Argobot

Yeah well, up until a 2009, newspapers weren't allowed to publish photos of caskets for the soldiers who died in Iraq and Afghanistan, so I think we have some equally messed up ideas about 'free speech.'

If Abrams casts Benedict Cumberbatch as Thrawn, I'll go see the movie opening night.

They already ruled a very similar law unconstitutional in 2011: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/29/arts/video-games/what-supreme-court-ruling-on-video-games-means.html

Govtrack.us (a nifty website that lets you track any bill introduced before congress) has this bill rated with a 3% percent of getting past committee, so I think it's safe to say that this bill is dead in the water: http://www.govtrack....bills/113/hr287 And nobody forced the video games industry to go to a meeting with the VP, they merely excepted an invitation. Personally, I welcome any study into the connection between violence and video games; the more evidence that proves there's a no real verifiable connection between the two, the harder it will be for politicians to use games a scapegoat.

Which two books? I enjoyed Freedom a lot, and while I had fun reading Goon Squad, I think GB's critiques against it are valid; once you get past the initial gimmick, there's really not a lot going for it. Super Sad True Love Story was just plan awful though. It's a great warning sign of how terribly someone can mess up satire (all the Fox News jokes were particularly painful). I like Shteyngart when he's writing about Russian immigrants, not whatever Super Sad True Love Story was supposed to be about.

Seconded.

I agree--I love the sound the characters make as they traverse the levels and the animations for how each character physically moves. It kind of makes up for the climbing/jumping deficiencies.

I know! So fantastic.

I just finished 'The Twins' level. I was actually surprised by what the ultimate ending to the level was: I have been waiting for some kind of Idle Thumbs reference in this game and I think I finally got one during the Time Traveler section:

Saw this a few days ago: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2012/jul/23/great-american-novelist-tournament-final-32 Pretty good list! I'm actually surprised at how varied it is and that Ursula Le Guin actually got a (deserved) spot. Who do you think will win? Who is missing from the original list? Is Nabokov really a great 'American' author? (Not even sure how I feel about that one. It's true that he wrote most of his most famous stuff while living in America and he obviously influenced the American writers that came after him, but is he part of the American author canon or is his a purely Russian author who just happened to write in English? Maybe he's a little bit of both! All I know is that Pnin was a great book.)

I have an annotated version of Moby-Dick and it is full of footnotes on all the Biblical references. The footnote for the first sentence is a few paragraphs long and goes into incredible detail about who Ishmael was and what he represents. I stopped reading the book because it felt like I was two different books at the same time.

So in case you haven't heard, JJ Abrams is set to direct Episode VII: http://www.thewrap.com/movies/article/jj-abrams-set-direct-next-star-wars-film-exclusive-74596

Here is me: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198026423724/

I played Metro 2033 in Russian-- a language that I studied in college. It was great refresher on all the vocabulary for guns and also demons. I agree though, I wish more games would include language fluency as some kind of mechanic. The only recent game that I can think of that did this was Fez, and I enjoyed it tremendously.

I suppose that taken out of context, the harassment story that I shared could be hand-waved away as just general assholery, but given the fact that I have had multiple experiences (like pretty much every woman), where strangers have called out fairly derogatory comments when I've been outside jogging or just walking around (one time a guy used some particularly colorful language when I wouldn't get in his car/acknowledge him and then proceeded to follow me in his car while I walked home to my apartment). When those you've had those experiences to the point where they're almost commonplace and mundane, it's a little difficult for me to separate harassment that's rooted in sexism vs. harassment that just comes from equal opportunity dickishness. Next time I'll be sure to supply the context!

I actually really enjoy the narrator. I found myself legitimately chuckling at some of his more sardonic jokes. Who did everyone start with? I'm playing as the Adventurer, Time-Traveler, and the creepy Twins (my favorite).

Yeah I don't really understand this either. You criticized the book for appearing 'white.' People interpreted that as a criticism against the perceived 'privilege' of the character who is introduced in the first few pages of the book, and attempted to counter that criticism by mentioning other parts of the book that involve people from 'less-than-privileged' background, who just happen to be living in a halfway home. After your initial criticism, the issue of race was never explicitly referenced.

Last night I played about 2 hours worth of the game and I'm enjoying myself. At this point though, the game hasn't had a chance to justify multiple playthroughs, but based on everything I've already seen, I'm really optimistic about where the game is headed. It looks great and all the allusions to the 'horrible' mystery of the Cave make me want to keep playing.

The comments about the weird conversations overheard from the psychiatrist next door were strangely appropriate, given the plot of By Blood (the plot is basically the same thing).

Yeah street harassment is completely mind-boggling to me. I have never actually known the type of guy who has no problem yelling things at random women in a public space, yeah I've been yelled at enough times to know how frequent and almost mundane these kind of harassment is. Guaranteed that every woman has there one 'great' street harassment story (Mine happened when I was riding my bike in the middle of the afternoon when a Jeep filled with college aged guys slowed down so they were keeping pace with me. I tried to ignore them, but when I finally gave in and glanced over, I saw that one of them was trying to take a picture of me. So I flipped him the finger. They yelled somethings at me, gave me the finger, and then drove off, presumably with my picture. It's funny to me now, how stupid these guys were, but at the time, I remember feeling so embarrassed and ashamed).

I super excited that Sean name-checked Sarah Vowell.

I know! I really wish more people would deconstruct their interviews like that.

Whenever I see this come up on twitter (#whitepeopleproblems), I always interpret at it at as an for easy way for people to excuse their complaining. Usually someone will say something along the lines of, iPhone not working #whitepeopleproblems, because they recognize the ridiculousness of complaining about something so banal and they think that by poking fun at themselves for complaining about something meaningless they are then able to complain, because it's all a big joke. That specific context particularly bothers me.

To bring this back around to Lot 49, what are everyone's general feelings towards post-modernism? It tends to have this reputation of being difficult just to be difficult, with no real merit beyond that. That's definitely the legacy author's like David Foster Wallace were trying to work against: writing these complicated, surreal narratives that served a purpose beyond just impressing the reader with the author's talent. The post-modern elements are so inchoate in Lot 49, but there still present and important. I enjoyed those elements and never once felt that Pynchon was merely just showing off, maybe my opinion would change if I read one of his longer novels, but I doubt that. It's a wonderful, innovative way to tell a story that gives the author a of room to experiment with writing styles. Completely worth the effort to read a novel like this.

Reading Pale King was the strangest experience. Every time there was a reference to suicide (and there were a few), I cringed. The closer I got to the end of the book, the sadder I got. Even in it's incomplete form, The Pale King is such a good read. I think it had the potential to be better than Infinite Jest, or at least on the same level. The 100 page chapter on Chris Fogle was one of the best things I read last year.