domain:kvetch.substack.com
FistfullOfCrows
29d ago
if born in Britain, France or Spain etc., will not see themselves as nonwhite, because their societies lack the concept of whiteness as an identity.
Press (X) to doubt. They would see themselves as non-white in exactly the same way as if they were born anywhere else that has the internet and english is commonly spoken. Further they will be reminded at every step by their peers, teachers and general adults how much MENA, person of color or BAME, BIPOC or whatever else fancy term for non-white they are.
f3zinker
Its A/B testing all the way down
29d ago
Brookes law
You mean marginal utility of labor goes negative. Econ 101 stuff.
I'm not disparaging you for citing it, but I am a bit dissapointed that there are so many "<Pronoun>'s Laws" out there that are just reskinned version of a well known generalized pattern.
The global knowledge base needs a refactoring just about now. There's too much redundancy.
Fuck you Brooke. I can reskin econ 101 shit too and apply it to Basket weaving or rice farming, or something. Where is my Wikipedia page ?
Armin
29d ago
It depends on the person and the context. As with sexuality, where bisexuality or queereness is a political label more often than not, in an European context calling yourself black or "native" is completely dependent on your political ideology.
BahRamYou
29d ago
yeah I've heard of them and I greatly enjoyed most of those. But looking back at them now as an adult, I don't see them as great writing. It seems more like stage directions to tell you what's going on in the game and keep you on track. Not to mention: it's all fantasy tropes that have been done a million times. Eg:
https://www.lemonamiga.com/games/media/screens/full/ultima_iv_-quest_of_the_avatar/ultima_iv-_quest_of_the_avatar_04.png Thanks for telling me it's a gypsy caravan, in case I couldn't have guessed just from the picture
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/YJC1C8Tm3S0s8JptmC0V3k01K35JRIp5r0j8buUXOi3Gih97ggYLbBGSVMOkbDOZf8CcTg7jcJAmOxknvnTghy2jak0XMPQkn7XnQoJMvEEHEJ4qojGOGmtCybaJ1xPhUw: Explaining that we're on the edge of the map and can't move any further
https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/baldur_s_gate_retro_4.jpg.jpg?width=1920&height=1920&fit=bounds&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp Is this dialogue? Or just random character lines to narrate the battle?
https://static1.thegamerimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Fallout-Harold-Dialogue-Cropped.jpg Infodumping the backstory
I shouldn't pick on these because the genre forces the writing to go a certain way. But still... you can see why none of this is exactly prizewinning literature, right?
f3zinker
Its A/B testing all the way down
29d ago
Just some scattered thoughts I have about passport broing.
The best way to passport bro is to go abroad for actual work, and end up doing it unintentionally. Being a foreigner (white) will still give you a sizeable advantage even if you are doing a boring PMC job and get paid the same as your local peers. But that is a whole load of fucking work and rarely ever makes sense if you are an American.
Stupid idea.. but, Why don't American men try passport bro'ing in.... Canada? You got a bunch of Europoors at your doorstep. The advantage you have might be minimal, but it's still probably material nevertheless given how poor Canadians are relatively.
If you do end up actually doing the real thing, make sure the woman you find is an absolute babe and a half in terms of looks and character/personality. I can tell you from experience that language,culture,intelligence barriers are some real fucking barriers.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
29d ago
Ukraine and the West's official war aim is to retake all Ukraine's 2014 territories which include millions of Russians. There are many more inside Ukraine's currently controlled territory, where being Russian is not very popular. There are fundamental differences between the two states that can no longer be resolved diplomatically.
There's also the strategic dimension regarding control in the Black Sea, bases and so on.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
29d ago
If you mean, “the kind of person who follows advice regarding raising children well will already reduce all problems in their children such that their QoL indicators are as optimal as the most optimal community in America”, that is so unevidenced as to constitute magical thinking. It’s not as if children of the upper class stave off all depression, drug use, etc in their children. Or parents who read parenting guides. I know children of upper class who have had such problems. Jeeze, my (randomly assorted) first roommate in college was a literal heroin addict yet from a 0.01% income household. And if we are comparing top 5% normal households to top 50% Amish, that’s also a bit silly because even though there is less Amish stratification there is still going to be differences in QoL according to income.
Amish exist more than they live
If this were so we would we see more suicides, at the very least depression, and we would see a high amount of leavers during mandatory Rumspringa. They haven’t exactly built a Berlin Wall around Berlin, Ohio.
MollieTheMare
29d ago
It is quite ironic that one of the biggest contributes to CO2 emissions reductions is fossil fuel companies fracking so aggressively they drove the price of natural gas negative at some points. Ultimately substituting NG for coal is probably a net benefit, but I'm pretty sure environmental activists are not happy with the growth of NG as a energy source.
It's been more than 15 years since An Inconvenient Truth came out and the IPPC won their Nobel Peace Prize. In that time it would have been totally possible to replace essentially all electricity production in developed countries with GEN III+ nuclear plants and make substantial progress on Gen IV plants. Instead, without utility scale storage, the focus on growing interment renewables has only entrench NG peaking plants as the dominant on-demand electricity generation source.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
29d ago
Consider: by raising your kids Amish you are vastly decreasing their risk of depression, suicide, drug use, and violence.
No, I'm not. My life expectancy, suicide likelihood, and propensity for violence are all far, far below both the general population and the Amish. I'm also much richer and simply prefer my lifestyle to either the general population or the Amish. Shifting from being an addled junkie or criminal lowlife to being Amish would be an improvement on these metrics, moving from my own life to Amish would not be.
This is the same kind of silly stuff that makes people say that owning a firearm makes you more likely to commit suicide. No, I actually know myself, and I simply won't kill myself. I understand the objections to this and they are simply wrong in my individual case.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
29d ago
I’m not sure if you can craft any advice for outlier cases, but as someone so preternaturally predestined for success as yourself, you would have to compare to the most successful Amish lifestyle. This would include:
-
Overseeing a huge tourism industry, one of rhe largest Amish businesses, or even directing the Amish to a new industry
-
Acting as an elder to your clan, advising their political and social concerns with loving patriarchal tenderness
-
The formation of a dynasty, which you oversee like a medieval King, sending your Sons to various parts of America to operate and enhance your family name
It is not without its own glories and rewards.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
29d ago
Amish exist more than they live
If this were so we would we see more suicides
Without commentary on the Amish specifically, this isn't true. Animals don't really kill themselves much. Lacking introspection is a good start for not killing yourself.
roystgnr
29d ago
On #1: try the second button from the top on the right of the gas pump's screen. It's almost never labeled as such, but it's usually set up as Mute. I've heard of one pump brand that uses top right instead, but never encountered it myself.
t3tsubo
29d ago
FWIW on my gut check I didn't really agree with the premise. In addition to your list I would have Last of Us,God of War + GOW Ragnarok, Warcraft 3, Witcher 3, Sekiro, and multiple others in the good story category. And in the old days for every game with a great story you had 5 games like Sims or Roller Coaster Tycoon which were just story-less.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
29d ago
Certainly the quality of living well would protect against the desire to cease living. This is historically considered one of the benefits of introspective philosophy, and IIRC there’s even a study showing that reading philosophy leads to a happier old age. If your introspection leads to a desire to stop living, that means you are neither living well nor introspecting well.
As for whether the Amish lack introspection, I’m pretty sure they have a practice of introspecting their sins.
WestphalianPeace
29d ago
This is a great list of narratively strong games but I think this misses something unique in how video games deliver narrative. The interactive nature of video games means that the reader/player can experience narrative through gameplay itself. Video games are distinct in this player experiential means of narrative communication.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice for example has the player personally experiencing being beaten down by it's punishing combat system, then getting passingly good at that system, getting over their fears within that system, and then experiencing mastery over it. The endboss line "Hesitation is defeat" is not just a good character line, it is an expression of what is being experienced by both the in-game character and also the player. You the player have to get past your desire for safety and instead fight on the knifes edge, and overcome. Your experience mirrors the character's own experience of repeated trial, overcoming of the desire for safety, and success. But there is little dialogue, just experience.
Victoria 2 has no narrative at all. It's a grand strategy game full of mathematical expressions of interest groups, migrations, military power, & prestige. But through repeated games you the player experience the narrative of what it means to be a nation amidst Great Power politics. Of the iron faced incentives structures set by the world around you. Play as france and you may find yourself willing to go to war over this pointless piece of land in Africa no one had ever heard before called Fashoda just as an excuse to start a war to devastate a nation simply to avoid them overcoming you economically and subsequently militarily. So you have to go to war now, before it's too late. But there is little dialogue, just experience.
Frostpunk is a city builder that takes place in a steampunk Victorian Era cold driven apocalypse. There are a few dialogues to set the tone or inform you about what's causing the next crisis. But overwhelmingly the narrative is told through decision making. The first time you play (before repetition causes desensitization) you sit grim faced at each challenge. You may demand people work extreme hours with no rest. Children into coal mines. The butchery of innocent sick and wounded just to make room for the next batch and because it's not worth it to recover them when food is so low. The sincere temptation of dictatorship or religious fanaticism just to keep control of the populace long enough to make it to the next day. 'we can always loosen things up later' you tell yourself. Your jaw has been clenched for three hours without realizing it as you make Sophies Choice tradeoff decisions that you deem necessary because your people are all that's left and The City Must Survive. But there is little dialogue, just experience.
I think video games have a really powerful means of getting a person to emotionally understand a narrative or setting in a way that books and movies simply canot. It's different to read an idea or see it versus being personally constricted by a system and condemned to navigate a world within it's rules. So while I think your list is a fantastic set of games, a golden age even, I think your comment on decline since the ps4 overlooks how games more broadly can communicate narrative outside of the traditional considerations of dialogue or imagery.
throwaway-7742
29d ago
Comic book media for sure.
- John Stewart (Green Lantern) and Shayera Hol (Hawkgirl) have a child (Rex Stewart aka Warhawk) in Justice League Unlimited.
- Luke Cage and Jessica Jones have a child (Danielle Cage) via affair when Jessica Jones was dating Scott Lang (Ant-Man). Danielle Cage becomes Captain America for a stretch.
- Kara Zor-EL/Karen Starr (Supergirl/Power Girl) is in a sexual relationship with Mr. Terrific and later a romantic relationship with Val-Zod (Superman) in The New 52.
- (Black) Jimmy Olsen is in a love triangle with Kara Zor-El (Supergirl) in Supergirl television show.
- Miles Morales (Spider-Man) and Gwen Stacey (Spider-Gwen) have romantic feelings for each other. Justifying it, by saying that it's an alternate dimension Gwen Stacey.
Black men taking formerly white men's superhero mantles and banging white women.
I've stopped paying close attention to any comic book media.
DTulpa
29d ago
I've only ever seen consternation over black British actors playing black Americans, obviously because there's a weird protectionist sensibility over that turf. Nobody was ever giving Christian Bale or Benedict Cumberbatch shit for their American accents. At most, we chuckle a little bit when the accents slip at some of the corners (for some reason the hard pronunciation of 'are' is often a giveaway to me), but we just take it for granted that the British are born with thespian genetics.
I took the OP's question as one of asking "among the subset of games which tell linear narrative stories with plots, characters, dialogue etc., have these stories declined in quality over time?" I think that's a fundamentally different question to the question of whether games without such narratives have improved or declined in quality. In Frostpunk, there is no "narrative": the narrative is the player's experience in the game, enabled by the mechanics. It's the difference between a novel and a DnD campaign. Everyone intuitively understands that Frostpunk is trying to do something fundamentally different from what Call of Duty is trying to do, at a mechanical and experiential level - it's confusing that "success" in game design is invariably described in reference to how "fun" the game is, when this descriptor hides more than it illuminates.
And maybe this is part of the story: maybe at the start of the PS4 era, all the smart game designers in the indie space collectively realised that trying to use video games to tell stories the same way that books or films do was a lost cause, and focused instead on crafting organic, player-directed simulations with more intuitive interfaces and better production values compared to their 90s forebears. This would mean that the last ten years of AAA games still doing the lame "Hollywood action movie but you're the main character" thing isn't evidence that video games have lost their way or are on the verge of another crash: it just means that the lumbering AAA game studios haven't cottoned on to the new hot trend, which is intentionally narrative-light organic player-directed simulations. If this were the case, it would be a fascinating narrative to describe the last decade and a half.
Fair point, but I would maintain that there is still a significant difference in reach and intended audience between the big-name game companies of the 90s and those of the 2020s.
Wow. There are no bodies?
Cremation couldn’t have been involved, perhaps?
It's a common misconception that performing a cremation burns the entire corpse to ash. Even a modern crematory furnace leaves behind thousands of identifiable bone fragments. For example, teeth do not cremate to ash, they calcinate and remain perfectly identifiable after a cremation. As Revisionists have pointed out:
And finally, we must note that the teeth of the supposed victims could not have been destroyed by the primitive methods attested to. Even if each of the alleged victims had only 20 of the usual 32 teeth left at the time he or she died, there would have been at least 17.5 million teeth to be disposed of at Treblinka. This means that we should still be able to find some 5 teeth per cubic foot of the 3.53 million cu.ft. of material excavated at the alleged site of the crime.
And there would have been orders of magnitude more identifiable bone fragments for each victim than teeth for that matter. If what is claimed actually happened, even if all the victims were cremated, there would be metric tons of physical evidence which could be easily found within a single afternoon of digging.
Even in a murder case, when there is a suspected cremation of the victim involved, it's equally important for investigators to excavate the remains of a murder victim. In no case would investigators say "oh well witnesses say the victim was cremated and buried there, so I guess there's no point in doing a dig to prove that's actually what happened."
Like, it’s remarkable you bring up the apparently fake Canadian graves, when the same technique was used at Treblinka and they found stuff.
No mass graves have ever been excavated at Treblinka. You say "they found stuff", whatever that means, but no mass grave has ever been excavated from the site.
Try to at least be aware of evidence you claim doesn’t exist:
I am well aware of the studies by Caroline Sturdy-Colls, I've read through her papers. You should be aware of the evidence you are citing:
"...We knew where the mass graves were and we weren’t going there,” Sturdy Colls says. These initial assurances, she adds, helped the rabbis feel comfortable letting the team excavate around the gas chambers, as they were not located on top of a mass-grave site. “Because of the way these technologies respected the religious law, they actually facilitated the investigation.”
"The techniques respected the religious law" is referring to the "technique" of purely using GPR to identify a mass grave with no subsequent excavation to actually prove what the ground disturbance was. She did not find any mass graves, she did exactly what they did at the Kamloops site.
The methods used by Caroline Colls to identify the "possible mass graves" were the exact same as the Kamloops hoax: GPR results were used to call ground disturbances "mass graves" and then they were forbidden from excavating the ground disturbances based on claims of cultural sensitivity.
She did, though, excavate human remains about 1km from the site of the alleged Treblinka mass graves. She went to a marked Christian graveyard, found a few bones, and then cried on camera. No problem disturbing those graves!
The most dramatic piece of evidence uncovered at the Treblinka extermination camp was not any mass grave, it was a clay tile which Caroline Colls misidentifies as showing a Jewish Star of David whereas in reality it was the brand mark of a porcelain factory in Poland.
Imagine you bring in the TV cameras with an archaeological team to investigate a crime scene where 900,000 were murdered. You don't find any mass graves, but you find a terracotta tile and immediately jump to the conclusion that the tile featured a Star of David to lure Jews inside the gas chamber, whereas in reality it was a manufacturer's branding. But nobody watching the TV show is going to learn the truth about that tile, or wonder why they are making much ado about a terracotta tile instead of investigating the enormous amounts of physical evidence that would be right beneath them, if what is claimed actually happened.
The reality is Caroline Colls did the exact same thing as the Kamloops archaeologists: use GPR to claim to have found mass graves, but don't excavate any of the disturbances you are claiming contain mass graves. It should also be pointed out the GPR results themselves run completely contrary to witness testimony regarding the size, shape, and locations of the mass graves. The GPR results do not prove any mass graves at Treblinka, but they disprove witness testimony about them. If they actually did a scientific investigation of the site and excavated them, it would immediately disprove the story.
Like I said, there has never been a single excavation of a mass grave on this site because Jewish authorities forbid it using the exact same claims as the perpetrators of the Kamloops mass grave hoax.
Edit: Here's an update on the Kamloops situation, if anybody is wondering, from a couple of weeks ago:
The Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc band is not close to excavating the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, where it says it found signs of graves nearly three years ago.
In May of 2021, the band announced it had found signs of 200 probable graves on grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School through a ground-penetrating radar survey.
During a press conference announcing a sacred covenant between the band and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver, reporters asked Kúkpi7 Rosanne Casimir if there was an update on the identification of the unmarked graves anomalies, if any excavation of the site had been completed to date and, if not, whether there were any plans to do so in 2024.
“We have not started excavation,” Casmir said.
Tk’emlúps spokesperson Racelle Kooy told reporters the band is still at a point of doing archival research in its investigation.
“We’re still at the oral tellings with the truth telling part of it,” Casimir added.
Casimir said any talk of excavation of the site “is very intrusive” and it is “a very sensitive step moving forward.”
She said taking that step will entail a lot of dialogue, with supports in place for band members and residential school survivors, as well as collaboration with other First Nations impacted by the Kamloops Residential School.
“And we're not at that point yet. We're still very early,” Casimir said.
Casimir said the band intends to provide updates “at key points” in its investigation into the probable graves.
“We will be sure to reach out and share,” Casimir said.
In September of 2021 Kooy told reporters at a press conference the band had done “non-invasive work to date” at the site.
It's literally the exact same script as the Treblinka case. Rely on "oral truth-telling" and refuse to excavate, claiming cultural sensitivity, because you know it would disprove the stories which have gained enormous cultural prominence based on extremely thin physical evidence.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
29d ago
To be clear, it didn't really upset me much: I still liked the show quite a bit overall. But now that I think about it, I'm not sure if I've seen a WWII movie written from a British perspective. The war has a very prominent place in American (and Russian) culture, but I'm not sure if I've seen a purely British take on it.
Lewis2
29d ago
A couple of points. First, although I suppose it wasn’t clear, I was responding to RandomRanger’s last sentence, which I do think is wrong. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a group that is more stable than the Amish, even though they have opted to go without modernity to some extent (the extent varies by Gemeinde).
Secondly, going back to coffee_enjoyer’s comment, I didn’t take him to be saying that we would need to adopt the Amish life wholesale, but instead that we could carefully pick and choose which parts we wanted to adopt (“incorporating such things into modern life”), just as the Amish carefully decide which parts of modernity they want to adopt. Some kind of synthesis between the two cultures would probably be a net gain over the current state of the modern West. If nothing else, I think the average modern person would benefit massively from the strong sense of community that the Amish have.
WhiningCoil
29d ago
I've heard good things (and am slowly making my way through) Unicorn Overlord - it seems refreshingly straight-down-the-line, and is gorgeous to boot.
Funny you mention that. I'd heard enough positive chatter about it that I bought it on sale and jumped in almost completely blind. I've been very pleasantly surprised, and I'm about 4 hours in.
Are we not missing the kind of Occam’s razor of reasons here.
Black people are more ethnocentric in their politics because under any other system they consistently come out bottom.
Lots of ethnicities have been aggrieved by discrimination and colonialism but have generally gotten on-board with a racially pluralistic form of politics because they don’t consistently come out on bottom, so the situation isn’t bad for them.
No population is ever going to just admit their worse, therefore there must be a more nefarious reason and the simple solution to that reason is for your population to govern.
This is not to say that the legacy of discrimination does not help justify that lack of trust and resulting governing reason, but it is far from the sole cause.
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