Mr. GOH!

I'm down

MisterJack: Ignore the colon; it's a weird affectation of the game lore that amounts to "hey, look, we do years differently!" For some reason, Bioware wanted to use an age and year system ratehr than a straight year system for the Dragon Age universe's time keeping followed by the year of that age after the colon. So "9:40" is the 40th year of the 9th age. This is dumb, because all the ages are 100 years long and named (the current age is the Dragon Age). To notate the year as 9:40 Dragon is just really redundant.

It's about ten years after the end of DA:O, and immediately after DA2. Varric was a companion in DA2 and that he returns in DA:I has been public knowledge for a long, long time.

Bungie. The motherfuckers made awesome Mac games in the 90's, and then promised this wonderful game called Halo with a persistent open-world; it was to be an equally single-player and multiplayer shooter with long-term strategy elements, great vehicles, and a mysterious world to explore. Steve Jobs even mentioned it in a keynote in 1999, I believe. Then Microsoft gave Bungie a dump truck full of money and Bungie compromised their vision to deliver the achingly boring, linear, ugly, and simple Xbox game we all know. Stab in the fucking back. Edit: Cowboy, you're just trolling now.

Deanb: The police here are semi-militarized and act as though most folks are just criminals waiting to be caught. It's a very us-versus-them mindset, and aspects of it infect even the best officers.

I get the sense DA:I will be like DA:O as far as world structure goes, except DA:I's zones will be large and open. The zones will also be farther apart in the world rather than all in one country.

My sandals fell apart and I want a little more protection than sandals afford when walking around the city.

I bought some boat shoes because I am turning into a preppy motherfucker, apparently.

They're certainly saying the right things about this one. Still gonna wait for reviews to buy.

As I confirmed, the boyfriend pulls out a laminated card with the Texas Romeo and Juliet law stating that people within 3 years of age can fuck without running afoul of statutory rape laws and shoves it in Marky Mark's face. The camera cuts to a close view and holds it for maybe 4 or 5 seconds. It's bizarre, not funny, confusing, and ultimately a waste of everyone's time, just like the rest of the movie.

Dean: Kinda? I am a member of Movie Pass; for $36 a month subscription, I can see one film per day at any theater that accepts Discover cards (like 99% of theaters in New York City). It's a steal of a deal, since regular tickets run $12 to $15 here and I see at least one movie a week. Transformers was the only movie that worked with my schedule last Wednesday when I had about three hours to kill between work and meeting a friend for drinks. I may hate a given movie but, damn, I love going to the movies and I like to watch even bad movies I dislike. It's due to how I was raised by a professor of film, I think. Edit: The statutory rape law things was actually in the film, and the card was large enough and the shot held long enough that the audience could read a bit of it. It was really, really, really . . . (*hours pass*) really dumb. I have no idea why she had to be 18 (or even in the movie).

Personally, I'm just looking forward to the first Nintendo-published game released on Steam.

Of all the things to criticize about Civ V, it's puzzling you chose the social policy system. It's far and away better than any previous Civ game's system of picking governments. I am WAY HYPED for Beyond Earth. I loved Alpha Centauri, and it looks like we're getting the spiritual successor in Beyond Earth. Glad it's not all about fungus this time, too.

Capitalism does not have to mean laissez faire capitalism; I'm a fan of a mixed economy, with many fields left to private interests (mediated by state regulations) and other fields directed by the state (occasionally in partnership with private interests). It's just as ridiculous to let the state direct all areas of human endeavor as it is to dissolve the state and let private interests direct all human endeavor.

Transformers: extinction. Dumb, loud, charmless, stupid, vapid, boring, and utterly without value.

Social democrat, United States. Strong supporter of population-based democracy (rather than location based - the U.S. senate and congressional district systems are a horror show and fundamentally anti-democratic). I believe that there can never be such a thing as a free market outside of thought experiments. I am a capitalist, but I believe the people should have a strong voice in economic regulations, though I believe such regulations are best accomplished and evaluated through technocratic representatives rather than direct voting on a given policy. I am a very strong civil libertarian when it comes to government encroachment on fundamental freedoms - assembly, speech, religion, and travel. I have a strong suspicious of powerful private entities, including corporations and the largest unions (though I believe in the fundamental right of workers to organize, even if it means the majority of the workers force unionization on the minority).

Recess appointments made during de facto but not de jure recesses. It's the right ruling on the law, but it allows the GOP to further obstruct the functioning of the executive branch. The union ruling is interesting and somewhat dangerous to unions; it essentially says that the beneficiaries of public union negotiations can free ride on the resulting contracts. That is, the plaintiff in that case was forced to pay union fees ($40-$50 a months) because she benefited from public sector unions bargaining for a higher wage and certain labor conditions for all home healthcare workers under a specific program. The problem with this sort of thing is that it allows the direct beneficiaries of union negotiations to not support the union that got the the benefit in the first place. So the problem is that fewer and fewer people will trade the modest fee for union representation, unions will lose efficacy and bargaining power, and eventually fade away. Some folks like this. But those folks have never been laborers in an economy devoid of union representation, as was the case in the 1800's. But, if they succeed in dismantling unions, they certainly will have the chance to work in such an economic paradise in the coming years. Hobby Lobby is a disgrace. It will be overruled by the Court within a couple decades. Edit: religious institutions and charities are already afforded a lot of options for not paying for birth control under the ACA. Justice Kennedy discusses how such a system could work with closely-held corporations, I believe. S-corps are not the only closely-held corporations; it's an elective IRS status for which some (most?) closely held corporations qualify, but not all. LLCs are not S-corps but are closely held, for example.

"Flapjack" is an old-timey word for pancakes. I haven't regularly heard it used in the USA, outside of advertising and old-timey movies. Pancakes are fucking delicious and are better than the vast majority of terrible English baked goods.

Steam Sale of game I'm mildly interested in.

Maybe. My 1.25 GB GTX 570 certainly chokes on the mod's settings.

Tried this and it did improve graphics. It had an odd effect on performance; gone is the constant stuttering when driving from place to place, but the frame rate was consistently lower in situations where the vanilla game would not stutter. Think I'm going to wait on an official patch.

I totally play the minimap when the game is repetitive, including requiring that I navigate the same spaces repeatedly, including AC games. I play the main view once or twice, but after that I just navigate by minimap.