Doug Explains Why Marco Rubio is NOT a Robot

by Douglas Slayton

 

As we discussed last time, the run-up-to-the-election-deciding-pie-eating contest is getting very fierce. Names are being called, feelings are being hurt, and only one can leave with the rose. While the Democrats only have two real options (sorry Steven Spielberg), the Republicans have at least thirty six candidates—and very possibly exponentially more because new candidates keep bursting out of the chest of noted Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan like the popular 1979 sci-fi-horror film Alien, but with a healthy dose of xenophobia. In the upper echelon of these smiling, vacant eyed homunculi is Marco Rubio, just behind the rubber puppet that is Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, who is probably that neighbor you have who is really nice but is actually the Zodiac Killer.

Chief within the name calling amongst the contestants is the accusation that Marco Rubio is a robot; this could be not be further from the truth. This criticism likely comes from his steely complexion and and dry, angular handshake. While these are characteristics of robotism, they are nothing without the true underlying causes.

Robotism is a condition that is contracted at birth when people, instead of being birthed from cellular entanglement of two warm blooded humans who don’t really care for each other but due to their fear of their slowly approaching demise feel that having a fraction of their dna survive another thirty to one hundred and twenty years is preferable to happiness, are constructed from metal bits under sweatshop conditions in the South Pacific. So not much different from human birth, but different enough. Those who have robotism live very different lives than meat people: the aging process is quicker as every year they are simply re-equipped with whatever technological advancements may have been developed in the past twelve months. But those with robotism also live virtually forever. Meat people only live thirty to one hundred twenty years—no less no more.

There are many reasons we can speculate that Rubio has these row-boatian characteristics. He could have been infected with some kind techno virus, but this is unlikely as he never wears raver clothes and has yet to ever mention Jamiroquai in public. He could be one of the silver men: a cult who worship those with robotism as both spiritually and sexually superior to the meats. The silver men theory is popular because there have been instances noted where a silver spray-painted gentleman who resembles Rubio has jumped out of a fake bush scaring people at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. This, we know, is a popular tradition for the silver men to cull meats from the robotians. Though the most likely explanation, according to my expertise, is that he may have been hit very hard in the head with a steel pipe, contracting wererobotism. Wererobotism is a very rare and serious disease wherein a meaty begins to think they are a robot, so they start eating only industrial metal shavings ¹ and only move in jagged forty-five degree movements.² Wererobotism—I am trying to say—is not a real thing; it is a thing robotists use as an excuse for when they start taking on those qualities.

The long and short of it is that Marco Rubio is not cool and should come out and apologize to the robot community rather than taking on robotist stereotypes in order to try and pander for their votes. Robots can’t vote anyway, but that is mostly because of claustrophobia.

Douglas Slayton is Professor Editor-in-Chief of Uncanny Valley Magazine.

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1 A robotist notion suggests that robots only eat industrial metal shavings, but this is perpetuated by the fact that robots are systematically forced to live in industrial areas because of economic hardships due to years of oppression. Industrial metal shavings are heavily marketed in these areas at bodegas in with bullet proof glass around the counters.^↩
2 This is another robotist notion because of a three year period from ‘79 to ‘82 where the popular joints for robots were clicking joints that would stop every forty five degrees creating the illusion of quick jerky motions^↩

Doug Explains the Iowa Caucus

by Douglas Slayton

Editor's Note: this is the first in a new series of articles whereby Uncanny Valley Magazine Professor Editor-in-Chief Douglas Slayton explains important, newsworthy topics. If you would like to read Doug's explanation of a particular topic, please send us an e-mail at uncannyvalleymagazine@gmail.com.

In the run up to the crowning of the new President some of you have walked up to me on the street
and yelled indignantly, "What is Iowa?!" and one even was like, "What is a Caucus?" to which I probably responded by crying or running in the opposite direction, because I thought you said something else. I am sorry for the misunderstanding. In order to make this up to you I will now explain what the Iowa Caucus is.

Firstly, Iowa, contrary to popular belief, is not in fact a state. Iowa is a governing body responsible for transportation and farming regulations. Iowa is actually an acronym, but no one remembers what it stands for because James Garfield possessed the only documents outlying its meaning at the time of his death and everyone forgot he had them until after he had been shot into to space. Coincidentally, that is why we have a space program: to recover these documents from his frozen corpse. As the need to govern both transit and farming grew, the department of Iowa grew to the size of a state after purchasing land from the states surrounding it so the officials and their family would not have to commute in from the coasts any longer. As more people began to occupy the compound, it became necessary to create more civilized infrastructure to support this new population, which led to the current misconception of its statehood.

A popular dictionary defines Caucus as "not what you think it is you perverted little fuck, put the book back on the shelf and go to class." This does not clarify the situation. Throughout the course of the "election cycle" half of what are considered "states" hold Causcuses. They are an ancient and brutal ritual where the supporters of each party must battle each other to prove that the candidate they support leads the strongest warriors and will better protect us from roving clans of geese that Canada uses to oppress the United States.

While all of this is common knowledge, it is important background for the current dispute that is the topic du jour for the media. This past week, this election season's Causcuses began with an especially brutal bout among the Democrats, leaving thousands dead and ten times as many homeless in the rampage across the non-state of Iowa, with the front runners' (Hillary Clinton and Bernard Sanders) supporters being some of the most vicious and entitled Caucusers¹ of all time. Clinton's were mostly armed with money from rich people and Sanders's was composed mostly of those who were young and had nothing to lose. I don't actually know the results; as a noted apolitical and perpetual presidential write-in candidate myself, I am not legally allowed to follow any coverage until there is an official, final announcement.

I would like to take a moment and ask why I haven't been invited to any debates. Is it my unpopular stance on outlawing chicken wire headwear? Anyway...

On the Republican side, some stuff happened too, I am sure. Like, look at them: they obviously did some shit. Although, traditionally, Republicans are less brutal because they are all related and think that fighting within the family is inappropriate.

Now someone just yelled at me from across the bus asking what the difference between a Causcus and a Primary is. This is a good question.

Primaries are what the younger states use to decide the candidates. As such, they are less brutal and more civilized. The constituency all casts double blind ballots for their choice. As the ballots are double blind, the voter does not actually know what they are voting for, so it is basically luck based. Traditionally, the candidate listed on the right side of the ballot has done better because of the right handed dominance in our culture. In the last decade, though, officials finally noticed the trend and have started randomizing the ballots. But usually it ends up with useless results for "other" and comes down to whichever candidate has not been battered into submission from the press and public.

It is important to stay informed on these issues and political events, so when a estranged relative or potential sexual partner (haha, yeah right) asks about who it is you voted for or who you think might pull it out in the end, you can flippantly say something like, "Oh the brutality of it all is too much for my poor heart to take. Please, please let me die already." To which they will respond with a tearful assertion that life and politics have meaning and you will simply shake your head endlessly until they leave, confused.

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1 Or, as they are commonly known, Caucasians.

 Douglas Slayton is Professor Editor-in-Chief of Uncanny Valley Magazine.

Against Analytics: The NFL's Popularity and Anti-Intellectualism

by Chris Alarie

That football is the most popular sport in America and that the NFL is the most popular professional sports league are indisputable facts. This is a frequent source of consternation for me because, while I am certainly a football fan, I find it to be a vastly inferior sport to both baseball and basketball and believe that the NFL is one of the most onerous institutions in all of sports. Of course, the reason for football's dominance are myriad—from the primal appeal of the sport's violence to the relatively short season and once weekly games to the sport's particularly good fit for gambling and fantasy leagues—but there is one key factor that seems to have been overlooked: football's comparatively lesser engagement with advanced statistics.

Both baseball and basketball have been embroiled for years—or decades, in the case of baseball—in debates about the merits and value of advanced statistical methods of quantifying and evaluating the performance of players and teams. These debates often divide along generational lines, with younger writers, fans, and executives generally tending to lend greater credence to these advanced statistics than their older peers. And rather than offer a defense of one approach or the other,¹ I'd just point out that these debates are essential parts of the fabric of both MLB and the NBA. Football, however, has mostly managed to avoid this debate and, really, the encroachment of advanced statistics almost entirely.

Indeed, when ESPN tried four years ago to introduce an advanced football statistic titled QBR, it was roundly ignored and routinely mocked. It exists now primarily as a means for other sports media organizations to criticize the "Worldwide Leader". But beyond reflecting somewhat poorly on Disney's otherwise impenetrable sports behemoth, the failure of QBR further serves to demonstrate football's immunity to having advanced stats as a part of the general discourse surrounding the sport. QBR's flawed analysis and laughable conclusions is a larger part of the NFL media and fan landscape than far better and far more useful advanced statistics such as Football Outsiders' DVOA. Often times the debate surrounding advanced stats is reduced to "numbers" vs. "the eye test"; in football, "the eye test" reigns supreme.

The question implicit in this is: why doesn't the majority of football fans care about advanced statistics? While I wouldn't claim to fully explain it, I can hazard a few guesses. Partly it is because football is so much less about individual achievements than baseball and basketball and much of advanced statistics focuses on the performance of individual players. But even still, there are advanced stats (such as the aforementioned DVOA) that focus on team performance and have not gained much traction among the mass of football fans. Perhaps it is a result, in part, from football's militaristic symbolism² and borderline fascistic obsession with the strength, unity, and secrecy of individual franchises and the league as a whole. The NFL is well known for its paranoid credo, "Protect the Shield". And, as Tim Kawakami frequently observes, NFL fans, more than fans of any other sport, have an extreme loyalty to their franchises and owners over players or even coaches. And the paranoia³ and gamesmanship of NFL coaches is legendary. So perhaps advanced stats, which ostensibly peel back the curtain of of the sport and offer a deeper understanding of why teams and players succeed or fail, are, to NFL fans, the proprietary realm of the overlords running the teams and not the business of us plebes in the general sporting public. Another possible explanation is that the dominance of fantasy football—which traffics almost entirely in traditional stats as opposed to advanced stats—has kept all but the most dedicated fans uninterested in these more complicated statistical analyses. Whatever the reasons, it is clear that advanced stats do not have the same place in football discourse as they do in the realms of baseball and basketball. And that lack of advanced stats is part and parcel of the NFL's perhaps confusing dominance in this country.

This is perhaps an oversimplification, but I suspect that the disparity between the NFL and MLB/NBA reflects, in some ways, differences within the culture as a whole. Advanced statistics, and the sports that more directly incorporate them, seem more likely to appeal to intellectual, coastal elites. By contrast, the NFL, with its rejection of advanced stats in favor of more primal, simplified, and traditional notions of sports, seems more likely to appeal to the mass of red state denizens who feel like the coastal elites and the media ignore their concerns and interests. As I said, this is probably not entirely accurate—among other problems, plenty of us coastal intellectuals still watch football. But it seems, at very least, to be of symbolic importance that probably the biggest football fan among American presidents was Richard "Silent Majority" Nixon while Barack Obama is famously obsessed with basketball. And it is worth noting that the same analytically inclined media that dominates baseball and basketball has been unable to predict or even understand the continued successes of Donald Trump's presidential campaign.

In this somewhat convoluted metaphor, the baseball and basketball focused, pro-analytics crowd is the coastal, media-saturated segment of the population arguing in increasingly minute, esoteric detail about the various discrepancies between Hillary Clinton's complicated financial regulation plans and Bernie Sanders's promise to "break up the banks!"⁴ The more conservative, anti-advanced stats faction of the baseball and basketball world is analogous to the conservative intellectuals futilely decrying Donald Trump's conservative bona fides in the pages of The New Republic. In the meantime, the remaining hordes are actively defying both sides of these debates by watching football and pledging their intention to vote for Donald Trump. This is not to say that all football fans are Trump supporters or vice versa, but there is clearly a similar dynamic playing out in the realms of sports and politics.

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1 Of course, like any good liberal, I almost neurotically try to split the difference between the two camps in my personal feelings toward the subject.^↩
2 George Carlin's famous routine about the difference between baseball and football remains as true as ever.^↩
3 There's that word again.^↩
4 Clearly, I fall into these camps.^↩

Chris Alarie is Spectacular Editor-in-Chief of Uncanny Valley Magazine.

MARIO MAIL MAX / WARNING EXPO

by Daniel Alarie

Daniel Alarie lives in Santa Rosa, California and generally prefers to write with pencils.

Ten Favorite Music Releases of 2015

by Douglas Slayton

My taste in music is myopic and driven entirely by emotional reaction. This list is not objective and is mostly about listening to sad music while being sad. The list is ordered in a haphazard manner; don't attach any significance or meaning to the order.

Time Spent Driving Passed & Presence

When I was in high school and developing a curated affectation that would solidify to the bullheaded personality that I now embody, seeing this group of older guys playing the sort of music that I was just discovering (I was five years younger than most of the band's fans, at the time) really made an impression on me.

Some number of years later, they made a record that feels like something that would have come out when I was still eighteen and still discovering this music.

I spent several cold winter weeks in 2015 sitting on curbs listening to this album and crying but feeling alright about it.

The Saddest Landscape Darkness Forgives

It is hard to talk about this record without feeling tears well up in my eyes.

The Saddest Landscape has perfected a certain sort of immediacy to their delivery. This record exhibits that and never feels well worn.

Foxing Dealer

This fucking record. Albatross was a seemingly insurmountable achievement that was annihilated when this was released.  

I was able to see them on either side of the release of Dealer this year and post-release was easily one of my greatest experiences from the entirety of 2015. I remember walking home, having my headphones on and not listening to anything, just going over it again and again in my mind, trying to make sense of it all, then sitting on my porch just breathing in the entirety of the night.

Envy Atheist’s Cornea

This has a lot in common with the Saddest Landscape's record. But where the Saddest Landscape are immediate, Envy is pensive and contemplative. Though not as sprawling as their previous efforts, the brevity doesn’t go against their strengths.

Envy has always been a band the matters greatly to me but I can never really explain why to anyone unless they already know.

Spraynard Mable

Spraynard says all the things they think and feel and don’t hide it under much metaphor, which makes them very antithetical to my usual favorites.

They fit into a style of punk that I don't usually like. But the uncut honesty makes this album something that I spent a lot of time listening to last year, and will probably continue to listen to in the future also.

Football, Etc. Disappear

This has a fair amount in common with the Time Spent Driving record, except it taps a separate vein of the same scene that birthed TSD a decade or so ago. Plus Football, Etc. is younger than those bands, so it still brings in other touches that are new and exciting.

They have lots of other EPs and even a full length but this is easily my favorite release of theirs.

Warm Thoughts Intangible

This record is two songs, and they are both really good. Like really good.

Dikembe Ledge

Dikembe released a really good full length in 2014 called Mediumship, but this EP is better.

They talk a lot about not being good enough or living up to your own expectations, and that is something I can really get behind. Plus their song titles are usually inside jokes, so it feels like they could be your cool friends who smoke a lot of weed in order to deal with their anxieties and insecurities.

Make Do and Mend Don’t Be Long

Make Do and Mend sound like Hot Water Music, which is hard to top.

I am a sucker for someone who shouts their feelings in songs, and that is a feature of most of this record—in the best way.

Hop Along Painted Shut

This is angular pop, and so much more. They manage to transcend that and everything else that they touch.

Plus Frances has a singular voice, one from which it is hard to turn away.

Doug Slayton is Professor Editor-in-Chief of Uncanny Valley Magazine

Flower and Haiku For Bowie

by Alexis Faulkner

Strong Bowie Inside

Softest Center Trembling

The Damnedest Winter 

Alexis Faulkner is Unicorn Editor-in-Chief of Uncanny Valley Magazine. 

At Least I Am Not Writing a Thesis

by Lauren Drayer

There are many things to complain about when it comes to your academic life. Your professor has questionable logic, he assigns one hundred pages of reading every week, and his class is based on the premise that you will fail; your lab partner spells the most surprising words incorrectly, she never remembers what time she was supposed to meet with you, and she keeps changing her mind about the font she uses in her emails. The smallest little things—and academia is nothing if not an aggregate of small things elegantly orchestrated into a master concept called a major—can get in the way of the big picture. They cloud your perspective: it is hard to project yourself a semester into the future when you are currently worried about whether you professor intends to fail you this semester because you deserve it or because he feels like it. The little things also prevent you from sleeping well: they nag and nag at you until all you can see when you close your eyes are all the little failures of the day. Most importantly, they prevent you from enjoying that burger you’ve been craving—who enjoys a burger when they have to rewrite their paper outline for the fifth time? That being said, at least you’re not writing a thesis.

The truth is that I did write a senior thesis. A very long one. On the biochemical characterization of antibodies. But that’s not what I am talking about. I am talking about writing a thesis in a department purposefully geared toward emotional pain: the Humanities. Humanity means the human race, or human beings collectively. It also means humaneness and benevolence. Academically, the humanities are the study of literature, philosophy, art … all things that are at the core of human beauty and creativity. It should be intuitive, it should feel good, it should reflect our energy, our capacity for good. It should feel human—good-human. But there is nothing good-human about the humanities. At their core they are vague, violent, mean.

There is this thing in law that dismisses regulations entirely if they are too vague to be reliably obeyed and enforced. The actual term is “void for vagueness”. We should be able to dismiss the humanities as a whole on that premise, because there is no structure within this area of study that would allow any practitioner to reliably produce a good analysis of literature, art, and especially philosophy. Why especially philosophy? Because philosophy is not even properly rooted in words; it exists in our minds as an abstraction of ideas that few have intelligibly translated into documents such as the Nichomachean Ethics of Aristotle. Just kidding; that book is unintelligible. Which further proves my point that philosophy rarely yields a structured response from anyone. Not even the Great Thinkers. Thinkers should keep their thoughts there, in their heads, in the space directly surrounding their bodies—not on paper, for it is there that it infuriates me the most.

So, above I have addressed why the “vague” portion of humanities is a problem. My conclusion, more or less verbatim, is that “it infuriates me the most.” My next point has to do with violence. We all have preconceptions of violence. Homicide comes to mind, police violence, battery. But obviously this is not the sort of violence that we notice in the humanities. It is far more subtle, because the humanities have mastered the art of quiet warfare. It comes in the form of an essay you thought was about Monet, when it really is about income inequality of Latino lesbians with lupus. You always, always get tricked into a carefully convoluted web of knowledge that is neither here nor there, all disguised as an essay inconspicuously titled “The Straightforward Explanation of Monet’s Paintings”. See? It is violence of the most sophisticated kind: directed at the reader wholly and personally.

Lastly, I need to address why I think the humanities are mean. There isn’t a very well thought out opinion there, so I won’t discuss it in any detail whatsoever.

In conclusion, when developing a humanities thesis, the student has to surmount the vast vagueness of his topic, realize that his writing will cause physical pain to his readers, and he has to understand that as a result of his work people will view him as mean, and probably avoid him in the future, both in the short and long-term. We all have many complaints about our academic experience, but if we are lucky, we are not humanities students, and at least we aren’t writing a thesis.

Lauren Drayer lives in a small town and thusly writes about small topics.