CuriousCat Archive Page 125 of 202

  1. Have you seen Babylon Berlin yet? It's p good.

    I watched the first episode, got distracted and haven't come back to it, but was intrigued. Will probably get to it one of these days.

  2. Is it ethical for a man to have sex with female prostitutes?

    *siiiiigh*

    it is ethical for people of any gender to have sex with sex workers of any gender provided their financial transaction is honest and both parties are consenting freely

  3. How do we reconcile "arrest and convict murderous cops" with "abolish prisons"?

    It's pretty straightforward: there is a high overlap between the people who want to hold the cops accountable and people who want to replace the justice system with something community-organized. People want the cops brought to justice. True justice will not come until we abolish prisons as well, but it's not like we want to cops out there murdering people until such time that the prisons are replaced.

    Life under capitalism means working with what we have *and also* working to replace what we have with something better.

  4. As someone who holds some leftist or anticapitalist ideas, what do you think of investing in stock markets?

    Enriching one's self isn't bad, it depends on the how one does that. My position is that we live in capitalist hellhole and if we have the means and money to earn some more money to make our lives easier, we can do so. Investing is one thing we can do. Obviously, one should do research into what they're investing in. Like if some corporation does ethically wrong thing with their money based on some news report, one should ethically not invest in them, right? So one can invest in the relatively good ones. And there should be nothing wrong with doing that, unless I'm missing something. Like maybe the stock market is an inherently bad capitalist idea that one shouldn't engage in. I'm currently not investing in any since I don't have the money to do so. Just bouncing around some ideas. Thoughts?

    Also an additional question that you can ignore if you want to, do you personally invest your money in the stock market?

    Thanks for your time and sorry if I messed up we conveying some of my ideas.

    Look, I keep banging this drum, but your individual actions don't really matter that much in the grand scheme. Whether your participate in the stock market is your business. The stock market is evil and shouldn't exist, but it does, and we're stuck with it, and if you can find a way to get some financial security for yourself without causing too much harm, be my guest. But, should we find a way to dismantle it, I want you to help us, not defend it because you have a personal stake in it.

    It's very sweet that you think I have enough money to invest in anything.

  5. If someone drew fanart of you naked, would that be a problem?

    in response to *sobs in professional managerial class*

    you do what you want, just keep it to yourself, I'm massively uncomfortable with being sexualized that explicitly by strangers

  7. Say Biden become president (which is the best case scenario for some reason), could he be forced to adopt progressive policies through enough pressure from people and his party?

    in response to How do I tell if Biden is actually a terrible person, or if the places I get news from are just amplifying the negative?

    I try not to think of it in terms of what Biden will or won't adopt. I try to focus on what *we* are trying to accomplish, what we're going lobby for, what legislation our allies in Congress are going to write, what we're going to get out in the streets and demand, and whether we can get that done while Biden is in office.

    And I think we can. Some of it, anyway.

  9. Do you think a sufficiently well-educated person can be immune from propaganda?

    a sufficiently well-educated person would know they are not

  11. Sorry, didn't mean to sound dismissive. What do you like about the movie?

    in response to That might have been his starting point, but he really lost himself along the way. I don't think the confusing timeline adds anything to that core story.

    it was probably the time travel movie with the hardest science I'd ever seen, that was genuinely interested in the nuts-and-bolts mechanics of time travel. I appreciated that even when the plot still super confused me. and the fun bit about puzzling out the plot (mostly by visiting wikis and reading explanatory posts) is it not only makes the story more comprehensible, it actually makes the science and the emotional stakes more interesting.

    basically, I got enough from the first watch to want to dig a little deeper, and every time I have I've found it rewarding.

    that's just my experience, not yours, and that's ok.

  12. Who are those folks doing the same thing? Any links or sources?

    in response to What is analytical fan-fiction?

    I'm not turning it up through a cursory google search, I'd have to dig out an old notebook to find it.

  15. What is analytical fan-fiction?

    A story that is meant to illustrate thoughts about a fictional universe the way an essay would. I don't think it's, like, an official term or anything. I had an essay I wanted to write about a certain property, realized I could express my thoughts better by writing a story in that property's universe, and had picked up the term from some other folks who had done similar.

  16. so you're saying darren aronofsky sucks? Requiem for a Dream was pretentious???

    in response to Darren Aronofsky or Shane Carruth?

    Requiem for a dream was pretentious, sure, but that's hardly a problem for me. Carruth is arguably even more pretentious than Aronofsky. It's more that all Aronofsky's work, for all its pretense, is extremely simplistic? "Character self-destructs in pursuit of perfection" is not that interesting a theme to define literally *all* of your work. (Oh, except mother!, in which "character is destroyed by husband's pursuit of perfection," really stretching yourself there Darren.) Requiem's "get this: ANYTHING can be a drug" is vapid no matter how viscerally-told.

    I'm dragging him playfully, to be clear. I have a soft spot for Aronofsky. Pi was a big part of my cinematic awakening, and Black Swan is wicked enjoyable nonsense. I do think mother! soured me on him a bit, but I'll get a hankering for his brand of bullshit eventually.

    But Carruth is the real deal.

  17. Is Primer the apotheosis of STEM cinema? A movie that's only meant as puzzle, with barely any emotional engagement?

    in response to Darren Aronofsky or Shane Carruth?

    it's interesting you say that, because Shane Carruth's inspiration for that movie was wanting to tell a story about two guys who have a secret so big it ruins their ability to trust each other

    he just decided at some point that secret should be time travel

    emotional engagement was his starting point

  19. Thoughts on John Woo? Would you say that his movies attempt to be Arthouse?

    I dunno about arthouse, but I do appreciate the way he aestheticizes violence. His violence really isn't meant to be thrilling, it's meant to be *pretty*. Not a lot of people do that.

  20. Homer Simpson voice: “$70 million may be exchanged for many guillotines.”

    in response to Would you run naked in a shopping mall for 3 minutes just to get 70 million dollars?

    how many millionaires you see building guillotines? it's almost like having wealth makes you more invested in keeping in than in creating a just and equal society, and lets you know you'll no longer be building the guillotine but lying in it

  21. With all your name variations on Twitter, why haven't you called yourself Ian DansKING?

    it would be false advertising, I've never dansked

  24. Any thoughts on this furor over The Last of Us II? Asking as a non-gamer.

    It's really, really hard to care. I didn't have a console that could play TLOU, so I'm not super invested in TLOU 2. There's a lot of bloviating. Some folks are having interesting conversations about it. I am not part of either.

  25. I noticed some other people doing it, but I didn't realize it was a trend. Why are people abandoning it?

    in response to Errant Signal deleted his curiouscat. Every other prominent leftist youtuber appears to have either abandoned or deleted their accounts. It seems you are the last one standing. How does it feel?

    I don't know anyone else's reasons, but it's kind of a terrible platform that is hard to have a healthy relationship with beyond a certain point.

  26. How do I tell if Biden is actually a terrible person, or if the places I get news from are just amplifying the negative?

    I can assure you both are true.

  27. (different anon) That's a very odd way to spell "Popeye."

    in response to What's the best made-for-cinema musical?

    i said what i said

  28. Is Dhalgren like a far-distant cousin of House of Leaves?

    ha

    hahahahahaaa

  29. Errant Signal deleted his curiouscat. Every other prominent leftist youtuber appears to have either abandoned or deleted their accounts. It seems you are the last one standing. How does it feel?

    bad

  31. Darren Aronofsky or Shane Carruth?

    what's better, this piece of gum I found on my shoe that still has some flavor in it or jesus?

  33. My only problem with contrapoints cancel culture video was the part about 'no apology is enough' I felt that it supported the toxic idea that you apologise to be forgiven rather than apologising because you felt bad about what you did, regardless of if you will be forgiven. What are your thoughts?

    I'm not relitigating the Contra Cancellation. The counter-argument you're looking for is voiced repeatedly in the video itself.

  35. Do you think there is any chance the Republican Party will move leftwards if their current politics become untenable?

    I don't predict the future but that doesn't sound likely.

  36. What's the best made-for-cinema musical?

    Let's go with Once.

  38. How do you pass the time?

    nose ain't gonna pick itself

  39. Name a famous book that ends on a sad note you wish had not, and what could it have been instead

    His Dark Materials' bummer ending seemed very contrived, like the story was twisting itself into pretzels just to make absolutely sure the ending was as sad as possible. I wish the door had been left open for at least the *possibility* of Lyra and Will seeing each other again.

    Also I don't know why Kidd had to leave Bellona without Lanya in Dhalgren. :(

  41. Why is ableism overlooked and forgotten compared to other forms of oppression?

    There's not really a "why" that I know of other than that people in power try their damnedest to deny any and all marginalized groups, and they've managed to keep ability politics out of the mainstream better than other issues. Sex worker rights are another that usually gets framed as "too far." Liberalism always tries to draw a line somewhere, "this far left and no further," always keeping a certain group Othered, allowing otherwise progressive people to ignore them. Disabled folks seem to be one of those groups at the moment. :-/

  42. Should the prospect of racial solidarity then be presented to lower class whites as in fact being in thier self interest?

    Is it wrong to frame left wing politics as being in the self interest of individuals, even if ultimately it IS?

    in response to What do you think if the claim that white supremacy is in the material interest of the white working class, which makes it a sacrifice for white people to oppose it, which in turn distinguishes between good and bad whites.

    What do you mean, "should"? Cross-racial working class solidarity is recommended all the time. Unfortunately, some portion of it is preaching tolerance of white racism to build a cross-racial coalition rather than fighting it. But both arguments are made on the regular.

  43. Hi Ian, do you have any tips for how I, a starting YouTuber with negligible clout, can respectfully and tactfully engage with another YouTuber who has much more clout, without giving the impression that I am seeking out their attention or trying to exploit them for social capital, or otherwise accidentally making them feel uncomfortable?

    (I got blocked by a semi-popular BreadTuber for reasons unclear to me so I'm wondering if maybe there are some ground rules that should have been obvious to me but which I was somehow breaking)

    Hey YouTuber! That's way too unspecific to give you useful advice on. My blanket advice is: no YouTuber owes you attention, and they block people for all kinds of reasons that you are not privy to! You may have mistakenly ended up on a block list. You may follow some people they have problems with and they maybe clocked you incorrectly as a reactionary. They may have had an odd interaction with you, checked out your profile, and decided you were not necessarily a problem but found you annoying. Maybe you actually crossed a line. Or maybe said YouTuber is just kind of an asshole.

    If you're looking to stay in this game a while, understand that, above a certain degree of notoriety, your relationship to Twitter changes dramatically, and you will deal with hundreds if not thousands of notifications a day, and while you may try to only block people who are genuine problems, you can't be expected not to heck it up ever. And your tolerance for weirdness is going to go way, way down when you're getting dozens of weird interactions on the reg.

    I'd say don't take it personally, move on with your life, and talk about your behavior with someone who actually knows the details (not me) to see if there's something you wanna do differently in future.

  44. Would you run naked in a shopping mall for 3 minutes just to get 70 million dollars?

    wealth is a disease

  46. Not really a question, but have you ever heard of an essay called The Tyranny of Structurelessness? https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm Not a short read exactly, but the ideas about spokespeople who never asked to be spokespeople reminds me quite a bit about discourse around LeftTube...

    in response to What do you think the alternative to 'cancelling' is? Like a way to hold people accountable within our movement that doesn't end up death threats and harassment.

    this could actually be useful, because I've been looking to talk about reactionary "leaderless" movements and how their leaders assert themselves through unofficial means. seems like the other side of this coin. so thanks!

  47. What gets to me is that a lot of people who defend capitalism seem to use "socialist" and "failed state" interchangeably in spite of examples of failed states with more capitalistic economies.

    in response to The CCP offers lip service to communism, sure, but do you honestly consider it communist? I thought that position was mostly exclusive to tankies, while other leftists generally just consider it to be state capitalism.

    I mean, it's basically impossible for socialism to succeed when your definition of success is capitalist in nature. Like, Cuba hasn't "failed." It has problems, like anywhere (many of them caused externally by US sanctions). But it's stable, its people are generally happy, and its healthcare is phenomenal. But when your definition of success is "large annual GDP growth" or some other such benchmark of wealth, yeah, nations that without profit-based economies will always be "failures."

    There's pretty much nothing wrong in any socialist or socialist-adjacent nation that hasn't occurred repeatedly under capitalism.

  48. What do you think of Wikipedia? Is it a good source for information? A bad one?

    To the best of my understanding it is about as accurate, if not slightly moreso, than traditional encyclopediae. It's got its problems, but it's overall a pretty good resource, and you can't beat it for ease of access and breadth of material.

  49. I’m undecided.

    Should I read dumb right wing books to understand and refute their arguments or should I just spend my time reading worthwhile books?

    in response to have you ever read any Ayn Rand?

    Both are valid paths. Whichever you choose, rest assured there are people out there doing the other. Which would you prefer? And is there any reason not to go back and forth?

  50. What do you think if the claim that white supremacy is in the material interest of the white working class, which makes it a sacrifice for white people to oppose it, which in turn distinguishes between good and bad whites.

    I would say that white supremacy makes the white working class *feel* empowered more than it actually benefits them in any material way, and they have far more to gain from allying across racial lines with other working class folks than they've ever gotten from wealthy whites

  51. What? China is one of if not literally the biggest carbon emitter in the entire world. https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2018/07/01/china-emits-more-carbon-dioxide-than-the-u-s-and-eu-combined/#5d68aa17628c

    in response to Can you give examples of socialist and communist countries that are leaders in dealing with climate change?

    Yes, China is one of the greatest CO2 emitters, but, last I checked, they had also made some of the most aggressive pledges to reducing emissions. If this info is out of date, I fall on my sword.

  52. The CCP offers lip service to communism, sure, but do you honestly consider it communist? I thought that position was mostly exclusive to tankies, while other leftists generally just consider it to be state capitalism.

    in response to Can you give examples of socialist and communist countries that are leaders in dealing with climate change?

    *I* don't consider China properly communist, but people arguing "capitalism has never collapsed" don't get to turn around and be all nuanced about the CCP.

    Look, the argument here is that "capitalism has succeeded where socialism has failed." This depends on a selective definitions of both success and failure. Most leftists will tell you Stalinist Russia was only communist in name, not in practice, but the USSR collapsed, so that's a failure of communism. But by any rubric that says Stalinist Russia was communist, so is China. But China is on track to be the world's largest economic superpower, so, therefore, it must *not* be really communist. Definitionally, any system claiming to be communist that fails *is* communist, where any system that succeeds is not.

    Meanwhile, we watch capitalism collapse over and over again. Greece. Turkey. The Great Depression. The US is in its second major economic crisis in 12 years. But every time capitalism collapses, it gets rebuilt as capitalism, often at the expense of the taxpayer. Socialization is used to bail the capitalists out and is then immediately abandoned to once again pursue profit and set up the next collapse. Meanwhile countries that adopt stronger social systems, dipping a toe in leftism, tend to be more stable, and better able to address large social crises like climate change because it's easier to enact policy that isn't profit-driven.

  53. have you ever read any Ayn Rand?

    h*ck no, I don't even have time for all the GOOD books

  54. Is the soy boy shirt a custom order? And is it considered official innuendo studios merch?

    it was a gift!

  55. Where is the line where harsh criticism becomes harrassment, if there is one?

    there isn't a "line" because those are not on a spectrum with each other. they are two different things that are often conflated by harassers painting their harassment as criticism and celebrities painting their critics as harassers.

  56. Are you planning on anything involving Outer Wilds? I don't care for deets, I just love that game and was stoked that you loved it

    I have something about adventure games that mentions it in the same breath as Riven, but I don't have much to say about it beyond this: https://innuendostudios.tumblr.com/post/617963920366452736/thoughts-on-outer-wilds

  57. Horses?????

    Unpopular opinion: horses!

  58. Do you think the way Del Toro denies humanity from the monsters is ableist, or is that a stretch?

    It's not great that he relies on physical mutilation to dehumanize the villains, though I think it's helped *somewhat* by having the empathetic characters often being physiologically atypical - Elisa's scars and muteness, Crimson Peak's ghosts with cleavers in their heads, the fishman's bullet wound (and... him being a fishman). It's at the very least stressing that differentness is not itself the problem, and the ways the villains' bodies change is always an act of violence they bring on themselves through their monstrosity.

    But... yeah, I don't think that fully redeems it.

  59. If you get a successful videogame made would you be the type of creator who talks about all the themes in interviews or the creator that tries to not explain their writing?

    I would want to be the former but try to be the latter.

  60. How old is too old to go on one's first date?

    "appropriate age to start dating" has a floor but no ceiling

  63. Is blaming it on "industrialism" rather than "capitalism" a fash argument? I stumbled on a fascist twitter account before and I saw a meme against industrialization? Or

    I don't know its origins I'm afraid. It sounds like something any capitalism apologist might say, not just fashy ones.

  64. Is the dan thing a stuart lee esque joke where people are pushing the unfunnyness to the point where it's funny again or do people actually think you're a Dan

    It's 1/3 people seeing my last name is Danskin and getting mixed up, 1/3 people confusing me with Dan Olson, and 1/3 people doing it on purpose.

  65. Climate change is happening because of industrialism not capitalism.

    in response to How can you claim capitalism is unsustainable when it's been around for hundreds of years and has yet to collapse?

    funny how socialist and communist countries are among the leaders in dealing with climate change while the richest nation on Earth is among the greatest polluters and yet they're all industrialized, almost like industrialization does not in fact require you to ruin the environment and that is a byproduct of something else... but that would imply there's some sort of philosophy centered around maximizing short-term profits through resource extraction, and surely that's impossible...

    ::kissy face emoji::

  67. https://www.pornhub.com/view_video.php?viewkey=ph5a6222d8e9189

    The full communist manifesto is on PornHub.

    in response to What is the greatest and most communist porn movie ever made?

    dang, I thought this would be read by some hot, naked, Marx-lookalike

    false advertising

  68. Do you think instead of (or perhaps conjunction with) comrade, the leftist movement in the USA use "pardner"

    I DO NOW!!!

  69. any phrases or terms that you're getting bored of seeing so much, even in spite of what they may mean?

    "it doesn't exist in a vacuum"

    I feel like it's become such a cliche that it ceases to function as an argument. they're just filler words.

  70. Hey i'm from the uk, where y'know the old conservative trick of "defund the thing until it fails, then justify scrapping it on the failure"? They have been doing that to the police for over a decade now,
    So for a taste of how that works? Private security companies can't ever get themselves insured if they have immunity from prosecution, and individuals who are theoretically liable and theoretically responsible for use of force with no union backing them up are expensive and useless, The LAST time G4S was deployed to a riot in large numbers a few years ago? They were famous for being ineffective and running away from the protestors, then lost the contract and the tories gave up on the idea
    Weird fact, they do the outer perimiter security for area 51 now,

    in response to Are you worried about the possibility that polticians will respond to Abolish the Police by transitioning to law enforcement for hire? I’m terrified about a nation wide Blackwater. Hell I can already hear Conservatives make the arguments for privitzation now. Why aren’t more leftists talking about this? Or am I over thinking this?

  72. Thought on Dhalgren?

    now what do you think?

  74. best careers to replace cop dramas

    sensible answer: we want to replace police with social workers and community law enforcement, we can replace cop shows with same

    real answer: SMASH PLAYERS

  75. Favorite Diablo Swing Orchestra song?

    Christ, basically all of The Butcher's Ballroom, but if I HAD to pick it would probably be Gunpowder Chant/Infralove. But, dang, it's hard to let Heroines down like that...

Anon commented:
Ian replied: