Ninety-Three

The man shot has been confirmed to be 18, the 13 figure apparently a rumour that took hold. Officers claim he fled a house where they were executing a search warrant, then pointed a gun at them. Also as far as I can tell there was only one person killed last night, no news mentions of anyone else. I'm going to go way out on a limb and suggest that tear gas was deployed not to avoid witnesses (of what?) but to disperse the object-throwing, Interstate-blocking protestors.

How is Hong Kong, is it pretty much more of the same? I'm interested in all the things it's trying to be, but Returns and Dragonfall were both pretty disappointing to me on all axes.

It worries me that they got Matt Damon for that movie. Not because I have anything against him as an actor, but because it seems like The Martian should be a slow, ~$5 million movie like Moon was. His presence makes me worry that they're going to Hollywoodize it and make it into some schlocky spectacle with mandatory crammed-in romance and all the other box-checking. I realize this going on a trek deep into speculation-land, but that's my fear.

Poor treatment of black people: Step 1: People are generally racist. Step 2: People are racist towards black jazz musicians as a subset of all black people. Step 3: Black jazz musicians don't receive the work/success/etc they deserve because of their skin colour. Cultural appropriation: Step 1: White musicians take up jazz. Step 2: Unencumbered by discrimination, they are met with success. There is no step 3*. Those things seem completely different and I'm baffled as to how they can seem the same to you. The white musicians definitely made more money than they would have if people weren't discriminating against black musicians, but the cultural appropriation argument alleges that their actions are causing harm when all they're doing is being nearby as society causes harm. *One could argue that Step 3 is "the audiences of black musicians go to white ones instead, depriving the black musicians of even more success", but this whole jazz tangent started over Gormungous' post that explicitly didn't attempt to do that, so for the purposes of this post I'm assuming it's not the case.

I'm really not. Why? Because society is super racist and denies black people their due in every field including music. White jazz musicians of course had more success because there were people who were willing to listen to jazz, but not from a black musician. I am on board with all of that. But all your jazz post demonstrated was "People were super racist against black jazz musicians, and white musicians took up jazz to greater success". The only link it establishes between cultural appropriation and the poor treatment of black musicians is that it shows the two things existed in the same place. There was no attempt to even suggest causality, hence my confusion. I never fucking said that! I never said anything even remotely like that! At every point in this discussion I have acknowledged that society does bad things to black people, and at no point in this discussion have I suggested that black people have a fair shot compared to white people. Where are you getting this!? Because it sure isn't from my posts.

I would have assumed this based on context, but within the post I see nothing except proximity linking the independent ideas of "white musicians started doing jazz" and "black jazz musicians were unsuccessful".

I'm not clear on what I'm supposed to be convinced of. You laid out a history of jazz and society denying success to black jazz musicians, which is perhaps a convincing argument for the statement "There was racial discrimination against black jazz musicians". Did you think I didn't already believe that, or was there another point that I totally missed?

The white person with an afro is a more conspicuous "sucks for you to be black" to black people with afros than is the white person with an undercut, sure. Are you saying that's why white people shouldn't wear afros? This isn't a gotcha but a request for clarification. Do you have evidence that white jazz musicians crowded out black ones? Economic analysis about the market share of black vs white jazz, that sort of thing? My response depends heavily on whether or not this is armchair economics (all too frequent in internet discussions).

That's a big statement to just present as true. I could just as easily say that white people with afros are actually helping by providing a data point that demonstrates afros are not necessarily dirty, thus reducing the likelihood that anyone (including black people) will be perceived as dirty for having an afro. Even accepting your statement, white people without afros are contributing to a dataset that says "afros are dirty and all those other hairstyles aren't so people with afros should wear something else". It's a no-win situation in which yes, afros technically do harm, but so does everything else. I see this argument a lot in these discussions and I'm really annoyed by it. It's technically true and completely misleading to say that white people with afros aren't helping. White people with undercuts aren't helping either. Yesterday I ate a sandwich and that didn't help. Nothing except specifically and actively addressing it will help, so it's absurd to complain that a particular action not designed to help isn't helping.

Ooh, I like that for brevity. "D minus" or "4/10. Apply yourself."

I had no idea there were licensing deals that worked like that. I assumed that they'd bought the right to make W&G games for X years (or the right to make X W&G games) and then sell those games forever. Is that the norm with limited licensing deals, or is W&G a weird exception?

So the core problem is that society has a tendency to view black people with afros as especially unkempt, dirty or even thuggish. However, society also has a tendency to view all black people as somewhat unkempt, dirty, or even thuggish. What cultural force perpetuates that stereotype? When I try to drill down into it, I ultimately end up with one of two answers: "Because humans have a tendency to think poorly of any out-group" or "Because someone said it once and it has become accepted". I'm not sure which is more accurate, probably some mix of both, and maybe something more that I didn't think of, but I feel that whatever it is, the exact same force perpetuates the double standard regarding afros. To come at it from another direction: How does a white person getting an afro perpetuate the societal notion that black people with afros are unkempt more than a white person getting an undercut? What exactly are they contributing to that notion?

I'm still interested in that discussion, so I've made a post over in the Social Justice thread where it's more on-topic. I encourage anyone not yet tired of this debate to go there.

Over in the Gamergate thread, a bunch of people including myself had very long disagreement about cultural appropriation (unfortunately it's a difficult discussion to follow because a user involved deleted some of their posts, everything was perfectly civil, long irrelevant story). The discussion stalled out a bit, another topic came up, and since it was off topic in the first place, it was left unresolved. I'm still interested in the topic, and it seems that some others are as well, so I'm making this post to continue that discussion. For the record, I shall be arguing against cultural appropriation being harmful. The beginning of those tweets is a sentiment that popped up previously in the discussion, and I think it's projecting. I'm not defensive. I've never been accused of cultural appropriation, nor can I think of anything I do that would be deemed cultural appropriation. When I discuss specific examples, I tend to use examples I have no personal stake in. Many of the people I see arguing against cultural appropriation are similarly not defensive, they're simply disagreeing. The reaction tends to get characterized as defensive because these discussions often start with "That thing you're doing is bad." "No it's not." To respond to one of the tweets that I most objected to: Why do you feel like people can deny you access to their fashions? The inventor of the undercut* can't go around telling anyone that they shouldn't get undercuts, so it seems equally absurd to me when someone tries to deny access to the afro. To say "white people shouldn't get afros", one should have to demonstrate how it is harmful, and that's something I feel hasn't been done. *This example may be undermined by some specific detail about undercuts that I failed to consider, but I trust you can see the point I'm trying to make. There is a hairstyle for which my argument works, so if it's not the undercut, pretend I said the right one instead. I get that society frowns on black people with afros in ways it doesn't frown upon white people with afros, and that sucks, but to restate the point I reached in the other thread: Have I reached the point in the cultural appropriation debate where I have an irreconcilable core disagreement (benefiting from double standards doesn't perpetuate them), or do those on the other side of the argument think I'm still missing something?

How do you criticize a pun? The language around puns has warped to the point where "That pun is awful" doesn't convey the same meaning as "That 'your mom' joke is awful", so how do you convey that meaning? Today I encountered a pun that was poorly constructed and I had to spend a small paragraph documenting the pun's flaws to avoid my comments being misconstrued as an appreciation of the pun. Is there anything you can say that's similar to the brevity of "That 'your mom' joke is awful"?

Spoiler, but it's information from ep 2: Rachel's been gone for a while, the thing with Kate is implied to be quite recent (I'm not sure they ever say exactly, I got the impression it was not yesterday, but single digit days).

Yeah, I responded to just the first bit. The one time I don't bother to quote someone's post.

But if the game doesn't react, why does it matter? For instance, I felt clever about correctly naming the killer until I learned that the game would have given it to me anyway if I'd been wrong. It made me think "Well that was pointless". Knowing that, I wouldn't care about the difference between me choosing the right killer and my cat walking across the keyboard while I played to choose the wrong killer. I guess the core question is "What do you get out of making an unacknowledged choice?"

I have this problem with all the TT games, but for what it's worth, it wasn't quite as bad with Wolf. I think the critical difference is that TWD needed you to care about things and stakes, while Wolf kind of functions as a mystery novel, still able to be interesting even if you're not invested. I really don't understand how you can see the game not reacting to you and not have that be a huge problem. If you understand that the game isn't reacting to your choices, do you get anything out of playing the game that you wouldn't get from watching someone else's Let's Play of it?

That's correct. Even in Ep 5 when you're asked to name the killer. It's notionally the culmination of your investigation, but if you get it wrong, the game will just tell you who it was: your deduction doesn't matter at all. It really is a mystery novel, emphasis on novel, because despite being technically a game, you're really just there to watch events unfold. The dialog tries to let you play a role for Bigby (corrupt asshole, loose cannon who doesn't play by the rules, somewhat good guy), but the game never recognizes and responds to the role you've picked. Sure it will occasionally call back to a choice you made, but it's just a callback, "Hey, remember that time you made that choice? I sure do." By the end you can have solidly established Bigby as fitting one of the roles above, but no one changes their basic reactions to him, there's no dialogue written for "If Bigby is overall an asshole", just a bunch of case-by-case "If Bigby was an asshole this one time" bits. To complain about particular a scene, the trial at the end attracts a lot of well-deserved criticism, but I hated the big fight scene in the factory. It felt like they were trying to be an action movie (not action game, an action movie), but the fight choreography was terrible, they took punches on the chin with no sense of impact and no sense of who was winning or losing, there were tons of enemies in the scene and 90% of them stood still and politely waited their turn, and of course, quicktime event fights are garbage.

Heavy bullets is out of EA, and currently on sale for 75% off. I beat the game in three hours, and I don't foresee myself replaying it a hundred times like a Spelunky, but it's good fun and has got some replay value. The enemies are well-designed and I love the mechanic of having to retrieve your bullets after you fire them, but it feels like the game allowing you to get a lot of extra bullets undermines that system. I spent most of my game-winning playthrough with 21 bullets and not once did I have to go out of my way to conserve bullets to avoid running out in combat, nor did I ever have to retrieve bullets in combat.

I can't believe I forgot this one. The original Hamidon raid in City of Heroes. The raid wasn't that fun to actually do, but I love it because it was essentially a puzzle boss without prescribed solutions. The raid throws a ridiculously strong set of enemies at the players and challenges them not to win with sheer strength of arms, but with clever ways to mitigate the incoming damage. It took players weeks and four separate breakthroughs to figure the whole thing out, and the story of how the whole raid works is a great one. Once the players finally beat it, the developers told us that we hadn't beaten it in the way they expected. We never did figure out what method the developers used. I still like to recall the raid and try to figure out how they might have done it differently.

My ignorance of Second Life is showing, but I assume that it's possible to mark your house as private so that strangers can't just wander in (I can't imagine the game lacks such a basic function). Similarly, I assume there's an option to boot unwanted players from your house. If that's the case, opting not to mark a virtual space as private seems like implicitly granting permission. If someone creates any sort of content and then uploads it to the public-facing internet, it's hardly reasonable for them to complain about people viewing it, and I see a Second Life house the same way. I think any expectation of privacy comes from people thinking of it the same way as physical houses, but as you pointed out, that parallel doesn't work because a trespasser in your virtual house can't steal your possessions or assault you. Speaking of stealing, virtual spaces and social rules, this has reminded me of an interesting example from the MMO City of Heroes. Necessary background: It's a fairly standard PVE combat-focused MMORPG, player versus player combat is restricted to certain zones dedicated to that. In some of these PVP zones, players can perform a series of PVE tasks to gather resources which are used to acquire certain powerful one-use abilities. These abilities are desirable enough that players uninterested in PVP will visit the PVP zones to attempt to acquire them. If another player kills you in a PVP zone, all of those resources you gathered in that zone are transferred to your killer. This is a case where the game mechanics are built to encourage stealing. What's interesting is the behaviour that emerged. Usually if someone is wandering through a PVP zone and they spot another player, they will start a fight (even in the zones where there are no resources to be stolen, people just like to fight). However, I played the game for a long time, and I started to notice an unspoken code of conduct. If a player saw another player engaged in the resource gathering tasks, they were far less likely to attack than if their target was simply wandering the streets. Sometimes I'd see someone pass by a resoruce gathering player and give them a wave of the hand or a salute, behaviour I never once saw when resource gathering wasn't involved. The game incentivized theft, and yet knowing the other person would lose their resources made people less willing to attack. How do you feel about the ethics of stealing from someone in that scenario? The game makes it clear to players that they can be stolen from and that it's an intentional mechanic, everyone present is opting in to the system, and yet many people still prefer not to steal.

I tried to get into Netrunner by playing a few games with a friend who's familiar with it, and wow was it unpleasant. I had a bunch of UI issues with it (like the constant unexplained symbols on cards or how they renamed all the basic terms like "hand" and "deck" into terms so vague that I kept having to ask "So does that one mean hand or deck again?"), but beyond that the gameplay was just fucking miserable. In my first game as a runner, I had one kind of icebreaker, the corp had a different kind of ice, and I didn't get to do anything for the entire game because I couldn't draw the right icebreaker to save my life. In my first game as a corp, I couldn't draw any money-generating cards, so I just got wrecked because I was perpetually broke. In my second game as a runner, the corp basically didn't put up a fight and I rolled over it. There was another game where I couldn't draw any money-makers, and it felt like I just lost because the other side did draw a money-maker and so their clicks were worth twice as much. Then there was a game where I walked into an early trap that was indistinguishable from an agenda and it put me so far behind that I felt like I should just concede there (I played it out and as expected, the corp was way ahead on resources and I barely got to interact with them for the rest of the game). It felt like the game was extremely draw-dependent and swingy: At any particular point in the game, 15% of my deck is cards that would be incredible and five times better than any other card, and 50% of my deck is (in the current situation) useless garbage. It was also a game that was miserable to lose: every loss (that wasn't due to an inability to draw basic crucial cards) was about getting slowly ground into dust by my opponent's unassailable resource advantage. I'm not here to shit on the game (although would it have killed the designers to just call it "deck" and "hand"?) because the amount of positivity in this thread has convinced that despite my experience, the game is not actually a finely calibrated misery engine designed by Satan himself. How does one get into Netrunner? The way I tried was apparently wrong, so if I'm going to give the game another chance, how do I go about doing it?

Did the game ever introduce a time mechanic that would have punished you from going back to town after every fight to rest? If not, I'm curious to try a party of six wizards who fire off all their neat dailies every fight to spice up the combat.