Coods

This evokes some kind of Matrix-esque harvest where clawed robots burrow themselves into a line of human legs for nutrients. god why are they so slow

Nothing much to add, this game is great and I enjoyed playing it with my friend.

This isn't really pertinent to anything, I just realized that the ACTUAL back to the future 2 future date is coming up and it'll be nonstop groans.

For what it's worth, I didn't really like Steins;Gate (which is as close to hating as I can get ), and it's still pretty worth watching.

where are the heroes though?!?!?!?

I had a fucking moment when they started comparing the hands in Tacoma and Firewatch.

I would have loved to be a new listener this week. This episode rocked. That turn of the century city-builder idea is insane and I also want to play it. Reminds me of how Cities Skylines released a full European themed content pack. Hoping that they do other eras of buildings as well.

You are all wonderful people.

Wizard Jam 2016 Proposal: Quotes from insane Goodreads author.

In my humble opinion, Tech Mo'r's subtle contributions to the definitive sound of the group are tragically forgotten. Also this hilarious excerpt from the wiki: Ouch.

I am very excited for the nick and chris cast, AKA With Cheese Plate Part 2

I think this season is funny as hell and great, but wow it has a strange story arc. A lot of backpedalling, red herrings and sporadic subplots that haven't come together yet, but are clearly going to by the finale in some way that i haven't pieced together.

"We have to go back, Kate" is so dumb, but I won't deny I lost my shit when it happened. The way LOST could find the perfect intersection between their narrative conceits and the emotions of the characters was beautiful.

I'm glad by nature of the joke, the "ever wish you could rewind time" joke is probably the oldest idle thumbs joke still in frequent rotation. It still gets me, embarrassingly.

212 is already in my music rotation frequently, so hearing it preceding an episode of Idle Thumbs would go undetected for a bit and then freak me out a lot.

I had this same reaction to the first couple episodes of Planetes. It gets better. Like, an entirely different show. 2.22 was so good, it's the only rebuild film that I can actually remember parts of. 1.11 and 3.33 have completely washed away for me.

I'm perfectly ok with believing that Don goes back to McCann and does the coke ad, because I don't necessarily believe that advertising in Mad Men was meant to represent something cynical and dehumanizing, even though Don may tout that perception at times (especially early series). Throughout the show we've clearly seen that Don actually puts a lot of himself in advertising. The famous Carousel pitch in season 1 always struck me as proof that Don sees a connection between what we want as human beings and what materialistic things can provide us. I vaguely remember that Don actually explains this to Peggy when he tries to convince her of joining SCDP in season 3 finale. He believes in Peggy because Peggy understands that the essence of advertising is the belief that you have agency in your happiness through consumerism. The Hershey's breakdown also, where Don first tries to spin some flowery thing about his childhood before breaking down and admitting that a chocolate bar was the only thing that made him feel like a normal kid. Does anyone have to believe that there still exists a human core to advertising in real life? Probably not. But watching Don's journey through the half-season, I don't think it undermines his arc at all to say that he went back and put his whole heart into the ad.

Gosh, Mad Men. So many thoughts about what I saw, but I can't articulate anything holistically about the ending, the season and the show in general yet.

Yessss Twilight struggle really is the best. You guys touched on coups and VP scoring system as really evocative mechanics, and I think this is true with so much of the other design choices. I'm not familiar with a lot of other strategy board games of this intensity, so some of this stuff might be convention, but damn I think it's super cool and makes me want to play more board games. Mainly my favorite thing about Twilight Struggle's card playing mechanic is that it evokes the uniquely unbalanced nature of something like the Cold War. Each card is either U.S. favorable, U.S.S.R. favorable, or neutral. At the start of any era, each player draws a random handful of them. Theoretically, the U.S. player could draw 8 U.S.S.R. cards and then essentially have to deal with the consequences in order to use the influence points. To me, it echoes the real foreign policy of containment, or limiting the spread of communism during the war. Since you have to make moves regardless of the cards you get, sometimes you'll use the influence points of a card simply to cancel out that cards effect. The important and brilliant thing is that you as a player get to "contain" the effects of these cards as best you can, since you have agency over when and how they are played. The incredible thing is that when you DO get terrible turns, the way you handle threats can drastically mitigate the negative effects. As a specific example, if you are U.S., there is a USSR card worth 4 points (really good) that causes all U.S. played cards to decrease in value for the rest of the turn. This seems pretty terrible for the U.S., but if you happen to draw this card, you can choose to save it for the last round in the turn, so you get to use the 4 points without any negative repercussions because the turn is already over. Small workarounds like these are what make the strategy of this game super interesting. There are also a lot of clever ways in which real events are synthesized into card abilities. For example, the Cuban missile crisis in real life was resolved by compromise, where the USSR would essentially take nukes out of Cuba as long as the U.S. took nukes out of Turkey (and also to not attack Cuba). The Cuban missile crisis card in Twilight Struggle can be removed if the U.S. player chooses to take some influence points out of Turkey. There is no real life parallel to nullifying an event and chucking it towards the space race, though. I think it was a respectable try at capturing the essence of the cultural relevance of the space race and its relevance in the cold war. It won't win you the game, but it helps.

Killer line of the episode: Betty talking to Henry: "Why was I ever doing it?" ughhhhhh

I'm a huge fan of every time the thumbs talk briefly about DFW. RIP the book club.

I really enjoyed the smile on Chaough's face when he realized that he possibly may never see Draper again.

couldn't wait for the new thread: I really really liked the new episode, man.