Zoraptor

Typically a tree with fewer, smaller fruit has fruit that taste better. It's particularly apparent with grapes, as low yield years tend to have best quality wines while bumper crops yield large amounts of lower quality wine. As with most things the benefits of Organic produce really depends upon how they are produced- typically they still have a lot of the bad inputs of non organic stuff like reliance on fossil fuelled tractors and some of the organic chemicals used are pretty unpleasant even if they are 'natural' (an arbitrary distinction, copper based sprays are not really natural and not very good for the environment, but most organic schedules allow them). On the other hand GMOs especially have some extremely dodgy PR claims as well. Roundup Ready crops, quite apart from locking farmers into cripplingly restrictive contracts to keep Monsanto's trademarked (but not longer patented) glyphosate herbicide relevant and make it extremely difficult to escape from Monsanto once signed, claim to lower the need for herbicides. Well, no, if you can freely spray a crop with herbicide that doesn't kill them but kills weeds you do so, if spraying will kill your crops as well you don't. With non roundup redy crops you can only spray once, with roundup ready you can drown them in roundup if you so desire. (Somewhat peripherally, cows themselves are not really significant contributors to greenhouse gasses. They produce methane which is very effective as one, but is also unstable and does not accumulate. Their food, of course, comes from crops which are made primarily from... atmospheric CO2 so breakdown products of that are carbon neutral at worst, only transport costs and the like aren't)

Don't know if Al-Sisi has children, the thing that really stuffed Mubarak was that he went for a dynastic succession for his son Gamal, and a lot of the vested powers hated that. The vested interests are why Morsi was in an impossible situation from the outset, the military controls a large proportion of Egypt's nominal economy and was used to running things with only oversight from (Air Force General) Mubarak, the judiciary (laughably referred to by Sisi and others as 'independent') was full of hard core Mubarak apparatchniks as were the police, and the Salafis were funded from Saudi Arabia who have banned the MB and hated Egypt being run by a Qatari client. All in all there was no way he could have run the country properly even had he wanted to, because nobody else wanted him to. It suited the military especially to have things not work, so they could step in to 'save the nation', but it also suited the police, judiciary and Saudi Arabia as well. So, nothing worked. (Western politicians and media pundits love to self deceive about the extent of liberal support and the arab spring, but even when including every non salafi/ islamist seat as being liberal- including the Mubaraknics as were etc- they managed less than a third of members in either elected chamber, even though Morsi failed to get the Saddamesque 96%< Al-Sisi vote share in the presidential vote)

Eh, they said that only three people had close contact with this guy, which is pretty low if no precautions were being taken. Though it would be somewhat ironic if the US did have problems, given that Nigeria had a guy turn up and basically drop dead at an airport near the beginning of the outbreak and they managed to stamp the outbreak out despite all their problems.

That would depend on the actual balance of support/ boycott vis-a-vis Gamergate. If the negative impact is on people who don't buy there anyway it won't have any effect, if the people shopping there have the ability to spell it won't have any effect or if GG people or people who don't care represent their clientele it won't have any effect. Don't think Gamersgate is publicly traded either and does not rely on advertising. Realistically, they have the far more significant trouble that all Steam Key Resellers have of being beholden to the good will of their primary competitor for survival and thus being practically irrelevant, since they're selling their competitor's product which can be withdrawn any time their competition gets too hot; but that's wholly independent of Gamergate and more to do with various other factors more suitable for another thread.

Funny, I can actually hear WJC saying that while reading.

Nastiness is not a defining characteristic of Salafism though, at least in the respect that all nasty (sunni) muslims are Salafi. MB, like AK, are (broadly orthodox, sunni) Islamist rather than Salafi, who many Sunnis don't even regard as actually being Sunni. It's all rather complicated though, due to various Gulf States supporting different movements of differing levels of whackiness that look fairly similar from the outside. In terms of Egypt, since Qatar backs the MB the Salafi Al-Nour party (second largest after the MB's political arm, and considerably more extreme) stood aside when al-Sisi launched his coup because they're beholden to Saudi Arabia, who don't like any other arab state having influence and think Qatar are uppity. That is one of the primary reasons for all the in fighting in Syria and in Libya, as well as the rise of ISIS. Qatar actually has more Salafis by population proportion than Saudi, but basically all Salafi (AKA Wahhabi, though they don't like that term) movements are sponsored and run by Saudi either officially or through back channels because Saudi is their spiritual home. Very little in the Middle East makes consistent sense from a western perspective, which is why the west keeps on stuffing up. Saudi sponsors Egypt, who then bomb a Saudi proxy militia in Libya- you look at it from the outside and just end going huh? a lot.

Not really, they were getting consistently (though incompetently) DDOSed such that some people could not access the site for some time, and that will have cost them money.

I think the SJWs are a bit baffled that their usual tactics aren't working as well as they usually do, running up against people who simply don't care about the opinion of the public at large has caused some confusion. That's why you have some pretty much declaring all the BBC, NYT etc coverage as being victory (the use of 'big push' by several prominent antiGGs was somewhat amusing, why not use Douglas Haig's WW1 terminology for moving his drinks cabinet 12 feet closer to Berlin/ sending infantry walking at machine guns...), and being increasingly annoyed that the other side doesn't seem much concerned at all about them. That's the fundamental problem that the antiGG side and the SJWs specifically have. Previously they've tended to come up against people who care about public opinion and can be effectively influenced by that, boycotts and the like; being able to slowly split bits off the opposition as entities bow to the pressure piecemeal. Indeed, that is largely why they've got such a stranglehold over the gaming press, anyone speaking out there is vulnerable to blackballing and the website owners to boycotts, being labelled as misogynist and other influences, and for a commercial enterprise those are critical concerns. GG is a rather different beast, it is decentralised so there are no practical central figures to attack, no financial support to try and remove and since many have lived through the 'games are satanist' and 'games cause school shooting' witch hunts there's very little concern about general public opinion and the media. In fact, negative media coverage tends to reinforce rather than damage the basic support for GG because that sort of behaviour is exactly what many have disliked and a large part of what caused GG in the first place. Add in things like trying to trash talk people who are quite likely to have been exposed to the more... interesting social interactions of MP gaiming and you get the feeling there's a very basic lack of understanding underpinning the whole thing.

That sort of thing happens a lot less now so I'm not particularly surprised if you or anyone else hasn't seen much or any of it, that's one of the big consequences of being advocated by Hitler, but at one point it was an absolute cornerstone of a wider ranging "WASP Man's Burden" for Britain/ US and Germans especially. You're far more likely to run into basic ethnic/ national 'slurs' than racial ones nowadays because you can generally get away with those especially if they're against an 'enemy', indeed they often make up a part of official PR/ propaganda.

Historically it happened rather a lot, for example with the British attitude to the Irish or the nazis attitude to Slavs.

He's been banned by the (Para)Olympic Federation for five years as well as being sentenced to 5 years. I don't think athletics bans have home detention or time off for good behaviour either.

Bruce really, nobody is that naive. But since I do occasionally take oby topics seriously... If I punch you in the face and steal your lunch I will be happy, you will be sad. By your metrics this means that my philosophy of robbery works, and my 'intervention' has worked since it made me happy- and that is true even if the reason you are sad rather than happy is because of my actions. To be honest that isn't even the worst problem, but that's already 30 seconds more consideration than is really merited.

UI usability is usually more about the design than the control scheme though, it will have an x,y move control when you move the mouse or stick, buttons you can click and potentially shortcuts using buttons or keys. Something like the UI in TWitcher 2 was not clunky because of its control scheme which was still point and click, it was clunky because of its UI design that used the screen inefficiently, only used part of the screen and had odd scrolling sections instead of presenting important information with immediacy. Similarly for something like Fallout 3, its UI sucked because Bethesda used the same UI template for console and PC so you ended up with something that had to work on an SDTV being put on a system capable of about 16x SD resolution, no amount of testing would change that if they had decided that that limitation was what they were doing.

It's quite sensible for mapping keyboard controls to be done towards the end. There are far more key combinations available than controller buttons, so of course you'd map controller functions first, they're less flexible and if you run out without realising then you have... problems. Only then do you map the more flexible ones. It's irrelevant anyway, matters nothing whether they're added first or last, so long as they're added.

That is related strongly to two of the biggest failings in the current press. Firstly, long play stories, the ones that need lots of build up and work, don't tend to happen any more unless the subject is 24 carat sensational and certain to be relevant x months after the investigation starts, because they're hard and expensive as compared to going on Facebook and doing a two minute article about the comments there*. And secondly, focus on short term utterly destroys the function of press as a critic of, especially governmental, actions with long term consequences. It's the old story about civilian targets in Iraq or Afghanistan being hit. First, insist they weren't civilians, then a few days later promise an investigation, then a few weeks later admit you hit civilians. The first bit gets prominent coverage, the second a lot less and the admission basically none, and most see and accept only the first part. Since that method works it gets repeated for everything, doesn't matter if you lie so long as the press picks it up and the lie will only be exposed far later, once nobody cares any more. *Something I've never understood, except as cost saving and an attempt to look relevance. If I want the opinions of the average joe or joette on the street I can ask them, and given the sources of information most have all you get from Facebook is what the news outlets say repeated back with a 'this made me feel sad/ happy' added at the end.

7/10? Wouldn't award more than about 3/10 myself, and that only because he got some bites. It's a pure oby topic, just from the exact opposite direction.

It is hopelessly defined because trolling is subjective and has variation in degree based on a large range of factors, principally based on how the recipient responds and whether it was even intended as trolling in the first place or is just labelled as such by the recipient. To illustrate, let's say that I think someone, let's call him Bob, posts stuff to get a negative reaction, you think someone, let's call him Ivan, posts stuff to get a negative reaction but neither of us thinks that both are trolls. And if we asked either they'd both say they aren't trolling. So are you right, or am I, or are neither of us? Are we going to go through some objective check list to determine whether your troll induced butthurt or my troll induced butthurt is objectively reasonable, or if either of us should be butthurt by both 'trolls'? Do we take the 'trolls' statements about their intent as gospel or do we assume they'd lie about being trolls, or indeed lie about not being trolls (the classic 'say something stupid, then claim to be trolling' defence of having said something stupid)? The only answer I can come up with is that none of those questions actually work to determine anything objectively. Base stuff on self identifying trolls and assume the trolls are being... honest and upfront- I think everyone can see the inherent problem in that proposition- or base stuff on what you personally think constitutes trolling, in which case it isn't objective either.

Heh. I am not now nor have I ever been a member of the RPGCodex*. You could have left it at usenet though. And you'll be pleased to know I am a fully fledged member of the august brotherhood of the 'Watch with a reasonable number of posts there. Really though, you're free pretty much completely to have any opinion you want at the Codex, so long as you can back it up, don't start crying about the big meanies being nasty and it isn't something contextually ridiculous like saying that CoD is the best game ever, on an RPG site. Plus, since it's been brought up, for a supposedly intolerant place there's a rather more varied selection of moderators and posters than in most other forums. People may tend to label it as a sexist, homophobic den of nazis, but then they'd have difficulty explaining the woman, the gay and the Jew moderating the place. *I do read them fairly regularly but I've never found a compelling reason to actually register or post. That isn't a figurative echo chamber. An echo chamber in that sense is where you say something and it is repeated back to you multiple times after slight delays. If you've got multiple voices (/views) that cannot happen, you say something and you get something different back. Probably something incoherent, if we were talking literally. In a more general sense all communities have 'soft' social control measures that are inherent because communities have a purpose, you won't tend to get big fps fans on a specialist RPG site, so the like minded tend to congregate in the same places anyway, and most people want to be liked. But that's a far cry from having supposedly fair and uncensored 'discussions' where you are obligated to take a particular position as that is the echo chamber as there is no chance to dissent at all without being silenced- and in some cases even insufficient enthusiasm for the party line is cause for being silenced.

Strangely enough, on sites which enforce a strict no-trolling policy, I haven't run into trolls. It's almost as if there's a connection between making internet forums ****-friendly and said forums being flooded with ****. Nah, you just end up with something Neogaf when you have those policies, where any dissent from the established consensus is labelled as trolling. Thus you get things like their GG 'discussion' thread which is pure circle jerk and where you can get banned for not being negative enough about GG. I'd take some genuine trolls over that DPRKesque- he- who- claps- least- enthusiastically- gets- hands- chopped- off attitude any day of the week, and hour of the day and any minute of the hour. Because zero tolerance for trolling almost always means zero tolerance for different opinions on any subject with any controversy associated with it. Unsurprisingly, that is exactly what the SJWs have shown right from the beginning with their censorious* attitude. *If they had a bit more education and class I'm sure someone would have broken out the old classic 'ceterum censeo Gamergate delendam esse'.

He almost certainly picked it up from Cleveland Mark Blakemore. If you don't know who Cleveland Mark Blakemore is I'm afraid there aren't enough minutes left in the life of the universe to adequately explain. PJ is basically doing a (pretty poor, though to be fair the full Blakemore experience wouldn't come close to passing moderation) impersonation of Cleve's posting style, in the reverse direction since the thought of Cleve as an SJW is not something that be comprehended by normal mortals.

I don't actually mind liberal arts, much as I may occasionally snark them for being woolly, they should just make all liberal arts students take Philosophy and solve the problem. Mind you, a lot of scientists could benefit from that as well. But, the ability to both put a cogent argument and defend it properly from criticism is of, er, critical importance in any form of academia whether it be a science or mathematics or linguistics or history or whatever. While some SJWs can put a cogent argument all right very few at all can deal with the second part even when it's pretty mild.

Pftt, you can have more than one problem, you don't have to pick one, and you don't have to repeat them every time. Especially when one follows from the other, 'politicising games' is just another form of censorship- wouldn't be, if it were done positively, but all too often it's insisting that [game] should have a female option or similar, no matter how inane a suggestion, and trying to organise negative press and boycotts is demands are not met. 'Academic discussion' though? Ridiculous. Core SJWs aren't academically rigorous*, even in the softest of soft sciences sense, and have not the slightest inclination towards actual discussion, they prefer delivering sermons from their pulpit about how others should live their lives and do what they want. Certainly, some in academia do do this; but if so they're utter crap academics. *No, I must be fair, they do do research. All those documents and phone numbers of their opponents don't just appear out of the aether...

This is the classic excuse, though. "The conspiracy theory I believe in is reasonable because the people behind it aren't accountable to reason!" Throw all the "enemies" in a box with a dehumanized acronym label, go on feeling that you belong to the group with the righteous cause, and laugh off those on "your side" who say or do hurtful things. Please, I'd actually disagree that the hypocrisy and self importance of SJWs is related to whether it's a conspiracy or not, you can have a conspiracy without the unquestioning self belief and you can have the self belief without the conspiracy. Plus, of course, pointing out that both sides do unpleasant things is hardly laughing off. That was just in reply to your "conspiracies don't form and hold together unless all the conspirators think there is something really important motivating them"- I was pointing out that clearly SJWs do consider such things critically important, and clearly there was a 'conspiracy'- your term, not mine- because they had a closed mailing list coordinating the response. Now, you can argue that the mailing list doesn't exist (which it does) or that SJWs don't consider such things important (self evidently incorrect) but you can't really start shifting the goal posts around to using acronyms to 'dehumanise', because everyone does that. The 'conspiracy'- again, your term- is confirmed. That SJWs consider such things important is confirmed. Now, I might dislike SJWs rather a lot and some issue can be taken with using the term, but that wouldn't be why I labelled their actions as coordinated. I labelled them as such because they incontrovertibly were. And really, there isn't any other term other than SJW, I usually use antiGG but that ain't appropriate for events that are before #GG was even a thing. (Nice rhetorical constructs by the way, use of the passive aggressive questions, labelling things yourself ('conspiracy') then criticising based on your own label etc. With any luck Bruce will learn a thing or too, might improve the quality of his trolling to near oby levels.)

Nah, they had a mailing list, someone on it even leaked the emails, so it was coordinated. And it is clear from any interaction with SJWs that they really, really, do think their activism is of immense importance. They're exactly the wrong kind of illiberal 'liberal' who have always thought it absolutely critical to tell others how to think, it's just another iteration of it. Gamergate as a 'movement' had little directly to do with ZQ at all, it started a fair bit after that initial controversy, it had more to do with the response to it. And I actually said in the first thread that Grayson cannot be held accountable for a retroactive conflict of interest. Though he's still a terrible writer.

Heh, Faraci et alia's ISIS comparisons have finally got results, ISISbot has taken notice of their attention. Yes, it is. The whole thing would have blown over in a week if there had not been a coordinated attempt to censor every mention of it- up to and including using DMCA takedown notices. As soon as that happened the Streisand Effect took over, and the censorship became larger than the story. Though, of course, the antiGG crowd never mention that. It also certainly didn't help that ZQ had publicly made some contextually pretty inflammatory statements about men cheating on women being equivalent to rape and then decided to cheat repeatedly on her bf. Then you had the- obviously coordinated, as well- 'Gamers are dead' articles attacking the people who theoretically at least give most of the people writing the articles their livelihoods, though of course the antiGG crowd no longer mention those. And of course the doxxing of GG people, fake accusations based on said doxxing, death threats based on said doxxing (usually laughed at though), comparisons to ISIS, ddosing Gamersgate (useless SJWs, illiterate and can't even ddos a site with multiple domains properly), using smurf/ sockpuppet accounts, general and repeated hypocrisy/ cognitive dissonance/ irony being something for putting creaseys in shirtys, and verifiable false flags like claiming to be 4chan and threatening to release nudes of Hermione Grainger when it was an SJW affiliated PR firm 'trying to raise awareness', after being caught out because they too were utterly incompetent and left identifying information in their Apache server config. Though, of course, the antiGG crowd never mention those either. The 'Zoe Quinn incident' itself isn't the problem, it's just a symptom.