miffy495

As I recall, for whatever reason the homosexual relationship trick also caused a save corruption, so I think the worry would be that if they put it back in, they would reintroduce the corrupted saves. Anyway, I'm glad this conversation happened and that Nintendo has made a public statement that isn't tone-deaf now. This makes me a lot happier than I thought it would.

Sno's been down too long in the midnight sea.

Rhythm Heaven? That's what I want, really. I love crazy Nintendo, and I'm looking forward to them being backed into a bit more of a corner and pulling out the weird-ass shit.

Now this I am absolutely on board with. Make it happen, please, somebody?

His death was the message.

AHA! YOU were Bug Catcher all along!

So I know no one cares, but I am less than a week from hitting 100 hours played in Rocksmith 2014. Add that to the 90-ish in the original, and I'm creeping up on 200 hours of playing this stuff. Like the 72 hour thing that I was proud of back in September, it feels odd to be proud of this, but fuck it, I now consider myself a guitar player. I noodle around when I'm lying in bed, I look up whatever I want to play, I've started trying to write my own stuff, I spent a third of my tax refund on a Gretsch (and I did end up buying that bass back around Christmas as well) and I'm practicing pretty much whenever I have a free second. Somehow, on top of that, I am still coming back to Rocksmith almost daily for that extra practice, if only because it's nice to hear the rest of a band playing along with me. I have probably put at least this much time into the Rock Band franchise over the years, and learned some basic drumming techniques (that I would be continuing with to this day if it weren't for the fact that I moved to a place with a baby upstairs), but this actually means something beyond that. Before Rocksmith, I was a lapsed guitar player who was competent in high school, gave it up around the start of university, and hadn't played in 8 years. Now I am actually a guitarist, and I don't know if I would have had the willpower to stick to it if it hadn't been for this game. I'm practicing far more now, and have become a far better player than back when I was a teen who just thought it was cool to play guitar and wanted to be cool. I realize I've spent a lot of time on this forum evangelizing this game to the void since picking it up, but I'm gonna make one last try here: EVERYONE WHO HAS THOUGHT ABOUT LEARNING AN INSTRUMENT SOMEWHAT SERIOUSLY SHOULD TRY THIS. It is actually a video game that has, without hyperbole, changed my life. Welp, back to occasionally commenting on things when I feel witty.

This and Black/White are the only generations of pokemon I have never experienced. I suppose I should give these a try...

Comic Sans is shitty for a lot of situations and makes it hard for people to take what you write seriously because it looks silly. On the other hand, as an elementary school teacher, I find myself using Comic Sans a lot because it makes things I write feel more approachable for the 8 year olds who are going to be reading it. Everything has a use case.

Oh my god, I need my PSP and import copy of Gitaroo Man RIGHT NOW.

No, but Kathleen Kennedy is about to. BOOM! EDIT: AND I get to start a new page with this!

Weird. I suppose it makes sense that, in the six years since I stopped watching The Daily Show regularly, John Oliver looks a lot older. On the other hand, listening to The Bugle every week and hearing his voice remain the same kinda made me imagine that he never changed. He looks like he could be a dad now. I don't know how I feel about this. Damn passage of time.

I grew a beard when I realized I was the youngest person at my work by about 10 years, unless you count our students. It makes me look like I belong with the grown ups instead of the kids, so I keep it and try to make it look as nice as possible. As for the content of the thread, I feel like we've reached our point of "I believe this, you believe that, we have all amicably explained our positions and understand each other, though maybe not agree" and will probably make a graceful exit. I am puzzled however by the temptation from mods to shut it down, as it has all been a friendly discussion. This is the one time I've ever seen a thread get threatened with closing without it having turned personal, and that strikes me as odd. Everyone here has kept a level head and been respectful, so I'm wondering if it's just the subject matter, or what? Usually when a thread gets closed, it has turned nasty and frankly gone on way too long as such. Maybe it was nasty in earlier pages and I just came in after that was resolved?

I was at work all day, so coming back to see two new pages of this thread is intimidating as hell. The conversation seems to have moved on, but I'll just say that James pretty much nailed what I mean by "intrinsic" versus "authentic" (not really a surprise, seeing as we both come from undergraduate programs where this is the thing you talk about). "Authentic" is a word that is meaningless to me, largely for reasons that have been discussed. It is an overused term that is entirely subjective that people want to treat as objective. Much like "art", authentic is up to whoever is saying it and could mean something different to every other person. Intrinsic is a very different matter. Something that is red will be red independent of an observer.* It's redness is just a part of what it is. Red is, to it, an intrinsic quality. If it were blue, we would be talking not about this object, but about the blue version of this object. It is now a different thing. let's say I place this object (let's just say it's a red ball or something) in a glass case for hundreds of years. I attempt to promote it as a thing to come and look at. The ball does not change based on my success or failure. Further, if the popularity of the ball fluctuates over time, the ball itself would remain unchanged. One decade people are all about coming to see my red ball, the next people regard it as inane and the pleasures of a simpler time, then another decade later the ball gets a cult following as retro-cool and interest picks back up, finally reaching a point where Family Guy decides they'll be really clever by basing an episode around my ball (man, the temptation to add an "s" to that last one was really big) and society at large is reminded that my ball exists and there is a sudden resurgence in its popularity. By your thesis, every single one of these events would fundamentally change the qualities of my ball, which has been sitting alone for about 50 years at this point in a sealed glass box. If the ball is unchanged, then popularity must be an extrinsic quality, something projected onto an object by an observer that the object itself happily exists independently of. That's not to say that an argument couldn't be made that the change in popularity does in fact change what the ball fundamentally is, and that each time the ball's popularity changes the previous (more or less popular) ball ceases to exist and a new one comes into being. To be convinced by that however, you would have to subscribe to a radically different theory of meta-physics than I do. If that is the case, then I will shake your hand and we can agree that we have different views on what maintains a continuity of identity over a period of time. Hopefully you are more clear on what I believe now though. *this is still debatable in a way, but let's just try to agree conceptually for the sake of argument that whether or not someone is looking at it, it would at least absorb light in such a way that an eye would see what is left upon looking at it as a colour that the brain that this eye is connected to would recognize as "red". If you still have a problem with "red" as an intrinsic quality, mentally substitute something less debatable like "is capable of absorbing light".

I love watching people discover this fact for the first time.

Calgary, though we recently got a few decent candy stores. I may need to go on a bike excursion next weekend.

They upped the drops when they got rid of the auction house because you can't just buy shit now, so yeah, loot is way better. As for WCIII, I am exactly with you, except that I was 15. High five for being teenagers with low standards for storytelling!

That sounds amazing. Unfortunately we Canadians probably don't get that stuff. Whenever I'm in a candy store, I always trick myself into thinking I like candy more than I do and buy a bunch, then realize when I try to eat it that I prefer spicy to sweet and give up on the giant bag of candy. However, things like dark chocolate with peppers in it or black licorice I'm ALL OVER.

Mild hint because I remember this puzzle being really hard:

The gameplay does get more fun as you hit higher levels and start to experiment with combinations. I've beaten the game with a Monk and a Wizard and both didn't get interesting until around level 20. If you're playing for story though, tap out now. It's not great.

Oh, certainly not. I get tired of things that I used to find funny when they pass that "overused" threshold in my brain all the time, usually faster than many of my friends. This actually gets me something of a hipster reputation among them. That threshold is a personal thing. I would assume though, that because you initially found whatever it was funny/apt/whatever, that what changed for you was not "Well, it's popular now, I guess it's done" but "Man, I've heard that a lot and it's really lost it's impact." As I said several times, this is a straw man thing and I don't believe that anyone is actually that extreme. The alternative would be this guy:

Short answer? Colour, shape, behaviour are about the thing. They are intrinsic to it. If any of those were to change, we would be talking about a different thing. Popularity is extrinsic. A thing's (non-economic) worth is not determined by how popular it is, and in ascribing value to a reaction to a thing rather than it, we are no longer talking about the thing but the reaction. It's entirely fair to talk about the reaction to something, and disapprove of it strongly, while still having that not apply to the thing at all. To make a very extreme (and admittedly probably a bit unfair, but this is a reductio I'm trying for here) example, it's the difference between saying "I hate the way society fetishizes adolescents" and "I hate adolescents because society fetishizes them". If you dislike something because it's popular, you are saying effectively nothing about it and every expression of preference boils down to "I don't like society." If that is all someone ever says when asked for their opinion about things, I hope you can see how it could get tiresome. ABSURD UNFAIR EXAMPLE OF TALKING TO THIS STRAW MAN: "How are you liking your meal?" "I don't like society." "Fair enough. Did you see [TV SHOW] last night?" "I don't like society." "Huh. Ok. Well, I'm going to a concert later. Would you like to come along?" "I don't like society." "Right. Bye then." This person is nothing but contrarian. A values-system based on the popularity of a given thing boils down to either "I don't like society." or "I LOVE SOCIETY!" for all evaluative statements, depending on which side you fall on. Either person is not someone I want to talk to. NOW, to be clear, I also have a fascination with that which deviates from the norm. To say something is fascinating however is not a value judgement. I can be fascinated by something's existence and still either love it or think it is garbage. I think one of the biggest flaws with Straw-man hipster is that they confuse this fascination with preference. (Again, this is a straw-man reduction of the common perception of "hipster." No personal affront intended. I assume that you are a more well-rounded person than that and have other reasons for liking what you like.) As for the "hipster in a vacuum" thought experiment (FORMER PHILOSOPHY MAJORS, REPRESENT!), well, I brought that up and then immediately pointed out it was a ridiculous thing. As humans, we are social animals. We thrive on interactions with each other. It is as absurd to me to consider someone immune to the effects of popular opinion as it is to consider someone who is nothing but reactive to it. Your brief "what's so great about that plant?" statement shows you've got a decent sense of humour about this, so we'll go from there: Our hypothetical lonely hipster feels a great relief relative to her personal tastes. By implication, she therefore does have personal tastes upon which her preferences are founded. The relief, I must assume, is in response either to a lack of judgement on the part of others or a lack of pressure to be reactionary in her tastes to popular opinion. If it is the former, then she is incredibly sensitive to the opinions of others and insecure in her likes and dislikes and, while I am happy for the relief this vacuum gives her from the judgement, I do pity that her self-concept is fragile enough to be so shaken outside of it. If the reason for the relief is the latter, then the explanation that comes to my mind is that her need to be contrarian will occasionally override what she would otherwise genuinely like and cause her to avoid or, even worse, denounce it. Bear in mind, the only thing we have removed from the scenario is popular opinion. If anything other than popular opinion had been preventing her from being true to her preferences, it would still be present and therefore there would be no relief. By this, I have to conclude that either way we have someone who is unsure of herself enough to habitually capitulate to the opinions of others in matters of taste and she is relieved that, in this societal vacuum, she is finally able to make up her own mind. Either way, I see the relief as indicative of a hyper-sensitivity to the opinions of others and a value system that is reactionary to that rather than founded on any consistent beliefs within herself. This is where it becomes entirely personal opinion, but to me, that feels like a tragic and precarious way to go through life. Crap that's a lot of text. Sorry about that.

When I read this list, I thought that you were describing what a "good" hipster would try to distance themself from. While I would not shame a person for ascribing to these beliefs, I do kind of feel bad for them. To me, to dismiss or be attracted to something based on it's relation to what you perceive as "normal" or "popular" (god, I'm using a lot of scare quotes here, I'm sorry) speaks to an underlying discomfort and insecurity around what you like. I think this is what people mean when they say "inauthentic" as well (fucking scare quotes!). The working definition of authentic in this case would be whether or not the person in question would still like thing X in a societal vacuum. Of course, tastes being influenced by society, this is still a meaningless and nebulous term, but that's the vibe I get from that objection. On top of that, judging your self-worth in relation to the tastes of the masses feels to me like a weird throwback to archaic aristocratic practices (for example, the term "vulgar" originally meaning "common") and kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I think that the underlying reason for hostility to hipsters is that being insecure in your tastes is actually far more common and the degree to which hipster-typified behaviour holds a mirror to this makes other people more uncomfortable with their own likes. That said, the traits you list are not traits that I think essentially define "hipster". I know many people who are hipsters who really do just like what they like and happen to like things that other hipsters do. Associations based around tastes are no problem to me, and by that logic I'm a bit of a hipster myself. I count that as one of many potential labels that someone could throw at me to which I would shrug and say "sure, why not?". Oddly, one of the traits that I most commonly would associate with a hipster is the rejection of labels in general, lending credence to the "hipsters never want to say that they're hipsters" sentiment. However, I am fully aware that saying "I don't care what you think of me, I like what I like" is a very hipster-y thing to say so the label would probably be valid in relation to me. What I do distance myself from as much as possible is passing judgement on anything due to its popularity. As you yourself have mentioned, this can be difficult (discussing production values in entertainment, if I recall) but if I catch myself not liking something because it's popular I give myself a pretty harsh internal dressing-down. I do understand the joy of finding something cool, but I think that's just human, not hipster. The part that becomes (negative, societal definition of) hipster is trying to keep it to yourself to ensure its validity as cool. If it's awesome and I found it, sharing it with as many people as possible only gives me more people to talk about it with. I remember in 2006 a co-worker was upset that Modest Mouse was suddenly popular because "They used to be MY band!" and wondering what the fuck was wrong with him. I still feel that way. Anyway, that's probably enough for now. I have no rage at you for being a hipster, but am puzzled that you find the quoted traits laudable. I am probably a hipster too, but to my mind, the hipsters I like to associate with are those who do not chase the label, but have no need to deny it if someone were to use it on them. Chasing labels? VERY un-hipster. (Sarcasm, mostly. Please don't read that as a personal attack.)

Kathleen Hannah is curating the Sled Island Music Festival in my hometown this year. She has already landed Mission of Burma. I am excite.

Spoilered to avoid google-able job woes: 10 more weeks until this contract is up. That means that I'm done 16 of them. This class is seriously making me reconsider whether I want to continue teaching. After dedicating myself to this for 8 years of university and having an experience with a class from September to December that was fucking extraordinary and made me love teaching more than anything, this group of kids just makes me want to throw it all in. I'm so fucking tired. Fuck everything.