Democratic (Party) Direction

how do you guys like my new sock

should put all the canadians in one thread to answer questions about the US.

there's no need to visit another country to count lawn signs. you can just use google earth imagery in 3D mode

My wife also seems to think that hyperbolic exaggerations make her assertions more powerful rather than moving them in the direction of absurdity.

i should know - i've been doing it for canada every night for 4 years. they are REALLY hard to find!!

xp

I mean, most Canadians know more about your history, so...

my girlfriend counts lawn signs, you don't know her she lives in canada

We can name the thread Bores of Canada.

In all seriousness since we’re on the subject, I live in a bit of LA that is not mostly white Canadians and during the primary the lawn sign count was like 90% biden, 10% Williamson. At least one of my neighbors still has their Williamson sign up.

It is very gratifying to have so many Canadian US history knowers on here. Saves me a lot of tedious wikipedia time.

This Rebecca Traister piece on the dispiriting nature of the convention is good, I think:
https://www.thecut.com/2020/08/how-were-the-dnc-speakers-chosen.html

most Canadians know more about your history, so...

know your audience, beamish. "most Canadians" would not know more about US history than US ilxors. so... what?

Is your ILX name a reference to noted British classical composer and violist Sally Beamish?

Why are we engaging with this boognish23

Is it just a reflex to having our minds blown?

My kids were both glued to the convention and have declared their intention to watch all two hours each night, so Generation Alpha and very young Z is on board

why do cats bat around a ball of yarn?

@pomemitul

No. As a young’un, I was very enamoured with the 1991 Dynamix software click and choose game The Adventures of Willy Beamish.

As an aside, the Sega-CD port has the best theme I have ever heard in a video game

Why are we engaging with this boognish23

the unifying trait of ILXors is the inability to resist picking at a scab

First, beamish13 asserts Biden inspires no passion anywhere. Next, beamish13 asserts they hate Biden. This is self-contradictory.

― the unappreciated charisma of cows (Aimless)

look, i understand you want to shift the topic of discussion from the particular awfulness of joe biden to the logical inconsistencies displayed by a person on the internet who dislikes joe biden, but i'm not sure anybody else here wants to do this. can we get back to talking about joe biden's awfulness and the political incompetence of the people who have self-appointed themselves as the Only Alternative to Donald Trump?

no

xp
tbf beamish's posting history goes back 5 years, he's just exemplifying that thing where a formerly ILM-only poster crosses over and everyone assumes they're being trolled

As an aside, the Sega-CD port has the best theme I have ever heard in a video game

― beamish13

oh my god i didn't know you were a _rockist_

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek65C45-zjM

no

― shout-out to his family (DJP)

that's fine, i'm down with just talking willy beamish on this thread until november

Sierra/Dynamix made some great games, no? Same company that gave us Kong’s Quest and Leisure Suit Larry

I misread the room, I guess. It seemed like most of us on ILC immensely dislike Biden. Honestly, I can’t even talk about too much; I have to worry about my blood pressure

I LOVE CRICKET: THE CHINATOWN OF ILX despises joe biden

some of us didn't replace the last horse we beat to death.

I was just making a very mild critical post about the propensity for people talking about US politics (and this includes journalists on twitter) to get into the weeds of reading lawn signs like tea leaves when surely it's the very definition of anecdotal and not v useful?

also beamish is from your country stop blaming him on Canada (also don't blame me on Canada, I'm not Canadian). blame Canada for being a colonial petrostate instead.

the lawn sign stuff reminds me of David Brooks being in Buttfuck, MI and talking to someone at the Arby's and they happen to have the exact same political concerns as him - which democrats ignore etc. blah

It's true; no one but the hardest of hard leftists actually believes in anything. Republicans are 100% creatures of greed, bigotry and spite, and mainstream Democrats have no beliefs at all except a vague idea that everyone should be a little bit nicer, while getting rich off capitalism of course. Only internet leftists have the virtue of genuine belief, which is why they are the best that the human race has to offer (just ask 'em). The other 99.44% of humanity are their inferiors, they just haven't acknowledged it yet, which is why the internet leftists are forced (it's a real burden) to keep screaming at them about it until enlightenment takes hold at last.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Tuesday, August 18, 2020 1:34 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

keep up this biting boomerish satire and you’ll have andy borowitz’s job in no time

EDITORS: Further GOP additions to the Democratic Party platform will xmit across the wire at 2:35PM EST. #DNC

— Fake AP Stylebook (@FakeAPStylebook) September 6, 2012

The DNC lineup’s got me feeling like Joe Biden’s neurons - not fired up.

Those synapses have been at quarter-speed since the first Nixon administration

Sierra/Dynamix made some great games, no? Same company that gave us Kong’s Quest and Leisure Suit Larry

― beamish13

oh dear, this is why intersectional politics are so hard

i assume you mean king's quest and not the donkey kong country sequel "diddy kong's quest", and honestly, i do not like sierra and their approach to gaming. it's not just that most of roberta williams' king's quest games are poorly designed and that the sexual politics of leisure suit larry are, uh, questionable, but they also put out the police quest series, including a game literally written by daryl fucking gates

honestly, if anything i would argue that sierra were their prime era's closest analogue to the democratic party - big, mainstream, popular with people who played computer games which was a small and unrepresentative minority of the people of america but they had Plans, they had Plans to expand and make things bigger and believed, really really believed, they were the future of gaming, there was a sense of inevitability to them even as they kept pumping out beautiful games that weren't any fun to play

in the meantime some fucking incels came up with a game where you shoot demons in the face and while nobody was paying any attention it became the Future of Gaming

gaming historian jimmy maher's blog post on Narratives of DOOM is incredibly enlightening and very worth reading

https://www.filfre.net/2020/06/the-shareware-scene-part-5-narratives-of-doom/

now, me, personally? i'm the fucking intellectual asshole who spent all this time complaining that they didn't make games like zork anymore and everybody just rolls their goddamn eyes at

the unifying trait of ILXors is the inability to resist picking at a scab

― shout-out to his family (DJP), Tuesday, August 18, 2020 7:19 PM (twenty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

look, they're actually kind of tasty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOR38552MJA

I only play Tetris and Mario Kart.

scabs are enemies of worker solidarity and deserve to be picked at

the unifying trait of ILXors is the inability to resist picking at a scab

look, they're actually kind of tasty.

Dan didn't say anything about eating them btw

the political incompetence of the people who have self-appointed themselves as the Only Alternative to Donald Trump?

As I recall, a goodly number of voters got involved in this piece of political incompetence. I suppose it is fair to call them 'self-appointed', but that is kind of built into the system. As for myself, my money went to Warren, then when Warren dropped out my vote went to Sanders.

What Alternative to Donald Trump are you proposing?

What Alternative to Donald Trump are you proposing?

― the unappreciated charisma of cows (Aimless)

for the seven billionth time, identifying a problem does not require one to have the solution

it occurs to me today that the government of the united states could well be described as "anarchofascism"

now, i could be wrong, but when i see the dnc, i see a group of people who are much more concerned with the anarcho- than they are with the fascism

i am not an anarchist, but i am much more concerned with the latter than the former

fwiw thinking about US political culture re: Sierra On-Line, imho the key Jimmy Maher post is Splendid Isolation: Sierra at Mid-Decade. this makes a case for Sierra staging a mid-80s realignment with the Reagan cultural majority (following early dalliances with PNW cedar hot-tub vibes, and notwithstanding Larry): the whole company was basically saved by cutting deals with Radio Shack to put software out on their Tandy line of PC clones, and Radio Shack had this huge retail presence in small towns across America. so they really leaned into being the wholesome, family-friendly, mainstream PC gaming company. probably also explains why they were hawking sort of underwhelming but easily-grasped fare as Hoyle's Book of Games. i would say more about Willy Beamish but truly we do have other threads for that.

As I recall, a goodly number of voters got involved in this piece of political incompetence. I suppose it is fair to call them 'self-appointed', but that is kind of built into the system. As for myself, my money went to Warren, then when Warren dropped out my vote went to Sanders.

― the unappreciated charisma of cows (Aimless)

why do you think i was talking about you aimless

why do you act like i was _accusing_ you of something

why do you feel the need to speak for "a goodly number of voters", surely they are capable of speaking for themselves

I have an enormous amount of nostalgic fondness for the SVGA remake of the first Quest For Glory game

I mean her VGA *nerd fail*

“just” not “her”

ugh sorry I’m done

Feel like we just scrolled by this, which made me lol:

We can name the thread Bores of Canada.

― Yerac, Tuesday, August 18, 2020 8:07 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

oh look to be completely fair the quest for glory series rules (i think they are doing a 100% of it at SGDQ this year?), and there's one of the king's quest games that jane jensen worked on - I think it was King's Quest VI? - that's supposed to be _way_ better than the others

and yeah it is, uh, not terribly great? the way sierra, which notably included a _lot_ of women designing its games, gets dumped on in favor of the lucasarts adventures, which really didn't

that's what i like about maher's post on doom, he doesn't flinch away from confronting realities that challenge his personal predispositions. he doesn't portray DOOM as this terrible evil that wiped out all that was good in gaming, even as he points out the many long-lasting negative consequences its success had for gaming culture

similarly, i brought up daryl gates' police quest before, maher has a great article on that as well that delves deep into the contradictions at the heart of sierra

https://www.filfre.net/2019/07/chief-gates-comes-to-oakhurst-a-cop-drama/

it occurs to me today that the government of the united states could well be described as "anarchofascism"

now, i could be wrong, but when i see the dnc, i see a group of people who are much more concerned with the anarcho- than they are with the fascism

i am not an anarchist, but i am much more concerned with the latter than the former

― Kate (rushomancy), Tuesday, August 18, 2020 3:27 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is an interesting point. I did find it notable that Bernie directly called out authoritarianism in his speech last night, but maybe as an exception that proves the rule.