Moonside

Moonside wrote

Reply to 0.5 A presses by emma

I really don't get what the point was, is it the challenge or just that it's kinda stupid?

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Moonside wrote

Offtopic suggestions:

  1. More "podcasts" - turn Youtube videos into mp3s and listen to the files. Lots of talking head content really is that.
  2. Audio books are in practice like tightly edited and narrated multihour single episode podcasts. Many are freely available on Youtube (piracy or not) and libraries have more you can loan (or stream). There's only so much time I want to or get to spend sitting at home which is how I read paper books so I'm glad to steal some commute back to me.
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Moonside wrote

Honorary mentions:

  1. Citations Needed. A leftist debunking show. It's generally good stuff, but the debunking angle is inherently limiting imho.
  2. History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps. The last three words are the central gimmick, really. It's quite common to skip from Aristotle to Descartes in popular treatments of the topic so the treatment here is an ambitious corrective. The reason I hesitate to recommend it so strongly is that listeners who really want to learn should probably spend the time studying a paper history of philosophy instead. But it is still the best educational podcast I've listened to. There are also similar shows on Africana and Indian philosophy, which I can recommend with less hesitations as there is a lack good quality introductory material on those topics.
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Moonside wrote

  1. My favorite podcast at the moment is BBC Radio 4's In Our Time hosted by Melvyn Bragg. It basically makes most infotainment look bad. Its self-described focus is on ideas, which in practice means that the topics include history, arts, science, philosophy and religion and they are discussed by relevant experts as guests in the studio. Melvyn is very no-nonsense type of a host who gently guides the discussion for the benefits of the listeners. I've given a chance to a lots of podcasts and honestly it's professional stuff like this that demonstrates how much dead air they can contain.
  2. Finding Drago - a podcast about discovering the origins of a fan fiction novel about the iconic, though criminally underdeveloped, Soviet boxer character Ivan Drago from Rocky IV.
  3. Kubrick's Universe - The Stanley Kubrick podcast. I've listened to four episodes so far, which have featured really knowledgeable guests, my favorite so far being the one on Kubrick as a New York jewish intellectual. The hosts are not ridiculously enthusiastic, which is good for a fannish podcasting.
  4. Talking Simpsons is the best pop culture podcast I've listened to, though I can understand why someone could have a difficult time listening to a 2 hour episode on a 22 minute cartoon episode. It's frequently hilarious and the hosts actually do their job in contextualizing the episodes. The episode on The Simpsons Spin-off Showcase is a good entry point.
  5. Heidi Matthews on Demand Podcast. She's a law professor who occasionally drops a podcast on whatever she's fancying from a leftist perspective. Leftist online content often has the problem of turning their energies into campaigns, taking potshots at current events or discussing praxis and strategy like the revolution was coming any second now.
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Moonside wrote

Thoughts:

  1. Is there enough representation from hand held gaming? There's some good stuff there too!
  2. 13 games from 2001? Tbh, why? I wonder if it's a combination of recentism in list authored in 2000's and the games aren't old enough to be forgotten in 2010's.
  3. Do modern gamers actually like Myst or is it feature on the lists just because it was such a phenomenon in its own time?
  4. I'm not super into action-role playing and action-adventuring games, which probably explains why I haven't been that big of a gamer with recent titles.
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Moonside OP wrote

I have not seen Adventure Time, so I can't make any comparisons.

I hugely recommend it as it's possibly the best TV cartoon series of all time. (It makes me envious that we adults can't have TV animation that compelling.) I think it scratches a bit of the same itch as Undertale does. They're both deceptively simple as their visual style signals (correctly) that they are often comedic and light-hearted, both examples of that being cute and compelling aren't mutually contradictory. Both of them were game changers in their own mediums in that they make you view their mediums in a new light. They both also have genuine themes, which while perhaps aren't unprecedented, are treated in a novel way, like Undertale does with the theme of preconceived notions. There are characters, much like Alphys, who have way more meat to them than you might think at first. There's a ton of lore and basically any detail might turn out to be significant in the end, yet many things are left unexplained, which I as a habitual overthinker find very satisfying. Both have clear queer themes, as well.

One way to describe Adventure Time on its own terms would be as the growing up story of Finn the Human, the last human to live on Earth after apocalyptic events, living in an odd ball world of monsters and candy people. The show matures with him, starting out being a zany and eccentric spin on fairy tale tropes, yet grows up a ton while developing an unique blend of episodic and serial storytelling over the seasons. It still retains its gentle and sympathetic core onto the end, distinguishing it from most adult fare, but it's a lot more sophisticated than children's stuff usually is.

Hayao Miyazaki's works occupy a similar place in film world. There's plenty of empathy to go around, things are rarely black and white and taken as a whole seem to propose an appealing attitude towards life, warts and all. Continuities between the episodes that reward observant viewers, metaphorical treatment of things such as dementia and memory and gradually deepening characters and their relationships hold up to adult standards (IMO), but children kept tuning in for 11 minute episodes thanks to their plots, voice talent, comedy and clear emotional moments.

That said, Homestuck definitely revolves around certain themes, many of them emotional. I don't want to spoil things too much, but a lot of these things are pretty timeless. I recently re-read Homestuck (i.e. in the past year), and it holds up well.

I'm very OK with spoilers, actually. Give me some of that delicious spoiler juice, if you want to, just don't tell me (much) about the latter half of the plot.

I will admit, there's definitely a value to having had been there to discuss, speculate, and theorize with others. It gives one time to digest and metabolize each update, a forced pacing that one might not get when reading it straight through.

Well, on the other hand I can read through it as fast as I want to, thus catching up is pretty fast.

If you're interested in Homestuck, I wouldn't want "being late to the party" to be the reason you don't read it. I was late to 17776 but it was (and still is) a great read. (BTW, if you like Homestuck, you might like 17776.)

When I put effort into consuming media, I'm often doing so in an attempt to understand other people better. Watching or reading something lets me enter conversations I wouldn't otherwise have had, which is cool and rewarding. Besides, Hussie seems to be pals with people I like from different circles (web comics people, indie game developers, cartoonists etc.). In fact Hussie's pal Ryan North has written Adventure Time comics.

I'm actually a huge fan of Jon Bois, though I have yet to read 17776.

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Moonside OP wrote

Is there some sort of emotional core and/or themes to this? For example (and to sound pretentious), Adventure Time is about best friends living in a post-apocalyptic, post-human world, but it has themes like cyclicality, creativity, the dangers of obsessions and other of stuff that you wouldn't guess from a description (and which basically betray the branding of the show).

If you do get into Homestuck, let me know, I can find you the mirror that hosts the flash animations.

It's gonna take a bit, but I'll write a literal note about this so I don't forget. Honestly it seems like it was a generational experience among the internet creators I follow so I feel like I'm missing a joke or something and it seems like it's cutting a bit deeper than any mainstream pop culture sensation of my teens did among the wider generation. Well, I guess that's the power of fandom, really.

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Moonside wrote

I do have the perception that McEwan was a bit of a Citizen Kane like benevolent narcissist and maybe the article could have gone more into that, but I have only occasionally read Shakesville so what do I know.

Below each post a notice stated that one must read the Commenting Policy and all of a post titled Feminism 101 before commenting. By my count, the Commenting Policy is 15,000 words long, including linked Shakesville posts. Feminism 101 is a roughly 22,000-word annotated bibliography of 182 posts dating from 2006 to 2012. In total, new commenters were asked to read approximately 205,000 words, about the equivalent of Moby-Dick, before typing a single sentence at Shakesville.

TBH this makes me wonder about how much influence Shakesville had on the rest of feminist blogosphere. First, I much prefer this model where no-one pretends to have the authoritative solutions for all issues and outside sources are prodigiously consulted. The model of Shakesville as trying to become a go-to place for an entire political world view and, incidentally, that of Silicon Valley rationalism and LessWrong/SlateStarCodex folks has a terrible track record.

Secondly, I think having too rigid expectations for conduct and prior knowledge set the bar for participation too high. This was an issue in the past in many feminist spaces, though I feel this has actually lessened perhaps because people can just set up a new shop elsewhere or can't be policed on Twitter or whatever. Given how the state of online propaganda and persuasion presently is, making these kind of demands come off as wanting to lose in a noble and enlightened manner and is a projection of weakness rather than strength. Feminism isn't a RPG and you can learn quite a bit from less experienced or educated folks and letting in 10 million somewhat ignorant 16-18 year old girls is probably better for the movement that spending multiple hours of research on problematic things someone said years ago.

This was pretty much a rant, but maybe a few uptakes could justify it. First, do promiscuously keep touch with people from different backgrounds and tendencies and have respect for expertise (when that notion can genuinely apply). Secondly, do have some rules for conduct, but keep them modest and clear. A few bad faith actors will always fly in through the cracks, but basically just banning slurs cleans up online spaces a whole lot.

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