Merry Christmas, if you’re into that sort of thing!

RE: YouTube Anusface

I saw that dude’s name all over Twitter last night, but had no idea who he was or why people were so pissed at him. Having read the story… yeah, this guy deserves all the condemnations he’s been receiving.

The tension between the money-making d-bags of the world–be they on YouTube, in Hollywood or in government–and common decency of the audience is approaching a breaking point, if this guy is any indication. I think a lot of it stems from Trump fatigue; it’s bad enough that we have to deal with a President that pulls this crap, but seeing two-bit e-celebs playing the reality show villain game for attention isn’t working anymore. I can only hope this trend continues; I’ve had to unsub a lot channels whose content I found genuinely enjoyable until they took a right turn down Edgelord Lane.

The context is bad enough, but it’s the pathetic ass-covering that comes after it that really takes the cake. I remember when JonTron decided to share a live stream with Carl Benjamin (where he hilariously referred to those interested in social justice as “commulists”) and followed that up with a stream with another user named Destiny where he pontificated at length on how Japan is the ideal society because it’s racially homogenous, the blowback was pretty immediate to the point where his next video was saying “yeah, won’t be talking about that stuff anymore”. Dick Coughlin nailed his ass to the wall over that spineless move, noting that clearly JonTron didn’t feel any urgency regarding his political opinions if he’s willing to just jettison them because it might hurt his bottom line. I hope Dick takes a piece out of this Logan guy the same way.

I think a lot of it stems from Trump fatigue; it’s bad enough that we have to deal with a President that pulls this crap, but seeing two-bit e-celebs playing the reality show villain game for attention isn’t working anymore.

That and people on the sidelines can’t dismiss “edgy” bigotry and harassment as just kids joking around, boys being boys when the president is doing the very same thing and destroying our relationships with the rest of the world in the process. You just can’t pretend it’s harmless anymore.

Scildfreja-
Thanks, but I promise you don’t have to worry about me slipping to the dark side that easily.

I hadn’t gotten very deep into the story at the time I posted that, now that I’m farther along I’m not overly impressed with events after the arrival at Hogwarts. Not enough experimenting on magic and too much of Harry being a smarmy little twerp, and Draco barely gets any explanation or background on what science even is. Hermione seems like she could contribute a lot more than she has been so far.

Either it will be mostly fake profiles like Ashley Madison, or it will be mostly men with a small percentage of actual Lauren Southern types who will be inundated with so much sexual harassment from desperate Nazis and MRAs that they’ll burn out and delete their accounts within hours.

Isn’t wearing the flag as a tube top rather disrespectful?

(https://katamount.deviantart.com/ for those interested)

I don’t wanna be that guy, but how many of these are based on traces?

@GenJones, @Scildfreja

I once saw a computer scientist write a 500-word essay that boiled down to “fuck Eliezer Yudkowski.” His complaints included the fact that if you try to do a search on artificial intelligence research papers, even using specialized engines instead of Google, half the results are Yudkowski’s fanfic and blog posts. He didn’t even go into the “average professor” thing or Roko’s Basilisk.

Glad I’m not the only one who finds YouTube celebrity to be a null statement.

I will not stand for youtube celebrity Maru being disrespected in this way!

@Scildfreja:
I don’t know if you’ve looked at Neoreaction: A Basilisk by Philip Sandifer. While that was being written, he also wrote an article in which he specified that while some of Yudkowsky’s rationalism-fetish helped seed parts of the modern alt-right, Yudkowsky himself was rather actively hostile to the group. They might disagree on things, but there were certain brushes he was unwilling to tar Yudkowsky with.

http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/neoreaction-rationalism-and-eliezer-yudkowsky/

I consider Yudkowsky to be a prime example of why we should teach engineering types more philosophy so they stop reinventing it badly. And I say this as an ‘engineering type’.

As a warning, Sandifer is… rather idiosyncratic himself. Interesting, long-winded, with active tendencies towards the mystical. His Guided by the Beauty of their Weapons is probably still one of the best descriptions of the whole Sad/Rabid Puppies mess and one of the more detailed takedowns of Vox Day out there.

But for all that Beale casts himself as the self-appointed end of history and the prophetic voice in the wilderness that will cast out the unbelievers, his holy mission is not about saving civilization from the forces of barbarism. It’s actually about ethics in science fiction awards. This is, to my mind, the amazing thing about Theodore Beale. It is not just that he is a frothing fascist, but that he believes that the best possible thing he can do with his magical genetic access to Divine Truth is to try to disrupt the Hugo Awards.

(And to Alan: Yes, this is the same Philip Sandifer of the Last War in Albion posts about Alan Moore I pointed you to a while back.)

As for me… holidays were mostly fun, aside from getting sick the morning after Christmas dinner with family. Flight back home was a disaster: security decision to hand-search all carry-on pushed me onto a later flight, snowstorm diverted me to a different airport for refueling, and lack of available gates stranded me at the airport. I ended up being actually home some seven hours later than I should have been. Gah.

Banned, why do you think Katamount’s art is traced from someone else’s work?

Or is it just me, not understanding what art terminology is?

@Katamount

Had a poke around your deviantart stuff. Your line work is great, and it’s lovely to see someone who pays attention to anatomy!
Your colour work is nothing to be nervous about either. Picking Bors as an example, you shade nicely in the right places, their face is brilliantly done. The uniform – purely in my opinion only!!! – might benefit from the same level of shading as you applied to the face work, but it works well as more solid colours too. (Disclaimer, I only mess about with watercolours and charcoal, so my definition of shading and colours is biased by my medium of preference 😛 )

I love Maru. He reminds me of my childhood kitty.

@Hambeast:

These dating apps…I’m so happy I dated, and got married, long before they were a thing. Of course, there have been dating services for years, but to me, there’s something so inhuman about Tinder, etc.

The only way I can explain it is, it’s uncomfortably like shopping online for products…you enter your criteria, and a slew of possibilities is called up. Then you scroll down through them, put the stuff you want in your virtual shopping basket…you get the idea.

Of course, singles bars were referred to as “meat markets” back in the day, too.

And, I do realize if I were 20 or 25 years younger than I am, I’d probably be using Tinder, and thinking nothing of it.