Vader

I really wanted to bring up some of my personal feelings about the Trump presidential campaign, which has been dominating all of the news here in the US since the middle of 2015. In some ways, the emotional arch of Trump for me is much like that of Gaston in Disney's Beauty and the Beast. A buffoonish chauvinist enters stage right. He makes disparaging comments about women (add minorities for good measure). We chuckle a bit, we shake our heads in disbelief. But this guy keeps scheming, keeps asserting himself into our lives. He's going to get exactly what he wants, even if he needs to incite violent mobs. Suddenly, we're not laughing anymore. Trump launched his campaign for President by characterizing Mexican immigrants as rapists. He's proposed banning all muslims from entry into the United States. He brags about introducing forms of torture "far worse than waterboarding" into America's wars in the middle east, whose inhabitants he's described as "animals." He says the only way to successfully fight terrorism is to not only kill terrorists, but to "kill the families" of terrorists. He refused to disavow white supremacists and the KKK when pressed in an interview the other week. I could go on. I have no idea what kind of president Trump would be if elected, but his behavior so far suggests a man who is not stable. To paraphrase John Oliver, I'm not sure if Trump is a white nationalist or pretending to be, but at a certain point it kind of stops mattering. Even if Trump never becomes president, damage has already been done. The Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that watches and opposes hate groups in America, has noticed an increase in boldness of racist groups this year, many of whom are responding positively to Trump's hateful rhetoric. Five Thirty Eight, a group of American statisticians that follow politics here, has found racial slurs to be commonly paired with internet searches for information about Trump's campaign. But that aside, something strikes me now in the beginning of March, and that is that Trump's supposedly imminent demise has never come. As he steamrolls his way to victory in primary after primary, I'm being forced to come to terms with a suspicion that a universe where a man like this can be the presidential nominee for one of the two major parties in the US is also a universe where such a man could conceivably be commander in chief of the greatest military and economic power on the globe. Are any other Americans on here legitimately worried about Trump, or do you still consider him little more than a paper tiger, a buffoonish diversion who will disappear by Summer? For those outside the US, are there analogous right wing nativist movements in your own countries that have you biting your nails? Anyways, I'm sure many of you are tired of hearing about Trump everywhere you look, but I thought if there was one place on the internet where we could thoughtfully consider this demagogue's rise to prominence in American politics, it might be here.

I haven't posted here in a while, but I felt inspired to get this message out there. Not being from San Fran I had never heard of Postmates until they started sponsoring Idle Thumbs a couple weeks ago. As someone who is car-less and in Philadelphia, the service had immediate appeal to me and I took advantage yesterday of the offer code "thumbs," though I am sad to report I did not order a Whiz Burger (such establishments do not exist on the East Coast, and I am a vegetarian which I think probably rules out "Whiz" as well as "Burger"). In any case, I found there to be a lack of tipping option when I put in my order. I was immediately a bit dismayed by this, as I know how poorly food services jobs pay. Even with the added "delivery fee," my driver would be left with only a few dollars to show for about 30-45 minutes of physical labor, as I found out that Postmates keeps 20% of delivery fees for themselves as overhead. Even though the base cost of deliveries might seem pricy, it is actually quite a lot of work for those who do the delivering. They should really be paid a tip on top of the service cost in order for them to pull in anything approaching a living wage. I found out afterward that Postmates does give you an option to tip once they send you your receipt by email, but to me this seemed somewhat obscured and unintuitive. Because I didn't know I would have such an option, I tipped my Postmate with cash. People in the service industry often struggle to make ends meet, so I just thought it would be good if the Thumbs Postmates community could be known for their generous tips. Thanks.

I think that BOTW lacks Mario controls because the run/jump function is not central to the gameplay. It's more important to have the run and action or "attack" buttons in easy access rather than the "jump" button. Being able to run and attack quickly is essential to optimally positioning yourself when engaging multiple enemies in battle. As someone else pointed out, running/jumping feels good but if anything offer a bit of a disadvantage as it needlessly drains the stamina wheel. I still enjoy the feeling it gives, though. I've grown accustomed to shifting my thumb slightly when I want to pull off the run-jump combo. I still think the choice is entirely defensible considering which button combinations actually offer gameplay benefit. Of course, if the game offered button mapping players could try both and decide for themselves which works better. With so many other conventions thrown out, it wouldn't have hurt if Nintendo had given us that option.

The discussion about button placement on Nintendo controllers had the hopeless Nintendo fanboy in me yelling at the pod. The thing is, I have the opposite experience of Chris: my go to gaming machines for my whole life has been PC (keyboard and mouse) or Nintendo. A year or so ago, I got my first Xbox controller for a new gaming pc, and it took me an embarrassingly long time to get used to the "weird" placements of the buttons ("Y" is where "x" should be!) side note: nintendo's button scheme precedes Xbox's by almost a decade. Oh well. I hate the part of me that gets annoyed at this stuff

It's probably safe to think of Christmas 2017 as the "true launch," the months before then are probably just fans getting to play it early. The lineup from Nintendo is solid for year one of a new console: Zelda, Mario, Splatoon, and new original multiplayer (Arms). If people were expecting more than that, they probably should have tempered their expectations. Those will be plenty to occupy both my time and bank account for a good while. I was never not going to buy the new Nintendo console eventually, but the Mario and Splatoon announcements coupled with the NES Classic shortage fiasco inspired me to preorder fast. Now if only they could bring down the cost of those peripherals...

huh, thanks Danielle!

I will admit I didn't immediately make the sexual connection when I heard the name. I think Danielle is reading it as an S&M reference. Also, I'm glad I can always count on Jake and Danielle to always have opinions on the latest Nintendo news. Every video game podcast needs at least one of those.

I think I'm OK if the battery life is only a few hours. I'd prefer longer battery life, sure, but the crazy portability of this thing is still killer even if I do need to camp out somewhere with an electrical outlet. Hell, I even like this about the Wii U and have been known to plug the damned unit in on Amtrak Trains and Greyhounds. Once the Switch/Breath of the Wild bundle is announced, I'm preordering that jawn.

Thanks for responding. Sorry if I came across as a little combative. If you couldn't tell it really ruffles my feathers when people come across as dismissive of what I see as the rich cultural output of Latin America. I think perhaps one problem with this discussion is that I am speaking in defense of an entire genre, a genre that has a rich library beyond its Anglo-American or Western adaptations, and you seem to be making what are perhaps isolated critiques of specific works? I'm not sure what specific elf-imbued work of fiction you are referring to here (if any), but perhaps that poorly developed manifestation of a spiritual reality in a material world is what offends you, not the concept of material-spiritual hybridity itself. This could perhaps also explain your comment about critiques of western civilization being "heavy handed." Again, that sounds more like a critique of something you have a specific beef with than of the genre as a whole, unless you truly are just tired of the heaters hating on colonialism. In this sense, maybe your criticisms are not unlike someone saying that all American action flicks are bad because they saw Transformers 2

Yes, thank you! I was going to go into some Anglo American cultural myths if anyone pressed me on this but you beat me to the punch.

I just need to share the email I wrote the show about the Magical Realism discussion. Was hoping what I wrote might get discussed in the show, but understand that the hosts got lots of emails. I appreciated Danielle's humility. I'm sure Rob means well, but I couldn't help but find him a little condescending. He seems to be operating under the assumption that magical thinking in the Secular Anglo Western world doesn't exist and that in this worldview folks just purely operate as rational beings. Rob, everyone sees the world through a mix of magical and materialist thinking. You can have a belief in things like ghosts as a lens of narrative cultural interpretation and also embrace science. That, in fact, is one of the few cross-cultural norms in our post-colonial times. Magical thinking just looks more obvious when you observe it as an outsider of a culture foreign to you. To act as though the Secular Anglo Western lens is so unique and perfectly well reasoned is just patronizing. Maybe I look at the destruction of the planet that your non-spiritual, materialist paradigm has brought down on us and see THAT as a truly irrational mode of thinking. In light of this, it's a little rich to hear someone from this school of thought complain that the anti-colonial perspective is heavy handed. If that's the case, the whole story of the Americas must be a sappy melodrama we should all just forget so we can blow fossils out of our tail pipes and rebuild every piece of dead land to meet our every industrial whim. I love you Rob, but I really think you need to look outside yourself and check out how others might perceive what just seems to you as 100% normative and smart. Oh well. Here's what I wrote. ____________ Hi R&D, Maybe I can help shed some light on this often invoked but seldom understood genre of "magical realism." Magical realism has its roots in the 20th Century Latin American literary tradition. To have a better grasp of what this means, I would highly recommend checking out the works of authors like Isabelle Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. What Danielle described as "inconsistency" can be better understood as "hybridity." That is, people experiencing life on different simultaneous planes of reality. Many mestizo and indigenous folks get this. Beause of the melding of european and indigenous-american cultures, we often interpret things both rationally and narratively, both materialistically and spiritually. Pan's Labyrinth, counter to Rob's point, actually presents an excellent example of this. Ofelia experiences her abusive, imperialistic stepfather both as a harsh, industrial millitarist and as a literal monster that fits in perfectly with her cultural mythology. For a real life site imbued with magical realism, check out Coricancha or Church of Santo Domingo in Cusco, Peru. Coricancha was one once a "temple of the sun" built by the Incas as a place to worship Inti, the sun god. When Spaniards conquered Cusco, they attempted to destroy all the "blasphemous" architecture and cultural sites, but were largely unable to do so because of the Incas' robust architectural designs. Thus, the Spaniards instead converted Coricancha into the Church of Santo Domingo, and today they are simultaneously experienced through the lens of both Christian and Quechua spiritual tradition. (I uploaded an image of Coriconcha). Magical realism is vital and even profoundly political in our time. Its inconsistency comes not from haphazard "world building," but from the way millions of people actually experience the world around us. Love the show, and looking forward to the next cast.

Yikes. As a Philadelphian, the tear Bill Clinton went on that disparaged BLM protestors got me pretty upset. I really think Hillary needs to either keep him in line or just stop letting him be a surrogate for her. I think this piece by Jamelle Bouie in Slate is a thoughtful reflection on Bill Clinton's tirade, and what it says about his complicated legacy. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/04/the_politics_of_bill_clinton_s_crime_bill_were_messier_than_they_seem.html

I'm @nvader90 Follow me on Twitter and maybe we can miitomo?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/04/05/this-new-york-daily-news-interview-was-pretty-close-to-a-disaster-for-bernie-sanders/ Has anyone here read the NYDN interview with Sanders? I listened to a recording last night and it was pretty... uncomfortable. My heart wants to love Sanders, but my brain keeps getting in the way

I hope so. I'll be so mad if Zelda U is an NX 'sclusive

Luckily, superdelegates often change their minds if the person they initially supported is losing national support. The current superdelegate count is how people intend to vote, not how they necessarily will. See Obama in 2012

Hillary made a similar argument about DOMA recently. She said it was passed (from many Dems perspectives) to short term stop a constitutional amendment that would have prevented marriage rights nation wide, and to preserve the ability of individual states to allow marriage rights even if the climate for that wasn't good nationally (a more draconian law could have stopped marriages in places like Massachusetts). I could see this as either being a bit of politically convenient revisionism or being the outlook she and Bill actually had at the time, it's hard to know. The point is that it's much better to look at the telos of someone's career than individual actions. This will better indicate what they might do when they actually have the power to do it (see also the fact that Lyndon Johnson fought like hell, way harder than Kennedy, for three sweeping civil rights bills as President when as a senator the Texas political climate prevented him from doing much of anything on that front)

See, I would argue that DADT was the first step. It laid the groundwork for its eventual replacement with a better policy by at least ending witch hunts and barring certain forms of harassment. I feel the same way about the ACA (I speak as a person who would have no health insurance without it). By mandating insurance coverage for everyone and subsidizing the market, there is room to incrementally adapt the legislation to cost less and more effectively meet that universal coverage mandate. This might be wishful thinking, but we were never going to just shut down every single insurance provider in America and replace them with a single payer solution the next morning. We started with DADT, now we have something better. We have started ACA, and I think if we elect people who care about fighting for it we can also build something better from that too. I'm starting my masters in Public Administration in the Fall, so yeah I'm probably more of an incrementalist than my activist friends want me to be, but I really do think an all-or-nothing approach simply doesn't work. Why do you think Ted Cruz' conservative republican colleagues hate him? He's actually hurting their cause, not helping it with his scorched-earth stance.

Ted Cruz would agree.

It's also worth noting that DADT was a compromise. Bill and Hillary wanted people to be able to serve in the military regardless of sexual orientation, but DADT was what they ultimately ended up with. In addition to forcing gay service members to remain closeted, it also banned the harassment of closeted folks. I'm certainly not defending DADT, but it would be unfair to characterize it as something that the Clintons pushed through to bar gay folks from the service. In fact, it was just the opposite. I'm sure Hillary was as thrilled as anyone when the Obama administration was able to get it repealed and replaced with a non discriminatory policy (which is what the Clintons wanted from the start). It should also be noted that the '90s were not a time when LGBT rights were exactly in the mainstream of american politics. The limited steps that the Clintons did take, contextually, were pretty monumental in that they occurred in defiance of the political wisdom of their day (I don't mean to make it sound like it was all them, I'm sure there are plenty of LGBT activists to thank for lobbying them). It also bugs me that Hillary gets flack for how late she was coming out for marriage equality when Obama, Biden, and basically every other mainstream democrat did so around the same time. Discrimination was wrong then and it's wrong now. She hasn't been here as long as she should've been (almost no one has), but she's certainly here now. Also, should it really be a shock that in a democracy a politician would change their opinion on something around the same time as the people? That's kind of what's supposed to happen. If you want to knock Hillary for something, knock her for her connections to large corporate interests and for her hawkish foreign policy stance. If you're going rule out anyone who pre-2012 opposed marriage equality regardless of their recent activities or everything else in their career, I'm afraid you're going to find yourself at a bit of a loss for political allies in Washington.

Sorry Just miss Sean and want either an update on when he'll be back or an acknowledgement that he's gone. Didn't mean to insult.

Seconded. I wrote in about a month or two ago asking about Sean's absence, and then he mysteriously appeared on the following episode. At this point he should be introduced as a special guest rather than a regular host, like Steve Gaynor

I have a Syber Vapor, which is (in terms of hardware) almost identical to CyberPower's Steam Machine, except comes with Windows 10 instead of SteamOS. I have it set up to to launch directly into Big Picture Mode. Overall, it works pretty well. There are times when something crashes and I need to contend with the harsh realization that I am just using a PC hooked up to a TV rather than a streamlined console and need to take out the ole' wireless keyboard and mouse, but it does a decent enough job of maintaining the illusion most of the time. I should mention that it's traveled across the country twice for an RMA :-/ Bad power supply and the first time I sent it they didn't find the problem so just sent it back to me without actually doing anything. Ugh. Seem to have gotten it fixed now though, and it was all covered by warranty.

I remember skyward sword having a bunch of clever puzzles and gameplay elements, particularly in the sections leading up to dungeons.

Yeah, she was so good during the Benghazi hearings. My favorite Hillary moments are when she's just being the smart adult in the room and not trying to go for awkward attacks on Sanders, who really is a guy that doesn't seem to have a lot of blemishes on his record if you are a liberal. I'm really not looking forward to Trump going after her. I'm sure he's going to bring up Bill's affairs during their debates and it is going to be really uncomfortable and gross... (assuming she and Trump are the nominees, I still think it is possible though unlikely it will be not-trump and/or Sanders)