It's a bit baffling how "some economists" weren't fully cognisant of what would happen when the minimum wage was raised. I mean it's not as though it's the first time it has happened, the effects should be well known by now. Kind of reminds me of the old joke:

A mathematician, an accountant and an economist apply for the same job.

The interviewer calls in the mathematician and asks "What do two plus two equal?" The mathemetician replies "Four." The interviewer asks "Four, exactly?" The mathematician looks at the interviewer incredulously and says "Yes, four, exactly."

Then the interviewer calls in the accountant and asks the same question "What do two plus two equal?" The accountant says "On average, four - give or take ten percent, but on average, four."

Then the interviewer calls in the economist and poses the same question "What do two plus two equal?" The economist gets up, locks the door, closes the shade, sits down next to the interviewer and says "What do you want it to equal?"

You're kind of putting the cart before the horse here. Marketing costs enormous amounts of money but it is effective, that's why publishers keep paying for it. People buy because of the marketing as much as the content.

So if you were a publisher would you prefer to put all that money behind a) a formulaic, uninspired but proven work or b) a new, exciting, but unproven creation? There's a good reason they keep making remakes of remakes.

If new and original content were to benefit from the kind of marketing muscle that gets put behind the formulaic stuff, it would probably have much more of an impact.

I just checked out Patreon, maybe I'm doing it wrong but when I clicked "writing" I got a mish mash of podcasts, comics, programming projects and art, with little writing to be found. Unless I'm missing a trick here they really need to get their categorisation sorted.

Hahaha!

Correct, as far as I'm aware it grew out of wargames and borrowed rules from diverse sources both mechanically and conceptually. Vancian magic is as close to a working interpretation of western magickal beliefs (Crowley et al) as could be envisioned, although with less emphasis on demons. Prepare your spell, cast your spell, spell gone.

Also fantasy was already a proven market long before it was published, Moorcock's Elric first showed up back in 1961 for example. As the game developed it changed from a skirmish style system to a single character game and people started to act out their roles almost spontaneously, a fascinating phenomenon.

This, a thousand times. A tabletop RPG gives a lot more freedom of choice and a much more visceral experience than anything technology has managed to produce or is likely to produce for the foreseeable future. And the barriers to entry are basically nonexistent, a few rules, some dice, pencils and paper.

I mean think about it - you read a book, right, and you interpret the words in the book in a way unique to yourself, you see the castle or the starship in your own minds eye in a way that nobody else can. This is a big part of the magic of reading. Tabletop RPGs are like that except it's a shared imaginative experience, others literally walk in your imagination and you walk in theirs. What could be more marvellous?

Books are to movies what tabletop RPGs are to computer games.

Why is Thor about to lay a smackdown on some wombles in that first picture.

Kind of reminds me of a vaguely remembered description of one of the Necromancer's chambers from I think it was the Hobbit, places of blackness so intense you would go mad staring at them for too long.

"We have no accepted definition of intelligence because reality is politically unacceptable"

Nope, we have no accepted definition of intelligence because any definition you can come up with can invariably be used to infer that cabbages are intelligent or something similar.

Oh okay, you've got a list of exceptionally intelligent people with a long list of increasingly intelligent ancestors handy, yes? We aren't chimpanzees and we have no clear idea what intelligence is in the first place is, so claiming it's a highly hereditary trait is... not terribly intelligent.

Yes, that's why Einstein's parents and grandparents were world reknowned scientists.

All the internets sir. You win them.

Oh get fucked asshole, this isn't about playing fair and providing jobs, its about corporate profits: http://pando.com/2014/03/22/re...

What, did you think Google was putting tens of millions into IT education for philanthropic purposes?

Aaaahahahahaha! Hahahahaha!

ahh

sigh

Haaaaaaahahahaha! ...yeah they're planning to strip mine up and coming generations.

Yes it is, you people are completely insane.