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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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It's getting unavoidable - the quality of news and novel information obtained from time here is crashing. I used to hear things here first - now I usually don't hear them here at all.

Recently I brought up Rich Men North of Richmond - only because no one else did - and pretty well everyone shit on it for one reason or another. 'Should've sang about this instead,' 'this song is better,' 'why'd he bring this up' etc. But it's the biggest song on the planet. You were all wrong and I was right to bring it to your attention. How can we raise the quality of posts back to be worthy of attention, so readers are informed about developments in the culture war?

  • -22

If you want to learn about the latest happenings at breakneck speed with reasonably high confidence that it's not a hoax, rdrama.net is probably the best place for it at the moment.

I see exactly 0 'latest happenings' on the frontpage, and instead "groomercord-chan", "ongoing sharty adventures thread", do any other women feel like men are kind of gay now", "ukraine tells critics to Shut Up".

Actually, there's one happening - "sourcegraph: incident involving unauthorized admin access", but that was on hacker news a day or two ago.

You forgot the starfield (game) being cracked before it even got prereleased, that's news to me. But yeah, 80% of the stuff is not "latest happenings" but rather assorted drama. Still any big happenings get posted there real fast, e.g. we already have an inbuilt emoji for the Rich men north of richmond singer.

(also technically "ukraine tells critics to Shut Up" is a "latest happening").

I see exactly 0 'latest happenings' on the frontpage

I would call this a happening.

Ai-generated books are already trying to get people killed

Link leads to panic filled reddit thread that leads here.

Life or Death:’ AI-Generated Mushroom Foraging Books Are All Over Amazon

A genre of AI-generated books on Amazon is scaring foragers and mycologists: cookbooks and identification guides for mushrooms aimed at beginners.

Amazon has an AI-generated books problem that’s been documented by journalists for months. Many of these books are obviously gibberish designed to make money. But experts say that AI-generated foraging books, specifically, could actually kill people if they eat the wrong mushroom because a guidebook written by an AI prompt said it was safe.

Not terminators, not killer drones, but mushrooms are the method chosen by AI to exterminate mankind.

Unstoppable move, except that Skynet forgot one little detail. Mushroom hunting is cornerstone of Slavic culture, Slavs are taught how to pick mushrooms since childhood and do not fall for this trick. If the rest of humanity perishes, Slavs will survive.

edit: link fixed

I mean didn't Russia's top rocket scientist just die from eating a poisonous mushroom he picked in the woods?

One of my favourite anecdotes is about an elderly Russian PMC couple that vacationed in a boutique hotel in the Swiss Alps. They were walking down a terrainkur when they saw it: a perfectly shaped and very edible mushroom growing under a nearby tree. They had no choice, they couldn't have left it unpicked. Then they saw another one. And another. Then their hands were full and they found a plastic bag in one of their pockets. Soon the bag was full and they turned their windjackets into makeshift sacks.

They came to only in their hotel room, with more mushrooms than they could reasonably expect to process and no kitchen in which to clean and cook them. Undeterred by that minor hurdle, they filled the bathtub with water, dumped the mushrooms in there to soak and went for a pre-dinner, this time mushroom-free, stroll.

The maid had seen some weird shit in her line of work, but she was not expecting to see a bathtub full of mushrooms when she entered the room for turndown service.

Indeed, The guardian just published an article on this in the last hour: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/01/mushroom-pickers-urged-to-avoid-foraging-books-on-amazon-that-appear-to-be-written-by-ai

Literal empirical confirmation we get newsworthy stuff before the big sites.

Jesus, that place is a nightmare to look at. Is there a way to turn off the dumb cat animations following you around the screen?

Use custom CSS: #cursormarsey{display:none!important;}

Why do you hate fun?

Go to your settings in the site and look for "poor mode" IIRC, which gets rid of most of the animations.

It doesn't deal with the retarded fucking cat on mobile, but I manage to ignore it most of the time.

Her name is Marsey and you will respect her.

:marseyagree:

Block element with ublock origin is the way I get rid of the cat animation. Other people may have a different way. A lot of the site is designed to be hostile to outsiders to minimise risk of takeover by either extreme rightists or leftists (which is an actual problem btw). If you make an account you can change the theme to "coffee" which is a lot easier on the eyes. Also turn on poorcel mode to get rid of all the stupid award animations.

Wow, didn't know that. I glanced it over a couple of times and had that reaction, "what is this shit" but also read some confusing shitposting I didn't get. Isn't it most of it shitposting? I also remember checking out their repo and had the same comment style.

Yes, this site is built on rdrama code. You can tailor it exactly to your liking. The purpose of all that action is to scare off users who can't figure that out

The format is impenetrable - I am too old. Flying cats and bussy and sparkles and it's just too much. It's not for lack of trying. But still grateful for your advice