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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3165 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 20, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I expect to be going on a trip (on the order of two weeks) to Singapore fairly soon. Since it will be my first time there, any recommendations for things to see or avoid?

Two weeks in Singapore is kind of a lot. There's not that much to see and while it's a great place to be rich in it's a mid place to be poor in.

For eats, I strongly recommend Blanco Court Fried Fish Noodles and Mr. Biryani.

I do have to second @pbmonster and ask why you're spending two weeks in Singapore. Perhaps I like to travel fast, but I spent far less time in Beijing, Seoul or Xi'an, all much older and more historically rich cities than Singapore. I honestly say three or four days maximum in Singapore, four if you're really dead from all the walking in the horrific tropical heat; you'll need to rest a lot in order not to pass out from heat exhaustion.

Anyway, I like history, so in my recommendations I'll focus on that alone. Firstly, there are some pretty nice Hokkien temples in the city centre. Thian Hock Keng Temple and Yueh Hai Ching Temple are two relatively old ones (hailing from 1800s) with colourful porcelain detailing and woodcarvings, personally I think you can't go wrong with Hokkien temples; most of them are quite beautifully decorated. Bunch of Indian temples downtown too: Sri Mariamman Temple, Sri Krishnan Temple, Sri Thendayuthapani Temple and so on are some old ones.

Secondly, there are also some historical houses I know of that you can mooch around. The House of Tan Yeok Nee is one of the only two remaining traditional large Chinese mansions left in Singapore, and it's built in Teochew style with a lot of tiling and decoration. And the Former House of Tan Teng Niah is a uniquely colourful Chinese heritage villa. The NUS Baba House on the other hand is a Peranakan/Straits Chinese villa; they're an ethnic group that has both Chinese and Malay descent and hybridises cultural influences from both groups. Worth seeing that when you're in the Straits, because that's an architectural trend you probably won't be able to find anywhere else.

Finally, if you really want a very weird and hyperspecific attraction, the Har Paw Villa is a strange bit of history. It was built by two Burmese-Chinese brothers who developed the analgesic heat rub known as "Tiger Balm" (if you're Chinese, you have definitely had this applied if you have had joint pain or even when you got sick as a kid). They built gigantic theme parks in Singapore, Hong Kong and Fujian showcasing dioramas of Chinese folklore and religion (the one in Singapore features over a thousand of them), which became a popular recreational destination in Singapore. In its heyday during the 1950s and 60s, the park hosted about 1 million visitors yearly, though visitor numbers have significantly decreased now.

Anyway, I'd also recommend making trips to Malaysia, and would point to Malacca and Georgetown as particularly interesting and historical places. I was there just this January, so if you want more info on them I'm happy to provide it.

Thanks for the recommendations! These all look interesting, and quite in line with what I'm looking for. I would add a more specific question for whether there are parts of town that are particularly interesting on the street level, in the sense of having local colour rather than being all globalised slop. (I'm quite open to shantytowns and the like too.) Also, anything touching on the military history of the place? The British colonial era, prisons/bunkers/batteries that changed hands during WWII or were otherwise connected to it being overrun, etc.?

The reason for the ~two weeks is that it's a technically-for-work trip (but with a low expectation for the actual density of work that will be done). A one- or two-day excursion to Malaysia is probably conceivable; how is the transport situation to go to Malacca or beyond? Are there good trains, or is it sensible to rent a car and drive?

I would add a more specific question for whether there are parts of town that are particularly interesting on the street level, in the sense of having local colour rather than being all globalised slop. (I'm quite open to shantytowns and the like too.)

That does exist in places (I look for these kinds of neighbourhoods as well; I truly hate the International Style). You'll find a lot of lovely colourful Straits-style shophouses in and around Chinatown, which also happens to house the two traditional Hokkien temples I spoke about earlier. In addition, Little India should provide you much of that local vernacular style, there are many shophouses there that primarily cater to the Indian diaspora. Koon Seng Road also features a bunch of Peranakan dwellings that have been painted very colourfully, though there isn't that much else to do in the area.

Also, anything touching on the military history of the place? The British colonial era, prisons/bunkers/batteries that changed hands during WWII or were otherwise connected to it being overrun, etc.?

There are a good number of colonial-era WW2 forts and bunkers: the most prominent are Fort Siloso, Labrador ATMB Battery, and the Battlebox on Fort Canning Hill (the Battlebox, in particular, is where the decision to surrender Singapore to the Japanese was made). Fort Canning also has some earlier fortifications going back to the 1800s, though only the gate and two cannons remain of this early fort. There's also the Changi Chapel and Museum, which features exhibits on a strange part of WW2 history: it was a place where Allied POWs were interned during the Japanese occupation of Malaya, and during this period prisoners converted buildings into churches and built makeshift altars out of scrap.

By the way don't forget to try the Singapore chilli crab. Criminal thing to miss out on, in my opinion.

A one- or two-day excursion to Malaysia is probably conceivable; how is the transport situation to go to Malacca or beyond? Are there good trains, or is it sensible to rent a car and drive?

There's no direct train from Singapore to Malacca, and it's a three-hour drive between the two cities if you're using a rental. I believe there are also buses directly connecting the two cities, that's a four hour trip.

In other words, it's doable if you're willing to spend a bit of time on the road. Ideally I would spend two full days just to soak in the vibe, though I'm not sure how realistic that is for you depending on your schedule. Malacca is small and sleepy but very charming, it has all the local feel you would want from a Southeast Asian city (it's so colourful and vibrant it looks like a Wes Anderson film sometimes), and has the historical credentials to boot, having been founded around 1400 as the capital of a sultanate. Lots of pretty little temples, heritage houses, churches, mosques and fortresses. It also has the most consistently amazing food I've tasted in the whole country, and I do not say this lightly; I grew up in Malaysia and am very particular about my Malaysian food.

If you end up deciding that you want to do Malacca just let me know. I can offer up some very detailed recommendations.

EDIT: Note that NUS Baba House seems to be closed for renovations, for something similar to that there's also the Singapore Peranakan Mansion Museum.

If you enjoy history, I can recommend the Asian Civilisations Museum. One of the better ones I've visited, specifically it is orders of magnitude better than every single anthropological/historical museum I've visited in Japan. The National Museum is more about Singapore itself, but I also found it well done. If anything, the museums are air-conditioned, which will make them very much appealing once you're exploring the streets. The city also has a nice selection of different styles of temples, I decided to visit all the major ones just as a mission to see many different parts of the city on foot.

If you like Asian food, I've had some of the best Chinese and Indian food of my life in Singapore, both street food and fancy restaurants. Selecting restaurants beforehand is probably worth it.

When I asked Singaporean people what they like to do, they suggested going to one of the mega-malls, with the cable cars to Sentosa Island and (of course) to Marina Bay. The two former I flat out hated, they are not worth doing, unless you really have time to kill or need photos for Instagram - they look much better in photos than in real life. No matter what, absolutely do not go swimming at the beach at Sentosa, that must be just about the worst touristic beach in Asia. Marina Bay (the towers, the gardens, the indoor jungle, the supertrees at night, and the area around it) are more or less obligatory for tourism in Singapore, but just like the main Botanical Gardens and the Zoo I found all that just extremely... mid. Unless you like park design and architecture, it won't even fill a full day.

Two weeks is a lot of time for a "young" city like Singapore. I would strongly recommend long excursions into Malaysia instead of staying in the city, and I regret not leaving for trips sooner.

Thanks for the recommendations! I'll make sure to check out the museums (and the food was ranking high on the todo list anyway, open to concrete (anti-)recommendations there too). Do you know if there's anything interesting to do with the more recent history of the city, specifically including the Japanese occupation?

As I said in my parallel response to problem_redditor, the two-week period is not entirely under my control, but I can probably fit in a short detour to Malaysia somewhere.

I had a short layover last December.

It's disgustingly hot and humid there year round, so prepare for that.

Out of your list, This Is Going To Hurt and the Golden Oecumene/Culture comparison sound like I would enjoy them the most, just going off of your blurbs. The former just carries the risk of being seen as a bit too much of a vanilla/safe/on-the-nose choice for Scott's blog.

Having read Blindsight, I also don't see what a review of it would add. The book, while being interesting in the way an academic paper is, is also dry and bloodless like one, and something something trying to squeeze juice from a brick.

vanilla/safe/on-the-nose choice for Scott's blog

Fair point, but in my defense, I'm a psychiatry resident, in the NHS, and also suffering from my residency while using humor as a coping mechanism. If anyone can get away with it, it should be me, goddammit!

Having read Blindsight, I also don't see what a review of it would add. The book, while being interesting in the way an academic paper is, is also dry and bloodless like one, and something something trying to squeeze juice from a brick

I genuinely disagree on the characterization of the book, it's one of my favorite novels for good reason, and that includes the sharp prose. Watts might be a depressed misanthrope who prays that humanity pays for its sins (any day now), but the man can write. Oh well, opinions can vary among gentlemen. I can think of a few things to discuss, I believe the reposted/updated version in the SSQ thread specifically mentions general cognitive neuroscience advancements as well as the clear example of LLMs as an inhuman intelligence that may or may not have qualia/consciousness.

Watts might be a depressed misanthrope who prays that humanity pays for its sins (any day now), but the man can write.

Yeah, reading his online comments made me genuinely reflect on whether I might have overestimated the depth of his books. I still like Blindsight, but boy does the guy sound like a complete cliche in short-form.

Just look at what the side bar on the blog is titled.

I think my actual favorite by Watts is the Sunflower series/novella. There's no scope for heavy handed ecological metaphors, just good old fashioned scifi and existential dread.

Since today is Forgiveness Sunday, I sincerely ask you to forgive me for anything I have knowingly or unknowingly written to make you sad or angry or hurt you in any other way.

See you on Easter.

God forgives, I forgive.

Now I have to go back through your comment history to see if you've written anything to piss me off that I've forgotten about.

In one of those weird things where it feels like the internet is actually fulfilling its promise, Angine de Poitrine has gone viral. They are a... uhh, alien? rock group of two guys from Saguenay in the interior of Québec. They play a simultaneously incoherent and very danceable style of microtonal music. They've been active for a few years but blew up in the past two weeks thanks to the video I linked of them playing a studio session in Rennes. Previously obscure if you weren't a real music nerd, their current tour is now selling out everywhere.

The youtube comments are quite funny, but there's also a realization that this is the kind of music that is both cool and totally unmarketable, and so it sort of falls to the whims of the algorithm as to whether unique, interesting, and talented artists like this can find a following.

They play a simultaneously incoherent and very danceable style of microtonal music.

At first I was "Wait, you can't really play microtonal music on a guitar". Then I saw the frets of said guitar...

This is also the first time I've ever seen someone use those weirdo pedals that /r/guitarpedals loves such that they sound actually musical.

This is really good! Surprised this has been blowing up for two weeks and I missed it; this is the kind of thing that I could see myself having on regular rotation for a while.

Les Trans

Everything about the visual aesthetic screams "annoying gimmick band" (they seriously replaced the volume and tone pots with dice? really?), but I can't deny this is a lot of fun, while still being math-y enough for the "count the time signatures" crowd.

My God, that double-necked guitar/bass must weigh a fucking ton though.

My God, that double-necked guitar/bass must weigh a fucking ton though.

Now imagine if it was based on a Les Paul instead of a Strat.

My God, that double-necked guitar/bass must weigh a fucking ton though.

Just copying the past 😂

That duo are okay, but (1) I've lived through the gimmick 'this is art not just pop' bands before (Devo and Blue Man Group, anyone?) and (2) my tastes remain stuck in the 17th century.

Just copying the past

As big as it is and as awkward as it is to play, it probably isn't actually very heavy, by virtue of being hollow.

Just copying the past 😂

Too far in the past man:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=PoAGasPLh30

The path to ubiquitous AI (17k tokens/sec): A company (TALAAS) just announced a chip that runs LLMs very fast: according to their graph, 8.5x as fast as Cerebras, which is 5.6x as fast as Nvidia. Try it for yourself. It's running LLaMa 3.1 8B, so rather dumb, but the answers are nearly instant. Allegedly it's much cheaper (10x) than GPUs, too. A downside is that the model is hard-wired into the chip, allegedly two months from model to production.

Any use cases that aren't possible with today's (relatively) slower and more expensive models? Perhaps you put this on a router to have a very smart firewall. Or have it repeatedly generate code and fix bugs until a test suite passes, which Opus and Codex do but they can take a while. Then again, it's not instant, and frontier models already generate text very fast, much faster than a human can write or even read.

A downside is that the model is hard-wired into the chip, allegedly two months from model to production.

That's (almost) the difference between Claude Opus 4.1 and 4.6 (skipping over 4.5), or GPT 5.1 vs. GPT 5.3 (kind of, since it's a restricted release).

There's probably a niche for it, but it probably won't become a core piece of the landscape even discounting the cost.

This is so cool but immediate gut reaction is that this

A downside is that the model is hard-wired into the chip

Is a deal-breaker in a world that is massively constrained by fab (right now literally anything wafer based (i.e. RAM too) not just CPU/GPU) capacity

In a world where fab capacity is plentiful and machine time cheap (i.e. no bidding wars for output) I can see this being an amazing optimization, especially if we hit scaling walls and base models stop being updated so fast.

But right now with constant model updates and 0 fab space? This isn't going into mass production

We should be using AIs to build more fabs, then. Have them design faster RAM and processors, better fabrication methods with higher yields.

The bottle neck is not science. Make them design robots that build physical factories.

Make them design robots that speed run the approvals process for factories.

Make them create a political party that would produce politicians that don't make creating new factories a Kafkian nightmare. That's the AI I would like to support. I mean if we give up on solving human problems as humans and are willing to pass the torch onto AIs, let's go all in.

That was my immediate thought as well. We're obviously not at that point yet. The $64K question is whether we will be in a couple of years or a couple of decades.

Design isn't the bottleneck though. We have designed fabs before, most of the hard part is solved. It's actually building these massive facilities, supplying them with water and energy, keeping them at pressure, staffing them with technicians, and troubleshooting the million small issues that can eat into yield ratios that is hard. It would take some world changing advancements in robotics or AI just leapfrogging our current understanding of how to build chips for them to make a dent in the difficulty of the process.

If that was trivial, we'd already be living in the singularity and/or matrix.

I am obsessed with this Anti-diss track about Pipkin Pippa. It's so good.

I suspect my weeb levels are higher than average for this place, so not sure how much people care or know about Vtubers, but I've been falling deeper into the rabbit hole of Based Vtuber reactions. People like SmugAlana, Nuxtaku, or Leaflit, who watch and make commentary on various political or culture war stuff. It's not like super deep stuff, it's just something fun to listen to in the background while playing games or something.

Which then led me to Skyebrows, who (like Leaflit) makes AI generated music videos which are pretty cool. And tends to have a generally based perspective (glazing people like Amelia, Elon Musk, or Asmongold)

One of his videos featured a cameo by (AI generated version of) Pippa, who is a rabbit Vtuber known for being based and a bit unhinged. Kind of Alex-Jones lite? She'll go on rants about how she doesn't trust the Federal Government, or how much she hates Walmart. She calls things "gay" or "retarded" as an insult, the way people used to before being afraid of cancel culture. And since she's effectively anonymous as a Vtuber, and her income is derived from her fans who know she's like this, she's basically cancel-proof.

So her chat spams her with pleas to go watch this video because she's in it and it's so cool. And she gets watches it, and is not impressed. She goes on her conspiracy rant about how this dude looks sketchy. It looks gay. It looks like a bunch of clout chasing slop designed to get people hyped, and he's probably going to pull a Candace Owens, make a crypto coin, and then rug pull it. She goes full schizo on him.

So he makes what I can only call an Anti-diss track. He takes all of her words and makes them into the lyrics, and it's about her being cool and based and beating the crap out of him. Literally, there's a scene where Pippa goes and beats him up and he doesn't fight back. And then all the other Vtubers who have watched his videos and liked them line up and shoot heart beams and he powers up with their support and there's this giant energy blob Spirit Bomb and it looks like he's going to finally counter attack and then.... he says "it's okay to be gay" and hugs her while possibly crying, and an inspiring line from her in the background plays about how you can be cool and make all sorts of drawings or other art, you just have to let go of your ego.

The message being "You might hate me, but I still love you"

I thought it was really clever. A cool way to respond to hate, while still kind of getting back at the other person (she's unlikely to actually be happy about being the focus of a video this way, even though it does make her look cool). And it helps that the song is really really catchy (in my opinion).

Anyway, just a bit of minor internet drama that happened (and involves AI) and thought some of you might find interesting.

No idea who any of these people are or what their little corners of the Internet are, but that was indeed oddly wholesome.

My God, between "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" and this, are we seeing the return of unironic sincerity?

I believe the vast majority of the people who show up in that video are very small Vtubers with a couple hundred or maybe low thousands subscribers. But they reacted to previous Skybrows videos, and he's very online and has a habit of checking youtube constantly for new reactions to his content and commenting on their videos about his videos. Which is maybe a bit narcissistic, but also kind of wholesome. And then he included them in this video to represent the love that the community gives to him and how it gives him power/courage/support, and also show his appreciation for them in turn. (I know this because most of them in turn have reacted to this video and I like watching them get excited when they see themselves show up. I might be a bit too online myself).

I do hope we see a return of unironic sincerity. The handful of instances of it I've seen recently have been pleasant and refreshing. Irony, sarcasm, and cynicism have their place, but we've swung way too far in that direction recently and I'd like to see more variety like this.

Anonymity doesn't make one's online persona cancel-proof, only their real-life identity, and Pippa Pipkin has been unmasked on the Kiwi Farms anyway. Vtubing culture just tolerates the kind of things she does, especially pandering to lolicons.

I've watched Pippa a lot. I think the overall culture has changed a bit (partly because of her). Vtubers really took off around 2020, when people were stuck inside due to lockdowns, with nothing to do but consume endless content online. And between covid and the presidential election, some people were desparate to find a happy space where people weren't talking about politics, so vtubers became something of a sanctuary. And the En world especially, everything revolved around Hololive, which was set up like a traditional idol company, with them having a carefully curated image and avoiding contraversial subjects (although they could still be pretty edgy sometimes).

Pippa was originally just some random streamer working for a small unknown agency. She wasn't trying to be "based" or political at all, she was just a weird shut-in who spent too much time chronically online looking up weird edgy content, and then she started talking about it in streams. She intentionally referenced 4chan memes, although usually not political ones, and 4chan at the time was a big hub of vtuber discussion, just not one that anyone in hololive or nijisanji would ever acknowledge.

So OK, she does occasionally mention things like how she owns guns or is interested in the Bismarck. But she's really not doing "based" political content at all. She's just cracking jokes, trying to be high energy, and doing whatever she can to be funny. She'll mention people like Asmongold or Alex Jones, but almost never discuss them in any detail. She certainly doesn't stand up on a soap box for any specific political causes. Still, even that much was pretty shocking the general vtuber culture of 2021-2022.

Nowadays, of course, there's a million indie vtubers, and most of them are a lot farther removed from Hololive or any other "idol" types. So now we have some that are explicitly political. It's not that shocking though, it's just... kinda boring, they repeat the same talking points as anyone else on the internet.

All of this is to say that Pippa just kinda pretends to be edgy, but it's pretty tongue-in-cheek and she's actually a sweet girl, so I wish people would just leave her alone.

Based doesn't just mean "politically right wing" though there is a bit of connotation in that direction. Ultimately it's when you say what you believe and what's true in spite of the external and opposing narratives and political correctness. People who are trying to be based, or god forbid call themselves based unironically, are almost automatically not. It's based to be yourself in spite of opposition, to say your opinion unapologetically, and be right about it. Which Pippa isn't always. And granted I haven't watched a lot of her content, mostly the more popular clips. But she seems generally based, if a bit unhinged at times.

People should leave her alone more though, I agree.

I second Orthoxerox in saying that a community that self-describes as "based" (or even is generally described as such) is nothing such, and is probably more likely to be cringe.

At any rate, I feel too old for this nonsense. It took me a moment to realize that you were talking about Pipkin Pippa and not Peppa Pig. Not that I'm complaining about you sharing this, I just look on in genuine bemusement and in terrified awareness that I'm becoming an "unc". Potentially a gay retard unc to boot.

I was thinking maybe Pippa Middleton found a new hobby.

I think I'm about your age and an intern at my office called me "unc" and I honestly might just go check into an old folks home and die at this point

Same as seeing an "old person's" listed age in an anime/Final Fantasy. But I tend to mentally age up everyone in those sorts of media by default, so...

Please don't do that. If you're in the UK, I might be the doctor seeing you, and I have enough on my plate already. If you're elsewhere, I still have sympathy for the local doctors.

Just embrace the status of 30-year-old boomer.

Yes, the Kiwi Farms threads on these people generally indicate that they are quite cringe.

I'm quite wary of vtubers in general, but "based vtubers" strike me as someone particularly untrustworthy. Hiding behind a pretty avatar and telling you things you want to hear in a pretty voice, they are, I'm 99% sure, in it for the money.

There's someone at the vtuber talent agency analyzing the potentical viewer demographic and going, "studies show that a significant chunk of Zoomer incels is not covered by our existing selection of personas, we need someone more... based, they call it?"

Sorry for bringing the CW into the fun thread.

It's actually quite the opposite.

Vtubing, I'd say, tends to lean more centric overall - if anything, recent attempts to try and make Vtubing more 'woke' or drag them into the cultural war have been received roughly akin to a wet fart. It's a weirdly meritocratic, and the benefits of a Vtubing avatar pushing forward toward anonymity means that they have less fear overall voicing thier opinions on things without having to worry about receiving censorship.

Conversely, the Vtubers that are rather left leaning have no fear whatsoever making hay about that - inevitably, they'll have some blow-up or drama or whatnot and then it's masks off. So grifters inevitably get found out, while others just blithly drift along doing thier own thing.

Now, having said that - Pippa gets glazed as 'alt-right' more than she deserves, mostly because the overton window has shifted so badly that someone talking like they're posting on 4chan pre-2016 is going to get people flocking to them in releif to get away from the overall cultural longhouse, so to speak. So while she can be spicy, if you're someone who's been following her for a long period of time, you've probably noticed that she's been purposefully dialing things back, not for herself per se but because she wants to save all her friends the grief and aggravation of dealing with Pippa being a little unhinged. She's quite the sweetheart like that.

Now, there are a few other talents that are actually what people think Pippa is, but I'm not gonna say who they are.

Also, Phase Connect is... weird. That would require a thread on it's lonesome.

The vast majority of these are indie, not corporate. That is, it's just a regular person who wants to be a streamer and using an anime avatar instead of showing their real face. Almost all of the corporations are too afraid of their image and the potential for being cancelled to let their employees express political views. With the exception of Phase Connect (which Pippa works for), which is much more hands off, though doesn't seem to actively encourage it.

But it's not like you need big corporate money to afford a Vtuber avatar, they're mostly there for handling marketing and sponsorships and stuff. All my experience with non-corporate Vtubers suggests they're the same as any other streamer. Some of them are probably grifting, some of them are not, and you can kind of get a partially accurate vibe check by watching them. It's imaginable that a woman who loves feminism would pretend to hate it just to be popular with men (though difficult, given the difficulties leftists have with understanding right-wing opinions), but it's also imaginable that a woman who hates feminism (they're rare, but they exist) would get on the internet and say so and then be popular with men. And then get signal boosted to the top. Once you start selecting for popularity, it's no longer a random sampling. And the authentic ones are much more likely have more interesting and insightful opinions and get discovered.

Sure, if you pick literally any random supposedly based Vtuber with a true random sampling there's probably a non-negligible chance of them grifting. But if you pick one of the more well-known ones they're probably authentic. Obviously they want money too, which is why they have cute anime avatar with big boobs. But it's easier to do that with authentic opinions than grifted ones.

https://harpers.org/archive/2026/03/childs-play-sam-kriss-ai-startup-roy-lee/

Sam Kriss is a good writer. I didn't expect the article to pivot from a Chinese-American Psycho to a dinner with Scott Alexander, but it did.

UPD: just got to the Donald Boat part and I'm in tears. Now I'll have to explain to my wife why I was giggling idiotically and endure her condescending look.

I find this kind of irritating. Feels like "check out these freaks who think they're better than you (they aren't)" genre bad faith writing.

I do like the Roy telling him to go to Turkey to get his hair fixed part though.

I liked his Burning Man article a lot more.

More amusing than I expected it to be, and yeah: San Francisco full of lonely scared people chasing (and being given) zillions of dollars so they can tell themselves they are doing something.

"They're my slaves" had me rolling ahaha. Thanks for sharing my man this is great.

I think Kriss writes very well. I also think he's bitter as hell, considers himself an underachieving failure, and is often jealous of people who made better choices in life (doing something other than journalism).

He has a terminal case of better-than-thou syndrome, he finds it much easier to tear down than build up. That's fine, I still think he's always entertaining and mostly insightful, which is a high bar indeed.

I'm on the side of the Rats in their small but spirited beef with him for Making Shit Up (it's a bad habit), but he's more generous in this essay, he almost comes out and says nice things about Scott, and the fact he doesn't insult him outright means he does like the guy. I can hardly complain about anyone trashing Cluely.

Sam Kriss is a good writer (a great one, even), but a bad thinker. Once you’ve read enough of what he writes, you can not only predict the broad outline of a Kriss Essay, you can also write your own in your head by stringing together obscure references, the occasional semi-ironic blasé fabrication, and a contemptuous leftist sneer for both the masses in general and anyone who works a regular job specifically.

contemptuous leftist sneer for both the masses in general and anyone who works a regular job specifically.

And people who start companies, too. The only way out is unemployment or writing a Substack.

Sam Kriss is an amazing writer, a true jester

Sam Kriss

Will check it out but prior note that I had fun reading his Clavicular looksmaxxing post a couple weeks ago.

I'm reading his Burning Man semi-mock travelogue and it's a hoot. A mix between Scott's Bay Area house party series and Fear and Loathing.

This was funny, but:

The highly agentic are people who just do things.

(neat)

They don’t timidly wait for permission or consensus; they drive like bulldozers through whatever’s in their way.

(yep, sounds good)

When they see something that could be changed in the world, they don’t write a lengthy critique—they change it.

(hell yeah)

AIs are not capable of accessing whatever unpleasant childhood experience it is that gives you this hunger.

Wait, what?

(In fairness, I think he shows a little more self-awareness later on:

Absolutely anyone could have done the same things he did. In 2020, when Eric was subcontracting coding gigs out to the Third World, I was utterly broke, living in a room the size of a shoebox in London. I would scour my local supermarket for reduced-price items nearing their sell-by date, which meant that an alarmingly high percentage of my diet consisted of liverwurst. There was nothing stopping me from making thousands of dollars a week by doing exactly what Eric was doing. It didn’t require any skills at all—just a tiny amount of initiative. But he did it and I didn’t. Why?

But it still seemed like an odd sentiment.).

AIs are not capable of accessing whatever unpleasant childhood experience it is that gives you this hunger.

Wait, what?

What don't you get about it? He's making the point that most of the 'highly agentic tech bros' in these circles are basically narcissists driven by an intense psychological need for approval and even worship from others. I think he paints the picture quite well, and that it's rather accurate.

I guess it's a coherent worldview as far as it goes, but, like, how absolutely cloudcuckooland insane to hear "you can just do things" and think "this is bad" with a side of "they should be going to therapy instead". I mean, would it be better to not just do things, to sweat and whine about our condition, lie awake in the dark and weep for our sins? This is particularly baffling when a lot of "you can just do things"-ists are doing things that are in fact fake and gay, and pointing this out seems like a much more penetrating critique of the implicit ideology! "Narcissists driven by an intense psychological need for approval" also seems like a TLP/Internet use of "narcissism" to mean "stuff I don't like", though this is arguably orthogonal to the point.

I think what he's getting at is that the things that these people are doing are quite immoral, and have horrible externalities on the rest of us.

It's accurate about people who use their agentic nature to farm social media likes. Naturally, as a social media consumer without visibility into the field, those are the only ones Sam Kriss notices. The people using their agentic nature to do great work and advance their goals without making social media fame a top tier priority go unnoticed.

Why do Zoomer YouTubers holding their tiny mics in front of their faces and talking into them without inflection annoy me so much?

It's a rebuke of the hyper-polished style of Youtubing that made so many millennial youtube millionaires: super expensive radio-quality mic and and a ring light at the perfect most flattering angle.

It's been exchanged for the "schizo rambling in his bedroom" style which at least has the veneer of more authenticity, even if there's layers of irony the audience has to tolerate. Not to mention it might genuinely be a cheaper production.

super expensive radio-quality mic

Ah, the cliche Shure SM7B, used mostly by people who have no idea why you'd choose it and who don't even know how to use it. Aka the less colored more upscale version of the uniquituous SM57 / SM58. Although at 400e it's hardly "super expensive" considering there are plenty of fairly run of the mill microphones that cost 1000e or more. Still, you can easily get that same "sound" from any number of cheap 100-200e cardioid electret mics (or even the cheap SM57 and a bit of EQ). All without looking like a goddamn idiot.

I blame that they grew up watching famous twitch streamers do it. Caught on from there

Because it's dumb. The only thing dumber is when YouTubers over the age of 30 do the same thing.

Once you're over 30, you really need to be using a larger mic. By the time you're retirement age, it should be at least ten feet wide.

At least they know how to emphasize words they find important.

I'm digging women's hockey this olympics, for the obvious patriotic reasons. I'm actually thinking it's a vastly underrated women's sport: the level and pace of play actually makes it more watchable than the men's, the girls are pretty and normal. It's much more entertaining than women's soccer, and the players are much easier to like than women's basketball.

But at any rate, the culture war angle interesting to me: lesbians have fallen off hard as a sexual fantasy, while at the same time homosexual men have surged, compared to when I was young.

At twelve in boy scouts, there was a common dirty joke: Right (index finger inserted into thumb and finger loop), Wrong (two index fingers bumping into each other), Fun to Watch (two thumb and finger loops bumping into each other). This more or less reflected the common understanding of homosexuality at the time (and our painfully stupid understanding of sex): two guys hooking up was disgusting and bad, two women making love was maybe not normal or moral but boy was it hot. This was reflected in media like The L Word (which my painfully square sister loved), episodes of shows like Sex and the City, etc. A woman could dip her toe in gay, or be turned on by lesbians, without it permanently scarring her as a partner, the male gaze was happy to absorb the content. Gay men were almost never eroticized, they were generally treated as jesters or sexless, gay sex took place exclusively off-screen. Lesbians reached acceptance through straight male and female masturbatory fantasies, gay men through pushing what was really happening as far out of mind as possible.

Compare to today, where Heated Rivalry is such a hit that seemingly every woman is flicking the bean to it, and women's hockey appears to be doing it for real and no one cares. Heated Rivalry has a huge following for the fantasy of maybe, what if, somehow, there were two gay guys in the NHL and they were actually good at hockey? Where we have like a dozen confirmed lesbian couples in the olympics playing against each other, and I'm not seeing any dirty fantasies about it. We've lost the raunch culture, the male focused Vulgar Wave of entertainment. There's not the Bulldog Briscoe to bark lasciviously and yell "hot" after every mention. What culture seems to be saying is that we've gone from Right Wrong Fun to Watch, to Right Right Who Cares.

Is this a fall-off in the lesbian fantasy in particular among younger straight men and women? Is it a fall off of male sexual power versus female sexual power? Is it the painful wokism of modernity? Am I just not looking at the right media?

Come on boys, let's get out there and RETVRN to tradition and objectify some female athletes when the pads come off!

The women's figure skating finals yesterday were a ton of fun. We definitely felt the absense of doped-up Russians this year. I'm glad that they raised the minimum age to 17. It no longer feels like you're in the Epstein Files to watch it.

I'm a big fan of Liu winning gold, in that I knew some competitive figure skaters years back and they were just so brutalized by the sport by the time they were 20. She looked a lot more normal than most figure skaters, you can tell she spent a year or two not starving herself.

At the same time, I can't imagine how pissed off the other girls must be that she could just take a break and come back.

Someone said it looked like she was doing TikTok dances on the ice, and now I can't unsee it. I suppose it's well in keeping with the American character.

What is the context of that tweet?

The context is generic culture war slop you’ve heard a million times.

Coming from the other direction as the other commenters, gay men have been a (some-)straight-woman fantasy for some time now, it's just become more visible to the normies for the same reason that social media has made everything more visible to the normies. Mid-2010s Tumblr had big shipping communities devoted to the show Supernatural and its male leads; these were predated by the mid-2000s anime fandoms hyping up pairings such as Naruto/Sasuke or Death Note's L and Light to the point of yaoi paddles being sold at cons. I'm not sure what notable immediate predecessors to that locus of gay-men likers there were, but I do know that the practice goes back at least to the 60s with women putting together mimeographed and hand-stapled magazines with stories about Kirk and Spock getting it on.

the level and pace of play actually makes it more watchable than the men's

I've been unable to watch it because I'm used to men's hockey, but I guess it might be a good on-ramp for people not already into hockey. It is overall the world's best professional sport for spectators, but the fact that somehow other sports are more popular show that there might be an issue of easing people into it. It's fast, it's strategic, it's robust, it highlights personal courage and grit, it requires its athletes to be complete well-rounded athletes instead of min-maxxing specific traits, it's exciting with games (at the pro level, not as much in the Olympics) usually ending with a close score. It hits the perfect balance of personal and team effort in success. Goals are neither infrequent (soccer) nor too frequent (basketball). The flow of the game feels mostly natural, less artificial stop and go (football, baseball). The only thing I'll grant other sports over hockey is that hockey is perhaps less relatable especially in places with less ice rinks; any kid on the planet can play pickup soccer, you just need a ball and a big enough field. Basketball you just need a ball and a court. Hockey needs a bit more than that.

Problems for Hockey that hold it down:

-- You can't see the puck on TV. The author in the linked article defends that you don't need to, but that's kinda goofy, and also pretty telling that he isn't saying "yes you can," he admits it is a problem even if he claims that it shouldn't keep you from liking hockey. Not being able to see the ball in any other sport is an immediate crisis.

-- It's freakishly expensive for kids in the USA. Travel team hockey costs around $7-15k/yr and some higher than $20k. That's crazy numbers. Competitive youth golf is cheaper than that. That's getting into "cost to keep a horse" territory in a lot of places. While travel teams are a problem in all sports, the rest of the big team sports in America still have a viable path for a kid who joins rec league teams and then makes the high school team. In hockey there's very little pipeline to the NHL other than through elite youth programs. It's a rich kid sport.

-- The population center of gravity in the US keeps shifting south, and even the northeast has had mild winters preventing ponds from freezing to safe levels in recent years, so nobody is playing hockey outside the way it was meant to be played.

Not being able to see the puck to me is a weird complaint although I guess it might be valid for people not used to hockey. It's not so much that nuh-huh, you can see it, but that with a bit of awareness of the game and a decent sportscast, it's obvious where the puck is whether you see it or not. The player with the puck moves differently, other players move differently with regards to him and the camera usually follows the puck.

Sure, but at that point I'm not really watching the game of Hockey, I'm watching the reactions of the players to the game of Hockey. Yes, I can pretty much follow who has possession of the puck, but I can't really see the puck being shot or going into the net in real time. For Larkin's goal against Slovakia I can't process the movement of the puck during the shot to know whether the shot went in or not prior to seeing the player reactions. I don't actually know what is going on if the broadcast cut off before the reaction. Where I can see that Devonta Smith caught the dagger, or a VJ Edgecome put back, or a penalty kick. I suppose if I spent 10,000 hours watching hockey, I might acquire the perception "at the level of baseline skill" to pick up the puck going into the net, but like, why? To impress rich kid Canadians?

Due to the pace of hockey, one pretty much has to be glued to the screen to get anything out of it in real time. I have to be watching and focusing to perceive what's going on, not chatting with guests or cooking dinner. Where baseball and football (both, in their own unique ways) are so slow that I can mostly just look up every now and then and not miss anything important; and also enjoy them audio only, where hockey audio just sounds like a random listing of mixed English and slavic names.

I actually think one of the downsides, or overapplications, of instant replay has been that increasingly I can't see live whether something is a "catch" or a "foul ball" or a "goaltend." Instant replay should mostly be for situations where the ref had a bad angle on it and the whole world can see he was wrong, not for Zapruder film style breakdowns looking for whether a single toe touched the line, or talmudic interpretations of what constitutes a "football move."

FWIW, I don't think the problem of the inferior product being more watchable is limited to hockey. MMA, depending on the meta of the time and styles making fights, has often suffered from lay'n'pray championship bouts that were like watching paint dry; while undercard fights between two bar bums can be exciting as hell. March Madness is a strictly superior entertainment product to the NBA, pound for pound, despite the fact that even a poverty franchise like the Sacramento Kings would rip through every college team like butter.

Here my Euro background comes through, but focusing at the ball is very amateur level of watching soccer, too. Like, my dad used more unkind words when I said stuff like, I am looking at the ball. Yes, certainly be aware of the ball, but you don't focus at the ball. Watching the players' reactions is bit better as it is the losers' game, kids who only react to other players don't make it to a farm league. You are supposed to watch what they all are doing in anticipation where the ball and other players will be.

Concerning penalty shots: He was disappointed every time a game ended with a penalty shootout. Goalkeeper has only very few indications to go by, he is mostly guessing where the kicker will aim and if he gets it right, the goal is huge compared to dimensions of average human being on purpose. Every pro player knows how to kick the ball into one of the top corners where the keeper can't catch it. Mostly it is about whether the kicker loses their nerve or not. No longer about football, my father would say.

Looking at the puck is same in the hockey. But I though the complaint of not seeing the puck was about old 480p anolog tv tech. I can see the puck most of the time in the Youtube video you linked, except for the subsecond moments when it is flying. And when it is flying, it is about to get where its going before I can react, feels petty to complain about that. What I dislike the MMA part of the hockey (legal checking and sometimes tactical illegal checks).

but focusing at the ball is very amateur level of watching soccer, too.

The original question here was not "how does a true genius-level connoisseur watch sports" but "why isn't Hockey more popular?" The answer: because you can't see the puck. Saying "Well if you really knew hockey you'd know that watching the puck is for fools and amateurs..." doesn't really help when the audience we're discussing, the casual fans that make the NFL and NBA bigger than the NHL, are by definition fools and amateurs. All else being equal a sport that takes dedication to understand how to watch on TV is going to be less popular than a sport like basketball, which takes about five minutes to explain to an immigrant.

Like yeah, serious NFL fans know the right tackle is more important than the running back, but the NFL wouldn't be more popular if it was just a camera focused on Penei Sewell.

but I can't really see the puck being shot or going into the net in real time.

I'll put in a "nuh-uh" on that -- maybe only Canadians can see the puck? Certainly you lose track of it at times when they're fighting for it in the corners or whatnot, but out in the open being passed or shot it's just, like -- not hard to see? Easier than, say, a baseball in flight I'd say?

The "i know where the puck is even if I can't see it" thing is not that you never see it -- it's that you know where it is, so when it pops out onto open ice that's where you're looking. Maybe your TV is too big?

Watching that goal, I see him shoot it, I track it briefly in flight, I don't really see it going in just bouncing out after. Absent the commentary and player reactions, they could just keep playing and I'd assume it didn't go in. In baseball I can easily track flyballs, so a lot of it is probably that baseline skill/experience issue. But that does serve to make the game less accessible, for the vast majority of people who aren't already hockey fans or former players.

Sick final though. Trading two teeth for the gold medal in OT is legendary.

Sick final though. Trading two teeth for the gold medal in OT is legendary.

I'm watching it right now -- yes I know what happens, I'm watching it anyways!

NBC doesn't serve hockey to Canadians apparently, but looking at footage elsewhere it's a hard shot that bounces out -- this is hard to be sure about sometimes even for the refs and players! That's why there's a goal judge sitting behind the net. In this case it looks like it might have bounced off some of the crap they've got stationed inside the net; in the past you'd mostly see the impact on the netting, but there's still the rear bars -- normally there's a noise though.

If you think hockey is bad you should try watching lacrosse -- crowd injuries used to be a major problem there for people who didn't follow the action. Now I think there is dumb netting all over the place so people can safely focus on their beer.

I'm watching it right now -- yes I know what happens, I'm watching it anyways!

Cheers, I got up at 5 to get through my morning chores, mass, and get a little toasted for the final. Fantastic game. Absolutely heartbreaking olympics for Canadian hockey.

it's a hard shot that bounces out -- this is hard to be sure about sometimes even for the refs and players! That's why there's a goal judge sitting behind the net. In this case it looks like it might have bounced off some of the crap they've got stationed inside the net; in the past you'd mostly see the impact on the netting, but there's still the rear bars -- normally there's a noise though.

Ok, I think we're on the same page here, you agree that there are some plays that are basically impossible to perceive directly for a casual audience. I think there are more plays in hockey where I have a distinct lag in perceiving what is happening than there are in other major team sports, and that this holds it back in ease of spectator interest compared to the other major team sports.

I like hockey well enough, but I think tv content and youth costs are the biggest things hurting hockey's mainstream popularity.

If you think hockey is bad you should try watching lacrosse -- crowd injuries used to be a major problem there for people who didn't follow the action. Now I think there is dumb netting all over the place so people can safely focus on their beer.

I wonder if professional lacrosse ever makes it big, if I'm capable of forming team loyalties anymore.

More comments

Not being able to see the ball in any other sport is an immediate crisis.

Someone once very kindly took me to the most important cricket field in the UK to see a game. Cricket balls are red. I am red/green colourblind.

It was very awkward making sure they didn't catch on.

It's 2026. Can't we just have a neon green simulpuck indicating where the puck is for those following along at home?

Exactly. The NFL became a dominant TV product in no small part thanks to animating the first down marker on the field. When I watch football at home, I have strictly more information more easily than I have watching in person (where I'm mostly just yelling obscure taunts about the opposing team).

We had it 30 years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FoxTrax

the concept was criticized (especially by Canadian critics) for being a gimmick that distracted from the game.

Seeing the puck distracts from the game, folks.

I wasn't ever into hockey and still am not, but I do recall the controversy vaguely from that time. As a non-fan, it seemed silly to me to complain about seeing the puck, even if it was some bright color that distracted from the athletes, but since I wasn't a fan anyway, I figured if the fans didn't like it, then removing it is fine.

What's exciting is the idea of AI-based smart TVs in the (hopefully near-) future where you could just tell it to add on the glowing dot to the hockey puck in real-time while you're watching any random broadcast (or even VHS recording of a game from the 90s or earlier). So watchers who want the UI element could get it, and those who don't could avoid it.

I imagine that such tech could be applied to other professional sports in similar contexts. Or, to get back to women's hockey, what if the tech could, in real-time, depict the athletes as if not wearing padding but just their form-fitting sweat-wicking tights, and also with the helmet off so we could see their faces well? The Smart TV would probably need to have internet access to cross-reference official photos of players with their jersey numbers, for generating video of their faces, but it doesn't seem impossible, and it could be greatly beneficial for individual stars in the league to build their popularity.

I remember early experiments with that, but it wasn't simulated so much as tracked. Threw off the puck balance or something?

That's what I wanted to ask. Give it a cool trail, too, so its speed and direction are even more legible.

It would turn off the purists. It's an indictment of our society that we haven't developed technology that allows the TV viewer to select whether they want a neon green simulpuck or not on their own TV. This is truly the most important technological challenge of our time.

Hypothesis: greater visibility of openly gay women has made the lesbian fantasy seem less appealing.

I believe lesbian porn is still being produced at the same rate as always. It usually stars heterosexual women, many of whom also shoot boy/girl scenes, and who look just as conventionally feminine as you would expect any heterosexual female porn star to look. (I once saw a YouTube clip in which actual lesbians watched lesbian porn intended to appeal to a heterosexual male audience and ridiculed how silly it was: for obvious reasons, no actual lesbian has long fingernails.) For heterosexual males, the essence of the lesbian fantasy lies in watching two hot, conventionally feminine women with high sex drives have sex with one another. No straight man wants "realistic" lesbian porn i.e. two butch women with crew- or pixie-cuts, both dressed like lumberjacks, neither wearing any makeup, having sex less frequently than even straight couples do.

In the past, when homosexuality was more stigmatised, a typical straight man might legitimately not know any out lesbians (sure, he knew tomboys, but he probably just assumed they were all straight, as indeed most of them probably were). With no real life examples to compare it to, he was free to imagine the lesbian fantasy as he wished, and perhaps even believed that the modal lesbian couple really did consist of two conventionally feminine women in a relationship with one another. (This even makes sense from an experiential perspective: if you've been told that lesbians are just like every other woman with the idiosyncrasy that they are exclusively attracted to other women, it's reasonable to assume that lesbians look and behave like the modal woman, this idiosyncrasy aside.) Outside of porn, this belief might have been reinforced by representations of lesbianism in popular culture: the depiction of a lesbian wedding in Friends was seen as groundbreaking at the time, but nowadays they'd probably catch flak for casting two straight women in these roles (both of whom were attractive in very conventionally feminine ways). Thus, when the typical straight male in the 90s heard about two women having sex with one another, he would either picture a) two average straight women; or (depending how much of a fantasist he was) b) two very attractive, conventionally feminine women. Either way, this mental image is going to be very far removed from what the typical lesbian relationship really looks like, and a lot more appealing to the modal straight man.

But with the greater visibility of out lesbians in popular culture, even a straight man who doesn't personally have any lesbian friends is far better acquainted with what the typical lesbian looks and behaves like than his equivalent in the 90s would be, which is bound to colour the fantasy. A straight man in the 90s would hear about two women having sex with each other, envision two attractive, conventionally feminine women having sex, and think "wow, hot". A straight man in 2026 hears about two women having sex with each other, his brain immediately goes to Ellen DeGeneres or Megan Rapinoe, and he thinks "ew". Knowing what the real thing looks like destroys the fantasy.

For heterosexual males, the essence of the lesbian fantasy lies in watching two hot, conventionally feminine women with high sex drives have sex with one another.

I think part of the appeal, that has become mostly obsolete with the broadening of the porn offering online and with better handheld cameras, is the "implied threesome". The camera, in "straight lesbian porn", is meant to make you think it's you the viewer, you're there next to these two girls, watching them warm themselves up. You could and will join in at any moment you wish, whenever you're ready your penis is going to be a welcome addition to the fun the two girls are having. They're not gonna go "Ew, what the fuck are you doing in our bedroom naked!?" they'd go "Yay! Penis!"

Now though, with the explosion of the internet, amateur porn and amateur-inspired professional porn (stuff like camera in hand POV "gonzo" porn), you can find a lot actual threesomes which on top of the same things you see in lesbian porn and straight porn will also include acts like double blowjobs. It's not like threesomes were impossible before, but you have to take into account the difficulties of filming porn in a professional way were only increased by adding another person.

This analysis is obviously correct, but in addition to the surface-level unattractiveness of the common lesbian gender presentation, I would add that you cannot cleanly separate sexually-motivated lesbianism from politically-motivated lesbianism. Accordingly, a woman avowing lesbianism is a pretty strong signal that she isn't merely unattracted to men, but is instinctually and ideologically misandrist. Some guys are actually into that on some level or another, but it certainly complicates the naive "two women, twice as hot" interpretation. It is extremely likely that a lesbian would not merely be unattainable to a straight man, but would be interpersonally unpleasant towards him in a platonic context.

Apparently there's a complaint among actual lesbians that their dating market is flooded with self-described queer women, whom they quickly find aren't actually particularly attracted to women or interested in sex with them, they just want to cuddle, do girly stuff, and talk about how much they hate men.

Yes, I was tempted to mention something about how some of the most prominent American lesbians are joyless, humorless scolds (Rapinoe in particular). There's nothing fun or sexy about being told off or urged to check one's privilege.

And a lesbian Heated Rivalry tv series would be unthinkable (maybe as japanese anime?). The plot for a western tv series would need to be political/feminist with any male gaze avoided. The asshole-antagonists would be men who get their comeuppance. But the gays don't care to serve as fantasy for the female gaze as long as they can watch hot guys get naked too.

Yeah I feel like you pretty much just said it all.

Back when I was a teen, I had a shitty Nokia feature phone (a 5233). The one time I actually tried to watch video porn on the 2g connection, I racked up a 2000 INR bill that month. My parents were pissed.

I quickly learned to stick to still images, and found out that lesbian porn had twice the women per picture, or unit of data. It just made sense. I don't care for it these days, my tastes just changed with time.

Fun for map/big project autists:

Land Use Database

A serious rabbit hole of a website. All kinds of interesting entries, but weighted towards big industrial projects (mining, solar, uranium cleanup in Utah, etc.).

In performing some relaxing HTML copyright infringement, I found myself thinking about wording.

Quotes from the official Magic: The Gathering rules:

(107.1) The only numbers the Magic game uses are integers.

(107.1a) You can't choose a fractional number, deal fractional damage, gain fractional life, and so on. If a spell or ability could generate a fractional number, the spell or ability will tell you whether to round up or down.

(119.1) Each player begins the game with a starting life total of 20. Some variant games have different starting life totals.

(111.10b) A Food token is a colorless Food artifact token with "{2}, {T}, Sacrifice this token: You gain 3 life."

Obviously, life is not countable regardless of what these rules say, so when you sacrifice a Food token you actually gain not "3 life" but "3 points of life" or "3 life points". But space on cards is limited, so the authors of Magic have chosen to omit these extra words.

It's somewhat interesting to think about how the particular game with which I am toying (1 2) has a similar problem. Each player, in his capacity as a major country at the Paris Peace Conference, can be considered to start the game with 15 influence points, three military units, and happiness at level 20.

  • Influence point: No problems here. It's just a point of influence. "You may deploy to any two issues any number of available influence points as long as you control both issues after the deployment."

  • Military unit: "Military" is not a quantity. This is a unit that is military (e. g., a corps sent to prevent an issue from becoming unsettled), or maybe a unit of your military, but not a "unit of military". (It could be a unit of military power, but that would be too long-winded.) "You may deploy an available military unit to an empty position 5, 6, 7, or 8 in a region that does not already contain a military unit of yours."

  • Happiness level: Doesn't calling happiness a quantity in this context—where it cannot be spent, but merely rises and falls based on outside factors—sound subtly wrong? It already is somewhat strained to think of diplomatic influence, with its complex one-off favors and threats, as a bucketful of interchangeable liquid that can be doled out and recouped at will by a negotiating government. But treating the happiness of a country's populace in such a manner feels even less appropriate. Rather, happiness is more like a level of temperature than a quantity of liquid. "Your happiness falls by two levels."

Drop whatever you're doing and watch this:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=kRaEXDJAEM8

I won't explain. I can't explain.

Somewhat funny watching very online people / nerds discover the state of a lot of contemporary multimedia (we could use the word multimodal) art over the last 20 years. Of course the references in a default show at a Gagosian or whatever will be more ‘normie’, but the spirit - a jumbled, largely incoherent reflection on the itself incoherent shared reference library of modernity - is the same.

I've been to modern art exhibits. If they were this good (I don't know what the fuck the point of the video was, but it made me feel things), then I'd be much more positive about modern/post-modern art.

Some are very good, but you have to sort the good from the bad. In a way it’s like the internet. Because the contemporary art world has no real relationship to meritocracy (since almost everyone involved, at every level from artist to gallerist to dealer to buyer to journalist to viewer, is rich because almost nobody is making any money) bad pieces or showings are marketed the same as good ones. Price has no relationship with quality. So, like YouTube, your own research is necessary, and over time you find what you like, which gallerists have similar tastes, etc. One good thing if you ever move to London is that so few people really care that the motivated individual can essentially gallery-hop for free champagne every Thursday if he or she so chooses. Occasionally you even see something very good.

What the fuck did I just watch?

A tendril from the posthuman intelligence at the end of time reaching back to instantiate itself, I think. Potentially advanced memetic warfare from Alpha Centauri. You can tell me if you've got a better guess.

This is somewhere between the best multimodal art I've seen and a good depiction of a descent into psychosis. A few trans people in the comments say it's what estrogen feels like, but I don't intend to find out.

I commute roughly 2.5 hours a day, spend until bedtime with my daughter, another hour or two with my wife before she falls asleep, and then I have 15 precious minutes to myself before I need to go to bed so I don't die on the interstate in a sleep deprived stupor in the morning.

So thanks for that I guess. It was at least interesting.

What's that saying again? "Art should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed"?

Well, it sounds to me like you're far from comfortable, so I can only apologize for the disturbing content. It opened up my Third Eye, and then gave it glaucoma. It uncalcified my pineal gland, and gave me a minor stroke in the process.

Eh, it's less that, and more relief that the madness of amateur flash cartoons just migrated over to Gary's Mod apparently. I'm happy someone has kept the flame alive.

I mean, Idiots of GMod was always mad.

I watched it and now I can't explain either.

I don't think there is a sufficient quantity of drugs in the entire supply chain to explain.

Gaming subthread.

Playing a ton of Island Defense on Warcraft 3, a custom game. Having a blast playing custom games on there, the community is still surprisingly active. Been revisiting wintermaul, hero siege, Gem TD, Jungle Troll Tribes, trolls vs elves, tree tag, kodo tag, etc etc. Direct strike is a new game that's fun too. Overall a great experience, totally worth the $30 that I was very skeptical about paying for a game I had already bought 20 years ago.

I arrived at the end of the first batch of main quest content of Arknights Endfield and while I didn't quite reach max level/endgame content yet, I think I can say that the game has been generous enough that I could make the team I wanted without having to pay anything and I'm pretty certain I'll be able to reach endgame content with that team. I did put in a lot of hours. The monetization seems well balanced in that, if I really really want to get a specific 6 star, I probably will be able to accumulate enough banner pulls to do so, but not often. However, it's less balanced in that from what I understand, one wouldn't be able to guarantee one without spending way more money than I can ever imagine spending on a virtual waifu for a game. I think it comes to about 2$ per pull, 80 pulls for a guarantee to get a 6 star that will in 50% of times be the banner one, 120 pulls for guarantee to get the banner 6 star. Maybe it'd work if you only need a bit of a boost to get your guarantee for a specific banner, but I can't imagine paying that much ever.

Not that I'd need to, the game gives you 2 pretty good 6 stars for free (Endmin and Ardelia) and playing the content over the first month I ended up with 4 extra 6 stars on top of the two they give you, and that's not counting that I got at least two duplicates in those. And even then, I could have built a team of 4 and 5 stars, they're not necessarily inferior to 6 stars, they just tend to have less dramatic designs.

The factory gameplay is addictive and creates reasons to log in every day, but I'm looking forward for more stuff to be unlocked in the 2nd region, as the game is hinting at more content for the factory that isn't quite there yet. There's factory-related concepts I've barely started interacting with. Some of the side content is less fun, though thankfully can mostly be ignored for now. The tower defense stuff isn't very well implemented to my taste.

The main gameplay itself is fine, it's a like a more action oriented, simplified MMORPG. What is really next level for this game though are the production values. I don't know how much other games in this genre (single player, action RPG gacha games, like Genshin Impact) made but the company behind Endfield clearly believes they can make a lot of money because this is not a cheap cash grab. Almost everything is voiced, and that's a lot of voiced lines... Like, a LOT. Over I think 4 languages? And it's pretty good voice acting too, I was surprised to hear the people in the 2nd region, which is "china themed" have the very distinctive accent that native chinese speakers who speak good english end up having. Animation are lush and high quality. Graphics are as good as they could be while maintaining the ability to be played on either computer or mobile.

Arknights Endfield

..looks like.. anime Factorio with simplifed MMORPG layer?

More like the other way around, the bulk of the gameplay is the action RPG, so it's simplified anime MMORPG with a Factorio layer. It tries to be an "everything" game with some of the side activities. You get puzzle gameplay (nonogram/picross inspired), market trading, tower defense, relationship management/courting (giving gifts to your waifus)...

If anybody has recommendations for multiplayer cooperative games that can be played in 20 - 40 minute chunks, I'd like to hear them.

Examples include:

  • Helldivers 2
  • Darktide
  • Vermintide
  • Jump space (getting a little long)
  • Phasmaphobia

Bonus points if you can tell me why it's fun.

Space Marine 2?

It's fun, because on the surface it's a power fantasy romp. But underneath it's got excellent mechanics.

This is me and my friend's main go-to.

Some stuff my group has done recently that roughly fits your criteria:

  • PlateUp: Swap back and forth between a light automation/progression game and a flow state. Pretty vulnerable to quarterbacking if that is a problem for your group.
  • Risk of Rain 2: Roguelike shooter, where you are reacting to the relics you get and trying to keep your team members builds in mind for sharing items. Quite a variety of characters with vastly different playstyles and some achievement based unlocks (do a hard weird thing to get a variant of this ability which is roughly balanced). Difficult to get win, so shared sense of accomplishment.
  • Tabletop Simulator: One of our members is really into board games so recently we've played Spirit Island, Sentinels of the Multiverse and Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship. All probably longer than you want.
  • Hammerwatch: Kill monsters, get gold/exp, get cooler abilities, repeat. Class based which encourages cooperation.
  • Divinity Original Sin 2: Play D&D but you don't need a DM. Less reactive than a real DM can be but more competent than many and will put up with more bullshit.

Most of the games my kids like fit your definition but don't really fit your examples. Listing them all anyway, in roughly increasing order of how much I like playing multiplayer games of them:

  • Stardew Valley
  • Minecraft
  • Core Keeper
  • Don't Starve Together
  • Team Fortress 2, Mann vs Machine
  • Project Zomboid
  • Wildermyth

Of course the all-time great is one I haven't introduced my kids to, because it really needs closure and if you play it in 40 minute chunks you'll need like a hundred of them: Baldur's Gate 1+2.

If you're curious about any of those let me know and I'll elaborate.

One of my kids likes playing Peak with her friends, but the rest of us haven't tried it yet.

Deep Rock Galactic. You are a team of dwarves, going on mining missions in procedurally generated caves while fighting off waves of bugs. The missions are reasonable length, the dwarf classes complement each other nicely, and the tone of the game is fun, dark comedy stuff. Definitely worth your time. Rock and stone!

I'm a huge fan. Looking forward to the new one coming out this year.

Action RPG Nioh 3 has just been released at a price of 110 dollars (including future DLC). As a result, its decade-old predecessor Nioh 1 has been discounted to literally 7.5 dollars (including DLC). Buy it!

  • The central mechanic is melee combat with careful stamina management—like Dark Souls 1 and 2, but faster-paced and with a Gears of War–style timed button press to recover stamina more quickly. There are seven melee-weapon types: sword, pair of swords, odachi, spear (actually wielded more like a polearm, with lots of swings), axe, kusarigama, and pair of tonfa. These weapons must be used in conjunction with three different stances: medium (default), high (powerful but bad at blocking and dodging), and low (good at dodging but weak).
  • Ranged weapons (bow, rifle, and hand cannon), ninja skills, and yin-yang magic also are available.
  • There are several sequential difficulty levels (samurai, strong, demon, wise, and nioh). At higher difficulty levels, enemies are stronger and get new moves, and more are included in levels.
  • Enemies include both normal humans (can be staggered with attacks, but can block) and big yokai (cannot be staggered but cannot block), plus small fodder yokai (can be staggered and cannot block).

Even after 700 hours in this game, I'm only okay at it (any boss fight with multiple big yokai always takes me a while to beat; the one with a raven tengu and a flying bolt deserves special mention), but it's great fun. I personally use the odachi most of the time, with some consideration given to the spear.

I played Nioh back in the day when it first came out, the 2nd Soulslike I've played after Bloodborne. Definitely a steal at that price, though I didn't get 700 or even 70 hours out of it. I only beat it once, probably because I hated the RNG loot system (which I hate in every game). The 3-stance combat system felt really complicated at first, especially coming from Bloodborne, but it took very little time for it to feel intuitive for me. I think it reflects Team Ninja's experience in making intuitive fluid combat in Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden games.

Also, like Assassin's Creed Shadows, it features a gaijin samurai protagonist, but it caused no controversy back then, partly because of the times, partly because Tecmo is a Japanese company, and partly because the character wasn't obviously a pawn for waging the culture war.

Isn't Sekiro the closer match? In any case, thanks for the rec, I considered getting Nioh anyway, though it's unlikely I'll find much time playing it soon.

Isn't Sekiro the closer match?

Sekiro is focused on timed parries. Nioh 1 has some parry skills (and IIRC Nioh 2 adds more such skills), but is much more focused on dodging and blocking. I don't use parry skills at all, but it's my understanding that they don't work on big yokai.

I think I got about 20 hours out of MENACE before burning out. It's a good game, but I'm going to wait till more substantial updates or large mods come out before trying a new run.

Right now:

  • The AI collapses when you get effective scouting units with high damage weapons: the AI always knows your sightlines, even for units in stealth, and are desperate to not get shot even when the sensible thing to do would be to bumrush the most likely origin of suppressed fire

  • The actual Menace enemies are remarkably unfun. Super-tanky and hit super hard. I had to cheese a mission by deploying smoke (which is OP) on all my units to survive till the countdown ended, otherwise we'd have been slaughtered with no recourse.

  • I discovered that the medium mech with two linked autocannons trivializes engagements with anything smaller than a heavy tank (except for the Menace)

  • Many weapons, particularly deployable weapons, are poorly tuned or not as effective as they should be.

  • The map gen needs work. If you've seen 5 maps, you've seen them all. The world needs more terrain diversity, choke point battles, rivers, cliffs, any kind of elevation really.

  • The ship upgrade/OCI system is half-baked. We need a lot more slots to play with and we also need more of the options we have to be buffed, alongside the addition of new ones.

Still a good game and I enjoyed a good helping of it both in demo and EA, but I'm going to need those mods or a lot more content to keep me going.

Applying modern tabletop wargaming to an xcomlike is such a good concept that it outruns its supply lines. There’s just not enough content to explore the whole idea. I want air support and field engineers and Foxhole levels of bespoke armor variants. I want faction cooperation that goes beyond the stuff you bolt on your ship. I want the Menace not to show their whole hand in their first mission, and I want their campaign presence to add the kind of decision-making you get from leaving countries to burn in XCOM. It’s not there yet, and that’s a shame, but I still had a lot of fun with my one campaign.

I found Menace underwhelming. Yes it can maul you but it lacks real heavy hitters.

Best, most fun battle I had was a meeting engagement over a strongpoint against Rogue Army. Had the guys had 2 scouts instead of one I'd have lost that one. Won it on like 7th reload I think. Very Rorke's drift, very fun!

Rogue Army was by far my favorite faction to fight. The bugs drop lots of resources but no actual gear (and need work), the pirates are fun but their loot is trash barring maybe the laser lance and commando armor.

RA though? When our favorite African Warlord Who Definitely Isn't Sseth tells you to that upside to fighting them is getting gear to replace the embarrassment we call our armory: he's goddamn right. They were fun to fight, until I outranged, out-scouted and outgunned them.

Right now, I'm going to grab a bunch of rebalance mods as well as a mod that fixes AI sight lines and cowardice, plus one that adds the TCR as an enemy faction.

Wait, there are mods already?

Indeed. Mostly on the Nexus.

I completed XCOM 2: War of the Chosen on Commander difficulty, and almost immediately began trying to beat the base game on Commander difficulty with Ironman enabled. Much like playing the first game with these settings, it takes awhile to get out of the "one of my soldiers was killed, I'll just reload and try again" headspace. Generally the first few missions will be fairly smooth sailing, then I'll hit a wall and all my soldiers will get killed; rinse and repeat. Wish me luck.

So.. Menace.

Very enjoyable and fun neat little game with a great gaming loop. EA. People seem to hate the idea of it getting a multiplayer and I can't understand why.

Given the bite-sized nature of the battles, it could make for a very fun MMO strategy/tactics game where each player per side fights several battles per evening, meaning the game cannot be, by design, hogged by the 16x7 no-lifer types.

Well, I won't be discussing the delightful little game here anymore as I got permabanned over thoughtlessly using a metaphor too spicy.

:-(

I hate it. Goodbye, I guess, and I hope Amadan gets a particularly insecticide resistant bedbug infestation.

I thought I'd wait until 1.0 but I've now started on it anyway.

I went straight for an ironman run despite understanding nothing about the game. I finished my first mission on a desert planet where I was supposed to protect civilians against extortion from pirates or something. I lost an entire squad of sassy black men to a sudden flamethrower attack that wiped them out in one action. I couldn't figure out how to stabilize or revive them. :( At least I saved 80+ % of the civvies.

Oh, yeah. My first run I skipped the tutorial and didn’t realize that SLs were either vehicle or infantry, no overlap. I picked 4 inf. Got butchered in the first mission, and thought “this is tough but it’ll be worth it when I find an APC or two.” Oof.

I went for challengin/ironman for my second playthrough and my squaddie pool dropped to 12 before I figured out the correct way to play the game is to use boarding commando suits or equiv protection and special weapons only, the bigger the better.

Armor is very situational in Menace. It's dramatically overpriced, a squad decked up in armor you can rely on to tank bullets will:

  • Be as expensive as fully armed vehicle

  • Often get pinned under suppression even if the bullets do no damage

It's not impossible to make it work, but it's a noob trap by default. You're better off investing in never getting spotted or hit in the first place. Get the scouting perk on a few SLs (Darby or Kody are great for this), give them camo and optionally suppressed guns, and they can wipe the floor with most enemies or at least give you advance warning.

The one other place where armor can make some sense is in a tiny support squad. I usually have Pike with 2 men and a heavy gun (usually redundant), the armor is cheap enough when you don't use it on a full squad, and it protects against fuck ups. Pike hugs the backline to buff the heavy hitters with AP.

Well, I had 12 guys plus my SLs so you can see why I went for the whole 'heavy armor only' thing.

What's the idea with smaller or bigger squads? I had extra supply so I just made the infantry squads all 8.

I restarted my campaign and finished two missions with no losses this time. My vehicle is getting like 80% of the kills.

Bigger is better, in general. But you're constrained by supply costs. The price of equipping a squad with weapons and armor is multiplied by the number of members. If you don't have fancy gear, then a full squad can be very cheap.

You need to keep in mind that if you equip a squad with a special weapon (MG, sniper, rocket launchers etc), then you have to choose between firing their primary weapons and using the special weapon. In addition, the SL will always carry that special weapon, which means one less rifleman.

If the purpose of a squad is to mostly fire an MG or shoot rockets, then all the extra weapons, armor and even the extra squad members is redundant. A squad with 3 dudes and an MG, using said MG, has the same firepower as a full squad of 9 that's also relying on the MG.

It sounds like you're in the early game, and probably playing on the normal difficulty level. You probably don't have the fun toys that cost $$ to equip. Later in the campaign, or on the higher difficulties, you'll have tough choices. Early on, the APC will carry you, since your infantry has dogshit carbines. Especially against the more heavily armored foes. However, when you encounter enemy AT, you'll need to be more conservative and rely on infantry to a greater extent.

What I usually run early game:

  • APC with an MMG or HMG
  • 3 squads of infantry. One of them the max size, the others usually cut down to 5 or 6 men.

Middle game:

  • APC with an autocannon/laser lance
  • 2 decked out infantry squads that mainly shoot their rifles. Note that they don't have very good armor, because that's cost ineffective. Just enough to get by.
  • 2 partial squads that have a special weapon. 3-4 guys, decent armor for survivability.

Late game:

  • A mech
  • An APC/IFV
  • As many infantry squads as points allow. Could be 3-5.

You will absolutely want a dedicated scout like Darby. She's worth every penny, and one you unlock the Crocodile AMR, she's a murder machine. You'll probably want a dedicated pushing infantry squad that relies primarily on rifles to fight other infantry. But beyond that, combined arms is the name of the game and there is plenty of scope for build diversity.

Don't worry too much, you can make a lot of tactics work. One of the reasons I'm bullish on the game, especially with more content and a few balance tweaks.

Thanks for the info!

Yup I'm playing on normal and without ironman this time, and I'm still struggling with part 3 of the xenophobic mission. I need to contaminate the breeding pools, and my vehicle can't do it. Shooting them was not the solution, I found out. The damn driver can't even spend a full turn or something on getting out and doing the action. Kinda bs. The 12 turn time limit seems pretty brutal given the number of enemies close to the pools. I've tried the mission twice and given up, although I could probably have finished with a partial success.

I'm considering bringing a small squad with the rocket launcher as that seems to be effective against the big, dark heavily armored alien, assuming the rocket hits. Maybe a flamethrower to deal with the groups of small soft aliens. I had ~265 credits to spend.

Btw will the scout ability function while the SL whos' got it is inside a vehicle?

I need to contaminate the breeding pools, and my vehicle can't do it. Shooting them was not the solution, I found out.

Heh. I did the exact same thing, turns out that lead poisoning isn't quite the right kind of contamination.

The 12 turn time limit seems pretty brutal given the number of enemies close to the pools. I've tried the mission twice and given up, although I could probably have finished with a partial success.

I strongly advise giving up on perfectionism. Even with perfectly optimal, meta play, getting a full 5 stars is a crapshoot on any difficulty. I reliably get 4 stars 85% of the time, and that's entirely fine.

The 12 turn timer is, as far as I recall, a secondary objective. You can take your time. There are less finicky missions out there.

I'm considering bringing a small squad with the rocket launcher as that seems to be effective against the big, dark heavily armored alien, assuming the rocket hits. Maybe a flamethrower to deal with the groups of small soft aliens. I had ~265 credits to spend.

If you strictly need them only for the special weapon, then you can get away with the bare minimum squad size.

Do you intend for them to hoof it on foot? Which RPG are you using?

I ask because if you have them riding inside the APC, it's expensive in terms of AP to have them disembark and shoot. Most rockets need the squad to deploy first, which unfortunately ends up with not quite enough AP to fire after disembarking.

Except: Lim.

His Mobile Infantry perk is goated. He can jump out of an battle taxi and shoot twice with normal weapons, at least once with most specials. You don't even need to give him any armor, because if you play things right, he'll never end a turn outside the vic. Highly highly recommend you try that.

If I had to choose, I'd say use any AT over the flamethrower. The bugs will hard counter you, especially the Alien Warriors or the Queen, if you lack it. I never used the flamethrower, I got by just fine shooting the smaller bugs with rifles or the MMG/HMG on the APC.

265 credits will work just fine, especially for a minimal AT squad. If you don't have Lim, get them to dismount early and shadow the vic.

Btw will the scout ability function while the SL whos' got it is inside a vehicle?

I don't believe so. But you can still have the squad jump out, gain vision, and jump back in. This works best with Lim, but literally all the infantry SLs can do it.

Until very late in the game, scouting is invaluable, especially if you rely on vehicles. An unexpected RPG or other AT weapon can fuck up the APC beyond repair, or destroy it outright.

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