What's messing with your Groove?

My latest issue of LEGO Club says the magazine will be going digital next edition. I've been getting a lego magazine delivered since I was in elementary school. :(

Microsoft has cancelled Fable Legends and plans to close Lionhead Studios, the guys behind Black & White and the other Fable games :(

Microsoft is just plain dumb. They shit on 90% of the companies and technologies they acquire. The other 10% is Wraith.

This Xbox One launch has been especially mishandled and messy. How they fucked over Darkside Studios with regards to Phantom Dust was really awful.

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Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer

Microsoft has cancelled Fable Legends and plans to close Lionhead Studios, the guys behind Black & White and the other Fable games :(

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From what I read, Legends simply didn't pan out the way it should have. And at some point, there's no use throwing good money after bad.

I mean, the whole thing was already in beta. To cancel something at that late of a stage, there have to be serious issues.

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Originally Posted by Khendraja'aro

I mean, the whole thing was already in beta. To cancel something at that late of a stage, there have to be serious issues.

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Companies can get huge tax breaks for cancelling projects. Blizzard did it with Ghost, and they already had playable demos. Microsoft isn't seeing the xbox one numbers that they were expecting/hoping for and Legends would have likely required a group commitment similar to what sank Evolve. The game could have been just fine, and thats how I gather the beta went, but if Microsoft sees better numbers in cancelling it (especially for a brand already tarnished), then they are going to cancel it.

Microsoft is already operating Spark at a loss, and so far selling AAA titles in the Microsoft Store App has been a huge clusterfuck. GoW bombed, and everyone is piling onto the Quantum Break hate train.

Throw all this together and its likely why Microsoft is talking about turning the Xbox One in a computer similar to a Steam machine and unifying games across platforms. Its just that so far, they are unifying in all the wrong ways using all the wrong methods.

Years after multiple reviewers pointed out--in exhaustive detail--extremely severe conceptual, methodological and analytical deficiencies that called into question the utility of the admittedly v. ambitious and thought-provoking work "Visible Learning", said work continues to be used--by Swedish voters, politicians, influential bureaucrats and even teachers and principals--to support or oppose various opinions about what works or doesn't work well enough in teaching and in education policy. The book is a very interesting basis for discussion and offers some intuitively appealing advice, but it is so scientifically flawed that it cannot be used reliably to compare the effects of different interventions in order to determine which ones are worthwhile. It is frustrating and also a little scary that none of this criticism is addressed or even mentioned by those who wish to apply the book's findings to policy and practice here in Sweden.

Wife's dog had to be put down :(

Broke up with my girlfriend of four years yesterday morning. :(

:( sad things are sad.

A Bluray copy of The Force Awakens has already leaked online. That means a lot of star wars related animated gifs are inbound.

The internet is just so shitty. It basically shits on everything that is good or even potentially good. Why would anyone turn an AI experiment into an incestuous Nazi sexbot? Why? Fuck the internet.

can't just blame the internet. Watson discovered Urbandictionary on its own and started insulting people much the same way.

Sure but in this case it seems to have been a 4chan sting

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Originally Posted by Aimless

Sure but in this case it seems to have been a 4chan sting

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https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19

Sitting down for a a coffee at the Starbuck's opposite St. Antoine Cathedral in Istiklal Caddesi (Istanbul) felt like an act of defiance. Where you usually basically have to kill someone first to get a seat now I had the pick of all seats, and for a good five minutes after sitting down I stayed all by myself. Untill two arab women sat down at the table next to me.

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Originally Posted by Aimless

The internet is just so shitty. It basically shits on everything that is good or even potentially good. Why would anyone turn an AI experiment into an incestuous Nazi sexbot? Why? Fuck the internet.

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You seem to be really annoyed at this rather disproportionally to what happened.

Google once again forgot how stupid their average user is and had to backtrack on their april fools joke this year. Luckily I got to use it a few times before it was turned off.

Yadiyadiya, norms, figures, targets more yadiyadiya. End of that is that I decide to help out some team members who've got problems with keeping up. I take 5 cases on top of my regular load. Not 24 hours later 4 of those cases are resolved and the 5th one will be tomorrow morning after I get some information I need to close that one too. In only one of the cases getting to a result was something of an effort, the other 4 only caused a feeling of 'why the fuck do they pay these losers if they don't even know to resolve this in 5 minutes straight'?

Prince is dead

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Originally Posted by earthJoker

Prince is dead

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and Chyna. The most masculine and feminine performers I've known. :(

My neighbor across the street has been moved to a long-term nursing facility. At first, she was living with her daughter, in the same neighborhood, but she was staying in bed too much, afraid she'd fall and break a hip or something. We all wondered what was going on, but didn't want to pry....

We watched her furniture taken away in moving trucks, and saw landscapers trim trees and shrubs, and knew something was different. I caught her daughter on garbage day, as she was taking cans in from the curb. It was clear she was feeling some pain, but didn't want to talk too much. Her mother was 93 years old and could no longer live independently.....she'd become afraid of being alone, but couldn't live with her daughter as her main care-taker, either.

I wondered how my sons would deal with this scenario, if I lived long enough to be a burden that same way. I decided it would be better to die in my 70's than live into my 90's; quality of life over longevity, independence over dependence. Good memories, not bad.

Well, here's to both quality and quantity :up:

In other news, the spread of Vespa velutina across Europe is messing with my groove :mad:

Warning: story about dentists

Spoiler:

So a while back I managed to somehow crack a tooth that was otherwise perfectly all right. For a number of reasons, fixing it took longer than I would've liked and the dentist responsible recently went on leave. I got a new dentist who was v nice and experienced but whom I suspected had done a couple of things wrong and shortly after that appt. the temporary filling came out for the first time in this long process. The on-call dentist I went to see was also v nice but less experienced and made a couple of mistakes but again my concerns were brushed aside. I got a new filling that was supposed to be more durable but something didn't feel right. It hurt a lot more, constantly, and the surface felt wrong. But I was told (once again) that there was nothing to worry about. Make sure to floss properly they said.

Night before last, the new temporary filling came out when I tried to floss and it was as I'd suspected: the tooth had cracked apart completely, likely after the appt with the new dentist, and should have been noticed by the on-call dentist. So it had to be extracted by a third dentist who just went to TOWN on my jaw. Wouldn't be a problem, I was told. It wouldn't hurt a bit after the anesthesia wore off, I was told. But it took an hour of tugging and mauling because he hadn't noticed on the radiographs that the tooth was double-rooted with a slight curve and needed further fracturing. I tried to signal this concern to him but neither he nor his nurse understood, nor did they consider closer examination of the radiographs. It hurt like a mother. For the first time I couldn't lie still and relax like I'd been able to previously and instead my legs were flapping around like crazy.

Afterwards I was told it wouldn't hurt mugh but less than an hour later I was back with excruciating pain that wouldn't let me focus at all. Friendly but condescending diagnosis: bit of muscle-pain. Turns out, nope. I won't go into details but after another half-hour of revision, another nerve block, more packing and a little bit of dope it was finally manageable.

All this less than a week before the foodie-trip of my life, to Japan, perhaps the last major trip we'll be taking in a few years. Not to mention an intensive course in trauma-management right after the weekend that'll require a lot of preparation and focus. I have a few soupy/brothy days to look forward to but it'll be worth it as long as this heals properly and doesn't get fucked up while I'm abroad.

On the bright side I now know what to do with the tax-rebate because fixing this will not only take a lot of time but it'll also be, as expected, hella expensive. Thank glod for the new dental-care subsidies I guess. And worst-case scenario I'll be incentivised to enjoy Japanese soups and broths :o

Good grief. Did you tell those guys what they overlooked?

I think that sometimes some people get too few feedback - I mean, when I got annoyed with one dentist, I simply went to another one. But never told the first one why I dropped her and I suspect that she'll carry on in the way which made me drop her.

It's good you have dental coverage, minx. And can afford a vacation to Japan, too! Seems you have the quality and quantity in Swedistan that everyone dreams of. ;)

I'm conflicted about ageing. Our society reveres longevity, and spends billions of dollars on extending life. We have pharmaceutical companies and biotech companies making profits on this concept....while the ageing people who need their innovations can't afford their services. And it's not like they could have "paid" for that R & D during their younger years, with cuts from their paychecks, before the tech revolution began.

I'm the last of the Baby Boomers, on the cusp. We didn't have defined pensions from employers, we didn't work for one employer like the Greatest Generation did. We didn't rely on the GI Bill to get our college degrees, but we also didn't rack up tons of debt getting our degree like today's students are. We paid for our own medical care via insurance, usually through an employer, until that became unaffordable or non-existent. Just like pension plans.

So why would I want to grow old in a country that has no place for old people? Why should I give my life to hedge funds and speculators that trade my life like a commodity, for their own profit, at my expense?

Why would I expect my own children could see the value in paying forward, when they've been convinced that SS is money deducted from their paycheck that they'll never see when they're my age old people?

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Originally Posted by GGT

So why would I want to grow old in a country that has no place for old people?

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You could always move.

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Originally Posted by GGT

I'm conflicted about ageing. Our society reveres longevity, and spends billions of dollars on extending life. We have pharmaceutical companies and biotech companies making profits on this concept....while the ageing people who need their innovations can't afford their services. And it's not like they could have "paid" for that R & D during their younger years, with cuts from their paychecks, before the tech revolution began.

I'm the last of the Baby Boomers, on the cusp. We didn't have defined pensions from employers, we didn't work for one employer like the Greatest Generation did. We didn't rely on the GI Bill to get our college degrees, but we also didn't rack up tons of debt getting our degree like today's students are. We paid for our own medical care via insurance, usually through an employer, until that became unaffordable or non-existent. Just like pension plans.

So why would I want to grow old in a country that has no place for old people? Why should I give my life to hedge funds and speculators that trade my life like a commodity, for their own profit, at my expense?

Why would I expect my own children could see the value in paying forward, when they've been convinced that SS is money deducted from their paycheck that they'll never see when they're my age old people?

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Soylent Green.

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Originally Posted by EmperorNorton

Soylent Green.

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Can you believe this

Also; it's hot outside, and the climate control inside this building seems to think we want the inside of this building to be considerably warmer than the outside. Humidity is ok thank God, but we're slowly to an approximation of a Scandinavian sauna.