Kulturkampf

[Puffy Fucking Baby]

Oh god stillgray, melaniemac, the quartering, carl benjamin all your favs are having a fight over wokeness in Starfield.

MAGA does not think it is woke and is playing it, Team DeSantis considers it woke and pushing the agenda.

How is it as woke? Cuz Barret is gay? Who gives a fuck?

[HaughtyFrank]

[Uncle]

robert schneider is trending on twitter

[Eric Cartman]

[Puffy Fucking Baby]

Dylan Mulvaney is the one where I think the women who think they're being dabbed on with some the trans stuff may have a point.

Having an all-time annoying face doesn't help Dylan's cause either.

[Cauliflower Of Love]

Joel McHael must be furious for not taking on this opportunity.

[jorma]

Dylan Mulvaney is the one where I think the women who think they're being dabbed on with some the trans stuff may have a point.

Having an all-time annoying face doesn't help Dylan's cause either.

i saw that vid where she was letting us all know how her first day as a "woman" went and i'm not gonna lie, if i were a radfem and had spent my entire life hating men and everything men do i would probably be a bit upset about Dylan Mulvaney too  

[benji]

Dylan Mulvaney is all the evidence I need to see that there's an actual massive anti-trans conspiracy. (It just might be coming from inside the right side of history house.)

[benji]

If you’ve been reading any news about wildfires this summer—from Canada to Europe to Maui—you will surely get the impression that they are mostly the result of climate change.

Here’s the AP: Climate change keeps making wildfires and smoke worse. Scientists call it the “new abnormal.”

And PBS NewsHour: Wildfires driven by climate change are on the rise—Spain must do more to prepare, experts say.

And The New York Times: How Climate Change Turned Lush Hawaii Into a Tinderbox.

And Bloomberg: Maui Fires Show Climate Change’s Ugly Reach.

I am a climate scientist. And while climate change is an important factor affecting wildfires over many parts of the world, it isn’t close to the only factor that deserves our sole focus.

So why does the press focus so intently on climate change as the root cause? Perhaps for the same reasons I just did in an academic paper about wildfires in Nature, one of the world’s most prestigious journals: it fits a simple storyline that rewards the person telling it.

The paper I just published—“Climate warming increases extreme daily wildfire growth risk in California”—focuses exclusively on how climate change has affected extreme wildfire behavior. I knew not to try to quantify key aspects other than climate change in my research because it would dilute the story that prestigious journals like Nature and its rival, Science, want to tell.

This matters because it is critically important for scientists to be published in high-profile journals; in many ways, they are the gatekeepers for career success in academia. And the editors of these journals have made it abundantly clear, both by what they publish and what they reject, that they want climate papers that support certain preapproved narratives—even when those narratives come at the expense of broader knowledge for society.

To put it bluntly, climate science has become less about understanding the complexities of the world and more about serving as a kind of Cassandra, urgently warning the public about the dangers of climate change.

The first thing the astute climate researcher knows is that his or her work should support the mainstream narrative—namely, that the effects of climate change are both pervasive and catastrophic and that the primary way to deal with them is not by employing practical adaptation measures like stronger, more resilient infrastructure, better zoning and building codes, more air conditioning—or in the case of wildfires, better forest management or undergrounding power lines—but through policies like the Inflation Reduction Act, aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

So in my recent Nature paper, which I authored with seven others, I focused narrowly on the influence of climate change on extreme wildfire behavior. Make no mistake: that influence is very real. But there are also other factors that can be just as or more important, such as poor forest management and the increasing number of people who start wildfires either accidentally or purposely. (A startling fact: over 80 percent of wildfires in the US are ignited by humans.)

In my paper, we didn’t bother to study the influence of these other obviously relevant factors. Did I know that including them would make for a more realistic and useful analysis? I did. But I also knew that it would detract from the clean narrative centered on the negative impact of climate change and thus decrease the odds that the paper would pass muster with Nature’s editors and reviewers.

This type of framing, with the influence of climate change unrealistically considered in isolation, is the norm for high-profile research papers. For example, in another recent influential Nature paper, scientists calculated that the two largest climate change impacts on society are deaths related to extreme heat and damage to agriculture. However, the authors never mention that climate change is not the dominant driver for either one of these impacts: heat-related deaths have been declining, and crop yields have been increasing for decades despite climate change. To acknowledge this would imply that the world has succeeded in some areas despite climate change—which, the thinking goes, would undermine the motivation for emissions reductions.

This leads to a second unspoken rule in writing a successful climate paper. The authors should ignore—or at least downplay—practical actions that can counter the impact of climate change. If deaths due to extreme heat are decreasing and crop yields are increasing, then it stands to reason that we can overcome some major negative effects of climate change. Shouldn’t we then study how we have been able to achieve success so that we can facilitate more of it? Of course we should. But studying solutions rather than focusing on problems is simply not going to rouse the public—or the press. Besides, many mainstream climate scientists tend to view the whole prospect of, say, using technology to adapt to climate change as wrongheaded; addressing emissions is the right approach. So the savvy researcher knows to stay away from practical solutions.

Here’s a third trick: be sure to focus on metrics that will generate the most eye-popping numbers. Our paper, for instance, could have focused on a simple, intuitive metric like the number of additional acres that burned or the increase in intensity of wildfires because of climate change. Instead, we followed the common practice of looking at the change in risk of an extreme event—in our case, the increased risk of wildfires burning more than 10,000 acres in a single day.

This is a far less intuitive metric that is more difficult to translate into actionable information. So why is this more complicated and less useful kind of metric so common? Because it generally produces larger factors of increase than other calculations. To wit: you get bigger numbers that justify the importance of your work, its rightful place in Nature or Science, and widespread media coverage.

Another way to get the kind of big numbers that will justify the importance of your research—and impress editors, reviewers, and the media—is to always assess the magnitude of climate change over centuries, even if that timescale is irrelevant to the impact you are studying.

For example, it is standard practice to assess impacts on society using the amount of climate change since the industrial revolution, but to ignore technological and societal changes over that time. This makes little sense from a practical standpoint since societal changes in population distribution, infrastructure, behavior, disaster preparedness, etc., have had far more influence on our sensitivity to weather extremes than climate change has since the 1800s. This can be seen, for example, in the precipitous decline in deaths from weather and climate disasters over the last century. Similarly, it is standard practice to calculate impacts for scary hypothetical future warming scenarios that strain credibility while ignoring potential changes in technology and resilience that would lessen the impact. Those scenarios always make for good headlines.

This fascist is fooling around writing articles that downplay the need for mass elimination of the human population while we literally are boiling due to our capitalist, colonialist and white supremacist sins.

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

Chris Paramore
17 hrs ago
I don’t know whether you are a hero or a coward. If I practiced surgery the way you practice science, I doubt my patients would appreciate my self interest... The fact that you are even studying the effects of climate change on wildfires - when there is ample evidence that that is not even a significant factor, speaks volumes. Take your mea culpa somewhere else. Grow a pair...

[PhoenixDark]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/PunishedMinerva/status/1699099240562135463?s=20

[/tweet]
lmao

[Uncle]

[HaughtyFrank]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/PunishedMinerva/status/1699099240562135463?s=20

[/tweet]
lmao

But have you seen how they'll expose false accusations?

Just lean back and wait until the liar tells you they lied. It's a perfect system

[Nintex]

I would prefer it too, because I would be a loyal party member and they'd work the lines

[benji]

But have you seen how they'll expose false accusations?

Just lean back and wait until the liar tells you they lied. It's a perfect system

Look, you're ignoring that when the lynch mobs murder the falsely accused it's completely reversible unlike prison which the person will never be able to get over.

[HaughtyFrank]

How can you believe in gender if you can't even find the god particle? Checkmate

[benji]

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

[benji]

How can you believe in gender if you can't even find the god particle? Checkmate

This is literally the same exact crap that Sokal mocked and criticized 30+ years ago in his hoax. These "critics" skim the first paragraph of the Wiki entries of scientific things, assume they understand it, then use it as a metaphor or analogy for something completely different, usually society or human nature, to make absurd philosophical claims they insist are scientifically backed. Then almost always, from the smarter ones anyway, it's a motte-and-bailey where they attack you for taking them seriously and not understanding that they really meant some unobjectionable irrelevant non-sequitur rather than the extreme radical claim they actually said.

And Sokal was some years late to the trend, this whole "there is no reality, only language, and so anything I say can be real if I can get power" is even older. Voluntarist thinking goes back even before that and into all kinds of religions. There's barely any of this that isn't taking old religious practices and throwing scientific terms over it and claiming science supports and proves their religious beliefs. Entire academic schools of thought are based on this rejection of scientific/empirical principles and the study of history/society/etc. for contemporary political conflicts with religious trappings. There are whole books where these people explain that MovieBob is right, there are no bad tactics only bad tactics, and everything must be subordinate to the political goal until absolute power is achieved. The Kingdom of Heaven is possible if we just will it into being by murdering all the non-believers who won't convert and thus won't clap to keep Tinkerbell alive.

I have not yet identified what it is that makes people believe such clear nonsense and reject the use of their reason but it must be something innate because all of recorded human history records it.

[benji]

This fascist is fooling around writing articles that downplay the need for mass elimination of the human population while we literally are boiling due to our capitalist, colonialist and white supremacist sins.

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

"fraud"

[Besticus Maximus]

How can you believe in gender if you can't even find the god particle? Checkmate

This is literally the same exact crap that Sokal mocked and criticized 30+ years ago in his hoax. These "critics" skim the first paragraph of the Wiki entries of scientific things, assume they understand it, then use it as a metaphor or analogy for something completely different, usually society or human nature, to make absurd philosophical claims they insist are scientifically backed. Then almost always, from the smarter ones anyway, it's a motte-and-bailey where they attack you for taking them seriously and not understanding that they really meant some unobjectionable irrelevant non-sequitur rather than the extreme radical claim they actually said.

And Sokal was some years late to the trend, this whole "there is no reality, only language, and so anything I say can be real if I can get power" is even older. Voluntarist thinking goes back even before that and into all kinds of religions. There's barely any of this that isn't taking old religious practices and throwing scientific terms over it and claiming science supports and proves their religious beliefs. Entire academic schools of thought are based on this rejection of scientific/empirical principles and the study of history/society/etc. for contemporary political conflicts with religious trappings. There are whole books where these people explain that MovieBob is right, there are no bad tactics only bad tactics, and everything must be subordinate to the political goal until absolute power is achieved. The Kingdom of Heaven is possible if we just will it into being by murdering all the non-believers who won't convert and thus won't clap to keep Tinkerbell alive.

I have not yet identified what it is that makes people believe such clear nonsense and reject the use of their reason but it must be something innate because all of recorded human history records it.

I too have been watching this play out over the years. My theory is Wittgenstein, language game and the early internet being something more primordial and ritualistic than any of us realised at the time.

[HaughtyFrank]

Hold on a minute, is now even GLAAD talking about how LGB and T are two different things?

[tweet]https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/1679297115124645889?t=TeY2I2kTW6SR22dySx6J0w&s=19[/tweet]

This is like one degree removed from the "Drop the T" groups but everyone is cheering it on. I'm confused

[Nintex]

We split 1 letter from 4 letters

Shifty Schiff

[Rendle]

Joel McHael must be furious for not taking on this opportunity.

Which opportunity?

[Puffy Fucking Baby]

from what little i know that clymer character is NOT the person you'd want to be repping your cause.

[HaughtyFrank]

A leader in Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party was beaten and carjacked in front of her young children, leading her to call for more action against violent crime — after previously saying she would work “to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department.”

https://themessenger.com/news/minnesota-democrat-vowed-dismantle-police-violently-carjacked

[Potato]

Between that "make the rich pay" guy and this cow, those leopards sure look well fed this week.

[HardcoreRetro]

Hold on a minute, is now even GLAAD talking about how LGB and T are two different things?

[tweet]https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/1679297115124645889?t=TeY2I2kTW6SR22dySx6J0w&s=19[/tweet]

This is like one degree removed from the "Drop the T" groups but everyone is cheering it on. I'm confused

I can't stop looking at the Bruce Campbell in drag in the first picture.



I did enjoy putting his name in google and finding this.

https://www.change.org/p/stein-huffingtonpost-com-remove-charles-clymer-as-a-contributor

[HaughtyFrank]

Hold on a minute, is now even GLAAD talking about how LGB and T are two different things?

[tweet]https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/1679297115124645889?t=TeY2I2kTW6SR22dySx6J0w&s=19[/tweet]

This is like one degree removed from the "Drop the T" groups but everyone is cheering it on. I'm confused

I can't stop looking at the Bruce Campbell in drag in the first picture.



I did enjoy putting his name in google and finding this.

https://www.change.org/p/stein-huffingtonpost-com-remove-charles-clymer-as-a-contributor

So someone who used to be very criticized for being a men who spoke over women on feminism is now a transgender woman.

huh

[D3RANG3D]

[HaughtyFrank]

https://www.themarysue.com/im-not-loving-the-latest-meme-about-starfields-npc-faces/

When I initially saw this, my thoughts were probably similar to those of almost everyone else: Jesus Christ, these look bad. The eyes, the motion rigging—it all feels like something you’d see in a new dev’s first major finished product, and not a AAA game that requires 125 gb to run. But then I just had to pinch my nose and sigh, because of course the first thing gamers would do is take targeted pictures of almost exclusively BIPOC NPCs and make a meme out of it.

I know some people might try to shut this conversation down because it’s “just a funny ha ha Bethesda meme,” and “why do SJWs have to take the fun out of everything?”—whatever. Here’s the thing: These pictures, especially the one of the Asian man on the right (you don’t get more classically orientalist than that), were very deliberate choices on the photographer’s part. Whether or not they had explicitly racist intentions doesn’t really negate the fact that these pictures are contributing to racial biases certain types of gamers already nurse.

For instance, this image is now being used as a dog-whistle for gamers who do explicitly have racial biases. You don’t have to go far on Steam to see examples of this being used, such as comparing these NPCs with the very white-presenting romances in Baldur’s Gate 3. Or better yet, players trying to bring this up, only to have commenters say that it’s tit for tat for “woke game devs intentionally making characters ugly.” You don’t have to think too hard to understand what they’re getting at.

Of course, the onus is also on Bethesda because at this point, you’d think a studio with this much funding behind it wouldn’t be this reckless in designing and rigging its characters. From what I understand, all non-named NPCs—i.e., the ones meant to fill out the game’s massive world—are procedurally generated. This is why we have Black NPCs with hair that simply doesn’t make sense, or Asian characters with skin that looks more jaundiced than actually Asian. Then, of course, there’s the rigging of the eyes and heads, which was so poorly done that it results in the angles seen above. 

This kind of design is just lazy at best, and woefully reckless at worst. I’d say that Bethesda’s devs should have known better, that they should have predicted that the worst of their player base would run wild with these kinds of flaws, but it’s Bethesda—who even knows what their stance is beyond “make big video game.”

Just to be clear, obviously the problem isn’t having a diverse world of characters. The problem is making a diverse world in the laziest way possible, without any thought or care put into creating it. By pulling this kind of shit, all you’re doing is inviting the worst kind of people to spew whatever bullshit they’ve just been waiting for an excuse to spew. I mean, again, that one Asian guy’s face just blew me away the first time I saw it. The teeth in particular are so emblematic of a certain kind of Yellowface portrayal I haven’t seen since games in the early 2000s.

The sad thing is, even if Bethesda did take more care in its procedural generation system, these kinds of gamers would absolutely, 100% still find a way to make fun of the BIPOC NPCs, because they do that with every game. But that’s why I still put some of the blame on Bethesda: In 2023, I’d like to think these major devs know better. “Bigger is better” doesn’t mean much when it gives fuel to bigots.

I love how this article tries to straddle the line between being upset that the NPCs look ugly put also trying to blame it on the evil gamers, also completely contradicting itself by first claiming Bethesda should have predicted this and then saying that the evil gamers would have made fun of POC characters anyway.

Basically they've been clamoring for ugly videogame characters for years and now when they're here and people make fun of them they're upset that it "gives fuel to bigots" 

[Potato]

but it’s Bethesda—who even knows what their stance is beyond “make big video game.”

I mean, why would their "stance" be any more than that?

These people are fucking retarded