JonCole

This news is breaking, but apparently the St. Louis PD is being called to stand down. Governor Nixon is going to be making a statement about who is going to be given jurisdiction next.

Well that's... disappointing. Here's for hoping that Bioware dashes all my expectations re: the theme and art style and manages to really pull one out.

If the OP is still interested, Guild Wars 2 is half off right now and I maintain is a good MMO introvert entry point - http://buy.guildwars2.com/store/gw2/en_US/html/pbPage.buyguildwars2

I think I'm going to go to bed, even though I feel like I could keep reading about and watching this stuff all night. For those still just finding out about this, Vox is doing a great job of presenting the whole picture and updating as necessary - http://www.vox.com/2014/8/11/5988925/mike-brown-killing-shooting-case-ferguson-police-riots-st-louis

From what I understand, it's just an over the top cost for participating in the program that slides based on the number of officers you have. So your police department pays <$2000 per year and then has access to effectively unlimited armored vehicles, assault rifles, body armor, etc.

I was trying to find the exact program that made this militarization possible, equipment-wise. It's called the Section 1033 Protocol: What makes it so appealing is that it's basically free, at least compared to most other methods of procuring this type of equipment:

The latter. Police forces acquire military-grade armament from the military as items are decommissioned - for instance, an armored truck that was used in Iraq would have to be stored and maintained by the government, so instead they essentially give them to local PD to save them that cost. Same goes for decommissioned assault rifles, NVGs, ammunition, etc. Edit: here's some pretty good footage of what it's like on the ground there - http://new.livestream.com/accounts/9035483/events/3271930

Insane pictures:

The shooting was so covered up that police actually refused to interview several witnesses to the murder, including Daria Johnson who was interviewed by Chris Hayes at MSNBC - http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/police-shooting-draws-massive-protests-317336131948 Yesterday, Ferguson police were firing tear gas into the backyards of people living close to where riots were taking place - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/12/ferguson-police-tear-gas_n_5671811.html A Missouri State Senator who was participating in a nonviolent protest was fired upon with tear gas, she went on to ask the police chief if she was going to get gassed again - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/13/state-senator-ferguson_n_5676766.html Earlier today, Ferguson Police shot a woman in the head with a rubber bullet and then attributed the attack to a local "driveby", despite the fact that they closed all the roads in that area (it was a mile away from the initial shooting). Here's the more or less "official story", despite the fact that there were several witnesses who said it was the police - http://www.ksdk.com/story/news/crime/2014/08/13/ferguson-woman-shot-in-head/13990051/ Wesley Lowery of the Washington Post and Ryan Reilly of the Huffington Post were arrested and detained by Ferguson Police for no apparent reason - http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/08/13/washington-post-reporter-arrested-in-ferguson/ And in all of this, the name of the officer who murdered Michael Brown has still yet to be released and no charges are being brought to him. The streets are covered with officers in SWAT gear, armored cars, tanks, officers perched atop vehicles with high-powered assault rifles, tear gas, etc. Police stats are being released that show that blacks are arrested in Ferguson at a fairly ridiculous rate, practically 1:5. A police officer in Ferguson has leaked over the past few months that the cops would openly discuss how some day would be "black days" and they would "arrest people for being black in the mall", for instance.

I'd say Oglaf doesn't count as pornography, my wife reads it and has shown me some of the stuff you may be referring to. It strikes me as more frank and lighthearted about sexuality than pornographic.

Unfortunately, pornography is not unique in creating social expectations of how sex works in the real world. Frankly, I feel like most pop culture produces unrealistic expectations of not only how sex works, but also how relationships in general work. I was just recently having an argument in reference to an article talking about cheating. The person I was arguing with was adamant that cheating means that the cheater must hate the person being cheated on and/or never had any real feelings of love for the other person. That just seems like a lesson learned from pop culture, where every movie portrays cheating as an ultimate, selfish, hateful act of betrayal with no context. In reality, there are any number of reasons that cheating may occur, like sexual or emotional dissatisfaction that isn't discussed openly. Anyways, back to the point, I have a vague hope that anime pornography serves a role as an outlet for unrealistic expectations rather than a reinforcement of those expectations. In this case, there is no facade - it isn't acting, it's pure cartoonish depiction. I don't think that most reasonable people would walk away from that kind of anime and say "that's how people are in the real world!"

It's generally illegal to represent children in anime in a pornographic context because it still "counts" as real enough, so by that logic I'd imagine that women can still be objectified in anime despite not being real. That said, I don't really fully submit to that logic, but it may help as a point of reference for your thinking.

It's really hard to do that if you're just recording a premixed stream from Skype. Back when I podcasted, each person recorded their stream locally, dropped their files into a shared folder, and one person would then import all the streams into Audacity, do some denoising as needed, volume leveling, and then finally mix it into one stream. I imagine that the format of their show means that they're always recording remotely with new people all the time, so getting everyone with the program is a challenge. Plus, producing audio on top of recording time is actually a very intensive process to perform on a weekly basis.

Ah, I put that in the Gamescom thread but it's just as good here. About what I expected - I mean, it's not in anyone's interest but our own to know when the exclusivity ends, so it's not a big surprise that it took all that long to get it out of someone.

Messed up link, here you go - http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/08/13/twelve-minutes-preview/ Also, did you mean "tobolowsky" in the tag, in reference to the actor in Groundhog Day?

Phil Spencer said that Tomb Raider is a timed exclusive, though obviously doesn't have insight into whether Crystal is actively working toward other platforms - http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-08-13-microsoft-confirms-rise-of-the-tomb-raider-xbox-exclusivity-deal-has-a-duration

Rant appreciated.

I don't mind Cara's voice, but I just can't stand the audio quality of the podcast. I tried reaching out to Tom on Twitter to see if they'd be willing to do anything different to improve the quality, but it seems they're intent recording over Skype.

A lot of the defense I've seen for the insensitivity has boiled down to "but look at the situation they're in!" I think it's an incredibly flimsy argument because guess what, Telltale constructed the exact situation that theoretically forced the issue so in either case they must shoulder the burden.

Fair enough. Three hours a week is actually a long time to spend on something that isn't fulfilling or interesting to you. My personal entertainment factor has increased since Dan joined up, though still isn't anywhere near GB's peak from back in the day.

I've been horribly annoyed lately with the use of the word "selfie" in place of portrait. I don't see it all the time, but I have seen it crop up more and more. I'll see an artist I enjoy post something on Tumblr of them "drawing a selfie of [character]" and it's just a portrait, no implication that the image was "captured" by the "subject". Or I'll often see on Instagram people showing off a "selfie" that was clearly taken either by someone else or by the phone mounted on a Gorillapod or something.

I got Rollercoaster Tycoon in a GOG sale, I should really go and play that dumb game again. So much nostalgia.

Yeah, I really really think it's a timed exclusive. They just want to obfuscate that as much as possible because it pays off most for those co-marketing dollars invested by Microsoft. Though, the vehemence of these exclusivity claims makes me think that it won't be a quick turnaround, maybe a year off or we'll really have to wait for some remaster-type deal. I mean, it took a full year for Dead Rising 3 to come to PC after being an "exclusive", so I would guess it'd be something similar to that. Really makes me not want to buy it ultimately, because voting with my dollar in that case would seem to suggest I'm fine with their dog and pony "exclusivity" garbage. Maybe I'll wait until it hits sub-$20 in a Steam sale some years from now.

This is something Activision announced yesterday. They're going to have a special 'Day Zero' preorder edition that you get the day before initial launch (November 3 vs November 4) which will give you a day of Double XP and some exclusive in-game weapons/junk. Rise of the Tomb Raider is "exclusively available to Xbox One in 2015". So, timed exclusive on console and maybe PC?

Meh. On the bright side, Below being "first to console on Xbox One" means it'll probably be on PC? I don't remember them saying it would be coming to PC for sure, but this is about as good a confirmation as I need.