Old Man Yells at Cloud

I wrote this on a forum about a year ago. It was a discussion on GRRM (Martin, the writer, for those who might not know) and specifically a gloomy post he wrote at that time that people interpreted as a sign of him becoming senile and nostalgic. It’s important to read for context. Especially now.


It would be quite nice if all of you were right and it was just another case of “old man yell at clouds.” His perception changing due to him getting older rather than an actual change simply described.

But I’m certainly not as old, and would have plenty to criticize of how he handled his work, I’m not a fan. Yet I don’t see anything personal in that blog post he wrote.

You see, it’s not like the past year has been “bad” and that this one looks worse. The real point of what he writes is that it all feels like a mere “set-up”, if it was a novel. Or, said with other words, it’s starting to feel like we are trapped in a chronic case of “Russel’s Turkey” (the world renews itself, one day looks just like the one before, no one sees it coming). Where he writes “the feeling that we are living in the Weimar Republic” he doesn’t mean that living at that time was bad, per se, but that it was that naive moment where no one knew or had the faintest idea of WHAT WAS COMING. And that what would be coming would greatly exceeds the worst expectations. It’s not like a necessary chain of events, but a breaking point that is hard to realize beforehand.

You assume that the way he perceives things is deeply ingrained on him being old and feeling the moment of his death getting closer, but you don’t realize that YOUR way of feeling is also deeply ingrained in the fact that there haven’t been any breaking points. Therefore breaking points cannot happen. They seem out of this world, like belonging to a fictional novel (then maybe read a bit of Zweig).

The literal fabric of reality everyone perceives is precisely what would feel like for a baroque culture at its apex: the certainty that nothing can change. Right before the collapse comes.

Covid has been a significant culture transformation, but most people don’t realize it. It wasn’t a course correction, but it has been an accelerator.

If he’s right, and I think he is because I feel the exact way coming from a completely different perspective, it won’t be down to perception. Soon enough you’ll see the tangible effects that it was not his own being old and change of perspective, but just getting a feel of a radical change, before it actually happens and before everyone realizes.

Or maybe he’s wrong and just old and pessimistic, and you are all right. For sure we’ll see this type of ending in the real world sooner than Winds of Winter. It will just happen to happen to you rather than to a character in a fantasy book.


I add this bit of Zweig straight from wikipedia, for more context:
Zweig begins by stating a law: no witness to significant changes can recognize them at their beginnings. Even after his failed coup, Hitler was merely one agitator among many in this period shaken by coup attempts, and his name quickly faded into insignificance. However, organized gangs of young men in Nazi insignia were starting to cause trouble. It was unthinkable when Germany imagined that a man as uneducated as Hitler could come to power.

(obviously “Hitler” here isn’t Trump, who’s merely a complacent puppet, but Musk)

A few thoughts on recent “drama”

On the other side of this duality of blogs I wrote a review of Ruocchio’s first book and mentioned in there that I had started casually watching the “booktuber” island of content. So I eventually bumped into Daniel Greene. His videos looked more like artsy style than depth, but I appreciated a recent review he posted about Ken Liu’s series, it satisfied a lot of the curiosity I had. That first book was part of a big lists of books I planned to get next and the result of having my curiosity quenched was that I decided not to order it. Not because the review was mildly negative, or because I decided not to read it, but with that initial curiosity gone I just don’t feel a priority about it. Sometimes things go in weird way (the order ended up being, Robin Hobb’s third in the first trilogy, Empire in Black and Gold by Tchaikovsky and… Duncton Wood. Plus other non-fantasy stuff. In the list I still have Ken Liu, The Mists of Avalon, The Sword of Kaigen, The Tainted Cup, The Justice of Kings, A Memory Called Empire, The Failures, The Emperor’s Blade… as you can see a few more of youtube-induced curiosity.)

But the topic here is the drama that popped up recently. Literally popped up because it started for me with a video randomly shown (and now gone, apparently). Titled: “I Received a CEASE AND DESIST from Daniel Greene”

I watched that video without knowing about anything else and I had a similar reaction to most of everyone else, I suppose. It was a strongly emotional video and quite damning of Daniel Greene. After that, my feed got populated by other youtubers sharing that general area of interest, showing support to this Naomi King. One of which especially got my attention (also gone now), from this other guy. It got my attention and now I regret of not having downloaded a copy. I know how these things go and I suspected it could have gotten deleted, eventually, but what do I care? The video was simply very good. It was again very emotional and honestly heartfelt, but didn’t stop there. It commented the situation with such a strength and clarity that I thought it sent a very powerful message, that superseded the specific drama. That was important outside of its specific moment.

And now it’s all gone. Everything is gone. All these youtubers are withdrawing their previous emotional reactions and support for the abused side, and now apologizing to the other.

I get it. And I do feel somewhat the same. There is a certain uniformity to these “community” reactions where (for once) I’m no exception. I feel and behave like everyone else. But I do think these erasures of previous comments do not really help, the community as a whole, to move forward and LEARN. The point is that YOU CANNOT (we cannot) level accusations to someone only, a few days later, withdraw everything and apologize. EVERY SINGLE TIME (every time this happens, I’m not implying accusations are usually proven false.)

It’s obviously perfectly fine to correct your stance on some event, while more information is disclosed. This is the basis of everything. But we have to learn to suspend judgment. I know there are implications. I don’t know Daniel nor Naomi, I only watched a few videos. But for some people it’s a big deal, because maybe they joined their discord, are more involved in a community. Those people have to decide whether to continue to support someone who, they find out, is not someone that aligns with their views. So you also HAVE to make a choice.

But the main topic here is not the drama, but the way I (we) react from the very beginning. Naomi’s first video didn’t leave much space for doubt. Daniel’s first response (still up, but may be gone soon), if anything, confirms the negative judgment on him. Now everything turned around. Are we all just wind vanes who turn today in this direction and tomorrow in another? Are we all just slaves to whims?

This is why I think history is important. Why these videos that are published only to get deleted two days later only contribute to these mistakes happening again, rather than learn from them. We need to ANTICIPATE these paths rather than continuously get surprised by them. Pretending ourselves naive and innocent. That’s why I think the video mentioned above by Jackson Dickert CONTINUES to be an important video. Because Daniel is just another guy, and Naomi another woman, and these things will continue to happen, and as a community (in the broader term, not related to booktube here, but as a whole society) we should learn to anticipate the outcomes.

I usually suspend judgement, and I have, innately, a much more indecisive nature. I always have a perception of things being way more complex and, on the internet, involving people that I don’t personally know, I just arrive at the absolute conclusion that I simply don’t have ways to know things well enough to be able to judge them. There is no way, for me, to be sure about anything about the private life of whoever else (like an agnostic stance applied to worldly events). My opinion is IRRELEVANT. But, as already said, sometimes you don’t have the luxury of indecision, sometimes you have to make choices. For me, the empathy I felt watching Naomi’s video still RINGS TRUE. This doesn’t mean that empathy turns into hate toward Daniel, or that I still defend the merit of Naomi’s position. I just think that we all are too fast to cling to certain positions, only to then being too fast again forsaking them and apologize. I see that as way too cowardly, because it’s innately dishonest.

As I said, if you want to judge other people, then you have to anticipate the outcomes. You need to have doubts. So you want to “doubt” women when they gather the strength to publicly denounce some abuse? Of course not, but then it’s a contradiction. For me, when these twists happen, it’s important to double down on the initial reaction. To UNDERSTAND why it was legitimate. Not because I prefer to persist in the error rather than be exposed to hypocrisy (it would be deciding between two faulty positions), but because reactions have reasons. It is always more important to understand, than to judge.

That’s why deleting all those initial responses isn’t helping. Those reactions are ALL legitimate. Rather than simply apologize and move on, we should instead stay, for once. Not to understand what truly happened with Naomi and Daniel, but to understand how this society is shaped and reacts. It’s important to not just transform it in another field of battle between two factions. It’s important that empathy doesn’t get simply stopped by doubt, or then reversed by more information.

OWN those reactions, even in the light of new information coming up. You can’t constantly erase the past. Every truth stays truthful. Those initial reactions to Naomi’s video stay TRUE. You can’t simply pivot from “Daniel is a monster” to “Oh, sorry, Naomi is the monster.” It’s not a binary war, and truth is never binary either. Things move contextually. Truths are never falsified, in the real world, they are only revealed partial, as more light is cast.

Stand your ground.

[The lives of others come together in fragments. A light shining off a separate story can illuminate what had remained dark. Brains are miraculous; humans storytelling creatures. The shards draw themselves together and make something whole.]

Fates and Furies, Lauren Groff

P.S.
Some context: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1iqs8lv/naomi_kingdaniel_greene_megathread/
Oh, and now I watched Dickert’s second video and he has an on-screen transcript of the previous. So that part is not completely gone, even if I think the video itself was more powerful. “The way I worded this was flat out terrible.” Nah, it was good. May have been imprecise about details, but the message was legitimate and important.
A look at the comments under this video also tells a lot about the “climate” around these things.

Because why not, this video is related. From gossip drama to science, it all comes down to basic epistemology.

On satire

I’ve always had a problem with satire. For a mind like mine, made of fundamentals and principles, satire was ever too blurry, hard to pinpoint.

If something like body shaming is universally wrong, why it is generally widely accepted as satire? Even historically, but also in modern times? Maybe you do remember all the controversies about Charlie Hebdo. Where is the line drawn?

There are certain groups of people that are sensible to certain topics. In general you make sure to avoid bringing them up, with a specific audience. But in the case of the internet a message doesn’t simply reach its intended target, it has the potential to reach everyone. So does this mean we avoid everything that can potentially offend someone out there, since everyone is potentially present? Of course not, it’s not even practical.

Something similar happens with “pronouns.” It’s absolutely okay to misgender someone by mistake. But if you then get corrected and refuse to acknowledge it, then you immediately are at fault. This becomes an attack, a deliberate offense that needs a strong response. Not so many people agree here. For some, the content of something said can already be at fault, universally wrong and to be condemned. But for me instead the distinct dividing line is on intent. Intentional, deliberate offense or not.

But intent does not solve satire, where the intent is often to explicitly INSULT. And yet we say it’s fine.

Well, all this until I figured out what satire actually is. It’s now a solved problem.

The way I understand it now, is that satire is not a problem of content. Whether what is being said is allowed or not. Because again, if that was the case you’d end up with too much ambiguity. Ambiguity that instead goes completely away when you realize what satire TRULY is: a contextual message.

That’s why body shaming, that would be unambiguously wrong as content, becomes totally accepted in the context of satire (not fully, it still retains moral implications, but lets say it stays lawful). This because satire doesn’t define a content, but a context. The relationship between who says something, and who’s the target.

Satire defines a message that ALWAYS has a “bottom up” trajectory. This is the line of distinction. It always origins from someone (or a group of people) who are vulnerable, toward someone who holds the power. That’s why, as a society, we accept it. Because it is a category outside judgement, regulated as a form of universal balance: even if a person is attacked, mocked, insulted… maybe even hurt, it will always be someone in a position of greater power. If money defines not happiness but a multiplication of possibilities (if you get ill you can die even if you’re rich, but being rich multiplies your chances of survival), then the satirical power is a power of destabilization for more stability. And if positions get reversed, then even application of rules get reversed.

A thing REVERSIBLE in application, but UNMOVABLE in its principle. It’s specifically one of those absolute “weak makes right” rules.

This is also why a member of the parliament cannot mock and insult another member of the parliament. For satire to apply you need a contextual imbalance of power, it doesn’t work between equals.

That’s why powerful men hate satire, it’s something they cannot control because it is defined outside their reach. Unless relying on active censorship.

A summary

Not going for nuance or complexity, here. But I do remember the world is complex.

I do believe that fascism is in the destiny of humanity.

I believe that humanity is a failed experiment, that it has nowhere to go.

I don’t think there’s any pragmatic, real space at this point to avoid this course. (the rightful correction is built as self-defeating, the system built to be unsolvable in its structure)

This is only a process that can be slowed down or accelerated. But I don’t think it’s something like a twenty years of delay possible. More like a few months or a few years. (I’ve been wrong about timings in the past, but not on the trajectory)

For all I care, it’s better to accelerate at this point. May chaos create some anomalies that lead to surprises. Good or not.

(me accepting the acceleration doesn’t mean me participating in it, I’m not movable and my point of observation is absolute. This isn’t about me)

Re-viewing Hitler, indeed

No need to add words to wiggle and nudge two different shapes that weren’t intended to match…

These two are a perfect match.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7213729970

Meanwhile, Elon Musk is endorsing concentration camps.

…Here be clowns

Yeah, it was a paper launch. But at least it’s a funny one:

The question everyone is asking is why has Nvidia done this? And the answer should be quite obvious, since Covid and then the AI craze. These videocards didn’t sell out because of the demand, but because of lack of stocks. Artificial (perceived) scarcity is what Nvidia uses to keep the prices high. Essentially one giant psyop.

Same as people wondering why the whole game industry is in a terrible ongoing crisis with all the layoffs. Wasn’t it an extremely flourishing sector up to 2019? People blame the Covid bubble, then blame AI. The AI is the correct answer, but for a different motivation. Devs aren’t being fired because replaced by AI. The simple reason is that the whole global economy is a giant joke. The game industry was blooming because of investors. The AI craze is not driven by utility or potential, EVEN in cases where they are justified, it’s once again driven purely by perception and hype.

Simply: all the money that was in the videogame industry rapidly shifted to AIs. Same as just a few days ago the whole tech sector crashed because, once again, the “perception” of a Chinese AI. There’s very little impact on the realities of these circumstances, it’s all a psyop. Although it is a psyop likely outside of anyone’s hands. It’s a capitalist psyop that is ran onto us as humanity. Driven by… absolutely no one.

A Dark God of Nothing.

If I had to buy a new videocard, right now, I’d probably get a 7900 XTX. I’d be absolutely fine with raw performance and I don’t give a single shit about RTX or DLSS.

There’s still a giant problem with AMD videocards and that one model in particular. They have way, way too high energy absorption. Powerful enough, but inefficient.

If AMD is able to improve consistently in that area with the 9070 XT I would gladly make the switch (with the added bonus of not giving money to the spreading cancer that is Nvidia).

Not only that, but if it had some 20Gb of ram for less than 1k price (the old 7900 has 24Gb, I only want something in that range but with acceptable efficiency and power draw), it would destroy Nvidia in general, not just in my own personal case. AMD simply isn’t even trying.