LMN8R

Just FYI to the Idle Thumbs folks - if you don't want to shell out $60 for Sea of Thieves, it's included for $10/month via Xbox Game Pass. And you can get a 14-day trial to Game Pass too, so if you've never used a trial before you can basically play Sea of Thieves for 2 weeks for free. Since the game is a "Play Anywhere" title, either buying the game digitally or getting Xbox Game Pass gives you access to both the PC version and the Xbox version. Also - it's fully cross-play so the Xbox and PC players can play together.

The discussion around AIs, copying consciousness, and other stuff reminded me of Black Mirror’s holiday episode White Christmas: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Christmas_(Black_Mirror) if if you want to see Jon Hamm in a brilliant/disturbing take on those topics, definitely watch it! On Netflix now.

YES

I need to see this koopa troopa/Woman side by side because I’m not seeing it :-P

That's quite the awesome guest!

You know, I had a fantastic time at PAX over the weekend, and agree with many who wrote about it that little of the extremism, harassment, etc. we see on Twitter was happening at all at PAX. That in the real world, things aren't nearly as bad as they could seem to be on Twitter. Articles like this: http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/08/29/why-pax-is-better-than-the-internet2/ But the thing is, in retrospect, I don't think that's very true. I think there were hundreds if not thousands of people who were at PAX who wholly empathize or tacitly acknowledge this gamergate crap as being legitimate, but they're just too chickenshit to do anything outside of their internet anonymity. I saw way too many fedoras and way too much gross gawking at cosplayers for me to believe otherwise. (Yes, you're allowed to look at and think cosplayers are attractive. No, stop getting all over them when taking pictures, or staring at them, or hitting on them. yuck) The claims that these are a "vocal minority" do more harm than good. It's a simple way to make people feel better about themselves, to distract the conversation or try to be reductive about it in a way that basically implies "stop claiming this is an issue because in my own privileged bubble it's not". Seeing Jenn Frank bow out is just so sad. I don't blame her at all for doing so, but it's yet more fuel for MRAs to think they've "won" here. Ugh.