JonCole

Congratulations! Rob seems like a rad dude, I wish I was more romantic with my now wife during our engagement.

Civ Beyond Earth for $37.50 - http://slickdeals.net/f/7284844-civilization-beyond-earth-37-49?src=pdw&v=1

This is pretty interesting - http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/23/7049141/ello-becomes-public-benefit-corporation-mandates-no-ads So they are basically committing legally to their mission and making it clear to investors that this isn't going to be a blockbuster profit company.

I made this one a long time ago, but it's been quite out of use - https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/6812-backlog-busters/ (also lol I only beat one of the games I mentioned in the OP)

I actually just got a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 to replace my Galaxy S4 that had some weird issues. I super like it and I'm finding the built-in pressure-sensitive stylus really useful. I'm taking notes all the time in Evernote and it's helping me organize my thoughts which is something I literally never did before. Also, I frequently use the stylus along with the SwiftKey keyboard to do Swype-like typing and it works very nicely. I'm looking forward to using the stylus in the winter, too. That said, it is very much a big ass flagship 5.7" phone. But I like that kinda shit too, so it works.

Wait, hang on. Edit: Well, no idea what that ^^^^ is. Also, this is a soiler. Edit again: Cool.

I guess I was trying to address this in this sentence: To put a finer point on it, I think there was a time in the middle of what you're talking about and what it it now where the people we've been asked to sympathize with again and again because they're in GG for "good reason" were actually more or less acting in good faith when they were roped in by the bad actors you're talking about. When it was the movement that is now glorified but is really only a memory as compared to how the current iteration of GG is. I really do think there is a reason to recognize the early attacks on Zoe Quinn as effectively separate from GG because GG people earnestly seem to think that the two are not directly related but are willing to admit that they were subsequent.

I think there is a discernable historical pattern that can be drawn on top of Gamergate. Most reactionary movements function in much the same way, whether you're talking about GG, Ferguson, Occupy Wall Street, or the Tea Party. Now keep in mind that when I'm talking about GG, I'm specifically talking about the "movement" that presumably started when Adam Baldwin created the hashtag and people were attempting to use it to talk about ethics (putting aside the efficacy of this attempt). The pattern is pretty basic. Initially, it's grassroots and generally anti-establishment. In this case, the "establishment" is super broad namely anyone that can be perceived as a journalist. Everyone seems to be caught up in the zeitgeist of fighting this establishment, but doesn't really have clearly defined goals. As the campaign rolls on, it becomes clear that without goals the movement can't really move forward. At the same time, some element of the establishment gets a whiff of a galvanized, enthusiastic group. The establishment-esque element aligns itself in such a way that their goals seem like what the goals of the movement are, and boom the movement is co-opted as political fuel for a coexisting fire. What does this look like in other cases? Ferguson - co-opted by Democrats and civil rights groups, the movement has been focused on getting primarily blacks registered to vote. Occupy Wall Street - co-opted by both Democrats and Republicans, who used it as a narrative to alternately empower labor unions and hype up class warfare Tea Party - co-opted by Republicans, who essentially turned it into an activist wing of the Republican party that integrated the "young libertarian" agenda of the movement in minor ways like changing views on the Federal Reserve I don't really think this is bad in general, but it takes the spirit of activism and converts it into something almost unrecognizable in most cases. So, who's the establishment-esque actor that is co-opting GG? The extremely conservative patriarchal element that loves stuff like MRA on Reddit. What started out as an activist effort to promote ethics in a broad sense has become a campaign to attack the same people who have been attacked again and again by anti-women groups. Is it truly a coincidence that Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian, Brianna Wu, and many others just happen to have been attacked in the past by people with a similar agenda to what GG has become and GG itself? I think not.

I just bought a GTX 970 and am super stoked! Those things are relatively hard to get, seemingly out of stock everywhere except for 5 minute - 1 hour windows of time where they are briefly available at random retailers. I had to hold out for Newegg so I could use my PayPal Credit account, but I finally got an EVGA model (I was willing to go with Asus, MSI, or EVGA). Now I just have to pay it off for $60/month for 6 months. :DDDDDD( Edit: If you're having trouble tracking down GTX 970s, this is the site I used - http://www.nowinstock.net/computers/videocards/nvidia/gtx970/

I beat The Room. I have nothing to add to the symphony of people who have said stuff about this good but slightly flawed in a couple ways game. Also, I beat it on my new Samsung Galaxy Note which has convinced me that probably the biggest impediment to me playing games on my phone was a small screen. This hideously huge phone is perfect for playing dumb mobile games.

Ah yeah, I didn't even consider that volumetric measures might be a problem. Luckily, cups for liquids are easy, cups for dry ingredients like flour can be easily converted to weight based on common conversion factors, and cups for anything in between can probably be eyeballed. Upon a cursory glance I saw a recipe calling for a 1/3 cup of grated parmesan, which could easily just be a small handful or something like that. As I've become more comfortable with cooking, I've found that a ton of things in recipes can be fudged when you're familiar enough with what you're working with. Once you "get" what certain components are supposed to be doing in a recipe, it's easy to bend the rules.

I use this site practically exclusively for my cooking - http://www.budgetbytes.com/ As it turns out, when you're cooking on a budget you don't use wildly complicated recipes or ingredients and it's all relatively straightforward.

Excuse the poor audio -

The status quo is AAA game development. Progressive game development is indie dev. GG opposes indie developers almost exclusively. Do you disagree with literally everyone else's supposition that you're drawing a false equivalence between GG and "anti-GG"?

Chris Klewe, former NFL player who is also a celebrated gamer that goes by @ChrisWarcraft on Twitter wrote a post about Gamergate and BOY is it cathartic - https://medium.com/the-cauldron/why-gamergaters-piss-me-the-f-off-a7e4c7f6d8a6 LOL I should read literally two posts before my post.

Not to mention that in response to a conservative movement like GG, it's only natural for the liberal opposition to say that neutrality supports the status quo because it's literally true.

That's really weird and funny. I suspect I might be on the "too good" side of the equation, but I'll hang in nonetheless as it's still mildly entertaining when I do engage 3 captains and 30 guys and somehow manage to kill them all. Maybe I'll just deliberately die more often just to mix it up.

That reminds me of an article I read yesterday that I unfortunately can't find in my Twitter favorites titled something like "I need horrible female developers". The gist of the piece was that women in the gaming industry are expected to be shining examples of innovative skill and design. Sure, it's good that a Jade Raymond can be a role model for women looking to get into the space, but not every female needs to be her to be valuable. The article quoted this from Nicki Minaj - The writer was equating this same strange cultural demand that we have on women to be everything to how women shouldn't be expected to do everything perfectly well in the gaming industry to be valuable. And for what it's worth, it was not pushing affirmative action ie "You should hire horrible female developers". It was more saying that equality is valuable and even if you have a merit-based hiring practice you'd still have more women in the space than there are now.

I'd also theoretically be down to play whenever. If you see me online on a weeknight, you are always free to send me an invite and I'll join if I'm available. Though I'm always online on Steam, so don't assume I'm around if I'm logged in.

Yeah, that definitely may happen. You should use scraps with a fair amount of the stalk intact (a good two inches, plus or minus) and you need to change the water every other day.

So, I rented this game, I've had it for a week and I haven't put in more than 2 hours into it. Can someone tell me something compelling that will make me want to play this game? I have voraciously played AC games and had fun with the short time I've spent on Batman games, so I don't know what's holding me back from liking this. Does the story get at all interesting? Thus far, the best thing I've done is run straight into an Uruk stronghold, get a ~100x combo and kill two captains. Fun, but not something I want to be doing all the time.

Was poking around one of the normally inaccessible areas of Venus and found myself in a Guardian cannon -

I feel like I tried to type up a response to Oliver Campbell's article three or four times over but have deleted it that many times. At this particular moment, I don't think I could speak particularly well about race and gender as it pertains to Gamergate. I will say that I'm not particularly surprised that a black male was treated better than any number of females by a patriarchal, conservative movement with prominent figures like Milo who unabashedly shits on sex workers and such. I also don't really know a lot about Campbell, so I wouldn't know if he's the kind of person who might also raise concerns about ethics as it pertains to cultural diversity in gaming outlets. The topic of representation of PoC in gaming press/industry doesn't seem to be of interest to GG, but I don't know if he would challenge them on that and say "well if you care so much about gamers having a voice, why don't PoC have a voice or proportional representation?"

I really want to raid. Had hopes to do it sometime this past weekend, but Thumbs seemingly couldn't be mobilized for the task. I think we need to just get a group of people to commit, and then we LFG for the remaining people we need instead of hoping for people to show up who won't. I'm getting ever closer to level 29, so Raid gear would make that task much easier not to mention all the shards you get as loot.