A side-scrolling, 2D cartoon platformer for a major console in 2008?

This is why my heart will always belong to Nintendo. It looks completely awesome and I can't wait to play it.

I don't think I fit into the hardcore/mainstream/casual gamer schema very well though. I range all over the place, with the cravat that the vast majority of 3D, first person games and a good deal of 3D, third person game give me motion sickness. If it weren't for this,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 7:02 PM on July 16, 2008

I know a guy who not only is not squicked by incest, until the discussion where it came up, was actually unaware that there was such a taboo. I believe he was 20 at the time. How he managed this I do not know.
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 8:41 PM on July 15, 2008

… So rather than trying to salvage anything from the standard model [of genres], I believe that it makes more sense to speak of a bifurcated culture. Of course, the bifurcation isn’t absolute or perfectly clean, but it’s clear that there are two distinct audience groups and that they have different characteristics. One carries swords in elevators and the other doesn’t.

So true.

And I love the bit about the waiter.
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 7:32 PM on July 13, 2008

There's a longstanding tradition among scientifically inclined folk to bash post-modernism whenever it comes up. It's certainly not unique to stephenson.
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 7:04 PM on July 14, 2008

I don't really care who he is. I like his stuff though.
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 8:08 PM on July 13, 2008

I understand that the labels of gay/straight and homosexual/heterosexual are fairly recent in human history. We gay guys have been doing our thing for centuries, even if we didn't have a special word for it.

You've misunderstood what it means to talk about "gay" as socially constructed. Men have been having sex with men for centuries, but until lately, there were no gay men. It wasn't possible to be a gay man, there was no one who identified... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 8:06 PM on July 13, 2008

Pretty.
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 8:36 PM on July 7, 2008

It looks gorgeous, and I'm sad that I'll never get to see it in person.
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 11:14 PM on July 6, 2008

At least among the baptist variant of this theology

You know nothing about baptist theology if you think there is any singular baptist theology. Or is 'baptist' acting as shorthand here for "Southern Baptist" here?
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 6:27 AM on July 6, 2008

There are over 300 million people living in the US. If one of them wants to set himself apart by being 'Crazy Zombie Guy,' more power to him. If all 300 million of us had the same aesthetics, goals, and sense of priority in life -- that's when I'd start to worry.

I'm with you. This guy makes the world a stranger place to live in, and I'm grateful for that.

World's only going to get stranger from here on in, anyway. Might as... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 7:15 PM on July 4, 2008

noway, I think you're making a mistake in thinking that what he's done is fundamentally about other people. I don't think it is. Rather than spectacle, I think the point is marking difference, setting yourself apart. And yeah, there's an element of provoking reactions in that, but it's more about dealing with society than with individual people. I don't think framing it as 'target audience' is at all helpful. He was miserable, etc., and this helped him deal.
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 10:33 AM on July 5, 2008

Why is it that every photographer's website must make it as difficult as possible to actually look at the person's pictures? No, I don't really want to change my screen's resolution and size of my browser to be able to see the entire thing. Fuck off.

Cool stuff, but I can't be bothered to try and look at it too much.
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 7:31 PM on July 4, 2008

This is totally amazing.

Jesus christ this is amazing.
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 7:49 PM on July 2, 2008

I saw the original post for the first time literally five minutes ago.

Had I not done so, I would have thanked you for pointing me at it.
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 2:14 PM on July 1, 2008

There's a bit on their site advertising future products, one of which is "A more anatomically correct proton and neutron", which I'm taking to mean what several people here want: nucleons actually comprised of quarks. The image.
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 7:35 PM on June 30, 2008

These threads always strike me as funny because everyone I know in real life who's read Doctorow's books, including myself, like them. Except for myself, this is a group of people who don't know boing-boing, have never read it, and are not really into this sort of internet insider stuff. I think part of the issue is that people here get sick and tired of that distinct Cory Doctorow flavor, which infuse his books as well as his blog. People who've never read his blog can come at his books without... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 2:04 PM on June 30, 2008

languagehat:Oh, what a load of crap. I've read Doctorow's stuff and don't like it, and I'm a huge sf fan. And I used to enjoy BB, but stopped reading it when it became an echo chamber.

Straw man. I did not claim that anyone not annoyed by Doctorow would like his books, as the notion that there is any book or author that everyone (or everyone who's a fan of the genre, or everyone who doesn't have preexisting feelings about the author) would like is... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 6:18 PM on June 30, 2008

I got 33 using FoB's method. Could have gotten more, but I got bored.
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 9:30 AM on June 27, 2008

I'm not a big fan of the pop/rap beat + rap song model of mashups, although there's definitely some good stuff out there, and I'm looking forward to giving this a listen. For my money, though, the most amazing mashups are done by a guy named Jason Forrest. Check out War Photographer for an idea of what his stuff is like. I'm also a big fan of Evolution Control Committee's song Rocked by Rape.

Raiding the 20th Century, by DJ Food is incredibly impressive for sheer scope... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 8:53 PM on June 26, 2008

How to Watch a Fanvid is what I'm going off of there. Key quote:

Several years ago, I sparked some controversy in the Star Wars fan cinema world when I argued that the rules of the official competition hosted by Atom films were gender-biased because they recognized forms of media production -- parody and documentary -- most closely associated with male fans and excluded outright those forms -- most notably music video -- most closely associated with female fans.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 7:31 AM on June 27, 2008

I have used the one about watching all of someone's youtube videos in the past.
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 11:15 AM on June 26, 2008

The Aptera. It looks like the future. Sexy, sexy future.

They're planning to make both an electric and a plug-in hybrid model, starting production of the electric in late 2008 and the hybrid in 2009.

Top speed for the production model will exceed 85 mph, going from 0-60 in under 10 seconds, and range of the electric is 120 miles. The hybrid doesn't have a fixed gas mileage (it depends on how far you go between charges, but the number they quote... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 10:44 AM on June 26, 2008

Am I the only one imagining a legless dog that moves like a snake? Because, if it can be as fluffy and adorable as Hope here, I want one.
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 6:02 PM on June 24, 2008

;_;
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 11:43 AM on June 22, 2008

The thread this spawned is worth so much more than the image itself. Not saying I agree with anyone's take on what's going on here, but it's really interesting to see it being fought out like this. Like Ynoxas said, this isn't meant for this crowd, except that it sort of is, if you follow the link that shows where the story and background image first got put together: 4chan, in a move that was not far off from your description of "tragically hip, hyper-self-conscious ironic sarcasm".... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 11:28 PM on June 23, 2008

pet causes

I swear I didn't do that on purpose.

Occupation: Student

I never claimed not to have my own set of biases and predispositions. For what it's worth, I nearly stopped and scrapped the whole thing after I found myself using the word 'genealogy' like I did there. Sometimes I think having this much theory in my head qualifies as an infection. And this sort of shit isn't even... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 12:40 AM on June 24, 2008

See also: Erin McKean's Semicolon Appreciation Society.

The semicolon is not used enough; the comma is used too often.

As for myself, I have been in love with the semicolon ever since someone actually bothered to teach me its use; this was revelatory. As someone who included far too many nested clauses in my writing, suddenly finding myself with better options for how to nest things was amazing.

I have... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 9:18 PM on June 22, 2008

Yeah, I don't think this is new like he thinks it is.
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 11:44 AM on June 22, 2008

also good:

HARRISON uses a CHEAT CODE to spawn a ROCKET LAUNCHER, then uses it to blow up the tree-cutting machine.
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 9:58 PM on June 18, 2008

Huh.
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 9:38 PM on June 18, 2008

Intel only? Boo.

I guess "getting a new laptop" has now changed from "when snow leopard ships" to "when snow leopard or spore ships, whichever is sooner"
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 4:25 PM on June 17, 2008

or is spore proper going to include ppc support? anyone know?
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 4:25 PM on June 17, 2008

If you really want something OSX-like, you need to be using Camino

Absolutely. Which is why I everytime a new version of Firefox comes out, I give it a try for a while, and always end up back using Camino before too long. I'm waiting for them to implement support for Greasemonkey scripts, after which I'm not sure I'll have any reason to be tempted by firefox ever again.
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 4:12 PM on June 17, 2008

See also: this comic by wellington grey.

I believe it to be the truth.
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 10:29 AM on June 17, 2008

The twitter feed is the best thing going on twitter right now.
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 4:33 PM on May 25, 2008

Vocals, even when lyric-heavy, can always be approached without touching their semantic content. I don't think it has to be about being poetry, or having something new to say, it can also be just about the fact that human voice and language can be just as abstractly musical as any instrument. Metal is not my scene, but within the music that I do consider my scene (for what it's worth: indiepop, about as far away from metal as you can get), one of my favorite things is when the singer plays with... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 11:45 PM on April 22, 2008

And while I'm here, something I started wondering while reading this thread: are there any (prominent or otherwise) female vocalists working with dirty vocals? It seems to be an incredibly male-dominated form, which is also true of metal more broadly, but I can think of a bunch of clean female vocalists in metal whereas I don't know any examples of woman singing in a dirty mode. I'm both interested in the general gender dynamics across the genre, but also really curious about how dirty vocals... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 11:52 PM on April 22, 2008

As soon as any kid shows up on a show like this, I start to brace myself for the cloying sentimentalism and clouded judgement that nearly invariably follows. This time, the kid could sing. I'll give him that. But god, the thing was pretty unwatchable for the editing and how everyone reacted.

Dear people of the world, a reminder: applauding, hooting and hollering, etc., is all well and acceptable when listening to noisy, popular music being preformed but for the love of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 5:45 PM on April 14, 2008

My dog needs no robot; she'll happily toss her toys up in the air herself and then go running after them.
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 3:00 PM on April 14, 2008

The problem of grues is, of course, their recursive nature. To wit:

A) Grues are found wherever it is very dark.
B) There are no light sources on the inside of a grue.

Therefore, being eaten by a grue is a fate which entails being eaten by an infinite number of progressively smaller grues, presumably nested in a geometrically complicated and interesting way.

The proper way to unify quantum mechanics with this... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 1:32 PM on April 11, 2008

everybody getting the "Upgrade browser" idiocy: it'll load fine if you disable javascript. Whatever they're doing to check your browser depends on that.
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 1:39 PM on April 9, 2008

I am legitimately a fan of Chris Crocker. The Britney video is what brought him to my attention in the first place, but I neither care for it nor care much about it. You're free to not care for him, or dislike him, or whatever.

Here's the thing though: none of the criticisms commonly lobbed at him seem to stick, in my view. So he's famous because he's a personality. Well, okay, sure. So is every other comedian or internet celebrity.

So he got... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 8:30 PM on March 25, 2008

I thought it was even better than Passage.
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 7:41 PM on March 25, 2008

I'm not the biggest NIN fan, but I have to love them for pulling this off. Listening to the torrent now.
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 2:24 AM on March 3, 2008

My contribution.
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 6:19 AM on February 27, 2008

Psych today pretty consistently just makes me want to stab things. I'm most impressed with the "hygiene made society slutty" argument.
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 1:44 PM on January 31, 2008

My dislike of Psychology Today stems from a broader dislike of evolutionary psychology, which Psych Today likes to spew out all over the place. My experience with evolutionary psychology comes largely from feminist critiques of it; it tends very strongly towards "women are like this, men are like this" sorts of things, which is characteristically strong in this article. It's likelimeonaire says with the extrapolated conclusions and all, but the point is that poorly supported... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 10:37 AM on February 4, 2008

Today is the day. (youtube)
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 7:05 PM on February 3, 2008

Here's a question not addressed in that piece: I keep my fingernails long. Hate it when they're short, it changes the way every single interaction with object in the world feel off. That said, the bit on the space in your hands when you make a fist doesn't really work for me. If I make a fist tight enough to grab the meat of my hand, my fingernails dig into my hand, and are bent over uncomfortably (my fingernails naturally having a great deal of flexibility to them). The way to avoid this is to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 2:55 AM on January 23, 2008

For information about possible future male contraceptives, this is pretty comprehensive. Basically, we do have reversible, medical male contraceptives, but none of them have gotten approval for widespread use, getting bogged down in clinical trials instead. RISUG seems the most promising.
posted to MetaFilter by Arturus at 10:52 PM on January 22, 2008