CuriousCat Archive Page 66 of 202

  2. Does financial planning work? Like planning savings for a future wedding, vacation, paying mortgages, rent, food etc.?

    In theory, yes. I'm in the "in five years you might break even" phase, so we're not exactly talking mortgages yet.

  3. ",,,demand I sell plasma"

    The hell

    in response to bro Ian is in collections, lmfao

    yeah bud, you ever get a phone call where a collections agent tells you to sell your blood for money so you can pay off 1.6% of your debt? it's fuckin vampiric.

    people wonder why I hate capitalism

  4. Wouldn't a lot of Christian Nationalists also fall into the "no" camp?

    in response to Can religion and science coexist?

    I think Christian Nationalists are more likely to say "science proves religion is right; also we decide what is and isn't science."

  5. fuck marry kill: wario, dark samus, shadow the hedgehog

    m Samus, f shadow, k wario

  6. What are the limiting factors for your videomaking process? What sorts of things cause you not to be able to make more videos? Is it more "This is as much work as Ian is capable of doing" or "Ian has to deal with immediate problems A and B before being able to work on videos" ?

    At the current moment, not much, and I am working at a rate of about 100 slides per week. For the past two years, it was a mix of pandemic stress, undiagnosed ADHD, and an extremely painful back injury. All three are being mitigated now.

    In general, The Alt-Right Playbook takes a LOT of research, writing, and illustration, and the videos keep getting longer, so even at the best of times it's hard to maintain a schedule. I'm in the endgame now and the final videos will be less slide-heavy I think, so hopefully things will speed up. But the better I get at making videos, the more ambitious and involved my ideas get, so who knows??

  7. How sexy is hell, exactly?

    in response to How's the front doing?

    hella

  8. Was Lyndon Johnson a good president?

    I don't know if I believe in good presidents. He did some good things and I wish more presidents would do that. Not sure it's enough.

  9. What are your thoughts on NoFap and No Nut November?

    December 1st must be epic

  10. Genuine question: what's the difference between flirting with a stranger and enjoying a nice conversation with a stranger?

    Flirtation is interesting! It is suggesting a small amount of emotional/sexual interest that is at the edge of but not outside the realm of propriety and seeing if the other party replies in kind. Through a sequence of subtle escalations the emotional intimacy and/or sexual nature of the interaction is increased until such time that it can be safely made explicit - by suggesting a date, asking for a phone number, inviting upstairs for a drink, going in for a kiss, etc.

    Some men like to complain, saying this courtship is dishonest, having to coax a woman into responding rather than simply walking up and saying, "I find you attractive, would you like to have sex?" But I would say, in reality, the ritual exists primarily for the protection of male feelings. Most men are not prepared to say, "I find you attractive, would you like to have sex?" and have the woman say, "No, because I do not find you attractive." Whereas, when you throw out something subtle and the other person does not respond in kind, you can walk away believing whatever you want - she didn't pick up on it, she has a boyfriend, she just wants to hang out with her friends, etc.

    Some people - myself included - aren't always sure when or if they're flirting because sometimes they escalate the conversation simply because they find the other person interesting! Maybe they just want to know the person better, or find the person attractive and are comfortable implying as much without necessarily trying to do anything about it. But, generally, it's this process of escalation towards a specific end that separates flirtation from conversation. And, yes, there is overlap.

  11. bro Ian is in collections, lmfao

    in response to What do you think will happen first? Trump admits that he lost the election or you champagne socialist actually doing something with your money to help others or affect any sort of political change instead of just hoarding it like the capitalists you pretend to hate.

    Recently got out of collections for the third time, actually! By asking for a refund on my student loan payments made during the pandemic. Still in the same amount of debt but lower odds of harassing phone calls that demand I sell plasma so I can make payments (which happened last time).

  12. You said in response to "What does British colonialism have to do with capitalism?" that "the British were capitalists and imperialism was in many ways profit-driven"

    It would necessarily follow that you think the fact that British imperialism was profit-driven is somehow evidence that British colonialism was inextricably linked to capitalism. Otherwise, you wouldn't have included the "and imperialism was in many ways profit-driven" part

    However, the Roman Empire was imperialistic and profit-driven, but clearly not capitalist, which is a fact that neither of us dispute

    I don't disagree that the British Empire was capitalist, but I do disagree with your belief that just because something is imperialist and profit-driven (such as the Roman Empire), that it is necessarily capitalist

    in response to The Roman Empire was profit-driven. Would you call *it* capitalist?

    I was trying to point out that a capitalist system seeks profit as part of capitalism, not to say that all seeking of profit is ipso facto capitalist.

  13. What do you think will happen first? Trump admits that he lost the election or you champagne socialist actually doing something with your money to help others or affect any sort of political change instead of just hoarding it like the capitalists you pretend to hate.

    what fucking money?

  14. The Roman Empire was profit-driven. Would you call *it* capitalist?

    in response to What does British colonialism have to do with capitalism?

    it is somewhat disheartening that people seem to think "capitalism" just means "anything to do with money"

  15. How's the front doing?

    in response to How's the back doing?

    sexy as hell

  16. Would Jesus have supported socialism?

    um, yeah, he was not subtle about that

  17. If nothing else, it made “top 1%” a part of every American’s vocabulary. That raised some class consciousness.

    in response to What do you think it would take for there to be another Occupy movement?

    I promise you the people marching and sleeping in tents and getting gassed by the cops were looking for more than mainstreaming buzzwords.

  18. Since when have you been anti-capitalist?

    hard to say when the point where I would say "I am officially anticapitalist" was. I began in that direction in my early 20s, and would sometimes call myself, half-facetiously, a democratic socialist on my blog, but I still mostly favored reform and Boom Years-era liberalism because I thought reforming capitalism was more feasible than instituting socialism. it was probably a year or two into my YouTube career that I came to the conclusion capitalism was fundamentally untenable and that reform was a dead end. there's like a full decade in between those moments.

  19. What does British colonialism have to do with capitalism?

    in response to What did the British do to India?

    the British were capitalists and imperialism was in many ways profit-driven

  20. at the risk of asking a question you've heard a million times, why not get a standing desk?

    in response to How's the back doing?

    the problem is putting weight on my lower back. standing doesn't make my torso lighter.

  21. Can religion and science coexist?

    my general sense is that a lot of religious people think "yes" and a lot of sciency people think "no"

  22. how much time do you spend on the internet daily

    when the internet is literally in your pocket, I think the idea of being "not on the internet" gets very fuzzy

  23. Is making your bed every morning a waste of time?

    do you feel better with a made bed?

  24. How did the Baby Boomers go from free love and protesting the Vietnam War to despising socialism and supporting Trump?

    while a lot of them did sell out their values, it's worth remembering that this may be less a shift in beliefs than a shift in which segment of boomers gets heard these days. turns out socialist hippies don't get on camera as much as capitalists who start media empires these days.

  25. Do you like real life mimes?

    I don't know that I've seen many. I'm not as creeped out by clowns as everyone else, so I probably don't mind mimes.

  26. How's the back doing?

    sciatica hasn't been an issue in over a year now. I am still dealing with intermittent lower back and psoas pain, mostly from sitting at my desk for long stretches or sleeping in certain positions. I could probably kick the problem entirely if I just stopped sitting at desks, but I need to work, so it's instead become a thing that I manage. regular breaks, a series of back exercises, yoga on Mondays, and meeting twice a week with an injury-informed trainer, and I keep it under control. I do hope to be done with it someday but it's looking like it'll be a long time, if ever.

  27. What do you think it would take for there to be another Occupy movement?

    I dunno, any sense that the last one made a difference?

  28. do you remember anything from that interaction that made it so that she had the power there?

    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?

    I didn't ask. on my end, I recall he wasn't insistent, only reacted with as much interest as she showed him, didn't use anything that looked like a "tactic," and seemed to pick up that she was enjoying the flirtation but not looking to escalate to exchanging names and numbers and left it at that.

  30. also in your opinion, why do you think those trends are what happens? just that abortions provide a necessary thing with no substitute while guns don't?

    in response to Why is "if you ban guns people will still find ways to get guns" a bad argument but "if you ban abortions people are still going to find ways to get them" a good argument?

    there are a lot of factors to the elasticity of guns as a product vs. the inelasticity of abortions as a service, and I could make some educated guesses but I'm not as confident as I'd like to be on the accuracy of my assumptions. the simplest fact is that, if there is no access to guns, a shooting cannot happen, whereas, if there is no access to abortion services, people will perform one themselves with coat hangers.

  33. Many countries have achieved independence from others peacefully. Often the ruling power decided the fighting a war wouldn’t be worth it, but it still wasn’t a war.

    in response to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet_Revolution

    the lack of a war doesn't mean a lack of violence

  34. Question, asking as an ignoramus about anarchist thought - how would currency abolition remove the need for taxes?

    in response to Okay so you think consent is sexy even, but how do you justify taxation

    well the short version is you can't give the government money if money doesn't exist

  35. How far aware are we from the next ARPB in your estimation?

    next month

  36. If you could be any Pokémon (excluding Ditto), which would you want to be?

    I dunno, nerds, one of the cute ones

  37. Okay so you think consent is sexy even, but how do you justify taxation

    taxation is complex in terms of consent, but I don't see how you can ethically opt out of taxes without opting out of the services those taxes pay for, like roads and police and the EPA, and that's not really possible. taxes seem like a necessity under our currency model, which is another argument for currency abolition.

  40. I think the problem is too many people see asking for consent in sex like it's some kind of legal contract, or dystopian objectivist concept, when in reality it's just about making sure the other person is actually into you, and not just humoring you because patriarchy.

    in response to A related query is in the topic of asking consent for sex - namely that while it's morally good, it's not exactly sexy; Do you know how to make asking consent sexy, or do you think we shouldn't try at all

    yeah, like, just imagine someone asking "can I put my mouth on ____?" and tell me that's not a sexy question

  41. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet_Revolution

    in response to Can a successful revolution ever be peaceful?

    this is very interesting! I question whether this is what people are mean when they ask about revolutions, though. it seems like a period of intense reform, but maybe that's my unfamiliarity with the subject talking. I would usually expect a "revolution" to mean achieving independence or replacing monarchy with democracy or capitalism with communism or something like that. is a confluence of dramatic reforms happening at once enough to be a revolution? could we end capitalism this way? I'm not sure!

    if you have any resource recommendations, I'd love to look further into it.

  42. What do you think capitalism's death toll is?

    I read somewhere that if you held capitalism to the same standard as the people who say "Soviet communism is responsible for X deaths" then British capitalism would be responsible for ~1 billion deaths in India alone.

  43. Yeah, that seems too complicated. I'll do the easier feminism and just die alone.

    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?

    you could date men!

  44. Pistols in shooters often have this issue where they're outclassed by every other weapon. How do you think shooters should handle that? I'm not sure I like Doom's approach, since when you get the minigun, you have literally no reason to use the pistol. In Doom 2016, I'm not sure I ever used the pistol once I got the shotgun since you're always flush with ammo. Serious Sam has that issue, too.

    I think games like Dusk that give you dualies that effectively double your rate of fire work well, but games where I see that have a stronger focus on ammo scarcity.

    ammo scarcity is one way, yeah. another is the pistol being a very accurate weapon that's good for far-off enemies, but for that you need to not have any sniping weapons. sometimes you can give the pistol a unique quality none of the other weapons have, like how Titanfall and Turbo Overdrive give you homing bullets that can target multiple enemies.

  45. Maybe this question is to personal, but how are your ADHD meds effecting you so far?

    well I've made about 400 slides on the new video in the last month...

  46. A related query is in the topic of asking consent for sex - namely that while it's morally good, it's not exactly sexy; Do you know how to make asking consent sexy, or do you think we shouldn't try at all

    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?

    I don't even understand this question. I find consent incredibly sexy, and don't understand how people can enjoy themselves if they haven't established explicit consent.

  47. So, could be that a minority of johns do a massive amount of abusing, you're meaning?

    in response to That the majority of johns are abusive? Yes: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9698636/#:~:text=As%20adults%20in%20prostitution%2C%2082,reported%20current%20or%20past%20homelessness.

    that would hold true for men broadly. I looked up the stats some time ago, and roughly 1 in 15 men have committed rape against a woman, and the reason that equates with 1 in 4 women having been raped is because some of those 1 in 15 have done it serially.

  49. Any thoughts on The Last Five Years, or have you not seen it?

    in response to What's your favorite musical show tune?

    I've seen the show live, not the movie. I like Anna Kendrick but her singing voice is a little... piercing for my tastes. appropriate for Cinderella, I'll admit! but I don't think I'd like it for Cathy.

    I don't think the show entirely works, honestly? it kind of works better as an album than as drama. there are a lot of very wonderful details in the songs, all these hyper-specific things about the characters and their relationship, like Jamie's weird thrill in dating a gentile, Cathy's exhaustion with the audition process, etc. lotta fine brushwork. but the broad strokes are missing. like, I know what present Cathy made for her high school friend's baby but I don't know *why she loves Jamie in the first place.* how did they even get together? when she sings "think of what's great about me and you/think of the bullshit we've both been through," WHAT is great about their relationship? WHAT bullshit have they been through? I have trouble seeing Jamie as having been through any bullshit at all. given the way their careers and successes/failures pull them apart, I kinda feel like "is Jamie a good writer?" and "is Cathy a good actress?" are kind of important questions, but there aren't any answers on that.

    so I have my interpretation of what went wrong. I think Jamie's a flash-in-the-pan author who has written a book his agents think is gonna be big and he equates notoriety with greatness, so he sees Cathy still working the grind as an actress as her failing where he's succeeding. but I doubt his success will last long. and I think Cathy's notion of success is getting better roles, more respect, stable work, but I don't think she particularly cares about being famous, and can't deal with the way Jamie prioritizes his career. I see it as a story about two people who want the best for each other but have VERY different ideas of what "the best" is, and it causes a serious rift.

    but this feels like headcanon! the reading that Jamie is just such a genius and Cathy is jealous, or that Jamie just uses his career to justify being a selfish asshole, are equally valid interpretations! and I feel like breadth of interpretation makes for a good concept album, but, for it to work as a play, I need to feel like I'm watching actual characters, not a couple singers who could be interpreted as half a dozen characters each.

  50. That the majority of johns are abusive? Yes: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9698636/#:~:text=As%20adults%20in%20prostitution%2C%2082,reported%20current%20or%20past%20homelessness.

    in response to empirical evidence > anecdotal evidence

    majority of sex workers have been abused at least once does not mean a majority of clients are abusive

  51. 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?

    okay so one time I was on a train with a female friend and a guy hit on her a little, and when we left the train she said it was nice to get hit on. and I was like, I'm terrified of hitting on a girl on public transit because she probably gets lots of creepy dudes when she's out and about, and why should she give me the benefit of the doubt that I'm not also creepy? and my friend said something very smart to me: she said, "oh, that's easy: just make it clear she has the power."

    when you're flirting with a stranger, you are making an ask. for attention, reciprocation, maybe something sexy or romantic down the line. you want something that she can either give or refuse. this creates a power imbalance, however small. and so much of creepy male behavior is about leveraging privilege, rules of politeness, threat of awkwardness or violence, etc. to shift that power imbalance back in the man's favor. making women give attention by insisting upon them, or ignoring hints, being in scenarios where telling you to fuck off would be considered rude. it's all about taking that little bit of power away.

    my friend was saying, just be clear that you are aware of the power imbalance and accept it.

    now, one takeaway from this story is, yeah, do that. the other takeaway is talk to women about what they want from flirty situations.

  52. 😳😳senpai noticed me. p-p-p-please give me validation 🙏

    in response to Ian-san please notice me

    there's that voice again

  53. How’d you feel about Counterfeit Monkey?

    it good

  54. Will you be watching Jordan Peele's Nope?

    later today!

  55. Can a successful revolution ever be peaceful?

    I'm curious about that myself

  56. What's the most plausible episode of Black Mirror in your opinion?

    probably The National Anthem

  57. Different anon with a related question. Reagan and Thatcher are often “credited” with ushering in neoliberalism to the world. Did the rise of neoliberalism result from them or was it a trend that would have happened regardless? Looking at the policies of Jimmy Carter, he seems more conservative economically than Nixon in many ways. Carter seems like the first neoliberal president to me more than Reagan.

    in response to Why did American politics become so conservative in the 1980s? In the 1984 election, Reagan got 97% of the electoral votes—more than any other president in history.

    I think generally Reagan and Thatcher are blamed for revitalizing conservatism and Clinton and Blair for redefining liberals into neoliberals, but this is an area I'm shaky on.

  58. Ian-san please notice me

    who tf said that

  59. Did you ever play Pokémon Go back in the day?

    I didn't have an N64

  60. I sent my conservative stockbroker mom your Princess Mononoke video, your video explaining fascism queued up when the Mononoke video ended, and now she thinks you're a genius

    She just phoned me asking what your name was again so she could find the fascism video and forward it to a business client

    What should I do next

    uhhhh... keep her watching TARP and maybe slip her some Contrapoints, Three Arrows, Carlos Maza, and/or PhilosophyTube when you think she's ready

  61. favorite fictional band

    Sex Bob-omb

  62. do you ever think fuckin is yucky gross

    no, but sometimes I think it's weird that I don't?

  63. not as a "gotcha" but because i'm genuinely curious: even mosquitos?

    in response to Sincerely not trying to be a dick, genuinely asking in good faith: Do you kill bugs? If so, under what circumstances? I don’t know a ton about how vegetarians/vegans tend to approach “this thing is annoying/upsetting/potentially dangerous/actively a threat” as reasons to kill bugs and I’m curious to hear your thoughts on it!

    I don't get mosquitos in my house. I put on bug repellent so they leave me alone. if one is in my face I wave it away.

  64. Any other Apichatpong Weerasethakul films you would like to recommend to us (that you have already watched ofc)? Because I have seen other slow cinema contemporary works from Kelly Reichardt, Tsai Ming Liang, they respectively did First Cow and Goodbye, Dragon Inn almost of a similar vein, and also my favorites for the past years

    in response to What is it about Memoria that has a dreamy vibe despite the very slow, unhurried pace? What dreamy vibes exactly?

    Sorry, Memoria was my first. I will probably see Uncle Boonmee one of these days.

  66. Aside from the exploitation of workers in the industry, are you in favor of or against the consumption of porn?

    I'm a pro-porn anticapitalist

  67. gut reaction, what's the best pokemon?

    sobble

  68. Why is "if you ban guns people will still find ways to get guns" a bad argument but "if you ban abortions people are still going to find ways to get them" a good argument?

    I mean, I could get into the philosophical underpinnings of those statements, but that's kinda moot given we can look at countries where abortion is illegal and see that the rate of abortion stays about the same but the rate of mass shootings goes down when guns are restricted. this is not a rhetorical question, we can just look at what happens.

  69. Wish you leftists would stop telling us to punch down: Here’s the thing, sometimes being mean and picking on people is just funny; Musk and Bezos are never going to see my joke but weirdos are everywhere and they gotta be reminded that they weirdos.

    how is picking on billionaires "punching down"?

  70. What's your favorite musical show tune?

    impossible to pick just one, but this is the most recent obsession: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU3eQMvJRhs

  71. “Reagan was probably the first major politician ever to truly understand how to use mass media to funnel celebrity into political capital,” will you elaborate on this? I don’t quite understand what you mean lol

    JFK was the first President who leveraged "screen presence" for the TV audience to curry favor, but Reagan was a movie and TV actor, and he leaned heavily on the persona he had cultivated. he was the first President who was a mass media celebrity BEFORE being a politician.

  72. How the heck do you deal with putting “scary” bugs outside? (Roaches, wasps, spiders, any insect that bites). Or maybe it’s something that gets easier with time?

    in response to Sincerely not trying to be a dick, genuinely asking in good faith: Do you kill bugs? If so, under what circumstances? I don’t know a ton about how vegetarians/vegans tend to approach “this thing is annoying/upsetting/potentially dangerous/actively a threat” as reasons to kill bugs and I’m curious to hear your thoughts on it!

    fortunately I haven't had to deal with roaches. wasps/spiders/etc. I catch in a cup. house centipedes... I just shoo them away and hope to high heaven they stay out of sight.

  73. Why did American politics become so conservative in the 1980s? In the 1984 election, Reagan got 97% of the electoral votes—more than any other president in history.

    ^91%

    and the fact that you can win 91% of the electoral college with only 50.8% of the popular vote is pretty fucked up

    Reagan's popularity was a mix of things and I won't pretend to understand it all. Dems had owned Congress all through the Boom Years and Republicans were due for a backlash. Carter was getting blamed for a "stagnant economy" that was the worst we'd seen since the Depression (though not nearly as bad as the recessions that Reagan was about to cause!). Reagan was probably the first major politician ever to truly understand how to use mass media to funnel celebrity into political capital. the Southern Strategy had rebuilt the Republican Party to the point where racial resentment was powerful unifying force. and a decade of gradually chipping away at New Deal regulations had primed the country for a different kind of economics (and deregulation had, in turn, caused the stagnation that was blamed on Carter, as is the Republican norm at this point).

    I've never dived deeply into Reagan as a subject. this is what I've picked up along the way in learning about conservatism broadly. Reagan was a symptom of imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, and if it hadn't been him rearing his head to strike back at liberalism, it would have been someone else. but he was also a massive, MASSIVE prick.

  74. Ever tried catching bass?

    in response to Have you ever tried playing bass?

    I'm from California. when I fished (before I was vegetarian) I fished in the ocean. ain't no bass in the ocean.

  75. Sincerely not trying to be a dick, genuinely asking in good faith:

    Do you kill bugs? If so, under what circumstances? I don’t know a ton about how vegetarians/vegans tend to approach “this thing is annoying/upsetting/potentially dangerous/actively a threat” as reasons to kill bugs and I’m curious to hear your thoughts on it!

    nope. I catch them and put them outside.

    but I don't enforce this in my entire household; when we get fruitflies and my housemates hang glue traps, I just kind of look the other way. I don't think that's very moral but I don't think I'd win the argument.

Anon commented:
Ian replied: