Nachimir

I think the only way to solve this is to produce a very high quality, HD video several hours long of him doing this, then force him to watch it while hungover. Like that bit in A Clockwork Orange.

I think browsing products it uncomfortably close to how some dating sites feel. Like people are shopping for partners.

Thankfully Amazon already appear to have nuked it into a 404, but someone started selling an ebook of thinly veiled rape fantasies about Zoe Quinn I was only slightly pleased to see it getting dozens of one star reviews reading "It's about ethics in game journalism".

Good work Ben Did he try to get back on the mic once you'd finished? Pretty frequently for me, but then again I tend not to randomly chat people up in bars, etc., but usually through some kind of event, social circle or mutual friends. Before going on a date we've often already established that we get on alright. Being in lots of different groups of people is something I'm good at. Not that things have gone terribly through things like OK Cupid, but in comparison to actual socialisation, it does feel like it's really not my thing.

Edit: I've known of game studios with HR departments that watched their employees linkedin profiles like hawks. Even a small edit would be cause for a "chat". I've actually been in that position and it fucking sucked. My former boss needing a punchbag at that job almost ruined a career path for me; luckily enough people outside the company knew what kind of person he was. I've probably got more than 80% of the jobs I've had through talking to people than by going through normal applications or interviews. I loathe job hunting and you all have my deepest sympathy.

http://www.dontstarvegame.com/blog/ A lot of people here at the Eurogamer Expo are saying "Oh, so it's basically Minecraft", but so much has gone into it that it really is a different thing. There's an element of horrible grind to it, but it's wrapped up in such a lovely way I find myself not minding. Death is usually sudden and catastrophic; yesterday I watched a guy eye up a buffalo, attack it with an axe, then suddenly get trampled by a dozen more running in from all sides of the screen. There are also some nice bits of balancing in there: A meat effigy lets you resurrect yourself, but requires quite a lot of beard hair, limiting the rate at which you can make them. It's easy to eradicate lairs of some of the monsters, but there's more benefit to farming them and accepting the danger.

I think I might be done with online dating. It feels like a chore, and when it's led anywhere it's mostly been to things that really don't work out (or lovely dates that then go south: On one, we were getting on amazingly then she got a little bag out to show me her magic crystals…). I've made a few friends through it who've all said "Yeah, I gave up on that too". It feels like a lot of the people I exchange messages with are waiting for any given site to spit up someone perfect at them. I feel way better about meeting people by going out and doing stuff.

I'll give it a go. Thanks

Any in particular you'd recommend? I generally avoid Western romance films because I'm very familiar with the history of romanticism in Western cultures, and that we've held on to loads of the unhealthy but comfortable bits while going "LA LA LA NOT LISTENING" to all the other much less comforting ones. I hadn't really thought to seek and find out what those narratives are like in other cultures.

I think I just picked it up from various Spelunky tweets. I've had a few conversations this year along the lines of: Friend: "Wait, such and such are sleeping with each other?" Me: "Have you seen the way they've been tweeting at each other for the past few weeks?" Friend: "Oh, I didn't really think anything of it". (Not about Sarah and Chris, mainly people in nearby circles of friends) I have to constantly remind myself that there's a lot of small interaction stuff that most people don't follow, and that people don't generally have a good handle on their own unconscious. I spotted that someone was interested in me this year, and she later told me that at that time, she wasn't aware of feeling that at all. It was really obvious in the way her face changed and the way her attention flowed readily toward me in a group. The feeling-without-being-conscious-of-it is something I'm familiar with in myself, but I think that's the first time I've known someone's motives before they did. Motivation is weird, most of it exists in some unconscious stack of past history, associations, desire and emotional values we never have access to, and one of the things I got from the academia I used to read is that, when asked about their motives, people often don't actually know and give a bunch of post-hoc rationalisations for their actions that just feel about right. This meandering lunchtime digression brought to you by taking a day off work.

There's no obligation for Steam to sell it, and there's no obligation for them not to. But I hate that in at least one other place I discuss games stuff, discussion of Hatred turned into a technical discussion about Steam, monopolies, etc. then speculation on an ideal world replacement for Steam. Hatred is a hateful game made by a bunch of dissembling pricks who are apparently "not Neo-Nazis", but wear neo-nazi shirts for their studio promo shots, consider far right facebook pages to be "good sources of information" while claiming to not support them, and describe their game as "a response to p o l i t i c a l c o r r e c t n e s s". Basically they set every prick alarm bell ringing. Fuck 'em if making this game is their idea of useful or worthwhile.

:0 Last I heard Brock was regularly going ape shit at people picnicking in the park behind his apartment if they played Modest Mouse. This is one of those bands where I hear one song I love then find out I hate everything else they've ever done: Their back catalogue is so twee and feels like it's superficially touring other cultures. I'd recommend chasing it with that Run the Jewels Album Clyde posted, or Spare Ass Annie by William S. Burroughs.

Congratulations both

I think I know which two people. Miffy: A big retailer once sent me an SD card, in tiny packaging, but suspended in the middle of a box that was, uh, bigger than a breadbox. The thing would have gone in a jiffy bag and through my letterbox, but instead I had to spend an hour fetching it from a depot :sadtrombone:

(Late entry: "Belittle Women") Kind of related to the underdog status, Rob Fearon posted some good stuff on GG earlier: https://storify.com/nachimir/the-circle-of-shit An underdog myth definitely feeds into their apparent need to sustain what they're doing through perpetual conflict.

Another good one: "Catcher in the Rye, Basically"

Milo announced today that he's writing a book about GG, apparently titled "Gamergate: The Definitive Story". People responded with #gamergatebooktitles. Some favourites: Of Mice and Not All Men Horton Harasses a Who Official Prima Strategy Guide to Harassing Women A Confederacy of Dunces

… what? I suppose they could only go so long mimicking Inspiring Speeches About War Stuff from films before they started drawing maps too. I bet someone, at this very moment, is pushing around little models of Adam Baldwin and Juicebro Lawyer on one.

I dreamt I made a really good vine of a sunset through the open doors of a moving train, then woke up and felt sad for a second that it didn't actually exist and I couldn't post it.

I hear you. To a perpetrator it's a single event and they often can't understand why it seems like a big deal. To the target, it's that drip-drip-drip of continuous, similar events year in, year out. The implicit threat and likelihood of street harassment makes me feel really conscious about walking behind women, especially anywhere quiet, so I usually cross the street to avoid doing it. Loads of guys seem to just not understand this, and if it's raised talk about how good their motives are or what a nice guy they are etc

We (as in, the west) are really not above that, and I don't think we ever have been. There's a long history of the CIA torturing people, but since 9/11 they've just been doing it closer to home and seeking more and more legal sanction to do it. Edit: Here's some historical context on British use of torture in the 80s (The C.I.A were using similar techniques in South America at the same time): http://www.alicerosebell.com/blog/2014/12/10/scientists-torture-and-history This New Yorker article is fascinating: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/02/19/whatever-it-takes tl;dr: TV glamourised torture while G.W. Bush's government sanctioned it, but those actually teaching interrogation knew how useless it was as a technique. Meanwhile, recruits were reporting for interrogation training with a head full of scenes from 24 thinking "Torture! Fuck yeah!". Once they've been tortured enough, people will do or say anything to make it stop and that tends to not yield accurate or useful information. It just gives abusive asshole torturers a outlet and impunity, and that has some eerie parallels with cop behaviour as it relates to black people in the US and UK.

It's Strava, and you can have any name you like on it. I use a pseudonym, mainly because rights of way for bikes around where I live can be ambiguous.

GraysonEvans, you're not wasting our time, and we don't feel the way that girl in 6th grade did about you. Please reach out to someone, and know that we're all rooting for you.

I'm kind of hoping it's about small town America in space, in the sense of science fiction focussed on people in a substantially different situation, rather than gadgets/stars/physics. (I'm mean I'm already pretty sure a Fullbright game won't be about laser guns and space opera, but maybe you know what I mean; SF is far too often about that shit and not the actually interesting things).

Whoah, that's gorgeous, TheHollowNight.