Bolegium

Waited for Merus to pop up on the map before I decided to broadcast my location to everyone on the internet.

Funny you should mention 'The Drop', the last movie I recall seeing more or less ignorant and with an absence of expectations is 'Rundskop' (Bullhead), the debut film from the director of 'The Drop'. In general I very rarely chose to see a movie I know little about (or to be more accurate, very rarely refrain from researching a movie i'm interested in seeing). It's a shame that the novelty of being pleasantly surprised is more rare, but I think in general I like knowing a bit a bout a film before hand so I can be engaged on it's own terms, rather than have some arbitrary and uninformed expectations colour the experience. Having said that, 'Moon', 'How To Train Your Dragon', 'Primer', and 'Mind Game' are movies I knew very little about going into, and feel like that naivety probably added to the experience in a (very) positive way. For the complete opposite of seeing a movie 'without any info', FILMCRITHULK finally published an article about 'Gone Girl' (http://badassdigest.com/2015/01/13/film-crit-hulk-smash-dialogues-gone-girl-and-the-maybe-art-of-post-feminist/), and now I feel informed and comfortable enough to actually go see the movie.

I know a person who pronounces vignette as 'vin-yay'. I've never corrected him because last time I tried, he was adamant that I was mistaken when I told him that actually gmail ignores periods in addresses. He's a really good listener.

Just saw Birdman (still in pre-release screenings in Australia), really liked it. Random thought about long choreographed single takes: they are basically the antithesis of improvisation, and having finely choreographed sequences feel naturalistic and improvised is incredibly difficult to pull off, if not impossible. I don't know if on the whole Birdman was 'successful' in doing that, or if that was what it was even going for, and instead it was deliberately contrasting the somewhat naturalistic dialogue/action with the choreographed long takes. In any case the acting is great, and it's really tempting for me to over-think all the formalistic details of the movie. I've also been really lazy about seeing movies that I've been meaning to, so thanks to people for reminders to see 'We Are The Best' and 'Mr. Turner'. Nightcrawler was also great, learning about the production details and thinking about the movie after seeing it made me appreciate it even more. I really want to see 'Prisoners' and 'Enemy' now as well. Also 'Big Hero 6' and 'Into The Woods'. And 'Foxcatcher', 'Selma', 'Inherent Vice', 'Rosewater'... film distribution in Australia really sucks.

Did not watch the whole video, or find it charming Choosing to be optimistic is nice and all, but it seems like having a 'positive' attitude is more important to her above anything else. - I was going to list the many problems I have with her video ("double-x chromosome"?), but her whole rhetoric of being polite and inoffensive makes that too much of a hassle for the good it does. I skimmed a bunch of her other videos and it's the same, I wouldn't call her insincere, but it seems like she's more interested in cultivating this persona than anything else. Welp, that was my miserable attempt to not be "negative" (even though I think her video thoroughly deserves it). Short version: She misconstrues Anita's arguments to paint her as overly negative, biased, and unfairly selective in choice of evidence, but does much the same herself. Seems to be particularly defensive about Zelda being called out as a damsel character.

Since it's being brought up again, I just want to say that my respect and amazement for people who have escaped childhood indoctrination knows no bounds. The fortitude and honesty required to do that is far more impressive and admirable than the lazy kind of disbelief I have. Things like 'The Clergy Project' are far more inspiring than whatever arguments Dawkins comes up with (even if he didn't have terrible views about a bunch of topics).

Sealion as a 'metaphor' for gg, 'analogy' is maybe a gooder idiom for me to deploy? Sorry, first time in this topic, couldn't resist

Yeah, i've never particularly liked the sealion metaphor. I get the point of it, it just doesn't hold under even mild scrutiny and there are plenty of better metaphors we could come up with. This also happened: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/01/8chan-tries-swatting-gamergate-critic-sends-cops-to-an-old-address/

Oh shit, that sounds a lot like the Bicameral theory of mind/consciousness proposed by Julian Jaynes (and first brought to my attention by Neal Stephenson in 'Snow Crash'). Ultimately I don't expect the Bicameral theory to be particularly accurate, but i've been obsessed with the idea for many years, especially the notion that language is a necessary 'technological' development for 'consciousness' to emerge from, rather than the other way around.

One of my greatest joys in life is being in a room filled with smarter people. By smarter people I mean ostensibly 'intelligent' people who on average aren't actually smarter than you. By joy I mean despairing at the fact that intelligence doesn't grant immunity from being a douchebag, and rather exacerbates it (helped by many of other privileges). Long story short, high school at an academically selective one sucked, but at least that and a bunch of other experiences means it's much easier to stop myself from being a douchecanoe like TB. *being surrounded by genuinely smarter, nicer, interesting-er people is indeed a very joyful experience. That's one of the reasons I like it here on the Idle Thumbs so much

'Skeptic' and 'secular' seem to be words that are the most encompassing of non-religious, non-"spiritual", atheistic worldviews, and the words with the least amount of baggage (although skeptic can also be used to refer to 'climate change skeptic' and other beliefs where such skepticism in the face of rigorous evidence is arguably unreasonable). Just to be pedantic, 'agnostic' refers to the position that knowledge about "god" (or any other phenomena or concept) is unattainable, or at least currently not known. 'Agnostic theism', and 'agnostic atheism' are both valid positions since agnosticism only refers to knowledge, and not necessarily to belief. Popular usage of the word is much more fluid obviously, so whatever. I'd argue that if something exists, then by definition it can be "known" to some degree however small and incomplete or inaccurately. If something is entirely and immutably outside the "scope of perception", then such a thing is meaningless and by definition does not "exist" (since following that line of thought allows for an infinite number of equally meaningless concepts to 'exist'). Genuine agnosticism would be a temporary phase one would have before evidence has been found to prove/disprove a belief, or in the case of something that is fundamentally 'unprovable' - a position that is indistinguishable from disbelief, though that's just me being a tediously literal prescriptivist, so continue using 'agnostic' and 'spiritual' however you like. See also: theological noncognitivism, and Newton's Flaming Laser Sword by Mike Alder.

New dälek track:

Fair enough, edited my original post and made the trigger warning obvious.

Just watched this short from Adult Swim: It gets REALLY distrubing, and not (in my opinion) in a ironically humorous way that their other shorts do like in Too Many Cooks. Probably deserves a trigger warning

Wow What the fuck At everything

Didn't really keep up to date with current releases. As mentioned above, I really liked Clipping, FKA Twigs, Future Islands (their David Letterman performance was incredible), Mogi Grumbles' FRACT OSC OST. Other favourites: The Transistor soundtrack(s) by Darren Korb and Ashley Barrett, the Nebraska soundtrack by Mark Orton (from 2013, and since I'm cheating I might as well mention the Upstream Color soundtrack by Shane Carruth), A World Lit Only By Fire by Godflesh. Superfavourites: Reachy Prints by Plaid (album playlist here: ) Open by The Necks (three piece improv "jazz" group from Australia that does album length tracks, Open is probably the most melodic and accessible they've been in a while and it's great) Still need to listen to all the new stuff released by Swans, St Vincent, Shabazz Palaces, Sun Kil Moon, The Bug, and so forth.

Shawn Lee did the music for Bully right? Never played but seen some praise for the soundtrack. His other stuff does sound superficial as you put it based on what little I've heard.

Haha, I mentioned Broadchurch but I haven't even watched any of it yet. Will rectify soon.

I should just listen to the whole album already, that was amazing. Clams Casino - I'm God (Video has exposed nipples in it superbriefly so maybe NSFW)

Just got 80 Days, my first mobile gaming purchase (aside from humble bundle bundles)!

(Sourced from a commenter on rockpapershotgun) supposedly Steam/Valve have private terms and conditions that are visible only to greenlight submitters that they must abide by, and were clearly breached by Hatred specifically concerning depiction of violence. I can't say for certain how reliable this information is, but haven't seen any evidence to the contrary yet. It would appear that Valve are following their own internal protocols rather than being pressured externally. Maybe they can be criticised for some hypocrisy, but that doesn't automatically mean that Hatred should be accepted on Steam. I don't know why it's been allowed back on Greenlight, those comments are petty and stupid. I guess they were so angry and 'oppressed' by being called 'neckbeards' or whatever that they had to retaliate by attacking blue hair, because they couldn't possibly be angry about people not liking a terrible game right? *Edited: now with source - http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/12/16/hatred-removed-from-steam/#comment-1768061

Congrats to you both!

I was avoiding mentioning documentaries, because soooo many to list, and also I have no idea if they count as 'tv series'. I dunno how this topic is supposed to work.

The pressure differential of the micro gravity suction toilet is:

Tacoma will feature "toast" TacOmA SoundTrack by Chris Remo