Bjorn

A space game that has illegal parking tickets. This just made the game so much more interesting to me.

If not for a lot of the badass women in my life (particularly the lady and a handful of friends who are super interested/obsessed with the sex side of feminism), I wouldn't know jack about a lot of this territory. So yeah, follow awesome women on social media and read the stuff they write and link to. And I can't credit my partner enough with having educated me over the years. But that said, her knowledge and her opinions have shifted quite a bit over the last 10 years even. There is so, so, so much cultural baggage we all carry around in regards to sex and sexuality, that even someone who thinks their opinions are very well informed and who try to be open minded can be constantly re-evaluating what they think because of how long it takes to even try and de-program all the crap that our parents, schools, media and culture drilled into our heads for the first 20 years of our lives. The point of mentioning that is that if you go down a road of reading about this stuff, and you feel confused or conflicted, that's totally fine. People who have spent many, many years thinking, reading and writing about this stuff still often feel confused or conflicted at times about various specific topics in it. The Internet, unfortunately, tends to lead us towards taking firm stances on everything rather than acknowledging personal conflict or confusion. Particularly if you start reading personal accounts from sex workers, you can run the gamut from reading heart breaking stories of abuse to uplifting stories of women attributing sex work to be their salvation.

Even if the majority doesn't say or do something specifically misogynistic, if they ignore or enable misogynistic behavior from others, then the majority has a misogyny problem. His tweet was the kind of logic that people try and use to excuse the majority for having any responsibility for the culture that they dominate.

It's really shocking how much the numbers under the hood have changed since launch. The loot system is completely different. A bunch of the skill trees weren't just rebalanced, but in some cases skills were entirely redesigned. Locking legendaries to characters and eliminating the auction houses are massive reverses in philosophy. The end game content basically didn't exist. The whole game was a shell of what it is now.

And that's exactly why I have such an issue with the phrase. It's grossly inaccurate. You're right in that sex positive tends to be a phrase whose meaning can shift in some ways depending on who uses it. When I use it, I'm meaning the freedom to engage (both legally and as free as possible from social stigma) in most kinds of sexual activity that are consensual. Obviously there are caveats, as there are kinks people have that are truly dangerous to themselves or their partners. It's also a philosophy of being open and non-judgmental about the kinds of sex people like having, even if you aren't interested in it. As an example of things people would describe as sex critical/negative would be having the opinion that sex work, as society currently exists, can't be consensual because it exists within the framework of a male dominated culture (the patriarchy), and so almost always seeks to cater to men's desires. They would say women aren't really making a free choice to go into sex work, society has created a situation in which some women see no other option but sex work. A sex positive person might say that if a woman tells you she is making an informed choice for herself, then you need to shut the fuck up and listen to her, because lecturing women about validity of their choices is something the patriarchy does, not something feminists should be doing to women. The sex work side can get really, really complicated, getting into all sorts of different intersectional type issues. Race, poverty, culture, religion, stigma all come into play in talking about what it means to be a sex worker in our society. Pro and anti sex work opinions both have some valid points, but both tend towards a hyperbole of trying to nuke the opinions of the other side too. Aaaaaand, the sex work question (because of its complexity and controversy) often ends up derailing conversations about sex. Kind of like how it is the easy example I went with. There are lots of areas that the positive/critical sides agree on. Things that might include consensual kink, poly relationships, destigmatizing gay sex (even with marriage equality growing, a lot of people still think gay sex is "icky") , quality sex education, swinging, easy access to the birth control of their choice, recognizing asexuality, supporting trans folk, legal and easy access to abortion, etc.

Netflix bumped the Crystal Skull and sent us Thelma and Louise instead, there is now a wait for Crystal Skull. Either proof that we shouldn't watch it again, or evidence of its incredible popularity. You decide!

My wife and I are on what people would typically see as the extreme sex positive side of modern feminism. And some of what I've seen from Sarkeesian seems to put her on the more conservative side. So even if we disagree on some elements of feminism or society. that doesn't mean I can't find other parts of her work interesting, useful or entertaining. Which, as a sidenote, is there a better way to reference the split in feminism that centers around sex? Like, I hate seeing women called sex negative by other feminists because they oppose sex work or pornography. That's not sex negative in the way that term has traditionally been used (the fear, control and conservatism around sex that I associate with the Bible Belt). And sex positive feminism implies that an opposite exists. And, to be fair, the people on the other side can be just as shitty towards the sex positive feminists. It's just not a division that I've ever seen someone describe in a way that I didn't feel was being unfair to one side, the other or both.

For all I know, TB has some interesting things to say about something. But there are certain opinions a person can have which will mostly make me ignore everything else they say. TB has proven time and time again that he has earned a spot on the ignore list.

So I never thought I would say this, but Diablo 3 is a better game on console than it is PC. We finished our first playthrough over the weekend of the Ultimate Evil Edition, but we'll probably play around with some of the other end game content and different characters. It will never be Diablo 2, but it's been quite a bit of fun to play through. I hated Diablo 3 on release on PC. It was a bad game that deserved to die in a fire. While it still looks the same, so much is different now that it feels like a different game. But I still wouldn't go back to the PC and click, click, click my way to hell. Playing with one or two other people on the same screen with controllers in my living room is the best. Other things that I think are unique to the console versions are also pretty awesome, like the Nemesis system, Legendary gifts dropping that you can give friends and apprentice mode. Apprentice mode boosts that stats of everyone in the party if someone is significantly higher level. Perfect if you've got someone over visiting, or a kid who wants to play who doesn't want to have to manage their inventory. Just make them a level 1 character and they will be able to run around with you wherever you want to go without having to worry about gear management. I really don't know why controller support, local co-op and apprentice mode aren't all in the PC version. They are the three best additions to the game.

Yah, it made it! That package was my third shot at getting a gift in the mail, after plans A and B both failed. I was super bummed when the Coldblum sold out at the Idle Thumbs store, I was going to buy a half dozen of those to give out for Christmas.

Hey, but the Justice Points goty (justice awards) 'cast taught me that you can play as a woman in Shadows of Mordor, something I had no idea about. So not all goty casts are terrible.

I really hope the jurors get ungagged, I'd love to hear their perspective on the process.

Huh, that's interesting, and not something I had really thought about that comic. What Malki did or did not intend doesn't matter in the slightest to the primary point the writer is making. Sealioning has been taken up as a term to describe a particular type of behavior, and the term was inspired by that comic. She's seeing peers and allies use a term that she's uncomfortable with, because the source of it can have multiple interpretations, including one that's particularly uncomfortable towards oppressed people. Malki can't be held responsible for what people have done with that comic since its release, but neither does his intent or historical use of Wondermark excuse the concerns someone might have with the term and origin of sealioning. The joke likely works fine and doesn't hit a nerve if it isn't two white folk trying to ignore the concerns of someone they don't want to talk with.

I think my default pronunciation for every example in this thread was originally the "wrong" one. It never occurred to me to pronounce meme like gene (obvious, I know), so in my head for years I just said meme with the e from men. The first time I heard it the right way, I was so confused.

This thread is making me want to go watch Crystal Skull. I only saw it once in the theater, and walked out thinking "Well that was fun, mostly dumb, but fun." And then I looked at the Internet and was super confused. Fuck it, Thelma and Louise can wait a week or so:

I almost bought it to get the second copy, then talked myself out of it. I know its something I really want to wait until its finished to play.

Assuming the quality of Dell's Ultrasharp series has stayed consistent over the years, I really cannot say enough good things about the one I have. I splurged on it like 7 or 8 years ago, and it still looks better than a whole bunch of other monitors I've bought in the ensuing years for other tasks. I don't think this should be visible to the human eye, if it is, something is wrong with the monitor.

That's exactly how I felt about Crystal Skull. The haters were just out of their minds. Like, of course this is what it is, this is what its always been.

Neat! I downloaded that episode today, but didn't realize Jr Mints was on it! I looked him up, you can stream his show live for free, but access to recorded archives for download takes a paid subscription. I'll try to listen to a couple of his live shows to check him out. I don't mind paying for podcasts if they're really good.

I wish I had a gaming news site that I actually enjoyed visiting. Joystiq lost me at some point (a combination of the McElroy's leaving and the changed comment system gutting the former regular community there). Polygon never clicked with me as a place to browse news quickly. The design just drives me away. I always kind of associated Kotaku and Destructoid as being the trashy gaming sites (whether that was fair or not). Kotaku does seem to be trying to re-invent themselves. I hope they pull off the transformation.

It was really good. They used a crunchy peanut butter, and I would describe it on the low to medium sweetness scale for peanut butter.

The best weird burger I ever ate was in New Orleans. This may be common in some places, but I had never heard of it. I was in a place called the Absinthe Bar, and asked where to get a good burger. And this big motherfucker sitting at the bar perked up (I'm a big guy, and he dwarfed me), looked at me and said with this Jersey accent, "What you're gonna do is go up the street, take a right, go two blocks down and go into Yo Mama's, then you're gonna order the Peanut Butter Burger, with a slice of American cheese. And they're gonna wanna put all this other shit on it, and you're gonna tell them no. You want the Peanut Butter Burger with a slice of American cheese, without any of that other shit. Trust me." When the big motherfucker at the Absinthe Bar tells you to go order a Peanut Butter Burger, that's what you do. And it was delicious.

I'm growing increasingly cognizant of things like "heart disease" and "how-many-notches-are-left-in-my-belt-oh-my-god-there-aren't-anymore". Otherwise I would still eat it.

Not gonna lie, a younger me would have eaten the hell out of that monstrosity.

I was still into MMOs back when WoW launched (mostly SWG at the time), and man that was a weird time. It was like every single person I knew jumped ship and was into WoW. There's just nothing comparable in gaming that I've ever seen in the way it dominated a space the way it did.