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I'm not sure that anyone has outright said this, but I think it is worth saying:

Ozzie has been a model of professional and upright behavior, even when placed in a difficult and awkward situation. Putting him in charge of community management is a good idea (even if it does mean he has a lot more responsibility, on top of all his other responsibilities). I don't mean to suggest that previous moderation leaders did a poor job (and to be clear, I approve of most moderation decisions for the past few years), but only that I think Ozzie will do a great job. Also, it will be beneficial to have an employee of the site regularly engaged with moderation.

We are all lucky to have Ozzie around. He is a stand-up guy.

I think a lot of you are missing the point here. You don't need to defend gamers, especially here on the Shack. We're all gamers and OUR gaming community IS inundated with sexism and misogyny, even if most of us are not personally sending death threats. We, each of us, have to own that. We should be less concerned with defending our honor and more concerned with stamping out the ugly shit.

The random guy you just had a good round of Titanfall with? He just shouted over XBL to the girl playing that she should go make him a sandwich. He's a gamer.

The guy who just gave you a tip on how to play Faceless Void and upvoted you for being Friendly? He just commented on a YouTube game review how he hopes the reviewer gets raped for her stupid opinion. He's a gamer.

And we can all think of a thousand examples where a gamer did GOOD and wonderful thing! Some of those good things even happen right here on the Shack, so gamers aren't the worst, right?

Thing is, it's not a contest. We're responsible for our community and for all the good things, things are still pretty fucking bad when girls and women can EXPECT to receive abuse and threats, just for being a part of our community. We can do better. Report. Call people out. Zero tolerance for this shit and maybe in our lifetimes 'gamers' won't be seen by many as a monolithic misogynist entity. And you know, maybe women won't be threatened with rape for existing either.

Am I allowed to peddle my tour to the Shack?

Pretty excited about this one! Lots of banner venues. Y’all come on out if you’re in the area.

https://www.marcrebillet.com/tour

Since my work is done, I feel comfortable talking about it. I spent a bunch of time working with the Biden IL campaign on data analysis and dashboards/reporting with folks from the former Obama CIO team, including Obama's CIO/CTO who is a friend and former client. I can't talk about any details, but let me tell you that the Biden campaign is more organized around data collection and visualization than pretty much any customer I have ever worked with.

I also got involved with the Lincoln project in IL and did some 'consulting' on their tech platform and a few other things. I know, they have a bunch of issues themselves, but I figured helping their voice and reach during the campaign was more powerful than anything I could do myself.

My ballot was very blue. I did vote for a local R who is running for county controller, because he is a friend, spoke out against Trump, and his opposition isn't a CPA and my buddy has a 6 year track record of being fiscally conservative and 100% transparent. He published the country finances online and updates it every month. That's the kind of R I can still get behind.

Going to be an interesting 72 hours that's for sure.

Can we stop with the normalization of phrases like "I don't like Biden either but...." and "hold your nose" etc?

It's the exact same shit that happened in 2016 with people being all "Well, I don't like Hillary either but...." and it permeated all social groups in my life. If you really questioned people on WHY they didn't like Hillary, they didn't even know. She was an objectively qualified and quality candidate.

Biden is a _good_ candidate. This dude served as VP under Barack Fucking Obama. Sorry he's an old white dude, but anyone who even remotely tries to say "Nothing will change" or "he's the better of two evils" or whatever other bullshit is completely off their rocker, and just goes to show you how adjusted we've become to the absolute INSANITY that is a Donald Trump presidency.

Remember back in the beginning of the Trump presidency when we were blown away by him doing "little" things like breaking the emoluments clause? Yeah. That shit isn't normal, and it won't be happening under Biden.

People are getting all in a tizzy because Biden, in a fairly tough interview, made a comment about how "you ain't black" if you are considering voting for Trump--well look the fuck around. He wasn't fucking wrong. Yeah he probably should have worded it better, but holy shit. Meanwhile Donald Trump is on live television calling black people Apes and Thugs and encouraging violence against them, while mocking disabled reporters and veteran families and people shrug their shoulders.

You can go back to searching for your ideal candidate who matches your political dating profile 100% when the country isn't literally on fucking fire with a pandemic sweeping the nation and a President who is actively dismantling every single aspect of our democracy so that he can continue to do illegal things with zero oversight.

In the mean-time, Biden is a GOOD candidate. He's a QUALIFIED candidate. He has GOOD ideas. He's not the lesser of two evils. Donald Trump is actually Evil. Biden is sometimes a goofball. Vote for him.

Love to each us that feel unloved and don’t realize. Love to each of us that depression has told us we don’t deserve love. Love to each of us that have fallen so hard that we keep those that do love at arms distance. Love to each us that our brain tells us we aren’t worthy. Love to each of us whose whole body cringes at receiving love. Love to each of us with stomachs that knot when every mother fucking thing is going right, but makes us feel wrong. Love to each of us that is dying inside when the sun shines. Love to each of us that has no affect when we’re ‘having fun’. Love to each of us that feels loss even when life is perfect. Love to each of us that anxiety causes us to create self fulfilling prophecy of worst case scenario. Love to each of us that just want to stop. Love to each of us that don’t know how or what to do next. Love to each of us that make mind plans of nooses or bridges or guns or overdoses. Love to each of us that can’t find hope.

And love to each of you that drag us out. And love to each of you that remind us we can shine. And love to each of you that remind us why we try, sometimes excel, sometimes fail, and sometimes live. And love to each of you who remind how you would hurt, not because your selfish, but because you love.

Thank you for being there for us and letting us be there for you.

I enjoyed Steve Kerr's comments

Look, I’m a basketball coach and what I do obviously pales in comparison to what the president does. But our jobs are similar in at least one respect: If you want to be an NBA coach, you need to be prepared to be criticized. You kind of know that going in. If I coach poorly and we lose the game, I hear about it. That’s okay. It’s really where we coaches earn our money, accepting and dealing with criticism and keeping the ship moving forward. There has to be an inherent understanding when you enter into any public position of power that this is what happens. People are going to take shots at you and it’s incumbent upon you to absorb those shots. Maybe you respond diplomatically, but you maintain a level of respect and dignity. What you can’t do is just angrily lash out. Can you imagine if I lashed out at all my critics every day and belittled them? I’d lose my players, I’d embarrass ownership, I’d embarrass myself. Pretty soon I’d be out of a job. It’s a basic adult thing that you learn as you grow up: People aren't always going to agree with you. And that’s OK.

Instead, we get Trump’s comments over the weekend about NFL players, calling them ‘sons of bitches’ for kneeling during the anthem. Those just crushed me. Crushed me. Just think about what those players are protesting. They’re protesting excessive police violence and racial inequality. Those are really good things to fight against. And they’re doing it in a nonviolent way. Which is everything that Martin Luther King preached, right? A lot of American military members will tell you that the right to free speech is exactly what they fight for. And it’s just really, really upsetting that the leader of our country is calling for these players to be ‘fired.’

https://www.si.com/nba/2017/09/24/steve-kerr-warriors-donald-trump-white-house-stephen-curry?utm_campaign=sinow&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&xid=socialflow_twitter_si

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Nope.