Pretty sure they're talking about the forest on the Byzantium. That one had a river, and it's rumoured that we're revisiting that story in the second half.
The Autobot Amos and Andy are back? Ugh.
Fuck everything forever. Burn down hollywood. Europe can make our movies from now on.
Fuck everything forever. Burn down hollywood. Europe can make our movies from now on.
I heard it was something like Inception, with Steinfeld having to fight her way through a surreal, fluctuating dreamscape in order to return to consciousness. Which is cool, because it means that she actually gets to do something instead of being passive and it (presumably) writes off the Prince's kiss as just so much bullshit.
Yeah but that would require Ray Kurzweil to be right about pretty much anything, when even he admits his futurism is driven by wide-eyed babyfaced optimism that has more to do with aspiration and his anxiety over the death of his father.
No, that's not what explicable means. It means it makes sense. Cause and effect.
I'm sorry that I'm not jizzing myself over a child getting his face pounded into pavement?
I'm sorry that I'm not jizzing myself over a child getting his face pounded into pavement?
@heywhat: There being a reason for what he did doesn't make it okay. It makes it explicable. The fact he was a victim doesn't change the fact that he slammed another kid into the pavement. I'm not saying he should be punished, and I'm not saying he should shoulder the full brunt of the blame, but he did something wrong and there should be a consequence for that.
Hey, anyone here into Vampire? I need a fifth for a New Wave Requiem PBIM game loosely based on the John Hughes canon.
#observationdeck
#observationdeck
Pretty much every system worth its salt suggests that XP be used as a carrot/stick. Hell, that was what prompted me to run nWoD: It institutionalizes the use of XP (either witholding or giving bonuses) to reward/punish different kinds of behaviour.
What bothers me about Casey is that we have this fundamentally wrong-headed tendency of forgiving him for what he did. He was wrong to do it. It is never appropriate to make another kid bite the pavement. I'm not saying that he's completely to blame for what happened, a lot of fault rests with the kid who provoked him, and with staff who allowed him to be abused for years. But both the kids in that video are victims. We have this mutant belief that being victimized somehow excuses your actions. We turn victims into saints when the reality is that they tend to be just as ugly inside, or uglier, than the people that victimize them.
This kid is fucked up, and any celebration of him as some kind of hero has more to do with the squatting brute in each of us getting a cathardic hardon for him than anything reasonable.
This kid is fucked up, and any celebration of him as some kind of hero has more to do with the squatting brute in each of us getting a cathardic hardon for him than anything reasonable.
Ahahahahahahahaha
Hahahahahahahahaha
Hahahahahahahaha
Okay, Okay. You got me. Where's the real costume?
Hahahahahahahahaha
Hahahahahahahaha
Okay, Okay. You got me. Where's the real costume?
I dunno. I think it's totally appropriate to ask notable people (and like it or not, he's probably going to be notable until his voice changes) about substantiative issues rather than normal gossip-rag fluff.
On the other hand, Bieber dropped out of Junior High for his music career and is, by all accounts, super-immature and not all that bright. So it's almost as if Rolling Stone asked him those questions so that we could all laugh about his terrible, terrible answers. In which case, it's even more appropriate.
On the other hand, Bieber dropped out of Junior High for his music career and is, by all accounts, super-immature and not all that bright. So it's almost as if Rolling Stone asked him those questions so that we could all laugh about his terrible, terrible answers. In which case, it's even more appropriate.
State workers get benefits because they have lower wages than they would in the private sector. Yeah, there are generally a few assholes who are skimming more than their fair share, but is it really right to punish all state unions for the inability of a teabagger to balance a budget?
The only place on the internet where people know Chirstina Hendricks for Firefly instead of Mad Men.
This is really stupid. I'm not even going to argue. I'm just going to say that this is the stupidest post I have read in my entire posting career.
Kill you're self.
Kill you're self.
Banks himself once said that he focused on people who didn't fit in the culture because people who did were largely boring. They lived happy lives bereft of desperation (quiet or otherwise) and want. Snooze City. Even in texts where technology is a liberating force it's still about the struggle between the huddled masses earning to breathe free and their oppressors.
Of course then he went on to imply that Circumstances and Contact were actually developed to help those perverse and broken members of The Culture who couldn't be satisfied with Paradise by providing them with the kind of morally ambiguous, dirty, nasty lives outside of it that they longed for.
Of course then he went on to imply that Circumstances and Contact were actually developed to help those perverse and broken members of The Culture who couldn't be satisfied with Paradise by providing them with the kind of morally ambiguous, dirty, nasty lives outside of it that they longed for.
Also it's worth noting that we have no idea if technology actually did result in liberation in Egypt- The extent to which it was involved in the day-to-day of the protests is unclear (with some protesters saying word of mouth and AJE broadcasts were a bigger factor in sharing information and growing the crowd) and we don't know what the Egyptian constitution will look like and who will be in charge in a year's time. For all we know, another Mubarak-esque US-backed strongman will be placed in charge of an utterly unchanged Egypt.
I think that part of it is that we've seen the failure of the techno-ideological, or at least, the techno-utopian, in the past century. In stories where technology liberates us the technology itself has an ideological quality (sometimes literally, as in VALIS), and it is an ideology that has failed.
Machines were supposed to allow us to live carefree lives with abbreviated work weeks. Instead they have crushed unions and decimated the working class. Machines were supposed to allow us to educate ourselves about important issues with the push of a button. Instead we have wikipedia and free republic. Machines were supposed to free us from ecological catastrophe. Instead we have global climate change.
We have come to understand, after a century of failed promises, that technology is nothing but a tool. It has no ideological quality, it has no utopian potential, no guiding principle. The only guiding principle is the use to which it is put by the people who control it. Sometimes, as in Egypt, it is put to the purpose of liberation. But it is just as likely to be used for brutal ends. After all, the Holocaust was only possible because of the efficiency of the machines used for mass-killing or for the administration of the concentration camps.
Machines were supposed to allow us to live carefree lives with abbreviated work weeks. Instead they have crushed unions and decimated the working class. Machines were supposed to allow us to educate ourselves about important issues with the push of a button. Instead we have wikipedia and free republic. Machines were supposed to free us from ecological catastrophe. Instead we have global climate change.
We have come to understand, after a century of failed promises, that technology is nothing but a tool. It has no ideological quality, it has no utopian potential, no guiding principle. The only guiding principle is the use to which it is put by the people who control it. Sometimes, as in Egypt, it is put to the purpose of liberation. But it is just as likely to be used for brutal ends. After all, the Holocaust was only possible because of the efficiency of the machines used for mass-killing or for the administration of the concentration camps.
Doctor Who is the only show where Cosplay is classier than licensed merch 90% of the time.
Lesso since they changed Smith's shirts though.
Then again, they're 120 pounds new, discontinued, and apparently pretty fragile. #observationdeck
Lesso since they changed Smith's shirts though.
Then again, they're 120 pounds new, discontinued, and apparently pretty fragile. #observationdeck
Shit Shit Shit. I read a short story a while back which was like Gray Goo but with white flight. It was his faux-heroic space opera and in the end it turned out that the enemy they were waiting for was actually a cloud of nanites building new suburbs of Chicago that would continue off into space forever or until they ran out of matter.
Has anyone else read this? Anyone remember the name? I wanna email it around but I'm drawing a blank. #observationdeck
Has anyone else read this? Anyone remember the name? I wanna email it around but I'm drawing a blank. #observationdeck
Those are all pop-sci though, and if there's one thing pop-sci does, it's overstate the feasibility and completeness of literally everything. It's basically science fiction.
