Link Archive 1/1/18 - 4/1/18

Augh, I've neglected this for too long.

This is delightful! EXCERPTS FROM MY UPCOMING NOVEL, READY PLAYER TWO: GIRL STUFF. "I ran a proud hand over the side of my spaceship that was shaped like a Lisa Frank dolphin. I had won it in a bet with my friend Snapewife over how many Pirates of the Caribbeanmovies there were. Back then, she had called it the Sparkleship, but I wanted a more intellectual, literary name. So I re-named it Astolat, after my favorite fan-fiction author."

The Daily Mail is not a legitimate news source "This is, in the bluntest possible terms, how they’ve managed to keep their hate-spewing empire running for so long. They adjust the facts just enough to get you angry, angry enough to click and read and pass the article along. How dare those writers disrespect my favourite actor, fuck the Russo brothers, and so on! They thrive on your outrage and weaponise it."

The Unit of Caring on TERFs (applies to a LOT of things though)

"Even if you know that a group of millions of people will have some bad ones, hearing in detail about the bad ones all the time will slowly rewire your intuitions. You’ll start to expect, when you see a member of the group, bad things, because your brain has thousands of examples of bad things. You can try to consciously correct for this, but in my experience it’s actually nearly impossible to consciously correct enough; when you’re getting tons of “data” your intuitions will be shaped by it, even when it’s a lie and you know it.

I categorically reject any group of people which does this. If a group does this, I block them all and leave and never come back. It is a fundamentally wrong thing to do. It can be done against any target; it does not teach truth; all it does is rewire your brain towards suspicion and hatred, and it works just as well whether the targeted group has a higher rate of violence of various types or not. I strongly encourage anyone who recognizes this pattern in groups they’re part of to leave those groups, because this is a horrid tactic."

That NYT article that got so much crap because the author didn't "really" take two months away from the internet still makes very good points.

"Get news. Not too quickly. Avoid social. ... Now I am not just less anxious and less addicted to the news, I am more widely informed (though there are some blind spots). And I’m embarrassed about how much free time I have"

also: "People don’t just post stories — they post their takes on stories, often quoting key parts of a story to underscore how it proves them right"

I feel called out ^^;

The Feminism of Black Panther vs. Wonder Woman. Good essay, and I agree that Black Panther is more mature story-telling.

No one realizes at the time they vote for the last time that it will be their last vote. "In the closed-door remarks, a recording of which was obtained by CNN, Trump also praised China's President Xi Jinping for recently consolidating power and extending his potential tenure, musing he wouldn't mind making such a maneuver himself. "He's now president for life. President for life. No, he's great," Trump said. "And look, he was able to do that. I think it's great. Maybe we'll have to give that a shot some day."

Black Panther’s Right Thing. A great article, which reminded me I haven't seen Do The Right Thing in over 20 years, and I really need to fix that. And probably buy it.

Oh shit! I thought Dogma was fucking awesome as it is, but now it's *even better*!

How white nationalists fooled the media about Florida shooter. OMG, they used 4chan as a source. /headdesk. Interesting though. (also note that even this article makes the hilarious error of calling Discord popular with white nationalists. I mean, I guess it is, but in the same way that cars are popular with white nationalists)

‘Donovan called this an instance of “source hacking,” a tactic by which fringe groups coordinate to feed false information to authoritative sources such as ADL researchers. These experts, in turn, disseminate the information to reporters, and it reaches thousands of readers before it can be debunked...

‘“We have to start thinking of these white nationalist groups as what some of them describe themselves — ‘media militias,’” said Donovan. “They think of media as adversarial territory.”’’

Orc Slavery Made Me Quit ‘Middle-earth: Shadow of War’ - now that's high praise for a game.

"I just want to spare you all the trouble of going through a revolution only to find out that wealth is specifically designed to exist as things which can’t transfer to the person who kills you. "

An interesting bluesy cover of Faith No More's "Epic"

SATANIC TEMPLE BEATS MISSOURI IN SHOWDOWN OVER ABORTION RIGHTS Still doing god's work. I love these people, and dollar-for-dollar I get more visceral satisfaction out of the donations I give to them than to any other charity.

"Writing is about more than just words" - What Writers Should Learn From Mad Max: Fury Road

I know this is old news, but - President Trump Slaps Tariffs on Solar Panels in Major Blow to Renewable Energy. Because not fighting global warming isn't enough, it's important to actively make it worse. /seethingRage

China, Unhampered by Rules, Races Ahead in Gene-Editing Trials. How many people must die due to delays?

> Dr. Wu’s team at Hangzhou Cancer Hospital has been drawing blood from esophageal-cancer patients, shipping it by high-speed rail to a lab that modifies disease-fighting cells using Crispr-Cas9 by deleting a gene that interferes with the immune system’s ability to fight cancer. His team then infuses the cells back into the patients, hoping the reprogrammed DNA will destroy the disease.

> In contrast, what’s expected to be the first human Crispr trial outside China has yet to begin. The University of Pennsylvania has spent nearly two years addressing federal and other requirements, including numerous safety checks designed to minimize risks to patients. While Penn hasn’t received final federal clearance to proceed, “we hope to get clearance soon,” a Penn spokeswoman said.

Why *in fuck* is a website only available during business hours???

Offspring is the Nickleback of punk. That is all.

The 1969 Easter Mass Incident. "Dad remembers hearing the bishop through the windows roaring “THE HOLY BODY OF CHRIST DOES! NOT! CONTAIN! RAINBOW! SPRINKLES!”"

And that's waaaaaay before it gets to the really good part...

Y'all know I love me some Movie Bob. Here he breaks down why Zack Snyder, while being a highly skilled director, was a particularly bad choice for directing Batman v Superman, by expounding on the importance of cultural context for art via the Watchmen movie...

And in the process, FINALLY is able to articulate exactly why the Watchmen movie felt so Bleh, despite being gorgeous and ridiculously faithful to the literal presentation of the source material! Bob.

This is the only one of the three parts of Really That Bad that it's worth watching. The others aren't good. However this one is really REALLY good, basically start to finish! And when he theorizes on how this movie could have been done well, he basically describes the entirety of The Metropolitan Man!

Peeing standing up is VASTLY overrated. It's basically a way of ensuring piss gets everywhere. Which I guess is good for marking territory. But in the modern world, it is an inferior method of urination.

The best person on the internet (really, IMO) talks about how to be kind. A neat note: "when being wrong wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world because you know yourself to be valuable in many ways, then you’re equipped to be nice, and it’ll come much easier."

> "If anyone were to take a highway engineer to a wide open space and ask them to design a junction which would readily enable two road users to collide with neither of them ever seeing each other, I doubt any would be able to manage it.

> Yet this is precisely what exists."

Cognitive scientist George Lakoff on Trump's tweeting:

> Trump uses social media as a weapon to control the news cycle. It works like a charm. His tweets are tactical rather than substantive. They mostly fall into one of these four categories.