RubixsQube

I recently baked a loaf of bread based on this recipe and while I may have broken my kitchenaid mixer (oof), the bread came out fantastic. Like, it made for super delicious sandwich bread, and later in the week I used it to make some really wonderful french toast. I second this recommendation.

The way that I've done it is that I've used the Cold Shower Capper as a way to rinse out the conditioner. I think it's probably BS that it has any benefits (although Tim Rogers swears by it) but it gives me something to do while the water is very, very cold instead of standing there. I suppose you could brush your teeth here, too. Also, make sure before you do it that you know exactly which knob, or which knob direction, leads to cold water, because the Scalding Shower Capper is REALLY NOT FUN.

You can read the story here from Sherry Turkle's book Alone Together. From what I can see, it's just an accounting of a weird day she had with some kids in the late 90s where she brought 8 furbies to an elementary school in western Massachusetts.

I am super into the fact that Chris described that Golden Gate Park statue as a bust of Cervantes being stared at by a pair of children. It's most definitely Sancho Panza and Don Quixote, kneeling before their creator.

Mighty Morphin' Power Macs

Whoops, bad post, delete please

I went on a run this morning and started listening to the Progresscasts. And as I was finishing up with the second episode, full of champagne and celebration of a successful Kickstarter and a long discussion of Realistic Summer Sports Simulator, in the end tag, Sean started talking about how he couldn't smell Irish Bacon without feeling like puking after some food poisoning, and then Chris mentioned how, on a dare, he drank an entire bottle of vinegar. Suddenly I stopped in the middle of a residential neighborhood, hoping against hope: Listen here, starting at 20:30, for Jake describing a certain trip to a state university. Bonus: it seems like Chris' reaction has gotten more and more subdued as we travel backwards into the past. In this, there's actually laughter and a champagne clink.

Ok, so I played more of this game, and it's clicking a liiiiiittle bit better, but it's still frustrating. The second world is a lot more straightforward and offers lower pressure opportunities to climb up various bits of bamboo. Also, it's nice that the hummingbird kind of shows you an option for winding your way up and around. I went back and forth between the two different control methods (in "easy", you don't press ZR to go forward, but push forward on the stick), and I think that I'll stick with the classic even if it means that I have to tap ZR if I want to move forward slowly. You really have very little control over speed otherwise, which I suppose is because of how they've actually modeled the snake muscles in Noodle. Which is cool, but it means that everything can go to pot so, so quickly. I'll keep at it, it's a pretty cool game, even if my brain has to rewire in a way that you both have encountered, when it comes to holding buttons when you don't need to.

Oh man, it's nice to have recommendations on IIT, and it's also pretty great to read what other people are recommending here. I may just buy that DAC, @Fingus! Also, @Gormongous, I really wish that I knew the best way to start a nice liquor cabinet. I assume that there are books or websites that describe this, but as of now, as a person who doesn't have a super sophisticated liquor palate (but who wants to have liquor on hand for entertaining, perhaps), it'd be great to know where to start in developing a collection. (I suppose you just pick up some of everything, starting with what you like) I have a recommendation, which is an annual book series that I've enjoyed since college: The Best American Nonrequired Reading. While it used to be edited by Dave Eggers, in the last three years they've shifted to different guest editors. Each year, this guest editor gets together with a group (or a few groups) of high school students, and together they meet weekly and collect articles, poetry, comics, and short fiction together into one anthology. It's designed to reflect diversity and be a more representative sample of current writing. Each edition is wonderful, and perfect if you're "someone who doesn't have a lot of time to read", because you can keep the book by the bed and read a bit and put it down and forget about it for a month or so and then read something else. Also, the entries are funny, and insightful, and sometimes very sad, and generally always enlightening. If you're someone who likes longreads on the internet, and wants to expand their worldview to be more encompassing, I think that this is a good addition to your life. You can find a lot of the back editions for pretty cheap used online, and I'd recommend just picking a year and trying it out!

I bought Snake Pass, and spent about 45 minutes fumbling around with the first level. The game is way, waaaaay more tough to wrap my head around than I had thought. It's pretty straightforward to get the various "required" items they want you to collect in the first area, but ugh, it is not easy to climb out on any of the bamboo structures extending from the main stage to get any of the bonus coins. For instance, here are the button presses required to wrap around some bamboo: - First, you have to kind of get some speed, which requires you to press ZR and then kind of move back and forth with the left stick. - Now you gotta get onto the piece of bamboo, so you have to press A to raise the snake head. - Here is where it gets tough, because now you have to keep holding ZR and rotate the stick juuuuuuust right to start the wrapping process. - You also have to release A at just the right time in order to drop the head to continue wrapping. - Now you are in a situation where you have to kind of juggle between ZR, A, and rotations perfectly, to continue wrapping and moving, and god forbid you come to a joint in the bamboo, or need to turn around, or whatever. If you want to do this all slowly, because you're learning, you can't, because you'll fall off, generally, into an abyss. If you don't do it correctly in any way, you fall off. So, in a very annoying piece of level design, they encourage you to learn how to do something completely new and weird in a situation that punishes you with death and respawning on the first level. In typical Nintendo-designed games, they give you a new power-up, or ability, or whatever, and encourage you to experiment in an environment where failure is only very slightly punished. It made me so frustrated trying to go out and grab some coin and dying, and dying and dying, on the first level of Snake Pass. I assume that I just have to keep at it, but man, I have no idea how I am going to play this if this is the level of challenge from the outset. I have watched videos of other people playing the game and describing how it's done, and I understand I have to "git gud", but it's like watching any type of video tutorial in the modern age: people often assume an understanding that the viewers do not have, which means complete neophytes are not well served. Bah.

I'm still having a lot of fun with this game, but I want to highlight something that has been really amazing about my experience - I've been really moved by the score, more so than in other games. I want to point you to this video (there are some spoilers, I suppose, but if you've played enough of the game you can probably watch) which dissects the way the music works in the game and calls back to famous Zelda songs from previous games. If you haven't gone out riding at night in the game, I'd recommend it, because the music that's specific to this event is really, really well done, and like, the first time I heard this I felt a lot of things. The composer is highlighted in this video, Manaka Katoaka, and I went to look at her previous work. It turns out, she worked on a few of the more recent Animal Crossing games, which makes sense insofar as those games had scores that were very driven by the time of day, similar to Breath of the Wild, but more importantly, she's the composer for Spirit Tracks, which, while slightly maligned, has an incredible goddamn score. I think that this is perhaps the best song in the entire Zelda series (seriously! It's so evocative of adventure, and the kind of theme that the game was going for), and it's too bad it was the overworld theme for a DS game that people didn't pick up because it came out late in the DS life cycle (2009), and Phantom Hourglass wasn't so well received. Anyway, I am glad that Manaka is still working on wonderful projects with Nintendo, and producing such good work.

the more you go down the Jeff Goldblum rabbit hole, the better it gets and if you want to directly link to what I think is the best line: https://tinyurl.com/everybodywilldie actually, here's another wonderful bit from the same clip: https://tinyurl.com/yeahwellhaveshrimp

You are correct, though, it is in fact from the gaelic Seán! Also, "schoying horne" is actually the earliest term for the device, apparently. Also, I still have no idea how to use one

I am aware that the name Shawn is not a shortened form of the word for shoehorn, as I did the photoshopping of the image to make it say what it says

Also: this is "thumbsChrisHappy" ?

Regarding Trespasser and a "third person mode," although perhaps at some point this is discussed in the chat:

https://clips.twitch.tv/ConfidentAntsyFriseeRlyTho Nick and a T-Rex.

1) Awesome 2) I really wish that Binding of Isaac had an entirely different aesthetic, since it has completely made what I think would be a neat game into something I have no interest in.

I don't understand, are you talking about Aaron Linde's little looping image? I think the other three people on the podcast decided to skype video call in, but he's represented by that silly loop. I listened to this like a podcast, outside of the fun moment I gif'ed above. In other news, after many many hours of fun exploring, I finally completed my first dungeon: It granted me a power that is profoundly useful for exploring. If anyone is reading this and hasn't completed a dungeon yet, your life will be immeasurably easier if you head northwest and tackle this challenge first. Afterwards, I just spent more time exploring the southeast part of the map. I think that it's important for me to not be riding a horse around, since I can really stop and satisfy my curiosity more quickly when I'm on foot. I've also been throwing my shrine orbs into stamina upgrades instead of hearts because it's way way more fun to clamber around without worrying about falling. It is incredible how amazing this game looks and feels.

It was pretty interesting that Jake identified that the clip of Omar Sharif saying "That was good play" was from a Mac version of the game. When Nick first brought up that he played that game on a Dark Souls stream, I went and found a clip it from a youtube play of the Mac game, then re-recorded from the youtube video and made it available for Nick, which he uses in his streams now. So, it started as Omar Sharif's voice, which was recorded and compressed and put into the Mac version of the game, then re-recorded and compressed for a youtube video, then re-recorded from a youtube video, and then put into a twitch stream, and then heard from a twitch stream. And it still sounds great.

I played a bit of Shovel Knight using the joycons and I never quite got the hang of it. It's a precision action-platformer, and you really need to have the ability to quickly go from one direction to the other to land difficult jumps and strikes, and I was never fully comfortable using either the joystick or the button d-pad. It always felt more dangerous than it should have. Other people have found that over time they get used to it, but I have played enough platformers in my life (I used to play a ton of Spelunky using an SNES controller) to know that things felt off with the joycon. I recently found a Switch Pro Controller, and it's night and day in terms of my ability to play Shovel Knight. Again, I have read a lot of people found it perfectly enjoyable with the joycon, but that was not my own experience.

You can watch Jake (and Ken Levine, and Jake Kazdal, and Aaron Linde) talk about the game here. It's an interesting discussion! Edit: Ken Levine curses, gets embarrassed, Jake says "Jesus Christ"

This is a pretty great article about how there are some MLB players who are currently alive who have "Star Wars-ass names."