CuriousCat Archive Page 62 of 202

  1. Was capitalism responsible for or complicit in the Atlantic slave trade?

    the slave trade predates capitalism by several hundred years

  3. what would be inside you if you were a matryoshka doll

    guts

  4. Are women functionally a minority?

    women are a social minority, or "minoritized"

  5. Any thoughts on Bertrand Russell?

    I like his teapot

  6. Do you think adventure games would be improved by more systemic gameplay? Eg puzzles that can be reasoned about by understanding underlying mechanics rather than just narrative context.

    there are tons of those kinds of adventure games! check out RHEM sometime.

  7. Would you say the Covid pandemic is over in the United States?

    don't be silly

  9. More Trains?

    I'd vote for that!

  10. Thoughts on Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Leon Trotsky, Vladimir Lenin, Leonid Brezhnev & finally Mikhail Gorbachev?

    Stalin very bad
    Trotsky pretty good
    Lenin provokes a deep ambivalence

    the rest I am too uninformed to have an opinion on

  11. What happens regularly that would horrify a person from 100 years ago?

    ladies wear pants

  12. your best dance move

    (•_•)
    <) )╯
    / \

    (•_•)
    \( (>
    / \

    (•_•)
    <) )╯
    / \

  13. Bridget from Guilty Gear is a...?

    hottie

  14. Good evening, Ian. For years, you've spoken about being vegan, and that you choose not to take lives. Likewise, you've spoken against the flavor of nature's finest food, the raw vegetable. Yet now, you must choose between the two.

    There is only one lock to the door that stands between you and your freedom, but there are two keys. One of them is within the heart of this man here, who you've never met, and the other is within this delicious, ripe tomato. You can take an innocent life to save your own, or you can eat your way through this delicious, scrumptious fruit.
    Make your choice.

    make the man eat the tomato and give me the key

  15. Do you like going to the library instead of book stores?

    "libraries vs. bookstores" is a very "fuck yeah two cakes!" scenario for me

  17. I'm a woman (and I'm also a lesbian so I guess take that into consideration, but I did used to think I was into men and this story dates to that time) and one time I was walking around the city I lived in at the time (Boston) and a man came up to me and just said "I don't want to bother you or anything, but you are really beautiful" and I just said "thank you!" and he went on his way and that felt nice, I think what made it nice is the guy genuinely didn't expect anything from me in that interaction, and I'm not sure I have a fail-safe formula on how to communicate this (I've certainly had creepy dudes start with hedging about not wanting to bother me) but I think that is the key in letting women still have the power, is making it clear that there are not going to be consequences for us if it goes nowhere - and btw, this was in broad daylight in the early afternoon, I figure you know this but to guys reading who don't, never approach strange women outside at night or any time/place where "unsafe" is going to be the default anyway

    in response to I understand that a lot of women are on guard around men because of misogynistic culture and a lot of men not being educated on the vital impotance of consent. In your experience, how can men signal to women that they care about consent and are pro-feminism, and generally make women more comfortable in their presence? Would it be tacky to wear, like, a feminism pin or something?

  18. I get some of this is about not supporting JKR as a person and not just the books, but the racism in The Horse and His Boy alone is way more problematic than any of the issues with Harry Potter

    in response to I like Madeleine L'Engle.

    Dang, I don't remember that book at all.

  19. How does the public transit infrastructure in the US compare with the other places you've visited? I (a Canadian) am no fan of my city's non-car options, but I was surprised to hear a Californian talk about how much better we have it in comparison to her.

    I've only been out of the country a few times and haven't ridden much public transit where I went. Certain cities in the US have decent transit, but much of it is horrible, and we are severely lacking in long-distance high-speed rail. Compared to Europe or Japan we're a joke. I don't know much about how it is in Canada.

    Being from California, though, whether or not transit is good depends A LOT on where you are in the state. Transit is pretty solid in the Bay, HORRIBLE in LA.

  20. if i don't own a car, what's the best way for me to get the car wash experience? do i hire an uber and have them go through the car wash?

    nah just walk through

  21. Any Transport Tips for folks who also wish to Not Car but aren't good cyclists and would like some good way to get around still evem before they learn bikes enough to consistently be able to go from A to B on one?

    in response to Does not having a car ever feel limiting? I like mine cause I like road trips and also not getting rained on but on the other hand, city traffic is terrifying

    I live in a city with public transit*, not sure what to do if you don't have that where you are.

    *he says while the Orange Line has been shut down for a full month >:(

  22. Would trust in medicine/medical institutions go up if insurance wasn't bullshit

    interesting question! insurance being bullshit certainly doesn't help. I know a lot of people distrust science because they are signaled by the authorities they respect not to trust science. I had a friend from high school who had a cancer scare very young, and so he couldn't get a lot of coverage because of a "pre-existing condition." he was a Republican raised by Republicans, and was very jaded about the ACA. he kept insisting it was all bullshit, all the reform in the world wouldn't help him because he had a pre-existing condition. I literally pointed him to the passage in the text of the ACA saying people with pre-existing conditions would be covered, and he was just like, "whatever." cynicism about his health was too core to his personality by then.

    that kind of distrust is learned behavior. people who want healthcare to remain private are going to stick to the messaging that medicine is bullshit anyway, and the people who trust them are going to listen. but, yeah, if the care they were getting were better, I hope it would take more work to convince them.

  23. What kind o bike you scoot

    it's green

  25. And they never miss a chance to accuse anyone who doesn’t follow trump without question of being a tankie.

    in response to What are the chances you think of the GOP courting tankies

    is that a thing? I wasn't aware the GOP even used the word "tankie."

  26. How would you describe the class hierarchy of the United States?

    the poor stay poor and the rich get rich

  27. Are there even that many genuine tankies outside of specific online spaces?

    in response to What are the chances you think of the GOP courting tankies

    some people use "tankie" as a synonym for "Marxist-Leninist," and Marxist-Leninism, as an umbrella term, is the ideology of every existing socialist state including China, so one could make the case that 1/4 of the world is tankies. but that's obviously not who the GOP would make inroads to.

    I don't have a sense how many "yay Stalin!" tankies there are outside of online spaces, but "yay Stalin!" was pretty popular in the first half of the 20th century, to the point where fragmentation over whether or not Stalinist Russia was good or bad tore the American communist movement apart. tankyism has a rich history in this country.

  28. socially, do you temper your politics or stay quiet on some views so as not to seem like a buzzkill?

    Like any lefty, I have the urge to go off about capitalism a lot, and I temper that not because people disagree with me (most of my people are in the general vicinity of my own politics), but because I don't want to be That Guy. That Guy is insufferable.

  29. What are your thoughts on nuclear power?

    I am generally aware that it's cleaner than coal and gas and our best option for keeping the lights on between abandoning fossil fuels and scaling up renewable energy. I don't like it as an ongoing power source, but my knowledge is limited.

  30. What are the chances you think of the GOP courting tankies

    the GOP doesn't so much court tankies as allow opportunities for tankies to become nazbols

  31. Does not having a car ever feel limiting? I like mine cause I like road trips and also not getting rained on but on the other hand, city traffic is terrifying

    in response to What about the moped

    I use car shares or rentals when I need one. It's a pain when it comes to little things like groceries or getting places at specific times if you don't catch your train, but owning a car is expensive and stressful!

  33. Can I borrow a heavy object of some sort?

    in response to What about the moped

    Bike lock is kinda heavy.

  34. She'll still be 35 by the time of the election. I don't see any problem here. Nobody bat an eye when John McCain ran for president in 2008, and he was born in a territory that wasn't even part of the US anymore.

    in response to Is AOC 2024 with Bernie as running mate the dream?

    What people do and don't bat an eye for is inconsistent.

  35. Death is something that will happen to everyone eventually it's just entropy Being born is a unilateral decision made by your parents against your consent By bringing you into existence they rip you from a state of absolute neutrality and expose you to a contradictory and irrational form of being

    in response to You dont consent to being born. What is your justification for childbirth?

    They do not rip you from any kind of state because you do not yet exist. In a roundabout way, they are granting you the ability to consent!

  36. I know you don't predict the future, but how are you feeling about November elections?

    Looks like things may not be as bad as they seemed?

  38. Aside from voting for her to oppose Trump, what did you think about Hillary Clinton serving as president in the 2016 election?

    as President, Obama lived in a quantum state. there was the progressive reformer he campaigned as, and there the conciliatory liberal he governed as, and somehow he managed to mean both things to people at the same time. so when it came time to succeed Obama, which legacy should you tap into? in a lot of ways, Hillary Clinton represented a continuation of the Obama PRESIDENCY, where Bernie Sanders represented the continuation of the PROMISE of Obama. in practical terms, Clinton was about as progressive as Obama; hell, Obama's big claim to fame was public healthcare, which was, for DECADES, Hillary's thing! and, in several areas, she was to Obama's left. but a continuation of the Obama PRESIDENCY meant abandoning the Obama PROMISE, and so, despite being slightly to Obama's left, Clinton REPRESENTED a swing back to the center, where Sanders represented a further step to the left.

    in practical terms, I think Clinton would disappoint me slightly less than Biden has been doing for the past two years. especially coming off of a liberal President whose legacy she was supposed to continue, rather than Biden coming off a conservative whose mess he was supposed to clean up, she might have even tried a fresh policy or two (probably heavily compromised right out the gate and means-tested as hell, but better than nothing). and I think she would further cement the Democratic Party in its current, vacuous, stand-for-nothing, the-rules-will-save-us state it's been in since her husband was President. but we'd be better off than we were with Trump.

    but I'm not a policy wonk. there are people who know much more about this stuff than I do. I'm just talking about symbols and figureheads because that's what I pay attention to.

  40. You dont consent to being born. What is your justification for childbirth?

    I don't consent to dying but it's gonna happen someday

  41. Howsabout some Anto-Social Democracy?

    in response to In that case, I should tell you that I am an American, which as I'm sure you know means that the tenets of social democracy in no way represent the life I am leading or the status quo of my country. For me it's something to strive for, and a more reasonable end goal than full-blown socialism, or communism, or really any other form of government which history has proven can be corrupted to produce tyranny.

    howsabout some ancho-social democracy? spicy!

  42. Can you explain why your opinion of Spears is so low, and what you were expecting?

    I compared Spears to student work because it lacked a lot of basic competence. camera angles didn't edit well together; shots using natural light didn't have their apertures set correctly so faces were too dim to read (this happened way more than the two times I think it might've been intentional); the filmmakers didn't know how to shoot dream sequences or flashbacks such that you understood they weren't just the next scene (or how to play with the confusion if it was on purpose, which I'm positive it was not); the rare instances where they used lighting kits they left hard shadows on the walls; there were huge gaps in storytelling logic, like where they put the scene where the guy mentions the bad guys are running a fake fundraiser several scenes BEFORE the one where he learns that information; tons of illogical decisions, like the guy getting shot at in a car and saying "it's not safe to leave til we know where the shot came from!" and then walking TOWARDS THE SNIPER ON FOOT IN AN OPEN FIELD because somehow that's safer than driving away in a car?!?!!

    I didn't hate Spears or anything, I just think it's kinda wild that something this amateur got written up in the recommendations list where I found it. the only think I expected of it was that it would be a real movie.

  43. If you were to become a fighting game character, what kind of archetype would you have? (Zoner, Rushdown, etc)

    What is your Side B

    I'm a Luigi who dreams of being Captain Falcon

  44. Is AOC 2024 with Bernie as running mate the dream?

    you have to be 35 to be President; AOC will be 34 for most of 2024 but would have JUST turned 35 by the election. I don't know what the rules are for that.

  45. What about the moped

    in response to Can I borrow the keys to your car

    you can borrow the key to my bike lock

  46. Do you think you've drifted left between around the time you started the Alt-Right Playbook series and now, and if so, by how much?

    there are a few areas I've drifted a bit leftier. I'm more amenable to things like currency abolition and anarchism. but I was already mostly this far left by the time I started the series. what's happened is my understanding of my own politics is a lot more nuanced now.

  47. What do you think of Orwells criticism of socialism and communism?

    Orwell was a socialist and his criticism was of Stalinism, which he felt was a betrayal of socialism that made it fundamentally indistinguishable from the power it was supposed to have replaced

  48. do you think instead of caring about whether internet people I don't know (ie you/others) I cared about learning to do flips I would be cooler

    those are not mutually exclusive

  49. Can I borrow the keys to your car

    It's sweet you think I can afford a car

  50. What’s the most expensive item inside your home?

    at this point, my spine

  51. You know of any times that someone's cited you in some academic capacity?

    Several

  52. Any advice on getting vegan cheese to melt?

    what brand?

  54. Have you ever cried from watching a movie? I so which ones?

    Too many to enumerate!

  56. Would you rather not have money or not be famous?

    in response to Would you rather have money or fame?

    I already not have money

  57. Never live for the sake of another or an ideology; live for yourself!

    "live for yourself" is an ideology. a rather popular one, in fact.

  59. Y’all stop inundating Ian with socialism questions, the man is tired.

    nobody makes me answer them, don't worry!

  61. Would you rather have money or fame?

    no thank you

  63. (Different anon) European social democratic parties have trended towards neoliberalism since the 1990s *at least*. When the capitalist class is left in charge of the economy, they use their influence to chip away at the reforms that the working class fought for. So give it enough time and you're back at square one.

    It's also worth noting that only in extremely rare cases (such as the UK Labour Party creating the NHS) have social democrats themselves been responsible for social democracy. In most cases it was an organized working class movement that could grab the economy by the balls and make demands. Social democrats who think we just need to vote in enough progressives to win reforms are putting the cart before the horse. And even in the case of the NHS, those circumstances are not likely to be repeated: they didn't have to fight 5 decades of neoliberalism being drilled into everyone's head as common sense.

    in response to Of course social democracy *can* be corrupted, but strong government regulation makes it much harder. Social democracy in the UK has endured since the end of World War II. So has the Nordic model.

  65. https://youtu.be/7c9g0gAmwp4

    what do you think about this leftist critique of that line of argument?

    in response to What precisely do you mean by "value extraction"?

    it's interesting! worth noting Xexizy is not refuting that profit is value extraction, nor are they calling profit morally defensible. it's more that a) calling it "theft" can be misleading and/or get you mired in semantic debates that aren't terribly useful, and b) focusing on it tends to funnel you down a line of argument that promotes social democracy or market socialism, which isn't necessarily the conclusion most of us want to point people towards.

    I don't disagree with anything here, but I would still say that profit is value extraction and that value extraction is exploitation, and I don't think Xexizy would challenge me on that. but, yeah, this has to be discussed in concert with a lot of other concepts to paint an accurate portrait of what our complaint is with capitalism and point to what a holistic solution would look like. we are in full agreement there.

  66. not op but this obvs wouldn’t give you equivalent orgasms to cis women

    in response to how to stop feeling envious over female orgasms

    op said they wanted female orgasms, not cis orgasms

  67. Please make a The Last Jedi video so I can just link to it whenever a discussion on that accursed movie happens and never have to personally defend it from stupid talking points again.

    hell no, that movie doesn't need more discourse

  68. Of course social democracy *can* be corrupted, but strong government regulation makes it much harder. Social democracy in the UK has endured since the end of World War II. So has the Nordic model.

    in response to In that case, I should tell you that I am an American, which as I'm sure you know means that the tenets of social democracy in no way represent the life I am leading or the status quo of my country. For me it's something to strive for, and a more reasonable end goal than full-blown socialism, or communism, or really any other form of government which history has proven can be corrupted to produce tyranny.

    yeah, they were also the ones in power in Weimar Germany

  69. how to stop feeling envious over female orgasms

    have you tried gender confirmation surgery

  70. In that case, I should tell you that I am an American, which as I'm sure you know means that the tenets of social democracy in no way represent the life I am leading or the status quo of my country. For me it's something to strive for, and a more reasonable end goal than full-blown socialism, or communism, or really any other form of government which history has proven can be corrupted to produce tyranny.

    in response to How so?

    got bad news for you about social democracy

  72. I can see how a faith that says "There's a lotta right ways to live, we're one of them" could be fine with not recruiting anybody

    Maybe even actively discouraging it!

    in response to question - if I were religious, why wouldn't I want the highest number of people doing what I believe is the objectively, ethically, and spiritually the right thing? why aren't most religions evangelical?

    "For you is your religion, and for me is my religion." - The Quran

  73. Different anon, but even in a society without prices, bread would have different values to different people right? Wouldn’t it depend on how much bread or other food sources a person has? So supply and demand would still affect value in a cashless society.

    in response to Doesn't this argument rely on the ingredients and the bread having some set universal value, which just isn't the case? A customer might be willing to buy a loaf of bread for $1 because they can't eat the dollar but they can eat the bread. But a baker wouldn't be willing to buy a loaf of bread for $1 because they already have 100 loaves, and getting a 101st loaf doesn't have any utility. So even though a loaf of bread is "worth 1$", both the baker and the customer are better off after the exchange, and no baker would be happier to keep the 100 loaves instead of the $100. Same goes for the ingredient seller. They are better off swapping 10kg of flour for $10 than they would be keeping the 10kg of flour they can't make use of.

    if the goal wasn't to make profit, this variable value would be useful because the priority would be to get it to the people who need it most. but, under capitalism, the greater the need, the higher the price, meaning the people who need it most have the hardest time acquiring it.

  75. What's the grey area? Like, "I wanted to fuck them too but you got there first," or "I didn't say yes to this but thinking on it, it's fine," or something else?

    in response to Does your perspective change with polyamory? Is there such a thing in most of your relationships? Feel free to ignore if too personal

    stuff like "this is a thing I would have said yes to if you had checked in, but you didn't check in before doing it," in which case it's basically a judgment call whether or not it's cheating. like, it's not a binary, "this is always cheating." whether or not it's cheating kind of depends on an assessment of intent measured against how much hurt it caused.

    obviously things like this exist in monogamous relationships as well, there's just a lot MORE grey area in polyamory.

Anon commented:
Ian replied: