Nachimir

I've stopped engaging, because that seems like the best way to make it stop. Even very sincere, calm, clever people like PixieJenni are ending up getting abuse heaped on them (her ability to engage calmly for so many weeks is amazing to me). When people with issues well outside of GG are getting involved for PR, and others are then doing stuff like posting a syringe full of something to Milo (much as he's a scumbag, and was described to me by one journalist as "a real fucking piece of work"), then it's all too mental and has attracted too many sociopaths and opportunists from various angles. Gaters see anyone arguing for social justice as complicit with people doing that sort of stuff to Milo, yet through their own sincerity feel remote from the abusive people at 4chan who were documented starting GG as a movement while revelling in rape threats/fantasies. Demarcating clear sides at this point seems unproductive. Much as we told gaters "Don't associate or be complicit with abuse, and if you care about press ethics wait for this to blow over then bring it up", trying to push things like, say, the documented fact the campaign started with targeted abuse then astroturf over the top feels like it'll be a more productive and impactful thing once GG loses its momentum. They're not making any of the inroads with advertisers and sponsors they thought they were, it's not targeting any actual corruption, it'll ablate the more sensible followers and leave a few cultural trigger words in its wake. I thought that momentum loss was going to happen weeks before now though

It comes from him misunderstanding complicity. Greg raises that he (the gater) is complicit with a movement that includes people who make these kind of threats and are abusive, and he takes that to be an accusation that he's personally doing these things, rather than ignoring/tacitly supporting them. I think misunderstanding of complicity is one of the biggest problems in GG. Supporters seem to think "I'm sincere, therefore this accusation of astroturfing is bullshit", "I don't make threats and neither do the people I know, therefore this movement is not abusive", etc.

It's probably impossible to represent accurately or perhaps mine at all, but I'd really like to see a venn diagram showing people who've argued "video games shouldn't have politics or social issues in them!" and people who've argued "video games are art f u roger ebert!"

I'm not inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. I think a bunch of people making fence-sitty statements feel somewhat trapped by their audiences, but not TB. Also, an excellent Wondermark strip kind of related to my experience of Twitter this past month.

The emoticons here are fine. They allow me to perfectly express the emotion

It seems really good for imagery, for which I've really been enjoying following Hogg and Cabbibo. Shift+1, shift+5 and shift+0 all do useful things to the layout/visible notifications. For all it's flaws, the primary thing Ello has underlined to me is that I'm really tired of people rushing to have lengthy, important opinions about any new thing on the internet. This isn't in reference to anyone in this thread. More the windy articles floating about Twitter ranging from "It's design is so gauche" to "I LIKED ELLO LAST WEEK BUT NOW IT CAN GO FUCK ITSELF FOREVER". Possibly the saddest thing is a friend who said "Oh, I forgot that new social networks are basically loads of random guys following me because I'm a woman". Minutes later she blocked a rando on Twitter who @ed her with "Follow me xxx". Ello could really do with working on those privacy features.

My recommendations are 70% "Games you intentionally didn't buy". I've been busy working on a show while this has been announced, and several developers have pestered me to make a curation page. I haven't yet, because it's something I want to think about more.

This. The message will generally reach more men by not lecturing them on privilege or bringing it up straight on. Building empathy is rarely a road to Damascus moment, it's slow change. I've had so many patient conversations about privilege with other white guys. Some really understand but haven't had a clue before and want to improve. Some respond with denial, and some respond by just locking down in shame. It feels like that writer is picking on the fact that Emma's speech wasn't the whole truth, but the problem with unvarnished truth is that it doesn't necessarily have the impact you want or expect it to, or maybe any at all. I think the critique really goes off the rails at the point it starts talking about false equivalency. Pointing out aspects of a thing does not falsely equate them. It's an aspect of inequality that men are hurt by it too, even if not anywhere near as much, and if you're aiming a message at guys, appealing to self-interest rather than altruism is by far the best way to get them involved initially. It'll generate some shitty allies, but lay the groundwork for people to grow in understanding too.

People rent out some horrific stuff in London: http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/aug/22/london-landlord-fined-renting-small-flat There are also guardianship schemes, which come at about half the price of domestic rent for a given city and basically supply line-in security to stop buildings from being squatted. They have none of the rights of tenants: as little as two weeks notice to leave, landlord/agents can turn up to inspect without warning at any time of the day or night, you need permission to have guests overnight, you can't be away for more than a night at a time, and you might end up in an office block with a portable shower pod installed. Poor people with refrigerators and phones? Luxury.

Oh, shit. Given the other things I've read, he sounds like a total douchebag

The cameras will probably take quite a long time to roll out; it's not just a camera on each officer, but the procedures and IT infrastructure required to handle and maintain them and the things they record too. I've only heard about Ferguson through the internet. I'm amazed anyone bothers watching TV news anymore, it just seems to be doom-mongering guff that panders to existing power.

A minute or so into that video, I noticed how many minutes were left and thought "Jesus". It feels like what's left of triple-A has now completely ossified into a bunch of macho tropes, and while I found it boring before, my brain is now getting pretty aggressive about defining it as irrelevant noise. Gamers weird excitement about guns, which isn't just a games thing but definitely has some strong roots there, is very much another part of that. It's not alienating. It's repellent.

They must've become too sad to draw. Internet Architect tweeted a screengrab of moot's post on the matter last night. Basically, they've been deleting GG threads because they violate a rule against raids, doxxing, etc.; they annoy people on /v, new threads keep covering that same ground, and /v has a long history of going off topic. IA captioned the screengrab "Welcome to insanity" and accompanied it with the one about (edit) Moot's girlfriend working for a PR firm. Then there's this PR-driven inanity.

I was with someone who wore the Samsung watch last week. When I asked about it, he said "It's shit". The pedometer had registered 15,000 steps in his first hour up and around. (I do wear a watch sometimes, but it's purely ornamental). Well played

They're so good! The Hohokum Soundtrack is a pretty good Ghostly sampler in itself: Buy from Ghostly: http://www.theghostlystore.com/collections/frontpage/products/hohokum-soundtrack?utm_source=ghostlycom&utm_medium=buynowlink&utm_campaign=ghostlyproductpage (The MP3 isn't a pre-order, just the physical release). Stream: http://hypem.com/premiere/hohokum+soundtrack Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/0rRd7rgECB573KGKNVlUun (Ugh, Spotify have boned spotify links).

I hadn't heard of him before this. Did just see this though

He also hires people then doesn't pay them. Bastion of journalistic integrity, that guy.

I didn't see that, but gaters thinking it is hilariously plausible.

Gamergate thread deletion has been going on for weeks there, it's just been on and off. No one knows exactly why; at first the gaters assumed it was a rogue mod.

Nick Cave and Ray Winstone argue about fish and chips: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V75y_wGlNY

I don't know why:

Whoah, I notice that trope sometimes, but probably more often than not I don't (The Lego Movie, for instance). I really liked Maleficent on this basis:

So, I have a dilemma. Me and some friends rented a van to go on holiday, and had to dismantle some wooden boxing to get to the aux input for the stereo. Inside, we found a PS Vita had been boxed in by whoever last put an aux cable in. I didn't have mine with me, so no charger, and it was dead. One of the people on holiday suggested just ebaying it, which I won't because that's a shitty thing to do. We decided I'd take it home after the holiday, charge it, then get the owners email address from the settings so we could try to return it. Except, it has a passcode. There are ways to easily break that, but it seems not without wiping the Vita completely, defeating the whole point. I don't fancy sitting and trying out all 10,000 possible codes, especially with a long wait between every five attempts. I'd really like to return this to its owner, but I think the best thing I could do at the moment is return it to the van rental company. Which kind of sucks, because even though it's a small company, I suspect it means a slim chance of it getting back to the owner.

Done! He has it, is very happy and paid me the postage. It'd apparently been boxed in up there for over a year! It was a band van, and they'd hired it to go on tour in 2013. The stereo was mounted on a shelf near the ceiling, and no one noticed the Vita sitting underneath until we unscrewed the panel. The van was a very old, ex-police riot van, with wire mesh covers still on the lights, tinted windows and matt black bodywork. We got loads of weird looks on French motorways, because it absolutely looked like it was full of men with guns. When we collected it, the guy said "I was going to give you the nice one, but it caught fire". They are now my favourite van rental company.