Bjorn

I have never met a feminist who wanted all men to die. I have met misandrists, but in those very few cases, I would not describe those women as feminists, or at least their misandry did not stem from their belief in feminism. (That's interesting, Firefox spellcheck doesn't know that misandry is a word). On to other topics, the only hospital in Bartlesville, OK apparently directed all doctors that they are no longer allowed to prescribe birth control for the purposes of birth control, because that would violate the Catholic Directives. This article has some interesting stats on the vast numbers of Catholic owned medical facilities in the US.

I haven't listened to MBMBaM in months and months, I should do some catching up.

I played one game tonight, started on Normal. I'm a bit rusty, only made it to Sector 4, and barely limped my way there. The hacking system and mind control both feel like really natural additions. The Cloning system is neat as well, though it does have a rather dark tendency to make me start treating some crew like they are disposable.

I don't know where this would fit better, so it's going here. Metal heads and the cats they love. "...any animal that shits in a box and expects you to clean it up is pretty metal."

I just finished up the second half of the 'cast, had to split it into two parts. I loved all the talk about local politics and journalism! Great stuff, and I heartily endorse learning more about your local politics. Go to a city council or school board meeting occasionally. Sure, it can be boring a lot of times, but it can also be fascinating! Before I moved a few miles outside of town, I used to go to the city council meetings a few times a year just to hang out. Anyone has the right to stand and address the council (at least in Kansas), about anything they want. There are some people who just use it as a platform to rant, sometimes about international stuff, sometimes about local stuff, sometimes about crazy conspiracy shit. This was always my favorite part of the meetings. A lot of these people just wanted someone in power to listen to them, and this was their only opportunity to do that. A high point of my life was actually getting to give a rousing speech/ass chewing to our school board. After the housing crisis, our board was considering serious cuts to the music and art departments to save money, but would not consider any cuts to athletics. And they tried to do it in a really stealthy way. Something like 300 total students and parents showed up to protest, and the band kids got there early to serenade the board members as they walked into the building, and stayed late to serenade them again as they walked to their cars. I was so fucking proud of those kids. When I got up to speak, I focused on the complete lack of transparency the board had been showing during the process, and what incredibly poor examples for personal responsibility they were setting for the children of the district. Got a standing ovation from the crowd. I thought shit like that only happened in movies. Seriously, local politics are awesome.

I'm not sure how widespread it was (certainly more of a Brit thing than an American thing), but the ginger hate and other negative stereotypes/slurs about red heads go back a long time.

General thought, I viewed the Borg as super cool when they were first introduced, but the longer they stuck around and the more shows they appeared in, the less and less interesting they became. They're just too "sci-fiy" for my tastes. I enjoyed the antagonists who felt like stand-ins for real world conflicts more, as the story arcs and character had more meat to them.

Rifftrax never really clicked with me until recently, for the same reason as you. But after I went to the live simulcast of them doing Santa Clause vs the Martians (they were live in one city and it was broadcast out to a bunch of theaters). It was amazingly hilarious! Since then I've watched a few movies with Rifftrax on, and it works for me now. I think seeing them together during portions of the live show kind of broke that speedbump of not having a character to identify with. So yeah, if you have the chance to go see one of their theater simulcasts, I heartily recommend it.

I haven't seen it mentioned, but they just did do a matchmaking update. Maybe it broke something? Wouldn't be the first time that a game's matchmaking got borked by an update.

Yeah, it's rude to do that and there are probably better ways to structure that post. It's the worst kind of passive/aggressive behavior. But after seeing enough posts to see the pattern emerge, I just can't directly engage or reply at this time. Particularly when I saw that the exact same line of enquiry ("I don't understand" and the philosophical claims of something not really existing or having meaning) was started in the Ep. 152 thread. I'm willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt that they are engaging earnestly and honestly up to a point. If that's about what I linked to (not sure), neither were lists. The first is just the Wiki page on the history of word reclamation/reappropriation. Good summary and lots of quality links in the references to dig deeper on specific examples. The second link is a sarcastic breakdown of a wide variety of derailment tactics used against marginalized groups or subjects dealing with marginalized groups. It's been awhile since I've read that stuff, I just browsed back through it. Good info to read, as even people who want a good discussion can fall into some of those tactics inadvertently (myself included).

I really want to see that, looks like it will be playing in Kansas City on the 25th. Will have to remember that.

I'm just going to point out that Faegbeard is essentially engaging in a standard derailing tactic that is often used against feminists, the "Won't you explain it to me tactic." The goal of this tactic is to divert time and energy away from engaging with the specifics of a discussion and to focus the discussion on the ignorance of the person trying to derail the conversation. There are literally thousands of online resources that would help someone understand the core ideas behind word reclamation, it's history and the simple fact that it exists. But to derail a conversation about it, you simply keep repeating, "But I don't understand, I'm just trying to understand where you are coming from. I don't follow." I'm not going to make any assumptions or claims about Faegbeard's motivations, but a lot of people end up engaging in these kinds of derailment tactics without even realizing that they are actually following the same pattern that happens all the time in conversations like these. That's why there are entire websites devoted to derailment tactics. I will point out that we are now on page 112, and since Faegbeard entered on page 109, much of the conversation has centered around Faegbeard's "lack of understanding" and inability to follow the arguments presented here, due to a lack of education in the area.

I'd honestly say that you need to go do some research on your own. The things we're talking about are not new ideas, and your counterarguments have been factually wrong, drawn on extreme hyperbole and hypotheticals, or attempted to distract by drilling down into the philosophical nature of thought and language. I don't see any particularly value in engaging with any of that. You can start here and it will lead you to hundreds of interesting references and sources about the nature of word reclamation. Edited to add: Reading through that, we've really been limited to the scope of examples we've used. It's a good summary of examples of terms that have previously been reclaimed.

I think any future characters I make will just start as a Deprived. It wastes a few points on a specific min/max build, but will give the greatest flexibility for respeccing and trying a bunch of stuff. I originally replied to this that I wasn't very impressed with Boss Weapons. I was wrong! They're great! I just hadn't realized the differences in upgrading. Boss Weapons upgrade better than any other weapon in the game. In general: Normal titanite weapons: Base damage doubles going to +10, minor scaling improvements Twinkling titanite weapons: Often have significantly higher base damage than normal weapons, base damage only goes up by 50ish percent to +5, minor scaling improvements Boss Weapons: Typically low starting damage, but gain massive improvement upgrading to +5. Some weapons look like they triple in damage. I hadn't realized that their upgrade path was so much more than common and twinkling weapons. Until I hit the late game stuff, I just never had enough material to mess around with them. Seems like they are really geared for very late game and NG+. I've got a bow from one of the later enemies that I'm dying to use, but need to put some more points back into Faith to use it.

From the tone of yours and others posts, it certainly feels like it bothers some of you that this is a movement that has been happening. It wasn't my goal to put words in your mouth, but to show how the overall tone was coming off.

For the people who oppose retaking slut (or who don't understand why that would be a thing you would want to do), I'd like to see someone address the geek/nerd comment I had on the previous page. Here are two words that were used as pejoratives for OUR community. I don't think they were as bad as slut or racial slurs, but they were words used to bully generations of kids, to cast them as the other, to ostracize them. So why is it so hard to imagine another group retaking a pejorative used against them when our community did it with 2 different words, and in very short order? Do you think the redefining of these two words is ultimately a negative development that shouldn't have happened? And one other question no one has addressed: What positive slang word should sexually promiscuous people use to describe themselves? Should we make up a new one, or just change the connotation of an existing one? There may be one point of confusion here in regards to what people have done to change slut. There are kind of two separate movements. One is related to the Slutwalk stuff, which is really about trying to stop slut shaming, victim blaming, rape culture and sexual abuse. The other comes out of various non-traditional sexual communities and is about having a self-identifier that informs others about your attitude towards sex and promiscuity. While I understand both, I'm predominantly coming from a frame of reference related to the second one.

The last 20ish years, at a minimum. Embracing slut as a positive descriptor of sexuality is not that radically new. Why does it bother you so much that some people wish to use it in neutral or positive ways? What's a good slang term for someone who is promiscuous, and safe, healthy and happy with that decision? Just like what was mentioned earlier in this thread about how some races adopting a version of a racial slur is essentially a big middle-finger to the culture that repressed them, self-identifying as a slut is a big middle-finger to the sexually repressive elements of culture. You can also think about nerd and geek, two C-grade insults used to harass and bully a lot of people like us 20 years ago. Now these are badges of honor, words of self-identification, titles of pride. In a surprisingly short amount of times, these words went from having little to know positive connotations to being arguably the defining words of a generation. And look what happened to nerdy/geeky interests in that time. Comics, video games, fantasy. Out of the ghetto and into the mainstream. There are numerous examples of pejoratives switching sides.

What if it's a Star Wars Knitting Simulator, with lightsaber knitting hooks?!

Just wanted to weigh in on the chorus of Danielle love and say that she's always a welcome addition to the show.

On my most successful runs, I would only use my guns to disable whatever the most threatening system was, and then let my boarding crew take care of the rest.

I wouldn't necessarily count on that long term. If the games are compatible with other OSes and/or devices (if they don't require the higher specs of the Fire TV compared to similar devices), I think Amazon will be happy to sell games for the PC and other Android devices if they think that will be profitable.

I agree with that, I find it to be the least interesting form of combat, which is why it frustrates me that it is the most effective in many ways. I'm totally willing to self-impose limitations on myself by not allowing teleporters on some runs, but I don't think I ever beat normal (or maybe even easy) without them.

But it's only one season. I mean, if it were two seasons, then they would just call it two seasons. But duh, it's just one. Don't you understand corporate logic.

Why?

I was waiting for the announcement that she had joined Amazon Game Studios.