Problem Machine

Nice, I'll have to check that out. I just started listening to the Infinite Ammo podcast as well, which so far has had Adam Saltsman, Edmund McMillen, and Jeff Lindsay. Early eps are a bit rough around the edges, but the discussions are mostly pretty interesting, though at times a bit frustrating IMO. http://infiniteammo.ca/blog/tag/podcast/

Haha oh man just watched Nick's Mr Magoo miracle run. So good. Also has the side effect of making me super jealous of Nick and Chris's living situation. Being able to live with buddies in San Francisco sounds real dang nice. Oh well.

Anyone else concerned about spoilers more generally, it's worth pointing out that while all that is true, they spoil basically all of The Walking Dead Season 1, so definitely play that before listening.

Wait... are we still talking about Super Hexagon?

Oh you never unlocked ultra-hard?

Well yeah, anyone who's played Super Hexagon knows that that wave shown there never happens! Am I right guys? ... guys?

You know, I think maybe there's something to be said for them outright admitting "yeah we know it's wrong and dumb but we will make more money this way so fuck all y'all." Kind of refreshing. Obviously still gross as fuck, but at least it owns it.

I'm glad you guys are doing these again, they are pretty consistently fantastic. Thanks!

Jesus. Just... wow. You can say you read the things people say all you want, but your words clearly show otherwise. Um. So. Actually on topic, I saw the kickstarter trailer for the sequel to River City Ransom today, and maybe it's just that I'm super sensitive right now but it seemed kind of sexist? Like, there are two women in the video, one is the only person in a random selection of people who doesn't play games and apparently doesn't work during the day, the other one gets hit by a baseball. Am I just imagining things? It's kind of too bad because other than that the game looks neat, though I don't have the disposable income to back something like that right now anyway.

I used to be super into this series, to the extent where I even ran a fan forum for it, but it lost me with the console generation change and the switch over to FPS style controls. I didn't have the wherewithal to completely relearn the controls for a game series which I'd kind of burnt out on. It seems like more recent iterations have focused on horizontal movement over vertical trickery as well, which negates one of the big points I loved about the series, that it was a game with a strong three-dimensional tactical element. If I ever get disposable income sufficient to buy $60 console games again, maybe I'll try to get back into it. Tangentially, as a long time fan of From Software in general and AC in particular, it's fascinating to see how some of those design tropes migrated to Dark Souls.

Unbe-fucking-lievable. This is like the fourth or fifth time someone has tried to reason with you, at length, and you have quoted one line of their post out of context and retorted as though it were representative of the whole. More often than not, you seem to even misinterpret that line, whether willfully or not. You're not listening. At all. Fuck it. You are obviously, obviously more interested in defending your position than in actually hearing what people are saying and parsing it into your worldview. This is garbage. I'm done. Maybe I can communicate with you again at some point in the future, when you've demonstrated some capacity for actually hearing and interpreting the stances of others, developed a little bit of goddamn empathy, developed beyond this shallow guise of open-mindedness concealing a circle of self-justifying rhetoric. I tried.

*mug falls from Sonic's slack fingers, shatters on the floor, and we see the brand name on the bottom: "KINTOBOR"*

I like that that's what you got from what I said. The actual point is, there's a conflict right now between those who want to support women and those who want to silence them. But declining to be one of the former, you are ceding to the latter by default. You aren't trying to make an informed decision. You're just running away from something that makes you uncomfortable. Your views of feminism have been repeatedly shown to be misguided and unfounded, and yet you persist in cherry picking edge cases to make it seem like your reservations are justified. Your reservations are not justified. You are willing to let real people suffer because you are afraid of having a semantic label applied to you that might also be applied to people whom you find a little strident or a movement that you think is too narrow in its aims. You are not willing to work with those who seek to end sexism because they're concerned first and foremost with those who have lost the most and who have the most yet to lose from sexism. You would rather save no one than save only those most in need. It is a terrifying and gross viewpoint, and I can only hope that someday you grow enough to see why. The thing is, I even agree with some of what you're saying. I identify as humanist before feminist but, feminism being that branch of humanism which is concerned with the systemic depredation of women, that makes me a feminist as well by default. I agree that everyone needs help, that this needs to be a more egalitarian world over all, that there are serious problems of, not only sexism, but racial tensions and transphobia and homosexual persecution that need to be addressed. The problem is bigger than feminism -- but feminism is one of the movements, albeit one of many, that needs to exist to fight that problem. Do you see how fucking insane it is that, when the world is on fire, you cast aspersions on those who fight the fires, just and only because they first fight the fires at home, the fires they know best, the fires which will haunt their nightmares and render them incapable of fighting the greater conflagration?

Feminism, generally speaking, doesn't ignore men's issues so much as consider them a subset of the same problems that necessitate feminism in the first place. I'm certain there are some hard-liners out there who refuse to believe that men have any disadvantages compared to women, but I think in the overall trend of the movement as a whole right now that is not the case. It seems like you're saying that because there are a few people who call themselves feminists who disregard that sexism also affects men, that is a good reason to avoid self-identifying as feminist. Well, it's not. There are serious fucking problems out there, and if you're not willing to put any effort into solving them because you might be associated with those people... well, I hope you prefer being associated with the hateful throngs of misogynerds, because in the gaming world as it is now that seems to be the dichotomy. I am not a fan of the term feminism for reasons I mentioned before, and feel uncomfortable in using the term, but I overwhelmingly agree with its aims. Cherrypicking examples of problems that also emerge from sexism that feminism may or may not, depending on who you ask, also address, is just a shameless dodge of the issue -- the issue being that, for fuck's sake, a lot of women are scared to speak up or participate because of being threatened with rape and murder. And you're waffling around about 'what if colleges discriminate against men now? They might not but they also might and what if they do? Won't someone think of the men!??' Jesus. I can only hope you grow out of this shit someday.

So you are opposed to, let's say, breast cancer awareness and treatment campaigns, because there's all of these other cancers and diseases that need awareness and treatment as well, and you think it's unethical to give any single one a spotlight?

Where was the part where he said you were less than human, again?

It's amazing the variety of ways that human beings will find to look down on each other for leading their lives in 'the wrong way'. Power without choice isn't power at all. Anyone who doesn't respect the choices that other people make with respect to their own lives is NOT working to empower those people.

No I didn't, but I can't figure out if that stuff is supposed to relate to what I was saying or ...?

Oh shit that's me. Sorry. Just to clarify, though, erasing gender doesn't mean everyone should be androgynous. That is silly. It means that we should stop assigning expected behaviors based on people's naughty bits and instead relate to them as human beings. Dudes would still be free to grow big gnarly beards and chop down trees and oppress indigenous peoples or whatever stereotypically manly behavior is, ladies would still be free to wear lacy things and bake cookies and be passive-aggressive or whatever stereotypically girl behavior: The difference is, ladies would also be free to wear beards and chop down trees and oppress and dudes would be free to wear ALL THE LACE and bake the cookies and be passive-aggressive. Though some people might have a problem with the specific behaviors, such as oppressing indigenous peoples or intentionally sabotaging fresh-baked cookies with laxative, they would no longer be subject to attack on the basis that such activities are not APPROPRIATE to one of their sex -- just, perhaps, dickish behaviors in their own right. It's kind of funny, I've been programming a system for creating entities with a modular behavior system, where each entity is a blank slate and behaviors can be added to it until it behaves as desired... ideas sometimes kind of echo themselves in different walks of life.

I'm kind of trying to parse what exactly the deal is with that quote...?

Next announcement: The StamosBox

Well, that's the problem with movements, isn't it? They're made up of individuals, and each individual has a different idea of what that movement is about. Charters and manifestos don't fix that, since people will just disagree with whatever they declare the movement is about and create a schism. Broadly speaking, though, I'd say feminists are those who recognize that society as it is now is set up in such a way that it disadvantages women and want to rectify that. Recognizing that it also disadvantages other social minorities, and even in some cases the social majority (IE Men's Rights), frequently comes with the territory, but isn't part of the definition. Of course, I don't know shit about shit, and other people are free to disagree with me on this score, but that's my perception of the definition anyway.

Any movement, no matter how benign, will have members who consider being part of the movement as more important than educating or protecting others. There will always be people who react to any dissenting opinion as an attack, rather than an opportunity for discourse or education. I think the existence of such a sub-subculture is a bit distressing, but also inevitable, and reflects in no way upon a given movement as a whole. Eh, in other words, any group of people will have its crazies, and you might as well not mention them because they are universal and irrelevant and only add noise to the conversation.

Then yeah, basically.

Well I certainly think the first is preferable. I didn't mean to characterize the current dialogue as being the second example, but it's maybe a bit further down that path than it should be?