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Did any of you know that the Axolotl can not only regenerate lost limbs, but also transform into a real salamander if given iodine?
https://www.thoughtco.com/axolotl-ambystoma-mexicanum-4162033

Before transformation:

After transformation:


Also, this is what baby Axolotls look like! 

Can any amphibians possibly be cuter?

I just thought It'd be really cool and fun to have a thread dedicated to share pictures, facts and videos on odd and interesting animals,
not just as a nice inspiration source for AGS projects but also just because it's fun to share animal-related things on the internet! 

For example, I just found out that there's an African pig species called the red river hog, and it looks just like a fairy-tale creature:

Thought I might share this! 

Exactly, most millennials couldn't care less if a YouTuber says the F-word, but advertisers are terrified they'd get associated with something that could get the Midwestern US christian moms into a moral panic

Sometimes, the creators themselves resort to self-censorship out of fear.

Apparently, that's what's happening with Commandos 2 HD remastered. I find it sad when a company claiming to make a game set in World War II decides to remove any symbols, portraits, speeches or other assets that could break the law in many countries - namely anything that connects it to reality.

Since no law could force them to remove the japanese flags, they seem to be more royalist than the king.

The no swastikas in WW2 games thing is due to the law not keeping up with the times and recognizing video games as an art form, and at least in Germany, those laws were made decades ago where games were seen by the public as kid's toys rather than mass media equal to books and films, but there has been a few recent games where nazi symbols were allowed in Germany, so things seems to be changing in that regard. As for bans on nazi symbols on stuff like toys and merchandise, I think Germany is right on banning such symbols there, and far as I know, they're still way more lenient on swearing and sexual content in their films and TV-series than the US has ever been.

I also think calling this case self-censorship is kind of pushing it, since having played the non-hd Commandos 2 for over 80 hours according to Steam, at no point did I feel like the swastikas were a big part of the game aesthetic or environment and the game barely touches on any of the politics behind the war at all, compared to say, the new Wolfenstein trilogy or the latest Call of Duty, and removing them doesn't sound like a huge artistic compromise. It just feels like a form of cultural pandering similar to fantasy games removing skeletons in the Chinese versions in order to sell more copies in a country where skeletons are associated to strong negative superstitions.

The thing is that the ratings for movies in the US isn't standardized. There are some rough guidelines, but at the end of the day the rating depends on what a select group of people think. So, movie ratings are less a reflection of how Americans feel, but more how a small group of Americans feel.

I remember seeing a dive into just how weird the US rating system was in This movie is not yet rated, yet while it showed it was some pretty randomly selected and biased little group of middle-aged conservative Christians rating all major movies, they were still human beings and you'd expect them to follow some kind of human logic, but I still can't say that I can see human logic in judging the severity of a movie based on the number of swears rather than the context of them.

[The King's Speech]

Really? So rating is based on the numbers of f-words? It means that even a movie about the Mathama Gandhi sharing peace for the world become a X-rated if a british soldier says "*rap" 400 times?

Why should it matter what the movie is about? If you make a video with kittens and add lots of swearing on the background, should it be considered okay for small kids to watch?

What gets me is that I could understand the logic that a video containing one swear word gets the age rating bumped up on the basis that impressionable kids might learn to swear from watching it,
but bumping up the rating based on the number of swears alone makes no sense.

Compare swearing to literally any other mature content and you see how insane it is. For example, when videos depict fictional people being killed, the age rating goes by how explicit/how much blood is shown, and everyone agrees that it would be be insane to rate Disney's Mulan as a worse movie than Saw just because Mulan depicts an evil army of soldiers being killed by an avalanche mostly off screen, but Saw "only" shows a handful of people getting gorily tortured to death for most of the movie,
yet this exact logic is applied to swear words in US movies.

Like, The King's Speech is a heartwarming tale of a man overcoming his stuttering and had no sex, drugs or violence to speak of at all, yet it got rated as an adults only movie in the US because of this scene.

Mandle: Yeah, that's a decent point, though still, you'd think something making real kids kill themselves (the video I linked to before referenced a news story on a minor who died trying to make a DIY popcorn machine with burning alcohol in it)
should set off some alarms.

I know. That's what makes it even more hilarious / mind-boggling.

"Safe" version: cannibalism, mutilation, murder.
"Mature" version: cannibalism, mutilation, murder, one swear word.

Maybe they go by the logic that no sane person would try murder and cannibalism at home, but if cool people on TV swear kids might start doing that too?

Still dosen't explain why PG-13 movies are allowed to have somebody drop an f-bomb once, but twice makes it an R-rated movie.   

"Haha look at these silly Americans getting all riled up over (*looks around, whispers*)... the f-word."

Just say FUCK ffs.

Good point, though I was unsure of the forum rules on profanity and felt it was easier than read the entire rules page all over again. 

Still, it's insane that the word "fuck" is more likely to get banned than a video instructing kids to soak their food in bleach.

Also, no one should rely on algorithms for content moderation, has anyone else read about the police AI meant to search for images of child abuse but couldn't tell an image of a human body from a picture of a desert? 

I can imagine there is some kind of cancel clique out there though just waiting for swear words to mass report.

Or an algorithm.

Exactly, most millennials couldn't care less if a YouTuber says the F-word, but advertisers are terrified they'd get associated with something that could get the Midwestern US christian moms into a moral panic,
and large media platforms absolutely refuse to take responsibility in a sane way, like say, having living human beings vet videos, and instead use cheap but stupid algorithms to do the job instead.

It grinds my gears that YouTube will happily demonetize videos mentioning swear words or that gay people exist, yet "DIY-hacks" encouraging kids to dye food with bleach or
pour 30 degree melted caramel onto a rotating handmixer gets to remain despite all the reports of the blatant danger in promoting that.

I'm literally not doing anything. 
Really need to get my hands dirty and do a new MAGS... maybe the next one. 

Good luck to all who are trying to finish their entry on time. 

I feel the same, but it'll be interesting to see what VampireWombat makes!

It's been a while since I've checked into the forums and it's sad to come back and see that a member has passed on. For some reason I had the push to check out my messages (I guess it's been so long that I forgot there was a game he helped me out on. I wanted to go read messages for it but what I came across was something even better, yet bittersweet).
...
It was really uplifting and motivating to look back on this message. While I have switched to pretty much primarily doing videos now and I know he did like the last video I shared here, it makes me wish I actually had finished that one game so he could have gave it a try.   

RIP Ghost and thanks for the good vibes, mate. Hopefully one day I can actually finish that game.

That's incredibly poignant.

I'll add to the choir and say it looks good, it reminds me of old classic horror games!

uhm... it grind my gears when people discuss movies outside of it's own thread and don't use spoiler tags. 

Sorry about that!

I just figured that with Star Wars, if you haven't seen those by now you probably wouldn't care about spoilers. 

I think Penny Arcade summed this kind of stuff up pretty well:

Well this is sad. My condolences go out to his family. 

I see he was making a game called Collateral Jelly, which I presume wasn't finished. It would be nice if possible, if someone reached out to his family and obtained the code etc for his game, and try and make it a more or less complete game and release it.

I don't know if that's something he'd want, but I know it's something I'd want if I died before finishing a project and it had a decent amount made.

Same here. At the very least, I'd want all of the project files to be released, so that perhaps someone somewhere could either finish it off, or at least admire what I had done.
But that's just me.

I'd feel the same, at least if I knew people would try and finish the original vision. Wouldn't most artists want their work shared?

I actually liked The Last Jedi, but I agree that it had many dumb plotholes that could have easily been avoided.

For example, I remember reading that in an earlier draft of the script, the rebels had gained intel that there was a spy on board their ship,
and the reason the pink-haired lady and Poe couldn't just explain their plans to one another was because both thought the other could be the mole.
Why did they have to cut that out?!

But my other problem with the new trilogy is the Force awakens, where they basically erased all achievements of Luke and Leia in the original trilogy
in order to just redo most of A new hope again, and I think the big problem with Snokes comes because they wanted to shoehorn in a Palpatine-replacement
as well as an army of storm troopers, despite the fact that it'd make no sense in reality, and that would have been hard for any writer to make into a satisfying story.

Just to give some perspective on just how stupid the whole New Order felt to me, the closest historical equivalent would be how Germany started WW2 after losing WW1,
but now imagine that instead of changing their technology, strategy and entire political landscape in response to such a big loss, the Germans would have just gotten
a new Kaiser that had exactly the same military strategies and personality as the old one. 

I don't recognize the third image, why that warrior is a misfit?

Maybe because he is larger than everyone else.

IDK who he is exactly, could be Goliath from bibleic story, or someone similar.

I'm pretty sure it's a picture of Goliath, by artist Arthur Rackham.

Posting that Galaxy Quest clip just reminded me of another thing that grinds my gears:
there are no good spoof/parody movies made anymore. Instead you get serious franchises becoming ridiculous and garbage like the Scary movie sequels,
which are nothing but toilet humor and pointless references that only serves to remind you that better movies exist.

And I guess you could reenact  one of his wars by buying a jelly danish and smashing it into a Gustavus pastry?









Sorry I'll let myself out...

Well, technically it was the Germans that got to him at Leipzig, but I guess doing combining the pastry with a bratwurst wouldn't be as tasty!