domain:city-journal.org
mildly_obsolete
14m ago
Curious if you were reading this take on 'system war' SF with a title I am too embarrassed to type out? It's coming to a close now, I found it to be a pleasant weekly read, at times disappointing, but overall a decent quality novel.
WhiningCoil
20m ago
We're All Sitcom Characters Now
If you've ever watched a successful long running sitcom, you've seen it happen. The characters start out mostly normal with a quirk or two. Maybe a little neurotic, or slow, or promiscuous. Four seasons in and the characters have all become deranged parodies of themselves. All their most entertaining qualities have been heightened, everything relatable or normal has been squeezed out. The character that was a little slow is now a straight up drooling retard. The promiscuous character obsessively fucks everything that moves. The neurotic character is only a step removed from Howard Hughes in his final days. You watch the last episode and the first episode of a sitcom, and you'll barely recognize the characters.
It's obvious why it happens though. The writers and actors give the audiences what they want. Sitcoms are (or were?) a cuttroat business. There was little room for artistic integrity, vision, or any other high minded concepts. Give the audiences what they want, or they'll change the channel and the show will be cancelled. Just shut up and do it!
I regret to inform you that we are all on a sitcom now. Everyone is enmeshed with an attention economy. Be it farming engagement on twitter, or upvotes on a reddit clone. And unlike actors who only have to inhabit their roles for hours a day, for a shooting schedule that might be weeks or months out of a year, those enmeshed in the attention economy must be in character 24/7. On social media, on streaming, on podcast, on youtube, all at once, all the time.
Some have whole heartedly embraced this. Twitter is full of people being characters, allowing the algorithm or engagement to tweak the dials on their personality. Like a second subconscious that lives in the cloud. Catgirl Kulak comes to mind. He's out there using an AI catgirl as an avatar, staying more and more in character as some sort of neo pagan feral/trad nordic catgirl with hot takes. It's a dangerous game he's playing, existing more and more in a fictional role. But there are others. The preposterous performative pro-Elon or pro-Trump nonsense I saw and tried to avoid on twitter this last week was really something. Twitter super users who've built their brand on being staunch partisans like Catturd out there acting like absolute charicatures of themselves. They're just sitcom characters anymore, and rapidly approaching the braindeath of the latter seasons. Others I don't think fully understand what was happening to them. I wonder how much upvote driven personality disorders had to do with certain flameouts here.
Because eventually every sitcom hits the wall. The characters have been intellectually and emotionally abused and lobotomized to such a point where there is no humanity left in them to ritualistically beat out for the amusement of the audience. It gets it's final season where the writers attempt to rehabilitate them just enough to send them off into the sunset.
There are no writers to rehabilitate you when the algorithm is done with you, and you've lived inside a cartoonish and horrifying version of yourself for attention for years on end.
Jazzhands
27m ago
I don't think we can rule out that Shapiro looked at the odds and turned them down, deciding he was better off trying in a later cycle.
self_made_human
C'est la vie
32m ago
I know what a woman is, or at least I know 'em when I see 'em. I don't need an LLM to guide me in that regard.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
39m ago
If that was an American reporter and the National Guard, it'd be front page banners on every news site in the US (including Fox except the headline might suggest she had it coming). Since it's an Australian reporter, the LAPD, and a rubber bullet (that was in fact non-lethal), it'll just be an amusing footnote.
The summary here -- "US Correspondent Lauren Tomasi has been caught in the crossfire as the LAPD fired rubber bullets at protesters in the heart of Los Angeles." seems wrong. There's no crossfire, in fact no other shots, as far as I can tell, and it doesn't even look like a miss (unless there was someone just out of frame who was up to something), it looks like the cop shot her on purpose, though I can't imagine why.
birb_cromble
40m ago
I like to check out aquariums and aviaries, personally. Fish aren't known for a history of racism and colonization.
aaa
42m ago
If you take a look at a graph you can see that things really started getting “Super Fucking Lame” right about 2007
That's not what I see. I see it starting in 1997 and peaking around 2012.
roystgnr
44m ago
Wrapped up the last of Journey to the End of Night, which I ultimately got almost nothing interesting out of, and finally finished Seeing Like a State, which I got a lot out of but I expect everyone here has already either read the book or read better folks than me summarize its findings better than I could.
Started Storm of Steel which is a fascinating contrast to American Sniper. Both authors, at least at the start, enjoy the war. It's the difference between the 2000s Patriots or the 90s Bulls, and a role player on a .500 team. Kyle goes in expecting to win every time, and is shocked and takes it personally when he loses. Junger is immediately just hoping to survive. Kyle experiences enemy soldiers and civilians as "savages," as mooks that are just part of his story. Junger experiences them as formidable dangerous foes.
As an aside, I saw a local performance of Penelope, a one-woman musical of Odysseus' famous wife. It was fantastic. That woman really carried the show for an hour and a half straight, just her and a band, and of course that is the core commentary of the play: Penelope did it all alone, with nothing but a backing band, for twenty years until Odysseus returned. The show definitely plays the situation for light feminist snark at times, but never lapses into wokeness: at core it maintains a belief in Homer, Homer's heroes stay heroes and his villains stay villains, it doesn't try to flip the script like so many recent musicals based on old stories. It's very reminiscent of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, in that it looks at how great events feel to someone who isn't privileged to speak constantly with the gods; where Athena speaks to Odysseus pretty regularly, Penelope here gets only a single, cryptic and non-actionable message from Athena. My only critique of the play is that, compare to Madeleine Miller's Circe, the play cuts off before the really interesting and difficult stuff to get Penelope's commentary on: the slaughter of the suitors and the hanging of the maids. How does she feel about her Telemachus going all school shooter on the place?
cjet79
59m ago
That is interesting, I'm not surprised I like the books better, but I wouldn't have thought many other people were the same.
The books can be sparse on details in a way that I like. The show fills in those visual details, mostly because it is forced to do so by the medium of film.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
1hr ago
The last two are really not games for the faint of heart though, it turns out that in our modern age, real world tactics are actually quite complicated and unintuitive.
I'm interested, tell me more.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε Ἰησοῦ Χριστέ, Υἱέ τοῦ Θεοῦ, ἐλέησόν με τὸν ἁμαρτωλόν
1hr ago
Mine was a combination of psychedelics and meditation slowly opening my mind over years to other possibilities, then having an odd string of coincidences leading to me taking Christianity a bit more seriously. Over time I began to learn more and more including listening to Jordan Peterson's lectures, John Vervaeke, and reading a good amount of the sort of "post-modern" Christian apologists. Eventually I decided to go to a church and slowly work on my faith.
In terms of the culturally alien thing... yeah. That's kind of the point if you want to fill the God-shaped hole. Anything that fills that is going to be alien to you, because your worldview is basically secular materialism. Even if you don't realize it, you have a 'religion' right now with extremely strong precepts. A big part of the journey to a "real religion" is recognizing that secular materialism is a philosophical system with axioms that must be investigated as well.
If you want a super dry book to read on all this, I'd recommend All Things are Full of Gods by David Bentley Hart.
EDIT: Sorry misread the God shaped hole thing. Also it helps to think of sin as "error" or "missing the mark" which is the Greek translation.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε Ἰησοῦ Χριστέ, Υἱέ τοῦ Θεοῦ, ἐλέησόν με τὸν ἁμαρτωλόν
1hr ago
I love finding random small bookstores or something like that. Atlas Obscura also has cool stuff https://www.atlasobscura.com/
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1hr ago
No need to get all autistic-ragey about it…
Don't drop personal insults like that.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1hr ago
The DNC has factions, and the Harris faction disliked Shapiro for some reason (maybe Jewishness, maybe not -- personally I think not choosing him was galactically stupid). The same faction is unlikely to be to driving the boat in 2028.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
1hr ago
If that "insightful answer" turned into any actual understanding on your part, you could have just reformulated the concept in your own words.
yofuckreddit
1hr ago
A world without color under the rainbow
Well, it’s pride month (Grammarly suggests capitalizing Pride here...)! Again. I rolled out of bed last week to a saccharine salvo of big brand bullshit. That, and smug condescension from the women I know on Instagram “wishing homophobes an uncomfortable month”.
When the gay marriage movement really kicked up steam in the early 00’s, I was always a bit perturbed by the use of a rainbow. I’ve always been a fetishist for color - my first attempts at building user interfaces somehow became unusable clown vomit because of it - and so a single group monopolizing literally every hue of light at the same time seemed like a bit much. But I was a good lefty-libertarian and didn’t complain.
I tried to drag this board into a conversation about cars. I won’t make that mistake again, but a point of discussion centered around all of them being way less colorful than they used to be.. If you take a look at a graph you can see that things really started getting “Super Fucking Lame” right about 2007. Don’t worry, the problem’s gotten worse: 78% of all cars sold today are a neutral color.
It wasn’t just vehicles, though. At almost the exact same time, Millennials began making everything grey..
Meanwhile, woke discourse has been (was?) on a tear in mainstream media institutions:
A clear trend of increasing prevalence of prejudice related terms is apparent with words such as racist or sexist increasing in usage between 2010 and 2019 by 638% and 403% in The New York Times or 514% and 141% respectively in The Washington Post.
If you ask a politically correct LLM about why everything is lame, it will suggest that we’re this way because of “economic uncertainty” or social media. Others will say something vague like resale value.
If I know anything about anything, it’s that correlation is causation. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a wave of rainbows and the unrelenting drumbeat of intersectionality has, in many ways, relied on the dilution of color everywhere else. How else can you shove it in the world’s face? A coffee shop already full of colorful whimsy would be burying v99.0 of the LGBTQIA+ flag. It’s only through the clash of it with the drab whites and browns of an espresso machine that a message can be sent. At least the latest revision inoculates itself against good taste pretty well. The clashing racial bars and two spirit circle make it hideous on its own.
The death of peak woke is… probably overestimated. But even my blackpill soul feels some sort of vibe shift. Dare I hope for color to make a comeback?
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1hr ago
We still do have a First Amendment, it still applies to public officials, and Brandenburg v. Ohio is still the controlling precedent. Unless Newsom says more or less "Come on out right now and wreck the place", he's reasonably safe from prosecution. And he's not dumb enough to step over the line. (Trump might be dumb enough to try to prosecute anyway, but probably not)
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1hr ago
Riots during Trump admins have been politically genius. If the admin Does What It Takes to restore order, he confirms the image the left has painted of him of being a dictator.
Nope. If he does what it takes to restore order, then as long as the Guard doesn't shoot anyone too sympathetic, he wins. The left has overplayed their hand on rioting.
BurdensomeCount
Messenger Status: Shot
1hr ago
Nah, my scrolls aren't that august. They're all late Qing/republic period (late 19th Century, early 20th century) works by no name artists painting the usual subjects of bamboo, shrimp and mountainous landscapes. They don't really have any artistic value beyond the fact that they look pretty and aren't reproductions, selling for a few hundred dollars each and the stamps on them are also of randoms, I expect if there was an Imperial seal at the very minimum the price would be in the 10s of thousands of dollars per scroll and I don't have that sort of money. Most certainly if what I had was a valuable work I would not be putting my own seal on it as that could easily damage its worth.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1hr ago
The problem is that "deficit spending" isn't a thing. It's two things, the revenue side and the spending side. The Democrats generally want to increase taxes, not just for revenue but as primary policy. The Republicans generally want to reduce them (or so they say, anyway). Both sides want to spend, just differently. A deficit hawk generally wants to reduce spending and increase taxes. This means Republican deficit hawks have no leverage against the Democrats; they can't really trade reduced spending that they want for tax increases the Democrats want, because the Democrats know they want those tax increases too.
bolido_sentimental
1hr ago
There's always geocaching.
https://www.geocaching.com/play
Can help you look at your environment in a new way, and also creates a nifty record of all the places you've been.
wemptronics
1hr ago
Does your Chinese scroll also have an Emperor's signature and archival stamp? Can we see it or is that gauche?
5434a
1hr ago
you don't hear about non-tech companies spending any substantial sums to use it. If they were to start charging a non-trivial amount for it, no one would pay, outside of a few edge cases
I don't see any mention of figures but there was the first regulatory approval of an AI-based law firm in England last month. https://www.sra.org.uk/sra/news/press/garfield-ai-authorised/
Law, medicine and finance are large service industries with notoriously steep fees that would gladly peel off a few billion to become more productive and competitive if they were allowed to. People might be slow to pay for image slop and virtual waifus but they'll happily pay up for things that matter. Will it scale to offset the expense of running the AI server farms? I don't know.
I think you should try Myth II: Soulblighter. It's a real-time tactics game where the multiplayer really shows how it can shine with regards to troop placement and management. I think the multiplayer community eventually settled on the best formation for melee being all of them packed in shoulder-to-shoulder, though.
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