That time a cozy game triggered me

Gather round, it’s anecdote time.

Unpacking is a critically acclaimed indie game from 2021 that asks the player to unpack items from boxes, as if they had just moved. From this basic idea, a low key narrative emerges, following an off-screen character as they move from place to place at different stages of their life. And you can track their interests and circmstances by the various tchotchkes they bring with them.

Perhaps it’s a bit hyperbolic to say Unpacking triggered me. However, I did find it so unpleasant that I DNF’d it, despite its short run time.

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What Even is Gender? (Book review)

What Even is Gender? is an academic philosophy book written by B. R. George and R. A. Briggs, freely accessible online. Unusually, the book belongs to the analytic philosophy tradition (i.e. the tradition that includes Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein), rather than the continental philosophy tradition (whence comes Judith Butler and Michel Foucault).

The authors take a trans-positive view, while expressing skepticism towards the concept of gender identity. To be clear, they are arguing for conceptual reform rather than language reform—their issue with “gender” is not the way the words are arranged in English, but rather that “gender” presently refers to several distinct concepts, and that the equivocation of these concepts ultimately hurts trans people

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Link Roundup: March 2025

Revisiting Radway’s Reading the Romance: A Critical Ethnography of Romance Fans | Osteophage – Coyote discusses a 1980s book that studied women who read romance novels.  The author Janice Radway is sympathetic to the women of her study, seeing them as mistreated housewives trying to find an escape.  And yet, the romance books contain a lot of sexism themselves, and she is disappointed to find that the women tend to uncritically accept that sexism.  Coyote positions Radway’s book in relation to more recent debates about fandom.

Trans People are Under Attack and We Must Help Them | Rebecca Watson (video and transcript, 9 min) – Trans and nonbinary people are a tiny minority (estimated at 1.6% in the video), so how much does it matter that they’re under attack?  Well, that’s a lot of people if you think about it.  For instance, it’s far larger than the number of federal employees fired or laid off, and it’s larger than the total number of federal employees period.  Trump has signed 80-some executive orders, and if each one chips away at the rights of as many people, that affects all of us.  (And the video doesn’t even discuss the ways that cutting trans rights directly impacts cis women, e.g. by requiring them to undergo invasive examinations for sports.)

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Origami: Spike Dome

Spike Dome

Spike Dome, designed by Aurélien Vermont

Today’s model is a tessellation that I folded at the Geometric Origami Convention in 2024.  That means we folded it within an hour and a half, not counting precreasing.  Very nice design, and potentially adjustable.  In principle, you could make spikes with any number of points, and have them spiderweb across the paper as you please.  For example, Aurélien has a model with the big dipper.

Personally, I look at these spikes, and I want to make them spiral!  Not sure if it’s possible within the design.

Risky heroics: Examples

Previously, I discussed the trope of heroes risking it all, and why I think it’s a bad moral value.  Now I want to discuss some case studies. I feel a bit embarrassed to talk about my examples, because arguably, if we want to talk about risky heroics we should be talking about popular movies. But I don’t watch those, and am unwilling to put up with one for a blog post. So instead you’re getting a couple obscure moments that happened to come to mind.

1. Yasna’s choice

The Invincible is a game based on Stanislaw Lem’s sci-fi novel of the same name, although it contains an original story that merely echoes the original novel. It follows Yasna, a scientist who is stranded on the planet Regis III, where she witnesses a series of strange events. (I think it is a decent game, if you like narrative walking sims like Firewatch, but I’m not here to offer a review.)

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Risky heroics

It’s fair to say that the Scouts are obsessed with the mythology of the heroic rescue. When I was a teenager, they would regularly circulate stories of scouts rescuing people with medical emergencies, or who fell in the water.

It is also fair to say that this obsession with heroics is shared by our culture at large. Most of our stories–not just the superhero stories–are about people taking huge risks to save everyone.

However, I think there’s a major difference between the true heroic narratives as told by Scouts vs those told in fiction. In fiction, a huge risk means nothing because the outcome is decided by the author, not by probability. In the real world, encouraging scouts to take huge risks is basically asking for tragedy.

The scouting way is not to take huge risks, it’s to be prepared. In particular, scouts take lots of emergency response training. Something the training will say over and over again: don’t put yourself in danger trying to save someone else. For example, the Lifesaving Merit Badge emphasizes avoiding direct contact with a drowning person, because they can pull you into the water. Above all else, avoid creating a situation where now two people need rescue. First, call for help, then try safe methods of rescue.

For all my negative experiences with Scouts (not getting into it), I think the emphasis on emergency preparedness and safe heroics is laudable. In contrast, I do not think our culture’s emphasis on risky heroics is very laudable at all. This is a perpetual source of moral dissonance for me.

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Pour one out for the CFPB

Working in the finance industry has given me a great deal of appreciation for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Created in response to the 2008 recession, it protects consumers from unfair, deceptive, and abusive practices by financial institutions.

Recently, the Trump administration ordered the CFPB to halt all work, and cease its own funding. It’s a disaster, but more low key and less visible than all the other disasters. So, in mourning the CFPB, I’d like to review what it actually did.

The general case for the CFPB

The finance industry is fairly opaque to the average consumer. This creates an information asymmetry, where consumers can’t tell if a financial institution is being fair and honest. So, if consumers can’t even see when an institution is being fair and honest, it’s a competitive disadvantage to even bother.

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