When are they going to learn that it's all about the alien tech med beds that I definitely have in my basement and can sell you 14 seconds on for just $6660?

Looking to exploit citogenesis for political gain.

[...] it actually has surprisingly little to do with any of the intellectual lineages that its proponents claim to subscribe to (Marxism, poststructuralism, feminism, conflict studies, etc.) but is a shockingly pervasive influence across modern culture to a greater degree than even most people who complain about it realize.

I mean, when describing TESCREAL Torres never had to argue that it's adherents were lying or incorrect about their own ideas. It seems like whenever someone tries this kind of backlash they always have to add in a whole mess of additional layers that are somehow tied to what their interlocutors really believe.

I'm reminded, ironically, of Scott's (imo very strong) argument against the NRx category of "demotist" states. It's fundamentally dishonest to create a category that ties together both the innocuous or positive things your opponents actually believe and some obnoxious and terrible stuff, and then claim that the same criticisms apply to all of them.

I'm a little surprised there hasn't been more direct interaction between my "watching the far-right like heavily armed chimpanzees in a zoo" podcast circles and our techtakes sneerspace. Zitron's work on Better Offline is great, obviously, but I've been listening through QAA, for example, and their discussions of AI and its implications could probably benefit from a better technical grounding.

You love to see it, though.

I do really wish someone smart and good at critical thinking would sit down and invest a lot of research into which claims by both sides are accurate and which are propaganda. This would be so good for the world

I feel like the fucking memestock people are actually more honest when they say "I'm just a smoothbrained ape, can someone with a few more wrinkles validate my preexisting beliefs?"

There's some truth to the rejection of NFTs/crypto. I think the current LLM bubble shows tech companies and capital more broadly betting that the economy is functionally post-consumer already. If the people won't accept their designated role I in technocapitalism, then it will simply exclude them. I don't think it can actually work but it's going to be rough seeing how many lives are destroyed in the attempt.

Yeah. I think there's definitely something interesting here, but it's mostly in how badly compromised the final pproduct ends up being in order to support the AI tools.

I'm reminded of the thing that happens to people learning the history of the American Civil War. First, you learn that it was about slavery and emancipation. Then you dig into the reeds and start finding a lot of contemporary evidence that actually there were bigger issues of state's rights or regional versus federal power or whatever at play. And then you keep getting deeper into the reeds and realize that all those other issues and factors were either contributing factors to why slavery was such an important and central issue at the time or were fallout from the decades of fighting about slavery in the legal and legislative systems.

Also you learn about how the existence of stage 2 owes a lot to antebellum revisionism as the men who lost tried to convince themselves and the world that their cause had been for something more than racism and exploitation, even as they supported domestic terror organizations that worked to retrench that same system of racism and exploitation without explicitly being allowed to fucking own human beings.

Like, there's a lot of motivated reasoning required to get to the point of "actually it's all very complicated" and not think past that into "because they're trying to make a smokescreen around a genocide".

That's how I remember it too. Also the context about conserving N95 masks always feels like it gets lost. Like, predictably so and I think there's definitely room to criticize the CDC's messaging and handling there, but the actual facts here aren't as absurd as the current fight would imply. The argument was:

1. With the small droplet size, most basic fabric masks offer very limited protection, if any.
2. The masks that are effective, like N95 masks, are only available in very limited quantities.
3. If everyone panic-buys N95 the way they did toilet paper it will mean that the people who are least able to avoid exposure i.e. doctors and medical frontliners are at best going to wildly overpay and at worst won't be able to keep supplied.
4. Therefore, most people shouldn't worry about masking at this stage, and focus on other measures like social distancing and staying the fuck home.

I think later research cast some doubt on point 1, but 2-4 are still pretty solid given the circumstances that we (collectively) found ourselves in.

The on-camera duo are exempt for obvious reasons, but they've definitely hit at least one of their mods. Before The Wheel was implemented I seem to remember they even specifically targeted them sometimes for the joke.

I'm reminded of the comedy/gaming stream that I watch that opens every episode with banning a random member of chat based on a spin of the wheel. It certainly lends the community a certain flavor, even if it is more "jingly keys" rather than "strong community."

It's kind of a missed opportunity too, what with how heavily the OG Persians feature in the early chapters of the racist "clash of civilizations" narrative.