Nachimir

As I said that premise was entirely new to me, and I haven't read much hard SF. One author that springs to mind and seems relatively unknown (at least now) is Algis Budrys. I loved Rogue Moon, it's a very different kind of book to Blindsight and centres entirely on very human characters, but has a similarly bleak centre.

GTA2 repeated the exact same scenario but with lines of Elvis impersonators.

I meditate sometimes too, but even when studying Buddhism I thought it just had very real and mundane psychological benefits in terms of conscious processing of unconscious things (mindfulness of breathing) and trying to cultivate empathy (metta bhavana). Within a few months I started to occasionally have really vivid visions too, but nothing made me think they were more than psychological quirks/glitches/experiences; altered states don't have to hinge on some kind of outside power. I can see how people might bring meditation up as "Aha you are spiritual" but that's how I'd answer them.

I'm the same as Bjorn in terms of what kind of athiest I am, and lump things like belief in karma with faith in gods. As a concept I think spirituality is irrevocably tied to religious ideas, at least for our generations. The closest I get to spiritual experience (and was as close as I got while I was religious, nothing has changed in this respect) is something I'd describe as profound aesthetic experience that can be brought on by (for instance) music, dancing, snowboarding, and staring at a Rothko painting.

Tegs, Grayson, sorry to hear that. I hope things pick up for both of you real quick. Christmas and New Year are fucking tough for people in situations like yours, and I don't feel I can help much, but I'm glad you both post here. I was really excited when Dawkin's series on religion was announced. Then I watched and realised he's a smug ass who can't keep his cool or make coherent arguments when put in the same room as someone religious, but somehow sees his own performance as triumphant. I hate campaigning atheists now, they're as dogmatic as any asshole I ever debated scripture with. I went to a local sceptics meetup once too, and it was just a bunch of self-contratulatory sniping at people who believe in mysticism/spirituality/religion/etc. I'm an atheist but man, fuck people who draw large parts of their identity and purpose from it. I'm pretty sure a lot of them are reproducing all the worst parts of the things they claim to oppose while actively corroding their own capacities for empathy and compassion.

I lost a friend this year, partially because of a "gender is really complicated" conversation that made him visibly uncomfortable. His entire stance seemed to boil down to uncertainty and discomfort coupled with "but that'll fuck up sports". It's weird to occasionally find these people in my circles of friends and realise they're probably the reactionary assholes of tomorrow. I really hope that if one thing comes from Leelah's death it's greater awareness of trans issues. It's easy to not look past my own anger at religious parents mashing their kids into various molds, but trans issues are so much wider and more pervasive than such clear cut antagonism. The microcosm Leelah had to live through isn't just a thing specific to fundy religious families; those attitudes exist in much more widespread places among people who consider themselves tolerant, liberal, progressive even. Trans and poor people seem to be the last groups left whom it's socially acceptable to punch down at or erase, and one day that'll look exactly like all the casual racism and homophobia of the 80's does now.

I really hope that's the case for itch.io, and was doubtful since last time I looked into it, it was a spare time project of one developer that took 0% of all sales. Has it been clarified that Patreon bypasses it?

Has anyone mentioned the new VAT rules in the EU yet? There are loads of indie game/thing creators taking their things down tomorrow since the amount of admin and money it'll take to comply outstrip the money they make. I ignored when I first heard about it a few months ago, because it sounded like typical anti-EU nonsense that would be explained, but no. Even this anti-EU source has it pretty much correct. The law was changed to make big companies like Amazon and eBay stop dodging higher VAT rates. In practice, it's going to hamper independents and drive more trade to bigger players just like them. Basically: VAT will be charged on digital goods and services according to the location of the buyer, and sellers have to collect proof of that location and pay the VAT. While the UK have set up a kind of centralised clearing house for this, it's still onerous for any small traders, as the UK exempts companies from VAT registration below a threshold turnover of about £80,000. The new EU law has no lower threshold, so suddenly those UK companies have to stop trading or take on the extra admin and expense of registering for and reporting VAT in the UK and EU. Bandcamp have stepped in to handle it for musicians: http://blog.bandcamp.com/2014/12/30/eu-digital-vat-changes-and-bandcamp/ Hopefully places like itch.io will be able do this for game creators too. In the past week, game designers I know have been variously planning to take their stuff down, make it free or ignore the law and hope no one notices because it's ridiculous.

Well then. Easy to host a lot of this material then get cards with the URL printed.

GG have really been sealing their reputation these past few weeks. I wonder if Milo is going to quietly not write a book about it now.

Oh, that really sucks Rodi, but I'm glad you and your girlfriend are okay. I've had a similar crash into a ditch after hitting a patch of diesel fuel at night; when something like that takes the car there's not much you can do.

I hadn't heard of Gravity Falls before this thread. This is great! The humour and the way they do locations remind me a lot of 90's Lucasarts adventures.

I'm talking to a few people going through exactly the same stuff with family at the moment; "It's not sexism! You're just overreacting" etc.

The police shot and killed another black teenager, Antonio Martin, two miles from Ferguson last night. Eyewitnesses describe how he was breathing after he'd been shot but was left to die on the ground for half an hour with no medical attention. He's already being smeared by the media as a gun toting monster. Lots on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hashtag/AntonioMartin?src=hash About a week ago, at a Police charity event in LA the guests all sang a racist song crowing over the death of Michael Brown. The venue condemned it, and the organising officer defended it by saying "This is America".

I'm speechless beyond "kill all nerds", but I think BadHat's take is about as succinct as it gets.

Those are among that same category as other things I've tried to find out without much success, and when you get to the bottom of it it's usually just "LOL JOKES" anyway. Someone suggested a few months back that I was in a good position to write a kind of ethnography of GG, and for a while their behaviour was interesting, but I really can't be arsed tracing the provenance of bullshit internet things when the answers are always the same. Also it's sometimes kind of like the extremes of the political spectrum, when if you go far enough in one direction spacetime just folds in on itself and ends up with a bunch of shitty people with really extreme (but sometimes paradoxically opposing) views set apart by increasingly small margins, continuously sympathising with each other and occasionally fighting.

This is extraordinarily close to my thoughts on it. I find the things people typically write for an online dating profile tell me very little about how I'll feel about them. Also that exchange of hints and looks and seeing how people react that's totally missing from online dating is a thing I really enjoy. All of the mechanical ways that dating sites have invented to try and reproduce it are so far removed from the actual behaviour that they end up meaning very little. I've never understood the thing people have about online dating being something shameful. I used to think it was just a weird generational thing, and maybe it is, but I've seen it in people younger than me too.

I'd never heard that scene called the burly brawl before, but knew exactly which one it was going to be.

do u like going out but also staying in as well

Oh, yeah! Drone Logic is great. I didn't realise he and Ghost Culture were on the same label, but spent quite a bit of this year looping Guidecca.

Favourite Album: 88:88 - Makeup and Vanity Set (Which I'm sneaking into this thread because I added it 363 days ago) Runners up: Run The Jewels 2 FRACT OST - Mogi Grumbles Favourite song: 2 is 8 - LONE: Runners up: (Which for some reason always makes me think about ) Most played: Dunno how to feel about that. It's far from my favourite track this year, but I like it as a pick me up. From the same album, I really, really like For by Nils Frahm. The album is Erased Tapes Collection IV, and I found that there were always tracks on it that slowly encroached on my brain and eventually registered as annoyance. I think it was only on the fifth or sixth listen I realised they were all the songs and remixes by Rival Consoles, who I then sought out and confirmed that, yes, I hate his work and unlike most music it has a way of prfoundly annoying me. I then found his official artist bio, which talks about how he shares a house in London with some really good other composers <-- yeah, great, well done . I deleted all of his tracks and think it's a much better album for it. His songs seem to play around with dubstep sounds in a half arsed way that pales next to stuff I was listening and dancing to six years ago. Anyway, I don't mean to unreccomend the album, it has Nils Frahm, Peter Broderick, Ólafur Arnalds and A Winged Victory For The Sullen on it and their stuff is really great.

I knew nothing about it in advance. I really enjoyed the slow burn, the It surprised me that I liked it, because I absolutely hate use of symbolism on centre stage for art/film/etc, but that's how I interpreted But I can see how it's an acquired taste. I liked Upstream Colour and Stalker for similar reasons. It's also interesting film making because:

Oh hell yes. I mainlined all of seasons one and two, then went looking for other stuff. They're and I find it really hard to not laugh at the worst bits. A friend told me there's also not a single prank from the series that they don't regret.

Some will, but at least they won't go "Are you… doctor Qube?" just because you're a woman, then seem reassured when they ask you if you're a medical doctor and you reply no. Which happens to at least one friend of mine with a PhD.