Bartimaeus

Someone mentioned Occam's Razor earlier - the explanation that requires the least amount of assumptions is probably that they simply got lucky.

Business Insider reports that Trump will warn Russia of where it plans to strike in advance. I believe Obama did the same thing - probably the right call, even if it sounds like it plays into Trump's Russia infatuation. Although Trump did criticize Obama for it on Twitter at the time, which is what makes it funny. BBC also reports that the OPCW agreed with the UK in its findings regarding the nerve agent assassination attempt.

nope, it's her and the deep state's fault that this is happening to begin with

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan calling it quits, will not seek re-election. Adds on to an already disastrous wave of retirements for the Republicans. Retirement tracker: https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/10/politics/house-retirement-tracker/index.html

The Red Letter Media guys got me excited for it with this video Yeah, that's one great. My favorite Star Wars video of theirs, though, is actually the utterly asinine "Vader's armor description" video that I cannot believe is a real thing. I cannot believe the patently ridiculous crap these authors have written about something that very obviously never needed any explanation. Some of this stuff just sounds like really, really bad fanfiction. or tl;dw: vader's every waking moment is a living hell

...The Solo movie? The one that looks like the worst one yet (excepting the prequels) that also had a media circus for its problems? ...Yeah, don't be too optimistic there.

Trump's reaction was amusing His threat to fire Mueller, not so much.

Trump's personal lawyer had his offices raided by the FBI in a no-knock raid, with all sorts of documents seized. Yikes. What in the world did they have that a judge felt comfortable signing off on raiding the president's lawyer? Will have to wait and see, but that is...bold, to say the least. ​ ​(e): According to Trump's lawyer's lawyer, it was at least party done on the basis of a referral made by Special Counsel Mueller.

...Honestly, a NWN sequel makes way, way more sense than a BG sequel ever would have.

I could forgive them for their aesthetics aging poorly - as most early 3D games have - but the real sin was in how it and NWN2 (and Dragon Age: Origins to a degree as well) played. They're so clunky. Screwing around with the camera all the bloody time is so miserable, especially whenever you're trying to switch between characters which is constantly resetting the camera, a movement system that feels like it's alternating between being on ice and being in a swamp, buttons that randomly don't fire or are sticky or slow to fire...and then the fact that you have so many buttons on top of it, many of them thrown into a horribly wonky right click radial menu...oh my word, it is so difficult to play either NWNs when it feels like I am just constantly fighting with the game's UI and controls. The IE games' perspectives, UIs, and controls are antiquated, but they work efficiently for the most part (with the major exception of having too many spells), especially if you master (or rebind) the Fx keys. No screwing around with the camera, either - one flat perspective is bliss in its simplicity in comparison. I was never able to get comfortable with either of the NWNs, even after years of playing them. (e): Also, it doesn't help that the combat systems in all the 3D games feel terribly slow-placed (...in addition to being mildly to moderately unresponsive in general). BG1 suffers from this as well for the first few levels, but not so much once you start hitting around level 4-5, and certainly not at all in BG2 - you butcher weaker mobs in seconds, and a group of stronger ones can butcher one of your characters in about the same time.

​RIP.

Weren't like 44 other people exposed to the agent as well?

​ ​ ​ ​How do you feel about people protesting about protesting, out of curiosity?

I see that he also directed When Marnie Was There, which is my second least favorite Ghibli film...but Arrietty is on quite another level compared to that - at least When Marnie Was There seemed mostly competent. So far, according to my list of movie ratings (where 6/10 means overall "decent", 7/10 means "good", 8/10 means "great", 9/10 means "fantastic", and 10/10 means "virtually perfect" - I've never rated any movie ever higher than a 9), I'd put them: 8.5: Howl's Moving Castle 8: My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Whisper of the Heart 7.5: Princess Mononoke, Pom Poko, Porco Rosso, From Up on Poppy Hill 7: Spirited Away, Laputa: Castle in the Sky, Only Yesterday 6.5: The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, When Marnie Was There 5: The Secret World of Arrietty Overall, as someone who generally likes a little more child-oriented movies (especially adventure, coming-of-age, slice of life, etc. films that, when done well, are also perfectly suited and fun for adults), the Ghibli experiment has been a great success on the whole. I have not, as of yet, re-watched any - it seems strange that Howl's Moving Castle somehow is apparently my favorite Ghibli film. The exact numbers may change slightly upon re-watching and discovering what really stuck with me, I think.

The Secret World of Arrietty. YIKES! Interesting premise, nice art, but the writing...was just so bad. Might be okay for children, but it was not for me. Whoever wrote this deserves a big ol' slap in the face for butchering it so badly.

Judging by the way it's haphazardly switched between being available and unavailable on digital retailers over the years since its release, it seems that the corporations involved don't know, either. Would not expect an Enhanced Edition anytime soon for that reason alone.

tl;dw: confusing, sort of bad (but mostly just mediocre and forgettable), and didn't seem like it was made for any age group due to conflicts in content and storytelling

...Uh, wouldn't they literally be cost-effective if you plan to live in your house for that amount of time, though? Good luck with the moving, Hurlshot.

Porco Rosso. I thought it was very good with the exception of the girl mechanic, who was written (and treated by other characters) very bizarrely. The movie was a little up and down because of that, but it was still overall very good. ​ ​The Tragedy of Man. I know I wrote about this one not too terribly long ago, but I had to re-watch it. A truly strange (but oddly captivating) animation that's just incredibly, incredibly unique - I doubt I will see its like, a time-traveling and philosophizing Adam torn between the rational and scientific Satan and a unknown and uncaring God, anywhere else. I wish I could find the BluRay of it, but it is on neither Amazon or eBay, nor anywhere else from what I have searched. ​

Gosh, isn't your tower by Mount Doom wealth enough? Leave some for the rest of us!

merry april fools' easter everyone

That's why I had the last three sentences of my post, . It seemed like they wanted me to sympathize with the main character, and think that the things "we" were doing made sense and were the right things to do...so that when things were turned on their head, it would be a terrible shock. Unfortunately, they failed rather spectacularly. I can only take the "we're soldiers, we have a duty to whatever and a job to do, etc." speech so many times to justify doing awful things that'll predictably go totally wrong before I think the main character is a complete moron. It doesn't help that the things they're saying to do are pretty obviously terrible even without hindsight!

I quit about the time my character told me there was no other choice besides to shoot a bunch of fatally poisonous explosives straight into a group of refugees, even though I could very clearly tell that that was going to happen. I remember reading later that one of the devs of the game said that the player does have a choice - to quit the game. They have zero choice throughout the actual game, mind you, but apparently the dev wanted you to exercise your ability to quit playing...which is exactly what I did, funnily enough - unfortunately, it was for the wrong reasons. If they wanted me to feel regret for my actions, they did a hilariously bad job of not making the entire game feel forcibly railroaded. A game where I felt like I was actually doing what was logical and just, but ended up being horribly wrong, combined with good gameplay would've made for a fantastic game. I got neither of those things.

Aviary Attorney. First game I've ever played of this type (Ace Attorney parody). I rather liked it, though the final act was very underwhelming.

I found it to be a totally mediocre third person shooter with some really lame and hamfisted writing and railroading. It was clearly meant to parody and mock other games of its type, but because I basically have never played other games of its type (other bad modern shooters like Call of Duty, or so I presume), I thought it was quite boring and ridiculous. You may enjoy it more if you play a lot of games in the genre to begin with, though, and want something that mocks it and points out how ridiculous and insane it can be. So I would not recommend it to anybody who does not typically enjoy these types of games - it's not different enough from them in terms of gameplay to be enjoyable, and you probably won't care too much for the gimmick.