Aphasialista

Silent but well fed. Formerly connecting brain hemispheres and chronicling Xennialblades. #SanDiegoNative, #SoCalLife.

[BLACKSTAR @Art444Star]

The misuse of the concept of "coding" has destroyed so much discourse and warped so many people's minds

Because most of the time people use it to validate their very subjective interpretation of a piece of art

"I see orcs as black people" = subjective, weak, easy to pick apart

"orcs are black coded" = objective, strong, harder to counter

"I see this character as a child" becomes "this character is child coded"

"I see goblins as Jews" becomes "goblins are Jewish coded" etc.

"I'm touch-starved" becomes "Every single friendship between two characters of the same sex is secretly queer coded"

"I'm a narcissist with validation issues" becomes "Every single gender-non-conforming character is trans coded"

But the fact remains that more often than not, by a massive margin, this is still your subjective interpretation of the art, you've just couched it in stronger terms, for the sake of making it harder to argue against

And, again far more often than not, the reasoning is pure Rorschach test level bullshit, whether you're just primed to get mad over something or just wanting to culturally colonise something, or motivated reasoning to the point of schizophrenia (e.g. It doesn't feel like something exists, but because it doesn't exist, means that it does exist)

The irony being that, if you use this play, you must sacrifice the "all art is subjective" argument, because the two are irreconcilable

You don't get to say that all interpretations of a piece of work are valid and at the same time that your apophenia overrules someone else's meaningful, reasoned analysis of the actual content of the work

Of course when you press them in it they will crumble and admit that it is just interpretation or headcanon

At which point they use "all art is subjective" as a shield, because none of this was never about anything but whatever makes them feel good and forcing you to accept it

[Steve McGuire @sfmcguire79]

Berkeley Professor Mina Aganagic:

“‘I realized that for students to follow me…I had to start reviewing basic algebra stuff, like fractions.’ The lack of mathematical fluency, Aganagic said, extended even to ‘the meaning of equals in an equation.’”

[Jeff Blehar is *BOX OFFICE POISON* @EsotericCD]

I'll be writing about this for NR, but I will lay the Los Angeles situation out here flatly. Pratt didn't lose because of fraud. Pratt lost because, just like Chicago, it's an 80/20 Democratic city. In fact, he seems to have placed exactly where was in the final polls.

The real scandal is what's legal: with a 100% mail-in system, an endless window for ballot counting and legal mechanisms for unions and organizers to harvest (and later "cure") ballots, California's system is a purpose-built black box designed to fuel paranoia. And for no other purpose than that it allows Democratic intra-party battles to become a test of organizing strength for NGOs and unions.

People are right to be angry about the system. But even the way the votes are being counted now makes perfect (albeit disgusting) sense without recourse to claims of "fraud."

[PoIiMath @politicalmath]

I mostly agree with this with the following caveat:

It might not be legal fraud to grab 1,000 ballots, mark your favorite candidate, and have a homeless person sign it with a smiley face

But it is a moral fraud because you've just disenfranchised 1000 voters who actually care about their vote, care about the results, care about their city

If that is what is happening (which seems likely) then it calls into question the very nature of representative democracy. Why do we even have a vote if the vote result isn't determined by individuals but by NGOs who can harvest as many votes as they want using these strategies?

[The Free Press @TheFP]

In a recent essay, Sam Harris explains why engaging with critics who single out Israel as the world’s foremost villain while ignoring the realities of its jihadist enemies is a futile exercise. As Jonathan Swift observed, “You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place.”

[First Squawk @FirstSquawk]

U.S. FAA Issues Ground Stop at San Francisco International Airport

[The Independent @Independent]

Why it’s OK to ditch your friends at the beginning of a new relationship https://t.co/kvVUIsj5Vu

[BORED @BoredElonMusk]

So….the most concentrated batches of mail in votes for @nithyavraman post election came from skid row…

Where tens of thousands of homeless people live. With no address or phone number to verify them. Ok.

[Kassy Akiva @KassyAkiva]

To understand what's happening right now:

Iran threatened to attack Israel if Israel struck Beirut.

Israel warned it would strike Beirut if Hezbollah attacked Israeli cities.

Hezbollah then launched attacks on northern Israel.

Israel responded with strikes in Beirut.

Now, multiple Iranian missile barrages have been launched at Israel over the past 20 minutes.

[TheRoadknight @RoadknightThe]

As a gay man, I say: you did this - you, the far-Left LGBTIAQ+ activists with your grotesque parades, your absurd 'pronouns', your men in women's spaces and your drag queen storytimes.

You did this. You pushed and pushed the boundaries of power to see what you could get away with, using the 'cause' as a testudo: criticise us and you're a 'homophobe', 'transphobe', etc.

You used us, the 'normie' gays as a cause, to radicalise and militarise, whilst weaponising speech, with what others can and cannot say - and now you're surprised that there's kick-back?

Oh, sure, you'll now use that as: "See? See? Look at all the homophobia and transphobia! We told you!" but it was you that caused the homophobia and transphobia with your ridiculous power moves for 5% of the population.

We asked for equality. We got that. We asked for Same-Sex Marriage. We got that. But you wouldn't stop there. Emboldened by the generosity of those who, in many countries, voted for or supported the latter, you wanted to see how much further you could go.

You poked the bear. The bear didn't react. But you kept poking and finally the bear reacted. And now we're in a position where the bear recognises you every time and will swipe back.

You did this.

[Michael McNair @michaeljmcnair]

Machine guns forced armies into trenches. The evolution of warfare in the drone era…tunnels.
The battlefield at the surface has become transparent and vulnerable, as anything that moves in the open can be seen and attacked cheaply.
The contested kill zones in Ukraine now extend as deep as 15 miles on either side of the front. The logical response is to go underground.

This plays out three ways:

Critical infrastructure gets buried bc a desalination plant or substation can’t survive in the open anymore.

Defenders pre-build tunnel networks behind the front, turning a whole region into fortified area that attackers can't easily cross or hold.

While attackers try to dig under the kill zone to turn a long exposed advance into a short protected one.

Traditionally the cost of tunneling has been prohibitive for anything but the most valuable use cases. But drop that cost far enough and you expose enormous latent demand, and the underground becomes routine military infrastructure. In the same way that SpaceX didn’t just make existing use cases cheaper but created entirely new ones that weren’t practical before.

Almost like Elon saw this coming when he founded The Boring Company.

Full thesis to follow if there's interest.

[Not a Good Jewish Girl✡️ @estherzelda0514]

I agree with every word Sam Harris says here about Israel, and I'll go further. The preoccupation with this country is antisemitism. There is no other explanation for how that, of all the world's many brutal dictatorships and ongoing famines, all of Europe and the Middle East is obsessed with this tiny scrap of land and what the people that rule it defensively and democratically, in a sea of aggressive tyrants, are doing. Any country subjected to such unrelenting scrutiny by those already predisposed to be suspicious of it would come out looking evil, and that's before the lying and semantic games.

If you believe that no criticism of Israel can be antisemitic, and that the antisemitic Arab world is not interested in destroying it, with the applause of most of antisemitic Europe, I'm sorry, but you live in an alternate reality and we have nothing to discuss.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

The car that used to be in my garage is currently in an Earth-Mars elliptical orbit and will be there for at least 10 million years

[Mickey Kaus @kausmickey]

NPR being NPR:" A new study suggests that the National Guard's presence has done little to reduce violent crime in Washington, D.C., despite the steep cost.."
Eventually you learn there was a "24% reduction in opportunistic crimes, like theft or vehicle break-ins"--the sort of pervasive crime that destroys a sense of order. If you ran for mayor on that 24% reduction you'd have a solid platform.

[Just Mindy 🐊 @just_mindy]

His grandfather is a famous architect. His dad is an attorney and his mother is a business owner. He went to boarding school. His parents begged him not to go into the military, but he did because he said he had always wanted to kill people. He never had to work a steady job because he always had a family to rely on.

Most working class men do not receive $200,000 from their families for homes. If most of the people that you know do, you are not familiar with working class people. You are familiar with upper middle class and wealthy people.

He gets $60,000 in tax-free income from the military and then his wife gets paid from from the oyster business and the campaign because he can’t be paid or it would mess with his disability.

Most men are not sexting with other women, which is adultery, when they’ve only been married for three years. Particularly Sexting with dozens of women. Most normal couples don’t need three therapists within the first three years of their “happy” marriage.

Also, his oyster business is brand new and his only customer is his mother. This is not the experience of most people. Most men and women who serve in combat come home and go to college and then get jobs.

He’s 41 years old and flailing around and never done anything substantial. That’s not normal.

Also, it would be more honest for you to admit you just want the Democrats to control the Senate so you’re willing to vote for whatever trash they can drag across the line because there’s nothing about this man that makes him a good candidate.

[Mark Hemingway @Heminator]

"E. Jean Carroll and Christine Blasey Ford were credible and upstanding examples of female empowerment, but this perfectly lucid woman who has politics I disagree with is obviously a liar."

[Chris Arnade 🐢🐱🚌 @Chris_arnade]

Built Japan is not pretty, often uniform, and can be downright ugly, but the beauty of Japanese culture transcends buildings — the meticulous care, the genuine craftsmanship at all levels, and a respect for living well which means being a good citizen — that permeates everything, including 7-Elevens, where a simple egg salad sandwich reaches gourmet levels.

If you want to gawk at clip-clopping geishas, and all that other cinematic cosplay stuff, then go to Epcot Center. There you can get your amber-preserved Japanese culture recreated for you.

That doesn't mean they don't care about their history — it's still all over Japan (just go to a Dormy Inn bath) — but they are not going to stop growing and changing to feed the fetish of western tourists.

[Matt Walsh @MattWalshBlog]

You cannot claim that you’re aborting your Down syndrome child because you don’t want him to “suffer.” First of all, killing a child so they don’t suffer is psychopath serial killer logic. You’re on the same moral plane as Andrea Yates. Second, children with Down syndrome are famously some of the happiest people you’ll ever meet in your life. They are not in fact living in a state of perpetual torment. So what’s really happening is that you’re killing your child so that YOU won’t suffer the inconvenience of caring for him. This is about freeing yourself of your own perceived suffering. If you’re going to be a child killing sociopath, at least be honest about it.

[Moebius Stripper @moebius_strip]

"The most obvious way [air conditioning] worsens the problem is by raising energy demand"

No one ever says this about heating, even though 1) heating is more energy-intensive than air conditioning, and 2) it's easier to heat yourself up (put on a coat!) than cool yourself down

[Flopping Aces @FloppingAces]

For years, Washington D.C. felt like a city that had been allowed to slowly rot in plain sight. The reflecting pool sat stagnant. The grass looked tired and dead. Parks had become places regular people avoided. Restaurants closed because nobody wanted to be there after dark. The fountains didn’t run. And the people who live and work in this city every single day noticed all of it.

They noticed because they had to walk through it. They noticed because their kids asked why certain areas felt unsafe or depressing. They noticed because the capital of their country started looking and feeling like a place that had given up on itself.

Now the water is back in the reflecting pool. Real water. Clean water. The kind that actually reflects the monuments instead of hiding them behind algae. The grass has been replaced. The parks are being reclaimed.

Restaurants that had gone dark are reopening because the city no longer feels abandoned. Fountains are running again. The difference isn’t theoretical ... it’s visible the moment you walk outside.

Elites spent years telling everyone that caring about clean public spaces, working fountains, and grass that isn’t dead was shallow or unimportant. That noticing the decay made you superficial. Meanwhile, normal people who actually live here had been watching it happen in real time. They didn’t have the luxury of pretending it didn’t matter.

One side spent over a decade either ignoring the decline or actively excusing it. The other side came in and started fixing the things normal people see every day. And the people who live here can feel the difference without needing anyone to explain it to them.

Normal people always notice. They just finally have something worth noticing again.
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