socratetris

[socratetris]

Kowloon’s Curse: Lost Report is a surreal RPG inspired by Japanese games from the Dreamcast and PS1-era set in a crime-riddled city filled with weird creatures!

Read More & Play The Full Game, Free (Steam)

[socratetris]

I’m so god damn tired of not just leftists, but even left-leaning people holding absolutely unrealistic, all-but-impossible positions which have no acknowledgement of any nuance whatsoever and then calling anyone who tries to give a dose of reality a shill or a bootlicker. Honestly, it’s not even enlightened to hold some of these positions because you just reveal yourself to have no grasp of incredibly complex issues. If this sounds vague, it’s because it can apply to how people online react to many different issues.

[socratetris]

My wife was learning ASL before becoming an RN. She’ll be starting up again soon and I have encouraged her to teach me to help her study. I have two main takeaways from this video: 1) I hope starbucks is paying competitively for this amazing skill the staff possesses - though I doubt they are paid enough, 2) Every starbucks should just stop having music. I hate starbucks music, and writing in the quiet would be so much nicer while having an afternoon coffee.

[socratetris]

Strayed Lights is a visually stunning parry-focused Souls-like where a being of light ventures through a dark oneiric world!

Read More & Play The Beta Demo, Free (Steam)

[socratetris]

My First Experience with Weaponized White Woman Identity

I keep thinking about this and don’t really have an opportunity to bring it up anywhere. CW: racism, sexual abuse, domestic violence, police brutality

Back in highschool, one of my best friends and debate partner was demographically a white woman. (I was a suburban midwestern kid. These things happen.) We talked about basically anything, but I knew she came from a fairly conservative family in a very conservative community.

Trayvon Martin and the subsequent murder of black men and boys starting getting public attention. The difficulty of trying to get people to acknowledge the long-standing systemic problems of white judges and juries never seeing racially motivated violence by other whites, but easily seeing it from black offenders to white victims was challenging. (After all, it is hard to convince white people who never deal with white racism to believe it. While it is very easy to logically figure out why a black person would hate a white person. The history of the United States is justification enough for an oppressed minority to be bigoted toward a hegemonic demographic.)

This difficulty manifested as i tried to explain to my highschool friend (I was in college now) that the higher rates of murders of black men, and acquittals of white offenders, was not comparable to the simple law of large numbers that result in some police violence against white victims. How no one ever sees white on white crime as a racial issue, because white violence is just violence, non-racialized. She, debate students as we were, argued against me.

However, we were arguing about this on a public facebook post, and at some point dozens of her friends began to find, share, and comment on me personally. People dug up pictures of me in bathroom lighting to deny that I was black. (Being of mixed heritage, I don’t have prescriptive, racialized features.) People said I was a stranger harassing her, even though we had been friends for nearly 5 years.

When i confronted her about who these friends were, about how the company she keeps was actively being racist toward me to defend her, her only response was, “i’m not responsible for what they say.”

After that incident, I had to stop talking to her. Because anything we talked had a pretty high likelihood of getting harassed by her other friends. Like many people experienced on facebook, she remained on the list but interaction dropped to 0.

YEARS later, I discover that she had, at some point, changed her mind about police brutality and the race inequality issue. (A post about that is what had me thinking i could reconnect.) I also learned that she had become the victim of assault and imprisonment by a violent, inhuman misogynist whom she had tried to break up with. Her family found her after a week and forcefully removed her without the intervention of the police, who visited the man’s house once and left without investigation. I felt somewhat responsible, because years earlier I encouraged her to go to college rather than immediately jumping into the life of a married, air-force spouse. (I grew up in an airforce family, and I know about the politics of being married in the military.) I encouraged her to both get married and go to college, but that boy didn’t like the idea and the two broke up.

(I recognize that this is an irrational thought. But I was raise Catholic, and my brain likes to invent reasons for why everything tangentially related to me is therefore my fault.)

The thought I have been having recently is something of a warning to white women. Whiteness, the power and the privileges that affords, will not protect you from the violence of sexism. Nor will being Straight. Nor will being Cisgender. Nor will conforming to the standards of men, because patriarchy is inconsistent and self-serving. Those white knights who will protect you idealistically online will not be there to help you when you need it.

Family, friends, and community will help you, and those things are not fully realized if they are contingent on your conformity to sexist standards. You need family, friends, and community, as well as an understanding of violence and how to wield violence yourself in self defense.

There are many “communities” online that will try to turn your blame and your hatred to anything but the hegemonic power dynamics of our society. People will try to weaponize your vulnerability in the political world for their own ends. The answer is not to accept your vulnerability as the disenfranchised woman in society. The answer is to form community with all the other disenfranchised and minority people, to make society deconstruct the violent expectations placed upon your identity and destroy the source of that vulnerability.

It is strange to say it like this, but in this society, Blackness is synonymous with the history of oppression, not just the specific oppression of African Americans. Women, of course white women included, suffer oppression as well. You, to a certain extent, know Blackness. You know it in the way every racial minority knows Blackness. You know it in the way every LGBTQA+ person knows Blackness. You know it in the way that every man who is violently forced to conform to masculinity that doesn’t match their personality knows Blackness. You know it in the way every poor person who can’t afford food, school, healthcare, or a home knows Blackness. Blackness intersects every oppression a person can experience in the modern day, and there is empathy in Blackness. There is community in Blackness. So seek Blackness

[socratetris]

Explanation is Backward to His Evidence

First time encountering Nicholas Humphrey's philosophy of mind. Articles like these frustrate me, because so much time is spent on the travel-blog style biography such that you lose the thread on the actual ideas expressed and argued for.

I suppose thats what reading his book is for, however, from the article I gather this:

Humphrey is an epiphenominalist, meaning he sees consciousness as a byproduct of biology.

Rather than concluding that consciousness is vestigial, like most epiphenominalists, he argues that sensation is a higher part of the system, which in turn creates eu-social behaviors.

Evidence from his psychology research: humans/other animals with working sense organs (eyes) but retain the interprative part of the brain (a specific cortex named in article) can learn to behave as though they have sight, or accurately describe things they consciously cannot "see".

In other words, they lack a "sensation" - the experience of seeing - but grasp the "perception" the brain's interpretation of the visual data. They lack a sensate, but retain the percept.

4. Humphreys, as an epiphenominalist, who believe consciousness is the by-product, then describes "consciousness" as the sensation through an unstated premise. By saying things like the research shows "the system works even without consciousness." But the subjects do have an awareness of things, that awareness just isn't in sensation. It's purely conceptual.

By getting this backwards, by justifying an explanation of an already held position, imo Humphreys has missed the biggest conclusion these studies might draw for Ontological Philosophy of Mind.

A. Most philosophy of mind assumes conscious ness is the highest order of the tasks that the mind is capable of doing. That because sense-organs came first, sensation would be the first step of consciousness. (Well, movement/motorics would be closer to first, but just put that aside for now.)

B. Thanks to Humphrey's research, we may consider this postulate "Perception of sense data -percepts- actually precede sensation of sense data - sensates." In other words, knowing precedes feeling.

C. Consciousness is in perception-knowing, not in sensation-feeling.

The system of purely conceptual consciousness, of knowing and acting without the experiences of sight, sound, smell, touch, taste, pain, etc may in fact be self-sufficient for life. Having sensation is thus the higher-order level of detail that could inform the consciousness. Like Humphreys says, feeling means consciousness has another data set of subjectivity that then enables empathy, sympathy, sociability, creation of values/meaning, and any other eu-social expression. As well as all of the flaws that comes with, such as value-laden perception and confirmation bias.

(He's just wrong about where he is defining consciousness. The research/evidence is still genius!)

Evolutionarily speaking, this would also mean that the human animal evolved such that subjectivity, feelings, and value ladenness are superior to facts in terms of survival, making babies, and thriving. Subjectivity developed on top of objectivity.

Obviously, we need not devalue facts and research (we are relying on facts and research for this conclusion). Instead, we can say definitively that the facts of the subjective mind do in fact matter to the objective mind. Feelings don't have to care about facts, but facts do in fact care about feelings!

#philo thoughts #philosophy #ontology #existentialism #philosophy of mind #psychology

[socratetris]

an eloquent take down of the "people are self diagnosing autism to be trendy and for attention" take that morons have been echoing on tiktok

[socratetris]

Construction Workers "just fine"

Pulling this quote from the article as an example of flimsy reasoning, "Think about all the manual laborers, they push, pull and lift heavy stuff everyday as part of their occupation. They do just fine, performing their job everyday for many years."

Doing a quick google search after learning that the muscle absorbing extra nuclei from surrounding cells is a part of the muscle hyptertrophy process. It comes of with "Nuclei Overload Training" which is essentially extremely high volume and weight of a single muscle group for extended period of time to break past a plateau. (The article suggests every day for a full month based one... well they just guessed.)

They bring up the concern that this sort of training could result in overuse or overtraining, then dismissed the concern based on the above quote.

Perfect examples of pulling from a lack of knowledge as evidence. Construction, as an industry, has extremely high levels of personal injury, stress-induced injury, and unreported injury due to a culture of bearing through the pain. The main strategies employed by construction workers to recover are most often just sleep, over the counter pain relievers, hot or cold showers, and eating a lot of food to overcome the extreme energy use. These rest strategies are not timed and measured like a bodybuilder or powerlifter might.

They are a lifestyle.

Injury is often ignored, because family has to eat and pay bills and send their kid through school.

A general practice doctor, or a rehabilitation specialist should be consulted before saying that construction workers are "just fine" and without injury. Working despite their injuries is often the norm.

Now the article does not really suggest one should do this kind of training. (Surely there may be a way to get the same effect without going to failure if one was to exercise every day for a month.) Ultimately it isn't dangerous to say the method may not be practical.

But being dismissive of health and safety is what I didn't like about this.

#Exercise #health & fitness #fitness #body building #bodybuilder

[socratetris]

Completely Coincidental...

Hanlim Gym: Any resemblance to persons, organizations, religions, places, or events are purely coincidental and used in a fictitious manner.

Also Hanlim Gym: HEY GUYS LET’S WARCH RETURN OF THE DRAGON, THAT'S BRUCE LEE, THE STRONGEST MAN IN THE WORLD! WE STUDY THE VERY SPECIFIC MARTIAL ARTS STYLE JEET KUN DO AND NEVER LOSE AND OUR POWER LEVEL IS 9999!

https://www.webtoons.com/en/sports/hanlim-gym/episode-37/viewer?title_no=2850&episode_no=37

#webtoon #webcomic #bruce lee

[socratetris]

Descend - True Mystery Stand Battle

This, by far, one of the most slept-on comic I have encountered while reading Webtoon. Descend is every bit as tense and well paced as a JoJo's bizarre adventure stand battle. The characters are clearly fleshed out to even the minute details, such as distinct speech and thought patterns. The world is "empty" but there is a clear mystery of how this spaceless void is set up to be the perfect space for this young girl (singular?) and this masked figure as they battle with their cleverness ans force of will.

#webcomic #webtoon

[socratetris]

My most hated trope in fighting/action comics is when the characters stop mid-fight to go "We'll finish this by putting all of our power into one last punch!" It's just not as exciting as following the flow of a fight, or a surprise upset. It's not how fights happen. Yes, clashes happen all the time, attacks make you vulnerable to counters, and the moment that two fighters connect a hit at almost the same time is cool. It's the calling it out, as though they are going to expend a meter like a video game, is lame. If they could do that, the whole fight should have just been that from the start. And that kind of fight is called The Boxer web comic, which had lame, 2 panel fights as the climax to long build-up chapters.

Now imagine a story they increasing relies on long-fighrs without as much story build up, and they still end on the "one final hit" thing multiple times in a single fight. That Hanlim Gym. Sorry to break your dream, Bruce Lee was cool. He was not "the strongest man that ever lived."

#webcomic #webtoon

[socratetris]

Video games need to calm down and go to bed

Tetrisweeper is a very addictive fusion of Tetris and Minesweeper!

Read More & Play The Full Game, Free (Windows & Browser)

[socratetris]

Celebrating Black History Month with @blackexcellence -- This video explores the cultural influence on the game Warframe, particularly from the ancient Egyptian Sebayt “The Dispute Between A Man and His Ba.” This video goes into the meaning of the sebayt as well as other cultural influences expressing in this story quest

#blackexcellence365 #video games #philosophy #warframe

[socratetris]

Celebrating Black History Month with @blackexcellence -- This is a performance of an ancient Egyptian Sebayt, a term for “wisdom literature.” Due to its conversational format, “The Dispute Between A Man and His Ba” is considered one of the earliest philosophical works in human literature.

I had to do extensive work with 4 of the primary/professional translations of the text, and even learned some hieroglyphic translations, to try to finish some untranslated characters and transform the work into something that would fit natural speaking for a performance in English.

#blackexcellence365 #philosophy #warframe #video games #black history

[socratetris]

Celebrating Black History Month with @blackexcellence -- Now this is a very old one for my channel. This was a discussion about Assassin’s Creed Origins, and how I eventually went from feeling seen through the cultural depictions of this game to not having that feeling of relatability by the end.

#blackexcellence365 #video games #assassin's creed

[socratetris]

To kick of my contribution to this, I’d like to share a couple videos I made on the ancient Egyptian Sebayt, “Dispute between a man and his ba.” The first video is a dramatic performance with fellow essayist Daniel Santos. The second video is presenting how the Sebayt inspired the video game Warframe in the quest The New War. Hope you enjoy!

https://youtube.com/watch?v=NnSqj7JGgZc&feature=shares

https://youtube.com/watch?v=XJ4dflI_MGQ&feature=shares

February is here, and that can only mean one thing: it’s BlackExcellence365, back for our fifth year right here on Tumblr. This is a celebration of all things Black culture and history, and it’s not just for February—this is a community celebration every day of every week of the year. This year we will be highlighting Black artists. So join us each month, as we will be exploring Black creativity with a series of themes such as history, power and activism, and PRIDE. 

Introducing February’s theme: Black History 

If you are a Black artist or creative, join in, follow, and share your art related to Black History using the tag #BlackExcellence365. Let’s lean into our creativity and explore Black Excellence through art. Selected posts will be featured, gifted free blazes🔥, or given a spot on radar. 

Keep your eyes peeled each month for your chance to showcase your expressions of Black Excellence. You will be able to do so as we explore artists here and across Tumblr over on Meet The Artist, Artist Picks, and Artist Alley— it doesn’t matter whatever your discipline: music, writing, photography, dance, fashion, film, and anything in between. 

Welcome back to #BlackExcellence365 ✊🏿✊🏾✊🏽!

#blackexcellence365 #video games #warframe #black history

[socratetris]

I am a simple man. I see giant hand; I think thing is cool; I want thing.

Bionic Bay is a dark Sci-Fi cinematic platforming adventure with fast and fluid movement and the ability to instantly swap locations with objects!

Read More & Play The Beta Demo, Free (Steam)