Someone posted an article on a subreddit I frequent. It was an extremely long and rambling hit piece against antifacism, littered with long academic words, written for a completely fake Sociology college in London. While checking the source's reputability, I found out that it's part of what is known as the Neoreactionary movement.

Here's an article about it: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/behind-the-internets-dark-anti-democracy-movement/516243/

Here's a more "fun" write-up from RationalWiki: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Neoreactionary_movement

It's the most bizarre thing. They are basically a pseudointellectual alt-right who quite literally advocate for a monarchy. They are very secretive of their identities and write contrived "theses" under pen names (which, strangely enough, seem to be stolen from actual published academics both living and dead). They think they are a secret society attempting to overthrow existing governments, but in reality they are little more than a collection of fanfic authors.

Has anyone else come into contact with any of them? I am particularly interested if any of our Reddit moderators have anything to say.

I see this a lot on the internet these days. The phrase "just because [some agreed-upon statement], it doesn't mean that [contested statement]."

That's fine when used correctly, but I've seen a lot of cases where it's used in a questionable way and people just jump on board with the phrase anyway.

I saw it again today in a conversation about video games, and one game in particular that everybody loves to hate. Someone said "I enjoy this game though," and someone else said "Just because you enjoy a game doesn't mean it's good."

Now, the impulse is to agree with the second statement because agreeing that there might be hidden subtlety in a matter is almost always safe, and nearly everyone involved in the conversation upvoted/reacted positively to that statement.

But the statement was really used to say "your opinion is wrong because there might be hidden subtleties that make me right," which seems like a fallacious position to me, or at least a pretty meaningless one. And when you stop to think about what was said, you realize that in fact, enjoying a video game might indeed be the most important, if not the only, metric in assessing its quality.

But the inclination to agree with anyone using the "just because, doesn't mean" format is definitely there I think. I'm not sure if that falls under the category of some other identifiable fallacy or not, but I thought I'd see what others thought.

Official trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYvWfDxhm_s

Website: https://www.bloodlines2.com

Up until the announcement an hour ago, Paradox Interactive were doing a fake "Tender" app teaser/promo thing. There was some kind of countdown involved which ended with this announcement, entertaining to watch: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/399100804?t=03h52m54s

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

I've been thinking a lot recently about space exploration and colonization, and the big question that's been running through my head has been this: would I be willing to leave everything on Earth behind and go to Mars, even if there was a strong possibility that I would never return home?

Wondering what everyone here on Tildes thinks about that question.

How do you all feel about making some UI changes to prompt more donations to Tildes?

For newer users' edification, at the very least we need to pay Deimos enough to keep working on this project full time. If I understand the situation correctly, Deimos has put around 2 years into this project and I know that we are really lucky to have someone as skilled as he is, working on a project as noble as Tildes.

I feel that the current UI which prompts users to donate is much too passive as compared to a normal "call to action." All we currently have is:

_{It has no advertising, no investors, and is supported by your donations.}

The subtlety of that donate link is part of the coolness of Tildes, but I have come across users' comments about how they were not aware of the Tildes Patreon.

So how can we do better without being annoying? What design patterns for this do you like on other sites?

_{edit: phrasing}

I have watched the first season, and started the second season. I have been told a few times, it gets better once they get more into the AI aspect behind "the machine". So far the episodes are pretty formulaic, so I am wondering if there is a specific episode or season where these little plot bits about this machine everyone is trying to find come to fruition and the series pivots to more of a sci-fi sub-plot.

Also, how come nobody calls him out for talking to himself all the time?
I do like the dog, good addition to the second season.

EDIT: I am now on season 2 episode 10, and yeah its starting to get a lot better. It seems to be a slow transition but they are getting my attention with all this hacker history talk.

• New Zealand ISPs are blocking sites that do not remove Christchurch shooting video

• New Zealand Mobile Carriers Block 8chan, 4chan, and LiveLeak

• And, in Australia: Telco giants block websites sharing footage of Christchurch attacks

• The block on some sites seems to have been lifted in Australia: Telcos block access to 4chan, other sites

Accelerationism: most of us have heard of it, few of us have read into it, and a fair amount of us have shared memes around it (gotta go fast), but have any of us formed substantial opinions on it yet?

With a variety of authors of various views each weighing in on it, like Mark Fisher and the notorious Nick Land (alongside his genderswapped, trans, slightly less-racist partner-in-crime, Nyx Land); it really does seem to be (slowly but surely) gaining considerable mindspace. Have any of you ever read any works in the genre you adored? If so, feel free to share!

Supernatural is one of those TV shows that had some fantastic early seasons. I really miss them.
As a show I feel it kinda turned way too much into fan service in its later seasons. It stayed decent (good, even), but lost a lot of its quality.
Every season there's a bigger, badder fish and things get more and more absurd. One of the things that kind of annoyed me the most about it is that characters dying has zero impact, as they come back into the show whenever convenient using whatever silly way the writers deem worthy. (That series is the polar opposite of Game of Thrones in that regard…)

Season 5 introduced the Four Horsemen. I remember Death's intro as being possibly the most memorable moment of the entire show. Re-watching them now, the introductions of all four were seriously chilling. Thought I'd share them here.

• War: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I4nFgMuciU
• Famine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQSnVPzV4_k
• Pestilence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E2aQKYEsUw&t=33s
• And best of all, Death: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EcsBgxXDqc

I'll recommend Supernatural if you like a good mix of horror-comedy without too much comedy. You may like it if you liked: Psych, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel.