#thinly disguised authoritarianism </3

[piratebay]

ngl bleach is Not good 🤣💞

[zuko-always-lies]

For those of you who don’t know, Babylon 5 is an excellent show. It is a much beloved 1990s sci-fi series that was just about the first American drama series to truly do long-form story telling, and one of the very few ever to do long-form story telling well. And in some ways, it was truly radical in a way you would absolutely not expect from a TV series from that period.

Half of the cast were officers serving in the Earth Force, the military of the Earth Federation. This was a thinly disguised pastiche of 1990s America. There’s even a presidential election in season 1, which doesn’t seem to affect the main cast much. 

Over the course of the first three seasons, the Earth Federation rapidly devolves into a xenophobic fascist regime which targets aliens, creates a SA/SS equivalent, and imposes a police state. Ironically, the rise to power of this fascist state’s leader, President Clark, is enabled by an alliance with a foreign power. By the middle of season 3, the protagonists are engaged in open warfare against their own government, and by the end of season 4, they’ve incited a civil war and created an alliance between a large portion of Earth Force and several foreign powers that allows them to overthrow their own government. Of course, the new Earth government is less than friendly with the protagonists. 

Star Trek: the Original Series had the Klingons be space authoritarians and a pastiche of the Soviet Union.

The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine used the Cardassians and their treatment of the Bajorians as an analogy for fascism and Nazism.  Both were good critiques and analogies, but the fascism and awfulness was safely located somewhere foreign, in an other and in incomprehensible foreign culture.

Babylon 5 had the fascist regime be us. It had us brutalize and murder our own citizens. It had us degenerate into authoritarianism and xenophobia.  It had us fall into bloody civil war.  It had our military declare that it “only followed orders” and “didn’t make policy” as it propped up a brutal, fascist regime.

[zachsgamejournal]

PLAYING: Republique

As a huge fan of Metal Gear Solid, story driven games, and pushing the boundaries of mobile gaming: I was really interested in Republique. For whatever reason, I didn't give a full-go on mobile, so I was excited to see it as a freebie on Stadia...now I see why I might have not finished it...

For a mobile game, Republique looks great. It's less impressive as a Stadia game. But I like blocky games, and the art direction and textures are still very impressive. The problem had with this game the first time I tried it was the excessive story. I know I sad I like story driven games, but watch long, uninteresting cutscenes doesn't count. Exposition in storytelling is usually frowned upon. Take a lesson from Lost: mixing your plot points with emotion or mystery keep it interesting. This game opens with a long monologue of some woman yelling at people about books you're not supposed to read it this dystopian (what I think is the) future.

This is a storytelilng sin for a few reasons:

1. We've seen dystopian futures with authoritarian, militarized policing before. Trust that we've seen this and don't try to re-write the book on it. 2. Show, don't tell. Though in games, I'd say: Play, don't show. Your player is going to spend hours in your world, you don't have to cram every piece of plot into one cinematic. A) They're not going to remember, and B) they just want to play. 3. Cutscenes should be rewards, not obstacles. Don't block the gameplay with long cutscenes, instead, offer short cutscenes as a treat for making progress.

Anyway, these were feelings from when I first played the game. Now, what it was like on Stadia:

Awkward. It was awkward. In the mobile game, you don't control the character directly. Instead, you tap parts of the screen for her to move to, while hopping between security cameras to observer her progress and scout for dangers. I thought this was absolutely genius for a mobile game. They really built up the feeling that I was helping someone through my actual phone.

On Stadia (and I assume PC & Console) you do control the character. So instead of targeting key hiding spots, I have to move her. I would be ok with this if I wasn't having to switch between cameras for the best angle. It's a little frustrating and requires excessive dexterity.

I noticed I could "check out" posters. They weren't very insightful, providing some gameplay thinly disguised as propaganda narrative. This is why it's important not to over-load your cutscenes with plots, there's plenty of opportunities to dig into the world without training videos.

I'm committed to beating the game, but I'm a little distracted by my own project at the moment. But I'm going to beat it. I promise!

[mugasofer]

So, that fucking Google memo.

One thing about it that struck me as odd was the structure:

Introduction: a quick disclaimer that I Don’t Hate Diversity.

A dozen right-wing and/or MRA talking points regarding gender, many totally unrelated to Women In Tech or Diversity. A handful have citations, most don’t. Some of the citations are stupid.

Conclusion: we should implement a bunch of policies, most of which are not mentioned in part 2. A number of citations for these new policies are included here, some of which go to random opinion pieces.

A good example of the material in part 2 would be this footnote:

For heterosexual romantic relationships, men are more strongly judged by status and women by beauty [link to survey showing women care more about men’s financial prospects]. Again, this has biological [link to study showing that testosterone injections affect player strategies in the Ultimatum Game] origins and is culturally universal.

A good example of the material in part 3 would be this bullet point:

Prioritize intention.

 ○  Our focus on microaggressions and other unintentional transgressions increases our sensitivity, which is not universally positive: sensitivity increases both our tendency to take offence and our self censorship, leading to authoritarian policies. Speaking up without the fear of being harshly judged is central to psychological safety, but these practices can remove that safety by judging unintentional transgressions.

 ○  Microaggression training incorrectly and dangerously equates speech with violence [link to Atlantic opinion piece] and isn’t backed by evidence. [link to article saying that there isn’t strong evidence supporting “the microaggression concept”].

It strikes me that this structure seems almost engineered to produce contradictory opinions backed up by out-of-context quotes and screenshots. 

Those who agree with the document can point to the opening disclaimer and some of the policy recommendations at the end and say the document is mostly milquetoast centrism, and/or point to some of the citations in the middle and say that the document is mostly well-cited claims of scientific fact.

Those who disagree with the document can point to the middle, which dwells mostly on the question of whether gender differences are biological or not and is mostly uncited, and to some of the policy recommendations at the end. This allows them to say that the whole thing is just a thinly-disguised rant about how women (and minorities; there’s brief discussion of how the Left “tends to deny science concerning ... IQ” and much mention of affirmative action programs) are inferior and that’s the reason they’re underrepresented at Google.

Both of these have strong evidence in their favour. Both of these are wrong. 

In fact, the document is a mixture of milquetoast centrism, well-cited claims of scientific fact, and often poorly-cited claims that minorities and women are just biologically worse Google employees (mostly just discussion of averages with appropriate disclaimers that statistics mean nothing to the individual, but it is pointed out that “[current practices] can effectively lower the bar for ‘diversity’ candidates by decreasing the false negative rate”, so it’s hard not to apply these “averages” to current Google employees.)

It’s like a perfectly-engineered gift to Culture Warriors.

There are two obvious flaws in this reading of the situation:

Quite a lot of liberals are flat-out lying about the content of the manifesto, so obviously the contents don’t matter to them.

Even the most assiduous quote-miner can’t actually justify Damore’s firing (at least not to me.) 

... welp, I’ve acknowledged those flaws. Yup. They exist.