naraburns
nihil supernum
No bio...
User ID: 100
naraburns
nihil supernum
1d ago
But yes, it turns out people who own businesses want to make more money, and they'll drop their appeal to males 18-34, if it'll help them also win over older males and women.
I disagree with most of your assessment because it simply does not track my own experiences--but this particular sentence did catch my attention. I was recently reading this Atlantic article about how Boeing became such a terrible company. The complete picture is of course complicated, but a quick-and-dirty version goes like this: once upon a time, Boeing made money by making airplanes. Over time, they did less and less actual making of airplanes and more and more putting their stamp on airplanes that were mostly made by other companies. By outsourcing this work, Boeing was able to increase its profits! But over time, this resulted in an "airplane company" that could not rightly be said to understand airplane-making in the way it once had.
I see this sort of thing all over the place. Amazon was a fantastic bookstore. Then, it became a remarkable everything-catalog. Now, it is a kind of shitty logistics company with a lumbering stranglehold on a couple of important channels of commerce. Each step down the path was a step toward greater profitability, but also a step toward enshittification.
The enshittification of geek culture is probably not entirely attributable to the Great Awokening--personally, I suspect that bad copyright law plays a bigger role than is ordinarily appreciated, as "control" over "key properties" comes to trump creativity and risk and so forth. But as I noted in another comment--"It used to be okay for something to not be for you." That is not something today's marketers seem to understand, or agree with. Everything has to be for everyone (except, maybe, straight white men). But even from a capitalistic perspective this is probably an actual mistake; short term, you might think "I want everyone to like this and buy it, because that will maximize profits" but long term you just end up with shitty planes literally falling apart in the sky--and whatever the cultural equivalent of that is.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1d ago
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.
This is a startlingly accurate summary of the last 25 years of my life.
Winning game designer banned from future Spiel des Jahres events for anti-Israel symbol.
Board gaming is a much bigger hobby than it used to be. The Spiel des Jahres award was created in 1978 to highlight family-friendly games, and I played some of the early winners (Rummikub (1980) and Scotland Yard (1983))--but it was 1995's winner, The Settlers of Catan, that really changed the face of board gaming in the United States. As an established presence in the European market, the Spiel des Jahres evolved from a simple trade award to the gold standard for "must have" games. Like most at-home hobbies, board gaming also got a bump from the COVID pandemic--but more broadly, the nerdification of American culture has fed board gaming in much the way it has fed video gaming, comic books, and other IP-adjacent hobbies.
These days there are three "Spiel des Jahres" awards--the children's award, the regular award, and the "complex game" award. This year's "complex" winner was Daybreak, "a cooperative game about stopping climate change." The creator, Matteo Menapace, presumably wrote his own bio, though I don't know that for certain:
...a game designer and educator, former artist in residence at the V&A Museum in London. He designs cooperative board games inspired by social issues, such as food politics, memory loss and the climate crisis. He also teaches people how to make games that encourage collaboration and help people navigate complex conversations.
Anyway, Matteo reportedly wore a pin or sticker or something looking approximately like this onto the award ceremony stage. The announcement describes this as
a symbol ... that Jews will perceive as anti-Semitic ... by pointing out the outlines of a 'Greater Palestine' that denies the existence of the State of Israel.
Predictably, a reddit post in the most popular board game sub refers to it as a "pro-Palestine" sticker rather than an "anti-Israel" sticker. These days the line between those things can seem pretty thin, or so it seems to me. The commentary is predictable enough... I suppose in this case I would say that it seems like the political symbol in question "deliberately skirts the border of comprehensibility." Matteo is clearly an activist, who was doing activist things. The Spiel des Jahres people are clearly on board with the DEI rhetoric, and employ it in this announcement, so this may be one of those "leopards at my face" moments, too. But I don't know what Matteo's nationality is (Google suggests maybe he's an Italian living in the UK?), and Germany has some fairly strict anti-semitism laws for, you know, historical reasons, so there may be a culture gap issue here as well.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1d ago
I would say that the meaning is pretty comprehensible to both his allies and enemies
Yes, certainly--but it comes with plausible deniability for those who are not allies or enemies, but merely useful idiots who parrot nice sounding slogans. In the now-locked boardgame subreddit thread, one user says:
Don't tell me it was just something like "to the river to the sea, Palestine will be free". The idea that that's understood as any sort of call to violence is pure fearmongering / gaslighting.
Which is gaslighting! The chant (and graffiti) in Arabic has for decades been "From the river to the sea, Palestine is Islamic/Arab." But people who don't know or appreciate history can say "oh, freedom from the river to the sea, how nice, I'm definitely in favor of that!"
naraburns
nihil supernum
3d ago
This is not a warning, in the sense that I'm not putting a note on your account, but I have two moderator-level questions about your post that I'd be interested in an honest response to, if possible.
The first is your rhetoric concerning the Motte. You wrote:
...while there were some voices calling for restraint...
Which can actually literally mean anywhere from one voice, to all voices; from a small majority to a large one, and anywhere in between. Then you wrote:
...many commenters demanded blood from the left...
Which literally means the same thing as the first part of that sentence, in reverse. However you chose "many" instead of "some," which paints a certain picture of this space. You then dropped four quotes. But weirdly, the first and fourth quotes are from the same post, and it is a post for which that user got banned, which you don't mention. So my first question is: why did you decide to portray the discussion here with such uncharitable rhetoric?
The Motte exists as text. One of the things that sometimes happens to places like this is, what sets them apart from other spaces gets amplified as it gets noticed. So for example people notice that reddit is a teeming hive of fedora-wearing atheists, which attracts more fedora-wearing atheists (and repels non-fedora-wearing-atheists) until the admin slashes-and-burns their way through the algorithm (or whatever), converting the site to a teeming hive of reflexively woke young adults. In a way I suspect this is analogous to Flanderization, but with a community rather than a fictional character. Maybe sociologists have a name for this process?
Anyway, this is a space for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. But our "open debate, no positions banned" policy meant that people with Overton-suppressed political views found this space unusually welcoming. One way we try to tamp down the "seven zillion witches" problem that this eventually Flanderizes to is by emphasizing individual arguments over discussion of "groups" wherever possible. I have often repeated the line "you are not stuck in traffic, you are traffic" to people who make sweeping claims about the Motte. It applies to your post, here: the reason I don't want people making claims about the Motte is that I think it tends to Flanderize the space. People read your claim, and it shifts, however slightly, their priors on whether this space is "for them." But of course it's for them! As long as they follow the rules, this space is for everyone, no matter what they believe. That's the foundation; that's the bedrock.
My second question is: why did you include the ChatGPT summary? Did you feel the need to provide a summary but didn't feel up to writing one yourself? Were you just padding your word count in hopes of avoiding a "low effort" moderation action? I'm not accusing you of anything, mind--I'm just curious. You have a pretty good posting history so I was caught off guard by it. Not only does generative AI minimize engagement with your audience, it minimizes your own engagement with the text you're citing. No one benefits from it. It seems to me that ChatGPT quotes are quinessential low-effort participation, unless maybe you're showing your work on a post specifically about generative AI or something. I don't think we've explicitly made it against the rules but I do think it's incompatible with the rules we've got--but maybe I'm overlooking something.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1d ago
always been
...
doesn't involve screens
I'm thinking about a timeline that reaches back quite a bit earlier than widespread parental concern over screen time (other than television). Many figures do not rate "PG-13," though of course in the late 1980s the UK had "Page 3" and the U.S. was often portrayed by its internal critics as quaint and backward in its insistence on stuff like sexualizing breasts, so maybe things really were/are just different across the pond.
Of course, "get 'em hooked young" has been part of their marketing approach for a long time, too; as with the Japanese pulling cross imagery out of video games in that era, "just don't mention Slaanesh" is a pretty low bar. But woke capital seems to have accomplished what church ladies couldn't, as these days it seems like the true Emperor of Mankind is the diversity consultant heading up HR.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5d ago
He doesn't mention picking a successor, but may in a speech later this week.
CNN et al. have been trying to make Kamala happen. Even Drudge seems to be in on the "consensus is gelling around Harris!" false consensus-building rhetoric. I have never seen any evidence that Harris has the intelligence or insight required to lead a nation. She was explicitly chosen for her current position by virtue of her sex and skin color, and sex and skin color have been the driving factors in her entire political career. To my mind this is frankly disqualifying, but of course--many Americans disagree with me there.
The fact that the second most likely pick currently appears to be a governor around whom the FBI decided to craft a kidnapping plot with which to libel right wingers does embarrassing things to my "deep state" priors.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5d ago
That's what their defense attorneys say. Which is of course what they'd say.
And that defense was broadly successful, for several of the accused. Others took plea deals, and the convictions that stuck were, in the end, comparatively bland.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5d ago
This is one of the worst gotchas in the history of gotchas. I can’t believe people keep saying this. He’s fit for office for a few months, he’s not fit to simultaneously run a campaign or for office for four more year. There, I just drove a truck through the widest needle in the universe.
It's not a "gotcha," though, it's a serious question about predicting the future. The reasons we have to believe that Biden is "not fit to simultaneously run a campaign or for office for four more year" are the same reasons we had to believe that four years ago, and two years ago, and six months ago. What has changed now isn't Biden; what has changed now is that the Left has been forced to accept that these reasons are not "cheap fake videos."
It's hard to get people to change their minds, but it's not impossible. The weight of the evidence has long been against Biden's mental competence, but for a while there people could do the political thing and ignore that evidence as cheap political tactics. The problem is that now we can look back at all the evidence and see that it wasn't cheap political tactics; if it had been, then there would be no new reason for Joe to drop out now. Trump almost getting assassinated did not change Joe's mental fitness. Trump dominating the debate did not change Joe's mental fitness. If nothing has changed about Biden, then why drop out? If it's purely a question of trying to beat Trump, that makes strategic sense, but his withdrawal is not being phrased that way, either.
So we get this Schrodinger's excuse; the narrative is that Biden has decided it's time to retire for purely personal reasons, but also somehow that those reasons have absolutely no bearing on the remainder of his term in office. Those reasons are not new, and yet they are newly relevant, and which part of that narrative you deny depends on which political point you are trying to make.
It would be simpler to just be honest about it: he can't beat Trump, and that's all the Party cares about at this point. Whether Biden is mentally competent has never been the Left's concern; if anything, his lack of competence probably made him an easier puppet to ply.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5d ago
Has anyone told him yet that he's not running for re-election anymore?
They didn't even tell his staffers, why would they tell him?
More seriously--if this were an elderly man trying to make changes to his will, I'd have some hard questions about undue influence. That's been true throughout his presidency. He might very well be going along with this as the result of rational persuasion, but I don't believe for one instant that it was his idea.
naraburns
nihil supernum
7d ago
Pure hearsay--but my IT guy says "if your system had Crowdstrike installed, and it was on and running automatic updates when the updates was pushed, then you got hit. If your system happened to be off, power-cycling, delaying updates, etc., then you missed it, and the actual fix was rolled out very quickly to prevent further problems."
So now "zero day" protection is also a zero day exploit.
Something something security monoculture? Truly critical infrastructure should probably be running multiple operating systems on vendor-diverse hardware in parallel, I guess?
naraburns
nihil supernum
5d ago
It obviously doesn’t follow.
But the same presently available evidence that supports the proposition "unfit to run" also supports the proposition "unfit for office." We don't actually know what Biden's mental state will be 6 months or 4 years from now. But the same evidence (from his speeches, debates, public appearances, etc.) that he won't be fit for office in six months, or four years, is also evidence that he isn't fit for office now.
If the same evidence supports both A and B, then discussions of A will naturally invoke discussions of B. Your ability to frame what is being argued in a way that does not logically follow is irrelevant to the arguments that do follow, and so your focus on this one particular framing looks like cherry-picking.
Thanks for the response.
Discussions of the meta are not banned, of course--and I would re-emphasize that my analysis of your comment was not intended in any punitive way. Several users have raised concerns about a slide in the quality of discourse. Two mods have left the site, citing this as a reason. "The discourse is degrading" is not a new accusation; analogous complaints are arguably why the CW thread got kicked off the SSC subreddit in the first place. I've been moderating for something like five years and "the discourse is degrading" has been a steady drumbeat all along. And yet some of the most highly informative and uniquely insightful posts ever contributed to the CW thread were written long ago by users with names like "yodatsracist" and "trannyporno."
So I'm (yes, probably as an exercise in futility) trying to understand the shape of what's really going on. The Sneer Club subreddit (now defunct) was created eight years ago. Most of Scott Alexander's best culture war posts were written in 2014. The underlying mechanism of being "a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases" has contributed to the development of numerous semi-famous and arguably even influential substack writers and podcasters and the like. And yes--it has also resulted in a metric shit-ton of weird stuff, conspiracy-theory level madness, flat-earther tier denials of reality, etc. It has always been that bad, and it has always been that great. And as specific individuals have found its usefulness to them personally to expire, they have on many occasions departed with the declaration that now the Motte is just too much a hive of scum and villainy. But... maybe this time it's different? That's kind of what I'm trying to understand.
I myself no longer find the CW thread as useful as it has been to me in the past! But that's very much about me. The idea of freewheeling discourse being totally cool was well within the Overton window before 2016 introduced the idea of a "Misinformation Age" (whether things actually happened that way or not), and today, well... today people are much more concerned about epistemic hygiene, I guess would be the charitable way to say it. "Wrongthink bad" is not a new idea, but I daresay it is much more fashionable now than it was ten years ago.
I don't know where that leaves us. I've never been the solutions person. I know @ZorbaTHut has expressed some desire to implement solutions in the form of code, but the demands of day jobs are a curse upon us all. (Isn't there something in the Bible about that?) Anyway, thanks for answering my questions, I appreciate the effort and reflection.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5d ago
I have never seen any evidence that Harris has the intelligence or insight required to lead a nation.
Does Trump?
Likely no--though he does possess a certain raw cunning, which served him reasonably well in his first term. I think his handling of COVID was pretty bad, but prior to that I had no serious complaints. Whether he actually has the insight or intelligence required to lead a nation, he has actually done so, which seems to qualify as at least some kind of evidence. Harris, by comparison, appears to have had basically every political position handed to her. Whitmer, at least, has some executive bona fides.
I don't think this switch will be good for the Dems (Biden staying would also not have been good for them, it's a no-win situation), but at least they can now make the instant switcheroo to "It's Trump who is old and demented, HE should drop out now".
Agreed--and really, I'd love it if Trump did drop out, too, though I have to wonder whether today's announcement was timed to make that maximally difficult for the Republicans to manage. I also wonder how thinking Democrats feel about having this happen now, after the opportunity to hold open primaries has passed. There's no way Kamala would have been the pick. It looks very much like the party is prepping a Clintonesque coronation, again--and there's nothing about Joe Biden's health today that wasn't known six months ago--or even four years ago. The tacit (and heavily papered-over) admission that Biden will not be fit to serve as President in January is also, I think, effectively an admission that he should probably have been removed from office for disability months, if not years, ago.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6d ago
Who is John Galt?
People old enough to have done things like "boot from a USB drive," but not so old as to be confused by computing devices generally?
Thirty years ago, relatively few undergraduates brought their own computers to college, though most had access to some kind of computer "lab." Twenty years ago, most undergrads brought their own computers to college. Ten years ago, it was common for many programs of higher learning to "give" students a laptop for curricular use, testing, etc. Today, I get a surprising number of students whose only computing device is their cell phone, or a similarly hobbled tablet-style appliance. They live in walled gardens and think that computing begins and ends with "apps." Throwaway consumption devices are, slowly but surely, crowding from our collective consciousness the general purpose (and modular!) machines that delivered the Information Age.
And in some ways, I suppose, that was always the goal ("it was always the plan to put the world in your hands...")--just as we don't need everyone to change their own oil, or know how to fly airplanes, we don't need everyone to be using desktop computers. But in much the way that the average American utterly fails to understand or, therefore, appreciate the systems that keep them fed, keep the power on, etc., I suspect that failure to even slightly understand the technology on which our civilization functions contributes to some pretty distorted perspectives--on the world, on life, on politics, etc.
naraburns
nihil supernum
12d ago
"fucking stop it, you're going to cause a literal civil war with your antics"
It is remarkable to read stuff from the early 1800s discussing how an American civil war over slavery was just inevitable--a matter of time.
It is depressing to feel like that's where we are today, that it may still be decades away but that a civil war between "reds" and "blues" has become inevitable. I would like to believe there is time to de-escalate, but I'm not sure there is a clear way--the bifurcation of American culture has gotten to the point where one side or the other simply must go away if the country is to survive at all. Time and demographics could accomplish that naturally and gradually, but if not, then a civil war is what will do it. But demands for political orthodoxy (on either side) seem to be getting louder, not quieter.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5d ago
Would either American party preemptively defenestrate a President because of mental competence concerns? The Reagan experience in his second term suggests not, though I suppose one could argue Republicans have shifted to caring more about mental competence since then.
No, I expect the "Reagan experience" is baseline; even the White House webpage has an entry praising Edith Wilson's handling of her husband's incapacity.
But the kayfabe is important; it may be the most important thing about the office of the President. When it falls apart, it is unlikely to fall apart selectively, in the way that is most politically advantageous for the people involved. That's what I'm pointing out here, I think, about "Schrodinger's excuse." Maybe it would be better put as "Schrodinger's dementia." The same evidence that supports Biden's withdrawal, supports his immediate resignation (or removal, or etc.).
How do you gatekeep medical procedures against the well resourced?
Well, first, you can't. But second, who cares?
I don't mean that in a dismissive way--I mean, has "but that law seems difficult to enforce" ever been a legible reason for striking down (or refusing to adopt) a law against something dangerous? There are countless laws against illicit drug use. Many of them are, at least arguably, stupid, but their stupidity is a political question, not a question for the courts. (At least until an activist court decides to get fancy with "arbitrariness," I suppose...) People use drugs, and it's bad for them, and explicit government disapproval of their activity does seem to actually reduce those harms (see: Oregon) even when it can't be said that the relevant harm can be eliminated entirely.
Ultimately, if enough people are down with transing the kids, the kids are gonna get transed. The threshold of "enough" is simply a question of power: if you've got a lot of money, then just knowing one willing (or venal) doctor will probably suffice. But if you're a middle class parent hoping to engage in a little light Munchausen's by Proxy for internet karma and GoFundMe credit, you're going to need some extra assistance via e.g. insurance, tax subsidies, and maybe some government bullying of recalcitrant health professionals. Conversely, simply making a law against transing the kids will suffice for 99% of the population, just like all the other laws that rich people so often find themselves free to disregard.
At best we can rely on professional ethics, but, you know, lol. What's the strategy here?
Sending a message. Having a government that doesn't directly contribute to harming children based on dubious pop culture trends and the elevation of mental illness to a virtue. Protecting children from abusive parents. "But they don't think it's abuse!" Fucking tough; I'm happy to outlaw genital mutilation (including male circumcision), too, because my conception of child abuse is unmoved by appeals to moral relativism. If states can't outlaw transing kids, then they can't outlaw the genital mutilation of infants, either--not in any principled way.
naraburns
nihil supernum
27d ago
Of the major Democratic candidates waiting in the wings, it seems clear that Newsom is the only viable candidate. And if you’re Newsom, why would you possibly replace Biden now?
The only answer I can think of is "for the same reasons Biden isn't dropping out."
Newsom seems to view high political office as his manifest destiny. At that level of politics, maybe most of them view things that way; you'd almost have to, I think, to run in the first place. If Biden and his handlers were even halfway humane, he would have retired years ago (same goes for Trump). There is something deeply narcissistic about believing that you, and you alone, can effectively steer the community/state/nation at this particular time--but if you didn't believe that, why would you run for office? I'd love to hear "a keen sense of civic duty responding to the insistence of one's fellow-citizens regarding one's merits as a leader" but I know that kind of idealism just gets me laughed out of the room.
It's really something to imagine Newsom or DeSantis in place of Biden or Trump at the CNN fiasco. This year's presidential race is a textbook-crafted thought experiment on inadequate equilibria in political contexts, brought to painful life.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
That was the first mention of Israel, that I could recall, but the whole conversation is about Ukraine, Russia, Putin, and NATO. It's not exactly new to me, but it's refreshing to hear someone so clearly say that this is a war of choice, and the choice is being made by the USA, and their puppet states involved in NATO.
I don't understand how it's possible for you, or anyone, to believe this. Insofar as any conflict in Israel is a "war of choice," the people making that choice are, and have been, Muslim Arabs, whether inside or outside of Israel. For generations, now. If Palestinians stop fighting, there will be no more fighting. If Israelis stop fighting, there will be no more Israel. The commitment of Hamas, its handlers abroad, and most of the people living under its rule is the eradication of Israel. They have never accepted any of the compromises offered to them for more than a handful of years, during which time they have always been sharpening their spears for their next attempt.
I understand that the United States is entangled in this, as it is entangled one way or another in most armed conflicts around the world. At minimum, the American government is a well-compensated arms dealer! And I understand that the Israeli government has made a variety of foolish, cruel, and otherwise objectionable decisions along the way. Nobody in that region has anything approaching clean hands. But exactly one side of the Israel conflict is ideologically committed to actual genocide, as a matter of religious prescription, and it's not the Israelis.
Ukraine, okay! There's a conflict where American (or at least NATO) interests have absolutely been downplayed in favor of spinning a Russophobic narrative. I still tend to see Russia as the bad actor there, because I am prejudiced against aggressors, but I can accept that the United States played at least an indirect role in poking that particular bear. The United States had nothing to do with the murder, mayhem, robbery, and rape perpetrated by the Palestinian stooges of Islamist governments on October 7, and Israel's response to that attack has been, if not obviously proportional, absolutely understandable. If a bunch of Canadians, at the urging of their government, snuck across the border to rape and murder a thousand innocent Americans, I would not be satisfied with a merely proportional response; as a matter of clear deterrence, I would definitely want to see an absolutely merciless escalation.
And if it kept happening, over and over again, over years and decades, well... at some point the only thing that makes sense is to reach for the metaphorical banhammer.
naraburns
nihil supernum
29d ago
...I think the case against male circumcision has been overstated by advocates and adopted by guys who were circumcized as infants and wouldn't know the difference.
It is certainly my belief that most, maybe all advocates are in the business of overstating their case, whether to make it seem more urgent, or to demand X in hopes of at minimum securing something less than X as a "compromise." In this particular case, botched circumcisions are sufficiently horrifying that the severity is difficult to overstate--but the incident rate is probably not.
This isn't directly on point...
Still, it's relevant. "Preventing children from having their properly functioning bodies interfered with, even when the adults in their lives are totally cool with it," is one of those things I think the law--judicial, legislative, and executive all--must be empowered to do, if it is empowered to do anything at all. If the law cannot protect the bodily integrity of minors, even against their own expressed wishes, much less the wishes of their parents, it's hard for me to imagine how the law can be permitted to paternalistically protect minors from anything at all.
And maybe that's the right answer, certainly I know some anarcho-libertarians who would bite that bullet. But despite the occasional temptation I have never really been able to get excited about governance quite that small.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
If Palestinians stop fighting, there will be no independent Palestine either. Palestinians will become permanent second-rate residents of Israel in everything but name.
This argument flies in the face of facts and history. There are several independent Muslim Arab states in the region; Israel is a tiny portion of the region, smaller than many American counties. "Independent Palestine" is a call for a Muslim Arab country specifically in Gaza and the West Bank, which was granted in the Two State Solution, and refused by the Palestinians. Palestinians still refuse it as a solution. Give them a two state solution, and within half a generation they will be raiding Israel from behind their "borders," calling yet again for the extermination of the Jews. How do we know this? Because they keep doing it.
Not only that, but a substantial percentage of Israeli nationals are Muslim Arabs, from when Israel tried to just allow Palestinians to choose to participate in a liberal democracy along with the rest of the developed world. Some took the offer, and are pretty universally better off for having done so. I have known a few Palestinian Israelis, and they were not "second-rate residents" in any sense but perhaps the fact that they lived in an officially Jewish nation--not unlike the Jews and Christians who are sometimes permitted to live in officially Muslim nations, except for the part where Jews and Christians are generally treated far worse in Muslim nations. Rural Americans in many states often have less political power or self-determination than Palestinian Israelis.
Attitudes like yours toward the conflict in Israel strike me as the most absurd exercise of both-sides-ism in modern history. Israel has taken every reasonable avenue, and perhaps some unreasonable ones, toward peace and coexistence. Every olive branch they have extended has been sharpened into a stake and used to murder their children. In some ways Israel may be the single most Christian nation ever to exist, so far has it extended forgiveness and amnesty to the descendants of the Muslim Arab colonists who live within their borders.
I've lived through this cycle so many times I've actually lost count, but it repeats like clockwork. Every time it looks like we're going to get "peace in the Middle East" at last, the Palestinians sabotage it (usually, with financing and support from other Muslim nations). "Independent Palestine" is a canard, code for "death to Israel," because coexistence is not on the menu, and as long as Muslims are religiously committed to reclaiming every inch of their holy lands, it never will be. Israel's Muslim neighbors wish to see it destroyed, and Palestinians are the stooges they have been using to pursue that goal for longer than most Mottizens have been alive. Nothing has changed, nothing is new. I feel bad for the Palestinians, they are being used harshly by bad actors. But they have had many opportunities to escape the cycle, and they have squandered them without hesitation.
I am sympathetic to arguments for independence and self-determination, but what Palestinians (and you) say in that regard does not match with their actions over the years. Talk is cheap. Peace is a choice they refuse to make.
Like many people, in the summer of 2016 I signed up for "Pokemon Go." I'd previously spent a couple of months playing Niantic's "Ingess" and though it got me out walking a bit, I lost interest in less than a year. I hoped Pokemon Go might help me re-gamify my preferred approach to light cardio. However, the game servers were apparently potatoes so after the first day, I never played again.
When the COVID pandemic hit, I took up walking again, and decided to give Pokemon Go another try. I was far from alone; the game's revenue went from $650 million in 2019 to over $900 million in 2020, only to drop off just as steeply in 2022. It did tend to keep me out walking longer than I otherwise might; I've now been playing the game for 30-60 minutes daily for a couple of years, in conjunction with my exercise regimen.
The game itself is aggressively mid. I've only played through one mainline Pokemon game (Diamond, if you care)--because I felt like I ought to have played through at least one Pokemon game, given their popularity. But I gather that if you're a real Pokemon afficionado, Pokemon Go ("PoGo") is borderline offensive in its implementation. The Pokemon formula is catch-and-brawl, but while the "catch" portion of PoGo is basically adequate, the "brawl" portion is genuinely terrible.
The explanation is, essentially, "Niantic." Ingress, the game on which PoGo was built, seems to have existed primarily to gamify pedestrian data collection for Google Maps. Niantic spun off of Google in 2015, but has kept its "data collection" DNA; one thing PoGo players can do to advance in the game is scan locations with their phone cameras and submit the info to Niantic. Publicly, Niantic is always talking about finding ways to improve the "get outside and gather with others" aspects of the game. Some changes made during the pandemic allowed players to gather more virtually, and these were hugely popular; when Niantic rolled these changes back, the playerbase revolted and Niantic partially restored the functions (while making them more expensive to use).
Well, this is all pretty boring corporate stupidity, so far. Not many serious culture war angles; it's a game targeted at Millennials and their kids, and it's barely playable outside of fairly densely-populated cities, and beyond that the company behind it had more "big data" DNA than "makes fun games" DNA. PoGo is successful, truly, in spite of itself. None of Niantic's other offerings have ever really taken off as they'd like.
And then today, everyone got new avatars.
Previously, the game had two base avatars--a male and a female. These had slightly different, but mostly overlapping, clothing options. Beyond that you could set hair, skin, and eye colors. You could freely switch between male and female.
There are several things I noticed immediately about the new avatar system. First, there is no longer any distinction between sexes. Rather, the system offers a number of body "presets" as well as a custom body slider. All of the bodies are monstrous; 75% are noticeably obese. The sliders do nothing to address this. All settings are vaguely androgynous; a slender female waist or strong male chest are simply out of the question. Many new faces and hairstyles are available (albeit none with facial hair), and all are creepy and doll-like.
Skin and hair color options have also changed. Most of the options are weird and strictly inferior to past options (avatars can no longer have striking red hair; a dull auburn is as close as it now gets). "White" skin comes in "pasty" or "jaundiced" only. But especially weird--the selection palettes appear to just be randomized. They do not cluster dark skin with other dark shades, or light skin with other light shades--it's just a mess of brown tones, in no particular order.
The clothing--most of which players must purchase using premium in-game currency--hangs oddly; every pair of pants looks like someone is wearing an overloaded diaper. Every shirt hangs like drapes. Previously "sexy" clothing now just looks ill-fitting; muscular male outfits are now vaguely flabby, curvy female outfits are flat or distended.
Discussion has raised a variety of points about Niantic possibly recycling assets to cut costs, or relying on AI conversions, or seeking to tap the Fortnite crowd with more Fortnite-esque physiques. Memes are dropping. Complaints are dropping. Waistlines are dropping. And dropping. And dropping.
I don't know what will happen next. It doesn't matter very much to me, except insofar as I have a distinct preference against the new avatar system. But the culture war angle just seems so glaring. Perhaps because of the target demographic, though, I don't see a lot of discussion of it. I kind of assume that Niantic is ready to deploy the "racists and transphobes hate the PoGo update" press releases, though I haven't seen one yet. But basically everyone hates the body updates, even if they are glad to have more hair options. I think my favorite comment on reddit was here:
"As a nonbinary player I always wished they'd remove genderlocked customization"
One finger on my monkey's paw curls inward
It would also be interesting to know more about what's happening internally at Niantic--like if the work here was done by AI, or by diversity hires, or what. I've heard completely unverifiable rumors that Niantic management is outrageously out of touch with reality but also petrified to kill their golden goose, so it is hard for me to imagine them green-lighting these changes without culture war blinders on. But maybe they really are just terrible at their jobs?
Well, there's your tempest in today's teapot. Such a small thing! And yet so clearly intended to make the game less pleasant to the San Francisco outgroup. Perhaps I will rethink my position on the possible existence of microaggressions.
It is... interesting... to see all this discussion about "progressive male role models" given that the progressive memespace has long been, and mostly still is, dominated by gender eliminativists. The elevation of fringe-of-a-fringe transsexual issues to the "cause du jour" has of course introduced irreconcilable metaphysics into the discourse, but coalition building has ever been thus. The philosophical work underpinning extant views on gender goes back over a century, to Nikolay Chernyshevsky's declaration that
people will be happy when there will be neither women nor men
and philosophical feminism has been broadly gender-eliminativist pretty much ever since.
All of that to say: progressives can't do "male role models" because progressives are fundamentally opposed to the existence of men. Sure, sure--ask your local progressive, they might very well deny it. But this is the standard motte and bailey that exists between thought leaders and political movements everywhere, the disconnect between political theory and political practice. You can't read feminism without stumbling over gender eliminativism, and progressivism is avowedly feminist. "Eliminate gender" is right up there with "abolish the family" on a list of things progressives explicitly and actually want to accomplish, even if these are things they're willing to compromise on for the moment, for the movement.
And you can't really believe that gender needs to be abolished, while simultaneously believing that anyone needs male role models. At best you might say something like, "well, we have to meet the little troglodytes where they are, so we need some... mannish... role models--but not too mannish! Nothing, you know, toxic, nothing overtly heteronormative..." and you've already lost the plot.
This is just another clear case of progressive dreams running headlong into the unyielding embrace of biological reality. People are incredibly plastic! And yet we are not, apparently, infinitely plastic. "Cultural construction" can do a lot, but it cannot lightly obliterate thousands of years of natural selection.
Talk of "misogyny" simply misses the point, and the problem. The only really committed misogynists I've ever met have been women. The men I know who seem to hate women, very obviously genuinely love women--but are angry that they have been denied access to women, by whatever means and for whatever reason. Sometimes it's literally just their own unrealistic expectations. Sometimes they have been badly mistreated by women. Sometimes they are bewildered by the refusal of women in their lives to behave as women. You cannot use "role models" to train people away from this kind of behavior; heterosexual men denied access to women will never just accept that fact. At best, maybe you build sexbots sufficiently indistinguishable from tradwives or something, allowing biological women to pursue whatever bland "non-binary" life they imagine lies at the end of the eliminativist project, but until those bots can do particularly biological things like have babies, there will still be men who dedicate their lives to finding a woman--and, sometimes, going off the rails when faced with sufficiently brutal failure.
Or so it seems to me. I think the progressive response is probably retrenchment on the idea that, surely, anyone can be taught to be anything, given sufficiently quality teaching methods. ("We just need more government!") But their real goal isn't to make better men, it's to make a world where there are no men, in the sense that the social gender binary has been eradicated. Recruiting masculine role models to achieve that end is flatly contradictory.
I agree, in principle. In practice, in my experience, anyone with strong views on the matter tends to seek ideological purity. I have a number of problems with Israel, which are often difficult to express without either being accused of antisemitism, or being praised by outright antisemites. I have many more problems with "Palestine" (in any of its many incarnations), which are all but impossible to express without being accused of Islamophobia, being pro-genocide, being racist, and so forth.
I agree, as a boardgamer, that boardgamers are terrible, and online boardgame forums are excellent demonstrations of Conquest's Laws. What amazes me is how the same can today be said of pretty much every hobby that was ever demographically "geeky white male." RPGs, video games, anime, comic books--but also science, engineering, philosophy, and information technology. These spaces have been absolutely overrun with people insisting "it's not just for you!" and for maybe the first decade of the new millennium, the response I usually saw was... this, basically. But post-Awokening (and with the help of "Woke Capital") a lot of old school nerds and geeks have been hounded to the edges of the space. It's weird to watch properties that weathered and survived the "moral majority" censorship of the late 20th century cave with zero resistance to the new millennium's
church ladiessensitivity readers. You could kill children in the original Fallout. Warhammer 40k was not PG-13. It used to be okay for something to not be for you.More options
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