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One word: Whoooooaaaaaa.

I'm speechless. I really don't know what to say. I have NEVER been given this much choice in an OS install before. For those of you who are Linux users looking to try out a BSD, go for this one.

First things first: to get the install started, I first dd'd the PC-BSD disk image onto a portable hard drive that I had lying around. After plugging it into the test computer and starting, I was greeted with something familiar to quite a few of the people reading this: "Loading GRUB". Now, I have heard that opinions on GRUB are varied, however I have to say that I quite like it just by virtue of already knowing how to configure it.

After a bit of a wait (this was off a hard drive, so those of you installing from a DVD or slow flash drive will need to be patient), I was greeted with the installer program.

After a few prompts, I was met with a screen asking me what I wanted the computer's role to be. At first I was going to just click "Desktop" and be done with it, but then I saw that I had the option to customize the install. Seeing that there was no reason not to, I proceeded to do so. Needless to say, I was impressed. The installer listed out categories of options to choose from, like, which desktop environment you want (of something like 10 choices, including KDE, I picked MATE because I wanted to. This was in direct contrast to Debian, where you have to explicitly select one of a few desktop environments in the bootloader of all places, or Ubuntu where you basically have to pick an entirely different version of the OS from a few choices. I proceeded to check off the other options that I wanted, like Java and Chromium (Maybe with enough support, we'll see a Pale Moon port to *BSD).

Following this lovely first impression, I was greeted by a disk partitioning screen featuring several options for the amount of control I wanted over the whole process. Seeing that this was going to be the only OS on the machine, I went for the easiest option. So far, so good!

Once the installation had completed, I had the option of saving my specific configuration and settings to a USB device in order to install with the same settings again later on. That was quite nice of them, and I really appreciate that touch.

I'll keep you folks posted as I use the OS.

Warning: if you suffer from depression, don't read this. It might mess with your head. Not kidding.

This is probably the first time I've written to you, universe. I may have prayed to God or others, but I doubt I've spoken to you before.

I need to drop on my knees, and sob out my thanks to god for Prozac 60mg. I've suffered more than I imagine near anyone else can comprehend. It's such a sick, bent agony laced with petrifying fear, covered in 'my-universe-is-broken' sauce. The OCD I was dealt in 2011 is the most indescribable hell I can imagine. I can laugh at the atrocities I see on the news because I would have traded places for something as simple and benign as physical pain, the pain of four broken limbs or having my skin peeled off with a steak knife. Instead I was given 24-hour terror equivalent to being eaten alive by a monster. I wanted to die so bad during this. I wanted to die so badly.
I was alive for my family but even their need was getting to not be enough to justify my living in this carnival from hell.

So as you know I ended up in a crisis center in September, right in time for 9/11, and was put on several medications, none of which worked, and one (Invega, the only antipsychotic they tried), actually made it far worse. Then they gave me the Prozac. I knew that SSRIs needed to be a high dose to help OCD, so I bothered them until they raised it to 60mg.
It took the month and a half to start working they said it would. A little longer.

We both know I was not given the hand-washing or germ phobias with my OCD, I was given the horrible obsessive existential stuff, the really horrible painful questions that I'd obsess over until every fiber of my being believed them to be true. The kind of stuff that can blacken your sky and make you feel like you're falling into an infinite pit of pitch black tar. The stuff that makes you want to die, but be too afraid of what nightmare would await you if you did. The one the sufferers called Pure-O. I suppose I deserve some positive reward for living through this at all, or perhaps just an absence of punishment for a while, since if I wasn't wanted by family and friends, I'd be two years dead by now.

I'm writing this because I want to tell you what I need now. I hope you'll give it to me. As you know, the last few months, during my recovery, I've stopped all work, all projects, all programming and just played Warzone 2100 all day. I've gotten as good as I was before. I'm happy for the first time in years. I plan to start my work again soon, but I need some guarantees from you before I do so.

The first thing is, as an example, my famous gerbil jokes, such as 'fear the gerbils', no longer appeal to me, because I've had enough fear. Horror movies are no longer something I watch, I don't enjoy Halloween anymore, and although you know that historically I've preferred sad music when sad, now, I find myself playing uplifting songs in an attempt to drown out the memories. Christmas is probably forever ruined for me because of the onset of the OCD that time in 2011. Kinda a PTSD thing going on there.
Whenever I hear a christmas song, instant trip down memory lane from hell.
Fourth of July is ruined too thanks to my relapse in July this year.

I want to be surrounded by joy, by kindness, by peace, by good things. I have seen enough of the other side of the spectrum for this lifetime.

I want to be loved, and to love others, I want to have a fulfilling and useful purpose and still have time for myself.
I want to be followed by a hundred billion times more light than I ever was darkness.

The tagline at the bottom of the site today says "Today is the first day of the rest of the mess.", but I vehemently disagree. Today is the first day of the rest of my life, and it's going to be good now, because I deserve it. I've paid my dues. I'd just like your blessing for the good plan I've laid out, and your help in making it come to pass.

Sincerely, SubsentientneitnesbuS.

Just going to link to my post on G+ this time, mostly because I don't feel like doing a whole bunch of work to reformat things for here. (It's set to "public", so you don't have to log in.) As usual, feel free to use any of these as submission to Soylent News!

One of these days, I'll write some sort of script to process the list into various formats for different outlets...that day is not today, though.

Technically, this is yesterday's edition - I forgot to post it here because I was up late. Feel free to mine this for site submissions.

How Universal Basic Income Will Save Us From the Robot Uprising
There's a list of six suggestions for "Navigating the transition to a better world" in this article, and I'd like to address these suggestions briefly:
1. Protecting Employment: This is dumb - if the robot doesn't need to have an operator, why build one into the system? It's another point of failure.
2. Sharing Work: This is probably the dumbest of the bunch. The most-difficult jobs to automate are those that involve creativity and those that involve a lot of knowledge about different components interact - which means that a worker needs to understand the current state of a project in order to continue to work on it.
3. Making New Work: If people hate make-work at their jobs now, how will they feel when their entire jobs are make-work?
4. Redistribution: Finally some smarts from these people. This happens today. It's called "your taxes going to welfare". It will continue to happen in the future. Trying to get it to not happen in the future is leaving future generations a world where they are ruled over by oligarchs.
5. Education: This is necessary; but today's education is based around a system designed to turn out people who are capable of working in a factory producing widgets. We need to totally re-evaluate our educational system.
6. Fostering a New Social Contract: Isn't the whole point of a universal basic income to turn the existing social contract on its head?
Okay, off my soapbox. Here's the link:
http://io9.com/how-universal-basic-income-will-save-us-from-the-robot-1653303459

Predictors of Kidney Failure in Middle Age Found in Teenagers
My wife's kidneys have failed, so kidney disease is something that I'm always looking at the causes of, as well as the treatments for it. This article suggests that damage may start early.
http://www.oru.se/English/News/Predictors-of-Kidney-Failure-in-Middle-Age-Found-in-Teenagers/

A possible alternative to antibiotics
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are no joke - and overprescription (and poor compliance) of antibiotics over the past few decades have lead to their spread.
http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=146793&CultureCode=en

Ultracold disappearing act: ‘Matter waves’ move through one another but never share space
I think (maybe) that this experiments gives some support for other interpretations of quantum mechanics that the standard "Copenhagen Interpretation" that is generally accepted in scientific circles.
http://news.rice.edu/2014/11/02/ultracold-disappearing-act/

Ferguson no-fly zone aimed at media
Unfortunately, I can't say that I'm surprised that a local police would abuse its authority and influence. David Brin (who I link to quite often in these posts) recommends "sousveillance" - it would have been excellent if some of the protestors had camera-equipped quadcopters or similar, that are small enough to avoid FAA notice, to document what was going on. Such items are, unfortunately, probably priced out of reach of those most in need of them.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/674886091e344ffa95e92eb482e02be1/ap-exclusive-ferguson-no-fly-zone-aimed-media

GeekDad Speaks Out About Gamergate – UPDATED
If it's about ethics, why are the women in gaming being attacked, instead of the journalists who are willing to trade "favors" for positive game reviews? (Although personally I think that gaming needs a magazine like "Consumer Reports" - one that goes out and purchases, then plays, the actual delivered game, rather than preview copies provided to reviewers well before the actual release date.)
http://geekdad.com/2014/10/geekdad-gamergate/

Why we must explore space
The dinosaurs are extinct because they didn't have a space program. Let's not follow in their footsteps - although once we move beyond our own planet, I think we'll likely also evolve beyond our current definition of humanity. Well, there were lots of types of dinosaurs - let's have lots of types of humans as well.
http://boingboing.net/2014/11/03/why-i-believe-space-exploratio.html

A World of Ruperts - back to the future
I mentioned I link to David Brin a lot, right? He's usually too scattershot to make any sort of coherent comment on the entirety of his blog posts that (at least, in any way more specific than "lots of interesting information here!"). I thought that the Rupert in this post would be Rupert Murdoch, but it's Rupert Sheldrake - but in typical Brin fashion, he gets around to Murdoch in this post, too...and gerrymandering...and transhumanism...and evolution... You really need a flexible brain to keep up with this guy!
http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2014/11/a-world-of-ruperts-back-to-future.html

Rethinking Term 'Invisible Cyclist'
Hour-long discussion. Probably won't interest most of you. I'll be watching/listening tomorrow.
http://bikeleague.org/content/rethinking-term-invisible-cyclist

Here's the page from the biology textbook that Arizona conservatives tore out
About - what else - contraception.
http://boingboing.net/2014/11/03/heres-the-page-from-the-biol.html

The Introvert's Corner: If You're Lonely, Try Loosening Up
"It's not that hard if you don't overthink it." I'm just glad that the author didn't suggest alcohol (although that does work for some people).
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-introverts-corner/201411/if-youre-lonely-try-loosening

When island nations drown, who owns their seas?
An interesting economic question for Tuvalu, Maldives, and Kiribati.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/10/18/when-island-nations-drown-who-owns-their-seas/hyH9W5b1mCAyTVgwlFh7qO/story.html?Src=longreads

Scientists Experiment With Robotic Bacteria?
Nanoscale! This is in the very early stages, though.
http://www.fastcompany.com/3037594/scientists-experiment-with-robotic-bacteria?partner=rss

*Massive geographic change may have triggered explosion of animal life*
http://phys.org/news/2014-10-massive-geographic-triggered-explosion-animal.html

*Research Suggests That Psychiatric Interventions Like Admission to a Mental Facility Could Increase Suicide Risk*
Very import to note the "could" in the title - this is correlation, not causation. No need to sensationalize! The second page of this three-page article suggests an intriguing possibility...
http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/research-suggests-psychiatric-interventions-admission-mental-facility-could-increase

*Secret recording of corporate lobbyist is a dirty-tricks playbook*
http://boingboing.net/2014/10/31/secret-recording-of-corporate.html

*People Change Their Moral Values to Benefit Themselves Over Others*
http://sb.cc.stonybrook.edu/news/general/141031moralvalues.php

*Efficient genetic editing*
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-10/hu-ege102914.php

*'Divide and rule' -- raven politics*
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-10/uov-ar103114.php

*Green spaces don't ensure biodiversity in urban areas*
http://now.uiowa.edu/2014/10/green-spaces-dont-ensure-biodiversity-urban-areas

*Demonization and the deliberate destruction of U.S. politics*
http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2014/11/demonization-and-deliberate-destruction.html

*In Social Networking, 'Weak' Connections May Be the Most Powerful*
http://motherboard.vice.com/en_uk/read/in-social-networking-weak-connections-may-be-the-most-powerful

*Who's Buying the Midterm Elections? A Bunch of Old White Guys*
http://m.thenation.com/blog/186873-whos-buying-midterm-elections-bunch-old-white-guys

*We must still hate our kids: Philadelphia and “education reformers” fight demented war on elementary schools*
http://www.salon.com/2014/11/01/we_must_still_hate_our_kids_philadelphia_and_education_reformers_fight_demented_war_on_elementary_schools/

*UK cultural institutions leave their WWI cases empty to protest insane copyright*
http://boingboing.net/2014/11/02/uk-cultural-institutions-leave.html

*Seeing dinosaur feathers in a new light*
http://phys.org/news/2014-10-dinosaur-feathers.html

*Why Don't More People Work As Programmers?*
http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/10/31/why-dont-more-people-work-as-programmers/

*Gravity in the World’s Biggest Vacuum Chamber: Dropping Feathers vs. a Bowling Ball in a Vacuum*
http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2014/11/02/gravity-in-the-worlds-biggest-vacuum-chamber-dropping-feathers-vs-a-bowling-ball-in-a-vacuum/

Since this is a fairly tech-oriented site, I've decided to post my most recent adventure in overclocking.

Where I work, there is a scrap parts bin that is occasionally emptied for recycling. For some reason, this summer I found two Athlon 64 boards (AM2 and 754) that someone had thrown away after removing the heatsinks from the chipsets. The 754 board came with an Athlon 64 3200+ and I had a spare 64 x2 for the other.

I managed to find some replacement stick-on heatsinks on Amazon so that the chipsets wouldn't burn themselves out.

The first step of this process was installing Linux Mint, as I have observed that it is far more stable than Windows when overclocking. Then in the BIOS, I set the core voltage to the max rated (1.55) to brute force stability for testing so that I wouldn't waste any time.

Benchmarks were obtained from HardInfo:

CPU Blowfish
2200 MHz 18.217
2420 MHz 16.639
2750 MHz 14.548
CPU CryptoHash
2200 MHz 69.457
2420 MHz 75.843
2750 MHz 87.045
CPU Fibonacci
2200 MHz 4.028
2420 MHz 4.701
2750 MHz 3.223
CPU N-Queens
2200 MHz 14.026
2420 MHz 12.865
2750 MHz 9.808
FPU FFT
2200 MHz 15.317
2420 MHz 13.218
2750 MHz 11.547
FPU Raytracing
2200 MHz 23.851
2420 MHz 21.389
2750 MHz 18.709

Feel free to mine this for SN submissions. I'm going to get busy reading all of these links.

*Magic Mushrooms Create a Hyperconnected Brain*
http://www.livescience.com/48502-magic-mushrooms-change-brain-networks.html

*Big Brother’s Liberal Friends*
I couldn't get through this; I can't tell if it's dense with actually commentary or just dense with crazy.
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/big-brother%E2%80%99s-liberal-friends-11515?page=show

*Asides: on Pax Americana, Libertarians and where the #$#! are our Roosevelts?*
http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2014/10/asides-on-pax-americana-libertarians.html

*New frog discovered inhabiting I-95 corridor from Connecticut to North Carolina*
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-10/ru-nfd102714.php

*Aortic Valve Replacement Appears Safe, Effective in Very Elderly Patients*
http://www.elsevier.com/about/press-releases/research-and-journals/aortic-valve-replacement-appears-safe,-effective-in-very-elderly-patients

*Falsehoods programmers believe about time*
http://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-time

*“Multiple roads lead to Rome” To reap the brain benefits of physical activity, just get moving!*
http://www.nouvelles.umontreal.ca/udem-news/news/20141029-multiple-roads-lead-to-rome-to-reap-the-brain-benefits-of-physical-activity-just-get-moving.html

*Cinema-like environment helps audiences become immersed in movies even when shown on small screens*
http://www.uni-mainz.de/presse/17666_ENG_HTML.php

*New solar power material converts 90 percent of captured light into heat*
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-10/uoc--nsp102814.php

*Researchers identify potential target for treating triple-negative breast cancer*
http://www.kucancercenter.org/about-us/news/researchers-identify-potential-target-for-treating-breast-cancer

*Liberal or conservative? Reactions to disgust are a dead giveaway*
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-10/cp-loc102314.php

*Microrockets fueled by water neutralize chemical and biological warfare agents*
http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/presspacs/2014/acs-presspac-october-29-2014/microrockets-fueled-by-water-neutralize-chemical-and-biological-warfare-agents.html

*A mechanism that allows a differentiated cell to reactivate as a stem cell revealed*
http://www.irbbarcelona.org/en/news/a-mechanism-that-allows-a-differentiated-cell-to-reactivate-as-a-stem-cell-revealed

*Walking Workstations Improve Physical and Mental Health, While Building a Healthier Workplace*
http://science.iupui.edu/news/walking-workstations-improve-physical-and-mental-health-while-building-healthier-workplace

*Supersonic Laser-Propelled Rockets*
*http://www.osa.org/en-us/about_osa/newsroom/news_releases/2014/supersonic_laser-propelled_rockets/*

*The Science of Charismatic Voices*
http://www.newswise.com/articles/the-science-of-charismatic-voices

*Same Votes, Different Districts Would Change Results*
http://today.duke.edu/2014/10/mathofredistricting

*NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility Completes Initial Assessment after Orbital Launch Mishap*
http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/october/nasa-s-wallops-flight-facility-completes-initial-assessment-after-orbital-launch/index.html

*Gottfrid Svartholm Found Guilty in Hacking Trial*
http://torrentfreak.com/gottfrid-svartholm-found-guilty-in-hacking-trial-141030/

*Nicely preserved teenage wooly mammoth carcass to be cloned into new wooly mammoths*
http://boingboing.net/2014/10/30/nicely-preserved-teenage-wooly.html

*Copyright Redux*
http://boingboing.net/2014/10/30/copyright-redux.html

*When Will Humans Live on Mars?*
http://motherboard.vice.com/en_uk/read/when-will-humans-live-on-mars

*Ancient Stone Circles in Mideast Baffle Archaeologists*
http://www.livescience.com/48532-big-circles-archaeological-mystery.html

*Physical Salary*
http://what-if.xkcd.com/118/

*David Graeber and Thomas Piketty on whether capitalism will destroy itself*
http://www.thebaffler.com/odds-and-ends/soak-the-rich

*Could daylight saving time be a risk to diabetics?*
http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2014/could-daylight-saving-time-be-a-risk-to-diabetics/

*High-Intensity Sound Waves May Aid Regenerative Medicine*
http://www.newswise.com/articles/high-intensity-sound-waves-may-aid-regenerative-medicine

*Take a walk in the sun to ease time change woes, says Vanderbilt sleep expert*
http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2014/10/take-a-walk-in-the-sun-to-ease-time-change-woes-says-vanderbilt-sleep-expert/

*Superior Firepower: The Making of Aliens*
http://boingboing.net/2014/10/31/superior-firepower-the-making.html

*Debuting "Shudders," MC Frontalot's spooky new video*
http://boingboing.net/2014/10/31/debuting-shudders-mc-fron.html

*Who ordered THAT?!?*
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/10/who-ordered-that-1.html

*How My Week Went*
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2014/10/31/how-my-week-went/

*quote of the week: "rail is only part of the equation"*
http://www.humantransit.org/2014/10/quote-of-the-week-rail-is-only-part-of-the-equation.html

*Jian Ghomeshi and the Women He Knew*
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2014/10/31/jian-ghomeshi-and-the-women-he-knew/

*Eleven countries studied, one inescapable conclusion – the drug laws don’t work*
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/oct/30/drug-laws-international-study-tough-policy-use-problem

*Fed pushes largest US banks to shrink*
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Latest-News-Wires/2014/0909/Fed-pushes-largest-US-banks-to-shrink?cmpid=addthis_twitter

It appears that the talks of there being a debian fork are actually getting serious:

http://debianfork.org/

What say ye, soylent? (If only I had the time and energy to write an article about this *cough*)

Okay, so I've been having a long discussion on Google Plus about Apple Pay and whether or not it will get greater adoption than Google Wallet and other NFC-based payment options. As part of that, I needed to explain the credit card processing industry as it stood when I left the acquiring bank that I worked for up until the beginning of 2014. Banks and the financial industry move very slowly, so I expect nothing has changed.

The mnemonic that you need to know is MANIC. It stands for:

Merchant
Acquirer (or payment processor)
Network
Issuer
Customer

These are the five types of entities involved in a credit card transaction. Each one has a formal relationship (some sort of contract) with the entities on either side of it. The merchant and customer have an INFORMAL relationship with each other. For the rest of this discussion, I'm going to say "customer" when I really "customer's account" as held at the issuer.

"Network" is one of the interbank networks - in the US, that's Visa, MasterCard, and now Discover and American Express as they've started to allow their card brands to be issued with other banks backing the credit. (Discover and AmEx used to do their own issuing, no other banks allowed, but that's changed in the last few years.)

Transaction process

When a credit card transaction is started, the merchant takes the card data - from the chip in the case of EMV transactions, which includes NFC-based payment; or from the magnetic stripe, which has three "tracks" on it, two of which contain the necessary data for a transaction; or by keying the data into a terminal; or from the internet - adds their merchant information, the amount, and a bunch of data about the transaction including how the data was entered, and sends it to their acquirer.

The acquirer then validates the information - including that the merchant has an active account - and reformats it (to what degree depends on the message structures involved, if you want your head to hurt, study up on ISO8583 messaging), figures out what network it belongs to by looking at the first few digits of the card number, then sends it on to the appropriate network.

The network receives the message, does their own validation on it (and may reject it if they don't like something about it), examines the first part of the card number, uses that figure out which bank is the issuer. The network may then do their own reformatting of the message, adds a bunch of network information (such as "Transaction ID" that you sometimes see on receipts), and forwards it on to the issuer.

The issuer then checks the customer to make sure that the account is in good standing, there's enough money available to cover the transaction, and a number of other things. If everything's okay, they respond with an approval response code ("00" in ISO8583) and an authorization number, and reduce the amount of money that the customer has available. If there isn't sufficient money available to cover the transaction, or there's some other problem, the issuer responds with a decline code, which there are a lot of (including codes for "violation of law" and "stolen card", among TONS of other things).

Once the issuer has made a decision on whether or not to approve the transaction, the whole thing is routed backwards through the same set of entities until it hits the merchant's terminal, and a receipt is printed showing the status of the transaction.

Some end notes:

1. For a credit card, this is just the authorization portion. There's a second step after authorization called "settlement" that's required before the merchant actually gets paid for the transaction. Settlement is the step where things like restaurant tips get added; as well as a number of things that are included for corporate cards that aren't included for personal cards. Authorizations do eventually expire; how long that takes depends on your bank. Debit is also different in that generally the authorization and settlement are essentially one piece.

2. This is the general case; there's a bunch of complications that I didn't go into around things like lodging transactions when you change the length of a stay and automated fuel dispensers that authorize for one amount but send a message giving the final amount when you put the nozzle back on the pump.

3. Sorry if my use of the bold tag has annoyed you.

If you're unfamiliar with #gamergate count yourself lucky that you've avoided it this long. The easiest and most instructive way to explain this saga is to teach you how to identify the two main camps which are currently at war with each other over the serious business of either ethics in video game journalism or sexism among male gamers--depending on who you ask.

The name, and hashtag, gamergate was coined after the style of adding the suffix -gate to a word to denote some relation to controversy, scandal, and Richard Nixon's now 42-year-old war on the English language which he continues to wage from beyond the grave.

Like any good media fracas, there's something for everyone. For the fans of lowbrow gossip there's a lover's quarrel, infidelity, sex and intrigue; and for people above such tawdriness, or at least pretend to be above, there's the more dignified issues of journalistic integrity and professional ethics. Remember though that we're talking about video games here.

The really telling thing though, and really the only aspect you need to understand, is which side is putting out which narrative. Understanding the details, the play by play of the early events is a long slog through a lot of tedious material. It's really a turf war over video games, and the two sides are the indigenous denizens of gaming culture (men and women), and an outside group which seeks to bring a radical brand of misandric feminism into video games. In short: a female game developer used her personal relationship with a member of the gaming press to gain publicity (not a review, just a mention) for herself and her game. Gamers think that's wrong. The aforementioned anti-male bigots think it should be OK, as long as that woman is one of them--and she was. But that event was just the breaking point. The issue is larger and more widespread than that. We're passed talking about her.

You might expect that the video game press would be at the center of the discussion about journalism and ethics. How close should a reporter be to a story? What constitutes conflict of interest? When should a journalist recuse herself from a story about a close friend? Yet the mainstream press doesn't want to have that conversation. They really don't want to have that conversation. They want to talk about that other stuff. So we get articles about the "toxic" culture of online gaming. We are told that gaming has a problem and that problem is sexism; that all the allegations of corruption are just a smokescreen to hide the fact that bitter, virginal, male, nerds, are angry that women in the industry have sex.

You have to ask yourself, if there is no basis for the allegations of corruption, why is everyone who would be implicated running scared? Why has there been a media blitz to pump out the other side of the story, the sexism angle? Why is Jimmy fucking Wales having to take a break from begging for donations to step in and (at least threaten to) police the Wikipedia article about gamergate?

When you calmly, politely, and without a hint of sexism, suggest that you'd like to have a discussion about ethics in journalism, you are immediately pilloried as a misogynist, a bigot, a slut-shamer, and worse. And the people screaming these things at you the loudest, you'll notice, aren't even players of video games. They're riding in from tumblr and academia to save us from ourselves. They really believe that we need them. They really believe there's something wrong with our culture and our hobby that must be fixed. They really believe that in the end, we'll thank them for their efforts.

I am not a sexist, a bigot, a mysogynerd, or a slut-shamer. And I say, no thank you.

We do not need outsiders to come into our community and tell us that we are doing it wrong. And when they use women and minorities as a shield to justify their campaign, I find that more than a little annoying. It's demonstrative of the cynical hypocrisy of these people, that the harshest vitriol is directed at other women who happen to disagree with them. When a female gamer stands up to their bullying and says that she doesn't feel threatened by men, that trash talk rape jokes online aren't existential threats to her safety, that they feel insulted when they're told they've internalized misogyny, she'll be told to sit down and shut up. The heat death of the universe would arrive before I would finish cataloging all the examples of this, but here's a perfect and succinct example that gives the character of what we're up against.

If you're anti-Gamergate, if you think that's where you belong because you say to yourself, "Hey, I'm not a sexist. I'm down with women's rights. Feminism sounds OK most of the time. I guess I side with the people who use those terms to describe themselves." then know that those people (from the pic, the username on the bottom) are your allies, your leaders, and your spiritual guides.

If however, on reflection, you see their hypocrisy and their infantilization of women, their anger and their hatred, and decide that's not for you; then welcome, you're in good company.

#gamergate

Now can we just play video games, please?