Post AVpsd4vjZLtF5PyScC by marick@mstdn.social
(DIR) More posts by marick@mstdn.social
(DIR) Post #AVnfb716YnNg5MnVom by marick@mstdn.social
2023-05-17T17:54:13Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Interesting review of @pluralistic’s /Red Team Blues/ (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60784417-red-team-blues) by @blair_fix. It comes with two charts: 1. “As countries become more plutocratic, do you know what goes up? Murders.” (Though I worry about the few upper-right semi-outliers dragging the best fit up.)2. “Naw, if that were true, the popularity of the word ‘cyberpunk’ would mirror incarceration rates. Oh wait … it does.”https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/05/13/red-team-blues-cory-doctorows-anti-finance-thriller/
(DIR) Post #AVnfb7d2Hlipz0XnwO by inglada@pouet.chapril.org
2023-05-18T08:31:38Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@marick @pluralistic @blair_fix What about this https://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
(DIR) Post #AVnfbAQNtGNuedeF8a by blair_fix@mastodon.online
2023-05-18T12:20:29Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@inglada @marick @pluralistic Are you comparing a time series with 11 observations to a regression with hundreds of observations? Please.
(DIR) Post #AVnfbBFmo9V9E3hIG0 by inglada@pouet.chapril.org
2023-05-18T19:36:45Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@blair_fix @marick @pluralistic No. It was about the cyberpunk plot. I was wondering about confounders.
(DIR) Post #AVnfbBoAkJ0Uwhmkr2 by inglada@pouet.chapril.org
2023-05-18T19:43:39Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@blair_fix @marick @pluralistic But if you have the source code and the data (or a notebook) which generates both plots I am interested. Which regression model was used? How do you model uncertainties? etc. Thanks for sharing!
(DIR) Post #AVnfbCOgYYDKlwrulc by blair_fix@mastodon.online
2023-05-18T19:46:43Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@inglada @marick @pluralistic I'm going to share data in a followup post. And about the cyberpunk trend, who knows about causation. But I think it's at least plausible that cyberpunk writers were influence by rise of mass incarceration.
(DIR) Post #AVnfbCwMXL9WSOcoG8 by marick@mstdn.social
2023-05-18T22:45:16Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@blair_fix @inglada @pluralistic I’ve lost track of who I’m replying to, but crime dramas might be better than cyberpunk when it comes to a correlation with incarceration. My sense (having been there) is that ‘80s crime dramas (and the Paper of Record) went heavy on things being out of control, criminals as immune to normal motivations, etc. “Taxi Driver” captured the attitude of the times. …
(DIR) Post #AVnfbDVSQrE2DF2pxg by marick@mstdn.social
2023-05-18T22:46:30Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@blair_fix @inglada @pluralistic …That is, maybe the cause of cyberpunk was the same as the cause of mass incarceration, which was the zeitgeist as reflected in fiction, which (I suspect) goes back to the death of the Great Society around 1968.Of course, Gibson is still alive. Someone should ask him. Cyberpunk *does* have the advantage of mentions being easy to count, whereas the shift in crime fiction is more subjective.
(DIR) Post #AVnfbED3ok6UOTRevQ by marick@mstdn.social
2023-05-18T22:52:49Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@blair_fix @inglada @pluralistic The phrase “crack babies” might be worth tracking. The popular press was all over the idea that babies born to cocaine-addicted mothers would be positively feral (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenatal_cocaine_exposure#Historical_context)Thinking back, it was a satanic panic / moral panic level of propaganda. And a phrase that was novel, like “cyberpunk”.
(DIR) Post #AVpsd2V4bVNLY9U8mW by siderea@universeodon.com
2023-05-19T02:19:19Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@marickHi, sorry, rando wandering in. This convo is weird to me because we don't need to speculate what inspired cyberpunk. The involved parties wrote about it.In particular, Gibson wrote a short story which honestly can be read as a kind of manifesto for the cyberpunk movement. It's titled "The Gernsback Continuum". Hugo Gernsback is the guy the Hugo award is named after; the point of the story is the meanings of different visions of the future. The protagonist winds up hallucinating a 1950s style future and realizes it's fascistic and he wants nothing to do with it.The story never comes out and says it's about science fiction (it's protagonist is a photographer on assignment for an architecture historian), except it's what's alluded to in the title, which is mighty pointed.So, @blair_fix @inglada @pluralistic
(DIR) Post #AVpsd3NJLqlEGMrSK0 by siderea@universeodon.com
2023-05-19T02:21:31Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@marickSo, was cyberpunk inspired by the rise in incarceration? Cyberpunk was inspired by the increasing awareness of white SF authors of fascism in the US. So insofar as increased incarceration was a manifestation of fascism, sure, but perhaps it would be better to describe them as coeffects of the same cause. @blair_fix @inglada @pluralistic
(DIR) Post #AVpsd43qngmwOIlQcy by siderea@universeodon.com
2023-05-19T02:26:13Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@marickThe very term "punk" in "cyberpunk" I take to allude to this antifascist, social critic stance held in common with, you know, punks.Cyberpunks wrote about disordered society with extreme income inequality, low social cohesion, high corruption, low regard for human rights or human life, environmental catastrophe, and militarized society because that was what they were seeing emerge in the US. @blair_fix @inglada @pluralistic
(DIR) Post #AVpsd4vjZLtF5PyScC by marick@mstdn.social
2023-05-19T22:39:13Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@siderea @blair_fix @inglada @pluralistic Pedantically I point out that “nazi punks” were a thing. “Nazi Punks Fuck Off" dates from the same year as “The Gernsback Continuum” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Punks_Fuck_Off). …
(DIR) Post #AVpsd5gsk3bVRe276W by theotherbrook@sunny.garden
2023-05-19T23:19:51Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@marick @siderea @blair_fix @inglada @pluralistic Keeping the literal Nazis from the nearby Aryan Nations compound out of our punk scene was a real challenge. Some of the younger kids joined them and one went to jail for committing a hate crime murder. Yeah, most of us were anti-fascist but to see punk as having a built-in ideology is a mistake.
(DIR) Post #AVpsd6KaMRMZQmbozQ by vfrmedia@social.tchncs.de
2023-05-19T23:27:15Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@theotherbrook @marick @siderea @blair_fix @inglada @pluralistic there was a bit of "edgy" use of Nazi imagery on the UK punk scene in 1970s, and some infiltration by the National Front and other right wing groups; but by the 1980s (with a parallel resurgence of the punk scene in UK/Europe and USA) most punks were indeed left/anarchist/anti fascist - many were friends of mine and I am brown. Punk of course isn;t dead, it just reached middle age 😁
(DIR) Post #AVpsd6eRAdF6QLtfvs by marick@mstdn.social
2023-05-19T22:39:33Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@siderea @blair_fix @inglada @pluralistic …I continue to suspect that cyberpunk was reacting to a general feeling that society was fucked up in a number of different directions. As someone who turned 21 in 1980, it just didn’t seem like it was a time when people pointed at X and said “That! *That* is the problem”. It was more… everything was the problem.…
(DIR) Post #AVpsd8IX32uPWzfD4C by marick@mstdn.social
2023-05-19T22:40:08Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@siderea @blair_fix @inglada @pluralistic …Granted, I’m no cyberpunk author, and I can only report why cyberpunk resonated so strongly with me.