2017 was a good year for me in terms of discovering new music. You might have seen this intrude upon my blogging a few times. I even started a separate blog for music–which I won’t link to because I’d prefer to keep my followers in the single digits.
I have a few highlights below the fold. And yes, this stuff is thoroughly inappropriate for Christmas.
Unpacking Some of the Extreme Distress I Experienced Last Week – Some of you may have heard about the murder-suicide of Scott Smith, who was a podcaster for Recovering From Religion. Well, here is an account from the cohost of the podcast. I think this could be helpful if you knew Scott Smith, or if you just want to learn about trauma.
Cuphead: The Fake Outrage (video) – Anti-feminist gamergate-types have recently been outraged over people calling Cuphead (a video game) racist and ableist. Except… nobody is saying that. Amongst game critics, there has been discussion of the racist history behind the animation style used by Cuphead, and there has also been discussion about it’s high difficulty, and what that might mean for accessibility. That really isn’t the same, and Shaun goes into depth about it. I recommend Shaun’s YouTube channel if you need an antidote to anti-feminist and alt-right YouTubers.
Video game difficulty and accessibility is an interesting topic, maybe I will write about it in the future.
The Fine-Tuning Argument and Base Rate Fallacy – The author is not a physicist, but articulates very well some of the reasons why as a physicist I am very skeptical of fine-tuning arguments. Predicting how the universe would look with different fundamental constants sounds like an incredibly difficult question! And the more “fine-tuned” the universe is, the more difficult the question is.
BTW, the author mentions William Lane Craig’s claim that the gravitational constant is sensitive to a change of one part in 10^60. I would not believe Craig’s claims without independent investigation. I cannot stress this enough, William Lane Craig is an extremely unreliable source of information on math and physics, even on matters that are neutral with respect to his apologetic arguments. Seriously, if you’re going to believe in God, you might be better off just believing in God rather than accepting Craig’s arguments, because then at least you will only be wrong about one thing.
It’s my monthly feature where I share links I’ve collected over the past month, and offer brief commentary.
The Trans Reveal – I recently found this blog that reviews queer webcomics and of course I’m all over that. This article discusses various ways that webcomics can reveal that a character is trans, and what the pitfalls of each approach are.
Exodus: Why Americans are Leaving Religion—and Why They’re Unlikely to Come Back – This is an old article summarizing results from a survey of religiously unaffiliated USians. What I found most interesting: 1) the main reason for their growth appears to be increased retention rates, 2) 58% of them say religion is bad for the world, and 18% say religion is personally important to them, 3) The people who say religion is bad for the world are more likely to be white, male, and have more education.
I found this article via Aged Reasoner–although the speculation in that post is mistaken, as I point out in the comments.
Why we really really really like repetition in music (video) – Vox talks about how we seem to find repetition inherently enjoyable in music, but not, say, stage plays. Something that I have great difficulty understanding is how music worked before recordings existed. It seems like music should have been more repetitive in those days, to make up for the fact that you couldn’t just repeat the recording as desired.
Vox incidentally mentions the speech to song illusion, which is the most compelling auditory illusion I have ever heard. Listen to this video, and then listen to it again. What has been heard cannot be unheard.
This week is Asexual Awareness Week. Presently I don’t do any outreach or education work, but I do work on the Asexual Community Census.
The Ace Community Census is an annual survey by the Ace Community Survey Team, which collects valuable information on the demographics and experiences of members in the ace community. It is the largest survey of ace communities and creates a valuable pool of data for future ace community activists and researchers.
The survey is open to anyone: ace, non-ace, or still questioning; as long as you are 13 years of age or older we want to hear from you!
We have also just published a report of the results from our 2015 survey. Take a look!
I may talk about this report more later, but for now I am happy to take any questions, either about the report, or the survey.
Something Something Soup Something – It’s a browser-based game about classifying things as soup or not soup. A fun philosophical exercise for the whole family! It shows that when people are asked to define soup, they use a slightly different definition from the one they use to classify soup. Also, soup is a metaphor for video games.
Everything You Need to Know about Gun Rights (also see part 2 and part 3 tba) – Crip Dyke explains the history of the 2nd amendment, and how it wasn’t intended to guarantee individuals’ rights to guns. This is all news to me, I don’t know anything about constitutional history.
Hillary Clinton almost ran for president on a universal basic income – In her memoir, Clinton says they seriously considered campaigning for universal basic income, but decided not to when they failed to come up with a realistic policy proposal. I have mixed feelings about this. Should she have included it in her campaign anyway? And why didn’t Bernie campaign on UBI, since apparently, a lack of realistic policy doesn’t otherwise stop him?
I used to call this monthly feature a “linkspam”, but after some consideration I am now calling it a link roundup. But whatever, it’s the same thing.
How an Ad Campaign Made Lesbians Fall in Love with Subaru – This is a very interesting article discussing one of the first ever queer-targeted ad campaigns. What surprised me the most is that Subaru used subtle gay-coding that straight audiences usually missed, but this was not because they wanted to hide their intentions. Subaru was open about it, and it was widely discussed in major newspapers. Rather, they used coded messages because market research said that lesbian audiences liked it better that way. Of course, I’m not sure that market research would extend to today.
Is there a “Gay Agenda” in Hip Hop? (video) – Music critic Anthony Fantano answers a question from a fan. I did not know this was a serious question that people asked. Apparently some of the barriers in hip hop have been breaking down, allowing more space for openly gay and bisexual rappers. This seems significant, especially given that hip-hop/R&B is the most consumed genre of music in the US. Of course, it doesn’t constitute a “gay agenda” in hip hop.
BTW, I don’t really listen to hip hop, but if any of you do, here’s an example song, enjoy. (content note: video depicts blood, lyrics talk about suicide and other violence.)
Damsels in Distress vs Distressed Dudes in Jin Yong stories (also see part 2) – Sara discusses the analogue of the distressed damsel trope in the Chinese genre of Wuxia. It seems that when male characters rescue damsels in distress, the male characters are usually regarded with suspicion. When female characters rescue distressed dudes, the female characters tend to get fridged afterwards in order to provide motivation for the male characters. It’s still kind of sexist but it’s a different variety of sexism from western fiction.
Sexual Harassment Is Pervasive and Under-Reported in Gay Bars – I found this link via a Facebook thread, where a bunch of gay/bi men were arguing that it was ridiculous that anyone would ever complain about sexual assault. They ask, if you don’t want people to grab your ass/dick unasked, why would you even go to a gay bar or club? This is absolutely infuriating. This is the sort of thing that makes me think RAINN et al. are completely underestimating rates of sexual violence.
On the Corner: Intersectionality and the Existence of Privilege – Crip Dyke responded to my article criticizing the “privilege” framework. She disagrees with my conclusion about “privilege” (which is fine!) but thinks that there’s something to be said about the limitations of “intersectionality”. My response is in her comment section. I should also link to this one: Every Other Trans Person is Wrong, which is disagreeing with me re: gender and sex language.
University of Oxford – Why am I linking to a random Facebook post by the University of Oxford? Notice all the comments about the Philippines! Somebody from the University of Oxford published a study looking at government funded trolls. Among other things, they found that President Duterte of the Philippines spent $200,000 on trolls. A bunch of people went to the University of Oxford’s page to attack this study, and it’s hilariously unconvincing.
A reminder to all the Americans out there: Duterte is not like Trump. Duterte has much higher approval ratings, and has already put the Southern Philippines under martial law. The martial law was supposed to be 60 days long, but was recently extended to the end of the year–in conflict with the Philippine constitution.