Granny Dragon

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About Granny Dragon

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  1. Congratulations, Rob! This is great to hear. I really, really enjoy listening to you, reading your stuff. My best wishes for the future! By the way, is it still too late to reply to that listener's WW2 letter? I have a reply I didn't get to finish, so I worry that the window has passed.
  2. Idle Weekend February 13, 2017: Stat Decay

    Thanks. I started listening to the original file through headphones and it was a slightly schizophrenic experience.
  3. Idle Thumbs !!: With Bagblast

    I like the idea of starting a new show, and will definitely give it a listen. I am not really enjoying podcasts which are 100% about games. Idle Thumbs had the right mix for me, and so does Idle Weekend. Even Three Moves Ahead is not exclusively about gaming, and sometimes the discussions about actual history and warfare are more interesting than the game talk. I listened a bit to the Bombcast, which is 100% gaming, and some Shall We Play a Game episodes (also pretty much 100%), but they didn't do it for me. There is one German gaming podcast I listen to (Stay Forever), but it is about old games and the hosts spend a lot of time putting the games into different contexts.
  4. Idle Thumbs !!: With Bagblast

    It's funny how inappropriate "Fuck Chris" sounded to me, while "F.uck Nick" to me is completely normal. Congrats Nick.
  5. I think you should cast your pods filled with whatever makes you enthusiastic about casting, and I always enjoyed the discussions "off-track". At the same time, I'd like it if you kept video games as the central focus. It's where your common expertise is and I get much out of your observations and experiences especially nowadays when my gaming time is more limited. P.S.: You probably know that The Last of Us is inspired by a fungus that alters ant behaviour. There is another parasite (a fluke) which infects ants - one fluke in each ant digs into the host's nerve clusters and causes it to climb up a blade of grass and stay there so it gets eaten by sheep. Actually, the full cycle is sheep -> snail -> ant -> sheep.
  6. Idle Thumbs 297: Patent Pending

    I agree that the third film is better by admitting that it is meaningless trash and at least having fun with it. Lost World tries to be enviromentalist for half of the film. I remember the dinosaur-catching scene to be quite moving in a what-are-you-doing-to-these-majestic-creatures sense, but quickly after that the film starts going nowhere until the end where it wraps up by trying to be King Kong. You probably know that Lost World is also based on a novel, Crichton's sequel to the first book. In the first book, Malcom dies. Crichton revives him for the second book. Lost World the novel is very different from the film, but it is among Crichton's worst books. Crichton later said that he would never write a sequel again (he didn't).
  7. Idle Thumbs 297: Patent Pending

    *slow clap* Idle Machete. Some PhD students here at uni decided to watch "all" of Star Wars using the Machete order (Episodes 4, 5, 2, 3, 6). I wasn't around for all of that, but in my mind it makes sense as an attempt to weave in some of the prequels (I personally would just watch 4, 5, 6, 7 - didn't enjoy Rogue One that much). With regard to the OT, we watched the "despecialized versions" which aim to give you the original experience in Blu-Ray quality. The work that has gone into it is insane.
  8. Idle Thumbs 295: Good... Bye

    Time Commanders is just as fun to watch as you imagine the BBC and military historians taking Total War semi-seriously to be (which is a lot of fun). Dramatic music, giant screens, lots of nail biting and shouting, but also plenty of smiles.
  9. Idle Thumbs 278: Beef Chief

    Nick, if I remember correctly, the T1000 being a machine is also a surprise in the movie. It is only revealed after Arnold shoots it and it's all silver and autohealing. So before the scene in the mall, the setup appears to be the same as in the first movie.
  10. Idle Thumbs 277: Coming Attractions

    There is a texture which contrians the code.
  11. As for Sapir-Whorf, I must say that I am impressed by how well Rob and Danielle (with help of the letters) represented and discussed the theory. I am a cognitive psychologist working in language sciences, and the relationship between language and thought (I prefer to frame it as the relationship between verbal and non-verbal behaviour) is an important part of my work. I would just like to mention one concept which I find useful, namely "thinking for speaking". If you consider how much we are used to sharing our thoughts verbally, it wouldn't be a surprise if our language biased us towards structuring thought in a way that is best suited to it, at least in communicational settings (which include writing an article or letter). The concept of thinking for speaking supports of a weak Whorfian hypothesis, and indeed weak effects have been found in several experiments including some on color perception and orientation in space (though there is some disagreement about the methods). I know analysis paralysis quite well from games in which death is of big consequence. I spent way too much time with FTL paused, trying to think of the next step and slightly afraid of pressing the play button. I made similar experiences with XCOM Ironman mode. I have played a bit of Arma 3 lately, a military sim in which one bullet can kill you (Arma is most famous for spawning DayZ). So there I am, hiding in the bushes, looking at my map, trying to figure out how to best flank the enemy while my commander tells me that the clock is ticking.
  12. I like it when there is a topic, but you have surely shown that you can just have an entertaining chat about whichever topic comes to your minds. Rob, at least one listener appreciates you pronouncing "Stasi" the right way. And, yes, Life of Others is an incredible film. A film that is different, yet similar in the way it presents consequences of German 20th centruy dictatorships is The Reader based on the book by Bernhardt Schlink and featuring a great cast. If you are interested, I would just watch it. Seriously, don't even look at the trailer. Smashing Pumpkins! Oh man. LIttle trivia: one of their tracks uses the sound of the Doom missile launcher a couple of times. To me, Metallica and Ultima will always be connected at some level. Listened to them a lot while uniting humans and Gargoyles. While the final game in the series, Ultima IX: Ascension, was a disappointment, I have fond memories of waiting for it to come out. The track I associate with waiting for Ascension is Where the WIld Things Are, also by Metallica. Weirdly, I associated the song with how imagined the game to be, and still do.
  13. Episode 348: Civilization at 25

    I always wondered whether the 4 X's in Civ needed a P for the endgame: preservation, given current themes about tye environment and the constant threat of total destruction through nuclear war. This would mean doubling down on the threat of nuclear war, e.g. by making nukes more powerful by allowing them to attack multiple cities, and on climate change/pollution.
  14. I feel that only in the past two episodes Danielle and Rob managed to get an enjoyable chemistry going. I do like how IW differs from IT, though I enjoy both shows.