What's Good: Feb. 11, 2022
SCOTUS, smooth brains, and the cloud.
Hello, good afternoon, happy Friday. This week I got back into Path of Exile because I saw some of my favorite Twitch streamers playing it. I don’t know if they buffed drop rates or adjusted the difficulty from the last time I tried it out, but the power curve feels much smoother now. There are still annoying moments where I die to one-shot hits that I don’t expect or that feel impossible to dodge, but I’m getting better at it in a way that is more satisfying than frustrating. I’m playing Enki’s Arc Witch and enjoying the build. I might even try a second character in the league once I get further along.
Also, releasing today is Lost Ark, yet another ARPG - but this one is an MMO as well. It was supposed to launch this morning, but has been delayed slightly for technical reasons. Still, I’m looking forward to playing it with friends, and I’ll likely stream at least some of it. This weekend I’ll probably stream Arataki Itto’s quest in Genshin Impact, too, in anticipation of the new patch dropping Tuesday. I’ll be pulling for Yae Miko and I’m very hyped about it.
Finally, I implemented proximity-based voice chat on my Minecraft server this week. It requires a client mod, of course, but the connections are all handled by the server and it Just Works(tm) once you’ve connected. This, the keybind mod, and another yet-to-be-announced mod are all part of a project I’m working on to improve the player experience on the server. I also cleaned up a bit of the early quest chain interactions!
The nature of the keybind mod and the games I’ve been playing sort of give it away, but I’m working on building out a new arsenal of abilities for players to unlock and use for both combat and general utility purposes (like replacing mcMMO’s tree feller tool with something more reliable). In the long run, players will have access to a whole suite of abilities that they can select from and upgrade to make gameplay more engaging both in combat and beyond. And, of course, it’s helping me build skills relating to the necessary calculations for messing with particles and velocities in a way that I can expand upon even more in the future.
Also I am still available to be hired, by the way. I am an even better lawyer than gamer/game designer. Those securities won’t know they got litigated until it is too late for them. Everything is securities fraud, etc. (I also do general commercial litigation.)1
View from the bench
I have a pair of tremendous articles about the Supreme Court for you this week. First:
Prominent conservatives are celebrating Black History Month by graciously allowing Black women attorneys like me to live in their heads rent free as President Joe Biden prepares to nominate one of us to the Supreme Court. The backlash has ranged from obviously despicable suggestions that Black women are inherently unqualified to more insidious complaints that selecting a qualified Black woman is fine, but an announced intent to select a qualified Black woman is not.
But the admission that the nominee would be qualified underscores that qualifications were never the real issue. Instead, the choice to put a Black woman on the Court has sent the white wing into a tizzy because it upends two core components of American mythology: first, that the system promotes true meritocracy, not white mediocrity, and second, that simply ignoring race will make racism go away. These myths are the foundation for a legal system that perpetuates inequality under the guise of neutrality, promising a level playing field but delivering an Olympic ski slope.
No one deserves special privileges—that’s the through-line of the brouhaha surrounding President Biden’s commitment to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court. But here’s the quiet part out loud: The people making that argument seem to mean that no one deserves special privileges anymore. Because, statistically—as many of us know—it has been the special privilege of white men to run this country, purportedly representing the rest of us, since our founding.
Here’s the rub: It’s not just historical. Today’s conversation about who deserves to be considered for seats of power merits a substantive review of who currently wields power. Today’s data shows that white men are significantly overrepresented in every part of government. They are 62 percent of all officeholders, but 30 percent of the population. That won’t change unless the country collectively acknowledges the literal concentration of American power among white men, decides it is not ideal, and takes affirmative steps to remedy it. The Court is a great place to start.
February is Black History Month, conservatives are absolutely losing their minds about the idea of President Biden nominating a black woman to SCOTUS, and most people don’t seem to understand why all of this is related! Please read these articles, even if they are the only two you read from the newsletter this week.
Crypto crushed
If this week’s newsletter were a poker hand, it would be two pair. First, the stupid monkey guys from last week got really angry about their not-so-secret identities being revealed, probably because they actually come from money and it dispels their marketing illusion of being “just some random nobodies who made it big,” which was never really believable anyway. NFT smoothbrains argue incessantly that the concept does and will revolutionize the way artists get paid. That argument, though, like many others from the same folks, is made entirely in bad faith:
Her creativity helped fuel a technological revolution she knew almost nothing about. Although the Bored Ape Yacht Club — now, arguably, the world’s biggest NFT project — first appeared online in May and quickly started selling for millions, the woman who drew its primary characters had no idea that the collection was a hit until she Googled the name months later.
These cartoonish primates have since generated more than a billion dollars and lassoed mainstreamers into the crypto scene. Yet Seneca — the 27-year-old Asian-American artist who played an integral role in bringing their ideas to life — gets little credit.
You just can’t argue that NFTs exist to “pay artists” when you are not actually paying your artists a fair portion of profits, either up-front or retroactively. The entire thing is a scam and I feel bad for everyone involved, but only kind of. The major takeaway is that NFTs do not and will not solve wealth inequality, they are just bad for the environment and exacerbate existing trickle-up economic problems by providing another medium for wealthy people to extract cash from regular folks who don’t know any better.
Speaking of scams and celebrities:
Have you seen this profoundly unsettling video of Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon discussing their purchases of "Bored Ape Yacht Club" NFTs on The Tonight Show?
…
I find the world of NFT-flogging celebrities fascinating, both because of the visceral, skin-crawling embarrassment I feel when I see people like Fallon and Hilton half-heartedly try to express enthusiasm for their expensive new Twitter avatars, and also because it gives me the sense that there is something going on behind the scenes here that I am not quite privy to. Where does a person like Paris Hilton or Eminem even hear about “bored apes”? Who is recommending that they buy one? Is this really the best thing any of them can think to do with their money and fame?
Listen, it is all just one big grift. Do not allow it to perplex you, do not give it air to breathe, just understand that it sucks and leave it be and enjoy the things that make you feel pleased to live in this world, like morning walks or fresh snow or a cold beer.
Innocence
The story about Kamila Valieva is heartbreaking, but not just because of the drugs:
Russian dynamo Kamila Valieva, 15, made history this week by being the first female skater to land a quadruple jump in the Olympics. A few days later, her team made headlines again with reports that one of their athletes had failed a doping test, delaying the medal ceremony and leaving Olympics fans wondering.
USA Today reported that a skater on the team who is a minor and who competed in this week’s team event had tested positive for doping. Russian outlets reported that the unnamed skater who tested positive was Valieva, and that the test was taken in December but reported this week. According to the World Anti-Doping Agency’s privacy policy, minors are not subject to the same mandatory public reporting as adult athletes.
She’s a brick
I am so sorry but I find this absolutely hilarious:
Some Mazda owners in the Seattle area are stuck with bricked infotainment systems after listening to a particular radio station.
According to the Seattle Times, the problem began on January 30 and afflicted Mazdas from model years 2014 to 2017 when the cars were tuned to the local NPR station, KUOW 94.9. At some point during the day's broadcast, a signal from KUOW caused the Mazdas' infotainment systems to crash—the screens died and the radios were stuck on 94.9 FM.
Obviously it is a problem that an entire computer can be bricked by a radio signal, but it is also very funny that even in 2014 and through 2017 there was not code in place to fallback to a default (one of the very first things you learn as an amateur coder). The next time someone shouts at you about code standards or anything similar, just remind them that a radio station destroyed entire years’ worth of Mazda vehicle computers and at least you didn’t fuck up that badly.
Whirlpool
I had a really great article for you about the profit-price spiral but it’s locked behind the Bloomberg paywall now and I do not have a Bloomberg subscription and I am not going to make you get one either. But I did find an older piece and I can do some summarizing and explaining, so here we go:
Economists have largely dismissed the Biden administration’s efforts to blame the inflation surge in part on big companies padding profits, but some warn that these firms could still keep prices higher for longer.
Consumer prices rose 7% in 2021, the fastest calendar-year increase in 39 years, according to government figures released this week. Analysts generally agree on the cause: massive fiscal and monetary stimulus that swelled demand, coupled with supply disruptions and tectonic labor-market shifts triggered by the pandemic -- rather than pricing decisions by big business.
They also concur that the disruptions will ease over the course of the year, returning inflation closer to its muted, roughly 2% pace of the pre-Covid part of the century.
Yet, there are risks that price gains will stick, some economists say. One reason is that corporate consolidation has accelerated during the past two decades, leaving more and more industries across the economy controlled by dominant companies.
The more control a company has in an industry, the more room it has to push up prices and fatten profits. The worry from some quarters is that in moments of general economic disruption, dominant companies can potentially exacerbate price spikes and heap additional pain on American consumers.
This is basically what has been happening over the last few years. Here is a tweet with info and a link to the article I originally wanted to include:
No, Bloomberg, I am not a robot. Anyway, companies are all focused on “This One Weird Trick To Raise Profit Margins” because raising prices lets them build profit margins which raises their stock prices and hurts consumers. It is another trickle-up wealth effect and it is why the conservative panic over high inflation should be viewed with extreme skepticism. Not every company is seeing these margins, mind you, but plenty of them are, and they are being rewarded by the markets for putting the squeeze on folks who are already struggling to get by. Unfortunately I do not have a solution, I am not an economist, I have not spent enough time reading about potential solutions to this problem. But probably the lax antitrust regime of the last four years did not help, and whether it’s monopoly or monopsony, consumer choice is increasingly shrinking. Very cool times we are living in for sure. /s
And now for something completely different
It is good and cool to highlight cool local bands, so hell yes to the Chicago Reader:
In a 2019 interview for WBEZ’s Weekend Passport, Filipinx producer-vocalist Ano Ba said they were inspired to start their own group after seeing a garage band at a favorite Logan Square bar that was made up entirely of white dudes. Ano thought it’d be cheeky to recruit other POC musicians to make garage rock under the name “White Ppl.” White Ppl didn’t end up making three-chord bashers, but Ano teamed up with Black hip-hop artist Cado San and Filipinx vocalist Elly Tier to unlock an alchemical mix that no other configuration of musicians could replicate.
You can stream the EP here.
Planning to fail
I don’t include much Bachelor content anymore, but oh boy when I do:
Twenty years. Twenty-six seasons. Two long-running spinoffs. Millions have been mesmerized by “The Bachelor.” At first glance, the reality television series is an experiment in love and matchmaking in the modern era.
Year after year, viewers watch a highly manufactured depiction of romance that prioritizes a thin, white, cis-heteronormative and able-bodied lens of love. The competition is a psychologically strenuous exploration of polyamory as a means to monogamy, which simultaneously appeals and directly opposes the sensibilities of its white evangelical base. No matter the gimmicks, countless crises or the amount of love-bombing and trauma-dumping the franchise invokes, fans are still watching.
Absolutely fascinating piece here about how the show’s leads often don’t get the happily ever after that the marketing folks want you to believe. Also, data.
I wanna be a billionaire so fuckin bad
Is what I imagine these two were singing both a decade ago and very recently:
“I’m in shock,” said Cavier Coleman, a New York-based photographer and artist, the day after Heather Rhiannon Morgan was arrested. “She’s a great person.” The two had been friends for nearly five years; he remembered that she would bring him bags of pecans from her grandmother’s tree, and was passionate about making sure her friends were treating the coronavirus seriously.
Earlier this week, federal prosecutors accused Morgan, 31, and her husband, 34-year-old Ilya Lichtenstein, of conspiring to launder around $5 billion in stolen bitcoins. Within hours, they had achieved global notoriety as the embodiment of everything lurid and grotesque about the recent mania for cryptocurrencies. The sheer scope of the alleged fraud, and Morgan’s bizarre online presence as maker of some of the most cringeworthy music ever recorded, positioned their story as a perfect synecdoche for everything anyone doesn’t like about an attention economy in which anything can be—and is—financialized.
There is a rap video, there are TikToks, they kept the stolen funds on cloud storage. I cannot believe a word of this, and yet, there it is.
You deserve some good animal content
Have a good weekend.
Addendums
The Scourge of “On Background” in Silicon Valley. Horrific allegations of racism prompt California lawsuit against Tesla. Meta Wouldn’t Tell Us How It Enforces Its Rules In VR, So We Ran A Test To Find Out. Ubisoft Employees Push Back Hard on Blockchain Initiative. Wait, Now the Right Loves Traffic-Blocking Protesters? A QAnon Grifter Who Claims She Can Time Travel Is Running for Office in Ohio. Jessica Pressler Introduced the World to Anna Delvey — But She Still Can’t Decide How She Feels About Her. The Rise of Sex Euphemisms on Social Media. A video game studio moved to a four-day workweek. It ‘saved us,’ employees say.
Here is an example: I don’t think I ever bragged about it in the newsletter,* but before I left my previous firm I scored an absolutely massive W. A partner gave me a motion from plaintiff for a case I had no prior experience with, in a subject matter area where I was totally unfamiliar, and asked me to read it and do the research for the response. I read the motion and volunteered to write the entire response myself. The only changes he asked me to make to my draft were to move the conclusion to the introduction because he thought it was so good and to include the excerpt I had cited to from a deposition. Having received my response, plaintiff opted not to file a reply and the judge ruled decisively in our favor. In fact, in denying plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment against our affirmative defense, she issued a holding that essentially destroyed plaintiff’s entire case based on the arguments I made in the response brief. The opinion was only three or four pages, and all but the last page was a restatement of the case up to that point. That brief is one of my writing samples now.
* Hahahaha you can’t put footnotes in footnotes on Substack anymore, how rude. Anyway if I already wrote about this, sorry. I don’t think I described it in this much detail, if at all, though.