In Twin Peaks episode 17, what was the deal with that semi-transparent image of Cooper’s face that appeared over the whole screen for part of the scene in the station?  I think it appeared in response to something specific, and might have said a few things I couldn’t make out?

What I mean is: was that the kind of weird David Lynch visual that has a relatively obvious meaning (like Bob as a floating orb – even if you aren’t expecting the visual you think “ah, that’s Bob”), or was it the kind that doesn’t?

If there was an obvious (or even “obvious”) meaning I missed it.  My intuitive reaction was that it indicated the onscreen Cooper was no longer the same / “our Cooper” / trustworthy (?) – like there was some new bifurcation in Cooper, and one part of him was trying in vain to communicate with us (as a superimposed image), while the other one remained in the station.  Or something.  And I mentally connected this to disconcerting Cooper stuff in ep. 18 after the “crossing” (his behavior, body language, and cadence in the in Judy’s scene were very Evil Coop-like)

passages i highlighted in “the cleanest race” by b.r. myers

First, here’s my one-line summary of the whole book:

“NK is a non-Confucian, non-Marxist racist ethnostate most closely resembling Hirohito’s Japan, which views its chosen people as inherently virtuous in a ‘pure’ childlike way that makes them unable to fend in the nasty impure world without a strong leader, who is consistently portrayal as maternal, an indulgent protector under whom the chosen people can give free reign to their childlike impulses.”

(The book is mostly a study of NK’s propaganda (specifically the kind made for internal audiences), so most of the following quotes are about propaganda.)

Quotes under the cut

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Referring to Stealing Indians, James continued: “Let’s leave the title for another day. This 2016 book has a blurb from Chinua Achebe. Achebe died in 2013.” Other dead authors who apparently provided Smelcer with blurbs over the years include Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, and J.D. Salinger.

Communication is key, and for this straight couple, the laundry list of “things I’m really into” is longer than usual. But once they get it all out in the open, they’re #1 at doing sex!

(I don’t want to start discourse about this, if you disagree and want to let me know in an ask or something rather than a reblog)

Since I was gushing so hard about that M:TG blogger the other day, and @brazenautomaton has just made me aware that the guy also writes some amazingly terrible posts, I ought to acknowledge that too

Like, what the fuck is this

Of course Wizards circa Kamigawa is to blame for designing this shit in the first place, but post-Kamigawa design is to blame for it not fading into obscurity. Coldsnap’s Counterbalance, a loving callback to the recurring Ice Age theme of “fiddly shit no one could possibly enjoy unless they make statistical arguments defending The Bell Curve for fun,” elevated Top from something that takes forever and does nothing into something that takes forever and does everything. Avacyn Restored’s mechanic of “what if your topdeck automatically won the game” created the monster as it was.

But now it’s dead. Miracles players will have to go back to decks like Lands, or lobbying Wizards to unban Shaharazad, or replying to women on their 13-follower Twitter accounts with something like “[34] …when this is a preposterous rejection of well-established scientific consensus of the biological secondary sex characteristics…”

To anyone who enjoys Top that is offended that I think you’re all MRAs: I’m sorry that you’re an MRA. Fuck Sensei’s Divining Top.

Is this a joke?  It has the “progressively careening into absurdity” structure of a joke, but without, like, humor.  The opinions can’t possibly be sarcastic, so they’re presumably aligned with the author’s actual opinions, if only in exaggerated fashion.  In this context, that line from the Ice Age article seems a lot more sinister:

What sort of designer would think that such fiddly, bean-counting cards would be fun? If you guessed college guys studying math and physics, you’d be right!

I had interpreted that as good-natured ribbing, but no, this guy would probably reflexively hate my guts for the most insultingly dumb possible reason.  Ha ha, look at my caremad response right here, looks like he touched a nerve, huh??  Triggered, perhaps?  How the tables have turned! – for my rationalogical mathbro ways must now admit hurt feelings as a consideration worthy of … jesus, look, I don’t care, I’m offended by how bad the post is, by this idiotic “gotcha” schoolyard bullshit, by how even this guy who writes so well elsewhere falls into this.  The world is disappointing

Plus this is exactly the kind of thing I was praising him for not writing the other day, this boring cultural criticism that everyone in the Serious Games Writing world apparently must do.  Like, I’ve played both with and against Top, because it’s in my friend’s cube.  It is annoying, but at least in cube with friends it’s a source of amusement, “oh now so-and-so’s got the Top, time for their turn playing the obnoxious villain” and it’s all 100% in good fun because we are adult friends who like each other.  It’s a game, man, I thought you knew this

Verbal brain noise: “Cultural criticism is an empty prison.  It should not be attempted, even by me.”

(This wasn’t quite verbal brain noise, really – it was related to some concept I was momentarily thinking about, which I forgot immediately after)

Utopia: A How-To Guide

tanadrin:

So, I picked up “Utopia For Realists” by Rutger Bregman at Dussman yesterday, somewhat intrigued by its title; based on the blurbs inside the cover and the summary on the back, I was expecting something, well, a lot more utopian: a look at crazy pie in the sky ideas which sound terribly interesting but also are ridiculously impractical. In reality, the book is much more modest. It’s basically a 250-page, meticulously footnoted argument for a modest progressive political program, written in an informal and approachable style, which has some (fairly restrained) rebukes in it toward leftism that’s more about shoring up the identities of activists, or aiming at poorly defined abstract goals than actually improving people’s lives. I don’t think many people reading this will substantially disagree with the ideas Bregman presents, but he condenses a lot of persuasive arguments in favor of them into a single place, and in a form which I think is likelier to appeal to the average person interested in politics as opposed to the average rationalist-adjacent Tumblr user.

Notes I made and passages I highlighted:

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