Homelessbird

Great podcast. Was a little surprised no one on stage knew how "St. John" is pronounced traditionally, however. As someone who was in Jane Eyre in high school, my delicate sensibilities were offended.

I understand the unwillingness to "share" a cultural touchstone that was previously an ingroup thing, but: a) The flipside of "co-opting" is "imitation," which, some guy once told me, is the sincerest form of flattery. A positive spin on white people doing things that black people have been doing for years is to look at it as them wishing they could be that cool. I have a white friend who is perpetually upset that he can't drop the n-bomb, but not because he bears any ill will to anyone - he just loves rap, and he can't really rap along to rap when other people are around. He just wishes he could be in the club too. He still doesn't get to use the word, of course, but I feel like that's a lot more understandable than the whole CNN thing. Really? Twerking is a thing you want to defend? I'm not saying twerking is bad, but it's not exactly the most interesting or creative thing to be contributed to culture that is also uniquely identifiable as "black." Considering how funny it is when most white people do it, I say go for it. Shine on you crazy diamonds.

I don't think you all are wrong about this, but here's another idea to consider: I heard a linguist talking on NPR a while back (don't remember the details, unfortunately) who was saying that one of the reasons we see so much racism on the internet is that that's what's shocking to people now. Words like "fuck" and "shit" will only shock your grandmother nowadays - they've been so oversaturated into our culture that the sensation you experience when hearing them is minor at worst. But racist words can still shock, they still have a sting to them. The internet is largely still an anonymous culture - even if you have your real name tied to what you're saying, the experience of comenting on twitter is of being just one line of text next to a profile picture in a sea of tweets. You can't stand out with a mild expression in such an environment. If you want to be read, you have to be saying something extreme - or at least, that's the line of unconscious attention-seeking drilled into people with parents that ignore(d) them. People reach to racist words to make you pay attention to them, essentially. Not saying that makes them excusable, of course. Just an interesting thought.

I'm under a certain age, and I certainly don't think you old folks sound amish. I just think times, they are a' changin'. Also, I've had plenty of people around my age (20-something) express unease about the NSA or surveillance in general on varying levels of intensity. And my 60-something parents love social media waaaaaay more than I do, and could give two shits about the NSA monitoring them. I think boiling it down to a simple age difference is filtering some nuance out of the equation. Personally, I'm of two minds: I can understand a lot of the concerns people have about these issues, and I limit my own exposure to things like Facebook, although admittedly as much out of a desire to be left alone as anything else. But I think the perspective of a lot of people I know (one that I share) is that yeah, the monitoring ain't great, but the benefit they get out of having their information out there and using these services is far greater than any percieved current or future threat. The slippery slope argument can be convincing, but it doesn't win against tangible benefits - for most people.

Great show guys! Enjoying it much. Two nerd things: 1) if you're doing area attacks, it's more fun (i've found) to roll seperately to attack each person in the burst. That way area effect spells arent so all-or-nothing. 2) if anyone's interested, the guys over at Penny Arcade and PvP (webcomics, both) got together with the D&D people a while back to do some similar humorous D&D podcasts. They're pretty great! You can still find them here if you're into it: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/podcasts.aspx