Shacknews LoL

Greetings, Travelers

This is one of those posts that I've been both anticipating and dreading at the same time. Steve, Asif, and JB have all known about it for a little over a week, but today is an interesting day for the rest of the staff, my friends, and Chatty.

My time with Shacknews is coming to an end.

http://i.imgur.com/jJpbalL.gif

You might be shocked by that...

http://i.imgur.com/7oxrHuJ.gif

Ok, some of you may be more surprised than others. I'm surprised myself, because this kinda... just happened. I love my job, love the staff, and you guys. I've enjoyed being part of the Shacknews family for over 5 years. But the time has come for a new challenge. Yahoo eSports came knocking at my door, seeking out someone to help build their community. After hearing their goal to be as big a presence for eSports as Yahoo Sports is for traditional sports, I realized it's a challenge I'm happy to take head-on.

With that said, next week's GDC will act as one of my final assignments for Shack. I'll be posting features over the course of next few weeks. After that, I'm off to a whole new journey and I will be stepping away as Senior Editor and as the resident Chattymaster. That means interesting times ahead for Shack, too, because the man with the briefcase will soon put out a call for new moderators to replace the ones that are retired and the ones that will soon hang their banhammers up after years of dedicated, unpaid service. More information on that is coming soon.

First and foremost, I want to thank everyone at Shack for putting up with me for the past five years: Asif, JB, JG, Greg, Andrew, Joe T (staymighty and mi hermano from another madre), Daniel, Josh, and Brittany. Brittany, in particular, is someone whose writing style, gaming knowledge, and playful tone I came to greatly appreciate at Destructoid and I take a great personal pride in helping get the ball rolling to bring her to Shack. There's the past Shack Staff, like Garnett (who's killing it at Amazon!), Xav (who I still have the pleasure of saying hello to now and then), Jeff Mattas (listen for his voice in Narcosis), Alice (hope to see you at GDC again this year!), and everyone else that has helped make me the writer I am today, including Andrew Yoon, my close friend and mentor who was lost to us way too soon. And of course, there's Steve Watts, EIC and the captain of the ship, who I've been more than happy to pick up my sword for in the last five years, both of us holdovers through the GameFly era, through that uncertain period of transition, and up through today. I leave the site in great hands!

And I will miss all of you on Chatty. While greg-m and ECO have gone on to new pastures, I won't forget that they introduced me to this hive of scum and villainy. I appreciate the mods all helping me get acclimated to the atmosphere and learn the ins-and-outs of the place. That includes active mods like Dave-A, UtilityMaximizer, Megara9 (who I miss like hell, since she left to Seattle), Morgin, eonix, Serpico74, hirez, and everyone else, but I'm also including the past mods, like geedeck, Frozen Pixel, and Rauol Duke, because whatever the hivemind's thoughts of them may be today, those thoughts are irrelevant to me, because they are wonderful people and they helped me be the best Chatty poster I could be. I will always appreciate everything they've done and I wish them luck in their new endeavors, as well. I'm also greatly appreciative of the Chatty posters I've met, like BlackCat9 and DianeoftheMoon over at Heroes of the Storm events; eeeealmo, Tawler, mechanicalgrape, bcyde, and the rest of the ShackFighter crew at Evo (we're doing it again this year, boys!); sparkly at E3 (a memory I'll look back at very fondly - http://i.imgur.com/ManC9Nl.jpg ); dahanese for being so awesome at E3 and beyond, too; ThomW for introducing me to the Las Vegas Pinball Museum; -=kodiak=- for the UFC threads; all of my friends here for the football threads; and everyone I've interacted with here on the boards. I look forward to seeing what our Chatty posters on the game development front are going to have for us in the future. Games like Corpses 'N Souls from valcan_s, Demons and Shotguns from freakynipples69, new content for Plague Inc. from jamiejme (multiplayer is out now!), and of course, Astroneer from our esteemed eonix.

This isn't a full goodbye, because I've been given approval by my new employers to continue offering up a few freelance reviews and features here at Shack on a semi-regular basis, which is good, since I have some episodic games that I must see through to the end. And of course, I'll be lurking around Chatty and have LC/ShackBrowse open. This isn't goodbye, it's more like "See you later."

Always remember: Be excellent to each other! Party on, dudes!

http://chattypics.com/files/BatmanHonor_p665i72ffe.jpg

Lukiopimp, posts like yours here reinforce my belief that a lot of dislike for Sarkeesian and other feminist figures often comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what they're presenting. Like others have said, she isn't saying "men are toxic" but rather she is referencing certain social ideas of masculinity that are destructive or 'toxic.' It's not a concept she invented or is trying to invent, but instead it's a concept that has existed for ages, throughout and completely independent of feminist dialog. It's nearly rhetorical at this point. For instance:

A positive idea of masculinity might be to "be a man of your word," to be honest and honorable.

A positive but potentially problematic idea of masculinity might be that in order to be a man, you must "provide for your family." I like the idea and it sounds honorable to me, but what if a man who has worked as a laborer all his life loses the ability to walk from an accident? Now he can't work. Does that make him less of a man? I think it's still a fine thought and the tricky parts are easily negotiated around, but it's worth recognizing that there are tricky parts.

A clearly negative idea of masculinity is the need to commit violent acts against other people when it is perceived that your masculinity has been questioned or even "taken away." A prime example of that is Warmachine nearly killing Christy Mack. They weren't even dating anymore but Warmachine felt he still 'owned' her, so seeing another man alone with her in her house made him feel like she was cheating on him. That he was being 'cuckolded' and his masculinity was taken away. He felt like the only way to get it back was to violently assault the man, and then violently assault and rape Christy Mack. He literally felt he had to 're-establish dominance.' That's "toxic masculinity."

A lot school shootings are ultimately tied back to how the shooters were bullied, or angry for some reason, and they felt violent retribution was the only solution available to them. The correlation is evident.

I think this documentary is one that will start to address these kinds of issues:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc45-ptHMxo

...but even if you don't agree with what they say, or what Sarkeesian says, or other feminists say, and you seek to discuss it, that's fine as long as you discuss what they're actually talking about. But if you commonly misunderstand what's being said from the start, then you're always gonna get it wrong and feel disconnected from what people are actually saying and trying to address.

I usually avoid these threads, but with the amount of fear mongering and craziness in general, I figure I'd chime in as I do have a PhD in microbiology.

In the cutting edge of science, we're basically on the verge of curing every viral infection ever with stuff like CRISPRs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR , which allow you to target a very specific piece of DNA and remove it from the genome. It allows you to do crazy stuff like remove HIV integration from an established cell: http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/40531/title/Genome-Editing-Cuts-Out-HIV/ .

Not only can you remove viruses and such you can take an alternate strategy and remove key molecules on the cell surface that allow the virus to invade the cell. For example, you can remove the CCR5 receptor from immune cells and boom, immune to HIV. http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/viruses101/hiv_resistant_mutation

The reason their isn't more of push for a cure/vaccination/therapeutic treatment, for ebola is generally and issue of money. It's not an issue in the modern world and therefore stuff like Cancer/HIV/Heart disease get the lion's share of research funding.

But you can take a similar approach for ebola http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v477/n7364/full/nature10348.html

The odds of a mutation allowing Ebola to become air born is so ridiculously low that it's generally not worth worrying about. We know what the ebola genome looks like:
http://viralzone.expasy.org/all_by_species/207.html

It encodes 7 proteins. For it to ever mutate to become air born it has to avoid mutations in its polymerase ( the thing that allows it to copy itself ) and gain a ridiculous number of new functions within every viral coat protein to cause it to become transmissible in air.

Be less mad : http://chattypics.com/viewer.php?file=childsplayJPG_8552di436a.jpg

Dude got $589.45 plus some unknown amount for a "pc tablet" and "diary" from reddit. I put that at about $800. Originally I wanted to do 2:1, but have some checks in transit that made that not possible right this moment. I'll do the other $800 after I transfer some out of savings.

I had already donated to charities this year and didn't intend to do any more, but his pissed me off. At least now those on reddit who were duped by this guy can know twice whatever they gave him went to giving sick kids a better Christmas.

Earl Greigh wanted me to post pictures from the office Halloween costume party. Earl is an awesome dude, totally saved my bacon when I first landed in LA and he didn't even know me but let me crash on his couch while I looked for a place to live. I drank all of his beer and he didn't complain. Coolest fucking guy in the world, sets the standard by which we are all to be judged. So I'm posting the pics. For you, Earl. Only for you. Oh and for Ernie of course.

http://chattypics.com/files/party1_tvv1p4mtun.jpg
http://chattypics.com/files/party2_arztn65is0.jpg

I think we won the contest (there was a lot of alcohol involved at the party). Only half of you will know who we are supposed to be, but the other half should find out and then head to Netflix.

Nah, not good for him. Fuck him. Fuck scalpers.

It sounds like she was just looking for a reason to leave. I don't think one off hand comment while you are mostly asleep should be enough to make someone leave like that.

Maybe she is crazier than you thought.

maybe you're both underpaid

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