Huge Ancient Red Worker

I knew the Sinfest guy went full SWERF & TERF and anti-vax. I didn't know he now also was super anti-Semitic. Christ.

Watching Midsomer Murders while I'm working. Who's the worst DS on the show, and why is it definitely Scott?

Now, it's also filled with problematic bullshit (90s US gang-centric racism), though it feels more like knowing parody in the vein of a Paul Verhoeven film. In fact, yeah: It's a hint that there should have been a generation of Verhoevens taking the piss.

Predator 2 is deliberately set in a very near for the time late 90s future that exaggerates the politics, media, and culture of the time--including movies. Danny Glover gets ripped. Morton Downey Junior plays his tabloid TV self. It's a British-Jamaican director's funhouse mirror of 90s America.

Prey is the least offensive Predator movie, which does count for something (although the OG Predator partly works because of the irony that special forces are getting ganked as if they're victims of the Global South death squads they are and support). But P2 gets that it's all a bit silly.

It's an excellent movie but my hot take will always be that Predator 2 is the best Predator movie because of its satire. In fact, my rankings are:
1) Predator 2
2) Predator/Prey (tie)
3) Predators
4) All other Predator media is undiluted shit.

No, it's to put up the appearance of these things. After My Lai William Calley evaded punishment and Colin Powell, who was involved in the coverup, would eventually rise through the ranks to lie about Iraq to the UN, the results of which I'm pretty sure killed lots of farmers.

One of the most tedious parts of creative work, made worse by the internet, is coming up with names for things that are not owned by someone else and work well for search. Demands unrelated to the quality of the work annoy me.

Speaking of Star Trek IV, I'm listening to this James Doohan narrated audiobook Probe. There are Romulan Whale Probe truthers! Doohan is a fantastic voice actor.

When we consider that Star Trek canon indicates multiple cetacean species survived into the age of the Federation, that probe in Trek VI turns out to just be a weird humpback supremacist from space.

(That's the ep. the Queen Mother tried to ban.)

Watching the most controversial episode, "Death by Moonlight." Canadians were duped into bombing civilian targets by Arthur "Bomber" Harris. Command hid their 1/3 survival rate while attempting to conceal deaths, including the number of corpses that made in back to base. Tail Gunners were worst off.

This was basically the last gasp of what nationally supported media in Canada could accomplish, forging history, journalism, and dramatic tools to tell a challenging story while maintaining independence. We don't have that anymore.

The Valour and the Horror is on Prime Canada (but you can find at least some of it on YouTube). This is a 1992 three part semi-dramatized docuseries about Canada in WW2 that was so controversial it was attacked in Parliament. The Queen Mother attempted to prevent one episode from airing in the UK.

2017 arming sword trainer (top) vs. 2025 trainer. I don't use the old one often because it's a buhurt weapon I only trusted myself to fence with, but it's got some miles on it, from rust to hockey tape.

Six day ban for nonviolent speculation.

My Xitter account was locked less than a second after posting this. I doubt the appeal will succeed.

What is common knowledge in your field, but shocks outsiders?

How little ownership many TTRPG professional have of their work: This has changed some with indie publishing, but chances are most TTRPG work for a publisher is a work-for-hire that sold all rights to that work.

...it could stand more self awareness about that when it's being played around with.

I think finding out what people really mean and how that evolves can tell us more than codifying the thing. History checks the facts and updates itself; a dictionary entry is a best summary, fixed in time or updated with new approximations. And really, theory does cycle through regularly, but...

(rather than any attempt to define it.)

I think there needs to be more of a sense that theory is aware of and responds to broader ideas in the community that we reflexively think of as naive, like "Powergaming." In this case we really want a history of what it means we can draw observations from than any inane attempt to define it.

...the discussion about them should be as deep as about Bleed. And it's specific to the form in that for every MAGAshit there's a friend who under some stimulus, acted like an asshole. Like, we should care about what the fuck is happening there. Just one example.

I think what really happens though is we gloss over a bunch of problem and interesting things to talk about. Like, why doesn't anyone take malicious play seriously? It's an enormous worry to actual roleplayers. It is treated as normal in some communities. I think ruiners suck, but...

There's a kind of horizon where even if you know a bit of theory has limits you still can't operate outside of those, but you can definitely forget what the limits are. And I get it; theory always amps up the powers of the form, and I want people to remake and share themselves too!

Theory likes to build a whole bunch of structures that can't exist coherently, like magic-other-person immersion and shared imagination. It's that I think proponents believe in psychic powers, but given enough hyperbole the operation of even a knowing bit of artifice resembles a kind of faith.

Dabbling back into rpg theory currents and seeing that it's still devoted to avoiding material reality. To diss myself, this isn't how I would have framed it even a decade ago but a personal breakthrough in getting more materialistic has helped me find my position. (Cont.)

Libraries are the best places. I will defend them until my last breath. These free period products are in both restrooms of a nearby library, yet another example of libraries being super rad.

Can't sleep.
I checked out wrestling.
So, WWE is dominatrix fights now?
No complaints at all.
Didn't help me sleep though.

Ever notice that Anglo countries quietly do whatever violent right wing actors want? Don't count the MN killer out, he'll be influencing policy, just like how Keir Starmer governs the UK according to the wishes of Jo Cox's assassin and Mark Carney's okay with Indian fascists murdering Sikhs.