Imagine looking at that one dril
tweet and, instead of just saying, “This, but unironically,”
dragging it out to the length of War and Peace. Truly inspiring
stuff.
I think you're missing the point. If we all fellate those boots together and can all manage to agree, at least nominally, on the value of boot fellation, then I won't have such an icky feeling in my tummy.
E: And I still can’t get over this site having 200k followers on
twitter. Esp as this is all just a self referentaial mess:
Part of what I’ve spent three years working on is a new language we
can use to think and talk about our societies and the people inside of
them
Seeing in 3D. Remembering to remember not only the Psych Spectrum
tug-of-war but also Emergence Tower. Ants are cells in a giant colony
“organism.” Polar bears are individual organisms in themselves. Humans
are weird because we can be like ants sometimes and polar bears other
times, making the human species kind of like a fractal.
Got the ‘new language’ part down right at least. That is unreadable
for anybody who isn’t already an insider.
(Why are all insight porn sites never self reflecting about writing
styles, esp the good advice about writing: “less, is more” Or as there
is a Flemish saying ’Schrijven is schrappen” (Writing is cutting)).
E2:
AARRGGHGH
The While We’re Here, My Recent Airplane Story Blue Box
I came into it crystal clear on what people on the Left generally
think, how they think, and why.
later:
And if we knew more about the thousands of genuinely heartwarming
GoFundMe stories that happen every year, it would strengthen our trust
and love networks and boost kind-heartedness and generosity.
ARRGGHHHH, the genuinely heartwarming GoFundMe stories that happen
every year are a sign of absolute failure of the social safety net. That
Hillary Clinton signal boosted a GoFundMe of one of her employees,
instead of just paying her medical bills should fill you with disgust.
What kind of horrible person looks at a succesfull ‘Help me pay for
insulin this month, I’m dying’ and goes, well that is a nice feel good
story, we all did well there. Good job us.
The leftwing stance is ‘we shouldn’t need gofundmes to feed the
homeless’, not ‘look at all these people we save just from the edge of
devastation each month’.
Damn US centrists thinking they are, and understand the left.
E?: wait they have a monthly patreon? With 4k members? And only
posted 1 article in 2017? Is this just a grift?
> I still can't get over this site having 200k followers on twitter
I was going to make a crack about how getting people to believe in the wisdom and profundity of a dense, witheringly long screed written in language they can't actually understand is the oldest trick in…well, the Book.
But the Bible actually *is* profound and beautiful literature, at least in parts, and this is like reading a fax machine user's manual badly translated from Romanian. Except that it's not funny.
The site is superweird, so many ... weird articles, and it so popular.
But I like the most that on my browser the frontpage is messed up, it smashes the names of articles together. 'Neuralink and the brains magical future' and '100 blocks a day', become "neuralink and the brain's 100 blocks a day magical future'. (some adblock fuckup I guess).
'The Stories of US: full series How to Pick a Career (That Actually Fits You)'
'Clueyness: A Weird Kind of Sad'
(I lied, the last one is an actual article)
Urban acknowledges some of his criticism later in the post:
After the last chapter, I was accused by some readers of practicing
“bothsidesism,” a suggestion that I was depicting both U.S. parties as
equal and equally at fault for the state of the nation, as a kind of
cop-out.
I get it. False equivalencies are infuriating. Imagine you’re eight
and you’re in an argument with your sibling. It escalates and he shoves
you. You shove him back. Then he slaps you incredibly hard across the
face. Then your parent says, “Both of you, stop it!” You protest that
what he just did was much worse than anything you did, to which your
parent says, “I don’t care about the details—you’re both grounded.” It
would be maddeningly unfair.
People do this kind of thing all the time with societal conflicts,
whether between political parties or racial groups or any other kind of
faction. The people who do it often have good intentions—they want to
seem fair and they think spreading out the blame equally is the best way
to diffuse things. Other times, it happens when defenders of the group
who did the “face slap” want to brush over the real story. Whatever the
reason, drawing a false equivalency about unequal wrongdoing is as
unfair as blaming only one side when there’s equal wrongdoing.
…And promptly tries to defend himself with more enlightened centrism,
missing the point by a mile.
The problem with posting what’s clearly a book one chapter at a time
is that you can’t get the entirety of your point across until the last
chapter is posted. Now that another chapter has come out, I hope it’s a
little clearer that “I don’t care about the details—you’re both
grounded” isn’t quite my angle here. I see it more like two siblings who
have caught rabies. In this particular household, the siblings always
have rabies to some extent (the low-rung element of both parties), but
recently, their rabies have been flaring up. More rabies makes them want
to bite each other more, and the way this strain of rabies works, every
time a sibling gets bitten, it causes their own rabies to ramp up a bit,
making them more likely to bite the other—and it becomes a vicious
cycle. Diagnosing which sibling has rabies worse right now or whose
rabies flared up first, while also a worthwhile endeavor, isn’t the
right focus of this series. Writing a series focused on scolding a
single faction of society and riling up anger toward that side is not
only unlikely to help the U.S. giant get better, it’s the exact type of
thing that exacerbates the illness—it would just be adding another bite
to the rabies war.
Criticism of mainstream media is good, but Urban literally puts
objectivity at the center of the left-right media spectrum in the US
(which is in fact conservative, since the US is a conservative
country that has successfully defined bland neoliberalism as “far
left”). He hears criticism of these habits as “both-sidesing” and
defends himself by saying, “I know it looks like that, but I’m not, I
don’t care who started it, I’m just trying to point out that both
sides are at fault here.” Just tragically dense.
>I know it looks like that, but I'm not, I don't care who started it, I'm just trying to point out that both sides are at fault here.
I think he's right that partisan media, regardless of its stripe, has a tendency to cherry-pick facts that support its position (as opposed to starting with facts and trying to form a position based on them). What he's trying to clarify here is that he's not trying to make any judgement about who does it more, just that it's a bad thing people should stop doing. I feel like the paragraphs you quoted make that fairly clear?
If people were to stop cherry-picking facts then they would all become Marxists. There's no reason for Western media to do that, because that goes against their material interests.
Surely there must be a term to describe the spamming of data
visualization charts, tables and MS Paint-drawn graphics to give oneself
a false aura of expertise. And if there’s not already, this blog is
creating a pressing need for it.
Lol, you can’t make me read this.
Imagine looking at that one dril tweet and, instead of just saying, “This, but unironically,” dragging it out to the length of War and Peace. Truly inspiring stuff.
[deleted]
Even the footnotes have footnotes!
E: And I still can’t get over this site having 200k followers on twitter. Esp as this is all just a self referentaial mess:
Got the ‘new language’ part down right at least. That is unreadable for anybody who isn’t already an insider.
(Why are all insight porn sites never self reflecting about writing styles, esp the good advice about writing: “less, is more” Or as there is a Flemish saying ’Schrijven is schrappen” (Writing is cutting)).
E2:
AARRGGHGH
E3:
So much words wasted on saying nothing.
E4:
later:
ARRGGHHHH, the genuinely heartwarming GoFundMe stories that happen every year are a sign of absolute failure of the social safety net. That Hillary Clinton signal boosted a GoFundMe of one of her employees, instead of just paying her medical bills should fill you with disgust. What kind of horrible person looks at a succesfull ‘Help me pay for insulin this month, I’m dying’ and goes, well that is a nice feel good story, we all did well there. Good job us.
The leftwing stance is ‘we shouldn’t need gofundmes to feed the homeless’, not ‘look at all these people we save just from the edge of devastation each month’.
Damn US centrists thinking they are, and understand the left.
E?: wait they have a monthly patreon? With 4k members? And only posted 1 article in 2017? Is this just a grift?
waitbutwhy is like Slate Star Codex but worse
I mean the site also features an article titled “Elon Musk: The World’s Raddest Man”
Urban acknowledges some of his criticism later in the post:
…And promptly tries to defend himself with more enlightened centrism, missing the point by a mile.
Criticism of mainstream media is good, but Urban literally puts objectivity at the center of the left-right media spectrum in the US (which is in fact conservative, since the US is a conservative country that has successfully defined bland neoliberalism as “far left”). He hears criticism of these habits as “both-sidesing” and defends himself by saying, “I know it looks like that, but I’m not, I don’t care who started it, I’m just trying to point out that both sides are at fault here.” Just tragically dense.
Also, scope the bit about “political bigotry.” Sounds kinda familiar, can’t place it.
Media “centrism” is a lot like media “truth” – everyone thinks they want it until they actually get it. Then they hate it.
To quote from Blackadder, “I like not this news! Bring me some other news!”
Current state: despair. But also, despair.
Surely there must be a term to describe the spamming of data visualization charts, tables and MS Paint-drawn graphics to give oneself a false aura of expertise. And if there’s not already, this blog is creating a pressing need for it.
Is this another 10,000 word disquisition on reals > feels?