them.

Pre-ordered, pre-loaded on Steam, just waiting for it to unlock. My general approach for the Souls games has been to attempt to solo my first attempt, with sometimes helping other people out once I've figured out how to solo a boss myself (particularly if there are faction rewards like DS2 had). So I don't expect to do a ton of co-oping for a little bit, unless it's an area I've already cleared.

I was going to stay out of this, but I do just want to chime in and say how much I actually like this question. It's an interesting question that lets you ponder your own relationship to games, and think critically and creatively about other people's relationships to games. I continue to be floored that this is one of your sticking points.

Haha, the apprentice becomes the master.

There's apparently going to be a Dark Souls themed board game at some point.

Pre-load is live, ~17GB download.

That is an excellent Krampus outfit, holy crap! Here's a pic of me driving my friends redneck convertible (just cut the top off with an angle grinder) around KC last night. Full pic of the car with my buddy getting it started:

Oooo, PC unlock times have been confirmed, but I haven't seen word on pre-load yet. Monday April 11th at 3:00 PM PDT (UTC -7) Monday April 11th at 5:00 PM CDT (UTC -5) Monday April 11th at 6:00 PM EDT (UTC -4) Monday April 11th at 7:00 PM BRT (UTC -3) Monday April 11th at 11:00 PM BST (UTC +1) Tuesday April 12th at 12:00 AM CEST (UTC +2) Tuesday April 12th at 7:00 AM JST (UTC +9)

Bloodbourne is probably the closest we're going to get to that, where the mechanics change was enough to make it feel really fresh again.

There's a fellow in Lawrence who I follow on social media who I generally enjoy his take on a lot of political and social issues. I'm just going to copy his thoughts on this subject whole cloth.

Lansbury, with all due respect, in regards to Clinton's ISIS policy vs Sanders banking policy, it honestly just looks like you've used your imagination to make hers meaty, and then used your imagination to make Sanders slippery and amorphous. I mean, when you have to use words like probably, slippery, invisible, and amorphous, I don't think you've you've described a clear, meaty policy that you can really dig into. I could imagine a meaty bank policy for Sanders, but I'd have to structure it exactly as you just structured Clinton's ISIS policy. I have my semi-secret doubts that Sanders is actually kind of a trainwreck in certain ways that have been glossed over by his fans, but this narrative that Clinton has these really clear policies vs Sanders non-policies I think is kind of made up. It's just giving her the benefit of the doubt, and not giving him the benefit of the doubt.

No body knows, the trouble I see. Nobody knows my sorrow.

Man, Demon's Souls just came out in late 2009 and I don't think I got into it until early in 2010. It seems like it was a lot longer than like 6is years ago that I started playing these games.

I think what happened to Sacco was a fucking travesty and everyone involved or who contributed should be fucking ashamed of themselves. In a just world, Biddle would have been made to pay for turning a magnifying glass on a single random person just for the lulz and clicks. That said, what happened to her was unrelated to her job. None of my points regarding what an employer should be doing would apply to her.

Fight clubs are one of the best things in Souls games. Lots of fun evenings spent hanging out on the Bridge in DS2.

Darth just got the signup link fixed, should be working now Dewar.