Luftmensch

Did I hear someone say "Plug Your Shit"? (so sorry for taking this train even further off rails. But I still insist that moist toilet paper improved my life)

And looking at Canadian pop culture is like looking at a crazy time capsule of America ten years ago, except everyone is happier and more content.

Well 1.) no, you're wrong, and I'm not going to debate whether I have the right to criticize her, and 2.) that was just an easy secondary criticism to make on top of the fact that I simply think that the videos she makes. I'll agree that it was a very hollow and baseless complaint to make. I'll stand by my opinion that the central conceit of her videos, telling everyone how terrible pop/nerd culture is with a smug or disapproving expression, is unnecessary and kind of despicable. But I belief in positivity, open two-way discussion (including listening to criticisms and acknowledging fault), and I abhor divisive language and vilification. I don't live up to that very well myself but I try.

I always moisten my first sheet of toilet paper, with warm water if possible. Nothing like the feeling of a warm moist wipe on the butthole to make you feel clean. Honestly, scraping my bare ass with a dry sheet of paper is one of the most unpleasant and dirty feeling experiences, especially when I'm at someone's house where they have that weird paper that's all soft and linty and you end up having to scrub balls of crusty paper out of your butt hair. So yeah, moist toilet paper. If I had a bidet, I'd use it.

Well part of my dissatisfaction is that I think getting a reaction is pretty interesting. Frankly, I will try to be a little controversial if I think I can learn something. Not a fan of flame wars, but I don't mind magnifying my opinion if I think it'll get a thoughtful response. Personally, I have no stake in her Kickstarter campaign, I just observed that she hasn't created any new content in nine months (seven if you count the Kickstarter video), which is frankly a really long time to make opinionated YouTube videos of yourself talking. Also I think her videos are pretty lame; she's doing the same thing any TV or radio pundit does, except instead of producing between three and twenty hours of original published content every week, she managed to squeeze out almost eight minutes of video a week at the height of her productivity. Like any pundit, her authority is strictly based on her smugness. Her entire series is based on highlighting and reacting to negativity in culture and media, and she divides the community further by vilifying and talking down to people who disagree with her. Also her fans are terrible (the more outspoken ones at least). Not the most eloquent statement, but that about sums up what I don't really like about her. Basically the same stuff I don't like about Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck.

The term "institutional" is itself a bit muddy, but my bigger qualm is that Patriarchy means male-dominated, and even if you don't intend to mean it that way, unless society as a whole understands that, you're going to have some problems. Why not invent a new word? How about Ananthropathy? All it means is lacking empathy for humans. It has no connotations to gender roles. It doesn't assign blame. It implies a system that Anyway, video games, amiright? Speaking of Video games, after Anita Sarkeesian took enough money to buy a house and spent it all on Video games, was she ever planning on making that web series? When I first discovered her, I thought she was interesting, until I realized she was just quoting TV Tropes and rolling her eyes obnoxiously (seriously, eye-rolling is one of the worst gestures anyone can make). Lately I think of her almost as a scam.

In his usual silly fashion, Ruben Bolling has a thing or two to say about the American obsession with Gun Rights (and pokes a bit of fun at extreme libertarianism in general) Personally, I don't know enough about the issues to make an informed comment. I think for many people, it's more of an emotional issue than a rational concern. I liken it to Catholics and birth control. Being raised Catholic, it's really weird trying to engage anyone in a conversation about using condoms, because they just shut down. People in my community don't want to talk about condoms, the pros or the cons, because they're just bad, simple as that. Vatican said so. It's a shame that, by and large, the American gun control conversation is so unwilling to discuss things outside of terms of good and evil. It's not all like that, but it's common enough that it is hard to have a civil discussion with a stranger on the bus when the topic is guns and you disagree.

Exactly my point. We already have defined sexism and racism and bigotry, what's the point of using a new term that ostensibly means "male dominated"?

Sure I mean to draw attention to the point that its used interchangeably and ambiguously. I've heard people say "I hate men, and I hate white people, but I hate them as an institution, not in general" if you can't define what the institution is in any terms that's meaningfully different from any other form of sexism or racism, why make the distinction? If you don't like the status quo, say so.

Haha I can't argue with that. I picked Tumblr because it's convenient. If I wanted to hunt for Anita Sarkeesian quotes I could have found something equally absurd, but it would have taken longer. Then why call it patriarchy? Regardless of what it means to you, as a concept it's lost any meaning it may have had for being tossed around as a catch-all root of all evil. The way it's used in modern parlance, Patriarchy can be substituted for Devil, the same way people used to blame their problems on Godlessness, Communism, or The Man. What good does this concept serve? It vilifies any abstract concept it's associated with--including men and male authority (under any circumstances), or anything of and associated with the status quo--and unnecessarily simplifies all the complexities in the world into an emotionally convenient but ultimately unhelpful good/evil dichotomy. Like I said, without a definition, it's just a meaningless rallying cry. I'm not convinced that it has any place in any discussion outside of anthropology.

I'm glad there's attention being brought to women empowerment in games, comics, films, &c. Great stuff. Now that it's something that's being studied and recorded, even if the goals and standards are fragmented, everyone's seeing improvement. Yippee. I still don't buy the idea of the Patriarchy. As far as I can tell, the Patriarchy essentially refers to a state of culture where there's an imbalance of power skewed in favor of men. Its anthropological definition is more niche and defined, but as a catch-all explanation for feminist frustrations, it's fair. You can look at the public data and see that, worldwide, women hold relatively little public power. So in that sense it's valid. Where my beef comes in is where people use "The Patriarchy" to refer to a huge amorphous evil that's responsible for all the problems in the world. The most telling thing, for me, is when people throw out slogans like "Misandry is just The Patriarchy biting men back!" That's absurd. It's come to a point where The Patriarchy doesn't represent anything that can be defined, and without definition it's just a meaningless rallying cry. To give some examples of what I mean, here's some quotes pulled from Tumblr searching for Patriarchy: (source) (source) (source) The first two are just vapid slogans that don't make any sense. The third says that the very existence of cultural gender norms, the existence of sexism, the existence of misconceptions based on sex, is the fault of men. It makes the bald-faced assumption that because stereotypes are harmful, and because men apparently benefit, that they created it and its their fault. Hell, the first two quotes basically say "I don't like this thing and it's all men's fault". Encouragingly, I'm not alone in thinking it's all bullshit.

She and Lady Gaga were both considered for the role of Candie's sister. I guess ultimately there wasn't really a place for either of them.

The way I felt about this movie was the way I feel reading any genre author I'm a fan of. I know what I'm getting into. It's not going to be completely new, but it'll have a hook, it'll be fun, and it'll be good. After that there's not much to expect. Honestly as far as cool editing and exciting action sequences, I almost thought the Die Hard trailer before the film was more creative. Almost. One thing I liked about Django: This was the first time I can remember going to a movie and hearing the audience audibly gasp and cringe at the violence. It's pretty intense.

Not exactly comical, but these body paintings reminded me of the style used in The Walking Dead.

That debate would be valuable if anyone here was a qualified environmental scientist and understood what variables are studied and why. As far as moral concerns, I would state that its our goal to create as good a world a possible for all people, in as inclusive a definition of "people" as possible. That's kind of a rough description and someone else could state that thought better.

It's a paradox because you're mixing definitions. If history came about such that I didn't exist, I wouldn't know the difference, much like I didn't mind the 14 billion years before I came to exist. The smoggy LA is only the best of all possible timelines for you personally. Broadly speaking, the smog-free LA would have resulted in a healthier, happier present. The people who would have existed in your place would have been healthier and better off. Effectively, you're saying it's okay for better off people to have never existed as long as you get to be alive. I kindly object to that sentiment. Or I would, if the past was not immutable.

I think when you're talking about a possibility space, it's pretty silly to talk about whether you'd exist or not. If there's a world-changing event, which completely changes who will be born but not the net number of births, the difference is irrelevant. You're talking about an infinite set of possible people, and arguing that one particular finite set is more valuable because they're the ones that exist in a given timeline (namely, ours). Let's just pretend that everyone is a reincarnation and that our individual existence is inevitable and sidestep that whole discussion. Once you get that out of the way, there are some things you could look at to judge if a given timeline is better: Rate of violence and violent deaths Health (mortality rates, age expectancy, people living with curable diseases, people living with untreated chronic conditions, rate of SIDS, &c.) Human rights under law Human dignity in society Political stability Homelessness Standard of living Literacy and scientific literacy Happiness or contentedness Scientific progress (did one timeline make more meaningful discoveries than the others?) Environmental health (green spaces, pollution, biodiversity, ozone levels, &c.) &c. &c. &c. Arguably, the future that has all of these better than all other futures is the better one. If you lived in a smog-ridden LA, and were at the age of having a child, would you strive for a future with a smog-free LA where your children wouldn't develop asthma, or would you go for the one that has Tycho in it? We don't have the liberty of knowing which future will have Tycho Redux, so it's entirely fair of us to strive for the ones we can, with some objectivity and some certainty, reckon are overall better for everyone, instead of just being fatalist and assuming that whatever we leave behind, the future will be grateful to live with it because otherwise they wouldn't exist.

Tycho's argument doesn't address the issue of the future though. When it comes to the past, it doesn't make a difference now whether their action were moral or immoral, because they happened and we can't change that. If we could accurately predict how history changed, which I doubt we ever shall, it wouldn't matter. Regardless, I think it's pretty egocentric to say that because a change to the past would result in a present that doesn't include you, that it can't be a change for the better. Projecting that same philosophy into the future strikes me as naive and counterproductive. Procreation is a weird thing. You can philosophize any point you want, so I'll just say I don't think an individual person or family necessarily has a moral limit to the children they should have. As distasteful as I find them, I don't think the Duggers are in the wrong. Let's just say that it can be irresponsible, but it's morally neutral. If anyone has a moral duty to birth control, it's policymakers, who need to create an environment that encourages the ideal birth rate. I imagine it's pretty tricky, since low birth rates are economically dangerous long-term, while high birth rates are environmentally dangerous long-term. I'm glad that's not what I do.

Well I submitted my entry to Illustrators of the Future this quarter. I misunderstood the rules so this was my entry for the first quarter of 2013, not the last quarter of 2012. I hope it works out. I don't know if I'm allowed to post my entries online according to the contest rules. I sent them an email today. I'll let you all know.

I bought Thirty Flights of Loving to gift friends (I allotted $20 to buy copies if it ever went on sale). I have some extra. I've also still got two Dota 2 invites.

Team Ico is part of a larger studio, so I doubt the six years of production has been full-time work for everyone on the project.

just wait until the year of the PS3.I will say though. As much as people laughed and joked that the hardware wouldn't last, I think it can be said that this hardware generation really is seeing serious improvement as it drags on. Of course as a PC/indie gamer In not really experiencing generations like I used to. I guess WiiU hasn't released any GOTY contenders?

Let me know if anyone wants to exchange gifts. I don't especially care about the community badge, but I'd be glad to participate.

Didn't complete it per se but I just finished the first week as Andrus in Cart Life. Damn.