Nachimir

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Posts posted by Nachimir

  2. Posted

    Good work Ben :)

     

    Did he try to get back on the mic once you'd finished?

     

    How frequently do in-person meetings work out, though?

     

    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.

  3. Posted

    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".

     

    What if your most recent employer was a dick?!

     

    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.

  4. Posted

    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.

  6. Posted

    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.

  7. Posted

    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.

  8. Posted

    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.

  9. Posted

    :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.

  11. Posted

    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:

  14. Posted

    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

  16. Posted

    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.

  17. Posted

    What I tend to try and convey most to men when I talk about this stuff is less about catcalling, and more how men can't get over this idea that approaching women on the street at all is extremely nerve-wracking, if not scary as hell. I used to have really bad anxiety about any man coming near me on the street because I've been flashed, groped, attacked, and generally creeped on. It's hard to explain that because it's such a mental thing that develops over time. 

     

    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 :(

  18. Posted

    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.

     

    This past November, U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, flew to Southern California to meet with the creative team behind “24.” Finnegan, who was accompanied by three of the most experienced military and F.B.I. interrogators in the country, arrived on the set as the crew was filming. At first, Finnegan—wearing an immaculate Army uniform, his chest covered in ribbons and medals—aroused confusion: he was taken for an actor and was asked by someone what time his “call” was.
     

     

    In fact, Finnegan and the others had come to voice their concern that the show’s central political premise—that the letter of American law must be sacrificed for the country’s security—was having a toxic effect. In their view, the show promoted unethical and illegal behavior and had adversely affected the training and performance of real American soldiers. “I’d like them to stop,” Finnegan said of the show’s producers. “They should do a show where torture backfires.”

  19. Posted

    Also how did you beat Lance? What is that thing? 71st place?

     

    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.

  20. Posted

    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. 

  21. Posted

    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).

  24. Posted

    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."

     

    Oh, sorry! I should have explained myself clearly: I didn't mean framing or highlighting GG as bullies, I meant targeting vulnerable gamers with support in completely separate contexts. Pretty much like I've seen with hackspaces, board gaming, and other quite nerdy hobbies I'm into, they attract a higher proportion of young men who've been bullied. The resulting vulnerability, loneliness, desocialisation and potential victim complexes make it easy for groups like GG to hoover them up and galvanise their negative emotions into support for a cause, while fulfilling their need for belonging. Getting to bullied kids first with pragmatic and compassionate support would go a long way to deny things like GG legs in future, before they can really build inertia. It'd only be long term if it produced results at all, but the socially challenged aspects of video game audiences have been a long time in the making too, and by peddling the fantasies it largely did from the mid 80's until very recently, I see the industry as partly responsible for those problems. Does that make sense?

     

    (and, for clarity: we're in total agreement on the importance of representation and diversity).

     

    GG is the Westboro Baptist Church of games.

     

    I think I nailed it a while ago.

     

    Yes, though the weirdest thing about digging around in GG stuff over the past week has been seeing gaters refer to various extremists, including the Westboro baptist church, by name and as their enemies (Perhaps one of the things they have in common is that they don't see themselves as extremists). When people say GG exhibits cult like behaviours, they're right, but as a movement it currently allows too much multiplicity of thought to really be or become one.

     

    (Also a little weird: seeing some adopt 'gater with a ', especially following conversations I've had with people who chose to avoid the term for fear of alienating moderates).