Tacherus
3mo ago
My three big projects at the moment are picking up piano after 20 years of not playing, studying for the JLPT in December, and training to run a 10k in November.
They’re all going well so far! I’ve been surprised how quickly piano has come back. I can already run 10k but have a target time so will be working on getting my speed up the next few months.
I have been playing a lot of Unicorn Overlord lately and am also kicking around an idea for a prototype that might improve on it in a few key ways. Happy to share details if anyone is curious.
Tacherus
3mo ago
“They don’t mean it that way they mean it some other way” seems like just another rationalization to me.
Whether it’s something about “historical context” or “power dynamics” or “punching up” seems there’s always a reason X thing that was bad is now ok, actually, once it’s useful.
The same cohort that opposes “fat shaming” will mock Chris Christie. The same cohort that opposes “kink shaming” will mock even a fake story about a horny teenager and a couch. One minute we’re holding hands praising diversity and other life experiences the next we’re mocking the illiterate southern red necks.
It’s too many epicycles for me to follow—isn’t “they don’t mean what they say and will say anything to score a point” much simpler?
Tacherus
3mo ago
I’ve also noticed “gross” and even from the time when I would have considered myself on board with a lot of this stuff didn’t understand it.
What’s also striking to me is for years I recall neuroscientists telling us that conservatives are motivated by disgust but liberals are more open minded and don’t have that feeling as strongly. I guess that was all bullshit.
Tacherus
3mo ago
To me this seems like the next step in a longer trend. In my news bubble by far the most common headline commentary is about how “bizarre” what Trump or whoever said.
A quick google news search for “bizarre”:
“Pete Buttigieg blasts JD Vance’s ‘strange worldview’ and bizarre GOP agenda”
“WATCH: House Dem makes bizarre claim while dodging question on VP Harris' 'border czar' record”
Maybe the weird thing is slightly different but it seems part of the same trend of “who can even understand those guys. It’s just bizarre.”
I think it’s the inevitable result of not being able to handle the idea of disagreement. If you don’t have political views, you’re just right, then it’s not disagreement, it’s a bizarre rant.
Tacherus
3mo ago
For sure. I still can’t believe she didn’t resign more or less immediately. What did she think was gonna happen where it could work out?
Tacherus
3mo ago
Yeah I can appreciate that. You’d think if the issue were sensitive matters they could at least do a closed door hearing where that shit won’t fly.
Tacherus
3mo ago
I agree strongly with this. In practice I think part of the difficulty is “oh I didn’t realize it before but now I get it” is a very common narrative but can be difficult to tolerate.
See the non-stop rampant accusations of “you just didn't care until it affected you!”
Maybe we need to accept chad_yes.jpg as a valid response….
Tacherus
3mo ago
It’s not at all plausible to you that there’s the possibility of more people and she doesn’t want to tip her hand? I’m genuinely asking here, I don’t have a strong position on this, but it’s not obvious to me that it’s evidence of anything on its face.
Tacherus
3mo ago
The weirdest people in the world talks a lot about this not in the context of inter-generational responsibility but as intra-kin-group responsibility, which of course overlaps quite a bit.
The book argues it’s a new and modern take that individuals are accountable at all as opposed to the idea of you getting beaten up because your cousin did something dumb, which was much more common historically.
Tacherus
3mo ago
I don’t know personally how true this is but I heard recently in an interview that the 25th is not designed to forcefully remove a president. If the president is aware and capable enough to resist at all it wouldn’t work. I hadn’t heard that before and it changed my view of some of this stuff.
Tacherus
3mo ago
You don’t end a cultural civil war by being nice to the other side. When your side is in power you enforce new cultural norms and hope they stick.
In this case aren’t they the same thing? How is swinging back enforcing a new cultural norm?
Tacherus
3mo ago
Is number 5 surprising? If it’s an ongoing investigation presumably she wouldn’t want to comment one way or the other.
Tacherus
4mo ago
I’m mean, one way of looking at it is that the affected computers are now very well protected from viruses.
Tacherus
4mo ago
I understand that’s not the literal meaning of the word toxic. I’m merely observed it seems to be used when the behavior drags other people down. I’ve definitely found myself behaving in ways I don’t like in what most would call a “toxic” workplace for instance. If it were up to me that wouldn’t be the word used.
Tacherus
4mo ago
What makes something toxic in my mind is the idea that it spreads. One person being a dick at work can lead to people being more likely to act that way and everything gets dragged down.
I haven’t played it since it first came out, but I thought it was a major plot point that the main character had to let go of some samurai ideals and practices and get in the mud a bit in order to effectively challenge the invaders. Is that not how it went down?
Tacherus
6mo ago
There was a bit of this with the first Nioh game, though I don’t think it had the popularity of the AC series and it was made by Japanese developers. It got introduced to me as a “white savior” game.
Tacherus
6mo ago
If you want to disagree that’s fine, but I’ve spent considerable time as a religious person and surrounded by the type of people I’m describing, and I think the weight of judgment day is comparable to the weight of “right side of history.” It’s not a boo outgroup statement by any stretch; I think it ties into the thesis that we tore down religion with little to replace it, so people are cribbing together ways to meet their needs.
Tacherus
6mo ago
It’s an old idea at this point that “woke” is a new religion, but my pet expansion of this is that “the weight of history” has replaced the concepts of judgment day and the afterlife.
I was just discussing this the other day with someone actually. I wished at the time that we had a better education of unsuccessful progressive movements as well as successful. The operative question ought to be “how could you tell at the time” but to even countenance that it could have been confusing is unacceptable.
That’s what we face though, living through history. It’s been stunning to see how many are willing to abdicate thinking it through in favor of listening to prophets claiming to know how they’ll be judged long after they’re dead.
My question for people is how they would have known to be for civil rights but against lobotomies.
Tacherus
7mo ago
I think this may have something to do with most current developers coming to it as players. When the medium was newer developers were likelier to have other interests.
Creativity and quality art I think requires upstream culture to die on but if your upstream culture is just more of what you’re making then it becomes repetitive, derivative, and self-referential.
The creator of Zelda for instance famously based the game on exploring caves as a kid. If you spent your childhood playing games and wanting to make one you’re less likely to have interesting experiences to draw on I think external to gaming.
Nerd culture is sort of a dead end in this sense I think. It’s not rich enough for others to draw on and its participants tend to be focused exclusively on it, so it never really attains the quality of other storytelling media.
My two cents.
Tacherus
8mo ago
What do you want to happen? It seems obvious to me it can’t be easily singled out as “the bad thing you aren’t allowed to post about” so posts like that will crop up.
You want to just freely reply that religion is nonsense over and over? To me that’s as tedious as someone posting “but that’s sexist” or something every time someone on the forum is sexist. It might be true but it doesn’t really add anything to the discussion. My suspicion would be that’s what mods mean when they say “it’s tired and played out.”
If people were writing nothing more than “Jesus is Lord” then sure but what I see is people writing fairly lengthy and thought out posts. I may disagree strongly but that’s why I’m here. And I would hope someone responding has more to say than “but there’s no evidence tho.”
Curiosity goes a long way. You mention it makes no sense on a rationalist adjacent forum, but I wonder what some of these people would say if you genuinely asked if (a) they generally consider themselves rationalists and (b) if so how do they think about that in the context of religion.
If, as I think, the point of this place is to have discussions you can’t have anywhere else, that line of conversation seems more in keeping with this place than rehashing the Great War.
Tacherus
8mo ago
I share your assessment of religion, but as others have already alluded to, I come here to see views I won’t hear anywhere else. If that means reading some % of what I think is obviously on its face nonsense then so be it.
You’ve said many times that pushback is not allowed—do you have some examples in mind?
If the criterion is “don’t post in a rat-adjacent forum views you aren’t prepared to change” then I think religion is far from the sole offender.
Yeah it seems ripe for some iterating on the formula especially since the studio doesn’t seem known for follow-ups.
I’ve had some tibia troubles but fortunately am near unpaved trails which help with the impact.
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