Bartimaeus

your dog is why games suck today. it's all graphics over gameplay and narrative

I'd like to order one pepperoni pizza, too, please

I haven't had a McD burger in probably around 15 years, but from everything I've read, pretty much no fast-food place has anything gluten-free here in the U.S., and things that should be are usually contaminated. So even though you should be able to get like a burger without the bun and stuff, or fries, it will really just be up to how strictly individual employees adhere to keeping stuff from getting contaminated. And I don't know what wages are like in Finland (I presume better), but a lot (not all, but an understandably large amount given the generally terrible pay and working environment) of minimum wage employees here in the U.S. just don't really care that much. From a quick Google search, I certainly see nothing of the sort offered here.

I think that's only a small part of the problem. Most people don't want to eat a bunch of raw fruits and vegetables every day...and furthermore, it's difficult to survive on only them (especially vegetables, which are by and large incredibly calorie-light). So you have to figure out how to integrate them into actual meals...and there's the problem. The time it takes to cook and prepare meals, the time it takes to figure out what you want to cook (most people don't want to eat the same 2-3 meals every day for forever), the initial time sink required to actually learn how to cook (preferably with skill!). You know what's not difficult to survive on? Hamburgers. If there has been any great loss as a result of the disintegration of the "traditional family structure", it's probably been decent home-cooking and nutrition. People just don't have the requisite time for doing it (properly) anymore when there isn't at least one person dedicated to the job - and I don't think it much matters whether it's a man or a woman, just that there has to be somebody. I have celiac disease, so I can't eat anything BUT home-cooking pretty much, and I absolutely loathe it. Not that I ever much ate out or had fast-food to begin with, but the loss of so many other prepared foods on top of it has made it even more acute.

that 25 million mexicans comment is just gold

Top Agent Said F.B.I. Would Stop Trump From Becoming President. Yeah, that guy's a clown. Mueller kicked him off of his Russian investigation for exactly that reason. Also, while it's true that Strzok was a dummy with issues of impartiality, the actual FBI Director (Comey) nevertheless came out on the opposite end by making the Clinton investigation as public as possible while making the Trump investigation as secret as possible, so that doesn't really match up with the idea that the FBI was in it for Clinton. I think he did the best he could in impossible circumstances. He had a duty to report his findings to the Congress intelligence committees, the Republican members of which (especially in the House) kept immediately running to the press and leaking favorable lines and tainting the investigation and causing an appearance of impropriety on the part of the FBI. So he tried to get ahead of it by going straight to the public (especially as a result of a compromised and non-recusing AG)...which may have had the effect of throwing the election in favor of Trump when he was forced to announce the investigation's re-opening days before the election, when all he was trying to do was maintain the integrity of the FBI. There wasn't a good solution, so he just took the one that was (I think) the most consistent and honest. Fair enough, I says.

What're you talking about?

Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort was sent to jail today for witness tampering-related charges - his other current charges are conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act) statements, false statements (separate occasion).

Yep. Poor authenticity and rather insane, IIRC the Eastern church did end up rejecting it, and so Greek Orthodox bibles have never included it to begin with.

that happened to me circa 2012-2013...and it's only gotten worse since

It's pretty silly that gaffes like this salute seem to always get an inane amount of coverage while clearly deliberately awful and/or dishonest actions and words are just another Monday. ...And in this administration, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday as well, .

Yeah, I see that, his "Death Gaze" ability uses the "Replace Creature" effect, so it's not a normal death effect. However, it does provide a save vs. death with no penalty, which isn't too bad. I can't really remember ever having much trouble with that fight, so I'm not sure what to tell you.

Hm. You didn't have a level 7 priest that could cast Death Ward?

Yeah, I was responding to Guard Dog, who did say that they apparently found his prints on the bag. Theoretically, the perp could've re-used a ziplock bag already in the car for the drugs - about the only explanation I can think of. So...possible, but not exactly what I'd consider probable - I definitely would not send a man to prison for it either way, though, especially seeing the nature of the crime. He could've literally written "(his name)'s ILLEGAL DRUGS" with his social security # on it and I still would say not guilty.

It's probably a reasonable assumption that it's the car owner's, but I'm not going to send anybody to prison for personal use-related drug charges, so jury nullification it is.

Steam machines weren't really a console as much as specialized prebuilt PCs. Wii U works, though - the fact that it's difficult to even remember that it existed is a pretty bad sign in of itself.

Isn't the Xbox One pretty much the consensus worst console this generation, due to having so few exclusives? At least the Switch and PS4 have some.

She was the worst of the lot. Annoying, can't act, and there's something I find a little repulsive about her to boot. No thanks, please shut the door on your way out, .

I can't even get into the trailers at this point, much less the presentations. Most everything starts looking the same after so many years of watching these things...and that's probably why E3 feels like a giant middle finger of a reminder that the current AAA video game industry is just not for me for various reasons. I guess I've got the new Dark Souls game to sort of look forward to, but that's really just more of the same.

I believe Colorado.

With a not as horrid supporting cast, I may have very liked it better. Alas.

I actually thought combat was OP in Penumbra, if anything (in the one that I played anyways, which I think is the first one). Once you land a hit, you could just stunlock enemies. So...the only hit that really matters is the first one. I don't think you're meant to screw around with that enough to figure that out, though.

That's a funny way of looking at it. I can see what you mean...because in the first movie, Thor was basically a total nincompoop with little to no self-awareness, leading to slapstick situations because he's just so buffoonish and apparently does not realize that his behavior is ridiculous. Thor 3, in comparison, felt a little slapstick-y not because the characters were stupid idiots, but rather the opposite: it seemed like they were smarter, more tongue-in-cheek and self-aware. I actually liked and enjoyed Thor's character a little in this movie, which I really, really did not in the first movie. The second movie I can't speak as much about, since I can only vaguely remember it and I can only remember being supremely bored...I THINK the humor was mainly supposed to come from other characters, and Thor himself was much more serious, BUT I could be wrong. Now, it's probably just a part of his character progression throughout the series, which I would agree would probably be fine from a storytelling standpoint if I'm looking at it objectively, but I pretty much freaking hated everyone else in those first two movies (besides maybe Loki), too, which means our main character also being an annoying dummy (1st) or super serious boring (my impression from the 2nd) just makes it so that the movies weren't enjoyable. So this was a nice departure from that.

I actually saw that yesterday, too. I sort of thought the same thing, except that it wasn't totally a negative, because the previous two movies were completely overly-serious snorefests. Though I did think the pacing was really jarring at times, and cut-back-to-pointless-boring-villain-of-the-week every ten minutes or so didn't help. But thank goodness they cut out all the human characters, because they were all absolutely dreadful. I think I might actually hate Natalie Portman - she's such a dead weight in every film I've seen her in with the exception of like Leon. Overall, it wasn't too shabby. It was weird that Thor in this movie is the same character as the previous two, since they weren't terribly alike.