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That trolling is a shameful thing, and that no one of sense would accept to be called ‘troll’, all are agreed; but what trolling is, and how many its species are, and whether there is an excellence of the troll, is unclear. And indeed trolling is said in many ways; for some call ‘troll’ anyone who is abusive on the internet, but this is only the disagreeable person, or in newspaper comments the angry old man. And the one who disagrees loudly on the blog on each occasion is a lover of controversy, or an attention-seeker. And none of these is the troll, or perhaps some are of a mixed type; for there is no art in what they do. (Whether it is possible to troll one's own blog is unclear; for the one who poses divisive questions seems only to seek controversy, and to do so openly; and this is not trolling but rather a kind of clickbait.)
I was in a bar in Chicago when I told a close friend of 20 years that, despite being a lesbian, I was marrying a man. My friend and I hadn’t seen each other in a while, but we fell back quickly into our old intimacy — those long, rambling conversations we used to have in coffee shops all over Minneapolis. When the subject shifted to an activist group she was part of, I said I’d be glad to help, if they needed a lesbian on their board. She laughed, dismissively. “You can’t call yourself that anymore.”
Of all the weird reactions I’d gotten to my engagement, that one pissed me off most.
I had not been not surprised when my fiancé’s friends — Washington insiders with the respect for convention that city inspires — expressed shock when they discovered I was a dyke. We came from different worlds; with my long brunette hair and short skirts, I hadn’t read as queer to them. But no one had presumed to relabel me, to retrofit me to their categories — at least, not to my face.
But here was my fabulous Portland pal, trying to claim me for the Bi-Het team (which sounded like a synagogue rather than a sexual identity, and certainly not my own). She wasn’t the only one: An ex-girlfriend and a sophisticated poet cousin said the same thing, as if my lesbian license had been revoked.
So let me be clear, since I can’t be the only one: I am a lesbian marrying a man.
This is not semantics, or splitting hairs; it is fundamental to who we are — my fiancé and I. Immutable as height or eye color.
Gaming is part of who I am, I can promise you that.
Thus, when I see an article titled “Gamers are dead,” referring to the death of the popular trope of a pasty young man in a dimly lit room, it fills me with joy, because it means WE FUCKING WON. So many people are playing games now that they are popular culture. They are not going away. All sorts of cool things, that I like, are now things that a whole bunch of other people like! There’s enough space now for people to make games that are strange and disturbing and maybe highlight a different perspective of the world, because gaming is no longer a niche activity, it’s something that everybody does. There is room for art in video games. That’s awesome!
You slopebrowed weaseldicks with zero reading comprehension and even less critical thinking skills who think an article claiming “Gamers are dead” is something bad? Fuck me sideways with a sandblaster.
It’s like all you can do is look at this collection of words, scratch yourself uneasily, and then run off to look for grubs. Your reaction (and I am not making this up, because it’s been widely documented literally everywhere) to various articles proclaiming the death of the basement-dwelling, cheetos-huffing, poopsock-sniffing douchepistol, because games are so good now that they are common entertainment and thus everyone plays them, was to COMPLETELY MISS THE POINT by either:
a) Making misogynistic threats against a wide variety of female game developers and critics because somehow they’re going to keep games you enjoy from ever being made again
or
b) Being stupid enough to get sucked in by people busy making misogynistic threats against a wide variety of female game developers and critics, and supporting their idiotic crusade for the dumbing down of everyone everywhere ever.
With metadata suddenly in the spotlight, Brooks decided earlier this year to dust off his Ricochet program and tweak it to make it more elegant—he knew he’d still have a problem, however, getting anyone to adopt it. He wasn’t a known name in the security world and there was no reason anyone should trust him or his program.
Enter Invisible.im, a group formed by Australian security journalist Patrick Gray. Last July, Gray announced that he was working with HD Moore, developer of the Metasploit Framework tool used by security researchers to pen-test systems, and with another respected security professional who goes by his hacker handle The Grugq, to craft a secure, open-source encrypted chat program cobbled together from parts of existing anonymity and messaging systems—such as Prosody, Pidgin and Tor. They wanted a system that was highly secure, user friendly and metadata-free. Gray says his primary motivation was to protect the anonymity of sources who contact journalists.
“At the moment, when sources contact a journalist, they’re going to leave a metadata trail, whether it’s a phone call record or instant message or email record [regardless of whether or not the content of their communication is encrypted],” he says. “And that data is currently accessible to authorities without a warrant.”
When Brooks wrote to say he’d already designed a chat program that eliminated metadata, Gray and his group took a look at the code and quickly dropped their plan to develop their own tool, in favor of working with Brooks to develop his.
In the Tao te Ching, Laozi explains that beings (or phenomena) that are wholly in harmony with the Tao behave in a completely natural, uncontrived way. The goal of spiritual practice for the human being is, according to Laozi, the attainment of this purely natural way of behaving, as when the planets revolve around the sun. The planets effortlessly do this revolving without any sort of control, force, or attempt to revolve themselves, instead engaging in effortless and spontaneous movement.
Several chapters of the most important Taoist text, the Tao Te Ching, attributed to Laozi, allude to "diminishing doing" or "diminishing will" as the key aspect of the sage's success. Taoist philosophy recognizes that the Universe already works harmoniously according to its own ways; as a person exerts their will against or upon the world they disrupt the harmony that already exists. This is not to say that a person should not exert agency and will. Rather, it is how one acts in relation to the natural processes already extant. The how, the Tao of intention and motivation, that is key.
Related translation from the Tao Tê Ching by Priya Hemenway, Chapter II:
2
The Sage is occupied with the unspoken
and acts without effort.
Teaching without verbosity,
producing without possessing,
creating without regard to result,
claiming nothing,
the Sage has nothing to lose.
I do not like the number five. I believe Five drives around in a red Mustang wearing mirrored sunglasses. Five lounges at lights with one arm out the window, slapping the side of the car to the beat of Van Halen’s “Runnin’ With the Devil.” I’d like to wipe that look off Five’s face. When running, Five bounds with an uneven gait, like a hare with a bum ankle. Five is prime, which I find obnoxious: why should a number refuse to divide by anything other than itself and one? Who does it think it is?
