Bartimaeus

It's still not really enough, though.

"Preliminary exit polls show that many voters were motivated by dislike of one of the candidates more than by support for the person they voted for. One in five Clinton voters said they chiefly oppose the other candidate, and 27 percent of Trump supporters said the same; those figures were just 8 percent for Obama voters in 2012 and 10 percent for Romney voters." -538

He never blamed the British Empire for anything? Why did he defect and fight against them, then?

They should do the same for companies that owe debts, too: call the individual employees while they're trying to sit down and relax at home to annoy them into putting pressure on their company. I'm sure that'll work just as well as what they're doing in your case.

Why are the refs so bad? Sweet moses.

For what it's worth, I thought the Swan was the best of the lot. A few of the tracks really only barely qualify as music...so if you do end up listening to it, I hope you have an accepting/tolerant ear. I think most people would turn their nose up at such things immediately,

That was pretty neat, thanks for sharing, . I'd actually never heard the song before. Was on some random compilation album that I just went through that's just a collection of a bunch of...I guess "experimental" would be the best word for it, music from different artists. Album entitled "Gravikords, Whirlies & Pyrophones" - yep, sounds like a title for an experimental compilation album.

It's the fact that I'm also a super completionist that makes it so annoying: doing every single planet, discovering every landmark is just a rather miserable experience. For the IE games, I have a console command memorized: CLUAConsole:ExploreArea(). I don't like it when games penalize me for exploring everything completely, and that's the way it certainly felt in Mass Effect.

I wouldn't say the attack at the diner would be the best example of "doing pretty well for herself": she loses her mind in the phone booth for no real reason. It's so incredibly painful to sit through scenes like that, when there's no real explanation for why a person, especially her (since she literally just got done telling everyone in the diner about the attacks, and she'd powered through a couple already), would act like that. I guess it's part of the genre, but eugh. I think Annie was probably the strongest of the women, but she died off screen somehow while we were left with the sniveling child...so that sucked. Annoying and poorly written and/or acted child actors/actresses...o' how I loathe thee, especially when it's a combination of all three. ...You'll note, based on the various things I've written in this topic, that I'm not really the sort of person that easily ignores the things I don't like, sadly.

I mean...it's not really too hard to figure out. I think the idea is pretty neat, but even in your first playthrough, so much of it is pretty clearly just copy and paste content, and what's not copy and paste content is just seemingly randomly generated landforms that are a pain in the butt to traverse. All the little compounds you enter with random enemies in them, all the stupid extreme inclines that the Mako constantly fails to get up or go around, the random landmarks you're supposed to find that never really amount to anything...and goodness gracious, the entire process is so slow. I can't imagine going through them on a console: even using Cheat Engine to go up to 5x and sometimes 10x speed, it was still a bit tedious. Weirdly enough, I still do have fond memories of it, because it's such a cool idea, and there is definitely a certain charm to it...buuut I would've rather they made less planets you could explore in exchange for better, more detailed, and more-fun-to-explore planets.

Packers' coaching is pretty retarded. Enough said. Actually, I take it back: why move away from the short, timing-based passing game that worked wonderfully for two weeks...back to forcing long throws to receivers on isolation routes that has not worked for the last season and a half? Why? What in the world makes you think that trying to force these throws is a good idea? Then we go back to short timing-based throws in the 4th quarter...and we get touchdowns immediately. I don't understand what our coaching just doesn't understand here. We simply do not have the personnel for the highly efficient long passing game as we did in years prior: get with the program, coaching staff. It doesn't have to mean we have to play poorly for 2-3 quarters of every game if you actually try to adapt to it. And on the defensive side...euck, what an even worse embarrassment. Blitzing near every darn play when, outside of a handful of plays throughout the game, all it does is lead to their offense getting huge gains when we inevitably fail to get to the passer. It doesn't work consistently...not even close...except at letting decent QBs with just even okay offensive lines get a ton of easy throws, if they're experienced enough to deal with the pressure. Please, coaching staff...adapt and use the personnel you have, not the personnel you wish you had.

If it's a laptop, it might be in the hybrid hibernate mode...but I wouldn't expect that to be enabled on a desktop (but you can check by holding down shift when clicking the shutdown buttons, and then seeing if it still boots up while "shut down"). Otherwise, yes, it's possible there's a BIOS setting, so check for that if you're really concerned about it.

I've never seen any of the movies, but I've (very casually and somewhat incidentally) seen a lot of the shows (the original series and TNG) - are they generally considered better/the pinnacle of the series, or what?

The Birds (1963). I was...not very impressed, to be honest. The best and worst part of this film was Tippi Hedren - the best because she's enjoyable to watch (and listen to!) for the most part, the worst because I find it somewhat unbearable for an otherwise strong female protagonist to instantly go into either hysterics or a catatonic state at the slightest sign of danger, both of which she does plenty of throughout this movie. Gosh dang, that gets annoying real quick. Is it a Hitch**** thing, or simply a product of the times? Why are all the female characters (...children included) in this movie totally losing their minds instantly whenever there's danger? How the heck did people think that was a good idea? ...But besides that, I guess it was a decent movie. Thank you for censoring "Hitch****", Obsidian forums. These word filters really need to be improved...

In technicality, no, it shouldn't be that much different...since both (and many more) are pretty absurd impossibilities...but in reality, the stuff that gets abstracted away that you don't really see (enemies losing AC or THAC0 as a result of various status effects, if we were playing Baldur's Gate, for example) is just that: abstracted away. You don't really see it, so it doesn't really occur to you that a whole lot of it doesn't make much sense...whereas characters clearly doing physically ridiculous and impossible things in front of your eyes is likely to be a much bigger issue for anyone really absorbed in the setting - at least, when there's no explanation given that we would find very plausible. For this particular example, Nonek...and I (based on the description of the action: I did not actually watch the video)...feel as though such just an action clearly steps over the line in keeping a setting grounded. Clearly, we and the developers are at odds here.

Not that 538 is gospel or anything, but it does not have a rating for Strategic National...and three other polls taken after it with better ratings have all given Clinton leads (+1 C-, +4 A-, and +5 B+).

Different words in different settings have different connotations. Who knew?

I think "lady" sadly lacks the same measure of authority as I would say "lord" generally carries, which would make me opt for the latter even for women, personally. It's the same in regards to saying sir vs. ma'am in military settings - "sir" simply has a greater tone of respect and authority to it than ma'am, so that's what's typically used. I also feel like I have heard "lord" used for women characters in other fictional settings, which probably has desensitized me to its use for such, but I can't remember where.

Hey, if we're allowed to post song videos uploaded by people who don't own the copyrights, I don't see any reason we shouldn't be allowed to post movie videos uploaded by people who don't own the rights.

Yep, I have the Criterion Collection BluRay algroth just linked, so I watched the 142 minute cut. I read about the controversy in advance, so I made sure to get the "best" version available. I loved the madness and Monty Python-esque nature of the movie...I just think that how the director used Jill (or rather, didn't use Jill) really bogged down the film for a while. Like, in 12 Monkeys, Kathryn starts out off as just a minor character, very besides the point...but as the film goes on, she becomes more and more central to the film, and an increasingly strong and essential part of each scene. Here, in Brazil, it's the opposite: she starts off strongly, clearly important to the film and Sam by way of her constant reappearances in his dreams and in the real world as she just keeps barely getting away from Sam in ridiculous sets of circumstances...and then finally, after Sam actually gets to her, she just kinda mostly disappears character-wise beyond the very initial scene of her kicking him to the curb, which kinda had the effect of making scenes involving her fall a bit flat for me. The film doesn't really pick up again for me again until their capture, which is basically just the ending scene (admittedly it's a very long one) anyways. But yeah, besides that, I thought the film was pretty great.

Brazil (1985). First time watching it, had been planning on it for years and years, and finally did it. I liked it, though it had its flaws, and I think 12 Monkeys, also from Terry Gilliam, was better. First half of the movie was pretty great, but the second half fell a little flat because of how poorly the movie integrated Jill into having screen time (barely spoke, kind of nonsensical actions and dialogue for what was there). If anything, it's the opposite of 12 Monkeys - a somewhat slow and perhaps confusing beginning that slowly ramped up into a more and more incredible and concise, I felt, experience as the movie went on. Brazil instead started off both direct and focused as well crazy...but ended with mostly just the crazy. Still good, though.

Owlboy. Basically a 2D Zelda platformer with flying. Enjoying it so far.

I feel pretty confident in saying that Romo is the superior QB, if only he can stay healthy...and if he can't, then he'll be replaced anyways, so that point is rather irrelevant. It was only two seasons ago that he received MVP votes...I personally find the dislike and/or disrespect for him from so many to be a bit unsettling. Yeah, he's infamous for boneheaded mistakes in season-critical situations, but that's football: Brett Favre was the same way, except way more extreme and he did it over a longer period of time...