Lately, I’ve been really disappointed in 404 Media. This article by Emanuel Maiberg, “Pro-AI Subreddit Bans ‘Uptick’ of Users Who Suffer from AI Delusions” is just… bad. The upshot is that a group of AI accelerationists have a Reddit forum, and a mod said that they had to ban up to 100 people because they suffered “religious psychosis.” Let’s get into it! Why is the article so rotten?
Tag Archives: criticism
Partial review of Sapiens by Yuval Harari… for a friend!
I’m reading the book Sapiens by Yuval Harari. I’d actually stopped reading it at one point, and he encouraged me to continue because he wanted to hear my criticism. (The reason I stopped previously was his fairly full-throated support for imperialism. Another part that almost broke me is when Harari said, “Can you think of a single piece of great art that isn’t about conflict?” I could, in fact, think of such art. As could, I think, almost anyone who thought more than a moment about it, ranging from the Mona Lisa to heavy metal songs like “Cosmic” by Avenged Sevenfold. It was a comment so ridiculous that I had to take a week off of the book.) I’m doing it here because, hey, why not? How often does a friend say they WANT to hear your criticisms?! While I could write a letter, but a blog post is more fun, right?
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Why I hate Batman… someone on Bluesky asked!
Someone on Bluesky asked me to talk about Batman. So, here I am, talking about Batman!
I’ll start off with a good “fuck Batman.” And let me tell a personal anecdote: I can read, basically, because of Batman. I’ve got a case of dyslexia. But – mostly by coincidence – when I was about five, my mother bought a box of comics at a garage sale. This big ol’ box of comics! Most of them were Batman comics, and I read the hell out of them. The images made it easier to put together the words, and the content motivated me to try. I can say with absolute sincerity if not for Batman comics, I might be semi-literate today. I think comic books are a great introduction to the world of literature. And for many years afterward, Batman was my favorite superhero. But, y’know, fuck Batman. Times change, and so do people.
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Bein’ Critical of Twitch-streamed D&D Games!
OK, then, more talk about tabletop RPGs on Twitch. This is where I get critical.
Most games on Twitch are Dungeons and Dragons. This is expected. I don’t play D&D anymore, and I haven’t for several years – and even when I did play it, well, I have been told I don’t play it in a very D&D way. I now have a much better idea of what that means.
Because, here’s the thing, when you start a game – and many of them do start in this exact way – saying a tiefling, a dragonkin, and a drow walk into a bar… that’s not the lead-in to an adventure. That’s an introduction to a fantasy-themed joke.
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Thoughts on bad writing in video games using Rise of the Tomb Raider as a starting point
I’ve been under the weather, so I played through Rise of the Tomb Raider to pass the time rather than dwelling on how awful I’ve felt. It made me think about why writing for video games is so bad.
Don’t get me wrong: Rise of the Tomb Raider is an excellent game. While I’ll be using it for purposes of illustration, because I’ve just played it, many games commit far worse literary sins than Rise of the Tomb Raider. There will be spoilers under the cut to illustrate my various points about the awful writing in video games.
There is no proof too much exercise will kill you: health news is the worst
There’s been a piece of “reporting” going around saying that it’s possible to exercise oneself to death. The New York Post’s headline is “You can exercise yourself to death, says new study.” A bunch of articles share that title, or slight variations on it. Short form: it’s bullshit. Deep and highly piled bullshit.
The news “stories” is based on a paper that has been electronically distributed by The Mayo Clinic Proceedings titled 25-Year Physical Activity Trajectories and Development of Subclinical Coronary Artery Disease as Measured by Coronary Artery Calcium by Deepika R. Laddu, PhD, Jamal S. Rana, MD, PhD, etc. I’ve provided links so, y’know, you can read it, too, if you’re so inclined. I did.
Continue reading There is no proof too much exercise will kill you: health news is the worst
Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner review – it’s a history of the CIA!
I have finished reading Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner. I found it to be a very odd book.
On the one hand, I have no fault for Weiner’s research. Since I’ve been following the CIA for a while, much of it was known to me, but seeing it collected in one spot was moving – the CIA has done so much evil.
On the other hand, Weiner doesn’t follow his research to the obvious conclusion: that the CIA never worked, and never will, that people operating in secret cannot be trusted, and secret services are a threat to democracy and global stability. Which is to say, the CIA should be shut down for the good of the United States and the world.
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Fare thee well, Cruzbike, adieu, adieu
I. . . got another new bike. Well, a new used bike. A Rans X-Stream.
One might be asking, “Kit, what happened to the Cruzbike Sofrider v3?” Good question! Here is my review of the Cruzbike Sofrider v3.
I rode the Sofrider for almost exactly four weeks. During that time, though, I rode it thirty times for a distance of approximately 650 miles. Without a doubt, it is a faster bike than my Sun Bike EZ-Racer, which I rode before it. I can claim without hesitation or reservation that, indeed, Cruzbikes are climbers. I saw increases uphill in the 30% range, and the Sofrider was just faster everywhere else, too. Like all recumbents, it is a comfortable bike, too, though it wasn’t until the end that I got everything dialed in. Pro tip: if you’re not comfortable on a recumbent from day one, seek advice!
Publishers have always made a killing on the backs of writers
Tara Sparling posted There’s An Indie Publishing Gold Rush, And Guess Who’s Making A Killing?
While the article is, itself, worth reading, I’d like to point out that publishing as we currently know it is the primary form of writer exploitation.
In traditional publication, writers give up much of their rights over their work for a period – often years, sometimes indefinitely. Most writers get damn little support, too. And for giving up the right to price their book, sell it where and how they please, and a bunch of editorial control, the writer gets ten percent of cover price (or about 20% of what the publishing house makes).
Defenders of traditional publication will say that the publisher assumes all the financial risk. Which is untrue. The writer has spent untold hours of their life writing and editing before they get to the point of publication – that’s financial risk, too. But no one talks about the financial risk of a writer because it happens beforehand. But it’s there and its real. The writer has spent their precious hours writing the book with the hopes of financial reward for their labor, after all. That’s the definition of financial risk. Writers are taking a chance writing at all.
Absent an argument of financial risk – which is shared equally by the writer and publisher – the rationale for the publisher getting eighty percent is. . . what, exactly?
Let’s flip the script a bit. You’re an engineer. You’ve spent a lot of time, money, and effort to become an engineer. And you spent another year of your life making a cool invention. So you take it to EngineerCo and pitch your invention. What they say is, “It’s a great invention, we like it, but we’re not going to pay you anything for it – or we’ll pay you a pittance, like, five grand for your years of work – and if we sell any, we’ll take eighty percent, and you won’t get paid anything until we recoup the money we forwarded to you.” If you’re an engineer, you’d be insulted and seek elsewhere – or go into business for yourself. Society would praise you for your entrepreneurial spirit.
But that’s what publishers tell authors. Even when they like their work, they don’t pay a living wage for it (unless you’re one of the lucky few), and they take a shamelessly high percentage of book sales. So if your book sells a few hundred copies, they make their money back, and if it sells a million. . . well, they make about four times as much as the author.
It’s a good scam, really. And the most significant one, too. Traditional publishers are robbers.
Wine tasting as the construction of “quality”
One of the things vexes me as a writer is how quality gets constructed. How do humans decide what they like and dislike? The simple answer is “we like what’s good.” Slightly less simple, but only slightly, is “we like what we like.” But the longer I think about the subject, the more I think that perhaps the most significant factor in determining quality is a person’s internal narrative. I also believe that how we decide what we like and dislike is intensely important because unless we understand the origin of our internal narrative – and how outside forces shape it – we diminish our intellectual freedom and harm our communities.
Which brings us to io9‘s article, pithily entitled, “Wine Tasting is Bullshit. Here’s Why.” It is useful for my purposes because it is a survey of other articles that discuss the problem with wine tasting. In none of the articles does the idea of “narrative” come up, but I firmly believe that’s the underlying issue.
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