CuriousCat Archive Page 184 of 202

  1. After going to a live performance the other day I feel like it is necessary to convey that cowbell solos are under rated and there should be more pieces with them

    That is not a question.

  2. Is it actually a wise idea to build a city on rock 'n' roll?

    New Orleans is built on a swamp, so who cares what's wise?

  3. How would you make the world a better place?

    There are a lot of things I'd change about my own country, but I don't know if those changes would benefit other parts of the world, so I'll just stick with the thing that I know would benefit everyone: Immediate abandonment of non-renewable fuel sources, and complete nuclear disarmament.

  4. Do you do that a lot with interesting topics? If I had linked it from slatestarcodex instead of lesswrong would you have clicked on it because it didn't come from a "silly" community?

    Do I make judgments based on my understanding of the source about whether or not I want to read a lengthy, 11-part post from a group that is a) proven unreasonable with their doolally idea of logical thought and b) weirdly beloved by racists? Yes, of course I do. That's the reasonable response. LessWrong's opinions on ingroup-outgroup dynamics are not of interest to me. The only reason I'd read their article is to prove a point, and I don't have a point to prove to you.

  5. What should be the goal of humanity?

    To not go extinct, a goal we're seemingly terrible at.

  6. Not the OP (and probably not a cop) but is your objection to Less Wrong in particular or to receiving blind links with no context and being expected to read them?

    If it's the former, I'm curious what your objection to Less Wrong is (I haven't frequented the site in a really long time but I'm not aware of anything problematic about it) and if it helps, you can instead read that essay on its author's personal blog: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/

    If it's the latter, I feel ya. Not sure what angle OP was coming from but I would describe the essay (in a vastly oversimplified way) as being about the tendency for groups to attack their ideological neighbors, since they're the people the group is otherwise in danger of being mistaken for - in one provided example, Russell Brand calls Fox News "worse than ISIS," because as a liberal he is in no danger of being mistaken for a member of ISIS but does seek to differentiate himself from conservatives. There's a lot more to it, but I'd say that's my takeaway in a nutshell.

    If this is the case, there are obvious implications for the issue you discuss wherein liberals don't unify as well as conservatives do - spoiler alert, but at the end of the essay the author points out that he's basically been criticizing a subgroup of liberals that he doesn't consider himself a member of, and therefore is guilty of the same thing he's criticizing them for doing.

    So yeah, you might find it interesting.

    LessWrong was launched by a crackpot obsessed with bringing about The Singularity and the whole community there had a collective meltdown when it theorized Roko's Basilisk, so, no, I'm not inclined to read anything from them. They're also utterly incapable of writing a blog post in fewer than 9 parts.

  7. (From the anon who asked about lady of different ethnicity and someone chiding me if I'm racist of being not interested)

    So sorry to make it unclear to you. Let me further clarify:

    Last week I was in a cafe with a group of friends whom I've known for about a year (quite naughty at times and they're the ones that like to prank call friends once in a while but nonetheless very friendly and approachable). So we saw a black lady (plump too) sitting one table away from us with a group of her own pals and one of my friends just poked me and say "Hey, ask her out!" out of the blue. I politely declined since I wasn't in the mood (also the fact that I've been seeing someone already but not willing to share my love life yet especially to my friend's there yet)

    And my friend just smirked and responded "Why? Are you racist?" And the other friends with me were laughing while I kept quiet and continued drinking my cappuccino. The subject of our conversation changed after that and I think we quickly forgot about it right away.

    But if I can only turned back time, how would I appropriately respond back to him and my friends without just simply finding different friends again? (tbh they're really nice friends and always love to banter. It's their nature and I've enjoyed their company most of the time while we're out)

    So sorry if I was very unclear in my previous question and I hope this one's a much more well-painted picture of what happened that day

    It doesn't sound like they were asking the question sincerely, so I think the appropriate answer is "shut up."

  8. Oh I was op and I did not mean to ask for only books on post-climatechange-apocalypse.

    how do I know you're the op

    how do I know you're not a cop

  9. https://www.lesswrong.com/s/rNuPrZvabXe2MaZv8/p/GLMFmFvXGyAcG25ni

    Thoughts?

    Don't link me to LessWrong and expect me to read it.

  10. do you think there would be art without the drive of capitalism? I heard arguments that art was a thing before capitalism, and, sure, tetris was a soviet game, but art takes time and takes effort and it can be produced only if you are given the resource to do so. The only grandios art the so called west produced was religious one, thanks to that sweet sweet catholic dough. Then secular people started getting rich, and they started to patron other kinds of art. Am i just too used to capitalism to see what anti-capitalists mean that I will still be able to work as an illustrator even without the ultimate goal of diverting people for 10 minutes away from their terrible lives under capitalism?

    Capitalism is a few hundred years old and we've found cave art from over 30,000 years ago.

    Socialism is not about denying resources, it's about guaranteeing them. I suspect we would have a lot more art under socialism because fewer people would have to work 50 hours of drudgery a week generating nothing but increased wealth for their CEOs.

  11. If someone next to me gestures at a lady of different ethnicity in the next table and asked whether I'm interested in her or not and I responded NO (NOT because of her ethnicity, it's just that I'm not interested at the moment) and the guy just chide me and asked "Why? Are you racist?"

    How would I appropriately respond without sounding racist?

    This scenario raises so many questions.

    From the statement that the lady is at "the next table," I take it your in a restaurant or bar? And since you're referring to her as "a lady" and she's not sitting with you, I take it she's a stranger? So you're sitting with someone who gestures at strangers and asks if you're interested? Do you know this person? You're calling them "someone," which implies they're also a stranger. Do you often sit in restaurants where strangers ask you if you'd hook up with other strangers and then demandingly ask you if you're a racist? Do you go to this restaurant frequently? Seems like that kind of clientele would dissuade me. Is this person drunk? That sounds like drunk person behavior. Maybe call the bouncer over. Or is it someone you're there with? Do your friends like to play "would you bang a Black girl?" If so, you need different friends.

    I'm really confused as to why you answered "no" so quickly instead of pointing out that that's a very weird question to ask in the first place. If the lady at the next table is a perfect stranger, how do you even know if you're not interested? You know nothing about her. Or is it that you're already involved with someone? Seems like that's you're answer right there, though, if the person sitting with you is a friend of yours they should probably already know that.

    I apologize, but if you want me to respond to strange hypotheticals about racism, you'll need to paint a more evocative picture.

  12. Wasn't "The Day After Tomorrow" a post-climate-apocalypse movie as well?

    OP was asking for books.

  13. How would you describe your feelings towards your gender without using the main identifiers? I find it hard to think about my gender because I don't fit the notions of masculinity (I'm a very gay male) but I don't have any dysphoria stemming from it, and even in listening to the experiences of trans people I don't really think I can wrap my head around it. A lot of them seem to barely understand it either, and just think in terms of "at this moment, I know what I feel".

    With being gay, there's a comparison—I am sexually stimulated by men, not women, and there are physiological indicators. But with gender I don't really understand it. Do you have any experiences you could relate from people you know or anywhere you could send me?

    I don't have a lot of feelings about my gender. I don't fit cultural standards of "masculine," either, but I still have plenty of images of men like me in my life. I feel like, if I don't fit the usual definition, it's because the definition's too narrow. It's probably easy for me since I'm a lot like my dad, so my earliest impression of manliness was an emotionally available dork.

    I don't have any specific narratives to share with you. Several of my friends have made coming out posts to explain how they realized they're nonbinary, but most are either lost down the memory hole or set to private. I suppose I'd just follow some nb or trans* people and see if their experience resonates with you.

    I will recommend Scout: https://twitter.com/villain_ette

  14. have you played the walking dead: final season yet? any thoughts?

    I'm not gonna play Season 4 before playing Season 3, and Season 3 still isn't on any platforms that I own.

  15. Re: the anon who asked about climate change post-apocs. The 00s/10s have seen a rise in that, mostly in books.

    Probably the most well-known is The Windup Girl, set in a Thailand threatened to be drowned by rising sea levels. Got some serious problematic elements, though.

    The runner-up is Tobias Buckell's series starting with Arctic Rising. The ice caps have melted back enough that the Northwest Passage is a thing now, and the Arctic Tiger countries are booming from the access to new oil fields and ore deposits. UN task forces patrol the new seaways, one of which is our protag.

    Cool cool. I was gonna say Oryx & Crake but then looked it up and apparently it was not an ecological disaster.

  16. How can we get the youth to Teen Titans Go! to the polls?

    I'm not sure whether you mean, how do we encourage it policy-wise, or how do we encourage it under the current policies?

    I wouldn't worry too much about the youth vote, young people are pretty politically engaged right now. If they're not going to the polls it's because they don't like any of the candidates, not because they don't care about issues. If you want the youth vote, fucking COURT the youth vote.

    In terms of policy, the same stuff people say when we talk about encouraging ANY population to vote: Make Voting Day a national holiday, provide free transit, allow on-site registration, and open more early-voting locations.

  17. I just want to say that you're Why Are You so Angry series was so helpful for me. It was like reading an autobiography of my past self (#RehireJamesGunn) and thank you so much for that. It meant a lot and was really helpful. Keep up your work. I cannot say what it has done for others, but it had an obvious and positive impact on myself so thank you for that. It gave me a vocabulary for discussing who I was and how I changed while also framing a lot of my past issues. I've since popped my bubble (especially once I worked in a school full of high poverty minority folks) and this has helped me talk to my old friends who have not.

    <3

  18. Apparently The Orange Menace is coming to my university campus sometime soon. Any ideas on what to bring to the speech to fuck things up without getting expelled?

    I would focus your efforts on getting the speech canceled first.

  19. Do you know of any post-apocalyptic stories where the apocalypse is due to climate chamge instead if nuclear fallout? Can you list some that are semi-realistic and aren't mad max?

    None come to mind.

  20. do you ever get tired answering a bunch of questions?

    I delete the ones I don't want to answer.

  21. What do you think about the recent estimate that we have until 2030 to prevent catastrophic, extinction level climate change?

    Do you think we'll make it, or are we super fucked?

    If we have until 2030, we're not fucked yet.

    What is maddening to me is that we have legit everything we need to prevent catastrophic climate change *right now*, all the technology and all the money necessary to dramatically reduce emissions, we could replace every car with an electric inside of a decade and it would cost a shitload but we could afford it, we could regulate the shit out of factories and replace a significant percentage of power plants with solar and wind, and we're just. not. doing. it.

    So, until the day we're fucked, we are not fucked yet. We have the escape hatch right next to us. It's very hard to imagine us actually doing what needs to be done, but we still can.

  22. Do you consider Keanu Reeves white? I always had trouble with this. He looks kinda asian, but he is not asian and he looks kinda white. Is he white?

    I believe Keanu is 1/8 Chinese and 1/8 Hawaiian, so a quarter pan-Asian but white-passing.

  23. not same anon, but: "Why on EARTH would you disbelieve the victims?"

    I don't really think random strangers should be having feelings about victims and their abusers. it's up to courts to determine. i don't feel the need to weigh in on every case of attempted murder because the person survived and spoke up either. it isn't my job. i know nothing about the situation. i don't know what the circumstances are, but i'm not gonna throw unconditional support behind every accusation of sexual assault and cry foul if it doesn't pan out in a court

    and there's a reason for this: my friend was falsely accused of assaulting someone when he was WITH ME, and we were NOT NEAR the person. prosecutor reviewed it and the case was thrown out.

    is sexual assault a massive problem? obviously. is the vast number of unreported sexual assaults a problem? yes. but if my friend's case had been tried in the court of public opinion, he'd be a rapist. he was not there. the story did not pan out. it fucking infuriates me to this day.

    Why do I need to have an opinion on victims? Why can't I show support to people I know and believe while also having No Fucking Opinion on people I know jack shit about?

    love your videos, love your content, was literally a day-one Patreon gal when it went up. don't understand this line of reasoning at all.

    I take your point, but it's orthogonal to the question I was asked. Someone asks me whether they should consider the victims politically-motivated liars, and I think it's ridiculous to draw that conclusion. "The victims are lying" IS an opinion.

    I think most of us would be better off having no opinions on the lives of people we don't know. I think the lurid fascination with the misbehavior of celebrities usually steps beyond the boundaries of justice-seeking and into tabloid sensationalism, and that's gross.

    That said, I feel "leave it to the courts" is a cop out, because we know full well that the overwhelming majority of abusers will never stand before a judge, and most that do will be acquitted. The court of public opinion is likely the only one that will ever judge Julian Assange. Most people coming forward to accuse people publicly do so because public shame is the only justice they will ever see. And, your friend's experience aside, we know 98% of sexual assault accusations prove to be true, so, all things being equal, we should assuming the victims are telling the truth as a baseline. We need to look out for exceptions, but they don't disprove the rule.

    Also, Assange has multiple accusers, as do most of the men who've been #MeToo'd. Most people who make false accusations don't have corroboration.

    Shit is complicated and I usually the media does not have justice in mind when they talk about assault accusations. And if our legal system were worth a damn, we wouldn't be asked to form opinions on strangers so often. Public shaming is a messy, horribly imperfect system. But often it's all we've got.

  24. Do Wikileaks good things still count as good things if we find out they're just an extension of the Russian intelligence apparatus, and their activities were meant to weaken an evil empire in order to stregthen a worse empire?

    WikiLeaks' intentions are not the alpha and omega of goodness. Some good has come from their surveillance leaks, and whether and how it weakens the US depends on what we do with the information.

  25. How do I reconcile Wikileaks' excellent work in documenting, archiving, and publicising the mass surveillance committed by the US, the UK, and such, with Julian Assange's obviously warped personal interests?

    Do I believe the victims of sexual assault at his hands, or is it just a ploy for extraditon? I find it so hard to talk about Vault 7 these days, for example, because of who Julian Assange is.

    Why is it so hard to believe that WikiLeaks can do critically important work in exposing war crimes and also be a bunch of misogynist technolibertarians run by rapist? Just because the sexual assault charges are a ploy for extradition doesn't mean the assaults didn't happen. And why on EARTH would you disbelieve the victims?

    There is no rule that says a rapist can't fight the surveillance state. The situation is complex and we need to deal with its complexity. Assange is a shitty human who has done good things. Neither of these facts discounts the other.

  26. Oh.

    when i said "they are insensitive to eachother", it..... was actually saying that the right doesn't care when members of their group hurt others outside of them.

    however your interpretation of what i said led to a very interesting and informative conclusion so i'm partly glad for my verbal foible and say thanks

    Ah, sorry. On that front, it's mostly creating in-group solidarity by demonizing an out-group.

  27. so would you say your ass has been paid?

    partially

  28. I was wondering if you had any opinion on the 1972 film "Fritz the Cat". It seems like an interesting period piece that remains divisive to this day...

    Haven't seen it, though I know it's reputation.

  29. Would you consider avoiding to buy stuff on amazon (or doing business with every corporations that is theoretically under your state laws) as a useful way to fight pay inequality other than supporting other widely preferred tactics (Strikes, voting leftists pro-workers politicians, forming unions ecc...)

    It is extremely inaccurate to say we unionize and vote for leftists MORE than we boycott companies. Boycotts are as common as rainstorms. We unionize and elect leftists because boycotts don't work.

  30. when you live tweet research, is it likely the stuff you cover will appear in a future video?

    Almost certainly.

  31. There's a user on my timeline who is abused on the regular for being a trans man, and for saying he hates League of Legends players. He says it a lot. They call and harass his parents, they egged his parent's home, they send threats.

    This is all really shitty. I support them entirely.

    But their tweets, defiant and furious, drift between completely hopeless, and borderline riling these assholes up even more. This is not his fault. It is the fault of the people doing this to him. And me saying, "Is it possible they need to stop saying things which are designed to rile these people up?" is dangerously close to "Well, why was she in a bad part of town? Why is she dressing that way?"

    But the people doing these things aren't reachable for me. All I can recommend to him is steps to stop this stuff from happening. So, so far, I've just reported the people who send abusve tweets. I don't know what else has to happen... Advice?

    You can tell him you're worried about the effect this is having on him and his family, and that it might be better for his mental health to avoid riling up toxic people, but, beyond that, if it's not putting you or other people at risk, you need to let him make his own decisions.

  32. Do you feel comfortable watching that one scene in Jenniffer's Body where these group of musicians murdering poor Jen?

    Its like the movie director, writer and producers took a page out of Sharon Tate's brutal death by those Manson family members

    So tasteless and insensitive

    I haven't watched that movie.

  33. Why you said that Kubrick is overrated for you? He probably made the greatest sci-fi movie

    Kubrick directed The Matrix?! This changes everything.

  34. Would you ever make an adventure game of your own? Do you have any plans?

    Yes and yes.

  35. What should I name my book review channel?

    Douglas

  36. Hey, I'm asking this because you seem like the kind of guy who would knows what to do when this weird awful shit happens, and I am *not* really prepared to handle this.

    Recently, me and a bunch of friends moved into a new apartment together and we're slowly trying to adjust to living there. We're all a bunch of trans girls who have been friends for quite a while, and I figured I knew both of them pretty well. But the latest problem with this new apartment is smoke. Lots of weed and cigarette smoke gets into the apartment, and it drives everyone kinda crazy, to the point we're taping up windows and doors.

    Just tonight, one of my roommates was going to go to the store and I said I'd go along with them. As we were about to leave, she dropped the sentence: "What a bunch of subhuman n******". When I told her to stop, she said it didn't matter and that it was okay because the weed smoke was getting into the apartment and she couldn't handle that.

    What the hell do I even *do* about confronting her in the future about this and steering her away from whatever alt-righty-style racist stuff? We all kinda grew up/got to know each other from 4chan, so I don't expect her to not be fully free of the racism that place kinda forces on you, and she still certainly isn't a progressive icon or anything, but we all stopped browsing that place years ago. I'm just at a complete loss for words, and it's been eating at me for hours at this point.

    I don't know anything foolproof, and haven't put anything to the test personally because I don't tend to be around white people who drop the n-bomb. But something I've heard recommended is to respond to blatant racism with a moral demand. "What the hell is wrong with you?!" And if she offers any defense about the smoke, do not debate, simply restate, "That's bullshit. What the hell is wrong with you?"

    Make it explicit that you find this behavior unacceptable to the point where the rules of polite discussion are suspended. Make it explicit that she is expected not to speak that way if she's going to live in a house with you.

    And, as ever, tell me if it works, because I'm operating on secondhand info here.

  38. What's your favourite emoji?

    😘

  39. I think people on the left and the right can both be sensitive to what other people on the left say, but this sensitivity is different and manifests in different ways for each group, thus harming targets in different ways.

    Rightists call for doxxing and angry barrages of hate in response to things that threaten their power, leftists sometimes attack people via calls for abandonement of someone or something, or cause harassment indirectly through callouts, in response to things that theoretically might hurt someone, ignoring how the thing might also be helpful and the hurt they are causing the person or people.

    this

  40. Not really a question, but I watched Tokyo Godfathers based on you saying it was good.

    Expected a yakuza story based on the name, got an emotional rollercoaster instead.

    It was indeed very good. So thanks for that dude.

    IT'S BEST WHEN YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT :D :D :D

  41. Was there any franchises that you saw likely to be put in the Telltale formula you are glad didn't get made into a Telltale game?

    Or, if you can replace the walking dead and tales from the Borderlands with another franchise what would it be?

    Why would I want to replace two of my favorite games of all time?

  42. to continue from my last curiouscat:

    people on the left are sensitive to others on the left, people on the right are incredibly insensitive to others on the right.

    Ah. Well, that's, I think, a misinterpretation of what "sensitive" means on the Right vs. the Left. The Right has a very real Do Not Fuck With My People thing going that isn't really replicated on the Left. Like, individual communities on the Left look out for their own - you talk shit on the trans lesbian community and you will get shaded into oblivion - but there's a lot of tensions on the Left between these groups because many don't trust the other groups to look out for them.

    The Right is a LOT better at forming alliances across political divides, at least when there's a task to be done. Before Trump, their political campaigns were much more unified than ours. Whenever there's a shooting, the 2nd Amendment bros put the fear of God in their politicians to ensure gun policies don't change. According to the ratings, Republicans loved Glenn Beck twice as much as anyone else in America loved any show on TV. Not to mention how quickly the Right resorts to violence and harassment any time they feel a group they're part of has been slighted. They defend their tribe more passionately than anyone.

    Where we see the most insensitivity is in how they talk to each other online. They're fucking toxic with each other, constantly deriding, negging, and mocking their own people. And, yes, this is insensitive, but it doesn't create disunity. Their insults are built around enforcing a very specific pattern of behavior: You have men insulting any perceived femininity, straights insulting any perceived queerness, militants insulting any perceived softness. It's a means of codifying a very narrow image of what being a proper American should look like, and a way of villainizing the opposition who exemplify all these traits. People on the Right are OK with this kind of constant vitriol because they're all opting in to the same beliefs about what kind of people they should be.

    Yes, they are insensitive to each other, but they still fight hard for each other against their supposed enemies. Where things get more chaotic is whenever their enemy is in some way defeated. Once they actually hold power, and there's no longer an outside force to agitate against, they devolve into shouting and squabbling, everyone undermining everyone else in an effort to keep their position and push their own policies. It's why Republicans spend so much time yelling about Hillary even after she lost the election: They have unity only so long as there's an enemy. They lose that, and the only enemies left are each other.

  43. Is it necessary for polygamist to get married?

    The word "polygamy" literally means "multiple marriage" so yes. It is not necessary for polyamorous people to get married.

  44. What's the best place to eat in New York?

    Champs.

  45. For a first time tourist visiting Boston/New Jersey/New York, what should be the first and last place to visit?

    The airport. Obviously.

  46. I'm starting to realize that politics drains me of energy almost immediately and so stopped talking about it and started turning off the news. But certain politically motivated people insist that by doing so I am only making it harder for others somehow or another. Am I trapped? Is it impossible to be moral and also not partake in politics?

    It's not an especially IMMORAL position, because you are just one person and you abstaining from politics doesn't have much effect on the rest of us. But, no, there is no way to abstain from politics and still be moral. Your taxes are paying to put Mexican children in cages. There's no way to be neutral on that and still be moral.

  47. Which movie of recent years have you found to be the most disappoint? Which movie has great ideas but failed to expand upon them in meaningful ways?

    Mute.

    I don't know how the director of Moon can make a sci-fi movie so uneven, hacky, and disinterested in its own premise.

  48. what do you think is the gain for jack dorsey to bring back jones's twitter? he's either not a real loss in money from revenues and traffic, or jack dorsey actually supports jones's political views. what do you think?

    I'm confident that no single Twitter user generates enough traffic or revenue to be immune to bans. That's not what's at issue here. So I'd imagine the following:

    a) Banning Jones will piss off his fans, who are very loud and aggressive and insist that pissing them off is company suicide and Dorsey for some reason thinks this could be true. (It is not.) Or, possibly, he just doesn't want the headache.

    b) Banning a high-profile monster like Jones sets a precedent for all the other people they should ban, and if they start actually enforcing their TOS they would have to ban A LOT of users, probably including the President, and THAT could meaningfully reduce their traffic. Keeping this people on the site is actually worse for business in the long run, but tech companies chronically think in the short-term, especially when there's no meaningful competition.

    c) Dorsey agrees with Jones. Given some of the assholes Dorsey publicly follows, this is quite believable.

    The answer is probably all of the above.

  49. One thing I've noticed is that it seems that people on the left are...much more sensitive than people on the right. I honselty want to ask why is this?

    People on the Right launch months-long harassment campaigns if someone puts a girl in their comic book and spend hours and hours screaming into cameras if someone calls someone else "mayonnaise boy," so what definition of "sensitive" are we using?

  50. Hey! Sorry for bothering, but I have heard quite a few times about CIA toppling socialist regimes and killing socialist leaders and I would like to do a bit more research on this topic, but I'm not very good at systematic research, so I don't really know where to start. Could you please give a few pointers and/or recommendations?

    Not my area of expertise, I'm afraid.

  51. Capitalism has turned Youtube into the biggest far-right propaganda/brainwashing machine in existence. Do you think the nazis may be actually right when they claim Generation Z/the post-millenials will grw up to become much more right than Millenials?

    Isn't Generation Z already the most progressive generation ever raised?

  52. Why are Swedes racist?

    are we still talking about turnips?

  53. What is your opinion on society requiring you to wear clothes?

    It's not one of my chief concerns.

  54. Hi Ian,

    Just wanted to say that I love your videos on Lady Eboshi & The Handmaiden... What an other eye-opening bunch of videos released on Youtube that I had the opportunity to watch. I am from the Philippines (Manila, actually.. the capital city). I am planning to watch your so called Alt-right Playbook though I feel that your politics and our politics here in the Philippines or Southeast Asia might be different..

    Speaking of lady eboshi and the Handmaiden, any chance that you seen any good southeast asian movies? If not, let me recommend this Indonesian film that just got released very early this year. It's called Marlina: The Murderer in Four Acts. And I think this movie has very intriguing commentary on feminism on par with The Handmaiden as well as added themes of rape-revenge & motherhood. Here is the official trailer with English subtitles. I think the full movie has already been released online with eng subtitles.

    https://youtu.be/sTuAVGhmgto

    I might well check that out.

  55. Do you have any thoughts about segregation of sex/gender in sports? It's pretty obvious you support mixed-gender e-sports (and I don't disagree with you there), but what about sports where physicality is an issue in de-segregation? I can't really find a time where de-segregation in physical sports hasn't ended in the more femme side being hurt (either physically, or just in perceived fairness).

    Example: The most progressive physical sport I know, Ultimate Frisbee, has a "30% per team female" rule in mixed-gender leagues, which seems fairly inclusive in a sport that would otherwise be dominated by tall men ...until an amab player started transition and ended up sitting out/coaching a season while she transitioned so she could compete as a female in the next one.

    So, I know there's a quasi-kind and quasi-equitable working solution here, but I still can't really feel good about it. Do you think it's possible to set up a system of rules for desegregation that's both, or is preserving "fairness" in a sport just not as important as preserving the inclusion of women and trans women?

    I think gender desegregation is a good thing and most of the problems it creates are solvable. It's fairly easy to set up weight and height groupings so that men and women of similar builds are grouped together. In general, I don't think my cis ass is the one to come up with those solutions, and I imagine a number of trans athletes have already weighed in on the subject.

  56. is all art made to be experienced?

    Alright, I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole of trying to define art, so I will rephrase:

    *all art that can be critiqued was presented to an audience, and was therefore meant to be experienced

  57. What is the purpose of review and critique of art?

    Art is made to be experienced. It is therefore worthwhile to discuss the experience.

  58. Have you seen Godfrey Reggio's documentary film Koyaanisqatsi?

    It's interesting. No narration

    I know of it, and have watched the Brows Held High episode on it, but haven't seen the movie itself. I've seen at least a few narration-less nonfiction films though. The Man With The Movie Camera comes to mind.

  59. what are your thoughts on appel on pizza this is causing arguments I need outside opinions

    why do people shame each other for liking different things on pizza? eat what you like, don't eat what you don't like.

  60. with kh3 supposedly having a release date now: any thoughts on the series thus far?

    I have no opinion on the KH-3 Corona reconnaissance satellite.

  61. Hi Ian! I hope you're doing well!

    What are your thoughts on cis people putting their pronouns in ther twitter bio? I've seen a few semi viral tweets encouraging everyone to do it, as it is A) helpful and B) can on some level indicate that you're an ally by virtue of showing your willingness to understand preferred pronouns. The only thing is, the only tweets I've seen encouraging people to do this are cis folks. While it seems like they're well intentioned, I was just wondering if you had read the thoughts of any trans folks on the matter? Also, what is your opinion in general?

    I haven't seen many people recommend it, and the ones I've seen have been trans, which is why I did it. I imagine the reason you're seeing more cis people than trans people say it is a) some allies can get a little, shall we say, LOUD about their allyship, especially when the thing they're doing is trivially easy, and b) it's safer for cis people to talk about it than trans folks and they know cis folks are more likely to listen to them.

    The argument I've heard is that we should normalize the idea of proactively sharing one's pronouns rather than having people assume them, which will make the world more hospitable to trans folks in the long run. Seemed like a good argument to me so I did opted in.

  62. do you ever feel like the "This is not normal" mantra can easily be appropriated by transphobes and the sort?

    I think it's similar to the abortion debate: the common philosophical ground that leads to people shouting past each other—ergo, I want to argue for women's rights, but they don't consider the women's rights first because they see a bundle of cells as a person.

    Thus—trans folk just want to be people and to be acknowledged and not murdered, but the lesser outright fascists in the right and left think that these people are literally harming themselves with surgery and hormones and all that sort.

    I'm really worried this comes across as a bad faith question but isn't intended to be. How do we get past the hurdle of a completely different framework that results in us being unable to discuss the issues?

    "This is not normal" is an acknowledgment that the definition of "normal" is decided by culture, which means we have some control over what is and isn't "normal." Bigots don't appropriate this from us, they know it better than we do. Transphobes are going to claim trans people are abnormal regardless of what we say. It is our job to normalize marginalized people to the point where claiming they're abnormal ceases to be convincing.

    We don't need to battle their framework because that's not what matters. They know most people don't care about their framework, they just do whatever seems normal. So we don't need to battle their framework, we just need to beat them at defining normal.

  63. How do I reconcile my love of strong unions with my dislike of police?

    The way I reconcile my dislike of the military with my desire for it to be desegregated is, "If we're GOING to have a military industrial complex, everyone should have an equal right to serve."

  64. I was in a discussion about violence in games, and when I claimed that "of course media influences people." and used cultivation theory as my "citation" (because of course everything needs citation), I was scoffed at because "social sciences are unreliable". What are we supposed to do when the other side doesn't acknowledge or accept the work of experts in a field (or even accept the validity of some fields of studies)?

    Say "that's a cop out," present them with the data, and ask them to account for the correlation.

    Then tell me if it works because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  65. What's your favorite cookie?

    ally cookies

  66. Speaking of RLM, they just put out their Plinkett review of TLJ, and it's pretty wild to see them struggle with a hate-review script about a movie they actually kind of liked.
    They somehow manage to mostly steer clear of the anti-SJW nonsense that has plagued TLJ reviews. Then they mention this might be the last plinkett review, and I got the feeling that might be because they've realized that the hate-review genre is losing popularity (Ive noticed some of their other shows are definitely becoming less overtly hateful as well)

    All kind of a roundabout way setting up my question: do you think hate-reviewing is finally being more widely recognized as the disingenuous crap it is? I've seen some really popular critics (namely Lindsay Ellis and Dan Olson) come out strongly against it recently, and I'm curious if you think we've made a dent, or if hate reviews are here to stay?

    I don't predict the future. It seems to be that Angry Bro Reviewer is fading in popularity, and so is Alt-Right YouTuber. Meanwhile, more analytical and progressive analysis is growing in tandem with Leftist political videos. So YouTube, as a whole, seems to be improving.

    I have no idea how long it will last, or if there will be a backlash. Hopefully not, or at least not a big one. Something good is happening and I want to hold onto it.

  67. In a little over a week there’s an election here in Sweden, and the racist Sweden democrats are likely to become the largest, or second largest party.

    I don’t really know what my question is. Just... what the fuck do we do now. And how the fuck can this be real.

    I feel you. When we elected Trump, I took a few weeks to spend time with loved ones, pace myself with work, and eat as much damn dessert as I wanted, and then I decided what my brand of resistance would look like.

  68. If you could come back to the political subtext of the Avengers and Phase 2 of the MCU I would be very grateful. If you can't / have better things to do, what's the gist?

    I was trying to put the central idea of "developing a theory of meaning from the text" into practice by using The Avengers and a bit of Iron Man 3 and The Winter Soldier, until I realized, wait, this whole video is about putting it into practice with The Beginner's Guide, I don't need an additional example! But the digression was about how The Battle of New York in The Avengers became a 9/11 corollary in the later movies, with Iron Man having survivor's PTSD and Cap becoming a one-man War on Terror employed by the surveillance state in The Winter Soldier, and what, exactly, it says, in that context, that we literally NUKED the people who perpetrated the 9/11 metaphor and it's treated as an unequivocally good thing in the series.

    It wasn't a very long segment, but it was fun to write.

  69. What's your favorite joke?

    the lemon cookie joke

  70. I'm going into third year at university now (Scoland, a well-regarded one), and I'm finding that when I'm making well-reasoned arguments that come, in part, from a video I've watched -- such as yours about the death of euphemism -- I find that my tutors and lecturers just... don't like seeing links to YouTube videos.

    I don't really know where to go on this. I want to use some of Dan Olson's thoughts on propaganda but can't link his video because it's frowned upon (instead I have to reference his sources), but ultimately I'm repeating the same basic argument sometimes, because it's a sound one: is this plagiarism? How do you feel about me being basically unable to give you or other YouTubers attribution but wanting to share your points?

    (This isn't to say I parrot; there's meaningful criticism of the arguments I need to present to adapt it to essay discourse.)

    Me and Dan-O probably aren't the first to articulate the ideas in those videos, so I don't think it's plagiarism if you're making similar arguments in your own language. And if these are only papers for your professors and not, like, published works, I don't feel too upset for not getting cited.

    It is unfortunate that video essays aren't considered valid sources by academia. I can't deny that a lot of video essayists are mostly repeating things they've gotten from Wikipedia or making poorly-reasoned arguments, so I get why profs might be skeptical (though, more likely, they don't really know what a video essay is). But when someone is making an original, useful argument, it's frustrating that their medium of choice disqualifies them. I imagine that will change with time.

  71. Person who asked the 'art' question. I love that video of yours but I'm not making the connection?

    Are they the pedantic kid using that rhetoric to have an argument/avoid a meaningful discussion?

    People claim that video games aren't art because they see "art" as a label of status, not simply a category of thing. People define art by looking at things culture has agreed are art and subconsciously noting the similarities. When something that seems a little different from what they're used to gets called "art," they get to arguing, because they've never actually had a working definition for "art," they've just gone by "feel," and they've hit a point where they don't "feel" the same about a thing as someone else.

    In short: people claim games aren't art because they don't know what makes art art, but they feel like games being considered art is in some way profane.

  72. You claim that yahtzee, Plinkett etc are all critics focused on hate as a single emotion without variety, yet you make youtube videos about the alt right and such which YOU hate.

    Why aren't you criticizing something you like instead? Oh because you care about the stuff you hate more?

    Hypocrite.

    Gee,

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJcJevvWGP8

    why don't I

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19xgdLF5agU

    talk about things

    https://youtu.be/udOR6tcsHqo

    I love?

    https://youtu.be/8qxVDOc-oV8

    (Also it's real easy to criticize my comments on Yahtzee and Plinkett when you make up things I didn't say.)

  73. "I don't think "save the future of society" is the kind of expectation that is going to make my work better." Are you prepared for nazis killing the world?

    Are you prepared for the first line of defense against Nazis to be YouTubers? Do you think a few collaborations between LeftTube is the difference between a socialist revolution and a white ethnostate?

    We're all doing our part. Don't expect any one group of people to be the deciding vote. It's going to take a whole lot of people working together and individually.

  74. Is Louis Sachar's Holes a parable about reparations?

    I've only seen the movie, which seemed more of a parable about the prison industrial complex.

  75. Excited for Damien Chazelle's upcoming film, First Man?

    Do we still actually believe that Neil Armstrong was the first man to step on the moon when it was actually But I Gagarin from Russia?

    "Russians beat the US to the moon" is a conspiracy theory I hadn't heard of. Thank you.

    I didn't realize First Man was Chazelle. I'll probably check it out, but after La La Land I'm raising an eyebrow at Chazelle.

Anon commented:
Ian replied: