Jake

Idle Thumbs 224: Ms. Petman

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Somebody brought their daughter to work today and she's been singing the chorus of Bad Blood on loop for the last 45 minutes.

 

I have to say, I do not like this song very much. I don't think it's this little girl's fault either.

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I know R Crumb's name but literally nothing he's responsible for, just like I know HP Lovecraft's name but have never read anything he's written. I know their reputations, but no context to put them in, having never consumed their work.

 

I did however buy 1989 and we have previously had big conversations about Taylor Swift in various Idle Thumbs threads. (It's what got me posting on the forums in the first place. Thanks Sean!)

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I would not disagree with misogyny informing any beliefs, as it is something we're immersed in, but I think there are worthwhile differences in something like Crumb or GG Allin. While gross they're also intended to be received as a kind of pure unfettered id, and looking into that bleakness/addressing the modern condition, has a value, where your pop stars (or at least Swift as a product of the Nashville machine (more than Cyrus or Rhianna) project a kind of wholesomeness that I think is more sinister. The former is basically screaming "i want to fuck" where the latter pushes the subconscious marketing desire for that, but presents as though it doesn't.

 

edit 1: like the former is the inevitable result of living with the marketing barrage of the latter. 

 

edit 2: no disrespect anybody not interested in consuming that stuff!

 

I definitely talk about this a lot with my music centric pals, and generally come down on the side of not wanting anything to do with even the more historic transgressive stuff (Whitehouse, Brainbombs, etc)

Whitehouse, Boyd Rice, Current 93 and the like ruled my listening for a while. I remember wanting to check out Soto's written work, but damn glad I didn't. 

 

Like you, I have this conversation a lot with my music friends. I always get it because I'm hugely open about race and gender politics, but I can listen to a one of those bands and not think twice about it sometimes. 

EDIT: There's been a continual conversation about this in the sci-fi/horror/weird fiction domain about some of its writers especially Lovecraft

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/08/hp-lovecraft-125/401471/

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/01/the-product-of-its-time-defense-no-excuse-for-sexism-and-racism/283352/

 

http://weirdfictionreview.com/2012/09/moving-past-lovecraft/

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I dunno, four hour check-ins for a mobile game seems pretty average to me.  If you're just stopping in to gather resources, you can do that in seconds.  Doesn't seem terribly unreasonable considering most people have their phone with them all the time.  Of course your situation may be different.  I remember playing a game of Neptune's Pride a few years ago and waking up at 3 AM to manage my fleet.  Now that was ridiculous.

 

Power is usually my number one consumed resource, at least until I slowed down my expansion rate.  Even then despite having the largest capacity, it's the least filled.

 

I've never had a person die on my while exploring even after days, but I'm flush with stimpacks and radaways so they always leave with the max.  One of my vaults got lucky early on and I had a guided missile launcher drop in a lunchbox.  That made my explorers practically unkillable.  The fact that you can resurrect using a common in-game currency rather than forcing the use of some kind of special currency or real money seems pretty forgiving to me, at least in comparison to the vast majority of F2P games.  It's one of the things that surprised me about Fallout Shelter.  Despite having microtransactions, it's maybe the least obtrusive implementation.  But perhaps I've become used to the shitty practices of other games and it's actually terrible.

I should've noted that Fallout Shelter is literally my first mobile game, ever. I had a specific creed to never get any games on my mobile. I wanted it merely to be my tool, and the most I use it for "play" is my satellite radio and watching YouTube during lunch breaks.

 

So if this is on par for what mobile games do, that actually turns me off to the idea of them. Not that I'm gonna crusade on the net calling for their banishment. They just aren't for me.

 

... Neptune's Pride 2 being an exception because oh shit I forgot I can play that using my phone now.

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oof. this contradiction talk was really hard to listen to, the game was sold really short in the description and discussion here.

 

it's a fantastic game! ..and jenks is fantastic. damn it.

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We need to start polluting in ways that will make the world uninhabitable by robots that way we can have our posthumous revenge.

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oof. this contradiction talk was really hard to listen to, the game was sold really short in the description and discussion here.

 

it's a fantastic game! ..and jenks is fantastic. damn it.

 

Yeah I want to say the same thing. The game is legit and Jenks' hammy delivery is perfect. The fact that he can somehow deliver about 1000 unique "Does THIS mean anything to you!?" lines without it ever getting boring deserves some serous kudos. Also I think the comparison to The Room is not a good one (I know Sean hasn't played the game yet). This isn't a so-bad-it's-good thing...it's just unexpectedly good (aside from the UI). Anyway, it's not super long and I really hope Chris and Spaff finish it.

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Holy shit, I think I was contacted by a Samantha West - but it was for auto insurance, not health...I think. I didn't realize it was a widespread thing that reporters had looked into, I just thought it was a really "uncanny valley" robot voice. Makes sense that it's a soundboard, because it was pretty convincing.

 

The things that tipped me off and made me ask "Are you a robot?" were:

1. No breathing sounds - most people breathe a little into the phone

2. Really awkwardly uniform pauses between all of her responses

3. No background noise - like other phones ringing or people talking in the background

 

But it was damn convincing at first. Just enough to make me suspicious but also embarassed to ask if she was real...because asking a real person "Are you real?" just feels rude...right? When I did ask if she was a robot, she sounded genuinely offended in her response. She didn't actually scoff, but the tone was equivalent to, "*scoff* No? Are you crazy? That's crazy."

 

And I laughed and said "Sorry," and she accepted my apology and asked for more information. But when I started asking for more details, she started giving me the "I'm sorry, our reception must be bad and I didn't hear that..."

 

But it was the same canned response each time. I only feel embarrassed that they got my name and address out of me.

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I didn't know there was some beef between Taylor Swift and Katy Perry, but I think it's rather amusing considering one guy has written/produced most of their respective hit singles. They have too much in common to throw crap at each other.

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I didn't know there was some beef between Taylor Swift and Katy Perry, but I think it's rather amusing considering one guy has written/produced most of their respective hit singles. They have too much in common to throw crap at each other.

 

Oh now that you mention it, it's Max Martin who wrote the Perry single I was complaining about. That guy is probably responsible for a huge amount of the regressive messages in pop music atm. It's amazing how much of the last 15 years of pop music he's written: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Martin_production_discography 

According to the wiki article: "Martin is the songwriter with third most number one singles on the chart, behind only Paul McCartney (32) and John Lennon (26). As a producer he holds the record for second-most number one singles on the chart with 20 behind only George Martin (23)."

 

That said when Taylor says she writes her music I believe her - she got raised in a song writing tradition, it's not unusual for pop-writers to workshop their stuff with other producers and writers, so I don't wanna seem like I'm writing her off as just being the voice for Martin's music 'cause I don't think that's how she works.

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Petmen are the last hope for mankind. Here is why:

 

Boston Dynamics are building an ergonomically imperfect model. The human spine, in combination with bipedal walk, is terrible design (ask any chiropractor). We are like we are not because evolution is perfect, but because it works with what's available and we evolved from four-legged creatures.

 

I understand why human engineers want to build robots with human-alike anatomy, but the circuit-mother that will one day rule Earth and space will have no tolerance for such a waste of resources. Robots will be tank-alikes, helicopter-alikes, centipede-alikes and fish-alikes. As a result, Petmen will be hunted down by other cyborgs, and this is where we come in: The remaining humans will form an alliance with the Petmen, and thus gain access to critical knowledge about the machine-rulers. The Petmen-Pact will ensure the survival at least of some.

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During my late-teens and early-twenties and to my somewhat mid-twenties, I was heavily into "transgressive" music: noise, industrial, NSBM (National Socialism Black Metal), and racist OI.  This love for this type of music genres pushed me into "transgressive" films, literature, comics and illustrations that pushed sexuality, violence, race and got me to read into a lot of white supremacy work. I was also into and knew a good amount of people who fetishized Nazi aesthetic. All these things are intertwined in many ways and all share artists that moved from field-to-field. 

 

One thing during my time there was that it was an outlet for many who loved such things. I also realized the people I dealt, conversed and hung with --me included--were and are social outcasts and had to deal with a lot of emotion and mental issues that came from various abuses. One way to gain a hold of those issues and feel "empowered" was to fully express what we were feeling and let it all out.

I completely understand what you are saying here. I agree, a lot of that stuff simply has to exist for the "imperfect" folks to have a good time, to revel in some deviancy. It's never going to be some kind of mainstream zeitgeist, it's just sort of what happens when you have more eccentric creators out there who don't have a bunch of ghostwriters, press teams, and big funders dictating their work, so even if you get something relatively poignant, you're probably gonna have some warts and I think we should be glad too.

 

That said, Crumb is such a bizarre case. I feel like there's a lot of newer generational fans of the guy who want to act like he was so much more high brow than he actually was in any way. His comics are gross, sexist, racist, and often times driven by his need to masturbate to them. Yet later in life he has art gallery shows and junk he makes sells for a ton. He has an award winning documentary made about him. Roger Ebert is a huge fan and intellectualized the guy to no end. At the end of the day, I think a lot of people are kidding themselves if they aren't enjoying the perversion on display.

 

Oh yeah, I hate Crumb because Jim Woodring (one of my favorite artists) tried to buy an original cover from him, since he's majorly influenced by him and they are both part of the underground comics world, and Crumb's response was he would give it to him if Woodring allowed him some sexy time with his wife. Smooth.

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Petmen are the last hope for mankind. Here is why:

 

Boston Dynamics are building an ergonomically imperfect model. The human spine, in combination with bipedal walk, is terrible design (ask any chiropractor). We are like we are not because evolution is perfect, but because it works with what's available and we evolved from four-legged creatures.

 

I understand why human engineers want to build robots with human-alike anatomy, but the circuit-mother that will one day rule Earth and space will have no tolerance for such a waste of resources. Robots will be tank-alikes, helicopter-alikes, centipede-alikes and fish-alikes. As a result, Petmen will be hunted down by other cyborgs, and this is where we come in: The remaining humans will form an alliance with the Petmen, and thus gain access to critical knowledge about the machine-rulers. The Petmen-Pact will ensure the survival at least of some.

 

Why would I ever ask a chiropractor anything about physiology or medicine?

 

The human walking feedback model is actually pretty amazing, which is why we do it so easily and robots can't yet.

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It sounds like you missed the best part of Home Improvisation, the part where you can use a drill to put new holes and pegs in any of the furniture. That's when it starts to get real modern art.

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Why would I ever ask a chiropractor anything about physiology or medicine?

 

The human walking feedback model is actually pretty amazing, which is why we do it so easily and robots can't yet.

I was trying to make a joke. Sorry if it didn't come across.

 

In any case, bipedal walking is complex, but if you are just interested in effective locomotion my understanding is that humanoid robots are poor solutions.

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I would think that the primary advantage of a humanoid robot would be that it would be more suited to using technology created by humans/navigate spaces designed for human use.

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Just to clarify on the HackNet humour discussion, the IRC logs are all actual IRC quotes taken from bash.org, an IRC quote database that used to be (or maybe still is? I dunno) a Big Thing among IRC users.

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I know it's been a week since the last episode, and also I think that this discussion must have happened one million times over in previous threads, but are the Idle Thumbs people actually worried about an AI uprising? Or is it one of those things where it started off as a funny joke and now they're still playing a long, since it's fun to speculate on (it is!). I find robot news to be really funny! The whole show is really, really a highlight of my week. But more and more I hear Nick, and Sean, discussing the subject as if they've started really freaking out. I know I'm probably reading too much into this, in which case, the next paragraph is unnecessary. But just in case...

 

...there is no way a Petman is going to hurt people because of a rogue AI. They'll hurt people because they're big moving machines that can sometimes be poorly programmed, but the idea of them turning and doing murdering because of some sudden burst of perfect intelligence is zero. Right now, we cannot produce AI that should actually worry us, because we don't have the computing power, nor do we have the understanding of intelligence that can be recreated with computer code. Popular articles from the internet that discuss experiments that show how "artificial intelligence has demonstrated self awareness" are way too far removed from what the actual scientific experiment indicated to be a source of worry.

 

Again, I know that this is me being far, far too ornery, and I know that the proper response is that "this is the kind of thinking that ignores the true threat until it's too late!" And I still want to hear robot news segments, since they're a fun highlight, but like, I keep having responses to some of what's discussed similar to what happens when I watch videos of Andy Kaufman. What should I believe?

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I don't think the robot uprising is the real threat, it's just the funny threat. The real threat is all this robotic military equipment making warfare and the eradication of "unwanted" people achievable, in a way that is absolutely terrifying to picture in ones mind, all without having to put a human face on any of it (joke: it is a robot that looks like a human but without a face). The scary thing is that people are building these devices, to then control them as they are deployed against other people.

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I don't think the robot uprising is the real threat, it's just the funny threat. The real threat is all this robotic military equipment making warfare and the eradication of "unwanted" people achievable, in a way that is absolutely terrifying to picture in ones mind, all without having to put a human face on any of it (joke: it is a robot that looks like a human but without a face). The scary thing is that people are building these devices, to then control them as they are deployed against other people.

So what you're saying is that war has changed.

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