FtttG
User ID: 1175
About a hundred pages into Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle. I'm enjoying it so far, although not as much as A Scanner Darkly. There's a funny bit where one of the white characters is looking at a Japanese woman and admiring how beautiful she is, thinking to himself that, compared to the Japanese, white people are defective, unfinished, taken out of the kiln too early (a curiously Yakubian sentiment). As a white man who's had more than my fair share of Asian sexual and romantic partners, I found this rather amusing, and read the paragraph out to my Asian girlfriend, who laughed. (Although funnily enough, part of the reason he finds her so beautiful is because she doesn't even need to wear a bra - a description which was not true of any of the Japanese women I've dated.)
It's possible you may have heard of the Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kneecap_(band)), most of whose lyrics are rapped in the Irish language. They're best-known in Ireland and the UK, but recently they've begun to establish themselves in the US as well, to the point of performing in Coachella and selling out their US tour dates.
Their lyrics are often political, and they've been unabashed in their support for the Provisional IRA, their opposition to the British monarchy and government, their support for the Palestinian cause, and their concomitant opposition to Zionism. Their political lyrics have landed them in hot water with the British establishment on occasion (as they're from Northern Ireland, they're UK citizens even if they "identify as" Irish), with current Tory leader Kemi Badenoch once denying them an arts grant on their basis that the band "oppose[s] the United Kingdom itself" (a decision they successfully appealed).
Recently, the British government discovered footage of the band performing some time ago, during which the performers could be heard yelling "Up Hamas", "Up Hezbollah" and instructing the audience to assassinate their local MPs (it's unclear to me if all of these statements were made during a single gig, or individually during separate gigs). As a result of this, the band are being investigated by British police, because public expression of support for terrorist organisations is a crime in the UK (insert your own "loicense" jokes here). Their fans and many of their fellow musicians have come rushing to their defense. The band now claim that they have never supported for Hamas and Hezbollah (doubt.jpeg) and their message has always been one of "love, inclusion and hope".
First things first: as a freedom-of-speech diehard, the idea of arresting and/or indicting Kneecap for yelling "up Hamas" is unconscionable to me. The fact that this "investigation" is happening at all is yet another canary in the coalmine (along with the numerous people investigated or convicted for gender-critical opinions, or the recent fellow arrested for burning a Quran) that freedom of expression no longer really exists in the UK. Probably no one will benefit from this probe more than Kneecap themselves, who made a name for themselves by cosplaying as radicals and going out of their way to be edgy and controversial. Glorifying a pogrom (albeit under the unpersuasive euphemism of "Solidarity with the Palestinian struggle" while grinning ear-to-ear) is revolting, but shouldn't be a criminal offense.
But, as noted by Brendan O'Neill, the double standard among the woke left is shocking. Because of his anti-Semitism and professed admiration for Hitler, Kanye West is now considered persona non grata among the woke left, or elsewhere. (It need hardly be said that probably the only reason he's expressing admiration for Hitler is because of his unmedicated bipolar disorder - but Mental Illness Doesn't Do That, so never mind.) Meanwhile, Kneecap (individuals, to the best of my knowledge, of sound mind untroubled by psychosis) expressed support for an organisation whose founding charter clearly and unambiguously states that its ultimate goal is the extermination of all Jews from the face of the earth - and the woke left eagerly support Kneecap, attending their gigs, joining in their juvenile football chants ("Ooh! Ah! Hezbollah!"), buying their merch, and rallying to their defense at every opportunity. The rules seem so arbitrary to me: you can't express support for Hitler, but you can express support for an organisation which shares most of Hitler's defining, animating opinions (hatred of Jews and desire to exterminate them, homophobia, misogyny etc.). You can't say that the Holocaust was a good thing - but if you want to cheer on the worst antisemitic pogrom since the Holocaust, go right ahead. It seems like some sort of perverse Sorites paradox, or Goldilocks effect: saying that the slaughter of 6 million Jews was a good thing will get you cancelled, saying that the slaughter of 1,200 Jews was a good thing won't get you cancelled. "Experts now believe it may be possible to express support for the murder of as many as two million Jews without suffering any reputational damage, but other sources differ."
I don't understand it one iota. I'm increasingly starting to think that the Holocaust has become completely de-Jewified (for want of a better word) and drained of its specificity, understood primarily as a grave crime because it was a mass slaughter, rather than specifically a mass slaughter primarily of Jews. I wonder if the current generation of secondary school teachers will go out of their way to "recontextualise" the Holocaust by listing off all of the more fashionable groups targeted for extermination by the Nazis: gays, disabled people, trans people (a myth, one of several like "people have been acquitted for murdering trans people by using the 'trans panic' defense", that trans activists essentially dreamed up from whole cloth and which is now widely believed in woke circles), and then mentioning Jews at the end, as an afterthought. I wonder if the next generation, when asked why Hitler was so evil, will say that he was bad because he hated black people, he hated gay people, he started a war in Europe, and he killed lots of people - all true statements, and yet all statements which rather miss the point of why he was so evil. All of this "recontextualisation" of the Holocaust has the unnerving feeling of salami-slicing to me.
FtttG
7hr ago
Closely related to #6: more risk-averse. Likewise a trade-off, but it's no coincidence that men represent a disproportionate percentage of successful entrepreneurs AND people horribly mangled in auto collisions.
She probably will never admit it.
Given to the extent to which she's made herself persona non grata among the woke set by her refusal to budge or play along on the trans issue (the hot-button political issue of the day, especially in the UK; there are essentially no British equivalents to American 2A diehards insisting on the right to bear arms), I put a lot more stock in Rowling's willingness to speak her mind, even if doing so would make her unpopular. I mean, we're talking about a woman who went from being the most successful and beloved children's writer of her generation, to having her fans turn on her, dox her, send her death and rape threats by the thousands, compose creepy fanfiction about her violent death - all because of her obstinate refusal to mouth woke platitudes she didn't personally endorse.
when she tried to write a story in coherent universe
I don't think Harry Potter is a coherent universe, and I don't think she ever intended it to be. Whatever pretense of internal consistency was abandoned as soon as she introduced time travel, then promptly forgot about it.
FtttG
3d ago
You're very welcome. I hope you're in a better place now than you were in February.
FtttG
3d ago
If "eat hot chip and lie" means "eat hot shit and die", that's news to me. I was under the impression the original tweeter meant it quite literally: that "eating hot chip" (e.g. Doritos) and "lying" are two of the only activities Gen Z women engage in, along with going to McDonald's, twerking, being bisexual and charging they phones.
FtttG
3d ago
But the second, bigger issue, is that even if this were definitively proven, with the author herself outright claiming that she typed in a one-word prompt into ChatGPT 10 to produce all 70,000 words of her latest award-winning novel, this could just be justified by the publishing industry and the associated awards on the basis of her lacking the privilege that white/straight/cis/male authors have, and this LLM usage merely ensures equity by giving her and other oppressed minorities the writing ability that privileged people are just granted due to their position in this white supremacist patriarchal society.
This is almost word-for-word how NaNoWriMo defended the right of writers to use generative AI while partaking in the competition: namely, arguing that criticisms of the use of AI in creative writing are borne of "ableism".
Now, you might think that this would simply discredit these organizations in the eyes of the audience
Yup. (Although this was really the straw that broke the camel's back following their earlier grooming scandal.)
Using the word "swallow" in the same sentence as one in which the word "rape" appears twice makes me uncomfortable for some reason.
FtttG
3d ago
A data point: 71% of black Americans think hip hop has a negative influence on the culture.
FtttG
4d ago
I think what @2rafa is getting at is that certain writers are "covertly based" i.e. they have edgy political opinions which they are consciously choosing to hide, and smuggling them into their works under cover of darkness.
I think what you're getting at is certain writers being "unconsciously based" i.e. they sincerely do not hold any edgy political opinions, but if you follow the implications of their writing to its logical conclusion you end up in a surprisingly edgy place, which the writer did not consciously intend.
I think the likelihood that JK Rowling believes (whether consciously or unconsciously) that real-life teenagers should be armed with deadly weapons is somewhere around nil, even if that's an entirely valid reading of the Harry Potter books.
FtttG
4d ago
I liked the one about how the Angry Birds movie was secretly a metaphor for stopping Syrian refugees from arriving into Western countries.
FtttG
4d ago
Yeah but degree of difficulty between 'find a hot guy for low commitment casual sex' versus 'find a hot girl for low commitment casual sex' is a Dark Soulsian difference in difficulty curve.
Skill issue.
Given that Katxwoods explicitly mentions crying herself to sleep while her boyfriend is out banging "falling in love with" other girls, it would be remiss of me not to mention this immortal tweet:
When you see two people are in an open relationship it’s like which one of you came up with the idea and which of you cries to sleep at night
FtttG
4d ago
For me and my wife, bringing a girl home for a threesome occasionally was a lot of fun
I really did not expect to hear something like this from you.
FtttG
5d ago
As ever, this comedy song is apposite more than it should be.
It must be said, I've met a handful of people who were poly, and not one of them was someone I could even imagine going to bed with.
Being that Machiavellian and manipulative sounds mentally and physically exhausting, not to mention time-consuming (rather similar to how I think I'd find polyamory, come to think of it). In his circumstances I think I'd rather cut my losses and put my energy into finding a partner whose relationship style matches my own.
For people who've taken to semi-ironically referring to Trump as the "God-Emperor", depicting him as the literal pontiff is sort of like the ne plus ultra of that. Sort of like the political equivalent of a Chuck Norris joke, or perhaps those memes where there's an election in a country other than the US and someone makes a meme depicting every electoral district in the country being won by the ultimate dark horse candidate - JEB BUSH! In fact the more I think about it, the more I think the latter example illustrates the humour - it's funny because it's completely implausibly ridiculous, and yet the person is keeping a straight face.
The idea of Trump becoming Pope is just funny in its own right, both because of its incongruence and because it's so on brand for a man of such limitless arrogance - and yet whose arrogance, oddly enough, seems strangely warranted (after all, people laughed when he said he was going to be President, and he sure showed them). The picture of him as Pope is only funny insofar as it visualises an already funny mental image.
110k words on my NaNoWriMo project. Did less work on it over the weekend than I would've liked, as I was busy with another writing project whose deadline is coming up soon.
FtttG
5d ago
couples/thruples? what do we call these associations?
I believe "polycule" is the preferred term.
I think this is an obvious and inevitable result of the rat-sphere growing and expanding, to the point that it includes many people who are "normies" along many if not most axes (a category I'm happy to include myself in). The first-generation rationalists were genuinely weird people (disproportionately likely to be autistic, gay, trans, asexual, vegan or all of the above), for whom maybe polyamory really did "work". But it's misleading to draw conclusions about what works for the general populace from such an atypical, heavily selected sample. As rationalism got bigger and bigger, it started attracting more and more normies, for whom polyamory is far less likely to work.
Within the rat-sphere, one of the most prominent evangelists for polyamory is Scott, who's also asexual. I don't think this is a coincidence. Some poly people like to pat themselves on the back about how romantic jealousy is just a bad habit that they've managed to transcend. But let's be honest: 90% of what we call "romantic jealousy" is just sexual jealousy, and it stands to reason that a person who doesn't experience sexual attraction in the conventional way probably doesn't experience sexual jealousy in the same way either. To reuse one of Scott's own points*, you don't get any Virtue Points for "transcending" an unpleasant emotion if it's an emotion you literally don't feel. I suspect many of the early outspoken advocates for polyamory were asexuals (or at least people with atypically low sex drives) who were inadvertently typical-minding the more conventionally-sex-driven people in their vicinity, assuming that - "well, if I could easily overcome my (vastly lower than typical, if not nonexistent) romantic/sexual jealousy, why can't everyone else? Must just represent a massive character failing on their part." This is a bit like someone who doesn't even like drinking alcohol marching into an AA meeting and announcing "I just stopped drinking, what's the big deal? You guys must be weak - skill issue". Katxwoods's point about "low baseline of jealousy" is exactly what I'm talking about here.
(Alternative/complementary hypothesis: maybe if you literally don't feel at all jealous when thinking about your girlfriend getting railed by another man, it might mean that you don't actually love her as much as you claim to? Perhaps you even have an avoidant attachment style, and you're deliberately seeking out romantic partners who it wouldn't bother you to lose, as a defense mechanism? Just a thought.)
Meanwhile, all of the conventionally-sex-driven people being evangelised to about how amazing polyamory is - they wonder why they're really struggling with feelings of sexual jealousy in a way the low-sex-drive people don't seem to be at all, and feel guilty and ashamed of themselves that they can't overcome this "moral failing", unaware that they're playing a completely different ball game to the asexual/low-sex-drive polys. I mean, Jesus, even puff pieces about what a wonderful alternative lifestyle choice polyamory is still make it sound miserable and even emotionally abusive:
[My girlfriend] started seeing this dude who was an absolute stud, having sex with him and having a great-ass time, and I felt totally lame and inadequate.
That was really hard for me, for obvious reasons. I felt like, I’m a hundred percent replaceable. It took a lot of conversations. She was like, There’s nothing wrong with you, this is going to pass, therapy will help. Lots of tears were shed. But medication helped me, talk therapy helped me
Just imagine feeling sad and upset that your girlfriend is fucking another man who's more attractive than you, and thinking "Yes, obviously this is an unhealthy emotional response, I need to dose myself up with antidepressants". I pity this poor man, and hope he realises he's being manipulated and gaslit sooner rather than later.
*Google highlighting doesn't appear to work on this page, Ctrl-F "virtue points".
Clicking this link reminded me that Michael Fassbender was in this movie. And Dominic West. I'd completely forgotten everyone but Gerard Butler.
Never could get onboard with Frank Miller. Everyone says that Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns kicked off the so-called "Dark Age" of American comic books. While my opinion of Watchmen has hardened over time (I nowlargely agree with the common critique that it insists upon itself, wherein Moore's determination to show off how clever he is with puns, symbols and parallelism actually takes you out of the story and breaks the immersion - From Hell is vastly better in part because he dialled this tendency of his down a few degrees), I still think it's basically a solid story, and its influence is undeniable. But The Dark Knight Returns - I don't know, man. Did nothing for me. Maybe it's a Seinfeld is Unfunny thing where it was so widely imitated that the original has lost its lustre - but Watchmen is also widely imitated, and still manages to be engaging and affecting on its own terms. And I just remembered that I read a few of the Sin City comics when I was a teenager too, but completely forgot about them until just now - shows you how much of an impression they made.
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