I prefer not to blog about current events, but if you’re interested in that sort of thing on FTB, Crip Dyke is on it!  She has some live-blog style thoughts here and here, thoughts on race, the 25th amendment, self-pardoning, and impeachment.

Dropping The Bomb: Hiroshima and Nagasaki | Shaun (video, 2:20 hours) – So, obviously the length of this video is a huge barrier.  Personally I treated it like a podcast while doing a jigsaw.  Basically, Shaun seeks to answer why the nuclear bomb was dropped, especially focusing on the political motivations and diplomatic failures.  It’s a black comedy of errors, with Japan being desperate to save the emperor, and the US not really caring about the emperor, but wanting unconditional surrender for political optics.  Horrifying to think that nuclear war occurred not by some freak accident, but because people in power just don’t care.

Who “Deserves” COVID-19 Vaccine Priority? / Don’t Worry about COVID-19 Vaccine Frauds | Skepchick (~10 min videos or text) | Rebecca Watson discusses issues related to vaccine prioritization, and makes the case that it’s not about getting vaccines to the most deserving people first, or punishing cheaters, it’s about efficient allocation to end the pandemic sooner.  We are currently thinking of getting a vaccine as a selfish action that protects yourself at the cost of others who could have gotten the vaccine instead.  But fundamentally, vaccines help everyone, and will soon be recognized as a civic duty.  For example, people criticize Republican politicians for rushing to get vaccines early, but I want them to get vaccines for the same reason I want them to wear masks! I’m not afraid of people desperate to get vaccines, I’m afraid of the anti-vaxxers.

For this month’s link roundup… I got two videos.  Did I even read anything this month?  Well, I also published a couple articles over on the other blog, one about my work on the Ace Community Survey, and some journal club discussion notes on asexuality and BDSM.

That Time Geocentrists Tricked a Bunch of Physicists | Folding Ideas (video, 45 min) – Dan talks about an old documentary promoting geocentrism.  This video has me imagining an alternate timeline where the skeptical movement welcomed the humanities, and in addition to a bunch of hard science geeks poking at inaccuracies, we had cinematography geeks breaking down misleading editing techniques.  What could have been.

Queering Animal Crossing | A Helpful Guide to Queer Readings | Transparency (video, 29 min) – It’s a basic introduction to queer readings.  I wrote a reaction to this on social media, partially disagreeing with it.  I think I’ll adapt it into a blog post of sorts.  For now, you’re welcome to watch it and form your own opinion.

As usual, I bring you a collection of articles from the past month that I found particularly interesting.

Effective Altruism is logical, but too unnatural to catch on | Psyche – Alan Jern discusses why Effective Altruism is psychologically and morally counterintuitive.  This is very different from my own discussion of Effective Altruism, where I am most critical of the realities of the community and its priorities.  While Effective Altruism makes counterintuitive decisions in trolley problems, I don’t really consider that a problem with Effective Altruism, rather our flawed moral intuition is the problem, and Effective Altruism addresses that problem by offering community support and discussion.  In any case, I feel like it’s rarely a choice between altruism and family; the majority of one’s resources are usually spent on oneself, so altruism tends to come at one’s own expense first.

Inside Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises | The Verge – A bit late for this story, but this was just engrossing.  In 2017, republicans gave huge subsidies to bring a Taiwanese manufacturer into Wisconsin, and it was a huge scam and corporate nightmare.  As recently as last month, Trump was still claiming that Foxconn would keep its promises.

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School of Life: A Very Bad YouTube Channel | Big Joel (video, 25 min) – Just a funny take down of a ridiculous self-help channel.  I was surprised to learn that School of Life is made by Alain De Botton, who I mostly remember from his 2012 TED talk about “Atheism 2.0”.  At the time, his talk certainly struck a chord with a lot of atheists who were unhappy with the state of the atheist movement.  But whenever I heard details about his specific suggestions, they were completely full of shit.  He just had no idea what he was talking about, and worse, he erased the efforts of other atheists who had similar criticisms and who were actually involved in the communities they wanted to change.  I hated this guy, and now I feel vindicated.

The Dunning-Kruger effect: Misunderstood, misrepresented, overused, and… nonexistent? | Skepchick – Ever since researching and writing about the Dunning-Kruger effect, I’ve been convinced that it’s not very good psychology, and even worse as pop psychology.  So I’m glad to see this independent (and more thorough) review.

While on this subject, I was reminded of my research into perceptions of penis size, where I learned that (non-Asian) men systematically overestimate their penis size (“penis Lake Wobegon” I called it).  Following Dunning-Kruger logic, we must conclude that having a smaller penis deprives one of the ability to accurately self-assess one’s penis size.

Science & Religion Aren’t Compatible (But only in America) | Skepchick – Rebecca Watson discusses a study demonstrating the point in the title.  If anyone has paper access I’m curious what it says about the UK and Canada.

In Search of a Flat Earth | Folding Ideas (video, 76 min) – I see that video essays are quickly approaching movie length.  Dan Olson disproves a conspiracy theory with some beautiful footage, not that it matters to the doomsday cult.

OpenAI’s latest breakthrough is astonishingly powerful, but still fighting its flaws | The Verge – GPT-3 is a new language AI with astounding power.  GPT-3 first grabbed my attention when I saw someone use it to produce a response to philosophers talking about GPT-3.  Sure, some cherry-picking is involved, but the result is more cogent than the average internet commenter.  To temper (or amplify) the hype, I suggest looking at this massive compilation of GPT-3 results, including experiments that failed.  Among other things, GPT-3 is apparently terrible at making cat puns.

Although not created by GPT-3, I also thought these image completions were incredible.

Beethoven Sucks At Music | 12tone (Video, 14 min)
Music Theory and White Supremacy | Adam Neely (Video, 44 min) – Now this is the music youtube content that I am here for.  12tone explains some of the history that led Beethoven and other classical composers to be canonized.  Adam Neely discusses how “music theory” as it is commonly understood, is really the theory of 18th century European music.  The framing of 18th century European music as the objective measure by which all music must be judged is structural white supremacy.  I have a passing interest in music theory, and it’s difficult to learn in the best of times, but I find it doubly frustrating because it fails to describe any of the music I listen to.  I feel like these videos have named the problem.

If you liked these videos, you might also appreciate the paper that Neely’s video is based on: “Music Theory and the White Racial Frame“.

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Last month, I relaunched the Ace Journal Club.  We discussed a psychology paper, and next month we’re discussing a gender studies text.  Not of interest to most readers, but it’s a thing that is happening.  I also started a series about split attraction models on The Asexual Agenda.

Also, in case you missed it, Crip Dyke was at the Portland protests!  You can start here and go forward.  Or if you read just one thing, you can read about the worst night.  Summarized in five words: Tear gas, lots of it.

‘Mum’s day off is it?’: what adopting as a same-sex couple taught us | The Guardian – This article is less about same-sex parenting, and more about the disproportionate labor that mothers perform.  When a kid has two fathers, they’re often presumed to be straight men supporting their wives, and they get praised for doing ordinary parenting.  File this under “Are the straights okay?”

The Women’s-Only Spaces Myth | Reprobate Spreadsheet – HJ examines the history of the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, infamous for excluding trans women.  The leadership believed they were protecting attendees from sexual violence, but in fact most attendees did not agree with the decision, and the leadership was guilty of covering up sexual violence perpetrated by cis women.

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Only two links this month, I guess I just didn’t spend as much time collecting them.

Bo Ruberg | Keywords in Play (Podcast, 22 min) – An interview with Bo Ruberg, author of Video Games Have Always Been Queer and The Queer Games Avant-Garde.  She talks about the queer theory perspective on video games, degamification, regamification, speed running, and walking sims.

As I share this podcast, I’m thinking back to my own initial reaction, when I started hearing about queer theory in relation to video games back in 2013.  I initially found it offputting how little relation it had to conventional discussions of queer media, spending very little time on queer characters, and much more time on whatever they considered to be queer themes, the queerness of which is often quite tenuous.  Well, the discussion has grown upon me a bit.  The more I read and talk about queer representation, the more I desire different perspectives on what that even means.

OTF (One True Fandom) | osteophage – Coyote discusses a certain view of fandom, which emphasizes transformative works, especially fanfiction, as uniquely progressive and the most essential expression of fandom.

While I have been a fan of many things, I rarely participate in fandoms because that just seems like an awful lot of commitment to one thing.  Nonetheless, I’m presently part of two fandoms: for the card game Dominion, and for xenharmonic music.  Neither of these lend themselves to fanfiction at all, which suits me just fine.  In my few interactions with more prototypical fandoms, I’ve definitely encountered many of the attitudes Coyote describes, and it’s such a narrow understanding of fanning.