purpleyuan's recent activity

  1. Comment on The largest school system in Kentucky temporarily closes after "transportation disaster" that left some children on buses until 10pm on the first day of school in ~transport

    purpleyuan
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    I'm a little confused as to what actually happened. It seems implied that there were major routing mistakes leading to a delay in the children being dropped off. But how much of a routing mistake...

    I'm a little confused as to what actually happened. It seems implied that there were major routing mistakes leading to a delay in the children being dropped off. But how much of a routing mistake can result in children being stuck for 6+ hours? I'm baffled.

    5 votes
  2. Comment on What do you recommend for sunscreen? in ~health

    purpleyuan
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    I use EltaMD for my daily facial sunscreen. My skin has a tendency to get eczema flare-ups, and this plus a really good moisturizer have been amazing. It feels extremely lightweight and not greasy...

    I use EltaMD for my daily facial sunscreen. My skin has a tendency to get eczema flare-ups, and this plus a really good moisturizer have been amazing. It feels extremely lightweight and not greasy at all. I haven't noticed any white cast, but I am also on the lighter side of the skin color spectrum.

    For sports where I'll be outdoors for hours on end, I use a completely different but much much greasier sunscreen called SolRX Sport It is much, much greasier, but I tolerate it because I never have to reapply it when I'm out for 7+ hours in the sun. I hate reapplying sunscreen, lol.

    2 votes
  3. Comment on Has anyone unintentionally handicapped themselves while playing a game and liked a game more for it? in ~games

    purpleyuan
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    A little different from the rest of the examples in here, but I played Assassin's Creed 3 with the entire HUD turned off, including the minimap. The game is not quite designed to be played without...

    A little different from the rest of the examples in here, but I played Assassin's Creed 3 with the entire HUD turned off, including the minimap. The game is not quite designed to be played without a minimap — the streets in the cities are a little too samey — but it's surprisingly doable as I memorized some of the routes and relatively frequent checking of the full map. It was really enjoyable, especially the parts in the wilderness (which were much more easily differentiable) as I had to pay attention to my surroundings at all times.

    I've tried this with some subsequent games and it doesn't work out nearly as well. Spaces that are 100% busy urban without street names make it very difficult to get around.

    5 votes
  4. Comment on US knocked out of Women’s World Cup after penalty shootout loss to Sweden in ~sports.football

    purpleyuan
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    Heartbreaking after a match where the US played splendidly but couldn't get past Musovic. Musovic pretty much singlehandedly won Sweden the game, imo. The US had several good shots that were...

    Heartbreaking after a match where the US played splendidly but couldn't get past Musovic. Musovic pretty much singlehandedly won Sweden the game, imo. The US had several good shots that were skillfully blocked.

    I hope the team isn't too hard on themselves, but I know professional athletes always are.

    7 votes
  5. Comment on Shutting down Feminist Frequency in ~games

    purpleyuan
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    I actually agree with you, but I'm confused about the relevancy to the original topic. I believe that the Feminist Frequency video I linked was specifically advocating against "blank slate"...

    I actually agree with you, but I'm confused about the relevancy to the original topic. I believe that the Feminist Frequency video I linked was specifically advocating against "blank slate" characters. Sure, they're probably going to be inevitable (nor do I think it is impossible to do them well), but I would absolutely prefer a story built around a specific, well-written character.

    But I believe the original comment topic had been around the idea that it's OK for the tropes discussed by Feminist Frequency to exist in "big blockbuster AAA games" because they are targeted towards men. I think there are a number of implicit assumptions here.

    @grumbel writes:

    What she is doing is looking at games targeted at men and complaining that they are target at men, while ignoring all the other stuff out there.

    Implicit is the idea that the tropes discussed by Feminist Frequency are not worthy of criticism because they are games written for and targeted towards men. I've stated above that I think the entire point of the series was to demonstrate that these tropes are inherently harmful.

    There is an assumption made by the industry (and frankly a lot of male gamers) that AAA games are targeted towards men because women aren't interested in AAA games.

    @boxer_dogs_dance then replies that that assumption is false, as she is interested in AAA games.

    The idea is that the assumption that women aren't interested in AAA games, therefore the games should be targeted towards men is backwards. AAA games are first and foremost targeted towards men, therefore women are less interested. The popularity or industry size of mobile/casual games is neither here nor there.

    It could be suggested that the Feminist Frequency videos explore why women aren't interested in AAA games. I actually think her goal is far broader; she is simply making informative videos about harmful tropes in video games. That's it! It's an attempt to educate folks who play video games about what tropes they might be exposed to without their awareness, as well as discuss how and why these tropes contribute to sexism and toxic masculinity. There is of course the hope that these discussions can then change the game industry. I do think the AAA industry actually is becoming slightly more aware of these factors; the number of games with well written female protagonists has certain increased over the years. Progress is slow, as you pointed out.

    To bring it back, you asked:

    Has Bethesada, Bioware, or CDPR not had considerations to your needs/desires?

    The answer is, of course, no. And there are folks in this thread that seem to believe that that is OK because there is a different industry that does target women. That doesn't make much sense to me.

    Let me know if I misinterpreted anyone's comments.

    7 votes
  6. Comment on Shutting down Feminist Frequency in ~games

    purpleyuan
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    It's funny that you state this because Feminist Frequency actually has a whole video where a male character is viewed as the default, or canonical, version, but there is an option to play as a...

    Has Bethesada, Bioware, or CDPR not had considerations to your needs/desires? I get the general point, but you chose games known for their blank slate characterizations with a character who's gender you can switch.

    It's funny that you state this because Feminist Frequency actually has a whole video where a male character is viewed as the default, or canonical, version, but there is an option to play as a female character. I remember noting this when I played KOTOR that although I played as a female character, the "canon" player character is considered male.

    What she is doing is looking at games targeted at men and complaining that they are target at men, while ignoring all the other stuff out there.

    It was my impression that the video series was about how those tropes in video games were harmful, regardless of whether or not the games were targeted towards men.

    4 votes
  7. Comment on Shutting down Feminist Frequency in ~games

    purpleyuan
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    If I may suggest something, I would say that it's important to be aware of the tone of the conversation and whether or not it meets your standards for nuanced and thoughtful discussion. Others in...

    If I may suggest something, I would say that it's important to be aware of the tone of the conversation and whether or not it meets your standards for nuanced and thoughtful discussion. Others in this thread have stated that repeating and rehashing the same points over and over again in a sort of one-sided, reductive manner is a pretense to dismiss Anita Sarkeesian's work wholesale, giving leeway to to attack her personally. Instead of discussing the topic (the tropes of how women are depicted in video games), there becomes a huge focus on how she did her work—to an extent that was far overblown since everything else in these videos becomes completely ignored.

    If we are aware that a discussion has become unproductive and that a participant's intention is to attack a person and not discuss the topic at hand, then I think it becomes important for us to introduce those nuances ourselves. It doesn't mean that we have to take a "side" and ignore the valid criticisms. It simply means directing the conversation to examine the work and topic as a whole.

    For example, based on the repeated talking points around the very short clip of Hitman, I would have assumed that that was the entirety of the video. If we take the pulse of the conversation, we can determine that these talking points neither need to be rehashed again nor contribute to a productive conversation. It's up to us to introduce other aspects and have the discussion we actually want to have.

    but that tends to get lost the instant someone picks through your response to quote the sections they can rebut and ignore the sections they can't. It's maddening.

    Honestly, there are some people that you simply can't have conversations with :\ There's only so much we can do as individuals. But I think @kfwyre's point is rather to point out that it is easy to mindlessly normalize the framing of bad faith actors. We have a responsibility to be constantly aware of the tone and goal of the conversation.

    7 votes
  8. Comment on "Body of Mine" puts users in a virtual body of a different gender in ~lgbt

    purpleyuan
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    I'm not trans, so it definitely isn't something I understand. I imagine trying to describe it is like trying to describe a color I am not physically able to see or pain in a limb I will never...

    "What do you mean, 'feel like a woman?'" "What does gender dysphoria feel like?" Etc, etc, and while I appreciate the attempt to understand, the question is really fucking hard to approach, because I've always felt this incongruity between my body and my gender, as much you never have. I don't know what's it's like to live without dysphoria, don't know how to convey the feeling of fundamental wrongness, to someone who's never felt it.

    I'm not trans, so it definitely isn't something I understand. I imagine trying to describe it is like trying to describe a color I am not physically able to see or pain in a limb I will never have.

    I do wonder and think about how the interplay between gender and sex must be a spectrum. It's not really a dichotomous question of are you cis or are you trans. I feel like the question should instead be how trans are you and how cis are you. Or perhaps it can be better expressed in how much you identify with any gender, with people being able to identify with any gender (and sex) as much or as little as they feel.

    It has surprised me how much people would feel 'wrong' if their body suddenly changed to a differently presenting sex. I suppose that reflects a lot on me and how I feel about myself. I wouldn't be surprised if experiencing this VR simulation can also help a lot of folks think more deeply about how much — or, how little!! — they identify with their body.

    11 votes
  9. Comment on Google Messages signs onto cross-platform encrypted group chat standard in ~tech

    purpleyuan
    Link Parent
    It was sort of my impression that it lacked more modern features in chat. Or maybe at least at the time. It was kinda like comparing IRC to Discord as it is now. But I just did a search and it...

    It was sort of my impression that it lacked more modern features in chat. Or maybe at least at the time. It was kinda like comparing IRC to Discord as it is now. But I just did a search and it seems like it has a lot more extensibility now. At the time it seemed like sending pictures (or gifs?), voice calls, were difficult to implement with XMPP.

    A decade ago I was running pidgin, where XMPP let me connect to AIM, Google Hangouts, and Facebook Messenger... it could also easily connect to IRC, which actually let you connect to Twitch chat. And you could run scripts for anything and everything... ahhhh golden days. lol.

    2 votes
  10. Comment on Former US President Donald Trump has been indicted on four counts on Tuesday, by a grand jury in the District of Columbia, over alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election in ~news

    purpleyuan
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    Haha, I was just reading that from your post! When I read "Sometimes these will be misstatements out of carelessness (I’m occasionally guilty on that) or ignorance" I was sort of wondering if that...

    Haha, I was just reading that from your post! When I read "Sometimes these will be misstatements out of carelessness (I’m occasionally guilty on that) or ignorance" I was sort of wondering if that was what I was doing since I really don't have any background in law!

    Anyway, I found it interesting that the articles I read don't seem to focus too heavily on the lies (as the National Review board op-ed seems to do). The lies are simply used to build context around intent. Instead, there seems to be far more focus on whether or not the speech could be considered to produce imminent harm.

    The National Review board op-ed says:

    In his press conference announcing the charges, Smith — for good reason — did not dwell on his questionable charges. He instead emphasized the Capitol riot. Anyone witnessing his remarks would have believed that Trump had incited a forcible attack on the Capitol. Of course, Smith has not charged him with any such thing because he doesn’t have the evidence to tie him criminally to the riot.

    ...But isn't that exactly what Conspiracy to Obstruct is? The argument specifically is that Trump "did knowingly combine, conspire, confederate, and agree with co-conspirators... to corruptly obstruct and impede an official proceeding, that is, the certification of the electoral vote" (from the official indictment).

    I found it kind of funny that the dissenting National Review op-ed points this out:

    Lastly, our editorial implies that Smith is aware of the flimsiness of the charges he has brought because, in his Tuesday statement, he lingered on the horrible outcomes Trump’s conduct produced rather than the statutes the former president is alleged to have violated. But just as every rational American supposedly should have known Trump’s lies were, in fact, lies, no one should need Jack Smith to take them by the hand and lead them to the conclusion that the riots were a direct consequence of the lies.

    2 votes
  11. Comment on A charge on supermarket single-use plastic bags has led to 98% drop in use in England since 2015 in ~enviro

    purpleyuan
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    Grocery stores where I live have moved over to paper bags (that are still charged a very small fee). I feel like this is a pretty good way to go; I detest that most places have simply replaced the...

    Grocery stores where I live have moved over to paper bags (that are still charged a very small fee). I feel like this is a pretty good way to go; I detest that most places have simply replaced the thin plastic bags with thick "reusable" bags. Who actually reuses those?

    2 votes
  12. Comment on Google Messages signs onto cross-platform encrypted group chat standard in ~tech

    purpleyuan
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    Does anyone know which apps support MLS? I'm cautious about this. Google used to support XMPP before moving away to their proprietary protocol. That's not to say XMPP was a good protocol (far from...

    Want to message a group chat and have it securely and seamlessly appear on other people’s devices in their preferred chat apps?

    Does anyone know which apps support MLS?

    I'm cautious about this. Google used to support XMPP before moving away to their proprietary protocol. That's not to say XMPP was a good protocol (far from it). But it was the start of most companies moving to their own proprietary protocols resulting in the fractured messaging space we have today.

    12 votes
  13. Comment on Former US President Donald Trump has been indicted on four counts on Tuesday, by a grand jury in the District of Columbia, over alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election in ~news

    purpleyuan
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    Gonna be treating this thread as a megathread, hope y'all don't mind. I was interested in the free speech defense, so I did some research on it. I have 0 legal background, so I'm not entirely sure...
    • Exemplary

    Gonna be treating this thread as a megathread, hope y'all don't mind.

    I was interested in the free speech defense, so I did some research on it. I have 0 legal background, so I'm not entirely sure if I've interpreted everything correctly, and am totally open to correction.

    TLDR: It doesn't seem like Trump has anywhere to hide behind the First Amendment.


    The free speech argument is dependent on a case called Brandenburg v. Ohio which asserted that unless the speech was "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action," then the speech is protected. In other words, simply advocating for an illegal or harmful action can still be protected under the First Amendment.

    Jay Sterling Silver indicates a couple ways Trump's language during the Jan 6 insurrection could be considered protected free speech, two of which are somewhat dependent on the politics of the judges themselves.

    Source: Silver, J. S. (2022). Thompson v. Trump: Lost in the Funhouse of Brandenburg. Iowa L. Rev. Online, 107, 151. https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/volume-107-articles-essays/volume-107-articles/2

    First, intent. Trump does make comments asking for peaceful protest.

    These thinly-veiled attempts to avert liability as he incited the crowd may provide our conservative justices with just enough cover to find an absence of intent.

    Second, the fact that Republicans insist to characterize the insurrection as "legitimate political discourse." While this may seem to be a bald-faced lie,

    Justice Clarence Thomas, for example, could be a concern in this respect. His wife, Ginni, is a prominent Make America Great Again (“MAGA”) leader who condemned the House investigation into the events of January 6th as “legal harassment to private citizens who have done nothing wrong.” Her husband, in turn, “speak[s] [generally] of a shared Thomas philosophy,” making one wonder if he would share her view on the storming of the Capitol.

    Third, it may be that Trump's speech did not actually incite the violence if the insurrectionists were already committed to the violence.

    The widespread assumption that Mr. Trump’s announcement to the crowd that “we’re going to the Capitol” and warning that “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore” convinced the demonstrators to descend upon the Capitol may, in an odd way, be problematic. It may represent the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy in which one event is presumed to be the cause of an immediately subsequent event. If, in fact, the demonstrators had gathered, already harboring the intent to invade the Capitol to “stop the steal,” then, as stirring as the ex-President’s speech may have been, it would not have served as the cause of the subsequent violence or influenced their pre-existing intent. Therefore, Mr. Trump’s speech cannot be said to have been likely to produce (or make the protestors more likely to engage in) the carnage that day. One cannot logically be said to have made remarks that are likely to produce or increase the chance of an action that the listener is already committed to performing.

    However, J. S. Silver notes that criminal law does still sanction intention, even if harm was not committed. In addition, there are tweets and other evidence to suggest that certain rioters explicitly were swayed by Trump's speech.

    In determining if Trump's speech can be considered incitement, Joshua Azriel and Jeff DeWitt state:

    According to Professor Rubenfeld, Brandenburg should be best understood as a test to “determine whether an individual intentionally used speech so closely and directly engaged with a particularized course of prohibited conduct that the individual may be treated as having participated in that conduct.” Trump concluded his speech at 1:10 p.m. by telling the crowd: “So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And we’re going to the Capitol…” While he did not accompany the crowd, the President led them to believe that he would and stated that it was time to go. The protesters listened to and acted upon his words.

    Source: Joshua Azriel, Ph. D. & Jeff DeWitt, Ph.D. (2022). “We Fight Like Hell”: Applying Brandenburg to Trump’s Speech Surrounding the U.S. Capitol Siege. The Criminal Law Practitioner. https://www.crimlawpractitioner.org/post/we-fight-like-hell-applying-brandenburg-to-trump-s-speech-surrounding-the-u-s-capitol-siege

    Alan Z. Rozenshtein & Jed Handelsman Shugerman state that political speech should be given more protections, not less. "Inflammatory speech is (regrettably) common across the political spectrum," and should not necessarily be prosecuted. The fact that the electoral count certification is so important means that more extreme speech could be considered expected—"A First Amendment that only protects harmless, fringe movements that have no political influence is hardly worth its reputation as a core safeguard of liberty and democracy."

    However, Rozenshtein and Shugerman still conclude that Trump's overt acts and attempts to join the march to the Capitol could meet the Brandenburg Test "without seakening the First Amendment's protections for inflammatory political speech."

    Trump’s order to remove the magnetometers, while perhaps the most damning, was not the only relevant overt act that he performed. According to Hutchinson, Meadows said when Trump heard that the mob was chanting for the death of Vice President Pence, Trump replied that “Mike deserves it” and that the mob was not “doing anything wrong” And Trump’s tweet, while Pence’s life was actively in danger, that the vice president “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution” is additional evidence of knowledge and intent. But the tweet, like Trump’s speech itself, was both political speech and thus prima facie protected under the First Amendment, and at worst only ambiguously inciting. Thus we do not believe that it satisfies the overt-act requirement.

    By contrast, Trump attempted, on multiple occasions, to personally lead the mob at the Capitol, demanding that the Secret Service drive him from the White House to the Capitol and allegedly fighting with a Secret Service agent who was driving him from the speech back to the White House. These orders and physical actions could, unlike ambiguous public speeches and tweets, count as overt acts. Had Trump personally led the crowd at the Capitol, that might well have inflamed them to even greater acts of violence. These acts went beyond mere speech and represent concrete steps to incite, insurrect, and obstruct; they thus can serve as a basis to establish both Trump’s intent and the likely imminent danger that his words and actions together presented.

    Source: Rozenshtein, Alan Z. and Shugerman, Jed H., January 6, Ambiguously Inciting Speech, and the Overt-Acts Solution (January 10, 2023). 37 Constitutional Commentary (Forthcoming), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4256652


    Am I wrong to feel like, at the very least, Conspiracy to Obstruct is a slam dunk case?

    14 votes
  14. Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of July 31 in ~news

    purpleyuan
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    538: Trump's Rivals Can't Compete With His Version of Masculinity / (archive link) The topic of modern masculinity has really been in the public eye for a while. As far as I know, it started with...

    538: Trump's Rivals Can't Compete With His Version of Masculinity / (archive link)

    The topic of modern masculinity has really been in the public eye for a while. As far as I know, it started with the introduction of the concept of "toxic masculinity"—an idealized form of masculinity that is as harmful to men as it is to women. The discussion in general has been pretty interesting to me; sometimes it is nuanced and often it is not. But of course there's been massive pushback against the idea from certain populations, and it seems like the support for Trump is part of that.

    [Trump's] version of manliness is fueled by other kinds of behavior — including his belittling of other candidates, aggression toward women, “tell it like it is and don’t apologize” affect — that are associated with traditional ideas about how a man should behave. The other GOP candidates largely aren’t trying to imitate those aspects of Trump’s macho identity — but experts told us that without Trump’s signature belligerence, his version of masculinity might not resonate as much. And that means his rivals may have an especially difficult time convincing the GOP primary electorate that they’re as strong a leader as Trump.

    “In this view of masculinity, men are supposed to be dominant, powerful, aggressive,” said Theresa Vescio, a professor of psychology at Penn State University who studies masculinity. “And the more that people — both men and women — think that good men should be high in power, status, dominance and toughness, the more they say that’s what a man is, the more they support Trump.”

    5 votes
  15. Comment on Former US President Donald Trump has been indicted on four counts on Tuesday, by a grand jury in the District of Columbia, over alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election in ~news

    purpleyuan
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    A recent New York Times/Siena College poll shows that 71% of likely Republican voters think that Donald Trump has not committed any serious federal crimes. I can't help but feel that this...

    A recent New York Times/Siena College poll shows that 71% of likely Republican voters think that Donald Trump has not committed any serious federal crimes.

    Zero percent — not a single one of the 319 respondents in this MAGA category — said he had committed serious federal crimes. A mere 2 percent said he “did something wrong” in his handling of classified documents. More than 90 percent said Republicans needed to stand behind him in the face of the investigations.

    I can't help but feel that this indictment will only increase support of Trump [among likely Republican voters], not decrease it.

    Upshot analyzed the crosstabs and separated the likely Republican voters into three groups: a MAGA base (37%), persuadable voters (37%), and those not open to Trump (25%). The group of persuadable voters seem to have views much more similar to the MAGA base than to those not open to Trump; they're more likely to say that "American is in danger of failing", more likely to oppose aid to Ukraine, and more likely to say they support punishing "woke businesses." The likelihood of a Trump nomination seems very high to me.

    10 votes
  16. Comment on Megathread for the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup in ~sports.football

    purpleyuan
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    You would need some sort of subscription with both FOX and FS1 access; then Fox has them on their website.

    You would need some sort of subscription with both FOX and FS1 access; then Fox has them on their website.

  17. Comment on Megathread for the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup in ~sports.football

    purpleyuan
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    Of all the games I've watched so far, this one was the most exciting! It seems like the US creates a lot of opportunities to score, but it doesn't actually convert to goals. Netherlands had...

    Of all the games I've watched so far, this one was the most exciting!

    It seems like the US creates a lot of opportunities to score, but it doesn't actually convert to goals. Netherlands had possession of the ball for longer periods of time, but the stats show that the US had way way more shots at the goal and way more corner kicks as well. I'm not actually sure what it says about either team, but I found it really interesting! In the US v Vietnam game, the US similarly created a lot more shots at the goal but it didn't really convert to many actual goals.

    It also seemed to me like Netherlands was just better at keeping the ball away. Some really nice footwork and passing, it seemed like. Baseball is the main sport I watch so I'm kinda missing all the stats that are usually on hand. I'd love to see completed pass % per team (FOX seemed to provide completed pass % for a player substituting off, so it does seem like they track it).

    1 vote
  18. Comment on Tildes Book Club: Roadside Picnic, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky in ~books

    purpleyuan
    Link Parent
    I would be interested in trying. I think it may be useful to set things up so that you know some books in advance to give people time to obtain them. It might be helpful to also pin some of the...

    I would be interested in trying. I think it may be useful to set things up so that you know some books in advance to give people time to obtain them. It might be helpful to also pin some of the posts to the sidebar so that people can see which books are currently going (and then maybe have a wiki page to contain the really old ones). I hope you don't mind if I go ahead?

    1 vote
  19. Comment on 'Fuck Spez': Reddit users unite to turn r/Place mural into a protest in ~tech

    purpleyuan
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    My first thought was also that this seemed to be a (successful, surely?) attempt from Reddit to demonstrate that there is still massive engagement, and that participating in r/place is simply...

    My first thought was also that this seemed to be a (successful, surely?) attempt from Reddit to demonstrate that there is still massive engagement, and that participating in r/place is simply playing into that. But the discussion here has been interesting.

    I do still use Reddit sometimes. There are just some communities that aren't really replaceable for any number of reasons, and I don't really feel any guilt in going back. I've mostly stopped using Reddit for the original reasons: I don't have a good mobile app to access it. But my overall participation has definitely decreased; it was a good time to re-examine how I was using my time and what the quality of information and discussion I was being exposed to was. I don't necessarily think it's useful to treat individual Reddit participation as a moral question. Everyone just kind of has to decide for themselves whether or not they are OK using a worse app, seeing ads, worse moderation, etc.

    The reason why all this drama around Reddit is so massive is because it's become sort of the sole location for information and discussion. A lot of people still search for things using search engines; they just add "reddit" because reddit is the place where information is. But that doesn't have to be true. I think building and maintaining alternatives for resources with information (that is easily searchable, like Reddit) works to build a much healthier internet. It's the fact that Reddit has become an informal archive that makes it so important.

    I recognize that one of the original impetuses for this whole debacle, scraping via LLMs, isn't addressed. I feel like that kind of thing gets really complicated and I'm not yet equipped to think about it.

    All this to say: I think using r/place as a protest isn't necessarily bad. It reminds the users that there are still people that care about the topic, as the protest site-wide has been well-squashed by the admin and the passage of time in general.

    13 votes
  20. Comment on 'The Three-Body Problem' is... bad in ~books

    purpleyuan
    (edited )
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    Look, I recognize that we're unlikely to change each other's minds, so I debated whether or not to even respond. But I guess I want to clear something up, since I think I see this misunderstanding...

    Look, I recognize that we're unlikely to change each other's minds, so I debated whether or not to even respond. But I guess I want to clear something up, since I think I see this misunderstanding in other comments you've posted.

    Saying that it's "the novelty of breaking new ground" is not substantially different from saying that The Three Body Problem won because the author is Chinese [and wrote the book in Chinese]. In fact, I consider it to be exactly the same issue; so much so that I was really confused with your response, since it seemed to me to be repeating what I said back to me and then saying that it was different and more acceptable. It is still saying that the book won because of the identity of the author, novelty or not. Being Chinese and writing a book in Chinese are not, after all, entirely separate concepts. It seems ridiculous to pretend that judging a book based on its language and judging a book based on the identity of its creator – a writer born and raised and currently living in China – are completely different topics.

    I do not believe all accolades are awarded for novelty of first X, but I am not naive enough to assume they are not sometimes.

    (emphasis mine). I would like to point out that neither did I say that you believe "all" accolades are awarded for the novelty. It stuck out to me because you also started this topic by stating that identity politics could be the "only" reason it won the Hugo. Quite a lot of all-or-nothing statements.

    You disliking the book is not the issue. The issue is that you clearly seem to believe that there is a sort of disingenuousness on other people's parts. Rather than keeping an open mind and understanding that other people may have liked the book that you didn't, you make the assumption that most voters in reality believed the other English-language were better (have you even read them?), yet "only" voted for The Three Body Problem because of the identity of the writer. Do you even understand why this assumption is offensive to so many?

    7 votes