Where I keep my Writing

[thectower]

Getting Intersectional about Emotional Perception

I'm doing a big write up about the alt-right and the culture industry, but I wanted to discuss emotional perception. This is a phenomenon i've run into a lot while working with autistic people and is, in my mind, one of the core elements of autism.

Social Emotional Awareness is the ability to intuit and internalise the complex emotional state of yourself and others. It is a felt sense that provides social context through emotional responses. It is developed over the course of your life through repeated trial and error. It is also what gives rise to social cues as they are informed by that Social Emotion. If someone forrows their brow, I know what that means because when I'm unsure, I furrow mine. I learnt that a natural smile isn't just bearing teeth, but partially closing my eyes and showing just my top teeth because I see people bear their teeth it triggers an emotional responce. Emotional perception is fundamental to allistic society, and is what gives rise to the unspoken "social contract". The "social contract" is the mutually understood expectations for what cues evoke what emotions.

I want to highlight this because i've been thinking a lot about edgy-humour. Edgy-humour is often offputting because it tends to cross a social line. They are words that evoke a physical emotional reaction, like seeing bear their teeth while smiling. Cringe is also a similar physical emotional reaction, for example.

But, I have come to recognise that when you dont have that Social Emotional Awareness, edgy, humour represents something else. In my experience, edgy-humour is used for one core reason: it is an expression of agency.

Stick with me

Telling someone without Social Emotional Awareness not to make edgy jokes is like telling a completely blind person not to look at the sun. Like, they can look at it all they want, it doesnt hurt. It might hurt me, or any other sighted person, but it doesnt hurt them. Then that restriction is enforced. Like, all the sighted people start alienating the blind person because they looked towards the sun. And I dont think its so far fetched to believe that if you were the blind person, you'd probably poke the bear a bit. You'd absolutely look towards the sun to bother people and make fun of a dumb rule.

That's what its like. Its open defiance of a rule imposed because of a sense you dont have.

Which is interesting. Because in many ways it does well to explain the opinions of a lot of these tone-deaf chronically online assholes. Trying to systemicaly impose social rules actually does feel like "censorship" to people who cant understand why those rules exist.

The larger piece I'm writing basically makes the claim that large swarths of the alt-right aren't real. It is people without Social Emotional Awareness standing in opposition to rules they literally cannot understand, and the desperate business men who are appointed leader and stay there because now they can finally pay their bills and are in too deep to get out. I think there is a certain legitimacy to the idea that most believe they're "just joking".

And look, none of this is to justify anything. Only to try to see the humanity behind it, that like anti-vaxxers they're victims to their own ideology, in an attempt to find better ways to combat it.

[thectower]

For a while i thought i was the last person I knew who used tumblr. What i have since discovered is that, no, actually all of my friends are absolutely still here. I just dont know what their blogs are.

And outside of a small handful of people, i fuck with that. I like that this is a space disconnected from the real world. I like that that is the standard. I like that the few people i know irl who I am mutuals with are people who get that and are both people who trust me and who i can trust to be freaky around in this weirdo psudo-anonymous space.

What I have also discovered is that that is how most enfranchised people use their social media platforms of choice. But tumblr has an extra layer that comes with it being a little bit shameful. Its publically normal to have a TikTok. Its not to have a tumblr. People will ask you for your TikTok. People won't for tumblr.

That said, X is absolutely the new genetation freak zone. Like, what tumblr was in 2013 is just X nowadays.

Idk. I think people assume too easily that Instagram and Facebook is the gold standard for what social media looks like and for 99% of people, Meta is absolutely the norm-core, basicmaxxing, unc-pilled online company. But i don't think the split is down the middle. But for every Instagram account there is a freak on X doing it right.

In fact, i reckon the cross over is so much bigger than people give it credit for. I went on a date with a girl who was the platonic ideal of an iphone face woman. She was intimidating in how disney princess she looked. And her favourite movie was Avatar. Like the blue people one. That's full freak behaviour. I wanna read her wattpad.

I dont know where I'm going with this but i think what I'm trying to say is that so many more people are freaks than we give them credit for and its nice to have a space where we can do that in peace

[thectower]

Ever since getting into magic, watching it's success grow has been fascinating. This has been furthered all the more by watching the rise of collectable card games in general post pandemic.

In that time I've speculated on what will cause the game to fail. Afterall, you're investing so heavily in a secondary market, and all things collapse. What will that look like.

I think that Magic will fall into one of two categories. First, the nostalgia for the game will transcends generations, and valuable cards will continue to hold value well after the game stops being made. Similar to baseball cards. At this point, the market will crash long after I'm dead.

The second is that the market will collapse 5-10 years after Mark Rosewater retires. Mark represents two things to magic. A strong creative force with a love for pushing boundaries and the core of the game's design philosophy. He knows what buttons to push and when to pull back. Something no one else can really replicate. When he departs, Magic the gathering will become something else. Similar to what Nintendo had become since Iwata's passing.

I think Wizard's can maintain nostalgia for the game for a couple years following, but will in turn, burn the candle at both ends and eventually burn out. The IP will pivot away from the card game, and this will kill the market.

[thectower]

Most conversations around game systems are neurotic. Like, at what point are folks going to stop being surprised when Nintendo knocks it out of the park with another underpowered system? They havent tried to meaningfully compete on power since the Gamecube, which was a flop, and that was only a home console. Their handhelds have always been under powered.

I'm feeling very

About this, but idk. It shits me.

Part of what shits me is the kind of person trying to talk about it. And i say this from experience, i was like this. But what these people try to do is speak objectively. To review a game objectively. To review a console objectively. The problem with this mindset is that it is both delusional and shortsighted. The two things this approach is trying to overcome.

What makes objective analysis delusional is that it requires absolutely emphasis on quantitative metrics. But games are a medium whose quality lies in felt sense, and that's not a quantative metric. Undertale is a game that cannot be analysed effectively through objectivity. For all intents and purposes, it is a bad game. The code is trash, it is poorly optimised, its broad tone is inconsistent and unserious. An yet, it is an amazing experience.

Further, so much bias is placed on specific metrics to govern quality in games that they overshadow the experience. The Steam Deck has less powerful hardware than the ROG Ally. But the games it supports run better. That's not a metric observable through specs alone. The same with the Switch. Yes, it was less powerful than the Xbox Series X. But it comes with two controllers out of the box, that can be used to make one big controller than can be held in seperate hands at a distance. Games can be played comparably both docked and in handheld mode, and handheld mode isn't limited to using the controllers attached. The experience of the Switch is entirely unique, and far far more versatile. To the point where the Switch has emergent gameplay features. You discover as you play. The console, not just the games, is fun.

This is what makes objective analysis shortsighted also. There is a far more fascinating and lush world of experience to unlock once you cast off the shackles of objectivity. In doing so, you produce a far more honest analysis. Suddenly, your experience combines with your stance as a reviewer. For example, people continue to say the only reason people buy a switch is for the exclusives. But I can say that the reason I havent bought a switch 2 is because the upgrade from Switch 1 to Switch 2 doesnt really offer anything more than the Switch 1. Mario Kart World doesnt offer anything I want over Mario Kart 8. Pokopia doesnt offer anything that Cobblemon doesnt. Donkey Kong Bonanza is just Donkey Kong Odyssey. So why buy it?

When the Switch 1 dropped, it consolidated both by 3DS and my Wii U and that was exciting. It was revolutionary in that it solved more problems than existed. It was a strict upgrade to both handheld systems and consoles. Then it also gave me two controllers, cartridges kids wouldn't eat, and a system I could take to parties. I didn't care if Pokemon ran like dogpiss, I could play it on my TV and the Bus.

This latest generation of consoles is, objectively speaking, the best there has ever been. But it is also the least inspired, so i dont give a fuck.

[thectower]

I have a love hate relationship with the term "Kill Your Darlings". I think the issue is that I use the advice at the wrong time. My darlings are what gets pen on paper. My darlings inspire me. My darlings are what compels me to try to create a world that suits them even though it will invariably outgrow it. But that first word is written for my darlings

[thectower]

I have locat friend who grew up in Texas and we really get chatting about cultural differences a bunch. I kinda love it. I dont realise how different things are between Aus and the US until we do chat.

But one of the things that always shocks me is the difference in how we approach our attrocities against our respective First Nation's peoples.

Like, so in Australia the way we're largely taught about it is like: 1770 Captain Cook founded Australia. He brough convincts. Then, we black out for a couple hundred years. And now, First Nation's people suffer and there was a fence. Uhh the uhh Stolen Generation. One of our Prime Minister's said sorry.

And in America its like: in the year 16XX John Spaniard founded America and we SAVED ALL THE NATIVE PEOPLE FROM THEIR OWN WICKED WAYS. EVERYTHING WE DID WAS GOOD AND ITS BEEN AMAZING EVER SINCE.

And i just find that fascinating. Like I knew that we were taught everything in school, but only because there were blanks. Its the Catholic influence, we dont talk about it. But America actively rebrands these attrocities. Maybe part of it is that The Stolen Generation are still around and so much of what we did is still happening.

Idk. Food for thought

[thectower]

One of the things I find truly fascinating about Machine Learning Image generation is the interplay between the images generated and where we look. What I mean by this is that many AI images I have seen look normal if I only look at the parts of the image that come naturally. Once I look beyond that, the cracks show.

There are two fascinating things about this. First is how clearly it shows that we very rarely look at a full image. It takes a lot of time and often a lot of effort to break out of where our eyes are drawn. From a graphic design perspective, I love this. From a broader artistic perspective, its a nice reminder that no one will ever see my work with the same granularity I do.

Second, however, is that this shows a clear bias towards the human perspective. I don't know how these images are trained, but whatever the Model is learning goes beyond literal images. There is a human, at some point, pulling a lever, offering a reward, and the bias of that person to not look beyond what catches their eye is evident.

An interesting way of looking at this is like blur. Blur is often added to art, games or film, to artificially draw the eye towards clearer parts. It mirrors our own eyes' ability to focus. What this could be is a sort of blue effect. It doesn't use blur in the traditional sense, but it recreates the same experience.

Super interesting stuff

[thectower]

My only hang up with AI note taking apps is that they aren't note taking apps.

Note taking is a deeply personal process, it is a process of making sense of information given in a way that makes sense to you and identifying parts that dont. Taking notes is also a method of internalising information. You take notes to remember stuff, not because you can refer back to your notes but because the act of writing it down in a personalised way commits it to memory.

Notes are different for everyone. They reflect how a given person learns. So automatically taking general notes isn't note taking. Its summarising.

Which is fine. Its marketting. Its talking about a specific thing in general language in order to communicate its use-value better. But it is marketting. Its not the same thing. And you wont get the same things out of it.

[thectower]

One of the most fundamental unaswered question is philosophy is that of substances. If we follow the causal chain of a single thing all the way back, we are lead to wonder where it all started. In philosophy the answer to this question breeds a nunber of answers. That all things originate with God or some higher power, that all things originate from the mind or that all things originate from extension, the physical world itself.

However, each answer has its own issues and can be shown to be true given a different context. Instead, I want to offer an alternative explaination. Really, a criticism of the very practice. One that is comparritively boring, but I've found often the boring explaination tends to be correct. The answer is, instead, that the question is frought. That the first cause is unknowable, that it preceeds both knowledge and knowability.

Consider the chicken and egg problem. Here we are asked what came first, the chicken or the egg. A chicken comes from an egg, but an egg is laid by a chicken. The problem is circular in that each step relies on its following step as its anticedent. However, the answer to this riddle is that each chicken and egg in the chain in minutely different. No two chickens or eggs are identicle, and that following the chain you'll find a gradual transition from a proto-chicken or egg that in no way resembles the chickens or the eggs we know now. No one link in the chain creates it, but when inspecting two points on the chain at a great enough distance, those links don't resemble each other. We call this process of gradual change evolution.

Evolution is often misunderstood. It is a theory used to explain obversations. It isn't a force in and of itself, and so we cannot discuss evolution as having an impact on the world. Instead, the world produces behaviour we describe as evolutionary. As such, many inexplainable human behaviours can be explained within an evolutionary context as "because humans who developed these skills had children." As such, we can contextualise any distinct human trait as either allowing us to have more children, or not causing out death before hand. I say this because its the context in which I want to discuss acquisition of knowledge.

Learning is an evolved skill. This means there is a time before learning. But in order for there to be learning, there must be something to learn about. We return to the circular logic of the chicken-egg problem. Given the evolutionary context we're discussing this, we can reasonably say that learning and things to learn both evolved in tandum in a similar way.

And so, I offer my explaination of substance. That if you follow the causal chain, what you find is not a first cause, a substance, but that meaning, and the means of finding meaning, slowly disolves. The first cause cannot be known, not because is the end point of infinite regress, but because it preceeds both knowledge and the means to aquire knowledge.

[thectower]

Recently people have raised the issue that Netflix shows feel like they were filmed for Tiktok. What I mean is that many of the pivotal shots of their flagship shows pool the important parts in the centre of the frame. This makes it easy to translate those parts into virtical videos for Tiktok or Instagram. This is being described as clear selling out. That the integrity of the medium is being sacrificed for the sake of advertising. But this isn't good criticism.

Adapting cinematography techniques to facilitate new technology or for advertising is not new. It has been around for as long as there has been commercial film and television, and it is a testament to the cinematographer to be able to balance cinematography that is interesting to both a widescreen audience and those who watch in vertical screens.

I had recently watching 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kurbirck's first colour film. Is it so hard to believe that at the time people believed Kubrick sold out because he started making colour film; that people saw his attemept to imbue style into the new hotness as just cheap marketting? What's truly different is that we weren't there as those conversations happened. We live in a world where what was and what came after are all condenced back down into what was.

What we ought to criticise isn't whether this technique is itself good or bad, but how well its done. Does it rob a scene of its weight? Does it suite the tone? Does it strengthen a scene, making it better? It is perhaps an unfortunate necessity for some shows, but that doesn't mean its meer presence is bad. How its implemented makes all the difference.

[thectower]

Someone once said that an enthusiast is someone who will sacrifice convenience for experience. On its own this is a valuable standard to set because it establishes a healthy boundary between casual enjoyers and more avid fans. A music enthusiast will spend lots of money on quality, yet awkward sound systems and headphones. A film enthusiast will brave foreign language film to find an experience that can't be had anywhere else.

Its also valuable because it informs conversations around accessibility. Accessiblity, for most people, is a matter of convenience and as a hobby becomes more accessible there is often blowback from enthusiasts. I say this because I often hear people go on about how much harder things used to be. Games used to take more work to play, stuff like that. But what's often forgotten is that, at that time, it was a much less popular hobby. Further, its just not true. For every good game that's hard to play, there were 10-20 even 30 that were easier and those where the popular options.

All of this to say, I'm proposing a new litmus test for gaming enthusiasts. The Fallout New Vegas test. If someone is willing to put in the work to get that game up and running for the sake of the experience it offers, they're an enthusiast. There are other ways to test it. I havent played every game. But I think it sets a healthy bar between people who prioritise a fun and convenient experience with those willing to go into the inaccessible to find what lies within.

The reason why I chose Fallout New Vegas as well is because the game was not well received upon release. It wasn't some amazing experience popular at its time, but a game that developed a cult following from those stubborn enough to meet it on its own terms.

[thectower]

Can we answer the question "Why is there anything?"

No.

Let's readjust the question. "Why does my house exist?"

We could answer it any number of ways: because there was an empty plot of land. Because a family wanted to build a house. Because a landlord needed a passive income. Because a development project set out to build homes in an area. Etc.

Each answer tells a story beginning from before the creation of the house. A story with supporting evidence from before the creation of the house, a paper trail.

Something doesnt have this. If we say that before there was something, there was nothing, then there could be no supportive evidence from before the creation of something. Otherwise, there would have been something before something. And something isn't nothing.

[thectower]

I have a friend who just turned 15. We watch tiktoks on her phone. One was of a young man talking about something. I asked her if he looked old to her. He did.

We don't get older. We always stay the same age, its the young people who get older; who call us old. I used to think older people had a secret club they kept to themselves. Now i think kids do.

You dont lose yourself with age. Your body gives up. It's a miracle we live as long as we do, and often miracles come at a cost. That elderly person whose house is falling apart, whose mail is building up on her kitchen table. She knows. She can't do anything about it.

I was going through some old photos of my grandparents. They were, as they died, exactly who they were in life. The faded parts where photos were exposed contrast the parts that were hidden behind other photos. Ink that slowly faded. A memory imperfectly reconstructed everyone time we remembered it.

[thectower]

I've been answering questions for r/askphilosophy for the better part of a few months now and I feel compelled to address something.

A lot of people seek out philosophy as a means of justification and direction.

What do I mean by this? Many questions we get ask something to the effect of, "Is X moral?" Or "X said this, does that mean Y?"

These are always well intentions questions, but they highlight a distinction between the perception of philosophy and its reality.

The greatest philosophers of all time did not pirsuit a grand theory to impose. They aimed to explain phenomena.

When Kant coined the Categorical Imperative, a simple principle of ethics, he was not trying to define what is or is not ethical. He was trying to explain the underlying logic of what we naturally deem ethical. Of where we naturally draw that line.

In this way, philosophy can't tell us how we should act, only why we do act the way we do.

Im his text, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel prefaced the text by saying, "Philosophy is its own time comprehended in thoughts."

In this way, it is baked into the fabric of philosophy that some thought will become outdated. Afterall, it was writting of a people who had not read that writing yet.

To this end, the application of older philosophy as something we can see as explaining behaviour must be taken with a grain of salt. It may explain people in their own time, but the world is ever changing.

[thectower]

Death of the. How we Draw Conclusions from Incomplete Data.

I want to talk about the relationship between Artist and Viewer.

When we comes to art there is a very old argument about whether the value of a piece of art requires the artist's input. Whether the interpretation of the artist is more or less valuable than that of the person involved.

This is the question that Thomas Malory hoped to answer in his iconic essay Le Morte D'Arthur, or Death of the Author. In the piece, Malory puts forward that the artist's interpretation of their own work holds only as much weight as any singular observer.

In order to discuss this further, I'm going to simplify the issue. At the centre of this conversation is one about the value of interpretation and the role of uncertainty in art. To illustrate this, I'm going to use this image:

What does this image depict?

We might be quick to jump and say that it is a square, but literally speaking, it isn't. It is a series of four corners which imply the shape of a square.

One of the great strengths of humans is our ability to draw meaningful conclusions from incomplete data. When we see this, we recognise the general shape of a square and confidently declare it as such. But it doesn't actually depict that. It only depicts four corners.

In essence, this is what art does. It offers to us an incomplete account of real life, often stylised to emphasise a particular emotion. However, it does not depict, so absolutely that no question can be drawn to its intention, what it is trying to depict. It is incomplete and it is our job as the audience to fill in those gaps.

Now, this is not always intentional. It is possible that the author had gone out of their way to depict something they're intimately familiar with. To perfectly capture an experience they had. But by virtue of not being the author, we do not have that necessary information to interpret that work as the author did. We didn't experience the event. We instead, bring our own experiences.

In this sense, we can say that while the author's intentions are valuable, they are valuable in that those intentions can be lost in communication. They forms the holes, produce an incomplete experience, something for an audience member to fill in.

And to further this, we can see this effect in action by way of this essay. This above image is called: "Square Paper Corners Shadow Transparent Png". It is meant to depict a square. And nevertheless, despite the intention only being to create the image of a square, I have taken that work and filled in gaps which allow me to speak to it as a metaphor for art.

[thectower]

Spoiler culture is this increadible phenomenon and its existence was far more fragile that i ever gave it credit for.

So for a long time I'd tell tell people that my boring super power is the ability to avoid spoilers for a show, game or movie. But as i was reading an interview with Orville Peck for a theatre production he was in, he reveals the twist of his character.

What i realised was that a lot of theatre, especially classical theatre, goes on assuming that the audience is familiar with the source material. The plot, its structure and the characters are already known. The focus is placed on the particular telling and portrayal, things that are difficult to spoil.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have meme humour. There, you have two kinds of relationships with familiarity. First, that familiarity with the source material is required to understand the joke. People who aren't in-the-know can't get the joke. As such, it can't be spoiled. The second is the novelty of the joke runs so deep, and the joke is so quick that even explaining the joke means telling the joke. Very little humour is lost.

So what we see is that spoilers can only exist in this middle ground between absolute familiarity and absolute unfamiliarity.

That's kinda neat

[thectower]

Film Review #38: Longing

“Although the things I perceive and imagine are perhaps nothing at all…. They certainly reside, and are met, within me.” – Rene Descartes.

The closing line to cinematic mastermind John Limbasko’s new film Longing captures the essence of his latest film; an emotional portrayal of the self and the complexities within.

The film follows Drake Portel (portrayed by character actor Greg Daniels), a penniless writer, lost in a hostel in Japan.

The film opens with a start as Portel suddenly awakens in the empty boarding room of a Japanese hostel. He has no memory of the place or how he got there. But, as he struggles to get his bearings, he finds himself quickly falling in love with the young woman Yana, portrayed by Holly Yamagata. The pair are portrayed as ships in the light, passing by, a connection in an otherwise strange place.

Although it is clear Yana shares feeling for Portel, those messages become mixed when they meet. Yamagata's portrayal of love and longing without words juxtapose the cold distance she maintains whenever the pair are on screen together.

It is here where the soundtrack makes its mark. The unique talents of legendary composer Angelo Badalamenti evokes his time working with David Lynch on Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive. He fills each scene with a strange melancholy that feels as once full and empty.

Furthermore, it lays the foundation for the film’s third main character, the hostel itself. A feeling of momentum and instability is created as each scene of the film is shot on a unique set. We are often left disoriented as we cannot get a proper sense of stability in an ever changing environment. Even scenes which take place in the enigmatic ‘courtyard’ maintain a lack of continuity that reinforces the film’s dream-like nature.

It is here where the setting and story collide. Through Yana’s heartbreak performance, she reveals that this was not the first time the two had met. He had been with her in the hostel before and the two had fallen in love. But when he left, her heart was broken. And when he returned with no memory of her, she couldn't stand to see him.And as the narrative goes on the two are able to begin to mend their relationship and fall for each other again.

But before true resolution could be reached, we hard-cut to Portel in his bed. The noise of the world outside his New York apartment overwhelms us as he realises it had all been a dream. Despite his efforts to fall back to sleep, the film continues on as Portel returns to a normal life. While this new, grounded world, one of continuity and consistency leaves us feeling both discomforted and at ease for the first time.

It is often said that the ‘it was all a dream’ trope is a cheap cliché, undermining the stakes and intentions of a narrative, but here it cements the film’s emotional goal; longing for closure that will never come. The choice to continue the film for 20 minutes following this realisation helps that feeling sink in. We are robbed of what could have been, and in experiencing that, we are reminded of an indescribable yet familiar feeling.

“Our dreams don’t bring closure. I wanted to remind you of that.” said Limbasko in an interview for Cinéma du Monde. “He’s having a great night’s sleep, and dreaming of love. But that’s not real. We want it, but we can't have it.”

Limbasko has identified the 1997 Austrian psychological thriller Funny Games, as an inspiration. Drawing from the film’s insistence on leaving its audience uncomfortable, disoriented and unsatisfied. “They don’t stop. Even when the family gets away, they come back. You feel like shit but that’s the point.”

This motif of striking deep and unusual emotional states isn’t new to Limbasko’s work, with many of his films playing with its audience’s feelings.

His previous film Etterath Success followed a domestic terrorist who spends his life planning and waiting for the right moment to plant and detonate a bomb. The film’s climax, however, is delivered half way through the film, with the second half following the emotional journey of getting away with it such a crime and what it means to lead a life after your purpose has been fulfilled.

“You know when you go out. Its loud at the bar. People are talking. Music is loud. The cars are loud too. Then you get home and your ears are ringing. Its like that.”

His short film, We Shall (Not) Overcome, was the first of his films to explore these emotional states. Here we follow Kelly Knightingale, played by amateur actress Danielle Brochevski, who begins her first day at a new job wearing high heels two sizes too large.

Its Lambasko’s continued commitment to unusual emotional resonance which has helped Longing stand out as it toured the independent film circuit. Leaving many viewers at a loss, but nevertheless with a lasting impression.

We look forward to the coming strangeness Limbasko makes us feel.

8.5/10