There's literally a 50 foot tall woman with 100 pound knockers ushering you into a palace of soft pillows and heavenly music after you get past her fuck boys.

Amazing chest ahead

Bump for literature.

Wow, I don't get why you guys are even saying 2001. Interstellar does everything that movie does and does it better.

Interstellar's a great film but its attempt to mirror 2001 falls far short. In 2001, the mysteries -- the monolith, the aliens, the signals -- are the answer to the question the narrative asks; in Interstellar, they're plot devices for action sequences and a bizarrely shallow "love transcends science" twist at the end. It's 2001 for Dummies, a truly Nolan-esque film where a convoluted plot has every answer beaten into the narrative out of fear it's too "intellectual". It's 2001 for an audience that today would get bored and leave watching a two-minute long black screen at the start of a movie.

This is a review of sorts.

On a whim I picked this book up from Amazon, not knowing anything about it or who the author is. Turns out the author, David Mitchell, is the author of several highly-acclaimed books like The Bone Clocks & Cloud Atlas -- yeah, the book that inspired the mediocre, experimental film starring Tom Hanks and Halle Berry. He's a master of -- I don't even know what to call it -- intersecting narratives? It doesn't follow one character, it follows different characters each chapter who all experience recurring characters and themes. In Cloud Atlas you see it in reincarnated souls meeting across various eras; in The Bone Clocks the story is told by various characters who all encounter the same protagonist as the timeline of the story progresses.

Slade House tells the story of five characters who are drawn to the titular Slade House for a mysterious reason, encountering the villains of the story, a pair of twins that prey on people every 9 years, for reasons that are gradually explained throughout the book. Each chapter follows a formula: the characters encounter the house, meet the twins, are lured upstairs, and then murdered, at which point the twins give exposition detailing a little more about their motives and abilities. I don't want to spoil too much of the book (and I'd worry about even telling you the pattern of the book, though it's gradually subverted as it progresses).

The first character is a socially awkward kid that regularly gets doped up on Valium, and it just gets better from there.

Mitchell's writing is fast-paced and doesn't get cluttered on unnecessary information, so many people have no trouble reading the entire book straight-through (it takes about 4 hours to read). What really solidifies this as great writing is his ability to fully envelop the personalities of each character; each one feels fresh, from the words they use to the structure of their own internal monologue.

My biggest criticism of the novel is that because it's a supernatural thriller that disguises itself as anything but, it requires some clunky exposition later in the book; the fourth chapter of five is basically just pure exposition about the backstory, motives, and methods of the villains. It works okay for what it is, though. At the end of it I would have been happy knowing none of it, but it provides some world-building for Mitchell's universe, as this book takes place in the same world as The Bone Clocks, though it's not at all a direct sequel.

If you're looking for something that qualifies as light reading that is just as good as some other heavy series out there, I strongly recommend you pick it up.

I'll vote for Hillary before I vote for Trump.

Quote from: Turkey Sanders on January 21, 2016, 03:49:40 PM

Insurance mandate e.g. Obamacare,

So, do you like Obamacare, or...?

No, because it doesn't fix much (though it admirably tries to address malpractice costs), it just makes people pay for services (or makes people pay for someone else's services).

Quote from: Turkey Sanders on January 21, 2016, 03:22:58 PM

but the main focus would be completely overhauling how insurance works in the U.S. to prevent inflation of prices and abuse of the system.

Like you said earlier, about how Hospitals charge what the insurance companies will pay?

Basically. The thing that's difficult is that this would require regulation; the reason services cost so much is because any company will logically charge whatever they can to make the most money. The government needs to step in and regulate this industry.

Quote

I think universal healthcare can be achieved without it. [Single-payer system]

How?

Insurance mandate e.g. Obamacare, or a hybrid system in which the government provides a minimum level of insurance via tax money and individuals are responsible for any other insurance they want or need. Universal healthcare doesn't mean socialized medicine, it just means everyone has healthcare.

Quote from: Turkey Sanders on January 21, 2016, 03:06:02 PM

Canada's system works fairly well, but their healthcare system is still worringly inefficient.

In what way? I mean, I agree that it has its flaws (personally, I don't think my tax dollars should be spent on the treatment of someone with cancer who got it from smoking cigarettes or eating meat, because they made that stupid decision for themselves and my money could be more beneficial elsewhere), I'm just interested to hear what an "outsider" thinks.

An average wait time of four and a half months, with an estimated economic loss of over $1,000 per patient, is the primary problem. Restricted access to physicians and services is an extremely difficult problem to quantify, and it mirrors the same outrage America saw at VA clinics.

So, how would you go about implementing his ideals? It's clear that free healthcare is on his to-do list -- what would be the easiest/most feasible/realistic way of achieving this? Or is his current plan exactly that?

I don't have a plan -- I don't write policy or anything like that -- but the main focus would be completely overhauling how insurance works in the U.S. to prevent inflation of prices and abuse of the system. I strongly disagree with any single-payer system I've seen, and I think universal healthcare can be achieved without it.

Quote from: Turkey Sanders on January 21, 2016, 02:44:32 PM

I disable it on sites I use frequently, especially YouTube. In general, use of ad-blocking programs is tantamount to theft.

Personally I think having ads fuck up your browser let alone your computer if its bad enough is a bigger crime.

That's like arguing it's a crime to have to drive into the city for groceries. Websites offer a service via their content and often pay the bills through ads; if you find their ads annoying, you have every right to not use their site.

I disable it on sites I use frequently, especially YouTube. In general, use of ad-blocking programs is tantamount to theft.

Quote from: Eli on January 21, 2016, 01:00:40 PM

What's wrong with it?

The hard "R" sound. It's not as pronounced.

It is in English.

Quote from: Connor on November 01, 2015, 06:11:47 PM

Quote from: HurtfulTurkey on October 31, 2015, 10:56:34 PM

Spoiler

@18K

Watchya' flying?

Judging by the reflection on his visor, that cockpit looks like an F-18. I could be wrong.

I wish. It's just a training aircraft, T-6 Texan II.

Except for the Revan bit, it's really fun. The new expansion kind of reboots the story to cut its awkward umbilical cord with KOTOR.

He's nowhere near Eminem's level and never will be.

Nowhere near Eminem's level of producing shitty albums, you mean? Em is definitely a better technical rapper, but he hasn't come out with anything decent in years, whereas Kanye's last album was incredible and subversive of the genre.

I'm not sure what there is to complain about the video. It's a legitimate point and like all of her videos she backs it up with a lot of examples from triple-A games. Maddox is completely right that it happens to guys -- especially in the medium he was criticizing (comics) -- but nobody can deny how rampant and purposeful stuff like this is.

And yeah, sexualization is subjective and not inherently bad, but in games it's almost entirely gratuitous and devoid of purpose or artistic value. I really want to disagree with her videos but I haven't been able to yet.