domain:alexberenson.substack.com
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3hr ago
Is it the shadowing on her face making her features too angular?
This, IMO.
striker
3hr ago
I feel this. My immediate thought on listening to one of those Suno tracks: “We’re going to get a thousand Sabrina Carpenters now”
striker
3hr ago
mark my words now, the first large music festival showcasing ONLY AI-produced music will be happening inside of 5 years.
Maybe, and maybe there will be sufficiently large cohort of people who want to go that it becomes a viable vehicle for the entertainment industry.
Much more likely, I think, is the move away from AI / digital art because people realise they need something human. That something human will be delivered not on screen or via any digital mechanism, thereby creating high demand for real life events (everything from spoken word poetry to pop-up tiny stage theatre to large concerts). The price inflation of tickets for gigs and live sports events is a symptom that shows this need for a real experience is already happening. It’s growing and not yet been adequately catered for.
MathWizard
Good things are good
3hr ago
I wouldn't say "slaves to". Again, it's not too egregious, and not enough to ruin the game. But their earlier games didn't seem to have this issue quite as badly. Or maybe I just didn't notice as much because they were original fantasy worlds so they weren't race swapping classic mythology.
You can tell throughout the time that they're definitely left-leaning. Bastion had a bunch of stuff about xenophobia and colonialism being bad. I never finished transistor but it was generally anti-establishment. Pyre had a made up religion that was abused by corrupt leaders to excommunicate people they don't like. But it's never so terrible that it ruins things. None of them are ever obvious and stupid ripoffs of current events, and Pyre still has you participating in the religious rituals because it wasn't the religion itself that's bad it's just the corrupt people exploiting it.
And most importantly the core gameplay remains good enough that it makes up for the slightly offputting lefty vibes (with the exception of Transistor, which I didn't find very compelling)
But yeah, they're clearly embedded in lefty culture, if not the actual war part of it. And they seem to be gradually slipping further and further into it.
Eupraxia
Of all words spoken, all things read / most true was that which went unsaid
3hr ago
...she's fine? Like I can normally see where female uglification complaints are coming from even when I disagree, but I have no idea what you're on about here, she's perfectly goonable as is. Is it the shadowing on her face making her features too angular or the bracelets accentuating her pointy elbows or what?
KingOfTheBailey
3hr ago
I can't find myself caring one bit about it because the good stuff slowed to a teeny tiny dribble over two decades ago. As far as I'm concerned there is nothing left for AI to drown.
My perspective is that this isn’t strictly true. It just seems that way because algorithmic media (Facebook to Netflix), instead of expanding the window of exposure, narrowed it and homogenised everything within it. Thirty years ago in my small town in Europe, I had more choice in my local video rental store (where there was a whole section of foreign language films, that was updated frequently) than I get on all my home screens and feeds now, no matter how far I drill down.
Edit: I believe the “good stuff” is still being made, but its audience and distribution network is not part of the great algorithm fork. It’s elsewhere, it’s curated, and it’s often offline. Interested in the new avant garde. I suspect it’s here, it’s just not where 50-98% of people spend their time.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
3hr ago
Unsolicited yeah. Imitating the people around you on politics on demand as people ask for your opinion doesn't particularly require political brain rot, just political apathy.
I think political apathy is probably the right choice for most people, including many of the people who post here (realistically, including me as well. Let it not be said that I make good decisions).
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3hr ago
Okay... while that does not meet his definition (or your interpretation of it), surely mindlessly chanting insane political slogans has to qualify as some form of "brain rot"?
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
3hr ago
I don't see how this could be doable without "spending a lot of mental energy on politics"
Easy, just say the same words the people around you are saying in approximately the same order they do.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
4hr ago
No, it's not. You're just comparing unlike things (specifically, a pure heater to a refrigerator). A refrigerator always has QH/W = 1 + QL/W.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
4hr ago
Are you saying this contradicts the original theory? I can understand being surprised by this, but it isn't even that strange when you think about it for a moment.
TheLoser
4hr ago
10-15 years lines up pretty precisely with the advent (or at least the widespread acceptance) of online dating and hookup apps. Dating and sex are commodities now, and the experience is significantly cheapened as a result.
And yet everyone is having significantly less sex today than 10 years ago.
astrolabia
4hr ago
Sorry I wasn't trying to be snarky. The original comment seemed to make it seem like truth about matters of fact was a minor issue that could be routed around, but in my experience that was the central problem with all religions.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
4hr ago
Do you have a list of the Zizian murders and the motives?
Killing the landlord: seems to have been a mix of Marxist-adjacent "seize the means of production" and normal criminal "didn't want to pay for things"/"didn't want to be testified against".
Killing the cop: normal criminal "I don't want to go to jail today".
Killing one of the members' parents: is this the one you're accusing of being anti-anti-trans?
There were others, right?
Not quite. Rent control is a dumb political idea, or affirmative action. I'm talking about causes that are supportable only if you whip yourself up into a fevered frenzy, I don't see how this could be doable without "spending a lot of mental energy on politics". I suppose it's possible to sleep through "your state put a rapist in a woman's prison", but I find it a bit harder to believe one did it for BLM or the Kavanaugh hearings, let alone the COVID mania.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5hr ago
I wouldn't say "This incorrect. Pant waist size means the number that a hypothetical tape measure would read when measuring around the waistband."
Because you're not a valuator.
"fair market value (FMV) is the highest price, expressed in cash, at which property would change hands between a hypothetical willing and able buyer and seller, each acting in their own interest in an open market without compulsion to buy or sell, and with reasonable knowledge of all relevant facts"
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
5hr ago
Unfortunately your second link is broken (it goes to some decade old reddit post), so I still don't know what the Hades 2 version looks like. But it sounds like the devs are kind of slaves to the culture war, and feel the need to make everything reflect it. Which is unfortunate.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
5hr ago
Sure, but that was an economic divide, not a divide based on artistic qualities
It is based on artistic qualities because Beethoven got big appealing to the 1%. Taylor Swift got big appealing to the 99%. They are not the same and comparing them is a mistake.
Silverdawn
I wake up 🔄 There's another psyop
5hr ago
Is anyone else playing Silent Hill f?
I played a bunch of it (80-90% of a first playthrough). The main complaints online I've seen are about feminist rhetoric. I think the original idea was "Hinako was traumatized by her father -> her nightmares are dominated by male-inflicted trauma". But it takes a certain amount of awareness to realize these are her own issues rather than the developers making a statement about all men.
As far as my experiences with the actual game, I've played both SH2 and SH4 in the past and it's very reminiscent of them. The combat is very awkward, difficult, slow and tedious. About what you'd expect if a teenage schoolgirl found herself in a monster-infested town with nothing but random pipes and improvised melee weaponry to defend herself with.
The main new feature is the ability to donate consumables like food and candy to shrines and get faith in return. Faith can be used to regain sanity and buy minor stat upgrades. Sanity is essentially an extra health bar that can also be used to do a bit more damage.
There's also a somewhat limited inventory system. It's not quite as suffocating as Cronos' but many people will be annoyed they can't just bring a warehouse of consumables everywhere.
There isn't much of a story for the first 8 hours or so, just "confused schoolchildren wander around the monster-infested town". But there are some eventual plot-twists and happenings I won't spoil.
Overall, I would recommend the game to Silent Hill fans and urge fans of other horror games to set their expectations low. The combat and story are very slow, especially compared to something like Leon Kennedy throwing grenades and shooting at zombie hordes with a shotgun.
sodiummuffin
5hr ago
Based on what I've learned in this blog post (and not from hysterical Xhit posts from what should be the most measured and deliberate people among us, the US VP and director of the FBI) - this looks and feels like a school shooting to me: no apparent motive beyond causing mass hysteria, which judging by this thread, was very much achieved.
https://x.com/CurtisHouck/status/1971290451807179180
Acting U.S. Attorney for Northern Texas Nancy Larson on notes left behind by the Dallas ICE shooter...
- One said “yes, it was just me”
- Another included what she described as “a game plan of the attack and target areas at the facility.”
- One called ICE agents “showing up to collect a dirty paycheck.”
- “He also hoped his actions would give ICE agents ‘real terror’ of being gunned down
- “And he did this to induce constant stress in their lives. He hoped his actions would terrorize ICE employees and interfere with their work, which he called human trafficking.”
- “He wrote that he intended to maximize lethality against ICE personnel and to maximize property damage at the facility. He hoped to minimize any collateral damage or injury to the detainees and any other innocent people.
- “It seems that he did not intend to kill the detainees or harm them. It's clear from these notes that he was targeting ICE agents and ICE personnel.”
Deciding he had no apparent ideological motive despite his actions, his bullet casings, and now his notes pointing to a straightforward motive, based on a journalist interviewing some people who knew him years ago and trying to spin their statements as both more in conflict with an ideological motive than they are and more definitive than his own actions and statements, in not actually more "measured and deliberate". Maybe it seems that way to you because it is contrary to views you associate with people you consider "hysterical", but that is not actually a reliable way to come to conclusions about the world.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
5hr ago
Wheel of Fish from UHF
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
5hr ago
I would defend calling Hitler-admiring Jew-exclusive white supremacists in favour of violent action "neo-Nazis" or, colloquially, "Nazis", despite their lack of membership of the NSDAP.
My working theory: All those are great songs, but what makes them great is not JUST the notes and lyrics and performance. These things didn’t exist in a vacuum. What made them great was how people experienced them together in time and/or space, and responded to them together in time and/or space. This is why I’m hopeful that human art still has a bright future, but that bright future must take place offline more and more. (I appreciate this sounds ludicrous to anyone who’s lived their entire life with and on the internet.)
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