An interesting conversation that refuses to indulge in speculation about the Epstein papers, while noting that Trump seems terrified off them and so is increasingly distracted, and moves from populism through peformativity and on the Marjorie Taylor Green as an odd sort of bell weather.
I watch these women every Saturday. Always very thoughtful and well informed discussions. Although, I have to say I'm tired of the whole designation of acts as being "performative" -- it seems to become facile. The descriptions of "performative" acts in this discussion avoids the homogenization when the concomitant particulars are identified.
ReplyDeleteLarry & Donald. Leaves on the Epstein tree.
ReplyDelete"The value of close reading: Larry Summers edition"
Posted on November 13, 2025 9:05 AM by Andrew
"The principle, “God is in every leaf of every tree,” doesn’t just apply to statistics. It also applies to literature. With close reading, we can find unexpected depths in almost any text.
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"6. “The moral bankruptcy that led the Crimson to endorse BDS . . .” Revealing to see where Summers draws the line. Getting dating advice from a convicted sex offender is no big deal. But a student newspaper taking a position on foreign policy that is different from that taken by Larry Summers, that’s moral bankruptcy.
7. “I do hope alumni trustees will investigate and take any necessary steps lest a problematic situation deteriorate further.” Kind of stunning to see a former university president suggest to use alumni pressure to intimidate an independent school newspaper. Yeah, I know, I know, college administrations lean on school newspapers all the time, but usually they have the discretion to try to do it behind the scenes. What’s noteworthy here is not so much that Summers has this belief that student journalists can be bossed around in this way, but that he thinks this belief is acceptable enough that he would just tweet it out to his 375,000 followers.
OK, the above are the things we’ve learned directly from the close readings. Lots more there than the immediate observation that Larry Summers is a creep who was pals with a convicted sex offender.
But we can do more. Now that we’ve drawn all this out from the document, we can put some of the pieces together. No, not the sordid details of who-did-what on that Caribbean island. I’m thinking about the bigger picture, of relations among the rich and powerful.
Let’s get back to point 3, Larry’s fumbled attempt to cleverly say that he thought women were less intelligent than men on average.
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https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/11/13/the-value-of-close-reading-larry-summers-edition/
SD
OT Bill.
ReplyDeleteBill, will Homo Ludens address....
"Dark Pattern Games (darkpattern.games)135 points by robotnikman 7 hours ago | hide | past | favorite | 65 comments
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"cflewis 22 minutes ago | next [–]
"I'm a co-author of the first paper cited in the citations page, "Dark Patterns in the Design of Games" http://www.fdg2013.org/program/papers/paper06_zagal_etal.pdf
I see at least some of the patterns we came up with appear on the site. Happy to answer any questions about it all, I think we were the first to write about dark patterns in games, at least academically. It was 2013 so predated Overwatch loot boxes, which I am sure I would have put in there, but now they seem quite tame.
I do want to get ahead of something many of the comments here made: we were very aware that one person's dark pattern was another's benefit eg Animal Crossing's appointment mechanics make it easy to just play for a bit then put it down for the day and come back tomorrow. We went back and forth a lot about how to phrase this dichotomy, as we knew it was the stickest point of the whole plan. That's why the paper's Abstract immediately addresses it: "Game designers are typically regarded as advocates for players. However, a game creator’s interests may not align with the players’." Alignment was the key: are the players and designers in agreement, or is there tension where the designer (or, more usually nowadays, bean counters) is trying to exploit the players in some dimension?
So yeah, happy to answer questions about it.
PS I would be remiss not to mention the rebuttal paper "Against Dark Game Design Patterns" https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/id/eprint/156460/1/DiGRA_202...
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swi 4 hours ago | prev | next [–]
"Chris Wilson released a video on this topic yesterday - "Dark Patterns: Are Your Games Playing You?". He has an interesting perspective having been the lead of Path of Exile. A free to play, decade long, popular, action role playing game.
While opinions vary on the correct use of these patterns, the video is a helpful and easy to digest, reminder of them. The video description contains additional links.
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"Dark Patterns: Are Your Games Playing You?" - https://youtu.be/OCkO8mNK3Gg
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45947761
Or do my Homo Luden model weights need adjusting?