James

If you take the term at face value, it's a claim that something is generally "rated" too highly. It's making an objective claim: that the thing is less good than people espouse, rather than that you simply like it less than others. For art it would probably imply that it's flawed in a way that people are ignoring, rather than it simply not being to your taste. For example, perhaps it's not as insightful as people claim. People could still like it, but it wouldn't be as good. While it takes its name and the very broadest strokes of its plot and setting from the Fritz Lang film (i.e. it's a heavily socially stratified future and there's a machine woman/girl in a big tower), it's really a different thing. It's more "inspired by" than "remake of". I love the ending of the anime. That kind of audiovisual spectacle really hits the spot for me.

It's not meant to be a measure of quality. It's just a tool to demonstrate trends in film-making. There's nothing inherently better about long takes; it's just that perhaps the general preference for shorter takes leaves modern audiences too impatient to appreciate slower-paced editing. I'm personally quite a fan of long takes, but obviously different films will be best served by different styles. I presume for Birdman it counts the disguised edits? Because otherwise shouldn't it be over an hour? Most of the film is presented as a single shot. Does anyone know why that site is under a Latvian domain, by the way? Does .lv correspond to something else relevant to the subject matter?

Oh, I'm sure. I imagine all the people who use them are lovely and appropriately humble and all that stuff, and it depends on how your stuff is set up and maybe some of them just have deep voices naturally. That's just the reaction it elicits in me. That said, there are styles of radio where that's less prevalent. If you're running a show and it has intense radio voice going on, even if it weren't deliberate in the first place, at some point you've noticed it and decided not to do anything about it, like moving the mic away slightly or whatever (not an audio engineer!). Which isn't to say that people running shows should do that – it's an entirely valid aesthetic – it's just something that puts me off a little.

I could be mistaken, but I think forumite Nachimir is involved in that in some capacity, or at least was at some point. His website mentions it, anyway. I haven't seen him around here much recently, mind. I'm similarly ill-equipped to explain it, but I'm also slightly bothered by the production on those sorts of programmed. I think I find it overly showy. I wonder whether it's a cultural thing – I don't know about Ireland, but similar programming on Radio 4 tends to be presented quite differently. Honestly, I think a lot of what irritates me is conspicuous radio voices. I'm not a fan of radio voices. It seems light a slightly conceited affectation. I do enjoy the occasional 99% Invisible, though, despite all that. The subject matter is often good, and when it's just a normal person with something interesting to say in a way you'd actually say it to a person, it's fine.

See, this is a large part of why I find the concept so unsettling. School is a strange time with its own particular power dynamics, but when you introduce the threat of arrest and officers of the law, it seems like it puts things into a whole other realm. Like, you can get into serious trouble in school, but in a sense it's its own little world distinct from adult life, and that seems somehow important to me. Of course, if a serious crime is committed, call in the police, but having that spectre hanging over proceedings at all times seems kind of fucked up. Perhaps in schools with such a high rate of criminal incidents it's just a matter of practicality. I guess it's logically not so different than a security guard at a shop (though those aren't usually dressed like police over here), but to me it does feel very different.

Yeah, Brad Muir's a star. Hope he does well at Valve. Looking forward to Dan on Alt+F1, too. I was pretty sure that was what they were hinting at, but hadn't seen it confirmed.

It sounds like they mostly fade into the background, which is good to hear. I suppose I overdramatise it in my head because my only experience of the idea is stuff like this most recent incident. I guess I should count myself lucky that my school experience was sedate enough that the question of security never even came up. I wonder whether any studies have been done into the effectiveness of school security. Are they effective deterrents? Do they have a significant impact on incidents that do happen? Not predicting a particular result; just curious.

The idea of an on-site police officer in schools is so bizarre to me. I wonder what (if any) psychological effect it has on the students. As I imagine it, it would make the place seem like a permanent conflict zone. But perhaps it's not like that, or perhaps they're in schools that already were that. I don't know. It does seem like it could strongly influence children's feelings about authority, trust and conflict resolution, though. Does it make school feel a bit like a prison? Or are they not that visible most of the time?

That's not a dash, it's a hyphen. Roughly speaking (and at the risk of being the subject of further pedantry), hyphens join up two parts into a single word (like jump-start), whereas dashes join up parts of a sentence. There are two types of dash of differing length, both of which should be longer than hyphens, but it's not obvious how to produce them on keyboards (particularly given that it differs by software), so the distinction is largely lost. Also, the hyphen on keyboards also doubles up as a minus sign, which strictly speaking should be between the hyphen and dash in length. There's a font that renders its hyphen-minus longer than its en dash – which is completely backwards – but I don't remember what it is. I think it's one Apple uses.

Now that I've unlocked everything, I was able to realize an idea I had before making my first course: 58AD-0000-00B8-B9F1 This one has a definite gimmick, but I did try not to make it entirely bullshit.

I got a Wii U this weekend. I'll be sure to go back through this thread and try all the courses, but in the meantime here's my first effort: 5A21-0000-00B5-2E71 I was trying not to be too gimmicky, though there is an attempt at a theme. It's also not supposed to be outrageously challenging or anything. Hopefully someone gets at least one moment of enjoyment from it. Since my first Nintendo console was the N64, I'm not intimately familiar with classic Mario. I die an awful lot. My momentous contribution to the second one was saying "make a bit where you have to go left". EDIT: It turns out I accidentally made the course way harder than I'd intended (it had one completion out of 112 tries). I'd tested the main route, then used a shortcut to actually finish it when uploading. It turns out that some question mark blocks I'd added right at the end made what should have been a simple jump very tricky indeed. Anyway, I fixed that and made a few other tweaks, re-uploaded and updated the code above to reflect the changes. I still think the bang-your-head-on-the-ceiling platforming section in the middle is probably more annoying than fun, but I didn't have any immediate great ideas to replace it with. So I suppose my first Mario Maker lesson is to test a lot, and to take the main path when uploading stages.

Absolutely not – I hope my post doesn't imply that it does. I just hope that the necessary and inevitable criticism is compassionate given how she came to say such things. That shouldn't be tricky, but public opinion often manifests as a pretty blunt instrument. Taking two examples from the article I linked to, this seems very well-considered, addressing the problems in a way that (to me, at least) involves Hynde's victimhood; it says "stop blaming yourself": Whereas this struck me as more of an attack on her as a person, which I'm less comfortable with: To be clear, I totally oppose her statements and do think they need to be challenged, and hope that she has a moment of realization, as you mentioned in your post.

It's a tricky one. On the one hand, she's quite visible and therefore what she's saying has reach. But on the other, she's as much a victim of this belief as anyone else. It should be resisted, but with sensitivity to her situation.

It turns out Chrissie Hynde (the singer from the Pretenders) blames herself for a sexual assault she was victim of at the age of 21. She says some clearly very unhelpful things, and it looks like it's kind of blown up on social media, but it's hard to ignore the tragedy in her spending all this time blaming herself for this horrendous thing that was done to her. I don't suppose that's too uncommon, either.

She looks like a cat I had called Tom (imaginative, I know). He was a very handsome cat, but of our three he probably most fit the aloof feline stereotype – he spent most of his time outdoors and didn't seem especially interested in people. Very occasionally he'd be more affectionate, though, which I enjoyed very much. Anyway, Maya looks a lot like he did.

Hahaha, wonderful! Weirdly, I'm pretty sure the first time Goldblum was mentioned on the podcast Chris really didn't like him and thought he was a total creep. I remember listening to it years ago when I was catching up on the (then limited) back-catalogue on my way to or from some stupid seminar to learn the software we use for email newsletters at work. It's a strangely specific memory.

Fascinating!

But if people who get no use from it aren't paying for it, who is? Where is the money to pay for the healthcare of those who can't afford it supposed to come from? Either it's the state, i.e. you and me and everyone else through taxation according, in theory, to our means; or it's from charity, which is less reliable and a much less fair distribution, because it depends on conscience. At least with tax the bastards have to put a fucking effort in to dodge it; with charity all they have to do to avoid contributing is nothing at all. Or how about you look at it like this: your prize for paying for more than you use is that you get to live in good health. It's not like sick people are laughing their way to the bank. I can believe the NHS is inefficient, but private health insurance isn't any sort of a replacement unless we all pool our money together and pay for health insurance for everyone in the country. That seems unlikely.

Shit, I haven't prepared at all.

Pretty much the only time people use it correctly (including myself) is in a romantic context: jealous partners are (implicitly overly) afraid of losing their love.

I got where you were coming from; I just thought it worth mentioning that even if there ever was any worth to the No True Scotsman nonsense, in this case it has no bearing at all. You know, for any entirely theoretical passing GGers. Or because I just can't bear for a thought to stay in my head, unspoken.

Whether or not he's really Gamergate has no bearing on whether or not what he's saying is true (which I don't claim to know). I suppose it is somewhat relevant to what one should do with that information, but it certainly wouldn't reflect well on the movement one way or the other.

I don't know whether this actually means a great deal, but apparently that Weev guy thinks GG is an effective recruitment tool for white nationalism.

Incredible. I've seen a few other photos of the aftermath, including one of all those hundreds of burnt-out cars neatly lined up. I feel conflicted because, as well as being an effective document of the event, they're also in some cases pleasing images, which feels like an inappropriate reaction to something so horrendous. I guess it's a similar conundrum to enjoying fiction based on real tragedy, and so on.

I also need to do the last part of the last heist, which I missed last time because of stupid other engagements.