Reddit and their going full retard

 Recently, Reddit had a massive drama bomb go off when they hired some transgender failed politician with some sketchy qualifications and even sketchier views and associates to be an admin, and no sooner did they get confirmed, they (or someone carrying water for them, makes little practical difference) went full Ministry of Truth, trying to prevent people from posting anything that was already in the public domain about their sketchy and incredibly messed up past, despite it being on public record on multiple news outlets.

This backfired, the Streisand effect kicked in, and Reddit eventually caved and sacked the party in question, claiming rather weakly they had no idea who they hired (as if it was not their job to do a little basic googling, unless they were hoping no one would notice, which is even worse, implying they were fine with this party being of ill public repute and still having a lot of responsibility), and sacking them to hold off the wolves baying for blood.

This all said, Reddit could have exercised a thimbleful of good sense and actually made sure they were not hiring some PR disaster, but for some reason, they thought this was a good idea and did the worst thing they could do in attempting a terrible coverup with the hideously laughable excuse of trying to prevent harassment of said hiree when it's not harassment by any legal standard to bring up the matter of public record when that party looks questionable for having a public responsibility.

It's worth noting Reddit wants to have an IPO and go big on Wall Street soon, so they likely cut their losses on this in the hopes this won't scotch the deal. Regardless, they've already locked the door after the horse got out of the barn, and from what I understand several skeevy people who are associated with this party still remain in moderator positions on Reddit (which refuses to look at the evidence because the source hurts their feelings).

Now, I rarely read Reddit these days, save for one subreddit, and if it died tomorrow, I'd live. However, it still amazes me how smooth-brained they had to be to think they could do the equivalent of concealing the sunrise even in the short-term when they planned to be answerable to the shareholders on the stock market soon. This was inept from start to finish, and I hope they do get on the stock market, I bet with people this intelligent running things, their next gaffe is likely to be worse, and I want to see them weep when their idiocy costs them money.

What this tells me, as a takeaway, is that whoever is calling the shots there is a blithering idiot. If you want to claim a prominent position in promoting public discourse, you had better be prepared to face the lions for every screwup you've made. I've been doxed, had my dirty underwear examined by all sorts of people, and write now under my real name for a gaming blog. I therefore do not as much expectation as most other people would to some degree of privacy anymore, and I've come to terms with that. To ask people to ignore all Google results for me would be idiocy at this point, and I'm amazed Reddit's staff was stupid enough to expect their own users to play along with this when they have every right to know who will be lording over them, especially since Reddit has a global reach and wants to go public as a traded company soon.

I doubt I will ever reach that level of public accountability, but these guys are already there and have made me cringe hard at how badly they handled it so far.

Beamdog seems to be trying to do something competent for once

 Now, I just want to establish that ever since Beamdog wrote Siege of Dragonspear, which hamfistedly tried to cram woke stuff into a game it was never intended for and butchered characters and good sense to do so, I was wary of their attempts to modernize games like Neverwinter Nights, only being willing to accept it thus far because all they did was make it modern friendly. Beyond that, I hoped I'd never see them plop another turd like Dragonspear on the gaming scene again.

Thankfully, they haven't, and I must give them due credit for continuing to modernize the original Neverwinter Nights. The original game was a drooling mess of spaghetti hacks and really poor decisions on Bioware's part, and while later expansions to the original were better, the game engine still drooled in many key areas.

Beamdog not only made it run fine on modern-day OSes with little trouble, they even have managed to fix a lot of dumb things, like Bioware's spit and pencil spellcasting classes code, added in engine features that make it far more modder friendly, and their latest beta update seems to be a tacit acknowledgment they can't write worth beans, so said update lets you download modules from fan modders who have better writing chops, which is a pleasant surprise.

So far, tried out the beta update on Steam on my Arch Linux machine and it runs smooth as butter. While I will remain giving the original writing of Beamdog an incredibly jaundiced eye at best, when it comes to fixing the work of others and polishing it further, they have continued to impress.

With that in mind, I hope they keep up the good work in that regard.

Why certain segments of the Transgender community are losing their minds over Super Straights (and why they need to stop)

 Recently, a bunch of more.....excitable, for lack of a better term, transgender types are losing their minds over a new thing called "Super Straights" or S+ for short.

Basically, a bunch of straight people, gays, lesbians, and the more reflective members of the transgender community are basically saying to the more militant transgender types who deem it cruel to not be attracted to them (for example, a transwoman deeming it hurtful to be rejected by a man, regardless if they pass or not) the following:

"We have nothing against you as human beings. Regardless, we are NOT interested in you sexually if you do not match what we consider sexually desirable. We wish you well with a more receptive person, but we are not interested, it is not up for debate, please leave us be, we'll do the same"

The above is perfectly sensible logic as a matter of legal custom in most places around the world, is generally civil and polite by most societal standards, and there is nothing, on the face of it, that should be offensive.

However, it seems the more excitable transgender types view this as an attack on all transgender people, especially when the S+ crowd expresses the following opinions:

S-Straight: I only prefer people of the opposite sex who are not trans.

S-Gay/Lesbian: I only prefer other people of the same sex who are not trans.

S-Bisexual: I prefer those of both genders who are not trans.

And since this includes some trans people under S+, they are as follow:

S-Trans: I only prefer those who are transgender themselves.

Legally, morally, and ethically, there is nothing wrong with this. No one can be sexually coerced into having sex with another person they have no interest in, it is immoral and unethical by most societal standards to even try, and logic would dictate that those offended being trans is a sexual turnoff should find those who are more accommodating. Given the 7 billion-plus people on the planet, that's not a death sentence for intimacy.

However, certain transgender types view the above as bigotry because it's saying they are not sexually attracted to the parties expressing the above opinions, and they are trying to shame and "cancel" the S+ types because they deem not catering to their desire to be desired to be the height of cheek of arrogance.

In my view and that of anyone else who believes we have the free will to make our own choices, that is madness. I'm a heterosexual person, only interested in women who were born as such, and if a transwoman was sexually interested in me, I would politely decline and wish them well with someone else. I am a devout Christian, but my religious beliefs are secondary to my own personal moral to live and let live for the choices of others, and I would happily call myself S+ because that resonates with my own personal feelings.

As for the transgender types who deem the above rejection of them as sexual partners bigotry, then all I can say, rather bluntly, is to get over it. As explained, there is no legal, moral, or ethical reason for anyone to cater to your sexual desires, and any attempt at coercion would be a moral disgrace and a legal crime for the party who cannot accept the word "no".

That said, I find it disturbing such a need to say "no" is even needing to be done. If it's gotten to the point it's offensive to assert one's own free will to be sexually attracted to whom you please, then those who are so offended need to realize they have no legal, ethical, or moral entitlement to the sexual agency of another human being without their consent, which is the crux of the matter at hand.

Something I haven't done in a long while, a rant post. One about my gaming woes of late.

 For the longest time now, I've been a happy user of both Linux and Windows, but some things I have discovered after extended use of Linux make me facepalm really hard and I'm stunned there is no solution for these issues yet.

1. I use RPG Maker, and even RPG Maker MV, the one with native Linux support, it runs like utter dog crap for all the things I want to do.

For one, saving and opening projects is an exercise in pain on Linux because even the Linux version seems to have a terrible time accessing the Sream Workshop for things you downloaded to use. Worse, since all the file folders for Steam are in a semi-hidden folder with a different file structure to the Windows AND the workshop saves all downloaded assets in folders with unhelpful folders named with long strings of numbers, and it's often less torture to just use it on Windows, where Steam is in an easily accessible folder and the workshop folders are slightly less tedious to find manually.

Another thing that drives me to frustration is that unlike the Windows version, I cannot open multiple instances of the RPG Maker program, which is VERY helpful for copying and pasting assets like sample events and scripts between projects. It's a simple feature, but one that saves a ton of time on Windows, and apparently, it's because the Steam version (I have yet to buy the non-Steam version and I'm not blowing money to find out) on Linux has a weird hangup with allowing more than one instance to run at a time, while the Windows version makes it easy to do just that.

If this was fixed, I'd use RPG Maker MV and other Makers (which run decently in Wine but have their own issues, some I even detailed on WineHQ's entry for the program under the name Daniel Cullen (my IRL name), here's a link:

https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=30838

2. Linux users like to brag they have open-source alternatives for almost everything you can imagine and usually, they tend to be telling the truth, but there is one thing they do not have it enrages me because I'd move my gaming to Linux full-time if they had it.

MOD MANAGERS

For some reason, no one has EVER made a multi-game supporting or game agnostic mod manager for Linux, and even the popular Windows-based ones like Vortex and MO2 have yet to bother supporting Linux, even though Vortex has a currently open issue on the topic and admitted all they really need to do is support Linux style symlinks.

For the record, I tried running Vortex Mod Manager through Lutris, which allows a very old and partially functional version of Vortex to work, but it's crash-prone, has issues even when it does work, and gets horribly confused when working with games designed for Steam for Linux because it obviously cannot detect the Linux specific folder due to it being a Windows program with no support for Linux save through a buggy compatibility later. Worse, even for games OUTSIDE of Steam, it's still crippled, locks up on occasion, and I've had to reinstall it more than once because something went horribly wrong.

Now, mod managers do exist that are Linux native, but are directly connected to a specific game in nigh all cases, like the one used for Minetest. The day someone makes a multi-game supporting mod manager or support for them to play nice with Linux natively happens, I will be a happy man.

Until then, I will be a rather cranky one.