I know, this pic is a little old. But I still think it’s funny!
Anyway, here’s a somewhat belated Open Thread for Non-Personal Stuff. As always, Open Threads are CLOSED to MRAs/trolls, etc.
Categories
Open Thread for non-personal stuff, Sept. 2015 Amazing Cat Box Edition
So hey, this indie game that I originally heard about either on here or on one of the (Misandry Central) links on the sidebar is getting real close to its launch date. Not really sure how to post fancy links, but Aerranis (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=334030576) is a game I’ve had my eye on since it first crossed my radar. Has anyone else been watching its development at all? It has some complicated feminist/queer themes that I haven’t *quite* been able to pin down (I’ve done a bit of writing for the game and some troubleshooting work, but don’t know everything yet about the ‘big picture’ yet). So yeah, it’s on my mind ^.^
@ SFHC
Some paleo catnip for you
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/11/homo-naledi-humans-not-alone-evolution
What do people think about this episode concerning the woman who posted a sexist email she received via LinkedIn via twitter?
What I don’t understand is why British newspapers like the Daily Mail and Telegraph are going all out to crucify this woman, all she did was complain about someone on twitter.
http://katblaque.tumblr.com/post/128828691804/katblaque-katblaque-katblaque-i-didnt
So this happened. White MRA type threatens sexual violence and lynching at black trans blogger. But! Then! His super public meltdown last night got screencapped and sent to his employer (NY Life Insurance). Today… he is no longer employed. Is it possible to overdose on schadenfreude?
(All screen grabs and whatnot are still on Kat Blacque’s Facebook page if you want to see him cry about white privilege, call her “it”, the t-slur, and go completely off the rails. Special appearance by his sister who asks, “Why can’t we all just get along?”)
@ sn0rkmaiden
In the public sphere it’s just the old “can’t you even give a woman a compliment now?” thing we’re all familiar with.
However there’s a more serious professional issue. As barristers we have two types of client. The “lay client” is the actual punter i.e. the person who needs our professional services and who we act for. The solicitor is however also a client; our “professional client”.
We owe a duty of confidentiality to our clients. What the chap said may have been out of order but she has stated that she thought the public interest in publicising his email outweighed his right to confidentiality. That’s a big no no at the Bar.
The duty of confidentiality is considered important because clients need to be able to instruct us with complete candour knowing that any communications are legally privileged. That covers any aspect of the communications.
It’s not just so clients can say stuff about the case; it covers everything. She was perfectly within her rights to email him back and state she found his comments unacceptable but not to breach confidentiality.
That’s why she’s now toxic within the profession; whatever the provocation and her motives.
As a hardcore gamer here let me introduce some awesome non-sexist games (if you disagree, please reply) for people to enjoy!
For Mobile Gamers:
This War of Mine
http://www.11bitstudios.com/games/16/this-war-of-mine
Trigger warning: Game deals primarily with survival during wartimes – characters you control may engage in morally questionable ways. Depicted violence is non-gory.
An incredible game that got recently implemented for mobile platforms, this is my favorite version of the game as the touchscreen mechanics are very well implemented and the game works wonderfully in short spurts of playtime. You control a group of survivors trying to survive in a warzone. You are always in a vulnerable state, lacking resources and under threat of raids. The game escalates as you progress further so don’t be dismayed if your early attempts fail – you will learn as you fall.
Of sidenote interest the development supported actual charity War Child:
http://www.warchild.ca/
with a percentage of its sales and held a driver. A round of applause for the indie developer please!
—-
Rebuild 3
http://rebuildgame.com/
One of my favorite zombie-based games out there! Instead of focusing on combat this game takes a management style approach to creating a safe haven for survivors in a zombie apocalypse. You have to recruit survivors, continually deal with the zombie presence around your haven, deal with other human factions that may or may not be friendly, research, train, scavenge and so on. This latest iteration has a staggering number of things to work on and honestly it works best on a tablet. Every survivor has individual stories with RPG elements incorporated to suck you into the game!
Highly thematically driven with a ton of text to read and a wonderfully animated style to the game. Very low on visual gore and violence (it is of course implied in the actions your survivors take).
—
Pandemic
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pandemic-the-board-game/id700793523?mt=8 – Apple
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.f2zentertainment.pandemic&hl=en – Andriod
And to round it off! When I found out that one of my personal favorite board games was having a mobile app created for it my head exploded 8p. Honestly speaking this game works best when played solo but it is still plenty of fun if you can play this as a group.
It works wonderfully as a mobile game and you also get the added bonus of having all the vital information (like discard piles, player draw piles, all the cards that players hold) easily accessible, which does make it easier to play than the original – somewhat.
You can adjust the difficulty of the game but I always play on heroic and burn myself 8p
Also an incredible tutorial that covers all the aspects of the game very quickly! A manual is also included if you want to go through that as well.
Easily one of the best board game mobile games out there.
If I get the time later I may do one for PC and console games. Enjoy!
I am watching piles of fuzz on the Tinykittens Livestream. One supermama cat, five kittens of her own, and seven adopted from a feral mama who’s been released to the wild. It’s like watching a cute, fuzzy afterparty. Dreamworks is also helping sponsor because they love them some kittens, which ups Dreamworks lots in my estimation.
http://livestream.com/tinykittens/tip
Wow, you guys know your games.
I was all impressed with myself for playing boom beach, lol. I started about a week ago, and I have been all WOOHOOEY I BE GAMIN’ NOW.
And, I suck at it. But it’s fun. At least, it is when it isn’t frustrating.
Interesting article about one of the many groups of women taking on ISIS:
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/sep/11/women-taking-on-isis-iraq-yazidi-female-fighters
@raysa: I get that way about the Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. XD
Also, the DLC for that, Afterbirth, is coming out for pre-order soon, and it’s going to be released on October 31st.
Paradoxal intention,
I Googled binding of Isaac, and, it’s about a ninja baby with an overly religious mother? Do I understand that correctly?
I may have to give that a look.
A lot of my feminist friends have been taking a disquietingly transphobic take on things lately, and it’s upsetting.
@raysa: It’s very much based off of the story of Isaac in the Bible. Isaac’s mother is highly religious, hears the voice of God telling her her son, Isaac, is corrupt, so she takes away his toys, his clothes, and locks him in his room, but then God says “nah, you gotta kill him because he’s still corrupt”, and he jumps into the basement to avoid death.
So you run around the basement (and even go into your mom’s womb to kill her heart, down to Sheol (hell), or The Cathedral (heaven).) And you cry enemies to death, and pick up items that could make your tears more lethal, or make them shoot faster, etc.
Rebirth is a polished version of the original Binding of Isaac, and it’s DLC, Wrath of the Lamb. It’s got a new engine, and the creators added a bunch of stuff that the original creator wanted to add to the original game, but couldn’t due to limitations involving Flash, which is what he used to create the original game.
It’s a rogue-like game that’s infinitely re-playable, since every run is randomized, and there’s a host of various characters you can unlock (the only one I’m having trouble with is Samson, who you have to go two floors without taking damage to unlock him, and the only one I don’t want is The Lost, which is a character where if you get hit once, your entire run is over), and each of them start off with different stats and items.
There’s also the headcannon going around that Isaac himself is a trans character, because one of the splash screens between floors shows Isaac getting a wig that looks like Magdalene’s wig and happily wearing it (until he’s teased by another kid), so people have come to the conclusion that Maggy was Isaac until Isaac transitioned, at least that’s what I think. (It might also explain Isaac’s mom suddenly hearing the voice of God and saying he’s “corrupted”, but, again, that’s just my headcannon that a few other people share.)
There’s also just the theory that all the characters are just different versions of Isaac, rather than individual characters, but that’s all just theory. Nothing’s been proven. :/
Also, in Rebirth, we got Eden as a new character, and they technically don’t have a gender and they start off with random items every time.
I DIDN’T KNOW REBUILD 3 CAME OUT I LOVE REBUILD.
@Pandapool IT IS BETTER!!! YOU WILL DIE OF HAPPINESS!!!
@raysa Welcome to being a gamer! We embrace you with loving arms, before WE CRUSH YOUR SPIRIT in multiplayer!
For the past few days I’ve been preoccupied with an article and its looooooong comment thread (like, thousands of comments, and I’m still not halfway through it yet!) about emotional labor and how it’s pretty much expected of women and girls to be the free supplier of it. Basically, what upsets “us” is not sending birthday cards, but the fact that “we” hold all the burden of keeping the family together and it’s an important but thankless job.
http://www.metafilter.com/151267/Wheres-My-Cut-On-Unpaid-Emotional-Labor
Warning: may ruin your plans for the week and tempt you to ask for an invitation to Crone Island.
Just remember: Games don’t make us violent. Lag does.
“Just remember: Games don’t make us violent. Lag does.”
Lag, I wanna be the guy (and its ilk of aggravatingly difficult games), and losing in NFL Blitz at the arcade are the things that make me violent. So as long as I kick ass and the game loads properly (and isn’t nearly impossible) nobody will have any problems.
I played The Binding of Isaac for about fifteen minutes before I came to my senses and realised that I’m terrible at bullet hell games.
It looks like it would be amazingly fun for people who have reflexes better than those of a startled goat (which I do not) and who have the patience to endlessly reengage with something until they learn all the ins and outs of it (which I do not.)
On the other hand, I’ve seen Youtube runs of it which look amazing fun, so kudos if you can do it.
@brittersweet One thing that continues to baffle me is how, contrary to how ‘history’ and ‘science’ work, women’s history and feminist ideas seem to be cyclical rather than progressive; we seem to reinvent the wheel every 20-30 years. Which is to say that you’ll find this book interesting:
http://www.amazon.com/Reflecting-Men-Twice-Their-Natural/dp/0805006397
and of course no one’s ever heard of it.
I’d hope so for $15. That’s $15 more than my monthly game budget.
@ultimateprotagonistnerd
I made it to the final boss of I wanna be the guy
…
And I couldn’t finish it. I was like NOPE! NO MORE!
There’s three big LPers on YouTube and Twitch who do Isaac runs on the regular that I know of:
Bisnap, who is very analytical and can tell you all the numbers behind the items, and is super thorough about his plays.
CobaltStreak, who is known for breaking the game in the best ways. I saw a run where he had a rune called Jera (Jera duplicates everything on the ground) and an item called Blank Card (mimics the effects of a tarot card or rune once every four rooms of combat), and he just kept duplicating the items in the shop over and over again, until the entire floor was full of nothing but vibrating consumables.
and, my favorite, Northernlion, who isn’t really analytical, but he goes on interesting tangents and is just fun to watch.
If you don’t want to play Isaac, but still want to learn, or you want to learn and get better for your own plays, I’d reccomend these guys.
Of course, they also do other games too. Northernlion is currently doing a playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas, and he’s doing some daily stuff with Nuclear Throne.
Sorry I didn’t see this sooner, but if you want to talk, we’re here.
My advice: Don’t forget you can always cut ties with them if you feel like it. You shouldn’t feel obligated to stay friends with them if they upset you.
Besides, if their feminism doesn’t include trans people, then their feminism isn’t that great anyways. : P
Today I am going to a pro-immigrant rally in London. All my lefty friends (well, those who didn’t have other plans and could be bothered) will be going, and we’ll hopefully have the typical fun-day-out that demonstrations can be. I hope the weather’s good.
The last demo I was at (counter-picketing a fascist group) got hijacked by pro-settler Israelis. Hopefully that won’t be the case today; I can’t think of any despicable groups who’d be on our side in this one, which is probably for the best.
I’ll let everyone know how it goes.