Uncategorized – Page 2

Wagey Slavie in his Gilded Cagey

David V Stewart October 6, 2021 October 6, 2021Uncategorized 4

Vaccine mandates are quickly becoming one of the most divisive and revealing political gambits in my lifetime. They are divisive because they occur entirely along the lines of political tribes on opposite sides of the friend/enemy distinction, with one side revering the jab in the same way a Christian reveres the sacraments with that same side desiring to impose it the way a Muslim might insist upon Halal food, while the other side simply wants to decide for themselves whether the risk is worth any supposed benefit. The mandates are revealing in that they show just what state most people…

High School, Forever

David V Stewart July 19, 2021 July 19, 2021Art, Education, Non-fiction, Uncategorized 7

Seems a little odd that brands (D&D and MTG) built on escapist fantasy would circle back around high school, doesn’t it? When I look up on Twitter the people who create such things, one of the thoughts that doesn’t pop into my mind is, “This looks like a person who was happy and socially successful in high school.” Besides the nerd brands, we have a vast swath of similar Harry Potter fans who are in their 30s, yet still write fan fiction about a wizard high school. What I’ve realized from interacting with these sections of millennial fandom is that…

Boomer Hate

David V Stewart June 22, 2021 June 22, 2021Uncategorized 4

If there is one thing that has ascended over the last few years, it’s hatred of the Baby Boomer generation. I ought not have to link much to prove my point, but if you want a distilled sample, head over to Vox Day’s blog. Vox is a little older than me – he’s Gen X and I’m Gen Y – but the last three generational cohorts (X, Y, Millennial) all share similar attitudes towards their immediate predecessors. The thing is, this is not the standard intergenerational hostility and resentment that has been standard in the west for the entirety of…

Service Guarantees Citizenship

David V Stewart June 8, 2021 June 8, 2021politics, Uncategorized 5

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,…

Why We Call it the Death Cult

David V Stewart May 12, 2021 May 12, 2021Uncategorized 5

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…

Low-Trust America and the State

David V Stewart April 26, 2021 April 26, 2021Uncategorized 8

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…

Blind Spots on the Right

David V Stewart April 19, 2021 April 19, 2021Non-fiction, Philosophy, politics, Uncategorized 2

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…

Republican Bugmen

David V Stewart April 12, 2021 April 12, 2021Non-fiction, Philosophy, politics, Uncategorized 5

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…

2007: Gaming Ground Zero

David V Stewart March 31, 2021 March 31, 2021Analysis, Games, Non-fiction, Uncategorized 18

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,…

Attempted Programming

David V Stewart March 29, 2021 March 29, 2021Economics, Non-fiction, Philosophy, politics, Uncategorized 4

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…

Category: Uncategorized