What I’m reading vol. ⅩⅣ
Vols.: Ⅰ, Ⅱ, Ⅲ, Ⅳ, Ⅴ, Ⅵ, Ⅶ, Ⅷ, Ⅸ, Ⅹ, Ⅺ, Ⅻ, ⅩⅢ, ⅩⅣ
I keep accumulating links in a drafts for these roundups and forgetting to every post them! Whoops!
I am nearing the end of Furuhata Ninzaburō so in honour of that the musical accompaniment this time will be this remix of the main theme from Dance Dance Revolution
History, Sociology, Psychology
I Might as Well Explain the Joke: Underwater Basket Weaving — Grayson Davis
The first people annoyed by basket weaving were not students or faculty but soldiers returning from World War II. Basket weaving was one of many activities used in the relatively new field of occupational therapy. Weaving, knitting, and other crafts were (and still are) believed to help people with mental disorders, which included traumatized soldiers.
I have seen a few people linking to this blog now but I think I may have first saw it mentioned by Laura Michet. Davis dives into the history of terms and jokes that have become so cliché as to fade into the background of culture, their original origin or point unclear. They’re all worth reading but this one in particular shows a fascinating lens on how industrialisation changes culture and the perceived value of skills and how different assumptions that arise from those changes can clash.
Why the English stopped opening the windows — Luke Jones
The whole design of the traditional English house was based on this peculiar form of life and its associated norms of thermal comfort and management. The English preference for single glazed sash windows and open hearth fireplaces over European-style double casements and stoves was, among foreigners, a baffling but charming eccentricity, generally understood as an adaptation to the wet oceanic climate.
I am a simple girl. Give me an article on how societal conditions shape culture over time and I will probably read it.
There are no psychopaths — Rasmus Rosenberg Larsen
Today, virtually every single claim about psychopathy has been either thoroughly refuted or failed to find empirical support in experimental settings. Psychopathy may not exist at all.
It is very difficult to kill an idea, even if that idea has little foundation.
Media
M’lady Moon — Kevin Houlihan
How would an anarchist society enforce traffic laws?” and “how would an anarchist society deal with rapists and other violent criminals?”, and similar, are perennial questions in “anarchism 101” type spaces online. I read an interesting answer on the former question recently. If the goal is increasing public safety, simply demanding that people obey certain rules is not very effective.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a book I have never really known anything about except its title, but I enjoyed this view into it and comparison of it to The Dispossessed and how they illustrate the difference between left- and right-libertarianism.
IDW Sonic: On Lanolin the Sheep, and the problem with Sonic Twitter — Bobby Schroeder
Another big part of the problem here is the way people engage with stories like this. (Especially young men in their teens or early 20s.) They treat it like it's not a story with ups and downs, but a sport. You root for your favorite characters, and when bad things happen to them that means you're losing.
I am disconnected from fandom spaces in general. Sometimes I catch site of a post, it often involves the phrase “it’s okay to”, that is clearly in response to some utterly baffling piece of internecine drama that reminds me that this is the correct path to follow. Similarly here, but in much greater detail, Bobby Schroeder outlines how angry fans made the character of Lanolin in the
Games
Becoming a Video Game Scientist Part 1: Archipelago — Natalie Weizenbaum
The core problem was this: because it was so difficult to figure out how to do anything at runtime in these games, the only thing the mod was really able to influence was the moment the player received an item. They could see which items the player was getting and replace them with something else. What's more, this didn't work with items purchased from a shop.
Interesting high-level description of making a randomiser mod.
Protagony Three: Gordon — Ian Danskin
Mapping time to space to make a subjective real time that spans a greater period than is temporally possible. Making time hyper-real. That is beyond Oscar bait. That is Golden Lion. It's not quite Palm Door, but it’s definitely Grand Prix. But in video games it’s basic literacy.
I am including a video and you can’t stop me! Danskins puts into coherent words some thoughts that I have had about games, and specifically about Half-Life 2, for years.
The Serious Zone
Our Visibility is Somehow a Threat to Power — Margaret Killjoy
I think this gets at the fundamental threat we pose to fascism, and to authoritarian structures more broadly. Authoritarianism relies on classification and stratification, on strict social order. Yet here I am, not only telling everyone in the world that I’m a girl, but having everyone either believe me or politely accept that I see the world differently than they do.
We are going to keep going.
Britain, the Ungoverned Country — Simon McGarr
Starmer's Government followed a plan by FG transplant Morgan McSweeney, to tack hard to the right to chase Reform on immigration, bigotry towards trans people and, weirdly, flag-shagging.
This so upset its voters that they got up and left, going to the Green party or just staying at home. It won them precisely zero votes from people who wanted Reform-style policies, who just voted for Reform.
An Irish look at British politics.
Kill Chain — Kevin Baker
Compress the time and the friction does not disappear. You just stop noticing it. Clausewitz called what unfolds when you refused to notice friction a “war on paper,” a plan that proceeds without resistance because everything that connected it to the world it was supposed to act on has been taken out.
Really good read on how automation is actually being used, the ends it is being used to justify and the failure to talk about these things correctly.
