Oerwinde

Why are all the Klingons bald?

I have not seen it, but I get what you mean all the same - the Emperor's New Clothes argument and all that jazz. I can see how one can feel that way about abstract art but I for one find a lot to appreciate in experiences and ideas expressed in manners that stray from classical, hard-lined conventions; actually I would hope a fan of fantasy and a medium as broadly shunned as videogames and comic books to be more open about such means as well, given the bad rep any of these categories has received over time from those who believe they're only Harry Potter, Call of Duty and superheroes respectively. I mean, as with any such category there's a good and bad side to it, I certainly don't think all abstract artists are great and I do think some can feel quite fraudulent - but then, for every Hubert Robert there's also a dozen mediocre landscape artists painting the same city landmarks over and over so that some housewife can fill an empty wall in her dining room. There are contemporary artists who may be extremely simple in regards to their techniques while others (see Shahzia Sikander, Luis Felipe Noé or Duane Michals in this thread for example) to put a great degree of skill on display as well. In fact the scene is so varied that one cannot rightly point at any piece or art and say 'everything is like that': when you find yourself with a scene that incorporates everything from sculpting and painting to forging to creating electric circuits to manipulating photography to collage, all the way down to readymades and performance, it's pretty disingenuous to me to try and find a blanket statement with which to dismiss it all. In the end I value the effect and impact it has on me regardles of technical or virtuous display - to me the right technique or appropriation, however simple it may be, to convey rightly an idea or feeling is more worthwhile than any amount of skill placed on something that, ultimately, is little more than 'pretty'. That, I think, is worthy of its own place and praise in art. I wonder if Art is like music in that if you like a genre of music you can pick out the differences between the artists and what makes them unique and such, but if you don't like a genre it all sounds like repetitive garbage.

Have you ever seen Art School Confidential? It pretty much sums up how I feel about art nowadays. If you haven't, its about a talented artist who goes to art school and his work is seen as pedestrian while everyone fawns over the work of an undercover cop who has never painted before in his life and is essentially producing children's artwork.

I predict there will be outrage at the casting of a black girl as Triss because there is a trend of replacing redheads with Black people, or they will stay faithful and there will be outrage over lack of diversity.

The claims to be the 3rd Rome were based on the Tsar's claims of inheritance based on his marriage to the niece of the last Emperor and Muscovy's status as the most powerful Orthodox state.

Xbox live is having a backwards compatibility sale, a ton of their backwards compatible games for dirt cheap, can play on both xbone and 360 for those of us who game on console as well.

As someone who liked Trump's campaign and promises, he has been a garbage fire of a president so far. And for the Republicans who were elected on promises to build the wall, repeal Obamacare, and defund planned parenthood, not being able to do any of them while controlling the house, senate, and presidency they need to do something big to gain some credibility back.

Every one of those is gorgeous. Its a shame nowadays art like that is relegated to concept work or illustration while abstract post modern garbage gets all the attention

It isn't obvious, but here is the rough idea: If you are running a large company and a small competitor is making similar stuff better than you are, you have four choices. 1. Buy them and sell their stuff instead of yours. (e.g. Google buying YouTube and shutting down Google Video) 2. Buy them and let their stuff rot, just to get rid of the competition. (e.g., (not exactly an acquisition, but) Microsoft hired the senior developers of the Mach micro kernel, stuck them in the playpen known as Microsoft Research and did nothing with Mach) 3. Lose in the marketplace. (e.g Yahoo vs. Google). 4. Make better stuff and out compete them (eg. .... hmm drawing a blank here, I'm sure this must happen sometimes) 4a. Use an effective monopoly position to kill them in spite of their stuff being better (e.g. The U.S. v. Microsoft anti-trust court case) Whether a company chooses option 1 or 2 probably depends partly on the attitudes of the decision makers (are they trying to get paid to make the best stuff or are they trying to make money) and partly on how entrenched the products are vs. how much the acquisition costs. That is, if a small company is cheap to buy and shutting down a project and marketing a different product is very expensive, it is rational for the larger company to kill the smaller one (even though it hurts consumers of the products). Overall, isn't necessarily an evil company doing nefarious things, they might buy a company, spend time looking at all of the options they now have, and make the best decision they can. The issue is that what is best for a single company isn't what's best for everybody. This why there are antitrust laws in many countries. and why it might be better if there were stronger ones (but carefully, because it is difficult to get things exactly right and not overdo it). Finally, note that there are a lot of other reasons for acquisitions and there are a lot of reasons why a company might complete an acquisition and shutter the acquired company later. The above is just to give you the gist of one situation. I feel like they have their business model, and they see indy developers doing really well with a decent fan base and they say "We want that" then they try to incorporate them into their business model, and it ends up destroying what made that indy dev successful in the first place(IE forcing Bioware to jam multiplayer into every game despite being known for their single player experiences.) We are experiencing something similar where I work. We were the most successful branch of our company in terms of sales and efficiency, company got sold, new parent company decides to implement a bunch of stuff to unify us with the parent, that changed the way we do things/destroyed the culture of the branch, we are now struggling to make numbers, we have lost like 1/3rd of our customers, and everyone hates working there now.

I hope Andromeda gets a sequel, I liked it and it sets the stage for some interesting sequels

Strong men who fight enemies and tell the truth.

I liked Jordan Peterson's take on the popularity of Superhero movies. They are modern mythological heroes embodying the ideal. Defending the weak, fighting evil, and telling the truth. With so much of society criticizing what humanity has enshrined as the ideal, movies that celebrate it doing well makes a lot of sense

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VxQHdDDCO4 I thought Gadot was fine as WW in Batman v Superman

Judge Dredd tv series in development, Jennifer Morrison is leaving Once Upon a Time, (and the Charmings too most likely), and with Emma gone there isn't much reason to keep Hook on the show. Its been renewed for another season so it sounds like Regina will be the new main character.

I think the problem people are having is that Gender and Sex were considered synonyms by most people until very recently, and outside of psychology or gender studies, are still considered such. Which is why the trans acceptance movement is seeing such resistance. The idea of gender as a pattern of behaviour and style separate from biological sex isn't something that has widely caught on, so people see it as trying to get people to deny reality for the sake of crazy people. The way I see the pronoun thing is if you look and act like a dude I'll use he, if you look and act like a chick, I'll use she. If you want me to use xie or other made up nonsense, I just won't interact with you because I don't need that kind of crazy in my life.

I liked Ares in Justice League. Mr Sera the arms dealer. Conflict makes him stronger and he emits an aura that heightens aggressive emotions.

Black Adder and Flash Gordon are the big things I know him from. Big booming boisterous voice.

I have been corrected - Gender != Sex (apparently) They are trying to say sex is a spectrum now too. I just think it's kind of odd for sex or gender to considered a spectrum when 99.7% of people are part of the classical binary. Usually you would consider the other 0.3% an aberration no?

Its not even that bad. He protested a law in Canada that could potentially get people in legal trouble for refusing to refer to someone as Xir. His issue isn't with trannies, its with compelled speech.

The American Left have never heard the story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf, because Boy assumes gender and that is cissexist.

I like how they have cut down on filler by doing like 3 8 episode storylines per season instead of stretching out the full 24 episodes or whatever a season is.

Alex Ross

I really liked Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Not sure if I liked it more than Snatch. Revolver was weird, but its supposedly based on some sort of Kaballah stuff. Rocknrolla was a little more serious than Lock Stock or Snatch, but I still liked it. Enjoyed the Sherlock Holmes films, and not liking what I've seen of his King Arthur flick.

Well he was created for the Brave and the Bold cartoon, so I didn't expect them to be super close.