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Honoring All Who Have Given Their Lives Serving Our Country
The Towleroad staff wishes you a safe, relaxing, and reflective Memorial Day weekend.
Kyler Geoffroy
www.towleroad.com/2015/05/honoring-all-those-who-have-given-their-lives-serving-our-country-.html
'League Of Legends' Introduces Automated System To Battle Abusive Language
The world’s most popular computer game is taking a bold new step to counter harassment.
“League of Legends” publisher Riot Games announced in a blog post last week that North American players now have access to a new “reform system” that works to correct abusive behavior in the competitive online game.
If you’re playing a game and experience abusive language from a teammate or opponent, you can report that player at the end of the match — as usual. But now, a system is in place to automatically process the content of a player’s chat messages. It will “validate” the report and deliver a “reform card” to the offending player, detailing their negative behavior and the punishment they’re receiving in hopes of improving their interactions moving forward.
“If a player shows excessive hate speech (homophobia, sexism, racism, death threats, so on) the system might hand out a permanent ban to the player,” Jeffrey Lin, Riot Games’ lead social systems designer, elaborated in a comment on the blog post.
Punishment is supposedly handed down within 15 minutes after a game concludes. But how accurate can an automated system really be?
“In terms of false positives, we recently flew in Player Support and Player Behavior team members from all around the world to hand-review thousands of chat logs, and we saw false positive rates in the 1 in 6000 range,” Lin said.
The reform system is currently in a “testing” period, meaning that actual Riot Games employees will review the first several thousand reports. If all goes well, it’ll be introduced to all other regions that “League of Legends” is available in — Europe, Korea, China and Southeast Asia.
Ben Kuchera of Polygon noted Monday that it’s already rolling out for European players.
“League of Legends” has long led the charge in terms of how popular video games deal with online trolls, introducing innovative ways to counter harsh language and improve player behavior. The game is tremendously popular, boasting over 67 million monthly players in 2014. Because it’s typically played competitively with other humans — rather than against computer-controlled players — tensions can sometimes run high during matches.
Riot Games’ blog post notes that moving forward, the reporting system could also be used to reward players who display good behavior, rather than just punishing those who do not.
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
PHOTOS: Sexy Spaniards Pack The Heat At Madrid’s Hottest Fetish Bar
Odarko bills itself as “a benchmark in the international gay fetish scene.” Located in Madrid’s Callao gayborhood, the bar is known for its all-night fetish parties, elaborate laser lights, and house and electronic music spun by resident DJ Manuel Carranco. It’s a must-see for any gay, leather-loving traveler who finds himself passing through Madrid.
Scroll down for a taste of what goes on at Odarko, and see the full gallery over at GayCities…
Photo credit: Odarko
Graham Gremore
Korean Men Tie the Knot In Heartwarming 'My Fair Wedding' Documentary: VIDEO
South Korea, like many places in the world and in too much of the U.S., bans gay marriage. South Korean gays, like in many places in the world and in increasingly more places in the U.S., are reaching the point of not caring what the bans are and are getting married anyways, governmental recognition be damned. Such is the case with Kim Jho Gwang-soo and Kim Seung-hwan, a South Korean gay couple whose marriage became the subject of a documentary by Jang Hee-sun entitled My Fair Wedding.
The documentary follows the couple along their journey to wedded bliss, from the planning stages to the challenges of telling their families to the ceremony itself in downtown Seoul. Despite the pushback they received from anti-gay protesters, the two felt that this was necessary in order to raise awareness of sexual minorities in South Korea. Said Kim Jho,
Through this film, we would like to show that we are not different from heterosexuals.
Hopefully this will facilitate legislation in South Korea that, like many places in the world and in most of the U.S., legally recognizes same-sex marriage. The film will be released in South Korea on June 6, 2015, and you can watch the trailer AFTER THE JUMP…
Christian Walters
www.towleroad.com/2015/05/korean-men-get-gay-married-in-my-fair-wedding-documentary-video-1.html
Would You Rather: Max Rockatansky Or Nux From ‘Mad Max: Fury Road'
Life often presents us with tough choices, but we’re here to help work them out. Each week, we discuss two attractive men, weigh the pros and cons, and decide, once and for all, which one we’d rather have sex with. In this week’s Would You Rather, we debate hopping into bed with either “Mad” Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy) and Nux (Nicholas Hoult) from Mad Max: Fury Road.
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
Nine More States Comply With Federal Prison Rape Law, But DOJ Rejects Texas Governor's Letter
For a brief instant, it was starting to appear as though a wave of sanity had swept over the Texas GOP.
First, Rep. Sarah Davis became the first Republican state lawmaker in history to publicly back same-sex marriage.
Then, it was widely reported that Republican Gov. Greg Abbott had agreed to comply with the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act — unlike his predecessor, Rick Perry.
Alas, though, it was apparently too good to be true, at least with regard to Abbott. The New York Times reports that the Justice Department has rejected the governor’s assurance of compliance with PREA:
Mr. Abbott, who took office in January, was under some pressure in the week before the deadline, during which an article in The New York Times highlighted the sexual abuse problem in Texas’ prisons, an editorial in The Dallas Morning News urged the governor to “enact the federal reforms now,” and protesters in Austin called on him to take action against prison rape.
“I can assure you that we will fully implement D.O.J.’s PREA standards wherever feasible,” he wrote to the attorney general. …
Mr. Abbott did not, however, provide the required written assurance that Texas would spend at least 5 percent of certain federal grants to achieve full compliance with the anti-rape standards.
“The letter we received from Texas makes no such representation and, therefore, it cannot be considered to be an assurance under PREA,” said Dena W. Iverson, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department.
All told, nine more states certified compliance with PREA this year, brining the total to 11. Texas was one of six states that had rejected the federal standards outright, foregoing federal funds rather than striving to meet them. Two of those states, Florida and Indiana, have since said they’re working to comply with PREA. It was unclear whether whether the other three, Arizona, Idaho and Utah, had done so, The NYT reports.
According to Just Detention International, which works to eliminate sexual abuse in detention facilities, LGBT inmates are 15 times more likely to be victims of prison rape than non-LGBT inmates. And Texas is home to five of the 10 facilities in the nation with the highest rates of sexual assault.
Jael Humphrey of Lambda Legal, which is suing Texas on behalf of transgender inmate Passion Star, who’s been repeatedly raped in assaulted in the state’s prisons, issued this statement:
“We are profoundly disappointed that Governor Abbott has neglected to make a meaningful commitment to meet the PREA standards set by the DOJ, and we applaud the Justice Department for demanding real commitment from Texas to use grant funds to actually enforce these standards. Governor Abbott cannot coast by paying lip service to PREA, while Passion Star and other incarcerated people remain at risk of continued sexual violence. Lambda Legal will continue to press Governor Abbott to take the necessary steps to end prison rape in his written statements and to turn his words into action.”
John Wright
Is The Struggle Of The Straight-Acting Gay Man Really A Thing?
Are you a gay guy who feels like he doesn’t “fit in” with other gay guys?
Do you find society expects you to act a certain way, then gives you shit when you don’t make the mark?
Is the struggle of the “masculine gay man” really a thing, or does it simply reflect the limitations our internalized gender roles?
To these guys on Whisper, it’s definitely a thing.
We’re not so sure about some of them, though:
Dan Tracer
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