Pretty much all that's needed.

However, were I there...I wouldn't be there long...dragon waking up.

My reaction would be to make the sea lion my new pet.

I would take him home in my car, fill up my bathtub, dump him in, and then go to Petco and buy him some dog food, a sea lion sized collar and a little dog bone shaped tag: printed on their patented pet tag machine!

I would name him after someone funny with a beard but with an ironic or silly prefix -- like Baby Gandalf or Mr. Bob Ross.

"How is my baby Mr. Bob Ross doing today? Aren't you a cute wittle baby Bobby Ross in your wittle bafftub? Oh yes you are!"

It would be so difficult to sleep because I'd be so excited that I have a sea lion for a pet!

I'd wake up SUPER early to see my new baby sea lion on his first night in my bathtub -- only to find him lying dead on the floor. I'll have inadvertently killed the cute litte sea lion -- and all because I wanted a new pet! And then I'd hang myself.

I think twitching and other weird movement is normal after getting knocked out. I've only watched a little MMA, but seen it plenty of times. You can also see it in ride-along fighter jet videos where the pilot pulls G's until the passenger blacks out. While they're out and/or waking up some weird stuff happens.

Wake up sheeple! Lighter fluid can't melt acryllic pipes!

Hmmmm. I buy some of that, but not all of it. Or rather it's true in some cases but not all. Some art, like the two lovers/clocks has meaning beyond it's own form and that's important to appreciate it. But there are certainly some abstract works out there that are just too lost in art.

I'm on the edge of the art world as an illustrator and photographer and completely get the 'go do it' angle though. Just saying 'I could do that' is missing the point entirely. Anyone who looks at a simple bit of art with a high value and thinks it must be simple to just paint a few squares and put a thousand pound price on it can't honestly believe it, otherwise we'd be up to our eyeballs in shitty paintings with huge price tags.

If a bit of artwork needs an artist's name to be worth something then consider what it took for the artist to get to that place. They didn't just wake up one morning a famous artist. The name gives context and can be important. Not every time, some 'artists' are just way too into their circlejerks and mutual bigging up that the only skill an artist might need is to be just weird enough and in the right place at the right time to be one of the 'in crowd', but to be fair this isn't the case with the vast majority of abstract art.

I went through that and suffered under a depression of knowing it, but then i underwent a brand new realisation when i was studying physics. The realisation that in actual fact, nobody on Earth has ever had a better idea about what happens when you die than anybody else. There's no experienced or authoritative perspective on that. It occurred to me because i asked the smartest man i know where he thought existence came from and he said "ask a philosopher".

Everyone's thoughts on it are either an imaginative guess (with no view point being better than the other) or a so-called educated guess based on the laws of physical reality. Well, the laws of physical reality only explain what we can observe (by definition) and furthermore at least some laws have been broken in unusual situations (where did everything appear from/happen from if there is energy conservation in the universe?). Not necessarily an educated guess in other words.

I recognise the way you talk about your 'realisation' with an air of finality, as though you have truly found the final answer. But i ask you, because i have spent my life wondering and years studying - what do you really know about what happens or why we are here?

I think it is equally likely to be a non-existence as it is to be an obscure, impossible to understand, trans-humanist wet dream. Literally anything is possible, and the only reason we limit ourselves to "god" or "nothingness" is because we're so used to waking up and seeing this undeniably weird and wonderful reality that we one day found ourselves existing in. I put it to you that it would be no more remarkable or unlikely to find ourselves in a second, entirely different kind of reality afterwards.

I bet that dream of sucking a giant Twizzler monster's cock made much more sense after waking up.

I was providing a more "technology tailored" way to fool us and how it might create a great magic trick. I also love magic tricks that make use of self-created "magical" devices (his vest counts towards what I'm talking about).

As I mentioned there are probably quite a few ways to do this trick and I wholeheartedly agree with you that the most likely way the majority of this was done was via misdirection and cues. As it is true with almost everything, the simplest answer usually is the truth.

I however, became interested with he kept moving his hands (and the "cards") to the same spots or moving them, repeating, the same movement over and over again right before the "change" or flip occurred (with other things as well like the smoke--and yes, I know it was more than likely misdirection--but, sometimes smoke is just smoke ).

That is what made me think of a scanner (mostly because I'm a computer/engineering/physics hippie and I have seen scanners that can be made to look exactly like that mat; but I also have learned a bit of magic, with that instead of becoming an amateur magician I instead learned about magic and it's history instead). But, like you said and I also said above in my comment, this all can/could be done through many various schemes. Using differing ways of that same scheme/idea, the same mechanics and/or devices, with sleight of hand and a lot of misdirection (very well done too, simply because there was so very much of it needed--which Penn & Teller commended him on in their own way).

His jacket for example is obviously HIS engineered creation. It has a lot of hidden and secret functionality; in fact it may have been the underlying foundation that allowed the whole trick to work so well (you never know just what exactly is the magician's biggest helper in many tricks). That is what I love, personally, about magic is the engineering and love--the workmanship--that can go into it. Every great magician definitely has that engineering facet to their personality; they all know how to create a device that gives them just what they need. I've seen so many magical devices and how they were used and how they're made as well and I must say, it is a terribly interesting thing to learn about and see done. Sometimes you have devices made just to perform one extremely small function, just to add that little bit of "panache" to a trick...

Every magician--good and average--however do have or need one thing in common no matter what, and this refers to what you talk about (and this magician may be leagues ahead of others, making all tricks completed in that same manner seem simple and mundane compared to what he can accomplish with the exact same, extremely fundamental, aspect to magic; pulling off tricks that almost all magicians would believe to be impossible using such a standard fare of abilities and methods): agility and sleight of hand. With this comes the uses for that "god-like" speed and manipulation. Use that with engineered tools (not necessarily what I mentioned--the scanner, printer, and ink method--but, things easier to craft and more likely to be used like his vest) and it can suddenly make any of the simplest tasks (or even tricks that other magicians perform) we do everyday, extraordinary if not miraculous.

I thought I'd add my idea, because I like to figure these tricks out as well; as I'm sure many of you are as well.

Overall, if I was Penn and Teller, I'd be most impressed with his ability to keep his showmanship intact while obviously needing great concentration on the trick at the same time--not to mention he keeps showing superb sleight of hand the whole time.

So many magicians are just amazing to watch. The tools they create (which can be so complicated that you'd never believe that someone would create such a thing or something fairly complicated to complete one very easy task) sometimes never let their presence be known--if done right. But in other cases you know there is "something" helping the magician, but you can't begin to imagine what exactly he has created or what exactly it is accomplishing for him.

I do wish they'd give us a general idea how these tricks are performed, without destroying the "magic" involved. Just tell us general things, like "misdirection and a magical device", etc... They don't need to explain it into it's minutiae.

I'll always love magic and the amazing use of the mind and the body to create illusions grand and small (or "magic" that just tests the limits OF the mind or the body; feats, as it were).

When the body and mind work together in perfect unison to create such wonderful uses of sleight of hand, feats, and "magical" devices...these are the type of people that will continue--hopefully for as long as humans exist--to create magic as real as it can get. Waking up the child inside us all!

/length

Great band, Great song.

Updated Video sucked balls.
Seriously, I see or hear someone say "Wake up" in the context of some bullshit halfwit conspiracy theory I have to fight the sudden urge to slap the stupid out of that person. Guess I'm getting old and tired of every tragedy since the written word was invented being called some false flag this or that.

I was getting the impression he was just waking up for the morning!

Invisible Inc didn't always include the rewind mechanic and I don't think it was actually a planned feature. Later iterations probably balanced the game more around it, but I still think it is kinda amazing how well it works given it wasn't in the game until relatively late into development.

I'd actually very much like the game to penalise you for not using rewind. Or rather I'd like the game to be balanced with assumption you will use it. I like that rewind creates a nice middle ground between quick save scumming and iron mode. I think it allows for a more challenging game in other respects and that doesn't feel frustrating when a miss click puts your main girl in open ground surrounded by cyberdisks (especially when the UI was pretty bad when it came to different elevations...). It smooths the transition from too easy to too hard.

That said, there are a number of changes from Enemy Unknown that I'd like to have more priority. Borrowing from Invisible Inc again, the ever raising alarm level in that creates a sense of urgency that I never felt in XCOM, even in the bomb missions and with the meld resource. I never lost a soldier because I forced them to take an incredible risk for the sake of the mission, I really only lost people because an unlucky shot dinked them in head across the map when they were in heavy cover. It looks like they are perhaps addressing urgency with the threat of reinforcements, which is cool. The other frustration I had with XCOM:EU/EW is that it always seemed to punish scouting. You'd effectively "wake up" the aliens by finding them which really disincentivised spreading out to cover more ground. It was simply safer to move as ball and let the enemies run into you (with the possible exception of the terror missions). it looks like they might be addressing that by making you the insurgent force with ambush tactics etc.

So yeah. I'm hyped.

This made me laugh. Too funny.

Just like a liberal claiming to be a victim and seeking a higher power for justice. Go to Dag with your closed minded opinions of me being unfair, racist, bigot. Boo Fking Hoo.

You sifters berate me day in and day out and I don't bitch and scream unfair to Dag or Lucky.

Sure I represent .00000000x% at this site but by your ( Liberal Sifters ) standards I should get EXTRA protection from bullies like you and you should be banned for picking on such a minority.

You hypocrite. Maybe it is time for me to have Dag to step in due to you incessant bullying. No - I'm better that that.


liberals except all forms of opinions and diversity only if it agrees with liberal views. How closed minded.

Out of hundred of accounts there are only about 5 speak wisdom and conservatism into this dismal abyss in hopes that you might actually wake up from you liberal stupor.