We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

I'm sorry I was sad when I found out too

There's also his whole anti-Modernism thing as seen in the newspost on this page of Nnewts, which I don't have a lot of depth of understanding on his views, but it rubbed me the wrong way. It seemed to me like this linked into his views on social structure, in that there is Meaning which exists in a Platonic sense, so that there is a right way to be and a wrong way to be, depending on if you are aligning with the Purpose that is implied by that Meaning.

Enjoy a bottle of Fatalism and think about all the many many things in this world created by people you wouldn't like

I've certainly unknowingly given money to homophobes in the past and presumably will in future, and it's (probably) not like this game is going to further any kind of homophobic agenda past the point of not featuring any homos (which is hardly a rare thing), which is why I still describe my decision as somewhat petty and not necessarily one with much strong moral backing.
But I feel like being petty today.

plus the only person we've determined feeds his money directly to antigay agendas is orson scott card so i think as long as we sidestep that one we've fulfilled our quota of not accidentally supporting hate groups

i'm just going to sit here and hope this snack i'm eating wasn't produced by somebody who makes racist jokes at the bar

so

GAMES

a report about that thing people keep talking about

it will most likely be ignored by people with agendas

Are people still on that violence bullshit? What year is this?

well, it's the year in which there were a couple high-profile mass shootings, and that means "attempt literally anything to block gun control"

Complete change of topic.

HG101 Senior Editor of the UK Desk John Szczepaniak is crowdfunding a video game history book focusing on Japanese developers. Seems a little pricey at first glance, but this would legit cost that much because of the scope and time requirements.

Funded.

thanks, i needed somebody to actually read it

dang did i ever just got confirmation biased

wheat’s post is not exactly sophistry-free either. disappointing.

wheat’s post is not exactly sophistry-free either. disappointing.

Why would you say that but not point out which are the actually "misleading" parts? I don't see any purpose to this post.

You can be That Guy who performs a forum-fisking on people you will have to encounter again (it’s a nakedly aggressive form of post), or you can just complain on the Internet that someone who knows better should be more honest. To point out the misleading parts when there are many I can see is, in part, to engage in the same thing to which I object.

So, criticizing what you see as an intellectual dishonest post and lining out why that's the case would be too aggressive, but saying "wow, how sophistic, disappointed" isn't? I mean, it's certainly not confrontational, but it's super passive-aggressive and dismissive. Even if you value harmonious communication over constructive discussion – or think that in this situation, the latter is impossible – how does sniping without providing support to your disagreement foster that? It's a lot more likely to engender further unconstructive conversation or actual fighting than an actual refutation would be, since criticism without substance defaults to a character attack.

Like, I mean, if you really thought wheat's post was misleading or dishonest or just wrong, great, say so. But saying so and refusing to explain why or how comes across as not just aggressive but supercilious; I'm not sure how you internally justify a post like that as helpful, or indeed anything but a quiet insult.

There's a third way besides line-by-line refutation and a one-line summary attack, too, though. Just write up a single coherent in paragraph form. It also happens to be a lot better for the audience and helps ensure the points you raise end up being worthwhile ones.

I think the issue here is that you seem to be looking farther than "Wheat refuting the legitimacy of the article" when you shouldn't.

I don't think Wheat is claiming he knows that the conclusions drawn are completely wrong, just that the methods used to draw those conclusions are so faulty as to be useless, and so you shouldn't be taking any of those conclusions with any degree of confidence.

EDIT: I.E. since Wheat isn't really making any claims in his post, and is just criticizing the argument, its hard to pin sophistry on him. Yes he does mention the "European" countries at the end, but that seems more of a "here is some other circumstantial evidence that you seem to be ignoring in favor of your own" type of criticism.

SpoilerShow

As an apologia rather than an endorsement, I must explain to the uninitiated that this is the sort of report written in Washingtonese, a language with which I am more familiar than most. It is (in this case) intended as a “further reading” for things like amicus briefs—briefs that tend to be legal arguments by nature. Legal arguments in an adversarial system like we have in the U.S. are strongly centered around certain tactics, one of them being to avoid conceding any points whatsoever, thus making a search for any nuance a lost cause, and criticism thereof an opposing argument as a fait accompli. When people say “context is everything” or “the medium is the message”, this is exactly the sort of place where you have to keep this in mind; to the Washington outsider, it is easy to misunderstand such briefs as being in a different literary genre, like perhaps a shitty op-ed, but they are in fact a genre of their own.

I'm not sure how you internally justify a post like that as helpful, or indeed anything but a quiet insult.

If one is going to dismiss a report while clearly having only looked at the abstract using insulting terms like “Overall, cite your sources, be less dishonest, d- see after class” and redtext (N.B. the report has two pages of citations), one does not deserve anything but my contempt because there is an apparent hypocriticism embedded in it. The fact that wheat gets only my disappointment is the quite opposite of an insult, even if my wording is (admittedly) blunt or inartful. My intention was to leave open the opportunity to reflect or explanation before I say my piece, because again, I have every intention of being back to say (or not say it), and plenty of people deserve a second shot at saying something that I may have just misinterpreted. But then that there is more than one post just seemingly taking his word for it was utterly appalling to me, hence the rest of the disappointment.

My initial refusal to argue with the post on its own terms is, internally, the same sort of justification I have for not beating up a weakling who starts getting physical—maybe it feels like they “had it coming” in a way, but it doesn’t make the retaliation justifiable the way I see it. If my refusal to engage directly is regarded as contemptuous, I can live with that. I was just trying to avoid posting something much less kind like “dude, did you read the actual report [which addresses a lot of points you brought up]?” or embarrassing in front of everyone else like “dude, did you read the actual report [which is written with citations all over the place]?” and it seems I struck out. I suppose I’m using up strike 3 here. It was not my intention to offend, but it seems I have, and I apologize (as I frequently have to do) for my occasional inability to speak in a harmony-conducive way.

e: hm, I suppose I am worked up. I’ll be in my office.

I refuse to make a twitter

I might have made one quite some time ago if their name squatting policy weren’t just plain bonkers!

I doubt I’ll make one until/unless it is time to start drumming up hype. Apparently it’s one of the better returns on investment for an indie game developer trying to gain a fanbase from scratch.

Oh my god.

I found Ultimate Spin Doctor.

It's this great puzzle game from way back when I was a kid. And I was even able to borrow my dad's old Windows XP computer so I could play it.

This is a joyous day indeed.

I just bought and started Dishonored and two things
a. ohmygodohmygod it's SO COOOL stealth games were always meant to have blink in them and I don't care if it's historical or realistic come up with a bullshit reason for the protagonist to teleport because BLINKING IS AWESOME
b. I feel that guard placement is extremely cheap, especially in the second level. Not in that "I can't get past this guard", but they leave guards in places such that it's incredibly easy to snipe them with the crossbow, except the game also makes no secret that killing too many people gets you ~terrible bad end~, but if you don't kill the guards with lethal ranged weapons they're kinda standing exactly where you need to go. I ended up just killing them all WOOO CHAOS

If you use Blink, nonlethal stealth is still really viable. Or maybe it just was for me, since two of the first three bone charms I got were Rapid Choking and Fast Body Carry (I know those aren't the names but whatev). Sometimes it's a matter of just knowing who to avoid, but for the most part I just piled up sleepy bodies away in corners and managed to get by without killing a guard or setting off an alarm (on the second hardest difficulty, though). Tranq darts for those tricky parts work wonders, too.

tranq darts just make the game easymode
you can only have a few, though :c

I think most guards are pretty chokable, but sometimes they put two right next to each other in a doorway or something, so you can easily doublekill them with assassinates but the one guy will just kill you when you start choking the other

That's why you throw something to split them up.

Oh right, night vision lets you see not only through corners and is hax, but sounds to help with distractions.

oh, I assumed that both guards would go to investigate a noise if you broke a bottle
I got chaos back down to low in the bathhouse mission, although my solution was a bit... less elegant
I choked the guards who were directly in my way, and then when I set off alarms/ran into weepers, I just ran really fast and blinked repeatedly until they gave up
minimum casualties, minimum stealth

the great thing about area of effect based sound is if one guard notices something but the other doesn't by virtue of being a foot away from the boundary of the sound, he will stand there like a lemon while his friend looks at that shiny thing waaaaaay over there

I am now in possession of Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril for the NES.

It was made in 2010.

It's fantastic.