CuriousCat Archive Page 32 of 202

  1. Did Hitler enact conservative policies, like being pro-market and shrinking the government's role in the economy. On that note, can you prove that fascism is "diet conservatism" (especially considering the different variants of conservatism, like libertarian conservatism and fiscal conservatism)

    in response to What proof do you have that Hitler was a conservative?

    do CONSERVATIVES enact conservative policies?

  2. I’m half-Cuban and I want to know if I should be offended or not.

    in response to Is gusano a slur?

    so you're asking a white guy?

  3. What proof do you have that Hitler was a conservative?

    what would constitute "proof" in your book?

  4. Is gusano a slur?

    every once in a while I get one of these context-free question and find out 24 hours later what Discourse it's responding to.

    you're asking because it just came out that Destiny's grandparents probably owned slaves, right?

  5. favorite ozzy song

    in response to favorite beatles song

    Free Bird

  9. Devil May Cry, God of War, Bayonetta, Dynasty Warriors, Bloodrayne, or Darksiders?

    Hyrule Warriors

  10. favorite beatles song

    in response to favorite oasis song

    Crazy Train

  11. you can't do a general strike that involves entire pipelines and supply chains anymore because a lot of them are gonna have bases outside the us. getting the whole of the united states to strike is one thing; getting *every fucking country economically involved with the us* is another. go ahead and tell me i'm being unrealistic and that we don't need such drastic requirements for a general strike; do you wanna take that chance? do you wanna risk a general strike with even just one crack that the bosses can exploit?

    in response to Care to elaborate *within* the character limit?

    mmm, do we need the people overseas to strike? they're just running businesses. provided the people striking can pay for their services - by selling them at cost or collecting donations for a strike fund - at least SOME will probably keep selling.

    also, I don't believe we need to shut down all or even most of the economy. it's a matter of shutting down a critical percentage. how desperate can we make capital by shutting down 30% of the economy for 6 months? 20% for two years? since trying to take over whole pipelines requires a lot of strategy already, we can also be strategic about WHICH pipelines we take over. maybe we avoid those that make heavy use of foreign labor. maybe we prioritize those that make use of communist labor - rather a lot comes from China, who are (ostensibly) communist and not the hugest fans of American capitalism. the nice thing about a general strike is there isn't a specific industry you're hoping will cave - you're after capitalism as a whole. you're after the GDP. it doesn't super MATTER where the losses happen, so you can target whatever you are most capable of targeting.

    I'm not claiming I have all the answers, and I'd rather not discuss it in this adversarial, "convince me you're not full of shit" kinda way. can we consider that it MIGHT work, and look at your concerns as problems that could have solutions? you don't have to sign on, just entertain the notion.

  12. Imagine that you could press a button that will abolish any institution of your choosing (capitalism, racism, sexism etc...), but in doing so it will also brutally torture a person of your choosing for several days. Would you press that button and if so which institution and which person would you choose?

    the prison industrial complex, and myself

  13. Is watching Borat praxis?

    the second one, maybe

  15. How do gang members both today and in the golden age in the roaring twenties justify their actions when it’s so clearly against the creeds of most religions? Are they all atheists? Petty crimes I can understand how they might bend the rules, but murder and racketeering are like buying a one-way ticket to hell.

    uh. the Klan is Christian. the Crusades were Christian. the most ardent defenders of the death penalty are Christian. people have never had trouble rationalizing murder with religion.

  16. favorite oasis song

    in response to favorite blur song

    yellow submarine

  17. Can I be considered white if i’m Latino but both of my haplogroups are from Europe?

    until such time white people decide that's not White Enough, sure. maybe.

  18. favorite blur song

    in response to favorite gorillaz song

    On Your Own

  19. favorite gorillaz song

    I'm a simple bitch who likes Feel Good Inc

  20. would i be missing out on much if i played Outsider without playing any of 2?

    in response to (DIff Anon) And your thoughts on Dishonored/the sequel?

    you'd be missing out on some, but you'd still have a good time

  21. why do you care so much about minorities as a white man

    because I have a conscience?

  23. About the strawman thing, it's less coming from a place of malice and more just my honest perspective as someone who's been involved in more vaguely right-leaning communities or places like 4chan. I think a lot of people have legitimate gripes with progressive ideology/people that is sometimes more eloquently expressed among leftists themselves and sometimes the criticism is marginalized as being any flavor of bigotry. Gamergate mindbroke a lot of people, where right-wingers oftentimes only operate on reacting to other people and people leaning more towards the left feel the need to defend shitty websites or mediocre game developers because the capital G gamers don't like them. Something that has a lot of nuance just gets watered down and for me your series didn't really deliver the bigger picture of what creates these kinds of people.

    I also feel like you're stuck in the mid-2010's when it comes to these issues and I'm not sure how you'd seek to tackle the current online right shift. The online left or "Breadtube" seems to have peaked in 2020 and fallen off a cliff.

    what are you doing? just sharing your opinion, hoping it's helpful for me to know my peak wasn't that impressive and I'm three years past it? like that's for my benefit? you feel I should've given more space for the idea that Kotaku was a shithole or Gone Home wasn't that good, when I was talking about how dozens of people were having SWAT teams called to their houses? that would've been "balanced"? I didn't talk about the quality of Kotaku or Gamasutra because it didn't MATTER. it wasn't RELEVANT. who gives a shit whether Depression Quest is overhyped when the creator was having dead squirrels shoved in their mailbox for making it? how on Earth are those your priorities?

    the reasons you think I'm condescending is a) my videos aren't for you, aren't centering you, folks who hang out on right-leaning communities and 4chan are not the target audience, and b) I'm calling you on your shit and won't be swayed by your excuses.

    I don't disagree that ARPB has slid behind the times. I wanted the series done years ago, but things have taken a while. I would rather move on to talking about how to build new systems more impervious to conservative techniques, but I gotta get THIS thing wrapped first. but, also, the mid-2010s were PRETTY IMPACTFUL and y'all keep saying "move on" because you wanna pretend otherwise, because none of the problems were fixed and hardly anyone faced real consequences and you're hoping the world forgets it all so the same assholes can pull the same shit again

    I look forward to your inevitable response about how I got triggered

  25. It was all a publicity stunt 💀 https://www.reddit.com/r/popculturechat/s/TGV3c4hjAu

    He played us like a damn fiddle

    in response to Thoughts on Snoop quitting grass?

    ok

  26. What if we replaced "Youtubers" with "TMBG Fans"? Thar more or less people you think? Also, think much would change if the respondants didn't actually know anyone else was recieving the choice?

    in response to (Different anon) how could long-term cooperation crash an economy?

    if a majority of people act selfishly, then EVERYONE is fucked, including the selfish people. if a majority act selflessly, then EVERYONE benefits, even the people who were NOT selfless.

    if the decision is blind, I would count on TMBG fans to behave selflessly more often than not. YouTubers I'm less certain about.

  27. (Different anon) how could long-term cooperation crash an economy?

    in response to Given a choice between halving your expenses and doubling those of all other Youtubers or doubling yours halving theirs, what would you choose? If all Youtubers got offered that deal, would your choice change? What would you expect most would choose?

    in this hypothetical, we are talking about every YouTuber reducing all their expenses to functionally zero. even if we're conservative with the definition "YouTuber" and say it's only people who have some semblance of a steady release schedule/audience, we're talking tens of thousands of people. tens of thousands of people no longer having to pay rent, buy groceries, pay health insurance, pay taxes. it'd be a SIZABLE dent in a number of industries.

  28. Given a choice between halving your expenses and doubling those of all other Youtubers or doubling yours halving theirs, what would you choose? If all Youtubers got offered that deal, would your choice change? What would you expect most would choose?

    every YouTuber is offered this choice? one person doubles their expenses and ALL other YouTubers get halved?

    so if I say "double mine, halve everyone else," I'm at 2x and everyone else is at 0.5x. then the next person (who was just halved) says "double mine, halve everyone else," now I'm back to 1x, next person is back to 1x, everyone else is at 0.25x. next person says "double mine, halve everyone else," I and the second person are now both at 0.5x, 3rd person is at 0.5x, everyone else is at 0.125x. everyone follows this pattern, all doubling your own does is set you one step back in the process of continuous halving - everyone will, Zeno-like, approach zero asymptotically. all of us will functionally have our expenses wiped out completely. alternately, if anyone says "I will halve my own and double everyone else's," they set a precedent that will, almost certainly, undo their halving with the very next YouTuber.

    this is not the Prisoner's Dilemma it first appears. there is actually no incentive towards selfishness and every incentive towards cooperation. long-term cooperation achieves the ideal outcome, where short-term selfishness will almost immediately be undone.

    of course, long-term cooperation could probably crash an economy...

  29. Your alt-right pipeline videos didn't really work on me, sorry. They felt like they were spoken from an out of touch perspective/strawman.

    they were spoken from the strawman?

    I DID play Scarecrow in Wizard of Oz for my middle school acting class...

  30. “no one’s gassing it up cuz”
    “you ain’t gotta like WAP”
    can you please stop using half assed AAVE, it’s so cringe. ur too old for this

    in response to WAP is a fundementally corny and annoying as fuck song that people only pretend to like because liking it pisses off reactionaries which, granted that's a good thing but we shouldn't gas up mediocre stuff just because the worst people in the world get mad about it (see: Ghostbusters Answer the Call, which despite being crap is still better than Afterlife because at least it tries to be a comedy and not a revenant nerd culture legacy sequel)

    I agree with you in principle that I am cringe and that white people shouldn't use AAVE. I used "gassing up" because OP used it and I was reflecting their language back on them, and I'm not sure I agree that "ain't" is exclusively AAVE.

  31. Metal Gear, Assassin’s Creed, Hitman, Splinter Cell, Thief, or Dishonored?

    Syphon Filter

    j/k I haven't played any of these except Dishonored

  32. Has a strike like that in the whole pipeline ever happened?

    in response to Care to elaborate *within* the character limit?

    I'd wanna look further into it before saying for certain, but not that I know of. many of the major General Strike movements happened before we were this interconnected. we could look at sustained dual power systems like MAREZ for what it might look like, though.

  33. Do you have reading recommendation about the fact that right-wing groups are more likely to unite behind a single candidate than left-wing groups?

    https://theauthoritarians.org/

  34. WAP is a fundementally corny and annoying as fuck song that people only pretend to like because liking it pisses off reactionaries which, granted that's a good thing but we shouldn't gas up mediocre stuff just because the worst people in the world get mad about it (see: Ghostbusters Answer the Call, which despite being crap is still better than Afterlife because at least it tries to be a comedy and not a revenant nerd culture legacy sequel)

    "shouldn't"? y'all gotta stop acting like disliking stuff is praxis. I like WAP because it's funny as fuck. Cardi and Megan's new collab is just as offensive to conservatives - they literally scissor in the video - but no one's gassing it up cuz we don't like it as much.

    you ain't gotta like WAP but please don't call my appreciation fake.

  35. ... into what?

    in response to Did the crushing fear of failure subside after This Is Phil Fish?

    uh... blowing it? failing to recreate my first success? being a disappointment? doing something wrong and facing a justified backlash? being found out as a fraud?

    fear of failure always finds a way through your successes.

  36. Thoughts on International Men's Day?

    lol. lmao.

  37. Care to elaborate *within* the character limit?

    in response to (diff anon) The recent Writers and Actors strikes left thousands of below the line workers out out in the cold for months. People lost their homes, or worse. How would you say we should mitigate the human cost of the work stoppage caused by a general strike?

    what is the problem with a strike? like, Stop & Shop workers go on strike, and that means you shouldn't shop there. this sucks for people who get their groceries at Stop & Shop - the alternatives in my neighborhood are much more expensive, and most are a lot smaller. it's hard for the strike to get the public on their side because the strike is a massive inconvenience. and, yeah, you can explain, "hey, the problem is really with the bosses," and folks may agree philosophically, but the bosses aren't the ones shouting outside the store, yelling at anyone who crosses the picket line for baby food, picking fights with scabs.

    the Okoyama bus strike had a clever solution to this: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/may/11/no-ticket-to-ride-japanese-bus-drivers-strike-by-giving-free-rides-okayama

    because the purpose of a strike is to cost the bosses money, the bus drivers kept working the routes and just stopped collecting fares.

    this meant the public wasn't inconvenienced by the strike; the strike meant the public rode for free. they weren't pressuring the strikers to come to a deal, they had every reason to hope the strike lasted as long as possible! the bosses caved VERY QUICKLY, likely because they rely on community pressure to break a strike. but, also: the strike showed that the bosses weren't necessary. if the buses could keep running with the bosses cut out of the process, why were the bosses even there? what function did they serve? they needed to cut a deal ASAP, because it is WAY WORSE FOR THEM to appear superfluous.

    this kind of strike has happened in a few places, often with buses. it's easy for busdrivers to do this, because, so long as they HAVE THE BUS, they pretty much control the entire means of production. it would be a lot harder for Stop & Shop to strike in this way, to keep giving out groceries but not collect money for them (or, I dunno, sell them at cost or only work for tips or whatever). certainly the public would be on their side, but all the bosses have to do is NOT RESTOCK SUPPLIES and the jig is up. our economy is so big and interconnected it's really hard to take over a business' operation if only one part of the pipeline is on strike.

    so that's where I see the general strike coming in. we THINK of a general strike as being like a Stop & Shop strike, but across every industry. and, every time Reddit announces a general strike, the plans fall apart with the first question: "if I'm not working, and all the grocery stores are on strike, how do I feed myself?" but what if the grocery store was on strike, AND the wholesalers who supply their products, AND the shipping company that brings them? and what if they ALL kept working, but stopped sending money to the bosses? what if the ENTIRE PIPELINE went on strike? what if you functionally made a non-capitalist pipeline, providing goods and services without profit, and met everyone's needs without bosses?

    THAT'S what a General Strike can be.

  39. (diff anon) The recent Writers and Actors strikes left thousands of below the line workers out out in the cold for months. People lost their homes, or worse. How would you say we should mitigate the human cost of the work stoppage caused by a general strike?

    in response to What would be the other way then?

    eheheheeee I have thoughts on this but Curious Cat has a character limit

  40. Perhaps more quibbling but I've heard lefties say that a revolution is any society wide change in fundamental social relations. Which implies that if we can replace our government through general strikes, protests, etc that would still constitute a revolution, even if we don't have say a guerrilla army occupying the Capitol.

    I fully concede that that's not what most people think of when they hear the word revolution tho.

    in response to What would be the other way then?

    sure. OP said "forcefully overthrowing," so I assumed they meant violence.

  41. Would you say the Israel-Palestine conflict is "complicated" or one-sided?

    ehhhh... there are a lot of complexities involved? but none are in the morality of what's happening: Israel is committing genocide and every second the US continues to bankroll it they are culpable for that genocide.

  42. Why do libertarians always Allie themselves with the right. They claim to be socially left wing and economically right so they should Allie with each side equally depending on the issue. But they almost always join rightwing groups why?

    because they're conservatives. there is no such thing as "socially left but economically right." you cannot square ANY progressive belief with conservative economics. they are based on fundamentally different logics. if you believe in the capitalist market, you believe in exploitation. that's WHY regressive politics trend towards the Right and ambivalence about capitalism clusters on the Left. you can be centrist and wishy-washy about them both, like the liberals, but libertarians claim to EMBRACE each, and, in practice, they always hold stronger to the conservative shit.

  43. Thoughts on Snoop in a more general sense?

    in response to Thoughts on Snoop quitting grass?

    he didn't like WAP, so. a bit sus.

  44. What would be the other way then?

    in response to There's just friend of mine that has been increasingly convinced that forcefully overthrowing the US government and redoing the constitution is the only way to stop the active support for colonialist projects by the country. They don't think that protests are meaningfully changing the government's position on Palestine or the Congo or other colonialist projects - the government is too rotten to be salvaged. What is your position on this?

    massive general strikes until the government accedes to demands, potentially? achieved a lot on Northern Europe. not convinced it can do everything we want, but it has enough potential that I bring it up when people say "revolution is the only option."

  45. Maybe they just want the trains to run on time?

    in response to i am a national socialist

    the trains ran on time in Italy. national socialists were Germans. their trains were managed horribly, far worse than in the Weimar.

  46. I’m an adult, and I don’t know what’s best for me.

    in response to Thoughts on Snoop quitting grass?

    keep rocking the ganja then

  47. Thoughts on Snoop quitting grass?

    he's an adult, he knows what's best for him.

  49. Bean water or Leaf water more to your liking?

    leaf

  52. Rank the Roy siblings from Succession?

    no

  53. Here's my attempt: "There are a lot of systems and laws in place that make life harder for black people than for white people, such as Voter ID laws designed to accept forms of ID that white people have and black people don't, and the difference in funding between majority-white schools and majority-black schools."

    in response to I don't disagree, but I also think that when talking to someone who has little to no familiarity with a subject, the best option is to provide a simplified version of the truth and then wait to introduce more complicated subjects until after they've grasped that.

    a'ight, use that on a white person who says they don't understand systemic racism and tell us how it goes

  55. I don't disagree, but I also think that when talking to someone who has little to no familiarity with a subject, the best option is to provide a simplified version of the truth and then wait to introduce more complicated subjects until after they've grasped that.

    in response to (different anon) In my experience the only real way to get better at explaining things is to keep doing it over and over, and accept that you're going to screw up while learning the best expression of an idea.

    no one is arguing with that. my point is only this: you want the simplest version of the truth that is still true. I don't think the two-sentence version of "how systemic racism works" is usably true.

  57. Marxism-Leninism is more akin to the "Alt-left" than anarchism or Trotskyism. Ultras would be the extreme alternative left.

    in response to Says the guy who hates Marxism-Leninism.

    ML is the most mainstream version of communism, every existing communist state is some variant of ML, in what way are they "alt"? "alt-Left" isn't a thing so it's weird to gatekeep what it WOULD be if it existed.

  58. (different anon) In my experience the only real way to get better at explaining things is to keep doing it over and over, and accept that you're going to screw up while learning the best expression of an idea.

    in response to I run into issue with explaining things succinctly all the time. Do you know a succinct way to explain systemic racism to a sympathetic but not as well-educated white person? I try to explain it in a sentence or two, but it always seems to spread to four or five.

    when talking about systemic racism, I don't think "better" and "shorter" are the same thing

  59. Says the guy who hates Marxism-Leninism.

    in response to Is there an "alt-left" pipeline?

    yes, I am a guy who hates Marxist-Leninism and also wants a pipeline to anticapitalism. you have correctly described the situation.

  60. Have you seen any Israeli hostage posters in your area?

    yes

  61. Also "government of a few individuals" is how private property functions now. In ancapistan, we won't have taxes but we'll have rent. We won't have cops, we'll have private security. We won't have censorship, just terms of service. We won't have politicians, we'll have boards of directors. If the state is an entity with a monopoly on legitimate violence over a given territory, that's no different from what libertarians want for private land ownership. Libertarians rail against statism but they don't have a single problem with what the state does, only who's doing it. If they were honest, they'd admit private rule and state rule are the same thing, and that they love oppression just as much as any conservative or liberal progressive.

    The alternative? Usufruct and the commons. Land doesn't have to be "owned" by anybody. It can just exist and we can just use it. Elinor Ostrom did field research on how non-state societies managed collective stewardship of common lands and found the ones that endured arrived at the same few principles.

    I recommend the video primer on this subject by Andrewism:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG4Y8bgUwQ0

    in response to Why wouldn't land & property being owned by private individuals who's best interest is to take care of it be better for the environment than a government of a few individuals having to take care of the entire country's ecological needs?

    thanks

  62. Did European countries tightening their borders decrease terrorism and crime?

    did you mean to type this into google?

  63. I run into issue with explaining things succinctly all the time. Do you know a succinct way to explain systemic racism to a sympathetic but not as well-educated white person? I try to explain it in a sentence or two, but it always seems to spread to four or five.

    in response to Even though you think that it’s impossible for a true statement to be shorter and quippier than a false statement, don’t you think that it’s still better for a true statement to have as little a gap in regards to shortness and quippiness against a false statement as reasonably possible? Not focusing on something at all just because you can’t win kind of feels like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

    in 2 sentences? no.

  64. i am a national socialist

    how's that working out for you?

  65. Is Cuba more democratic than the United States?

    that is an equation with many variables. I don't have the maths for it. in some ways, yes: they have much more freedom of knowledge and physical health, thanks to free healthcare and incredibly high literacy. they have less economic freedom and some stricter state control. I don't know a lot about the Cuban government, but I know enough about the US government to know we aren't winning any medals on democracy.

  66. Is that a yes or no?

    in response to Will you celebrate if he freezes up again?

    I'm not gonna throw a party or anything but I'm not gonna be solemn about it either

  67. Where would the world be had Tumblr not banned the porn

    world peace

  68. Is there an "alt-left" pipeline?

    give me time

  70. I’m trying to figure out what feminist thinkers have proposed for the role of men in a post-patriarchal society, because from what I’ve gathered the consensus among women seems to be “there aren’t any roles for men, men suck and always will” and I don’t want that to be the case. Is there anyone you’ve come across that I can read or is there a more specific direction you can point me in besides “read feminist literature”?

    I can assure you that is not the consensus, and what thought has been put into the role of men post-patriarchy has been done by feminists. but it's not the job of feminism to tell men what to be. their charter is the libertarian of women; what men are supposed to do after that liberation is for the men to determine. why would we be waiting around for someone to tell us?

    honestly, I don't think there's any sort of secret. there is no alternative to patriarchy where we don't have hundreds of examples. there are already men who don't demand they be head of their household, who share in the labor of childrearing and chores and making money. there are already men who don't need to be the biggest and strongest, men who are comfortable being kinda queer or gender-fucky or not particularly sexual. none of this is perfect yet and it's all evolving, but we can see the directions we need to head in and people have been heading there for ages.

  71. There's just friend of mine that has been increasingly convinced that forcefully overthrowing the US government and redoing the constitution is the only way to stop the active support for colonialist projects by the country. They don't think that protests are meaningfully changing the government's position on Palestine or the Congo or other colonialist projects - the government is too rotten to be salvaged.

    What is your position on this?

    I would caveat that revolution may not be the ONLY way or quibble over the definition of "meaningful," but, yeah. your friend and I more or less agree.

  73. Isn’t it more unfair to be given something you haven’t earned? Or for someone who has worked hard to not be given their due because some of it had to go to someone else to make things equal?

    in response to What makes you think humans are equal, or deserve equal treatment? How is that supposed to be "fair"?

    the only reason something rightfully yours would be taken to make things equal

    is if you are better and more deserving than the other person

    if you believe the world is unfair, then why the fuck should the law be fair? why SHOULDN'T the government take your hard-earned resources and give it whomever they want? if they're in a position to take it, they must be better than you, and you agree some people are better than others

    you prove the conundrum: even when promoting the idea of an unfair world, you fall back on ideas of fairness.

  74. hey, i feel like i should also withhold my vote for joe biden due to his stance on the israel-palestine conflict, but i am terrified that if trump wins he will go back to trying to make himself president for life, but voting for the lesser of two genocides seems insane, what do you think?

    are you in a swing state?

  75. What makes you think humans are equal, or deserve equal treatment? How is that supposed to be "fair"?

    I mean, that's what "fair" means, unless I'm missing something?

    I don't think humans are, empirically, anything. I don't think, in any cosmic sense, it matters whether we treat each other well or horribly. "humans are equal" is, functionally, a choice. you CHOOSE to make that an axiom.

    but very little about human life is predicted on it. there's pretty much no way to exist in society without that presumption being the basis of SOMETHING, from writing a contract to voting to even just having friends. and I don't think anyone wants to live in a world where that isn't a presumption. I don't think humans are built to even conceive of such a world.

Anon commented:
Ian replied: