Bjorn

I might have remapped it, that's how I discovered it in the first place. I decided I wanted to remap something, went into options, and was all like, "What the hell, there's a drop button?"

I've always wanted to do one of the harder challenge runs in a Souls game (like level 1), but I always end up going with a theme build instead. Theme builds may still increase the challenge of some areas, but it's not really the same thing. I was stupid good at Resident Evil 2 at one point, good enough to complete the game in a single session with limiting my weapon choice, no saves and no First Aid Sprays.

Party pooper, with your "facts" and "confirmations" and "reality".

Just in case people don't realize this, you can drop trinkets, pills and cards. I had probably played for 10ish hours before I learned that. With a controller, I think it's holding down left bump for several seconds, not sure what the keyboard key is.

It's an interesting angle to consider on whether it helps radicalize people, though I would wonder how many of the people going to 8chan were likely to be turned towards a neutral or progressive stance. I have my doubts that there are very many. Another thought. Is it bad for people in the dominant group to feel what it is to be inhibited from speaking? One thing dominant groups do quite well is inhibit the non-dominant from speaking. So when people from the dominant group complain about being afraid to speak out, I wonder if there is any awareness that what they are experiencing is something that many people outside of the dominant group have already experienced. That doesn't apply universally, but in something like Chait's piece, he appears to be completely blind to the toxicity of dominant cultures that suppress outsider thought within them.

I keep writing, and then deleting, posts for this thread. Can someone actually point to concrete examples of when callout culture is truly bad and alienating? A lot of people here have agreed that it is (including me), but the more I've thought about it, the less convinced I am of that. All of the examples I can think of are actually ones where the shit hit the fan not because of the callout, but because of the reaction to the callout, someone getting really shitty or defensive because an element of their speech or behavior was called into question (often legitimately). And sometimes the callout is super mild, with a wildly disproportionate response. I saw that last week when the lady told an old friend on FB that his post in a thread was patronizing, and he threw a fit, writing an essay about a whole bunch of unrelated shit to prove he wasn't being patronizing. Then the next day he called and apologized, admitted he was out of line, that the original post was poorly thought out because of the context of the thread, and that he reacted like a shithead because he wasn't used to someone pointing out his shitty behavior that way. Her calling him on his shit wasn't the problem in that thread, it was his reaction. How often is that what we're actually talking about when we talk about the toxicity of this area?

Fuck it, retcon it and say Shia had a twin sister that just never got introduced. Cast Emily Blunt as the new "Indiana" (seems like a name that can go either way). Mutt realizes all he really ever wanted to do was fix motorcycles, so he does that while his sister flies all over the world being a graverobbing archeological badass.

Not to distract from the serious conversation here, but I was browsing through The Toast, and ran across a link to an article from last year about the NBA player's union electing Michele Roberts as their executive director (making her the first woman holding that job for any major sporting union). In a speech laying out her credentials and why she deserved the job,

The whole Joystiq thing is hitting me a bit harder this evening than I expected. I commented on the post there, then went out for the evening. Got home and a whole bunch of old timers from like 6-8 years ago had all ended up in a thread there. During that time period I was one of the more prolific commenters there. Kinda weird having a little reunion with several people I haven't chatted with in years about the end of the only thing we all had in common.

@Dewar, This is something that I have a lot of thoughts about, but it's not something I want to get into unless you're interested in talking about it more. A decrease in sex drive can come from so many factors (physical, hormonal, stress, long term co-habitation, even very mild depression), that if it concerns you, there's a lot of territory to be explored to reverse it.

I think I'd be a lot happier with a Son of Jones situation than a reboot or just telling more Jones stories set in the 30s with a new actor. The latter is the safer route that's unlikely to make anything particularly memorable, while the former at least has the opportunity to be great.

Good news everybody, Chris Pratt's going to be the new Indiana Jones!

Not pills, but it does duplicate batteries Which means any floor where a pair of batteries drop is a floor where you have infinite uses of Jera.

Triple appreciated. Maybe it is a Midwest thing, apologizing for causing harm or offense, even if minor and inadvertent, is deeply hard wired into me. I don't do as well online as I do offline, but I do try.

Except he doesn't provide any examples of that. His example is of how a woman used it to describe an answer by the WH press secretary, in answering the question of a man. Yes, I think a person can still mansplain something, even if the question is coming from a man, because the answer is addressing a concern specifically about women. That is a specific case where using the term mansplaining is perfectly valid. I know the kinds of things he's describing, but I'm honestly hard pressed to think of a time when I saw someone deploy the word mansplaining and there wasn't at least a partial truth to it. But I've seen men get irrationally furious at seeing the word or being told they're being patronizing/condescending many, many, many more times. If we have one example of mansplainging being used wrong for every 10 examples of a man just getting pissed off because it was used (usually correctly), I have a far greater concern with the latter and am skeptical of arguments of someone who focuses on the former. And I'm pretty skeptical about claiming that the word abuse has any place in the conversation around whether mansplaining is a word that should be used or not, or whether it is overused. Sure, abuse has multiple levels of meaning. I don't see a good faith claim in which saying someone mansplained something is abusive. It might be dismissive, but not abusive. I may not have delved enough into why that section bugged me. I don't trust him, or his characterization of that exchange. He posits it as PC run amuck in a safe place, but he's filtered the posts for us, only giving us the ones he thinks back up his view. It's a source I doubt any of us can check to see if his characterization is accurate. But I actually see someone raising a legitimate point based on the evidence presented. Then there's a joke, that may or may not be mockery, then some defensiveness, then a disagreement, and then some drama. But which side in that discussion is being oversensitive? Which one is doing the policing? I'm not confident to say it's the PC SJW types. I mean, if you are engaged in a discussion of a specific topic, and the people most invested in that topic are not present in the discussion, then you should be really thoughtful about why that is the case. I think that applies to these very forums. We are super male dominant here by numbers, and while most of us try to be thoughtful and progressive, I have no doubt that we also completely fuck it up occasionally. If a woman were to point that out right now, that this thread is a majority men, mocking that would be wrong. Acknowledging that we are missing voices and perspectives would be right. I just don't see where pointing that out is some sort of PC sin. And I totally agree with you, which is why I just wanted to pick at a few things that raised my hackles in that piece. I guess, ultimately, I think Chait's piece actually does more to perpetuate that toxicity rather than provide a solution. He's basically calling out call out culture, but doing so with poor faith arguments. But then how do you call out call outs without calling out? It's a weird conundrum, and one that's hard to solve. That's an excellent point, and one worth considering. I don't think it would have changed my reaction to the sections I brought up. I don't honestly know who Chait is, at all. I don't think I've ever read anything by him and don't recognize the name. In general, at this point I worry way more about marginalized voices. I think one of the things I've personally seen that bugs me the most is the vitriol, attacks and dismissiveness that goes on between women on opposite sides of the sex criticality conversation. When I see a sex worker try to speak out, or try to live an open life owning her choices, and she gets shit on from multiple directions, including people who should be her allies, I care more about that than whether or not a legitimate white dude ally feels afraid to speak up. I think about the nearly invisible Hispanic women who drive a metric fuckton of the Kansas economy, with few people willing to acknowledge them. I worry so much more about that than I do about whether or not a man feels abused by being called a mansplainer. Yes, call out culture can be counter-productive. There should be better dialogue within these communities. Yes, people tend to be loud and vitriolic on the Internet, and it seems like its getting harder and harder for anyone to listen to anyone. But in that piece, I don't see him worrying about those people, at all. He's worried about whether or not white men have a voice, about whether or not abortion protesters have a voice. And that bugs the shit out of me.

Just specifically about that piece (and not the more worthwhile discussion about how people within the community treat each other), Chait kind of goes down a bullshit rabbit hole pretty quick. The entire section about manslpaining and the internal strife of a Facebook group are just...wrong. Using the word mansplaining is an abusive term, apparently because some men are offended by it? If that's what that man considers abuse, I'd love to see him describe the real world. Who is the one being over sensitive? Sure, anecdotes can be useful to explore a subject, but drawing from screencaps someone gave you of a Facebook group you don't belong to? That's just weird. Like in the whole Internet, you can't find a better source to illuminate the point you're trying to make? It's a weak, poorly delivered anecdote without enough context. To characterize the intersection of people who are pro vs anti choice as expressing opposing views is a very fucked way to describe that. Did that woman interfere with those people's free speech rights. Yep. Are those people trying to actually take away the constitutional rights of women's control over their bodies. Yep. That's a debate between two opposing constitutional freedoms (speech versus control over your body), and one side of that debate features a decades long terrorist campaign of murder, arson, assault, abuse and cult-like indoctrination. I can't imagine why some women feel literally threatened by their presence. That is not a good faith example. It would be like arguing that black people are anti-free speech because a dude stole the hood from a grand poobah wizard at a KKK rally. Anyways, yes, I agree there is a valuable conversation here. But that piece, and its twisting of events and words, is just terrible.

Blank Card + Jera can duplicate unopened chests, throw in some recharge bonuses (the Habit is the best if you have some healing ability on a floor), and you can actually get every single item in the pool. Not every item will be available every game, so you can't get everything in one run, but you can definitely exhaust the pool. I've never pulled it off, as I ended up running out of keys and foolishly didn't leave myself one on the floor to keep duping with blank card. If you go back quite a few pages, I think I put up a spoilered image of me filling an entire room with Chests in the Chest.

Ultimately I think the knife barrage is a bit less powerful/valuable than Brim, but it's certainly neat and worth getting at least once. For those interested in the themes of Isaac, Arthur Chu wrote an interesting piece about his relationship with the game, having grown up in a fundamentalist Christian home. I find these explorations of Isaac really interesting. I grew up in a very Christian town, but my family was not particularly active in religion (believers, sure, but not of the daily worship, fundamentalist kind).

Ha, I totally missed that, was just scanning the replies and didn't see enough emphasis on form.

That seems wildly unlikely. There are people who practically have the whole game memorized, and its not like there aren't tons of people with the original game available to check. Any significant dialogue/script change will be discovered pretty quickly.

You are all quite right about the value of squats, but for those who aren't terribly experienced or comfortable doing squats, I would urge a lot of caution. Squatting with weight is one of the most technically challenging lifts to maintain good form on, and bad form (even if you are getting the weight up) can cause serious and permanent damage. You're much better off to be conservative on weight, or even just not use weight and do more reps.

That all makes sense! Thanks for your take on him.

All the best to whoever you date (and everyone else there), I hope they all land on their feet quickly. And that post is pretty amazing.

We fall more on the sexual side of non-monogamy than the romantic side, so that creates quite a different dynamic, but we also try to find people we can become long term friends with. Roderick, It's good that you've given some thought to why you're picking monogamy, and analyzing your own brain. Ultimately it's about defining your own relationship rather than letting society do it for you, and for a lot of people monogamy is going to be the right choice for them. Things can also change as you age. Ten years ago, I wouldn't have believed myself capable of any form of non-monogamy, and it wouldn't have been a good fit for us for the first years of our relationship. But we've tried to stay open to change as we've aged. We're around 40 now, and still learning things about our own sexualities, both together and as individuals. An idea a lot of people have never encountered is compersion, often described as the opposite of jealousy, which is the joy that you experience because a partner is enjoying another relationship. That you can be happy that your partner is on a date, or sleeping with someone else. I think in a lot of western society this is a radical idea. Jealousy is modeled for us almost every day, in every medium. But compersion is never modeled. And it's definitely a real feeling. It doesn't preclude jealousy, you can still also feel self-doubt, insecurity or jealousy, but in order to make this kind of thing work you've got to get really good at both communication with your partner(s) and with yourself.