Griddlelol

I read the title as Pederasty Corner. Kinda disappointed, in the least gross way possible.

The UK crime commissioner candidates had party affiliations - only one per party was allowed to stand, which I find particularly ridiculous. Many of them weren't even ex-police officers. Schools in the UK also drive me insane. Many are highly politicised or with very strong religious connections which I find rather gross. There are even some Islamc schools under review at the moment because they refuse to hire women into positions of authority (i.e. anything higher than cleaner or teaching assistant - only male teachers). Not to mention their incredibly poor education. Similarly there are awful, awful Christian schools, but they're not in the news so much.

I find the whole idea of police officials being elected rather foreign. In the UK it was originally all internal, however they've recently politicised it and had the first police commissioner election 2 years ago. I don't really like the idea of the police being linked to a party, it makes much more sense if they're separate from partisan politics and just uphold whatever laws are in place at the time, without bias. Britain is slowly becoming Americanised without any thought put into it. I don't see the need for more people to be elected, just choose the ones who are best at their job - i.e. best at organising and managing a police force. As soon as political affiliation come into it, there's quite a large chance that a poor candidate will be chosen just thanks to the local area's party affiliation. I guess it boils down to the shit parts of democracy. How could I, or anyone not remotely involved with police work really understand who is the best candidate? Yet my vote is equal to a specialist in the area. People can make an informed (or biased) decisions, whereas those in the job actually know who's the best.

That's a bummer! I'm a little stuck on MGS right now. I've got to freeze/heat the keys. The idea of finding the furnace again just seems impossible. It's crazy how many quality of life changes new games have compared to older. Just a map would be fantastic.

I played this in early access and had another go last night. Urgh! I like it a lot, it's just the whole game fills me with fear and dread. I find it incredibly stressful to play, constantly looking out for enemies that are tough as nails. I think I'd enjoy it more if there was a coop option so that the whole experience was lightened a little, and it wasn't just me freaking out at every noise or shadow.

Unfortunately, if it's not published, I can't post it. I think if I gave out any data and someone found it and copies it my boss would kill me. Not likely, but not worth the risk! The cool thing about cells is that ethics committees don't really mind what you do. Animals on the other hand are a different issue...so here's a picture of a section from a mouse lung. Different cells are stained red or green with the nuclei blue.

I thought I'd join in on the "pictures of tiny things" and post hundreds of pictures taken over about half an hour. Unfortunately my skill with a camera is pretty weak, but my skill with a microscope... What you're seeing is a receptor moving from the cytoplasm of a few cells to the nucleus after drug addition. Unfortunately I can't post my more interesting gifs, but this one's pretty cool!

I finished Tearaway! I'm too tired to write much about it, other than it's rad. A lot of love was put into making that game and it should have shifted a lot of Vitas. Oh well, at least some people got to experience the incredible creativity that went into that. I mean, they managed to get use out of the rear and front cameras on the Vita. Who the hell thought a portable gaming device needed two cameras? Yet MediaMolecule manage to get use out of them both.

I seriously feel like it's a negative overall though. I can deal with someone calling me a faggot every 5 seconds or telling me they're going to rape my mother (both real world examples from about 6 years ago), however making genuine friends heavily outweighs the name calling in my opinion. Not to mention being able to tell people they're doing something wrong. I've recently tried Warframe (scratching that Destiny itch until it comes out), and on one boss I revived people about 25+ times because one dude kept trying to melee the boss only to be instantly killed every time. I had to pause the game, type out with a PS4 controller "dont melee" and then get back in. It just kills the flow and really makes tactical play difficult. If I, and everyone else had been using mics, it would have been so much simpler. Didn't help that my PS4 mic doesn't seem to work on Warframe, or I'd have just quickly plugged it in. Even in WoW PUG groups for raids, it was mandatory more often than not to enter a mumble or ventrillo server, even if you couldn't talk, just to hear orders/updates.

That applies to me too. I miss the days of people constantly talking in multiplayer games. Of course the trade off is now we have less kids screaming obscenities.

I gave up on Dream Team too. It was the over tutorialization and constant babying just got on my nerves. The combat was pretty fun, but it was so sparse. The game felt like walking and then getting a tutorial followed by some really lame exposition (seriously, did they think people would care about the story?) I think played for about 5 hours and they were STILL explaining to me what to do.

The only evidence I have for the first statement is after doing the idle thumbs survey, it said that 95% of the members were similar to me (saying it's the most homogeneous was exaggeration, I have no evidence for that! I just thought 95% white male was pretty darn high.) I don't really know if other podcasts don't have similar demographics - like I said in the post; traditional gaming media tends to have a more male following any way, so it wouldn't surprise me if they do. The other statement about Giant Bomb's readership isn't backed up by anything more than anecdotes from visiting their forums, and of course more members = more diversity by simple statistics.

I think the "most diverse" games podcast out there that I've listened to is Daft Souls. It's a good listen, and one of the usual guests Keza MacDonald (she used to work for IGN UK and now for Kotaku UK) pointed out something quite important. Most females don't get their information about games from traditional gaming media, like sites and magazines and to a lesser extent I assume podcasts (although she didn't mention that). Rather they get it from things like Tumblr and social media. Obviously there's no causal link known, but they postulated that traditionally those sites/magazines are fronted by men and so could be off putting. I don't know if I agree with their assessment as much of the people behind these things aren't really known more than words on a page to the casual reader. Also I'm not sure that being fronted by a man is enough to put off tons of people. It's probably more to do with women and girls preferring social media to standard media, but I'm just guessing there.

So how's the play-through going? I recently picked up MGS 1 for my vita and man is that game tough! I've made it further than I ever got before and I'm really enjoying it. Unfortunately I had to use a guide at one point (getting the sniper rifle). I totally get metal gear solid games now though, took a while for it to click for me, but it just did.

I found it quite ironic after doing the idle thumbs survey that one of the most progressive diverse gaming podcasts (that one queer lady in the past few months makes it such is pretty sad) has probably the most homogeneous following out there. Giant Bomb has a shitton of female listeners but is exclusively run by white dudes. I guess if you're a niche within a niche it's hard to get a diverse following.

I still like the first game the most, just because it was something new to me. This one is technically better in pretty much every way though. I also like that the story isn't stupid over the top, you're out to save your tribe and a city. Every bit as pointless as I thought it would.

I finished INfamous Second Son. It's pretty ok, I even bothered to get the Platinum Trophy for no good reason other than I've never had a platinum trophy before. So I guess I enjoyed it enough. Not a lot to say on it other than it's a competent game and can be fun at times.

Thinking is good! I also enjoy discussion, it's made me question why I laugh. I still think if more people laughed about themselves the world would be a better place.

You certainly have a point, but I think whenever I'm laughing, it's rarely at a person and more likely the thing they did. Obviously I've laughed maliciously at people before, I'm by no means perfect, but in this example it's more that it just seems the most natural response. I'm not really thinking about why things are funny, sometimes they just are, analysis kinda kills comedy. Other than being turned on, is there really another appropriate response other than laughing to erotic Sonic fan fiction? (Bad joke if that wasn't clear.)

I think the part of that article that hit me the most was where the author talked about privileged people not believing accusations of harassment. I know I've felt that way sometimes, partly because of what the author says - it's hard to believe that could happen and someone could get away with it. The idea that justice should prevail. Also, personally I find it really difficult to believe someone could do something like that. I just can't understand the thought process behind sexual or malicious harassment. I feel awful and kinda gross, luckily no one has ever come to me with stuff like that. It's definitely something I'll work on from now.

I completely understand where you're coming from, I guess maybe it's a sensitivity matter. I firmly believe that anything can be made fun of - kinda like Twig said. Just as long as you're not marginalising people or prohibiting them from doing something. Mocking each other is basically usual banter for my college and high school buddies. I don't thinking joking about something detracts from the seriousness of the thing, or means the thing being made fun of is wrong or right. The whole laughing at/with is a very hard distinction to make in this (and any) context. Some of those people may be taking what they do incredibly seriously in which case it'd be impossible to "laugh with" (although I'd argue to me that'd make it more funny especially the idea of serious Sonic porn). However, the person interviewed in the article seemed to be part of the "scene" so I don't know if that sort of avoids the laughing at. It's almost impossible to define laughing at/with. Is it OK to laugh if someone trips on the street? I mean technically it's laughing at, but I've sure tripped up loads and laughed at myself on some occasions. Sometimes it's good to be laughed at, it puts things into perspective and humbles you a little. I dunno, I'm rambling now. I just find a lot of dumb stuff funny! You're second point is fair. The article didn't really say anything positive, but I didn't find it particularly judgemental. It's hard to say something positive about something you find hilarious other than the rather boring and transparent "hey! at least they're enjoying themselves."

I dunno, I think people need to relax a little when it comes to joking about weird things people like. Growing up my friends and I always ripped on each other for stupid things we liked, it didn't mean we believed anyone shouldn't like, or was wrong for liking things. To me the piece didn't seem to be even hinting at these people being gross, but more was just a "isn't it funny what some people will do with a cartoon?" vibe. There's also a huge difference between marginalising a group of people due to genetics and chuckling about people using characters from a 90's game in porn today. I guess my point is that it's ok to laugh at people weird stuff, just don't be a dick about it. Nothing in that article was mean from what I read, and I found myself laughing mostly at the idea of interviewing a rather reluctant Sonic fan art "expert" than anything else.

Has anyone here moved from Europe (or the UK specifically) to the US for a job? I'm coming to the end of my contract here and I'm intrigued by someone at the University of California Irvine who might have a position (if I get my research published soon). Is it a massive pain in the ass? Are you at a big disadvantage not being a citizen while living/working in the US?

That's really important. In WoW I played a Rogue, and used to do my "daily dungeon finder" before any of my friends would be on. You'd get a lot of newbie tanks in there wanting a fast queue so I would spend a lot of time coaching them in whisper chat so no one would know they were lost. Having an aggro redirect was incredibly useful when playing with newbies. Helping people new to a game is actually really rewarding. They generally appreciate it a lot, and you can make friends quite quickly like that. My WoW guild had a ton of people who were new to the game and even though we were a hardcore PvP guild, we'd all make time to help them out with questions or tasks. It also lead to some very funny situations with players who were clearly children, not realising they were in a guild full of twenty-to-forty-somethings. I think the key thing to remember is that sometimes people just have bad days and can get frustrated at you for what may seem like a stupid reason. Also if there's a group of people it's generally better to talk to someone rude one-on-one as it tends to diffuse the situation rather quickly once they realise you're a person like them, just trying to have fun with a game.

Ah, Danielle is http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/31/5956683/sonic-boom-bad-sonic-fan-art'>the best.