JonCole

Noriega is suing Activision for a character clearly based on his likeness in COD: Black Ops 2 because it basically represented him as who Noriega was in real life. Pretty hilarious.

I agree that the victim's word is more important than that of the accused, but I still feel like I don't have enough information to make a personal assessment. Furthermore, the context of him calling it "gossip" is slightly more nuanced - I read it as literal rather than reductive, meaning that it is personal conversation and not evidence and that the court of public opinion will take her statement as fact despite it not being legally/objectively/whatever "evidence". Basically, I think he's entitled to a response, particularly if there haven't been any charges pressed and the statement was made publicly. I do, however, agree that the mention of libel and how he's not going to be pressing for it was unnecessary and came off more as a threat or a "look at how charitable I'm being" as opposed to something sincere. He could have done a much better job of making this a statement of regret that he made her feel victimized, regardless of his personal feelings or what exactly he feels the encounter amounted to. Ultimately, even if he's perfectly innocent I can't imagine that Magz would have gone to these lengths and put herself at risk of public backlash just for shits and giggles - she was victimized in some way simply because she felt it was so.

When I was cancelling my Comcast TV/internet package in favor of internet-only, they offered me a "deal" that was literally the exact same services (50 down + a "starter" cable package) for less than five dollars less expensive (it was like $78 vs my $81/mo) that was only valid for a 6 month window. After that six month window elapsed, the plan would increase in price to over $15 more than what I was paying at the time. When I did the math for the rep of what the plan I had would cost in a 1-year period vs what was being offered, I swear she was silent for a good 30 seconds before saying something like "you're right, your current package is better than this promotion". Also, Comcast charged me a rental fee for two cable boxes when I only had one. Through presenting various receipts and statements, I figured out that there were two serial numbers on the box - one for the box itself, and one for the embedded cable card inside - and there was a charge for each item as though they were each a cable box (despite the fact that you couldn't even remove the cable card if you wanted to). It then took them 3 months to fully disburse a refund.

Yeah, I agree with that assessment as well. The thing that ran most true (though probably not in the way they hoped) in Comcast's statement was their insistence that their customer service reps are trying to "do the right thing". The only problem is that the right thing in this case is not a judgment made by either the rep or the customer - "the right thing" is customer retention and bottom line.

Yeah, but the use of the word "mansplain" isn't limited to a personal assessment of sexism. I've seen it used when a man makes a general statement not even to a particular woman, or an external party making an assessment of an interaction between a man and a woman and assuming that the man is being sexist. In this way, I feel "mansplaining" is a weak word - it simply doesn't have a precise enough definition or usage for it to be effective language, in my opinion.

I think that males explaining the female experience to women is the most severe example of mansplaining, but it also just refers to a general condescending tone taken by a male explaining a topic to a woman that he assumes she knows less than him about, presumably because of her gender. It has to do with a mixture of arrogance and obliviousness, where a dude is like "I know all about this" and the girl is thinking to herself "well no shit, everyone knows that". Part of the reason I don't like it as a term is because it's meaning is somewhat obtuse - I mean, how exactly does one know that the condescension is due to the gender difference? If the term mansplaining is used incorrectly, isn't the woman using it simply assuming that the man is being sexist and thus actually being a little sexist herself? It's somewhat of a double standard, because it is making an assumption out of an assumption. That said, I wouldn't presume to take the word away from women because I think it is a prevalent issue and points to the pervasive nature of a male-dominated society impacting the way men talk about things. I just can't really measure its efficacy due to the meaning being oft misunderstood and it being overused in some cases.

Also problematic - some major YT podcast channels are automatically placing mid-roll ads into their content producer's videos without any kind of consent. I saw NorthernLion complaining about it on Twitter, he's partnered with Machinima. Some of his longer videos have like 7 or 8 ads just randomly placed through LPs.

Sailor Jupiter is about as badass as this dude could hope for.

hey, i actually forgot! Maybe I'll try to find an Android IRC client so I can just always have it running on my phone. None of the web or desktop clients really knocked my socks off otherwise I'd still be using them and participating in the chat.

It's not too late! I'm still online usually from 5PM EDT - 10-ish EDT on weekdays. I've lost a little bit of my steam regarding playing constantly with randos, but I'm still happy to play with Thumbs.

Yeah, basically Yahoo or any other conglomeration of weird news/blog brands. He went back to AOL to revive Engadget as it was flailing post Verge-exodus, and then he moved up into the business part of AOL overseeing a number of their blogs like Engadget, TechCrunch, etc.

I got my PS4 yesterday and thanks to cross-gen upgrades and PS+, I had like 12 games in my download list from the first second of owning it. Also, that interface is so fast ughhhh This generation is pretty cool, if you allow yourself not to think about ridiculously slow download times.

I have decided to not feel anything about this yet because I don't have enough information, and I doubt I ever will. While buying CAH stuff does have some degree of implicit endorsement, "he could potentially be a rapist" is not convincing enough for me to change my behavior. All of the information I have on hand suggests to me that Max is a thoughtful person who is doing more than most people do to make himself and his company better on a regular basis.

Jesus, Ryan Block from AOL (irony noted) was trying to disconnect his Comcast service over the phone and recorded his call. This is the exact reason why I hate this goddamn company and it's honestly shameful that I still give them any money, despite them being a monopoly. https://soundcloud.com/ryan-block-10/comcastic-service

I've been listening to the Not A Game podcast and quite enjoying it. That said, as an American who likes to listen to podcasts at 1.2x speed, if I zone out for even a second I can't understand their accents at all and lose a chunk of the convo. Doesn't help that their audio quality is mediocre at best. Sounds like just one person is recording locally in a single stream, as opposed to individual recordings that are volume leveled and denoised, then mixed together.

Cine mentioned that we should use Mumble when we play this game. I literally know nothing about it, but I theoretically appreciate the benefits of better voice quality, a client out of the somewhat buggy game audio, and not having to use the PTT button on my controller that sometimes decides to also launch a grenade at an inappropriate time. Thoughts?

The aging works the same as the endurance. The more prevalent their fable, the more the aging slows. So, if a child-Fable is extremely popular it'll stay a child essentially forever.

What you're all saying is true. The balance between "I don't have a choice, this is a prison" and "well, this is may be a prison but it's not Hell and there are good, legitimate reasons for it to exist" could indeed explored. As it is, there's not much nuance - getting sent to The Farm seems almost as bad a threat as being sent down the Witching Well. Farm spoiler:

E5 (and I guess some very mild comics) spoilers:

I sure remembered it.

Target is also going to be offering a $50 gift card with the purchase of an XB1 next week, I think. I imagine it must not be doing very well for a retailer to put that kind of incentive out there to move units. I'm not playing a ton of console games either, but I mostly bought a PS4 because my PC is slowly becoming inadequate for running games at peak performance so I'm shifting back to console as it generally has a standard level of quality. Watch Dogs ran like total shit on my PC, I'd rather avoid that kind of poor performance on demanding games by going console when it may be in question.

Did Gearbox really have to name their game Battleborn? I feel like I'll get it eternally confused with Bloodborne in my brain.

I don't think they've said why SA. If I had to guess, they picked Texas because of geography - central, meaning people like me living in Florida might find it a more appealing option than going up north. As to why SA specifically, it'd be because Austin doesn't have a PAX-sized convention center that I know of and that SA is the closest city to it with one (it's like 1mil+ sq. ft). From my somewhat limited knowledge of the city (my parents-in-law live there), the close proximity to the Riverwalk and other restaurants/accommodations would make it an affordable, easy to navigate venue. I don't know if there are comparable things like that in Dallas or Houston, but I'm just glad it's in SA because I get to sleep free there.

A lot of those websites (including the one with the Dark Souls 2 deal I posted earlier) are pretty grey market. Generally, the basic idea is that regional pricing allows for cheap keys to get out to markets with less sensitive pricing. Risks include: 1. a publisher not being happy that tons of keys got sold cross-regionally and blacklisting the Steam keys, at which point you'd have to try to get the key seller to be accountable. Doesn't happen very often, but definitely possible. 2. a seller that uses retail keys deciding to use the "my account was stolen" method, where they use their retail purchase of the game you bought the key for as proof of their ownership of your account. Happens somewhat often, though generally through eBay or more obviously unreputable sellers. In either case, it's not likely that you'll get in trouble and the more likely punishment is that that individual game's key is revoked.