They’re doing the same thing they did for the war in Iraq. Beating the drum for the military industrial complex and smearing anyone who stands against it. We’re just slightly better at recognizing it today.

The end result is comically bizarre and obviously extremely unlikely. The joke/criticism is how disconnected feminists are from the real world with their overly complicated, academic and abstract language, despite the fact that they ostensibly have a goal of influencing ordinary people into being better.

The goal of feminism is gender equality. That is to reduce the authority men have over women (and in some cases vice versa). Part of that may be to influence people toward being kinder and more understanding towards others. But another part of that might be a deeper and more complex understanding of how gender functions in society.

Think about it this way… Just because Einstein’s theory of special relativity is complicated and not well understood by most people doesn’t make the theory of special relativity incorrect. But for some reason in the social sciences you can make the argument that a theory is too complicated and therefore wrong and some people will think that argument makes sense. The theory being complicated is obviously not an argument against the theory of special relativity or Judith Butlers theories on gender.

I do find this skit funny but I think the joke is one layer deeper. I think the joke is something along the lines of this Upton Sinclair quote:

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. ―Upton Sinclair

That is men benefit from the status quo of gender relations therefore men have a certain subjectivity that we expect from them that resists thinking critically about their own position in gendered hierarchy. Seeing (especially working class) men break from that subjectivity breaks expectations and the result is humor.

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Trump said it in a way that he could have meant that you won’t have to vote for him again. He kept saying “vote for me now and in 4 years you won’t have to vote again”. I’m sure if you made this criticism to Trump’s face he would act like you’re being unreasonable and pretend that of course he meant that he can only do 1 more 4 year term. Trump’s supporters would respond similarly. But that’s why it’s called a dog whistle, the message gets to the people he wants it to while it forces his detractors to debate what’s going on inside Trump’s head.

If wielding power in our “democracy” is so complicated that we must exclude non-experts isn’t that an indictment of our democracy? What is it about the legislative and executive process that people are ignorant of?

While I am skeptical of the celebrity as politician trend which has been prominent over the last few decades; especially on the right. I don’t think lack of experience is the problem with the trend.

Put aside what you think about Trump’s political project for a moment. He was effective at giving conservatives what they wanted. Tax cuts and Supreme Court seats. Despite having zero legislative and executive experience. You could say the same thing about Reagan and perhaps Schwarzenegger.

I agree, expecting a strongman to come in and save us from all our political issues is problematic. We shouldn’t recreate feudalism. We need to learn to organize ourselves into a base of democratic power that we can wield towards our broad economic interests.

But at the same time our media apparatus runs on spectacle, it takes someone with the charisma of John Stewart to be taken seriously by mainstream power brokers. Perhaps he could breakthrough the spectacle and kickstart a new progressive era that could enable those democratic ends.

Because the alternative to charisma for gaining political legitimacy is going through the political system. And the longer you’re in that system the more time that system has to influence you towards ends that want to stop progress. Just look at Jamal Bowman and John Fetterman.

It’s a bad enough idea we don’t need anymore for the next few centuries.

They could potentially release source only with no art assets. Then you wouldn’t be able to compile the game without either owning the game or pirating the assets elsewhere. But it would allow community members to update the game when it breaks or to add new features. Similar to the Mario 64 decompile.

While all this would be great for consumers it would probably take legislation to get publishers on board with something like this. Publishers have a financial incentive to let the games languish then force you to pay to get a “remastered” version.

I feel personally attacked by this comment.

I spent like 8 hours yesterday figuring out how to install viewtube on my NAS because I got the YouTube Adblock warning on my iPad.

TLDW: Landlords are colluding to fix pricing with algorithms. The FBI is actually doing something good for once and breaking them up.

I don’t remember them saying that specifically. But we did spend a lot of time on supply and demand curves which heavily implies that.

To be fair to my econ101 class for a moment when I took that class it was during the Obama years and that was a bit before progressivism made the come back it has now. A lot of people were still Fukuyamaists.

I think economics is a pretty complicated subject that is deeply intersecting with ideology. It maybe impossible fully to disentangle how the economy works with how it should work. To expect kids just out of high school to critically examine all the nuances of a field beyond the assumptions they grew up with, while simultaneously learning the basics of that field is a pretty tall order. And if the experts at the time are moving away from that way of thinking anyway, why bother?

Of course in retrospect they probably should have bothered. But that’s just how the flow of history has to work I guess.

Edit: There’s some nuance and detail I could probably add to that conclusion. But I’m running out of steam for tonight.

I learned this in my Econ101 class; if you impose rent control you will disinsintivize investment into building homes exacerbating the problem of housing supply. Some one in my class literally asked why rent control was common in places like NY and my Econ teacher dodged the question. Econ101 in the US is basically neoliberal indoctrination.

The easiest response to the textbook is to point out that the current problem isn’t supply. In the US we have 6 houses for every homeless person. We have plenty of housing stock. The problem monopoly power over housing.

Beyond that I believe that housing investment should be managed cooperatively; rather than by the profit incentive.

It’s considered the first popular piece of Gen-Alpha internet humor.

But it doesn’t matter because the lesson to take away is that in any system the people with power will modify it to what we have now

Was the system that the peasantry lived under in the commons the same as what we have now?

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

Ok?

The quote you just gave is from famous socialist George Orwell from his book Animal Fram. Which is critical of the structures the Soviet Union created.

But your comment is actually in direct contradiction to Orwell’s actual more nuanced point. His point was not that every system devolves into capitalism… he was himself a socialist who fought along side communists in the Spanish civil war after all. His point is that we need to think critically about the structures we’re creating to ensure they’re serving egalitarian ends. Something I agree with Orwell on.

The original reason why I commented was because it didn’t seem you were engaging in the same project of critically examining economic structures in the way Orwell was and the way Smith was. Though I would love to be proven wrong.

I think you should think more critically about what people tell you about Adam Smith and George Orwell.

Adam Smith did not ‘invent’ capitalism. No single person can invent an economic system. He made some early observations and normative assertions about a set of economic relations that were forming independent of him.

So the economic system we had prior to capitalism was feudalism. The common lands that I mentioned were apart of the feudal system. The system of landlords and rent-seeking were and are apart of capitalism. You can just look around… we still have these things. You do understand that right? Unless you’re saying our current system isn’t capitalist.

Yes Capitalism is supposed to be pro-worker/anti-rich

Supposed by whom? The rent-seeking behavior that Smith criticized was largely brought about by enclosure; the process of enclosure was foundational to capitalism.

Hence my comment about people still paying to live before adoption of capitalism

This is ahistorical, before enclosure the peasantry had substantial rights to live freely on the common land.

I suppose it does depend on what is meant by ‘pay to live on this earth’. If you just mean that people have to work to take care of themselves then, sure. But that’s not really what this meme is referring to. If it was then the orangutan would be ‘paying to live on this earth’ as well.

Adam Smith was much more critical of capitalism than he is given credit for. For example, Adam Smith was critical of rent seeking and landlords. It would be somewhat accurate to replace Orangutan with Adam Smith in this meme.

They need to move to a P2P model of hosting. Radicle is an open source P2P GitHub replacement. Ideally all open-source development would move to Radicle or a similarly P2P hosted model. If it were made easy enough I would set up an instance to help with hosting on my NAS. These corporations should have no right (or ability) to take down projects that the community has funded and built.

Not a fan of crypto-currencies generally but I would also set up recurring donations to any legit fork of Yuzu that will accept donation via Monero. Fuck these corporations.

Not being able to hear the dialogue is an artistic choice Nolan has been intentionally making since around The Dark Knight Rises. I know that sounds dumb but, I’m not joking. I have been baffled by this choice and have refused to see any of his films until Oppenheimer. Which was a major improvement.

https://youtu.be/iWlqxGQXZx8