Two Audiobooks

Before the Coup

After the Coup

[MUSH] RetroMux.org - The MOS Eisley of WOD Mushes

Short: I left the mush once because they were the victim of a horrible crime, but left so I could report it, only to be convinced to return and regret it seconds into my first scene.

Medium: This mush has so much going for it; so much potential only to have a completely non chalant attitude about game integrity or embracing new players. When you GO old school you get the good of nostalgia and old systems not written by the PC policy and you get the bad of the old and remember WHY there are safety checks in National Larping and WHY Larping is going to the nordic model; because hapless nitwits seem to like to hire sadists or have sadists attracted to work for them, and/or maybe a combination of both.

Maximum Verbosity: The king of all World of Darkness Mushes is Dark Metal, which is over 30 years old, was set in the future of the LA area and merged Old World of Darkness and Cyberpunk perfectly. It was also a jungle; the staff was as old school as it gets and basically anything goes. Any abuse you have ever heard of staff doing anywhere on another mush, including threatening people with their characters, making super characters to beat the shit out of people, letting sabbat eat people in broad daylight and then having the uber ridiculous Metsec Cyberfreaks show up and mow everyone down, and it was great. I still have a character on the lingering legacy shard thereof and likely will as long as its running and it is run as a labor of love by those that run it.

With Retromux, that's basically what you're getting; smaller, quieter, 'risk levels' that put a smiley face sticker over the barbarism of teenagers doing teenager things without the coolness of it all being new, the game being new, the perfect genre mash up of cyberpunk and WOD and the hundreds upon hundreds of players that played on Dark Metal back in the day. Instead, you get a small baroque mush set during the heydey of world of darkness in 1994 using the M20, V20 and W20 rules. The staff is engaged and expereinced, and they are up front about what the mush is, but just like any infernal contract you need to read the fine print.

Let's start with calling a spade a spade. There were two versions of this MUX. The first one, that I very much wanted to play the characters I made for it including a Gangrel that I loved from a Floriduh LARP, a celestial chorus mage librarian and worshipper of Zoraster, and a kinfolk smith who was quite and stoic. It was great. I had a few scenes, it has SO. MUCH. POTENTIAL

And then Polk ruined it.

Yeah I'm naming names, and Polk if you want to sue me, feel free. I'm serious. Get an attorney, get a supoena, find my IRL address from google, send me a supoena, and then I will hire an attorney, and then there will be discovery. I can afford an attorney, and I can and will find a VERY VERY GOOD ONE. And I can and will call witnesses, some of whom will be hostile to me for writing this, but they will be UNDER OATH to talk about you and the shit you do.

Bring it.

Now since we are bringing lawyers into this, let's start with the fact that I have not witnessed anything first hand. What I know is that on an old mush I was on, Polk got banished, and rumors were for some pretty dark shit; like hacker type shit. I didnt see it, but I thought he might have gotten a raw deal because that MUSH was the cliqueyest place I've ever been in my life, and I ended up getting banned because I called them out for it. To this day, aside from Heromux, who had a wizard who allowed a sadistic little abuser to fuck with my stories and character, that I ahve ever been banned from. Social media and I do not get along, but only two mushes (Maybe three after I write this). But that place had PROBLEMS, so you can see why I might wonder if Polk got a bad deal.

Then I hear that he is staff at the new mush. So I'm all aboard it because Polk is a great story teller. Well then I try to log in and find I cant. So here is what I KNOW, because I expereinced it first hand. And its down. And the wiki is down too. On the discord server rumor is its Polk. Rumoris, Polk and some other rando dude tried to blackmail the person who runs the mush, who, despite asking us all not to say anthing about this spycho, was CLEARLY the victim based on observations and hearsay. What I KNOW, is that the person who runs it was terrified becuase Polk threanted to SUE and said anyone who badmouthed him would be BANNED from the mush.

So I left the mush. I had every intention of writing this then. I dont let shits get away with this kind of thing. I am not telling lies.. I am perfectly willing to get into the laundry of a man who would do this kind of shit, because if he has done it two I know about; HOW MANY FUCKIGN TIMES HAS HE DONE THIS? What about the guy who helped him? How many times has HE threatened to crash a mush or wiped it or ACTUALLY DONE IT?

But that didnt happen, until now, because I was convinced to just go back. So I do, and I make a vamp, and THIRTY SECONDS after joining, the Harpy comes over and goes out of HER way to make sure I have to get out of her way, all in one pose, deliberately making drama. I've dealt with this type of player in mushes and larps all the time. I was briefly annoyed, but I was more annoyed at staff for not calling it out. There is nothing wrong with playing your character and if you are STUPID enough to play the sadistic tower that is the Camarilla in Vampire the Masquerade (and I was, on request, and that will NEVER EVER EVER happen again for ANYONE) then you get shat on by the upper rims of the tower. Just like in DND, if you are playing a party of evil characters, evil characters are gonna do evil things.

But as I said, the REASON modern LARPS and modern games go OUT OF THEIR WAY to distinguish out of character play and in character paly is t his retroshit. Retromux means old school style mush GM's letting power players shit all over the newbs. You want a nice welcoming place/ This aint it. You want a vamp sphere that gives a shit who you are as a player? This place aint it. The fucking clueless idiot who runs theirv amp sphere doesnt have the same sense I did when I was 12 years old running first edition dnd that you dont let the older players SHIT all over the new players right away without motivation BECAUSE ITS ALSO FUCKING METAGAMING. And the fucking idiot didnt even see it. Needless to say, after the fact that the person running the game hired this idiot to run the vamp sphere and let Polka and his pal lock her out of her own code, I decided it was time to move on to greener pastures, left the mush, left the discord server and blocked everyone on discord. And frankly, I am never EVER doing another WOD mush again as long as I live.

[Social Media] Kolektiva.Social - The Anarchy Mastodon Instance that is Run by Hierarchy

Short:  I wish I could tell you that a Mastodon Instance built by Anarchs would live up to Anarch Ideals, But I'd Be Lying.

Medium: I fled to Kolektiva.Social after Mastodon.Social decided that my defense of college protesters who didn't like the Israeli Genocide merited enough action that the State of Germany told Gagron, founder of Mastodon.social to attack my account.  I have proof of what happened on my writing blog; what matters here is I thought about the safest place for me to flee, and I went to the most leftwing instance I knew.  At the time, I knew nothing about Anarchism, but I also know that was a colossal waste of my time as is this place.  It is the most hierachical place in the history of Anarch institutions; not even a syndicate or a collective but run by a committee of six; several of whom told me on Day 1 that they side with Israel so watch my step.  Which I did, so the powers that be found another way to make me leave.

Maximum Verbosity: I deleted my account.  I also deleted my author only account on Tech.Lgbt which hasn't done anything but frankly I like them and I didn't want them to be subject to the targeted harassment I received on Kolektiva.  The most reportable instance was when an innocent named Blog Diva was spammed by Gagron setting my account to limited (for pointing out what he did on Mastodon.social) and spammed anyone I interacted with on mastodon.social with a notification so it seemed to the poor woman that I was spamming and stalking her; but MudMob; the demented tyrant decided to side with Mastodon.social (I'm guessing mud mob is one of the zioninsts on kolektiva but that's only speculation).  What I do know is that my absolute shame and indignation about what Gagron had done to my account made Mudmob tell ME to be less defensive with an absolute lack of empathy for the assault on my account.

It is apparent to me that Kolekitva isn't really about Direct Action so much as McAnarchy and more concerned about being a popularity contest to spread the gospel of Anarchy than it is to actually make the world a better place.  The inciting incident was when I commented on the nine billionth post attacking Mastodon because it is full of bigots (like Gagron and Mudmob) and how they were shutting down their account.  Gee, if I was Mark Zuckerfucker and had a billion dollars, do you have any idea how fucking cheap it would be to set up a bunch of false accounts of bigots who then proceed to attack Mastodon and get every gullible white knight Liberal to run mob violence to the rescue so that they can get their maximum allocation of virtue signal points.  Indeed, the reason I know this is a scam has now been taken down and doesnt show up in Kolektiva searches.  So far as I know, based on google searches,  its been taken down entirely, likely by court action due to a think tank.  My proof is all gone; which is convenient, but the screenshots I took of Gagron's tyranny are mostly gone since they won't let me totally delete my mastodon.social account (meanwhile actual nazis just make a new email and just log right back on but I can't entirely delete my account on mastodon.social...Facebook has a more generous deletion policy.). 

Hell, I think the best proof for my claims is, get suspended for something harmless and try to delete your account on mastodon.social.  You can't.  Its the stupidest most kludgy enforcement mechanism in the history of man kind.

The irony is that I was starting to take interest in Anarchism.  I was studying it and may still use it in my future works; but I've always had reservations about it.  It isn't what people think it is.  Until I met Mudmob, I observed anarchists to be more moral than most people but a Liberal Anarch is such an oxymoron I dont know what to say.  I define genetic conservatives and genetic liberals as those who are resistant to change and those who weaponize the moreys of a culture and society to maintain the status quo or their hierarchy.  Anarchs aren't supposed to have heirachys, because hierarchy is corruptible, which is why Liberals love to weaponize it, but that doesnt stop Liberals from infiltrating anarchism and behaving just as much of a Delores Umbridge as any Labour  / Ministry of Magic petty tyrant given a small amount of power.

I believe that a true anarch instance is only possible with a much wider committee than six people, that is absolutely transparent in its discussions and that when acting in an administrative capacity not allowed to be private at all.  I went to the trouble to block the hired agents trying to destroy mastodon and mud mob went to the trouble of copying the offended liar and talking to her and me indirectly in a most condescending way.  In other words, she acted like a liberal.

At the end of the day, I decided that dealing with more hypocrites-anarchs pretending to be anarchs but on a committee for public safety, was more than I could tolerate and left.  I've left social media and left mastodon entirely.  I dont recommend mastodon, not because its full of bigots, but because it might give you hope for what an anticapitalist and decentralized social media platform can do but is so riddled with state agents and corporate saboteurs that it is assuredly doomed.

Just skip the step and join Blue Sky which is run by a think tank agent; likely the same think tank that is trying to destroy mastodon.  As for Anarchy....let me save you several hours of their Kafkaesque faq.

The two incidents they point to for why anarchy works are the First Nations and Prehistory; and the Spanish Civil War.  Last I checked, not a single First Nation actually runs on anarchy even if their version of hieirarchy is considerably different than western ideology.  Prehistory is the same as basing your society on the Bible; our understanding of it changes so often and so many times that its fucking bullshit.  And finally, the Spanish civil war, which based on high level analysis did actually work pretty well but, surprise surprise, anarchists didn't find fighting in trenches to their liking so while. highly motivated in many ways without a hierarchy they got crushed by the communists.

If you can't win wars; you can't exist unless you get some shangrila zen moment which I am all in favor of hoping for but given that they can't even run a half decent mastodon shard by their own fucking principals I'm pretty sure you are better off with just about any political philsophy but anarchism.

[Mush] Heroes Assemble Mush - The Paragon of Superhero Mushes

 Short: It successfully applies every lesson learned from previous superhero mushes in a well run fun way to tell your story your way in a sandbox environment.

Medium: Heroes Assemble Mush merges DC and Marvel Continuity with a few inclusions from Image and Darkhorse; whilst avoiding the genre dilution of other shows such as the Dresden Files, Buffy the Vampire or the Last Starfighter.  It uses a semi automated log system to allow anyone to read role-play logs with scheduled events so that there is something going on practically every night, and a flexible and fun plot system to connect the various events together.  There is (as of now) very large player base which gives the opportunity for fun and social RP to allow you to play just about any character; feature or original with a few sane limits put in place.

Maximum Verbosity: Up until now, I've largely written about what didn't work in mushes and this is my first positive review of one.  I've been doing super hero mushes since Children of the Atom and I played my 2nd version of Grenademan (after first making him in Torg) and had an absolute blast.  The biggest problem with an X-men themed mush is the Mansion problem where 2/3rds of all meaningful play takes place in the X-mansion.  Heroes Assemble solves this by mushing everything together (Gotham/Metropolis/New York City) are all in one area where everyone hero and villain alike are in close proximity.

Another big problem a lot of mushes have is how to handle Original Characters.  This is complex, because most who want to play an original want to be the hero of their own story, whereas those who tend to play feature characters most want to play variations of the same stories they've read about in the comics but have them 'in the shoes of' said hero.  Heroes Assemble does this by finding the sweet spot between restricting too much power to start with (no reality benders, no casual time travel, etc) as well as ensuring that they have to have room for growth by saying that they can't be more powerful than Captain America.  that's not to say you can't play someone stronger, faster smarter etc...but Captain America is insanely powerful in many ways; he has an indestructible shield, is insanely popular, is among the best fighters in the world, and has unparalleled leadership while also being super strong and super fast. He is a solid medium level character which lets an original start out as robust; but not stronger than Superman and smarter than Tony Stark.  But unlike feature characters, the staff are very very welcoming at allowing Original Characters to grow over time with some becoming members of most every super team, insanely popular and also very powerful.  Its one of the most difficult problems in running a super hero mush and they do it well.

the plots/logs/and events system is masterfully coded and dutifully manually uploaded by staff from the databanks of the mush to the Wiki every night to allow people to share in the fun of a scene almost like ten based comic books.   As of today in the four years the mush has been open, it has done over 18200 scenes, which when you break that out by weeks of operations means 91 scenes a WEEK for 200+ weeks.  That's pretty impressive.   When I count the number of scheduled scenes (11) during the summer slow season no less; there are plenty of things to do and setting something up is as easy as pie.

I ultimately left, for a lot of reasons.  At the end of the day, my plots weren't just interesting people.  People want a certain level of genre normality and I felt that my ideas didn't fit their expectations and got sick of setting things up and having no one sign up for them.  Cliques have been part of our social experience since high school and a mush is no different, but what I can tell you is that to the extent that a mush can be structured to overcome that problem, Heroes Assembled has done its absolute best to handle this problem.  You can't permanently change the setting; the illusion of growth is just as much of a problem in a MUSH as it is for the genre.  By allowing everyone to tell their stories, it ensures that no one else's story can affect everyone else but that still leaves a thrilling range of tales of what you can do. If you want to play a super hero in a text based medium; this is the place to do it.

[Website] Airbnb - The Landlord App for Landlords

 Short: This app is all about making landlords money and has long since ceased to be about meeting the locals or having an enjoyable stay; and except for 4-6 week stays really isn't cheaper than most hotels.

Medium: I have never had an enjoyable stay with this app despite using it for 10 years (save two) despite using it about 9-12 times.  Its like Frozen Yogurt; I was in denial about the truly ridiculous crap that these shadow hotels push on their customers and by allowing the landlord to rate you after the fact, they encourage you to leave happy shining reviews or you won't be able to use the crappy imitation hotels again.

Maximum Verbosity: We rented a small hidden gem in Marblehead for 6 weeks while looking for a new apartment and had a lovely time.  Only a week later our puritanical former land lord filed a claim for a few hundred dollars claiming out cat had pooped and peed'd all over the place; never mind that it was water solubable hair dye and our cat is the most fastidious in the history of mankind.  There is a subset of people in Massachusetts who simply take a Disney attitude towards cats.  Then, after having our pet insulted by our cat, we began to remember what we had gaslit ourselves into forgetting; like the towel rack I simply bumped into that fell off the wall, the phone booth sized shower, the upstairs cleaners who made insane amounts of noise at 8am on a Saturday (The same ones who claimed that our cat pooped and pee'd everywhere).  At a hotel, you have a certain expectation of service, but if you are using Grandma's Dead Empty tomb, you can save a small amount of money and meet the locals.

But we haven't met a local in the last 8 years.  When we went to Montreal, we had a hermetically sealed anally retentive psycho landlord in this bizarre apartment building/shadow hotel that was build like a hotel but full of pseudo condominiums and we left a positive review but in the private notes mentioned things like hoarding toilet paper and insane weird rules including having to unlock the Davinci code and 5 phone calls to find out where to stay.  

The first time we used the app we met a charming woman when we went to the Stiletto festival in Charseston.  True, the second time we found that she had tons of smelly and rotten food in the fridge, but she was still a very nice person.  We met our hosts one more time when we went to Del Ray which was the last positive experience we had with it.  

Speaking of our Cat, we had a negative experience with another puritanical actual landlord which changed our persopective on who should or shouldn't be one; so I've been researching this problem a lot more.  Airbnb is responsible for raising housing prices by tying up affordable housing in shadow hotels.  New York City recently made very strict rules that it can only do what Airbnb actually originally was supposed to be which is rooms in houses that a family actually has where they live there instead of unregulated crap shadow hotels.  Blackrock is a bigger problem, but Airbnb is the tool for wanna be slum lords to move from Upper Middle Class to Lower Upper Class.

Needless to say, I've literally deleted our account.

[Website] Hotels.Com

 When you have Captcha that doesnt work, it means I dont use your website.  What's the point of using a website that makes you leap through hoops to just access the content? We're not talking about booking; we're just talking about typing hotels.com to look up fares.  But, full disclosure? 9 years ago in Miami was the last time we used them, because we booked a hotel, and they didn't have reservations for us during an emergency when we paid for a hotel, couldn't get it and had to drive around Miami in the middle of the night.  The hotel was quite reasonable but couldn't do anything because hotels.com locked them out of their own reservation system.  Since then, I have only used hotels.com to find hotel deals and called the hotel directly.

So I am glad their business model is idiotic.  Fuck hotels.com

[Movie] Challengers

 Short: A complex love triangle between two male and a female tennis player that offers complex compelling characters for the 21rst century and Generation Z.

Medium: If you have 19th century morality this film isnt for you.  The R rating is for authenticity rather than shock value for a surprisingly chaste film given where it DOESNT show nudity or sex.  Make no mistake, the sexual tension exists in ever element of this film but the well paced non linear timeline slowly doles out twists and turns that makes the stakes between the three protagonists (with no antagonists) compelling and fascinating to behold.

Maximum Verbosity: The most fascinating thing to me about this movie is the courage it has not to turn into a sex film.  Three fit, charismatic individuals are all attracted to each other with a different dynamic in each act.  The narration is well done but the cinematics and visual appeal of the film make it more art than sports film.  Most sports films are a study of the culture of the sport just as much as a heroes journey of the protagonist, but in this case the only element of sportsball that comes to fore is the competitive nature of the three protagonists, and there are no wasted frames.  It is tightly edited but ensures that no character is 'the good guy' while each character's choices matter and impact the trio in complex ways.

The Lincoln style friendship between Patrick and Art is hit by a wrecking ball as the two fall all over to please and win the favor of Tashi Donaldson (played by Zendaya) which boils down to a single tennis match that follow's the 20th century romance patterns of 'and they lived happily ever after' for Patrick and Tashi; only to find that the cost of Tashi's favor broke something critical in Patrick and definitely broke Art in its entirity.

While sports is merely a vessel for the film, it shows with excellence the harsh bittersweet deathmarch of the grinding human cost of capitalist sportsball as at one point Art is literally starving to death as a "Challenge" (Minor League Tennis player).  The sportsball accuracy is also highly accurate for correct (and authentic) Tennis rules, sites and terminology from the onsite locations in Atlanta and Conneticut to the hyperenthusiastic (dare I see creepy) devotion and minionosity of the Ball Handlers/Fondlers eagerly rushing on to court to please their Tennis masters.

I highly recommend this movie unless you can't watch R rated movies or only enjoy missionary sex.