While We Wait: Writer's Block & Other Lame Excuses

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OP is here:

Welcome to the latest While We Wait. This is the thread where all of your NESing related posts that don't belong anywhere else go. Please be courteous and obey forum rules.

And now a word from our friendly neighborhood mod, Birdjaguar:

Please post responsibly; if you notice things getting out of hand, you may report the post in question.

The WWW thread is a friendly place to discuss topics that concern NESing. This thread is NOT a place to attack others, flame, spam, or discuss things that would be better suited for the OT forum.

Also,

This thread is for topics/posting related to NESing, but that would not fit into another thread. If you feel the need to spam/post off topic, we have an entire subforum provided for just such posting. Use it. Spamming this thread, or for that matter other NES threads, will be dealt with.

The last WWW thread can be found here

Post away, and Happy NESing! :)

Spoiler :
Not that I think it will be a problem, but feel free to comment on anything you'd like to see in/eliminate from the OP
 
we have the ideas thread for all nesing related stuff, misc stuff goes in www

just keep infracting people if they go over the line *shrug*
 
That said I am pretty lax in the enforcement of the spam clause, but when I see the discussion heading to a place where infractions could be imminent I'll step in to draw things back to the original intent of the thread.
 
Bottom line: behave yourselves and I won't care what you talk about.
 
That said I am pretty lax in the enforcement of the spam clause, but when I see the discussion heading to a place where infractions could be imminent I'll step in to draw things back to the original intent of the thread.

fair enough!

that being said, amon you should definitely go and post a thread about your views in OT :):)
 
No, that is ridiculous. Before WWW people just spammed in NES threads on anything not directly related to said NES. We don't need to go back to that.

Not nearly as much as you seem to think. I've been going over old NESes and though it happens once in a while, it is seldom.
 
Luckymoose said:
You're the one comparing them to an improper group that barely has a population. This is most easily compared to Native Americans, who most certainly have it worse than your Indigenous Australians.
There's no particular reason why I have to limit my comparisons solely to Native Americans. You're also wrong by the way.

Luckymoose said:
The statistical authorities love to cherry pick this kind of crap to make specific things look worse when they aren't.

This is conspiracy level nonsense and doubly hilarious because you're using their apparently "cherry pick[ed]" data to illustrate your point below. That's an irreconcilable position. In any case, if you have evidence about data manipulation you should probably contact the FBI because I imagine that like here that's viewed rather dimly.

Luckymoose said:
If you want to talk about real African American unemployment or income, how about you look at the South during the same time frame as your own data? But let's pretend that isn't how it works. How about we compare data from the 1930s to 1990? Cause it doesn't make a lick of sense when comparing current conditions!

I didn't cherry-pick the data I used. I simply took the most up to date data for both countries. In Australia that's the 2011 Census and in the United States that's the 2014 ACS. You're comparison about 1930s to 1990s data is almost laughable. Using data that is a little out of sync is common as hell when comparing countries because of data scheduling issues. For reference, just go look at WEO. So just saying "UR DATA DOESN'T LINE-UP" is meaningless unless you can demonstrate that it matters.

Luckymoose said:
You cherry picked 2011 Indigenous data vs 2014 African American. In 2011-2012 the African American unemployment in Georgia alone was around 17% (some states were as high at 28%), and that's for more people than your entire group.

I'm well aware there would be variation in unemployment outcomes between states much the same as there's unemployment variation between states here. But I'm still not sure how cherry-picking the states you want to discuss is relevant or tells us more about African American disadvantage? You also need to demonstrate the difference between our sample sizes matter for the purposes of our discussion before I'll even consider that. I can tell you answer, they don't.

Luckymoose said:
No, I'm not going to get over it. This is a major factor in the statistics!
Demonstrate that it's meaningful then.

Luckymoose said:
But in make believe Australian demography land, Australia is suffering so much more!
You clearly can't read because I've never claimed that.

Amesjay said:
The difference in between Australia's indigenous population and non-indigenous regarding HDI was ranked 3rd largest in the world, whereas America's was 30th.
Although you may disregard this point perhaps, Australia's indigenous population at the time was dying 20 years earlier than compared with the non-indigenous population, whereas America's in comparison was only 2.4 years.
I'm not going to check the average life expectancy of Australian and American citizens during the year when they conducted the research but I feel safe in assuming that there is still going to be a considerable gap regardless.
Thanks he's just going to ignore that sort of stuff if it comes from me. From a demographic point of view, five years is fine when dealing with life expectancy. It tends to move slowly and often has considerable gaps between reporting for Indigenous people (the world over) because of their low relative sample sizes.

Perfectionist said:
Hey Masada, do you hear the same revolting justifications down there that we do up here? You know, the thinly coded "blacks are locked up so much more than everyone else because they're innately violent thugs," or "they're poor because they only care about gang-banging and swag instead of responsible life decisions" kind of thing? Or is it just ignored entirely like we do with the Indian reservations, or what?

Yeah, that sort of nonsense is trotted out when people bother to look. Although the kind of rhetoric from the post below yours which compares different races (which maps to melanin counts in the United States) to animals would be unusual even for the nuttier part of the right wing here.
 
Steampunk is the utmost expression of white privilege and nostalgia given form as a genre.
 
@Masada: Unless you can prove using data from 2011 isn't benefiting your group's unemployment statistics (I looked it up, and the labor participation rate is really low for black Aussies anyway), since 2011 was still deep in the global recession (where comparing the data for two groups during the same period would make sense--you don't compare 1928 to 1931 either in this type of thing), then I'll have no choice but to compare data from the same year. It is most relevant to do so, as it occurred at the same time. Not sure why you'd use a modern statistic to compare when data is readily available for the same year you're comparing it to. Secondly, you're pretending the social programs don't exist or matter in this debate, when they absolutely do. You didn't even bother addressing it. American social programs just simply don't reach these people as much as you'd like to pretend they are similar to Australian programs. Thirdly, ignoring the Natives instead to pick Black Americans is a cherry picking, when the groups most comparable to Indigenous Australians are the Natives, not the blacks.
 
Steampunk is the utmost expression of white privilege and nostalgia given form as a genre.

In before "white people aren't allowed to like white people things".

First, they came for the turtlenecks, and I did not speak out, because I was not Steve Jobs.

Then, they came for the hipsters, and I did not speak out, because I did not ride a fixie.

Then, they came for the steampunkers, and I did not speak out, because I wore no monocle.

Then, they came for the strategy gamers, and there was no one left to speak for me.
 
National Socialism=Government
Republic=Government

I can draw the lines. Why can you not?

EDIT: I remember someone on this thread saying "I can't own human beings. Thanks government." :lol:
 
Yep, white people are definitely directly comparable to the people in Nazi Germany.

Don't you know the reason people were so afraid of the Nazis is because they started doing to white people what whites had been doing to brown people for centuries.
 
National Socialism=Government
Republic=Government

I can draw the lines. Why can you not?

EDIT: I remember someone on this thread saying "I can't own human beings. Thanks government." :lol:

Infant F. catus=cat
Adult P. tigris altaica=cat


C. a. auratus=fish
C. megalodon= fish

H. turcicus=lizard
V. komodoensis=lizard


M. domestica=fruit
C. × sinensis=fruit

A. hitler=hominid
F. mcfeely x rogers=hominid
 
In before "white people aren't allowed to like white people things".
Consider: Cyberpunk was about exaggerating the deficiencies of the existing (domestic) sociopolitical climate to the point where open rebellion against it was attractive, and criminals, terrorists, and other people society generally looks down upon could become fashionable and chic points of view. Its rallying cry was literally #firstworldproblems.

Steampunk eschews the -punk entirely, usually focusing on aristocracy, the upper class, or people who are presented as legitimately superior to those around them. It doesn't even feature the class warfare overtones of Cyberpunk and doesn't even usually explore the documented sociocultural problems of the historical (Victorian) era it takes place in. The poor are marginalized, preferably to the point of being entirely out of sight. It's rich white (male) problems encrusted in gears, in an era where there was even more rampant classism and exploitation than today. At least poor white people problems sort of vaguely competed with the horrors of empire (which are never touched upon) in depravity, but poor people are essentially never the focus.

"Now imagine a cyberpunk story where the main characters are all rich CEOs who spend their time wearing hats with motherboards stuck on, jerkin' off to how great it is to be wealthy plutocrats." A 1:1 translation of the stylings of Cyberpunk to Steampunk would have the protagonists being coal miners, chimney sweeps, textile workers, meat packers... and their revolutionary technology would probably be guns and bombs and Communist or Anarchist propaganda. (The lack of Communist ideology in Cyberpunk is at least directly attributable to its rise during the crescendo of the Cold War.)

Regardless, both Cyberpunk and Steampunk place the emphasis on white western society and see the solutions to the problems it presents within it itself. You can agree with Chinua Achebe that Joseph Conrad was "a bloody racist," but he at least had more or less working class people directly interacting with the products and repercussions of empire: he acknowledged there was an outside.

Girl Genius is actually sort of the Snow Crash of Steampunk because it relishes in all this and even resurrects historical orientalism and so on for "coolness," to the point that it becomes ridiculous self-parody. The difference is it isn't self-aware.

P.S. the #1 thing white men like is Tom Clancy so really yeah they probably should be told off for liking the things they like.
 
EDIT: I remember someone on this thread saying "I can't own human beings. Thanks government." :lol:

It was me, and it was meant to say without government intervention my family would still own other human beings. I would probably own human beings right now, if that were the case. Hell, I might even own you since there'd be no one to stand up for you in your libertarian paradise.
 
Luckymoose said:
@Masada: Unless you can prove using data from 2011 isn't benefiting your group's unemployment statistics (I looked it up, and the labor participation rate is really low for black Aussies anyway), since 2011 was still deep in the global recession (where comparing the data for two groups during the same period would make sense--you don't compare 1928 to 1931 either in this type of thing), then I'll have no choice but to compare data from the same year.

First, Australia's unemployment rate has increased since 2011. Currently, it's at the highest level in about ten years. Second, America's unemployment rate is at its lowest level in six years. Based on that, it would be reasonable to suppose that the differential ought to have increased. Third, the differential is seven freaking percentage points to even get the Indigenous unemployment rate to the same level as the black unemployment rate. That's a huge gap by any reasonable standard. Fourth, low labor force participation rates is an indicator of disadvantage. Sixth, as I've explained a difference of a few years due to different reporting schedules is nothing big in statistical circles. But if you want to find data from 2014 on Indigenous unemployment by all means go for it I won't stop you. (I reserve the right to snicker).

Luckymoose said:
Secondly, you're pretending the social programs don't exist or matter in this debate, when they absolutely do. You didn't even bother addressing it. American social programs just simply don't reach these people as much as you'd like to pretend they are similar to Australian programs.
Look you can make all the airy-fairy qualitative arguments you want and I'll continue to ignore them. Why? Because they have no explanatory value sans data. But I'll humor you with one of my own: If we accept that Australia spends more on health programs (which I've shown is a dubious assumption) then the differential in life expectancy between groups should increase if we standardized for health expenditure. Basically, if we accept that relative health expenditure is a good explanatory variable for health outcomes with higher levels of the former leading to better outcomes in the latter then logically if we increase United States expenditure to match Australian expenditure the life expectancy gap would increase as black people's health outcomes rose and vice versa. I can come up with a bunch of other otherwise unprovable conjectures if you would like?

Luckymoose said:
Thirdly, ignoring the Natives instead to pick Black Americans is a cherry picking, when the groups most comparable to Indigenous Australians are the Natives, not the blacks.
Can you provide me with compelling reason I can't make the comparison? I also don't think you understand what cherry-picking is.
 
Consider: Cyberpunk was about exaggerating the deficiencies of the existing (domestic) sociopolitical climate to the point where open rebellion against it was attractive, and criminals, terrorists, and other people society generally looks down upon could become fashionable and chic points of view. Its rallying cry was literally #firstworldproblems.

Steampunk eschews the -punk entirely, usually focusing on aristocracy, the upper class, or people who are presented as legitimately superior to those around them. It doesn't even feature the class warfare overtones of Cyberpunk and doesn't even usually explore the documented sociocultural problems of the historical (Victorian) era it takes place in. The poor are marginalized, preferably to the point of being entirely out of sight. It's rich white (male) problems encrusted in gears, in an era where there was even more rampant classism and exploitation than today. At least poor white people problems sort of vaguely competed with the horrors of empire (which are never touched upon) in depravity, but poor people are essentially never the focus.

"Now imagine a cyberpunk story where the main characters are all rich CEOs who spend their time wearing hats with motherboards stuck on, jerkin' off to how great it is to be wealthy plutocrats." A 1:1 translation of the stylings of Cyberpunk to Steampunk would have the protagonists being coal miners, chimney sweeps, textile workers, meat packers... and their revolutionary technology would probably be guns and bombs and Communist or Anarchist propaganda. (The lack of Communist ideology in Cyberpunk is at least directly attributable to its rise during the crescendo of the Cold War.)

Regardless, both Cyberpunk and Steampunk place the emphasis on white western society and see the solutions to the problems it presents within it itself. You can agree with Chinua Achebe that Joseph Conrad was "a bloody racist," but he at least had more or less working class people directly interacting with the products and repercussions of empire: he acknowledged there was an outside.

Girl Genius is actually sort of the Snow Crash of Steampunk because it relishes in all this and even resurrects historical orientalism and so on for "coolness," to the point that it becomes ridiculous self-parody. The difference is it isn't self-aware.

P.S. the #1 thing white men like is Tom Clancy so really yeah they probably should be told off for liking the things they like.

Dude, this is why you have to play Infinite. It's such a de-pantsing of Steampunk.
 
First, Australia's unemployment rate has increased since 2011. Currently, it's at the highest level in about ten years. Second, America's unemployment rate is at its lowest level in six years. Based on that, it would be reasonable to suppose that the differential ought to have increased. Third, the differential is seven freaking percentage points to even get the Indigenous unemployment rate to the same level as the black unemployment rate. That's a huge gap by any reasonable standard. Fourth, low labor force participation rates is an indicator of disadvantage. Sixth, as I've explained a difference of a few years due to different reporting schedules is nothing big in statistical circles. But if you want to find data from 2014 on Indigenous unemployment by all means go for it I won't stop you. (I reserve the right to snicker).

Seven percentage points over two periods of time, which (as you've stated) hold very different economic circumstances. Low labor participation must be a compared stat between the two groups when considering unemployment rate, income, etc. You can't just say one group is worse without considering all the factors contributing to unemployment (which isn't a very good stat in and of itself, and you should look more at labor participation and underemployment on top of this). You also need to consider factors such as single income households, number of children per household, education rates, drug and alcohol abuse rates, etc. But you're ignoring all of this.

Look you can make all the airy-fairy qualitative arguments you want and I'll continue to ignore them. Why? Because they have no explanatory value sans data. But I'll humor you with one of my own: If we accept that Australia spends more on health programs (which I've shown is a dubious assumption) then the differential in life expectancy between groups should increase if we standardized for health expenditure. Basically, if we accept that relative health expenditure is a good explanatory variable for health outcomes with higher levels of the former leading to better outcomes in the latter then logically if we increase United States expenditure to match Australian expenditure the life expectancy gap would increase as black people's health outcomes rose and vice versa. I can come up with a bunch of other otherwise unprovable conjectures if you would like?

Ah, but here again you did not prove a damned thing. Comparing expenditure vs GDP is a silly means of finding out the goals and effectiveness of social programs such as healthcare. Black Americans simply do not have any form of universal healthcare provided by the state, and if they do it is limited to children (specifically the really poor, and often times it is only subsidized and people don't pay for it anyway) or elderly, not the middle of the road poor (again, because many states have opted out of Medicaid expansion and also happen to be the states with the highest African American populations). Now, you want to compare life expectancy of these two groups without considering that life expectancy of Native Americans is pretty much on par with Indigenous Australians (but again, you want to pick a poor group to compare it to to pretend our minorities don't suffer as much as yours).

When you're considering social programs such as welfare, food stamps, income tax refunds, and healthcare, the United States is pitiful compared to Australia. And if you can't see why that is an important factor in a debate about income, crime rates, and disadvantaged status then I don't know what you think is? See, there is an obvious lack of knowledge on your part about how large, dense, and unprotected our minorities are in comparison to all other first world countries. We simply do not provide what Australia does, so it isn't even a fair comparison.

You used 18k as the median household income of an African American, now add a few thousands a year in healthcare to match your programs and you get 14kish income. Now consider how little money that is to provide to households, and the ease in which criminals can affect the youth. Drugs, gangs, prison system promoted violence, etc.

You can't just pretend these factors don't exist. You want to make a point, but you're missing the forest for the trees, man.


Can you provide me with compelling reason I can't make the comparison? I also don't think you understand what cherry-picking is.

I've listed them all, but none of the factors that matter seem to be ones that you want to include in this discussion, which stems from your ignorance of American social programs, minorities, poverty, regional divisions, household size, etc. But please, let's continue making your group sound worse than ours just because you want to sound smug about it. It doesn't provide anything to the people actually suffering. It is nothing more than a whitewash of the social and economic issues in the United States by a foreigner who has never studied nor lived among these groups.

I don't want to argue with you Masada, but you're going about this topic in a completely backwards manner.

EDIT: All I can find on the Australian GDP percentage spent on your national healthcare service is 9.5%, not the 19.5% you compared to the United States.

EDIT2: Apparently you guys subsidize medicine to the point of being super cheap. I also need to remind you that the American market bears the brunt of new medicine costs in comparison to other countries. (this is why we buy pills from Canada or Mexico)
 
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