Argobot

Sorry, I just want to clarify some of the stuff I was saying earlier. I'm not trying to equate transphobic harassment with jokes about GamerGate. That was not my intention. I was trying to explain that sometimes I (and others) take this idea of not criticizing women because of latent sexism too far and it ends up creating a culture where you can't say anything negative about a woman. A lot of women have behaved poorly during this fiasco, no where near what the GamerGate people have done, but still worthy of criticism. Re: Twitter as an echo chamber. The difference between friends and Twitter is that you're way more likely to have a nuanced conversation with a friend than with a relatively unknown acquaintance on Twitter. Twitter is really great for shooting off sound bytes that get faved and retweeted from all the right people, but would be just empty words if said in an actual conversation. Performative point scoring is the most annoying part of Twitter, mostly because it's so predictable. That's what I meant when I was brining up similar rhetorical devices. Everyone plays to their own crowd and gets the positive feedback they need to just continue playing to the crowd.

Sorry, not rhetoric. Rhetorical devices. So not the content, but the way stuff is discussed.

The spectre of sexism shouldn't keep us from criticizing women. I have a hard time talking negatively about women because I'm always fearful of doing it for the wrong reasons, but that's a weak excuse. Sometimes people do things that you find wrong and as long as you can articulate why, you should. There are a lot of people, men and women, who have weirdly, almost gleeful, used this GG nonsense to make themselves known. It's a pattern I've seen repeated with any major social flare-up. It makes me uncomfortable because while I agree that harassment is wrong and that GG is dumb, I don't agree with they way it gets discussed. There's an individualistic streak to it that feels wrong and honestly, kind of manipulative. In many ways, the GG rhetoric and the rhetoric of some of these vocal Leftists on Twitter are exactly the same and I should be able to say that without being labeled a sexist.

I heard about this a few weeks ago, but wasn't sure when the issue was coming out. Thanks for the notice!

After two episodes, how has there not been a Besiege - Bespoke joke yet?

Totally goofy aside: The actress who plays the Mitford's young wife was in a hilarious late-80s teen girl movie, appropriately called Teen Witch. I, a former teen girl, was in love with this movie when I was 12 and it was my only exposure to that actress before watching Twin Peaks. It never fails to make me laugh and really helps ease some of the more intolerable scenes with that character on TP. Important trailer: Actual scene from this movie that I somehow watched and enjoyed.

While this mythology come from an interesting place -- thanks for posting all that, by the way! -- I generally dislike its inclusion in Twin Peaks. Mostly because it is happening so late in the show and feels very disconnected from a lot of the stuff that preceded it. Twin Peaks is best when it presents a morally complicated view of its universe. The woods around Twin Peaks start off as being this very nebulous concept. They're kind of like the unchecked Id and the effect they exert on the town can be extrapolated out to represent the effect that baser instincts and emotions have on humanity. Now the woods just fill the same role as the Hellmouth on Buffy the Vampire Slayer; it's a very specific thing that is only relevant to this one specific place and doesn't carry any other symbolic weight beyond that. The Black/White Lodge dichotomy distills those other concepts into something simply and kind of boring. What does "perfect courage" even mean? It's just an empty phrase that sounds cool, but if you try to actually apply it to reality, it loses all value.

YES. More to the Ferrante circle. I'm so close to starting an individual thread where we can all just gush about those books.

The Gates Foundation recently moved its investments from McDonald's and gas companies into less morally/ethically questionable businesses. It was seen as a really encouraging move for other foundations and businesses.

This provokes the same kind of reaction as when Sports Illustrated featured a plus-sized swim suit model. It's a good thing being done for mainly gross reasons and it makes me feel incredibly skeptical.

That's definitely part of it, but I think more broadly it allows individuals to deflect examining their own pernicious sexism. If someone believes that buying this comic makes you a support of feminism, I could imagine them being more resistant to subtler criticisms of their own sexism. Kind of like of how the "but many of my best friends are black" people don't think of themselves as racist but with a credit card instead. Edit: I suppose it sounds like I'm really unsupportive of lady Thor. As SAM keeps patiently pointing out, it's still entirely possible that this storyline will go in an interesting direction that makes the gender choice meaningful. The little I've seen has made me really skeptical, however.

I just don't like the idea of supporting feminism being boiled down to what you buy, but maybe I'm over exaggerating how dire the situation is. Everything is a commodity, even values.

I don't ever read comics, so maybe I'm not accustomed to the style, but is the dialogue usually that on the nose? It comes of as really silly and childish to me. I'm all for more inclusion in all media, but I really can't stand it when a commercial entity does the least amount of work (gender swap!) and waits expectantly for a pat on the back for being so progressive. You can say 'Thor is a woman' all you want, but you better have something to actually back that up with. Thor is a woman but she does everything just like a man so if you squint you cant really tell the difference, is just lazy and boring. Edit: I want to add that I know comics are generally targeted at younger people, even though plenty of adults read them. When I say that the dialogue is childish, I don't mean that it's written so that a child will understand it, I mean that it has a very immature outlook of feminism/gender that I think even most children would have a better understanding of.

The James plot is made worse by its connection to scenic Washington shots. As he's leaving town, you can see a sign that says 'Snoqualmie' -- the town where a lot of the location shots for Twin Peaks come from -- in the background. I love seeing all these scenes that feature the immediately recognizable Washington landscape but I hate, HATE that I also have to endure James' stupid face. Christ, the way his voice cracks when he orders a beer at that bar. I hate this plot so much.

The James noir plot makes me want to throw my computer cross the room.

White men remaining neutral on diversity — because let's be honest, it's always white men — and claiming that this proves anything but how privileged it is to have all media unquestioningly catered to you is rage-inducing.

It took me so long to work up the nerve to reply to people on Twitter. Even with people who followed me, I would generally wait for them to say something first before engaging. There was this intense feeling of not wanting to encroach on anyone's time, not wanting to bother them, even though they voluntarily deciding to allow my own tweets into their feed. This feeling was always worse with anyone with a lot of followers, because I was even more conscious of being yet another voice inundating them with empty comments. I'm a little less self-conscious about replying to people I don't know, but I try to remain respectful. It's absolutely amazing to me the level of entitlement that some people (usually men) feel in communicating with strangers on the Internet and I think there could stand to be a little bit more restraint with how and who you reply to on Twitter.

If the biggest story to come out of your interview is about the interviewer, then you have failed. I'm all for asking the hard questions and getting answers, but that's not what Walker did at all and has hurt his audience as a result. Unlike politicians, game developers have no need to agree to interviews. They could very easily get away with not talking to the press. It's an unfortunate reality that the press needs to contort itself in some ways in order to gain access, but better that than having no access at all. Walker's infantile questioning will probably ensure that more developers think twice before agreeing to be interviewed by him or RPS. He did nothing to add to the conversation, except make Molyneux look sympathetic. Not only does his interview fail at showing what went wrong, it failed at providing any clear answers.

It's a bummer in this country how little we respect or even understand what good reporting looks like. This is true in all areas, but the more specified your topic becomes, the worse the problem.

The problem with Jon Stewartand the way this RPS interview was conducted, is exactly that they play to a certain crowd. Stewart gives horrible interviews (unless they're with fiction or neutral non-fiction authors) because it's clear that he's not really there to ask questions. He's there to posture for his audience and make everyone feel good that he's going to yell at the Bush exec who wrote the torture memo for 20 minutes. It can be incredibly cathartic when, as you say, you are predisposed to agree with Stewart's viewpoint, but in terms of adding information and clarity to a complex situation -- the whole point of an interview -- it does nothing. It's just hot air, the same as having Bill O'Reilly interview any left-leaning person on his show. Compare that to the way people like Terry Gross or Diane Rehm interview their subjects. The questions are hard, but the interviewee has a chance to explain themselves, which in turn allows the interview to ask for further clarification on those explanations and you generally walk away from an interview having a better understanding of the personal actions that went into making a decision. In Stewart/Walker's version, you come away knowing exactly what you did when you started reading, which is whatever your negative opinion on the interview subject was. The press shouldn't be here to mollycoddle famous people, but they also shouldn't be just another voice of unconsidered, rabid judgement. If it's hard enough to get developers to open up about the difficulties of the industry, this kind of grandstanding, playing to the audience form of interviewing is just to going to guarantee that no developer will ever offer anything actually interesting or complicated about the work they do. We're trading access to information for a the momentarily satisfying, but ultimately useless, emotion.

Part of the reason why there are such horrors is exactly because humans have a tendency to paper over them with fantasy. It's some boogeyman stranger that's most likely to hurt your child, not someone you actually know. That shadow in the bushes will attack you, not your husband. Etc. Twin Peaks continues that obfuscation of reality by erasing any possibility that Leland played a hand in his own actions. It's a simplistic way to look at the world, and so provably false that I find it incredibly insulting. I can sympathize with why people are attracted to this kind of storytelling, even if I myself do not enjoy it, but Twin Peaks set itself up as a different kind of story and then completely veered off course in this episode, especially with that line.

For as opinionated as some people in this country are on women's reproductive organs, we certainly have failed to do enough to medically support them, especially if they belong to low income women. Like I mentioned, I had to go through a round of IVF treatment before starting my chemo, as way to help protect my fertility. I have health insurance, but the fertility procedure was not covered. Most insurance companies see IVF as elective, even in the case of cancer patients, and will not pay for it. My medication was free because there are a bunch of nonprofits that will donate the drugs to cancer patients, but my surgery was a $5000 out-of-pocket expense. More than that, actually, because we paid extra to have the embryos grow out for a few days prior to freezing, which increases the chances of freezing an embryo that will later become a viable pregnancy. My fertility doctor told me that a lot of patients never call her back once they here the expense of saving fertility. I'm lucky that I have access to the resources to afford this procedures and have options, but I know that there are plenty of women who do not. It's unfathomable that we live in a country that idolizes mothers and motherhood, while at the same time doing as little as possible to actually aid or protect future or current mothers.

Yeah, that is something that has always bothered me. I find that there is something unsettling about the attention we pay to this disease. It's true that breast cancer is the most common cancer for women, but it still feels like it receives undue attention relative to others kinds of cancer because it has to do with such a sexualized part of the female body. Compare that the cervical cancer, which is much worse than breast cancer, but gets far less media attention because you can't as overtly sexualize it (or infantilize it by slapping a pink ribbon on a yogurt lid and call it a day). (The irony is that I am now benefiting from all that lopsided attention)

I don't have a part, but I do have a widow's peak that I wasn't aware of https://twitter.com/sarahargodale/status/567775629199843330

Yeah, hair is a fascinating issue. I had pretty short hair for awhile and was misidentified as a man on a few occasions, which always amused me more than anything. I'm curious to see what the reaction is now.