cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
16hr ago
We have Sunday threads if someone just wants to throw out a short question.
Otherwise what Primaprimaprima said is kinda true we don't want people who cant contribute three sentences to a discussion to be the ones that dictate what gets talked about.
Some people don't care what is talked about they just want something. But many posters care a great deal about the specific topic, and thus a low quality entry on a topic they don't care about is a double negative. It's crowding out topics they might care about, and it isn't interesting enough to expand what they might care about.
cjet79
16hr ago
Context is ultimately a suggestion, not required. I happen to think it's a good suggestion, and I also happen to think that people will dismiss the need for it more than they should.
You having personal experience with one of these camps is interesting context! I don't go near a college campus on a regular basis.
cjet79
17hr ago
I don't watch the news. My smartphone news feed is heavily curated. I in fact do not leave the home most days because I work from home. My main outside trips are to pick up my kids from school and to go grocery shopping. I am not on Facebook, Instagram, twitter, etc. My reddit browsing is limited to gaming and fantasy fiction subreddits.
There are things I "hear about" in the sense that I might have seen a news headline. That was probably as aware as I would have gotten about Campus protests.
As unaware as I am, my wife is even more unaware. Most topics barely pierce her awareness. Unless it shows up directly at her workplace she usually doesn't know about them. Since the closest person to me is just as unaware I find this state of things normal, and the opposite hyper awareness of culture war issues strange.
cjet79
20hr ago
Come on man. There is no goddamned way that anyone posting here is unaware of the core of the story.
There are other good reasons to ask for context:
- To avoid talking about nothingburgers. Sometimes people have weird news feeds and they get small incidents show up on their feed.
- For future readers. We do keep a list of old quality posts. The reader of a post is not just the people here this week.
- For additional depth and discussion. For example, if they had linked Brown University they could have started a discussion about divestment.
Yeah, they did that - it's right there!
Yeah they sort of did, which is why I half parroted their words.
Some of you seem to very much live in the culture war. You are very aware of what is going on and the latest news. And you also seem to want to replicate that newsfeed here?
I'll admit I just don't get it. If I didn't read this website I'd probably be unaware of a large portion of the culture war. I am not certain I would have known about the campus protests if I had not read about it here on TheMotte. I specifically need the context. I basically live under a rock. I hangout with my family and my neighbors, and we talk about local stuff mostly.
At the same time I don't want a scrolling doomlist of every item in the culture war. That is what twitter and mainstream news outlets are for. I don't visit those websites because I don't want the scrolling doomlist of every item in the culture war. If there is something novel and interesting to be discussed about a particular item, sure, lets have that conversation.
What do you want here exactly? Do you want this to just be a twitter clone (but with indents!) where we write a few sentences to performatively crap on our outgroup? I don't see the point.
cjet79
20hr ago
that many of them perceive the barrier to entry to be too high.
Exactly! Its a perception thing, so I am trying to clear it up by changing that perception. WhiningCoil and others are making it more difficult by adding to the false perception. You of course are asking them to stop posting these bad interpretations of the rules, and thus discouraging posting, right?
Saying that they're mistaken, it's really not that high, isn't going to change anyone's mind.
There are different barriers to posting. One of those barriers is being afraid that the mods won't like your post and you'll get banned or in trouble. I can lower that barrier. I can't lower other barriers like "I don't know what to post about", or "I don't really want to talk about anything".
cjet79
21hr ago
@somedude @WhiningCoil @Stellula
Tagging all of you due to confusion about the low effort posting.
This is an example of a short post that meets the requirements: https://www.themotte.org/post/1002/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/212011?context=8#context
Context:
So a bit of a time ago there was a discussion here about the gender war, demographic implosion and political male-female divide in South Korea. rokmonster stated that "Seoul is the only city worth living in [there]" as self-evident fact, apparently.
Analysis:
As someone who knows little about Korea, I find this puzzling. Aren't there other large cities there?
Opinion / jumping off point for discussion
I'm sure there are. Are they really that bad? And if yes, what is "that"?
7 sentences, 73 words, 425 characters. That does not seem very long to me. It does not seem like a 40k word essay. It does not seem like a wall of text.
Will we continue to have this discussion again and again every month? It does not make our job easier when you spread inaccurate interpretations of the rules, especially overly hostile interpretations that would scare people off from posting.
cjet79
21hr ago
[2]: Yes cjet as you say every single time anybody complains about this topic there is no length requirement. And yet: yes there is.
Does the NBA have a height requirement? It doesn't but also it does. They have a good at basketball requirement, and height helps a lot. Likewise, we have a 'decent post' requirement and length helps, but I think it helps less than height does in the NBA.
If you held my feet to the fire I could give you a minimum length requirement: three sentences. I just don't often say it, because its not really about the length its about the content. And three sentences doesn't mean you have satisfied the requirements. Its just impossible to have enough content in less than three sentences, and I don't want people pointing to this and saying "hey I wrote three sentences like you asked". Which someone will do, and I will laugh along with them and give them a temp ban for being so funny.
All you need: Context of the thing. Interpretation and analysis of the thing. An opinion on the thing. A very good concise writer could do that in three sentences. It wouldn't be a very good or interesting top level post but it would satisfy my personal "low effort" rule. Five sentences would be safer. One context sentence and then an average of two sentences for the analysis and opinion parts.
If you don't want all three of those parts then about ten sentences is good enough. But these posts tend to get dinged for other problems. An opinion only rant tends to run afoul of boo-outgroup and waging the culture war.
cjet79
21hr ago
I wrote this up thread
In general I suggest three things for a decent start at a top level post:
- Context. What are you talking about. Helpful to have links or quotes, but not always necessary. "There have been a slew of campus protests about the Israel war lately. They were the worst at [this university] (link to news story)."
- Interpretation and analysis. Add some of your own interpretation and analysis to these events. "The protests seem to have been treated a bit differently from other protests in recent memory, like the BLM. Police have been called up to break up some of the protests. Donors have threatened to remove funding from universities. Etc"
- Opinion. "The protests seem pointless. Israel has not changed its policies at all."
There is a definite problem where people skip step 2. And part 3 sounds like "The protestors seem evil, it would be nice if they were shot." Yes that sort of post will get you dinged for boo outgroup.
cjet79
21hr ago
@Primaprimaprima is correct. Write about a paragraph of original thought and you are fine.
I wrote this up thread:
In general I suggest three things for a decent start at a top level post:
- Context. What are you talking about. Helpful to have links or quotes, but not always necessary. "There have been a slew of campus protests about the Israel war lately. They were the worst at [this university] (link to news story)."
- Interpretation and analysis. Add some of your own interpretation and analysis to these events. "The protests seem to have been treated a bit differently from other protests in recent memory, like the BLM. Police have been called up to break up some of the protests. Donors have threatened to remove funding from universities. Etc"
- Opinion. "The protests seem pointless. Israel has not changed its policies at all."
cjet79
21hr ago
For top level posts in the culture war roundup there needs to be more effort and content.
In general I suggest three things for a decent start at a top level post:
- Context. What are you talking about. Helpful to have links or quotes, but not always necessary. "There have been a slew of campus protests about the Israel war lately. They were the worst at [this university] (link to news story)."
- Interpretation and analysis. Add some of your own interpretation and analysis to these events. "The protests seem to have been treated a bit differently from other protests in recent memory, like the BLM. Police have been called up to break up some of the protests. Donors have threatened to remove funding from universities. Etc"
- Opinion. "The protests seem pointless. Israel has not changed its policies at all."
cjet79
1d ago
The best fits are recommended below. I'd second the reca for cyberpunk, ghost recon, and dishonored.
If you want to try something a little different, Zero Sievert is a top down stealth shooter and roguelite. Extended firefights are a bad idea, and I had a real sense of caution and danger. Whenever I got too carefree I was punished with death.
cjet79
1d ago
Banned on request, he did not say he plans on coming back. My impression was that this was permanent and from a building discontent with the community. The main point of frustration was with people dropping bullshit or unsubstantiated claims. And then those claims mostly going willfully uncorrected.
cjet79
1d ago
There are full matchmaking services. Pay for one of those instead of having someone run a dating app for you.
cjet79
2d ago
Game looks good, I'm surprised that I haven't heard of it until now. I wonder if I have it ignored on steam for some reason.
cjet79
3d ago
Great game, I'm hoping the second one that they have announced is as good as the first.
cjet79
4d ago
I've played most of the total war games. The later entries in the series I've enjoyed less. Maybe I should spin up one of the old ones.
cjet79
4d ago
I've played total war 3k a few times, pretty early on. Meant to come back around to it after it got more fleshed out, and then ya CA abandoned it.
cjet79
5d ago
I remember reading steel world a few years ago. It was a fun book. I ended up not reading any more of the series, can't remember why.
cjet79
5d ago
Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster’s Power sounds like my cup of tea.
Calamitous Bob has been sitting in my follow list for a while. I read it a long time ago up to about chapter 100. It has an amazing army fight scene.
cjet79
5d ago
Game looks kinda interesting, but I doubt I'll make it over the steep learning curve.
cjet79
5d ago
I maybe should go back and play some old Total War games. The Warhammer ones have been leaving me unfulfilled. I don't think I like the magic spells that were added for battles, and the single units that are powerhouses.
I have no particular interest in WWII, but it does seem like the genre of games I'm interested in are all set in that time period.
cjet79
5d ago
I'm looking for a strategy game that is BIG. Stellaris kinda scratches the itch, but I've played the hell out of it too many times. I want the sense of massive armies movies, and not just fighting battles, but fighting wars.
There seems to be a glut of strategy games lately that are on a small scale with a few dozen people or a hundred or so people fighting. I'm not entirely opposed to a game like this, but they often just feel so tiny. I don't like having to care about individual units, but so many games seem to make that a selling point. They Are Billions is a "smaller" scale game that I still find enjoyable, because at least the scale of your enemies feels massive. I'd be happy playing that game again if there were maps that were five to ten times larger, as it currently is you are failing on the harder maps if you don't cover the entire thing with defenses by the end.
cjet79
5d ago
I always see these reading threads and think y'all read such heavy stuff. I read for fun. Not a serious book in sight.
I just caught up in Markets and Multiverses. A young lady dies. Her soul gets pulled along in a big soul ocean to a galaxy sized ship floating in the soul ocean. The ship is called "the market". Its a place for re-incarnators to stop by and buy powers between reincarnations. But the ship has been taken over and all the reincarnators seem to have been killed, and the enemies are still lurking around. She meets some new people from different worlds who also just got reincarnated. Together they Reincarnate and try to build up their powers.
I'm currently subscribed to patreons for some stories I enjoy. Like Millennial Mage (A Slice of Life, Progression Fantasy) and The Path of Ascension. I recently got to read the end of Ar'Kendrithyst which is one of the longest completed stories ever at 4.39 million words. I'm also caught up on The Stubborn Skill-Grinder In A Time Loop which is the perfect level of trashy dumb progression fantasy for me. I'm waiting for Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube and Unintended Cultivator - A Xianxia-inspired Cultivation Novel to build up more of a chapter backlog for me to start reading them again.
I like action, powerful main characters that kick ass, and fantasy worlds that mostly don't resemble our world at all. I prefer stories with low levels of moral ambiguity. Made up fantasy systems and rules are fun. Betrayal is not fun. Horrors of war are not fun. Politics is boring.
Definitely could have had some better word choice there. "filled" seems to replace "infested" just fine.
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