CuriousCat Archive Page 101 of 202

  1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikaqus5_QIg
    4:48:25-4:49:55
    Have you seen it? Ron Gilbert watches your videos.

    in response to What Is the secret of Monkey Island?

    you mean cuz he's saying similar things in this segment?

  2. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?

    in response to What Is the secret of Monkey Island?

    I am the terror that flaps in the night

  3. So they're just tied? Also, do they eco-terror in complementory manners?

    in response to who is the most leftist smash character?

    Sonic wins because Cloud is a merc who doesn't actually care about radicalism

  4. Who has had the best take on Batman so far?

    TAS, obvs

  5. Oh really, so when you said ‘you’ll never convince a capitalist..’ you weren’t speaking categorically ? Lol

    in response to How can you speak so categorically?

    you've won this argument by willfully misunderstanding hyperbole, go you

  6. Why do you think there's such a common misunderstanding of 'no ethical consumption under capitalism' to mean 'you shouldn't bother caring at all about the ethics of your consumption'? It seems to be absurdly widespread.

    in response to i think i agree with you about being rich being antithetical to being cool, since they can do better things with their wealth than hoard it. but i also remember you saying in the past that since there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, buying a game like Ion Fury with transphobic devs isn't a huge deal. what makes those statements logically consistent?

    because we live in a society where "good" and "bad" are treated as binaries

  8. How do you organize a workplace where the workers literally don't all have the same economic interests? A grocery store, for example, & many other service industry jobs, is likely to be a big mix of adults who need the job to support their life & young people who just want to be there for a few months to make some extra money & are still mostly living on their parents' money--can you make an effective union that just ignores what might be a significant chuck of the workforce, & if not, how do you convince someone to demand better conditions at a job they don't feel connected to & will want to leave no matter what?

    in response to Different anon but what do you think are the proper ways to win elections, making general strikes and proper methods of revolutionising? Also, what exactly do you mean by this community/movement-building?

    that's not really an issue unless their interests are opposed to one another. you are perfectly capable of taking on the demands of both young workers and adults. like... it's a general strike. there are going to be a LOT of demands. heck, we might literally try to rewrite the constitution.

  9. How can you speak so categorically?

    in response to Honestly if there ever was ever a time where you could, it's now. The topic of how different countries handled covid comes up a lot these days. I find it a good starting point to casually mention Vietnam and Cuba, especially when countries like New Zealand come up. Their success is, I think, indicative of their wider strength when it comes to public infrastructure. "Why are these countries successfully handling this public health crisis while mine is not" is a question that could lead to some interesting thoughts.

    when people say "is this an effective way to combat [problem]" and I say "no," I am not saying "it will 100% never work," I am saying it will work too infrequently to be a viable strategy

  10. Hey, is Serenity (the good one) neo-confederate, anti-communist propaganda, and an example of capitalist realism or am I just an asshole?

    no no no, it's libertarian propaganda

  11. What's your take on American near-religious worship of the first amendment? It seems like it's what got us into this media mess where people are living in completely different realities, and more often than not it's used as a tool to radicalize.

    Media disinformation does not exist as a natural outgrowth of the first amendment. It exists because it benefits people in power. The first amendment is what they reach for when they need an excuse. If they didn't have it they would pick a different one. That's why every argument explaining why "freedom of speech" doesn't mean what they think it means accomplishes nothing. They don't care about rhetorical consistency. They care about power.

  12. How many books do you read on average per year? Do you wish you read more or less

    I would rather not tally that number, as it's pitifully low. I would love to read more and am trying to do so in 2021.

  13. What's a book every person should read at least once in their life?

    there are hundreds of different cultures in the world, we should let go of the idea that a book can be universally relevant to all of them

  14. Do you think there is an anti-religious sentiment among the online left? I know that many, probably most, leftists are fine with religion, but do you think there is a significant amount of people who view religion as inherently oppressive?

    there is a portion of the Left that is LOUD about finding religion oppressive; I don't know if they are significant

  15. In that case, do you stand by your claim that it's impossible to be cool and rich? It seems like at least half, and maybe all, of millionaires are cool.

    in response to Also lotsa other people, which you prolly already know.

    I will detail my claim by saying that richness and coolness, beyond a certain point, are inversely correlated, and someone who starts out with a lot of cool may maintain residual coolness in the early phases of being rich but it is a losing battle

  16. i think i agree with you about being rich being antithetical to being cool, since they can do better things with their wealth than hoard it. but i also remember you saying in the past that since there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, buying a game like Ion Fury with transphobic devs isn't a huge deal. what makes those statements logically consistent?

    Well, the idea that millionaires can do better things with their wealth isn't the issue. Lots of wealthy people do philanthropic work with their money, but their wealth is still a problem. Setting aside how often that philanthropy is self-serving - they often do it as a form of tax evasion - there's the simple fact that good deeds done by wealthy people are not democratic. When a rich person builds a community center, maybe that community center is a net positive for the neighborhood. But the neighborhood didn't vote on it, they didn't decide that was the best use of that money. Maybe there are initiatives for the homeless or improvements to the school system or roads that need to be repaved that would've been higher priority if the community had a say. Instead, they get a community center because some rich dude wanted something he could plaster his name on.

    THAT'S the issue here.

    (Also, per "no ethical consumption," in the post where I talked about buying Ion Fury I stressed that "no ethical consumption" does not mean all things are equally unethical, that different things are compromised to different degrees, some things are too evil to participate in and some things are not and there is no consensus on where the line between them is, so we all have to do our best in drawing it ourselves, and be open to redrawing it as necessary.)

  17. Can pseudo-apathy be self-care?

    I'd sooner call it a maladaptive coping mechanism

  18. How would you feel if everyone working for Polygon left? Literally every single individual?

    in response to How do you feel about bdg leaving polygon and unraveled ending?

    Let's be real, I like a lot of those folks, and Polygon is a pretty good gaming site, but BDG was the only reason I paid attention to them anymore.

  19. What Is the secret of Monkey Island?

    only LeChuck knows

  20. who is the most leftist smash character?

    Sonic and Cloud are both eco-terrorists

  21. would marx consider curiouscat emotional labor?

    the concept of "emotional labor" was put forth in 1983, so no

  22. Can you imagine if there was only two millionaires. If we had to get rid of millionaires one at a time, who would be the best millionaire to go first and last

    in response to Also lotsa other people, which you prolly already know.

    if by "get rid of" you mean "redistribute the wealth of" I think we should do all of them at once.

    millionaires aren't the problem so much as the economic model that produces millionaires.

  23. Favorite Trek captain?

    Picard. I'm boring.

  24. Also lotsa other people, which you prolly already know.

    in response to So is Bernie Sanders.

    no I think those are the only two

  25. Even if we could, would that mean we should?

    in response to Cuba and Vietnam have been doing pretty well lately.

    I don't know enough about either government to know whether I would consider them properly socialist. I know Castro did some fucked up stuff that no nation calling itself "for the people" should ever do, but he's dead and I don't know a lot about Cuba today. I know they have better healthcare than we do, and even with the weaker economy the public is generally happier than Americans. That's evidence that socialism doesn't always fail, but not enough to claim it's a proper, honest-to-goodness socialist state, you know?

    And I know basically nothing about Vietnam. Or Laos, for that matter.

  27. Can you expand on this? What do you mean by "doesn't work?" Do you mean doesn't change peoples minds about capitalism and/or communism? Doesn't prompt a conversation about our ideas of socialist countries? Doesn't help plant the seed of doubt in the prevailing ideology of our system? What is your criteria for "works" and why do you think it is that the successful handling of covid by Cuba and Vietnam cannot work as a demonstration tool for the efficacy of leftist policies?

    in response to Honestly if there ever was ever a time where you could, it's now. The topic of how different countries handled covid comes up a lot these days. I find it a good starting point to casually mention Vietnam and Cuba, especially when countries like New Zealand come up. Their success is, I think, indicative of their wider strength when it comes to public infrastructure. "Why are these countries successfully handling this public health crisis while mine is not" is a question that could lead to some interesting thoughts.

    OP argued Cuba and Vietnam could serve as examples of socialism working because they handled COVID so much better than capitalist nations. By "doesn't work" I mean I've used them as examples of exactly that and people found other reasons to argue Cuba and Vietnam are, in fact, failed states.

  29. Who have you hurt?

    in response to who hurt you?

    OP

  30. How do you feel about bdg leaving polygon and unraveled ending?

    I mean... I no longer have a good reason to be subscribed to Polygon, and that sucks for them, but I'm always glad when someone has the chance to follow their interest to wherever it takes them. And his YouTube channel has always been full of wonderful strangeness.

  31. Different anon but what do you think are the proper ways to win elections, making general strikes and proper methods of revolutionising? Also, what exactly do you mean by this community/movement-building?

    in response to Yup lol people talk about revolution like it’s gonna be possible even though the majority of the developed world is against it. If u can’t convince em to do a general strike or win you an election, they’re not gonna be convinced to destroy what they believe gave them everything they have

    Winning elections is doable if you know how to campaign effectively; several leftist candidates have done so. I have criticisms of the Sanders campaigns for failing to reach out to the demographics they would have been most valuable to.

    Revolution I'm still looking into. There's a lot I don't know about how revolution becomes possible and what makes a revolution result in the kind of leftist society I want to build and what makes one turn into a totalitarian dictatorship that merely calls itself leftist.

    But general strikes? Well, for one, you can't just announce a date on Reddit for six months in the future and assume you'll have everything figured out by then. If you don't have infrastructure in place to make sure everyone's needs are met, you're just asking people to throw themselves into the gears of capitalism in the hopes that the government will accede to demands before their lives are ruined. People don't sign on for that. So you have to talk to lots of different groups around the country well in advance. You talk to the various unions - what do they need before they can go on strike safely? If the grocery stores go on strike, how do people feed themselves? Do the grocery store workers just keep working the store, selling food at cost to the community, and simply not sending the money to the parent company? That could work, but only if the suppliers are also in on the general strike; otherwise, the parent company will just tell them not to deliver goods until the strike is over. So you have to coordinate with the suppliers in advance, see what they're demands are and figure how you can work them into the general strike. Okay what about the delivery pipeline? The bosses can still stop the community from getting food if they just refuse to pay the drivers who bring it from the suppliers to the stores. So you gotta get the drivers on strike, too. All of this takes a lot of time and coordination.

    That's what I mean about movement-building. A general strike isn't just stopping work; it's turning large portions of the economy over to the workers, creating a socialist system WITHIN the existing capitalist one. This is what Lenin called "dual power," where you've made a separate power structure whose very existence undermines the legitimacy of the previous one. Sooner or later, one will replace the other.

    It's not the kind of thing you can throw together in a matter of months.

  32. what is the story about?

    in response to What's the last book you've read?

    It's a little hard to describe! It's about this woman who grew up on a planet that has a very small human population that all lives in one little city amid the native species. And the native species has two mouths and their language is always two words spoken at once. So normal humans can learn to understand it, but can't speak it. Also their language has no symbols - words are a pure expression of thought, so there are no lies, no metaphors, not even pronouns. When they need a simile, they have to stage the event they want to refer to, since they can't describe anything that hasn't actually happened.

    I actually really loved it, I'm an absolute sucker for xenolinguistics as a concept and Mieville *really* sinks his teeth into the concept. It's also structured in this really interesting way that makes exposition as page-turny as the actual plot.

  35. What's the last book you've read?

    Embassytown by China Mieville

  36. "Become destitute to prove your Leftist clout" is a phrase I will now be stuffing down your throat. Do not resist.

    in response to But Hank's cool right?

    no no, people are coolest when they have all their needs met without having excess, it's a bell curve

  37. Honestly if there ever was ever a time where you could, it's now. The topic of how different countries handled covid comes up a lot these days. I find it a good starting point to casually mention Vietnam and Cuba, especially when countries like New Zealand come up. Their success is, I think, indicative of their wider strength when it comes to public infrastructure. "Why are these countries successfully handling this public health crisis while mine is not" is a question that could lead to some interesting thoughts.

    in response to Cuba and Vietnam have been doing pretty well lately.

    I promise you: I've tried. It doesn't work.

  38. Best and weakest Jaco Van Dormael film?

    best: your least favorite
    weakest: your favorite

  39. Yup lol people talk about revolution like it’s gonna be possible even though the majority of the developed world is against it. If u can’t convince em to do a general strike or win you an election, they’re not gonna be convinced to destroy what they believe gave them everything they have

    in response to I'll be perfectly honest: I'm kind of beginning to lose a bit of faith in Leftism. A lot, actually, but not in the usual way. I don't think that a better world is impossible, or that socialism cannot bring about that better world: I fully, wholeheartedly that capitalism and fascism are inherently evil concepts that need to be removed, that everyone should be equal, but as a Venezuelan, and as someone who really fucking hates guillotines as a concept, I kind of am beginning to question the way more than a few people seem to want to go about it. I hate to get all horseshoe, but like, from day one I was uncomfortable with the way the upper/upper-middle class is essentially dehumanized completely by a lot of rhetoric, and whenever I hear someone talk about AN ENTIRE CLASS OF PEOPLE like they are demons who must be exorcised, I just wonder: "would they act on this? I mean, sure, it's Twitter, but the things people do under the influence of so-called "righteous fury" can easily become more horrific than even acts of premeditated cruelty?" Admittedly, this is a very privileged point to be making, and as such, I never took it particularly seriously. What I DO take seriously is the very fact that some people are seemingly willing to wage fucking war based on the books of a dead man, and even talk as such. Marxism was meant to be a social science, and as such, it wasn't meant to map out 100% onto reality, and even iterated upon, and yet SOME (keywordissome) "proletariat" are still yearning to take an AK-47 and "liberate" a bullet into the heads of a "bourgeois oppressor". Frankly, people who yearn for violent revolution may not be garbage, but they are, at best, naive and so understandably desperate that they'll basically take ANY out they can get, and at worst, a hair's breadth away from killing everyone at a Met Gala with nerve gas, and the only thing that separates the two is how willing they would actually be to outright murder a man in cold blood because of that man's social strata. Admittedly, At Best is the majority, and would, in any realistic immediately answer "of course not", but everyone talks like they're At Worst, and it's just so irritating.

    winning elections, general strikes, and revolution are all possible, just not necessarily in the ways we've been going about them

  41. So is Bernie Sanders.

    in response to Hank Green is a millionaire

    no shit

  42. Best and weakest hayao miyazaki film?

    Best is a toss-up between Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, depending on how I'm feeling, weakest is The Wind Rises.

  43. Does it really mean don’t think about protection? That seems inherently dickish from a sexual health perspective lol

    in response to Based on this definition, "relationship anarchy" sounds a lot like "being an asshole." Would that be accurate, or is there something I'm missing?

    not in the sense of "don't wear protection" but more "I'm going to use the amount of protection I feel safe with and my other partners don't get a say"

    I mean, that's THE KIND of thing that people sometimes argue under "relationship anarchy," I don't know how common that specific thing is because I don't date relationship anarchists

  45. That's all well and good but is he hot???

    in response to Hank Green is a millionaire

    I'ma be sacrilegious here and say John is the hot one.

  46. Hell yeah! The Zapatistas are incredible! Do you have any ideas as to how exactly they have been so successful in, you know, not being wiped out by any imperialist forces?

    in response to Is there a good example that lasted for more than three months? Preferably more than a year?

    I've only recently discovered them and have the documentary queued up on YouTube. They're an area I wanna research. But it's a pretty brilliant example of a sustained dual-power system.

  47. I'll be perfectly honest: I'm kind of beginning to lose a bit of faith in Leftism. A lot, actually, but not in the usual way.

    I don't think that a better world is impossible, or that socialism cannot bring about that better world: I fully, wholeheartedly that capitalism and fascism are inherently evil concepts that need to be removed, that everyone should be equal, but as a Venezuelan, and as someone who really fucking hates guillotines as a concept, I kind of am beginning to question the way more than a few people seem to want to go about it.

    I hate to get all horseshoe, but like, from day one I was uncomfortable with the way the upper/upper-middle class is essentially dehumanized completely by a lot of rhetoric, and whenever I hear someone talk about AN ENTIRE CLASS OF PEOPLE like they are demons who must be exorcised, I just wonder: "would they act on this? I mean, sure, it's Twitter, but the things people do under the influence of so-called "righteous fury" can easily become more horrific than even acts of premeditated cruelty?"

    Admittedly, this is a very privileged point to be making, and as such, I never took it particularly seriously. What I DO take seriously is the very fact that some people are seemingly willing to wage fucking war based on the books of a dead man, and even talk as such. Marxism was meant to be a social science, and as such, it wasn't meant to map out 100% onto reality, and even iterated upon, and yet SOME (keywordissome) "proletariat" are still yearning to take an AK-47 and "liberate" a bullet into the heads of a "bourgeois oppressor". Frankly, people who yearn for violent revolution may not be garbage, but they are, at best, naive and so understandably desperate that they'll basically take ANY out they can get, and at worst, a hair's breadth away from killing everyone at a Met Gala with nerve gas, and the only thing that separates the two is how willing they would actually be to outright murder a man in cold blood because of that man's social strata. Admittedly, At Best is the majority, and would, in any realistic immediately answer "of course not", but everyone talks like they're At Worst, and it's just so irritating.

    I am burnt out by that flavor of leftist, too. But I sincerely believe they are primarily an Extremely Loud and Extremely Online subset of modern leftism, and don't really seem prepared for (or even particularly interested in) the kind of community-building necessary to create real, measurable change, in no small part because they don't seem to get along with others. It's why they get so utterly hyped every six months or so when someone declares a general strike on Reddit, or when some nominally leftist candidate runs for office: because they can skip all the movement-building if leftists suddenly shut down the economy or take over the government. But these efforts are doomed to fail without a sturdy movement to back them up, and even that plays into their mentality: "see? the general strike WOULD have worked but people are too apathetic; Bernie WOULD have won but THE SYSTEM prevented it; that's why we need to take up arms." I mean, hell, they aren't even PLANNING a revolution, they're just prepping for one the way evangelicals prep for The Rapture.

  49. Is The Mesopotamians They Might Be Giants secret best song? I think it would be a great recommendation to anyone trying to get into them.

    It's one of their best latter-day bangers. But I would say Am I Awake?, Reprehensible, Erase, Certain People I Could Name, Kiss Me Son of God, and Why Must I Be Sad? are all contenders for secret best song. And that's not even getting into the classics like Ana Ng and She's an Angel.

  50. My go to is the Zapatistas in Chiapas Mexico. They've been autonomous from the Mexican government for something like 25 years now. They seem to be a good example of a more libertarian socialist society. What would you say to a modern Marxist-Leninist who would likely just lean into the success of countries like China, Cuba, Vietnam, and The USSR in terms of lifting people out of poverty (literacy rate, life expectancy, etc.) Do the successes of these countries validate the need for a centralized state for a successful socialist nation? Were the alleged crimes of these states exaggerated by our capitalist one? And does the existence of historically libertarian socialist societies like the Paris Commune or modern ones like the Zapatistas disprove the ML point that the state is necessary to defend against imperialist forces?

    in response to Related question: are there good examples to use as a rebuttal against the tired "but Soviet Union/North Korea/etc." thought-terminating clichés, i.e. socialist/communist states that are successful, stable, and not authoritarian hellscapes?

    I am seeking answers to these questions but I'm afraid I don't have them yet.

  51. What's your fav Open Mike Eagle song/album? (Please dont say you haven't heard of him, everyone knows you like TMBG)

    *stares you dead in the eye*
    who's that?

  52. So Wealth is higher than Rich then, noted and thanks!

    in response to Who the hell even IS rich? Am I rich? Is my friend who’s mom is the headmaster rich? How does one even know if they’re rich? When you say “rich”, are you referring to dentists, principals, and middle management, or are you referring to the 400 billionaires?

    to paraphrase Chris Rock - "rich" is money you can run out of if you buy too many mansions and yachts; "wealth" is money that CANNOT be spent in a human lifetime

  53. Do you have anything planned on how some people think that pointing out a division or injustice is equivalent to creating it? That seems like a pretty relevant topic considering the reaction some people are having to last week's coup attempt.

    oh yes, that will come up

  56. What do you think would be genuinely good replacements for the US flag and anthem? I don't know about a flag, but it the idea of using This Land Is Your Land feels nice, but maybe other songwriters are worth supporting

    flag is black with white text saying "you just lost the game" and the anthem is the Jurassic Park theme played on a vuvuzela

  57. Related question: are there good examples to use as a rebuttal against the tired "but Soviet Union/North Korea/etc." thought-terminating clichés, i.e. socialist/communist states that are successful, stable, and not authoritarian hellscapes?

    in response to That first quote is dope af! The second quote, did "totalitarianism" as he understood it include communism?

    The go-to is the Paris Commune, but don't expect the "but Venezuela" crowd to accept that. There is no effective rebuttal for people who've switched their brains off.

  58. Who the hell even IS rich? Am I rich? Is my friend who’s mom is the headmaster rich? How does one even know if they’re rich? When you say “rich”, are you referring to dentists, principals, and middle management, or are you referring to the 400 billionaires?

    in response to Why can't I be cool, hot, or rich :(

    dentists, principals, and middle management are upper middle class

    rich is millionaires

    WEALTH is billionaires

  59. Why do people on the left refer to democracy as "electoralism" in a sneering tone? Isn't socialism basically the extension of democracy into the workplace?

    They're not against the idea of voting as a concept. They're dismissive specifically of voting as a means of resisting capitalism. In the US, you can't really vote capitalism away, because everyone running for office is a capitalist. (Though it annoys me how many people sneering at electoralism were hardcore Sanders stans and see no contradiction in that.) So they want electoralism, but under a system that doesn't exist yet and can't be built under the existing system. In the most extreme (and stereotypical) cases, they think the only way forward is revolution and electoralism is counter-revolutionary.

    These are generally people who cannot fathom that you could do all the organizing, agitating, and resisting needed to change the system AND ALSO vote. And I'm tired of people who think "I sat on my ass on election day" is some kind of activism.

  60. Too horny for this world, where to go

    there's a dope sex party on mars this weekend

  61. Can rich people be hot if they are also class traitors?

    in response to Engels was rich

    you wanna be a class traitor to the wealthy, divest your wealth and we'll talk

  62. That first quote is dope af! The second quote, did "totalitarianism" as he understood it include communism?

    in response to Was he an anti-fascist daddy or and anti-communist daddy?

    Not exactly. Animal Farm is pretty explicitly about a socialist revolution that is slowly corrupted by the people in charge who use the revolution to grab power for themselves and become the same as the ruling class they'd just overthrown. That was his feeling on the Soviet Union under Stalin: they bore no resemblance to actual communism beyond hollow pageantry. To Orwell, totalitarianism was the opposite of socialism.

  63. Can you see what's your most-liked answer on here? Or would that take a hella lot scrolling?

    Everything on CC is scrolling, I can't even search my prior answers. No analytics whatsoever.

  64. Well I'm gonna call it that out of spite now.

    in response to Engels was rich

    why u gotta spite

  65. Was he an anti-fascist daddy or and anti-communist daddy?

    in response to Thoughts on George Orwell?

    "When I joined the militia I had promised myself to kill one Fascist — after all, if each of us killed one they would soon be extinct."
    -George Orwell

    "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.”
    -George Orwell

  66. Engels was rich

    in response to Why can't I be cool, hot, or rich :(

    you'll note we don't call leftist theory "Engelsism"

  68. Cut out the rich, why am I not hot or cool

    in response to Why can't I be cool, hot, or rich :(

    it's just that you're too cool to think you're hot

  70. Thoughts on George Orwell?

    daddy

  71. What do you use to draw? What's your drawing process like?

    Uh... I have a tablet and I work in Flash.

  72. Based on this definition, "relationship anarchy" sounds a lot like "being an asshole." Would that be accurate, or is there something I'm missing?

    in response to How so?

    enh, it's not as dickish when you remember everyone involved is also a relationship anarchist. I'm sure there are people who can pull it off without pain, but it seems like a machine for generating drama.

  73. Why is Nestle allowed to own so much water?

  75. "yeah! anarchy! so whats on the agenda first? looting, or straight to the murder"
    "well we don't exactly have an agenda, but there will be people going to the local protest and handing out flyers, or we can see if anyone needs help at the community farm we are building on unused private wasteland, the green manure is coming up soon"
    "--- no violence?"
    "the company that owns the empty field is talking like the farm is violence :)"
    "but no hurting people even at a protest?"
    "modern anarchist protest learned the majority of its methods from the Religious Society of Friends :))"
    "what about in self defense?"
    "we learned that from the EZLN :)))"

    (not related, but overheard at a squat a few years ago)

    in response to How so?

Anon commented:
Ian replied: