Category: Uncategorized

Service Guarantees Citizenship

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There are only two things people seem to take away from Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein: Power Armor and “Service Guarantees Citizenship” (unless you are James Cameron, in which “bug hunt” is also a takeaway). For those who focus on the latter, Starship Troopers might as well be Heinlein’s only work, which is not so much an indictment of the readers as it is an acknowledgment of the power of that idea compared to Heinlein’s other ideas (which were often quite liberal, by the way). This has led many people (mostly older people to whom the prescription does not apply,…

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Why We Call it the Death Cult

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Screw it. here we go: I’m not the only one who calls the vast pseudo-religious motivation and activism the “Death Cult.” I saw last year (or so) that fellow Christian author Brian Niemeier was using the same terminology to describe the same things, and every day I see more people either getting very close to the terminology or pegging it outright. By why do I specifically call it the “Death Cult”? Why not the “woke cult” or just “Social Justice Warriors”? The short answer is because they are obsessed with death. They want you dead. Every so often the mask…

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Low-Trust America and the State

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It’s easy to blame the state. After all, it was state enforcers that shut down the girls’ egg operation. But let’s not forget… American society, even in a supposed “red state” is now a low-trust society, but it’s a very odd version of such a society, quite unlike third-world countries. In America, the state itself has replaced the social fabric and trust is concentrated, at least in the corporate/imperial side of society, in the state rather than in other people. Somebody saw the egg business and decided they would sick the state on them, meaning they had no sense of…

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Blind Spots on the Right

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Again, “left” and “right” are outdated, but quickly get to the point – friends and enemies. The American right has a huge blind spot, and that is the near-religious support of certain elements of the state, specifically the military and enforcement wings of the state, even when these elements are acting against their interests. I pointed this out in “Republican Bugmen” – that the republican bugman is still obsessed with state solutions to personal problems, just with a different focus – and it ruffled a few feathers. The defense of these parts of the state is a natural reaction, due…

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Republican Bugmen

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I wrote a recent article on the profile of a bugman. Because this included many traits that have been recently associated with “the left” (for lack of a better term), a few people have wondered whether there are bugmen on the “right,” or as part of the republican party. There absolutely are. Not only are there Republican bugmen, they are a very large and vocal part of the Republican apparatus, which explains to a large degree why we are where we are. The real divide is between the corporate and the local, not right/left. That’s why we have the modern…

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2007: Gaming Ground Zero

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Maybe you’ve heard of cultural ground zero: 1997. Now let’s talk games, because unlike other institutions of culture, the games industry kept on growing and innovating for another 10 years. Then 2007 happened, and as far as the bigger publishers are concerned, games reached their peak and no more change or risk was required or even advisable. Gameplay seemed to stop changing almost entirely after 2007, and the extent to which it did change is usually in the negative, involving the watering-down of mechanics and general reduction of difficulty. Of course, there were plenty of amazing games prior to 2007,…

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Attempted Programming

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If you are seeing crap like this all the time, you aren’t the one: Nothing is organic when it comes to legacy media. If you remember the Gamergate days, it was proven through a leak/hack that all the games journos had a big chat going where they would decide to, in concert, talk about the same game, same issue, or dogpile a target across all separate publications. “Dad bod” is the latest, but certainly not the most ridiculous, attempt at “narrative saturation.” If you were paying attention you’d have seen it before with eating bugs, living in pods, “amazing” child…

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Profile of a Bugman

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Yes, this is a stereotype and not every Bugman is going to hit every point, but most bugmen will represent some concentration of most of the following, including bugwomen: White Overweight Childless, even if married At least one bad physical consumption habit (drinking beer, starbucks, smoking, etc.) At least one purposefully unattractive physical choice, such as colored hair or messy beard Lives in a city No real religion Carries a large amount of debt Seemingly large amount of disposable income and budget for entertainment Somehow always has a new phone and other gadgets Low long-term planning and investment ability Moves…

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The Apostates of the Pop Cult

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I’ve been talking about this since 2015, and I feel like a broken record, but here we go: A little context for the above: Zac Snyder, original director of Justice League went on a Geeks and Gamers stream dedicated to raising money for suicide awareness and more or less denounced them, saying he was not affiliated with them in any way and that there was “no room for hate,” with the charity, etc. This provoked some cognitive dissonance, as G&G had apparently been vocal for a long time regarding a “Snyder cut” of Justice League. Of course, lots of people…

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The Empire of Nothing

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I came across a term thrown out by fellow writer Alexandru Constantin: The Empire of Nothing In the spirit of cultural exchange and expediency, I’m appropriating it. The United States is an Empire – we don’t have to get into the technical details of why this is so – but what exactly is it an empire of? Individuals. This has been, in one sense, its strength. Individuals unbound by borders, restrictions of status, obligations to lord and land, and unencumbered by tradition were the perfect group to spread across a mostly empty land and settle it, forming the semblance of…

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