Pop Culture
I’m enjoying the sight of Elon Musk revealed as a clueless idiot manchild, raging at the real world for contradicting his impulsive, selfish missteps as Twitter degenerates into 4chan.
It is ourselves that are valuable, conferring value onto an app by our presence in numbers. As products, we get to choose if the company selling us deserves us. We are like a product abandoning its connection to a company due to mismanagement rendering it unworthy. This is where the products decide to be customers, too. Twitter is on its way to being a derelict husk drifting toward “MySpace” status. It will end up irrelevant, and owned by the current second-level stakeholders, The Saudi Royal family, once Musk grows sufficiently afraid of the consequences of his own actions and concocts a narrative that allows him to slip away with a shred of dignity.
This is a thrilling moment, getting to watch the unraveling of a social media giant and the fantasy of “too big to fail” for such monstrosities. Facebook, you’re next, buddy! “Meta” my ass. They’ve lost $66 billion in value this year and are whistling in the dark, in denial about their failed dream of owning us all through VR headsets.
I can’t imagine anything healthier for our society right now than watching a few of these fucked up parasites collapsing in flames. Schadenfreude, it’s what’s for dinner. 
What Nuisance?
- Netflix considers an accidental click or a movie you ditched after 5 minutes to be perfectly valid sources for recommendations.
- The Netflix equivalent of bad one night stands you want to forget. You had fun watching Naked Zombie Apocalypse but you’d rather not base future suggestions on it.
Let’s fix this mess.
Log in to your Netflix account, I recommend doing this on your computer or results may vary. As soon as you are logged in, follow the link to “Your Account”. Once there, look near the bottom for “Viewing activity”.
Here is the history, take out anything you don’t want affecting future recommendations.
The bad news is that even with a clean and shiny viewing history Netflix has a bit of “WTF” built right into their algorithm…
This post is about violent video games. Well, one violent video game in particular and why Moms need to stretch their imaginations a bit on the subject.
Like it or not there seems to be a difficulty/danger/fighting itch that (many to most ) guys need to scratch from time to time. Every man I know understands this and knows it comforts and strengthens boys. The mothers I know TO A PERSON, do not. They aren’t being mean, they just really don’t get it. Boys have a natural mission: To protect and defend, To hunt with the hunters, and to stand up to individuals who pose a threat. Mothers who hate this model of masculinity aren’t wrong to want a better world than this for their children, but they should know that they are treating their boys they way we treat neutered pets. As if perfect safety were an option for them, as if we get to choose whether they will ever face danger. We do not. Boys know at a DNA level that they may face danger and hostility and that they will face challenges where their response might determine the success or failure of the most important endeavors of their lives. Depriving a boy of the way he learns to feel strong is not kindness, it is closer to shame projected onto another person.
Why Team Fortress 2 is unusual and good 
My son is 14 and LOVES Team Fortress 2. I play it with him as often as I can.
and complex: Class plus loadout, plus team plus map. There are not very many maps and this is because each one is a chaotic chessboard a mile long and if you do not know the map you WILL lose.
A talented and esteemed lecturer in early childhood education has resigned from teaching at Yale because an email she wrote suggesting a little flexibility about Halloween costumes resulted in an inferno of moral indignation and demands for her (and her husband) to be fired by the college. (Demands by the students of course).
Here is the intolerable message:
“This year, we seem afraid that college students are unable to decide how to dress themselves on Halloween,” she wrote. While noting that she did not wish to “trivialize genuine concerns about cultural and personal representation, and other challenges to our lived experience in a plural community,” Christakis went on to question the imposition of “standards and motives” on others as well as the feasibility of agreeing on how to avoid offense. “Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious… a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?” she asked. “American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition.”
Even -asking- the profoundly politically correct to consider being a little more relaxed results in a take no prisoners purge of the impure. Left wing. Read your history. You do this. Stop.
The Reign of Terror | The Great Purge | The Cultural Revolution | The Killing Fields
CenturyLink (Paul Allen’s company) missed an awesome opportunity. They are going around talking up their high speed internet, etc. But they have created packages and prices EXACTLY like comcast. They could have arrived as a total hero, breezing into Seattle selling affordable internet with no strings attached and people would have LOVED THEM. They gave up a stellar opportunity to go into business and have people breaking down the door to give them money, while joyfully thumbing their nose at comcast. My God, the customer loyalty they would have had and the tidal wave of popular support from new markets. Continue reading
(Disclaimer: This is the opposite of news, most of these songs have been around a long time.) One of my favorite musicians of the last decade or so is Jonathan Coulton. His tunes are clever, infectiously catchy, piercingly beautiful at moments and funny. They are also beautiful snapshots of various pop genres.
For some reason he’s made a slew of songs about monsters, often from the monster’s point of view and these are some of his best work. They also seem to speak of the horror in ordinary life in a way that is chilling and witty.
Chiron Beta Prime – https://youtu.be/B3DyxaCYlfg
The best new Christmas carol in many years.
Skullcrusher Mountain – https://youtu.be/9jn1Gf4AGdY
An evil scientist’s love ballad. “Isn’t it enough to know that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?”
Still Alive – https://youtu.be/Y6ljFaKRTrI
This song accompanies the ending credits to the brilliant video game, Portal. Singing is GlaDOS, a passive/aggressive sociopathic computer who starts by seeming like a helpful guide promising cake as a reward and turns out to have already murdered everyone at this evil research corporation but you. Turns out you didn’t really manage to kill her.
RE: Your Brains – https://youtu.be/v04H7_fFC90
Your office manager and most of the staff have turned into zombies. They want to come in and he won’t stop talking in manager buzzwords.
I crush everything. – https://youtu.be/oJAlFyKHp_M
A sad introspective ballad about change, hope and loss sung by a giant squid.
Blue Sunny Day – https://youtu.be/PNuTEUUUZ4k
A vampire contemplates suicide
