CuriousCat Archive Page 37 of 202

  1. Have you ever thought of starting a band called Ian, Crosby, & Danskin?

    my acting teacher used to call me Ian Crosby Stills and Nash Danskin when I was 12, and I had no idea what the word "stillzenash" meant

  2. What's some other stuff that you hate?

    in response to Do you hate groomers?

    wet socks

  3. Wasn't it Al-Khwarizmi that founded algebra?

    in response to So what if age was a Letter instead of a Number?

    Al-Khwarizmi named it "algebra" but Diophantus was doing early algebraic equations 500 years earlier, and its roots go back another 800 years to Mesopotamia

    as with a lot of math, it's hard to argue any single person "founded" it, I just picked "Diophantus" cuz it was the funniest name

  4. Can you do a Jordan Peterson impression?

    https://vimeo.com/864634622

  5. what got you into politics?

    giving a shit about people and justice, I guess

  6. Do you hate groomers?

    you mean pedophilic Catholic priests? yeah, not fond.

  7. Would you support an anti-rightest campaign to purge reactionaries like Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro from politics? Would it do more good than harm?

    I would support an anti-rightist campaign to deplatform reactionaries like Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro. they followers are lazy and generally don't go to the effort of finding them in more obscure places.

    if "purge" means anything more than that - exile, imprisonment, execution - I don't need it. take the mic away because they pose literal threats to people and be done with it.

  8. Are black feminists obsessed with white dick?

    white dicks are obsessed with Black feminists

  9. How often do trans people you know go out in public?

    what?

    every day.

    ...trans people need groceries and stuff.

  10. I recognize your remark may have been flippant, you in case you genuinely would support a 0 dollar military budget, would you simply cede hard geopolitical power to powerful more authoritarian and more oppressive countries such as Russia and China? Also, genuinely mull over how countries hostile to the US would respond if the US announced it wouldn’t be spending a cent on defense. The Is is not a force for good in the world, but it is a force against worse entities. Once again, this may just be a flippant remark to indicate support for a large cut in defense spending, if you would seriously support reducing military spending to ZERO, I would implore you for reconsider.

    in response to What percent of GDP designated for defense would you say that the US should have? It often seems like political goals are framed in a more than now/less than now dichotomy that, while understandable for maintaining a political coalition, doesn't give a good answer as to what specifically is aimed for.

    this is a very silly argument. the US has a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons, enough to end the world multiple times over. those don't simply disappear if we stop paying the military, they just can't build MORE.

  11. (diff anon) If we went to zero the U.S would be wiped off the map but go off I guess.

    in response to What percent of GDP designated for defense would you say that the US should have? It often seems like political goals are framed in a more than now/less than now dichotomy that, while understandable for maintaining a political coalition, doesn't give a good answer as to what specifically is aimed for.

    um... we have pumped trillions of dollars into the military, it's not like they have spent ALL OF IT every year. it would take a while to go from "not receiving more money" to "out of money." and the entire world economy is tied to the US dollar, the idea that we would be immediately destroyed if not a military superpower is just... ludicrous.

    not everyone's a fucking conqueror.

  13. (first different anon)
    First of all, I appreciate the elaboration! I think I was operating from an incomplete/wrong definition of "crypto" (or at very least a different one than you are using). Which is kind of emblematic of my larger point. There are certain buzzword-y topics that are just REALLY hard to talk about because there are a lot of bad actors intentionally muddying the waters at all levels; definitionally, regarding costs and goals, what their own role will be, etc.

    FWIW I'm not attached to crypto specifically. I just felt like there was kind of a moment where we (societally) were maybe going to explore the idea of decentralized currency, but specifically crypto turned out to be a scam, and it seems like we kind of threw the baby out with the bathwater on the larger conversation to me.

    in response to (different different anon) Also, most of those problems *are* inherent to cryptocurrency, as part of how they chose to solve the problems they've set themselves. If you want to create a distributed and permissionless blockchain, you need a way to protect against somebody gaming the consensus method by saying "Me and my 5 zillion sock puppets say I get all the tokens". The way cryptocurrencies do that is by attaching a monetary cost to voting, and offering tokens to people who cast the winning vote. That might be proof of work, AKA proof of willingness to burn a shitload of electricity; proof of time and space, AKA proof of willingness to grind through hard drives; or proof of stake, AKA proof of having a lot of money already. A system which rewards people who already have money is an inherent and necessary part of cryptocurrency.

    crypto did not arise because society was interested in decentralized money, crypto arose because people who would profit from crypto pushed it hard, and "decentralized money good for people" was one of several loose justifications

  14. What percent of GDP designated for defense would you say that the US should have? It often seems like political goals are framed in a more than now/less than now dichotomy that, while understandable for maintaining a political coalition, doesn't give a good answer as to what specifically is aimed for.

    there is no limit on how much I would reduce military spending. we could go to zero for all I care.

  15. If you couldn't say Delaney or Orwell because you said them already and the person talking to you read them already and wants someone else who would you pick

    in response to What writers do you like?

    N.K. Jemison

  16. Is religion the opium of the masses?

    y'all need to keep in mind that "religion is the opiate of the masses" was not referring to heroin, it was referring to painkillers

  18. You heard of Mighty Jill Off?

    of course

  19. And the fascists have the outfits, but I don't care about the outfits! What I care about is music,

    in response to no matter how hard you try you can’t stop us now

    AND THE COMMUNISTS HAVE THE MUSIC

  20. Thoughts on Errol Morris' Believing is Seeing book (or was it titled Seeing is Believing? I forgot). If you did read it before, would you recommend it to anyone including non-film, non-photography enthusiasts?

    hell yeah, it's friggin fascinating

  21. Is it too late to date anyone if I'm already in my mid-30s? Or is age just a number?

    never too late fam!

  22. Have you seen the Mario movie yet?

    no. what do you mean "yet"?

  23. no matter how hard you try you can’t stop us now

    we're the renegades of funk

  24. Same person: I thought of a related question that is probably a lot better: What is your understanding of the differences between therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists?

    I ask this because I'm having a lot of difficulty determining what type of mental healthcare professional would be best suited to help me. It seems like there are some important differences between professionals who fall under those three terms, but I can't pin down what the most important differences are. I tend to lack confidence that I'm making good decisions.

    in response to Is there any truth to the statement: "A large number of therapists are kind of bad at their job"? The reason I ask this is because I've seen multiple instances of a person talking about a bad experience with a therapist in a comment or post. I don't have much evidence to go off of, but it seems plausible that being a good therapist us really hard and a lot of people fail to meet the challenge. And, like, I live in the States and have to pay for therapy, so I have good reason to want to sure I won't be wasting my money.

    a therapist is a person you talk to in a professional capacity for your mental health. psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers are all people you might see for therapy.

    psychologists and social workers will give you a similar type of treatment but come at it from different angles: psychologists from the study of the mind, social workers from the study of society and environment. the fields are different, but they overlap in therapy and the training for that will be similar.

    neither psychologists nor social workers can prescribe medications, but a psychiatrist can. people who treat their issues with medications may see a psychiatrist for talk therapy at well as meds management, or see a psychologist/social worker regularly and then periodically with a psychiatrist or psychopharmacologist for prescriptions.

    if you're looking for therapy, you'll most likely see a social worker or psychologist, and get a referral if you need meds. you might not actually know which field of study your therapist comes from! because you'll be focused more on what you're trying to treat and maybe what modality you want to treat it with: cognitive behavioral, psychodynamic, narrative, internal family systems, etc. you can look into whether you'd prefer a psychologist or social worker or psychiatrist, but you don't need to sweat it too much. better to look into who takes your insurance and what issues they specialize in.

  25. Is Rififi the best heist movie ever made?

    it's pretty damn good, but I'm partial to Sneakers

  26. Is it too late for a college student in their 20s to get braces for my lower teeth?

    nope! you'll get that invisiline

  27. Is there any truth to the statement: "A large number of therapists are kind of bad at their job"?

    The reason I ask this is because I've seen multiple instances of a person talking about a bad experience with a therapist in a comment or post. I don't have much evidence to go off of, but it seems plausible that being a good therapist us really hard and a lot of people fail to meet the challenge.

    And, like, I live in the States and have to pay for therapy, so I have good reason to want to sure I won't be wasting my money.

    I don't know. the worst therapist I've ever worked with was only mediocre. I don't know if that's luck or the places I live having above average therapy schools.

    the pitfalls of therapy are usually that people who've been in the game a while start improvising more and get critiqued less, so they can end up both arrogant and out of touch. if you're worried about that, you can look into a therapy center where people early in their career are getting the hours necessary for an independent license, or work with grad students on a college campus. they're both cheaper and getting a lot more supervision, so they're unlikely to go off-book.

    most therapists will give you a free (or at least discounted) first meeting, so you can feel them out, see if it's a good fit. if there aren't any red flags, then, yeah, work with them a while. the shitty ones tend to prove shitty pretty quick, so, at worst, they'll just be disappointing in the long run, and then you can just get a new one.

  28. No, you're right. Old posts are removed from the HTML of the page as you scroll. Twitter does the same thing. That way your computer isn't overloaded when you scroll far. This is true on Chrome as well. A web scraping app is likely the only viable option for querying Curious Cat right now.

    in response to No. This won't work. Curious Cat "lazy loads" content, meaning, when you load the page, only a few posts are loaded. When you have hundreds or thousands of posts to search through, the only way ctrl+f will work is if you scroll through the page and load in older posts. Otherwise, you'll only be searching the most recent posts. You could make a relatively simple JavaScript program to automate the process of scrolling through the page and saving posts, but doing so manually would be very time intensive.

  29. There are two types of "grindset" people: buyers and sellers. The buyers want a way to justify the fact that they will spend the rest of their lives performing otherwise meaningless labor. "Hustling" feels a lot better than "being exploited until you die." The sellers are their bosses. They are the ones who intend to exploit them until they die.

    in response to What gives with people being like "I don't ever want to retire I want to work until I die" have you experienced anyone like that?

  30. Have you read the Lucifer comics that spun off of the Sandman series?

    in response to Neil Gaiman Fan?

    I read a chunk of them. it was interesting!

  31. What gives with people being like "I don't ever want to retire I want to work until I die" have you experienced anyone like that?

    I find that "grindset" type really interesting, because they're, like, the MOST capitalism-poisoned you can be, and yet their beliefs run counter to capitalism, you know? like, the two main incentives to work under capitalism are a) get rich or b) don't starve. supposedly financial precarity will force you to work if you're poor, and, if you're stable, you will keep working on the promise of getting rich enough to not have to work anymore. but if these people wanna work forever, even when they don't HAVE to, when they COULD retire, it means work has SOME intrinsic value to them. and, if work has intrinsic value, then we don't need to the threat of poverty OR the promise of wealth to incentivize work; people will (apparently) already work until death when they don't have to.

  32. Dan Olson's "In Search of a Flat Earth" encapsulates this idea fantastically. All ideology, good or bad, has the function of justifying particular actions and behaviors. People who believe conservative ideology don't do so because they thought objectively about it and came to the conclusion that it is correct. They believe it because it justifies their political projects. The only way to break them from their ideology is to first break them from their political projects.

    It's also essential in any Socialist movement. The Black Panther Party had a program to educate its members and dissuade them of what they called "bourgeois ideology," homophobia, sexism, chauvinism. They identified these as ideologies that served the interests of Capital not the workers, even the ones who held those beliefs.

    in response to I know it's pointless to call out conservative hypocrisy, but does it ever just baffle you? Like, when PragerU puts out a video called "Israel: Who Are the Real Indigenous People" even though they don't care about indigenous people's rights in any other context and constantly deny the genocides of indigenous people in America... why would they do that? Who are they arguing to? Is it even their goal to convince anyone with that?

  33. Neil Gaiman Fan?

    generally, yeah. haven't read his books, but Sandman is one of my favorite comics and I like a lot of projects he's been involved in.

  34. Who was hotter Marx or Engels?

    big beard Engels > Marx > young Engels with the chinstrap beard looking like the bassist for a MCR cover band

  35. There aren't many videos I could be referring to.

    in response to Thoughts on the Sailor Socialism video?

    look buddy I'm 39 and I'm not gonna recognize every reference. I didn't know the "you have brainworms" girl was called Sailor Socialism.

    she's fine.

  36. No. This won't work. Curious Cat "lazy loads" content, meaning, when you load the page, only a few posts are loaded. When you have hundreds or thousands of posts to search through, the only way ctrl+f will work is if you scroll through the page and load in older posts. Otherwise, you'll only be searching the most recent posts. You could make a relatively simple JavaScript program to automate the process of scrolling through the page and saving posts, but doing so manually would be very time intensive.

    in response to Just use the find tool on chrome

    I've found ctrl-F doesn't even work when you scroll a ton first; it seems the stuff you've scrolled past stops being searchable after a while. I use Firefox so I wondered if Chrome has some extra-special search function.

  37. Thoughts on the Sailor Socialism video?

    you'll have to be more specific

  39. I know it's pointless to call out conservative hypocrisy, but does it ever just baffle you? Like, when PragerU puts out a video called "Israel: Who Are the Real Indigenous People" even though they don't care about indigenous people's rights in any other context and constantly deny the genocides of indigenous people in America... why would they do that? Who are they arguing to? Is it even their goal to convince anyone with that?

    it convinces the people they want to convince. facts aren't important to them, what matters is a kind of emotional truth. PragerU is being ideologically consistent with their Zionist, authoritarian beliefs. being FACTUALLY consistent is meaningless to them.

  40. What writers do you like?

    *Samuel R. Delany intensifies*

  41. Should CuriousCat add.a search function for finding questions/answers within someone's page?

    YES

  42. (Different Anon) One of the arguments I've heard against the state of Israel from leftists is talking about Liberia which was also formed as a state for victims of discrimination removed from their homeland and the problems that arose from it. Namely a state created against the wishes of the people that already lived there. What are your thoughts on that argument?

    in response to (Different anon) I got banned from The Deprogram Discord server for 6 months for expressing the same sentiment as you during vetting; that the Israeli government is corrupt and abhorrent in its treatment of Palestinians, but that doesn't mean Israel has no right to exist (at least, any more than other settler-colonial states like the U.S., Australia, etc.). I didn't even say that I think Israel SHOULD exist, I just said I wasn't sure because Israel was created to give Jews a safe place to live in the aftermath of the Holocaust and centuries of discrimination towards the Jewish diaspora. But apparently that wasn't "leftist" enough of an answer to acknowledge the Israel-Palestine conflict as one of the most nuanced and complicated geopolitical topics in history.

    no one is defending the displacement and colonialism that led to the founding of Israel, or Liberia, or the United States for that matter. the point is, it's happened, and the entire world has been shaped by it, and it's OF NOTE that people talk so much about specifically Israel's right to exist and not, like, every nation England ever founded?

  44. (Different anon) I got banned from The Deprogram Discord server for 6 months for expressing the same sentiment as you during vetting; that the Israeli government is corrupt and abhorrent in its treatment of Palestinians, but that doesn't mean Israel has no right to exist (at least, any more than other settler-colonial states like the U.S., Australia, etc.). I didn't even say that I think Israel SHOULD exist, I just said I wasn't sure because Israel was created to give Jews a safe place to live in the aftermath of the Holocaust and centuries of discrimination towards the Jewish diaspora. But apparently that wasn't "leftist" enough of an answer to acknowledge the Israel-Palestine conflict as one of the most nuanced and complicated geopolitical topics in history.

    in response to apartheid south africa still exists then? israel is a fundamentally theocratic state, to give palestinians the right of return, dismantle the colonial systems, to introduce a single secular state with universal human rights would be to stop israel existing. Obviously the land and the people would still exist as in SA

    sounds like a shitty discord

  45. This has been an obstacle for my support of abortion rights for a long time. What is the difference between an 8 and 3/4s month old fetus and a newborn baby?

    third trimester abortions aren't a thing, so why is that your obstacle?

  46. What's the difference between one reason to do a thing and two reasons to do that thing?

    2 > 1

  47. You do all your own art? Any time I see any armless little guy do any sorta bend I think of your videos now.

    I do 99% of the art. guest artists for things beyond my skills (the thumbnails for Protagony, "Tony Soprano as Dalai Lama," art on Cost of Doing Business when my back was too fucked to use a desk).

    are there other people drawing doops now??

  48. apartheid south africa still exists then? israel is a fundamentally theocratic state, to give palestinians the right of return, dismantle the colonial systems, to introduce a single secular state with universal human rights would be to stop israel existing. Obviously the land and the people would still exist as in SA

    in response to people responded to the apartheid government of south africa by saying it shouldn’t exist. and they won

    when people say "Israel should not exist" they're not saying it should have a fundamentally different government; they're saying the land should never have been given to Jews and the Jews should be disempowered if not forcibly removed.

    this is why discussing Israeli apartheid is such a powderkeg. I condemn the government but I gotta be REAL SKEPTICAL about who wants to side with me.

  49. Are those unions being led by Occupy or BLM organizers? I don't see the connection you are making. Yes, class struggle persists because capitalism persists. But, you've ignored the substance of my argument which is that the Occupy movement and the BLM movement did NOT accomplish the majority of their stated goals. Wall Street was not held accountable, the police were not abolished, defunded, or even reformed. A lot of good people put a lot of energy into these movements. What do they have to show for them. I mean, people died!

    I'm glad that unions are on a resurgence and I'm glad that revolutionary talk is increasing. But that has nothing to do with the point I was making. The point is that mass protests seem to be an ineffective way of furthering class struggler. The fact that other strategies are being considered is great! But, I honestly think that this has more to do with the worsening conditions of the working class and the desperate measure people are increasingly getting more comfortable with.

    The people who sacrificed so much for Occupy and BLM deserved better than what they got. We HAVE to be critical of these movements and learn from them if we want our future efforts to be successful.

    in response to Given that the conditions both Occupy and BLM sought to address are WORSE now than they were before and both of the movements have pretty much fizzled out, couldn't one make the argument that those movements themselves quelled the American proletariat? We all went out to march and fight. Two of the largest movements of civil unrest, and what happened? The orchestrators of the 2008 financial crash got cushy government jobs and the police keep getting more and more funding and resources. As impressive as these movements are, if we're being honest with ourselves, can we say they had the lasting effect we wanted? It seems like the biggest lasting effect has been a lot of good people exhausting their energy. I agree with you that the energy is there, but it's being dissipated into protests that have very little to show for themselves.

    it's not a question of whether they are being led by the same people, it's whether those actions would've happened if mere demonstration hadn't proven ineffective. the nature of mass movements is that the individuals are less important than the overall trajectory of leftism. leftism has been ENERGIZED in the last few years, so it's hard to frame movements past as having deflated the left.

  50. I refuse to have a Xitter account to see whether Brennan Lee Mulligan is still stalking your YouTube recommendations, my favourite bit of yours, so: is it still going on, is him running a D&D game for the actors’ strike shown up yet, and how would you react, hypothetically, if a recommendation turned up entitled “Brennan, for Ian from Innuendo Studios”?

    most recent sneak attack was August 20th

    it goes ever, ever on

    I don't know how I would react to that, is it something I'm likely to encounter?

  51. Do you think it's appropriate to use terms like "projection" or "catastrophizing" when describing conservative rhetoric? They seem appropriate to me, but I'm leery of using therapy-speak to talk about people I haven't diagnosed (particularly since I have no training in that field).

    it's therapyspeak, sure, but you're not diagnosing them with anything! you're just using useful term therapists also use. yes, projection and catastrophizing are central to conservatism.

  52. i forget which video this was in (probably TCoDB), but you list allosexuality as a form of privilege and/or assumed norm and/or some other related thing, and as an asexual person this was one of the first and maybe the only time i've seen this brought up outside of discussions focused on asexuality. just wanted to say thank you for that inclusion.

    it was How to Radicalize a Normie, and you're welcome!

  53. Isn't the core idea of communism - the distribution of power? I'm not sure something authoritarian can be called communism.

    in response to Why does "Democratic socialism" imply that all other forms of socialism aren’t democratic? Isn’t socialism democratic by its nature?

    personally, I agree, but many only interpret it as the distribution of ECONOMIC power, in the same way liberal democracy only distributes VOTING power while leaving capitalism intact

  55. Do you think achieving socialism is possible in the US? As much as I believe in progress, the sheer size and scale of our military, police and other state forces makes me think a revolution of *any* ideology would be logistically impossible against them. Even if something like a hundred million armed people were up to the task, what hope would they have against billions of dollars' worth of tanks, drones, bombs, missiles, and god knows what else at their disposal? As a socialist, it's one of the big thorns in my side thinking about just how bad the odds are of abolishing capitalism in a country where anti-socialism and anti-communism is baked into every facet of our national DNA

    between late capitalism and climate change, I think it is faulty to assume the US' wealth can be put in the way of socialism indefinitely. one way or another, we are going to see radical restructuring of wealth over the coming century, as the failures of capitalism start to reap what they've sown. there are also a lot of valid questions about how willing the military will be to use bombs, missiles, and drones on the American public. cuz they're not UNwilling, but that doesn't mean they're INFINITELY willing.

    (yes, I have been watching Sophie's video about climate change: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DalnJ-isI5A )

  56. Natalie Wynn just put out an 80 minute of retrospective of GamerGate on her Patreon. Your name comes up a few times and I'd love to know your thoughts on her take if you have access to it.

    I do not have access to that at present, I'm afraid

  57. I would HIGHLY recommend reading Black Shirts and Reds! It is one of the best critiques of the USSR and most importantly, its a critique from a Marxist perspective. It really helped me better understand what material realities led to its formulation and eventual collapse. He does a really good job of both critiquing the USSR, explaining the ways in which it failed, AND defending it from the kinds of critiques that even many socialists take for granted. If you're interested in the history of the USSR, I would definitely give it a look! He also has a lot of great speeches that are on YouTube!

    in response to Have you heard of Michael Parenti?

    I'll put it on the list!

  58. Would you say any socialist revolutions have led to governments that were MORE authoritarian than what came before? For instance, the USSR had many heavy handed and repressive policies BUT if you compare it to what came before (and after) it had also made many improvements in its democracy. I'm not saying it was a beacon of democracy by any means. But, it was still far more democratic than Tsarist Russia. Hell, I'd go as far to say it was more democratic than its main adversary at the time, the USA.

    So, if say the US were to have a socialist revolution, does it seem likely that it would lead to a government that is worse than what we have now? I'm also curious what you would say is an example of a successful socialist revolution that didn't go that way. Cuba? Vietnam?

    in response to Why socailism always leads to a dictoatorship?

    personally, I don't see the value in discussing DEGREES of authoritarianism. the USSR may well have been less hierarchical than Tsarist Russia, but, like... I wouldn't go to all the trouble of overthrowing a fucking government, with all the strife and bloodshed that entails, just to get a moderately less brutal government. I'm in this to ABOLISH hierarchical power!

    I have a whole series I wanna do looking at different revolutionary action to see how they took power and what structures they built. til then, I can't speak with much confidence on Cuba, Vietnam, or Laos. but they're not the places I'm looking at with the most interest; that would be the Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities in Mexico, the Korean People's Association in Manchuria, and Burkina Faso. (and, yeah, I'm a basic bitch, but the Paris Commune.)

  59. Given that the conditions both Occupy and BLM sought to address are WORSE now than they were before and both of the movements have pretty much fizzled out, couldn't one make the argument that those movements themselves quelled the American proletariat? We all went out to march and fight. Two of the largest movements of civil unrest, and what happened? The orchestrators of the 2008 financial crash got cushy government jobs and the police keep getting more and more funding and resources. As impressive as these movements are, if we're being honest with ourselves, can we say they had the lasting effect we wanted? It seems like the biggest lasting effect has been a lot of good people exhausting their energy. I agree with you that the energy is there, but it's being dissipated into protests that have very little to show for themselves.

    in response to Would voting in social democrats and democratic socialists quell the American proletariat and make a revolution that could meaningfully change the system less likely? Under the current system which has been designed by the Bourgeoisie to cater to their interests, leftists in government can only make concessions to the working class; concessions that can easily be taken away, such as in the case of Roe v. Wade and the gutting of the Voting Rights act. I believe only a proletarian revolution can radically change the problematic constitutional principles that are deeply rooted in American society, such as the right to private property.

    that's a weird thing to say during the greatest period of unionization and labor strikes in 50 years. we tried peaceful protest and it didn't yield results; people didn't get exhausted, they radicalized further, and now we're hitting capitalism in its wallet.

    and the level of open discussion about sabotage and civil disobedience is greater than I've ever seen, and the lack of empathy for the wealthy and ruling classes (laughter at the Mitch Glitches and the billionaire submersible) is POINTED, so we can hypothesize where things will go if strikes don't work.

    (also, point of clarification: BLM has in no sense "fizzled out," it's just not trending in the news anymore.)

  61. We wanna get your opinions re: Vaush in the public record in case we need receipts to cancel you.

    his beard is good

  62. If Trotsky was really assassinated by the NKVD on Stalin's orders, why did the assassin use a goddamn pickaxe instead of, oh I don't know, a GUN OR A KNIFE????

    it was a mountain climbing axe

  63. this is a misreading of democratic socialism in modern practice, which boils down to "whatever socialists are doing right now plus some". it's a contested term with no coherent ideological meaning because it simply describes the contemporary American socialist movement, which is incredibly diverse. this is a good thing.

    in response to (diff anon) What are the differences between democratic socialism and social democracy?

    mm, I don't mean to imply that "democratic socialism" still refers to Menshevik-style workers councils, but I think most beliefs falling under the demsoc umbrella would fit the definition of "foregrounding democracy, not Marxist-Leninism"

  64. Why do people want to defund The Police? Don't they make great music?

    white reggae?

  65. (different different anon)
    Also, most of those problems *are* inherent to cryptocurrency, as part of how they chose to solve the problems they've set themselves. If you want to create a distributed and permissionless blockchain, you need a way to protect against somebody gaming the consensus method by saying "Me and my 5 zillion sock puppets say I get all the tokens". The way cryptocurrencies do that is by attaching a monetary cost to voting, and offering tokens to people who cast the winning vote. That might be proof of work, AKA proof of willingness to burn a shitload of electricity; proof of time and space, AKA proof of willingness to grind through hard drives; or proof of stake, AKA proof of having a lot of money already.
    A system which rewards people who already have money is an inherent and necessary part of cryptocurrency.

    in response to (different anon) Are those problems really inherent to crypto? I've always had the sense that most of "crypto bad" comes from the baggage the silicon valley grifters have saddled it with. I mean, the energy cost is a real thing, but I know there are also far more energy efficient ways of doing it (like orders of magnitude). The original pitch that roped a lot of people in was a decentralized digital currency, and that still seems like it's worth at least examining to me. Or maybe commodifying everything was always going to be the conclusion and they got me. I don't know. It just sucks that every time we get a new technology that enters the discourse, even the word we use to refer to it (see also: "AI") rapidly becomes indistinguishable from horrible techbro scams and it becomes impossible to talk about potential non-shitty uses for it.

  66. (diff anon) What are the differences between democratic socialism and social democracy?

    in response to Why does "Democratic socialism" imply that all other forms of socialism aren’t democratic? Isn’t socialism democratic by its nature?

    those terms have wiggled around a bit over the last century, but here's a rough outline:

    democratic socialism intends to overthrow and replace capitalism, giving workers complete control of the means of production, be it through reform or revolution. it is distinct from Marxist-Leninist socialism in that it foregrounds democratic governance over centralized, hierarchical states.

    social democracy has come to mean a kind of compromise between socialism and capitalism. the primary referent is "the Nordic Model," a form of heavily regulated and mass-unionized capitalism. this stems from a period of mass socialist uprisings and general strikes in Northern Europe which came close to overthrowing capitalism entirely. it resulted in what's called "The Great Compromise," where capitalism was allowed to stay but with HUGE concessions made to the socialists. the countries practicing social democracy tend to have active socialist parties who are represented in their governments, but the countries themselves still practice capitalism.

    where exactly the line is between social democracy and regular liberal capitalism is unclear, at least to me. Europe on the whole has a much more regulated and unionized capitalism than the US, and even the US after the New Deal was pretty different from modern neoliberalism. do they qualify as social democracy? or is the Nordic Model categorically different? I'm not sure.

    but the short version is: social democracy is a version of capitalism that makes heavy concessions to socialism, where democratic socialism fully replaces capitalism.

  67. Why does "Democratic socialism" imply that all other forms of socialism aren’t democratic? Isn’t socialism democratic by its nature?

    in response to Once, but I wasn't that invested in it, nor was I even brought up in a very pious household. My life feels empty and without meaning, so I'm wondering if Christianity could and should try to fill in that gap.

    I was just reading about Trotsky, so I actually have relevant information on hand!

    basically, in the broadest sense, all socialism needs to be is anti-capitalist. "the workers shall control the means of production" has been interpreted a lot of different ways throughout history. this was part of the divide between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in Russia leading up to the revolution: the Mensheviks wanted a pluralistic socialism, one that allowed many different types of socialists to work as groups and then the groups could come together to work collectively as needed. the Bolsheviks, instead, wanted a hierarchical and ideologically pure socialism, where only ONE type of socialism was instituted and a centralized state was charged with enforcing it. when it came to revolutionary action, the Mensheviks were fairly conciliatory with the existing government, trying to reach agreements with the middle classes rather than incite the workers, and having a weird amount of patriotism for the government they ostensibly wanted to replace. the Bolsheviks were the explicitly revolutionary party, unwilling to make compromises with the capitalists. in the end, the Bolsheviks are the ones who took power in the revolution, and their centralized, hierarchical system is the one that got instituted.

    then, after Lenin died, Stalin took over, exiled or executed everyone who opposed him, and consolidated the state even more, naming his *highly* centralized version of communism "Marxist-Leninism."

    this caused a divide among socialists worldwide, where those who supported the centralized, authoritative socialism of Stalin adopting the Marxist-Leninist label, while those who sought to differentiate themselves from it and support a lateral, workers council, Menshevik-style socialism using the term "democratic socialism," to stress that their version of socialism would NOT be hierarchical or authoritarian.

    this inevitably leads to arguments about how democratic vs. dictatorial Stalinist Russia was, with pro- and anti-Stalin propaganda coloring perceptions on both sides of the argument. I haven't read enough about Stalin to make a judgment on whether his government was a heavily centralized democracy or a full-on dictatorship, so I won't weigh in. but, even in the most generous reading, I do not find Marxist-Leninism democratic *enough*, and my socialism will always run non-hierarchical.

  69. What makes a baby a baby? Why is dog dog?

    a baby is a baby because when you say "stop that" they say "but I'm baby!" and dog is dog because wtf else would it be

  70. do they feel nice

    in response to do you like boobies

  71. (Different anon) I think this is the first time I've seen you mention Team Fortress 2! Anyway what's your favorite hat

    in response to (different anon) Are those problems really inherent to crypto? I've always had the sense that most of "crypto bad" comes from the baggage the silicon valley grifters have saddled it with. I mean, the energy cost is a real thing, but I know there are also far more energy efficient ways of doing it (like orders of magnitude). The original pitch that roped a lot of people in was a decentralized digital currency, and that still seems like it's worth at least examining to me. Or maybe commodifying everything was always going to be the conclusion and they got me. I don't know. It just sucks that every time we get a new technology that enters the discourse, even the word we use to refer to it (see also: "AI") rapidly becomes indistinguishable from horrible techbro scams and it becomes impossible to talk about potential non-shitty uses for it.

    I don't play it, sorry. :(

    I heard about the hat economy on Idle Thumbs.

  72. Umurangi Generation?

    I appreciate it conceptually. maybe I'm just an unobservant dingbat, but scrounging around for the photo subjects always took me forever and made the experience tedious, so I washed out of the game early. similar thing happened with Hypnospace Outlaw. I guess I'm bad at "spot the thingy" games?

  73. Just want to know what you think about Vaush and if his opinions matter to you.

    in response to Are you OK with that? (Different anon again)

    I get more questions about my opinion on Vaush than any other single person, I think. people seem particularly invested in me having one and it being public record.

  74. If Line goes up=Economy Good and Line goes down=Economy bad, then what if Line goes *back*? Line crosses itself or somesuch?

    I'm VERY curious about your x-axis

  75. What is the place of dark humor in an ethical society, if any at all?

    it can be a relief to laugh at bad things that affect you, and to laugh with people who suffer the same problems

Anon commented:
Ian replied: