Undeadpool

Precisely! (also glad you got my point) I grew up as a kind of bridging Gen-X/Millennial (born in the 80s to two parents in their mid-30s who had both been very different parts of "free love" and major progressive movements) and, as a result, my sex ed was kind of bridging the gap too. More was known about AIDS, but we still had speakers coming into our schools telling us "If you see blood, DON'T TOUCH IT! It might have AIDS" and that's BARELY hyperbolic. I 100% endorse the notion that right-wing religious movements had a HUGE impact on how we did and do perceive sex in this country as a society, my point simply was that stopping the conversation there is reductive, lazy and a little dangerous. Also: I fear I am threadjacking unintentionally (usually you pay double for that action) from what is a legitimate discussion going on, so I'd personally like to wind this down with this post...

And I'm not even religious and was raised secular, I just think that blaming religion for all of modern society's ills, or even the majority of them, is reductive and often used a smokescreen for a form of intellectual elitism coupled with laziness. People have begun to conflate merely NOT believing in God (or whatever else) with critical thinking. Whereas belief or not, thought without CRITICAL thought tends to be incredibly dangerous. And honestly? My business partner is about 15 years older than me and you wanna know one of the massive things that led to the current American view on sex? The misinformation and delusion around the AIDS epidemic. It sounds like a minor thing, but that event demonized sex to a massive extent. The path from "caution" to "full-on demonization" was so short that the culture HONESTLY has not recovered. I'm not saying that there's NO religious background to anti-sex crap, what I'm saying is that it's a lot more new than it at first seems. I wasn't presenting it as "correct and awesome" and I never actually said that, I was merely making the point that the Puritans weren't as backward and buttoned-up about sex as they're mostly portrayed as. I guess I'm saying contrast that with the idea in the 1980s and '90s that the female orgasm might be a MYTH, or that the MPAA won't even allow depictions of women enjoying sex without an R or NC-17 rating. See above. I wasn't saying much of anything about how women should or shouldn't feel about it, I'm talking about their view toward sex. I never said "Everything about this is correct," I was just pointing it out to contrast pure sex, not gender roles, of then VS now. Edit: I get that a lot of this thread has been about sexism, and rightly so, and I also get that I might be coming off a little more defensively than I'm either meaning to or should, and I get that on a LOT of internet message boards that means I'm overcompensating, but in this case I'm just feeling a bit piled-on. Again: I'm not saying the Puritans were 100% correct, ESPECIALLY in their views on women. These are people who had witch trials (which has a weird resurgence in modern pop culture), I was just taking an example of how strong religious belief doesn't always equate to extremely regressive sexual politics, though there's also an argument to be made that the two shouldn't be separated. At the same time: It WASN'T a wild idea at the time, but oddly if you ask modern media examples, the idea of a woman orgasming being a regular thing still IS a wild idea.

Not terribly. People talk about a "puritanical" view on sex, and sure the Puritans had some backward-ass ideas, but they also believed in being open about sex with kids and wild ideas like: if a woman doesn't orgasm during conception, the children are more likely to be born with birth defects, or generally be weak and sickly. A lot of the "modern" view of sex, and the role of women began in the 1950s, ebbed and flowed through the '60s and '70s, then took a large, large downturn in the 1990s. Too many people in positions of power believed the "problem" of female portrayal in the media was solved after the glorious tropes of 90s pop culture, so they flat-out stopped trying, but now I'm off on something of a tangent. I guess my main point is that, much like religion is the shortest path to making groups of people act stupidly, blaming religion itself for people acting stupidly is something of a shortest path itself.

Just got into the Cathedral for the first time, though it seemed to happen on a random trigger as I haven't even unlocked Sheol. That final boss at the end of it is nothin' to screw with. Wish I hadn't burnt all my regular hearts into the Soul variety in the Mom's Heart battle... I'm finding that if I use Samson, I almost always make it to Mom's Heart and beat it more often than not. Probably Azazel is 2nd place with Magdalene 3rd and then a hodgepodge after that. Just unlocked "???" and beyond the challenge of playing as him, I do NOT get the appeal of him. Also: I get that luck is visible, but the ticks in all the stats don't actually seem to correspond 1:1 to increases/decreases as I have ZERO luck with Lazarus and a TON of luck with Isaac, despite them having the same stats. Also really, REALLY getting into the "metaplot" and implications this time around. Is there any kind of database of confirmed plot stuff, or is it 100% headcanon and speculation?

That in and of itself is likely PART of the propaganda. You can't appear to be in the lead or "winning" in a war of words/information or people tend to get apathetic and listless. It has to be a constant uphill battle 100% of the time if actual lives aren't on the line. You have to be an underdog, otherwise you're part of the "machine." Even if, as a white heterosexual male in America (which is why you ALWAYS hear the narrative of global white oppression during things like WAR ON CHRISTMAS or CHRISTIANITY UNDER ATTACK IN AMERICA??? media narratives), you are about the furthest thing from an underdog.

It is REAL funny reading the comments on those patchnotes. They go from positive, to some complaining, to people FROTHING AT THE MOUTH over how much Edmund "gets off" on artificial difficulty for not re-kajiggering enemies that damage you by appearing/burrowing on you so they don't do that. Even though that, clearly, would be incredibly difficult because of the fact that your character can MOVE. Now I'm no ultra-elite player, I'm not even that good, but I've had that happen...maaaaaaybe thrice in 60+ hours of gameplay?? Also in all my hours of the original on PC, I never realized that Samson's bloodlust is for the entire floor and not just as long as he has low HP. He is officially my favorite now.

Whole lot harder without a leader. Why anyone could say ANYthing in the name of "the cause" and NO ONE would be able to object to it!

Tell me about it, it's almost all just "REFERENCE TO WHATEVER THE ARTICLE'S ABOUT!" "REPLY REFERENCE TO THAT REFERENCE!" "RANDOM SIMPSONS REFERENCE!"

In that case, you are 100% CORRECT! I might not agree with all of Cracked's recent...practices, but one of the most INTERESTING articles recently was comparing the MRA movement (this was a pre-GG world) with the skinheads. With a contributing writer who is an ex-skinhead who now works to educate people and fight racism. At one point in the article, AN EX-SKINHEAD WAS RENDERED SPEECHLESS BY MRA FORUMS. He also confirms that it's almost 1:1 on recruiting tactics. And sadly, as someone who was VERY close to falling into this trap (I am SO GLAD things like twitter, reddit and 4chan either weren't around or I didn't know about them when I was in jr high/high school/early college. LORDY I was a crappier person then) I can echo the fact that education is what's truly needed before crap like this gets calcified. Let's all take a moment and appreciate Terry Crews...

The show's diverted enough and in such major ways that I'll keep on keeping on. I'm honestly not sure WHAT they could reveal at this point that be legitimately "shocking," besides major character deaths. The show's not perfect, but it's entertaining as hell and a DAMN good adaptation (something I think more people need to become aware of).

I understand the impulse, but anti-bullying may not be enough in this case as nerds, in their own mind AND in pop culture, CANNOT be framed as bullies. Look at this entire thing, you think these people sending pictures of mutilated animals, threatening violence, and trying to drive a specific set of people out of an industry as BULLIES? They're not BULLIES! They're FREEDOM FIGHTERS! This is why things like representation and diversity are important and need to become the new "normal." It's a big tent, there's plenty of room, and when people are more well represented they aren't seen as "the other."

So here's the thing about the party dialog: there's a bug that's apparently one of the most nefarious ever crafted (Bioware is soliciting user savegames because of how hard it is to reproduce) that causes the party "banter" (where characters chat within the party, but there's no dialog tree) to almost never trigger. Devs say it's supposed to trigger every 10-20 minutes outside of combat and people are reporting anywhere from "every few hours" to "never." It's also apparently accompanied by the music either dropping out or never starting. I didn't even know there WAS music for every map until I realized my party was being oddly silent.

This MIGHT be the most infuriating part about those whole...debate is such a generous word...this whole THING (I mean besides the rampant threats and ludicrous levels of denial) the notion that internet and gaming culture USED to be more inclusive. But it HAS to be framed this way, it's ALWAYS been framed this way. Nerds have always seen themselves as the place where the "outsider" can be welcomed, but that's a crock. Looking back on my high school years, at the time I felt like my friends and I were "the outsiders" but of COURSE we weren't! We had each other! We had a functional, fairly large friend group! The REAL outsiders were the kids you were legitimately afraid might bring a knife or a gun to school, the kids who were always ALONE. I'm not saying nerds never get picked on or ostracized, but the notion that they were "all-inclusive" has ALWAYS been a work of fiction. Like that friend who's constantly offering you a couch to crash on knowing full well you'll never take them up on it: it sounds good, it makes them seem like a good person, and it requires ZERO accountability. "We're all inclusive but many of our most influential writers include flagrant racism and misogyny in their most famous works! You just have to read AROUND that stuff, I mean if it's easy for ME, a white heterosexual male, why can't EVERYone do it?? Why don't you want to be INCLUDED???"

I spent a huge chunk of my weekend playing this, I mean really sunk my teeth in in a way that I haven't done with a game in a LONG time and I am absolutely hooked. Maybe it's because I've had an amazingly cool Nemesis experience and been surprised by my own reactions TO it. How something so SIMPLE as having an enemy both remember you and make specific references to your past encounters has enriched my feelings on the game and that character SO much. The world's not terribly big, but I'm actually very, very okay with that. I'd rather have a small world filled with content than a vast one that feels empty or takes forever to traverse. I think the combat is simplified enough over something like an Arkham with its myriad gadgets that I almost never use. I'm about 50% through the story content and 40% through overall and while the ambient dialog hasn't been as customized as I've hoped, I find that I can't stop playing.

To quote a Song of Ice and Fire (wrong thread, I know) : Just so.

This is yet another example of the kind of projection people talk about in this "movement." For the purest example: you see them claim that men only stand with women because they want to "get laid/noticed." And these tend to be the same guys who whine about getting "friendzoned" after doing nice things for a woman they know and she has the GALL to not put out. They only do things to get sex and assume those are other people's motivations.

What's the over/under on this having the COMPLETELY unintended consequence of shining a light on the shitty ways that women are treated both within the industry and from consumers? This stuff all used to be fairly under the radar (which is one reason some people who aren't overtly awful think that this is making much of a "non-problem") and now there's mainstream news coverage of these rocket scientists threatening Emma Watson. When sexism (or racism, or really any negative -ism) is subtle, it's most dangerous because the average person won't see or encounter it. When it's THIS overt, no one can sit on the fence because it's so very obvious. That last part is not surprising to me, Hardwick is actually one of the few men to have his "nerd cred" questioned out of the gate since, I guess, he's a reasonably handsome dude who got famous on MTV. So he can't POSSIBLY be a "real" geek. It wouldn't surprise me if, for that alone, he's sympathetic (aside from just being a decent person).

Oh my GOD! It's you! THE CHOSEN ONE!!

Fiancee got me a "fixed head razor" (the blade goes between the two leftmost parts) for my birthday a couple of years ago and I've NEVER looked back. It's only one blade, one is truly all you need, and you just buy bulk razor blades (about 10 to a $1 pack). The blades last a LONG time since water (and the rust it causes) accounts for almost all of blades getting dull and it dries quickly. I get a SUPER close shave with it and still haven't run through my second pack of blades.

A THOUSAND times this. Going back and watching those old episodes, some of which I've seen multiple times, there are STILL jokes I don't get. And multi-layered jokes (I got that "Chairman Moe's Magic Wok" was funny because Moe had wanted American cooking, but it took my most recent viewing to realize it's ALSO a riff on Chairman Mao) that are funny when you get them and even FUNNIER when you GET them. I can't say what the nadir is (we may not have reached it), but I'll tell you what my breaking point was: Marge was doing something with cooking in the A plot and Homer was remodeling the house in the B plot. Homer realizes a wall has to come down and takes a running start at it with a sledge hammer. He breaks the wall open, hitting a fuse box, electrocuting himself and HURLING himself across the room. He slowly, stammeringly, stands up, shakes himself off and triumphantly declares "And now to do the EXACT same thing AGAIN!" and does...the exact same thing...again... I just sat there, dumbfounded. It was a bad setup. A bad payoff. A bad swerve at the end. And they chose to HIGHLIGHT it.

Patrick put up a video Q&A about it (though it was Premium which...I get it, but it's still a bit disappointing) and he and Alex talked for 10-15 minutes on their Friday morning show. Which was, of course, BEFORE all the Quinn stuff.

That might go to explain why it seems to have dried up INCREDIBLY quickly, though I somewhat dread the police doing little to nothing since it's an internet crime against a non-mainstream celebrity. Which would only EMBOLDEN these freakshows. There are a couple of political forums I frequent (less and less of late) and I see the same thing ALL the time. THAT'S how low the level of political discourse has sunk both on the internet and in America in general. Also: talk about Poe's Law, Zoe's ex may be the LEAST self-aware man on the PLANET.

The original was a real sleeper hit for me, and after playing, getting hooked, leaving, coming back and actually BEATING it, then getting hooked all over again, I am certainly ready to love/despair once more. One of the things that always impressed me about the game was its implicit style of storytelling. Almost nothing is told, but there's plenty implied and it allows for some very out there stuff, interpretation-wise. And VITA?! Hot diggity! I've got myself a NEEEEW commute game!

You're doin' God's work, son (no idea if you're younger than me, or even male, but the quote just doesn't work the same otherwise). I kinda figured (hoped) this would peter out RIGHT around the time things like REAL attention and scrutiny was paid to it. I mean it was obviously started by Trolls Without Goals, but a lot of people seemingly jumped on (and many RIGHT back off) thinking there was some real purpose behind it. It's a similar reason you see skinheads beating up on KKK members: you can't fuel something on hate alone. After the initial rush of sophomoric rage wears off, you realize you're surrounded by people it turns out you don't actually agree with all that much. Not that that'll stop it altogether, unfortunately, and I shudder to think of the creative minds we may have lost, both present and future, but it IS somewhat satisfying to see them lose something in the same breath they declared victory.

...based on the author's own admissions of his predilections...I can't imagine why is novels are so........TOP-heavy.......... <teehee> Seriously, though, I thought his food descriptions were a tad overwritten and THEN I bought "A Feast of Ice and Fire," the cook book based on the dishes in the novels. Holy. Crap. I've never eaten so well with relatively LITTLE effort (though a LARGE initial cash infusion to get all the proper spices). Also: I'll TOTALLY check out that collection. I just finished book 5, after marathoning all of them, so I'm looking for some palette cleansing. Currently reading Sirens of Titan, but I want to go back to Martin.