Chris

I also mentioned it by name in this episode!

Rome is his first love, so it's not surprising to me that those episodes would end up better. I really enjoy the series, but I'm speaking from the perspective of a non-historian.

So are we now, technically. Wizzard Media is the company that runs Libsyn, effectively a content host that focuses exclusively on podcasts. You can also use Libsyn to host your actual podcast archive pages and stuff like that (which Three Moves Ahead does, at least until our new website is done), but we just use it for hosting. Previously we were using Amazon S3, which just got too expensive. Also, thanks for the thread resurrection! I had no idea Carlin released new episodes recently. I had assumed he gave up. Anyway: Wizzard.

If the world goes a certain way, stuff like bandwidth caps are just going to go away or change in how they are applied. The inertia of many major entertainment industries isn't going to be stopped by ISPs having some technical or economic kinks to work out. It would take something a lot more fundamental than that. There are always changes in infrastructure, convention, and business models that have to change when major shifts occur. I similarly wasn't making an argument for or against anything based on personal preference or taste. I'm just saying that this is clearly the way things are moving. I buy all my books in hardcover, and yet as of last month, e-books just overtook physical books in fiction sales. I almost never buy music digitally, and yet the music industry has long since reached the tipping point in that area. Film and television are moving in that direction as well. I just think it's kind of silly to assume that video games--which unlike ANY of those forms are actually digital in fundamental nature--are somehow going to hold out. I'm not saying it's going to happen immediately. I made a point to say there's no way it's going to happen in the next generation--and as we've seen over the last seven years, a single generation can last a while these days. But it's definitely going to happen.

Shoot an email to questions@idlethumbs.net with your name and email address.

I read in large part because of all that shit. I feel it's important to carve out time for one of the few remaining major avenues of culture that isn't totally dominated by technology and spectacle. I don't really have a concrete answer about how to make the time, but that'll be different for everyone.

Seven-day would make sense based on our experience. It definitely wasn't midnight though--maybe there's something wacky about our clock settings? I haven't even looked in a month.

Maybe I'm still not understanding something, but wouldn't that still be fixed by addressing the first complaint?

Could you clarify the thing in smaller text? Is that not the same complaint as the previous one, or am I misreading it? And yeah there's no main site link. I don't know why we haven't put one in yet. We need to remember to do that.

Yeah I get that generally, but Korax then referred to other LOMA games as being first or second person, which I don't really understand. It's not a big deal, I was just curious as to his meaning.

I'm confused about the usage of "third-person" in this case. How are other Lords Management games not third-person? I've never seen a first-person LOMA game. (And what do you mean by second-person in the context of a video game camera perspective?)

Welcome, new people!

I definitely felt that simplicity was appropriate to the work. I've heard consistently great things about the Harbach; I need to pick it up.

Yes, that is basically what I mean. I don't feel Franzen was passing judgment or contriving his characters in such a way as to invite easy judgment. I'll take your word on The Corrections, which I haven't read; I think I'd just heard comments to the effect of describing it as more biting.

I haven't read Crime & Punishment since high school (although I should), but Lolita is a goddamn powerhouse of a book. Nabokov is a hell of a stylist.

To me what really hit home about Freedom was not so much its scale of ambition or anything like that; its value for me came, on the most direct level, in the truthfulness of its characters. Without going into specific personal context, there were many subtleties in characters' motivations and actions that were shockingly (in some cases, sort of distressingly) reminiscent of and accurate to--and, by extension, revealing with respect to--people within my own family. And although I know some people don't agree about this, I found Franzen's portrayal of his characters to be humane and generous (I haven't read The Corrections, but as I understand it, that is a big difference between the two novels?), which was very valuable to me in reflecting on those people in my life, especially during difficult interactions.

The New York Review of Books published a great piece comparing Stalker and STALKER, although oddly it didn't much deal with Roadside Picnic: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/may/01/zone-chernobyl-tarkovsky-video-game/

You can, which is awesome.

I'm pretty sure they weren't. I can't imagine that being feasible in the Quake II engine without a lot of effort.

Yep, linked in the first post of this thread. There's also a link in the sidebar of the Idle Thumbs blog. http://steamcommunity.com/groups/idlelords

Sean might have a better reason, but as far as I'm aware it's just because Dota 2 is a game Sean happened to get into. It wasn't a case of "I'm interested in Lords Management, which would should I try?" Even though Deadly Premonition never really resonated with me, I understand why it did with some people and I think you're right.

Lots of modern literature does talk about other stuff. I think the field is unjustly pigeonholed in that way; there's a huge range of material. Here are some currently-working authors I've read whose most recent novels (released in the last couple years) can't be described that way: David Mitchell, Umberto Eco, Ann Patchett, Hilary Mantel, Jeffrey Eugenides, Alice LaPlante, Michael Chabon, Haruki Murakami. Debatable: Hari Kunzru, Tom Perotta. No doubt there are countless more examples, but this is just from my recent experience.

He's published four novels, which technically makes him eligible, but only two of those novels are highly celebrated. He's also considerably younger than most of the authors on the list (many of whom are dead). I think these lists tend to implicitly evaluate the body of work of a relatively full life. Anyway, I thought Freedom was a really incredible novel.

Hopefully it will be available on Steam as part of a bundle with the game, or separately for people who already own the game.

Christopher Hitchens has also spoken and written on the topic of having an internalized American identity that isn't immediately apparent to others: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/05/on-becoming-american/3889/