unimural

In the toilet scene, Chad walks in as Hawk is dismantling the toilet. Hawk hardly acknowledges Chad's perfectly reasonable puzzlement, just telling him to use the ladies bathroom. And sure, Chad is a dick in that scene as well. As a character Chad is seems to be a thread of the dark underbelly of the town, and I think we're supposed to get from these scenes the sense of everyone being tired of Chad's bullshit. But with these scenes (the toilet and the meeting room) being so distant from each other, their impact is more individual, and at least what I see is bunch of people being kind of petty towards each other. Someone being an asshole does not make it right or useful to be an asshole back at them. Unless one wants to be vindictive and delight in the comeuppance. But I feel Chad hasn't earned that yet in the series.

I think common human decency tells you that you should open a door for someone who has his hands full. Especially as you want the person to leave to room. By not facilitating that you're both mean and counterproductive. I agree with Urthman, it felt small of Hawk. Funnily enough, many scenes at the police station seem to showcase this lack of energy or effort in caring about other people. In very small, everyday manner. Truman's wife(?) complaining, Truman's exhausted attitude towards said complaining, everything Chad does, Hawk's attitude towards Chad. And to some degree Andy/Lucy show as well. Even if that's mostly just an awkward gag machine.

I quite enjoyed Mike's genie-email, but I think the poop-apocalypse math was off. The mass of Earth is roughly 6 * 10^24 kg. A ton is 10^3 kg. A billion tons is 10^12 kg. To increase the Earth's mass even by 1 percent means increasing Earth's mass by roughly 10^22 kg. With the extra 7 billion tons a year, this would take 10 billion years. In roughly 5 billion years the sun will turn into a red giant, swallowing Earth and all the extra poop. Stuff is big and takes a long time. Another way of looking at is that nothing close to humans eating half the planet a year happens. We only eat very very tiny portions of Earth's crust. Or, yet another way of looking at it is that if 7 billion tons is 50% of the mass of the Earth, the humans would make up something like 2-3 percent of the mass of the Earth. Still probably doomed by all the antimatter explosions and shockwaves. EDIT: Also, with the extra poop would could fertilize a lot of the barren lands, and we could convert all farm land into carbon sinks and combat climate change. And cause all our waters to become overgrown.

Jake is in good company with his worries regarding the total mass of poo. In Douglas Adams' radio play Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy there is a beautiful planet (the name of which escapes me) with massive tourism. Because so many transient people eat and excrete, the difference is surgically removed from your body at the spaceport. The Adamsian closing on the bit was about needing to remember to get a receipt at the toilet. I miss the possibility of new Douglas Adams. Or am nostalgic towards it. However, I'm more dubious of Jake's postulation of uneaten food disappearing causing the net effect also disappearing/fading. So what happens to those people you club to death with your frozen meat clubs and coconuts? Do they become zombies? Can zombies still wish for food? Do they wish for brains, or do their merely eat yours as a revenge? I also want to say I never realized how relaxing it is to listen to an hour of jovial banter with nonsense digressions. The only negative is that some people on my commute look at me strangely when I can't help but to grin and laugh thanks to the show.

This was the first episode in this run where I enjoyed the podcast more than the show. Still a lot of fun. The original run had it's share of detached, meaningless things, but it also had very strong focal points. One being the town and it's people. In this season we haven't really gotten that, which makes it harder to approach said things. Even as Windom Earle appeared and was silly, we saw him interact with the characters we knew, and that helped in keeping things grounded in the shared reality of series. Where James has always been cool. I do suspect this is intentional, but I admit that at this point I'm really looking forward to either some grounding or progress.

I totally missed the bead thingy even having watched the sequence twice. The mother-theory makes a lot of sense, although I'm still baffled by the whole thing and don't quite know what to think. The mouth-face of the arm and the arm-doppelganger is quite similar to the face of the glass box monster. Or perhaps it's the weird Dougie-meat-blob. Upon rewatching the glass box sequences what was strange was that as Good Coop initially falls from the red room, he falls on top of the glass box outside the building, then sinks in. Would Good Coop have made the transition safely, if he hadn't been caught by the glass box? If so, was the intent of the glass box to capture things moving from Lodge-realm to Earth? Or it could just be a really boring tv that explodes. Not that it really matters, I suspect, and I wouldn't be too surprised if it's never resolved.

Do you send postcards internationally? I do try to avoid collecting stuff, but Jake's designs are always rad! I have no idea how much it costs in US. If it's anything like here in Finland, a dollar or two more would surely cover the international postage.

I fully get the feeling of not wanting to get into an expansion before coming to grips with the base game. However, with a game like EUIV I'm sure there are many people who just want to play it through once, and kind of be done with it. And I also get that you'd want the 'complete' experience for that. In EUIV I feel, thanks to the free patches, the difference between the expansions and the base game isn't as huge as one might imagine. There probably isn't a single mechanic that has stayed the same since launch, and there are a whole bunch of new mechanics, all in the patched base game. I usually recommend that people do not buy any of the expansions, since the patched base game is so expansive already. If after playing a game you feel like getting back into, then look at what the expansions add, and choose what you want. Conversely it gets kind of annoying if you want 'all the features'. To get all the diplomatic options, all the possible event chains etc. you need to buy almost all of the expansions. Paradox's success has certainly had an impact, even if I'm not entirely convinced the lineage is necessarily exactly that when it comes to Total War. I've idly wondered if in 10 years we will have a 3MA show where Rob will realize he's come to hate the grand strategy genre which just keeps on trying to recreate CKII.

I also recommend watching the trailer in the lowest available bitrate for an illustrative demonstration on video compression.

wizardjam.museum Now you just have to either start a museum or bribe ICANN.

I honestly do not understand this point of view. Could you please refer me to something that supports this? It is such a common point people bring up that I would like to know what they find more belligerent than what Trump has said. So you're saying Hillary would create a war with Russia in Europe? That doesn't make any sense. The path to war with Russia in Europe that I see is Russia trying to either directly annex lands or in other ways violating the sovereignty of other nations. As they've already done. I could see the situation devolving to an ultimatum, with the options being either caving in to Russia's demands or escalation to armed conflict. The threat of war would be due to Russia's ambitions, not due to us having an ally in US. I can understand Russia wanting hegemony over Eastern Europe. It is hard to say what exact shape that would take, and what consequences that would have. I certainly would not welcome that. In all honesty, I'm short-sighted enough to not see benefits there. Besides those of specific interest groups. Not that the cultural and economical dominance of the US has been strictly a good thing for Europe, but it certainly hasn't been a bad thing as a whole. EU currently has a rather precarious position, what with Brexit creating a lot of uncertainty over the shape of EU in the future. If EU shrinks or dilutes, it seems likely Russia will try to take advantage. For EU, not having US as an ally in this scenario would be pretty terrible. Thanks for this point. Wealth is a clear metric, and there's utility in it. Some people probably directly value this. I've kind of glossed it over, as I mostly view his financial success as evidence of his willingness to screw the other guy over, his basic lack of empathy.

I was kind of dreading how the Depths would be for Nick since he was so frustrated with the Lower Undead Burg. I was fully expecting him to need a full stream to get past the place. I got cursed a bunch of times and lost twice as often. Slimed a few times as well. It took me hours. Que Nick just waltzing through the thing. I don't think I've ever seen such a blessed thing. Tiny Head destroyed the Depths like nothing. Admittedly my impression of the Depths may be biased. I hate the place. I also hate the boss, which Nick took apart with relative easy. With regards to Nick's comment about the bosses of DS being inferior to DS3, I personally like the distribution and placement DS has of major enemies, minor bosses and major bosses. Or at least that's how I view it. And how the minor bosses (like Taurus, Capra, the dragon Nick still hasn't killed) are different, and either require of benefit from different approaches. Then again, I do agree that DS is a bit of a janky game. And it has some absolute BS moments. All in all I'm not quite sure DS truly is worth the time and effort, unless you really enjoy the combat. I do love the world design though. And I love the streams. Nick is the greatest troll streamer in the known universe!

I have a few questions, and I'll probably have some follow-ups if you're still interested. And thank you for offering your point of view, whether you answer or not. What were your main reasons for voting Trump? What are your thoughts and feelings with regards to Trump's campaign rhetoric? Which of his campaign promises do you think are the most important ones? Do you expect Trump to follow through on his campaign promises? By the follow through I mean a reasonable attempt at getting the thing done. If you don't want to answer publicly, I'm happy with a PM as well. I am simply curious to hear your view.

I also do not have the 'Source' option available. Am I doing something wrong?

Here's a sort of an understandable map of pretty much the entire game. It's not detailed, but of course is still kind of a spoiler. You've been at the Firelink Shrine, Undead Burg, Undead Parish, and a couple of short visits to Darkroot Basin http://blogs-images.forbes.com/erikkain/files/2015/04/Dark-Souls-Map-1940x1931.png

If you truly wanted discussion, surely you could have chosen a less aggressive approach. Based on your post I do assume you are intentionally trolling. At the very least, given your tone, you wanted a fight. If this was not your intent, please take a moment to consider what you actually wanted to communicate, and the result of your post. If all you wanted was an affirmation of your belief that the forum wouldn't engage you with you if write a post like that, then you weren't really looking for engagement. If you were, you should understand that you went about it at a fairly counterproductive way. I admit, I'm writing this as a serious form of procrastination. I have some work I still need to do today and I really don't want to. Also, if this ends up as patronizing and arrogant, I am sorry. The tone of your language does tug at my own desire to feel superior. I haven't familiarized myself Clinton to any great detail. I do not doubt that she's a political animal. However, most of the things you cite seem to be speculation, innuendo or downright not so. There may be merit, but claims of that nature should be substantiated rigorously, not thrown in an off-handed way as 'everybody knows' facts. Of the other stuff besides Benghazi I don't know much. And if you're curious, I came to the conclusion that wrt to Benghazi there was nothing there. What is the evidence that she did this smearing of Bill's accusers? Brief wikipedia run does not seem to support your claim. Certainly even speculation does affect the perception one can have of a person. Yet, with regards to her being a real feminist, she has championed women's rights globally. We of course can't know if it's sincere or not. Still, role models matter, and I think she's has globally been a visible, powerful, positive woman. She's certainly been more visible at supporting women's rights than say Angela Merkel. Who is an admirable statesman, but you can't really call her a feminist. Why is viewing Clinton as a feminist lazy thinking? I would challenge both aspects of your statement. The standing of US hasn't moved significantly, globally, and that Obama has been seen as a man who stands for nothing. In general, in the western world, trust in the western democracy has suffered a serious blow. Bush Jr. was indeed seen as a bit of a simple fellow. The wars in the Middle East have been divisive, but globally speaking I don't think they've hurt the standing of US that much. Obama on the other hand has been met with almost universal approval in Europe. With regards to political standing, potential loss of Philippines is an on-going development that has more to do with internal politics than anything the US has done. Relationship with Russia has indeed soured, but that has, as I understand it, more to do with either what Putin had to do after the economic challenges posed by the crash in oil price after 2008, or simply just the man finally succumbing to the allure of the trap that is power. China has become more influential, economically and politically, especially in Africa, but that doesn't seem to have had much to do with the US as such. And as sad set of realpolitik as it is, the wars in the Middle East probably have helped US there. But this is already some pretty wild speculation on my part, as we can't know what the alternatives could have been. This is a bit of a detour, and perhaps a bit uncalled for on my part. But if you're honest about engaging and communicating, please try the following. Substitute Danielle with your name and woman with whatever you gender, and read that. That's a pretty darn aggressive a thing to say. Insulting too, as you're attributing circumstances (ignorance) to be an intrinsic part of the persons character. We all are easily selective of our facts. We cherry-pick, and I fail at this as well. And I'm certainly the hosts do too. Yet if you wanted to challenge Danielle to challenge her own assumptions, you're not doing a great job at it. It reads as if you want to go for passive aggressive sense of superiority here. Never say never, but never use language like this. The unpredictability of Trump feels like a far greater risk to me than anything Clinton has done. I'm not quite sure what are the things that make Clinton seem so hawkish to Americans. To me, as a European, it hasn't manifested. Well, she might be, I don't know. I do agree with you that better relationship between US and Russia is a good thing. However, as a European I am kind of concerned about Russia's foreign policy. Would Trump not have condemned and sanctioned Russia after they violated Ukraine by occupying Crimea and supporting the east-Ukrainian separatist? Admittedly I'm selfish here, but I honestly fear what Putin would have done if the opposition hadn't manifested itself. The whole thing was scary, and quite too close for my comfort. If Russia and US become pals regardless of Russia's policies, well, that sounds rather bad to me. The civil rights are also an aspect of this. My impression is that Russia does not have a very functional democracy. Opposition, press and even basic rights are threatened. But Russia is a separate and a complicated matter. All I'm saying is basically what Mangela was saying: good relations with Russia at any cost is not a very appealing thing. How should the issue of liberation from legal, social, or political restrictions be handled? If the way liberals are doing it currently is wrong. I'm not being facetious here, but I don't quite understand what you're saying. I think you're saying that the prevailing liberal outlook protects entities that shouldn't be protected, because they are threat. Yet the same people mock and belittle straight white guys. So Trump is a natural answer to all that. This is a narrative that I've also encountered. I suppose I understand the feeling that the barbarians are at the gates and this will be the end of our way of life. The Vandals will sack Rome. But I just don't see it. All societies change all the time. Ours is an era of unbelievably rapid change. But I just don't understand what is this threat that will destroy the rights and freedoms? That Islam will take over the US? The Black Lives will dominate other wavelengths of the spectrum? How? I honestly do not see these fears as realistic. Admittedly I got a bit carried away to hyperbole -land here myself. Is the fear is that liberal policies will mean that we will have a major terrorist attack every few years? These kinds of things are difficult to discuss, because they are value questions. Political discourse often pretends to be about facts when it is fundamentally about values. Death penalty doesn't prevent crime, but even if it did, I would still oppose it because my value judgement is that lives have inherent value, and especially the cost of even a single innocent person getting executed is too high. My value is that to a degree yes, we need to support other peoples right to "damage our culture and society". That's what freedom of speech really means. That's also what the infamous second amendment means. They are an expression of the idea that restricting all possible harm can be far more harmful than the actual harm. But the most important part of it is that there should be room for reasoned discourse in any society. And the source or the contents of that discourse should not be restricted. Naturally, we do restrict the contents of that discourse. A society can for example say that slavery is not up for debate. We just don't do that. Things a society discusses do not fall in a linear scale from bad things to good things. There's a great deal of variety there. But the UN Declaration of Human Rights is an admirable document which could be considered as a kind of a baseline for things we don't really need to discuss about. The fact that in this US presidential election we had to discuss some of those things is a bit horrifying. But I'm digressing again. I would say Affordable Care Act is a significant change. Admittedly some might say it's a significant change in the balance sheet. Guantanamo? Well, my understanding is that it isn't for the lack of Obama trying. Is Obama perfect? Certainly not, but I think it's kind of uncharitable to react with laughter to Obama's work. I however am not convinced that Trump is change in any real way. What we've heard of his cabinet choices thus far, the swamp looks to be very much there. His economic program looks a bit questionable, but who knows. Even US economy is very much dependent on global economy by this point. His stance on environment seems truly scary. I suppose that's change. I hope I'm wrong, but I fear he's surrounding himself with absolutely the wrong guys.

Great streams! Watching Nick play Dark Souls without Kyir guiding him has been somewhat painful :-) Nick really has a pretty good handle on the mechanical combat when he actually feels like. Yet, it is exquisite how poorly suited, for the game, his combination of considerable persistence and complete lack of patience for all the other aspects of the game beyond the combat is. A while ago there was a reference on the cast of someone's visualization of the worlds in the Dark Souls games: Watching Nick play reveals that perhaps indeed series' designers were right to simplify the map topology. Also, Nick, try to remember to homebone. If you have souls and things are looking dicy, remember the homebone.

I haven't played Civ 6 yet, and I suspect I won't for a good while yet. It is really amazing how wonderful a time this is to be a strategy gamer, compared to just 4-5 years ago. Cornucopia is almost an understatement. I played such ungodly amounts of Civ 4, I think I kind of exhausted myself a bit. I've played a few games of Civ 5, but I don't think I ever finished a single vanilla Civ 5 games. Of course the game ran really badly for me at launch. Eventually I picked up the expansions and had a few nice games. But I never did have that need to challenge myself. I suppose for me Civ has become this Disneyland strategy game. I play it to see what cool things are hidden inside, and after I've been there a couple of times, I'm happy to take a few years off before the next round. I do agree that I would love for Firaxis to try out something different. Still, excluding XCOM, the other things Firaxis has tried haven't been that successful, so I'm not really expecting them to do anything actually interesting.

I would welcome an informal chat episode 3-4 times a year or so. I would welcome a bridge episode as well. In general some oddballs every now and then sounds interesting to me.

Going on a tangent with expectations, for me Ip Man was the straw that broke the camel's back. I've watched quite a lot of Hong Kong movies, and I'd like to think that I'm at least passably familiar with wuxia as a cinema sub genre. For a long time I've felt that HK cinema keeps repeating itself and is as uninspired as Hollywood can be. I saw Ip Man at a festival, and there was a fair bit of buzz to it. A huge hit in China, and everyone seemed to love it. Ip Man was a miserable experience for me: a classic example of everything that's horrible and boring about HK cinema. Since I saw it some 6 years ago I've kind of unconsciously avoided most HK kung fu films. My two main issues with the movie were that the black-and-white prejudiced world-view and typical wire-fu approach to action in a film very much billed as a story about Bruce Lee's master. Additionally the simplistic wuxia-style lack of characterization and unfortunately still very prevalent overtly misogynist approach to female characters didn't earn the film any points either. I honestly think that HK was better when it came to dealing with Japanese in the 1990ies. Something like the Jet Li Fist of Legend was, I think, a far better characterization. These days it seems most Chinese movies go full on insane nazi villain territory with regards to the Japanese. I admit I rarely enjoy any kind of nationalistic hubahuba, but it seems endemic in HK cinema these days. Understandable, perhaps, what with the influence Hollywood cinema has gained in China. But still unfortunate, at least to me. In this case the worst of it is perhaps that the only character development the Yen's Yip Man gets is him becoming ever more angry at the Japanese. It makes for some very bleak watching in a movie that's perfectly willing to abandon all historicity for sake of cheap drama. I get it's a bit silly to moan about a wuxia film featuring ridiculous action, but I hoped they would have at least made some token effort to recognize Bruce Lee's impact on kung fu action. This is exactly the type of action he championed against. Instead we get yet again over the top cgi-wire-fu, no remorse -edition. I do admit there are a couple of impressive looking, even pretty inventive fight scenes. But nothing we haven't seen a million times already. This would have been a brilliant opportunity to go for some authenticity.

I've never really been interested in Dota 2, but I've thoroughly enjoyed watching Sean play it. I've been kind of surprised how followable and fascinating it is to watch. I hope we get some more.

My ever-game is Crusader Kings II. It's very difficult to fail, the fall can be just as much fun as the rise and it doesn't require as much attention as most Paradox titles. Yet if I feel like it the game offers tons to micromanage. But everything is safe and familiar, no new concepts to learn, nothing difficult or demanding to tackle with. Just turn off your brain and use prejudice and bigotry as an excuse for taking more land.

A very interesting discussion. I've been thinking about similar things on and off over the past few years. I haven't seen It Happened One Night, but I have seen The Searchers roughly a decade ago. I recall being impressed by the movie, mostly due to it trying to do more with a Western. John Wayne's role was probably as shocking as Henry Fonda's in Once Upon a Time in the West a few years later. I re-read Ebert's Great Movies piece on it, and found it a good read. http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-searchers-1956 It is perfectly possible that some people do not need to see a particular work. Michael Haneke said of his movies that the people who walk out of the cinema on his movies do not need his movies anymore. Perhaps the audiences of the 60ies would experience the same with our action movies. And it is possible that some people could find these works as a reinforcement of the prejudices. I do think The Searchers is worth watching. I recommend it. A classic, if you will. To me a classic doesn't mean a movie that holds up, or is good, or is enjoyable. My concept of classic roughly means that it has to have some aspect of notable craftsmanship and it also has to have something that's worth consideration. Some value beyond as a way to spend some time. I recall The Searchers being visually beautiful. Although I would say the same thing about many a western. It is also illustrative of a time and world view. It has an interesting, plausible main character. It's also well made, a work of good craftsmanship on many levels. Acting, pacing and cinematography. I would find it troublesome to say that The Searchers helps prejudiced attitudes live on. To me, pretty much the opposite is true. I would argue the film is conscious of a lot of what it presents. But even if it wasn't, I think, that for most modern audiences, the movie also tackles with the meaning of being different and the value of human lives. Even if that was not the intended value of the movie, it is a value the movie currently has, for us. Forgetting that we humans tend to fall into this traps of thought is the true danger, and that's one of the values of stories from different times and cultures.

Has someone tampered with the title of this thread? It refers to Josh Brolin. According to RPS, Campo Santo partnered with Good Universe, the production company for ... the US version of Oldboy! </conspiracy> I personally feel it would be difficult to pull of a very direct translation to a movie. And kind of unnecessary. If this happens, I'd like something that was both true to the characters and the feel of the game. With regards to casting, I want both Rich Sommer and Jeff Goldblum to play Henry. Either both at the same time, or that on the bluray you can seamlessly toggle between the two tracks.

Halcyon 6 is out. Massive Damage, the devs, say the following: Which is a passable description. It has X-COM antfarm basebuilding a simple tech tree Final Fantasy VI era JRPGish combat a single scenario with lots of scripted events, storybits and conversations a bit wonky starmap exploration (very) vaguely reminiscent of Starflight and Star Control II pixel graphics The narrative borrows widely from typical sci-fi tropes, the first two+ hours have been good fun. You play as a starbase commander and you send officers on missions with ships. You talk with alien factions and fight a war. It's very combat heavy, and personally the aesthetics feel a bit dispirited to me. The game does have some procedural and random elements, but the main narrative, I believe, is the same every time. All in all, the game has a fair amount of the game I've been dreaming about ever since Star Control II and Babylon 5. Fortunately it seems to work pretty well. I backed this on Kickstarter. There are still some stretch goals missing from the game and I think I will end up waiting until the game is done for good before actually jumping in. It is not in early access, though. These days I just prefer to wait until games with a storyline are done with adding DLC and whatnots before I play them. Has anyone else been playing/following this?