1321

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: July 06, 2017, 02:27:45 PM »

There's no evidence that the redditor is fifteen. That just seems to be a thing that Trump supporters on Twitter pulled out of their asses. And if his own posts are to be believed, he was a teenager back in 1990, which supports the reporter's claim that he's middle-aged:

1322

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: No Religion= Peace

« on: July 06, 2017, 02:21:59 PM »

Could you please stop linking to some other website in lieu of arguing your points yourself? We're debating you, not the author of those posts.

1323

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: July 05, 2017, 02:35:33 PM »

The video was ridiculous and not even close to a threat, but I'm intrigued by the notion that Trump took it from a racist shitposter on reddit. And CNN threatening to dox him like that is a huge dick move.

1324

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: July 04, 2017, 05:38:31 PM »

No, they totally just barged in uninvited! Trump chided them for their disgraceful behavior and asked them to leave, which they did with their tails between their legs.

1325

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: No Religion= Peace

« on: July 03, 2017, 03:19:12 PM »

um, no ..... that is why evolution is referred to as a THEORY

Not this dusty old fallacy again. The very first thing we see in this link is:

a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained.

That's what "theory" means in this context. That the word can mean something else in a different context is irrelevant.

1326

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: July 03, 2017, 12:33:25 PM »

Nah, Trump's new thing is to act like an adult (kinda, sorta, not really) while the media lose their shit.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-40463972/chaos-erupts-in-the-oval-office

Some slight jostling in the Oval Office, proof that the media is losing their shit while Trump is the real adult! What a desperate reach.

1327

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Superhero Movies & Comics General

« on: July 03, 2017, 05:29:42 AM »

Almost all live-action Batman fight scenes are pretty bad, to be honest.  My personal favorite is the one at the climax of the first Burtman:



(lol video was deleted here's another one)

He's getting his ass handed to him by a guy who looks like Ray Charles.  Fucking Ray Charles!  And that dive from the bell, only to be caught and flung into the staircase, is just embarrassing.  Come on, Batman, up your game!  His eventual victory (by murder, no less) feels more like a stroke of luck than any kind of strategy paying off.

With Batman Returns, the fight choreography was improved quite a bit:



<Saddam> Crudblud: [dead link]
<Saddam> This is terrible
<Saddam> Why couldn't he just throw Batarangs at all of them?
<Saddam> Surely he carries enough
<Saddam> And it can't have been very powerful if a tiny little dog could intercept it like that
<Crudblud> Saddam: Who gives a fuck
<Blanko> Saddam: But that's hilarious
<Blanko> Why can't capeshit be like that anymore
<Saddam> It is, but I'm not sure that was the intention
<Blanko> A dog catching a batarang isn't meant to be comedic
<Crudblud> Burton Batman was very knowingly goofy
<Crudblud> It fits with his other films of the period like Ed Wood and Beetlejuice

I forgot to note that the batarang apparently dropped several feet closer to the ground before the dog jumped up and caught it. To better explain my issue here, though, while I understand that this scene is clearly meant to be silly, it makes Batman look inept by having a dog intercept him like this. Even in silly takes on Batman (an approach every bit as valid and narratively-rich as him being a tormented vigilante), it doesn't work to portray him as a bumbler who doesn't know what he's doing. Instead, he's the straight man, the one who responds to every new challenge and enemy with the same level-headed pragmatism and steely competence, no matter how overtly ridiculous they are. He has no time to be shocked and overwhelmed by his nonsensical circumstances when the city needs saving, after all. Virtually every silly/lighthearted portrayal of Batman I'm familiar with* uses him like this, and to his credit, so did Burton in his movies, for the most part. Keaton almost always played the Batman side of his role straight, with his dialogue, fighting style, and movement being very minimal and to-the-point. And it was the right call. It's true to the character, and far more funny than having him be someone just adding to the goofy chaos.

*The one example I can think of where Batman is arguably something of a screw-up is Will Arnett's turn as him in the recent Lego movies, where he's largely a parody of himself and certainly not the straight man. Even then, though, he's shown to be an extremely effective crimefighter and an unmatched master of combat and technology.

1328

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)

« on: July 03, 2017, 04:45:06 AM »

It's most common in shooters, action/adventure, and sci-fi games, and more the product of Western devs than anyone else. It feels like they're catering to a very juvenile sensibility of "this is what a real man looks and sounds like!" That's nothing new for video games, of course, but the sheer arbitrariness of this one - especially the ubiquitous dark hair - really bugs me.

1329

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: July 02, 2017, 05:10:00 PM »

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40474118

lolwut

1330

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)

« on: July 02, 2017, 05:16:34 AM »

Most of my friends are in their forties now and it seems the older you get, the longer these games take to play.

Not to minimize your own experience, but it's worth pointing out that TW3 is legitimately an enormous game, with far more content packed into it than virtually all of its contemporaries. They could probably have split the whole thing in half to sell as two separate games, and they both would have earned overwhelming praise from both critics and gamers.

Well someone is triggered by dark haired men.

I'm triggered by the endless deluge of them. It's so dull and lazy.

1331

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: No Religion= Peace

« on: July 01, 2017, 02:10:26 PM »

So what do you call something that you don't accept BECAUSE there is no evidence? .... evolution

What a bizarre set of points. The author keeps making one argument in particular and just rephrasing it somewhat each time - that the atheistic view is inherently nihilistic and there's no motivation for anything beyond the life of an animal in it. Even if that's true - and I think it says a lot more about the author's cynicism than anybody else's that he's so convinced of it - it doesn't make it the tiniest bit more likely that God is real.

1332

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: June 30, 2017, 03:39:45 PM »

The ACORN video was a hoax. It's not simply that O'Keefe used dishonest methods to find his story, but that the story itself was a lie. Most of his stories over the years have had similar issues with their veracity.

1333

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: June 30, 2017, 03:13:35 AM »

I should have replied to this weeks ago, my mistake:

They are posturing up for a major witch hunt that they only hope drags out until the midterms. Finding anything is secondary to just muddying the waters and trying to build a Trump obstruction of justice case.

A congressional investigation designed to stretch on as long as possible and push a narrative of perpetual scandal rather than genuinely investigate any real issues?

You don't say.

Except that investigation actually found multiple felonies being committed, as well as obstruction of justice. It was Hillary's "intent" that your on again/off again hero/enemy James Comey arbitrarily decided wasn't malicious.

This picture is from the endless Benghazi hearings, not anything to do with the emails issue. I'll concede that Trump is the victim of an unfair partisan vendetta if this investigation is followed by another investigation, which is then followed by another one, which is then followed by yet another one, etc. Also:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/880408582310776832

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/880410114456465411

What a disgusting piece of shit.

1334

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)

« on: June 29, 2017, 05:40:16 AM »

The Surge is my first experience with a Dark Souls clone (unless you count Bloodborne, but that at least came from the same dev), a genre that I hadn't realized until recently even existed. I bought it because I liked the idea of a sci-fi Souls-esque game, but all it's really done is show me that it was never the basic formula or the difficulty that I loved about the Souls series or Bloodborne. It's things like the intricate level design, the beautiful visuals, the broad variety of enemies in terms of both their designs and movesets, the thrilling boss battles, and even the intriguing, minimalist stories and lore. If you don't have a dev as creative and talented as From working on the game, what are you left with?

Spoiler warning, you're left with The Surge. It's a shallow, superficial ripoff of the Souls formula with none of the depth or imagination that made From's games such rich experiences. The levels (of which there aren't many) are all dull, ugly, and gray in very similar ways, and rely on nonsensically convoluted maze-like designs to disorient the player and pad out the game. 90% of the enemies you fight are just generic mechs like the player character, only varying in their armor and weapons. The difficulty is overwhelmingly of the artificial variety, and the only way the dev could seem to think to provide more challenging experiences later in the game is just to jack up the existing enemies' attack and defense. The story is obvious right from the start - seriously, in the very first scene, the first thought that'll pop into your head is correct. It's a standard robots-go-bad plot, with zero surprises. Add to that mediocre voice acting and yet another generic dark-haired white guy hero*, and blah. I'm probably being a bit too harsh on the game. It's not the worst thing ever. It's really just mediocre, maybe even passable when I try not to compare it to From's games. It just feels like such a wasted opportunity.

*I am so fucking sick of the generic dark-haired white guy being the standard hero of video games nowadays. Why? Why the fuck do devs keep going back to this same shallow archetype again and again and again and again and again and fucking again? Is it the result of market research or something? And no, I'm not saying it has to be a black trans woman in the name of social justice or whatever, but surely deviating from this standard just a little wouldn't get gamers REEEEEEEEEing, would it? Like, nobody complained that Geralt wasn't dark-haired. Same with BJ Blazkowicz, a character I'm convinced is essentially a parody of the kind of man every male gamer wishes they were. We aren't all snarky, somewhat rebellious, dark-haired white guys in our twenties or thirties. That archetype doesn't fucking "represent" us.

1335

Arts & Entertainment / Re: American Gods

« on: June 29, 2017, 03:31:02 AM »

I feel like the ending was a little cringey, in part because it was so widely predicted it would end with the "reveal" of Wednesday being Odin. It's also a shame in that it seems to go against the show's apparent lack of worry about spoilers or big reveals.

1336

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: June 28, 2017, 04:42:17 PM »

I'll grant that O'Keefe's latest video doesn't seem to be quite as inherently dishonest as his usual fare, but it's hardly a devastating scandal or exposé. Any organization will have somebody cynical working there who's willing to vent.

1337

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: June 28, 2017, 03:08:49 PM »

06/26: In light of Trump’s latest Twitter tantrum, I am retracting my claim of Trump not admitting the Russian meddling happened.

...

https://twitter.com/CaitrionaPerry/status/879804904696496128

Ugh.

1338

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Rogue One (with spoilers)

« on: June 27, 2017, 08:56:16 PM »

Vader's scene at the end was probably the scariest he's been in the entire series though, yeah.

That scene really bugged me. It was blatant fanservice with no real effect on the story, thrown in at the last minute (both in the sense of the movie's runtime and its production) to pander to the vocal minority loudly demanding that the movie focus on Vader slaughtering people. Give Abrams some credit, at least his fanservice revolved around the near-unanimous agreement that the original trilogy was far superior to the prequels. He wasn't simply catering to reddit. If the filmmakers had really wanted a scene of Vader being a badass, they should have made something that actually impacted the story, perhaps a scene near the beginning of the film to establish how dangerous the Empire is. Of course, they weren't interested in what such a scene might add to the story, and so they threw it on the end as a last-minute plea for reddit's approval.

1339

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Modern Feminism

« on: June 25, 2017, 04:36:16 PM »

Maybe he needs a safe space where the mean feminists won't be able to hurt his butt anymore.

1340

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Modern Feminism

« on: June 25, 2017, 02:04:53 PM »

Anita Sarkeesian took time out of her duties as a panelist at VidCon to call Sargon of Akkad "human garbage" and a "shit head".  His crime?  Watching her quietly.  Glad she is standing up against the evils of harassment.

Does this trigger you?