#polemic

[st-just]

It was nothing that the local EMS and fire departments couldn't handle. What rankled them was that they were providing their services for free. The deal negotiated by Amazon and the state had freed the company from paying local property taxes - the taxes that paid for the functions of local government, from schools to the police and fire departments - for fifteen years. The warehouses were in Licking and Franklin Counties, but they weren't really of them. They put many hundreds of cars and trucks onto local roads every day, and they put out emergency calls, but Amazon paid for neither snow plows nor ambulances. The basic social compact applied to others but not to them; in 2017, voters in the area served by West Licking Fire Station 3 would be asked to approve a 5-year, 6.5 million property tax levy to keep the fire department going. They would be making up what the company withheld.

-Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America, by Alec MacGillis

[philosophybits]

Polemic, or the art of throwing eggs, is ... as highly skilled a job as, say, boxing... keep your face straight and throw them well! The difficulty is: not to make superfluous noises or gestures, which don’t harm the other man but only yourself.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, in Recollections of Wittgenstein, Rush Rhees, ed.

[cl0ck-killer]

Now, amid intensifying social and environmental breakdown, there is a growing realization that daily life overshadowed on every level by the internet complex has crossed a threshold of irreparability and toxicity. More and more people know or sense this, as they silently experience its damaging consequences. The digital tools and services used by people everywhere are subordinated to the power of transnational corporations, intelligence agencies, criminal cartels and a sociopathic billionaire elite. For the majority of the earth's population on whom it has been imposed, the internet complex is the implacable engine of addiction, loneliness, false hopes, cruelty, psychosis, indebtedness, squandered life, the corrosion of memory and social disintegration. All of its touted benefits are rendered irrelevant or secondary by its injurious and sociocidal impacts.

Jonathan Crary, Scorched Earth: Beyond the Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World

[punisheddonjuan]

Reminder that Ethical Altruism is the brainchild of a philosopher so inept at philosophy that when confronted with the problem of "infectious nihilism" he attacks it with formal logic only to find that formal logic comes up short (perhaps the most pointless academic paper I've ever had the displeasure of reading). This is what no continental philosophy does to a motherfucker.

Also, his book What We Owe the Future is the most facile, anthropocentric, weakly argued and logically incoherent piece of shit I've ever skimmed through. (To head off any criticism of not reading it thoroughly: why would I ever seriously consider the moral philosophy of a man who was fooled by Sam Bankman-Fried and consorted with Elon Musk?) For whatever criticisms I may have of object-oriented-ontology (and I have them), it made me think they maybe didn't go far enough in decentering the human.

[daemonicdasein]

‘Oh my Father, Lord of Silence, Supreme God of Desolation, though mankind reviles yet aches to embrace, strengthen my purpose to save the world from a second ordeal of Jesus Christ and his grubby mundane creed. Two thousand years have been enough. Show man instead the raptures of Thy kingdom. Infuse in him the grandeur of melancholy, the divinity of loneliness, the purity of evil, the paradise of pain. What perverted imagination has fed man the lie that Hell festers in the bowels of the Earth? There is only one Hell, the leaden monotony of human existence. There is only one Heaven, the ecstasy of my Father's kingdom.’

‘Nazarene, charlatan, what can you offer humanity? Since the hour you vomited forth from the gaping wound of a woman, you've done nothing but drown man's soaring desires in a deluge of sanctimonious morality. You've inflamed the pubertal mind of youth with your repellent dogma of original sin. And now you absolve in denying them the ultimate joy beyond death by destroying me? But you will fail, Nazarene, as you have always failed. We were both created in man's image, but while you were born of an impotent God, I was conceived of a jackal. Born of Satan, the desolate one, the nail. Your pain on the cross was but a splinter compared to the agony of my father. Cast out of heaven, the fallen angel, banished, reviled. I will drive deeper the thorns into your rancid carcass, you profaner of vices. Cursed Nazarene. Satan, I will avenge thy torment, by destroying the Christ forever.’

— Damien Thorn (portrayed by Sam Neil), Omen III: The Final Conflict (1981), directed by Graham Baker; written by Andrew Birkin.

[while-the-days-slipped-by]

Hey friends and mutuals I just got around to putting the finishing touches on this article I wrote, it’s a fairly long piece and goes into the history of Pokemon Red and Blue, as well as my own history with it. I’m quite proud of it and I hope you choose to give it a read and enjoy it.

[jayahult]

Now, a bit back I saw someone complaining about a site called the Mythcreants, which seems to largely be a writing advice column / blog-type-thing. Now, I try not to badmouth someone without at least giving them a fair shake, and I checked out their site. I think there's an attempt to do some good work here, but I also think what's presented is vastly incomplete and often odd. The problem with writing advice is that it's sort of like financial advice or really any sort of advice - it can easily do more harm than good if delivered incorrectly, and broad generalizations and "musts" and "shall nots" are often wildly unhelpful when making contact with reality. Mythcreants often runs afoul of this, and I kind of wanted to just dissect that for a bit.

The first thing that I feel like is noticeable is their rather extensive Q&A column. I think in terms of advice, Q&A columns are perhaps some of the best ways to dispense it because it's most often someone with a specific problem who comes to Q&A for a solution to that problem, making the diagnosis and subsequent advice usually highly specific and applicable for that specific person, and more broadly applicable once you start spiraling the ideas from that specific application out. Now, the selection of these questions is... sort of weird? Some of them, certainly, are great choices. For example, one person asked "How can I spot bad faith critiques?" That's a great question for a beginning writer or even someone more experienced who feels like they're being harangued a bit too much. No further notes. Others, however, feel... listen, I know I just said Q&A is great because it's specific, but these are too specific or so simplistic that it feels awkward. A lot of the questions are great big "cans" - can I do this, or can I do that, which to me feels like a sign that a lot of these questions are coming in from novice writers who feel like they still need to ask someone for permission to do something. And that's not an insult to them - I was there, once upon a time - but one of the truly wonderful things about writing is realizing that you're very free with it, that you "can" do anything so long as you feel it is a satisfying way to write that resonates with you and your audience.

Many are also "cans" about social impact around marginalized groups - certainly great questions for any author to ask. But I don't think "can" or "should" or "ought to" is really the right way to look at that sort of question. I myself am a trans woman, and I'm disabled mentally and in some respects physically, though many of those physical disabilities have become less noticeable with my adulthood. There are times when I really do see some depictions of trans and disabled people and feel uncomplicatedly offended. I think we can all safely gather round and laugh at Sia or The Good Doctor for being backwards and stupid when it comes to this sort of matter and so on, but it's rarely so clear cut, especially from the perspective of an author or artist. The important part is to be thoughtful, read closely on a topic if you're trying to represent it properly, and then not much else can be done besides consulting members of a marginalized group directly and doing your best to actually write it. I've lived about two decades now and if there's anything I've learned it's that being impolite or insensitive when making a best effort is maybe the least concerning thing that a person can be, at worst an annoyance; and so it is not tantamount to an author to make it their sole priority. The advice from Mythcreants seems well-intentioned in this respect, but with all I've said in mind it also feels insufficient in that area, if that makes any sense. It seems more focused on what one ought not to do rather than looking at the vastness of the possibility present when one really looks at the diversity of the human race and the ways in which we are different.

Additionally, I personally feel like - and this is rude, but I don't know how phrase it - the Mythcreants hate fun. Or at the very least, they hate things that might be interesting in the context of a fictional novel. For instance, they have an article entitled Five Anachronisms That Fantasy Needs. It starts off by being on the face of it inaccurate by saying that it is "historical almost by definition," largely ignoring the vast number of fantasy stories that take place in the present day or near future, but let's move right on past that. The list - spoilers for a several-year-old listicle, I guess - consists of modern medical knowledge, birth control more reliable than sheepskin condoms, acceptance of differences (ex. class, race, gender, sexuality, etc.), reasonable fashion trends (ex. no codpieces, restrictive corsets, lead-based cosmetics, etc.) and standardized time-keeping. The problem I have with all of this is that fundamentally speaking these are things that many people find deeply interesting topics and love reading more about them. People love reading about societies that have bizarre ideas about medicine, that have prejudices so exotic that they seem to turn the world on its head, they love a dramatic pregnancy scare, they love the biggest, stupidest codpieces and most carcinogenic makeup you could imagine and they love having no clue what year it is. Maybe not so much on the last one, but you're sort of picking up what I'm putting down, no? What people find fascinating about past societies is reflected in our fantasies because they are interesting things; the past is a foreign country that we love to explore and play in with fiction, and most audiences are here for that sort of thing. Don't take it from me! Brandon Sanderson apparently has written a hit series about an entire society of feudalistic magical hand fetishists and he's a best-seller. Haven't read it though; still getting around to that one.

Another example of this is their article on "Five Tips for Avoiding Disorientation in Your Opening Hook." I think this is sort of a silly endeavor in the first place. Confusion in an opening is an almost certainty, because nothing has been answered yet and nothing established. There's something to this that I like to call "the Star Wars rule," which basically says that if something's function is self-apparent by how it plays in the story going forward, then you can use that to your advantage and minimize further explanation. If you off-handedly mention that Blahian wine, then audiences will very quickly make the connections that it's probably really high-quality or has sought-after characteristics, because they're probably familiar with the fact that good French and Italian wines are also pricy and have sought-after qualities. You only really need to elaborate on that when, per say, the character from Blah reveals that he's secretly blighted the vineyards to drive the wine prices through the roof and make a monopoly or something, and you can elaborate on how he specifically did that, or what in Blah let him do that, and it'll all cohere. What this means, ultimately, is that you can throw uncertain or unknown terms into fiction and they will be able to come to understand those very quickly by context because humans are generally pretty good at that, and they'll respect you for letting them figure out that little mystery on their own. They focus, for instance, on the opening to Blindsight: "It didn’t start out here. Not with the scramblers or Rorschach, not with Big Ben or Theseus or the vampires. Most people would say it started with the Fireflies, but they’d be wrong. It ended with all those things."

I think this is actually a really good opening, not knowing anything else about the novels. It's... pithy, you know? It gives the immediate feeling of some old guy on a porch telling you about something he lived through that other people didn't. Immediately, what we're being told is that the world is like our own - there's Big Ben and Theseus and Rorschach are familiar names - but something's happened with them that's quite enormous and led to a very big conclusion involving vampires and scramblers and a group named the Fireflies. After all, we don't usually talk about big national monuments with this sort of tone unless something very bad happened to them or in them. The audience immediately knows that the story is going to somehow cover all of these things and they're going to figure out what this all means as it goes along. It being a little confusing doesn't make it bad - it makes it intriguing. The article then goes on to urge authors not to use confusing labels, including not referring to characters by multiple names early in the opening (ex. replacing Paglino with Pag, Gardner with Gard) and minimizing metaphors. I can at least agree with keeping the narration consistent, but I feel like that's true of most writing, opening or not. All of this feels like the writers of Mythcreants expect authors to write books for people who are not curious and are not interested in learning about what they're reading about, or that they think that writing is tremendously weakened by being even slightly ambiguous or potentially confusing for an audience. And again, you don't have to take this one from me. One of the most popular game series of the last ten years was Dark Souls, which has story elements that are almost indefinitely obscured or simply unknowable even in the opening, and people love that, they love debating what version of events is true and what's really going on and they find great joy in that. Hell, last year we got Signalis, a game that opens with a cutscene where the main character picks up a semi-obscure late 19th century horror novel before listening to a German radio station repeating "ACHTUNG! ACHTUNG!" before repeating a series of numbers while the main character's face starts dissolving, and then quotes from H.P. Lovecraft start flashing on the screen along with several characters we don't know about, a highly technical fictional BSOD screen and then just the title.

You know what people said to that?

"We love it, give us more, we will speculate about this for months."

Now you may ask, Jay, where are you going with this? Surely you have some sort of grander point about how bad writing advice tends to stem from a prescriptive view of writing that fails to take into account the complex realities of the real world, fantasy worlds and the authorship thereof? And, well, yes. That's the point. This advice is overly specific and prescriptive, and it seems to cater to people who haven't strongly developed their own style and authorial interests that tend to create strong audiences in turn. That's really it. I just chose to tear into Mythcreants because they were around and I had a lazy afternoon to do so. I do hope that if they do see this, they don't take it too harshly. There's nothing unsalvageable about their site or their general milieu, and if someone got something out of their advice I'm glad. I just don't see them as being all that helpful personally.

[mickeyoffbeat]

New Album ska band from Slovakia 11SKA !

#ska #slovakia #band #polemic

[angeldmn]

“because will bisexual-”

just shut up bro

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

[twinegardening]

Polemic by Davis G. See [IFDB]

When Henrietta escaped the repressive nation of Tamra, she took a mech with her. Now she uses it to defend her new home, the self-sufficient, collectivist colony Evening Song. When the Evening Song is approached by a Tamran mech pilot--Henrietta’s old friend, Tess--she must engage in mech combat and political debate simultaneously, in true mecha anime fashion. But what is the point in talking to someone who is already determined to kill you? Can Tess really be reasoned with?

POLEMIC is a Twine game where your commands refer to both battle tactics and rhetorical techniques; to put up your shield and defend your philosophical position are one and the same.

[st-just]

A central misconception regarding American education is that we are a uniquely terrible nation when it comes to schooling. This assumption is not defensible. It’s certainly true that our performance does not look good relative to expenditures, but then school funding is not consistently or simplistically associated with student performance. Overall, I think the evidence is strong that the United States has mediocre mean academic outcomes and that this disappointing average performance is the product of a relatively small number of schools in economically-challenged parts of the country that perform truly terribly. Our median student does alright, not great but alright, but our worst-performing students struggle dramatically compared to the rest of the developed world. Meanwhile, the top-performing American public school students are competitive with those from anywhere; I would put our top 1% or 3% or 5% of students up against those from any country. In events like the International Chemistry Olympiad and the International Mathematics Olympiad, for example, American students have excelled for decades. American high school students go on to flourish in the most elite universities in the world. Our problem isn’t at the top. The story of American education is not of generically bad or even mediocre results but of extreme inequality. Which is the general American story.

-Freddie deBoer

[bloodofangell]

miley post a time ago .. 💀💀 lol

[boyruggeroii]

When I was in high school, the first or second year like, I read Zelig by Woody Allen and I found Zelig sooooo relatable it almost creeped me out. He was me but a book version

[punisheddonjuan]

Ugh, somehow stumbled across a post from way back in 2016 written by one of the bloggers on here I used to hate passionately for being a spineless and mealy mouthed liberal who stood for nothing (@theunitofcaring) on how assisted suicide shouldn't be banned simply because some people might be coerced into choosing death. "People being coerced into suicide is unfair! But we can't let that impede the freedom of others to choose, the people who are coerced are always going to be a sad minority." And seeing as how less than a decade later we have a full blown eugenics regime here in Canada after the introduction of Track 2 MAiD with a similar regime developing in France, it just reminded me how much I fucking hated those bloggers. All those fucking "ethical altruist" and "rationalist" blogs on here were given far more attention and credence than they ever deserved, simply because they all wrote a lot of words (more indicative of prescription stimulant abuse than actually having anything to say in my view). They were all moral cowards who stood for absolutely nothing, playing their little thought experiments with the idealistic naivety of sheltered children and now we stand witness to the results of that sort of detached moral arguing, the return of eugenics and the real world deaths of disabled people. The entire EA movement was fraudulent from the start and I still can't believe so many couldn't see through it. The rationalist adjacent blogs that are still around continue this proud tradition of ableism and as far as I'm concerned have blood on their hands for perpetuating the cultural attitudes which have allowed for eugenics to once again become a pillar of liberal "social justice". Frankly if I ever met any of these people, I'd stuff them into the nearest locker like the nerds they are.

[redbrokenwhistle]

Next Polemic: The Non-Existance of Personality 'Disorders' and the REALity of Indeterminable Valence. The subject is TOO unique and does, when appreciated, escape definition.

And how there has been a manufacturing of common anxiety and self "regulation" (REALITY: The POISON of moral ideology and individual subjective refusal of themselves as something unique outside definition). It seems to me on the part of sociopathy and psychopathy modern freudian psychology (the same psychology also instrumental in propaganda, advertising, and public opinion) has us all on the right track of needing to conform, and having to justify our attraction towards those who exist outside the prescribed model (of what a person should be). This intends to force something real out of morality, as if it a paste to be forced from a tube and inspected on a plate. We are accompanied then by the Bernayian propaganda, nephew of freud, who culled the death on (largely) all public accounts of personality. A foucaultian ideal that we believe more in things we have no agreeable definition of than in our own truths we have the pleasure of discovering ourselves in passionate emotion. And there is also to have "evil" which does not exist to me, an inherit thing, a natural island from which I sailed and found Nietzsche. With these scapegoats we face a reality, western psychology desires a herd of obedient problems, if I were in charge I would see too the advantage of having dischord. Because it's my invention, youre not going to find it was mine, when you do no one will care, and you're never going to reach a compromise on it. Add in a myth of equality, and deny them their reality of at the very least the awareness of the amoral egoism that propels all achieved capitalists, and you'll have the maintenance requirements of a rice cooker. I have power anyway, and you'll never reach very high and die meaninglessly. You will have wasted your life chasing what you were told to believe. (Your idols). Now these problems are unequipped for the cunning egoist (your narcissist) to reveal their loserhood, which is quite real, be unfair, unequal, immoral, a thing to which you still lose to even though you dissent.

And when you look around, you will find people everywhere with different levels of intensity in these traits.

And villainy is so goofy. Is there anything else they could sacrifice for themselves other than human life that would have them be still so evil? Or is ALL of evilness dependent on this ONE chip that is on so many shoulders.