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Great topic guys. I like Friedrich especially.

My favourite painting is Pieter Brueghel's the Triumph of Death:



Came across it unexpectedly in the Prado which was a treat.

I also like Böcklin's The Isle of the Dead:

[Edit]

this is what lots of men fantasize about

That is absolutely fair enough, Blondbraid. I'm sure there are (but certainly nobody I would associate with long enough to become my friends).

With respect, however, you are proceeding from 'lots of men fantasise about this' to 'every man must read this to check their fantasies'.

Edit

I'm also confused by how the "cool girl" trope can be interpreted as sexist... I can also read it charitably as wanting a partner who shares your hobbies and interests... I don't think any of this is gendered... It's a general human tendency that's hardly exclusive to relationships and gender. It's dumb, but I'm failing to see the sexism in it.

Perfectly said. Particularly with the 'but it could be a vegetarian variation on the Cool Girl trope'. Where then does the metaphor end? It is not an inherently gendered concept. Humans often change their behaviour to be accepted. I certainly have done in relationships - and in fact exactly by becoming de facto vegetarian! Does this make me a Cool Girl too?

Good discussion everybody.

I think this paragraph should be required reading for every man trying to write a female love interest

Funnily enough I watched Gone Girl very recently (great movie), and this scene / passage from the book just confused me.

What is its purpose? I understand that the monologue has become iconic for some feminists (see here and here).

But to my mind it is just the words of a character in a novel (an extraordinarily evil and vengeful character). This interview with Flynn in The Guardian suggests to me the evilness of Amy was the primary feminist motivation of the book. Flynn says that feminism is 'also the ability to have women who are bad characters… the one thing that really frustrates me is this idea that women are innately good, innately nurturing'.

For me, the 'Cool Girl' monologue is owned entirely by Amy's character, and it certainly does not reveal any real-life wisdom on how 'men' actually think, or how 'women' perceive they should be. Flynn's 'lurid plots make no claim to social realism: to interpret her evil female characters as somehow representative of their real-life gender, you must willfully overlook hundreds of pages of other people and events that you'd almost certainly never encounter in reality, either.'

So I am absolutely on the same page as Danvzare here:

Having read that paragraph, all I can say is that no guy wants a girl like that.

I will add that some men probably do, but at least no man I've ever met in my life.

My overall point is that I don't need to read the Cool Girl monologue in order to write a female love interest. It is a monologue that is a work of fiction in itself.

Thank you for the replies everybody, I really appreciate the helpful advice.

So I made some phone calls to PC builders in my city - a fair few. They've either scaled back to just doing repairs because of lockdown... or stopped building custom PCs because of the global graphics card shortage... I didn't realise that was a problem. One of the guys I phoned said there's no point them taking orders for custom PCs, because they haven't been able to get their hands on graphics cards ("gold dust").

I won't give up on custom builds just yet. But it's starting to look like my best bet is to acquire a second-hand PC, and think about swapping components when circumstances are more ideal... This is essentially what Crimson Wizard suggested

Thank you so much for the help, WHAM. Yes, that sounds like a good idea to me too.

I will make some calls in the next few days and let you know how I get on!

Thank you for your helpful replies!

What is your main reason for wanting to build your own PC?

This is a good question. Well, a friend suggested that it can be cheaper - I took his word for it, but he's been wrong about a lot of things in the past Second, I would also find it very fun and challenging.

But right now considerations of expense outweigh how much enjoyment I would get out of building my own So if generally-speaking it is more expensive, I would happily elect to purchase a pre-assembled PC. The warranties are also something that I hadn't considered.

As I say, I am an utter noob - I've had the same laptop for 8 years now.

The only thing I'd be worried about with an assembly service is being sold a lemon, because it would be very easy to take advantage of my noobness.

My experience with desktop PC parts is that their costs vary a lot depending on the exact place you live, and things like cases have expensive shipping.

Good point eri0o. I believe accessibility and range of parts won't be too much of an issue, as I live in a big city.

total war can be quite demanding, if your going into huge battles

Ahh that's fair enough... and I do like that!

Hello all! Hope you're keeping well.

I'd like to build my own desktop PC, but I don't have a clue where to start. I mean, quite literally no clue.

In terms of specs, it doesn't have to be anything particularly high-end. To be honest, I mostly wanted to play some of the old war sims like Total War or Mount and Blade on it (maybe the new one too). I've also been messing around in Blender and Unity recently on my laptop, and would like something much more capable to make a walking simulator I have in mind.

I will do some other research on where to start as well, but I thought it would be good to hear some impartial advice from you guys on what the suitable components etc are (please disclose if you own a components company).

The practical skills and tools to actually put something together won't be an issue.

I am sorry to bump this but that is a fruit of my itinerant ways. Miguel, you needn't apologise


Ghost, I remember you as one of the first AGSers I interacted with. I would wonder from time to time what you were up to, and how you were doing. I have been through our PMs together, and your words of encouragement and kindness are just extraordinary. Had they not been so at such early stages, it is quite possible that I would not have grown the interests I have now. Although I never met you, this news has made me truly sad. Thank you so very much.

It's nice to see the community is still a friendly and welcoming place.

Re Brexit:

But since this thread is about brexit, remember when Johnson was asked whether he had any hobbies and started talking really weirdly about crafting toy buses from wine crates? Some people suspect he did this to influence the search results when people google "johnson bus".
Anyway, it's a pretty good video.

That interview is actually surreal (people have pointed out the similarities with this )

Stupot, I'm not convinced it was a deliberate ploy to change Google trends though, even if it did actually have that effect. He was quite clearly making it up as he went along, in an attempt to make him seem like he has an 'ordinary' hobby. He mentions his time as Mayor, so he's alluding to the Boris bus. That it was a haphazard attempt at answering a personal question makes more sense to me than him trying to keep the Brexit bus out the news.

From what I see, the Conservatives are pretty much spent. With Clarke, Hammond, nineteen others, and now Rudd gone, there seems to be no moderate, centralising cooling rod. I'm sure others will follow Rudd now.

It's lies that there are negotiations going on with the EU, we know that from multiple sources on both sides. Johnson is delaying because he wants a no deal, that's obvious. However, I genuinely believe he wants to get a deal on paper, and then blame any shortcomings on the EU, delays on Labour, etc, pushing towards severing all ties on Halloween.

Also, I realise that the OP was per se asking about the games industry. I honestly don't know enough about it but I cannot imagine that the entertainment industries will be nearly as affected as, say, farming or manufacturing.

I tried one of these recently:

[Stay Puft]

I can safely say that I still detest the taste of alcohol.
I binned it after one sip. 

I love that! Honestly my go-to if it's on tap. Can understand why people feel the opposite though. The roasted (burnt) taste is inherent to porters because they're brewed with brown or black malts.

Otherwise: anything with the letters IPA after I don't touch with a barge-pole

I would agree with the unanimous advice given already. Do what you can within reason but don't put his wellbeing before yours (martyrdom as Slasher says). Because the very sad truth is that some people won't change in spite of any help, big or small, they are offered (of course, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't try in the first instance). I am not trying to be facetious or heartless here but, if he has proclaimed he wants to drink himself to death, in spite of all the help (running away from rehab etc), why would you then spend effort to try and stop him doing what he thinks he wants? Addiction is a horrid disease/behaviour pattern which at the end of it all comes down to how much personal responsibility one can muster to change themselves. External help can only do so much, and from what you've written it appears he's had ample opportunity.

By the way, it's highly likely that these periods of sobriety are part of a sort of charm offensive, so that he doesn't lose fingers in pies that he might need in future ('he reappears and is sober and nice and then I fall for it and talk with him until it gets worse and worse'). I've had a comparable friendship to this where the reconciliation was always followed by a loss on my part. The last straw was when they trashed my room and broke all my furniture when they were steaming drunk. You honestly just have to cut some people out of your lives, like pruning rotten wood. In your own short life you simply can't afford to try and change another's when they lack the personal fortitude to do it themselves.

I have a lot of empathy and feel sorry for him

This is very interesting because empathy, and perhaps even pity, I suspect is the only thing that is motivating you to help. Now I have another alcoholic acquaintance who truly had a bum deal in life at every turn - in lots of ways it's 'no surprise', or even reasonable, that they hit the bottle. But empathy is never a sufficient reason to put up with someone giving you shit and dragging you down. Again, the fact that they lack personal responsibility will always trump any empathy that you might feel for them. (It's funny actually, because this guy once put a gaping hole in his front door when he locked himself out too, just like your friend!)

In short, and I'm sorry it's blunt, as soon as you feel like you've done enough that can be reasonably expected, and not a moment after, just ditch him. Invest your time in friends that you know for certain don't just care about themselves.

PS. Realised this thread is a bit older, would be nice for an update too selmiak

Some Midwest emo (cue internet flamewar about music genres)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGRPC3Dcj_E

Nice shots all. Everything looks so much nicer from high up! I'm envious of birds and drones alike.

Maybe if it were another type of game then it could be so... But seeing as the 'killer' is in fact the Kings defender I don't think he would go around killing willy nilly

Exactly, you just need to decide to what extent the character is 'owned' by the player, in light of any other RPG elements in the wider game

My night job is captain of a beer league hockey team called the Dragons.

Best sentence ever

I'm a PhD Law student, teaching at my university part-time.

I think I've heard of something similar being used before. Where if you kept doing bad things that you weren't supposed to do, you would keep getting warnings, until eventually you got a game over.

In Assassin's Creed you would be 'desyncronised' if you killed a bunch of random civilians in quick succession.

Jami Sieber - Maenam, ie Braid soundtrack!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kWo8N4QNXM

Ok, that's all fair enough. I would just say that when I talk about things being formed organically, I rather meant racial identity as the natural result of humans being able to discern differences in one another. In which case, the political concept of whiteness which you are talking about is surely based upon this 'ability' otherwise it wouldn't be able to operate.

In groups and out groups existed before then, but never along modern "racial" lines, but more cultural and linguistic ones.

That's a very bold claim, one which I don't think is historically substantiated at all. Just take a look at this, a list of medieval Arabic writers who speak in no uncertain terms about black people: http://www.colorq.org/Articles/article.aspx?d=2002&x=arabviews

If we are to mean racism in terms of weaponised politics (Jim Crow laws etc), then of course one can scarcely disagree, considering that it is only in modern history that different races have begun to live side by side in some societies.

Edit

It would be more scientific if there had been some blacks in the room too.

Precisely, the point is that there probably wasn't anybody who wasn't white in your grandfather's town anyway (this was certainly the case in my own grandfather's village when he was growing up at least), so how could they have discriminated against race? In this case saying that political racism is a new phenomenon is actually quite pithy. But it doesn't follow that racial identity was an unheard of, alien concept before then.

Alas, it must be the residence of my gay doppelganger. For many years and across continents I have sought him, but at every turn he has eluded me, continuing to preach his invaluable fashion advice using my face and name. I am now one step closer, but I cannot trust to hope.