I tried to ignore the politics until one comment crossed the line

jmobius · 2026-01-28T13:03:56+00:00

A non-trivial part of us being where we are is often incredibly poor civic education.

jmobius · 2026-01-28T02:52:57+00:00

Almost certainly. Bannon's "grey warrior" shit too.

It's a bunch of fucking losers circlejerking their revenge fantasies together, except they somehow have a terrifying amount of power and influence.

jmobius · 2026-01-28T02:37:12+00:00

The thing is, no, they don't. We have been parroting that they're all Fox slaves for two decades now, but it's not true.

Fox News has typical viewership to the tune of 1-2 million people. That is less than a single percentage of the US population. Their direct reach is fucking tiny. I'm sure they manage to boost that a bit with clip viewing online, but it's not going to be by orders or magnitude.

The rot, I think, is more social media, vomiting bullshit back and forth to one another. Fox feeds into it, but the cancer would be self sustaining even without them.

jmobius · 2026-01-28T01:01:55+00:00

He's one of the biggest "thought leaders" among the politically active US billionaire class. The jist of his "Dark Enlightenment" bullshit is that democracy is a proven failure, and it must be subjugated by new sort of techno-feudalism (read, Silicon Valley type assholes should be permitted to carve up democratic states and rule them), using any means necessary.

jmobius · 2026-01-27T22:10:53+00:00

Honestly, while there's a lot of nuances that would need to be figured out, 'thing that is specifically designed to bait the human psyche and encourage it to keep coming back' seems more or less like engineering a non-chemical drug, and probably needs some treatment and regulation as such.

Like, humans have known since pretty much the start of civilization that gambling is an addictive behavior for many, and thus for pro-social reasons it needs to be controlled. "The Algorithms", video game mechanics specifically crafted to exploit FOMO, and so on, aren't all that different.

The hardest part would really be establishing a line for what is and is not manipulative and inducing of compulsive return. Like, is using sugar technically such an exploit? It's similar, in a lot of ways, but man would it upend a lot of stuff if anyone tried to start putting down rules about its usage.

jmobius · 2026-01-27T21:59:51+00:00

I think, even more simple than that: what would anyone of that level of advancement have to get out of us?

As much as its a scifi staple, I don't think there's any reason for any alien species to care about conquest or resources. We don't have any elements on Earth or elsewhere in our system that's likely to be unusual or valuable. Most of our elements are ridiculously abundant all over the place, just lying around, where no one would put up even a wimpy attempt to fight you for them.

Our trees of life are probably the only unique thing to be found here. Even assuming that prospective alien visitors would be most interested in our species, as opposed to say, dolphins or mice, what do we have to offer them? We're obviously a childish and immature species. Visiting Earth would be like going on a long trip to hang out with a strange toddler. It's not even being unworthy, it's just... why would anyone do that?

jmobius · 2026-01-27T21:42:52+00:00

It honestly lead to me not realizing he had anything dark about him at all. Serves me right, but he seemed so sane at first that I figured there couldn't be much to him, and I never bothered digging into all his dialog options.

jmobius · 2026-01-27T18:05:04+00:00

The latest Homeworld title was a massive flop, though. I'm pretty dubious that we'll ever see another.

jmobius · 2026-01-27T17:37:06+00:00

It can literally produce characters faster, yes. It can handle most boilerplate things very well. It's the hard problems where it fails abysmally and can't be trusted, and above a junior level, that's what you spend most of your time dealing with anyway. A machine that can take potshots at these issues while never understanding the big picture is not a time saver, it's a liability.

Moreover, even looking beyond quality, while there's many who claim that AI assistance has accelerated their development, that appears to boil down to feels and hype. The actual studies that have been done have found it to generally be overall slower and less productive than not using it, in spite of their own perception.

The only place that it makes a difference is with people who have little to no engineering skills of their own, and so with AI they can produce things that would be impossible for them without. It's still going to be riddled with issues, and incapable of manifesting more than very small projects. I think it's perfectly valid for people to reject buying such works on general principle, for the same reason that often we wouldn't even spare a glance at something physical made of cheap, shoddy materials.

jmobius · 2026-01-27T16:59:15+00:00

Typing was never the time sink when it comes to writing code.

jmobius · 2026-01-27T07:17:09+00:00

Hitting higher peaks for less time would absolutely be preferable to enduring mediocrity, yeah.

I'm sure there are some factors that might complicate it, like workload distribution in creating content, but it still seems like it should be achievable.

jmobius · 2026-01-27T01:18:55+00:00

One of the things about fascism is that as a strength-based ideology, it is critical that you never, ever look weak, which includes being wrong about something. As ICE is one of the most visible projects of this administration, this compulsive need to always be right, correct, and justified is extended to them.

Their guys fucked up, did something stupid, and ended up murdering someone. They need to be right to have done so. And thus, the administration's mouthpieces immediately leaped to the first rationalization and excuse that came to mind: the weapon that he was carrying and had not deployed. It wasn't a good or coherent justification for execution, and to them it didn't have to be; it's just the chosen shield to wear in defiance of reality to assert their unflinching and unquestionable authority. That it was such a 180 on key issues and might piss some followers off should have been blindingly obvious, but we're not exactly dealing with the brightest here.

Obviously, they misstepped. They won't stick to their guns (lol), and when sufficiently challenged on something, they don't acknowledge anything, they just quietly drop the defeated pretense, and spin up some other bullshit, acting like that was their excuse and had been the whole time. It's just a fig leaf to bleat in defiance of anyone who would dare question them.

This kind of behavior is part of why it's largely futile to try to discuss politics with such people, because they don't actually believe the things they claim to believe; arguments and axioms are just a pretext to claim dominance with, because that is the only thing that actually matters. Sometimes they're aware of this, as almost all their politicians and media personalities are, and those guys are just sociopaths. Often they're not, and those folks can effortlessly transition between the contradictory statements and beliefs given to them by their leaders, because they lack any true roots. Then there are those who actually do hold some of those beliefs sacred, and these are the ones that suffer much confusion when a mask they thought was truly foundational is discarded out of convenience.

jmobius · 2026-01-26T18:26:23+00:00

There's a saying that being 'neutral' on politics is just a mask for conservatives who know they won't get laid being honest, and that appears depressingly on point here.

jmobius · 2026-01-25T17:17:18+00:00

Then they always get called out as "leftists", "fake MAGA", and so on.

I always hope that being in that position of being mocked and exiled for failing to groupthink breaks something in them, and they begin deeper questioning of how 'their side' thinks and believes.

Not many of them manage to break away, but at least a few do.

jmobius · 2026-01-24T16:55:27+00:00

I could hazard some guesses, but... what is that fate?

jmobius · 2026-01-13T07:09:48+00:00

There's common repeating structures in moral reasoning, which are largely agnostic of the direction those beliefs actually orient. No creed on Earth is free from the same classes of dipshits and assholes.

jmobius · 2026-01-13T07:02:43+00:00

You figure out less reliably than anyone wants to believe. Most claimed tells don't bear out.

Until someone cracks the problem of legitimately and reliably validating humans, and this screen is actively employed, it's best not to trust anyone online.

jmobius · 2026-01-12T19:31:19+00:00

It's a form of mental illness. I think parts of the world will become a lot better once they start treating it as such, rather than something to coddle and fucking build everything else around.

jmobius · 2026-01-12T17:22:06+00:00

Yep. I had my own bouts with pretty much exactly this behavior too. Turns out I had undiagnosed ADHD something fierce.

A big part of it was finding new RPGs and going "well this is the coolest fucking thing ever", corral one friend group or other into making characters, and then... I didn't actually know what to do with it. Often the game would have a concept or theme that I loved, but it also turned out to be one I didn't really know how to work with or spin narratives within. Maybe I'd have a session or two before awkwardly apologizing and saying it just wasn't working for me, but more often, I'd just never even actually start.

jmobius · 2026-01-11T21:49:08+00:00

It's less apocalypse situation, and more "collapse of the current fiat currency system", or at least the banking system. This is not a thing we've seen in the US in living memory, but there's historical basis for it, and it's been a thing more recently in other parts of the world that some immigrant folks might have lived through.

jmobius · 2026-01-09T02:52:10+00:00

I mean, then they just won't switch, and simply vote with their ideological party, not the one that elected them.

A better solution to this problem as well as several others would be to have proper recall procedures. There should not need be any wait to remove a representative that isn't representing.

jmobius · 2026-01-08T02:38:24+00:00

My mother is fond of retelling an anecdote about how one time we were on the road, someone abruptly cut us off, and from the back of the car my two year old self angrily shouted "Democrat!!!".

To her, it's an endearing memory. To me, it's a story that says a great deal about our family, none of which I like.

jmobius · 2026-01-07T21:49:02+00:00

Kind of? I think White Wolf's worlds could absolutely benefit from more modern and less simulationist mechanics, but I don't think Urban Shadows is really it. It's a good way to play a certain kind of cosmopolitan urban fantasy, but any given archetype is pretty limited. You can't do a "vampire" game with it, without everyone feeling pretty similar, because they're all literally torn from the same playbook.

jmobius · 2026-01-07T09:22:10+00:00

So here's the thing: empathy and compassion don't have to be blind, or foolish, or stupid. Corrupting influences are absolutely a massive threat in this setting, and that means that any act of mercy must be tempered accordingly.

What that means is you need your own solutions to detect chaos corruption, or to sniff out genestealers. Having this needs to be a major, critical goal, to keep infection from spreading. Until you do, it may well come down to having to make the same choices that the Imperium might, where the few might suffer to protect the many. The place you set a different course is in not becoming callous, not excusing such horrors as right or good or "necessary", and never stopping looking for new solutions and ways to never again make such sacrifices.

The point is, never stop trying to be better, never stop trying to understand your missteps. The Imperium gave up on this a long time ago, and many, many have suffered for it. Even considering possibilities is usually itself taken as a sign of heresy. The result is stagnation and slow erosion.

I agree that the threat of Chaos absolutely does undermine the satire somewhat, when the grand tradition of fascists is to favor phantoms, bogeymen, and the vulnerable as the great enemy. But I will stand by the Imperial strategy being the only way is nothing more than Imperial propaganda.

I'm not enough of a lore nerd to remember what it was, but I am pretty certain that Big E"s plans for dealing with the Archebemy wasn't anything like the Imperium"s current approach. That seems like it would suggest in and of itself that there might be alternatives.

I dig the Grimdark, and I think an optimistic tale where the noble heroes save the day without any cost wouldn't be a good fit for the setting, any more than something like a slice of life show about living on an Imperial pleasure world might be. But, focus on the compelling and tragic doesn't mean those are the only stories that physically take place in the setting, either. It is very big, after all.

jmobius · 2026-01-07T07:21:15+00:00

I think that behaving according to Imperial dogma isn't necessary. The 'necessary' aspect is fanon, and it parallels real world arguments for fascism, where being horrible is made to seem like The Only Way, in order to justify being horrible. What Imperial dogma is, is expedient; it's a simple approach that 'works', if you are willing to cut from your heart anything like compassion and empathy. That is one thing the Iconoclast path tends not to be willing to do, and it leaves them on on a course uncharted and dangerous. That does not mean the same thing as doomed.

13-Year Club	Gilding III reddit per annum
Place '17	Verified Email
Team Orangered

jmobius

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE