#gawker

[contract-crawdad]

Look Outside Pacifism Concepts: Part 1

Wouldn’t it be neat if more encounters in Look Outside had alternate methods of beating them?

Assorted thoughts along that vein, starting with the early F3 crowd!

I want to preface all this by saying that this isn’t me ‘fixing’ the game in any way. Just some thoughts about how things might play out if there were a way to resolve things with more enemies by either calming them down or neutralizing them!

And that’s not to say all of them are easy solutions, obviously solutions, or hell even worth doing at all!

Wounded Neighbor

If you guard against the Wounded Neighbor after he’s revealed the eye in his chest, his knife will break (it’s only fair that the weapon degradation mechanic goes both ways)! At which point the combat ends as he huddles in a corner.

‘He seems to be trying to open more holes in himself using just his bare hands. Progress seems slow, and you’re definitely going to vomit if you stay and watch.’

The knife always breaks as long as you guard after his eye is exposed, much like how any attack after the eye is exposed is scripted to always kill him.

You can return later and find him as a pile of nothing but pulsating eyeballs. Sam wonders if this is what his neighbor wanted but can’t think of any way to ask him.

The Onlookers

Once you’re in combat with an Onlooker, there is no peaceful way to resolve things aside from running away.

But the overworld is another story! You can bait them near any television by getting them to chase you, at which point they will stare transfixed at the screen and no longer be interested in fighting. Both the television in the wounded neighbor’s apartment or the one in Vincent’s apartment will work (though the latter will need to be turned on first).

‘It seems too focused on the static to care about you anymore.’

Once every Onlooker is glued to a screen, you can come back one in-game day later to see that they’ve all jumbled together and become a tangled mass of wiry black limbs and eyeballs filling the couch.

‘Many limbs fight over the TV remote as if parts of itself are arguing over what channel to watch. Occasionally, they manage to change the channel from one wall of static to another.’

They’ll offer you huge amounts of change from beneath Vincent’s couch if you trade them batteries for their remotes!

Gawker

Unlike the Onlookers, the Gawker won’t get distracted by screens and can’t even be led out of the bathroom you find it in.

If you let the Gawker transform into a Witness and from there into an Eternal Eye, surviving three more turns against it will cause it to metamorphose into the Enlightened Oculus.

“Good heavens, I simply must apologize for my uncouth behavior a moment ago! Up to this point, the act of beholding another person and tearing them asunder became one and the same to my addled mind!”

The Enlightened Oculus will then offer you a bottomless jar of eyedrops as means of an apology.

“Now then… I do believe it best if you leave immediately. Posthaste, even! I am quite concerned that my enlightenment might loop back around into madness in a moment, you see... so I suggest locking the door behind you as you exit. Ta-ta! Oh, and do tell Vincent that he threw a delightful party!”

After this interaction, Vincent’s bathroom becomes inaccessible after leaving. You can knock on it, and each day there’s a 50/50 chance for either unintelligible bestial noises to be heard on the other side, or for the Gawker to cheerily inform that it ‘Feels just fine, thank you ever so much for checking!!’ but that it still thinks it’s a bad idea for you to come in.

Vincent

If you manage to take out all of his protruding eyes without killing Vincent, he will get woozy and need to lay down. You can find him in his bed, but he doesn’t respond.

You can check on him eight hours later to find him up and about, not entirely lucid but seemingly understanding that Sam would really rather not do whatever ‘letting him close’ entails.

Joel and Benjamin

These two already have pacifistic options, and I imagine that everything involving their encounters would remain entirely unchanged (hahaaaaaa just because you don’t have to kill anybody doesn’t mean there’s not still tragedy). But I’ll be doing the rest of the teeth family as well as the apartment 31 folks next time!

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

[gamer2002]

In memory.

Rest in glory, brother.

[siryouarebeingmocked]

Gizmodo: How dare Google’s AI give arguments in favor of slavery! And gun ownership!

Google’s AI, in Gizmodo’s own video: Here are some arguments people have made in favor of slavery.

Me, a black dude, descended from slaves, from a black-majority country: So Gizmodo is complaining that Google exposed people to viewpoints they disagree with?

Personally, I thought it was fascinating to learn about this stuff. Loads of people today and in history have views that I’d roll my eyes at, but somehow I don’t throw a tantrum if something or someone reminds me they exist.

Also, if you’re cooking mushrooms to eat based entirely off what some AI says, I think that’s on you, actually.

[transpondster]

Jezebel Shutting Down, Parent Company G/O Media Laying Off 23 Staffers

After more than 16 years, Jezebel, the sharp-edged feminist news and opinion website, is shutting down, G/O Media told employees.

Laura Bassett quit as Jezebel’s editor-in-chief in August 2023, writing in a post on X/Twitter, “I have reluctantly resigned from Jezebel, because the company that owned us refused to treat my staff with basic human decency.” On Thursday, Bassett said in a post on X, “I’m obviously boiling and have too much to say on this subject. But for now I’ll just say my heart is with the entire Jez staff who just got laid off, including incredible abortion reporters at a time when the beat couldn’t be more relevant to national politics. Please hire them.”

G/O Media has trashed all the old Gawker sites — and trashed all the staff members who built those sites. Gawker, Jezebel, Deadspin, Gizmodo, and the other sub-sites were all great reads for a decade or more. Defector, which is owned and operated by former Deadspin staffers, is still great. 

[thoughtportal]

Billionaire Peter Thiel and Hulk Hogan make for an unlikely couple.

In honor of Hulk Hogan's death, sharing this 2016 story:

One of Silicon Valley's best-known investors has been footing a former wrestler’s legal bills in lawsuits against a shared enemy.

Peter Thiel, a PayPal cofounder and one of the earliest backers of Facebook , has been secretly covering the expenses for Hulk Hogan’s lawsuits against online news organization Gawker Media. According to people familiar with the situation who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity, Thiel, a cofounder and partner at Founders Fund, has played a lead role in bankrolling the cases Terry Bollea, a.k.a. Hogan, brought against New York-based Gawker. Hogan is being represented by Charles Harder, a prominent Los Angeles-based lawyer.

A spokesperson for Thiel declined to comment.

The involvement of Thiel, an eccentric figure in Silicon Valley who has advocated for teenagers to skip college and openly supported Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, adds another wrinkle to a case that has garnered widespread attention for its implications over celebrity privacy and a publication’s First Amendment rights. During court proceedings, which ended in late March with a $140 million victory for Hogan, there had been rumors that a wealthy individual had funded Hogan’s case though there was never any hard evidence that surfaced to prove that was true.

On Tuesday, in an interview with The New York Times, Gawker founder Nick Denton said he had a “personal hunch” that the financial aid could be linked to someone in Silicon Valley. “If you’re a billionaire and you don’t like the coverage of you, and you don’t particularly want to embroil yourself any further in a public scandal, it’s a pretty smart, rational thing to fund other legal cases,” he told the Times.

It is not illegal for an outside entity to help fund another party’s lawsuit, and the practice, known as “third-party litigation funding” has become increasingly common in the U.S. Typically, the outside party negotiates for a defined share of any proceeds from the suit.

It is unclear how Thiel became connected to Hogan or Harder or if Thiel, who is worth $2.7 billion by FORBES’ estimates, is the only outside financial backer of the cases against Gawker. It is also unknown whether Thiel will see any of the proceeds won by Hogan in a Florida court. Gawker is currently appealing that ruling.

Money may not have been the main motivation in the first place. Thiel, who is gay, has made no secret of his distaste for Gawker, which attempted to out him in late 2007 before he was open about his sexuality. In 2009, Thiel told PEHub that now-defunct Silicon Valley-focused publication Valleywag, which was owned by Gawker, had the “psychology of a terrorist.”

“Valleywag is the Silicon Valley equivalent of Al Qaeda,” Thiel said at the time.

Charles Harder (center) is one of former wrestler Hulk Hogan's lawyers in his lawsuits against... [+] Gawker Media. (Photo: Gerardo Mora/ Getty Images)

When reached by phone on Tuesday, Denton said that he did not know of Thiel’s involvement but had “heard that name” along with others in the speculation that surrounded Hogan’s first lawsuit. (Hogan and Harder sued Gawker again in a Florida state court earlier this month alleging that Gawker attempted to extort Hogan over the release of a sex tape that was the subject of the first lawsuit.) When asked why he thought financial backing was coming from Silicon Valley, Denton said that exposing the money and power in the tech industry was a relatively recent practice.

“We write stories about powerful people in New York, but there are plenty of outlets writing stories about powerful people in New York,” he said. “We write stories about powerful people in LA, but there are plenty of outlets writing stories about powerful people in LA. What’s unique about Gawker is that we’re an internet publication and the tech industry is of particular interest to us. There are powerful people in Silicon Valley and the power of Silicon Valley is a relatively new phenomenon.”

Launched in 2006, Valleywag spent two years exposing the personal and sometimes darker sides to Silicon Valley’s wealthiest and most influential people before being folded into the larger Gawker site in 2008. It re-launched in 2013 before being decommissioned again in Dec. 2015, with Denton citing the company’s redeveloped focus on politics and culture as the reason behind its shuttering.

If Gawker fails in its appeal in Hogan’s first case, it may not be around much longer to explore that new focus. On top of the $140 million in total damages facing Gawker, the company has already likely accumulated millions of dollars in legal fees defending itself. Lawsuits like these can have a chilling effect on the rest of the media industry, said First Amendment expert Peter Scheer, as they may encourage other wealthy individuals to back litigation against media companies that run unflattering stories about them.

“That’s often the purpose of these cases,” said Scheer, the director of the First Amendment Coalition. “Winning is the ultimate chilling effect, but if you can’t win the case, you at least want the editors to think twice before writing another critical story about you.”

Scheer, who has followed the Gawker situation closely but was unaware of a relationship between Thiel, Harder and Hogan, said he expects to see more lawsuits like this one to be brought against other media organizations: “It’s more common today than it has ever been, because there are more private individuals with enough unrestricted cash to be able to do that.”

Harder, who could not immediately be reached by FORBES for comment on Tuesday, told The New York Times, “I do not discuss the finances of my clients, including any financial arrangements they have with my firm.”

A partner with Harder Mirell & Abrams LLP, Harder is a well-known Hollywood lawyer whose past clients included George Clooney, Julia Roberts and a slew of other celebrities. He is also representing plaintiffs against Gawker in other lawsuits, including a defamation case on behalf of Shiva Ayyadurai in Boston that was filed earlier this month. Ayyadurai, who claims to have invented email, was the subject of a story by Gawker journalist Sam Biddle, who wrote that the plaintiff was a “fraud” according to former colleagues. Ayyadurai’s lawsuit seeks “no less than $35 million in damages.”

Harder has represented writer Ashley Terrill since January and filed an amended complaint in her lawsuit against Gawker and Biddle in April. She alleges that the site published “a false and highly defamatory hit-piece” about her written by Biddle last year after she had initiated a working relationship with Gawker to publish a story. Earlier this month Gawker's lawyers argued that Terrill's case should be dismissed. On May 18, the judge in the case gave Terrill's legal team two weeks to file a second amended complaint before the case moved forward. As of Tuesday, no additional documents have been filed in the case."

It is unclear if Thiel is helping to fund Ayyadurai or Terrill’s cases against Gawker.

Lawyers for Hogan and Gawker are due back in a Florida court Wednesday morning to discuss a number of recent motions in the case, including one filed Monday by Gawker that opposes Hogan's motion for a final judgment. Hogan’s lawyers have asked the court to force Gawker and other defendants to put up $150 million in escrow before moving forward with the appeal the case, something that Gawker has also challenged. 

[tochira]

Hulk Hogan Was a Racist, Liar, and Scab

In the 1980s, the professional wrestler portrayed himself as an all-American hero—but he was really a “jabroni” the entire time.

"But Hogan’s harm can be counted in more ways than just what took place behind the curtain. He sold what was left of his soul to Palantir founder and sweaty, ham-faced fascist Peter Thiel who bankrolled Hogan’s lawsuit that bankrupted Gawker. With Thiel’s help, Hogan crushed an audacious Internet journalism outlet that I guarantee would have published the Epstein lists by now. That we lost Deadspin because of Peter Thiel and Hulk Hogan will never not make me apoplectic."

[toonvasion]

olisnowpaw drew all the real humans (I colored everything) cause I was lazy and didn't want to, plus I like the contract in style. The origin of Gretchen, my nerdy science bird  and I guess Allie too?

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[doubledaybooks]

Praise for SECOND LIFE by Amanda Hess “There is no better chaperone than Amanda Hess through the strange world of surveillance, monetization, bureaucracy, and alternative medicine to which pregnant people and mothers are subjected.” —Max Read, editor of Read Max and former editor-in-chief of Gawker