Month: June 2015

Arkansas County Clerk Resigns Over Marriage Equality

Today in ethics, Part 2.

Girl Scouts Return $100K When Donor Demands It ‘Not Be Used’ For Trans Girls

Today in ethics, Part 1.

New iPhone app will help conduct the largest LGBT health study ever

Awesome use of Apple’s new ResearchKit API. A way to gather data on an underserved community.

Taylor Swift’s 1989 is coming to Apple Music

After Ms. Swift’s post about Apple’s non-payment for artists during the 3 month trial period for Apple Music, and Apple’s turnaround on the issue, and now Ms. Swift’s deal to put 1989 on Apple’s streaming service… I bought her album. Vote with your wallet.

In my quest to avoid writing, I spent quite a bit of money during the Steam Summer Sale the last couple of weeks. The only major video game I’ve played a lot of was The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and, man, have I played a lot of that. 1000+ hours, easy. I’d fire it up and check the exact number but, y’know, I’m writing. But after the sale, I now have copies of Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2; Bioshock 1, 2, and Infinite; Talisman Digital Edition; Banished; Dragon Age: Origins; Life is Strange; Mount & Blade: Warband; and Fallout 3, New Vegas, and all the DLC.

My nephew, Max, is a huge fan of most of these games. He’s the reason I started playing Skyrim, actually, and the main reason I fell in love with Skyrim is that it was a big, open world and I could go anywhere and do anything. There were stories to be discovered, but I didn’t have to do them all. I didn’t have to do any of them. I could just go pick flowers and chop wood if I wanted to. It was the closest I’ve ever seen in a computer game to reproduce the feeling of playing a tabletop role-playing game. The fact that there was so much backstory and lore to the world, since Skyrim was the fifth major game in the series, only made it more interesting to me.

I also picked up Fallout Shelter, which is basically Farmville set in the Fallout universe. The old-timey music, and hints of the wider story explored in the other games, drew me in, and I had a lot of creepy fun (it feels very strange to pair off the dwellers in my vault and make sure as many women are pregnant as possible – but it makes sense in the game). Max played it, too, and he and I traded tips and stories about our vaults.

So looking at the games I had purchased, the ones that seemed most interesting to me were the Fallout series. Same developer as Skyrim – Bethesda Studios – as well as the same underlying engine, although 3 years older. And since I had already had a taste of it in the silly iOS game… Last weekend, I started Fallout 3, not really knowing what to expect.

(Minor spoilers ahead for the early part of the game.)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54kIEbVy63k]

The music and title cards immediately set a mood. And the game literally begins with my character being born. The game uses that moment to both introduce you to your dad and tell you your mom is dead, and create and name your character.

I named mine Kevin.

Then they introduce you to the world. It’s somehow in the far future – 2277 AD, if I’m not mistaken – but the atmosphere and aesthetic is what the 1950s thought the far future would look like. Art Deco and Art Nouveau. Lots of flash and chrome. Bulky, functional equipment. It’s beautiful. It’s Space Age. Your character grows up in Vault 101, under the control of the Overseer.

One thing leads to another and your character is forced to flee the safe confines of the Vault. That’s all groundwork, backstory, and tutorial. I made some mistakes but that’s how new games go. I would text comments to Max and he would reply, carefully not spoiling anything for me. Often, he’d just respond with a vague question: “Did you meet Butch’s mom?”

Those first steps out of the Vault, onto the cracked and ruined pavement and walking down the hill to see a couple of wrecked houses, and the skeleton of the Washington Monument on the far horizon… it was eerie. I felt haunted and lost. The game had gotten its hooks into me and I had to know more.

I’m only 7 hours into the game, and I’m still learning. I’m trying to play Kevin as a generally good guy, who is smart in some ways but ignorant of lots of others, willing to help people in need but not afraid to defend himself. This game, like Skyrim, is a big open world, and there’s so much to explore. I can tell I’m going to play the Hell out of this, and eventually go back and try different things.

Much the same way I played (and still play) Skyrim.

#mturkgate

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, a crowdsourcing platform I use nearly every day, and which has been long neglected by the mothership, is raising their costs in a month. And the people who pay those costs, the requesters who post work, and especially educational institutions who rely on Mturk for surveys and data of all kinds, are pissed.

Podcast I Love: Robot or Not

In the last couple of years, I’ve discovered podcasts. I have found that I like listening to them when I work around the house, or go for a walk, so generally, the longer, the better. This is a delightful exception. I think I have a bit of a crush on John Siracusa, one of the hosts of the juggernaut Accidental Tech Podcast, who seems grumpy and exacting (probably because he is, I suspect), but has revealed himself over time to be a person of great virtue, filled with compassion for people.

But that’s on other shows. On this show, host Jason Snell (of The Incomparable) asks Mr. Siracusa to determine if some object or fictional character is a robot, or not. To date they’ve weighed in on Roombas (yes), car factory robots (no), Mr. Roboto (no, both as a song (don’t ask) and the fictional character in the song), and others.

It may not work for anyone else, but the silly, simple premise and the short per-episode length make me smile every time I see a new episode appear in my feed, while I’m listening, and for several minutes afterward. Delightful, and probably a gateway drug to their other podcasts.

The Case for Reparations, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

This article, published in the June 2014 issue of The Atlantic, should be required reading for anyone who still believes the foundational myth of America: that we were founded to ensure liberty and justice for all. That hasn’t been true for a long time, even centuries prior to the Declaration of Independence.

A long read but well worth it. Set aside some time, and think about the implications. Every American has been touched by this history, regardless of whether or not you use the N-word in daily life.

I Want Cheese Noticed Something About a Bernie Sanders Fundraising Email.

You know those annoying fundraising emails political candidates send? The Bernie Sanders presidential campaign did something sneaky after the Charleston terrorist attacks; but they did it for the right reasons: to channel money to a community in need. Bernie is the real deal.