CuriousCat Archive Page 61 of 202

  1. I’ve never felt so baited before but

    You can’t be serious, right? You’re not thinking of the Black Mesa one? You really think gonarchs lair is the best chapter in vanilla half life?

    in response to What's the best Half-Life chapter?

    just barely edges out On A Rail

  2. Are you an anarchist?

    not yet

  3. Do you like watching sports live in-person?

    sometimes! I can get into basketball or roller derby live. mostly unmoved by football and baseball. don't know that I've seen much else in person.

  4. How long did your last video take to create?

    that's really hard to answer! most of the production proper happened between June and October 2022, but I started writing it in spring 2020, right after I Hate Mondays went up, and very little of what was written in 2020 made it to the finished script. between then and now there was a pandemic, a back injury, a case of COVID, and an ADHD diagnosis. there were stretches where I was doing very little work on it but Mike - the animator who did character art for me while I was laid up with sciatica - was working consistently. and there were stretches where my work was paused but my sensitivity reader, Isabelle, was going over and annotating the script. this is the hardest video to pin down what work was happening when and by whom.

    I can say it took somewhere between 4 months and 2.5 years.

  5. What's the best Half-Life chapter?

    I'm going to choose violence and say gonarch's lair

  6. Let me ask you this: do the UK and Nordic countries have universal health care? What about gun control? Provisions for the poor? And have they had such for the better part of a century?

    If so, then they're objectively doing a better, more ethical job at governing than we are.

    in response to That "constant vigilance" version of liberal capitalism isnt some vague belief of mine; there's a name for it. It's social democracy. Its the Nordic model. And it's as close as we've ever come to a government exhibiting the vigilance necessary to keep the powerful in check. And that's not a fantasy. It works. It's worked in much of Europe for decades. Maybe not as well as it could (or should), but a hell of a lot better than the unchecked late-stage capitalist dystopia we have in the states.

    no one is disputing whether they're doing better than US, the question is whether they're the best we can do

  7. "leftists put up the greatest fight against fascists" Why did the commies side with the nazis in 1939?

    which commies are you referring to, the German communist party that were the first antifa and that Hitler sent to Dachau, or the Soviets who later disbanded the alliance and lost 9 million soldiers fighting fascism?

  8. So, far, how well are you understanding the plot of "Dark"?

    Pretty well! The only place I get mixed up is remembering who's who. The only character whose young version looks like his adult version is Ulrich.

  9. World War II ended 77 years ago; you can't blame modern social democrats for Hitler's rise to power any more than you can blame modern Germans.

    in response to That "constant vigilance" version of liberal capitalism isnt some vague belief of mine; there's a name for it. It's social democracy. Its the Nordic model. And it's as close as we've ever come to a government exhibiting the vigilance necessary to keep the powerful in check. And that's not a fantasy. It works. It's worked in much of Europe for decades. Maybe not as well as it could (or should), but a hell of a lot better than the unchecked late-stage capitalist dystopia we have in the states.

    Sure, I can agree to those terms if y'all agree not to bring up Stalin in your dismissal of communism, being that he died 69 years ago.

  10. That "constant vigilance" version of liberal capitalism isnt some vague belief of mine; there's a name for it. It's social democracy. Its the Nordic model. And it's as close as we've ever come to a government exhibiting the vigilance necessary to keep the powerful in check. And that's not a fantasy. It works. It's worked in much of Europe for decades. Maybe not as well as it could (or should), but a hell of a lot better than the unchecked late-stage capitalist dystopia we have in the states.

    in response to I see in you the same unearned confidence in socialism and "smash the state" politics that you see in my view of human nature. How do you expect to have a functioning society without *some* sort of hierarchy of power? What form of government is set up in such a way to make it impossible for anyone to amass enough power to exploit others? Because let me tell you, it isn't socialism. The number of nominally "socialist" dictatorships is proof of that.

    we're talking in circles now. by your own admission, it is only spottily effective in Europe. you're also kinda dodging around the whole "social democrats were the ones who let Hitler rise to power," which is about as great a failure as can be imagined. historically, leftists put up the greatest fight against fascists. historically, social democrats pop into being when there is public support for leftism and someone wants to find a compromise that doesn't entirely give capitalism up. historically, fascists also pop up in response to leftist mobilization, and tend to achieve power one of two ways: either the social democrats refuse to ally with leftists against them and there isn't enough resistance to stop the fascists... or the social democrats ally with the fascists against the leftists. meanwhile countries like France, where fascism was actually stopped in its nascent form, only did so because leftist groups came to power and actually fought against fascism.

    so forgive me if I don't see social democracy as some grand safeguard against tyranny.

  11. I never said I was against a world without a pointed to our head. But when there’s a gun pointed at your head, getting the gun away from your head supersedes everything else, including preventing them from pointing the gun to your head in the future.

    in response to When world leaders have a gun to your head, saying that there shouldn’t be world leaders is not likely to get them to move the gun.

    yes. we agree. as I say, "survival pending revolution."

    but this is a thread in which I've been saying "it is bad that there is a gun to our head we should figure out how to make there not be one" and keep getting "we can manage the gun with constant vigilance" or "there has always been a gun to our head" in response.

  12. Thoughts on Alexander Dubcek's reformation of the Czech Republic and the subsequent violent response from the USSR?

    in response to I see in you the same unearned confidence in socialism and "smash the state" politics that you see in my view of human nature. How do you expect to have a functioning society without *some* sort of hierarchy of power? What form of government is set up in such a way to make it impossible for anyone to amass enough power to exploit others? Because let me tell you, it isn't socialism. The number of nominally "socialist" dictatorships is proof of that.

    I only know the barest bit about the Prague Spring but I'm not hype about what the Warsaw Pact did! kinda hard to believe the Marxist-Leninist argument that consolidating power into an authoritarian state is just a "necessary stage" towards collective ownership if, when a country tries to move on to that stage, they violently suppress it with the largest military action in Europe since WWII.

    this is why we hate tankies.

  14. Best tips on sticking to an exercise routine?

    I got a trainer. that's an expensive option, but it's the first thing that worked. maybe get a gym buddy who is more reliable than you are?

  15. Do you like being hurt?

    I still use this website, so apparently

  16. I see in you the same unearned confidence in socialism and "smash the state" politics that you see in my view of human nature. How do you expect to have a functioning society without *some* sort of hierarchy of power? What form of government is set up in such a way to make it impossible for anyone to amass enough power to exploit others? Because let me tell you, it isn't socialism. The number of nominally "socialist" dictatorships is proof of that.

    in response to The world outside your window should be all the proof you need. We're on the verge of World War III, for God's sake. A *nuclear* war. All thanks to the greed and entitlement of yet another tyrant with too much power. And the only way to stop it is the application of force. Whether you think power corrupts or reveals, somehow the powerful always end up needing to be reined in from indulging their worst impulses. And when they're not reined in? That's how we got to this point. Can you think of *one* world leader who hasn't used their position to enrich themselves? Whether their government they supposedly represented was capitalist, socialist, communist or anything else? I don't think you can.

    if you can believe in a functional "constant vigilance" version of liberal capitalism despite capitalism existing for hundreds of years in hundreds of countries and only rarely approximating the thing you believe in, I can believe in a non-authoritarian version of socialism given it's only been tried a dozen or so times and several were promising before the US overthrew their governments

  17. Ah yes, for as we all know, hierarchical power structures were introduced to human being by aliens from the sky. :^)

    in response to The world outside your window should be all the proof you need. We're on the verge of World War III, for God's sake. A *nuclear* war. All thanks to the greed and entitlement of yet another tyrant with too much power. And the only way to stop it is the application of force. Whether you think power corrupts or reveals, somehow the powerful always end up needing to be reined in from indulging their worst impulses. And when they're not reined in? That's how we got to this point. Can you think of *one* world leader who hasn't used their position to enrich themselves? Whether their government they supposedly represented was capitalist, socialist, communist or anything else? I don't think you can.

    if you're gonna bring up the long history of societal structures going back to the paleolithic age, they're not gonna help your argument, compadre

  18. When world leaders have a gun to your head, saying that there shouldn’t be world leaders is not likely to get them to move the gun.

    in response to The world outside your window should be all the proof you need. We're on the verge of World War III, for God's sake. A *nuclear* war. All thanks to the greed and entitlement of yet another tyrant with too much power. And the only way to stop it is the application of force. Whether you think power corrupts or reveals, somehow the powerful always end up needing to be reined in from indulging their worst impulses. And when they're not reined in? That's how we got to this point. Can you think of *one* world leader who hasn't used their position to enrich themselves? Whether their government they supposedly represented was capitalist, socialist, communist or anything else? I don't think you can.

    obviously, but we can both agree it would be preferable to have a world where no one is pointing a gun to your head, yes? like, we're on the same page in regards to "I would prefer to not spend my life with a gun to my head, that is not an ideal state of being to remain in"? that "I guess I'll just do what the guy with the gun says forever" is a suboptimal solution?

  19. The world outside your window should be all the proof you need. We're on the verge of World War III, for God's sake. A *nuclear* war. All thanks to the greed and entitlement of yet another tyrant with too much power. And the only way to stop it is the application of force. Whether you think power corrupts or reveals, somehow the powerful always end up needing to be reined in from indulging their worst impulses. And when they're not reined in? That's how we got to this point. Can you think of *one* world leader who hasn't used their position to enrich themselves? Whether their government they supposedly represented was capitalist, socialist, communist or anything else? I don't think you can.

    in response to But the facts underlying that history are incontrovertible.

    the fact that you see the evils of world leaders and blame human nature instead of hierarchical power structures saddens me.

    there shouldn't be world leaders. there should be distributed power structures that make it hard for any individual to amass enough power to exploit others. this is why I'm a democratic socialist. this is why I get along with anarchists. this is why I am warm to the ideas of police abolition, of currency abolition. I want to smash the very power structures you are criticizing.

    the fact that you see them and say "guess we'll just deal with that forever" is what I find so shortsighted.

  20. Do you wanna bet who will start a nuclear warfare first, given the current situation?

    are you a bookie?

  21. Why undeserving? Isn't everyone deserving of that?

    in response to How lucky do you feel to be a cis-het non-disabled white man? That's like pulling a royal flush! I have all of those except one. I'm a light-skinned Latinx person who might be white-passing depending on who you ask. I'm super jelly of y'all.

    I guess I'll clarify: in a world where not everyone has it, I haven't earned the right to be someone who does

    but yes the goal is that everyone have to same rights as the most privileged (except, of course, the right to power over others)

  22. Well, have you asked capitalism to describe capitalists?

    in response to Can't ask water to describe fish either

    capitalism is like veganism: you don't need to ask, they'll tell you

  23. Have you ever sent yourself a question here?

    one time I had an answer that exceeded the character limit so I sent myself a reply and finished my thought

  24. People talk about tiktok censoring kids language, what shit did that when you were a child

    ...my parents

  26. Do you think you'll ever do a video on neurodivergence? I love your videos of the alt-right playbook, but feels odd you never really mentioned in the "radicalising a normie" how much it seems Autistic guys are vulnerable to being radicalised by the alt-right

    none of my research has implied that, and, regardless, an allistic person should not make that video

  28. Do you think people like Ben Shapiro or Jordan Peterson could ever be won over to the left? I'm not implying that it would be plausible or a good idea (our energy needs to go elsewhere), I'm just wondering if it would be possible.

    Anything is possible, but I'd give it pretty long odds.

  29. How much of your Daria video was your own personal nostalgia trip during quarantine hell?

    Not much, given it was largely about how the 90's weren't that great when you get down to it

  30. Were you ever targeted by KiwiFarms when it was active?

    They had a thread on me, but no coordinated harassment campaign.

  32. Things can get better, sure. But only by preventing those who would exploit the system for personal gain from doing so, through strict regulation and constant vigilance. All I'm saying is the system being exploited is next to irrelevant.

    in response to "Another world is possible"? Almost sounds like religious doctrine to me. Might as well be singing about the "sweet by and by". Because the differences between feudalism and capitalism, for the oppressed, are superficial at best. And you can be sure that, whatever the "next thing" is, those with power will find a way to exploit those without.

    there's no possible way for you to know that with the confidence you have

  33. Your thoughts on the Bob's Burgers movie?

    best episode of the show in a long time!

  34. You seem to focus a lot on American politics (which makes sense given your situation), but why not also comment on the European/Asian/African side of things?

    I started The Alt-Right Playbook to try and understand how the US got to where it is, in the hopes of figuring out what can be done about it. part of my project has been trying to narrow my focus enough that I can delve deeply into it. so: focusing on the rhetoric and political strategies of the Far Right, and limiting the scope to the US. this has already proved substantive enough to keep me going for YEARS. I have an idea for a series on leftist societies throughout history, and a series looking at issues like sexual assault statistics or women in video games and examines their entire cultural context, both of which would take a more global lens while still keeping the focus narrow enough that my single human brain can actually understand it. we'll see whether I get to either of those once TARPB is finished.

  35. Why do people want Trump in prison? Shouldn’t he get court mandated therapy instead?

    I mean, if we wanna be prison abolitionists about it, sure. but the idea that a rich white man can commit sedition and get therapy while Black citizens are getting sent away for years for selling weed or getting shot at traffic stops is...

  36. What do you think about the claim that Mussolini was a socialist before becoming a fascist? If it's true, why did he leave socialism and turn against it?

    Mussolini's stabs at leftism were not particularly convincing. he seemed to follow whatever rhetoric he thought could lead him to power. when socialism was on the ascendant, he claimed socialism. when he didn't see any success with that, he tried to fuse socialism with nationalism and bigotry, in a sort of third-position fusion of socialism and conservatism. as soon as he found purchase with the Right, the socialist rhetoric quickly sheered off. fascists are "whatever puts us in power"-ists, after all.

  37. How lucky do you feel to be a cis-het non-disabled white man? That's like pulling a royal flush! I have all of those except one. I'm a light-skinned Latinx person who might be white-passing depending on who you ask. I'm super jelly of y'all.

    very lucky and undeserving

  38. you tried prodeus yet?

    I was a Kickstarter backer, I've been playing Prodeus this whole time! haven't played the new stuff since they released the 1.0, was busy making a video.

  39. (different anon) What does "survival pending revolution" mean in layman's terms?

    in response to What do we do in the short term? I don’t reject the idea of ending the profit motive or currency, but most of us in the west have no experience with anything resembling such a society. You can’t just ban currency and profit motive, especially not if you don’t know what would replace them. In the meantime, people need food, clothing, and shelter NOW. Fighting for more limited but more specific actions to deal with lack of those things as well as other harms of capitalism seems to be more helpful to me. Discussing and debating more radical changes to society can be done at the same time.

    our goal is to replace capitalism. but, until we can do that, we have to survive under capitalism. this often means working with liberal capitalists who are less viciously evil than the other capitalists. it means buying goods needed for our health and safety even when we know they were produced with exploitation. it means using certain tools knowing there is blood on them. some leftists are very hardline about refusing to make concessions to capitalism - though obviously they are making concessions because you can't feed yourself without participating in capitalism - but that's unworkable. treating symptoms will not cure the disease, but you also can't cure the disease by *leaving the symptoms untreated and letting the disease kill you*.

  40. does curiouscat really not have a search function so i can't search through your literally ten thousand plus answers to see if my questions have been answered

    N O P E

  41. I'd caution against taking the word of anyone living in a dictatorship at face value regarding what they think of their government.

    in response to "Cubans are happy" lol walk around Miami and ask some actual Cubans what they think of Cuba, whether they'd want to go back. If I were you I'd try arguing that communist nations fail because of sanctions and international intervention

    agreed but I'd say the same about people living under capitalism

    you can't ask a fish to describe water

  42. Mostly certain raw materials that are used to make high tech devices. These include metals such as cerium, dysprosium, praseodymium, lithium, niobium and others. None are very common and some only have a few known deposits on earth.

    in response to That is true, but definitely not all of it.

    which devices do they produce?

  43. Energy. This includes the raw materials to make solar panels. They contain many rare metals.

    in response to That is true, but definitely not all of it.

    how rare

  44. "Another world is possible"? Almost sounds like religious doctrine to me. Might as well be singing about the "sweet by and by". Because the differences between feudalism and capitalism, for the oppressed, are superficial at best. And you can be sure that, whatever the "next thing" is, those with power will find a way to exploit those without.

    in response to All of my friends, who are mostly center left to middle left, always ask me why we should get rid of capitalism if its the only successful economic system today, so how do I respond to that?

    "nothing can ever get better" sounds pretty religious as well friendo. "we are all born into sin."

  45. Want to add to this that the government in the UK has just cut taxes, mostly on the rich, and the markets responded basically by plummeting even faster than they have been anyway, the system in this case is CURRENTLY failing anyone but the very richest and nobody is saying "oh hey maybe those social democrats saying growth was impossible to chase in the long term a few years ago had a point" or "this shows that capitalism is a failure" the reaction has been "Tuss made a mistake" because she did the thing the next leader ii's going to continue with anyway

    in response to All of my friends, who are mostly center left to middle left, always ask me why we should get rid of capitalism if its the only successful economic system today, so how do I respond to that?

    here in the states the guy who did that was named Reagan and instead of saying he made a mistake we enshrined his economic policies for the next 40 years

  46. Have you ever been catcalled?

    in my early twenties when I was skinny and dressed like an art student, some dude at a farmer's market started talking about fucking me til I turned around and he realized I was a guy. it's the only time I've ever been catcalled.

  48. (Different anon) So if capitalism gets replaced by socialism or communism, does that mean that the economic model that replaced capitalism might get replaced by another system in the future?

    in response to All of my friends, who are mostly center left to middle left, always ask me why we should get rid of capitalism if its the only successful economic system today, so how do I respond to that?

    that's core to the Marxist dialectic: socialism addresses the internal contradictions of capitalism in the same way capitalism addressed the internal contradictions of feudalism. Marx believed every system, once implemented, would invariably reveal its own contradictions and need to be replaced by the next thing.

  49. What astronomical feat do want to see in your lifetime?

    humans landing on Mars. I would like to see direct imaging of an exoplanet, but I don't know if that's physically possible.

  50. "Cubans are happy" lol walk around Miami and ask some actual Cubans what they think of Cuba, whether they'd want to go back.

    If I were you I'd try arguing that communist nations fail because of sanctions and international intervention

    in response to All of my friends, who are mostly center left to middle left, always ask me why we should get rid of capitalism if its the only successful economic system today, so how do I respond to that?

    maybe ask a person who lives in Cuba

  51. [citation needed]

    in response to We'd need to be close to or in a post-scarcity society to eliminate the need for currency.

    there are more houses than people in this country yet there is homelessness

    we grow enough food to feed a nation bigger than ours but people go hungry

    during the depths of the pandemic suppliers literally threw away COVID tests when demand went down which is why supplies were low when the next wave hit, which cost lives

    capitalism invents scarcity because there is no profit unless you limit supply. why do you think capitalists have such hard-ons for NFTs? they took something infinitely reproducible - fuckin JPEGs - and imposed a form of scarcity on it, and that's how they created a market.

  52. Was George Orwell an anti-communist hack?

    George Orwell was a socialist. George Orwell literally fought alongside the anarcho-communists in the Spanish Civil War against Franco. he took a bullet in the throat for socialism.

    it seems I have to keep saying this to people.

  53. You ever consider joining a circus?

    I used to be pretty flexible and wondered if I could train as a contortionist. but now I'm old and my hamstrings are tight.

  54. We'd need to be close to or in a post-scarcity society to eliminate the need for currency.

    in response to OK, now what is socialism?

    most scarcity is invented by capitalism

  55. badger badger badger badger badger badger

    mushROOM mushROOM

  56. All of my friends, who are mostly center left to middle left, always ask me why we should get rid of capitalism if its the only successful economic system today, so how do I respond to that?

    I mean, we can argue with the factual basis of that all we want. (what definition of "capitalist" are they using, and does it include China, and why? what constitutes "success"? capitalism usually considers "success" wealth, but that's explicitly not a goal of socialism; is Cuba having very high health and happiness among its citizens not also a measure of success, and if not, why not? when the USSR's economy collapsed, we call that a failure of communism; when a capitalist nation's economy collapses, is that a failure of capitalism? most capitalist nations have had at least one major economic collapse akin to that of the USSR's, it's just that they get rebuilt as *another* capitalist economy, so capitalists consider them continuous. but capitalism fails *all the time* in exactly the way the USSR failed, and we just keep with it and waiting for it fail some more. never mind that most communist nations "fail" because they get overthrown by the US.)

    and if you want to argue a lot, you can get into that, and maybe, in time, they'll start thinking differently. but maybe ask them this instead:

    whether or not capitalism is "successful," is it the end of the story? do we believe it is the best of all possible societies? don't we have problems it's had trouble addressing? is it so hard to imagine that we could do more?

    this is why leftists say "another world is possible." we have to first believe that we could have something better than what we have, and that problems we see in every capitalist society (e.g. poverty) are not necessary parts of life but symptoms of the economic system we have chosen. capitalism tells us that humanity grew and evolved different societies throughout history, but once it hit capitalism, it just... stopped. the end of history. nothing left to try. and it'll be hard to get anywhere if they can't consider that capitalism could just be a waystation on the way to the next thing.

  57. What do we do in the short term?

    I don’t reject the idea of ending the profit motive or currency, but most of us in the west have no experience with anything resembling such a society. You can’t just ban currency and profit motive, especially not if you don’t know what would replace them. In the meantime, people need food, clothing, and shelter NOW. Fighting for more limited but more specific actions to deal with lack of those things as well as other harms of capitalism seems to be more helpful to me. Discussing and debating more radical changes to society can be done at the same time.

    in response to OK, now what is socialism?

    no disagreement there. I believe very strongly in "survival pending revolution."

  58. FYI, “Latin American” is also gender-neutral.

    in response to I appreciate and support the use of latine (as a latine person, it is my neuter of choice) but it tickles me that you pronounced it as latiné and not latíne haha Specially seeing that latino/a is a paroxytone in english and spanish (and portuguese). Any reason for that?

    "Latin-American" means people from Latin America, the way "Cuban" means a person from Cuba. if a person of Cuban heritage is born and raised in the US, we call them "Cuban-American." but we don't use the term "Latin-American-American" for obvious reasons; the word for a person with Latin-American heritage but who is born and raised in the US is "Latino/a," which is gendered. so, "Latine."

  59. Did they intend to invent capitalism, or did them accepting rent in cash just sort of metastasize on its own to become capitalism?

    in response to is the atlantic slave trade responsible for capitalism?

    they did not intend it, no, it was a circumstantial thing. once it caught on, though, it was forced on many people by governments.

  60. Ok, now who is Mario?

    in response to OK, now what is socialism?

    he drives the car well

  61. (Diffrent anon) Wikipedia says you're right, but I do have a question: Why don't we call the manifold privileges of nobles etc. in feudal societes in history a form of classism?

    Marx at least talks about classes before capitalism in the Manifesto, e.g.: "In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.".
    Why do we have classes in these times but not classism? Honest question btw, I don't know a lot about the concept

    in response to Your latest video included a quote from Samuel R. Delaney about how he thinks misogyny is the oldest bigotry, on which all other forms of oppression are based. Why is misogyny the oldest oppression?

    mainly just that the term "classism" as it is used today refers to oppression based on how much capital a person possesses. we could use it in the more general sense to refer to any caste system, and that's kinda valid, but all it does is make the word less specific. it doesn't really illuminate anything new - we already know feudalism was oppressive.

    I don't personally jive with Marx's idea that all of history is the history of class struggle. it's reductive, and feels like he was pushing it to make a point.

  62. OK, now what is socialism?

    in response to What even is Capitalism

    there are varying opinions on how socialism should be implemented, but a notion central to all of them is that privatization would largely cease to exist. all means of production would be owned by the workers who use them. in some models, private business still exists in certain markets, but it goes back to the pre-capitalist norm of markets being isolated from one another.

    my personal preference would be ending the profit motive as well, and I've been getting warmer on the idea of abolishing currency altogether.

  63. I appreciate and support the use of latine (as a latine person, it is my neuter of choice) but it tickles me that you pronounced it as latiné and not latíne haha Specially seeing that latino/a is a paroxytone in english and spanish (and portuguese). Any reason for that?

    the reason for that is I am a silly gringo

  64. How many of them made their money in the slave trade?

    in response to is the atlantic slave trade responsible for capitalism?

    they didn't. they made their money being landlords. but circumstances led them to primarily accept cash rents instead of the usual feudal system of tenants working the land and paying the landowner with a mix of goods, labor, and cash. accepting exclusively cash meant tenants had to trade their labor in the market for cash instead of just working the land. circumstances compelled what we now call capitalist behavior, and spread outward from there.

    but it hit the slave trade same as it hit every other industry.

  66. Opposite of Pronoun?

    antinoun

    if they touch language explodes

  67. Your latest video included a quote from Samuel R. Delaney about how he thinks misogyny is the oldest bigotry, on which all other forms of oppression are based. Why is misogyny the oldest oppression?

    I think because most of the means of oppression we have now are recent inventions or could only come about at a certain stage of history. to have classism, you must first invent capitalism. to have racism, you must first invent race theory. to have homophobia, you must first invent heteronormativity. none of these things have existed forever. but before any of them, we had sexism. all you need for sexism is a man and a woman.

  69. What even is Capitalism

    in response to Was capitalism responsible for or complicit in the Atlantic slave trade?

    capitalism is a privatized, profit-driven, totalizing market economy.

    the pillars of capitalism are:

    - most of the things that people want or require, even the barest necessities like food and shelter, must be purchased in a market

    - in order to get money necessary to purchase basic needs, the large majority of people must trade their labor for a wage (indeed, since most necessities must be bought in the first place, labor is one of the only commodities people have to trade that they don't first have to buy). this means, quite literally, that, except for the independently wealthy, people either work or they die.

    - the reason basic needs must be purchased is because most goods, services, and means of production are privately owned, meaning they are not owned by individuals (like a toothbrush or car) or by the state (like a national park or a space station) but by a third pillar of society: the private business. the average person cannot simply sleep in an empty field, move into a vacant house, drink water from a spring, because all of those things - land, buildings, water sources - are *owned*, and the owners charge for access.

    - the goal of businesses is to make profit, *not* to provide goods and services. goods and services are the means by which profit is made. it is not the goal of a restaurant to make sure the community is fed, it is to make a profit off the ones who can afford to eat at the restaurant.

    - profit is the money left over after a business clears expenses. workers' wages are one of the expenses.

    - businesses are in competition with other similar businesses. this means the market is always in flux, as customers may at any time take their money from one business to a competitor. because businesses are competing for a finite amount of money held by a finite number of customers, they must always be looking for an edge over the competition. it is very rare for a business to maintain at a certain level; a business is either growing or shrinking, because ANY business in a market growing cuts into the potential profits of the others. this is why businesses cannot seek stasis, but instead must seek profit.

    - because the overwhelming majority of life involves economic exchange, all markets are, to some degree, interconnected. the price of oil affects the price of gas affects the automotive industry affects the tourism trade and so on and so on. all markets are part of The Market.

  70. do you know of any good resources that digs into the lantine/latinx/hispanic discussion

    nope, my resources were talking to several Latin(o/a/x/e) people

  71. The Atlantic slave trade ended in the 19th century. Capitalism began in the 18th century at the latest. Did capitalism become integrated with the ongoing slave trade in some form?

    in response to Was capitalism responsible for or complicit in the Atlantic slave trade?

    capitalism got integrated with ALL forms of commerce. that's what capitalism does. all markets become part of The Market.

  72. Did you intend to upload your video the same week as Folding Ideas

    it's the end of the month, that's when everyone uploads. I dunno Dan-O's schedule.

  73. Do you see yourself as having drifted more to the left as you've gotten older, or do you have any beliefs that have become more moderate or "centrist" over time?

    oh I've been drifting lefter and lefter for years

  74. Can you do my math homework for me?

    what level of math is it?

  75. In a scenario where a far-right speaker is threatening to do awful stuff, would you consider it ethical to do things to disrupt the speaking event like deploying stink bombs or air horns to attempt to make them cancel?

    absolutely

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