Bjorn

I'm genuinely worried about the retention of the Supreme Court judges. There feels like there's a pretty strong movement building in opposition to Brownback and his legislative supporters, but it's hard to tell how accurate that is given my mostly liberal social circle. From my understanding of the effects of Citizen United, it has mostly not had a significant effect on high profile elections like the presidency, governors, etc. However, the effects are seen in smaller elections, particularly when you don't have an opposing side spending money, like on judicial elections. There's not Super PAC to support the existing bench, but it's becoming increasingly clear that a lot of money on negative advertising is going to be spent on trying to get the moderates out of there.

On the subject of positive/negative coverage, this is the kind of headline I find infuriating: Clinton campaign: Sanders playing 'games' with debate This headline could have been written multiple ways: Neutral: Clinton, Sanders campaigns fight about New York debate schedule Pro-Sanders: Sanders rejects Clinton offer to debate on night of NCAA Championship Game Pro-Sanders: Clinton proposes debate on night when no one will watch (this one's pretty Oniony, but still accurate) Neutral: Clinton, Sanders reject proposed debates as New York Primary looms I mostly find it annoying that it isn't accurate. It's a campaign staffer quote in a headline that had a lot of fodder for an interesting, but still factually accurate, headline. I'd be curious to see if there are any examples of CNN quoting the Sanders campaign, favoring their narrative over the Clinton version of the story.

Again, there, we're talking about a difference in scale. One person accosting an employee versus a group of people harassing an employee and digging into their past and background as part of a sustained campaign are different scales of problem. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect an employee to shrug off one shitbag yelling at them, but it is reasonable to provide assistance when they've got a dozen shitbags waiting to yell at them every single time they go grocery shopping, when those shitbags are there because of that person's employment. Abortion is a really good example of the extra costs an employer has to take on for their employees safety due to unique circumstances. I've volunteered at the local offices for Planned Parenthood. They've got an armed guard and a security system that far exceed what any medical clinic should need, but because it's PP, they exist in a unique circumstance. Part of my volunteer training included how to handle protestors at the location and guidance on how to de-escalate or disengage a conversation that felt like it was getting too heated (I've done outreach and phone banking for them). They do provide in house resources to their employees to deal with off-site and personal time risks, because they acknowledge that in this time and place, the choice to work for PP is one that infuriatingly comes with real risk. Since the rise of gg, I think a lot of game companies are now facing an environment where a certain percentage of their workers are also facing new and unique risks from online mobs. I think those companies need to find ways to support employees who find themselves in that situation. The ideas I rattled off earlier were just things off the top of my head that a company could do. I'm sure there are other things that could be done with a range of costs in terms of time and money. Based on a quick google, Nintendo spends several hundred million, up to a half a billion, in PR, advertising and marketing per year. Somehow I think a company that can spend up to a half a billion on marketing can find a few resources in that pool to develop a strategy to help employees who are, mostly, facing a communications problem. Also, I think that employees also do bear some responsibility. I think that people should, and that this should probably be corporate policy, maintain as much separation between personal and business accounts as possible. But we've already got an expected culture on Twitter where that divide doesn't exist. Many publicly facing employees interact with the public through their personal accounts. And I'm not sure how you fix that, because an employee should have the right and freedom to have a public twitter account, but with that comes the reality that customers, fans or haters will have access to it, and there's not always a way to know if the person you're interacting with is in any of those camps, or a friend of a friend, or just some rando who found something you had to say interesting.

Oh, something I should clarify, I have no problems with Nintendo letting her go, I think there are multiple good arguments for it being the right choice, even for both parties. I just disagree with their handling of it and with the notion that employment caused harassment is a problem that is solely an employee's responsibility.

The big differentiating thing here that you seem to be not addressing is that the harassment directly stemmed from her employment (as far as I know, if I'm wrong on that, then it is a different story), hence her employers responsibility to help with it. This isn't different to me from workers comp medical coverage for on the job injuries. There are all sorts of business that have to pay costs related to risks that their employees take. The two newspapers I worked at had lawyers who were paid to defend us against certain possible claims (assuming that we had followed ethics guidelines and paper policy in our reporting). I know of several people who work jobs where mental health services and counseling are offered because of on the job shit that can happen. There are all sorts of specialized insurances for the variety of unique circumstances that companies and their employees may face across a huge variety of fields. I guess I don't really see how your argument that it's the employee's responsibility applies to employment caused harassment, when there are all these other examples of employers being responsible for the risks or harm that comes to their employees due to their employment. I mean, if the harassment was completely unrelated to her employment, I agree with you. Her problem. If someone breaks their leg waterskiiing on vacation, their problem. If they break their leg on the job because a piece of equipment was faulty, employer's responsibility. If I'm sued because I punched someone on my own time, my problem. If I'm sued for defamation because of a story I wrote for a newspaper that followed newspaper guidelines, it's the newspaper's responsibility. The harm stemming from employment is what matters. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point, but why does this harm not equate to the other myriad harms that employers are responsible for?

Whoops google.

Also congrats, always rough losing a job but it's awesome that it sounds like you've ended up in a better place.

Nintendo may not have Intel money, but they aren't exactly poor either. There's still things they could do at some scale. But even at the individual employee level, here are things they could have done (this is what I would have done if she were my employee and my business was several times larger than it is, but still a tiny order of magnitude smaller than Nintendo): 1) Issued a statement of support and condemnation of her harassers while she was still an employee, publicly taking her back 2) Someone higher up the food chain from her could have attempted to take some of the heat. Someone at the executive level, who would actually have final approval over greenlighting a translation, could have said, "Hey y'all, I made the call, you got a problem, bring it to me." This is a thing a good manager does. Good managers take the heat directed at their employees. Good managers sometimes do it even when it isn't actually their fault or responsibility. 3) This may have happened, but I have seen no evidence of it. They could have offered identify theft protection and credit monitoring services to her for the next year or two, since we've previously seen harassment victims have their accounts targeted. Her harassment was work related, this to me is as necessary as something like workers comp medical insurance in this day and age for certain companies. 4) This may have happened, but I have seen no evidence of it. They could have offered to provide assistance in managing the campaign against her. There are now companies that specialize in this. And it's not like they don't have other PR specialists who work for them. Any company of the size and visibility of Nintendo should probably already have a relationship with a firm like this, or something like this is an excellent opportunity to find one. This is not the last time that a Nintendo employee will be subject to harassment due to their employment. It would have been up to Rapp at that point if she was open to their guidance (I have a feeling she wouldn't have been as part of that guidance almost certainly would have been to go radio silent for awhile, but at least the option would have been there). - As a side note, these services aren't cheap, but even in lieu of that, I would still ask an employee for guidance from them on what I could do to help until the storm passed. 5) This may have happened, but I have seen no evidence of it. Nintendo could have offered her a severance package that would have made sure she was financially secure for awhile while she looked for a new job and wouldn't lose her health insurance. There's easily precedence for this kind of package under certain circumstance with plenty of jobs. This actually solves multiple problems. Nintendo wouldn't be facing the criticism they are now if they just would have offered her a 2-4 month severance package. Instead of trying to blame her second job, they simply could have issued a statement saying, "It's become increasingly clear that due to circumstances out of both our and Ms. Rapp's control that she is no longer capable of effectively doing the job she was hired to do. We have ended the relationship, but provided a generous severance package as neither party expected her employment to end in the position it has. We wish her the best." It would have been a pittance in order to avoid the negative attention they are getting now. That's all I can think of off the top of my head. 1 and 2 are cheap/free. 3 is pretty cheap nowadays. 4 is actually pretty expensive, but there are more affordable options to still provide support. 5 is just a cost of doing business, and something all businesses in the US already face when considering to fire or layoff an employee given how unemployment works. Rapp may still have an unemployment claim if she can show that her moonlighting didn't violate company policy and that other moonlighters were known, but not fired. Unemployment claims drive up future unemployment tax rates. This is a big reason severance packages are offered in the first place. A few months of severance can ultimately be cheaper than the future years worth of unemployment tax increases due to unemployment claims. It still may have made more financial sense to give her a severance package than to outright fire her.

AC, you seem to have some more first hand experience with her comments over the years than at least some of us do (I think you mentioned that you followed her for awhile). All I've seen are a handful of out of context tweets and I know this undergrad essay exists, but that's all I know. That such a terribly limited body of work, it's the primary reason I feel far more comfortable focusing on other elements. I, personally, would have to try and fill in blanks to make any kind of coherent comment on it, and I don't see any value in that. I cannot fathom what it must be like to have any significant part of your college undergrad work exist forever in easily accessible formats. People wring their hands about kids these days having sexted and whatnot and half the college kids having nude pictures of themselves and how they'll never get elected president because boobs and dicks. But the idea of my undergrad work being dug up to use against me for years to come is far more horrifying than the idea that someone might see me naked.

:tup: :tup:

Yeah, if you posted in this thread, and said, "Oh, hey, look, I found this argument someone is making that in the cultural context of Japan, blah, blah, blah. I think I disagree with this, and with this persons other thoughts on X subject." That's one thing, and would probably make for an interesting conversation. But in this context, you only know all of those things because they were used against her as part of a sustained harassment campaign, not because the harassers cared, but because it was the ammunition they could find. To me, the most interesting discussion right now is about Nintendo. I like the summary at the end of this Game Informer piece. Nintendo hung her out to dry and to weather, what appears to be single handedly, a harassment campaign whose source was the decision they had made as a company. That's just the shittiest. I don't know how to look at this in any other way than Nintendo becoming party to the abuse for refusing to support an employee who was being attacked for decisions that one of her bosses made. And to not even acknowledge the harassment until after she had been fired.

Damn, good piece.

video pls

Ben, I'm really tired of you posting this.

Oh man, those bug swarms are the worst, tied for the hardest thing I've fought in the mines (I had a single slime kick my ass around level 80, I think he was super rare, a color I've never seen again). Just keep yourself topped off on health, bash rocks and rush through that area. The next 60+ levels are a cakewalk after that.

I've never played a Harvest Moon, so I have zero points of comparison. Having started over once (before my first spring even ended), and having watched the lady play, this is definitely a game where success breeds accelerated success. Getting lucky or being particularly efficient in the first Spring can pretty radically affect how much you can afford to do in the coming seasons. Combat wise, I mostly just used the stuff I found in the dungeons, you get new gear on most 10 levels, with a couple of purchases of new weapons at the guild (both of which I think I could have skipped if I'd have powered on through).

That seems to have been a fairly recent shift, and a disappointing one, from what I've seen. The online Sanders supporters feel like they've completely flipped on the legitimacy of the email stuff over the course of a couple of months.

I think for a lot of Democrats and left leaning folks in general, some of the negative stories about Clinton are functionally invisible. Like the email scandal and Benghazi, many Dems view those as total bullshit, and so even if they see a story about those, it doesn't register as being negative media coverage. Because, like, who would ever believe that? So it creates blind spots to actually digesting the full range of news that's produced about her.

Dawwwwww!

Oh hell, I think you might be right. I'm going to be buying 20K worth of coffee next time I play. Jas and Vincent are pretty easy gifts, so it would just be running around with coffee, a flower and a grape unless I was trying to specifically get someone up.

FWIW, I think you've single handedly introduced me to more great shows over the last few months than anyone else for the entire time I've been listening to 'casts. So thanks!

Yeah, I finally looked up a bunch of that stuff. I'd say you only really need to worry about Loved gifts on birthdays, they're worth a huge boost then. Otherwise cheap liked gifts are good enough. Here's my generally strategy most weeks now:

Well, functionally there's a reason to do socialization as well, as you get some unique recipes and blueprints through friends. As for theme and story, you certainly learn more about people as you friend them and get new info about them. Some are more interesting than others, but I don't particularly want to give anything away. The extra cutscenes certainly confirmed who I was going to court for marriage though.

This game taps onto the worst parts of my time management and decision paralysis issues. I've got to a point where it's actually constantly started to feel stressful (into Year 2 Spring) because I try to cram too much into each day. Animal and crop management, running all my artisanal machines, continuing to clear my property plus getting out and about and trying to get at least a couple of things done around town. I'm actually in super great shape, I could easily afford to dial back on some things or just let them slide for a day or two, but nooooooo, there are goats that need milking! Those parsnips need harvested! Can't let that honey go to waste! Oh shit, it's Lewis' birthday, gotta get the old man a present!

Fishing is by far the most uneven of all the mechanics. I enjoy it when it isn't too difficult, but even at level 7, I'm still finding fish that feel like i have no chance of catching. Socializing initially annoyed me, as it felt like time I could have been doing other things, but as that's progressed I've generally found it to be pretty enjoyable. I've been really surprised at the relative depth of the themes and characters. There's just a ton of nice and thoughtful touches that have made the game feel much richer than I expected when I started.