SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
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User ID: 225
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
4hr ago
I can never remember whether decimated was originally supposed to mean "reduced to 10%" or "reduced by 10%". If the latter, then the common usage of decimated is pretty off, of course. But if the former, then it's not too different in meaning. Perhaps that's where the colloquial usage crept in to begin with.
SubstantialFrivolity
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1d ago
Oh dear. That's really dumb. It really makes one wonder about what's wrong with some people, that they can't envision two people being close without romantic or sexual interest in each other.
SubstantialFrivolity
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1d ago
scholars now claiming Catholic Tolkien was just fine with LGBTQ actually
Please, please say you made this up just for rhetorical effect. I think I might have an aneurysm if that is indeed a real thing people are claiming about Tolkien.
SubstantialFrivolity
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1d ago
Some people are really, really deep into culture war bullshit to the extent that they would rather believe their ideology than believe "this person I know is actually ok" when confronted with the cognitive dissonance you describe. That's just the sad truth of it.
SubstantialFrivolity
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1d ago
I think that "some ads got through ublock" is not really sufficient evidence for the claim that Google is trying to help Harris here. Google has been quite vocal about their disdain for ad blocking, and their attempts to get around it, for a long time now. Occam's razor suggests that without further evidence, it's probably just that the timing of their latest attempts to get around ad blockers happens to line up with the election campaigning.
SubstantialFrivolity
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1d ago
Sure - I don't deny that there are culture warriors on the right as well. That's why I said "approximately nobody", to try to make it clear that I meant the colloquial usage where people say "nobody" to mean "only a small minority". But I feel like maybe I should've just changed the phrase entirely, to make it more clear.
SubstantialFrivolity
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1d ago
I mean, yes, there has been social change, but the vast majority of that has been positive in my view, and in the view of the vast majority of people.
Citation very, very badly needed. With all due respect, I think you're completely out of touch with what actual nerds (as opposed to the bullies colonizing nerd spaces) think. Apart from vocal progressives in Extremely Online forums, I have never encountered nerds who think that the invasion of politics (left wing or otherwise) into their beloved activities is a good thing.
Like, why do I want to be personally friendly with people who want to make the lives of my other friends worse?
For one thing, because you're wrong and approximately nobody wants to make the lives of your other friends worse. If you can't see that, then you need to take a step back (many steps back) and learn to view things from your opponents' perspective rather than your own.
For another thing, because that is how society works. We all have things we disagree strongly with each other on. Having a functional human civilization requires that we live and let live as much as we can. And sure, kicking people out of your hobbies based on your political disagreements does not by itself destroy that social contract. But it does undermine it, and like clockwork the illiberal attitudes of "let's kick the baddies out of our social club" turns into "let's kick the baddies out of good jobs" turns into "let's kick the baddies out of society altogether". It's important to fight this sort of toxic thinking on the small scale before people start to apply it on the larger scales.
SubstantialFrivolity
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1d ago
It used to be okay for something to not be for you.
It pains me that this is such a lost thing nowadays. There's nothing wrong with things that don't appeal to everybody! In fact, I would go so far as to say that's what makes life interesting - we can each be into different things that others would find unbearable, and we are better off for it because each of us is happier than with something that tried to appeal to everyone at once. But for some reason, that's now treated like it's morally abhorrent.
Also, maybe it's just my skewed perspective but it seems like the actual rule is even worse than "we must water everything down for everyone". It seems to be only the things that nerdy men enjoy which get this treatment. Board games have to be PC, video games must remove any trace of sex appeal because that scares off women, programming must be packed full of diversity statements and codes of conduct, etc. But nobody expects the local crochet club to change to appeal to men, etc. Basically, it feels like society kicked nerds out in the 80s, we went "ok whatever we're going to do our own thing", and now 40 years later the bullies are back to kick us out of the communities we built as a refuge from them in the first place. It really grates.
SubstantialFrivolity
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1d ago
Ugh, there are few ideas I hate more than the "everything is political" mantra. I know exactly what you mean because I saw some of the same behavior. People weren't allowed to push back on politics and say "I just want to enjoy my leisure activity in peace", they were expected to just shut up and let the politics bullies ruin their fun. I think that insisting that everything is political is the most toxic idea I've seen in any sort of hobbyist space, bar none. And I mean bar none - I think that even something like outright racism (ugly as it is) ruins hobbies less than people trying to make it into their activism soapbox.
I think the final straw was when Shut Up & Sit Down posted this terrifyingly Orwellian review of Cards Against Humanity...
That's so unsurprising to me that it hurts a bit. Those guys are absolutely insufferable. I guess it's not shocking, because it's people who came from Rock, Paper Shotgun which was itself insufferable for injecting politics into everything. The moment when I realized I needed to stop listening to SU&SD was when they had a review of the game Istanbul, where they spent a significant amount of time complaining about Orientalism or something. And of course, when people on /r/boardgames pointed out "this is really obnoxious", they got told off for it.
SubstantialFrivolity
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1d ago
Unfortunately, /r/boardgames is a cesspool and has been for years at this point. I stopped visiting because I was sick and tired of reading people's political opinions in a forum which is ostensibly about board games.
SubstantialFrivolity
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2d ago
Doesn't alcohol metabolize into sugar, and so it's also bad for diabetics? Not that I can talk as I still have sugar, I just can't quit it. But maybe thinking of alcohol in terms of "this is bad for the beetus" will help you to cut back?
SubstantialFrivolity
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3d ago
I don't think that there is an underdog here, so that's probably the first point where we disagree. I see two roughly evenly matched sides which will produce a long, drawn-out conflict where everyone loses.
But let's say that the right is, as you say, the underdog. Isn't "the underdog taking the high road" exactly what led to the US-Japan peace in WW2? Japan started a fight they couldn't win, the US hit them back so hard they realized "oh shit we're not going to win this fight", and so they passed up the chance for vengeance in favor of appealing to the better nature of the US. Seems to me like your strategy would say they should have kept fighting the US until the Americans gave in and stopped fighting.
SubstantialFrivolity
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3d ago
Literally every time peace has ever happened? Peace always starts by someone saying "no, I'm not going to hit them back, instead I'm going to try to appeal to their better nature and end this".
SubstantialFrivolity
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3d ago
I disagree with your analysis. The two choices are, in my view:
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Take the high road, and by doing so gain credibility with the left which can be used to cool tensions, or
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Double down, expect the left to double down, and let it keep getting worse until both sides agree to stop. Which they may never, and it may not be in our lifetimes.
Option 1 is the clear superior choice in my view. Also note that in option 2, someone still needs to take the high road eventually. So long as people are thinking in terms of "fuck the other guy, it's his turn to get kicked now" (which is what many in this forum have explicitly argued for), the conflict in #2 will never actually end.
SubstantialFrivolity
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3d ago
People have already picked sides. The goal at this point is not "get people to pick my side", it's "get people who have already chosen the other side to stand down". And those people are going to double down, not stand down, if the right persists in this hypocrisy on cancel culture.
SubstantialFrivolity
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3d ago
If the right continues to "take the high ground", there's no reason for the masses to ever change their behavior or beliefs.
On the contrary: if the right abuses the tactics the left does, there's no reason that the masses will ever change their behavior or beliefs. They will see "the right is a bunch of hypocrites" (and they will be correct to do so), and continue to fight to put the screws to their enemies. After all, they thought the right was evil before, the right confirmed it in their eyes, so why shouldn't they fight to put them out of existence?
That's why people keep saying to not escalate things into a cycle of hatred where each side stabs the other as soon as it gets ahold of a dagger. Taking the high road is not a sufficient condition for peace, but it is necessary. Taking the low road simply ensures the conflict will continue unabated.
SubstantialFrivolity
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3d ago
HD lady will learn that she has the wrong memes.
As I pointed out the last time this topic came up (though perhaps not to you personally, I can't remember): if this were true the culture war would be over by now. Because the right would've learned they have the wrong memes, and changed. The fact that this hasn't happened should be glaring proof to everyone that cancelling the left isn't going to teach them a thing. It will simply further stoke resentment and lead to further conflict.
SubstantialFrivolity
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5d ago
It's not clear to me that this is in fact the case. But let's say it is - something being de jure illegal is much, much harsher than something being de facto illegal. So it's possible for the situation you describe to exist, and for the American restrictions to still be overall more lenient.
SubstantialFrivolity
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5d ago
Not the person you're talking to, but I think "restaurants are closed" would have been a reasonable policy. So would "you don't have to wear masks". It's the halfway point of "wear a mask but not the 90% of the time you're at your table" which I found ridiculous.
SubstantialFrivolity
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6d ago
To be fair, there's no easy way to type the dashes on a standard keyboard. So people just use hyphens instead, cause that's easier than bringing up charmap or whatever. And to be honest I have no idea (even as a frequent pedant) what the difference in usage between em dash and en dash is supposed to be.
SubstantialFrivolity
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7d ago
I personally think that "no automatic updates" is better than the current hellscape of "lol we can break your device at any time", even with the problems it causes. I'd rather have hella security issues on the Internet than have my stuff randomly break (or just get worse) without my intervention.
SubstantialFrivolity
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7d ago
I can't speak for your IT department, but in the past we would always test updates across a cross section of the business before rolling them out to everyone. Maybe like 10% of the computers would get the test updates, and we would only deploy if we had no issues on the test PCs. That's really all you can do though, sometimes issues come up even with testing.
SubstantialFrivolity
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7d ago
I don't even understand why something like clownstrike is necessary in 2024.
Because, just like with DEI and other stupid corpo bullshit, business necessity has nothing to do with efficacy. You do the rituals and check the boxes because someone somewhere figures this lets the company cover its ass. Whether there was an actual threat of ass exposure to begin with doesn't even get considered.
SubstantialFrivolity
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7d ago
Note that it's crowdstrike, not cloudstrike. Doesn't detract from the post that much but just thought it was worth pointing out.
I think prescriptivism is of vital importance, because without it language is completely incoherent. I find linguistic descriptivism to be rather vapid, actually - all you can really say as a descriptivist is "that person sure is using word X to mean Y". You can't actually say whether it is correct or incorrect. I would much rather have an effort (imperfect though it is) to at least try to say "this usage is the correct one" so we can actually communicate with each other.
I also think it's interesting that you mentioned postmodernism, because sometimes linguistic descriptivists feel like they are engaging in serious motte and bailey arguments. And of course, Scott Alexander's original essay talking about motte and bailey arguments focused on the rather bad faith arguments you sometimes see used to defend postmodernism. So I think there's definitely something to the parallel you are noticing.
I will say, in fairness, that language does change over time and at some point you need to accept it. But at the same time, I think you can take that too far, and it usually is taken too far. Some people are just plain ignorant, and they speak/write the language poorly. There's absolutely nothing wrong with acknowledging that and refusing to lower one's standards.
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