Blazer-Sharp, Prattle-Ready, Brainless Steel Samurai Banana

Myth
A civilization becomes decadent as its people become soft and unmanly. The Good Men violently resist but the temptations of degeneration become irresistible and the civilization eventually crumbles.


Reality
A civilization becomes decadent as its increased resources allow their most brutish, stupid and violent men to indulge in their delusions en masse. Eventually a population of such men gains critical mass and bully and murder their way to power; once on top, they set off a spiral of violent suppression, aggressive mismanagement and diplomatic catastrophe. They double down on their methods and philosophies each time something bad happens, trusting in their continued ability to reclaim the state monopoly on violence as proof that they are doing things right.

The civilization is eventually conquered by people who all but accidentally walk all over them, wondering at what had happened to this fabled mighty warrior-race of old.

So there's the old controversy about AO3 floating around Tumblr and I don't feel like replying to any of those threads, so I'll put down my thoughts here.

The problem: OTW (the organization that runs AO3) is, for some good (or at least earnest, well-intentioned, good-in-principle) reasons that go to the very reasons for its founding, highly allergic to any moralistic censorship of any kind whatsoever.

Unfortunately, ( CW: references to (fictional) child sexual abuse, and other less severe but still nasty and misogynistic porn tropes. )

Anyway, yes I'm aware much better thinkers than me have spent a lot more time on this. But I'd still like to do this as a reminder to myself how AO3 (which I fully intend to continue using for the time being) got to this point in the first place.

Based on what I've written out, though, I think they can do better. And I think the times are changing in a way that eventually they will.

Ant, Uber, and the true nature of money by Cory Doctorow

The actual historical reality, supported by history, archaeology and anthropology, is that governments created money by creating tax. The first "money" was the Babylonian ledgers that recorded how much of their crops farmers owed to the state and their creditors.

Money took a leap forward with imperial conquest: emperors solved the logistical problem of feeding and billeting their occupying soldiers by charging the occupied a tax that had to be paid for in coins stamped with the emperor's head.

They paid the soldiers in these coins, and demanded that their conquered populations somehow get the coins in order to pay their tax, with violent consequences if the tax wasn't paid. So the people sold food and other necessities to soldiers to get the coins.

Money, in other words, is how states provision themselves, and it derives its value from the fact that you have to pay your taxes in it. Governments spend money into existence by buying labor and goods from the public, and then tax it out of existence once a year. ...

When You Know by Tim Bray

OK, let me add one additional argument for why Bitcoin is not and can never be “real” money. You know what real money is? Money you can use to pay your taxes. The USA, in 2018, had about 140 million taxpayers. Suppose 10% of them wanted to use Bitcoin to pay their taxes. Let’s say the global Bitcoin network can process ten transactions per second (it can’t, it’s slower than that). By my arithmetic, at 10/second it would take the whole network, running flat out, not doing anything else, over five months to process those payments and refunds. This is just Federal Income Tax.

I should keep this in mind for any further worldbuilding stuff. Sure beats uncritically rehashing barter mechanics and GP...

Google's 'experiment' hiding Australian news just shows its inordinate power

Australians have been seeing current news disappearing in recent days, replaced by old links and old news: in some cases news outlets have disappeared altogether. Google says it is displaying older or less relevant content to 1% of users.

The news comes as the debate between Australian media and “Big Tech” revs up over the proposed news media bargaining code, which would require Google to negotiate a fair price for news content with eligible Australian outlets.

Google doesn’t want to pay for news content, on anyone’s terms except its own, and it appears to be manipulating search results to avoid it.

In other words, they killed search results for Australian news media for a day in retaliation over a price bargaining law.

I saw this article right after replying to this thread where haskal was pointing out how Android would nag you about supposedly battery-draining notifications without regard to any demonstrable difference in battery use, relying instead on the software's reliance on Google for its notifications. My response was a related experience where Android would remind me that I was running out of storage and recommend I delete some programs that I supposedly wasn't using much - and they turned out all to be non-Google things I was using on a regular basis for which Google had their own apps.

So, to recap:

1. You can't trust Google's OS to tell you what you need.


2. You can't trust Google's search to give you what you're looking for.

That's pretty much the core of their flagship products.

At this point I'm only stuck with it for:

1. Email and calendar by organizations I work for or with.


2. A lazy way to move text between my computer and my phone. (copypaste the text into a calendar reminder)


3. Pokémon Go.

#1 and #3 are not mine to abandon, but if anyone's got a good alternative for #2 that doesn't involve carrying a USB cord everywhere I'd like to know.

Been a long time since I've linkdumped here. But the series of links from Wednesday followed such a clear thematic pattern I have to save this.


Post-Christian America: Gullible, Intolerant, and Superstitious
One may rightly object to that last comment as a general thing, but given the links that I will link to below, it turned out to be prophetic.

Ross Douthat has written powerfully about the political consequences of post-Christian conservatism. It turns out that when men and women shed their faith, they don’t necessarily get more liberal, but they do get more tribal and vicious. Many members of the alt-right, for example, famously shun Evangelical Christianity (calling its adherents “cuckstians”). Indeed, as we learn from the battle between social-justice warriors and their right-wing counterparts — the emerging class of godless, angry populists — when you remove from your moral code any obligation to love your enemies, politics hardly improves.

The damage extends far beyond politics, of course. If there’s one abiding consequence of the shallow theologies and simple superstitions of our time, it’s the inability to endure or make sense of adversity. It’s a phenomenon that fractures families, fosters a sense of rage and injustice, and ultimately results in millions of Americans treating problems of the soul with mountains of pharmaceuticals. ...

South Park raised a generation of trolls

“Is it just me or has South Park gone full cuck?” wondered fans on Reddit’s The_Donald immediately after that episode aired, and probably not for the first (or last) time. But in the aftermath of Trump/Garrison’s election, those same, vigilant cuck-watchers were back to crowing over how South Park had really stuck it to politically correct types in a scene where Trump/Garrison tells PC Principal, “You helped create me.” That South Park positioned this as less of a triumphant comeuppance than a suicidal backfire didn’t seem to matter. And the show more or less left it there—portraying Trump/Garrison as a dangerously incompetent buffoon, but also as the ultimate “u mad?” to all those liberals they fucking hate.

All of which makes Parker and Stone’s recent declaration to lay off Trump in the coming 21st season a real disappointment at best, cowardice at worst. The duo is, of course, under no obligation to tackle politics—or anything else they don’t want to, for that matter. They’re also right that mocking Trump is both redundant and “boring,” and also that everyone does it. For two dyed-in-the-wool contrarians, Trump comedy feels every bit as bland, lifeless, and sitcom-safe as an episode of, say, Veronica’s Closet. Furthermore, Parker’s complaints of the show just “becoming CNN now” and not wanting to spend every week endlessly restacking the sloppy Jenga pile of Trump-related outrage is completely understandable. Believe me, I get it.

That said: Man, what a cop out. South Park has already spent the past 20 years being CNN for its CNN-hating audience. Meanwhile, Parker and Stone have proudly, loudly thumped for a “fearless” brand of satire that’s willing to mock everyone from George W. Bush to Scientology to Mormonism to Muhammad, even under death threats. To shrug now and say, as Parker did, “I don’t give a shit anymore”—right when, by their own admission, the influence of the show’s worldview has reached all the way to the White House—feels especially disingenuous, and suspiciously like caving to the young, Trump-loving fans with whom they have forged such an uneasy relationship. (“South Park bends the knee on their fake-news-fueled portrayal of President Trump,” one The_Donald post gloated, followed by many, many more.) If they truly believe that those trolls in the mirror are “horrible people” who are helping to “fuck the country up beyond repair,” it would be truly fearless to tell them why, with no hint of ambiguous, everything-sucks irony that can be willfully misinterpreted.

Porn is Destroying Dicks, and My Job

I should probably explain that I am Tantric healer, which means that I touch penises for a living. It's certainly not all I do, as an ordained priestess who supports men in cultivating sacred, conscious relationship with their authentic sexual expression, and the Divine Feminine herself. But, for our intents and purposes, all you really need to know is that I touch a lot of penises.
...
What's wrong with bucking and clenching and grinding? they ask. Well, these are the actions that speak to Voon's findings, which state that the porn addicted subjects "had greater impairments of sexual arousal and erectile difficulties" than those "healthy volunteers" we referenced earlier. The bucking and the clenching and the grinding are all indicative of desensitization, and of my clients' desperate attempts to generate some real-life arousal, because—as we've already determined—they have become tolerant to subtle sensations, and now require gross and exaggerated stimulation to feel themselves at all, let alone to achieve orgasm. [Graphic description follows of what to expect of a healthy male and a broken one.]
...
It's one thing to be numb and unreachable on your Tantrika's massage table. It's quite another when you are entwined in your lover's arms, and she wants to share a connected, mutually-satisfying, erotic experience, but all you can do is pummel and pound while clenching your eyes and your nether regions, calling up any number of online scenarios in your imagination to trick yourself into a semblance of turn-on. Because this is yet another downside of porn addiction: It makes your partner's needs and wants and humanity kind of irrelevant, if not downright annoying, because the porn addict is used to pixelated, 2D "women," who are so much easier to (not have to) deal with than the real life-version, what with their emotions, and their periods, and their clits.

"I prefer seeing you, because honestly, I feel sort of resentful when I have to give my partner foreplay," admitted a twenty-seven year-old client.

I spent 23 years as an elite fighter pilot, and it taught me that motivation is meaningless
A cure? A diagnosis? Pride and lust are wonderful motivators.

In real life, when fear, fatigue, and doubt set in, no speech can provide the motivation you need to keep going. The only thing you and your team can rely on is discipline.

"Discipline Equals Freedom" is Jocko Willink's formula for achieving success. ...

Literally overnight, my motivation evaporated – as did most of my interest in spending a career flying from a carrier. For the first time in my life, flying wasn't fun. I realized that the dream job was just that: a job. And it was a job that was going to require me to do things I didn't enjoy or find easy.

Fear can debilitate a carrier aviator, especially in combat. To succeed, I had to get past it. My self-discipline was all that I could rely on, and I needed every ounce that I had. ...

Most of my time was spent with men like Chris Kyle, who would sit next to me on rooftops, motionless for hours, observing the city through the scope of his rifle. Day in and day out, I watched him do the tedious, thankless, and unrewarding work they don't show you in recruitment videos or movies. Few things can sap your motivation and focus like Ramadi's suffocating dust and 115 degree heat. The only thing that gets you through an environment like that is discipline. And although that discipline often goes unrecognized, it doesn't go unrewarded: It allowed Chris to save countless lives and made him the most successful sniper in SEAL history.

DoD spends $84M a year on Viagra, similar meds
Not to suggest at all that the porn caused this too. But they are both repeated exposure to destructive, dehumanizing evils with significant neurological consequences.

A report published in September found that the incidence rate of ED among active-duty personnel more than doubled from 2004 to 2014.

Researchers at the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center found that the overall incidence rate of ED climbed from 5.8 cases per 1,000 person-years in 2004 to 12.6 cases in 2013, or more than 1 percent of the total population.

According to the report, 100,248 cases of ED were diagnosed among active-duty members from 2004 to 2013.

More than half of those were classified as "psychogenic," meaning the dysfunction was related to psychiatric rather than physical causes.

A number of factors can contribute to ED, from mental health conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety, to medications for treating physical and mental conditions as well as injuries, illness and aging.

"Everything Except Country and Rap": What You Really Mean
Relevant for this one line at the end:

Do you really like everything, or do you just like everything you’re told to?

This started off as a comment to the discussion here, but it both grew and degenerated into its own thing. Hopefully a bit more coherent than my last meditation on this.

With respect to the contrast between the perspective in Byzantine icons (and even most medieval art) versus the "realistic" style of post-Renaissance work, one thing that always strikes me is how much the former resembles the perspective in video games before 3D "photo"-realism became the norm.

For a particularly striking example: doorways in tile-based or isometric CRPGs (scroll down to "Chestyrre approaches a house to the south" and the second screenshot after that) and the door leading out to the world at the bottom of the Pentecost icon. The fact that even current games show a need to go "back" to this portrayal underscores the point about different needs.

(Also this icon of the Fall reminds me of the style of the Golden Axe games, but the latter is more of a technical limitation than a design decision, so not quite as good an example even if in my view more visually striking.)

This excellent discussion shows how much even "photo"-realistic depictions, literally mathematically perfect by Renaissance perspective rules (an unaided computer cannot do otherwise), need to be tweaked and adjusted to begin to function in a way that allows the most basic interactions one might expect in real life. Of note: a personal face-to-face interaction is the most difficult; violent games routinely render the player's own weapon (i.e., the player's primary means of participation) with a different perspective. And, of course, the first comment about monitor size and distance - which is entirely applicable to icons. And, of course, the way the person's face changes with the different FOV.

And, of course, actual photography requires a great deal of preparation and overhead before the machine you're using can reasonably approximate what you see.

So with all that in mind I can think of two main ways in which this manner of perspective works:

First, by drawing emphasis on what actually is necessary to depict, without cutting them off unrecognizably, obscuring other elements or requiring a great deal of irrelevant white space. (Consider, for instance, how tiny Jesus would be on your typical Transfiguration or Anastasis icon if rendered with modern perspective rules!)

Second, of which the first may be a subset, is the proper positioning of each element so that the player viewer might interact comfortably with it.

I write this with one specific example in mind: the Theotokos icon on the iconostasis in our church, which is based on this one (top row, second from the right). The ordinary manner of venerating this icon is to bow before it and kiss the Mother of God's right hand, as one might a priest in receiving a blessing. (Christ's feet are also kissed but that is another matter.) Her hand, however, is ostensibly also supporting Christ's weight; she'd have to move it and adjust Him for this purpose. The priest can simply swap hands; the icon cannot be animated to show the Theotokos doing this. (We might be able to do it now but the result would start dipping into the uncanny valley.)

This leaves us 3 options:

1. Theotokos holding Christ in her left hand, stuck in a "kiss the ring" pose. Very effective for this 5-second exchange and nothing else (i.e., the rest of the 0.5-2+ hours that you're in there facing the icon).


2. Theotokos holding Christ in her right hand, Renaissance perspective. You venerate Mary, bend awkwardly and kiss Christ's arse. Humbling, maybe, but inappropriate (and not in a good way).


3. The in-between perspective we actually see on the icon so venerated.

This may be related to the (relative!) lack of statuary: this sort of trick simply does not work with a 3D model. Another trick: a picture of someone looking at you always looks like it's looking at you except at the most oblique angles, but a lone statue looking at what is in front of it is more often than not staring into nothing in particular (which at best makes the depicted seem remote and distant, at worst evokes Psalm 135:16).

Unrelated to perspective but related to design, one thing that always strikes me about the labels on icons is how difficult they are to read - even the ones in English are heavily stylized, longer words broken up and longer phrases mashed together in very reader-unfriendly ways, to the point of not being immediately recognizable as text, or at least text in one's own vernacular. This, I have come to believe, if it weren't deliberate before, is a bug-become-feature: we don't want to be reading any text without conscious effort - the immediately obvious focus should be the image of the person represented.

I'm sure there are other more concrete examples, but nothing in particular springs to mind now.

(And I don't think I'll really "get" anytime soon those icons that (trigger warning: literal graven image) are embossed shiny metal everywhere except a little window through which is a painting of the person's face.)

It is never until you have seen good and understood the principle behind that good that evil can be seen for what it is.

There are two shooting clubs, Club O and Club C. Each has their own shooting range.

C boasts some of the most advanced techniques and is welcoming of everyone, and all of their members are capable of hitting their man-height target 100% at maximum range on most days.

O openly admits that the vast majority of its members can't even reliably hit the target, which is about 20 feet wide.

C's range is a state-of-the-art climate-controlled sound-dampened indoor range of exactly 10 metres. Everything is built to very exacting measurements. The bullseye on each target is exactly 0.61803 metres in radius. Members are fitted with custom-made ergonomic pistols with optic sights accurate to 1/60 of a minute of angle. Failure to hit the bullseye is treated as a scandal resulting in much hand-wringing for your teacher and the club board, and failure to hit the target can get you permanently banned from the club. (This is not always enforced.)

O's range is on the side of a mountain - the rainy side. It is in the burned-out clearing in a wooded area that suffers many brush fires and the area often gets hit with snowstorms. The clubhouse has been destroyed several times in the past fifty years due to landslides. The target is about 20 feet wide and its circumference is painted with a very bold, thick red line so you know exactly where it is - which is important because it is about 300-500 yards away (depending on more factors than we can get into right now, none of them seeming to involve what anyone actually wants) and the bullseye is about an inch wide, with a literal bull's eye painted into the middle. You are expected to aim for the optic nerve in the back of that eye (not depicted). Scopes are forbidden but full-auto weapons are encouraged. It is strictly forbidden to denigrate anyone for their inaccuracy, provided they were actually aiming for the bullseye and the bullet did not hurt anyone. (Temporary bans are frequent and there is no standard for their length.)

O and C used to be the same club. Both of them have plaques in their clubhouses dedicated to their early legends who were able to shoot tiny, barely visible targets at over 300 yards in the middle of a storm in a burning forest - no scope, of course.