chim

Post your favourite gospel music! Other religions than protestant christianity are welcome too. Please keep the arguing to a minimum.

Shit, I need help. I'm playing unhealthy amounts of Fallout 2. Once I got the car and the power armor, the game has gotten ridiculously fun and satisfying. I don't dig timesink games but this is crazy, one of the best games I've ever played. Once you settle into the aged GUI, the level of freedom, the dialogue options, their consequences and the complete absence of patronising hand-holding is just beyond any other RPG I've ever played. My only regret is going for a stereotypical optimized gunslinger. I just know that as soon as I finally finish this for the first time, I'm going to have to start all over again with a completely off the wall character. Why don't they make games like this anymore? I played the hell out of FO3 and Vegas but it was nothing like this. In fact, not even the giant RPG's like Baldurs Gate have this level of freedom. All I remember is trying to be an evil bastard and the game patiently steering you back on the goodie-goodie track after offering little more than a nasty dialogue option or two.

Yes!! Watch Tyrannosaur if you haven't seen it - it's directed by Paddy Considine (who was in Dead Man's Shoes) Thanks for the recommendation, what a great film.

This Is England - 10/10 I haven't seen this in a long time. This film is so dark, so realistic, so good.

Doing another playthrough of Fallout 2, got really far but fucked up a lot of things like the car the last time, so I'll try to get that right. Some impressions of recent games played at my nephew's place: Dead Space - really glad to finally finish this, even though it's sorta repetitive it was way better than I expected.. I'm fucking jaded when it comes to these types of games but the monster that interrupts you when you think you're safe at a save station nearly made me shit my pants Dead Space 2 - way better PC controls than the previous, plays a lot more fun and less freaky/scary, though the story and environment kinda goes off the wall, the scientology/social commentary was kind of cute.. Playing on hard difficulty really brought up the worst kind of hoarder in me though, I probably spent twice as much time as needed with all the running back and forth between stores Gemini Rue - great ending, great game, really turned me onto more recent point & click games, will be playing Primordia from the same developer next Dark Souls 2 - People who say this game is hard aren't fucking kidding.. I felt like the clunky PC controls (which aren't even represented in the inventory screens) were partly to blame. It's got a unique sense of gameplay but I don't really enjoy timesink games like this Watch Doges - Didn't get to try a lot of this, but it's got absolutely stunningly beautiful graphics, the game itself is sort of a generic GTA with some cool gadgets. Well written dialogue, plays like a movie. Police chases are really hard but it's fun to fuck with the 5-0 by tinkering with the city infrastructure. It didn't take a lot of gameplay before all the profiling "random person info" screen clutter felt more like a nuisance than a cool feature.. luckily the shootouts, physics and effects are really well done I also tried Day Z out at a friend's place, got to play over the microphone with a german dude. He was super friendly, helped me find stuff to loot. Over the course of an hour or so we gradually built up a nice set of gear (apparently an amphibious pistol and a pipe wrench won't get you far in this), after which we went to the airfield to score some kills. We quickly spotted a lonely dude running around there and engaged him. He ran into hiding, and I thought this will be a piece of cake, I opened door after door, only to run into two guys with heavy rifles in hiding behind one and that was it - we had employed the same technique when looting to be safe and I fell for it immediately. It was a lot of running around for a mere few minutes of embarassing battle, but I really enjoyed it, this is kinda unique. All the little details like food and hydration, and the sounds dependent on what gear you've got on your back really made it immersive and realistic. It's weird how finding an ugly UN helmet and a big orange backpack makes you feel like a mack daddy. When the battle started, I started screaming into the mic "CONTACT, CONTACT!". I don't do that usually. I will probably get it myself, but I'll maybe wait until it gets less buggy and laggy - I broke my legs at one point due to rubberbanding, it was only luck that the german dude had morphine on hand.

Closing thoughts? A definitive connection between the Stars and You, but it mostly works in ways we can not fully comprehend. me and chimera slot mom have become one. we are all one, omg Prepare to be assimilated, resistance is futile.

This is really cool, thanks for the recommendation.

Pompeii A complete shitfest but Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje does a pretty good job

I believe in it to some degree, going by a bit more extensive treatises and less "cold reading" newspaper stuff by Melanie Q Starchild, there's some uncanny shit to discover and I have found guidance at times, as well as really weird resemblances with specific personality traits, including private ones that are rare. I can't explain the logic to it, it doesn't go through that centre in my brain. To me, it's not so much whether it's really really true deep down, but the fact that I have found it helpful at all - and it's useful when you're talking people's vibes and energy and similar terms.

I'm super-stoked for New N' Tasty. That reminds me, should be doing another Oddyssey/Exoddus playthrough soon..

Gemini Rue. This game is AWESOME!

hi richard

Finished True Detective recently, one of the best shows I've ever seen. Vikings - better than I expected, but I didn't expect a lot.

Other than as a way to find "related music" in a certain style, labels don't make a lot of sense to me these days as there is so much quality self-released music out there, simply being spread by word of mouth. It also feels meaningful to discover your own favorites outside of that system, although I can understand not having the time to trawl through soundcloud lists etc. In an age when people make a living through youtube videos, the financial/promotional advantages of a label are not that great unless you're making bad/generic music.

Everytime I check there's another $1,000 in the pot... where is this going?!?

a man can dream... :(

Shit, that's a lotta moola. Good job everyone. I'm guessing there won't be cashback? I'm fine with giving the other 3rd to charity as well. Papa Joyrex had this theory when we were brainstorming this thing. edit: I trust we'll be syncing this on CHATMM on the release date? No sneaky peeksies!

this will be done overnight, mark my words.

no, joyrex will sell the physical record on ebay... which we can then purchase with the excess money from this kickstarter, so we can start the process all over again.

This shit is going nuts times like these watmm truly rocks, proud to be a part of it.

thanks for the heads up joyrex! i'm in!

What an amazing lecture and what a great personality. I will definitely look up more of his talks. Apart from nailing the biological nature of depression, it's a great breakdown on the aspects involved, but something really surprised me: his mentions of the limbic system and the anterior cingulate cortex. I recently read some info from neuroscientific studies on the effects of Zen meditation on the brain. I don't have the sources on hand right now so you'll have to take my word for it, and I'm not a neuroscientist so this will be greatly simplified, but basically the studies showed that Zazen primarily affects three parts of the brain; the frontal lobe, the limbic system and the anterior cingulate cortex. The study showed that when one practices Zazen a minimum of 12 minutes a day, the frontal lobe and anterior cingulate cortex are strengthened and the limbic system is basically put on the backburner. As the limbic system is responsible for primal, emotional fight/flight responses and such, this has an effect on reactionary behavior, lessening primal instincts and allowing us to respond from a different state of awareness. This drastically affects states of anxiety and depression, and the strenghtening of the anterior cingulate cortex in particular will affect addictive/dependent behavior. The anterior cingulate cortex is interesting because it involves empathic/compassionate behavior as well - it's a high-tech, recently evolved part of the brain. And with the strengthening of the frontal lobe, we are able to choose and act from logical conclusions rather than emotionally-driven motives. I already found this information interesting in relation to my own experiences with meditation, but it's worth bringing up in light of that lecture. Aside from this, there are studies on the effects of peripheral vs. fovial vision on activity in specific brain regions (related to how the eyes are used in zazen) - basically, focused viewing in a small area for prolonged times (like computer usage) correlates with anxiety and depression, which is the complete opposite of the neutral, wide view of open-eye meditation practice (not mentioning the fact that after an initial period of sitting practice, zazen can be carried out in activity). And I haven't even brought up on the effects of abdomen-focused breathing on the enteric nervous system, relationships between posture and brain activity/chemistry, etc. There's a lot of stuff out there. Zen evolved long before the advances of neuroscience, but it's an ancient well-known fact that meditation practice develops something called joriki, which roughly translates to self-power and means the ability to respond appropriately to any situation with calm and without having to collect one's wits. There's a funny anecdote related to this from the Ming dynasty period:

Thanks for jumping in ahead of me to comment on that Audioblysk. Some of you are making it sound like anarchy is the cure and the most likely result of breaking up the ennui of modern society is some kumbaya wonderland of hippie communes. The history of not just such communes but the history of humanity in general makes it less than likely. FWIW I believe that the structure of society is largely to blame for many of these problems but it keeps people alive. Speculating about utopian alternatives does not do this discussion justice. I'm not saying many people, maybe myself included, wouldn't be better off in a simpler more primitive communal lifestyle, but that has incredible dangers as well, looking at parts of the world where people still live like that. I think this ties in with something poignant that another poster (gmanyo) mentioned, which was about more or less getting over your emotions - I can attest to the efficacy of this. While I don't agree with "getting over it" is the right way of phrasing it, it's important to accept your condition. It's important to accept that a large part of your condition (besides theoretical deficiencies or whatever metaphysical kinks you've got) isn't that your deep soul is being stifled by oppressive forces, but that evolutionary habits designed to keep you alive and procreating are deeply driven desires which are liable to cause incredible conflict when you're dealing with the realities of life. So, a part of learning to deal with emotional disorders is learning to deal with life in different manners. I can attest that at when initially learning to deal with intense anxiety rather than allow it to run wild and ruin your life, it will be necessary to accept that in certain situations, like certain social situations, your private version of events essentially "isn't happening" to a large degree, so that you temporarily stop trusting it for emotionally driven decision making. This sounds potentially destructive, but it's not so much putting a lid on it, but learning to recondition your perception of the world and restructuring your ideas on threat handling and the huge amount of guesswork and exaggeration involved - this pretty much has to be radical on some level in order for it to work. And I think it can work with some long-term rehabilitation, private or assisted on some level, but it certainly isn't easy.

^jazz [youtubehd]IyDdVJ81Ixs[/youtubehd] science! wow