thomasnash

The guy was being dumb, but I don't really buy the argument that the conductor was doing it to save his life, or at least not specifically because he envisioned the protruding bit of metal hitting his head. I reason thusly:

The metal does not in fact protrude that far, or look like it would have caught the guys head, really. although the conductors leg is in front of it, his foot is further out than the metal. But my main issue is that I just don't think the driver was looking at it and thinking "this kid is going to get hit by the handle of that ladder!"

I don't really think that people who describe that bit of metal as a decapitation risk are correct: It doesn't look very sharp, although I accept it would be more of a risk than a guy's leg because of hardness. My intuitive reaction is that if the train was moving fast enough for that bit of metal to decapitate him, then it was moving fast enough for the conductors fuck off massive boot to represent a serious blunt force trauma risk.

But the biggest issue I have with saying that the conductor probably saved the kid's life is that with the way his boot hooks around the kid's head, and the way the kid bounces around afterwards, that seems to me to increase the risk that the kid is going to get knocked over and dragged under the train.

So I guess I don't have a problem believing that the conductor might have been trying to save the kid's life by trying to make sure he didn't do dumb things anymore, or even that he wanted to kick him away from the train, but if he did he might have miscalculated.

Of course it doesn't really matter. I only really made the post because no one had made any of these points I suppose. Maybe I'm way out.

If all else fails you could always find a framers in your town and get it framed custom like. Probably not worth it for a poster though - the only time I've had something custom framed it cost me £40 and that was on the cheaper end for quite a narrow frame. The result is good though, and it hangs a lot better than any of my pictures with off the rack frames because it has a better string to hang it from. Maybe worth bearing in mind, depending on how highly you value the poster.

You know, thinking about it, I think that there in some ways Alpha Centauri is really radically different from the Civ games. I mean, you're right that the core economic part of the game is the same, but there are three things that I think are really different to Civ (although I'm not a Civ expert so please correct me if I'm wrong!):

1: The native life forms. It's not so dissimilar from barbarians in Civ, or Native Americans in Colonisation, but it's interesting having them tied to geographical features (fungal bloom). Is there a similar system in civ that does this? like, do barbarian camps appear more often in forests or anything?

2: Customisation of units. I used to love this feature, although when I go back to it it always seems a little bit under-developed. I remember when I first realised that I could put colony pods on any chassis, and make a really fast moving colonisation unit, I was pretty impressed. I don't know whether it ever serves a practical function - maybe it could help to tailor slightly cheaper units that are only slightly ahead of your enemies tech level or something to add a bit of economic strategy to the military aspect. Whatever it's awesome anyway.

3: The biggest one though, is definitely the fact that there is a sort of proto-XCOMish narrative to the game. not basing it even loosely on real history allows a weird sort of through-line to bleed in through the periphery. In some ways I think it helps that there is a tight focus to what the game is doing, each game sort of ends up being a snapshot of a possible future for human development, as it is shaped by an alien environment. Honestly I wonder if that sort of thing will be possible under the Civilization brand, but I hope it is!

I'm not a hugely outgoing or confident person so I think I actually can remember every time I've had romantic advances rejected. Not including girls I actually have had things with/breakups, it's happened 3 times.

The first time was in my early teenage years, and probably doesn't even count that much because it was one of those classic bullshit schoolyard things, where rather than actually asking her out there was a whole network of intermediaries and nonsense. I took it really badly when she went out with someone else. I had a short temper back then, and it was that classic thing when infatuations go bad; having built her up to be the most amazing person in the world I ended up thinking of her as a demon bitch or something. I barely even remember anything about her at the time, but that experience had a really profound effect on my attitude towards relationships and girls throughout my teenage years in ways that still cause me occasional pangs of regret.

The second time was many years later when I was 17 or 18, and I drunkenly slept with a good friend of mine. We were very close friends and I'd been developing feelings for her at the time anyway, and one night she propositioned me. At first I said no because I didn't want to ruin our friendship when I wasn't sure if she really returned my feelings or was just drunk, but in the end I didn't stick to my principles. I was fairly naive about it and thought that she would want a relationship afterwards (she didn't). I went to her house in the rain with flowers like an idiot in a last ditch attempt to convince her she wanted to be with me but it was a no go. I reacted with much less hostility this time around, but it definitely soured our friendship for a long time and we didn't see each other really at all for a few years afterwards - mostly because I was too immature to handle it. We see each other quite a lot nowadays, but we're nothing like as close as we were then.

However the last time I got rejected, I am proud to say, I reacted in a manner that approaches mature and reasonable. I'd been talking to a girl who I didn't know massively well, but who was sweet and who I got along with really well. We'd gone out to the pub with some friends and I was determined to not let it fester and mutate into something ridiculous like I have done with women a lot of the time. I was determined that by the end of the night I would just ask her out, and eventually I plucked up the courage and she said no and then I walked her home and we said no hard feelings. It sucked badly but she was pretty nice about it. I also don't talk to her, really, but I was never that close to her in the first place so that probably has more to do with it: I may have lost the chance at a friend, but I was and am proud that I had the courage to go for it, and that I didn't let the rejection send me into a tailspin of rage or jealousy or sadness.

I've been with my current SO for 5 odd years now, and I think If I wasn't the type of person who could handle rejection sensibly and proportionately by the time I met her, she never would have gone out with me. All part of life's rich tapestry, I suppose!

Could it partly be that when journos talk about companies "suffering" layoffs, they aren't looking at the company as being the people at the top, but as the entire business, so when they refer to "irrational" they aren't referring to Ken Levine, but everyone from Ken Levine to their lowliest QA Intern.

I suppose another reason is just that you can't have a headline saying "Company x suffers economic circumstances possibly of their own making which lead to them having to lay people off" which I think is sort of what you're saying?

Sidenote: My SO works in HR at a fairly large insurance company. Around the time she started they were having a bad year and had to lay people off, which they did under the banner of "project simplify" which always sounded terribly callous to me (even though in a lot of ways it's not the worst company to be laid off from).

@aetheldod: Is it at all possible you aren't as embedded in discourse around film as you are in discourse around games? Google "women in film" and you'll find a lot of recent discussion (positive and negative, probably) about the representation of women in films.

You are partly right, though, that women have tried to just get on and make stuff about it (as, indeed, women in games have done), but if I think about the response to, say, Bridesmaids, it was overwhelmingly focused on how out of the ordinary it was for a (major, hollywood) film to focus on women in isolation (I'm trying to find a way of saying this that doesn't use the phrase "women's issues").

I think the main difference actually is probably that discourse about video games is really weighted to the internet, whereas film criticism is spread out over newspapers, tv, radio and academia (as well as the internet), and maybe the high-profile voices who want to discuss those issues have "establshed" outlets to air their views - and are probably a little older and less savvy when it comes to the internet anyway.

I'm sorry but this is just patently false.

I don't know a huge amount about the Illiad but I have heard it argued that the main thematic thrust of the Illiad is basically "look at what massive bellends all these powerful men are" (Odysseus excepted?). Like it's kind of the story about how a bunch of grown men acting like spoiled children causes the extension of a siege to 10 years and huge loss of life.

What is the dual wield moveset like for katanas? I really like the one I get from the Flame Sword in my right hand (I'm pretty sure that the right hand weapon determines the moveset), but absolutely hated what I got with a falchion in my right hand, and assume it would be similar for a scimitar - the animations take a long time to pop off.

Did you have the lights on for Lost Sinner? It makes it a lot easier. Not massively easy, but easier.

I'm pretty determined to do this whole thing solo the first time around, although I do tend to put my sign down before challenging a boss so I can get a bit of a look at their patterns. I think I might be a bit OP now though as I'm not getting as many hits as I did.

All I can say is I'm a little bit past you and it absolutely is feasible to play a dex-end style (I actually have a pretty wide spread across dex, str, end and vit). I've been dual-wielding since the pursuer and haven't looked back. That said I did switch to sword and board for a couple of fights (Belfry gargoyles, the three sentinels).