Bartimaeus

It's not a coincidence that most of the top players of twitch-based esports are invariably teens and very young adults. ...Of course, the fact that they have more time on their hands to practice their craft than older players probably also has something to do with it, I'm sure.

The Green Bay Infirmary for NFL Players Whose Bodies Don't Work Good opens today.

I think it was "crowd", but "crew" also kinda works.

I'm surprised AAA publishers haven't attempted to capitalize on crowdfunding yet, to be honest. At least as a way of gauging interest in perhaps "less safe" ideas that they're not sure about.

Interestingly, it wasn't even until 2009 that teams came out for the national anthem anyways - until the Department of Defense started funneling money into the NFL to try to boost recruiting. Hmph.

Also, on an unrelated note, I finally heard my first game of Tony Romo. He's still a little unpolished, but gosh dang, is he a breath of fresh air or what compared to the rest of these scrub announcers? He's having fun with it, and he's actually often insightful. Listening to most of the rest of the dull and unhelpful bums besides maybe Al and Chris sometimes really drives home how little most of these guys are actually contributing unless you're just listening to radio...and I think they actually have separate radio announcers, so what's the danged point?

A lot of people seem to have that attitude regarding football/sports. I am not that bothered because I already hate listening to the vast majority of commentators (Al and Chris are good when it's a decent game, and Tony Romo is already surprisingly/refreshingly good...but everyone else can pretty much just screw off) and I hate commercials and I usually mute both (indeed, I sometimes switch channels temporarily for commercials I especially hate and don't want to give any views to - it's stupid and probably pointless, but it feels good), and this whole political business doesn't extend to the game itself - only before and after. Not only that, but I'm just honestly less annoyed by it than the commercials and commentators: it really is not that big of a deal to me. If it makes you feel any better, supposedly NFL ratings are going down because of stuff like this: the networks will most likely eventually catch on and stop giving them coverage...probably.

fixed: without David Johnson, the Cardinals' defense can try all they can, but the offense ain't going anywhere

Packers-Bengals 2nd half:

yep. I hate snake drafts, but that's what I'm stuck with for this league. I much prefer to be drafting late, but it seems like I'm always drafting early...

you and me both, pal. of course, my team went straight into the trash as soon as I lost david johnson for the year, so I'm probably more likely to ultimately go something like 3-11, but that's besides the point.

in other news, at least both volourn and I can take comfort in the fact that our teams are terrible

No idea.

On the other hand, they do have a notably less violent and less militarized police...and since Trump is a part of this protest now, Theresa May be less than ideal, but she's not Trump. Yeah, I think literally nothing went right in this game for the Ravens. Flacco was garbage, but so was every other part of their team, including their previously elite-looking defense.

Athena is my favorite. Less action and more puzzle-oriented, which is a very, very welcome respite by the time you get to it. Furthermore, Athena herself is kind of cool, so that helps. Apollo, Artemis, Poseidon, et. al. would be just fine if they were...a little smaller. Well, in Poseidon's case, maybe half as small, . It's just a bit overwhelming every time you try to tackle one of these, so much so that you're pretty exhausted by the time you finally finish an entire area. I also wish there was an easier way to manage your weapons...I basically always use whatever is "below" fists (aka whatever's at the very top) because it's so annoying to try to switch between anything else quickly in the middle of combat. Too many weapons...I'd like to just drop a majority of the low-end weapons, but they get damaged if you do and some of them are actually pretty rare, so...keeping a full armory on me the entire game, I guess.

Yeah, not sure what they're thinking...maybe they should try fixing their chuggy and janky game before threatening other devs.

I think Leferd and Bruce were literally the only ones who expressed liking Hillary pre-election. Leferd I understood to a degree, Bruce...well, we all remember that, I'm sure.

Bizarre. Embarrassing. They certainly aren't the originators of the battle royale genre, and even if they were, the hosts of knockoffs of every new genre should serve enough of a reminder that you can't really protect gameplay mechanics. Unless Fortnite has been just straight ripping and re-using assets from PUBG, and it's my impression that they haven't, this is pretty much just bullying a competitor.

http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/20788354/president-donald-trump-speaks-nfl-player-protests: "He also said that NFL ratings are down "massively, massively" because people prefer watching him. NFL ratings dropped eight percent in 2016 compared to 2015." I would like a transcript of this, because

Federal government notifies 21 states of election hacking: https://apnews.com/cb8a753a9b0948589cc372a3c037a567 At least some were breached, but it's not clear exactly how many or to what effect. I know many Arizonians complained about having their voting registrations being (seemingly) illegitimately revoked leading up to the election...and not a single poll ever showed Trump being ahead in Wisconsin. Doesn't necessarily mean either were "hacked"...but there is still some uncertainty about whether we could even tell exactly what was changed even if we know they were hacked. We should probably figure this out before elections...but I'm not gonna count on it happening.

I'm playing Apotheon as well. It really is just a bit too long, with areas that are just a bit too big at times (...the underwater section, good lord).

the best game so far this season aaand it's a stupid 49ers-rams game

Well, usually because it has one (or two) games you want at a great price, better than if you just waited for them to be on sale by themselves...and so you get a load of extra games. Also, yeah, apparently Dishonored 2 is on the Humble Store (for $30 right now), which surprises me (I always think of Humble-branded stuff as being indie owing back to its early days...). As Steam phased out inventory keys some months ago, I thought you were literally asking someone to find your Steam account and gift it directly to you. But yeah, probably not a great idea to open the up floodgates to begging...

You should: this is the "giveaway" thread where people generously give things of their own choosing and according to their own inclination, not the "request that somebody randomly buy you a $40 game out of the blue" thread. Use some common sense, man! (e): Also: