Nachimir

My visits to KiA are a lot less frequent, because fuck them and probably a lot of the harassment will move on from it. GG are effectively spotters for a smaller group of vicious, dangerous bastards at this point, who only operate partially under the GG label if at all. If anything GG forums like KiA might be useful as early(ish) warnings of who or what will be targeted next. I enjoyed listening to that Sarkeesian effect guy explain that the truly moral thing for him to do was fire the other one and keep all of the money. Super ethics there.

Grayson, give Lost Levels a look tomorrow. A lot of GDC can feel very corporate, and LL is very much the opposite. I think you might enjoy it.

Yes, I'll be there. Here's the line up of games I put in the Leftfield stand, you might recognise Beacon from these forums: http://www.egx.net/rezzed/news/leftfield-collection-revealed

The Sarkeesian effect guys are breaking up. It seems the one handling the money tried to fire the other, and it shockingly didn't go very well. https://twitter.com/mistertodd/status/572723003861045248 https://twitter.com/mistertodd/status/572725585656459264 https://twitter.com/mistertodd/status/572726145411514369 https://twitter.com/mistertodd/status/572726922163044353

I once made the mistake of registering for tax self assessment after doing a guest lecture at a university (The university lost my paperwork multiple times and never paid me). It was only after three years of filling in returns with zeroes that HMRC wrote to say they weren't going to send any more. A few months later, I got a final demand in the post for £0.00p

Glad it wasn't your place. I stopped an electrical fire from starting this afternoon after smelling burnt plastic. So the house I live in didn't burn down, which is cool.

Disguised links to flashing stuff are not cool, Megaspel. You could physically hurt someone and that makes you a dick.

I can totally see that, it made me wince. I think one of the interesting things about bots is they'll make a hundred dross or nonsense tweets, then accidentally come up with something really funny.

A kickstarter for a point and click adventure: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/268919490/seventeen-uncles-a-pugs-life They have a demo up too.

https://twitter.com/mryandev/status/572157678874574848

I'm surprised no one thought of this Markov chain earlier (but then again I didn't either): DrilBiscuit

Sorry to hear all that S.A.M. I hope some of your parents projects pay off soon and relive the burden on you. Being more privileged than others doesn't mean our lives can't be hard, it just means they're not AS hard.

Feminists arguing with porn in the mix: A heady mix of interpersonal beef, complex issues, and personal histories that makes me want to choke on my own puke.

Ugh, sorry to hear that. I remember being a bit like that and cringe at my past self. Likewise the way some cis/het people edge toward asking bi people indirect questions that amount to "So when you're in a relationship with a woman, do you pine for cock?". I think it's most often non-hostile curiosity, compounded by the effort of thinking beyond cisnormative and gender binary stuff, but still gross. As Tegan pointed out, it doesn't really have any more cognitive load than remembering and using someone's name.

I've not read anything on this, but I did lose a friend over it last year. It started with talk of sports and the Olympic committee demanding that people have surgery or not compete, then went into gender differences not meaning gender is binary. When I mentioned the variety of chromosonal conditions that lead to gender complications or abnormalities he looked really troubled by the idea and went quiet. He really wanted to cling to binary gender, but couldn't argue for it, and ended our friendship within a few months. I don't think needing the gender binary is a condition these people have, but it's embedded so deeply in so many people's identities that it'll take a lot of education, time and people's stories to shift this. <3

I too am cis, but have felt in the past like a barely balancing tower of meat and neuroses. I don't know what dysphoria is like, but I guess I have more experience than most of how mismatched yet persistent bits of self can be. That's bad enough when it's chunks of personality, I can't know but imagine it's much worse when a contradiction like that's reflected all the way from pervasive societal gender roles right down to your genetic makeup. I've wondered the same things as Merus, but knowing the complex preceding biological conditions, knowing plenty of trans people through work, and having at least one friend who's transitioning, it seems far more important to support them and offer an open ear.

It can be a lot more complex than that, because sometimes physical characteristics are ambiguous at birth. It might already have been posted here, but this is a great article on gender complexity that goes through some of the different ways that can manifest: http://www.nature.com/news/sex-redefined-1.16943 So, kind of what you said above, but sometimes it's complete guesswork, or bad parenting, or a mistake, etc.

144,000 is a number in the book of Revelation, which as you probably know is thought to be written by apostle John, probably while tripping balls. For the JWs, they interpret it that 144,000 of them will be the chosen few who go to heaven and form a government for the Earth with Jesus as its monarch. They believe the rest will either live through some kind of armageddon in which all the unbelievers are killed or, if they die before it, will later be resurrected to a paradise on Earth. (They also have a history of fucking up by proclaiming or heavily implying when armageddon will come. My favourite two instances of this are 1: some of the very early ones filing out onto a bridge in 1878 wearing white robes and expecting a rapture. 2: Lots of JWs getting loans and credit cards in the run up to 1975, fully expecting the world to end and to never ever have to pay anything for those sports cars, etc.) They tend not to talk about the armageddon thing on the doorstep anymore, and I think have shied away from their old iconography of that and paradise, but here's a good example of the former, and of the latter. They've apparently stopped using so much imagery like that, but it relied very heavily on verdant images in which people pick fruit, build barns, pet formerly predatory animals, and inexplicably wear their national dress.

I think with the more unhinged belief systems, that layer of isolating fear is the main thing that stops them from crumbling away or becoming more tolerant and secular. Hah, GG would probably go nuts over there only being 144,000 of them or something (There are about 8 million of them… if you don't get the 144,000 reference, it's complicated and dull)

I think most of them are good people most of the time, but they exist in a bad organisation with rules that sometimes make them do crappy things and think they're doing good or pleasing their god. Also, that "worldly" thing is strong subtext for all of their interactions with non-believers. It was surprising when I left to find basically the same cross section of humanity outside.

Given how many people involved with GG early on were doing stuff for lulz, it doesn't really set him apart from them does it? Making threats and taking the piss out of GG basically just aligns him with Baph.

The JWs are different to most because their processes are designed to exclude any flexibility in thinking or tolerance for other religions and ideas. They're a high control group. (some edits) They're on the other end of the shunning, so don't have to deal with or even see the effects. I never quite got the full experience of shunning people, because the first person I knew to leave was my own brother, living in the same house. Their advice under those circumstances is "minimise contact", but of course I got to see the effects firsthand. They refer to non-JWs as "worldly people" and like to reinforce a stereotype that worldly people are materialistic sinful liars who'll mislead you for their own advantage. Not all JWs believe that wholesale, but the process of kicking someone out then shunning them pushes them over that mental boundary into "worldly" for the more ideologically conformist JWs. Ergo, "that person has forsaken Jehovah, so I don't have to feel guilty about shunning them. They're probably full of dangerous ideas and lies". The less conformist will exchange pleasantries, but that's it. Leaving the JWs is hitting the eject button on an entire culture, and if you've been following its rules well, you won't have any friends outside of it. That's one of the things that makes leaving so terrifying and difficult. On top of that, you've been living under the idea of a vengeful, judgemental god presiding over an environment of rules that are impossible for most humans to live up to. Low self esteem and gossip tend to be endemic in JW congregations as a result (or at least, they were for the entire time I was involved), so when you've not long been out, are feeling vulnerable and isolated, and bump into some JWs in public, who avoid you but point and mutter things to each other, it doesn't have the best effects on your wellbeing. Teenage years are usually the point people leave, due to discovering sex, drugs, booze and lots of other forbidden stuff. I wouldn't say it's exactly a mass exodus, because the conditioning is strong, but it's a steady rumble and at times would get more insistent in certain communities and areas. Most other teenagers I knew at least used to poke the boundaries and keep secrets. I only ever saw one shotgun wedding as a result of that. (edit edit: Search this page for "Worldly people" (with quotes) to see some of their typical representations and opinions of non-JWs. I generally don't like ex-JW sites because they often have axes to grind, ranging from the very specific but mundane to really weird conspiracy theories. However, the quotes in that section are representative and not cherry picking. Judging by the more recent ones, nothing has changed since the 90's in respect of this: It's not a pendulum that swings, they aren't quotes from the JW leaders going through more conservative phases. Those are their consistent, cultivated opinions on non-believers and have been for many decades. I'll stop making this post longer now!)

TotalBiscuit has done this enough times I feel like I don't need to click on links or engage with his arguments in any way. Internally I regard him as a generic problem, rather than just the latest thing he's said being separate problems. Thanks for the interesting read. I know someone who works for an NGO dedicated to clean water in developing countries, and she once told me the most effective thing they can spend money on is strengthening local government and human rights, before even thinking about putting infrastructure in.

As a friend said, The Escapist is now fascinating not as a source of writing, but as a case study.

Oh, yes! I didn't realise they'd implemented that, and I'm almost certain they hadn't at the time.