even more interesting

[jazzfish]

"Should you explicitly request to play, I will choose 7 of your LJ profile interests for you to expound upon (in your own journal)."

Seven from rbandrews:

cinnamon

Best spice ever. I can't even conceive of making pancakes without it anymore.

lacuna

A very strange RPG by Jared Sorenson. The players are government agents in a strange dream-space. Particularly nifty is that there are zero mechanics governing anything that might happen outside that dream-space. I've run it once and had a lot of fun with it.

y

Not Y: The Last Man (a pretty decent comic about the last male human on earth and his monkey), but a connection game played on a triangular board. I learned this out of a book in second grade. Arguably, it was my introduction to serious gaming.

bicentennial quarters

I started hoarding these around the age of ten, when I realised that they were made the same year I was and were neat and different. I've probably got around $30-40 worth now. Some day when I desperately need money I'll turn them into cash.

answers

When I first declared my interest in "answers," there were roughly eight times as many people interested in "questions" as in "answers." This struck (still strikes) me as wrongheaded. How do you get better questions if you never find answers to the ones you've got?

feminism

The radical notion that women are people, as opposed to baby-factories or sex toys or decoration. The places where women are assumed to not be people are pretty deeply ingrained (see next) and take some effort to root out.

blaming the patriarchy

From Twisty. To be clear, "the patriarchy" is not white guys sitting around going "how can we make women's lives miserable?" but rather a hierarchical social order with fixed places for everyone, separated by gender, race, orientation, and (sometimes especially) class. I don't know what getting rid of it would look like but it'd be a good thing.

---

Seven from salzara_tirwen:

blaming the patriarchy

Twisty's a lot more radical than I am. That doesn't make her wrong.

bowler hats

The preferred headwear of Rene Magritte's subjects. Plus they look neat in general. The only kind of hat I'll wear.

homing from work

I encountered this in someone else's interests once and it amused me greatly. It's been a passion of mine since before I knew its name, probably since Crunch Time Followed By Layoffs at Exegetics. Bluntly speaking, the hell with work.

owly

The cutest thing ever. I have seen bald ex-Navy sailors break into huge smiles at the first Owly book. (Preview available here.)

polyamory

The crazy idea that one can be in love with more than one person at a time. After trying my damnedest to avoid it for a couple of years, it finally smacked me upside the head in late 2005. Difficult (especially with a monogamous partner) but rewarding.

rain

A wonderful thing to watch, particularly when one is in a Mood. "The beauty of the rain is how it falls."

y

A game played on a triangular board made of hexagons. Players take turns filling in a hex in their color. The object is to have a single connected group of hexes in your color that touches all three sides of the board. The idealised version of this shape looks like a Y.

---

Seven from diadelphous:

bowler hats

"The Hat of Eternal Surprise is worn by many of the more whimsical on the streets, these days. A simple bowler hat hangs exactly two inches over the wearer's head. There's a certain amount of give in the support field, so it flaps nicely in a strong breeze.

"But more: you can connect it to a neuroplug which monitors your emotional state. When you are gloomy, the hat sags; if something delights you, the hat springs high.

"The people wearing this hat are not always who you might expect."
--Zarf

feminist science fiction

Start with Le Guin, Joanna Russ, and James Tiptree Jr., and go from there. I took a class on Le Guin in college that started me on the path to being the feminist I am today.

owain glyndwr

"Owen Glendower," if you're Wm Shkspr. A Welshman, the last Welsh Prince of Wales. Led an unsuccessful revolt against the English from 1600 to around 1610, and subsequently vanished into the mountains. I named my first car after him.

the treachery of images

Ceci n'est pas une pipe. I love everything about this painting, including the fact that Michel Foucault wrote a small book about it.

tim powers

He's a fantasy writer of a peculiar kind. Anubis Gates is the best time-travel story I've read; make Ross loan it to you. Last Call has Vegas, the Fisher King of the US, and a really vicious Tarot deck. Declare is a spy story with djinni. I'm sad that his stuff doesn't hold up as well on a reread, and Three Days to Never (his latest) was kinda weak.

lacuna

That which is missing. The space beneath Blue City, where the Hostile Personalities come from. Also, the Lacuna Device, which Agents can use to eliminate HPs. Jeez. Now I'm seriously itching to run this again. Maybe I'll inflict it on my nominally D&D group this evening.

going barefoot

The only way to go. My boss is okay with me being barefoot as long as I put on shoes to go out into the main part of the office. I've been going barefoot indoors for ages; there's a note in one of my high school yearbooks that starts out "Tucker-- where are your shoes?" Outdoors started in spring 2003, like so much else.

Comments

[desfido.livejournal.com]

I would like to play, despite the fact that my currently listed LJ interests are not particularly diverse.

deep, but not necessarily broad

[jazzfish]

• alan_moore_knows_the_score
  
• i'm a bear etc
  
• lyx
  
• olivine
  
• snowball earth
  
• spiel
  
• tjhsst

(Also, I'm working through the questions you gave me, um, months ago. That's some hard stuff. Probably done sometime next week.)

[dasphios.livejournal.com]

To be clear, "the patriarchy" is not white guys sitting around going "how can we make women's lives miserable?" but rather a hierarchical social order with fixed places for everyone, separated by gender, race, orientation, and (sometimes especially) class. I don't know what getting rid of it would look like but it'd be a good thing.
So.... Let's take a nebulously defined idea that we can't locate yet that seems to govern every last aspect of our interpersonal interactions and replace it with... whatever comes next? You're smarter than that, Tucker. I don't know who told you that intelligence was something to be ashamed of, but they were wrong.

[rbandrews]

I dunno who you are, but that was awesome.

Here's my problem with blaming the patriarchy: I inevitably get lumped into it.

Because I am a heterosexual white male, age 18 to 49, with a good education and job, and an American citizen to boot, everyone else feels justified in making me feel guilty for how society treats them.

Just because I am winning the game doesn't mean that I invented it, or even approve of it.

[nixve.livejournal.com]

Oh, so you think you're winning the game, then? I would argue that you're not. That if anyone is losing then we're all losing because the system does not let winners be winners for long.

"Everyone else" is not trying to make you feel guilty, neither is "everyone else" saying that you invented or approve of it. Some people are saying that you need to try to change it, that you need to make sure you are hyper-aware of it or it'll never change.

Do you think you're above society's scorn? You're not. It can turn on you as fast as it turns on other minorities.

That is blaming the patriarchy. Saying "This system sucks" and trying to change it. Not just saying "oh, well, the system sucks. Guess I lucked out!"

[rbandrews]

I think this is one of those times when I agree with someone, but am in danger of spending an evening arguing with them anyway because of a simple misunderstanding. It's my fault; I have an odd way of wording things.

So anyway, here's where the flamewar lets me off.

[jazzfish]

everyone else feels justified in making me feel guilty for how society treats them

That's a whole different story and one I'm not going to get in to.

At its most basic level, the point of blaming the patriarchy is to recognise that things like xkcd's How it Works are (pretty tame) examples of real life, and that they're propagated by people who aren't necessarily bad people but are just following existing social norms. Those norms say it's okay to treat women (blacks, gays, poor folk, the disabled) as Different, Other, Less Than Human. It's about not putting up with that kind of thing in yourself, and calling other people on it when it comes up.

Just because I am winning the game doesn't mean that I invented it, or even approve of it.

If you don't accept the basic unfairness of a system that treats you as though you hit a double when you were born on second, while calling people who never got to bat "strike-outs," you're approving of it.

[nixve.livejournal.com]

hmm, let's see ... getting rid of discrimination produces some rather tangible results. People are happy, people have freedom to live as they want to live, people cooperate and through that cooperation and community reach higher goals.

I think "whatever comes next" isn't as vague as you're thinking it is. We've seen the results of breaking down harmful social systems in the past, all we need to do now is move forward with breaking down existing discrimination and inequality.

[jazzfish]

This.

[jazzfish]

It's not all that nebulous or hard to locate, once you know what you're looking for. See, e.g., xkcd on How it Works. If you choose to believe that that shit doesn't actually occur in real life, that's your choice; because the system doesn't smack you down personally, you can ignore it. That's what we mean when we talk about privilege.

If you're actually interested in discussing this, and considering that just maybe you might be able to learn something, feel free to chime in. If all you've got is insults and insecurity, well, don't let the door hit you on the way out.

[rbandrews]

I made some chicken and noodles the other day, spiced with red pepper and cinnamon.

It was oddly good. It's sort of the spice that goes with everything.

[jazzfish]

I'd never thought of it as other than a baking spice until I had cinnamon chicken at a Moroccan place. Now I find myself wondering whether I ought to add it to everything I cook. Couscous? Salmon? Pesto?

[psilan.livejournal.com]

"Should you explicitly request to play, I will choose 7 of your LJ profile interests for you to expound upon (in your own journal)."

While my listed interests aren't exactly diverse, I'm game.

de more interested you are, diverse dey get!

[jazzfish]

• amelia rules!
  
• lego
  
• mage: the ascension
  
• personal development
  
• rtss
  
• theology
  
• thieves and kings