MrHoatzin

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Posts posted by MrHoatzin

  1. Posted

    As angry as I am, I guess I'm not as sarcastically angry as MrHoatzin:

     

    DvW4dWF.png

     

    (he is running afoul of Poe's law, guys, calm down)

     

    God, in five minutes I had dozens of notifications and people piling on me and was all like, oh shit, what did I do now?? Epic sarcasm fail.

     

    Horrifying that this—THIS!—is indistinguishable from the shit that gamerghazi scum have actually been saying. :(

  2. Posted

    It looks like I might get a chance to develop a curriculum from nothing and then teach video game design at this weekend/after-school art program for inner-city kids!

    I have about 3/5 of the qualifications that they're looking for. I don't have a portfolio of games under my belt and I've never taught kids before... still, I think I'd make for an effective teacher of arty programmings... I hope... I have an art degree, I can program in a bunch of different languages (and should have no problem boning up on any new ones if I have to), I have thought at length about structure of games for decades now, and even though I play few games these days, I play all the artistically interesting and novel things that come out... and I also know 3/4s of the people working there (NEPOTISMS CRONYISMS ARGLEBARGLE etc)...

    I have one more interview to go through, yet to be scheduled. The first one went p well and they did make me an offer—a part-time nonprofit offer, as one would expect, which is fine—a year of freelancing web dev has been kind to me, so I'm not really doing this for the moneys anyway. So far so good! :woohoo:
     
     

    They want to start off with this thing called Scratch, which looks pretty full-featured for a Fisher-Price™ programming language.

    I want to throw in Twine early on. I really have no idea about how much I can push these kids or expect from them, I have no idea what kinds of games they like, play, or want to make either, but I can see teaching Processing maybe... if the program grows up to include high school kids, definitely. It would also be cool to do a larger project-oriented something or other, where they're split into roles and make a bigger game all together or in small teams. So maybe Unity would come in handy? One thing that is kinda wacky and limiting is that their lab is all Macs, so that throws out Game Maker and AGS...

    Anyway: ideas, recommendations, tips on curriculum and general teaching appreciated!
     
    One fun fact: I was super excited to hear that this organization has a solid history of about 70% girl participation throughout their middle and high school programs (visual arts, theater, film) and they expect the same for the video game design dealio! Pheuh! I was actually anxious I would have to beat gamerness out of a herd of nerdy boys. Having the scales tipping like this will make that task easier if it even is an issue.

     

     

     

    Now that I made this thread, it will somehow fall through and I'll be a sad. :cry:

  8. Posted

    Oh man, I had forgotted how much I wore my Seditious Industrial Complex shirt. I completely wore that down, I don't even think I have it anymore. At some point it was just worn to the thread. I loved that shirt.

     

    I still have a box of them in the closet. The only reason I haven't worn out mine to shreds is that I have five of them in rotation ¬¬

     

    Neat!  That's not something I knew about in the slightest (I'm pretty ignorant of photography in general), and didn't realize what Hoatzin was talking about with the fake depth-of-field stuff.

     

    It's not tilt-shift exactly; it's a mode on the Android camera app that takes some depth info and semi-unwisely applies post-process blurring. It sometimes works and sometimes things have really awful chunky outlines. Works best with backgrounds that are not too noisy and it will never be as good looking as a proper lens.

  10. Posted

    I'm not sure if that making post was a big deal for you or not, but I think it was a courageous post to make.

    ....

    It always seems like, for all of those people, that it feels risky to stick their head above the parapet and say something non-heteronormative though.

    Yeah, it's weird. I never had any problems ranting about all kinds of controversial topics, but this topic was weird because I had no allies whatsoever and the risk of becoming some kind of social pariah was palpable if I said the wrong thing to wrong people. Monosexuals can be absolutist jerks. If they even really exist. I am kinda eager to say no, fuck all y'all. How does that feel, huh?? :shifty: :shifty: :shifty: :shifty:

    Yeah, I also think it's really cool and couragous that you took the time to write this and post it "out loud".

    It's too bad that a question from Thunderpeel has haunted you for two years like this, I doubt he meant it like that. On the other hand, by the end of the post it sounds like you have stepped closer to finding your OWN identity? Not as in "identifying as X", but you seem like you know more who you are instead of questioning yourself, fluid sexuality included.

    You mention that "Bisexuality has no cultural visibility whatsoever", and I agree with that. It led me to an honest question: Is there such a thing as "bi culture"? You mentioned the stereotypes, but there's also gay clubs, media such as TV shows, music and literature aimed specifically at gay men, lesbian women or other groups such as drag artists. But does places, art or other things under the definition "culture" exist specifically for bi-sexual people? (Stating again, I'm genuinely curious.)

    I haven't exactly been "haunted" by Thunderpeel, it was just a momentous moment, because I never ousted myself publicly before, s'all. I've had a bit of time to unpack my baggage, try stuff out and come to terms with things... The "courageous" long post from a few days ago was not as big a deal to me as that brief conversation two years ago. I figured it was time to put things into writing and ask others in a thoughtful forum about their experiences—so why not this thoughtful online web-forum on the internets!

    There really isn't anything like bi culture. The closest thing I can think of is this pretty rad comic anthology that came out recently, Anything That Loves. I didn't expect it to have as big an effect on me as it did. It is a really, really good collection, with a bunch of autobio comics, but also a lot of really good stories that deal with the themes and conflicts inherent in non-binary, beyond-straight-and-gay relationships, including trans, asexual, etc. It was the first time I saw some of the same feels and impressions I've had all my life verbalized and by a bunch of different people. If anything, it just illustrates double-plus-well how there isn't a bi culture... outside of indie comics, I guess. Erica Moen has a little abridged journal comic in there, part of which she posted online.

    And when you think about gay culture, there are so many aspects of it that have absolutely nothing to do with sex. To be gay is to be a member of a tribe that almost incidentally also involves sexual preference. Gay dudes and fussy old ladies would get along so well, if only so many of the latter weren't so dang puritanical. Drag comes out of a tradition of needing to hide, or blend in. Theater, Broadway and showtunes are uhh somehow related to fabulousness which is also gay for some reason? Because real proper straight dudes don't care about their appearance? Which is really a wider feminist issue... And lesbian culture is completely different still from the gay culture in equally arbitrary-seeming ways...

    I have managed to hone my bidar tho—I put all of the bi people I know in a pile and compared them amongst themselves and against all the straight and gay people I know to draw some kind of common thread—to where I can sorta definitely say that there is a "bi type"... Can't quite put my finger on verbalizing what the telltale signs are, but the general feeling is that bi people tend to be less neurotic (or something!!??) about their relationships, intimate or otherwise... maybe it's just that being straight and being gay are so taxing, constantly have to be affirmed, different sexes are inherently treated differently? I kinda feel that that bi personality manifests itself even in more quiet, closeted people so it doesn't really have anything to do with being out, but uhhh I dunno something something scientific method... :dopefish:

    As for bisexuality/pansexuality/non-binary sexualities being diminished, I have talked to some people who have had bad experiences being a lot of straight but questioning people's test tube. Like "Oh, don't know if I'm straight or not, I should see if I have a relationship with the person in my sphere who is out, oops I don't like this farewell." Pure anecdotal evidence, but I've heard it from a fair number of people who have had that kind of bad experience, whether it was being lead on romantically for long periods of time or just a night of really awkward sex. I remember one guy I hooked up with in college telling me I was "one of the good ones", which I guess just meant I put out? Gay guys can be entitled pigs too.

    I think maybe also the focus recently has about integrating gay people into traditionally straight capitalist-driven institutions, like getting married and having children, while queer and trans (and non-monogamous) people often feel more like challenges to said institutions? Which is why the b and t in LGBT sometimes feel like they aren't pronounced? Trans-visibility seems to have increased in the past year or so but I've also only been dating my partner, who is gender non-conforming, for a year or so, so maybe that change is just in me?

    It can be hard to say, I guess. I'm kind of just rambling because I saw a clip from All That Jazz again recently and it made me think about that time in my life.

    I feel like it's impossible not to ramble on these kinds of uncharted touchy personal topics... Speaking of Fosse, I watched Cabaret recently for the first time since I was a kid and was startled by how much I remembered OUTSIDE of the love triangle... I remembered all the songs and the general vector of the nazi conflict, but I had completely forgotten (suppressed???) the central plot...

    Relationships are weird and difficult enough without throwing that cross-camp experimentation into the mix. People are emotionally manipulative, selfish and younger people so much moreso. There was a time in my confused early 20s when I dated a string of (in retrospect wrong) girls, had piss-poor chemistry, and freaked out that maybe I should be dating dudes... I wasn't absolutely certain I wanted to make that shift, since, like I mentioned, it seemed a permanent decision and not one to be made lightly... but still, inability to connect with a few girls = gay gay gay... and then with every subsequent girl I'd go out with, I'd be preemptively freaked out that I would fail to connect, creating a string of horrible self-fulfilling prophecies... Properly Gay™ people have it easier than bi peeps, in a way, since there is no alternative-sex attraction to muddle the waters and cast doubts...

    My recent impressions on the emotional side of bi-dating are further confused by the fact that most of my gay dalliances happened in a poly context... and that is a whole other can of worms. On top of that, I feel like Americans just date differently than normal ( :crazy:???) people... I've never been able to connect with Americans as emotionally unguardedly as I've been able to connect with foreigners... I've heard similarly vague experiences from other foreigners dating in the States. I'm a very competent, attentive lover—if they let me—so I am pretty sure it's not just me...

    I retumblred a cut down version of Kenji Yoshino's The Epistemic Contract of Bisexual Erasure a while back, and I'm gonna plop it here again because it is pertinent:

    The first investment monosexuals have in bisexual erasure is an interest in stabilizing sexual orientation. The component of that interest shared by both straights and gays is an interest in knowing one’s place in the social order: both straights and gays value this knowledge because it relieves them of the anxiety of identity interrogation. Straights have a more specific interest in ensuring the stability of heterosexuality because that identity is privileged. Less intuitively, gays also have a specific interest in guarding the stability of homosexuality, insofar as they view that stability as the predicate for the “immutability defense” or for effective political mobilization. Bisexuality threatens all of these interests because it precludes both straights and gays from “proving” that they are either straight or gay. This is because straights (for example) can only prove that they are straight by adducing evidence of cross-sex desire. (They cannot adduce evidence of the absence of same-sex desire, as it is impossible to prove a negative.) But this means that straights can never definitively prove that they are straight in a world in which bisexuals exist, as the individual who adduces cross-sex desire could be either straight or bisexual, and there is no definitive way to arbitrate between those two possibilities. Bisexuality is thus threatening to all monosexuals because it makes it impossible to prove a monosexual identity.

    The second interest monosexuals have in bisexual erasure is an interest in retaining the importance of sex as a distinguishing trait in society. Straights and gays have a shared investment in this because to be straight or to be gay is to discriminate erotically on the basis of sex. Straights have a specific interest in preserving the importance of sex because sex norms are currently read through a heterosexual matrix: to be a man or a woman in contemporary American society is in part defined by one’s sexual attractiveness to the opposite sex. Gays also have a particular interest in sex distinctions, as homosexuality is often viewed as a way to engage in complete sex separatism—that is, as a means of creating single-sex communities that are bonded together erotically as well as socially and politically. Bisexuality endangers all of these interests because it posits a world in which sex need not (or should not) matter as much as monosexuals want it to matter. Indeed, bisexuals and asexuals are the only sexual orientation groups that have at least the capacity not to discriminate on the basis of sex in any

    aspect of their lives.

    The final interest that monosexuals have in bisexual erasure is an interest in defending norms of monogamy. Both straights and gays share this interest, as the dominant ethic of contemporary American society favors dyadic relationships. Straights may have a particular interest in this insofar as the form of nonmonogamy associated with bisexuals has been connected to HIV infection, with bisexual “promiscuity” acting as a bridge (phantasmatically if not actually) between the “infected” gay population and the “uninfected” straight population. Gays may have a particular interest in monogamy insofar as they seek to assimilate into “mainstream” society. Bisexuality threatens all of these interests because bisexuals are often perceived to be “intrinsically” nonmonogamous.

    Thus, along at least three different axes, both gays and straights have distinct but overlapping interests that are threatened by the concept of bisexuality. It is thus unsurprising that both of these sexual orientation groups collude in bisexual erasure.

  11. Posted

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    aaaaand I don't have pics of me biking all xtremed out, but I have these sorta neat fake depth-of-field pics of my bike taken while traversing some unbikable sharp stairs in the Hill Country... they're just as good, right?

     

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    I had to replace all the ball bearings after that trip. Next time I'm gonna take a BMX with much smaller wheels...

     

    EDIT: Argh, sorry I broke the site, I figured the forum would shrink these...

  12. Posted

    Sit down children and let me tell you a tangential tale of times long past when people liberally peppered their posts with :eyebrow: and :chaste:. One day Chris Remo had enough and replaced the image files of those two smileys with  :naughty: and :innocent:. Sometime later when we learned our lessons the olden smileys were given back to us, but with different shortcodes. The End.

  14. Posted

    Hey, sup quiltbag.

    Last time I queered out on these here hallowed pages was in the early years of the Feminism thread when I snapped back at Thunderpeel about whether I "identified with bi-sexuality" which was also a first public thought I've ever shared about being any kind of queer.

    I had some time to think about stuff, play around, talk to people, and I have further thoughts to share.

    I've identified as straight for ever because—while the foci of my attraction have been dudes and gals at different times, places, people—the loud monosexual consensus on both sides of the divide seemed adamant I pick a team and not fuck around outside of my playpen.

    The tangential cultural tropes of gayness (femininity, Barbara Streisand, Golden Girls, etc) were just as unappealing to me as the cultural tropes of straightness (machismo, cock rock, mainstream heterosexual porn, etc)—but straightness is the default position and thus the assumed default of those who don't explicitly voice an opposition. The received view of what that opposition means is not exiting the monosexual binary, but just flipping within it.

    I've never been in love with a dude the way I've been in love with girls, so even though I had moments of doubt as to whether I've been lying to myself all this time and was actually super gay but repressed, it was comforting to simply set up some parameters, "choose" my sexuality, and decide to be done with it. So I kept my straight mouth shut.

    It's easy to not entertain disclosing any of this stuff when one is super happily lady-married for years and has parents who, while intellectual and not beholden to institutionalized bronze age superstitions, have throughout years blurted out ludicrous shit that I never felt like contesting—shit that more than anything showed a benignly folksy callous lack of reflection on any of the quiltbag letters. They are a product of a still very homophobic Serbia where skinheads beat up pride parades and cops let them. I have not known ANY openly gay people growing up, though in retrospect gay people were all around me. My parents have recently made some strides in processing gayness in their milieu, but leaving parent-facing closets is still not anything that I feel I must do. It would just baffle and confuse them.

    Bisexuality has no cultural visibility whatsoever. There was nothing out there for me to to try on for size as I wrestled with these questions of identity growing up. I'm 31 and this is still largely true (I now realize I should've searched out more punky places to hang out, but I never saw that kind of punk for the noise that punk-flavored Hot-Topic pop made)...

    Bi is perceived by both straight and gay people as a phase in becoming "fully" gay. When bi people get straight-married, it is assumed that they're no longer gay, or that they deserted their gay brethren. Lesbians are downright aggressive towards bi girls, to a much larger degree than gay men are toward bi men. When someone digs out a hint that some historical personage engaged in buggery, it is automatically proclaimed that so-and-so was GAY, often throwing away evidence of other-sex attraction. David Bowie says he was just fibbing when he was bi in the 70s—cause it was trendy!—and he's still holding on to that claim, that asshole...

    "Do identify with bi-sexuality" is just such an impossible question to answer because bisexuality is a cultural placeholder the existence of which is so casually denied. The only reason that B is in the quiltbag is to enlarge the alliance, but it is really just a GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGgggglllqtgggg(G!) for all practical, political and social imagination purposes.



    Thunderpeel's line of argument still rings as annoying. He holds that there is some kind of substance, a material that we're made of, of which the (highly culturally-cooked) sexual preference nomenclature/categorization is just a manifestation; that, naturally, we have to reconcile our internal identity of which we are well-aware before we step out and engage with other people according to that a-priori established substance... whereas really, the identity happens in the intersection of self and other people, at the point where we allow or disallow ourselves to follow our impulses based on outside cues as to our impulses' acceptability. The nature of those impulses is so much more nuanced than the official camps built for clearly demarcated identities such as gay vs straight allow for. That kind of identity-comes-before-practice thinking prevents a lot of people on fences from just fucking around with people they're attracted to, or trying the wrong kind of clothes, or whatever—because now the stakes are higher, they have to be true to their inner selves, define what they are, then adhere and not be damn dirty tourists.

    I have more somewhat disjointed thoughts to dump on the topic, but this is already getting long and rambly...

    TL;DR: I've come to prefer to think of myself as queer, to set myself apart from the normative impulses of our society, but everything past that is just elaboration which does not need to be institutionalized or searched out for in the genome or medicated away or whatever.

  17. Posted

    I want to think this too, but they definitely have some of the same problems. Just not amplified by distance/anonymity.

     

    In my experience of such organisations, I've had to fight to get safe space policies in, occasionally against people directly opposing them as "polit*cally c*rrect nonsense", and counter the "But we're not sexists!/racists!homophobes!" etc. talking points whenever an issue comes up. Because they involve games and tech, the people who start and inhabit them tend to be overwhelmingly white, male and middle class, and while few of them have malign motives, many of them are definitely ignorant to systemic prejudice, how ingrained it is in all our behaviour, and how intimidating that makes hackerspaces to any other type of person.

     

    Also, building the political will to deal with harassers can be a monumental effort. Not because people are in favour of the harassment, but they feel like they're violating a part of the organisation by taking power and responsibility to make those kind of decisions.

     

    (Edit: Haha, the swear filter changes "opinionated in a way that is different from me" to "opinionated in a way that is different from me" :D)

     

    Well, I've only had a little contact with the San Antonio hackspace peeps (even though they're walking distance from my house and I should participate more often), which is kinda dinky—and while they are mostly white dorky dudes, there is a fair bit of overlap and cross-pollination with the art scene which is bigger and a lot more female and queer and unwhite... I suspect any town (without a cutthroat art market) can foster a supportive art scene like SA's.

  20. Posted

    Speaking of cults and homeopathy, here's some choice ads from Alex Jones's Infowars as mentioned in the Ferguson thread. All the ads are pretty much the same as these...

     

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    post-5974-0-21440700-1408762715_thumb.jpg

     

    ... proving once again that you can't be a right-wing (?) blowhard in this country without also being a petty grifter.

  21. Posted

    Internet is literally Hitler.

     

    I feel like warm, affectionate, real-life support communities of artists and hackspaces are the antidote to this noise. A proper indie dev community may not need to exist. To hell with the internet. Make pilgrimages to artist monasteries, set up residencies...

  23. Posted

    Infowars is a weird baby of Alex Jones, an Austin legend/fixture who often once in a blue moon has cogent geopolitical commentary which he thoroughly undermines at the last moment by blaming lizard people for everything. You can find the mag next to other free publications in restaurants around town. It has really weird ads for gizmos and commodities that are supposed to help you survive in the mad Max apocalypse...

  24. Posted

    "A former LAPD officer turned sociologist observed that the overwhelming majority of those beaten by police turn out not to be guilty of any crime. “Cops don’t beat up burglars”, he observed. The reason, he explained, is simple: the one thing most guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to “define the situation.”…The police truncheon is precisely the point where the state’s bureaucratic imperative for imposing simple administrative schema, and its monopoly of coercive force, come together. It only makes sense then that bureaucratic violence should consist first and foremost of attacks on those who insist on alternative schemas or interpretations. At the same time, if one accepts Piaget’s famous definition of mature intelligence as the ability to coordinate between multiple perspectives (or possible perspectives) one can see, here, precisely how bureaucratic power, at the moment it turns to violence, becomes literally a form of infantile stupidity."

    —David Graeber, 'Beyond Power/Knowledge, an exploration of the relation of power, ignorance and stupidity' (2006)
     
    I am a bit of a Graeber groupie... a graeoupie... ¬¬

  25. Posted

    Mainly because bureaucracy, as terrible as it can be some times, has in the past been a means of social change.  You used to be able to own people in America, only white men were allowed to vote, etc, and bureaucracy changed that.  We tend to focus on legal or bureaucratic changes because those are the mechanics by which the government functions.  I'll admit in recent years this system has been failing, however that is the result of a coordinated effort by a minority in congress.  I can't find it at the moment, but there was an article recently that described how a relatively small group can more or less prevent the whole thing from functioning.  I'll keep looking and add a link here if I can come across it.

     

    Edit: This isn't the article I was referencing, but shows that the problem is essentially either that a bill gets filibustered, or bogged down in committee as various interests attempt to add amendments to the bill that can be unrelated to it.  In recent months, this has been trying to add more sanctions to Iran in an attempt to torpedo the nuclear negotiations.

     

    Man, I dunno. It sounds crazy generous to give all credit to the bureaucracy like that. All the bureaucracy did was relent to pressure from the people, and only after it exhausted all avenues of repression. And whatever racist interests got burned never really gave up their fight, they just abstracted it a bit so that they could market it better. Bureaucracy is just a means power uses to simplify conditions on the ground. It is kinda amoral and by design stupid, alienating. The congress is set up to minimize democracy. From the getgo, the saintly founding fathers put measures in place to curb anything resembling real democracy because they feared proper justice would be a thing the rabble might push for if they had access to power. And now with money=speech there is practically nothing people can do short of a double plus total general strike to get their voices heard. It is a dysfunctional system rapidly losing legitimacy.

     

    I disagree. Patchwork reform that keeps police from shooting people with impunity is worthwhile. Holding police officers that murder people accountable doesn't solve every systemic problem in society but it should save innocent lives and is a worthwhile, reasonably achievable step towards further reform. Everything can't be fixed at once through the political process, but that's no reason not to fix what we can when we can.

     

    Yeah, you're right, but it would be a small tactical victory. I don't think it is going to happen. Because nothing people want happens in this country any more.

     

    I very much share the sentiment and frustration with MrHoatzin, but I also make sure to acknowlegde the humanitarian boons of a mixed-economy. Our society has become so technological that a fall of the systems of power and methods of production would do far too much humanitarian damage. Regulation has become absolutely necessary now that we have so many weapons and chemicals and dams and other things that would be massive problems without central oversight.

    Our mixed-economy religious plutarchy is incredibly violent, but I think we will make more progress by creating new systems that will one day make it obsolete. In other words, respect everyone, join a credit-union and if you employ anyone, form a co-op.

     

    We don't have to destroy the good things about markets to remove positive-feedback-loop profiteering that has kept the parasitic capitalist class in power since the French Revolution. You are absolutely right that the correct way forward is to remove the power from the machine by empowering people to lead their own lives, grow their own food, etc—rather than taking the state head-on. I do fear that the state would eventually, as its power starts to diminish, start fighting coops and communes as it already does, with code violations and drug busts—but moreso and more belligerently.