CuriousCat Archive Page 173 of 202

  1. Is Marie Kondo alright to you?

    she's fine

  2. Are straight people real?

    I'm unqualified to answer spiritual questions

  4. With Tulsi Gabbard denouncing her anti-gay past and Joe Biden reconciling his tough on crime history. How can we know if a person truly had a evolution in there character or is just bullshiting because they have they have the political and social self awareness to know that what they TRULY believe won't fly anymore? Especially if said people would to run for president as a democrat in a very progressive era.

    look at their voting history, whom they accept donations from, the policies they are proposing, the people they are campaigning with, the parts of the country they are campaigning in

    see if their actions are consistent with their words. you still won't know for sure what they believe, but, if they feel obligated to behave in ethical ways for political reasons, who cares if they actually believe in the ethics? you're never going to know a politician's heart, so focus on influencing their behavior.

  5. These two things don't logically follow. If the politics of your friends are important, then I don't have a moral imperative to cut them out?

    It sounds to me like you're telling us that it is bad to have tumors growing in you but you don't have an imperative to cut it out. Doesn't logically follow my dude.

    in response to Do I have a moral imperative to immediately cut ties with friends who lean or slide regressive?

    that's not how logic works

  6. What is a not broken system? Marxism?

    in response to I am also quite far left and know where the theory behind this comes from, but in practice I've had so much help from the polics. I live in a really bad area, and they come whenever I ask really promptly, they helped me recover my bike when it was stolen from me by sending out folks to pawn shops looking for it, and gave me advise on how to fix it. I struggle to broadly condemn the police, and even in trying to say to my friends that there are issues with the police they don't really get where that idea comes from

    hell if I know, let's find out!

  7. Any Smash Ultimate players or characters you enjoy watching? Like Awestin's matches, something fun about watching a Ness main dominate.

    Ultimate doesn't click with me as a spectator, I'm afraid, but I've enjoyed playing it a lot. I have the most fun with Sonic, Little Mac, Zero Suit Samus, Ryu/Ken, Richter/Simon, and Ike.

  10. What did you think of the Suspiria remake (2018) compared to the original?

    I haven't seen the original.

  11. Who is your favorite character in ATLA? Doesn't have to be from the main group.

    Suki, Toph, Iroh, Zuko, Aang, YOU CAN'T ASK ME TO PICK JUST ONE

  12. I am also quite far left and know where the theory behind this comes from, but in practice I've had so much help from the polics. I live in a really bad area, and they come whenever I ask really promptly, they helped me recover my bike when it was stolen from me by sending out folks to pawn shops looking for it, and gave me advise on how to fix it.

    I struggle to broadly condemn the police, and even in trying to say to my friends that there are issues with the police they don't really get where that idea comes from

    in response to I'm a cop in a european country fresh out of the academy; I'd also categorize my political views as far left. I've noticed that american left!twitter is very hostile to cops. Do you think it's possible to work as a cop and also uphold leftist ideals?

    Just a few weeks ago, Hbomb and a bunch of other lefties ran a charity stream for trans* youth and raised over $340,000. It was a resounding success filled with hope and mutual support.

    Pretty much the entire stream still hates capitalism.

    You can do good things with broken systems. But the systems are still broken.

  13. what on earth is that and why i'm already too tired to google it

    in response to What's your view on MGTOWs? Very similar with polygamy?

    voluntarily celibate men who hate women so much they won't have sex with them

  14. Congrats on the success of your new video! I was honestly surprised by those numbers, just because "the card says moops" seems less self-evident than some of the others.

    Do you know why this one took off like it did?

    I think it's just the channel as a whole growing. On average, each video has been doing better than the last for a while now. I could make further guesses, but saying more than "time, luck, and algorithms" is probably taking too much credit.

  15. how to start liking writing assignments or essays? More i write and read more i think it is just rephrasing ad infinitum. Humanities sucks

    Humanities are awesome! Try not to think about what the teacher wants or what the assignment requires of you. Try to engage with the work on its own terms: What is interesting about this? What about it is relevant to your own interests? How does it relate to readings you've actually enjoyed? Find an idea *you* would like to interrogate and find a way to fit it to the assignment. I had a miserable time with assignments in high school and my first go at college, but when I finished school in my thirties I had a blast, because I had experience engaging with ideas on my own terms.

  16. Thoughts on economics as a field? I'm not bad faithing I legitimately want to know what you think of the academic field that promotes markets.

    I've never taken an econ class so I'm not really sure what goes on in there. I'm assuming they, like, do laps in Scrooge McDuck's money bin.

  18. What's your view on MGTOWs?

    Very similar with polygamy?

    I am SO CURIOUS about why you'd compare those things.

  19. I'm a cop in a european country fresh out of the academy; I'd also categorize my political views as far left.
    I've noticed that american left!twitter is very hostile to cops. Do you think it's possible to work as a cop and also uphold leftist ideals?

    Under capitalism, the job of the police is to defend the powerful. You can be a good cop, but you can't make The Cops good until you replace capitalism.

  21. Why does the right pretends like George Orwell or George Carlen would totally be 100% be on they side if there were alive? Also why does the right always use 1984? Why not use Animal Farm since it was meant to be a parody of the Soviet Union while i don't think even sub textually mentions socialism.

    Animal Farm begins with an allegory for the Russian Revolution, with Snowball representing Trotsky. It is... extremely about socialism? Like, it's about how socialist ideals can be co-opted by autocrats and corrupted into the same capitalist hierarchy it sought to overthrow.

    Anyway, the Right champions Orwell and Carlin because they assume anything they like must agree with their politics. And because they're not very bright. Some of them are aware that they are appropriating men who would despise them, and they just don't care, because it still helps their brand to be associated with famous, respected people.

    They place no value on rhetorical consistency. That's not how things work on their end.

  22. First If all, Sorry bad english

    Okay... I really don't know If you can help me with It but whatever... I want to be a writer and, to achieve that, I've searched a ton about writing and drama and all - since I can't attend to a writing class around here. Film Crit Hulk's book about screenwriting was the only thing that actually helped me..., but I have, like, a lot of insecurities and questions, and my country having terrible education make things way worse.

    First of all, even tough I love Shakespeare's tragedies, I have no idea what ppl mean when they talk about his "mastery of language"... Like... What do they mean by that? It is the metrification? The imagery? I just know I like to read It and I want to know what It means and How to learn... Those things regarding style are what confuses me the most

    Second, I REALLY enjoyed those videos about Fury Road, and to learn more about that could be important for me... Where can I learn more about this trope study?

    Third, the only helpful book to me was Hulk's... But he does not talks about novels, literary techniques (such as stream of consciousness, or, idk, when Stephen King says to don't use passível voice or whatever) etc... Since you've said you wrote stories in the past, do you have some advices on that matter (idk... Books... Some theory...)?

    The last thing (Sorry long post)... The Samuel R. Delany's book is kinda expensive here. I think I can afford It but I don't wanna waste my money on a book that isn't helpful... Do you think It is a good book for an aspiring novelist?

    Those are my questions... I hope they - nor my bad english - annoy you very much

    1) Well, Shakespeare had the largest vocabulary of any writer in the history of the English language (by, like, a WIDE margin). He also invented more words than any writer in history. Throw in that he was a master of dozens of poetic forms, yeah, it's safe to call him a master. Though, generally, when folks say he was a master of language, it's an aesthetic judgment: Beyond all the other stuff, people think he wrote pretty sentences.

    2) Thank you! There's actually a bibliography in the end credits of the Fury Road video! There's a lot of good stuff on tropes there. Feminist Frequency's original Tropes vs. Women is a good starting place, as well: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBBDFEC9F5893C4AF

    3) Here's a post from a while back where I talked about books on writing: https://curiouscat.me/InnuendoStudios/post/625297479

    You can also check out Story Hospital for writing tips: https://storyhospital.com/

    4) Hmm, which Delany are you referring to? I've mentioned About Writing and also The Motion of Light in Water. About Writing is a very good book on writing, but it is *not* entry-level and I would say not worth throwing a lot of money at if you're still starting out. If you mean The Motion of Light in Water, it's an excellent book that I love dearly, but it's a memoir of a writer, not an instructional book. It's full of musings on writing, and I highly recommend it, but it may not give you what you're looking for.

    Thanks for writing! Not the least bit annoyed. Good luck! :)

  23. what do you think of postmodern conservatism in 1984? ie. Truth is what those in powers say it is, according to their convenience at the moment, and party members being trained to hold two contradictory opinions at once.

    Postmodern conservatism is extremely Orwellian.

  24. Do you think the politics of your friends are important? If so how important?

    yes. extremely.

  25. What's the better game, Amnesia 1 or 2? And why is one worse?

    I don't play those scary games

  26. Speaking of moral relativism: I just watched Zach Snyder's "Watchmen" for the first time this evening. I understand I'm about 10 years too late for this discussion, but I'm having trouble reading what its opinion on relativism is. It doesn't seem to excuse the awful things its supposedly "good" characters do, but it doesn't truly condemn them either. I mean, other than the fact that the world and each of its characters is just miserable. I think there's perhaps a strong case for it to be read as either a critique of or in support of moral relativism. Do you have any strong opinions on it?

    I don't quite remember how the movie handled everything, and I generally don't expect Zack Snyder to have much nuance. I only saw the movie once when it was new, but I've read through the comic a few times.

    In the comic, you have a bunch of different ideologies represented by the characters: Ozymandias is a kind of extreme consequentialism, Dr. Manhattan is a determinist, Rorschach is an unbendable moral absolutist, and Nite Owl and Silk Spectre are basically liberals trying their best within an imperfect moral framework. The comic itself doesn't seem to take a position, rather interrogate each ideology by playing them off each other. Roschach's inflexibility clearly has limits, but Ozymandias' relativism has a horrible cost, and Dr. Manhattan's fixation with the Big Picture means he will do basically nothing.

    It's a book of extremes, taking a number of viewpoints to their logical conclusions and asking you to decide how far along you're willing to go, and on which.

  27. Hey,
    I'm a reformed edgelord who recently saw your video on the card says moops, and do you have any advice for overcoming this ingrained relativism? I always find myself making assertions that morality doesn't exist whenever I'm confronted with this kind of issue.

    I dunno, I've never been much of a relativist. Like, yes, reality can only ever be experienced subjectively and no one can ever really know if their perceptions match up with anyone else's and therefore it's nigh-impossible to make any claims as to what is or isn't moral or even what is or isn't REAL with true certainty, and that's all REAL FASCINATING in a sort of Philosophy 101/stoner beach bonfire kinda way, but, unless you're spending your life in bed because you don't know for a fact the floor is solid, or setting yourself on fire because you don't know for a fact fire is hot, existence means taking rather a lot on faith. You take it on faith that everyone else's experience is just as real to them as yours are to you, even though you know they could TECHNICALLY all be figments of your imagination. You take it on faith that reducing suffering in the world is a good thing if for no other reason than it increases happiness, and happiness is probably just a chemical reaction that evolved to encourage behavior that will help you pass on your genes and has no greater importance than that, but fuck it, it still feels good to be happy. You take it on faith that the species not going extinct due to climate change is a desirable outcome, even as you acknowledge that the species is probably only valuable to you because it happens to be the species you were born into and it has no objective value beyond the collective personal attachment we have to our own kind, because that collective personal attachment is as real as anything else.

    Morality is a choice. You are choosing one set of principles and treating them as objective truths, even as you acknowledge that they are not truly objective, because you can't *actually* abide by them unless you treat them as inviolable, and no one is actually capable of existing on the believe that *nothing* is true, so if you're going to take anything on faith, you might as well choose morality over self-centeredness, because it generally yields happier and more productive results.

    Sorry, I just had this debate when I was like 17 and the fact that grown-ass adults all over the internet are still hung up on it is kind of exhausting.

  28. What did you go to post-secondary for?

    I ended up with a degree in Interrelated Media.

  29. What is the purpose of a video essay that can't be adequately captured by a traditional written essay?
    (I hope that question doesn't sound weirdly judgemental but it was posed to me and I'm not sure how to answer it)

    What is the purpose of a written essay that can't be captured in a video?

    Why is text the medium that doesn't need to justify itself?

  30. Where do you fall on the "debate Nazis vs don't debate Nazis" Debate?

    I'm pretty explicitly in the "don't" camp. You can have private conversations with Nazis if you feel like it, but there is nothing to be gained from engaging them publicly.

  31. How would you respond to the criticism that the alt right playbook too often conflates liberals and leftists?

    I am very intentional about when I say which thing, so anyone who thinks I'm conflating them isn't listening very well.

  32. Any advice for getting over someone who isn't interested? He is definitely gay, I am definitely not, he is also my flatmate and my best friend. He's said he's only sticking in at uni because he has me and would drop out if he didn't. I don't want to derail his life and so need to find ways to get over it. I don't really know if a psychiatrist can help with this situation — I live in the UK so I can see one if I have to, but I'm worried that psychiatrists are basically just not perfect because of, you know, the history of psychiatry. How well can they understand a whole situation, especially when my view is so distorted?

    You've mentioned you use some antianxiety meds. What do you think about psychiatry at all and have you ever just completely disagreed with their advice?

    That's rough. :(

    I am not an advice column, so I can't help you much with your situation, but it's worth knowing the difference between psychology and psychiatry. I have never seen a psychiatrist; I have been seeing psychologists - as in, doing talk therapy - for most of my adult life, and it has always been incredibly good for me. I would not recommend going on meds to deal with unrequited love, but seeing a therapist to talk through your feelings is a good idea in most any circumstance. I've rarely had a shrink give me advice, they mostly offer perspective and help you think through your feelings. If you and your shrink decide you would benefit from meds, they can refer you to someone who can prescribe them.

    Good luck. You will get through this.

  33. possibly related to your new video, do you have any thoughts on the irony used in leftist spaces like r/chapotraphouse?

    I don't have answers to questions about Chapo.

  34. If you had a magic wand, what would you want society to look like?

  35. Quick random question about an image in "The Card Says Moops":

    Was there a specific reason you used the GQ shoot of Alison Brie and Gillian Jacobs to represent pervasive sexualization of women? For some reason that shoot always gave me a creepy vibe but I can't put my finger on why (compared to other sexy photoshoots)

    I was trying to think of an example of needlessly horny marketing, and then remembered that shoot. It was so blatant that the photographers were just like "this is what you do with young, attractive actresses" despite it having nothing to do with their careers, Community being a surprisingly non-objectifying show.

  36. I'm pretty dang ignorant. What are Englebert and Charlemagne a reference to?

    Nothing specific, they're just names I think are fun to say. Engelbert Humperdinck was a British pop singer in the 60s and 70s and Charlemagne was the Holy Roman Emperor in the early 9th Century.

  37. Why you think abortion is legal?

    Shouldn't it be, from a moral perspective, illegal to murder a living being?

    Buddy, have I got news for you about the military.

  38. Is the government shutdown the one thing that value neutral politics could not compromise on ? To violent a tactic for a nonsensical goal ? If the dems get a win for refusing to budge, will they learn the lesson in your opinion ?

    Dems have rolled over on government shutdowns before.

  40. I think if anything this stream teach us that spite and positivity (Trans pride and solidarity, helping kids, N64 collectathons) mobilise more than either of them alone.

    in response to I remembered one thing about why "the left will eventually win" in an angry jack video a long time ago that states "spite can't last" and I've seen a lot of common sentiment elsewhere (usually by liberals) that "love will win". While I'm not denying or dismissing the sincerity of doners wanting to help trans people in Hbomb's charity stream, I can't help but notice that there was actually a lot of spite around it. Primarily the event was driven by spite against Graham Linehan's transphobia. In fact, the more upset he got at Hbomb the more people donated and the spite even spawned #thanksgraham that further pushed the stream viral. Given this and the previous alt-right backlash that shoved Trump into office at dizzying speeds, I'm slowly feeling like spite is really the best way to mobilize people effectively and whether progress is made politically depends on whether spite is aimed at the right people (the oppressors, the right, the rich) instead of the wrong people (poor, minorities, feminists). Doesn't seem like "love" ever really wins and only spite and hate makes people win. (Again if directed at the right people). Do you agree and thus feel like the only REAL way forward is to militarize the left like the right has?

    I'll co-sign that!

  41. While I recognize the arguments, you don't think hate and spite has worked for The Left before and has gone farther than anything else The Left has currently been trying? I don't think the Russian Revolution was possible without pitting the working class against the landowners and capitalist class. Likewise for the Cuban Revolution, both launching a violent revolt and suppressing a capitalist class allowed Cuba to be what they are today, a successful Leftist state.

    Introduce Gun Culture to The Left (Black Panther), redefine culturally "The Other" to be more class based and against white privilege, train a cadre of political superiors that lead mobilized groups of followers with zero compromise, and get the vast majority of The Left to get more and more comfortable with violence. Punching Nazis is a good start and has helped us grown an opposition hasn't it?

    Can't this approach overcome bigotry by sheer force? I'm not sure that, given the right training and mindset, The Left and The Right in a punching contest will always favor The Right.

    My personal first step would be re-introducing Gun Culture to The Left and trying to spread more firearms to all spectrums of the left where we'll have equal number of gun-owners as The Right and maybe more-so eventually.

    in response to I remembered one thing about why "the left will eventually win" in an angry jack video a long time ago that states "spite can't last" and I've seen a lot of common sentiment elsewhere (usually by liberals) that "love will win". While I'm not denying or dismissing the sincerity of doners wanting to help trans people in Hbomb's charity stream, I can't help but notice that there was actually a lot of spite around it. Primarily the event was driven by spite against Graham Linehan's transphobia. In fact, the more upset he got at Hbomb the more people donated and the spite even spawned #thanksgraham that further pushed the stream viral. Given this and the previous alt-right backlash that shoved Trump into office at dizzying speeds, I'm slowly feeling like spite is really the best way to mobilize people effectively and whether progress is made politically depends on whether spite is aimed at the right people (the oppressors, the right, the rich) instead of the wrong people (poor, minorities, feminists). Doesn't seem like "love" ever really wins and only spite and hate makes people win. (Again if directed at the right people). Do you agree and thus feel like the only REAL way forward is to militarize the left like the right has?

    Your examples are Cuba and Russia, which are both revolutions that turned into dictatorships as soon as they took power.

    The problem with demonizing an Other for political purpose is you're not actually breaking down the hierarchy, you're just creating a new in-group to replace the existing one. That does not lead to the abolition of hierarchy that socialism promises.

    Not saying it doesn't work in the short term, but I suspect that's how you end up with Stalin.

  42. I remembered one thing about why "the left will eventually win" in an angry jack video a long time ago that states "spite can't last" and I've seen a lot of common sentiment elsewhere (usually by liberals) that "love will win".

    While I'm not denying or dismissing the sincerity of doners wanting to help trans people in Hbomb's charity stream, I can't help but notice that there was actually a lot of spite around it. Primarily the event was driven by spite against Graham Linehan's transphobia.

    In fact, the more upset he got at Hbomb the more people donated and the spite even spawned #thanksgraham that further pushed the stream viral.

    Given this and the previous alt-right backlash that shoved Trump into office at dizzying speeds, I'm slowly feeling like spite is really the best way to mobilize people effectively and whether progress is made politically depends on whether spite is aimed at the right people (the oppressors, the right, the rich) instead of the wrong people (poor, minorities, feminists).

    Doesn't seem like "love" ever really wins and only spite and hate makes people win. (Again if directed at the right people). Do you agree and thus feel like the only REAL way forward is to militarize the left like the right has?

    I never said spite isn't mobilizing, I said it doesn't last. Spite for Graham Linehan is great for a weekend charity event, but you can't build a movement out of it. You could maybe build something sustainable out of dunking on transphobes at large, so I suppose if you picked a number of prominent transphobes to serve as shorthand for transphobia and built your movement around taking them to task, that could keep you going for a while.

    So maybe you're right, and spite and anger *can* build something lasting. But this raises a number of other concerns.

    It is very hard to fix anything if you build your movement around what you're trying to tear down and not what you're trying to build.

    Something Andi McClure pointed out on Twitter a while ago was that we all know the Democrats are against Trump's border wall, which, great, they should be against that. But can you tell me what the Democrats' policy is on immigration? Do they even have one? Right down the ticket, I can tell you what the Dems are against, but what are they FOR? They have defined themselves for years as better than the alternative, and not as a party with any specific goals. Setting aside that this keeps costing them elections, even when they hold power, what do they accomplish? They end up being incrementalists who make marginally better versions of what already exists, or do what Republicans would do but not as bad. Anger at billionaires and oil barons is no substitute for an actual plan to address wealth inequality and global warming.

    This is not to paint the Dems as an effective opposition party, and maybe if they were more willing to demonize the Right they would get more fervor behind them. But there's still that problem of what to do when they actually hold power, and spite doesn't give us that. People who just wanna see Republicans fail will cheer when the Dems take power, but then we have no plan of accountability. There are also rather a lot of issues we need to deal with where there's no obvious villain.

    There's also the simple fact that the conservatives are just generally more hateful than the Left, and if we're playing the game of anger and spite, they will always outplay us. If you're appealing to your audience's anger, bigotry always plays better than hating the rich. On a gut level, people fear The Other more than they hate their "betters." Your politics will fail if you don't demand people rise above that.

    In short: I think anger is good for getting people into movements and for short-term goals, but your movement has to be about MAKING THINGS BETTER or it will fail. It has to have room for joy.

  43. Hi,

    I just want to ask

    I'm currently writing fiction and I've seen examples of past works where authors just feel obliged to add "quotes" or "worthy lines" that's bound to be shared/screenshot worthy for readers of the millenial/Instagram age, such as poetry where people just snap a photo of one of their favorite passages/lines in the book, and I just feel that those lines were purposely written there just to cater to these people, as if they expected these to happen

    so, is it very essential to add in quotes, fancy lines in my narrative work? Because I honestly don't have any, especially any quips or witty ones

    Given that none of us know how much those snapshots actually benefit the book, I'd say don't sweat it.

  44. Hey! I was wanting to ask a kind of odd question. Ben Shapiro is gonna be speaking at my university (University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa). Do have any advice on things to do about that? Like, ways to try and de-platform him, or really against him? I dunno, I just wanna be active against his kind of alt-right BS, and I don't know how.

    I don't have step-by-step instructions, I'm afraid, but general tactics are to petition the school, threaten student walkouts, and, if the talk goes on despite that, hold a protest. Depending on your school, there are likely activist-y types ready to work on this, maybe some with more experience, so I'd say your first step is to find other people who are pissed off about this and get in a room together.

  45. Hi. I hope you don't mind a question of the blatantly nonpolitical variety.

    I'm seeing a lot of divided thoughts on Shyamalan's SPLIT. A lot of that criticism is very fair, and there's a fair share of it which criticises the film's inability to stand as a self-contained story. I think that criticism might be fair for SPLIT, but that same criticism was not really applied to, for example, RETURN OF THE KING.

    Some of this comes down purely to expectations. You cannot really separate the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy because they were filmed back to back, their budgets weren't separable, and so on.

    But if you look at MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, it very much functions as its own piece of media, and is maybe a better comparison than the others. How does one evaluate and separate films that exist as part of a series in terms of general merit? Does a film fail if the relationship to itself (and to other films within its universe) is not part of the text? Or is it really a matter of adequate telegraphing?

    Expectations are surely part of it - even without the knowledge of Return of the King's budget and filming, it is an adaptation of a well-known book series that most people know is a trilogy - but there's also a meaningful difference between serialized fiction and more traditional sequels.

    Like... The Two Towers doesn't resolve the story of Lord of the Rings. Nobody seeing that movie things the story is over, it's just the middle chapter of an ongoing narrative. The ring is still on its way to Mordor. But Unbreakable had a concrete ending; it left the door open for sequels, but it wasn't incomplete without one. Its story was finished. So a sequel needs to not only begin a new story, it needs to justify adding to a story that was functionally complete.

    I think the charge that Split doesn't stand on its own is... kinda weird? Like, the bad guy gets away, which teases a sequel, and Bruce Willis has a cameo in a mid-credits scene to set up the shared universe, but its narrative is more or less complete. Sequel bait and an Unbreakable callback don't really do much damage to the movie itself. If there's any complaint to be made about that stuff, it's more in how those elements have inflated the movie's reputation, but that's a problem of reception more than a problem with the script itself.

    I dunno. There's just so much other stuff worth criticizing in Split, complaining about how it does or doesn't fit with Unbreakable seems almost petty?

  46. The pressure to stay informed and keep others informed on the internet and social media makes me feel both tired and extremely guilty about being tired.

    I almost can't bring myself to be passionate about this latest incident with the High School jerks in DC even though I know it's both important and a narrative the right really cares about controlling online. The same tools that power modern activism also allow the right to flood the internet with false information and tire debunkers out, and even 3 days into this I feel almost robotic.

    Is there a time to distance yourself from social media, how long should that disengagement last and at what level should you keep yourself informed? I've had thoughts on this for the past month and I'd like to know yours.

    I feel rather strongly that it's impossible, unnecessary, and detrimental to stay informed about EVERYTHING. There is too much, and one of the Far Right's major tactics is to create so much awful shit that activists feel constantly overwhelmed. Whenever people say "Trump doing [X] is just a distraction from [Y]," I think, no, it's not a distraction, it's a war on two fronts; both X and Y are important, and he is trying to exhaust our attention.

    As a general rule of thumb, breaks should happen as frequently and for as long as you need them to.

    But what's worked for me, personally, is to stop trying to be broad in my engagement and instead try to be deep. The Alt-Right Playbook is me picking an area that I care a lot about - Far Right rhetoric and how to combat it - and researching the shit out of it. It means there are a lot of news stories I don't keep up with, because they don't tell me anything about my chosen subject, or because they don't tell me anything NEW. But it means putting my skills to use in an area where I can have some impact, and feel like I'm actually addressing a problem rather than simply being informed about it.

    We'd do well to keep in mind that "being informed" is not activism. It is good to be informed but it does not, on its own, accomplish anything. So it's weird to feel obliged to following everything and guilty when you can't. It's setting an impossible standard that, should you actually achieve it, doesn't fix things. We need to trust that, whatever issues we don't have the mental space to engage with, *there are people working on them*. It seems like every progressive feels they need to be THE ENTIRE MOVEMENT, that, if there's something they're not working on, they are saying NO ONE should work on it. But this is silly. One of the goals of The Alt-Right Playbook is to give people information so they don't have do all the research I'm doing, thus freeing them up to put that energy elsewhere.

    You can't help anything if you're burned out and spread thin. We need you to take care of yourself. Find a type of engagement that suits your skills and your available energy and do that to the best of your abilities.

  47. When progressives study the alt-right there's basically two approaches. View them as old wine in a new bottle, or as a radical new kind of authoritarianism different from its predecessors. I suspect you fall into camp 1. If so what do what do you think of camp 2?

    Well, the thing about "old wine, new bottle" is what's new about the bottle is actually pretty important. Yes, the Alt-Right is continuous with the long history of fascism, but there are a number of things that make them unique. That's not in and of itself special, most fascist groups are in some ways distinct - Italian fascism is distinct from German fascism is distinct from Spanish fascism, etc. I think we ignore the ways the Alt-Right is the same as other fascist groups at our peril, but we ignore the ways they're different at our peril as well.

    I'd say camp 1 over-focuses on the wine, and camp 2 over-focuses on the bottle. Of the two, I'd say over-focusing on the bottle is the bigger mistake, but any nuanced understanding of the situation must look at both.

  48. Wait why do reagan and bush go to jail for a failure to address a problem? Like it may be bigoted apathy but like that's not a crime.

    in response to Could you elaborate on what for for one or two of them?

    Reagan told the CDC to "look pretty and do as little as you can" about AIDS.

  49. Other than the violence and genocide, what do you dislike about fascism exactly?

    Universal, deliberate, and rigidly enforced inequality. It's everything I hate about capitalism but worse and on purpose.

  50. Thoughts on the government shutdown, especially regarding the Democrat handling of it, especially especially regarding "They go low, we go high"? Is their refusal to capitulate a good sign?

    Refusal to capitulate is a good step. I'm not convinced that they won't still capitulate, but they haven't folded yet, which is progress.

    One thing that frustrates me about the shutdown is that it's preventing this new crop of progressive Dems from getting to do their jobs. We haven't gotten to see what any of them will live up to our expectations.

  51. Did you not like The Longest Journey's story? It's hailed as one of Adventure Games' great narrative s.

    in response to Is there a particular reason ? I'm not as huge a fan of the second game but the first Syberia was my first adventure game and even replaying it as an adult a few years ago I found it to be quite good ! (I never play that third one, I liked the ending we got back then)

    I have a soft spot for The Longest Journey and it's weirdo offspring, but it's never been a particularly interesting universe or plot. I just got kinda invested in the characters. I don't think my love of the series is entirely earned, and I don't think a similar game would win me over at 35 the way TLJ did at 16.

  52. So I recently learned that Brad Bird defended John Lasseter and blamed it on people being "hypersensitive" (http://www.animationmagazine.net/people/brad-bird-lasseter-misconduct-not-black-and-white/). I'm not really angry or disappointed so much as tired. Do you think these famous men can ever get their heads out of their asses and sympathize with the victims? Because I sure don't think so.

    Sure, and some do. They don't grab our attention as much as the ones who don't, partly because it's less provocative and partly because part of being a better man is not trying to call so much attention to yourself. We've talked on here before about Park Chan-wook evolving into a feminist over the course of his career.

    I wouldn't hold out hope for Bird and Lasseter, but I don't want us to extrapolate to assuming all shitheads will remain shitheads forever. Not enough change, but they all *can*, and we should keep demanding that that they do.

  53. Since we define words wusing other words, does that make language a circular proposition?

    my dictionary is all choreographic diagrams of ballet moves

  54. Could you elaborate on what for for one or two of them?

    in response to not OP but I can't imagine him spending any time in a prison frankly. what do you think about Nixon? do you think he should have spent time in prison? do you think he should have spent the rest of his life in prison? this is a question largely about your thoughts on how long these sorts of crimes should carry imprisonment for. On another note: would you consider yourself a prison abolitionist?

    Reagan and Bush #1 for letting thousands of gay people die during the AIDS epidemic, Clinton for multiple sexual assaults, Bush #2 for myriad war crimes including invading a country on false pretenses and torture, Trump for basically everything he's ever done.

  55. Is there a particular reason ? I'm not as huge a fan of the second game but the first Syberia was my first adventure game and even replaying it as an adult a few years ago I found it to be quite good ! (I never play that third one, I liked the ending we got back then)

    in response to You have any opinion of Syberia and its story?

    I dunno, people just usually mention it in the same breath as The Longest Journey and Still Life, which are very long games with no endings and too much dialogue, and they don't have very interesting design, so it lives or dies on how much you care about the story. Someone described one of the puzzles to me and it was, like, getting the right pair of legs for an automaton? And he said, "There's no actually puzzle here, you just keep picking legs until you find the right pair." And that seemed to confirm my suspicions that the design wasn't gonna do it for me.

    I might be wrong! Or I might forgive the design if I like the story. I just haven't taken the plunge so far and don't feel a strong desire to do so. All I know about the plot is that you're looking for some mammoths? And that takes three games? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  56. Can we have someone other than Joe Biden win the nomination please?

    I'm working on it.

  57. IS it good that I feel hopeful for 2019? Like the charity stream has me thinking that there’s some real solid hope to be had for the left and the rights we fight for as a community?

    It is awesome to feel hopeful. It's been all too rare lately. Fucking BATHE in it.

  58. Since you once claimed that each person/character isn't necessarily doing good OR bad things but are actually doing both good AND bad in life and it's just a matter how GOOD is the good and how BAD is the bad that each person has done,

    what do you think Walter White from Breaking Bad falls under?

    he seems to do both GOOD and BAD stuff in the show, so as Tony Sopranos... is just that people keep mentioning most of the bad stuff that they've done rather than the good/redeeming ones

    What redeeming things did Walter do that could possibly make up for how many people he, directly or indirectly, murdered, and how many lives he ruined?

    I don't see people constantly talking about how evil Walt was, I see them calling him a badass.

    Breaking Bad is an experiment in complicating audience sympathy. How evil does a sympathetic man have to become before you stop identifying with him? For some people, there doesn't seem to be a point where sympathy runs out.

  59. HAIL SOBEK

    hail sobek

  60. What do you think of Steven Pinker's work?

    legit the only things I know about Steven Pinker are that he's a racist shithead and he thinks the human love of music is a spandrel, which are both incredibly wrong

    there was a scientist on Twitter a while back pointing out that, despite his popularity among the general public, Pinker is not taken very seriously in the scientific community

  61. Yesterday, there's a flight attendant on my plane who told us all to “remember to share a smile and hug a stranger today.”

    Is there such a thing as toxic positivity?

    I guess so!

  62. You have any opinion of Syberia and its story?

    Never played the Syberia games. From what I know of them, I think I won't like them?

  63. I'm a pacifist so no violence is good violence for me. Obviously we disagree, so where would you draw the line between "good violence" and "bad violence"? Do they fall on political lines?

    in response to You don't think the Left has the capacity for violence?

    I don't think in terms of good and bad violence, I think in terms of defensible and indefensible.

    Violence is rarely "good." It is sometimes necessary.

  64. That may be true but are you going to blame me for being suspicious of the Left when I see Twitter mentions about how they would like to shoot people like me? (Liberal here)

    in response to "Liberals get the bullet too"

    I don't blame you, and I don't think that language is helpful. But the people saying it are making those jokes because they've given up on persuading or recruiting liberals. They don't care if it makes you suspicious.

  66. Do you ever worry about Generation Z viewing social justice and economically left politics as "the establishment" with Mega-Personalities like Notch, H3H3, JonTron, and PewDiePie setting the tone of rebellion on some of the most popular platforms?

    Do you think the Left could gain it's counter culture perception back? (since it technically still is counter cultural at least compared to Conservatism)

    in response to Is conservatism the new counter-culture? Like I heard this phrase a while back and can't help but think that it has a degree of truth.

    Gen Z is just as progressive as the Millennials. Reactionaries always frame stumping for the status quo as counter-cultural, because they appropriate the rhetoric and posture of the Left, so some portion of every generation is going to buy into it. But I don't think Gen Z is particularly at risk.

    I'm not sure how to get culture at large to recognize that the Left is far more rebellious than the Right. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez seems to be pulling it off.

  69. Speaking of Harvey Weinstein,

    Bill Clinton did exactly this and the Left worship him daily. Hillary turned a blind eye and even crushed some of Bill's chicks.

    So sad that there are people who are blinded by their political ideology.

    Back then, during the Trump-Clinton presidential election, did you bother to even vote at all?

    Knowing that both sides are equally just as shitty

    Not to downplay the crimes of Bill Clinton, but "both sides have done something shitty" != "both sides are equally shitty." I had a lot of grievances with Hillary Clinton, but I am *so tired* of false equivalences.

    Hillary's efforts to hide Bill's sexual assaults are unconscionable. Trump raping a thirteen-year-old and bragging about his sexual assaults are worse.

    The "superpredators" argument that Hillary popularized is racist. "Build the wall" and "Muslim ban" are worse.

    Hillary's military hawkishness is hugely upsetting after over a decade of war. Trump's "I would bomb them til there's nothing left" and "why can't we use nukes?" are worse.

    I just don't understand why this needs to be explained.

  70. How postmodern is the alt-right?

    watch my next video to find out

  71. Why is it ok for left wingers to joke about authoritarianism and violence but not ok for right wingers to joke about authoritarianism and violence. This feels like a double standard.

    can you use an example?

  72. Is conservatism the new counter-culture? Like I heard this phrase a while back and can't help but think that it has a degree of truth.

    no

  73. How much Marxism-Lenin-Maoist have you read and abide by?

    I have read none of the original sacred texts.

  74. not OP but I can't imagine him spending any time in a prison frankly.

    what do you think about Nixon? do you think he should have spent time in prison? do you think he should have spent the rest of his life in prison?

    this is a question largely about your thoughts on how long these sorts of crimes should carry imprisonment for.

    On another note: would you consider yourself a prison abolitionist?

    in response to Do you think Trump will every spend a day inside of a prison cell? I imagine not, but just want to hear your thoughts.

    I am not *presently* a prison abolitionist but I haven't researched it. Most prison abolitionists I know of are otherwise pretty closely aligned with my politics, so I think there's something to it.

    But, inasmuch as putting people in prison is a thing, probably most Presidents should be in prison. Definitely Reagan, Bush, Clinton, other Bush, and Trump.

  75. I'm not a legal scholar, but if Trump IS impeached, and Pence pardons him, is there any recourse to that? Or is that the end of the discussion, as it seemed to be with Nixon?

    Impeachment just means losing the job of President, it doesn't come with any criminal charges.

Anon commented:
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