Thursday Next

I don't get dean's joke...

Normally when I see a trailer I click the link. See that it is watermarked to shit with "FilmTrailers" or whatever, pause the video, search for the studios own channel, then search through their recent uploads so I can watch a version without obnoxious logos in the corners, adverts in the middle of the trailer, and watermarks.

The G-Tech air ram has headlights. (Not that it isn't a weird feature mind).

I've had PSVR from launch. Games worth getting that I found to have zero motion sickness are Batman Arkham VR (great game), I Expect You To Die (also great), Psychonauts (the new VR one) and Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes (great for parties). Eve Valkyrie has low/medium motion sickness. Rigs is medium. The absolute worst game I've played for motion sickness is Here They Lie, can't do more than 10-15 mins before having to bail out. My personal hypothesis is that cognitive dissonance causes sickness. No motion = no dissonance = no sickness in stationary games. Since I have no frame of reference for flying around in space I have low dissonance so low sickness in space shooty sims. For walking/running/driving around I'm not getting the physical / gforce effect that my eyes tell me I should and which my body is used to so I start to feel queasy. Could be bollocks though... who knows?

I hate when I'm trying to find a new trailer and the first 3 million pages of youtube are MovieClip, MovieTrailers TrailerClips and so on re-ups with a shitty watermark. I know it doesn't make a difference, but I want to view the original trailer from its original source.

Gods he's such an unmitigated prick it is unbelievable.

Also enjoying that after Trump surprise fired Comey, they surprise appointed the Special Councel[sic].

Special Counsel appointment... "announcement apparently took the White House by surprise, with Mr Trump only being informed of it after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had signed the order." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39957358 What goes around comes around motherfucker.

Atlus could have patented certain aspects of the menu system if they were unique. Bioware did that with the conversation menu. But otherwise, yeah, those aren't normally protectable things.

Really confident in their early work? Or mired in dev-hell?

If the only choice is that one of the above is a thing. I'll take aliens over ghosts and cryptoids. Aliens aren't going to shake my worldview any.

Have you played the Nioh? It is very Souls-y. Was hoping it would be more Bloodborne-y so I'm not enjoying it as much.

I'm comfortable that probability wise, life elsewhere is pretty much inevitable. I can wait for us to find it or it to find us. I'm also an alien intelligence optimist. I think humans are explorers at heart, I see no reason why a superior intelligence wouldn't be similarly curious about the universe. I would love 100% concrete, utterly undeniable, everyone accepting it, no more arguments disproof of any sort of afterlife whatsoever. If we could get rid of afterlife based religions altogether I think people would be a lot more careful with the one that they have. On the flipside, if there was total proof of an afterlife, it would have to be really detailed proof so we all finally agree on which god is the god, which set of rules we are supposed to follow etc. Either way, I would just want absolute consensus on the issue so we can get on to more important things like not screwing up the planet, and going to space and finding new places to live and new people to disagree with things over.

And then once we have eliminated the machines we will all die because no one knows how to drive us to the hospital which no longer has any doctors in it anyway.

Sharing their light pollution. I don't think people in NK can read by it.

"She lied about that one like the lying tory that she is."

Nope. Never heard of this weirdness in my life. Had a look at the white house easter egg roll video, and it is a bunch of kids, flicking eggs along the ground with spoons. I've never even heard the term easter egg roll before today.

Was wondering what the hell an "easter egg roll" is. Turns out it is an "egg and spoon race" for people who lack even the most rudimentary coordination.

Yeah, I think we all get the business reason behind whitewashing. It's still shitty, but we get it. Are you saying that westerners will struggle to spot the difference between two Japanese actresses? Cos if so, I don't think that pandering to lazy racist tropes is a great reason for casting decisions. As to the scene with her mother, if we accept that two Japanese girls can look different, then the scene would play out the same. It would only not work if the viewer struggles to comprehend that Japanese people do not all look alike. Just to be clear, I'm not saying that the casting director, the producer or anyone connected with the film (or anyone who enjoyed the film) is racist in a "I hate foreigners and want them to be gassed." sort of way. This is a more subtle, subconscious, "white is default and other races are an afterthought" sort of racism. Like the racism that makes people wonder where the black guy in a Lamborghini got their money (and probably rattle off drugs, rap, basketball in their heads as top candidates) while a white guy in a supercar is more normal. Like I said, I totally missed the racist implication that a "perfect shell" just happens to be a white shell, but having had it spelled out to me, it's difficult not to see it and think that if I wasn't white, it's yet another subtle way of telling me I will never be good enough.

Seriously? Because... And I mean, this feels pretty obvious... Japanese women don't all look the same. So you obscure her identity. Her being white conveys no tactical or other advantage in the film. So why was she made white? Other than to cast a Hollywood name at the expense of an actress of Japanese descent.

Precisely as Ethan says. I don't think there was an explicit "the best robot is a white person robot because round eyes etc. are objectively superior" message. At the same time when you take a Japanese person and say "we are going to perfect you." and as part of that perfection process she becomes white because that's just what the android making machine made by the Japanese, in Japan, for Japanese consumers happens to be set to on the day that they churned out the Major it displays an unconscious, unintentionally racist message that white is superior that could, and should have been avoided. They could for example have crow-barred in a reason that Matoko now looks like the Major, like the Major was in section 9 already, and actually died, so they covered up the death and copied her body to avoid questions as to where this random Japanese girl sprung from. In short, they made a conscious decision to choose a white actress to play Major, they should at least have had a conscious decision behind the in fiction Major being white.

Oh sure, part of the reason is that Scarlett is way more famous in Asia than the most famous Asian actress is in the US, so it has more "global appeal" for want of a better term. This interview is quite interesting on how the race swap doesn't work. I honestly missed the unconscious racism of "We made the best robotic bodies possible and guess what, turns out white guys and girls are best. Sorry Japanese brain, you have a new home now."

On the one hand, playing in the post game world can be a nice touch, on the other though, having stuff post game can lead to missable things. I think on balance, I prefer the game to reset to before the pnr and be able to hoover up everything in one playthrough, rather than having to reload an old save to get the bits I might have missed.

Yeah, on white washing, I don't see why they couldn't have chosen two very different looking Japanese actresses (if you want to make sure that westerners can tell the difference and that it isn't lowkey "You all look alike" stuff). I liked the general presentation of GitS, nails that cyberpunky, blade runner vibe. Because I don't follow the manga and only watched the anime movie ages ago it didn't feel like a betrayal of the source. What I didn't like was that they used a sledgehammer to get their points across. "This is your shell. Your mind is a ghost. We are now going to put your ghost in a shell so there will be a ghost in the shell." Repeat about six times throughout the movie just in case people are wondering why there aren't any haunted crustaceans running about... I mean, surely people have heard, even in passing of "ghost in the machine" and the concept of our organic bodies being shells for our consciousness? Do we really need such blunt tools to explain this more?