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Meta just suspended the Facebook account of Neal Stephenson

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Re: Meta just suspended the Facebook account of Neal Stephenson

#91

Post by lemonberry »

gopher_space wrote: post #41
lemonberry wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loved this game! I still have the original rulebook. That my AD&D 2nd ed. books, Star Frontiers and Gamma World boxed sets may be my most prized possessions.

Throw a few Uncle Al catalogs on the pile and we’d have similar childhoods. Gamma World was actually pretty amazing.

Cool! I had to look "Uncle Al catalogs" up. I remember seeing ads for Car Wars, but never played it myself. There were so many neat games back then.

Gamma World was really neat and timely given how fearful we all were of nuclear war. I remember watching Road Warrior at the time and thinking that Gamma World could actually be the world we live in.

Dragon Magazine would occasionally have articles on Gamma World too. So much food for the young imagination.

Re: Meta just suspended the Facebook account of Neal Stephenson

#92

Post by Tostino »

rl3 wrote: post #82
pesus wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got a week long ban for calling someone out for being a Nazi. The person openly praising Hitler did not get banned at all. At the time I thought it was mere incompetence, but in hindsight, it seems more like intentional malice.

> The person openly praising Hitler did not get banned at all. Content moderation at Meta is a joke now. I reported an account multiple times for hate speech. The account's photos were comprised entirely of racist caricatures of black people. Like absolutely vile, hateful shit. Each time, I received a notification along the lines of: [paraphrasing] "We found that the account in question did not violate our community…

I don't think I've ever gotten a response from a corporation other than "this totally obvious Nazi adjacent content seems fine to me".

Re: Meta just suspended the Facebook account of Neal Stephenson

#93

Post by tialaramex »

glimshe wrote: post #88
jdlshore wrote: post #27

For people missing the irony here, the term “metaverse,” that Meta is named after, was coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 book “Snow Crash.” In the book, the metaverse is a VR version of the internet with an emphasis on accurate sword fights and realistic facial expressions.

If Mark Zuckerberg didn't exist, we'd still have Facebook. Someone else would have done it. But if Neal Stephenson didn't exist, we'd not necessarily have what he created. That's how unique his ideas are. And Meta, billions of dollars later, is still no Metaverse...

Eh, I like some of Neal's books a lot, particularly Diamond Age is likely in any top ten I'd come up with. But this claim is basically only true in the trivial sense that wouldn't have any arbitrary creative work if its author hadn't created it.

So in that sense it's the exact same as Facebook. Without Neal somebody else would invented "post Cyberpunk" and without Mark somebody else would have invented whatever Facebook is - social media for your grandparents maybe?

Neal is "unique" but we're all unique, it's the least unique thing about us. He struggles to write satisfying endings, he leans too heavily on the rape-as-character-development trope, his novels have become flabby as his fame grew and presumably he was able to resist editorial demands more, he doesn't know as much about technology as he thinks he does... Like I said, "Diamond Age" would probably make my top ten, but that's not because it's flawless by any means.

Re: Meta just suspended the Facebook account of Neal Stephenson

#94

Post by defrost »

mchusma wrote: post #86
SlowTao wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years back Chris Hedges did a showshow/podcast or something and he was forced to finally read in depth a lot more Rand. I love his defeated responded of "It is amazing just how pedestrian those books are. There is nothing interesting in them.". Hedges is always worth listening to even if you won't always agree but he does make doomers look like utopian optimists.

I think anyone who says there is nothing interesting in Rand either didn’t read it or is acting in bad faith. Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead are uniquely fascinating even if you don’t agree with her stance. Chris Hedges is a self reported socialist. So makes sense they would not like books negative on socialism. But you can be a socialist and still engage with competing thoughts. Just like a capitalist can review Ma…

Both Rand and William McGonagall are widely regarded as are uniquely fascinating.

In a layered complex world both the above statement and the statement that there's little of interest in Rand's books for socialists, for hedge fund traders, or for the majority of people with a background in political science, can be true.

Stephen Fry, well known for his love of the English language and breadth of eclectic interest, when discussing the Scot said:

  I am too kind to you and to [McGonagall's] memory to reproduce the entire poem'
(The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within [NY: Gotham, 2007], p. 153), and further:

  Almost everything that can go wrong with a poem has gone wrong here. One might argue that McGonagall has brilliantly memorialised a doomed and structurally flawed bridge in congruently doomed and structurally flawed verse.

  His poem is a disaster for a disaster: it is the Tay Bridge, crashing hopelessly to its destruction and dragging every innocent word with it.

  It is not buttressed by metre, rhyme, sense or reason and even as we read it we feel it collapse under the weight of its own absurdity and ineptitude.
(p. 154, as above)

Regardless of anyone's position on the political stance of Rand, her written works deserve little more than to be the subject of atrocious parody of her robber baron sick o' fantasy, the breathless bodice ripping drama of trains repeatedly entering and being reversed out of tunnels against a soundscape of a geared steampunk stock ticker of yore.

Re: Meta just suspended the Facebook account of Neal Stephenson

#95

Post by tialaramex »

gtirloni wrote: post #60

How would one go about suing in cases like this?

For any legal action you should find a lawyer. Many lawyers will be happy to meet briefly with someone to figure out what they can do for you or if they should point you to somebody else. In this case such a meeting is likely to be very brief indeed, the chance of success is negligible and the likely costs are sky high.

Re: Meta just suspended the Facebook account of Neal Stephenson

#97

Post by anthem2025 »

mchusma wrote: post #86
SlowTao wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years back Chris Hedges did a showshow/podcast or something and he was forced to finally read in depth a lot more Rand. I love his defeated responded of "It is amazing just how pedestrian those books are. There is nothing interesting in them.". Hedges is always worth listening to even if you won't always agree but he does make doomers look like utopian optimists.

I think anyone who says there is nothing interesting in Rand either didn’t read it or is acting in bad faith. Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead are uniquely fascinating even if you don’t agree with her stance. Chris Hedges is a self reported socialist. So makes sense they would not like books negative on socialism. But you can be a socialist and still engage with competing thoughts. Just like a capitalist can review Ma…

Literally every person I have any respect for as an intellectual has described Ayn Rand as slop.

I have yet to hear positive things come from anyone who isn’t a libertarian. The sort of person who identifies with the characters because they could also envision themselves doing a monologue that lasts 45 pages.

Re: Meta just suspended the Facebook account of Neal Stephenson

#98

Post by daotoad »

Animats wrote: post #80
jdlshore wrote: post #27

For people missing the irony here, the term “metaverse,” that Meta is named after, was coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 book “Snow Crash.” In the book, the metaverse is a VR version of the internet with an emphasis on accurate sword fights and realistic facial expressions.

I was really hoping for a Snow Crash movie. That project has been in development hell for years. Instead, we got Ready Player One, which is like Snow Crash for dummies. There's a trailer for a low-budget version of Snow Crash.[1] It's awful. I don't hold out much hope for that project. Snow Crash is about a conspiracy between a media baron and a televangelist to take over the world. That would upset a lot more people…

That trailer is brilliant for what it is.

I would love to see a proper version of Snow Crash get theatrical release or maybe even the high-concept-tv-series-with-ten-episodes treatment the big streamers are cooking up these days.

Re: Meta just suspended the Facebook account of Neal Stephenson

#99

Post by schoen »

daotoad wrote: post #98
Animats wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was really hoping for a Snow Crash movie. That project has been in development hell for years. Instead, we got Ready Player One, which is like Snow Crash for dummies. There's a trailer for a low-budget version of Snow Crash.[1] It's awful. I don't hold out much hope for that project. Snow Crash is about a conspiracy between a media baron and a televangelist to take over the world. That would upset a lot more people…

That trailer is brilliant for what it is. I would love to see a proper version of Snow Crash get theatrical release or maybe even the high-concept-tv-series-with-ten-episodes treatment the big streamers are cooking up these days.

I would watch a full-length movie of Snow Crash in the style of this trailer!

I think it may be a high school student project.

Re: Meta just suspended the Facebook account of Neal Stephenson

#100

Post by [deleted] »

anthem2025 wrote: post #97
mchusma wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think anyone who says there is nothing interesting in Rand either didn’t read it or is acting in bad faith. Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead are uniquely fascinating even if you don’t agree with her stance. Chris Hedges is a self reported socialist. So makes sense they would not like books negative on socialism. But you can be a socialist and still engage with competing thoughts. Just like a capitalist can review Ma…

Literally every person I have any respect for as an intellectual has described Ayn Rand as slop. I have yet to hear positive things come from anyone who isn’t a libertarian. The sort of person who identifies with the characters because they could also envision themselves doing a monologue that lasts 45 pages.

[deleted]
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