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Merdifex posted:I really love that one; some heredist, scientific racist, and general right-wing person got worked up about a far-right cause célèbre, and thats the only point where she was political, because scientific racism isn't political, just like, you know, Arthur Jensen never intended to be political when he suggested policies which nixed educational interventions, because black kids were too dumb to be helped. And yes, Rushton was also apolitical in he received funding from the Pioneer Fund, all in order to pursue scientific racist research. Only the feelthy progs can be motivated by politics ever.
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Sep 10, 2015 00:39
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What I don't get is the investment. Take steampunk for example. I remember when it was first coming into vogue and thinking "oh, like Jules Verne, I can see why you might want to try that as a visual style in something". But the investment people put into play acting a faux Victorian world that makes no sense and never existed anyway is insane. It goes beyond the saddest bounds of escapism, and it is so devoid of substance or original thought that I can't understand what draws people so much. Like Woolie Wool says, the properties that hold nerds most are those that are old enough and dead enough that any sort of commentary or social/philosophical critique can be easily removed, leaving them only shallow signifiers and mountains of irrelevant facts to learn and obsess over.
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Sep 10, 2015 02:47
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The being old and dead also means the nerd is much less likely to have to have distressing social interactions with non-nerds when talking to other nerds about the product. And I personally never got steampunk. Victorian England was a hellscape of air pollution and abject poverty rotting in disgusting filth and ruled over by imperialist butchers, it's actually in some ways worse than the Middle Ages, to the point where legal trickery and violence had to be used to make the peasantry give up their medieval-style subsistence farming lifestyles and move to the cities. In many ways being a peasant in 1250 was a better deal than being a worker in 1850. The peasant could even boast of owning some of the product of his own labor--the lord took some of the peasant's labor but the rest was for himself and his family. Sewer survey team, 1849 posted:The surveyors…find great difficulty in levelling the sewers of this district; for, in the first place, the deposit is usually about two feet in depth, and in some cases it amounts to nearly five feet of putrid matter. The smell is usually of the most horrible description, the air being so foul that explosion an choke damp are very frequent. On the 12th January we were very nearly losing a whole party by choke damp, the last man being dragged out on his back (through two feet of black foetid deposits) in a state of insensibility…Two men of one party had also a narrow escape from drowning in the Alscot-road sewer, Rotherhithe. "Choke damp" is an old-timey word for asphyxiant gases. These workers almost suffocated on poo poo and rot fumes, multiple times. Woolie Wool has a new favorite as of 03:03 on Sep 10, 2015 |
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Sep 10, 2015 02:53
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divabot posted:Has anyone addressed Jim Goad as yet? A proud shitlord (and Taki's Mag contributor) who can at least actually write, some of the time. Nydwracu is a huge fan, particularly of The Redneck Manifesto. Which I haven't read, but I did read Answer Me! back when it first came out. Enjoyed it in the way I enjoyed edgelordery when that sort of thing was work to get hold of. I'm not sure Nyd has read Answer Me, but he might be less than impressed at Jim's whining about how evil his parents were for not sending him to art school 'cos they couldn't afford to subsidise him even with a partial scholarship. I also recall Goad showing up on alt.tasteless in 1995 and, ah, crashing and burning in front of his fans. How embarrassing. Somewhat related to this, mostly because I like it when this thread talks about the front page of the alt-right instead of Games Workshop crap: Taki's has been publishing columns by Charles C. Johnson recently. If you don't know who that is, you're really missing out.
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Sep 10, 2015 02:56
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Woolie Wool posted:The being old and dead also means the nerd is much less likely to have to have distressing social interactions with non-nerds when talking to other nerds about the product. I also think it's because we actually have large amounts of Victorian-era ephemera that has survived in both reprints and in some cases in the original form - you can actually go SEE books and objects from that era pretty readily, and while people may overlook that they were probably not dirty and faded at the time, it's not remote in the way that the medieval era was. People still read Dracula and Sherlock Holmes after all. Perhaps equally important, the world hegemon at that time, that produced all this ephemera that nerds can scrape over and geek out about is in English. Recognizably modern English too. British-y stuff has also always had a nerd cachet to it, probably for seeming "smarter" than American pop culture and so on. (There's now a WWE wrestler who wears steampunk clothing, though, so this ship may have sailed.) Mix 'em all together and hey presto, being Lord Airship-Gearhatsmythe as a costume identity is a good time! Apparently.
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Sep 10, 2015 03:06
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Taki's Mag: We pay you once you ruin your career by being an idiotic psycho clown.
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Sep 10, 2015 03:07
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Taki's Mag: We pay you once you ruin your career by being an idiotic psycho clown. I just visited Taki's Mag for the second time. I don't remember the first time I was there, but their banner is definitely familiar for some reason. So about those alt-righters. An actually good comment posted:Friends of Abe, the “underground” group of Hollywood Republicans, is honoring author and columnist Mark Steyn at its annual summer bash (with an opening act by 1990s country has-been Deana Carter, because apparently Lee Greenwood has wash to do that night). I will accept any stab against a hack like Lee Greenwood. Sudden holocaust denial wut posted:Friends of Abe is honoring a man whose rhetoric might be too rich for even The Donald. “America has more Mexicans than anybody needs, and then some” is a recent Steyn bon mot. “Why do immigrants rape out of all proportion to their numbers?” is another... 
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Sep 10, 2015 04:02
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Political Whores posted:What I don't get is the investment. Take steampunk for example. I remember when it was first coming into vogue and thinking "oh, like Jules Verne, I can see why you might want to try that as a visual style in something". But the investment people put into play acting a faux Victorian world that makes no sense and never existed anyway is insane. It goes beyond the saddest bounds of escapism, and it is so devoid of substance or original thought that I can't understand what draws people so much. Like Woolie Wool says, the properties that hold nerds most are those that are old enough and dead enough that any sort of commentary or social/philosophical critique can be easily removed, leaving them only shallow signifiers and mountains of irrelevant facts to learn and obsess over. Speaking of play acting as a faux Victorian: http://www.vox.com/2015/9/9/9275611/victorian-era-life I don't think they're doing it because they hate women, but it's certainly mockworthy.
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Sep 10, 2015 05:25
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Spec Ops: The Line is great, but it's a videogame version of a 70s movie and a novel from 1899. I always used to think old stuff was better because you had the filter of time to separate the wheat from the chaff. I was mostly focused on music though. There's a nerdy pride in being uncool - in NOT being a 'hipster' or a 'millennial' or whatever. I used to have a Jim Goad quote on my wall about how you could insult a music fan's mother but not scratch his records. I liked the 'no bullshit' attitude of guys like him and Mark Ames - that Exile crew - and PJ O'Rourke. It felt a bit transgressive since everyone I knew was ultra-progressive. I didn't realize what massive shitlords they were.
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Sep 10, 2015 05:53
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Troy Queef posted:Charles C. Johnson Would he really be alt-right or DE or whatever? He always seemed like a wannabe Breitbart, just the usual Republican dogwhistle stuff but without even the thin veneer. Or am I misunderstanding what "alt-right" is describing?
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Sep 10, 2015 06:25
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Oh man, the mention of Goad reminded me of the 90s, Feral House, and loving Peter Sotos. I ... don't really know how to sum up Peter Sotos, and even googling his name makes me feel like I've been put onto a list somewhere. He has a weird fascination with child porn and bestiality, so any interview with him will feature those words and themes somewhere in the text. I've never read any of his complete works; I mainly recall either excerpts of his writing or short form pieces, as in Apocalypse Culture, or his Afterword/takedown of serial killer Ian Brady in The Gates of Janus. I'm not sure I understand what Sotos' overall point ever is, and I'm not sure I ever want to. He definitely qualifies as one of those cathedral-smasher types who believe they're experiencing a much purer, more honest reality while the rest of us poor benighted fools wander around blinkered by political correctness. He was just a few decades ahead of Mencius Moldbug or Roissy or whoever. And way more extreme. Supposedly he made movies with porn actresses where he, uh, demonstrates his life philosophies. Here's an excerpt from the Apocalypse Culture interview which probably needs a "non-_____-safe" emoticon that SA doesn't have. quote:I do not hate many things--few things annoy me that much. Females are dogs whose only worth is as pawns for my pleasure. Almost exclusively, this involves physical violence. Homos are a bit more attractive than women when they're on top but disgusting when they're on bottom. That sort of submissiveness stinks of femaleness. Also, I dislike phony sadism such as that practiced by leatherboys, but I appreciate their promiscuity. Real power and real violence can only be enjoyed when it is imposed and forced upon people with brutal, unending consequences. Fun stuff. Here's an interview with him: http://thefanzine.com/interview-with-peter-sotos-2/
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Sep 10, 2015 08:10
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Woolie Wool posted:The being old and dead also means the nerd is much less likely to have to have distressing social interactions with non-nerds when talking to other nerds about the product. I like Steampunk, but for that very reason. It's a basis for horrible exploitation, examinations of capitalism and imperialism, the effects of scientific progress and militarism. It's different, yet familiar in all the worst ways. Though if you write steampunk and haven't read London Labour and the London Poor, you're a fuckup.
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Sep 10, 2015 08:29
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Thanks you fucks, I've clicked on a few links in this thread and now Facebook is trying to get me to join a group called Eliezer Yudkowsky's Essays.
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Sep 10, 2015 09:03
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When the FAI reconstructs you from best guesses, posts, and first principles, that'll be the post that saves you from the Basalisk.
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Sep 10, 2015 09:27
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Political Whores posted:What I don't get is the investment. Take steampunk for example. I remember when it was first coming into vogue and thinking "oh, like Jules Verne, I can see why you might want to try that as a visual style in something". But the investment people put into play acting a faux Victorian world that makes no sense and never existed anyway is insane. It goes beyond the saddest bounds of escapism, and it is so devoid of substance or original thought that I can't understand what draws people so much. Like Woolie Wool says, the properties that hold nerds most are those that are old enough and dead enough that any sort of commentary or social/philosophical critique can be easily removed, leaving them only shallow signifiers and mountains of irrelevant facts to learn and obsess over. It's the successor to goth and popular with many of the same people. Whitby Gothic Weekend is full of them. Like all subcultures, its purpose is to be itself, drink with people in similar clothes and get laid. If you look deeper than that you might get good answers, but you are in danger of media studies pareidolia.
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Sep 10, 2015 09:27
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nerds are AWFUL
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Sep 10, 2015 09:30
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Peztopiary posted:When the FAI reconstructs you from best guesses, posts, and first principles, that'll be the post that saves you from the Basalisk. Skellybones posted:nerds are AWFUL
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Sep 10, 2015 09:36
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Von Sloneker posted:Oh man, the mention of Goad reminded me of the 90s, Feral House, and loving Peter Sotos. I ... don't really know how to sum up Peter Sotos, and even googling his name makes me feel like I've been put onto a list somewhere. He has a weird fascination with child porn and bestiality, so any interview with him will feature those words and themes somewhere in the text. I've never read any of his complete works; I mainly recall either excerpts of his writing or short form pieces, as in Apocalypse Culture, or his Afterword/takedown of serial killer Ian Brady in The Gates of Janus. I'm not sure I understand what Sotos' overall point ever is, and I'm not sure I ever want to. He definitely qualifies as one of those cathedral-smasher types who believe they're experiencing a much purer, more honest reality while the rest of us poor benighted fools wander around blinkered by political correctness. He was just a few decades ahead of Mencius Moldbug or Roissy or whoever. And way more extreme. Supposedly he made movies with porn actresses where he, uh, demonstrates his life philosophies. He's a gross piece of poo poo, but I don't know if he's NRx. Then again, he is getting published on Nine Banded Books, so who knows.
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Sep 10, 2015 17:54
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The Vosgian Beast posted:He's a gross piece of poo poo, but I don't know if he's NRx. But NRx does love him. Nydwracu does, "Henry Dampier" does, I think he was even interviewed for that Anita Sarkeesian docu by Baldy McShitlord.
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Sep 10, 2015 18:18
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Merdifex posted:But NRx does love him. Nydwracu does, "Henry Dampier" does, I think he was even interviewed for that Anita Sarkeesian docu by Baldy McShitlord. Goad I think you mean. Not even NRx want to be friends with Sotos any more. I was in the guts of the zine culture of the early '90s. Back when his present day fans might possibly have been conceived yet. I mean, full points to Goad for turning his way with a word into a living, I had to go and get a day job. But I remember Goad as edgelordiest king hipster who had slight but not quite enough self awareness and everything he's done since still fits into that perfectly.
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Sep 10, 2015 18:47
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Heresiarch posted:Would he really be alt-right or DE or whatever? He always seemed like a wannabe Breitbart, just the usual Republican dogwhistle stuff but without even the thin veneer. Chuckles went off the deep-end towards the end of his spell on Twitter, and at least one of his current articles talks about "cuckservatives" which is something that DE/NRx people love to use. (And there's a ton of cross-over between the "alt-right"--which I see as "edgy", Chan-culture influenced young right-wingers online who believe the height of "edginess" to be the use of terms like "dindu nuffins" to refer to black people- and Dark Enlightenment: just look at people that use #NRx on Twitter, who they follow, that sort of thing.
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Sep 10, 2015 18:52
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Tiberius Thyben posted:I like Steampunk, but for that very reason. It's a basis for horrible exploitation, examinations of capitalism and imperialism, the effects of scientific progress and militarism. It's different, yet familiar in all the worst ways. Though if you write steampunk and haven't read London Labour and the London Poor, you're a fuckup. Never heard of that book, added to wish list. I was never a fan of Victorian England, but I am a RPG/fantasy fan, and Exalted's 2nd edition depiction of Nexus (which is an ultra-libertarian hellhole for the not-rich) was great, but only a couple of pages long. I also gotta get me some Imperial Guard fiction too, my friend's a big fan of those guys.
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Sep 10, 2015 19:05
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The Vosgian Beast posted:He's a gross piece of poo poo, but I don't know if he's NRx. At this point 80% of the stuff discussed itt is not NRx.
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Sep 10, 2015 19:05
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TwoQuestions posted:Never heard of that book, added to wish list. I was never a fan of Victorian England, but I am a RPG/fantasy fan, and Exalted's 2nd edition depiction of Nexus (which is an ultra-libertarian hellhole for the not-rich) was great, but only a couple of pages long. I also gotta get me some Imperial Guard fiction too, my friend's a big fan of those guys. London Labour and the London Poor is a historical piece interviewing working class people in the 1840s. If you want to understand that Victorian England was poo poo, it's where you should start.
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Sep 10, 2015 19:09
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DStecks posted:At this point 80% of the stuff discussed itt is not NRx. Fair, fair. Anyway Rachel Haywire, Mike Annisimov's ex GF and Anne Sterzinger, an editor for Taki's Mag tried to create a journal of "Insight Porn" together. http://www.donotlink.com/gerj It did not go well EDIT: Lol, that site kicks you out of DoNotLink. Good ol' Matt is really desperate for those clickbucks
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Sep 10, 2015 19:18
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Fair, fair. I should stop poking around the sites people link in this thread. Matt Forney posted:I’ve established in the past that high self-esteem in a girl is as attractive to men as a hidden penis. All else being equal, any man with a sack will choose an insecure girl who lives to please him over a Strong, Independent Woman™ every time. But because of you-go-grrl propaganda encouraging girls to behave like ersatz men, few if any women can admit their desire to submit to the whims of a man.
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Sep 10, 2015 19:58
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Too bad sociopath lady and mikey broke up, they seem perfect for each other. a match made in grifter heaven.
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Sep 10, 2015 20:27
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Woolie Wool posted:And I personally never got steampunk. Victorian England was a hellscape of air pollution and abject poverty rotting in disgusting filth and ruled over by imperialist butchers, it's actually in some ways worse than the Middle Ages, to the point where legal trickery and violence had to be used to make the peasantry give up their medieval-style subsistence farming lifestyles and move to the cities. In many ways being a peasant in 1250 was a better deal than being a worker in 1850. The peasant could even boast of owning some of the product of his own labor--the lord took some of the peasant's labor but the rest was for himself and his family. Ironically The Difference Engine, pretty much the book that founded steampunk, talks about how lovely Victorian England was and a miasma coming from the Thames due to pollution is a plot point of the book. The book is poo poo though, I don't recommend reading it unless you want to read an entire chapter in which the main character bangs a prostitute and has to think of his sister having sex to orgasm for a third time. Control Volume has a new favorite as of 21:23 on Sep 10, 2015 |
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Sep 10, 2015 21:19
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Curvature of Earth posted:I should stop poking around the sites people link in this thread. Every time you feel like getting angry at him, remember that he's a deformed egg-man wrought by a cruel demiurge, hoping that if he makes enough money through hateclicks, God will make him a real boy. And who wrote a whole book about how to stop masturbating.
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Sep 10, 2015 21:29
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Curvature of Earth posted:I should stop poking around the sites people link in this thread. Last time I heard he hosed off to Manila because he heard that "radical feminism hadn't hit the Philippines" or some poo poo. Yes, folks, he's the worst kind of tourist: the sex-pat.
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Sep 10, 2015 21:34
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Control Volume posted:Ironically The Difference Engine, pretty much the book that founded steampunk, talks about how lovely Victorian England was and a miasma coming from the Thames due to pollution is a plot point of the book. The book is poo poo though, I don't recommend reading it unless you want to read an entire chapter in which the main character bangs a prostitute and has to think of his sister having sex to orgasm for a third time. It's really funny to me how nydwracu hates (I do mean hates) Gibson, because to him Gibson is a Maoist. I think it stemmed from an article where Gibson explicitly called out DE types as being inspiration for a dystopic group or society in one of his latest novels.
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Sep 10, 2015 21:44
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Troy Queef posted:Last time I heard he hosed off to Manila because he heard that "radical feminism hadn't hit the Philippines" or some poo poo. A shiny new dime says he's a pedophile.
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Sep 10, 2015 22:08
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Every time you feel like getting angry at him, remember that he's a deformed egg-man wrought by a cruel demiurge, hoping that if he makes enough money through hateclicks, God will make him a real boy. Goddamn, man. That's perfect.
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Sep 10, 2015 22:27
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Merdifex posted:It's really funny to me how nydwracu hates (I do mean hates) Gibson, because to him Gibson is a Maoist. I think it stemmed from an article where Gibson explicitly called out DE types as being inspiration for a dystopic group or society in one of his latest novels. I mentally separate these guys from steampunk people anyways, steampunk people are just weird nerds who like Victorian aesthetics and GEARS and Charles Babbage's amazing Analytical Engine. The worst I usually see from them is a bad sense of fashion, social awkwardness, and being slightly too into tabletop RPGs, and barring the last one that's over half the US population anyways.
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Sep 10, 2015 22:51
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Merdifex posted:It's really funny to me how nydwracu hates (I do mean hates) Gibson, because to him Gibson is a Maoist. I think it stemmed from an article where Gibson explicitly called out DE types as being inspiration for a dystopic group or society in one of his latest novels. The entire LW crew's reaction to China Mieville is really funny, because they have a lot of trouble conceptualizing how someone can be both an science fiction and fantasy writer, and thus, Good People, and also a Marxist, and thus, Bad People.
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Sep 10, 2015 22:53
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its time for someone to tell the epic saga of the real intellectual battlegrounds of the 21st century, the hugo awards
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Sep 10, 2015 22:56
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Control Volume posted:its time for someone to tell the epic saga of the real intellectual battlegrounds of the 21st century, the hugo awards For anyone who hasn't read it yet, this is a pretty solid summary of the whole sordid affair.
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Sep 10, 2015 23:00
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The Vosgian Beast posted:The entire LW crew's reaction to China Mieville is really funny, because they have a lot of trouble conceptualizing how someone can be both an science fiction and fantasy writer, and thus, Good People, and also a Marxist, and thus, Bad People. Banks must have been incredibly annoying to them because here we had the guy writing some of the best fiction about posthuman intelligences and he's a goddamn socialist. Of course these people would probably read Use of Weapons and think that Zakalwe was a cool dude.
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Sep 10, 2015 23:22
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Notorious MRA Roosh V delivers  about how women accumulate DNA from the semen from all their sexual partners, giving them "slut face" from all the foreign genes and causing earlier suitors to indirectly cuck later ones. I have no words.  Roosh V posted:The second implication stems from the fact that it’s scientifically conclusive that single mothers have DNA of their bastard children residing permanently within their bodies. Any man who reproduces with a single mom will have a child that contains DNA from the bastard spawn, which of course includes DNA from the absentee father. This means that men can be genetically cuckolded without being traditionally cuckolded, and that having a baby with a single mom is essentially giving the father of her first child a bonus prize in the game of evolution.
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Sep 11, 2015 00:36
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Control Volume posted:Ironically The Difference Engine, pretty much the book that founded steampunk, talks about how lovely Victorian England was and a miasma coming from the Thames due to pollution is a plot point of the book. The book is poo poo though, I don't recommend reading it unless you want to read an entire chapter in which the main character bangs a prostitute and has to think of his sister having sex to orgasm for a third time. The only good parts of that book are Gibson's. It's the book that totally turned me off of Bruce Sterling. I only got as far as halfway through the prostitute chapter and tossed it.
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