wampus

@wampus@lemmy.ca

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How would an anarchist society work?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I agree to some extent – I kind of look at the socialist democracies that’re around and think of them as a step in the direction of having a ‘functional’ version of a “libertarian socialist” setup. However we’re also witnessing these fail almost in real time as a result of the global turmoil currently on-going, with rights erosion and increase in authoritarian tendencies on both the political left and right.

  I do think there’s a fundamental issue that is a nearly impossible hurdle for ‘proper’ anarchist states of any meaningful size to arise, which is somewhat exemplified in that Spain example. In order for a ‘state’ to exist, it basically needs to have a “force” component. People don’t always want to accept it, and it’s often an open debate on what level of force and how that force is structured in democratic setups. In Anarchist setups, it’s nearly impossible to implement, as there’ll always be dissenters from any use of force, which pretty well blocks that whole function of the government in a consensus based decision model. There also needs to be a method to incentivize/organize large groups of people to complete increasingly complex tasks the larger and more complicated/advanced the tech level of the country may be. Anarchism, from what I’ve read at least, tends to work better in smaller community setups, because there’s less need for either of these things, based on those small community goals. Sorta like the old (and horribly flawed) Marxist refrain of apple farmers and orange farmers swapping produce in a system without capital, it doesn’t really translate to something like making computer chips for advanced tech, or trading direct unskilled labour for something like a surgeon’s services.

  Like for the force thing – take something like minority rights. Say some minorities decide to protest in a way that shuts down major streets in a city, demanding special treatment. In a democracy, they get given some media attention, can schedule marches etc, but they can’t illegally shut down businesses / regular day to day life, without running the risk of having the state apply force for their illegal behaviour – cops should show up and force a resolution. If those cops could only show up after a consensus is reached by all parties, including the protesting minorities, then a group like MAGA could basically sit there not compromising on their demands, and inflicting pain on their neighbors/others without a care in the world. Spain’s inability to mount a defense against fascists in the 1930s, was basically the result of them not being able to get a consensus in this sort of regard – you couldn’t get them to all agree to defend the country against franco/hitlers invading force, because some were in favour of it, so no action was taken (except by Durruti’s militia). (and yes, that sort of thing clearly happens in failed democracies like the USA still to some extent, so it’s a problem that goes beyond ‘just’ anarchist decision models – but it’s yet to hit them in an existential way)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How would an anarchist society work?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah – though in all fairness, we haven’t seen too many larger implementations of its principles. Some other guy was whining that I’d missed some regional sub-states/failed revolution attempts for example, but that’s the best he could find to counter my ‘only spain so far has tried it’ note. The sample size is stupid small, so it’s a bit dicey to draw definitive conclusions.

  I guess you could argue that things like Durruti’s struggle to get support qualifies as an internal problem – like a government/large group, making decisions on consensus, is much more difficult to motivate in any particular direction even when existentially threatened by an outside force. But ultimately, without that outside force, the CNT likely would’ve continued to meet the basic needs of people in the country in line with the anarchist principles it was based on. Bit of a mixed bag.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How would an anarchist society work?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Afaik, Ukraine was a failed attempt to setup an Anarchist government. Rojava and Chiapas are not realistically established enough to qualify as a case study so much, they’re also not countries, but general regions/states within countries. As sub-regions protected within and by a state, they benefit from the state while putting on airs of being anti-state: much like a parents-basement dwelling neckbeard sort, who rants online against capitalism, while enjoying the benefits provided by their parents participating in that system, and who’s lifestyle is wholly dependent on the system they oppose. Anarchist principles often function ‘ok’ for smaller communities, but they struggle/fail once attempted as a full government of a country – Spains the only example I know of in that regard.

  Spains attempt lasted ‘roughly’ 30 years, with the movement starting in the 1870s, the CNT coming in sometime around 1905 or so, and Franco fucking it all up around 1936-1939, give or take?

  I worked in an anarchist bookstore for a few years after uni, where I read books about anarchist history, and the Spanish attempt. That’s what I base my comments on. And, yea, Rojava and Chiapas are so ‘new’ that no one had bothered to write about them at that time. So really, they don’t seem like examples worth mentioning, other than to be a little shite online.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How would an anarchist society work?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Read up on Spain pre-Franco, which was the only time that an Anarcho-state was seriously attempted. It basically coagulated into an Anarcho-syndicate, but failed miserably at getting many traditional ‘state’ responsibilities covered. When Franco rolled in with the backing of Hitler, Durruti was the only guy that tried to mount a defense, because the “government” couldn’t come to a consensus on whether to defend themselves or not. Durruti had to literally raid government weapons stocks to arm a militia to try and fight back, but that totally failed and then they ended up as a fascist steel production center feeding arms to Nazi germany.

  So that’s about how it goes in practice. It’s a style of government that’s good in theory, but it fails when implemented, generally due to ever present outside influences. It’s on the same sort of pedestal as communism really, in that lots of folks look at it on paper and think it sounds great, but reality’s a bitch.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is cryptocurrency good for anything?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The way I look at it is that cryptocurrency is basically a useless security with no real use, but it can store ‘value’ in the same way those NFT things stored value for a while. There are more bullshitters for crypto, so they’ll keep that hype train going longer, and you can semi work it to get some profit by buying the security low, and selling it high.

  There was a post a while ago about how around something like 2020 or whatever, with billions invested in it, and with huge amounts of power/electricity going towards it, bitcoin had something like less than 10 transactions per minute globally. Like it’s absolute dogshit when ti comes to transactions, in part because it’s not a currency despite its name.

  Currencies need to depreciate in value via inflation – crypto tends to just store value and go up / down solely on its isolated demand as a nebulous concept. In fact, one of the bragging points from cryptobros is often this misguided notion that crypto is a hedge against inflation – as that ‘benefit’ basically disqualifies it as a proper currency. If you get $1000, and that $1000 is able to buy you some quantity of goods, you need that money to be able to buy less of those goods in the future in order to encourage people to actually use the fucking thing. If you had $1000, but were almost assured that it would be able to buy twice as many goods in the future if you just held on to it for a bit under your mattress, you wouldn’t spend the money… ever. Sorta like those crazy early crypto experiments where uni students were given like 25 bitcoin to see how they’d spend it – and a bunch did exactly what you said in your opening bit, bought pizzas (you could at the time). Bet they would’ve preferred to buy a bunch of houses and sports cars later on, if they’d realised how popular the fad would get. Bitcoin only tends to go ‘down’ in value when people completely exit the currency, so it’s not a valid currency.

  I think you’re generally right in your note about it needing to be exchanged. The whole point of currencies is that you don’t want them to sit idle under someone’s bed. Banks/Credit Unions provide savings accounts that pay interest, though typically slightly less than inflation. This is basically a function where because of inflation, you don’t want to have your money just sit under your bed, you want to invest it in at least a savings account/term deposit – but what’s actually happening there, is that you’re committing your money to the financial institution for a fixed period, and they’re subsequently loaning that out to someone so that person can buy a house (typically) – and then their payments on that house, is what generates your interest earnings (and the banks profits). The house itself is a security, with a general stable/safe valuation, so if that person can’t make their payments on the house, the bank can foreclose, sell it, and still pay you your interest. So your savings are generally very safe – especially, frankly, with simple/smaller financial institutions that aren’t trying to do fancy bullshit / aren’t doing any higher risk wealth management type back end tricks. Main point being though, that because of inflation, even people who have ‘too much’ capital, put it into the market, and it generates economic activity as a result.

  Crypto, being a security, doesn’t behave too well in this situation either – in that you can’t realistically hold a security and pay interest on it based on being able to use that security to fund other economic activity. Sorta like if someone hands you 10 shares of a stock (which has a variable price), and you’ve gotta figure out a way to pay that person back 12 shares of stock in a year, buy giving those 10 shares to someone else. What if they don’t want shares of that stock? What if the stock price goes down, or up, significantly? There’s just an absurd amount of risk, that would be considered wildly untenable for something like a person’s core savings vehicle. There are some “interest paying” crypto type accounts these days, but that’s a whole shitload of financial shenanigans and cryptobro bullshit. Cryptocurrencies are basically an economic blackhole.

  And speaking of governments, anyone saying that crypto is useful because you can send money globally, is a moron. Banks/Financial institutions have the ability to do global money transfers with ease. The reason they can’t/don’t, is because of LEGAL reasons and regulatory restrictions from governments - it’s not some technical restriction that crypto magically solves. Laws like “You can’t let people fund terrorist groups”. Crypto being able to do those sorts of things quickly is just a matter of them not obeying any of the laws or regulations from governments. That’s not a ‘good’ thing in general. Many of the recent pushes from crypto sorts to get places like the States to recognize them, are basically resulting in banks getting less restrictions – which really isn’t a win. Crypto shows up and is like “We like sending money to north korea, so you gotta remove or neuter that whole know your customer thing for fintechs. Here Mr USA administration, we can pay you by buying millions of dollars of your personal ‘crypto currency’ to help with signing the bill. See, isn’t it so much better to have no regulations/oversight on transactions?! It’s win win!”

  And the last negative I’ll note, from my pov at least, is that the core mechanics of most crypto currencies is obfuscated and controlled by cryptobros. Financial industry people make money, but they don’t make the sort of explosive, concentrated wealth that you see occur in crypto for the people who maintain those systems. That’s partly because the financial industry is larger, and involves government components – while crypto currencies are often just some techbro goin “let’s fork bitcoin and stick a dog face on it and sell it to morons for big $$$$ then we can FTX it up fuckin in the bahamas with uggos!”. It’s the sort of obvious conflict of interest that they all try and bullshit their way out of – one that typically doesn’t exist in fiat setups, due to the multiple layers, and the role most govs fill in regulating things.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is the USA attacking Iran?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I imagine that there’s no real consensus response to what you’ve asked, given that the official reasons are pretty murky. My take, for what it’s worth at least:

  Epstein was likely connected to Israel. From bits and pieces that’ve been reported about timelines and from the email archives, it seems like he sold information to both Israel and Russia – typically blackmail material for use as leverage against people in key positions in politics / business. Many of the later emails relating to Trump, appeared to talk about the dirt Epstein had on Trump, and efforts to potentially sell it to others.

  This blackmail material, combined with the massive amount of money thrown at US gov candidates by things like AIPAC, results in ‘close ties’ between the US Govt and Israeli interests. Basically, to control Americas government, if you can ‘buy’ a majority of the candidates via PAC funding or blackmail material, you can control the overall tone and direction of America’s international politics.

  In terms of ‘why now’ and what they gain…

  So the Epstein files note above is just ‘another nail’ in the common american’s support for Israel – even before those links were made more apparent, public opinion had largely soured due to the brutal treatment of Palestinians. Israel as a state has been increasingly an apartheid regime – mostly in its alignment to far right fascist motifs involving xenophobia. The US right also aligns with this general sentiment – the people currently in the administration, for example, practically all cheer on figures like Jack Posobiec, who romanticizes figures such as Spain’s Franco, a fascist dictator who literally came to power with the backing of Hitler. They maintain this notion that ‘they’ are the sole custodians of civilization, so any atrocity they commit against ‘others’ is justified and right. So timing-wise, it’s definitely best to do this sort of thing with Trump’s administration in power – they’ll be gleeful willing accomplices, no need for much convincing.

  Also entering in to the arena, would be the emergence of powers like China, and the perceived deterioration of the USA’s global influence. Israel as a state, exists because of the USA – Trump likes to say that about Canada, but Canada doesn’t really have a bunch of neighbours (other than the USA) that want Canada dead for having a history of “pre-emptive strikes” and so on. If the USA were to fall into significant decline, Israel’s existence would be in clear jeopardy. In order to survive, Israel likely needed to trigger a conflict before America’s hegemony deteriorated too far – to survive without a ‘singular’ military hegemony’s backing, Israel needs to have the entire power dynamic of the middle east destroyed and remade with them as the defacto/unchallenged ‘power’ of the region.

  Add in to the mix the Tech bro oligarchs, who all want their own baronies – or ‘free cities’ as they like to call them. These folks actively bank roll efforts to destabilize states. Their reasons seem to vary a tiny bit, but the end result/drive is the same: they want to have the ability to control cities/people, without worrying about government controls/oversight/regulations, because “they know best”. So they’re completely in alignment with the other areas in which we’re seeing dramatic increases in authoritarian traits. So there’s practically unlimited money available for any sort of atrocity that can benefit the richest 0.1% at the expense of everyone else.

  Most of what’s above speaks to the conditions that set the stage for the event.

  As for the very specific timing, it’s still highly likely that Trump is just trying to mute the Epstein stuff. What he gains is less coverage of Epstein. He is America’s dictator, so what benefits him, benefits America. That simple.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨EA invents new microtransaction nightmare as it breaks paywall promise on Skate: rent a playable area for 24 hours or buy a premium pass, bucko⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That poor cat, are you forcing it to play EA games???

  Animal Humane Society operates the primary animal cruelty reporting line in Minnesota: 612-772-9999 or report online at investigations@animalhumanesociety.org.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨EA invents new microtransaction nightmare as it breaks paywall promise on Skate: rent a playable area for 24 hours or buy a premium pass, bucko⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  idk. I’ve heard we can still consume pussy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨EA invents new microtransaction nightmare as it breaks paywall promise on Skate: rent a playable area for 24 hours or buy a premium pass, bucko⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  People are still playing EA games after the take over by Saudis/Jared Kushner??? Sorry, I feel no empathy for these gamers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Take-Two CEO Responds to Stock Price Drop Following Google Genie Announcement: 'I Think People Are Confusing Tools With Hits' - IGN⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Eh, take it however you want I guess.

  I still find games that I enjoy these days. Two that my friends and I have played through for a while are Valheim and Abiotic Factor. One reason those are more enticing, is that the proc gen on a game like Valheim means you can’t as easily stumble across a post saying “Go here to unlock bear porn scene” or whatever. And while Abiotic is less random, it’s less well known/saturated by marketing shit, so there’s plenty of “wait wtf was that?!” and “oh neat, I can do something new that we hadn’t realised we could do before!” as we play.

  So given that I still find games currently that fall into my preferences from way way back, it’s still something some games are capable of accomplishing. BG3, I’ve basically never made it past Act 1, as I get bored with it and its pseudo predictability and mundane mechanics. Like even the Divinity series from Larian, I found more engaging from the tactical fight POV just because the way they did elemental combo attacks on enemies and interaction with world components far better than in BG3, from my perspective in terms of player engagement – like there’s still ‘traces’ of that stuff in BG3, but its neutered. Plus they were less known games, without a constant stream of marketing shit showing you exactly how to min/max those events.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam Quietly Withdraws Under Fire MMO Ashes of Creation From Sale As Fans Wonder Who's Left to Maintain the Servers⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Agreed. I’ve seen PE take overs of other software firms, and a big part of those take overs is the human capital / access to a team of skilled professional developers. PE typically doesn’t just ‘fire’ everyone en masse, but rather chops the shop up and resells parts of the org as it scavenges the remains.

  So this smells like something more fraudulent, and connected to SS – especially as there have been notes that the intrepid ‘board’, on paper in filings, was just SS, the CEO. The messaging that came out from their comms director (I think that’s what she was?) yesterday seems to generally support this, in that the Senior Management team was completely in the dark about anything that was going on – they had practically the same notification of events, as everyone else. A board wouldn’t normally do that, as the senior management team would each have a relationship/reporting obligations tied to board meetings (eg. c-level HR managers working out HR policies/budgets, Accountants providing audited monthly financials to the board, etc). I mean, a company that size would likely have an accountant, who would report out the financial state of the org at senior manager meetings – so they’d all see the layoffs coming way in advance, not suddenly get a WARN notice that they aren’t getting paid for the last pay period. The CEO is ‘always’ at board meetings as managements rep, but other SMs show up / attend based on agenda items/topics. Long and short, a shift like this wouldn’t come out of nowhere at that level.

  All that said, the comms director also noted that initially they’d thought it was just going to be 100 developers let go, but a day or two later found out it was everyone – and it sounds like these were all ‘local’ developers, given that she was setting up an in person job fair to try and help x-staff find work. AoC having over 100+ developers at ~100k salaries is an absurd carrying cost that would likely be impossible to make work longer term financially. The sub costs for the player count just wouldn’t support that spend, let alone licensing/server costs where they were already in the red pre-steam release (they had about $800k in hosting debts they were gettin sued for, from what I recall). So I really don’t know what Intrepids business case generally looked like, but based on information available it seems pretty clear that their business model was unrealistic, hence pumpy dumpy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Take-Two CEO Responds to Stock Price Drop Following Google Genie Announcement: 'I Think People Are Confusing Tools With Hits' - IGN⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh, I’m not trying to say there aren’t some gems around. It’s just that the quality options vs the garbage is already at a really bad ratio, and to find something like a ‘quality’ indie game, you gotta sift through a lot of junk. And with marketing blitz’s, and the pervasive use of things like influencers who’ll steer conversations on various social media (including reddit, not sure about lemmy yet but wouldn’t surprise me if it was happening here too)… they’ll hype garbage, or they’ll inundate you with so much marketing stuff that it basically spoils parts of ‘good’ games.

  Easy example: the thing I liked most about the old BG games, was discovering/exploring etc. That style of gameplay was obliterated for me by how much marketing / comments / noise there was about that game – noise that was basically impossible to avoid if you’re online at all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Take-Two CEO Responds to Stock Price Drop Following Google Genie Announcement: 'I Think People Are Confusing Tools With Hits' - IGN⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Eh, the gaming industry generally feels pretty dry/dead these days to me, even with record numbers of games available. There’s just so many crappy half made ‘alpha’ or ‘early access’ things around. The very small number of ‘better’ games are often marketed so heavily that I find them boring and don’t even bother to finish them – like BG3. And a lot of the “triple A” content often trades engaging/fun gameplay for rent-seeking features without regard to actual player enjoyment.

  A new tool from Google won’t fix that. So I guess I’d sort of agree with the take-two guy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Would we be seeing these emails involving Epstein if they were all using E2EE email service?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Many ways people implement that E2EE email service, is smoke and mirrors that still puts your data on to foreign servers – and if it touches/remains in a cloud space, even encrypted, I’d say there’s still the opportunity for the leak to occur (encryption algorithms require updates periodically for very good reason!). However, back around the time period this stuff was happening, I imagine that if they’d used a properly setup E2EE service that they controlled, the comms would not have leaked in this volume. Like it used to be common for even smaller/medium sized businesses to maintain their own Email and Blackberry messaging service servers in the 2005-2015 period, which kept comms internal to the company (barring hackers of course).

  If they had that setup properly and with retention periods set for things like backups / old messages and so on, this sort of leak, I imagine, would not have happened.

  IT Operations type roles in companies are less common these days, as most just dump things into the cloud (and options like BB went poof!), but there is a reason that such departments exist, and why some industries place a high premium on things like data retention (and getting rid of data when you legally can, to minimize this very sort of risk). Most of the people involved in these scandals, appear to be incredibly wealthy / business people etc – I mean, Bill Gates should’ve known for sure that this shit was highly leakable.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anyone in tech confirm?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yep. I’ve middle aged coworkers who are saying quite emphatically that they can’t imagine retiring in tech – they know they’ll need to move to another industry well before retirement, in part because of AI reducing the need for certain skillsets. They also know they’re too old to be considered a ‘good hire’ due to ageism in tech. Most seem to have made plans to try and move on to something relatively low skill for the last part of their working lives. I know one of their plans is to do a food truck.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  For me personally, yeah, it wouldn’t work. As others noted, it needs to be reciprocal attraction for sex to really feel good / get you that endorphin hit. Based on the number of replies noting it, it seems fair to say that men’s needs aren’t just a matter having an orgasm.

  Prolly better off looking for an asexual guy to partner with.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Update: Clinton says that Trump tried to stick finger in his butt during trash felattio extravaganza. (Read more)⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Clinton ought to just put this rumour to bed, and tweet out: “I did not have sexual relations with that Man”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨She is making a GREAT point⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Nah, this isn’t a great point at all… even at face value really.

  Put slightly differently, if we’re assuming people sleep around as much as the text implies, if we focus on birth control solely for men, then one ‘failure’/non-controlled man would result in a ton of pregnancies. If the onus is on women, then one ‘failure’/non-controlled woman would result in one pregnancy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My credit union no longer allows me to payoff pending purchases made on my credit card⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  buncha folks talking about savings accounts and rates, its easier to think of accounts in three categories: loans, savings, demand. The last one being where the money’s available to you ‘on demand’ with no extra conditions – ie. a chequing account, or a ‘savings’ account with a low rate… because the money’s available on demand.

  Higher rate savings accounts are common, I don’t know why people almost always seem confused by the notion. You get a term deposit/gic or whatever, where you lock money in for X period, to get a higher rate – and if you tap that money before the period’s over, you lose the interest.

  Locked in deposit rates will almost always be about 1-2% lower than regular mortgage rates that people pay, with CUs using the difference for operation costs. So like my CU has mortgage rates just shy of 5% at the moment, and term deposit rates of around 2.7-3% give or take. A rate cut was just announced in Canada, so those will likely go down a bit this week.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨From Snoop Dogg to Lap Dogg⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  They’re in the minority on lemmy, sure.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨From Snoop Dogg to Lap Dogg⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s accurate to describe it as abnormal – something that’s less common deviates from what is normal, is abnormal. There’s often a connection to abnormal things being ‘worrying’, and lgbtq+ stuff falls into that category for many as well – case in point, Snoop. Few parents ‘wish’ their kids to be lgbtq+, it worries them, even if many will (hopefully) love their kids regardless. I reckon lemmy has a significant number of lgbtq+ people on it, which presents echo chamber bias. I still think it’s important to voice dissenting opinions / views, even if it triggers a bunch of people – so long as it’s done in a generally neutral fashion. My communication skills feel ok to me, though some groan that I write longer posts. Sure, I often have people post ad hominem type insults / personal attacks against things I post, but I rarely respond back attacking the personality/character of those folks (admittedly, I’ve been more lax lately).

  Sorta like how there are seemingly a lot of FN people in many of the Canadian subs. Most/many of the articles that get posted there are primarily about FN topics, with FN bias. While I know my views on FN issues are not “in line” with the FN narrative, I still think it’s important to highlight things in a mostly neutral manner, so that there’s a diversity of opinions presented to the broader community. Without more diverse opinions displayed, it gives the wrong impression to readers of the general public opinion about various topics – I doubt I really need to go on about the risks of echo chambers on social media.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨From Snoop Dogg to Lap Dogg⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I know about ancient greece, and as I’ve said I don’t care personally what people do / who they love. Don’t assume just because I consider homosexual behaviour to be abnormal, that I’m somehow opposed to it / think it inherently “wrong” or anything. I also don’t have a personal issue with it in movies, particularly more adult themed movies – though I do think it’s massively over-represented at this point, as almost every movie/show I see has heavy lgbtq+ themes wedged in haphazardly, often to the detriment of the plot.

  Younger generations claiming to be lgbtq+, or being on the gender spectrum, doesn’t really impact my view, I admit. First, it’s still a minority, which makes it abnormal. Grouping all abnormal types together also inflates the perspective of how common it is for any one subset. Young people are also more inclined to be affected by perceptions of benefits / “going along with what’s approved in media”. Even the stats on that site generally support this, noting that the breakdown between men/women is hugely lopsided amongst Gen Z, and with the bulk of the change seemingly being women identifying as bisexual. That fits quite a bit with how its presented in media – so I’d still question whether it’s kids being ‘genuine’ in their experiences/feelings, or if it’s media pushing certain messages and kids reacting to those messages. Media can clearly influence peoples world views / perspectives, at times in ways that aren’t authentic – we’re all keen to recognise as such when we talk about the negative impact of fox news – so it’d seem strange to pretend like it can’t have a similar reality-distorting effect in this area, given the level of over-representation of lgbtq+ themes. Particularly bi-sexual women, as media likes to treat women as sex objects desired by “everyone”, and wedge in some lesbian sex scenes to boot. Almost every series/movie has lgbtq+ stuff in it these days, which is one reason Snoop is uncomfortable taking kids to movies – it’s gotten pretty rare to see a same-race healthy relationship straight couple in media.

  To approach it from a slightly different angle: it’s like trying to find non-emo edgelord male characters in anime (which, in its space, feeds the indoctrination of alpha male sorts) – or the negative male stereo-types pushed by people like Tate. If we accept/recognise that certain media representations can “make” young people more extreme in that sort of space, then I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable to say that media can “make” young people more gender fluid on the flip side. Part of being young, is lacking critical objectivity.

  Also, in terms of the polling and benefits, hell, I personally identify as “other” on all government polls, because “other” gets preferential treatment/hiring options, while “male” gets rejection letters. That isn’t an authentic response, but it’s a necessary response to get past certain hiring criteria – I’ve literally had rejection letters stating “you’re not part of an equity group” in the past, when I answered male (in Canada, literally the reason the federal government rejected my application). Workplaces have no business blocking people from employment due to their preference, even when it comes to us CIS folks.

  As for seeing things in public – a kid could see a horrific car accident by chance, corpses everywhere. That doesn’t mean it’s appropriate to show a 6 year old graphic death scenes. Or to use a less extreme example, and a fairly common one, they could walk in on their parents fucking – it still wouldn’t be appropriate for a movie for kids to have a bunch of sex scenes. Content involving adult stuff should have an adult rating, even if “some” kids may encounter those things earlier in life by happenstance.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨From Snoop Dogg to Lap Dogg⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Me personally? I wouldn’t care either way. I’ve seen a woman on the street fingering the ass of a muslim dude before, and just sorta walked by. But I don’t have kids. I imagine if I had kids, I’d be opposed to public ass-blasting.

  A parent that I work with has had awkward conversations with his kids, after they came to Canada and saw guys kissing / making out in public. I can appreciate that such PDAs can prompt similar ‘awkward’ conversations, but also that they’re much less ‘common’ than encountering them as part of a big budget movie – and encountering them in public is often an easier way for parents to broach the subject. Kids noticing that stuff is unavoidable as they mature, but having it forced to the front by media / schools is questionable, and I can appreciate the parents’ concerns on that front.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨From Snoop Dogg to Lap Dogg⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Poor word choice perhaps, wasn’t intending it to be taken as ‘hard core’ graphic sex bdsm, but more hardcore bdsm as in a couple clearly into that lifestyle - like a dad that wears a collar or whatnot. The latter would still be inappropriate as it would prompt questions difficult to answer for parents, and topics that are reasonably beyond a kids maturity level. It’d be fine in a pg-13, but not in a G.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨From Snoop Dogg to Lap Dogg⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s an abnormal relationship type with a dom and a sub. Just like homosexual relationships are abnormal relationships with non standard partners involved. One is just more abnormal than the other. Both raise questions about sex, as was the point with Snoops clip – his kid explicitly asked about sex stuff, because he encountered the abnormal couple on screen. Snoop wasn’t comfortable discussing that with his grandkid in a movie theatre, and felt put out. That’s a valid response, no matter how many lgbtq+ people scream in nonsensical rage.

  You may not like the point, but it doesn’t make it invalid. Just like you may not like hetero people’s reaction to homosexual content in kids media, but that doesn’t make their reactions “wrong”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨From Snoop Dogg to Lap Dogg⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If you put a bunch of hard core BDSM content into a movie for kids, it’d be considered inappropriate. Even if the BDSM community argued we have ‘no problem’ exposing kids to other kinds of relationships. It’d prompt similar uncomfortable questions for adults, and I reckon could lead to negative interactions that could damage the parent/child relationship.

  No matter how you spin it, lgbtq+ gender stuff is abnormal, and applies to a relatively small minority of people in the overall population. Forcing those conversations onto hetero couples is inappropriate. Children of lgbtq+ couples may/can have those conversations earlier, as their households will likely encounter the questions regardless – just like a family of hard core BDSM practitioners would need to explain to their kids why mommy and daddy have a dungeon in the basement. That doesn’t mean every kid, and every family, should go through the same crap. Especially if, as a non-member of that community, your response will almost definitely be “wrong” according to that community.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨From Snoop Dogg to Lap Dogg⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This thread seems so triggered.

  He’s not expressing an uncommon opinion. Lots of parents/grandparents dislike overtly lgbtq+ content in kid-focused media, because it results in kids asking questions the adults aren’t prepared / comfortable answering. They’re basically just saying that discussing “adult” relationships is an “adult” topic, and shouldn’t be something coming about as a result of a little kid movie.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If there's a sort of "apocalyptic" event but there are still surviving communities, will people be able to make eyeglasses again, or are people with vision issues gonna be fucked?⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Eye glasses started showing up around 1300 AD. Implies the basic tech / processes required to make them is relatively simple, given that they’ve been around in some form ever since the middle ages. Granted, they wouldn’t be as sophisticated as they are today, and many people with very niche issues would suffer.

  Anything more modern, requiring microchips or heavily integrated international supply chains would go poof. Personally, I’d worry about dental and medical stuff we diagnose with x-rays. Like it’s not too uncommon for people to have a root canal these days… but it didn’t become a more ‘common’ thing until around the 1800-1900 period. Hell, getting your wisdom teeth pulled in a post-event world would likely suck some serious ass.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Should visitors to a country (tourist / visa-holders / people staying temporarily) have the right to criticize the government? When should an immigrant have the right to criticize the government?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Lots of people seem to think it’s either or, and it really shouldn’t be, in my view. (I’ll note I’m canadian, since it seems to matter to some these days).

  The argument that foreigners shouldn’t be allowed to protest is to me somewhat valid, but with a bunch of reservations. Peaceful protests, publishing op eds, (obviously) University papers, online posts, and other ‘regular’ forms of expression I’m totally in agreement that they should be allowed to express themselves/participate.

  But we’ve also seen cases in Canada where our immigration levels got so high, that we literally had CCP organized protests in favour of a detained Chinese CCP Billionaire, as well as the tearing down of “peaceful protests”/awareness things in regards to HongKong and the crack down the CCP did there. We’ve seen large, organized groups of Indian students – their messages of “go get free food” being amplified by foreign controlled social media – draining our food banks dry, the loss of that social support helping to fuel class conflicts and increased animosity towards Indian people as a demographic. We’ve seen ‘protests’ leveraged by foreign powers to sow discontent and animosity intentionally, and/or to control the narrative around news stories.

  And that’s really no surprise: one of the stated methodologies of authoritarian regimes, for attacking democracies, is to basically sow civil unrest through the amplification of contested issues/topics. They’ll amplify/fund controversial right-wing and left-wing viewpoints in order to cause internal conflict. They’ll hype up race conflicts. Like how the majority of people are totally fine saying both “Hamas is bad” and “Israel’s genocidal actions in gaza are bad”, but somehow it’s always framed as just a 2 sided thing where you’re on one side or the other, is great for authoritarians: why fight a democracy, when you can make it fight itself. If we’re accepting Students/people from authoritarian regimes, we have to be realistic in acknowledging many of these people will share the regimes beliefs, and will be actively working against our governments / peoples. They aren’t the stereotypical refugee seeking a better/freer life, but rather people with malicious intentions and a desire to disrupt.

  So I’m fine with such people having visas and non-permanent citizenship revoked if the person’s involved in criminal activity (violent protests), and/or if they’re a primary organizer/instigator/funder of such things, or (as was the case with some ‘student’ groups in Canada) they’re actively coordinating their protests with foreign embassies/agents. I’d also be in favour of increased scrutiny of people from such regions when it comes to long term stays / partial immigration (where they don’t renounce their former non-democratic country). Lots of countries also expect singular citizenship, I see no particular issue with western democracies at least requiring that their citizens not support/be registered citizens of authoritarian dictatorships. If you want to live in an egalitarian/democratic country, you shouldn’t be supportive of authoritarian autocracies/dictatorships.

  And again, similar to the note about ‘one side or the other’, in terms of free speech, most folks generally recognise that there are some reasonable restrictions / repercussions involved with it. Hate speech, explicitly calling for the killing of some group of people or what have you, clearly not a ‘right’ for most sane people – at least, not one that wouldn’t come with consequences. In the same way that the left is fine boycotting Musk for his Nazi salutes (he’s free to express himself as a Nazi, and other people are free to take issue with that / not support him because of it), foreigners explicitly challenging the existing norms of society should be prepared for potential consequences if they do so in a manner deemed inappropriate.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'Doctor Who' Star Varada Sethu Fires Back at 'Woke' Critics: 'It Means We’re Doing the Right Thing'⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  So the argument is what, that the white people who had a ‘role model’ for their kids shouldn’t be annoyed that the industry is removing that role model, because race shouldn’t matter. But also that race representation matters, and that it’s important for other races to have representation by taking over the roles of those figures.

  It doesn’t upset me, it just doesn’t make sense to me. Like I accept that parents want to have positive role models that ‘look like’ their kids, as it helps kids development. So it makes sense that minority groups want to see themselves represented as such in media, and that they’d celebrate established characters being swapped over to be their race/gender. However, that same line of thinking explains why white people are annoyed that their kids are ‘losing’ role models that ‘look like them’. If you assert that ‘race matters’ (and I accept that it does for kids), then it seems reasonable to be annoyed that those characters are being ‘taken away’ for practically the same reason that it seems reasonable for minority groups to be happy to see themselves represented. If race representation matters for the character and kids having positive role models, than its arguably worse to disenfranchise the larger group of kids.

  I mean, we’re busy watching young guys flock to alpha dumbass influencer bros, in part because there are fewer and fewer positive role models for them to look up to.