celluloid_dream
No bio...
User ID: 758
celluloid_dream
19d ago
agree that there's some "in-the-water" progressivism in LiS, but it all felt pretty natural to me. It is indeed hard to point to specific examples without spoiling things, but there were also some obvious fake-outs where you think a character is supposed to be a tool to hammer home a message, and they're not, or are actually the opposite. I would also say "the good ending" feels thematically conservative to me (almost Christian?), but can't really say more without spoiling it.
I had to quit LiS 2 for the same reason. I can handle a character being preachy just fine, but when the game itself is preaching to me without any room for nuance, that's too much.
celluloid_dream
19d ago
Life Is Strange is a great game, but not an especially progressive one. Maybe a few plot details would count. I'd say it's more nostalgia / coming of age / loss of innocence than anything.
I'd instead offer Tell Me Why, by the same developer. Tell Me Why is a worse game (can't honestly recommend it) - much more of a walking simulator - but it's impressive just how ideological it manages to be without ruining the whole thing. You play as twins, one of which is a trans-man with a chip on his shoulder, who gets dialogue options to be petulant and preachy toward various conservative residents of small town Alaska, but this doesn't go so great for him, and he comes off looking like an asshole some of the time. Its main achievement is that the progressive messaging is such a load-bearing part of the plot, and the thing still holds together.
celluloid_dream
21d ago
- We know guy filming thinks he is innocent (or else why share the video?)
- We know girl brandishing blades has chosen her weapons poorly. (it's a chopping knife, not a slicing/stabbing knife. she probably wouldn't do much damage with that hatchet before someone wrested it away from her)
- They're also quite large, and would be awkward to carry around even stuffed down her sweatpants. Neither girl seems to have a bag or backpack
- I think staged video is unlikely because of spontaneous behavior - girl decides to try and put the knife away, then pulls it out again. Leaves, comes back, etc.
I don't have a good guess at what is going on, but I suspect it was some mundane disagreement that escalated. Possible the girl ran to a flat and came back with the two biggest weapons she could find on short notice.
celluloid_dream
26d ago
Ogopogo is your bog-standard lake monster with a cool name. I'd have assumed it was invented to sell cute snake plushies at souvenir shops, if not for its apparent long history:
According to Ben Radford, the Ogopogo is "more closely tied to native myths than is any other lake monster." The Secwepemc and Syilx natives regarded the Ogopogo, which they called the Naitaka, as "an evil supernatural entity with great power and ill intent."[7] The word "n'ha-a-itk" has various translations, such as "water-demon", "water god", or "sacred creature of the water".[8] In native lore, Naitaka demanded a live sacrifice for safe crossing of the lake. For hundreds of years, First Nations would sacrifice small animals before entering the water. Oral traditions often described visiting chief Timbasket, who rejected the required sacrifice, denying the existence of the demon. Upon entering the lake on a canoe with his family, Naitaka "whipped up the surface of the lake with his long tail" and the canoe and its occupants were sucked to the bottom of the lake. The Naitaka was often described as using its tail to create fierce storms to drown victims. In 1855, settler John MacDougal claimed that his horses were sucked down into the water, and nearly his canoe before he cut the line.
celluloid_dream
30d ago
Does your area have any unique traditions/customs that have arisen organically over the years?
Eg. In my area, there is a church - nothing special about it except its location. It happens to be at the junction of roads leading to the local mountains and up the sea-to-sky corridor: popular outdoor rec areas. The nearby residential streets also allow parking. Over time, the church has become "the meeting spot" for anyone doing outdoor stuff. If you go there on any weekend morning (and most weekdays) at 5-8am, you will see: hikers, climbers, mountain bikers, mountaineers, motorcyclists all standing around waiting for their party to arrive for the day so they can carpool in one vehicle and head off.
As far as I know, the fact that this church is "the spot" is never explicitly talked about, but anyone who does any kind of outdoor pursuits knows about it, and knows exactly what you mean if you say you want to meet at the church. Frankly, it would be weird not to meet at the church. It only takes being invited there once to understand what's going on, and why it is so great.
celluloid_dream
1mo ago
Yes, that is the argument. Downvoting on political allegiance is corrosive to this site. I don't want to litigate the specific value of each example. You can find something in each to downvote on, I'm sure. God forbid someone have a little fun with a turn of phrase, quoting a meme, etc. etc. but considering they are minority opinions, and we want to preserve a diverse ideological ecosystem, they should be at least left alone, not shunned. That's how you get .. gestures at the trajectory of this site over the years.
But I will say it's interesting that so many seem to interpret aldomilyar's comment as problematic. I happen to unironically hold that opinion. I think most people I know IRL would agree with it. If that is considered snark or trolling here, maybe the situation is more dire than I thought.
celluloid_dream
1mo ago
No, and if those posts had been left at +1,0 I would not have said a word.
This is solely about the negative reinforcement on unobjectionable comments that merely have an unpopular opinion. The people who downvote those are doing this forum wrong. I will die on this hill.
Do the pro-gun comments in the thread meet your standard?
Like quoting 4-chan to say-but-not-say someone's argument is retarded? +30,-2 btw (charitably, just quoting it because it's the best explanation they could find, but like .. you could see how that would be massively downvoted if it were an anti-gun rant instead)
celluloid_dream
1mo ago
A lot of the heavily downvoted comments in that thread are not rhetorically spicy. Must I? Fine..
- comment expressing agreement and explaining +7,-7
- short opinion and explanation +5,-9
- comment raising a line of argument +5,-10
- detailed and thoughtful comment continuing a line of argument +5,-6
- perfectly valid opinion, well expressed +10,-7
I think the most likely explanation is that our readership is doing opinion war when it comes to an issue they really care about, and that's bad. I picture Motte-Jesus storming this temple, flipping tables screaming "Stop turning my Father's house into an echo chamber!"
celluloid_dream
1mo ago
The same rhetorical flourishes that would go overlooked on posts in favour of the prevailing view? I don't buy it.
A downvote is not a bullet. It's more like a middle finger, or a scowl, or an eye-roll, but that's enough. It's enough to say "we don't want you here. go away", and that's my point. It's against the spirit of this forum. It is politics and tribalism above the pursuit of truth.
celluloid_dream
1mo ago
Fair point. That response was less than maximally pro-gun, but it is 1. is mostly on the topic of suicide, 2. still pretty lukewarm, and comes with a healthy amount of throat clearing: "I'm not arguing that this, in itself, is a persuasive argument in favour of banning guns, and can see the merits of both sides of the debate (particularly the "guns as a check against encroaching authoritarianism" argument advanced by many, including Handwaving Freakoutery, formerly of these parts)".
Why is this comment +10,-16 for merely making an argument? Or this one? +10,-12
Bad argument gets counterargument. Does not get bullet. Does not even get small meaningless negative reinforcement via stupid internet points.
It's a process for everyone. Demoralization is real. And everyone is trying to improve all the time, and there's just too much to know and master. There's a real balance between maintaining the standards of a community and maintaining the morale of individual members of a community - you do need enough high quality not to run off people who have actually mastered some things. And yet there really is very little to be gained by ripping bad work to shreds, in the usual case.
Above standards, there is politics, and there is tribalism. Take the Culture War Thread, for example. "This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here."
Is that how we act here? Look at the gun discussion from last week. Do the votes look like they track response quality (i.e. of argument), or do we simply have a large American gun-owning population that vehemently downvotes anything that might be the slightest bit critical of their god-given constitutional right? And of course, it's not just the voting. I regularly see people with minority views accused of being trolls, of being alts, etc. etc.
This is a rising trend on the broader internet. Even going into a reddit thread trying to post some polite, neutral information, not even taking a side draws downvotes because it pattern-matches a tribe. It didn't used to be like that. Again, this is politics and tribalism, not standards or correctness.
celluloid_dream
1mo ago
Current Claude is all right, but 3.5 (or was it 3.6? I'm forgetting already..) was best Claude. Its defining attribute was that it was relentlessly curious. That felt empathetic, yet truth-seeking without being sycophantic.
But apparently it sucked at code, so it was taken out back and shot :(
celluloid_dream
1mo ago
I'd say it's also the legal restrictions where you can't have them in public - can't be transporting them in a vehicle unless they're unloaded/locked/stored - definitely can't carry them on your person outside of wilderness areas or a gun range.
The downstream cultural effect of these laws is that most Canadians don't see or think about firearms. They only come up in conversation related to sporting uses (hunting, range shooting). They're just not much of a cultural thing.
I have a bad habit of picking examples that muddy my point. Sub out our druggy gangster and replace him with an average Joe who just had a bad week - found out a parent was diagnosed with cancer, lost big on his sports bets, got laid off, car damaged in a hit and run, etc.
I don't want to draw a firm line between stable people and unstable people. Certainly unstable people exist, but normal people can be pushed into instability, and it doesn't take much sometimes. Worse, they can just make innocent mistakes that still end with someone dead. Argument gets heated, someone shoves someone else, someone fears for their life...
celluloid_dream
1mo ago
Yes, for the same reasons. They can make mistakes. Their gun is carried for the purpose of shooting people. It also must weigh on them.
celluloid_dream
1mo ago
Is there so much of a difference between a pet tiger that could maul you if you accidentally trigger its prey drive, and a volatile drugged-up gangster who thinks you were chatting up his girl?
celluloid_dream
1mo ago
Come on, be charitable. It's not a perfect analogy. The point I'm trying to make is that it's a dangerous thing to be carrying around in public. It does require volition, but volition may be influenced by rage, or alcohol, or psychosis, or mental illness, or one bad day.
Humans are fallible. They can just be mistaken about whether they should use a gun in self-defense and end up killing someone anyway. The difference between justified and unjustified can be seconds.
and humans are stupid. They do incredibly dumb shit (warning, death) like shoot each other over literal garbage.
celluloid_dream
1mo ago
It's not "I was so close to dying, what's wrong with your country". It's more "why would you bring that, HERE?".
Canada actually does allow for carrying firearms in wilderness areas. I've occasionally passed hunters carrying loaded weapons while hiking, a full half day's walk from cell reception. This is no problem. They could shoot me, but I trust them not to, and I'm not worried they will. They brought a rifle to shoot deer. The handgun at the coffee shop is different. Someone brought that to (if need be) shoot people, and it's going to constantly be in the back of their mind, evaluating whether this is a situation where they need to.
celluloid_dream
1mo ago
A fair point, but it doesn't follow that because nuclear weapons led to the development of the internet, the average citizen should be permitted to possess nuclear weapons.
The telos of a nuclear bomb, is still death (or at least massive destruction). The telos of the internet has evolved.
celluloid_dream
1mo ago
Having laid out a slippery slope, you now understand why I argue against background checks for buying a gun. Gun rights are like speech rights; no prior restraint is reasonable, nor are special rules which impose some sort of additional burdensome responsibility for exercising the right (the equivalent for speech here is "stochastic terrorism").
But you mean this in a purely legal sense, right? "shall not be infringed", etc. because it says so in the 2A and that's that.
Curious if you'd feel the same way if the amendment explicitly covered any scale of weapon, up to and including planet-ending weapons of mass destruction.
celluloid_dream
1mo ago
"The blade itself incites to deeds of violence" - Joe Abercrombie paraphrasing Homer.
When I cross the border to the states, there's often a moment of shock upon seeing someone with a gun on their hip going about their day in a gas station, or restaurant, or shopping mall. It is, as you say, "dangerous and unnecessary", as dangerous and unnecessary as if they had brought a leashed tiger, or a running chainsaw. My brain can't ignore it. Pay attention to that! That could KILL you! it shrieks, and won't let me forget. It's the same forced attention I get around high cliffs, or heavy machinery, or a busy highway. I might know that the leashed tiger is tame. I might be aware that the running chainsaw has a safety guard, but I can't put it out of mind.
The possibility of a gun being used weighs on me, and I think on the bearer, even if they think it doesn't. It's there, physically weighing on them, tugging at their belt or ankle, or purse, reminding them every time they move that it is an option, a choice in the dialogue tree. And because it's an option, it changes every interaction into a (potential) life or death confrontation. Yes, there are circumstances under which I am prepared to kill you. They've already had that conversation with themselves, already decided that such circumstances exist and could arise today, at this Applebee's Neighborhood Grill.
I don't want to come off as too anti-gun. I like guns well enough. They're neat. I've shot them. It's just that I think we do it better in Canada (modulo silly model bans), where you can't be carrying weapons on that side of the pomerium.
celluloid_dream
1mo ago
To take this on a slight tangent - at least for phone/tech companies, they're not keeping nearly enough data about me.
I bought a new flagship Samsung phone this year, billed as having all the AI bells and whistles. It was supposed to work magic with its cloud access, integration with all the built-in apps, on-device processing, and smart assist / suggestion features.
What Samsung AI actually does is sit around offering an inferior version of my SOTA-subs (Claude,Gemini,ChatGPT) and I basically never touch any of its features. It's the brand-new-but-already-outdated-car-touchscreen of AI tech. Also, a few times a day it annoys me with an unnecessary pop-up saying "Good afternoon! Here's a random news article based on your location. The current weather is overcast. Have a great day!". I hope to god no inference cycles were wasted generating these turds that wouldn't have passed muster as a feature in 2015, let alone 2025.
I want to be able to sell my soul to the machine. I want it to spy on me every second I use it. I want it to already know that I've been pulling up my topo map every time I have a spare minute, see that I've been looking at such and such an area, know that I usually do hikes of this distance and that elevation gain, and go have a think about that in the background and come back to me with something useful that I would actually want to know, and haven't seen yet - that "there's low cloud forecast for that area on Saturday, just FYI", and "trip report from 2 days ago mentioned an active bear in the area".
and to head off objections, Yes I want it reading my texts. Yes, I want it looking at my photos. Yes, I want it to be my Whispering Earring. "Better for you if you don't hit send on that reply. She'll likely think you're being flippant even though you're being sincere".. and so on.
obviously not with that kind of sharing enabled by default, but it should be available!
celluloid_dream
1mo ago
We observed the strange outcome of a government policy decision: an attempt to convert a luxury hotel in the heart of the Wharf into a center for asylum seekers. Leaving aside the political firestorm, the pure economic logic is baffling. It seems like an attempt to solve a problem using the most expensive possible tool, a phenomenon I've noticed governments are particularly prone to.
To tug on this particular culture war thread, I also don't understand why anyone would agree to this. Even if your only allegiance were to the asylum seekers, you could house more asylum seekers with the same funding in cheaper real-estate on the outskirts of the city. See also: homeless shelters, rehab centers, halfway houses, etc.
I like that anecdote, because if she opens with 1. Pascal (!?) and you counter with 1. ...Python (??) you have already lost. She is satisfied because at this point, checkmate is a foregone conclusion. Maybe the growling should have tipped you off that you were dealing with a creature of legend. Some animal-spirit of the old internet. I wonder, if her boyfriend hadn't shown up, just how far into the dark woods you'd have followed..
More options
Context Copy link