darthelmet
@darthelmet@lemmy.world
- Comment on President Trump reacts to President Biden’s cancer diagnosis: "I don't feel sorry for him" 2 days ago:
We’re just Biden our time… I’ll see myself out.
- Comment on Drop your unpopular opinions here because c/unpopularopinions is filled with popular opinions 2 days ago:
I suppose there’s that too. But even then, I think the same point about those products being made or localized to avoid associations with foreignness holds. I don’t think people were buying Nintendo and Sega games because they were japanophiles.
- Comment on Drop your unpopular opinions here because c/unpopularopinions is filled with popular opinions 2 days ago:
Isn’t that kind of just a problem with an upvote system being used for unpopular things?
Also I’ll drop mine in here for the sake of it, although I get the sense that lemmy in particular will be more likely to agree with me than the broader population: I hate meta progression in roguelites. I still end up playing a lot of games with them because unfortunately that seems to be what sells in that market compared to more traditional roguelikes and if the game is good enough, I can try to look past the system. However, I do think that they just strictly make the games they’re in worse. I could get into a whole rant about them, but maybe not here.
- Comment on Drop your unpopular opinions here because c/unpopularopinions is filled with popular opinions 2 days ago:
I kind of agree. I like pics and vids of dogs, but actually being around them is kind of gross and scary. Cats are more my speed. They clean themselves. They don’t need to be taken outside just to take a shit. They usually don’t smell. They sleep a lot and generally just act really chill. I haven’t had a cat jump and bark (or whatever the cat equivalent would be) at me in the way that dogs do. I feel like I have an understanding with cats.
- Comment on Drop your unpopular opinions here because c/unpopularopinions is filled with popular opinions 2 days ago:
Ah, but what about ones about a HS girl who gets sent to a magical world full of charming pretty boys? See? There’s so much variety! (I say this as someone who watches way too much of that trash lol.)
- Comment on Drop your unpopular opinions here because c/unpopularopinions is filled with popular opinions 2 days ago:
Most of it is shit, but I think your reasoning is backwards. I don’t think people (At least Americans/Westerners) like anime because it’s Japanese, they like Japanese stuff through exposure to it in anime.
When we were kids and watching stuff like Pokemon and Yugioh, none of us knew wtf anime was or where it came from. They were just some more cartoons. In fact the localizers like 4Kids actively tried to scrub “foreignness” from the shows because they thought it would ick American audiences.
And this pop cultural dominance has been very successful at rehabilitating Japan’s image, both erasing the past and glazing over some of the uncomfortable parts of the present.
As for actual show quality, I’d say all mediums have mostly bad art with a few gems, but I do think anime is exceptional in two ways: First, it seems like the barrier to turning some random author’s bad ideas into a commercial product are much lower, I’m not really sure what the exact economic or cultural reasons are for that though. Second, most anime ends up being kind of bad in the same way. It’s a medium that’s practically defined by it’s tropes and they are shared amongst the good and bad shows alike. The difference is usually that the good ones have something else worthwhile going on and the bad ones are almost nothing but a reheated remix of these tropes.
- Comment on Still waiting for my Donny dollar check, any day now... 2 days ago:
Huh. This turned out to be a more complicated answer than I thought. My parents were born in the mid 60s. Lead paint was banned in 1978, so they would have been in their teens. Lead gasoline, on the other hand, was gradually phased out starting in 1973, so a little earlier, but shockingly wasn’t completely banned until literally the month I was born, Jan 1996.
Lead pipes are even more wild. NEW installations were banned in 1974, but it allowed existing ones to stay in.
- Comment on Delicious 3 days ago:
The death of innocence is reaching the point where you could do that, but it wouldn’t even make you happy because of health reasons.
- Comment on Disc drive needed 3 days ago:
We’re on lemmy. Our opinions on how widely used tech is don’t count.
Personally my last 3 PCs haven’t had a disk drive and I can’t remember the last time I’ve SEEN a disc. It was almost certainly before college.
- Comment on Still waiting for my Donny dollar check, any day now... 4 days ago:
Propaganda is a hell of a drug.
- Comment on Still waiting for my Donny dollar check, any day now... 4 days ago:
I do try to explain that, but she just won’t listen. It’s like there’s a mental block stopping the connection from happening.
The crazy thing is she’s worked insanely hard in her career and until a couple years ago barely made any money from it. (Although some of that is the gender inequality of her being out of work to take care of us when we were young for a few years.) She doesn’t understand how her being this hardworking professional who still only makes enough for a middle class income is different than someone who’s never worked a day in their life siphoning money off of workers so they can buy their 3rd mansion, private jets, and elections and somehow still has MORE money after all of that.
- Comment on Still waiting for my Donny dollar check, any day now... 4 days ago:
If only it were just dudes. My mom is like this. I can get her to agree with that things need to be better and that social spending is good but… when I explain to her that we need to tax billionaires to do that suddenly it’s “BUT THEY EARNED THEIR MONEY! WE SHOULDN’T TAKE IT FROM THEM!!!”
- Comment on [deleted] 6 days ago:
Like others said, seems fake. However it did remind me of what I saw when I went to the town in Japan with all the deer. They just cross the road whenever the fuck they want and expect cars to stop for them, and they do. It’s the deer’s town, the humans are just living in it.
- Comment on Languages 1 week ago:
I feel like we might as well just go back to symbol languages. What’s the point of an alphabet if the letters don’t actually convey consistent pronunciation? It’s just more confusing because the letters imply rules which don’t hold.
- Comment on Are you too young to remember these? 1 week ago:
I continue to be shocked to discover things that seemed very recent to me are now a decade or two old. I probably shouldn’t be, but here I am.
- Comment on Doesn't add up 1 week ago:
Oh yeah. I just left most of the numbers from the original meme because I didn’t feel like deciding on new ones.
- Comment on Doesn't add up 1 week ago:
Labor $200 Land $150 Materials $800 CEO pay and profits $1,000,000,000 Utility $150 someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my family is dying
- Comment on Name of a Japanese vegetable dish? 1 week ago:
Definitely regretting not getting a photo. I don’t tend to take a lot of pictures in general. I think I maybe have like 2 or 3 from the trip and they’re all group shots with my friends.
- Comment on Name of a Japanese vegetable dish? 1 week ago:
That could be it. It looks similar.
- Comment on Name of a Japanese vegetable dish? 1 week ago:
I don’t think so, but that looks like it might be worth a try.
- Comment on Name of a Japanese vegetable dish? 1 week ago:
That looks sort of like what I remember. I’ll give it and your other suggestions a try. Thanks!
- Submitted 1 week ago to [deleted] | 15 comments
- Comment on Will Hollywood's remake of Parasite really succeed? 2 weeks ago:
There are so many cases I’ve seen of some piece of art getting commodified in ways that just kind of fly in the face of the original work.
The one that always comes to mind is Madoka Magica.
Spoilers
The twist in the show is that the magical girls’ souls have been essentially turned into objects alienated from their bodies. They’re forced to work for someone exploiting their needs and are discarded when they are no longer useful. So it feels super weird and gross to make a bunch of figures and merch of the characters, literally objectifying/commodifying them.
- Comment on Will Hollywood's remake of Parasite really succeed? 2 weeks ago:
Idk if it will turn out good or not, but I don’t think the problems you mentioned are really an issue. I assume they aren’t just going to shoot a one to one remake with English actors, it’d be adapted to the culture it’s being presented in. (To be clear, I haven’t heard anything about the remake, this is just speaking generally.) Sort of like how there’s a US and UK “The Office” which aren’t just the same show but different actors.
While those specific cultural examples couldn’t just slot into a movie set in America, the themes still fit really well. It’s not like the US doesn’t have economic inequality and all. There’s a reason why Parasite and Squid Game got such international attention despite language and cultural differences.
That said, I’m generally anti-remake/franchise. Come up with your own original ideas dammit!
Also, I sure do love jelly-filled donuts.
- Comment on take their money and arrest those responsible 2 weeks ago:
I posted a question about it a few days ago, but atm my tiny project is to get my town to plant more trees along the sidewalks so it isn’t so torturous to walk anywhere when it gets this hot. I tried emailing someone from a department I think handles this kind of thing, but not 100% sure and I haven’t heard back yet. I guess I’ll follow up soon if I don’t get a response.
- Comment on take their money and arrest those responsible 2 weeks ago:
I don’t look at companies like people, because they’re not. They’re profit optimization machines. Thinking about it in terms of blame is like getting mad at a math equation. The truly depressing thing about all the evils of capitalism is that they’re entirely rational and expected outcomes of the incentives and structures of the system. To a company, spending money to make a thing they can sell is functionally equivalent to spending money lobbying the government to get more favorable regulations. There is no moral calculation involved. Sure there are people who make those decisions within the companies, but over time the ones that make less financially lucrative decisions lose out to those who will do anything for a buck.
Recognizing this dynamic as our greatest barrier to progress is a necessary step to solving the problem. In order to be able to fight against such a powerful and organized enemy, we need to get as many people on our side and activate them enough to take coordinate collective action. To this end, we’ve seen how this individualized blame game has hurt our cause. (And the fossil fuel industry is at least partially responsible for pushing that narrative to the forefront.) People are naturally going to be hesitant to do things that diminish their quality of life and seeing people judge them for not doing so when they’re already living with so little while the rich pollute to their hearts content can make people feel alienated from the struggle. It makes it seem like these activists and politicians don’t understand or care about their circumstances. It makes it seem like we’re being petty and disingenuous by going after relatively small things. Nobody likes to feel like the bad guy, so they may even overcorrect and be more receptive to climate denial. Even if they accept the premise and reduce their consumption, if they’re convinced that this is sufficient and take no additional action, we’re still screwed. It also doesn’t help that the gov has been doing things to make even individual consumption changes even harder. China has made great strides in making cheap solar panels and electric vehicles, but we can’t have that, think of the shareholders! Lets put trade barriers up on their import.
Don’t get me wrong. I would never tell someone NOT to modify their behavior. If you are in a situation where you feel you can drive less, eat less meat, etc… go for it. My problem is using this framework as an overall marketing strategy for climate action. Look, climate change has just gotten worse over my lifetime. In fact, it’s gotten worse at an accelerating rate. Whatever we’ve been doing… IT HASN’T BEEN WORKING! Whatever tiny gains have been made by changes in consumption have been totally eclipsed by the wastefulness of the elite. If something isn’t working… you do something else.
- Comment on take their money and arrest those responsible 2 weeks ago:
USA #1!.. at a bunch of things you don’t want to be #1 at.
- Comment on take their money and arrest those responsible 2 weeks ago:
110%. Walkable cities and trains. Let’s do it.
- Comment on take their money and arrest those responsible 2 weeks ago:
That is exactly what I’m trying to push back against. Guilting people over their tiny contribution to climate change is hurting the cause, not helping it. It’s a problem intrinsic to the consumption-oriented liberal approach to climate activism, but not exclusive to it.
- Comment on take their money and arrest those responsible 2 weeks ago:
Waaaaaaaay less than the people who have used their power to corrupt said system. Capitalists wouldn’t have spent this much money on lobbying and propaganda if it wasn’t needed. They try their best to keep some people from voting and the rest from having any viable choices that reflect what they want.
It’s just counterproductive to conceptualize our current situation in terms of individualized guilt. It’s not like going to privately check a box every few years is doing much more than choosing to consume a bit less. We need to be organized. Our enemies are and they’re winning.