Pulpachair
1mo ago
In my mind, the order of operations is:
- Creatives come up with a cool idea/world/gameplay mechanic that, despite having quite a bit of jank, catches on and is a moderate success
- Creatives scale up a bit and second try is better than the first. Huge success and brand loyalty follows.
- investors get involved (either finance types or an outright purchase of the thing by an EA or Microsoft) because the creatives suck at/don’t care about business aspects. Decision process starts changing to prioritize engagement metrics.
- Studio expands or becomes part of a larger corporate environment. HR starts making more decisions.
- Old guard leaves/is forced out. New hires are mostly fans and not the ones with creative vision. Innovation becomes irrelevant as decisions are now being made based on engagement.
That is the pattern I see across the NA AAA games industry. The games that are being made are so laden with vampiric “engagement drivers” (read: unfun tedious time wasters not central to the gameplay loop) and cash shop features that they were never going to be fun. They tack on DEI feelgoodery to provide the thinnest veneer of moral virtue over what is basically a $60-70 predatory phone app disguised as a game.
The focus on DEI is symptomatic of the ultra-safe corporate decision making, but not the cause of why games (and movies and comics) suck now. For example, a hypothetical Suicide Squad game with fighting fucktoy Harley Quinn and a soy-free Luthor and no other changes would have still been shit. Gamers would be complaining that it was a tragedy that Kevin Conroy’s name was associated with such a dreadful game, and Rocksteady would still be dead.
Instead, we’re going to have a media cycle talking about -ist/-phobic gamers, and the corporate types who killed Rocksteady will end up at another company and start poisoning that one too.
Pulpachair
3mo ago
I don’t believe Buttigieg’s paternity leave was kept from the White House, it just wasn’t announced to the public.
Pulpachair
5mo ago
I wouldn't say so, but either way this is irrelevant, because it's a completely different question to whether the economy is 'good' or not.
I don't think it's irrelevant. The economy isn't just a snapshot, it's a trendline with predictive value. We've got an uptick in the trendline right now, but is it a dead cat bounce or actually indicative of healthy and sustainable economic growth.
Here's the fed in July 2007, after the fuse on the bomb was lit.
Pulpachair
5mo ago
Thanks for this post. It made me stop and think about why I'm so pessimistic on the economy, and I think that my pessimism is, at best, only partially warranted. Here are my thoughts on why I think pessimism is still warranted, though not as doomy as previously.
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Trust in elite institutions is deservedly low. The pandemic blew up any notion that global institutions were remotely concerned about the public weal when the well-being of PMC/Blue Tribe is at stake. The media and public watchdog groups are all-in on team Blue, so my expectation is that any information that looks bad for Blue will be suppressed if possible, excused if not possible. Any information that trends well for team Blue will be given more weight than it is actually due. If there are black swans out there right now, we're intentionally trying not to notice them.
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The pandemic flipped the switch on remote work being preferable for many jobs. For the industries I'm privy to, this largely meant divesting from expensive investments in blue cities and seeking out qualified employees in lower cost markets. This was a substantial increase in the earning potential in more depressed parts of the country at the cost of eliminating a lot of jobs in more expensive cities. So, it's a net increase in wages across the country, but still incredibly disruptive to the workforce left behind in the big cities.
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This is less analytical, but still real. The housing crisis took place in 2006-2007 when a wave of ARMs kicked in defaults went through the roof. The smartest banks, with the help of the rating agencies, did everything they could to delay the crash in order to divest from the toxic assets before the crash landed, which ended up putting off the crash until mid-2008.
We blew up the economy from 2020-2021, deficit financing massively distortionary unemployment benefits for almost 18 months, losing track of hundreds of billions of dollars in fraudulent loans, and, thus far, we haven't really paid much of a price. Sure, the inflation figures and supply chain disruptions in the aftermath are annoying, but my gut says that the piper is yet to be paid, and the longer we put it off, the worse it will be.
Consider the current residential real estate market. The high interest rates are keeping people from selling their current homes due to being unable to afford to afford a new 8.7% mortgage payment under current market rates. That means there is a constantly increasing backlog of inventory that is just waiting for a drop in interest rates in order to sell. Once that rate drop comes, a glut of new inventory will drive prices down. Much of the median increase in net worth is driven by the inflated real estate market, and that will suddenly evaporate while the current highs in consumer debt will remain, and people who are buying currently will be underwater. My cynical side expects to see this in early 2025.
I really hope that you're right and I'm wrong.
Pulpachair
5mo ago
The housing market is currently irrational with median home prices outpacing median income for the first time since, well, ever. Certain markets are more insane than others. The median home price in Idaho is now $469,000 while median income in a dual-income family is just under $70,000 before taxes. Assuming a 20% down-payment of ~$100,000, the monthly mortgage payment would be $3,538, roughly 60% of the take-home for the median household. Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado are all fairly similar in terms of median home price outstripping the ability of the locals to purchase. Meanwhile, the southeastern US is pretty stable with low prices and reasonable overturn in inventory.
Texas is somewhere in the middle from what I've seen. Houston and DFW area both have lower home prices compared to some of the really inflated markets in the west, but not as low as the rest of the southeast. It wouldn't surprise me to know that many of the Cali/NE corridor transplants are currently driving up the market in Texas like they did in the mountain west during COVID.
Pulpachair
5mo ago
Heinlein’s “All You Zombies” was 1958. I’m sure there are examples of earlier stories featuring gender reassignment as well. To the extent KSR chose not to have gender modification in a transhuman milieu, I doubt it was for lack of exposure to the idea.
I have no dog in this fight. Ballard could be the hero he is made out to be or a grifter. I have no idea and don't really care, but there is nothing in the world that I loathe more than:
Vice reports
My heuristic with Vice and most other "progressive" news outlets is that when it comes to reporting on non-progressive topics, I'm more likely to be closer to the truth by believing the opposite of what is reported. I view every part of the article as presenting the available evidence in the least charitable and most misleading light possible.
So, let's look at who the authors of this piece are, Tim Marchman, a "sports journalist" formerly of Deadspin with a lot of articles about Q-Anon and Anna Merlan, author of Republic of Lies, a book about Q-Anon. So we have two Q-Anon obsessed progressives focusing their little part of the eye of Sauron on an organization that works against child human trafficking. They have written 12 articles critical of OUR since December of 2020. The linked article is pretty much a rehash of their last article on the subject in July. It's surprising there is any axe left here after all that grinding.
So, let's check on the sourcing here:
- "according to sources with direct knowledge of the organization." Anonymous sources not within the organization
- "Sources familiar with the situation" Anonymous source not within the organization
- "These sources requested anonymity because they fear retaliation." Okay, more anonymous, and retaliation from who?
- "One source close to OUR" Yet another anonymous source with an alleged link to the organization
- OUR official statement in response to a request from VICE - okay, an official nonconfirmation of any allegations.
- "sources with direct knowledge of OUR corroborates an anonymous letter that’s been circulating in the Utah philanthropic community for the past several months" anonymous source confirming an anonymous letter circulating in "the Utah philanthropic community".
- "Women believed to be at the center of the investigation have not responded to requests for comment, or have declined to comment." Other possible direct sources would not confirm.
- "Ballard did not respond to requests for comment submitted through his personal website; that of his new organization, the SPEAR Fund; and through a spokesperson whom OUR previously told VICE News is his personal representative." Crazy that the guy you had written 11 hit pieces about previously didn't want to engage with you.
- "Last week, a spokesperson for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a statement to VICE News that contained a pointed rebuke of Ballard." Hrmm, an anonymous Church spokesperson who issued the pointed rebuke directly to VICE, but did not make it public or official statement from the Church's press office. Links to the statement from Utah news sources return a 404 statement not found. The quotes I could find of the rebuke are as follows
“President Ballard and Tim Ballard (no relation) established a friendship a number of years ago. That friendship was built on a shared interest in looking after God’s children wherever they are and without regard to their circumstance. However, that relationship is in the past. For many months, President Ballard has had no contact with the founder of Operation Underground Railroad (OUR). The nature of that relationship was always in support of vulnerable children being abused, trafficked, and otherwise neglected. Once it became clear Tim Ballard had betrayed their friendship, through the unauthorized use of President Ballard’s name for Tim Ballard’s personal advantage and activity regarded as morally unacceptable, President Ballard withdrew his association. President Ballard never authorized his name, or the name of the Church, to be used for Tim’s personal or financial interests.
In addition, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints never endorsed, supported or represented OUR, Tim Ballard or any projects associated with them.
President Ballard loves children, all over the world. It has been his mission and life’s work to look after them, care for them, and point them to their Savior.”
So, presumably there was a public statement that is no longer available online, was withdrawn without comment by the Mormon church, and what we have left is some citogenesis where the Salt Lake media sources cite Vice citing the Salt Lake media sources. I'll chalk this up as having existed at some point, but perhaps no longer representing the official position of the Mormon church.
So, out of 9 sources, only one partially confirmable source even sort of supports the allegations and even that is now offline less than a week after it was created.
Now let's look at the nature of the allegations:
- "investigation into claims of sexual misconduct involving seven women" What is "sexual misconduct" precious?
- "invited women to act as his “wife” on undercover overseas missions ostensibly aimed at rescuing victims of sex trafficking. He would then allegedly coerce those women into sharing a bed or showering together, claiming that it was necessary to fool traffickers." So, no actual sex then.
- "is said to have sent at least one woman a photo of himself in his underwear, festooned with fake tattoos, and to have asked another “how far she was willing to go,” in the words of a source, to save children." Oh, so still no sex.
- "The total number of women involved is believed to be higher than seven, as that would only account for employees, not contractors or volunteers." That's quite an inferential leap, and believed by whom? The authors of this article?
- "anonymous letter that’s been circulating in the Utah philanthropic community for the past several months, which accuses Ballard of sexual harassment." Still no sex? Man, this guy really sucks at sexual harrassment if he's not actually getting any. And what the fuck is the "Utah philanthropic community." Is it, maybe, composed of other organizations that are competing for donation dollars with OUR?
- "It was ultimately revealed through disturbingly specific and parallel accounts, that Tim has been deceitfully and extensively grooming and manipulating multiple women for the past few years with the ultimate intent of coercing them to participate in sexual acts with him, under the premise of going where it takes and doing ‘whatever it takes’ to save a child." Here we go - grooming them with the ultimate intent of participating in sexual acts. So, did they actually do sex, or were we just in the grooming phase? I know which one Vice wants me to believe, so I'll go the other direction.
- "Ballard, an ally of Donald Trump" Would it be uncharitable for me to think that this is the real accusation here?
So, a bunch of anonymous sources saying that a guy may have inappropriately conducted himself in ways that did not lead to actually having sex with women, but with maximum innuendo of massive misconduct and multiple cover-ups in ways that can't clearly be proven as actual malice in a defamation case. Also known as a Tuesday in Vice-land. If anything in this article turns out to be true, it will be in spite of the reporting on it.
Pulpachair
7mo ago
You’re not wrong, but wasn’t this also the case for the Trump impeachments and the Jan 6 committee? The first Trump impeachment started in December 2019 when COVID was first acknowledged in China and continued while it spread in Italy. The second impeachment came during some of the most strenuous arguments about continued lockdowns. Objecting to a political hit because of the “state of the world” is special pleading unless all political hits are off-limits forever and ever.
Pulpachair
7mo ago
So, your position is that Biden asked for the firing in December and three to four months later, Shokin was fired due to a change in public opinion, almost as if a whisper campaign had changed something behind the scenes. Some good luck that Biden was out ahead of the pack in thinking Shokin should go.
Pulpachair
8mo ago
Is this where we pretend that Trump didn't get the 2nd most votes in the history of the country, improving on his previous total by 11,000,000 votes?
Trump is remarkably good at motivating Republican voters. I would argue that the only thing he is better at is motivating Democrat voters, thus no longer being president.
Pulpachair
8mo ago
Does it even matter? Every bit of information I've looked at in terms of spending vs. academic achievement shows basically no correlation, and sometimes a very weak inverse correlation. Utah, Colorado, and Iowa spend close to the lowest amount per student on education, but consistently rank in the top 10 for academic achievement. Arizona spends slightly more than Utah, and New York spends the most of any state, but both of them are ranked below the median (New York well below), while New Jersey has very high spend and ranks in the top 10 for achievement. Arguments about disparate spend amounts based on property taxes beg the question.
Pulpachair
8mo ago
It is always funny to me that courts continue to take the State Farm v. Campbell rule on due process for punitive damages as merely a suggestion. We will see if either award survives appeal.
Pulpachair
8mo ago
shank's pony
This is not a substantitve response, but it has been decades since I've heard that phrase. You brought a smile to my day, sir.
Pulpachair
8mo ago
I may be your worst enemy. I only tell intentionally bad jokes at work, really awful forced puns and jokes where the setup is overly long for a weak punch line. A portion of it is sadism for sure, but the other portion is giving my team a momentary distraction and a common enemy to fight against. It’s actually pretty good for unit cohesion. On the flip side, if someone laughs at my joke, I know that they’re either an idiot or a kiss-ass and not to be trusted with important tasks.
Pulpachair
8mo ago
It is certainly the excuse that many of these men use; how seriously to take that excuse is a different matter, and clearly it’s transparently false in many if not most cases. I do think there is probably something important and true, though, about the profound culture shock and almost “kid in a candy store” mental space that a lot of them must be experiencing in their new environment, though.
I think it is telling that we don’t hear stories about roving gangs of young Amish men on Rumspringa assaulting women. It is far more reflective of Muslim attitudes toward women generally and kafir women in particular that this cope is taken seriously at all.
Pulpachair
9mo ago
Werewolf suggests involuntary transformation into a defined form. Navajo yee naldlooshii are evil witches who can assume multiple different forms and possess animals and other people. Update your monster manuals appropriately.
Pulpachair
9mo ago
The key phrase in your link is "For now, that translates into an almost $4 billion gain," with emphasis on "for now". The SPR is currently depleted to levels not seen since 1983, around 350M barrels. This is from a peak of about 750M barrels. There are at least another 160M barrels earmarked for sale by congress over the next 5 years. DoE regulations permit (but don't require) replenishment of the reserves when WTI crude is at or below $72/barrel. It has been at that price point multiple times over the last two years, including last month, but no effort has been made to replenish the reserves, at all. Secretary Granholm has said that DoE might start replenishment in Q4, assuming oil prices are consistently below the repurchase price point. That level of commitment does not inspire me with confidence.
At some point, that bill is going to come due, either in the form of expensive oil going into the SPR instead of cheap oil coming out of it, or really wishing we had some expensive oil to get past a supply disruption. It's all short-sighted to the point of absurdity.
Pulpachair
9mo ago
Obama cancelled offshore drilling and pushed green tech too and yet oil production doubled under him.
Mostly in spite of his policies. 2010-2014 was the technologically-driven shale boom period, followed by the crash in 2014-15. The leases that facilitated this expansion were created under Bush who was a wee bit more energy industry friendly than Obama/Biden.
US oil production continued to expand under Trump, though more slowly than it did during the Shale boom and peaked in late 2019-2020 before COVID nearly bankrupted 1/3 of the US regional producers by briefly making oil prices go negative. It has taken three years for US production to get back to 95% of the peak production because it isn't just like turning on a spigot again.
Prices are slowly normalizing, but are still historically high, even adjusting for inflation. This makes very little sense to me because U.S. demand has fallen almost 10% from 2019 and almost 20% from 2005 despite returning to high production rates. I'll have to look into what is going on with global production in that time period, but that data is harder to track down and less reliable.
I have no idea. As I argued in previous posts I think regulatory decisions are probably less impactful than the broader global markets, and investments in new productive capacity remains low for that exact reason. So a lot of the future probably hinges on stuff like the Ukraine War and the decisions made by OPEC. Still, coupled with the fact that Biden tapped the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to depress prices, I think this largely confirms that Biden was certainly not driven by a desire to crush oil production and keep prices high for Americans. Like most Presidents, he wants voters to be happy with him.
This analysis seems apt to me, with the exception of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve publicity stunts. Tapping the reserves to increase supply temporarily to help lower prices was nothing more than a headline generator, and was a poor decision strategically. It's selling cheap gas now to buy expensive gas in the future.
I do appreciate that the messaging from the Biden administration has moved away from "Evil Oil Companies™" to focusing pretty much exclusively on culture warring in the runup to the election. I don't think campaigning against big oil is a winning strategy when prices are still 50% higher than they were under the last Republican administration.
Pulpachair
9mo ago
I doubt it's any of these. I think it's edgelording. I think it's Iron Maiden feeding on Christian Satanic Rock panic by releasing Number of the Beast. I think it's Joe Biden doing Dark Brandon memes in real life. I think it's 4-chan making the left turn the OK sign into a white power symbol. It's meant to tweak the ideological opponents by saying the thing that will trigger them the most. In which case, well done fellas. Too bad the message was muddled by, you know, having people twerking in front of kids. Message discipline across broad coalitions is a lofty goal.
In general, my opinion on the groomer stuff is that I really, really doubt that the vast, teeming majority of the LGBT community is trying to convert the straights or their kids. Most gays alive today still remember how shitty it was to be a young, closeted gay before the mid-2000s and would prefer to spare kids nowadays the shittiness, so being more open and accepting about it is a good thing, but they don't mind the straights having their preference.
There are, however, a not insignificant number of predatory activist allies who want to collect exotic people like rare Pokemon. The more exotic the better (a shiny Trans kid is the winning card these days.) These people are overrepresented in media, influencer-types and, apparently, the education system. A lot of them don't mind if they make a kid's life measurably shittier as long as they are bolstering their collection. They're the left's version of conversion therapists.
There are also the actual pedos who wear activism like a convenient skinsuit, but I suspect those are mixed in with any group that provides easy access to kids proportionally based on how easy that access is.
The trick for LGBT is how to shed the predatory activists and police against the actual predators. The predatory activists tend to run a lot of the LGBT organizations, so it's a fair amount of cutting off of one's nose to get rid of the predatory activists. And getting rid of the actual predators entirely is a quixotic feat for a group as disorganized as "all of the gays."
One thing that would be really, really, really easy to do, though, is to stop supporting sexy drag shows for kids and stop advertising Folsom Street Fair stuff as being family friendly. If they were to take that really simple, easy step, it would go a long way toward convincing normies that the behavior is not, in fact, "groomy."
Pulpachair
10mo ago
The main thing to note is that Hunter's main advantage was having the money to pay the tax debt. That is where his status and connections distinguish him. I don't know where he got that cash.
Hollywood attorney Kevin Morris loaned him the money to make the tax payment and has apparently been bankrolling his housing and travel for a few years now.
Pulpachair
10mo ago
If someone had asked you five years ago whether Hunter seemed fine, you probably would have answered yes as well. He was of counsel at Boies Schiller, was co-owner of an investment company, had bounced around at various government and private lobbying posts throughout his adult life, and carried on publicly like a respectable member of a political family. But for the laptop incident, that would still be the public view of him.
Being well-connected and having sympathetic political press at your disposal is hugely beneficial for families like the Bidens. The respectability is more of an effect of people not looking too closely than actually being respectable. I would venture a guess that a deeper look at the rest of the Bidens would probably reveal more of Hunter-type behavior than you might expect.
Pulpachair
10mo ago
Except that the government wants workers, not stay-at-home mothers. So the women will have to have babies as well as going out to be the high-tech labour force, and that is the problem in a nutshell. Do you want bodies on the production lines, or do you want wives and mothers?
Women can replace men in factories, but men can't replace women as childbearers and primary nurturers. You want high IQ, high conscientiousness women bearing most of the children, and raising them to be high-conscientiousness citizens. I don't think it's possible (or desireable, frankly) to put the genie back in the bottle in terms of women in the workplace, but I think you can create a middle ground that encourages motherhood and family while also allowing women to succeed professionally.
Public Policies to adopt:
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Abortion is illegal outside of rape, incest, congenital disease, or life of mother exceptions, and requires prompt reporting of rape and DNA testing of incest reasons.
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A conviction for incest means lifetime incarceration.
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Primary and Secondary schools are year-round and align with typical work-weeks. Teacher compensation increased to reflect higher workload.
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School curricula focused on STEM education, basic literacy, civics, physical education and vocational classes.
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College-level online courses free to all citizens on STEM and vocational classes - no other higher education is subsidized.
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Government pays for all pre-natal and pediatric medical care.
Grant tax incentives to:
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Companies with very generous mat leave up to two years.
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Companies who offer work schedules for mothers and single caregiving fathers to align with school hours and holidays.
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Families with two parents with children. The benefits don't expire when the children reach age of majority.
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Married couples who adopt.
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Single mothers who give up their infants for adoption, doubled if it is their own parents or relatives adopting the child.
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Community beautification services or other civic engagement.
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Military service - lifetime supplemental stipend assuming an honorable discharge.
Add tax penalties for:
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Parents whose children are convicted of felonies and incarcerated, by canceling the tax incentives above.
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Families with school-aged children where both parents work full-time.
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Divorce. In the case of provable unilateral adultery, the adulterer suffers the tax consequences for both partners.
Pulpachair
11mo ago
Mr. Penny’s use of force may have been justified, but it’s not going to hinge on a rap sheet which he couldn’t have seen.
Minor nitpick and only tangential to your comment. Yes, the rap sheet can’t possibly have informed the judgment of those that were on the train. For the rest of the world that wasn’t on the train, it should adjust our priors regarding the likelihood that Neely was acting erratically and threateningly enough to warrant being subdued by three grown men.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
“It is inescapable not to observe the racial dynamics here,” said Crump. “If the roles were reversed,” he continued, “how much outraged would there be in America?”
Wait, Ben Crump again?
Family attorney Ben Crump said in a statement, “While this is certainly a step in the right direction, we will continue to fight for Ralph while he works towards a full recovery.”
I am constantly amazed that Ben Crump is instantly the attorney of record in every single one of these cases. Somewhere out there, there has to be a bar association curious about how an out of state attorney becomes the family attorney of so many high profile cases without violating that jurisdiction's version of ABA 7.3.
The world does not owe you anything. You have to offer something that people want in order to get what you want from them.
Don’t be afraid to fail spectacularly. You will fail and the earlier it happens in life, the more time you have to incorporate the lessons gained from failure.
Hit the gym.
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