Bjorn

I think that's where the judgement comes from though. It's not just a narrow palate, it's the imposition of that palate on others in social settings, breaking the social contract. And yeah, I'm specifically talking about people who have no health, ethical, moral, etc., reasons for their dietary choices. Just incredibly narrow preferences, almost universally what you would consider things that a kid or maybe young adult would want to eat all the time. The weird thing is that the people I know like this don't lack social skills in other contexts. They just cannot break out of the rails they are stuck on in terms of food.

Well, except I've had picky eaters be a royal pain in the ass when trying to organize group events, to the point where there are a couple of people I just don't invite out to certain things. If a grown ass adult can't live for an evening without eating an incredibly narrow selection of food, they're being kind of an asshole. If someone wants to live on hotdogs and mac & cheese on their own, I don't care. But don't veto a half dozen restaurants because they don't serve hotdogs and mac & cheese.

I play a JRPG about once every 3 years or so, but I could not get into Ni No Kuni. I thought the aesthetic would pull me through, but it was just dreadfully boring.

I totally missed seeing this last week, sorry! When cooking in a crockpot, I generally only use some apple and ********* juice, plus some basic seasonings. For pulled pork, I'm generally going to be using sauce, and usually have a half dozen different bbq sauces around (because Kansas City is awesome for bbq), and so don't worry about saucing in pot.

I hadn't really thought about Borderlands basically being a Mad Max game, but it is. They also (at least 2 and the Pre-Sequel) draw on feminism influences a lot more than I expect any Mad Max game too.

We set a limit at 3 cats, feeling that any more than that was was definitely crossing the line into crazy cat people territory.

Was there that big of a backlash about them using Kickstarter? It's not like other established companies haven't used crowdfunding. Weird.

I've wanted a Russian Blue for years. But I only ever get my cats from shelters, and there's never been a Blue there when I've been ready to adopt.

I, very sadly, haven't donated blood in years. Once I started working from home, it just wasn't as convenient as when I was at school, or worked somewhere that sponsored blood drives. I had hoped that things had improved in the last decade.

Sweep is the best! Is that his name because he's grey like a chimney sweep?

We watched The Nightly Show over our lunch for the first time in months. I had dropped it from our lunch watching rotation out of frustration with repeated lazy jokes that were sexist, transphobic, fat-shaming, etc. But I've also wanted Wilmore to have success, just to wise up and drop out the punching down humor. So the show opened with a "nerds don't have sex" joke, and then made a point to repeat the exact same joke 10 minutes later. Not offensive like some of the earlier stuff, but still just so incredibly lazy and had no connection to the topic at hand. Like, you can't come up with a different fucking joke than that, you have to repeat the opening monologue joke during the discussion? The topic was about the FDA changing the rules about gay men donating blood, now allowing it but requiring 1 year of abstaining from sex before donating. WTF FDA?.

IT has always had the mandate that all cast members be present though, so I'd assume that would mean her appearances would be limited to when she travels to the west coast? If so, that's going to be a huge bummer.

"Miles Prower" Good lord, I had never noticed that before.

I didn't realize Miller directed The Witches of Eastwick. That's fascinating. I haven't seen Beyond Thunderdome in years, I should rewatch it. But I know it's a movie the lady is incredibly fond of, mostly because of Tina Turner being a badass and leaving a hell of an impression on an impressionable teen her back in the day.

I think it's that easy now, and levels don't even matter anymore. I'd be willing to give it a shot some night, as that's the same boss I stalled out on. I've been playing a lot of DS2, so I'm sure my dodge timings will be all sorts of terrible and I'll die in a humiliating way.

Yes, it sounds like co-oping chalice dungeons has become much, much, much easier. At launch, it felt like a massive pain in the ass to do.

New patch! Quite a few changes, but the biggest ones are that shards, chunks and rocks can now be farmed from Chalice Dungeons, and Chunks can be purchased from the insight shop (though at a whopping 30 insight per chunk). You can also co-op with no level limit when using password matching. Which...eh...ultimately what I see this allowing is for people to twink even faster and better for PvP. And rifle spear arcane glitch fixed (yah!).

Pickaxe Pete has become King of the Peasants, but elected to turn away from the throne. Spoilered images are of the new, alternate ending, just because I like seeing my peasant in such an epic, dark fantasy, dramatic setting. He also finally finished off all the DLC bosses last night, killing all three in the Old Iron King and FINALLY BRAVING THE BLIZZARD AND KILLING THOSE FUCKING CATS! My original goal with this character was to solo every boss with the pickaxe. I had to fudge with the pickaxe a few times, as it broke on me during fights. Ultimately I just could not solo 3 DLC bosses though. Elana, Alonne and the kitties were just too much. I'm sure I could solo Elana and Alonne with a different build and some more practice, the cats....no. The only reason I got through them is a guy I summoned for Alonne (and died with) friended me to ask if I needed more help. I died on that one with just a sliver of Alonne's health left. I actually killed him on the next run with someone else, but that guy offered to help me with any other bosses, as he was bored and wasn't getting summoned much. So he helped me with the cats. The fight against the cats was epic, by far the most challenging co-op fight I've ever had. I did burn a Brightbug (two, since I died once) ultimately to beat the Fume Knight, the only time I've used that item. It helps, a ton, pretty significant defense and damage boost. I was getting soooo close and just needed a bit extra. Cool Ranch Smelter I didn't find too bad. I just exhausted the enemies in the first part of the shortcut, and then sprinting through to him was easy.

Zeno Clash says you're wrong. Isometric.

I guess that's just not a person I've encountered often, so I'm relatively lucky. For some people I suppose certain types of stories are puzzles to be solved, with nothing more to be gleaned from them. Which, I can have some fun with stuff like that, but I'm never so invested as to not want to have a discussion about other themes and elements as well.

Every Deckard Cain is actually a new replicant made by the Horadrim to obscure their real movements and motivations, for they are the Illuminati of the Diablo universe. LORE!

I really disagree with that. Isn't the question of whether Deckard is a replicant pretty integral in exploring some of the themes of Blade Runner? Like what does it mean to be human, what are the natures of self identity and memory? Those questions are already present thanks to other replicants, but ambiguity of Deckard is what really leaves room for some good discussion. It's not so much answering the question, as it is asking it. Of course, if you obsess purely on looking for clues to that question, I can see your point, but I don't feel like that's a thing I see that often. Also, well crafted lore (ala Dark Souls) invites interpretation and discussion. You can drill down on specifics and get lost amongst the trees for awhile, but sometimes that's fun and lets you see the forest differently when you pull back out. I guess I don't see it as an either/or proposition, but if you encounter someone who does, I can see why that would be frustrating. Also, Deckard Cain was totally a replicant.

I realized how confusing the bow vs bow might be after I posted that I think some asshats just think anything they don't know how to counter is automatically cheesy. Which, if you surveyed a dozen people, you'd probably eliminate every single weapon class in the game. I PvP with a bow in a very similar way as I do with a melee weapon, I typically stay at medium to close range (no more than twice the distance a whip can travel) and look for openings or mistakes by the opponent before drawing the string back. I find that people are much, much, much more likely to Estus when facing a bow, so I need to stay close so I can switch to a melee weapon to punish a heal. I've now gone through the entire game focusing on a bow, and have killed (almost) every boss with just a bow. It's taught me a bunch about the timing and windows of using a bow in close range. I found my win rate to be similar to my win rate with other weapons I'm really good with (about 60-65 percent win rate). People with daggers destroyed me. I fought one guy powerstancing a Smelter Sword and Gyrm anvil Hammer who just fucking crushed me (literally) 3 times in a row. The powerstance L1 with that combo seemed to come out a bit faster than you expect. Heavy armor was really challenging, as it cut the damage on the bow down a lot more than it does even on melee weapons. Spell spammers were about 50/50. I did kill an estus chugging havelmage without ever taking a single hit. Fight took like 4 minutes. I was super pleased with that fight

Well I had a pair of firsts last night, my first hatemail on Steam and my first hacker (the first I've for sure known was a hacker). I was running my archer (literally named Robin Hood) and getting in some Dragonbro fights on the bridge. I'll admit that bows are incredibly frustrating in PvP if you don't know how to handle them. But the same is true of a bunch of other weapons. If you know what you're doing, they aren't any worse than other good weapons. They're great though because they really fuck with all the habits that people have developed to deal with melee. You don't roll against a bow, you will get hit 9 times out of 10. You block and move laterally, circling and closing. You also stay right the fuck on top of a bow user, give them no space, force them to change weapons. If you don't do those two things, you're gonna have a bad time. So, with that context, I got friended and had this lovely little exchange last night. I bow or wave to everyone I fight, both at the beginning and at the end if I win. I (almost) never taunt. And then shortly thereafter, I got invaded by the Hunter of Yarnham. I was excited! That sounded like a fun build. I started to do the prostrate gesture when I saw the name start coming over the bridge, and by the time I saw him it was to late to escape. He was blue, but the wrong color blue to be in the Blue Covenant, plus I was sin free, so a blue couldn't have invaded me anyways. He hit me once with a Drakekeeper's Axe and it: 1. Killed me from full health (50 Vigor) 2. Broke all my armor and rings 3. Hollowed me by the equivalent of 6 or 7 deaths. There had been several reports on reddit in the last week of equipment breaking hackers, including some who will kill NPCs. I went to the BDSM tree and got all my shit fixed for free (thank god that exists), and went back to the bridge out of curiosity. There were very few signs. I put one down, and the Hunter of Yarnham summoned me. BC'd out. Put down another sign. Hunter summoned me again. BC'd out, and decided to go take care of some PvE areas I hadn't finished. Then I got a message from a friend asking me to help twink some armor down to a lower level character. I switched to a character with 136K SM in FoFG, and within a few minutes of loading, got invaded by the Hunter of Yarnham here. WHAT THE FUCK. Same steam account, according to recently met players. I alt-F4'd, first time ever doing that in a Souls game. That was the last time I saw him, but I did find a thread on Steam this morning of several other people reporting being killed by the guy last night.

On the neat things some of those old games would say to you, I think my favorite was UT 2003 (I think). If you went into the graphics settings and maxed everything, when you adjusted the final slider, this big booming voice said, "HOLY SHIT!" 20-whatever year old me thought that was way the fuck too cool.