HalloweenSnarry
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User ID: 795
HalloweenSnarry
28d ago
Maybe not through Discord, but through text messages and physical proximity.
HalloweenSnarry
28d ago
I would like to agree with you, but I absolutely must push back on something:
We can't forget our technology, too much is recorded.
We can and we most certainly fucking will unless something is done in the near-ish future. Right to Repair is somewhat of a live issue now, and that it's a live issue at all is a sign of deep trouble--same with video games. We will actively create new problems or un-solve solved problems simply because it helps enrich the pocketbooks of executives. If anything, I expect a collapse to push us back to anywhere between the 1980's to the early-to-mid 2000's in terms of what technology will be left, and that's assuming things aren't quite so total that we can still set up factories and maybe reverse-engineer the more proprietary stuff.
I'm not terribly, 100% convinced that we'll see the collapse of the USA in our lifetimes, but I can easily imagine that it will start, not directly via fire, explosions, coups, civil war, or turnkey tyrrany, but it will start with numbers on balance sheets and lines on charts going down, which will cause a cascade of various services mysteriously (heavy sarcasm tone indicators optional) becoming unavailable, as people in suits order servers to be shut down, following a cold, contextless logic driven by numbers and lines.
HalloweenSnarry
18d ago
I am going to join the others in disagreement and point out that it definitely seems like the Japanese have been pretty anti-war since 1945. Now, sure, attitudes can change, the Japanese aren't ignorant of the rising tensions and potential threats of the current age, and there isn't exactly a political monoculture, but one needs only to look at the freaking cartoons they make to see that the population seems pretty inoculated against the more warlike tendencies they had in ages past.
HalloweenSnarry
18d ago
I think someone here linked this review (or linked to something else that linked to said review) of a book by Mao's former personal doctor, which detailed how closed-minded, filthy, perverted, and short-tempered Mao could be. As per Olive's reply, the totalizing ideology of Communism in China, paired with the general ability of the Chinese to go along with a proclaimed direction, would naturally have led to Mao dragging an entire country down with him.
HalloweenSnarry
10d ago
Honestly, I imagine what might happen then is that the tribes just rent out the land until they feel like they have enough money to justify clearing out the land, and maybe even going a step further and building something new on it like that one tribe in Vancouver(?).
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
Quick thoughts: the American "optimal life path" in the 50's depended on a number of other conditions (economic and such) that no longer obtain today. We can look to certain Southeast Asian countries (South Korea, Japan) and see that their life scripts are also crumbling to dust because of changing conditions.
I'm perhaps sympathetic to those who might say that we don't need to follow a pre-made script for how to live our lives. You can't find yourself grousing about being sold a false promise if you never commit to following in your predecessors' footsteps.
I, personally, don't necessarily wish for a very flashy lifestyle, but I would like one where I don't have to worry about as many things as I currently do--but maybe that's not possible without considerable sacrifice on my part.
HalloweenSnarry
15d ago
Perhaps they're referring to one of the oldest immigrations, i.e., the slave trade?
HalloweenSnarry
11d ago
HalloweenSnarry
28d ago
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
You made this point the last time, and just like last time, it's still wrong on multiple facets. I'd like you to list what games you think clear the standard of "good writing," because when I think of games lauded for their story or writing, I can think of a fairly deep list, and that's mostly limiting myself to computer games (Half-Life, Deus Ex, the "Shock" games, Myst, Command & Conquer, Ultima, Spec Ops: the Line, Max Payne...)
Your post also seems to discount the large number of impactful Japanese games, a number of which I'd imagine are lauded because their storytelling or writing struck a particular chord with people (Metal Gear, Zelda, Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, most any FromSoft game from like Armored Core 4 to today).
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
I think what ChickenOverlord is getting at is that Commando does contain more levity than just that one scene. John Matrix cracks quite a few puns and jokes during that whole thing.
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
I do remember people in the ratsphere saying during the Trump years that a realignment in both political parties was underway, so perhaps the definitional collapse is a necessary ingredient of that.
HalloweenSnarry
30d ago
Is that all? I was taking the term "tollbooth kingdom" to mean that travel across districts and such was infeasible because of wildly-differing laws as well as literal rent-seeking behavior to fuck with outsiders.
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
I'll echo 2rafa and say that this post, while interesting, seems to contain a lot of "big if true" assertions. Many of these cultures eventually gave way to one empire or another, and for reasons likely unrelated to women selecting and being selected against beauty and femininity. Burn your boats, slay your babes, say "not a step back" all you want, if you can't win a fight, then you can't win a fight. Nowadays, warfare is much more complex than "get a bunch of guys to march and kick ass," and is so mechanized that women can probably still participate in some combat function, even if they can't quite be PBI like the men.
I am, however, not equipped with the knowledge to challenge your historical analysis, but I know enough pop culture to interject on a few things:
1: Re: nuns, I'm not aware of nuns being given spiritual aspects outside of literally like 2 or 3 horror movies. The demon nun trope does exist, but I think that's kind of about it. If anything, Catholic nuns are probably the most disapproving of any notion of assigning supernatural powers to them. I guess some Japanese media has nun-looking warrior women and spellcasters?
2: On the subject of Kyrgyz bride capture, I have to wonder if the horseback girl-chasing was what inspired Red Sonja, given her whole shtick of not being allowed to lay with a man unless he defeated her in a fight.
3: Speaking of women who fight in media, I'm somewhat surprised at the lack of mention of anime; plenty of Japanese media have women characters fighting directly and holding their own against big, beefy men. Outside of martial-arts-inflected shonen or fantasy-based isekai, you have sci-fi mecha shows where women can drive a robot just as well as a man (unless you're in a Tomino show; then it's more 50-50 as to how good you are).
4: If the VTuber Ironmouse has taught me anything, I would say that laughing at the 4'10" Latina D.I. would probably end badly--that's a can of Latina temper you do not want to open. Would she be able to choke you out, Gunney Hartman-style? Maybe not. Would she reduce you to tears with her mouth? Quite possibly.
5: I am very unfamiliar with the conception of the E-girl as the adventure travel influencer; the latter definition you give is by far the dominant image. If anything, e-girls are stereotyped as not going outside and living in some measure of filth.
The mention of Manual J calculations in that article reminded me of the recent Technology Connections video about how lazy HVAC industry practices lead to companies selling oversized heaters to homeowners, which will become a problem if we switch over to electric heat pumps in the future (since oversized heat pumps will short-cycle, eating into the efficiency gains they normally have). (ETA: Not to mention customers getting ripped-off by being sold more expensive units with more heating capacity than they really need.)
Some anecdata: a local plumbing/remodeling company likes to advertise their quality service over the skeezy competition, to the point where I wonder if many of the blue-collar trades aren't actually rife with workers who will do what's quick and cheap over doing what's correct or desirable. (See also: this Kontextmaschine post about how the working-class used to live and work back in the heyday of American manufacturing.)
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
Presumably, it would have a chilling effect on no-knock raids as police chiefs and federal authorities get more antsy about using something that is only a few steps removed from the same lethal actions that lead to de facto race riots in 21st-Century America.
HalloweenSnarry
28d ago
I dunno, maybe it is something with the background scripts on ACX, but I could swear the reason is "the page for any ACX post is like 43 times longer than any non-TV-Tropes webpage needs to be, because the comments section is not truncated like on any other Substack post."
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
I might as well mention it here, even though it's very tangential: today, Gumroad announced that NSFW content will no longer be allowed on the platform (well, I say "announced," but it's more that this KB article was uploaded/updated today).
For those who don't know, Gumroad is a sort of storefront service, akin to Etsy and the like: you open your storefront, add products (generally digital, but there's some allowance for selling physical goods), and people can buy from you. Simple as. The thing that's notable about Gumroad is that probably something like 80% of all products available on Gumroad are NSFW art of various kinds--many 18+ artists who take commissions or run Patreons and the like tended to open up a Gumroad storefront to sell monthly content and such a la carte to fans and others interested.
Now, granted, even previously, Gumroad did have limits as to what you could sell, but I think the hardest line was essentially "no porn of or between living humans." It was otherwise pretty permissible and you could indeed find anything from explicit cosplay to explicit illustrations and everything in-between.
However, some months ago, Gumroad added PayPal support (and/or they had it even further in the past, but removed it at one point?), and was already also using Stripe for credit card processing. Both these companies, as you may know, tend to disallow their services being used to purchase adult stuff (and they themselves attempt to pass the buck to the credit card companies themselves, who have had a policy of not supporting adult stuff because of allegedly high chargeback rates from embarassed men). The announcement today was perhaps inevitable, but still quite disappointing.
If Gumroad didn't do this, they'd presumably lose support and be choked off from money for too long. The CEO did at least try and bargain for an extension to the deadline, but no dice. Every day, the argument of "just build your own financial system" seems like less and less of a ridiculous proposition.
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
Previous discussion on the topic, which might enlighten you as to the more specific issues.
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
Really, they're getting rid of them even in Europe?
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
"law makers trying to make it legal for you to sell your grandpa's private collection when he dies probably weren't trying to make it legal to buy and sell 150 guns, with no extenuating circumstances, in two years".
And yet, we are going to have more cases like this in time, I imagine, if they're not already happening, purely because the former will be indistinguishable from the latter, given the habits of gun owners (to speak more plainly: older people probably buy a lot of guns, thus, it is quite conceivable that a family that needs to ditch paw-paw's little arsenal might run afoul of the ATF through no genuine fault of their own).
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
Re: your second paragraph:
From the philosophical perspective, technology simply enhances humanity's capabilities, it's still up to us to actively choose to embrace liberty, honest communication, the pursuit of wisdom, and brotherhood among all men. I, for one, will not yet forsake that dream.
This is a good point, but to echo VoxelVexillologist's comment below, I think pretty much the only reasonable response left is sink-or-swim: either Detroit manages to shape up and make the transition before they get the rug pulled out from under them, or the American auto industry will simply be forced to leave the Rust Belt and look elsewhere.
This would be disastrous if this was still the era of Who Killed The Electric Car?, but thankfully, we have something of an actual industry for EVs in the US thanks to one very-outspoken and intense tech CEO.
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