Bjorn

There's a bunch of anti-abortion stuff on my Facebook feed today, so I figured it was time to push back against that bullshit again.

Oh yeah, I'm also dying to know what got bleeped, what is so terrible that Chris talks about?!

Gormante, I'm sorry man, that's terrible. And yeah, as Mangela said, don't be afraid to turn to those around you for support.

Mangela, that sounds like an absolutely wonderful week and overall turn of events for you. Congrats!

Stranger's Wrath remains one of my favorite all time games. Such a classic. Did they ever get the PC version sorted out? I had heard pretty terrible things about the port when it was first released.

The crowd sourced weird/horror wiki Chris was trying to remember is the SCP Foundation (I'm assuming). If by some odd chance someone hasn't delved into it before, I highly suggest just starting with the top rated page and have fun. It is still one of my favorite things the Internet has ever produced.

I have a handful of people with whom I have some far more substantive texts, though yeah, easily 90 percent of my texts would just be throwaway stuff.

Oh man, the Breckon-becomes-Coach segment had me in tears laughing so hard.

Your guide looks a bit worried in that photo! And the lady and I before going out the other evening:

Glacier on ME3 MP - by far the fastest map for speed running, which means I've spent dozens of hours on it.

Next on SyFy!

Yeah, I mean, we live in tornado alley, we get micro bursts (sudden, unpredictable downdrafts that produce 80+ mph straight winds), up to baseball sized hail, 120 degree heat index summers, sub-zero degree winters, floods, wildfires. We had to go to our cellar a couple of weeks ago because a tornado touched down a couple of miles from our house (thankfully it was a small one that just knocked over some trees and roadsigns). Kansas really can feel like a hell scape that's been designed to kill you some days. The only thing we don't get are volcanoes and earthquakes, which make them seem exotic and dangerous.

I thought you were joking. Oh Microsoft.

Math is fucking weird. And that's about the extent of how much I can contribute to this thread. God bless all of you who are good at math. I actually aced every math class I ever took, but if you asked me even the most basic question weeks later, I couldn't answer. No retention at all.

It hasn't happened in a long time, but it used to be if I was staying up reading when I was really tired, my mind would kind of bug out and it would suddenly feel like the book was being held much, much further from my body than it was (like dozens of feet away, but I could still read), to the point that it felt as though my arms must have been disconnected from my body to be so far away. Kind of a weird, tunnel vision type illusion. After initially being freaked out by it, I then always found it to be a fascinating experience when it would happen and I'd try stay there as long as possible. Not exactly the same, but there is a lot of weird perception illusions your mind can play with you, particularly when lack of sleep is involved, as Gorm said.

I have never heard the phrase "ghetto rigged" before, but I can imagine how that evolved, since people still used the far, far, far more racist version of that when I was a kid. I'm sure that that was probably my introduction to the n-word without even having any understanding of what that word really meant.

So that New Yorker doomsday article about Seattle being destroyed pretty much sent me into parent panic mode for a couple of hours today, even though I know better. Also, update, the kiddo finishes packing her car and will take off for the drive up there to stay on Friday.

I forgot to backup my texts when I went from my Nexus 4 to 6, and I was incredibly bummed at the conversations I lost to that.

The Tower of Latria from Demon's Souls is still one of the most oppressive, scary environments I've ever encountered. And yeah, Sen's Fortress from DS1 is up there as well. I have a real fondness for the run from the start of the game to the police station in Resident Evil 2. That's a game that just dumps you into zombie infested streets, with crappy tank controls, a knife and a few ammo shots and expects you to figure it out. Plus I ran that thing so many times to get it perfect to unlock some alternate costumes and weapons. Edited to add: The Napoleon level The Mailman level from Psychonauts as well, for the delicious absurdity of it. I retract the Napoleon level, if I had to pick just one from Psychonauts, it would be the Mailman.

I never did beat N+, stalled out somewhere about 80 percent of the way through I think (just far enough that I knew I didn't want to bang my head on that wall anymore). Still, pretty stoked for N++. Even if I can't beat it, don't care, good times ahead.

If Razer doesn't offer them something, probably file lawsuits against individual executives for Ouya, and against Razer. Even with the contract, since Ouya didn't actually file for bankruptcy, it's possible there's a legal claim for Ouya's debts to have been taken on by Razer. That shit can get pretty complicated through. As part of the disclosure in lawsuits against executives for Ouya, they might be able to shame some of them if they can show that investors and executives were well paid, while other contracts were abandoned. Or if they can show that executives continued to sign deals after they knew payments would be impossible to make, then you're crossing over into fraud territory. But most of the devs who took these deals were desperate for cash, which of them will have the money to fund suits like this?

I'd say that it would actually need to be at least double the minimum wage, at a minimum. I know a few of servers who earn $25K-$50K a year, and if they were switched over to minimum wage, they'd lose the vast majority of their wage. This is one of the challenges of figuring out what to do with tips, without them the average wage of servers would probably drop. Which is a bad thing, being as it can be a solid low education job for a lot of people. I may have told this story here before. You can't underestimate the greed of restaurant owners and managers. I know a guy who owned/operated multiple 4 and 5 star restaurants over the course of a couple of decades. Awhile back, I got into an argument with him when he said he didn't think that he should be required to pay his servers at all, that in fact, they should be paying him for the privilege of having access to his customers. The servers at his places often made easily in excess of $50K a year (these are places where the average cost per person was $100+). He felt like he ought to have a right to a percentage of their tips, since they were collecting it from his customers. It's essentially the same model that strip clubs use, where the women are required to pay a stage fee, or jukebox fee, or some other bullshit, for each shift they work.

I tip 20 percent even when the service is poor, as it's not always in the server's control. Plus not everyone can smile all the time, we all have shitty/grumpy days and most of us aren't required to try and care for a bunch of demanding adult babies while having a bad day.

Shitty, but not particularly surprising. I'm sure any banks, investors and the executives all got paid something out of the purchase. It's always the contractors and suppliers who get fucked in these situations.