Amentep

Hopefully will be able to watch this soon:

I liked Hotel Transylvania. A lot. Not sure that has anything to do with Adam Sandler, per se, but there it is. I know I'm looking forward to the sequel.

I've always viewed my pledges to kickstarter as me supporting things to exist that might not otherwise do so. To that end whether I liked PoE was irrelevant; I thought it should exist, I like Obsidian as a company and I wanted to see the game made. I sure haven't always backed a winner on kickstarter. But I don't regret pledging to see it made, either. To that end, I don't see the rewards like I'm purchasing a product. They're rewards. Sure I was disappointing the game disc wasn't in it. I'm still slightly disappointed the documentary went from a physical reward to an electronic one. And the map was ultimately fuzzy. But - and here I guess is the difference between how I approach kickstarter projects and others - the rewards weren't why I pledged. I pledged so the game would exist, and I'm satisfied in doing so.

State of mind? Ability to carry out threat? Context in which the words were said? You act like the police can't arrest/juries can't convict anybody unless they assume that everything a person says is 100% true or they've actually done something they said they were going to do.

You say that like its a bad thing.

Regardless of whether this guy needs mental health care or not, I think its true we don't do a good job with mental health issues here in the US. EDIT: I do think there will always be certain limits we have to our ability to deal with mental health issues from a cultural standpoint.

Shocking. Probably do need consequences, but I think the court was saying you need more evidence than just someone saying it is threatening. Throwing people in jail is serious business, right. As I understand it, the guy was convicted under the test that recognizing the words as a threat was something a "reasonable" person would do. But that as a test could remove the words from any potential context they might have. Context is always important. "I kill you? I kill everyone!" might be a threat...but probably isn't if it was proceeded by something like "Man, you're hilarious - you kill me!" In this case - and again as I understand it - the guy clearly marked on his posts in ways that would provide different context for what he wrote (some sort of Free Speech disclaimer). So what I gather reading about this decision isn't that you can post anything online without consequence, but the words themselves are not enough to convict - you have to provide intent.

I think Dwayne Johnson is charismatic and funny. But I worry that - as he's a fairly big action star - the plan is to make him the action star of the movie. One of the best things about the original is that for all of Jack Burton's macho posturing, Wang Chi and Egg Shen were 1000 times more competent. Yeah there's a reason he's there and ultimately gets things right (its all in the reflexes) but...I have a feeling that a remake made carelessly will have none of the charm of the original.

Neil Labute was responsible for the Wicker Man remake. Robin Hardy for the good original one. No M. Night Shyamalan. Mind you Shyamalan's actual film done prior to THE 6TH SENSE - the dramedy WIDE AWAKE with Rosie O'Donnel didn't exactly point to his later career either... Unless they change the end, the twist should be the book's twist. I can't imagine that they'd change the end of the book after getting the rights to make a series - but could be wrong.

It's actually based on a book series so the ending - lame or not - isn't really on M. Night...unless they change the end.

Story of my life...

I get Lego Worlds Hatred GTA V

And a new https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/black-angel-a-fantasy-feature-film#/story indiegogo campaign is up to try and get a feature produced.

But that one didn't have a poll.

"The Obsolete Man" (Season 2 Epi 29) - Totalitarian government that has outlawed books declares that Merideth's character (a librarian and a deist) obsolete and plans to execute him.

Exactly my point. Moreover, the idea of children being disgusted by fantasy feels intuitively wrong to me; if that was the case, how could bedtime stories become a thing? I never said fantasy, I said the unreal and by that I mean the uncanny or the false, fantasy is a different thing and one I patently agree with introducing to development. I seem to recall a study that had to do with dressing the caregiver up in sort of a cartoonish getup or with dolls or something that had to do with kids and real/unreal but for the life of me I can't find it.

A really good Alfred Hitch**** Presents about dopplegangers is THE STRANGE CASE OF MR. PELHAM. It was adapted into the Roger Moore movie THE MAN WHO HAUNTED HIMSELF (1970) which is good but not as good as the series episode IMO. One of the TWILIGHT ZONES you mention is "Mirror Image" (Season 1, episode 21 - A lady finds the people at a Bus Station all act as if she's been there before) and I think "Death Ship" (Ep6, Season 4 - the crew of a spaceship find a duplicate of them and their spaceship on another planet) is the other.

The reports on the "Military Entertainment Complex" is still a bit paranoid (IMO) but the US military has been partnering with Hollywood on projects it feels presents the military well since the 1940s and 50s (like, for example, the cooperation on the Otto Priminger directed, John Way, Kirk Douglas starring IN HARM'S WAY (1965)). Babies & Reality - not an area I've kept up with. I recall reading that babies at 9 months can determine information about real things from photos - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140429205733.htm And at 18 months can tell when people are faking emotions - http://www.bps.org.uk/news/babies-are-able-spot-fake-emotions Some studies indicate the ability to determine fake from real appears to be located in a specific brain point: http://healthland.time.com/2011/10/05/reality-check-why-some-brains-cant-tell-real-from-imagined/ However this doesn't indicate how early a baby can be shown to distinguish fantasy/reality or whether they show disgust at fantasy.

JOURNEY TO THE FAR SIDE OF THE SUN (1969 aka Doppelgänger) - Roy Thinnes and Ian Hendry are sent to investigate a new planet found in synchronous orbit with Earth - but opposite it from the sun. There they find a mirror world of the earth. Produced by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, elements and themes from the TV shows UFO and SPACE: 1999 are on display (as are several cast members who end up in UFO - George Sewell, Ed Bishop and Vladek Sheybal off the top of my head). The model work is excellent - in some case hard to tell as models (in others...not so much). The big problem is the end of the movie which is in no way satisfying. The logic stated in the interviews with Anderson (that when one meets their Doppelganger it is right before their death) ultimately makes no sense (because none of the characters involved actually meet their own doppleganger) and basically feels like a nice big middle finger to the audience who'd invested the last 90 minutes investing themselves in the characters.

It's quite a bizarre phenomenon. Even the most reasonable GGer (lol) seems to portray Sarkeesian as some kind of Machiavellian mastermind orchestrating the downfall of 'fun' and the rise of the matriarchy. She wouldn't even be a thing if they didn't get so butthurt when she was running her little kickstarter. That's not even remotely true. Most GGers think Sarkeesian is a hired public face for McIntosh drunken ramblings. I'm not sure it matters in the end whether it is Sarkeesian or McIntosh calling the shots; the truth is Feminist Frequency gets a lot of free press from the people who get butthurt every time they sneeze and react by spewing vitriol. That's not to say that I disagree with the logical dissections of their poor arguments. Its not even that I don't think that maybe some game makers could think twice before sending their game to a strip club (the modern-day equivalent of those damn mine-cart levels of yesteryear*) and similar nonsense that crop up in games. But the first time I'd ever heard of Sarkeesian/FF was through people railing with an absolute rage about how evil she was. I had to research Feminist Frequency, look at the kickstarter and find her messages that led to the vitriol for myself. And that was my context for her for a long, long time not through journalists promoting her or her site, but by her detractors running around knee-jerking every time she or McIntosh said something. And if it wasn't for those knee-jerk reactions, I'd have never heard of her. *The obvious answer is to put a strip club in a mine, where you whiz by strippers in an out of control mine cart, to make it the ultimate gaming thing

Unlike consoles - and IMO - you're never going to have a PC release that is bug free because no developer can ever have as many combinations of equipment as the end users do. And even though consoles don't have the different configurations they still come out with bugs. And at some point its a law of diminishing returns. Two, three, four months isn't going to find all the bugs. A year isn't either. And at some point the company is going to see some financial relief. Maybe its Early Access. Maybe its a full release and patch. Both have their good/bad points. Early Access may have more forgiving players (hey they knew it was going to be rough). But you're also allowing them to see all the surprises the game has - at that time. No Secrets are left. Full release means all the interested parties start with less spoilers, but they have a rougher experience. Given Obsidian's desire to minimize spoilers (so much so that the Beta was a non-critical game chunk to avoid spoilers) its not that surprising they went the release and patch route to me.

Since we don't know the nature of lyrium, isn't it a bit premature to declare it "undivine"? That's even assuming that Bioware's flip-flop hasn't flopped back to Alistair being right. There's nothing in the game that says its just luck that you survive; my memory is that it's left open to interpretation.

I understand that the Templar specialization does require Lyrium as part of the quest in DAI. It does have that in the description but as far as I recall there is nothing that actually forces you to take Lyrium as a mechanic once the specialization is achieved. I can't speak to the books because I haven't read them and have no context for what they might say. I will agree that Bioware has been all over the place with whether Lyrium is necessary or only makes the skills stronger. The Anchor may be created by magic, but - for the faithful of Andraste - the idea would be that Andraste had set the events up. When everyone else died in the explosion, why did your PC survive? Chance? Magic? Intervention by Andraste? The escape was certainly aided by the Divine Mother...but she was the highest representative of Andraste. Did Andraste use the sacrifice as a way to create a champion who could stop the magister? I don't think there's anything in DAI - that i've seen - that necessitates that the PC isn't the Herald of Andraste.

That's still a nicely designed page. Kudos to whoever did it. I caveat my previous issue with it from the last time you posted it, though. (previous discussion)

But what the Templars are actually doing according to DAI (and this supports Alistair's claim that they don't need Lyrium) is their skills allow them to strengthen the wall between the natural world and the Fade, thus they supress a mage's ability to channel energy from the Fade by making the mage have a harder time connecting with the Fade. The idea, then, is that lyrium (or - trying not to be spoilery - the special "vigil" that Cassandra went through) strengthen the ability to channel the Templar's/Seeker's conviction, thus their ability to make the Fade harder to reach for mages than without those tools. But still possible.