Bjorn

WHAT!? Man, screw kids these days, why couldn't we have things like that when I was young. We just got to play with fire and broken beer bottles.

I know a Bishop, but I'm pretty sure she can in more than just diagonals.

Technically it is theoretically possible to elect a Pope who had fathered children, so JonCole could be the son of a Pope. #PopeGhazi

Gross. Can you unsubscribe from notifications for specific Tweets?

Displaying my Twitter ignorance here, so if someone tags you in a shitty or harassing post, you continue to get notifications about it? So it guarantees you get to keep being reminded about it until it fades from notice? Also, right before that guy replied, Burch did make a comment about some of these guys being "sex deprived." On one hand, I think there is likely some truth there, that some men who lash out online like this do so because of a lack of relationships. But it's also the kind of inflammatory language I hate seeing used by our side, as it is seen as being an excuse to be shitty back, and examples like that are used to try and paint our side as being as shitty and hateful as their side (I don't think that's true, but the feedback loop is perpetuating that idea). I'm not sure I have a major point here, just trying to parse my own thoughts on how to discuss or react to this shit without acting like them or contributing to their own paranoid conspiracies.

My wife, barely able to hear the podcast from another room, walks in and says to me: "Why did Idle Thumbs add a laugh track to the podcast?"

It starts around this tweet last night and runs through the next 20+ tweets and retweets, some of which branch into conversations. I kinda hate trying to reference anything more than a single Tweet, as I've never used Storify (I'm sure it's simple, but it's not something I can justify dipping into when I should be working) and it's so cumbersome to present Tweets in any other way, especially since you have to screencap them here and can't embed Tweets. This is the conversation imagining speedrunning sex, which I'm including only because it gave me the giggles, and that's something this thread needs occasionally. And here's one of the examples of someone going after him for being in an open relationship, which of course involves trying to emasculate him because of the choices they've made about their relationship. Which to me ties back into the kind of misogyny aimed at people like Quinn and Sarkeesian, because it also tries to enforce the cultural norms of being a man's manly man, which must involve controlling women's sex lives.

I don't actually use Twitter much, just pay attention to it during particular times, so I'm not very familiar with how best to present or link to clusters of stuff.

I don't know much (anything at all, really) about Anthony Burch, but after his Twitter rant last night, I'm rapidly becoming a fan. He used to write for Destructoid, before leaving to enter development, and eventually wrote two of the DLCs for Borderlands 2, which Destructoid reviewed, and about which no one has said a word. Also, going through some of his previous stuff, ran across a discussion about what if you treated sex like speedrunner's treat games. Also, also he's apparently in an open relationship, which critics are trying to use to mock him, which is going hilariously badly for them.

Eh, I wouldn't get any hopes up based on the FBI stuff. They are only going to do something about a certain level of crime (terrorist threats against airplanes, hacking accounts to steal data, etc). They might provide some resources to the IGDA, but I would be shocked if it went any further than that. And I doubt their being interested has much of an effect on the people driving this, I don't think they will perceive what they've done as something wrong, therefor there's no reason to be worried about being investigated.

So thanks to the passionate folks behind #gamergate, we know that it's unethical to ever mix sex and work, and that doing so should automatically destroy people's careers. Yeah, well, you know who else mixed work and some fun? Obama. Proof this is all Obama's fault. #GamerGhazi #THANKSOBAMA Reading comments of someone screaming about how unethical and destructive it was to ever fool around with someone you have a professional relationship with, I was reminded of some studies about how common workplace romantic relationships are. Seems to tie back into the gamergate people being completely clueless about the real world and how humans interact with each other.

Has anybody else noticed these memes floating around Twitter? They're mocking the message of "Don't make women responsible for rape, teach young men not to rape."

Yeah, looks like she was developing a blog/news site to focus on those kinds of games. It doesn't look like she got too far into development on it, but it is the kind of site that would end up attracting the trolls and making her another lightning rod like Sarkeesian if it started to get any traction.

Looks like Mattie Bryce is done with games writing as well. I don't blame her, Frank or anyone else for calling it quits and looking for other pastures. Gotta take care of yourself. It's still infuriating the reason they've doing this though.

I am pretty shite at web design, but I would contribute both writing work and hosting fees if there are any Thumbs with the time and knowledge to put together a nice looking site that would showcase games and devs that do things well. It feels like the kind of thing that needs to exist, and I personally would like to do something to push back against all the bullshit being cataloged here and in the ethics thread. I mostly feel powerless to do anything though, but trying to make something that's a positive database like this strikes me as being something of value.

I'm just...what in the actual fuck. Crowdfunding a lawsuit about the feminist cabal that controls the games media? Seriously, WTF?! Is that even a thing you can use Indiegogo to do? Shockingly, they decided it might be a bad idea and are taking the campaign down and rethinking their strategy. I'm going to hope that it's less insane, but it's probably not. Gameranx wrote a piece about how maybe it's a good idea to actually scrutinize the FYC, and reiterated some of points similar to that earlier Vice piece (which I do think is actually weak criticism and am surprised no one is asking other questions). To which, the FYC called it a hit piece. Remember how they promised that the peace treaty was their last statement about Quinn or any of this? Yeah, that lasted almost a few days. So they continue to maintain a presence in this mess.

We could always register socialjusticewizard.com and make our own.

On that KU article I linked earlier, I'm super disappointed that I'm reading about that on HuffPo and not my local paper, which as recently as a few years ago was heralded as one of the truly great small to mid-market daily papers. Also, I finally watched the latest Sarkeesian video over my lunch hour today, and it was really good. Part way through she brought up Papa y Yo as an example of a game that deals with issues like abuse in an interesting and mature way. I've wondered for awhile if there is a resource to find games that handle certain subjects well, like a list of feminist games or something. Not even feminist games, but just games that manage to not be shitty about gender/sex. Not every game on it would need to be perfect, as few things are, but at least be worthy of inclusion for meeting certain criteria. People do a really good job of criticizing games that handle these issues poorly, but I'm not sure we (the general gaming community that cares about this stuff) do a good enough job of promoting games that we think do the job well.

TBS seemed quite sensitive about gender roles and sexism in their fictional society, and let the player and other characters have agency over how women were treated and what role they took in the defense of the caravan. In game, that is a society in upheaval. I'm hoping that they continue to explore that going into the next game, including showing women taking more combat and leadership roles. It seems like a natural extension of what they were doing in the first game. Also, spoilered as it is a major plot point/twist late game:

So some guys who are local to me started up gamephobias.com to create a database of things that might be troublesome for some players (ranging from sexual assault to alcoholism to fear of spiders). Which is actually kind of a neat idea. The Ghost entry was delightful. But, my local newspaper reported (scroll about halfway down the page, first half is about golf) about this as a "technological startup" with a lead about how there is serious talk of Lawrence becoming a destination for such tech startups. I didn't realize how low the bar had become to be a startup. Woot! I'm curious to see what other people think.

The latest in terrible university behavior in regards to rape comes from my alma mater. The whole thing is infuriating and (as the woman in the case says) the process of reporting the rape was more damaging and victimizing than the actual crime. The guy admitted he continued to have sex with her even after she told him to stop multiple times, but his lawyer later presented an argument that because she took her birth control pill that day, she was clearly going out with the intention to have sex. WTF?! The university decided that writing an essay would set the young man straight, but that community service was too "punitive" to use as punishment. The police threatened to arrest her for underage drinking, while the prosecutor declined to press charges against the guy.

FOIA is specifically the law that governs the release of documents from the US federal government (but is often a catchall phrase for making any request). Each state has their own "Sunshine Laws" that govern the release of documents which vary in requirements, and it depends entirely on the agency (or even individual) you are dealing with on how big of a hassle a request will be. I've made some that were completely painless. I also once made one for some financial documents and was told that it was going to cost several thousand dollars to hire data specialists to retrieve the information I wanted. Once I informed them that I'd be writing an article just about how incompetent their system was and about how it was in violation of state law, as the data I wanted was required to be tracked, suddenly the information materialized and it only cost ~$30 in fees to have several hundred pages printed out. FWIW, the vast majority of police reports are dreadfully, painfully boring, and usually not that useful. I've read upwards of a thousand, and only a few jump out of my memory as being terribly useful on their own. At best, they are usually just an arrow pointing you towards what might be an interesting story. My favorite one I ever read was when a couple of pieces of art were stolen from an exhibit that was all about male genitalia. The officer managed to get through the entire report without ever using the word "dildo". The entire exhibit was nothing but hand made or drawn dildos.

The preview for Vol 2 makes it look much more violent than Vol 1. 1 is dark at times, and depressing, but also thoughtful and funny and sweet and strange. I do feel like movies that are about sex and sexuality have a lower bar to cross for me to be considered good, because of their relative rarity. We've got thousands of movies which are essentially dissertations on the nature of violence and murder, but so few that are about the hows and whos and whys of sex. And of those, the ones exclusively exploring a woman's sexuality are even fewer.