They dress in bear heads and bells, and behave like beasts.
Masahiro Sakurai takes the process of adding new characters to the Super Smash Bros. seriously — possibly to the detriment of his mental and physical well-being. Choosing who stays and who goes…
Always interesting to hear about the process behind these types of games. We have a tendency to take all the effort put into them for granted because, hey, this isn’t one of those big fancy important games. But game design is game design, and like all creative endeavors, the good stuff has a ton of thought put into it, even in areas we wouldn’t normally notice.
We don’t give other people credit for the same interior complexity we take for granted in ourselves, the same capacity for holding contradictory feelings in balance, for complexly alloyed affections, for bottomless generosity of heart and petty, capricious malice. We can’t believe that anyone could be unkind to us and still be genuinely fond of us, although we do it all the time.
Years ago a friend of mine had a dream about a strange invention; a staircase you could descend deep underground, in which you heard recordings of all the things anyone had ever said about you, both good and bad. The catch was, you had to pass through all the worst things people had said before you could get to the highest compliments at the very bottom. There is no way I would ever make it more than two and a half steps down such a staircase, but I understand its terrible logic: if we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.
Years ago a friend of mine had a dream about a strange invention; a staircase you could descend deep underground, in which you heard recordings of all the things anyone had ever said about you, both good and bad. The catch was, you had to pass through all the worst things people had said before you could get to the highest compliments at the very bottom. There is no way I would ever make it more than two and a half steps down such a staircase, but I understand its terrible logic: if we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.
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I Know What You Think of Me, New York Times (via apleasantsurprise) This was written by an only child clearly. Hasn’t gone through the Malcolm Gladwell threshold of being called a dumbshit to realize that everything you do as a person is the most annoying thing in the world to some other person. There’s a level of self-regard that isn’t ego, it’s just “I wish people were nicer (to me)” that I just react to with disgust, because you should have that part of you ground away by the time you’re an adult. You should have had someone you love call you on your shit enough that you are aware of it. Yes, people talk about you behind your back, yes people are mean. That is important to understand as fundamental to life. (via supervillain) |
Think your good at air hockey?
You will lose.
Scientists in Japan have developed a robot which is unbeatable at air hockey. The robot utilities a camera to track the movement of the puc at 500 frames per second. This means that even at frighteningly quick air hockey strikes (lets say it moves the 1M table in 0.1 seconds) the robot will see 50 frames of where the puc is travelling. Giving it plenty of time to move to attack, block or stay stationary is the shot is going to be ineffective.
It would be like playing against someone on ketamine, every action being depicted as super-slow-mo.
Not only does the robot have the ability of foresight, it also utilities a very smart adaptive playing style. It uses Motion Pattern Histogram data, which tracts the movement of the opponents paddle and can tell whether the opponent is playing aggressively or defensive over a period of time and can adjust its relative strategy accordingly.
So, however good you think you are, it will always be better.
Next thing to do?
Let a robot play a robot. It could be a never ending 0-0, or depending on how well they adapt it could be a forever tense infinity-infinity.
It would be interesting after a very long time to see if there was any difference in score. As to say that one previously identical program has developed itself further, or possibly due to the smallest detail such as assembly optimization.
http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/blogs/world-of-sport/nobody-stop-air-hockey-robot-090439699.html
“Hiroshi Abe, popular picture book illustrator, and I have had a joint exhibition at Gallery Purupuru in Asahikawa city from the beginning of April through yesterday.”
I want to stress this again: In many, many parts of the country right now, if you want to go to see a movie in the theater and see a current movie about a woman — any story about any woman that isn’t a documentary or a cartoon — you can’t. You cannot. There are not any. You cannot take yourself to one, take your friend to one, take your daughter to one.
There are not any.
By far your best shot, numbers-wise, at finding one that’s at least even-handedly featuring a man and a woman is Before Midnight (on 891 screens) so I hope you like it. Because it’s pretty much that or a solid, impenetrable wall of movies about dudes.
Dudes in capes, dudes in cars, dudes in space, dudes drinking, dudes smoking, dudes doing magic tricks, dudes being funny, dudes being dramatic, dudes flying through the air, dudes blowing up, dudes getting killed, dudes saving and kissing women and children, and dudes glowering at each other.
Somebody asked me this morning what “the women” are going to do about this. I don’t know. I honestly am at the point where I have no idea what to do about it. Stop going to the movies? Boycott everything?
They put up Bridesmaids, we went. They put up Pitch Perfect, we went. They put up The Devil Wears Prada, which was in two-thousand-meryl-streeping-oh-six, and we went (and by “we,” I do not just mean women; I mean we, the humans), and all of it has led right here, right to this place. Right to the land of zippedy-doo-dah. You can apparently make an endless collection of high-priced action flops and everybody says “win some, lose some” and nobody decides that They Are Poison, but it feels like every “surprise success” about women is an anomaly and every failure is an abject lesson about how we really ought to just leave it all to The Rock.
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At The Movies, The Women Are Gone : Monkey See : NPR The whole article is fantastic, as is pretty much everything Linda Holmes writes. (via kdhart) |
A fast-food restaurant in Manitoba has backtracked on its offer to make customers a burger fit for Fred Flintstone.
I have no idea what this is or why it happened here. I’m now seeing my local Wendy’s restaurant on Gawker, and there’s a possibility I’m in there at the time the photo was taken and I’m being looked at by Internet people and NO GET AWAY ALL OF YOU GET AWAY!
The case could upend a long-held practice in the film industry and other businesses that rely heavily on unpaid internships.
