CuriousCat Archive Page 193 of 202

  1. Do you support the idea that plants are sentient beings too?

    they will move to get more sunlight when needed you know

    Not by any definition of "sentience" I am familiar with.

  2. a police force or vigilantism?

    neither

  3. Who is at fault of getting humanity banished from the Garden of Eden?

    Adam or Eve?

    It seems obvious to me who tempted the other to try the forbidden apple...

    And don't say it's the snake. The choice is between Adam and Eve...

    I'm an atheist.

  4. Have you seen this anime called Wicked City?

    Damn weird anime

    No.

  5. Would Orwell regret Animal Farms if he lived to see what conservatives would do to it?

    No, I think Orwell knew better than most that conservatives will always misuse arguments.

  6. Do you have any Samuel Delany you recommend? Haven't read his non-fiction stuff yet, but I've recently read Aye, and Gomorrah and liked it a lot.

    Dhalgren for fiction, The Motion of Light in Water for nonfiction.

    Dhalgren takes, ah, some effort to read...

  7. When did you become a vegan?

    14 years ago.

  8. tofu or carrots?

    yes

  9. camembert or Swiss?

    daiya

  10. white wine or red?

    no

  11. garfield or jon?

    no

  12. calvin or hobbes?

    yes

  13. What do you think of Vermont?

    It's like an upside down New Hampshire.

  14. Any thoughts on gang violence?

    is it just a myth?

    I hear Boston Area, especially the Southies gt pretty rowdy.

    Gang violence exists, it's just usually overstated.

  15. What do you think of jazz?

    New Orleans has some good ass music.

  16. "I like Portland, OR, but it rains too much and there are no jobs"

    huh?

    you mean that fit your criteria right?

    Maybe things have changed, but, in my day, Portland was famous for having low employment.

  17. Portland Oregon that is my bad

    I like Portland, OR, but it rains too much and there are no jobs.

  18. Do you as a native bostonian love Dunkin Donuts and love to riot if the Celtics don't win?

    I don't often go to Dunks and don't really follow soccer.

  19. Do you eat baked beans still as a vegan?

    Sometimes.

  20. Ever wanted to move to Portland with your extended fam?

    Not sure which Portland you're referring to, but no.

  21. So using people is okay as long as they get some positive result?
    (referring to Kamala Harris)

    In politics, we rarely get the option to vote for our ideal candidate. As far as less-than-ideal goes, Harris is far from what I want but preferable to most.

  22. What do you think of the new Star Wars films or the new ones planning to be made?

    Force Awakens was likable enough, but I felt the characters deserved a more interesting movie. The Last Jedi was that more interesting movie and I adore it. Rogue One was only OK until a pretty gangbusters third act. Solo was meh. I don't have high hopes for Episode IX since they're not using Rian Johnson's treatment anymore, Abrams is directing again despite having no faculty with paying off complex themes (and the best things Johnson did was throw out all of Abrams' mystery boxes), and the screenwriter is the guy who wrote Justice League.

    I got a great movie out of the Star Wars relaunch. Maybe that's as much as I needed.

  23. "What do you think of the H3 podcast on YouTube? It's hosted by both these Jews named Ethan & Hila from the YouTube channel H3h3 Productions?"

    So this ask doesn't sound anti-semitic to you?

    Why did they need to pointout they were Jews?

    Smells like a bad take to me

    I read that question too quickly and didn't notice they identified the hosts as Jewish, which, yes, seems anti-semitic. I deleted the post. Sorry about that.

  24. Do you think religion is inherently awful?

    No. Like anything, it can be positive or negative, depending on the culture that springs from it and a person's individual relationship to it. I'm not religious, but I don't blame the evils of the world on religion, I blame them on people.

  25. You're just a few hundred away!

    I wonder if I'll get verified!

  26. Ever been to New Hampshire?

    Yes.

  27. Red Sox or nothing for you then?

    I don't really follow basketball.

  28. Ever been to Fenway Park?

    Not in the park itself, but I'm in the neighborhood a lot. There's a movie theater and a good vegan restaurant thereabouts.

  29. Do you hate going to Boston?

    I like living in Boston a lot.

  30. Ever read Animal Farm?

    Yes. Have you read Down and Out in Paris and London?

  31. Is Kamala Harris an enemy?

    Kamala Harris is a problematic politician. There are many things I don't like about her, but, as was my opinion about Hillary Clinton, she is someone I think the Left can get *some* positive results out of if we put the right pressure on her, which is more than I can say for any Republicans.

  32. Do you think legalizing and decriminalzing drugs is the way to go?

    yes

  33. What do you think of the book "The Conquest Bread"?

    Tabby: "Have you read Kropotkin?!"

  34. Ever read Michael Parenti's books?

    No.

  35. Why is it that folks on the left in general are afraid of talking about Israel outside of the massacres that occur?

    Which folks on the Left are YOU talking to?

  36. so, obviously, a lot of anti-sjw types are just idiot dudebros who would be better off reviewing pizzas than talking politics, but have you ever come across someone who was actually smart; maybe even too smart to actually believe in that nonsense?

    I've come across people I think are like that, and it's pretty sad, honestly.

    The complex rhetorical contortions people have to make in order to justify bigoted beliefs require a kind of intelligence to produce, even if they don't require much to repeat. The Alt-Right Playbook is largely a catalogue of how these rhetorical moves are smarter than we give the Right credit for. If you think about intelligence as not solely about logic and internal consistency but also about the most effective way to spread a message and manipulate emotions, yes, a lot of the Right is very smart in certain areas.

    I've met plenty of people who appear too smart to believe the nonsense they are repeating, but it just means they've put their intelligence to different uses than I have.

  37. are you alienated from the product of your labor?

    Less than most people. Biggest thing is that I generate a lot of traffic for YouTube but don't make any money from them because I refuse to participate in their ad program. Without ads, they don't make any money directly off of me, but I increase the ubiquity of their site, which is a value they extract from me that I am not compensated for.

    For me, the primary problem is that the product of my labor is not commensurate with the amount of labor I am exerting.

  38. are their any obscure indie films that you would recommend?

    I feel like This Must Be The Place flew under a lot of people's radars.

  39. Have you ever had a conservative or reactionary phase in your life?

    I thought and said a lot of shit when I was younger that I'd be embarrassed to be reminded of today, but I don't think I'd have ever qualified as "conservative." Liberal centrist at worst.

  40. I heard a Fox News segment about people who listen to only one news source and the need for more perspectives, and the level of projection broke my brain, and now I can't remember how to swim or detect irony. Should I seek help?

    You should at least turn off Fox News.

  41. How many questions do you think are sent by the same people?

    Dunno.

  42. So the "Remake TLJ" campaign has disturbed me a bit, beyond the fact that it's utterly ludicrous. I can't wait to see either the result or its fast decline into the abyss, but one of its top tweets reminded me of something that I believe you said about the way that GamerGate pandered to the alt-right. In one of their most recent tweets (as of this writing) they posted the Rotten Tomatoes critic/viewer score discrepancy (91% fresh according to critics and 48% according to viewers) and asked if it was just "critics pandering." "Ethics in games journalism" was, of course, the way that GamerGaters disguised their true anti-sjw aim. I'm just curious regarding your thoughts about this whole TLJ debacle and if a similar thing could be happening with the Star Wars fanbase?

    The same thing is happening in the Star Wars fanbase. It's happening in comics. It's happening in DnD. Right after GG it was happening in the sci-fi fandom. It will happen in everywhere there is a large population of nerdy white men that are used to being catered to as soon as it looks like minorities might get a foothold, and it will use the same tactics GG used, because that's where /pol/ and Stormfront and the Alt-Right go to recruit. And it will keep happening until those communities start working proactively to prevent it.

  43. Do you think Charlie Kaufman handles absurdity and surrealism in movies much better and meaningfully, also in terms of human emotional connection, than David Lynch?

    I remembered that Charlie Kaufman used to say David Lynch and Franz Kafka were very influential and important in his works

    I dunno if he handles surrealism *better* than Lynch, they approach it in very different ways. Kaufman presents unreal stuff as if it's completely normal, Lynch shoots everything like it's a dream so you can't tell what's real and what isn't. You could make a case that Kaufman's films are more meaningful, since I feel his movies tend to be about things more concrete than, like, mommy issues, but I also don't think we can discard Lynch's accomplishments as less meaningful just because they're mostly sensorial.

    And I think it's weird to imply Kaufman is better with human connection. Lynch's connections are always a little INhuman, but they're connections! The two films Kaufman has actually directed - Synecdoche New York and Anomalisa - are both explicitly about how lonely human existence is and how impossible it is to maintain the few meaningful connections you make (especially when both protagonists are utter narcissists). His other scripts have more room for humanity, but I strongly suspect that's because of they were directed by other people. Honestly, the only one I'd say is REALLY about human connection is Eternal Sunshine, and I think its lack of cynicism is more to do with Michel Gondry's sensibilities than Kaufman's. The original script made it explicit that Clem and Joel are on this cycle of falling in love, breaking up, erasing each other, and starting over for their entire lives, and had Joel repeatedly dumping the same woman when he'd fall in love with Clem. MUCH more cynical about emotional connection.

    Don't get me wrong, I still prefer Kaufman to Lynch, I just don't think they're comparable.

  44. Will the euphemism of 'coastal elite' ever die, to be replaced with explicitly saying 'we hate other Americans who disagree with us?'

    I've already made my case for how terrifying it is when a euphemism dies. They admit they hate you when they're getting ready to kill you.

  45. In one of your videos, I think it was either Control the Conversation or Never Play Defense, you talk about how the left and the right and fundamentally at odds over systemic issues vs. personal responsibility. But the left is just plain right about that. I know it's not relevant to your point, so I'm not trying to correct you or anything like that. I'm just pointing that out to ask:

    Do you ever think that the journalistic value of "balance" corrupts the journalistic value of "truth," when one side of a political divide is just straight up correct, and the other side is just flat out wrong?

    Balance is a virtue in journalism, the problem is what journalists think balance is. It is absolutely important to know what both sides of a debate are thinking. It is also important to know how many people are on each side, how factual their statements are, what the results of their actions have been, what their credentials are, and so forth.

    Journalistic "balance" is, too often, presenting both sides as equally valid, where proper balance would be to show both sides accurately and in context.

    Balance doesn't corrupt truth so long as the balance is truthful.

  46. In what world is Trump not a coastal elite?

    "Coastal elite" is a euphemistic way of saying "urban liberal," with, I suspect, an undercurrent of "probable Jew" in the mix.

  47. Thoughts on Kurt Vonnegut?

    Haven't read him in a while, not sure what I'd think of him with my current sensibilities, but I love him. I grew up on him. Slapstick was one of my three or so favorite books for years.

  48. Have you seen Hereditary yet? I heard it's a really creepy, great horror movie... one of the best Western horror films in this modern era

    I don't do horror movies.

  49. To me this video showcases what I might perhaps call the height of utilitarian beauty in cinematography.

    Look past the grainy video and washed out colors that come with it and one will find some extremely impressive camera work at play.

    In particular the way in which it manages to convey the gradient of the terrain, which is normally extremely difficult to do on camera without having to resort to showing footage of people falling over.

    https://youtu.be/S00E1je2WsI

    neat

  50. Are accusations of 'virtue signaling' just projection? Like, they are the sort who wouldn't want to help anyone without a reward, so they just assume anyone else wouldn't?

    I think that kind of projection manifests more in statements like, "Defending feminists won't get them to fuck you." Those comments definitely think of sex as transactional and the only reason to do a woman a solid is to get in her pants. They don't deride virtue because that would blow their cover of being Nice Guys.

    The people I see complain about "virtue signalling" are almost never virtuous themselves. They wouldn't do something nice for a reward; they wouldn't do something nice at all. They are skeptical of the concept of virtue, and think anyone who acts unselfishly is a phony. They are utterly selfish people, but think that they're better than "virtue signalers" because they're honest about it.

    Anyway, that's what I've observed. Could be other people have observed differently.

  51. Have you read anything by Thomas Pynchon by any chance? If so, may I ask what?

    The first couple chapters of V. and maybe a third of The Crying of Lot 49. I feel like, for my tastes, sometimes things can be a little TOO postmodern.

  52. I have a question based on how a comment thread played out in response to your Ship of Theseus video. This thread started with seemingly fair points about left-infighting, but the replies were rapidly taken over by alt-righters. One linked to a random time in your video to say something about being accused of Nazism, when you hadn’t said anything about accusations of Nazism at that moment in the video—or anywhere in it, ever. Another, who had on hand a thesaurus, essentially said that the left-wing invites abusive monsters upon themselves. You get the idea, and it devolves from there.

    Here’s my concern: how does one publicly engage in criticism of fellow liberals/leftists without the points getting hijacked by the alt-right and turned into weaponized attacks against us? As you pointed out, the right loves to take disagreements among people on the left and turn leftists on each other. (And without understanding that, generally, lefty criticism of itself is to try to get us to do better.) Or is there no way to avoid bad faith appropriation of arguments made in good faith?

    I'm still trying to figure out the answer to these questions.

    One thing I would ask is, does our engagement with other people on the Left need to be public? If we know Far Right assholes are going to jump into the conversation and pollute it, why not speak in private? Are there sites, well-moderated forums, curated feeds, where we know the Far Right has little presence, and we can discuss things in peace? People are always free to tweet at me, I'm pretty committed to blocking assholes when they show up, and we can have reasonable discussions. There are plenty of subreddits and forums where lefties hang out that weed out the trolls. My bandwidth is limited, so I can always respond to people directly, but there plenty of places where people can talk to each other about these things. MetaFilter is a personal favorite.

  53. Now and again on Twitter or Tumblr, I'll see people quote a headline from an op-ed and say something like, "Look, newspaper [X] is reporting [thing] and isn't that proof of the terrible state of modern journalism?" But this never sits too well for me! Because op-eds aren’t reporting and columnists aren't journalists. So why do people, including some on the left, talk about op-eds like they're official, journalistic news reports? It’s one thing to say, about an op-ed, that the NYT or WaPo or whoever “says [thing],” but saying that an op-ed is the official reporting is a mistake, isn’t it? Or is there a useful reason to call out factually wrong op-eds pushing bad takes and narratives as bad journalism because, though distinct sections of a paper, op-eds color the perception and reception of the news? I get that criticism of how the news is filtered, but it always bugs me when people call columnists and commentators journalists. TBF, cable news elides the difference too. :-\

    While I agree that being a columnist doesn't make you a journalists (though many op-eds ARE written by journalists, often as a companion piece to a piece of journalism), and drawing the distinction is important, who a paper selects to be columnists does fall under the banner of "journalism." When a paper makes a conscious decision to hire a number of starkly conservative columnists for the purpose of appearing "balanced," they are extending their brand and whatever journalistic integrity is associated with that brand to the columnists. They are making a decision about their paper's priorities, and about which voices are worth hearing. I think most of the complaints about columnists are to do with that, and hold true even when we correct that the columnists are not, if we're being accurate, journalists themselves.

  54. Well I just forced myself to sit through Avatar (first viewing since cinema) and this was the extended edition. Stunning visuals throughout, but no sense of "wow" because you know it was just James Cameron describing the shots he wanted and an army of CGI technicians delivering upon command. In a short note, I would love to see a future video from you on militarism in most of James Cameron's movies. Avatar is the only Cameron movie I really don't find enjoyable. It tries WAY too hard to pull on the eco-warrior heart strings, and ignores complex realities on such issues. Everything screams again and again ... these guys are good, those are bad, nature is good, technology and industry are bad. Certainly his weakest script writing effort imo. Still got faith that he can produce great movies again if he comes back down to Earth. Maybe he already has...

    Come on, Jim!

    I'd sooner do a video on his ex-wife, Kathryn Bigelow. I wish she was given the leeway Jim gets, because I think she's a better filmmaker.

  55. Why has no one bought this man a PC yet?

    I dunno, because I haven't asked?

  56. What are the “good” numbers when it comes to immigration? I hate how material that question is, because I would personally not just open but abolish borders, but my general ignorance tells me other considerations (of a practical, economical nature) than racism must come into play.
    Like, maybe it’s not worth it welcoming everyone if the quality of the reception is proportionally decreasing? Or other concerns I can’t even imagine yet?

    Or are these right-wing false arguments to make my conviction falter?

    If people aren't receiving the immigrants well, then the problem is the people, not the immigrants. It's also a lot cheaper to address than patrolling the borders.

    There are potential issues with people coming here to work when we have an unemployment problem for the people already here, especially since immigrants are at a disadvantage for finding what little work there is, but, again, you deal with that by dealing with employment.

    There are no problems with immigrants coming to this country that are worse that the problems immigrants are leaving behind; if it was otherwise they wouldn't be coming here. So they're going to keep coming, and it would be a lot smarter to make room for them than trying to change the reality of the situation.

  57. Is the whole 'fascists are part of the left' poppycock being used as misdirection? It seems they want us to look over there while they try enact fascist shit in the other direction.

    For some of them, yeah. For others, they genuinely believe that everyone is like them.

  58. Is calling trump a nazi because of an obama-era immigration policy abusing the term? Are we crying wolf and risking diluting the value of calling an actual nazi a nazi?

    Well...

    1) I've never called Trump a Nazi, though I have called him a racist who caters to Nazis. I don't think Trump has any particular plan to institute a white ethnostate, I think he intends to do whatever is good for him on a given day, and if that means making moves towards an ethnostate because it'll make his Nazi fans happy, he'll cross that bridge when he comes to it.

    2) I'm not defending Obama here, but scale matters. Trump has taken a shit policy and ramped it up dramatically. Obama did something unconscionable; Trump is doing something worse.

    3) Don't worry about diluting the value of the word "Nazi," the Nazis are working to dilute it no matter how it's used.

  59. would you consider yourself a coastal elite?

    I don't think anyone considers themselves a coastal elite. But when people complain about coastal elites, I know they're talking about me.

  60. why does every movie have to be two hours now?

    2 hours is fine.

  61. I read somewhere that separating families is as unpopular as repeal and replace was last year, but, if that's true, why is Trump's approval six points higher than when that all went down?

    https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/?ex_cid=rrpromo

    essentially, I'm asking how anyone other than MAGA cultists possibly be okay with all this.

    Outrage about the subject is recent and may not be reflected in the polls yet. Possibly some folks are buying Trump's line that this is the Democrats' fault. Or, when challenged, some people double down on being heartless bastards rather than admit they are being immoral.

  62. I think "radicalised" is one of the most extreme examples of a semantically neutral term which in a mainstream media context is given a high level of (usually negative) weight.

    Like, you can say the electric kettle radicalised tea making or whatever. But then you use it in a weird context and make it sound like people were radicalised by an electric kettle.

    Do you know what I mean?

    Words have different meanings in different contexts, and when one usage becomes popular and/or loaded, it can have a connotative effect on other usages. We could use "radicalized" easier in non-political contexts if there weren't so much radicalization going on in political contexts.

    In other words, Nazis ruin everything.

  63. Is there a difference between killing someone and not paying for their medical treatment?

    Yes, but the difference is small.

  64. Just looked up gay panic defense. I think you understated it when you said "multiple states"

    You have officially done more research than the people telling me I'm lying.

  65. Do you ever worry feeling that nobody under 20 is living to the age of seventy?

    I get genuinely scared that between global warming, the threat of nuclear warfare, and antibiotic overuse there's no way I'm not going to either die or live in some mad max dystopia.

    I tend to think I'm going to be the last generation to live to their 70s, dying while we watch the system crumble but not having to see it end. Maybe that's wishful thinking.

  66. Hype for Cyberpunk 2077?

    It looks cool. It's not coming to Mac or Switch, and none of the Witcher games were on Mac or Switch, so there are limits to the hype I can get.

  68. Ever been a plumber?

    No, but I play Mario in Smash so I think I understand the basics.

  69. Ever learned linear programming?

    No.

  70. has anyone ever called you Ian Danksin?

    Just you.

  71. Ever taken an accounting class?

    Not properly, no. There was a class I took in my department called Art, Life, and Money, which covered managing money as a practicing artist - planning a budget, applying to grants, writing freelance contracts, filing 1099s - but it certainly wouldn't qualify me to work as anyone else's accountant.

  72. You wrote
    "On the one hand, GMOs are overwhelmingly safe, and the fear around them is unfounded.People are just cagey about science and have some vague notion that GMOs are "unnatural." Catering to this fear is a bad idea."

    So when people use information to be anti-GMO based on information from Monsanto is catering?

    What?

  73. are you monolingual?

    Sadly, yes. I know a little Spanish, and want to get fluent one of these days, but I haven't made the time for it so far.

  74. Do you think Monsanto is a good company?

    Fuck no.

  75. dem strategy 2k19: invite trump to play golf every single day, thereby minimizing his potential damage. And I guess they can give pruitt some cut plastic yokes he can vainly try to put back together, just to keep him busy.

    I don't need credit, just seeing the flames subside is reward enough.

    it's worth a shot

Anon commented:
Ian replied: