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May. 23rd, 2013
A woman got an email from a guy on a dating website. It was a classic piece of shit - overly-flirtatious, too complimentary, obviously didn't read the profile because there was nothing specific, and creepy in an over-sharing, too-familiar-too-soon way. Naturally, she posted the email online.
Another woman saw the post and recognized it as the exact same one she received from the same guy. Now we all know that guy is writing form letters and we're all mocking him for being insincere and inconsiderate.
Guys, take note: when you send a form letter (and believe me, we can tell it's a form letter) and when you ignore the profile, not only do you come across as creepy, but you get made fun of by the women you're hoping to attract. It's in your best interest to learn how to be sincere and considerate in your first-contact emails.
When you do something rude (like these kinds of first-contact emails), the girls are not the bad guys for mocking you. That's the consequence that you get for being rude first. We are under no obligation to be nice to people who disrespect us first.
I really like all those "evolution of music" compliations and medleys, but I'd really like to see someone really treat it as "evolution" and do a true taxonomical tree, with branches and diversions and divergent musical "species" that merge a few generations later and lines that die off.
It's one of the reasons why I feel frustration when people say they hate a certain category of music when they like a related category, or long for the "good ol' days" of music before "today's kids" started producing such "crap". Many people tend to ignore the interconnectedness of music, the complex musical influences of past generations on the current generation, and they like to oversimplify and box in musical genres when the reality is that it's more of a fuzzy, blended pool with every genre being a "transitional genre" to some other genre and not a "finished" genre, complete and isolated all by itself.
My sister used to give me a lot of crap for liking country music. Then, in her late teens, she started listening to Dixie Chicks. I asked her how she reconciled her hate of country with her love of the Chicks. She said it's because they didn't sound like "country". I pointed out that they're actually a bluegrass band with rock influences, so they're actually more "country" than the country pop of either then-current Faith Hill, '70s classic Kenny Rogers, or even the twangy country of the '50s back when rock & country were so closely related, they had such cross-over superstars as Elvis Presley.
I'm not telling anyone what they should or shouldn't *like*. I'm just saying that music is incredibly rich and diverse and is influenced by a lot of other styles that a lot of people ignore and dismiss in their disdain for whatever style of music isn't the style they prefer. And I think people might enjoy their preferred musical style even more if they had a better understanding of that complexity and diversity in their music, even if they never learn to appreciate those styles they say they dislike.
I like to think that I am not a total Torquemada when it comes to historical accuracy in novels set in the medEvil period, but there are some clankers which set me to brooding.
Just as a for instance: it is highly unlikely that an English monk living in an eighth-century monastery would be able to see his reflection in a glass window.
Also, it is just as unlikely that a medieval woman would show a guest into her living room.
I know, I know-- I am just a cranky elitist snob throwing the cold water of historical continuity upon some poor author's creativity, but I can't help feeling that authors should make some pretense of not gratuitously crossing over the yellow line while blithely barreling down the highway of poetic license.
This entry was originally posted at http://kestrell.dreamwidth.org/236551.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
02:07 pm
I just said to Boy, "Being involved with a classicist means never again having to say 'gosh, I haven't heard a cool story in a while." I thought about it some and then said "Although I suppose at some point you might want to say 'STOP TELLING ME WHAT SOME DEAD DUDE SAID ABOUT DICKS.'"
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/05/one-shot_vs_ite.html
This post by Aleatha Parker-Wood is very applicable to the things I wrote in Liars & Outliers:
A lot of fundamental social problems can be modeled as a disconnection between people who believe (correctly or incorrectly) that they are playing a non-iterated game (in the game theory sense of the word), and people who believe that (correctly or incorrectly) that they are playing an iterated game.
For instance, mechanisms such as reputation mechanisms, ostracism, shaming, etc., are all predicated on the idea that the person you're shaming will reappear and have further interactions with the group. Legal punishment is only useful if you can catch the person, and if the cost of the punishment is more than the benefit of the crime.
If it is possible to act as if the game you are playing is a one-shot game (for instance, you have a very large population to hide in, you don't need to ever interact with people again, or you can be anonymous), your optimal strategies are going to be different than if you will have to play the game many times, and live with the legal or social consequences of your actions. If you can make enough money as CEO to retire immediately, you may choose to do so, even if you're so terrible at running the company that no one will ever hire you again.
Social cohesion can be thought of as a manifestation of how "iterated" people feel their interactions are, how likely they are to interact with the same people again and again and have to deal with long term consequences of locally optimal choices, or whether they feel they can "opt out" of consequences of interacting with some set of people in a poor way.
I Threw a Show in My Heart and Nobody Came
What's it like being in a band that you think is amazing and everyone else is completely indifferent to? Well, it's a lot like a job where you're the laziest guy on the shift and everyone knows it; it's not great, but it beats working. Except you're working really hard and it sucks. And all your friends are getting promotions, and even if they eventually get dropped by their promotions, they at least got a taste and what did you get? First on a bill of three on a Tuesday night. Like your life, the analogy eventually falls apart.[...]
I wanted to be successful. Not rock star successful, but successful enough that I'd be tending bar six months out of the year instead of twelve. I wanted to be at least Murder City Devils successful. And I have the idiotic tattoos to prove it. You don't get a flaming 13 on your arm unless you're deeply invested in being the sort of person who's earned a flaming 13 tattoo on their arm. I wanted to die semi-young and leave a semi-successful corpse for my mother to cry over. So what one wants out of the band is entirely irrelevant. The world is a vampire and you are a bucket of blood sitting in the corner, unattended yet still strangely ignored, until you go bad and somebody inadvertently kicks you over and the floor is incredibly sticky and still the vampiric world fails to pay you a morsel of mind. Poor li'l bucket of blood.
If this narrative seems to be lacking in specifics, that's because, as I noted earlier, the specifics aren't entirely interesting. And I should be clear that I'm not speaking for anyone in the band other than myself. If you want their perspective, corner them in a bar and ask them. Like the leprechaun, if you capture one of us, we have to give up our gold. But in this case, the gold is a list we keep in our back pocket of everyone in the industry who ever lied to us. But, hell, I imagine even those monsters have their point of view. It couldn't have been easy to deal with five rapidly aging problem drinkers who were watching themselves become the butt of jokes in the Brooklyn Vegan comment section.
Mirrored from jwz.org.
I put mustaches all over my new computer.
And 
gordonmessmer bought our house! We signed all the papers today! YAYYYYYYYY!!!
matthew KEEPS TRYING TO POISON US TO DEATH.
WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL US, MATTHEW.
WHY.
(Last week, breakfast was demon-infested or something and we were both sooooo sick. Today he brought me a smoothie that made me sooooo sick (I tend to feel sick when I try to take fiber supplements and he got me a fiber boost). I am tired of being soooooo sick. Make it stoooop.)
I told him he better not poison me on our anniversary.
I MIGHT TAKE IT PERSONALLY.
*whiiiiiiiiiiiiine*
I doooon't feeeeel gooooooood. I want to not feeeeeeeeel baaaaaaad. *craaaaai*
Okay I'm done whining. For now.
Man that icon is so goddamn appropriate.
May. 22nd, 2013
Reasons to let the 13-year-old stay awake past bedtime: right as I kissed him goodnight he decided that he wanted to talk about drugs. He often wants to have "serious" talks at bedtime. I'm not sure if it is a stalling tactic because he doesn't want to go to sleep, or if his bedtime routine has him in a relaxed, calm, trusting mood. I usually tell him it's not the right time, and make time in the next day or two, but that was one that I wanted to jump on while he was feeling open.
We had a good talk. He had good questions: about why certain things are illegal and not others, what affects different drugs have (both desirable and undesirable,) whether all drugs are equally addictive, whether drugs from natural plant sources are automatically safer than chemically synthesized drugs, why people choose to use drugs.
My favorite question, though, was the one that started the conversation. We were talking about a reference in a TV show to Edger Alan Poe. He said he was a good writer but not really a good role model. I laughed and said "No, not really! He died in a gutter, drunk, alone, broke, and on drugs." The kiddo asked "They had drugs back then!?" Ah, youth.
I am so glad that he feels that he can talk to me about difficult subjects. Sometimes the problems he has overshadow all the good and I forget. I need to remember that he is a really wonderful kid. Of all the troubles he could have, the ones he has are not the worst they could be.
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