Bjorn

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Posts posted by Bjorn

  1. Posted

    Every time I listen to Reveal, I'm simultaneously impressed by the quality and bummed by the content.  I caught up on a few others today after listening to the temp one, including the strawberry picking one, which featured an interview with a farm worker who was happy to have been hired by a new farm that not only paid fairly, but provided amenities like shade for breaks and working toilets. 

  3. Posted

    One of the big things is that stand-up comedians who haven't worked at improv can have this interview style where it feels like they're just burning time until the host can lob them a softball that they can use to launch into a prepared bit.  And that is death for podcasts because it doesn't really advance the conversation at all.  When the bit is over, the host either tries to dig in further to a topic where the prepared material has been expended, or the host resets and the stand-up goes back to looking for an opening to do another prepared bit.

     

    That kind of describes what the part of Chewin It I listened to today was doing.  Not so much looking to insert a prepared bit, but just milling around looking for something to catch.  They were literally talking about LA traffic (this is another thing, every comedian who lives in LA feels a compulsion to talk about living in LA.  ProTip: We don't fucking care), and it was kind of obviously about trying to get a riff going, but was just meandering.

     

     

    If you want an actually funny comedian podcast that's ALL WOMEN, try Lady 2 Lady. It's great. 

     

    Will do!

  4. Posted

    Weirdly enough, the lady and I would professionally throw ourselves into a new business, probably within 6 months after taking some time off and doing some planning.  We can't really imagine not working, we'd just rather be doing something else. 

  5. Posted

    So, in my experience, I often find that actual comedians are just not that funny on podcasts.  I've tried a bunch over the last few years, just today tried Chewin It with a couple of the Broken Lizard guys, and it was another flop.  I don't know if it's me, or the shows, but comedy and podcasts just don't seem to be a successful intersection for me. 

  10. Posted

    I keep going back to thinking about the list to filter who can and can't download the Unreal kit, and am flabbergasted by its use for game development software.  The only reason I can think of is that there is fear that someone could use it to develop either simulators or propaganda.  Someone probably could.  But that someone, who would do that, could just as easily pirate the kit, or use a "safe" name to download it.  The barrier to acquire it, if you don't care about support or a legal license, is no barrier at all.  So, the implementation of that list can functionally only have a single outcome: alienating people with certain names from access to a common tool for a big and popular industry. 

     

    I can't think of a defensible reason that anyone would ever implement that list for this specific case. 

  12. Posted

    Every time I watch Eyes Wide Shut, I'm baffled by why people seem to hate it as much as they do. It's such a good movie! Kubrick thought it was his best. I might agree.

     

    I rewatched it...a year or two ago after having not seen it since it's theatrical release.  On release, I remember not caring for it very much, it easily being my least favorite Kubrick movie.  I liked it more this time around, but I still don't think it's Kubrick at his best.  Cruise's character is, to me, by far the most boring and least interesting character in the movie (full disclosure, I super duper don't like Cruise and this may color my interpretation).  It's what I often think of as a British problem in story telling (Kubrick was American, but it's a style I associate most often with the British), viewing extreme experiences through the eyes of a "normal", as a bland outsider.  I don't think it works as often as it is used.

     

    As for why people don't like it, the themes running through it are male insecurity (across professional, personal, financial and sexual fronts), female sexual desire/fantasy and glimpses into a kind of debauchery that seems both fantastical and real at the same time, the kind of debauchery most people know that they could never experience but might want to, a dream that's just far enough out of reach to be aggravating to be informed of it's existence.  Those are all the things I like about it, but not necessarily the themes a lot of Americans want to think about when watching a movie.  It just doesn't quite work for me because I think there's a better and more interesting story waiting to be told in that material (probably Kidman's story, though I'd take the piano player as well). 

  15. Posted

    I could have worded that more clearly, but generally I think there's still a pretty clear demarcation between the YouTube/Twitch cults of personality that have developed around some streamers and organizations that have a variety of staff that will come and go over time.  If Bain suddenly took a job at Polygon, I'd still say the same thing about not liking seeing devs directly hand off promotional work to him.  On an organizational level, I could understand if someone had the same sentiment about Kotaku because their parent company has acted in some pretty reprehensible ways. 

     

    Edited to add: On topic of X2, I'm still really pumped for it, TB notwithstanding.  After last year's AAA releases left me feeling pretty meh, Xcom 2 has been a shining beacon to look forward to.

  16. Posted

    I generally think the biggest issue with fwbs is one of communication.  People often have a hard enough time communicating honestly and openly with friends or with romantic partners, but blend the two with vague boundaries and expectations and not enough communication and it's a drama stew ready to put to boil. 

  17. Posted

    Yeah it seems to have been largely swept under the rug as no one wants to be the one to question a dying man. But his ragging transphobia really should be better known by now. As someone who is not directly effected by it's easy enough to assume the marketing person doesn't know and is just doing their job, but it's hard to think about my friends who are effected and feel good about it.

     

    Oh, I totally agree with you on that, it's just I think it's sometimes easy to forget that things we're aware of generally on this board don't represent the knowledge that others have. 

     

    Also, I hadn't gone and looked at that tweet.  It's not just directing a link to him, but he was given a preview copy, which they then advertised on their official channel.  That's...got some more problems than just happening to retweet him or something.  I'd rather not see my favorite devs doing business with him. That feeds the symbiotic beast that now exists between the most powerful tubers and devs.

  18. Posted

    I still wonder how much awareness a lot of people have of TB and how he's courted his audience over the last couple of years.  I saw a thread the other day on the Warframe forums where someone linked to a TB video, and easily half of the people who commented had no idea who he was.  I think, even being a pretty dedicated enthusiast, it's possible to have missed TB's existence.  And on the dev side, they're probably more likely to know who the popular 'tubers are for marketing reasons, but that doesn't mean they have an awareness of all the actions those people have taken.  Even if you were doing some vetting of who you tweeted, a quick google of TB doesn't turn up any red flags in the first few pages, and would even paint him as sympathetic with stories about his cancer. 

  19. Posted

    I'm curious if anyone here had a similar experience: falling in unrequited love with a friend, yet trying to keep up the friendship nevertheless. I can't say that I haven't suffered a bit for it, which I'm ready to to a degree. The friendship is so strong that it is worthwhile to me. It's difficult, but it's working out (I'm not falling out of love with him after all).

    Most of my friends and my sister assume that this can't work. I think it can if the friendship is strong enough, and maybe also if the feelings of love aren't overwhelmingly strong.

     

    Do you find yourself routinely daydreaming about your friend the way you would about any crush?  I think if you're still in that kind of headspace, maintaining a healthy friendship could be difficult.  Regular contact is going to continue fanning the flames, even just inside your head, and being in that kind of mentality will naturally affect how you act around that friend.

     

    That said, I think the friendship can be kept and survive just fine, but I'd suggest backing off a bit for a few weeks if this is someone you see on a regular basis.  Even a little bit of separation can do a lot to clear the head.  Keep in touch over texts or social media, but no alone time, dinners, Netflix, etc., for a few weeks.  I know if I'm crushing on someone pretty hard and it's not going to go anywhere, just some space really helps get things back to a better balance in my own head.

     

    But, if you don't have that kind of crush mentality going on right now, then you're probably fine. 

     

     

    *snip*

     

    Fuck people!

     

    Dude, that blows.  Fuck 'em.  I lost two of my closest friends from high school in a similar way (not exact, but close enough), combination of weird jealousy in their relationship plus all of us growing and maturing in different directions.  It still sucks though, they're people I'd enjoy catching up with once or twice a year if that was a possiblity. 

  20. Posted

    Seems like the generally accepted theory is that code breaking efforts accidentally skipped a step, meaning the Red Herring badge was obtained earlier than intended, something that encouraged people to keep looking for clues when really the finish line had already been crossed.

    Another complimentary theory is that the ARG was added only after Valve employees noticed people searching for one and decided to have some fun with it. This can be supported by a couple of things, such as the late date that Store pages were changed to house part of the puzzle's mechanism, and the Red Herring badge's "ARG?" subtitle.

    There's a good rundown on the Reddit sub's wiki if you want more -https://www.reddit.com/r/steamsaledetectives/wiki/summary

     

    Thanks!

  21. Posted

    Souls talk!  

    Weirdly enough, one of the elements that attracts me to the Souls games is not just their difficulty, but also to play dress up with dolls and show them off to people.  It's like Dark Fantasy Barbie.  Commonly referred to as the game of Fashion Souls.  Since playing with others (either co-op or vs) is core to the experience, it's fun to do that in style.  So on repeat playthroughs, they became about designing perfect character designs through a combination of face/body, clothes and weapon selection.  And the 3 actual Souls games gave increasingly better tool sets to do that, culminating in Dark Souls 2, which has so many options.  This was a reason that Bloodborne was a bit disappointing to myself and others, the weapon and outfit variety was much more pared back, so most characters just kind of looked the samey.  You couldn't end up with a three way pitched battle between Sauroman, a peasant farmer and Robin Hood.  Indiana Jones coudln't face off against Muhammad Ali.  

    Also, I enjoy how rewarding those games are to explore the environment, which I feel has a relationship to their both their difficulty and how everything is hand crafted.  Take a Skyrim, which has a majesty and scale that the Souls games might not, but 20 caves in, you've seen 20 variations on cave and if you were to somehow figure out a way to get killed, you wouldn't be excited about taking another shot at the 20th cave to see if there was a path you'd overlooked.  The difficulty in the Souls games encourages patience, a slower pace, and re-exploration.

  24. Posted

    On Toy Story's logic, I always took it to be that the toys don't actually have the foggiest clue what the rules are, and this is all a quasi-religious explanation for them that's been retold from toy to toy, akin to ancient people's making up a new god (rule) for everything that suddenly needed an explanation.  The toys are, themselves, a kind of micro-cargo cult.  No one, viewer included, is ever actually clued into what is going on in terms of rules or logic of toy life.  So breaking the rules is not a "You've violated the laws of physics" thing, but a "You can't take god's name in vain!" thing.