You Know The Drill

We’re being asked to conform to an orthodoxy which we haven’t had a say in
That.

From academics to high priests in two easy steps…

Don’t know if this has been posted here already, but GarbageHuman appears to be back.
https://twitter.com/Gee2TheAitch

GarbageHuman appears to be back.
From which, I see that the Los Angeles Times thinks that people in wheelchairs aren’t doing enough hiking.
[ Added: ]
Sadly, the Los Angeles Times is paywalled, and I’m not inclined to encourage them in cash form. But from other reactions to the piece, it seems to include the standard, near-ubiquitous question-begging, whereby statistical differences in group activity and interest are framed by default as some systemic and nefarious exclusion. Generally, with “whiteness” lurking in there somewhere, along with intimations of racism.
But if someone can’t bring themselves to engage in some supposedly desired activity simply because they don’t “see themselves represented” and therefore don’t “feel comfortable,” then it seems to me they’re not really trying and are basically making excuses.

If you say so
https://twitter.com/Gee2TheAitch/status/1370821237186949122

‘Yes, my adoptive daughter resisted arrest and shot a cop but why did he let himself get shot? Isn’t it really his fault?’
https://t.co/2JcShIZngs

But if someone can’t bring themselves to engage in some supposedly desired activity simply because they don’t “see themselves represented” and therefore don’t “feel comfortable,” then it seems to me they’re not really trying and are basically making excuses.
That.

That.
As I mentioned the last time this subject cropped up, the East Asian walkers and hikers I see in the nearby Peak District – and people just enjoying a modest stroll in pleasing scenery – don’t seem to be inhibited by their minority status. They don’t seem to require hand-holding or identitarian affirmation. They just, you know, go for a walk. But then, they don’t appear to be steeped in a pernicious and infantilising victimhood culture propagated by lefties week-in, week-out.

I guessed that they mentioned the “big drop” to get a laugh and mess with me.
White men never do this sort of thing to one another. It’s strictly a way that we keep minority chicks in line.

a world where people do a double take when they see a young half-Filipino woman with a whitewater kayak
With the implication that this might be raacism. The reality, of course, is that the people she encounters are not thinking about her much at all, but at most merely noticing someone who looks a little out of the ordinary.

White men never do this sort of thing to one another
I am routinely amazed by how many women take affectionate male “ball-busting” as an attack on their sex, via them.
This, with all the gripes about how “women are socialized to x” or “taught not to y” when there hasn’t been one solitary male involved in that process.
Not to mention the enabling in distinct women’s culture of toxic grudge-holding.
Let’s Have A Conversation about Toxic Femininity, shall we?

In municipal public finance in the U.S. there’s a big financial document called the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, or CAFR. Today I learned that we’re no longer allowed to say the word “CAFR,” because it sounds too much like a South African racial slur.
I’m guessing that some fresh-out-of-college finance clerk just saw Lethal Weapon 2 for the first time and found a way to leave her mark on the profession.

Let’s Have A Conversation about Toxic Femininity, shall we?
Can you imagine the ten-page feature in GQ about how millions of men would rather spend time in an unfinished, unheated garage, watching sports and throwing darts and drinking beer with the other husbands on their block, because they all feel unwelcome in their own homes?
“Jesus, Doug — can’t you go outside if you have to fart like that?”
“Give it a rest, Karen — something needs to counteract the sickening cloud of potpourri saturating this place!”

…but at most merely noticing someone who looks a little out of the ordinary.
But if you actually read the article, she calls up her mentors and they readily agree to go out kayaking with her and others – almost spur of the moment, not usually indicative of shunning. The telling part of the story is when she describes balking at going down one set of rapids. Karl and Joey paddled to the next rapid while the rest of us, the younger, newer paddlers, watched and cheered each other on. We finished up and followed our mentors’ leads. But the author doesn’t want to do what everyone else is doing – following the mentors leads, cheering, pushing to herself to build confidence and ability. So yes, after 2 years she still feels very ill at ease and runs into trouble in one of the rapid sections. But the issues don’t appear remotely related to any “half Filipina” or “woman of color”. In fact the overall gist of the article seems to be that the author overestimated her ability and confidence but if there were more kayakers of color, easier kayaking runs would be performed. OK, but maybe you just need to stay with more beginner groups suited to your ability. Sort of like more traditional “running groups” – you need to join one that actually matches your running level, and you may have to try several before you find a good fit. Pantone shades haves little to do with this.

have NO CLUE on how to behave in the wilderness. The amount of damage and trash they leave behind
Ouch. My own personal knowledge is extremely limited, dating back to when I was in Scouting and encountered badly behaved affirmative action campers.

“long time oppression keeping [victim group de jour] from the outdoors”
The question-begging and unearned assertions appear to be obligatory. And somehow this has become the default explanation for this inflated micro-woe. Whether in the States or over here, it’s the same template.

Since this is an open thread, may I present one of the most cretinous and illogical things I’ve read this year:
https://twitter.com/Clayburn/status/1371268469145079809

And in the event the above gets deleted, here’s a screengrab:
https://twitter.com/lporiginalg/status/1371482154090295296/photo/1

have you read Victor Davis Hanson’s accounts of the trash and unlawful behavior around his farm?
Oh yes I have. Two things happening … one is cultural where the dumpers have no conscience about their behavior and, two, governmental where the local enforcement policies are driven by $$ .. they know they won’t be getting the fines from the citations as opposed to busting homeowners & businesses for actual trivial stuff so they don’t bother.
A lot of firefighters, first responders and even law enforcement live in the mountain communities of Wrightwood, Running Springs and Big Bear and they’ve come to dread snow because of the invasion of people who just trash their communities including ignoring fences around private properties because “the snow belongs to everyone!”

So you shouldn’t assume someone isn’t racist just because they own a minority sex servant
Sci-fi author Brad Torgersen had the same accusations flung at him during the Sad Puppies affair.

Drama queens gonna drama.

Heh.

I have become convinced that what fuels a very large number of Angry Studies types is a very potent blend of paranoia and sollipsism
It’s simpler than that: they’re children. Emotionally, anyway. Children think the world revolves around them until well into late adolescence. (This is why trauma affects them so deeply; since to the child everything is about them, the trauma must have been their fault or because of something they did.)
Angry Studies majors have been coddled their entire life and denied the necessary life experiences to see the world as a larger entity independent of their own actions, needs and desires. If they’re discomfited at all or suffer any unpleasantness, it must be due to the deliberate actions of someone else targeting them specifically.
They’re children. Treat them appropriately.

Or has a wife, as the rest of us might say.

Apologies if I’ve missed someone else posting it, but the wife in question’s response is rather splendid.

It’s simpler than that: they’re children.
I don’t think we disagree. That is certainly the core of their beliefs, their worldview. “I am the world, and the world is me and my concerns”. A child’s sollipsism and not an adult variety.
I was proposing a further sort of crippling of reason extending from that – for those who spend time “thinking” – in how the model allows rationalizing of the acts of others. When the subject should *know* intellectually that acts have nothing to do with them, but need an explanation otherwise to comport to the belief it really is still all about them. “That person has done a thing that I don’t understand, therefore it must be explained in terms of what I’d do if I were them – *and evil*.”
Compare Obama’s childish sin-as-in-conflict-with-my-values remarks.
in the tabletop gaming hobby, “gatekeeping”
Gatekeeping is a looming threat of pernicious control that has loomed over tabletop for time immemorial, but always ends up descending on other hobbies instead.
My mother, a very introverted person, engaged briefly with d&d at the end of the ’70s while it was still in packet form but didn’t stay with it. If it didn’t actively keep her out then, how could it be said to keep anyone out since? Rather, it’s been more a thing of the hobby’s Pure Autist Energy and the boredom that often follows it. Why must it be more anguished in welcoming women than model railroading?

Perhaps this is salient: in the tabletop gaming hobby, “gatekeeping” (intentionally excluding certain types of people from the hobby) has been a terrible sin for decades. Originally this was driven by the usual handwringing about getting more women into the hobby, a fool’s errand anyway because women don’t want to play D&D or Warhammer 40K as it turns out.
I was in a tabletop gaming group that ran an ongoing campaign for, oh, six or seven years. It was heavy on couples — both husbands and wives playing, although my wife didn’t play (just wasn’t into it). About half the players were female. We’d rotate among different houses once a month, and we also had a play-by-email campaign going on. For a while a black guy joined the group. He was a work friend of one of the regulars, but it was weird because the guy was really quiet. He would literally go a several hour session without ever saying an extraneous word beyond what was needed to direct his character in combat. Now, this was a group where we were all joking and talking constantly — it was a social occasion as much as it was a game. It was very hard to become friends with a guy who won’t talk. Then at some point he stopped coming. I don’t know why. Nobody wanted to exclude him. Maybe he felt excluded, though. Maybe he went on to write essays about Whiteness in Gaming.

He would literally go a several hour session without ever saying an extraneous word beyond what was needed to direct his character in combat
There are as many ways to play TTRPGs and motivations for playing as there are players. The guys over at Fear the Boot like to tell a story about a D&D group they encountered that seemed to think the entire game was a kind of endurance-mode video game level: they would literally open the Monstrous Compendium to ‘A’, and say “Round One: Aaarakocra!” then roll for number appearing and fight until they defeated the aarakocra or got TPKed, then roll for whatever was next in the book in alphabetical order, etc., etc. That was “D&D” to them.
So perhaps he was simply looking for a different experience. I frankly can’t understand people who unironically play Adventure Paths, but they sell quite well.

Is that a rhetorical question?
Perhaps not entirely, but since the topic has been raised re: age, I’ll offer rumination. Despite the difference in age group and perhaps aspiration, both are extremely bookish pursuits adjacent to feminine topics of interest (fan-fiction and dollhouse-making, for two) while having enough detail to allow highly focused typically-male digression (the comparison of 3.5 BAB progressions from 1 to 1/2 and effects on multiclassing a gish build, the Whyte descriptions of common locomotive types, etc. etc.). It’s not immediately clear that either *shouldn’t* have women interested, but the long-term tendencies are hard to ignore.
D&D allows a social outlet of sorts for the painfully shy that railroading doesn’t, admitted, but assuming it would ever be a target-rich environment for dating might be called the real fantasy taking place. Although, as a pre-filter for a suitably nerdy mate, perhaps…
The thrust of my comparison was that the outcome in sex ratio might be guessed from afar to be similar due to proclivities – it’s the expectation for d&d that’s unrealistic. Hence the agony in one and not the other, I suppose. “We never have enough girls at game night! We must be keeping them away somehow!”

[ glares through gate ]
My level-9 raiding missions in Hades’ Star seem almost respectable.

“Perhaps this is salient: in the tabletop gaming hobby, “gatekeeping” (intentionally excluding certain types of people from the hobby) has been a terrible sin for decades.”
I must be missing something, which is quite possible. I used to play wargames before moving into D&D after seeing Gary Gygax run a campaign at an Origins convention. I played in other’s worlds and had one of my own, and we had a circle of friends that we played with. Sometimes women played, usually they came in through our connections with the Society for Creative Anachronism. If there was any “gatekeeping,” it was more along the lines of “is this person right for our group” rather than “are they a certain type.”
I could see the problem if there was a college club organized around the games, but my sole experiences revolved around friendship as a criteria for joining in.

Women, as a general rule, are less likely to enjoy fiddly detailed simulations that require tedious repetition to converge
Quite so.
I was suggesting that an attraction one might suppose on a facile level “women like renn faires and downton abbey!” or “women like decorating dollhouses!” belies that (possibly misdirected at times) intensity required for building a 5 foot long HO railway siding with little bits of moss and plants along the way, or the careful choice of deity for the right domain spells in one’s cleric.
The end result of expecting women to like to optimize their wizard’s spellbook as much as a guy is disappointment – and probably worse among those whose “gifts” render them unable to realize what is and isn’t a normal level of interest intensity.
“DM’s girlfriend” remains a well-worn trope due largely to the “other reason for being there than the sheer spergery” aspect. It’s not that anyone is keeping the gate, it’s that the room beyond the gate is full of textbooks and cheeto dust.

I must be missing something, which is quite possible
I should have mentioned that it’s debatable how much gatekeeping ever actually occurred, outside individual groups. I know one woman who described a D&D group in her high school she wanted to join who were exceptionally strict about who they accepted, but that seemed to have more to do with requiring everyone to dress up as their character, speak entirely in character for the entire session, and learn a small encyclopedia of lore before playing.
It’s essentially impossible to say that anything is typical of people who play TTRPGS because the vast, vast majority of the hobby happens in private among groups of friends who don’t really follow “the hobby”. People who write fanzines aren’t typical, people who go to cons aren’t typical, people who go to organized play events aren’t typical, people who post online or stream their D&D sessions aren’t typical.
I do think that people who do do all of those things are mostly interacting with other people who do those things and as a result are likely to mistake those people as typical. Hence the disconnect between gamers who claim orcs are racist and that the hobby discriminates against women, and the gamers who are befuddled by such claims.

[ checks comments ]
NERDZ!!
[ resumes anime while cleaning WWII rifles ]

Looks at copies of Twilight In the East (https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/21779/1914-twilight-east) and 1914, Offensive à outrance (https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/46669/1914-offensive-outrance) on my bookshelf.
I even playtested https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4207/kharkov-soviet-spring-offensive with a classmate of mine oh so many years ago.

The indie RPG scene is doing great work to present game designs that eschew fiddly number-crunching in favour of generating relationship drama,
feminine topics of interest (fan-fiction and dollhouse-making, for two)
That all sounds absolutely horrifying to me, and I’m female. But that’s probably one of those “exceptions that proves the rule” deals. /shrug “Typical” or “stereotypical” female stuff just bores me or gives me a screaming headache. I’ve found that if you go into the male-dominated job/hobby/whatnot, and take it as it is, realize the ball-busting for what it is, can laugh with them at you, and don’t try to change things, you’ll gain some kind of acceptance. I also realize that I’m in the minority, and that a majority of women enjoy exactly what Daniel outlines. They can have it too – I’ll stick with my tomboyish, nerdy pursuits. It’s a big enough world – there’s room for all sorts. Or there used to be. Now, I’m not so sure.

LabRat: worked for me too, at work (starting out all those millennia ago, my field was largely male and so was my business arena) and elsewhere. I got into canoes and kayaks, plus hiking, some time back and my experience across the board was that people in all those activities were helpful, patient and friendly. So I strove to be likewise, and it seemed to have worked well enough.

@pst314, the Wargames Committee of the Military Affairs Club of West Point back in those rather ancient times almost always had someone playing https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2802/war-europe in the club room. (I remember one conversation after glancing at the map: “Oh, wow; is this the end of 1944?” “No, we kinda screwed up the Russian Campaign; it’s mid-1943.”)
My very first issue of S&T was the one with https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/7051/kampfpanzer-armored-combat-1937-40. My last issue was the one with https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/8324/china-war-sino-soviet-conflict-1980s.
If you are still interested in that sort of thing, then perhaps either http://www.vassalengine.org/ or https://www.spigames.net/ could provide something useful.
NERDZ
I guess you can argue that D&D has little to do with what has happened and with what might happen.
Wargames can (and should) have a lot to do with the past and future.

Regarding the intrusion of wokeness into pre-existing worlds, an example comes to mind. I thought I’d type it out before I forget. It’s fairly mild, but still telling, I think.
At the end of Avengers: Endgame, an old Steve Rogers passes his shield, and by implication the mantle of Captain America, to Sam, not Bucky. This is clearly intended to be a stirring and important gesture, regarding race and whatever. But it feels contrived, somewhat out of character, and – as yet – it doesn’t quite work. And part of the reason is that it jars with in-universe logic. Sam’s skillset doesn’t really suit throwing around a vibranium shield. And the wings of his flying rig are already used as a shield – it’s one of his signature party tricks. The second shield seems superfluous, incongruous.
Also, in-universe, the shield-hurling isn’t just a matter of practice; it requires superhuman strength and coordination, which Sam doesn’t have. But Bucky does, being intended as a duplicate of Rogers, power-wise. We’ve seen Bucky use the shield quite effectively. But hey, two white males. And so, for the sake of a political gesture, suspension of disbelief is somewhat undermined. The in-universe rules are broken. It’s possible, of course, that the writers of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier may acknowledge this in the forthcoming TV series. But the heavy-handed politics has created a problem that now has to be fudged or explained away.
Assuming, that is, that the series doesn’t insert more racial politics in a similarly awkward fashion.

Late to the party, I know but:
Has no one ever heard of being a trailblazer?
I have.
Have they?

She is a planet with heavy gravity. It’s her superpower.

Wargames can (and should) have a lot to do with the past and future.
Learned a lot from playing those games and from reading the articles in S&T.

It’s her superpower.
Akshually she possess a magic backpack bequeathed to her byOH MY GOD SHUT UP! 😃

“…D&D is almost entirely played by hormonal teenage boys…”
Yes, as best I recall most (but not all!) of the D&D players I knew in the 70’s and 80’s were indeed young males–although I didn’t play so my knowledge might be unreliable, having only met the ones who showed up at the same social events as me. I do retain the impression that the females were more often playing other games albeit just as nerdy ones.
“…historical miniatures wargaming…is mostly played by middle-aged men who have no overriding drive to pursue women.”
I’ll take your word for that, and do get the impression that they are now relics of the past. But how about the situation a few generations ago, before the advent of all those board games? I have read about a few groups of young men who wargamed with miniatures back in the 30’s and 40’s.

Akshually she possess a magic backpack bequeathed to her by
No, no, she was exposed to some kind of head-shrinking atomic radiation. Clearly.
An experimental Internet gas, actually.
I swear I am not making that up.
“You have to let me join your Stupid Little Club so that I can rapidly transform it into something you can’t abide.”
Oh no!
The second shield seems superfluous, incongruous
I have heard uncomfirmed (and unconfirmable) rumours that it was a last minute retcon. Sebastian Stan was signed for a three picture deal when he was cast, and the plan (allegedly) was for him to take over the shield and extend the Captain America franchise. His rather shoe-horned-in appearances in subsequent Avengers movies fulfilled the contract terms without having to give him a lead role.
Marvel has teased a ton of legacy heroes, from Spider-Man to Cassie Lang to Captain America II or III. I doubt they can pull that off; such characters have never been able to capture mindshare.

Oh no!
Heh. Yes, quite.
I have heard unconfirmed (and unconfirmable) rumours that it was a last minute retcon.
Endgame was on the whole a disappointment, badly paced, and frequently boring, and that scene just felt… off. The political gesture trumped the in-universe logic, breaking the spell.
Trashfire HTML corrected, by the way.

An experimental Internet gas, actually.
Remember when some New Age charlatan promised to deliver homeopathic doses via the internet? (Not sure how people thought substances were supposed to be transported in Ethernet packets, but it is technically true that an Ethernet packet can carry zero molecules of anything you wish.)

The last 18 hours on here has been ……… interesting.
Is it everything you dreamed it would be?

Mr Feige, the Big Marvel Cheese, has been making some drearily woke noises of late.
I seem to recall he’s essentially withdrawn from the MCU post-Endgame. I think he’s a canny office politician; he’s seen that the incoming agenda cannot be deflected or stopped, he’s completed his magnum opus, and now he’s mouthing the right platitudes so he can maintain his position while enjoying his multi-story jewel-encrusted gold mansion.
In the 1990s, when Star Wars was a thing most people had forgotten about, George Lucas said that he didn’t see himself as a director but as a filmmaker. His goal, he claimed, was to advance the state of the art of filmmaking to the point that anyone with $30,000 and a garage could make a feature film.
I think technology is well beyond that point now, and the market is prime for someone to do exactly what Lucas did with Star Wars – produce an entertaining film that anyone and everyone can enjoy and distribute it outside the regular channels.
If Disney won’t do the Indiana Jones reboot with Chris Pratt, perhaps some enterprising young director can take a stab at it.

When I buy an IMAX ticket and tie up half the day to travel across town to the local multiplex, I don’t do it to be reminded of the real world, or the weirdly dogmatic preoccupations of leftist writers.
That.

Do you know about this from personal experience? I knew an avid player who graduated West Point in the mid 70’s.
@pst314, I graduated from there in 1980, so odds are likely that I missed the guy you knew. The class of 1977 were firsties (AKA seniors) when I was a beanhead (AKA plebe AKA freshman).
There was almost always some team of people playing War in Europe while I was there; I’ll admit that I didn’t join the club until I was a yearling (AKA sophomore). There was another time (different run of the game) when I saw that the Axis player had pushed the Soviets to within a few hex rows of the eastern map edge. It turns out that the Axis player(s) had misplaced an errata page that reduced the Axis ability to extend the rail network in Russia.
FWIW, juniors were called cows. That terminology has probably changed by now, even though it pre-dated the arrival of women (which happened in my class).