Bjorn

After watching them, I went and looked up some "best of" lists for future watching. I think I've seen pretty much everything on those lists, but its been forever. Tonight is our local Zombie Walk! It's also game 1 of the Royals baseball playoff series. Normally we actually do the walk, but this year we may have to find a bar with a good view of the street so we can watch both baseball and zombies. It'll be a shame not to dress up again though. This is us from a couple of years ago:

:clap:

Do you have anyone with a high perception to spot the landmines at a distance? You still have to stop and disarm them, or send someone through by themselves to explore (or one at a time if you need everyone on the other side), but it does speed the process up.

I just now got the pun that is in the 'cast title.

Kind of wishing I hadn't read that right before bed. Fucking tragedy. And goddammed heartbreaking to read the people trying to reach out to her. Also, a Riot dev tweeted his number to her before anyone knew what had happened, and started getting harassing phone calls. Fuck the Internet.

Since I quit drinking beer a couple of years ago, I've really missed the Pumpkin Ale season. This year, Pumpkin Apple Cider was introduced. It is not the same. To celebrate the start of Halloween, we watched stuff! Started with a German vampire flick We Are the Night. It's the story of three women vampires and their recent adoption of a fourth convert. It's...good. Parts of it are truly excellent, and there are some intriguing ideas in it. Unfortunately it ends up going a direction that didn't do much for me (and that I felt somewhat betrayed one of the best ideas in the film). Which maybe that was the point. But if you like vampire flicks, it's worth watching an interesting take. Then we watched the first three episodes of Season 1 of the Twilight Zone. The intro to that still gives me chills.

Holy crap, that's amazing on so many levels. Also perhaps the most condescending and patronizing video game ending ever.

I retweeted something at the same time I sent an email (the first time I've tweeted anything in forever) and have yet to see any reply to it.

I sent a message, will see if I get a response.

That quick mention of Yum! at the end of the episode reminds me of working at a Pizza Hut in the early 2000s and reading through the corporate quarterly magazine. There was this incredible piece of marketing about opening the first Taco Bell in China. I don't remember the exact wording, but it was something like this: At the time, it was just one of the most exuberant pieces of marketing bullshit I had ever seen.

Kung Fu Chaos was actually one of my favorite games on the original Xbox, but it's developed a reputation (a probably deserved reputation) as being one of the more racist games made. Which at the time didn't stand out to me, because I was so used to the typical way Chinese characters are scripted and presented in almost any game, but in pretty much every discussion I've seen on racist games in the last few years, it is always one that gets brought up.

Interesting question, and one I've already pondered (there are crazy shitheads on our side as well). 1. I haven't seen any evidence that the syringe was actually related to GG. Dude fucking works for Breitbart, one of the most inflammatory sites on the net and he writes about more than just video games (including sexuality, gender and trans issues). So guy writes lots of shitty, hateful stuff. Receives threatening package. Declares it's because of gamer gate. Eh. 2. The difference, to me, is that GG started from a baseline of being angry at women in gaming. That's the origin point, and continues to be a focus. And it continues to ignore any of the actual ethical issues that affect gaming and journalism. So when you identify as a gater, you're identifying with a movement that started with harassment and continued to evolve into a witch hunt with blinders on. If you're against the gaters, you believe (by and large, I think) that gaming needs more indie, women and minority voices and that the ones we have shouldn't be harassed and threatened.

That's fucking cool.

Yeah, I was mostly just clarifying that it had happened at least twice with similar proof provided.

Huh, that sounds like it's probably a neat way to add a feeling of permanence and depth to the world, providing it doesn't become unwieldy or annoying.

It's the third time I know of that the gaters have claimed to have gotten advertising removed from a site (Scottrade from Polygon, BestBuy from Kotaku and now Intel from Gamasutra). In all three cases the "proof" has been a customer service email someone claimed to have received from the company. Like, a CS email from a low level employee manning the public customer service inbox. And so far I haven't seen multiple people receive these emails, it's always just been the same image surfed around on Twitter amongst the gaters.

Can you explain what this system is? I don't know much about the game other than the Batman/AC influence.

I consider it a good football game when both teams are performing competently (not dropping catchable passes, not missing a bunch of makeable tackles, not making dumb penalties, etc). Back to baseball, the KC police tweeted this out last night:

Holy crap, the first episode comes out this month. I honestly wasn't expecting the first one out this year based on some of the previous updates. I just had a sense that it would end up being early next year for some reason.

The Ag Center is like 5 areas, each with combat and side quests and at least one or two interesting NPCs. Going through Highpool first doesn't sound much different than going through it second, there's still just some stuff to murder, just nobody to talk to. The Rail Nomads has so far been the most disappointing area to me. It started great (with the opening emergency), but then it just kind of feels like a generic, RPG town that I have to explore. It's too big. I hate big towns in RPGs. I tend to find them exhausting to get through. And I'm only in the first area. There's at least another area (maybe 2) I have to go through.

The persecution complex if the gaters is maybe one of the most privileged, bullshit things I've ever seen. Which was brought into stark contrast for me yesterday. I went to a meeting about the intersection of sexuality, gender and politics in the upcoming election. There was a woman from Planned Parenthood there. The office she works out of has been shot at before. Years ago one of their facilities had to be moved because it had been firebombed. The woman I met routinely has to engage with people who hate her, as she works with the state and local government on women's health issues. She sits on panels with the same people who protest their clinics and call her a murderer. Every single year multiple laws are introduced whose sole purpose is to limit or shutdown their clinics. And then gaters are screaming about how they're being dehumanized and persecuted by the feminist illuminati.

That's incredible!

He completely attributes some of Greg's early posts to Leigh, where Greg argues that people choosing to self identify as gaters are standing elbow to asshole with digital terrorists, so it's impossible to tell one from the other, ergo, all gaters support death threats through adopting the label. And as previously said, yeah, Leigh comes in and he becomes 10x extra shitty in attitude immediately. The whole Koster thing sent me down a rabbit whole of gaters accusing Leigh Alexander of being a frothing crazy hateful racist (which was a new one for me). Tracking it down, it appears to be related to a couple of tweets where she uses the term hood rat. Thing is, she's mixed race/ethnicity (which I only know from having read some of her pieces discussing that specifically). Not that being mixed race is a free pass to say shitty or racist things...but the two or three tweets they've found are hardly condemning proof that she's a racist, particularly not when her background is one that draws on multiple ethnicities (including African American). Just seems like the gaters are desperate to show how everyone they hate is actually, secretly, a terrible and hateful person as well.