Pisha [she/her, they/them]

Still in awe that abstract calls for death are the big red line that can never be crossed because it makes a space unsafe. Calling us fascists and Nazis? That’s just some healthy discussion. Doubting that people here are really trans? That’s a slap on the wrist. But hyperbolic vitriol against landlords or “people of NATO”? Oh buddy, now you’re going to get it.

There’s nothing fun about French gender.

Hot take incoming: I spent all day yesterday playing Baldur’s Gate 3, which just confirmed my opinion that Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is the best CRPG of recent years. There’s just no comparison.

I understand that. I’ve got two legal first names, one that I use with my partner, this one for online and another in reserve. Maybe we should, like, steal upper-class naming conventions and just have half a dozen given names each.

What annoys me about the liberal parts of the Internet – one thing at least – is the idea that intellectual property benefits creative workers and piracy hurts them. It’s just so simplistic and removed from actual money flow. People seem to imagine that when you go to the book store and pay your 20 € for a copy, 10 % of it goes directly to the author or something. In reality, at least as I understand it, royalties like these basically don’t matter because they only come in after the advance has been covered by the sales. And whether one of the oligopolistic publishers buys a manuscript and for what amount is based on inscrutable calculations including how much prestige it will bring to the brand, separate from the profit it will make. So I don’t think there’s a direct economic incentive to publish truly literary work and therefore I don’t think royalties matter for good writing. Coming back to the main point: Authors who decry piracy are just redirecting the righteous hatred of the artistry-destroying oligopoly toward the readers, who are comparatively powerless and unwilling participants in the publishers’ money-making scheme. Besides, some of the best writers today publish their work for free and take money via Patreon or some such, which is a slightly more ethical corporation.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk, I’ll be here all week.

Saw “boujee” the other day and that almost makes sense