Mulling: “The Media”

My posting has slowed quite a bit. Big changes at work are one reason. The start of a terrifying online game of Diplomacy is another. Also, in my rush to try to find a strategy to save Austria-Hungary from her nearly-historically-correct total destruction, I discovered my unread copy of Kissinger’s Diplomacy and then started reading that. Suddenly my  RSS feeds are more »

An Aside: The Perils of Uncritical Enthusiasm

A short post this morning. — The problem of the “weak man” is pernicious. It’s incredibly frustrating to carefully craft a position and then to see it conflated with a duller one and summarily dismissed. Videogame evangelism often feels that way. While a decade or two ago there were rampant unsubstantiated claims regarding why games of more »

Flavors of Declinism and Exceptionalism

  I. Flavors of Declinism Three speculative flavors of political declinism, in order from most subtle to most immediate. Inspired by an article I can’t find anymore- it was a throwaway line in a conservative magazine (The National Interest?). I ought to find it and credit properly. Falling Short: Dissonance between ideals and action. Common more »

Prowess and Cheapening

I. I had a discussion with some friends in Boston last week that kind of clicked with some ideas that have been in the air around me. I guess I was the least musically-inclined person involved in the discussion. Let me sketch out the situation: One of the songs from Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories starts. One person more »

Interstellar Communication

  I. I’ve said this before: While it’s not the only reason for my interest in “weird politics”, engaging earnestly with more uncommon frames allows for some helpful recalibration on common issues (or, if you’re the trolling type, a new set of arcane rhetorical weapons). I’ve scratched similar itches by reading conspiracy theory sites, reading Weird Fiction, and trying to more »

Apologetic, Association, “Weak Men”, Fnords

I thought that I was going to release some stuff about aliens today, but I didn’t get to write as much as I wanted this week. — These are loose notes relating to an older thread of ideas about apologetic, and our own propensity to use association to empower our own tribe and demonize the other. I was more »

Titling

I. The word “Species” means something. When asked “Does a ‘species’ exist?” you might get tripped up: the taxonomy is itself a human invention, and the traditional definition of a species- a group of creatures bound by their capability to breed- is shakier than one might be comfortable with. But, overall, I think the reasonable answer is more »