Bjorn

Isn't one of the problems with diversity in games is needing to justify non-white characters though? That if a character is black, or Asian, or Middle Eastern, there has to be a reason? Not just because, fuck it, let's make him something other than a white dude.

Happy belated gerbil!

"God doesn't care about Australians" seems like a good motto for something.

I could have my father-in-law bring me some Buffalo poo when he comes through in a couple of weeks. It's exotic!

Because there is some weird archived shit in Groups. Groups was built on the Deja News archive of Usenet and some of the old archived stuff can still be found.

Apparently TFYC thought it would be a good idea to have a two hour conversation with about feminism and gaming. I tried to listen to it, but I just can't.

I'm still recovering from the shock of shaving for my Halloween costume. I was going to stay clean shaven for awhile, but that got nixed pretty quick, so it's in the process of growing back out now. I literally do not recognize myself in pictures without my beard. I don't think I look bad, I just look like a radically different person.

The first thought I had was that I know a couple of people who get very worked up about blasphemies, and those two words just skyrocketed in usefulness to me.

Oh man, that blows. Well, obviously it blows that twelve people got laid off, but especially being LeBreton.

Wilson was never, ever going to be convicted. Short of a video emerging showing it was unquestionably unjustified, any decent defense lawyer would have been able to establish reasonable doubt in a jury. There's too much conflicting information. So a full trial would have taken longer, cost more, dragged this out and exposed the police department, Wilson, the prosecutor's office and the city government to scrutiny that no one wants (some of which is obviously already happening, but a trial would make it even more so). For the people in power, there were no upsides and all downsides to taking this to trial. The grand jury was never anything other than cover so the prosecutor didn't have to make the call himself.

TIL interesting etymology! I had no idea.

I just read through the entirety of Darren Wilson's testimony. That strikes me as one of the softest prosecution interviews I've ever read (I'm no expert, but I've read through a few transcripts). I'm going to be curious to read through some of the other testimony, particularly the testimony of the black folks living around there, to see if the way those interviews are handled are different or similar to Wilson's. Things I would have liked to have seen drilled down on. The bruise/swelling on his face was on the right side, which would have been the harder or more awkward side for Brown to allegedly punch with Wilson sitting in the car. A clearer examination of the positioning of each man during the altercation at the car should have taken place. Wilson, at a minimum, washed his hands and arms before being interviewed to remove blood, photographed or anything was processed as evidence. That should have a been a point challenged as evidence might have been destroyed. Wilson was allowed to maintain possession of his firearm and all his other gear, drive himself back to the station and checked his own gun into evidence with no other officer overseeing it. Da fuq? That seems like something to drill down on. He said he made the decision to use lethal force once he was punched in the face. That part of the conversation could have been expanded on a lot. Later he talks about Brown going for his gun, and him thinking Brown might have a gun in his pants. But ultimately the decision to pull his gun and use it on Brown happened within the first few seconds of the interaction, and everything else was that playing out. His prior employment history is very, very briefly mentioned and then completely ignored. The first department he worked for was one that was completely dismantled because of corruption, and he was not one of the officers invited back when it was rebuilt. And the second department he worked a single shift before leaving. No explanation given. The distance covered by the run from the car to where Brown was ultimately killed is not addressed at all. His body mic was on the wrong channel, but he's never asked why it was on the wrong channel. So any radio contact he claims to have made after his initial call from his car was never heard by anyone. None of his personal testimony is compared to, challenged or corroborated by forensic evidence during his testimony. Nothing. He's just allowed to deliver his narrative independent of any other evidence. It's interesting to see how the cops handle another cop vs a regular person. One of the other Ferguson cops checked with him to make sure he had called their union lawyer (where as police sometimes try to restrict access to a lawyer during an investigation). They also waited to interview him until he had had time to decompress from what was a very traumatic situation, whereas with a regular citizen if they have the opportunity to interview (even extensively for hours), they will under the theory that a person is more likely to make a mistake if pressured like that.

The park itself looks pretty cool, and kind of justifies having another movie. But the whole hybrid thing is just ten tons of dumb.

I hadn't actually watched the trailer. That hybrid is amazing. Amazing as in "This ought to be a SyFy original!" amazing.

There are not one, but two, Jimmy Buffett themed chain restaurants (Cheeseburger in Paradise is the other). Which is almost justification for hating him and everything about him. But I still dig listening to him. As for the movie, I never watched any of the Jurassic sequels. Are either any good?

I like Jimmy Buffet. It's dumb and fun and about touristy tropical island shit, and sometimes that's what I want to listen to. Margaritaville (the restaurant chain) is fucking awful though.

I haven't listened to MBMBAM in a long time, kinda checked out after about 50 or 60 episodes. It was fun for awhile, but started to get repetitive, which had less to do with the brothers and more to do with the questions they were getting tended to be on the boring side. I remember there being sooooo many variations on "I like this girl, but don't know how to ask her out" questions. Any advice show or column tends to get repeats, but at least with something like the Lovecast you get a lot questions about out of the norm sex stuff or non-typical relationship drama (particularly with the swingers and poly folk).

Holy podcasting crossover Batman! The Brothers McElroy got into my Savage Lovecast. Weird. I don't think Dan knew much about the brothers before having them on as guests.

I wasn't able to find an archived version of it for verification, but it's referenced in that storify I linked earlier. Edited to add: Some context for this. One of the accusations being thrown at Harper is that she's like a Nazi, and her autoblock tool is like putting together a list of Jews in WW2, wherein the gamergaters are the Jews being identified for extermination. Not fucking kidding. Hence the Nazi photoshops and accusations.

I still haven't bought the DLC, so I guess I'll just wait for this to come out now.

Well that all sounds awesome. Going to be a bunch of community ideas included as well. You can see the submissions in this reddit thread.

I don't really have much to say, the evening ultimately played out almost exactly like people expected it to. Just...fucking hell. It's amazing how much righteous indignation a bunch of old white men can muster when a car or building burn, but they don't think people should be getting so worked up when a black man dies. Huh. Shocking. Of course the violence is bad, but the reaction from too many corners of America is equally disgusting, where property damage is viewed as a greater threat to our democracy than death. Edited to add: Can we embed vines here? Fucking war zone out there.

Thanks for clarifying that. I've gone from catching up on this stuff once a day to once every three or four days, so I'm not as informed as I was a few weeks ago.

Okay, that's much better. I don't use it, and haven't done a ton of reading about it (or how it is working in practice). I didn't know how much human curation was going on with it.

I'd argue that it's a poor decision because the autoblocker takes a shotgun approach to blocking that actually catches (and included) a lot of non-gg people, including some of the IGDA's own staff. At one point in time (though I've since stopped following any of the prominent ggers), I would have been blocked by it. A lot of games journalists would have been blocked by it, since they have a professional interest in following even the toxic people on Twitter. It's fine for an individual to choose to use an overly broad tool, but for a professional organization to endorse it is another matter. I don't know if the tool removes people from the block list or not, or if once you're on it that's it. But it is not a good professional tool that limits communication solely because you have followed a couple of people for awhile.