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It has been a quiet quarter for Commander, and we are going to keep it that way. We don’t have any changes to the Rules or Banned list this time around. We will continue to monitor the format, player experience, and so forth. As always, we’re interested in your feedback. You can pop around to the free RC Discord server and be pretty likely to run into an RC or CAG member in a chat (or four). We are making one small change regarding our announcements. This is the last quarter in which our regular announcements will take place on the Monday after a new expansion’s prerelease weekend. Starting in January 2021, quarterly Commander announcements will happen the Monday before a new expansion’s prerelease weekend. The reasons are two-fold: Since new sets are legal in Commander as of the prerelease, it only makes sense that any announcement take place before then. This will get any possible bannings/unbannings and rules changes out of the way prior to the prerelease. Commander players can attend their prerelease (well…someday), acquire cards, and not be worried about rules changes the following Monday. The Rules Committee, some of the Commander Advisory group, and a few “friends of the format” have been playing a format variant for the last 4 month. Dubbed the “EDH Boxing League,” it has proven itself to be a very different, fun way to play Commander. The short version is: Each player opens a booster box or a normal release expansion or Core set cards. Players build their Commander deck from this pool. Starting each subsequent week, each player can open 6 boosters of another set and add those cards to their pool. They can’t select a set for which they have already opened boosters in that league. All Commander Rules are in effect (including banned cards). There’s a full write up of the rules here. There’s also a dedicated channel for it on the Discord server. If you’d like to see the format in action, join us on the RC Twitch channel (http://twitch.com/CommanderRC) on Thursdays at 8PM EDT and Sundays at 2PM EDT. 2020 has been a challenging year for everyone. Our hope is that Commander has provided some small sense of relief from the crazy over the last 6 months. See you again in January!
Quote from FlossedBeaver »In the interim, I just wanted to ask: what are your sources regarding Blue Lives Matter? A cursory glance at Wikipedia - while not the most academic of repositories, certainly the most immediately available - yields the following in just the first paragraph. "Blue Lives Matter is a human rights countermovement in the United States advocating that those who are prosecuted and convicted of killing law enforcement officers should be sentenced under hate crime statutes.[1] It was started in response to Black Lives Matter after the homicides of NYPD officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu in Brooklyn, New York on December 20, 2014.[2]" Emphasis mine. If Black Lives Matter started in 2013, how can Blue Lives Matter be a separate precursor? I'll see if I can't dig for other sources to verify, but I have no reason to doubt this information on the face of it.
Blue Lives Matter was founded in 2014 by NYPD officers Joseph Imperatrice, Christopher Brinkley, and Carlos Delgado. They started it after Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were shot and killed by Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley in the Brooklyn borough of NYC. Brinsley reportedly did it to avenge the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown in police custody.
Now, Jacob is the president of Thin Blue Line USA, one of the largest online retailers devoted exclusively to sales of pro-police flags, T-shirts, neckwear and jewelry. “The flag has no association with racism, hatred, bigotry,” he said. “It’s a flag to show support for law enforcement—no politics involved.” The company officially disavowed its use in Charlottesville. Jacob said the flag was not a direct reaction to the first Black Lives Matter protests—an idea suggested by a previous origin story in Harper’s—but he allows he may have first seen the thin blue line image after those protests spurred the circulation of pro-police imagery online. “That’s maybe why it came to my eyes,” he said. As Jacob built the company, a “Blue Lives Matter” movement was growing in the wake of news stories of multiple officers shot to death in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Brooklyn, New York; and Dallas. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, as a presidential candidate, called police “the force between civilization and total chaos.” Some states began passing laws to categorize physical attacks on law enforcement officers as hate crimes.
That same winter, following the fatal ambush shooting of NYPD Officers Rafael Ramos and Officer Wenjian Liu, a group of former and current police officers created a Facebook group, and later a news site, dubbed Blue Lives Matter. The founders said they wanted to speak out against the “vilification of law enforcement” they observed from the nascent Black Lives Matter movement. They claimed they were “motivated by the heroic actions of Darren Wilson,” the Ferguson police officer who killed Brown. The movement soon adopted the Thin Blue Line as their flag.
Blue Lives Matter was founded based on the need of law enforcement. On August 9 2014, Ferguson PD Officer Darren Wilson was doing his job as he stopped Michael Brown, who had just committed a robbery of a local convenience store. Brown attacked Officer Wilson in an aggravated assault. Officer Wilson was forced to defend his life by shooting Brown. In the months that followed, agitators spread outright lies and distortions of the truth about Officer Wilson and all police officers. The media catered to movements such as Black Lives Matter, whose goal was the vilification of law enforcement. Criminals who rioted and victimized innocent citizens were further given legitimacy by the media as “protesters.” America watched as criminals destroyed property, and assaulted and murdered innocent people, and they labeled these criminals as victims. Personal responsibility for one’s actions went away, replaced by accusations of racism and an unjust government. It seemed that almost every media organization was spreading the absurd message that people were being shot by law enforcement simply because of the color of their skin. Our political leaders pandered to these criminals and helped spread this false narrative, with no thought of the consequences. On December 20, 2014, NYPD Officer Rafael Ramos and Officer Wenjian Liu were ambushed and murdered by a fanatic who believed the lies of Black Lives Matter, the media, and politicians. While reporting on the murder of these heroes, the media continued to spread the false narrative of Black Lives Matter. Even the big law enforcement media companies, who purport to be all for the police, helped spread misinformation through re-posting articles written with an anti-police bias. This highlighted that these companies weren’t run by law enforcement, and they only cared about saving time and money “reporting” the news. The officers who founded this organization were motivated by the heroic actions of Officer Darren Wilson, and many others, and decided to create this organization in the hopes that it could prevent more officers from being hurt. Blue Lives Matter formed and gathered supporters of law enforcement on Facebook to distribute information which accurately reflected the realities of law enforcement. Feeling the limitations of being contained to Facebook, the Blue Lives Matter news website was launched to provide accurate coverage of law enforcement, from a law enforcement perspective. In 2016, after an unprecedented number of ambush attacks on law enforcement officers, the founders decided that we could be doing more to help the officers who are getting attacked in the streets. The Blue Lives Membership was created so that citizens who aren’t afraid to support law enforcement could become actively involved in providing law enforcement officers with life-saving equipment and training, and providing financial support for the families of heroes killed in the line of duty. Blue Lives Matter will continue to support law enforcement in any way when there is a need that we can fill.
Quote from TheOnlyOne652089 »Change you never be DEMANDED , especially not by violence, oppression, insults and property destruction. Change has to be made by a concentrated effort to make it BETTER, not run the entire society in the ground in the process to aim for some fantasy, that will only shift the supposed problem to somebody else.
There is to say, people are way more inclined to act like they are oppressed, as it provides them benefits. As long as crying victim (no matter if its real or not) results in attention and is rewarded, thats exactly what you get.
And if somebody cries victim while smashing windows in, looting stores and putting fire to buildings, i cannot take any of it serious, its completely impossible to have any meaningful "message" if its all about destruction and making absolutely everything worse for anybody.
The fact that the racism continues today and is not fixed shows that it's not a miniscule problem, and that it hasn't gone away on its own. That means we need to examine if proactive steps will prove better or more effective - because what we have been doing, is not working. Actual problematic racism is already gone. Law even goes as far as to give black people affirmative action, which is a form of racism in itself. So it can very well be said that the pendelumn already swings in the other direction, making the supposed former racists into the actual people that face racism themselves.
The fact that the racism continues today and is not fixed shows that it's not a miniscule problem, and that it hasn't gone away on its own. That means we need to examine if proactive steps will prove better or more effective - because what we have been doing, is not working.
The very idea that black "cant be racist" is mind boggling naive.
BLM actively aims to make violence "ok" , like its not a problem at all, while simultaneously claiming the other kind of violence is bad. Both violence is bad, so stop it instead of instigating more of it!
Completly wrong, either get your message PEACEFULLY across, or you just become a part of the problem on your own.
Quote from H3RAC71TU5 » I'm pointing this out because this is the sort of argument being made by people in the anti-fascist movement, and you seem to be unfamiliar with it.
All that is required for an institution to be racist is that it participates in and/or perpetuates systemic racism. The institution of police does do this as you admit, so it is a racist institution. It is not necessary for that institution to have a conscious agenda of participating or perpetuating systemic racism. It is not necessary for the individuals who make up the institution in whole or in part to hold racial prejudices. These aren't the claims being made by people who say that the institution of the police is racist. The claim that you want to deny here is that the institution is necessarily racist, and the movement to defund the police is pretty skeptical about that denial to say the least.
It's important to be cautious any time we dehumanize anyone. I re-read over FlossedBeaver's post and I didn't get the sense that his argument was the Nazi loses his claim to humanity, though if anyone would surely a Nazi is a candidate. He said that a Nazi whose act is characterized by what we would normally consider the virtue of courage should not be celebrated for this seeming courage because this virtue is not in harmony with other virtues (Plato's Laches, give me life! ).
This appears to be a moral equivalence argument. Use of violence in any context is, by definition, extreme. Yet what most people (except absolute pacifists) agree on is that violence is sometimes necessary. You, for example, say police violence is sometimes necessary. Meaning, the context determines whether it's appropriate. If the context is an institution which systemically engages in violence under the auspices of state power, and a violent response is considered an undesirable but historically informed strategy of combating this institution, that position shares a principle with yours--neither is pacifist. But yours accepts the basic legitimacy of state violence and chooses moderate rather than extreme action as a response to this state violence. And there is a third position, the promotion of state violence, which you are characterizing as equivalent morally to the violent opposition. I don't think that you are morally equivalent to the state-violence-promoting group here but I do find it dubious that in this situation being moderate is the most rational and appropriate response, and I definitely object to the insinuation that the two groups you are comparing are at all similar.
The context of bluelivesmatter is that blacklivesmatter arose specifically to address the issue of police violence and the former was, in complete and utter cynicism, thrown out ad hoc to derail the discussion so that the focus was instead on... the perpetrators of the violence and their issues. I find this perverse. A specific individual's intent in invoking bluelivesmatter may simply be to offer support, but this usage is technically acontextual.
It's important to take into consideration the impact in which the proliferation of "bluelivesmatter" signatures would have on marginalized groups within the community. It would make the community less welcoming to them. Some people might be similarly impacted by "blacklivesmatter" and feel unwelcomed, but is this a segment of the community which is worthy of being specifically catered to?
I'm not sure a permissive attitude toward police PR efforts is exactly what this conflict calls for. I would draw a comparison to men's rights activism, which is reactionary to feminism. It assumes, first of all, that men's issues require distinct treatment not provided by feminism. This is somewhat understandable considering that the word is "feminism," the emphasis is on women. MRA is the "alllivesmatter" of gender issues, basically. But feminism actually does analyze the issues that men face under a patriarchal society, it just makes the simple point that its emphasis is based on the fact that the issues men face are overall not as impactful as patriarchal society is on women. So men don't really need a separate treatment on gender issues independent of feminist analysis; they're already covered. And, on top of that, for men to receive this separate treatment would mean that dialogue on gender issues is taking place in which women aren't prioritized, which is backwards because of the earlier point that women are impacted more heavily by the effects of systemic gender inequality. Finally, there's the way that this discourse has developed and takes place in practice, in order to derail feminist discourse. We can indeed solve both women's issues and men's issues at the same time. But the aversion that some men have to the solution because it associates them with femininity is a salient instantiation of the problem to begin with.
Quote from FlossedBeaver »I'd be curious to know what the site owners' opinions on police violence is - whether they condone, disprove of, or perceive it at all. Rhetorical question: what's the value of a life given in service to a fundamentally racist institution? Not to be crass or cruel - because I do value all life (insofar as living is concerned), and do not condone violence for any reason - but if I may draw a historical comparison: a Nazi soldier jumping on a grenade to spare his squadmates might be noble in the abstract, but ultimately does not redeem the greater cause they're fighting for. Again, the purpose of a peace officer is supposed to be the service and protection of their community (it's in their name!), but recent events have shed some unfortunate light on the very grim reality facing people in certain communities. It would be charitable, I think, to characterize police conduct as merely punitive in nature; in many situations I would call it outright criminal. While the loss of a human life is tragic under any circumstance, if we continue to uphold peace officers for self-sacrifice in the line of duty, we are then also promoting and perpetuating the racist institution they serve.
Despite my example above, I also reject the notion that peace officers are anything remotely akin to soldiers.
I take umbrage with the fact that my service is used as a patriotic dog whistle to deny other people their constitutional rights - I swore to uphold the constitution, and that includes the right to protest and redress of grievances. If you don't like something patently wrong with America, the democratic answer is to fix it, not be bullied into leaving the country.
And for all of that, I haven't seen a single #GreenLivesMatter sticker anywhere, despite the fact that more military personnel die from suicide every year than in combat. Why is that? If we go so far as to demote military service to being just 'a job,' and there are many different kinds of dangerous jobs, why do we feel the need to advocate for only one of those jobs? Why is the one dangerous job being advocated for, in diametric opposition to BLM, the only job accused of perpetuating violence against that exact same group?
You know what? I'm inclined to share that same video here. It's not work safe, it's not family friendly, but I will suffer another infraction - my very last, if need be - to draw awareness to such a grotesquely topical piece of evidence, one that even I hadn't seen until just last week. Suffice it to say, no amount of training can ever be held responsible for making someone into a monster - but it certainly can enable them. I'm a grown man, a combat veteran. I've survived rolled over humvees, mortar attacks, and jumping out of perfectly good aircraft, and this made me weep; I cannot bring myself to watch it again. Do so at your own risk.
Men and women who are supposed to be held accountable to the same moral precepts which governed my own possession of a firearm in public, and yet are endowed with privileges above and beyond the law.
Quote from TheOnlyOne652089 »Your perceived problem of police violence is minuscule at best, facing the vast violence and crimes.
Mistakes result in tragic events, that will always be the case and while they cannot be belittled, they have to be served by justice of the court in a proper manner, not a wild witch hunt and destruction of anything and anybody just to satisfy some savage need of vengeance.
Media push the mobs to violence, which is a much bigger threat to humanity than any police violence could ever be.
All fundamental conflicts get down to that. Somebody has to forgive, and if they cant, they and all they love will suffer for it (in this world and after).
Defunding the people that swore and oath to serve and protect is complete inversion of help, it sabotages the work of the police and lets them face insane violence without the proper tools to face them.
That is NOT the job of the police, and right now, especially in the big cities, police is simply send to anything, regardless of if they are trained to handle the problem ; and that will as we see again and again lead to problems as people with less training will not be equipped to handle very stressful situations, which they cannot foresee to happen.
So while you might argue for DefundThePolice, you should actually ask for even more money, to much better train the police, give them much better equipment and in parallel start the work with social workers.
Structural problems exist in many shades. Racism especially is a minuscule problem in that greater scheme, as its more of a symptom that gets really ugly if more dire issues come together.
#BLM as it is now does absolute NOTHING positive at all for anybody.
#BlueLivesMatter will always ensure that police officers are not the sacrificial goat for a out of control media that is horny for the next violent riot, just to get a headline.
As long as #BLM is actively asking for pro violence against police officers
People that believe in the actual positive messages of #BLM should absolutely distance themselves from that group and start to act in their local community to start a change ; Hollywood stars and other fancy people will not help any of these interests, they only seek attention and self-glorification, they have nobody else interest in mind then their own.
Quote from Rosy Dumplings »So… I wanted to try throwing in my own two cents. To start, I can totally understand what you and the site staff are trying to aim for. One of the wonderful (and at times, terrifying) things about the internet is the level of anonymity it brings. Without a face or genuine name, people can interact in ways that the politics of the outside world would never otherwise allow. An African American Jew could have a lovely conversation regarding scones with a Neo-Nazi on a baking forum without either of them realizing what had just happened. People in opposed countries at war might give thumbs up to the same youtube comments. A person might unknowingly reblog a video uploaded by their most hated nemesis. Much like a thanksgiving meal, things can reach a certain level of peace and equilibrium as long as politics aren’t brought into the matter. With that said… 1. While I appreciate that you are short-staffed at the moment, I am curious whether anything has been considered to address that. It doesn’t look like the moderator recruitment thread has been updated in quite some time and starting an active recruitment drive in a more visible area may be useful for filling gaps. Likewise, I’m wondering if the application process has been adjusted to account for the recent difficulties with polarized politics (as I’m assuming that the goal wouldn’t be to recruit a bunch of people who want to police certain political views and turning a total blind eye to others). While it’s been said before, it really does seem that you’ll need additional eyes to maintain the sort of equilibrium you seek and dissuade vigilantism. 2 Edited. While I in no way to believe this to be the case, it is easy to interpret actions taken from a desire to not have thread after thread devolve into largely off-topic arguments as a desire to not want to annoy/alienate or deal with/acknowledge bigoted individuals within the community. When someone’s incendiary statements goad someone into making someone post inappropriate political messages… What’s the plan? Are you willing to accept the unfortunate implications of most responses (implicitly encouraging people to do that more, appearing to favor bigotry or oppose those standing up against it, etc.)? You have talked a lot about being able to make civil communication in a way that doesn’t cause people to dig in their heels but what is the ultimate fate of people who insist upon confrontation? 3. I do want to take time to acknowledge that things have been handled fairly well so far, considering your available resources. Outside of this one thread (and another with a very problematic title… which you changed), I have seen fairly few problems in recent times. While I feel that there are issues worth discussing, the fact that things have been largely moving along as normal is worth noting. Thanks as always.
Quote from H3RAC71TU5 »Quote from bobthefunny »You are correct H3RAC71TU5 that the views of the staff do not have a direct bearing to the site, Well, let's not get carried away.
Quote from bobthefunny »You are correct H3RAC71TU5 that the views of the staff do not have a direct bearing to the site,
Quote from TheOnlyOne652089 »Spamming messages like : #BLM #DefundThePolice In perspective that Antifa associates themselves with BLM and shouts DefundThePolice for years, is putting a massive negative on this entire topic. If political discussions are not wished for, this is downright insulting to anybody which friends these protesting terrorists attacked, hurt and which stores and homes these sick people are destroying and burning down. This is not helpful at all and pushing blindly in a direction is upsetting a lot of people that wish nothing more than working and living together respectfully (and especially #BLM is anything but respectful). Either be consequential and make all political associations not allowed or downright opt in to a extreme radical position that is spreading nothing more than hate, pain and misery in the world.
Quote from mikeyG »No, it's not. The staff thinking it is, though, is profoundly naive and certainly clarifies a lot.
Who are you referring to here? Are you saying that marginalized people are mad and stressed because other posters are raising awareness about ignorant/bigoted/offensive attitudes displayed on the forum? Who is the attacker here, is there a lot of attacks going on? I'll admit that I haven't seen a lot of direct attacks going on so much as dogwhistles to alt-righty/bigoted attitudes and frankly that's a bigger piss off and stressor than other posters taking a stand against it. But I may have misread you.
So, for context, I'm the director of a charity that supports 2SLGBTQ+ people across our province, and I championed a whole educational program that is a full-day class on creating and maintaining safer spaces. I work with municipalities, schools, community organizations - I even worked with a federal prison once. I don't know that I'd call myself an expert, but this is certainly something I work with daily. Your first point is certainly on target, but I don't think the second is. Safe spaces don't assume challenging/hurtful conversations won't happen, they ensure that the people who could be in some way harmed by those situations have backup so they aren't in a position to deal with it alone. And in some cases that means having allies take on the work of pushing back against ignorance and helping people understand why their attitudes/actions are harmful. Safety isn't stopping conversations about bigoted opinions from happening, it's ensuring that when they do happen that they are healthy/respectful discussions and the people most impacted by them are supported. In my trainings, I advocate for authority figures (teachers, supervisors, etc) to be those supports, facilitate healthy and anti-oppressive discussions, and follow-up with people who may have been impacted to ensure they're okay. On a site like this, I'd anticipate the staff would take that on but here it's largely been a handful of users. And I'm grateful that they do.
I certainly can't and won't speak for every marginalized person on the forum, perhaps some like these conversations being avoided. I think that's like an ostrich with its head in the sand, racist/homophobic/misogynistic/etc members are on the forum, and in my experience letting things go unchallenged doesn't make things go away. I personally feel most supported and 'safe' (in this context) when I know other posters won't let casual bigotry slide and will seek to pushback and educate. That, in my opinion, is the hallmark of a real safe space.
Not to be petty, but I reported a homophobic slur in a thread title and nothing happened for three days. I'm not bringing it up to criticize the staff, I get why that situation played out as it did and that's my point. The staff isn't able to facilitate and guide conversations like it used to, they aren't in the position to be the empathetic authorities nurturing a community (not that previous iterations of the staff didn't have their issues). I think it's why you're seeing regular posters attempt to step into that role by pushing back on posters expressing opinions that may be hurtful to other posters. And it's very likely why you're receiving so much frustration, the staff's stance on this feels more like neutrality than real leadership - especially from the perspective of posters putting in effort to be supportive and try to make other posters feel supported (which is to say nothing of the general principle many of these posters may be guided by beyond just supporting other posters). I appreciate that the staff is having conversations about how to address the politicization and partisanship of everything, I hope feedback from posters has contributed to those conversations. I don't think the issue is going away anytime soon, it'll probably only worsen as the world continues to strain.
Quote from FlossedBeaver » I'm glad you brought this up, seeing as how I've been infracted eleven consecutive times for just my in-post sig. If you support the message, then why the heck does it matter if I choose to express it on my face mask rather than my t-shirt, if the entire purpose is visibility and awareness?
Quote from FlossedBeaver »Dude, please. Black people don't get to step away from being black when political discourse gets too hot, that's the entire premise of the ongoing movement. You can either acknowledge that, or continue to pretend like black people don't post here - and who could blame them at this point, when voices for inclusion are consistently shouted down for being 'political'? When people complain about systemic racism, they're describing your actions here, bob. Your silence as an authority figure, and unwillingness to let others be vocal in your stead, is perpetuating the notion that Magic is for cisgendered white guys only.
Quote from Feyd_Ruin »I've said it many times, I'll say it again, and I stand by it: Political discussion is not allowed here. The world has gone to %$#%, and I think everyone can agree this has been the craziest year — at least in a long, long time. Politics are insane right now, with the largest polarity between sides than we've seen in living memory. Turn on the news, and it's chaos and unrest and political discord, and an unending stream of negative emotion and a cacophony of anxiety. People need to be able to get away from this when they need to, and sites like this can offer them that opportunity. There's no reason to have political discussions here, it doesn't fit the site, and there's no good merit for having them on a magic site when a lot of people won't want them and there's other, better places to have them.
Quote from H3RAC71TU5 »Quote from bobthefunny » As far as the view that the site is leaning in one direction or another - there have always been allegations of various viewpoints that the site leans in a direction opposite of where the user feels they personally stand. This is often the case when trying to hold a centrist or non-partisan position. We have been accused of being anywhere and everywhere on the political spectrum, from allegations of far-right, to allegations for far-left extreme liberalism. The hope is that the balance of these allegations shows that we do hold that central line. Historically speaking, I believe that the majority of the staff has tended to lean slightly to fairly liberal, all things considered, however the staff has had representation from the full spectrum of political beliefs. We have never had any sort of "official" survey on the matter, however our off topic chats, as well as various discussions on how to handle certain tickets (especially political) has shown that we are a fairly diverse group in terms of beliefs. Hello, I'd like to clarify what is being stated in the quoted content. It is not necessary for the site overall to be leaning in a particular direction, or for specific staffing on the site to being leaning toward particular views, in order for one of the site's policies to in practice have biased results. What I'm describing here is a type of bias in the true sense of the word, in which the sorts of discussions that get represented are disproportional to the views of the community and/or disproportional to their epistemic merit as an effect of the moderation policy. In other words, a policy which is actually biased, because it is intended to dispel the appearance of bias (according to popular perception which is self-reinforcing). The latter is what you're describing vis-à-vis holding a "central line," a position which makes it possible for those on the political right to feel comfortable in the community here by virtue of implicit approval. If there's middle ground to be had, neither side can be considered to have gone beyond the pale, and thus there are "good people on both sides." I think this is a pragmatic calculation about maintaining the largest possible audience, but the long term effects of the social dynamics within that audience are something I would consider to be unfortunate. I respect the difficulty you mention of determining how to best moderate in these cases. I hope that you consider the criticism I have offered as reflecting on the value that this community holds to me, which has been cultivated over many years of work by the staff here. If I felt it were fruitless to continue to engage in discussion here, I would refrain from doing so.
Quote from bobthefunny » As far as the view that the site is leaning in one direction or another - there have always been allegations of various viewpoints that the site leans in a direction opposite of where the user feels they personally stand. This is often the case when trying to hold a centrist or non-partisan position. We have been accused of being anywhere and everywhere on the political spectrum, from allegations of far-right, to allegations for far-left extreme liberalism. The hope is that the balance of these allegations shows that we do hold that central line. Historically speaking, I believe that the majority of the staff has tended to lean slightly to fairly liberal, all things considered, however the staff has had representation from the full spectrum of political beliefs. We have never had any sort of "official" survey on the matter, however our off topic chats, as well as various discussions on how to handle certain tickets (especially political) has shown that we are a fairly diverse group in terms of beliefs.
Quote from FlossedBeaver »I think it would be helpful, bob, if the mod team stopped conflating politics and social issues. It is not inherently political to say that people are black, or that people are gay, or that people are transgender, and it is certainly not political to observe that people from each of those groups are disproportionately marginalized in contemporary America (as they have been historically). Those are facts supported by data, for anyone who cares to look at it, and to dismiss these issues as being 'political' gives voice and credibility to bigots in much the same way that making Covid-19 a political issue enables the anti-science / anti-liberal crowd. Furthermore, the only way to construe these issues as 'off-topic' would be to ignore that Magic players come from all walks of life, identify with every race, creed, color, orientation or preference, and that yes, they even post here on occasion. Again, we're talking about real, live human beings, not abstract ideology. While I recognize the obvious hurdles posed by a digital platform, it honestly doesn't take much effort or wherewithal to see that forum posters are more than a series of colorless handles and avatars, inconvenient as that may be for someone in your position. The calculated decision to put blinders on is only elevating the degree of bias here at MTGS, as H3RAC71TU5 sagely pointed out. I will apologize for not being as forgiving as my peers; while I can empathize with your position as a mod, I do not sympathize. You volunteered to be here, and no matter the difficulty it is your responsibility to make this a safe space for all Magic players - and yes, that includes those very same groups I mentioned above. Your determination to hold a centrist line only continues to promote inequity on these message boards, and hamstringing our ability to promote more inclusive values / behavior means that bad faith posters will come away emboldened and enabled, the inevitable consequence of which is the continued toxification of social mores in real space. This is why I continue to emphasize that MTGS does not exist in isolation; we are all part of the greater, global community, and however small our footprint may be here on these forums, there are still broader repercussions to be felt everywhere. I implore you to be part of the solution, and if you can't live up to your self-imposed responsibilities then at least let us do it for you. --- #BLM #DefundThePolice
Quote from lastdaysgunslinger »Wait so now we cant play celestial dawn and use other lands as colorless? What the heck BS is this. Celestial says it right on card " others produce COLORLESS" . So basically wotc has F'ed up the soup and now we have to eat it.
702.25f When a permanent phases out, any Auras, Equipment, or Fortifications attached to that permanent phase out at the same time. This alternate way of phasing out is known as phasing out “indirectly.” An Aura, Equipment, or Fortification that phased out indirectly won’t phase in by itself, but instead phases in along with the permanent it’s attached to. 702.25k Phased-out tokens cease to exist as a state-based action. See rule 704.5d.
702.25e Continuous effects that affect a phased-out permanent may expire while that permanent is phased out. If so, they will no longer affect that permanent once it’s phased in. In particular, effects with “for as long as” durations that track that permanent (see rule 611.2b) end when that permanent phases out because they can no longer see it.
502.1. First, all phased-in permanents with phasing that the active player controls phase out, and all phased-out permanents that the active player controlled when they phased out phase in. This all happens simultaneously. This turn-based action doesn’t use the stack. See rule 702.25, “Phasing.” 502.2. Second, the active player determines which permanents he or she controls will untap. Then he or she untaps them all simultaneously. This turn-based action doesn’t use the stack. Normally, all of a player’s permanents untap, but effects can keep one or more of a player’s permanents from untapping. 702.25b If a permanent phases out, its status changes to “phased out.” Except for rules and effects that specifically mention phased-out permanents, a phased-out permanent is treated as though it does not exist. It can’t affect or be affected by anything else in the game.
Quote from Jemolk »One card I haven't seen mentioned (not entirely sure how much it's played, but I play it in every deck I can) is Rakdos Charm. It's basically never dead, it's multipurpose removal: it can remove an artifact, or an entire graveyard, or it can remove that player who just went infinite with squirrels. I originally started running it as a way to deal with infinite combos by killing people who use them, but it has been fantastic as an instant-speed, whole-graveyard exile effect for 2 mana. That, and removing swords, greaves and memorials. It doesn't fit into any of the categories here, but I felt that it was worth mentioning.