Last week I was wondering whether the first chinese balloon story was really so interesting as to occupy the top 4 spots in /r/all and 5 of the top 11. Today, a week after the Ohio train chemical spill, the full severity is finally hitting the front page, albeit only one post at the 10th spot as of now, with the "why isn't this being talked about" group battling with the "it is being talked about, here's 10 news links" group in the comments. I saw the chemicals specifically being discussed a few times before today in doomer prep subs, but the front page was mostly UFOs or earthquake posts the last few days. Charitably, what the latter group don't understand is that what the former means, is, why did a tangible disaster story go less viral than a relatively inconsequential balloon, why wasn't it talked about the way we talk about other threats, why did it not develop the way we've come to expect big stories to develop? Uncharitably, the latter want to reinforce the conservative conspiracist trope. The white house certainly could have made a big statement about it, like they did with multiple statements about balloons and UFOs, but it's not false to say there was coverage of the train story, despite it being punctuated/less than the expected amount.
Every country will signal boost other stories to take the heat off embarrassing incidents, but what is unique is how skilled western media/culture is at dancing around plausible deniability. They covered it, but something clearly wasn't the same. It's like a rhetorical ABS, as in making controlled micro delays, to render judgment impossible, until enough time has passed that whatever the truth is, it's become a fait accompli. Like with the nordstream bombing, or old CIA shenanigans/warcrimes, the facts are suspended in the air until its old history, at which point you will have Americans saying how they're not surprised X or Y happened, but then turn around and continue to give themselves the benefit of the doubt or maintain faith in the system. Similar to gell-man amnesia but reflects worse for both the writer and the reader.
titivate
1mo ago
If tiktok is forced to sell, that would legitimize China's stance against facebook and google years ago, which wasn't a ban either. The million dollar question is how much American soft power will the move cost? What will be the new equilibrium on foreign-aligned social media in all the other countries once the dust settles?
Has the motte astralcodexten'd itself? What's your impression of the off site CW threads so far? I myself check in less frequently than before, and when I do, it seems more... boring?
titivate
1yr ago
Back in the good old days when stuff like race and gender didn't matter, was it just coincidence that things always ended up in one group's favor? Has the game really been changed, or is it a change from unipolarity to multipolarity? If the naysayers didn't protest so much about the black little mermaid, would you consider it non-political? And why should losers of the previous status quo care about your ten commandments? To them, it probably sounds as convincing as a trust fund baby waxing about how his work ethic got him to where he is.
If you were able to meet your past selves with perfect recall of yourself at the time, how far back (what age) could you go without feeling cringe at and still be satisfied with your character/intellect/overall decision making?
titivate
7mo ago
What I'm trying to scratch at is why a big country of ostensibly smart people who are industrious and diligent in everything they pursue, with a large publishing market and average age of 48, so easily satiated with low ceiling entertainment? Are they so burnt out they want nothing more than to read light novels on the train, wage-slave the day away, pick up some takeout from 7-11, put on the latest CGDCT anime and veg out? I don't find that explanation satisfactory because the same applies to their neighbors. Some say they are not living to their full potential because of linguistic determinism. It could also be kawaii culture* that dictates everything must be dumbed down and stylized for aesthetics, which explains why their actors are so bad compared to korean ones. But if they're so smart, why do they willingly submit to the self-infantilization, wouldn't they be bored of it already?
*On a side note I think American culture definitely veers in the opposite way resulting in every tom, dick and harry to enthusiastically offer his original thoughts, before aping what he heard on a podcast one time. But fraudulent intellectualism at least provides enough pushback to prevent the 1000th isekai power fantasy from being written.
titivate
1yr ago
In the last week I saw two instances of reddit comments that were unique in phrasing and almost identical. The first was in the same thread shilling some video game streamer, so that's not surprising, but the second was copying a comment from a three year old thread found via other discussions tab in /r/documentaries. Someone brought up a similar situation in a CW thread a few months ago but I don't remember it well. Anyways both comments were later deleted, and I only saved the second account name, a one year old account with only comments in the last week that just did the same^1 thing^2 today and most of its comments are copied from crossposts. Any guesses on the purpose of this?
titivate
6mo ago
It seems to me the ball is still in Israel's court, and they're fumbling. The longer time goes on without a highly visible and high Δp response, the more appetizing they appear to sharks. It's not about 4d chess, it's about sending a message.
titivate
7mo ago
Well compare nerds with nerds. What are the premier otaku-traps in Japanese fiction? Fate? Eva? Time has not been kind to those franchises. Gwern's review recording his disenchantment with later Eva summed it up nicely, and Fate these days is a waifu gacha game before all else. Western nerd franchises like 40k or mtg or game of thrones take themselves more seriously. I believe even in pokemon, it was the western fandom that developed the competitive scene and made nuzlocke (where pokemon being beaten = perma-death) playthrus a thing. You wouldn't think it with their famous otaku and people who spend decades mastering a craft, but Japanese nerd fandoms are surprisingly casual. It's not that western appetite for gritty realism is more high-brow per se, but that does retard the rate franchises are dumbed down.
titivate
11mo ago
I'm content to stick to the kiddie pool threads, but my disconnect with the CWR is less to do with alleged circlejerking than it is with how CurrentHappening oriented it is. It's either news chatter or a bingo board topic, usually both. I know it says CW right there on the label, and I'm a nobody so... But I just expect it to be a little more serendipitous, and a little less retreading of the latest developments on wokeness. I can't stomach reading even 10% of the comments, it's so tiresome; I have no clue how you manage to moderate and participate in this groundhog week of yours.
titivate
10mo ago
Anybody sleep in a hammock? I always wanted to give it a go, and pulled the trigger on a hammock stand deal I couldn't pass up. Now I'm just waiting for the hammock itself to arrive, right in time for the hot summer nights.
titivate
1yr ago
Does looking up how to use Tor likely put you on a list? That paranoia always made the cost-benefit unappealing to me.
Tell me about your favorite mods or most interesting fan projects you know. A while back when I was prepping for a roadtrip, I looked into emulator options and games to play during in-between time. Pokemon, was of course, on that list, but since I hadn't played pokemon for over 10 years, and wasn't interested in going thru the grind loop again, I started digging around the ROMhack scene. Most mods were of the usual, outdated, poorly documented, sort. There were only 2-3 polished and highly rated ones but they didn't really grab my interest. But one recently released ROMhack stood out, with its ambitiously vast scope of changes and the author's unwavering dedication. Pokemon Sweltering Sun, a hack based on Ultra Sun (2017, for the 3DS), that in the author's own words, tries:
To have every single Pokemon be fun and viable to use for the entirety of the game... thanks to new moves, abilities and so much more.
By every single pokemon, he means every single pokemon, and to wit, has uploaded a 488 video playlist, covering all 800+ pokemon (the hack adds all mons from gen 1-7), explaining each redesign thought process. There's also a neat spreadsheet pokedex with all the changes for "easy" reference (and it will cause your browser to lag). As a modder, I can tell you that is not normally, This very very insane. It is one thing to make an ambitious mod, it is two things to be super disciplined about clean documentation, and it is three things to have so much sustained passion, because in the process off writing this, I noticed the mad lad has still been pumping out content and just announced a brand new romhack project.
titivate
11mo ago
be the change you want to see
Aren't I already doing so by not participating? I've contributed a parent level post twice on the old site when I thought I had something good for show and tell.
What are the fun things you are doing with chat.openai.com? So far I'm using it to:
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Rediscover childhood computer games I vaguely remember
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Augment my DIY skills and help navigate the hardware store
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Fill in the gaps in my memory of books, shows and movies or...
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Filter the unimportant episodes to a show I don't want to watch entirely
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Brainstorm or provide design inspo for my pet projects
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Cherrypick examples to back up some argument in my head
titivate
1yr ago
I rewatched the first two terminators in honor of our new overlords, and I really wished they'd focused on Skynet instead of its dumb agents. There is a massive void in pop culture in the shape of a modern 1984 that exploits our AI fears and mercilessly twists that knife. The Matrix was also too fixated on the physical struggle despite taking place... in the matrix.
I want to see humanity's strongest put up against a pan-omni AI God, watch them get outplayed in slow motion at every turn, baited into having some hope, before realizing they were getting hustled, and end buck-broken. None of that limpwristed shit like Ex Machina.
titivate
1yr ago
It's so inefficient at increasing karma I had ruled out that possibility.
titivate
1mo ago
Japanese homogeneity
It's not homogeneity that keeps the japanese in line. It's carryover from the days of samurai, when peasants would be killed on the spot for minor transgressions. Just look at singapore.
titivate
1yr ago
The more I read reviews of anything, the more I beeline toward reading all the negative ones first. For anything worthwhile, the negative reviews are far fewer and more revealing. It's also faster to tell if the negative reviewer is going to provide any insight and discount the ones that don't, compared to positivers. The good ones cut to the chase and let you know if [thing that annoyed the reviewer] sounds like it'd bother you. Doing this has also lead to some serendipitous and highly entertaining rabbit holes.
titivate
6mo ago
What would you call the following dilemma and options:
Someone presents an argument, to which another responds with a counter-argument that is tangential or slightly off-target. The OP must decide to either 1) legitimize the counterargument by engaging, and run the risk of entering an unproductive dialogic detour, or 2) attempt to steer the conversation back to the original argument but risk appearing dismissive or uncooperative.
titivate
10mo ago
John Oliver becoming an icon of the resistance and being posted everywhere is the latest "most reddit thing" to happen, but I have to admit I'm surprised because it's spreading to places I didn't expect. I previously attributed flash mob meme activism to the anglo white male demographic, but it's happening even in subs like BestofRedditorUpdates, a repost sub of AITA and the like, with a predominantly female base, likely even moreso than its parent. They held a poll whether to convert the sub to a John Oliver shit posting sub, and the yeas outnumber the nays almost 5:1. Am I the only one surprised by this?
titivate
11mo ago
Do people post for a sense of impact? I hadn't considered it. Why should a chef change the menu for one person's arbitrary tastes? If most people like cake, let them eat cake. @TheGodhead already said more or less my thoughts anyways.
titivate
1yr ago
Are younger people less skeptical of the US government compared to older generations? I only have a small sample size but it always struck me that the boomers I know seemed more skeptical of Uncle Sam regarding privacy and foreign policy compared to people that use reddit. Or is it just reddit that tends to be more pro-US than the general population?
titivate
1yr ago
Are you surprised the other side is punching back in a cultural fistfight, or disputing it was ever a fight, or surprised that there hasn't been a detente after the tides started turning?
Japan's first forced cultural exchange with the Americans started with Perry putting on a minstrel show. Hasn't entertainment always served dual purposes?
I'm not sure how to word this, but I have a poor impression of Japanese people's intellect that contradicts their reported mean IQ, which is supposed to be among the highest. Trying to find counterexamples among translated works seems futile, it's all swill for the masses. Even the old stuff, like the tale of genji, or esoteric buddhist writings, don't seem worth diving into. There seems to be no demand for heavier intellectual content beyond cheap existentialism. For instance, the 3-body problem would have never been published in Japan. Am I the only one puzzled by their stunted level of content production? I get reminded of this contradiction every time I read comments from Japanese people on quora or elsewhere. Maybe something is lost in translation, but they commonly come across as substantially and consistently dumber than other ESLs.
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