26 Comments

"The Cure for White Replacement" made my day, or maybe week. A masterpiece. The check's in the mail.

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Awesome. I think the concept has a real shot in Congress this year.

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My nostalgia is for the days when I actually understand or even recognize any of the cultural references you and others of your age make. (smile.) I think that was why I was so excited by the Screwtape reference! But for some reason I enjoy reading all those names of people, games, books, songs, etc I have never heard of...sort of like listening to a foreign language and enjoying there is a whole world out that I don't have to understand.

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I’m glad the forest of citations has some external entertainment value. I’m now considering the label “accidental worldbuilding specialist.”

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Absolutely, a great idea. I am currently rereading William Gibson, for the umpteenth time, and I started reading him in 1984, when so much of what he wrote and terms he used like cyberspace were creating a fictional world that in my life time has slowly become real. At that time I had just started having access to a personal computer (having written my dissertation on a selectric, and having turned in my reams of coded data from my research into punch cards and then gigantic tapes), and the whole game era simply passed me by, In fact I realize that it has been his characters "jacking in," that primary nformed my view of that world for a long time , having only had participated in an abortive attempt to play Myst, and then later my daughter's first boyfriend playing grand theft auto. So, yes, reading you is like glimpsing an interesting different world that I can believe actually exists.

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Honestly, after reading Gibson, you've experienced a much more inventive version of half my reference pool. So no FOMO worries.

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founding

I'm only a decade ahead and I have no idea what he's talking about either.

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I'm going to start making up names and seeing who catches it first.

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I'm the same age as Amran. Definitely not 8 months older. Still clueless.

But I got the Mass Effect reference! 😂 I actually played through the entire first game, (Commander Jazzy Shepherd reporting for duty,) and I'm not really a video game person outside of standing by in case my husband needs help with a puzzle. But that was years ago. Now my puzzle skills have been replaced by YouTube cheat clips.

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My greatest sin is never playing New Vegas. My children's greatest sin is preventing me from playing New Vegas. My only defense is I played the hell out of Fallout 3 and 4.

I'm light on nostalgia, too, and that's a strength. It's the "again" in MAGA, which started with the Gipper, and metastasized with the Orange One, that's made satire nigh impossible.

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That “again” is a real trap. The worship of an abstract, mythical past is much too central to cryptofascists (who aren’t so into the crypto) for me to enjoy the small-scale version.

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Aug 23, 2023Liked by Dennard Dayle

It's that thing where they agree there are problems, but they think the way to solve them is to undo things until they're back to the way things were when they didn't hear about it. Because object permanence is a myth.

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Seriously though, at this point, why can’t guns vote?

Also “a cure for white replacement” sounds like it should’ve been a recurring segment on Tucker Carlson Tonight. Someone pitch it to him now, his numbers on X are not so hot and true patriots need to hear this urgent message!

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Considering his predecessors, I think being Fox’s lead screamer may carry some kind of curse. Or bog-standard karma.

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Love your newsreel. Esp Mars axis. It’s so fast it might tip. Hubby would regurgitate at the black and white game pic having been a game developer. Personally, I like the look.

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Aug 23, 2023Liked by Dennard Dayle

My dad is a massive Civil War nerd. I gave him a copy of Everything Abridged and haven't gotten feedback yet. But his birthday's next week, so not sure yet if I double down or get him a gift card. Maybe I'll take the coward's way out and get him both.

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I think Civil War fixation is some kind of license requirement for the best and worst dads. I hope he loves it.

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Aug 23, 2023Liked by Dennard Dayle

To clarify: he's the drummer in a Civil War reenactment band (Union). He asserts that the best Civil War movie is Glory, has an entire bookshelf filled with tomes on the subject, and agrees that it's probably a bit weird to focus on it so much.

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Glory was my middle school’s second favorite “the teacher is out of human patience, watch this” film. The first was “Remember the Titans.” A potential takeaway was that racial unity mostly means charging in a straight line towards physical pain.

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Aug 23, 2023Liked by Dennard Dayle

And Denzel Washington will usually be involved.

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You’d think history would recognize his place in healing the rift between us.

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I'm a nostalgia sucker and I don't know why. Maybe it's the security of a known outcome. Anxiety works in mysterious ways.

I finally read the interview. We've read a lot of the same stuff, though it was my sister who got into Redwall while I was facedown in Dragonlance.

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Dragonlance! I never hit those until high school (late for our prestige class of nerd). I remember thinking Raistlin was perfect concept album material (not far off, if you’re a Blind Guardian fan).

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Aug 24, 2023Liked by Dennard Dayle

It blows my mind that it only occurred to you that a Civil War comedy might piss people off AFTER you were done writing it. I barely escaped the Twitter sensitivity training camp with my life and two years later I'm still trying to shut up that voice that goes "this is offensive, you're going to upset someone, you're so canceled." It's vital I unlearn this or The Siege Of Faggot Hill will never get finished.

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We’re likely reacting to the same thing: setting off an avalanche feeling random. I just threw my hands in the air and stopped keeping track.

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founding

That's the strat. What are we going to get canceled on anyway? Bluesky? Parler? That hotdog discord? I'm not scared of those nerds.

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