First play, I heard Yanny. On the last repeat, I "tried" to hear Laurel and was able to, but felt like Yanny was stronger.

Second play, I turned up my volume. I had had it set quite low, I turned it up to rather high. With that, it was flipped -- Laurel stronger, Yanny just audible if I listened specifically for it.

I have my computer hooked up to a receiver with large speakers and a subwoofer.

I got interested in that question based on the Elder Scrolls series. Morrowind had a basically static world, Oblivion was basically entirely scaled to the player, and Skyrim is scaled to the player but within a min/max range.

To me, Morrowind was great because it could put appropriately powerful rewards in difficult (or just plain obscure) areas. Oblivion in particular was bad at making leveling feel like a treadmill because every time you leveled up as the player, pretty much every enemy would be that much more powerful also. Skyrim was better about that since an area would generally set its difficulty scale based on the first time you visited it, so you could leave and come back later if it was too tough, but it still felt a little off.

Another associated problem is how loot gets influenced by those leveled lists. In Skyrim, loot in containers and in the inventory of leveled enemies generally scales, but loot sitting out in the open in the game world generally doesn't. Which is really annoying, because all generic loot pretty much everywhere ends up being crappy low-level iron. God forbid there's some steel, elven, or dwarven gear in places where it would totally make sense to be (say, dwarven gear in dwarven ruins) that you might venture into before that gear becomes "level appropriate".


In a related issue, one beef that I have with general RPG mechanics is how they all feel the need to make you drastically more powerful at level 5 compared to level 1, and again at level 10 compared to level 5, and so on. By the time you're near the level cap, you're probably 100-1000 times as powerful as you were at level 1, which gives a good sense of accomplishment but just doesn't seem realistic, and leads to this problem with fixed difficulty or level scaling. Western RPGs (boiling back to pen and paper DnD rules) certainly aren't great about this, but JRPGs are completely ridiculous about it, which is pretty much why Final Fantasy 3(6) was the last one that I enjoyed. In my adulthood, I just can't handle them -- even going back and trying to play FF3 that I *loved* way back when.

I'd like to see more games where you get more skills, polish, and versatility as you progress, but overall you aren't more than 3-5 times as powerful at max level as you were at the beginning. Mount and Blade is one of the few games I can think of that comes close to that.

I don't really dislike or get offended by any of the interviewee's thoughts here, but the older gentleman is very well reasoned, logical, and cool about it while also being conscious about the potential for misunderstandings that can be avoided if we know a little history.

This really rang true for me... (Cool Story Bro alert)

I spent a ridiculous amount of time playing two different RPGs in my early teen years: Ultima 6 and Final Fantasy 3 (SNES, FF6 by Japanese reckoning).

I treated Ultima 6 as a world simulator more than a "game", and so I never actually finished it because I had discovered and thrown away key plot items, and done enough"evil" stuff to have low karma that prevented me from actually proceeding with the story. But I didn't care much, I enjoyed just exploring and steamrolling anything that crossed my path.

Final Fantasy 3(6) was more forgiving though. I put experience eggs and other stuff on each character and then ground xp in the dinosaur forest, and eventually got every one up to level 99 with 9999 health and high stats. Similar to Ultima 6, I mainly enjoyed exploring and leveling up, so I had never even tried the final boss battle (Kefka) until I had every single character up to level 99 (not just 4-person party, I mean *every* character).

I figured being the final boss meant that it would be a tough fight no matter what. So I decked out a group of 4 (I liked Edgar, Sabin, Mog, and Umaro as my favorites) all with high end stuff. Edgar had Genji Gloves (dual wield) and Offering (attack 4 times per weapon, so 8 with Genji Glove), with Atma Weapon and Ragnarok swords.

Fight my way to Kefka, and order Edgar to "attack" -- 8 attacks of 9999 damage each, Kefka dies without getting so much as a single turn. Welp, guess I overprepared for that boss!

/end CSB

Seems about right.

I hate "achievements" in games, but one similar system that I actually loved was in Baldur's Gate (1 and 2). In those games, there was a window that tracked all kinds of stats for each of your party members. Stuff like percentage of total party kills, percentage of total damage output, strongest enemy killed, etc. A few games since have done things similar (Borderlands comes to mind), but most seem to opt for this sort of pointless achievement nonsense.

I know the feeling! So Long and Thanks For All the Fish was my early favorite of the 3 main singles, but this one grew on me more. They are all good though.

A lot of album reviewers seem to think this one is a bit too preachy in being sort of anti mobile devices / anti social media. I can kinda see that, but it doesn't strike me as overly that way. Guess it touches a nerve for some.

The joke to Seinfeld at 6:50 or so (and continued later) is very much a reworking of one that Norm did in Dirty Work: (about 1:30 for the specific joke)

I vaguely remember Larry Wilmore doing it, but had forgotten the others. 100% agree that Obama was the highlight of the event by far while he was in office.

Whatever one's political leanings, I think that any objective party had to appreciate Obama's speaking skills.

I thought parts of it were cringeworthy, but that that was entirely intentional. Sometimes that cringe is precisely what a comic is going for.

Honestly, I don't remember any of these being a "roast" to the degree that this one was. Thinking back on them in Obama's era, all I can remember is the mic-drop moment when Obama turned the tables and said Dick Cheney was the worst president in his memory, and Keegan-Michael Key being Obama's anger translator. Obama could certainly handle light/moderate jabs directed at him, but I don't remember that being done much if any at these specific events. Maybe it was and I just don't remember it.

Anyway, I think that saying that this upped the ante and went for the jugular significantly more than in the past is almost certainly correct. But that doesn't make it "bad" or "disrespectful" or whatever. I don't care that Trump didn't attend, even though presidents "traditionally" do. Hell, given the whole "fake news" shtick that he is trying to sell, he should have barred any White House staff from attending -- even/especially Press Secretary Sanders.

BUT, then after the event he should have simply said that he didn't watch it and that he doesn't give a rats ass what was said there instead of sulking about it on twitter. Acting all offended just makes him look like a little bitch (and that goes for all the other R's that have whined also).


Anyway, I guess overall I thought her bit was a good but not great set. Doing that material with that mixed audience guarantees that there's going to be some uncomfortable silences and crickets, but she clearly anticipated and managed that quite well. Roasts aren't really my thing, but given the machismo image that Trump tries to push it may well have been the perfect way to bait him into looking like a crybaby in his inevitable response. Mission accomplished?

Thanks for the promote!

The ending. Love it!

Thanks for the promote!

It is very different and poppy compared to previous stuff for sure. I like it in the context of the song, even though overall I prefer Tool's prog/metal melding.

I'm not a Maynard whisperer / expert, but my guess is that there are 2 motivations for the sound of this song/album compared to other stuff.

1) Although Maynard is the vocalist for Tool, APC, and Puscifer (which I haven't listened to much), he kinda wants to keep all those projects distinct. Tool is more dark and heavy, APC is a bit more rock, and Puscifer trending towards some electronic stuff. But that kinda oversells this, because mostly he is putting vocals down onto musical tracks that the members of those bands have already recorded without much or any input from him...

2) From my interpretation of the song itself, he's being (mildly) critical about getting caught up in triviality of celebrity gossip and nightly news instead of paying attention to stuff closer to home. While simultaneously accepting that we all do that, and that sometimes it takes the death of a far-off idol from our adolescence that we'll never meet in person to get us to consider our own mortality.


So the poppy sound with that dark edge right around the corner really fits -- at least to me.

The lyrics are somewhat more ... direct than Maynard's usual stuff.

"Thoughts and prayers ... adorable" is such an awesome burn. In just 1 additional word!