Bartimaeus

"If you are unprepared to encounter interpretations that you might find objectionable, please do not proceed further." I did the fat-thin one, and came up with a strong automatic preference for thin people compared to fat people. The test is biased in of itself, though, because they make you do it one way the first time (where you learn to associate "good" things with thin people), and then reverse it for the second part of the test...by which time you've already had it ingrained in you to do it that way. I wish they'd done it in reverse, or more accurately, went back to the original way, because doing it in that manner introduces bias in of itself. Since it's difficult to avoid that original mental programming, perhaps it would be best to test 50% of people going one way, and then 50% the other way, to see how much that truly affects the results. That would be more about empiric results than individual, though.

Microsoft Flight Simulator X DLC dev included malware in their DLC designed to extract Chrome user info and possibly passwords...for the purpose of identifying pirates to sue them (maybe - there was a report of a user suddenly having fraudulent payments almost right after having purchased and played this game). https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/02/19/flight-sim-group-put-malware-in-a-jet-and-called-it-drm/ ...Of course, information obtained in this way is almost certainly not admissible in court (especially European), but at least it allows them to make threatening letters to try to extract payment out of scared people.

But there are so many toxic online gaming communities these days, how can you pick just one?

I guess I don't know enough about Jimmy Kimmel to comment (except that it's a pretty common trend in our society when anything bad happens that the people more on the side of not overtly trying to restrict these bad things from happening always say "let's not politicize this", while those on the other are always in an uproar doing the exact opposite, and it seems like neither side ever realizes the hypocrisy of it all). I think this is literally the first time I've seen a picture of him.

...Context?

He's being painted as a hypocrite because he made it easier for the mentally ill to obtain guns...and then immediately blamed the massacre on the mentally ill while proposing to do nothing to actually solve our crisis of mentally ill people (...while also crapping all over our quite deadly opioid crisis). It's as stupid as it sounds.

I believe it's against the Russian constitution to extradite their citizens to other countries. Three Russian firms were also "implicated", and it seems more charges will be levied against Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager.

Thirteen Russians indicted by the special counsel for various crimes relating to election tampering, in addition to a California man. More to come in the coming months, it seems...

Yeah, they do that on purpose to make you pay more to get both. Almost all of the big cable-ISP corporations do that crap, and it usually works. @Majestic: have not heard that song in a million years.

There are a lot of things that I can absolutely consciously recognize as working or not working for me, and can explain them to others. However, there are times where it's difficult to recognize exactly what I like about a movie, or even a particular scene, and would struggle mightily when comparing them to other movies or scenes that are similar that I really don't like. Guess that's why I'm not a movie critic. Whisper of the Heart. I really enjoyed it - it was a very cute coming-of-age story. It was kind of like the as-a-child parts of Only Yesterday, except for the whole movie. Somewhat different themes, though, and not quite as interesting as a result, but I think more enjoyable.

Please, Don't Touch Anything on Steam (from our good pal ShadySands). One of those little wacky "end-a-thons", where you try to find all the different little secret endings through a variety of arcane steps or techniques in a very short game. It was fun to play around with for a couple of hours, and had decent music and visuals. Scanner Sombre on Steam (also from ShadySands). Apparently, this was meant to be a VR game, which I did not realize. Oh well, it was a little bit of horror-exploration fun with a nice little gimmick of "painting" the pitch black underground cavern you're stuck in with a scanner to reveal the area as you go along.

but nobody's played it

...And my first thought was armor class.

Yeah, U.S. sports are pretty annoying with the endless awful announcers who will never, ever shut up. Dead air is not the plague, you guys - if you used your voice more sparingly, and more thoughtfully, some of us would probably like you better.

My biggest complaint is that almost every character talking made me want to put my controller through my monitor. What the hell is up with almost every character giggling to close out every conversation? ...Why can't I be one of those nice people that aren't easily annoyed by things? :|

From the sounds of it, a heart attack.

Shocker: Trump has refused to authorize the release of the Dems' memo.

The first point about the dossier has probably been debunked already, based on the opinions of various reporters who looked at the specific wording of the Nunes memo. The memo said information that was in the dossier was used, but not the dossier itself. A weasely way of saying that information from another source that also happened to be in the dossier was used. I'm pretty that's one of the clarifications that we'd see in the release of the Democrat memo. For the second point, Obama had definitely been briefed on the Russian investigation - he had begged Mitch McConnell (Senate Majority Leader) to go public with him on it either before the primaries or as they were ongoing (I don't remember which), to try to nip it in the bud, but McConnell refused. Also, it's really weird that Strzok keeps getting painted as this super anti-Trump guy...when he was the one that convinced Comey to re-open the Clinton case, leading to that infamous Comey press meeting days before the election announcing exactly that. Strzok did not appear to like either candidates, which probably just means he had a good head on his shoulders. Except for that whole cheating on his wife with another member of the FBI while apparently writing some really stupid texts - that stuff seems rather contradictory to that point. (P.S. I don't think the Federalist is considered a very good source of news. It's not utterly terrible along the lines of breitbart, though.)

@Pidesco: Coincidentally, the idea for Fox News was originally coined in 1970 by Roger Ailes during the Nixon presidency when he was "media consultant" to the president. Discovered by Gawker (yuck) in old memos in the Nixon Presidential Library: https://web.archive.org/web/20111016200523/http://gawker.com/5814150 Originally envisioned as sort of state-run, pro-GOP news. Roger Ailes would eventually go on to help create Fox News, becoming its first CEO (starting the day it officially launched) until his resignation in 2016 as a result of a sexual harassment scandal.

Yeah, I can definitely see similarities between those three as well, but this felt even stronger than those. It's getting a little off-putting at this point. Disney needs to change up its animation style at least a little here...so many of their 3D movies just look and feel the same.

Zootopia. It was alright. Felt pretty formulaic, though, but I guess that's not totally unexpected. As far as talking animal animations go (which I don't ever bother with), this one was O.K., I guess. Could've been more interesting, though - there were several points where I was thinking that it looked like the film might be breaking free of the formula, but then it kept pulling me back down to Earth, which was disappointing. I couldn't but help keep thinking that the main character, Judy, was just Anna from Frozen, though - and it didn't help any that they made them look similar along with similar physical/expression mannerisms and voices to a degree. Princess Mononoke. Was this supposed to be a spiritual sequel to/remake of Nausicaa? Because that's kind of how it seemed. A lot of shared themes, character roles, and the structure of the film seemed pretty similar, too. I liked Nausicaa better in some ways, and Princess Mononoke in others - I'd rate them right around the same, I think.

*(not actually the same dev, although some of the guys that used to work at GSC Game World before they were all unceremoniously laid off did help form Vostok Games) BR market is already crowded, wouldn't be surprised if this made the company crash and burn. Furthermore, the connection to Stalker is tenuous at best due to BRs playing like the complete opposite kind of shooter Stalker was in most respects. Furtherfurthermore, it's not like the Stalkers were the best technically, and it seems like most BR games are utter technical disasters initially, so I can't see that going well for them when the current crop of BRs have had so much time to mature, and will have even more by the time it comes out.

pop music was a mistake I did recognize a few songs, but I think all of them were from weird al, neil cicierega, silvagunner, and postmodern jukebox parodies

Trump likes veterans who didn't lose their legs in the line of duty.

​You're not kidding. Almost all of the relevant images are of Obama and the Japanese Emperor. I did see the one image of him and the Saudis, though.