Alternatively, you could STFU

Is there a meme that's the opposite of that Onion “Worst person you know makes a valid point” headline? When someone you respect makes repulsive assertions. 

Patrick McKenzie is sharp, and I like his writing (“Whether one describes them as tools or weapons depends mostly on whether one touches them with the hand or the face”). I also like his discussions of financial institutions enforcing U.S. laws. It's a complicated issue, especially when groups like Collective Shout can use those enforcement mechanisms to successfully attack speech they disagree with. 

But sometimes it’s challenging for me to understand where the fuck McKenzie is coming from. 

In his 17,000-word post about the indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), I understood two points:

1. It seems likely that the SPLC has broken existing laws as they were written, and
2. Some financial industry executives had to attend unpleasant meetings from 2017 to 2021. 

Much of the financial services industry relies on an SPLC list to identify people linked to terrorists, but that list is managed without any public oversight. Now the SPLC is linked to people who terrorized the financial services industry, and they could be punished accordingly.

It's difficult to tell who has the moral high ground. McKenzie is not overtly supporting Trump, but he extensively criticizes the SPLC's failed effort to restrain him. 

(Should we have a problem with that effort? The SPLC was formed to fight hate groups. Trump's white nationalist administration rounds up undesirables and puts them in camps. The fight seems ideologically consistent to me!)

After struggling through the entire post, I finally identified a third point: that the SPLC list is problematic, and the financial services industry needs something better. 

I can't argue with that, but I’m annoyed that the whole thing reads like a victory lap from someone who believes that the ends can never be used to justify the means. It tells the story of the United States successfully blocking the SPLC from accessing funds after that group's extrajudicial efforts failed to block a convicted felon from doing the same thing.  

I can’t object to the principle, but I hate both when and how the point is being made.

Image credit: hans/ Pixabay

(The fox seemed appropriate because of that “the hedgehog knows one big thing” quote that made such a stir.)   

  

Meaningful divides

I largely think “generational divides” are bullshit — there’s often more variation within generations than between them.

On the other hand:

Here’s the thing: I experienced physical pain sitting through an hour and a half of video discussing Vampir: Kyuuketsuki Densetsu. (Okay, I ran the video at 2x speed, but it still ended up being about 30 minutes longer than necessary.) I wish it was an article, because I could have skimmed the text a hell of a lot faster. 

After enduring the video, I'm now writing out the reviewer’s assertion that Vampir benefits from an inverse Harvest Moon mechanic:

• It takes place in settlements full of characters who have daily routines.
• You visit townspeople to strengthen your relationships with them.
• Each relationship can only be strengthened once a day.
• As your relationships advance, you learn different pieces of each character’s story.

(This is also something you see in Story of Seasons, Stardew Valley, or any other relationship-building title.) The guy narrating the YouTube video was captivated by the way Vampir inverts this trope — as a vampire, you’re working to erase everything that makes these people human. Your character patiently builds these relationships and learns backstories as part of a calculated effort to amass an army of mindless thralls. 

Meanwhile, your computer-controlled opponent is running around the map and trying to win people over to his own cause. It’s notable that while the reviewer felt that the experience was bland and tedious, the game's character-driven narratives made a strong impression. I had hoped to pick up more lessons in game design from that video, but I'll settle for seeing how good storytelling can shore up mediocre gameplay.

Elsewhere in bland and tedious, I read two books in October: Greg Bear’s Moving Mars and Terry Goodkind’s Running with the Demon. Neither one was particularly rewarding. 

I was hoping that Moving Mars would be more along the lines of Blood Music or Steel Beach (although it turns out that John Varley wrote Steel Beach; I'm not sure why I misremembered the author as Bear). Moving Mars ended up being more of a political thriller? Lots of factional maneuvering to develop and control a technology that is offscreen for most of the book. The text was divided into thirds, and I wish the story began with the final third, where they’re actually applying the technology and making things happen. 

I never got into Terry Goodkind’s Shannara books —several people recommended them when I was growing up, but I found them overstuffed with description and not very interesting. I always wondered whether I had tried reading them too young. Now that I’m older, I know that's not the case; I still find them overstuffed with description and not very interesting.

Edited to note that an observant reader pointed out how I confused Terry Goodkind with Terry Brooks. It was Brooks who wrote the Shannara series, but that still didn't make Running with the Demon very interesting.  

Image credit: hans/ Pixabay   

Interactive fiction and generative AI

This post starts with a shoutout to Bruno Dias for three reasons:

1. For writing a blog post about generative AI that influenced a mammoth discussion thread on the Interactive Fiction Community Forums;
2. For having the ability to politely ignore a poster who was too clueless to realize that Dias not only wrote the post cited in their discussion, but had also actively commented in the thread; and
3. For the observation that this year’s AI-generated entries caught a rake in the face.

Maybe explicit rules aren't needed to ban generative AI from the Interactive Fiction Competition? Those types of rules are difficult to implement, especially for IFcomp, which relies on volunteers.

On the other hand, Parsercomp 2025 saw some drama related to generative AI and irregular voting patterns. There's a certain type of GenAI evangelist who persistently refuses to take a hint. Overall, I’m conflicted about the best way forward.

I mean, I prefer to treat judges like adults, which is an argument I've made regarding other concerns about “selection bias.” Start by assuming they can, you know, apply their own judgment, and have robust measures in place to prevent bad actors from gaming the voting system.

That’s what made the original post from Dias so alarming; it described a plausible scenario where rational judges had incentives to abandon IFcomp as a forum for creative human expression. 

After seeing how everything played out this year, I'm thinking that playing and rating entries (including at least a few GenAI works assessed fairly against their peers) is going to be an important part of ensuring that interactive fiction remains a safe space of creative weirdos.

(Elsewhere in game jams and creative weirdos, it's worth noting that November is the PicoSteveMo jam. In previous years, it was responsible for Dolan's Cadillac and Stand Elsewhere, so keep an eye on what develops this year.)

Image credit: lscottewart / Pixabay