Monthly Archives: February 2017

Nioh Review-in-Progress: FromSoftware’s Formula Evolved – Shacknews

Posted: February 7, 2017 at 8:06 am

Team Ninja's SoulsGaiden-like marries the best of Dark Souls and Ninja Gaiden with a little Bloodborne stirred in.

In case you missed the memo, FromSoftware is done making Dark Souls games. Unless studio president Hidetaka Miyazaki changes his mind, next month's Ringed City DLC is not only Dark Souls 3's final expansion, it's the last piece of Dark Souls content ever.

Rather than leave that bloodstain to dry, Nioh pays homage to FromSoftware's modern classic while driving the genre forward at breakneck speed.

Developed by Team Ninja, Nioh evokes Ninja Gaiden and Dark Souls with a little Bloodborne thrown in for good measure. The basics will be familiar to anyone who's at least dabbled in a Souls game. You'll creep through dozens of areas painted in shades of grim and bleak, fighting enemies using a bevy of weapons, resting at shrines that both heal you and reset enemies and traps, spending amrita instead of souls to upgrade attributes.

Instead of playing it safe and conforming to a winning pedigree, Nioh builds on FromSoftware's ideas by injecting them with the raw speed of its 3D Ninja Gaiden series. Every weapon has a light and heavy attack, but your character can switch between low, mid, and high styles on the fly, effectively giving you six basic strikes.

Besides amrita, you earn skill points that you can spend on skills unique to each weapon class. Specializing in kusarigama (a wicked sickle-and-chain combo) afforded me access to skills like a kick that drains enemy stamina, a flurry of strikes that chews through life meters, and a throat slice that deals massive damage to winded enemies who neglected their stamina.

Minding your stamina, known as ki, is paramount in Nioh, but Team Ninja put a twist on the mechanic. Every time you finish an attack, you'll notice a blue glow surrounding your character. Tap R1 at the right time and you'll recoup all the ki you expended in a flash. Performing a ki pulse is reminiscent of getting hit in Bloodborne and being able to reclaim lost hit points by counterattacking quickly, but you always regain at least a smidgeon of ki even if your timing is off, so you won't feel punished if you prefer defense over aggression.

Ki regeneration has the added benefit of dispelling portals of dark energy that spring up around certain enemies and bosses. You can fight in those pools, but you'll regenerate ki at a snail's pace while inside them, and the rate of regeneration usually means the difference between success and respawning at the nearest shrine.

All of this boils down to layered and rewarding combat. You're never hurting for ways to dispatch enemies, and the staggering amount of options at your fingertips encourages you to switch styles and strategies depending on who or what you're fighting.

You almost have to. Dark Souls let you get away with picking off enemies one at a time while their buddies stood gaping at the growing pile of corpses lying at their feet. Nioh's mobs know when their friends are dying. Sniping with your bow or rifle gives you enough time to kill one, maybe two before the rest of the pack is on their feet and stampeding toward you.

Nioh's two biggest departures from Dark Souls lie in how you explore its world and digest its story. Instead of reporting back to a hub after killing bosses or exploring vast and interconnected environments, Team Ninja went with more traditional levels. The notion of selecting missions at a map screen may seem jarring to players accustomed to world design that communicates story, but every individual level of Nioh I've played has been deftly interwoven and dense with nooks, crannies, and side routes.

I was surprised by how much I appreciated having a minimap as I played. The map itself is bare bones; it exists only to point you toward your main objective. You can ignore the marker and explore at your leisure; when you're ready to move forward, you'll know which way to go.

Instead of creating your own character and customizing every pixel down to the shape of your eyebrows, you play as a characterWilliam, who's based on a real samurai of the same name, minus all the supernatural elements. And get this: William talks. Cutscenes are sparsely used to move things along, but I was able to skip them without missing any gameplay beats, yet engaging enough that players interested in a more traditional narrative will enjoy them.

To call Nioh a copycat would be doing it a disservice. Combat is tight and layered with options, levels are gorgeously rendered and ooze atmosphere, and the story is entertaining enough to keep me interested yet can still be set aside when I'm more interested in perfecting my ki pulses.

If, like me, you've sunk thousands of hours into Souls games and were concerned that the genre would dry up after Dark Souls 3's conclusion, you owe it to yourself to immerse yourself in Nioh's samurai-fantasy world.

This review-in-progress is based on a PlayStation 4 disc provided by the publisher. Nioh will be available exclusively for PlayStation 4 for $59.99 on February 7. Refer to the Shacknews Nioh guide hub for tips on solving levels and honing your skills in combat.

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Progress being made on possible grocery store co-op in Winston-Salem – myfox8.com

Posted: at 8:06 am

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WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- The SHARE Food Cooperative of Winston-Salem is making progress with plans to bring a co-op grocery store to one of the citys food deserts.

A now-vacant 8,000+-square-foot building has the attention of project leaders.

The building in the West Salem Shopping Center was a grocery store at one time, making it an ideal space for what SHARE hopes to do.

The vision is to establish some food markets in some food deserts, project coordinator Rev. Gary R. Williams said.Fresh food to people at a reasonable cost.

Eventually, SHARE would like to have multiple locations to address the numerous food deserts in the city, but for now, its focusing on the Peters Creek Parkway location.

We said, Why dont we find an area where we wont have to do so much work on the area itself, but be able to set up the co-op and [allow people] to access it right away and then we would use it as a model to take to these other areas, said Rev. Willard Bass, co-founding project developer.

They should build one right here, or put one here, resident Aundra Thweatt said.

The goal is to create a model similar to the Renaissance Co-op in Greensboro, but the group will need city funding to move forward with the vision.

To meet the operational, administrative and consulting needs of the project, SHARE would need an estimated total investment of $100,000 from the city.

However, in the short term, SHARE will ask the city at an upcoming council meeting to consider providing $21,000 for a feasibility study.

The study will allow SHARE to determine if this location is best suited to address all of the co-ops needs.

36.099860 -80.244216

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Bomb-shelter builder busy as customers prep for ‘Trumpocalypse’ – Atlanta Journal Constitution

Posted: at 8:03 am

MURCHISON, Texas

Inside his football field-size warehouse an hour's drive southeast of Dallas, Gary Lynch is busy trying to keep up with orders for his solid-steel bomb shelters.

He offers visitors a tour of a 600-square-foot model under construction for a Saudi customer.

Right now, it's just a steel shell, he said, but when the work is done it will be a luxurious underground bunker with a master bedroom, four bunk beds, a composting toilet, a living room with satellite television capability, filtered air and water, and a storage closet with room for months of food.

Lynch explains that orders for his most expensive shelters, which can cost as much as several million dollars, have increased since the November election.

"It definitely has picked up a little as Donald Trump emerged as president," said Lynch, general manager of Rising S Co. on the outskirts of the rural city of Murchison. Lynch said some customers even half-jokingly say they're trying to protect themselves from a "Trumpocalypse" or "Trumpnado."

"There's some people who maybe even voted for Donald Trump and may be worried some of the riots are going to get out of hand and there's going to be social or civil unrest," he said.

"Then you've got people who didn't vote for him and are thinking that now that he's president maybe he's going to start a war. There's definitely been some renewed interest from people since the election."

Doomsday prepping the act of stockpiling food and other essentials in a reinforced, often-underground shelter used to be mostly associated with Libertarian-leaning Americans who feared their own government would turn on them.

But now that Trump has taken office, some centrists and left-leaning folks also are building bomb shelters under their homes and businesses, apparently fearing either civil strife or war with an external enemy.

Sales of Rising S's most luxurious shelters have jumped 700 percent in recent months, he said. Lynch didn't provide specific data on how many units he typically sells, but he said Rising S Co. recorded about $14 million in sales during the past year.

Although Lynch credits Trump's surprising rise to power for the latest sales spike, he said a similar jump in sales occurred eight years ago when President Obama took office.

He has been building shelters for 13 years.

"When a Republican is president, the left wants to buy a bunker," he said. "It's the opposite when a Democrat is president."

The phrase "#Trumpocalypse" has taken on a life of its own on social media such as Twitter.

And a quick search online shows many other examples of people taking advantage of Trump's knack for controversy to sell their fare.

For example, in Pearsall, south of San Antonio, a Craigslist seller named Dan was offering used buses for $3,000 to $5,000, and explaining on his advertisement that "They make good Trump Bunkers and Bomb Shelters."

"You Know Who's Finger will be on the Button," the ad continues. "Make America Great Again. Buy a Bus. All are welcome. Pro Donald. Pro Hilary. (sic) Can we all be friends again?"

America has a long history of building bomb shelters, going back to the days of the Cold War with the Soviet Union shortly after World War II.

In the 1950s and 1960s, thousands of home owners built underground escape rooms something that was encouraged by President John F. Kennedy, a Democrat who presided over the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis that nearly brought the U.S. and Russia to nuclear blows.

America's bunker mentality is the stuff of movies and historical lore. The desire for blast-proof walls, filtrated air and water, and composting toilets is deeply embedded in the national psyche.

And, although it's an issue that typically only comes up during a leadership change, domestic strife or a global crisis, the desire to be safe from harm to have a place where loved ones can hunker down indefinitely seems to always burn in the nation's collective belly.

It's a different story with storm shelters, similar structures that can be built either underground or as a "safe room" within a home. Storm shelters tend to grow in popularity after a major disaster such as the tornado in 1997 that killed 27 people in the Central Texas city of Jarrell, or the one two years later that killed 36 people in the Oklahoma City area.

According to the Lubbock, Texas-based National Storm Shelter Association, which applies its official seal to shelters that meet high construction and design standards, "sales are half what they were three years ago," executive director Ernst Kiesling said.

After a major incident such as a tornado or hurricane, Federal Emergency Management Agency money can sometimes be made available to offset some of the cost of shelter construction, depending upon how states and cities use the federal funds.

But the demand for shelters usually only lasts about as long as the cleanup, Kiesling said.

"After an incident, there will be an upsurge among the public, but it will subside rather quickly," he said.

Storm shelters can be underground, or they can be built at ground level in a home. They can be made of steel, fiberglass or other materials.

Although they typically don't have the long-term accommodations for people to live in indefinitely, like a bomb shelter, storm shelters can also provide residents with a "safe room" to escape dangers such as gunfire or a home intruder.

But usually it's concern about enemies of the state whether foreign or domestic that motivates someone to install a bunker in their home or business.

Peter Westwick teaches a class on the atomic age at the University of Southern California and he sometimes shows his students a photo that he took just a few years ago of a commercial building in Los Angeles called Atlas Survival Shelters. The otherwise-nondescript metal building features an outside display of a bright yellow bomb shelter the size of fuel truck.

The photo illustrates how little has changed about Americans' concern for the long-term security of their republic since the 1950s, he said.

"I sometimes use a picture I took of a shelter manufacturer here in LA, just off the 5 freeway, to show these fears haven't gone away," Westwick said in an email. "But they have changed, to a broader doomsday/survivalism instead of just nuclear fear."

Of the current interest in shelters, Westwick said, "I think you could indeed say that the losing side in an election often takes a catastrophic view of the outcome. You might consider the migration to the Idaho, Montana, Wyoming region by conservative or Libertarian adherents following Obama's election.

"There's an issue here with whether the survivalists fear an external enemy (e.g. the Soviet Union, albeit aided by Communists in American society) or an internal one (e.g. the Idaho survivalists apparently fearing their own government and fellow citizens).

"The current fears seem to be more of Trump provoking an external enemy, whether another state or stateless terrorists," he said.

Often, customers who buy bomb shelters are wealthy.

Steve Huffman, founder of the Reddit social news aggregate site, acknowledged in a recent New Yorker story that he is obsessed with surviving a catastrophe.

In that same article, many other wealthy elite from New York, San Francisco and other tony places say they're stocking up on gas masks, motorcycles (more nimble and fuel-efficient than cars during a crisis) and other essentials to escape from the expected confusion and panic that likely would envelope and overtake those who had failed to prepare.

But bomb shelters don't have to break the bank.

Some manufacturers offer closet-size underground bunkers for as little as $5,000.

At Rising S Co., Lynch said he and his roughly 40 employees can't sell anything that cheap. They use the finest, Alabama-made steel and an air purification system with a patent pending on its design and materials like that come at a cost.

Rising S Co.'s shelters also feature a water purification system that can be designed to pull water from an underground well, a municipal water system or a storage tank.

But Lynch said he can set up customers with an entry-level shelter approximately 4 feet by 6 feet for roughly $10,000.

In fact, he has one of those basic models under construction right now in his warehouse off Texas 31 in Murchison, right alongside the underground virtual palace his crew is building for that wealthy Saudi customer.

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Katamama review: Craft cocktails, hipster coffee and haute tapas at Bali’s coolest new hotel – The Independent

Posted: at 8:01 am

When the team behind Bali's legendary Potato Head Beach Club opened a luxury hotel, it was never going to be a getting-away-from-it-all kind of place on a secret beach somewhere.

Right in the heart of buzzing Seminyak, Potato Head is the place to see and be seen, whether you're sipping cocktails at the swim-up bar or dancing to the sound of live DJs after dark. And while its little sister, Katamama, which opened just a few steps away last spring, isn't a party venue in itself, it's certainly no shrinking violet, with a destination restaurant and bartenders who'll come and make you a cocktail in your room.

Yet, it's not all about hedonism. This is perhaps Bali's best hotel for those serious about design, from the angular brick mass of the exterior to the beautifully curated rooms and the thoughtfully designed indoor-outdoor corridors.

Hotel guests can book day beds at Potato Head without any minimum spend (normally around 30 per party), but for a much lower-key experience, Katamama's own pool sits within a pretty, secluded raised garden atop the complex's oh-so-cool coffee shop and boutique, which stocks stylish but pricey trinkets.

Katamama hotel is serious about design

If you have a hankering for Balinese cuisine you might be disappointed that the hotel's only dining option is an outpost of Aussie-based Spanish joint MoVida but you shouldn't be. Local ingredients are cooked to perfection, with highlights including tender calamares in squid ink dressing, and a modern take on patatas bravas. Even breakfast is delicious; there's no buffet everything is made to order, from the juices and smoothies to dishes such as shakshuka-style baked eggs served with sobrasada toast.

Location

Seminyak is by no means the most picturesque part of Bali, and its beach was in need of a serious clean on my visit (a fair bit of rubbish had washed ashore, apparently because it was rainy season), but if you're looking for a resort with plenty of bustle, and a bit more class than Kuta, it should do the trick.

The Katamama Suite looks out to sea

Between the slick bars and banging clubs you'll find some lovely places to eat, including Biku, which offers Indonesian dishes in homely surroundings, and The Halal Boys, a food truck serving Middle Eastern fare. For surfy vibes and better beaches, venture slightly north to the laid-back town of Canggu.

Aussie tapas joint MoVidaprovides the dining

Comfort

The smallest but still spacious rooms are the Island and Pool View Suites, while the largest, the Katamama Suite, has two bedrooms and panoramic windows looking out to sea (and, unfortunately, the stadium-like Potato Head building).

Practically everything you see, from the bare brick walls to the wooden furniture and beautiful terrazzo tiles in the bathrooms, has been locally made using top-quality Indonesian materials, but you'll also find a few mid-century originals designed by the likes of Arne Jacobsen and Le Corbusier.

Rooms are stylish but comfortable

The attention to detail has really paid off the dcor is incredibly stylish, but comfortable too. The bed in my Garden Suite was vast, and looked out towards double doors leading on to a small private courtyard. The huge bathtub and monsoon shower had the same view through floor-to-ceiling windows.

Other nice touches in the rooms include books you can borrow (running the gamut from F Scott Fitzgerald to Irvine Welsh) and a cocktail-making kit, complete with recipes. Though ingredients, along with the rest of the minibar, are chargeable, each guest gets a free welcome cocktail one quick call and someone will be over to make it for you.

Katamama, JL Petitenget No 51B, Seminyak, Bali, Indonesia (00 62 361 302 9999; katamama.com). Doubles from US$270, B&B. Malaysia Airlines (malaysiaairlines.com) flies from Heathrow to Bali Denpasar via Kuala Lumpur.

Wifi:Free

Access:No specifically adapted rooms but all are large enough for wheelchair users, and ramps are available around the hotel

Rooms: *****

Service: *****

Value: ****

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Free Speech, Not Hate Speech | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson

Posted: at 8:00 am

After violent protests raised concerns of student safety, administrators at UC Berkeley canceled a planned event featuring controversial far-right speaker Milo Yiannopoulos last Wednesday. 150 masked agitators interrupted an otherwise peaceful protest, causing $100,000 of damage to the universitys campus. We commend UC Berkeley administrators for effectively and efficiently handling this situation.

While the incident has been framed as a battle over free speech on UC Berkeleys liberal campus, it is important to distinguish intellectual diversity from hate speech on college campuses. It is imperative that college students gain a wide range of perspectives and evidence-based ideas to continue challenging their own opinions and worldviews, but universities should foster this intellectual growth by inviting principled conservatives to provide educational experiences for their studentsnot polemicists such as Yiannopoulos who hold little substance behind their contrarian views.

Yiannopoulos does not deserve to be granted the platform of a university campus to espouse his hateful beliefs. Institutions of higher education pride themselves on generating new knowledge and challenging old beliefs for the purposes of advancing our understanding of the world. Furthermore, these institutions are built on the principle of evidence-based research. In contrast, Yiannopoulos appears to challenge others beliefs simply for the sake of being a contrarian, and he does so with little tenability for his claims. Yiannopoulos is little more than a racist, sexist, and anti-semite who encourages hate and fear rather than intellectual thought.

There is strong precedent for believing that Yiannopoulos poses a tangible threat to the safety and well-being of university students. For example, in a sold-out talk at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee last December, Yiannopoulos singled out Adelaide K. Kramer, a transgender student at the university, by projecting her face on a large screen and proceeding to mock her in front of a packed crowd of laughing students. Following the incident, Kramer wrote to the chancellor of UW, Do you know what its like to be in a room full of people who are laughing at you as if youre some sort of perverted freak, and how many of them would have hollered at me (or worse) if I was outed? Do you know what this kind of terror is? The far-right speakers views are incredibly hateful towards students who deserve to feel welcome on their college campuses. Yiannopoulos has proven multiple times that he is a significant threat to specific students. This alone should be more than enough for administrators to bar him from campuses in the first place.

In the midst of the debates of free speech and intellectual diversity, the irony of President Donald J. Trumps Twitter responses is especially disheartening for student protesters across this country. Following the Berkeley campus protests, President Trump tweeted, If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view - NO FEDERAL FUNDS? Moving forward, advocates of free speech must work to also expand their selective view of the constitution and recognize that the Berkeley student protesters who were peaceful were exercising their first amendment rights. President Trumps immediate threats to pull federal funds from a public university due to student protests must be taken as a serious infringement on one of Americas most powerful democratic rights.

Members of Harvard should think twice before inviting speakers such as Yiannopoulos to our campus. Granting these figures a platform at our universities only serves to further legitimize their untenable, hateful claims and poses a threat to fellow classmates. Milo Yiannopoulos and other members of the alt-right have no place on college campuses. Harvard College's mission statement "seeks to identify and to remove restraints on students full participation"; the identification and prevention of hate speech is critical in this mission.

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Portland International Airport is Now Requiring a "Free Speech … – Willamette Week

Posted: at 8:00 am


Willamette Week
Portland International Airport is Now Requiring a "Free Speech ...
Willamette Week
Protesters marched into the airport, marched through baggage claim and had a sit-in outside the departures gate. Related: Demonstrators Throng Into Portland ...
Oregon Local News - Port says future PDX protests require permit ...Portland Tribune
Portland Airport Protests Lead To Free Speech Zone Being ... - PatchPatch.com
PDX cracks down on roving protests; permits needed | OregonLive ...OregonLive.com
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Free speech for all, not just some – Washington Times

Posted: at 8:00 am

Free speech for all, not just some
Washington Times
While it is laughable to imagine Governor Moonbeam cutting state funds over the denial of free speech to anyone to the right of over-the-edge left, any other old-fashioned liberals out there ought to support the threat of the cutting of federal funds ...

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When Free Speech Turns Into Harassment, It Isn’t Okay or Legal – Huffington Post

Posted: at 8:00 am

Why are gender pronouns being forced into law?originally appeared on Quora - the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.

Answer by Jae Alexis Lee, Trans Woman, Technology Enthusiast, Martial Arts Instructor, long time manager, on Quora:

Why are gender pronouns being forced into law?This is a distortion of reality that's popular in some social circles and it really, really bugs me. Let meexplain, we'll start with the basics: Harassment isn't okay. We good with that? I hope so because if not there's no hope for the rest of this conversation. Harassment isn't okay.

What constitutes harassment? Well, lots of things. Anyone who's ever been a manager for a sufficiently large corporation has probably sat through at least one mandatory training session about what the company considers harassment, what the law considers harassment, and what they're expected to do about it. We'll skip the minutia and leave it at high, high-level concepts for now: Harassment can include physical behavior (inappropriate touching, hitting, etc.), verbal behavior (teasing, lewd comments, etc.) and direct actions (work assignments, dismissals or threats of termination, etc.) Got it? 1,000 foot level.

Let's descend a bit to talk about verbal harassment. Some things would be considered harassment regardless of the gender, ethnicity, religion or orientation of the target. If I make a point of loudly addressing one of my staff as "Dumb F***" and pile onto that with abusive language every time I give them instructions both in private or publicly, that's not okay. (All right, I'm wandering into hostile work environment land a little bit, but hang with me, we're not going to get sucked into that level of minutia here.) If that member of my staff quits and files for unemployment, I promise you, I'm going to have a hard time explaining my behavior to a judge on that.

Some forms of verbal harassment are unique to traditionally oppressed groups. Racial slurs, sexist remarks, religious slurs. We've got a list of things that as an employer, it's not okay to call your employees. If those employees complain and we keep doing it anyway, that's explicitly not okay.

So, now we're looking at trans people, a historically oppressed minority that studies have demonstrated face significant rates of harassment and discrimination. Like many other groups, there are collections of slurs and methods of being verbally abusive that are specific to the group. In areas where we talk about gender identity being a protected class, using trans-specific verbally abusive language would be forbidden in the same contexts that using racial slurs would be prohibited or making lewd sexual comments would be forbidden.

Still with me? Good. When it comes to trans people, in addition to slurs like shemale and tranny, denying a trans person's identity can constitute harassment. Terms commonly used in the trans community are misgendering (referring to a person with incorrect pronouns, or other gendered parts of speech), and deadnaming (using a trans person's pre-transition name.) Same as using racial slurs or making lewd sexual comments, this kind of behavior can have significant negative impact to the person on the receiving end of it.

So, Jae, what you're telling me is that if I screw up and call a trans man 'she' it's the same thing as if I asked my receptionist to show me her tits?

I get this a lot. No, not that exact question, but the idea that people are afraid that screwing up will get them in legal trouble.

This isn't about verbal stumbles. In general, when we're talking about non-discrimination legislation that creates protection for gender identity what we're doing is placing behavior that is explicitly anti-trans on the same level as behavior that is specifically anti-any other protected class.

Verbal stumbles happen, we all know that. Show of hands from everyone who's never said she when they meant to say he? Who's never opened their mouth to mention a person by name only to have the wrong name come out? It happens, and in general, we make a quick comment/apology about it, and then we move on.

There's no reason to feel like a law that protects trans people would be different in application. In any legal case we're going to be looking at severity (saying 'show me your tits or you're fired' is on a different level than calling someone the 'company slut' where it can be overheard, both are bad, one is worse), there's going to be an examination of frequency, of intent, and of circumstances.

When you dig into harassment in the workplace, you learn that there's a whole lot of gray. We can't write laws that spell out every word that can or can't be used, or every phrase or how often people can or can't say something. Instead, we have a framework of guidelines that the justice system can use to assess the situation.

So, I get that Jae, but... are you saying this is just for employers and employees?

No, not at all. Looking at from a corporate perspective is easy for me because I've been in management for so long, but it's also an approachable lens for a broad swath of people because most of us have had jobs at one point or another.

This sort of thing applies to a large number of relationships where there is an institutional power differential. It applies from employer to employee where we talk about things regarding hostile workplaces, harassment and a host of other employment related things. It also applies when we're talking about how law enforcement treats suspects. In investigations of bias and excessive force, the use of slurs on the part of the LEO can be employed as part of proving that an officer acted inappropriately due to bias. We look at this in relationships between teachers and students, especially in instances where there is a reason to suspect that grading which may be subjective has been unfair towards minority students, or that classroom environments were too hostile for students to be able to engage and learn. We talk about this in the contexts of landlords and tenants, business owners and clients and on and on and on.

Fundamentally, harassment and discrimination are issues we face in the modern world. We have laws to address these things because harassment and discrimination aren't okay. Legislation that adds gender identity to the list of protected classes aren't enforcing an Orwellian form of thought control on the population, but they recognize that trans people are frequently targeted for harassment and discrimination. Some laws make explicit note that misgendering and deadnaming are specific methods by which people harass and make transgender people feel unwelcome or unsafe.

But Jae, what about free speech?

You still have freedom of expression, as much as you ever did. It hasn't gone away. Want to call me a delusional dude on your blog? Go for it, knock yourself out. Want to demand you have the right to call Caitlyn Jenner Bruce? Be my guest. It isn't an issue until you do so in a way that is specifically harmful to another person. If you're my boss, and you call me 'he' or 'it' every time you talk about me at work, then you're going to get a complaint from me letting you know that I'm not okay with it. I'm going to copy HR on the complaint, and if it keeps happening then things escalate as appropriate for the situation (that may mean internal escalations to my boss's boss, that might entail talking to an employment attorney, again, situational.)

Speech has consequences, and in general, our rights stop when our method of exercising them hurts other people. You're welcome to say or think whatever you want, but in some situations, there are things you shouldn't say because of the harm it will cause and if you do cause damage with what you say then you may be held accountable for the harm you caused.

That's what this is about. Not about Orwellian thought police, not about an out of control radical left, but about recognizing that the trans population is a minority that faces significant harassment and discrimination. That harassment and discrimination aren't okay, and that deliberately misgendering or deadnaming a trans person may be a form of verbal abuse that would be actionable under appropriate laws regarding specific forms of verbal abuse.

Got it? Good, now go be nice to each other, class dismissed.

This question originally appeared on Quora - the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. More questions:

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5 ways free speech is under attack – The Rebel

Posted: at 8:00 am

I support free speech but.. That is a worrying statement to hear from anyone that lives in a Liberal Western Democracy like Canadas.

I support free speech but. always means theres some kind of speech the person speaking, would like to see shut down.

And the problem with that is, where do you stop?

If you trust the current government to restrict speech you dont like, what about the next government led by that leader you hate or that party you cant stand.

Would you be comfortable handing over the ability to criminalize speech?

And yet, from people rioting to shut down civil discourse on campuses to calls for advertising bans and having the government police Twitter or Facebook for mean posts and fake news, this is a worrying time for free speech.

- Riots - Fake News - Twitter police - Ad bans - Political targeting

Watch as I go through each of the ways free speech is under attack in the current environment.

Doesnt it remind you all of 1984?

Freedom of speech, freedom of expression its all taken for granted but as we have seen in the past with issues like Section 13 of the Human Rights Act - the hurt feelings on the internet section, many people, including elected officials are more than happy to let freedom of speech be curtailed for the latest fashionable idea.

The answer however should always be no.

Originally posted here:
5 ways free speech is under attack - The Rebel

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A Free Speech Battle at the Birthplace of a Movement at Berkeley – New York Times

Posted: at 8:00 am


New York Times
A Free Speech Battle at the Birthplace of a Movement at Berkeley
New York Times
BERKELEY, Calif. Fires burned in the cradle of free speech. Furious at a lecture organized on campus, demonstrators wearing ninja-like outfits smashed windows, threw rocks at the police and stormed a building. The speech? The university called it off.
The No Free Speech Movement at BerkeleyLos Angeles Times
Free speech takes a hit in BerkeleySan Francisco Chronicle
UC Berkeley riot tests free speech, incites funding threat from TrumpThe Mercury News
The Seattle Times -Daily Caller -U.S. News & World Report -UC Berkeley
all 845 news articles »

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A Free Speech Battle at the Birthplace of a Movement at Berkeley - New York Times

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