Mr. GOH!

But you gotta love Jeff Bridges's nonsense accent/diction! Try talking like him in the Seventh Son; it's real fun!

Sicario. Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro and James Brolin are just fantastic. The writing is quite good, but the film creates a lot of its copious tension via its wonderful directing and brilliant cinematography (which makes sense, since the cinematographer is the unparalleled Roger Deakins). The plot is interesting, focusing on Blunt's character, who is an FBI SWAT team leader seconded to an intergovernmental task force combating the Mexican cartels after she leads a raid that uncovers the scene of a very grisly crime linked to the cartel. There are a few twists, but they're both earned and reasonable. The entire movie just pulses with tension and reminded me, in many ways, of some of the best parts of Breaking Bad and Zero Dark Thirty.

Hope the EPA and DoJ bring down the hammer. VW essentially defrauded every person who bought a a car with a TDI engine over the past five or so years and the resale value of those sorts of cars will bottom out quickly. With this, VW has fucked over its customers, the public, its investors, and its innocent employees.

I doubt very much that it will get modded, but I tend to buy these games for my phone rather than PC, so I don't look for mods.

The redone sprites look fine.

It warms my heart to hear "afk" applied to idling players in a console-only game.

Madness. Die Hard 3 had one location, my friend: the greatest city to ever rise upon the face of the Earth, New York City. It also had goddamn Jeremy Irons and Sam L. Jackson and was 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 times better than the boring and dumb Die Hard 2. I have no opinion on the Raid or the Raid 2.

Examining the root cause of a social problem and coming to a reasoned, realistic solution is exactly what the American people do worst.

Welcome to the MMO hamster wheel, Strangelove.

Oh, I totally agree, TN. Any company that openly sold child sex simulators would be hounded out of existence fairly quickly. Except in Japan, as long as the sex robots were chibi enough.

Public policy should weigh in favor of child sex simulates if the availability of such simulacra results in pedophiles having sex with robots rather than raping children. I'm not convinced it would, though.

True, it's clearly illegal to click on a Google search result. I think The WSJ may actually be violating the DMCA by circumventing its own measures to protect its IP.

Shenanigans? Tutorial to get to WSJ articles without paying: 1. Find the article you want to read 2. Type the headline into Google 3. Surf to the article via the link in the 'google news' area/tab/whatever-you-want-to-call-it 4. PROFIT.

I start over because I have been told to Fulton every enemy I come across until I'm on mission 15 or thereabouts. I need those sweet, sweet D-rated personnel!

I can handle that. I will probably not have a problem avoiding spoilers, since I'll be busy with family holiday stuff around the 18th and will avoid the greater Internet until the New Year (aside from posting for the X-Talk gift exchange, of course, but I trust you folks not to spoil the movie).

Still working my way through this game slowly, focusing on early side ops. If I want to actually progress in the game, I may have to give up restarting every time I get a base alert on a side op. I mean, I still haven't gotten the cargo Fulton upgrade, and all those vehicles and big containers of resources just sit there MOCKING me!

So he's the UK's Bernie Sanders? #ignorantpoliticalcomparisons

I usually liked how real world events affected my classes. Except when SCOTUS issued the Iqbal and Twombly decisions significantly modifying the liberal pleading standard for 12b6 motions during between the end of my federal civil procedure class and the exam. My gut says the marriage licenses issued without Davis's signature will be held to be valid no matter what and/or made retroactively valid by legislative action early next year. But I have never practiced law in KY and am unfamiliar with its laws and courts.

Isn't Philip not the King because he's not in the Hanoverian line (he's a Schleswig-Holsteiner, IIRC) and since "King" is always superior to "Queen" in British royalty, he has to be a Prince? In layman's terms: he's not the kid of the previous royal family and the title of non-reigning husbands of queens is "prince," not "king." There were queens in Westeros, although the last female claimant fomented a civil war that essentially led to the extinction of dragons in Westeros. Generally, though, the non-Iron Throne titles are inherited by whoever wants them badly enough, though the default is that the title passes to the oldest male, then the next odlest male, and so on, and women only inherit if there are no males. In Dorne, however, women inherit equally with males (the eldest daughter inherits the title before her younger brother). This is very loose, though, and there appear to be houses that follow strictly female succession lines and others that essentially allow the reigning lord to appoint his or her heir. The Iron Throne used to be succeeded by appointment by the reigning monarch (or the Small Council after his or her death), essentially, until the aforementioned civil war, in which the the Small Council passed over the eldest daughter and apparently-appointed heir Rhaenerys in favor of her younger half-brother Aegon II. In 'modern' Westeros, the Iron Throne is presumed to pass to the eldest male, then to the next-eldest males, and only passes to a woman if no men are left to inherit. That's why Tommen is king and not his older sister. Please feel free to move this to the Westeros Politics thread if it doesn't belong here.

A whole day. Big whoop. But bully for the UK and France and UAE for getting Star Wars slightly early to goose its opening weekend box office numbers.

Makes some sense, I guess, since the licenses are already being issued, and the same-sex couples in Rowan County who wanted licenses at this point have already gotten them. Let's see if she interferes with issuing any licenses to same-sex couples going forward. If there are no more who plan to get married in Rowan County in the near future, this issue may have resolved itself. Personally, I think as long as she has a duty to sign off on valid marriage licenses as county clerk and she refuses to do so, she should be held in contempt because licenses lacking her signature or stamp may not actually be valid, so the same-sex couples would still have their rights violated by her refusal to do her job.

Pretty sure it's not trolling when I point out that MGS is well-known for its bizarre and terrible writing and that taking it seriously or expecting anything other than bizarre unfulfilling bullshit from Hideo Kojima confuses me. I mean, I also praise the game and its predecessor (MGS 3) as being fun and having great gameplay. Let me be clear: I am enjoying the hell out of TPP. If you want to see me trolling, see my comments about how consoles are for little babies who are afraid of the awesome power of a homemade gaming rig. In a different year, and if the game holds up as I play more, this would be a strong contender for my personal GOTY. But, alas, this is also the year Witcher 3 dropped, and that's in my top spot and I don't foresee that changing unless Fallout 4 way exceeds my expectations (and I'm expecting to enjoy the hell outta of that, too).