uriel238
@uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- Comment on Hopeposting 22 hours ago:
According to Bob Chipman
Superman only makes sense in the context of a worldview where good is the default setting of the universe and the job of a being of godlike power who aims to do good is to fix things when they break and thwart evil from spoiling the natural state of goodness.
Because if the universe is not good at its core then the moral responsibility of that same godlike being who wants to do good is to assume power absolutely and make the universe good by force.
And that’s not Superman.
I don’t think IRL, good is the default setting of the universe.
- Comment on Hopeposting 22 hours ago:
According to Bob Chipman
Superman only makes sense in the context of a worldview where good is the default setting of the universe and the job of a being of godlike power who aims to do good is to fix things when they break and thwart evil from spoiling the natural state of goodness.
Because if the universe is not good at its core then the moral responsibility of that same godlike being who wants to do good is to assume power absolutely and make the universe good by force.
And that’s not Superman.
I don’t think IRL, good is the default setting of the universe.
- Comment on Housing prices 1 day ago:
Also in 1971, the Powell memorandum was written and submitted to the Chamber of Commerce.
- Comment on International 2 days ago:
If Guwutine doesn’t get to eating soon, we’re all going to be super sad, according to an awful lot of economists telling us that wealth redistribution is the only viable solution out of this mess.
- Comment on There’s a lot of confusion about what democratic socialists want, and that’s fair. Even within our group, there are differences among us. 4 days ago:
Tineye only reveals a couple of hits on imagur. This isn’t an official image coming from the Republican party, but a mock-up done privately.
- Comment on Centrists have such a Hard Choice. 4 days ago:
I don’t think wealth taxes are too far left for Americans. I think the ownership class is just willing to flood social media and television with propaganda against wealth tax, which influences elections.
That’s what they’re doing already in California, and we’d really, really, like to keep Medi-cal when the OBBBA gutted Medicaid nationwide.
- Comment on Centrists have such a Hard Choice. 4 days ago:
Encouraging people to find and listen to independent news media is one of the more effective things you can do for the resistance.
By the way, you should add more independent news media to your news diet.
Also, generally, if something makes you scared or mad, go online and look for other sources discussing the same story. It’ll not only provide nuance, but it’ll reveal what’s fact, and what is opinion or assertion.
- Comment on Centrists have such a Hard Choice. 4 days ago:
From the 20th century, we have the ideological war against USSR to thank for that. It started all the way back with Wilson. After WWII, the threat of nuclear annihilation was a powerful tool for nationalism. (I’d learn only recently that a first strike was far more likely to come from US than USSR, and we had some dangerous war hawks in power.)
Before that, after reconstruction came redemption and corporate interests took over both parties.
Before that, roads, schools, bridges, libraries and such were socialism giving the working man benefits to which they didn’t contribute (we just contributed all the labor). Yes, they called it socialism even back in the 19th century.
Do observe that adherence to neoliberalism in the EU (which is essentially corporatism with extra steps) is driving the rise of far right movements even over there. And when the tech-bros and white Christian nationalists over here are done bleeding the US dry like its private equity, they’ll be headed over there with their vast wealth to do the same thing.
- Comment on Centrists have such a Hard Choice. 4 days ago:
Radical Right: Dismantle democratic elections (to stay in power)
Radical Left: Make elections freer and fairer (to have a say in governance)
- Comment on This is what Democratic voters are saying. Will the party listen? 4 days ago:
Here’s my breakdown after listening to a lot of analyses.
Establishment (centrist) Democrats really would rather be rich than serve the public. Seriously. If they just pass the clauses written for them by corporate lobbyists, they not only get campaign contributions and dark money, but a cushy high-paying job after their political career ends, and they get to join the ownership class. (Thank Reagan for allowing all this to become legal.)
The superdelegates in the Democratic Party are all old guard establishment Democrats.
Also Blue Dog Democrats argue that the Republicans will assert some of the more extreme ideas that the SDA are considering (e.g. abolish police, abolish prisons) which will scare their voters away. The thing is, if their voters are engaged with the far-right propaganda machine (e.g. FOX News) and are dim enough to take Republican talking points seriously, then they’re not going to vote blue anyway. They need to vote red to prove their manhood, own the libs, lock immigrants in torture cages and deny gender affirming care to trans folk.
Harris made this mistake (among many) during her 2024 campaign, trying to get never-Trumpers and Liz Cheney Republicans. All those are still too racist and detest working class folk to dare vote Democrat.
Regular Democratic voters want a platform, things like universal healthcare, a jobs guarantee, higher education for all, support for Palestine (and no support for IDF), immediate action on the climate crisis. A platform draws more apathetic Democratic voters to the polls.
Independents want a better economy, and if they’re not racist (in which they’re actually Republican) then they vote against the incumbent when inflation is high and jobs are down. Right now, inflation is high and jobs are down.
Blue-no-matter-who Democrats see the Republican party and the MAGA movement as an existential threat to the United States, specifically to democracy as an institution (lower case) and the preservation of civil rights. They fight their platform battles during the primaries, and then vote against Republicans (that is, for the non-Republican everyone else is voting for – usually the Democratic candidate, but not always).
To BNMH Democrats, the immediate issues are overhaul of SCOTUS (more than merely adding new bench seats and term limits) and federal restoration of free and fair elections (eliminating gerrymandering, voter suppression and top-down election fraud). Until these things happen, the Republican party, and the captured SCOTUS will continue to be an existential threat. As Larry Lessig points out, we’ve been kicking this can down the road for a long, long time, and now we’re paying the price.
~ We know independents and non-voters outnumber both Democrats and Republicans
~ We know MAGAs are getting dissatisfied, between inflation, the war and the Epstein files. But MAGAs are easy to manipulate
~ We don’t know how big factions are, nor how determined they are to vote. There are local trends
~ We know that whites in the south are (generally) staunchly Republican
~ We know blacks nationwide (generally) vote Democrat. Especially black women
~ We know municipal areas vote Democrat, and because they’re dense, they win popular elections (they dominate Governor and US Senate races)
~ We know rural areas vote Republican, and they get a boost from the EC. They’re also useful for gerrymandering
~ We know the VRA is gutted and the southern states acted quickly to gerrymander and otherwise suppress the black vote. That will affect House seats and state assembly seats, also the race for President in 2028
~ We know that billionaires are investing hundreds of millions (that’s huge) in key elections to push them red. In 2024 Musk’s $250M contribution made a critical difference for Trump. In elections since, campaign money has helped less.We expect the Democrats will take the House in November, but they will only get fifty Senate seats, leaving the majority to the Republicans. This will inhibit saving Social Security, and allow Trump to confirm bench appointments (including SCOTUS seats if Thomas or Alito retire). If Mitch McConnell remains undead (and still not voting) that will make things interesting… but hopefully the public is pissed off enough to give the Democrats that key one-more Senator.
- Comment on When y'all gonna learn 4 days ago:
I’m not writing to the crackpot I’m responding to. I’m writing to the lurkers on the fence wondering if he has a valid point.
That might be why I’m so used to replies that look like long-form essays. It takes a lot more words to explain nuance and invite critical thought than it does to shitpost.
- Comment on Theft 5 days ago:
The real difficulty is with the vast wealth and power in the hands of the few and the unscrupulous who represent or control capital. Hundreds of laws of Congress and the state legislatures are in the interest of these men and against the interests of workingmen. These need to be exposed and repealed. All laws on corporations, on taxation, on trusts, wills, descent, and the like, need examination and extensive change. This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations. — Rutherford B. Hayes, 1888
- Comment on How to move a sofa 5 days ago:
I will grant you I’m referring to what popular culture teaches us masculinity looks like. I’m taking my cues from what social media is popular, what US cinema has to say about masculinity. But that’s because it’s also about the expectations of displays of manhood, what we are obligated to do if we’re real men.
There’s also this video (on YouTube) from J. Draper and PBS which asserts that there’s been a masculinity crisis for about as long as there’s been a moral panic about new fads corrupting our kids (id est, always), that there have always been pundits and editorial correspondents saying that men are becoming too effeminate.
One source I haven’t yet been able to tap is what trans men have to say about masculinity, because to them social expression of their gender is super important. But I don’t know any trans men well enough to stop and ask them.
- Comment on Does Israel have a right to your tax dollars? 5 days ago:
In a purple state like Michigan, you should run the most conservative democrat possible. Otherwise, you’ll lose.
Yeah, that’s not necessarily true.
People who vote for conservative Democrats are way more into the things that MAGA Republicans like: Voting R to prove your manhood; Voting R to own the libs; Voting R to deport all the immigrants; Voting R to keep trans women out of women’s sports (all ten of them.)
Then there’s independents who are really only concerned about how the economy is doing, or rather how their own household is doing. If it’s doing poorly, they vote against the incumbent. If their household is doing well, they’ll keep the current guy to avoid rocking the boat.
Then there’s the breed of Democrat who is interested in platform issues. They’re not all interested in the same platform issues:
Some really want universal healthcare.
Some really want to stop support of the Gaza genocide.
Some want serious action on the climate crisis.
Some want a jobs guarantee.
Some want full access to women’s reproductive healthcare, including abortion, to be guaranteed nationwide.Some want a combination of these things.
And then there’s those Democrats who will vote blue no matter who, because they acknowledge the crisis of democracy that’s unfolding in the US. The Republican party is actively attempting a coup in order to secure themselves a permanent majority, a step towards a one-party state, and autocracy. If that happens, then our elected officials don’t need to care at all about what the public thinks, since the peaceful transition of power as been eliminated. (That also puts non-peaceful transition of power in the center of the table, but that’s a different conversation.)
But this last batch of Democrats try to express their policy opinions in the primaries rather than in the general elections, and back any Democratic candidate that makes it to the general. So some of these Dems are voting in progressive candidates in the belief that progressive Democrats are better winners against Republicans than centrist ones.
(To elaborate on this hypothesis, Republicans are going to Republican: FOX News just has them by the balls, and there’s nothing for them, but a Democratic candidate that has something to offer will draw apathetic Democrats to the election polls, tipping the election in their favor. And in the current clime, we’re seeing this happen repeatedly.)
So what the centrists are banking on is a voting bloc that likes establishment Democrats that take corporate money and are beholden to the lobbies of their campaign contributors, that doesn’t like progressives (who try to be beholden to their constituency) and yet are not so hardline that they vote Republican, who do the same thing. That would be the corporations and the lobbyists themselves, I think.
Democrats as a group don’t identify as blue the way Republicans identify as Red. This is evident in the messaging crisis on the Democratic side. They vote D because they’re interested in the policies that benefit them, or to stop MAGA from taking over the country. Establishment Democrats seem to be looking for blues that identify as blue.
Maybe there’s a demographic that I’m missing, but from here it seems that our Blue Dog Democrats are out of touch.
- Comment on Does Israel have a right to your tax dollars? 5 days ago:
In a purple state like Michigan, you should run the most conservative democrat possible. Otherwise, you’ll lose.
Yeah, that’s not necessarily true.
People who vote for conservative Democrats are way more into the things that MAGA Republicans like: Voting R to prove your manhood; Voting R to own the libs; Voting R to deport all the immigrants; Voting R to keep trans women out of women’s sports (all ten of them.)
Then there’s independents who are really only concerned about how the economy is doing, or rather how their own household is doing. If it’s doing poorly, they vote against the incumbent. If their household is doing well, they’ll keep the current guy to avoid rocking the boat.
Then there’s the breed of Democrat who is interested in platform issues. They’re not all interested in the same platform issues:
Some really want universal healthcare.
Some really want to stop support of the Gaza genocide.
Some want serious action on the climate crisis.
Some want a jobs guarantee.
Some want full access to women’s reproductive healthcare, including abortion, to be guaranteed nationwide.Some want a combination of these things.
And then there’s those Democrats who will vote blue no matter who, because they acknowledge the crisis of democracy that’s unfolding in the US. The Republican party is actively attempting a coup in order to secure themselves a permanent majority, a step towards a one-party state, and autocracy. If that happens, then our elected officials don’t need to care at all about what the public thinks, since the peaceful transition of power as been eliminated. (That also puts non-peaceful transition of power in the center of the table, but that’s a different conversation.)
But this last batch of Democrats try to express their policy opinions in the primaries rather than in the general elections, and back any Democratic candidate that makes it to the general. So some of these Dems are voting in progressive candidates in the belief that progressive Democrats are better winners against Republicans than centrist ones.
(To elaborate on this hypothesis, Republicans are going to Republican: FOX News just has them by the balls, and there’s nothing for them, but a Democratic candidate that has something to offer will draw apathetic Democrats to the election polls, tipping the election in their favor. And in the current clime, we’re seeing this happen repeatedly.)
So what the centrists are banking on is a voting bloc that likes establishment Democrats that take corporate money and are beholden to the lobbies of their campaign contributors, that doesn’t like progressives (who try to be beholden to their constituency) and yet are not so hardline that they vote Republican, who do the same thing. That would be the corporations and the lobbyists themselves, I think.
Democrats as a group don’t identify as blue the way Republicans identify as Red. This is evident in the messaging crisis on the Democratic side. They vote D because they’re interested in the policies that benefit them, or to stop MAGA from taking over the country. Establishment Democrats seem to be looking for blues that identify as blue.
Maybe there’s a demographic that I’m missing, but from here it seems that our Blue Dog Democrats are out of touch.
- Comment on How to move a sofa 6 days ago:
That handful of jackasses dominate social media in contrast to their opposition counterparts, and it’s creating a public divide between the sexes, hence the 4B movement and the choose the bear thought experiment.
I don’t know to what degree this factors into the observable trend that zoomers are having less sex and less romance than prior generations at their age. (I’m sure the affordability crisis is a major factor.) But in the US in 2026, our exemplars of masculinity are demonstrating they are entirely transactional and only understand the power of brute force.
And it’s going to be a long, long time before stereotypes of masculinity change for the better.
Feel free to set a counterexample. Plenty of men do. And we need more of them. But when they do, they’re not demonstrating what it is to be a man. They’re demonstrating what it is to be a functional adult in a cooperative society.
I also think society gender roles should be abolished, and that every gender identity (including non-binary ones) should be respected.
- Comment on How to move a sofa 6 days ago:
Men are fine. Masculinity in 2026 as an ideology or a cultural institution is a problem.
Men exist in concerning numbers who submit to the manosphere logic, who follow the far-right influencers I’ve mentioned, who vote R because letting the libs win is effeminate. And curiously, conservative, tradwife-minded women don’t like them much either.
Manhood as expressed in media isn’t much better, with scriptwriters diegetically presuming the alpha male model is a valid theory. (It’s been debunked even for wolves.)
There are plenty of men who do not submit to these notions, and generally they tend to not be concerned about expressing their manhood or being seen as inadequately masculine. They are more concerned about being adult or being functional than being manly.
- Comment on A cow is more likely to kill you than a shark 6 days ago:
There’s two problems, and the Kurzgesagt two-parter on nuclear fission power discusses them both.
One is that nuclear power plants are long term projects and you’re stuck with what you built, even as improved versions are designed and flaws are discovered with what you have. Yes, sometimes we retrofit our nuclear plants to make them safer (or more efficient, or prettier).
The other is that contractor firms have had a bad habit of just designing the same simple LWRs over and over again, even as engineers have developed designs that are safer, more efficient, more elegant, etc.
But this doesn’t mean either of those can change.
- Comment on A cow is more likely to kill you than a shark 6 days ago:
All the nuclear stuff happens in one place, with a few people minding it. But they do have to be super careful and know what they’re doing.
And if there’s a critical flaw in the reactor design (looking at you Chernobyl) it can go very very wrong.
Renewables are all spread out, and a lot more people manage it for the power output.
That also means a lot more people have power-related jobs.
Fossil Fuels, Methane (Natural Gas) and Coal are just ugly all around. But they have really, really great lobbyists.
- Comment on Screw you peasants 1 week ago:
How are we going to pay for it is an example of a thought terminating cliché. Much like It’s just a theory referring to biological evolution. There are mountains of arguments to be made to the contrary, but for the indoctrinated individual, the phrase is enough.
See also, the clobber passages in the bible regarding LGBT+ folk (specifically gay men). Scholars might explain what they mean, that their intent is not for committed same-sex relationships as they appear in modern society, or that biblical mores are generally not applicable to modern society (for example its full endorsement of slavery). But none of that matters to the loyal indoctrinated cult follower, whose thinking terminates at the passage itself.
- Comment on Pikachu 1 week ago:
I remember news coming out about it in the early 2010s that a study showed that crunching reduces productivity drastically, to the point that even (only) two weeks of crunching will negate the additional work time. Curiously, some game companies at the time were crunching for a year or longer. I believe the statistic reported was that productivity commonly was reduced to 10% normal when crunching.
James Stephanie Sterling did a video about it, which is how the news came to me.
Studies from the aughts (not necessarily related to game development) regarding the effect of micromanagement tools used on the workforce (e.g. mouse movement monitoring and keylogging) came earlier, noting that the time wasted by workers (under the label of time theft ) doing activities such as going to the bathroom, checking social media, talking to loved ones on the phone, getting coffee, etc. were more than offset by the increase in productivity when workers were allowed to do these things. (Slacking workers do exist, but they are starkly the exception. And large companies typically have a significantly greater number of bullshit jobs – workers tasked with busywork that doesn’t actually serve administration or the profit motive – than they have shirkers.)
- Comment on Pikachu 1 week ago:
Sadly, this is true even for workforces, even though the cost of treating your labor pool well (giving them breaks, letting them chat with loved ones and surf the internet) is surpassed by the profit gained by increased productivity. (There are studies.)
Game developing companies still crunch, even though crunching decreases the likelihood that a deadline will be met.
A recent How Money Works video (this one on YouTube) came to the conclusion that the ownership class is just plain cruel and vindictive and is disgusted if their workforce gets even a modicum of class consciousness.
Every concession for labor, from the weekend to lunch breaks to bodily autonomy to living wages had to be attained by leveraging power against the ownership class.
So long as we have ownership class, we will be oppressed by them.
- Comment on How to move a sofa 1 week ago:
I don’t hate men, but masculinity is a millstone.
There’s a difference.
- Comment on How to move a sofa 1 week ago:
All the virtues associated with manhood in the 1970s and 1980s turned into general adulting in the 1990s and aughts.
In 2026, what it is to be a man is asserted by social media personalities like Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro, Joe Rogan, the Tate brothers. The conversation on masculinity is dominated by the manosphere on social media and far-right television.
Expressions of manhood are on full display when Josh Hokit disparages Michelle Obama, when Trump intervenes in the world cup to cancel a red card and lift the one game penalty on Folarin Balogun. Or when US Representative Max Miller doubles down on his innocence in a video making common DV gaslighting arguments in the face of credible abuse allegations, on the presumption that his MAGA base won’t care and will still vote for him.
Masculinity in 2026 is demonstrated when you discharge your strength in malice or cruelty or bad taste to show the world you are beyond the reach of consequences, or do not care what consequences occurr.
But sure. I’m AMAB and have been criticized for half a century for being inadequately masculine. I’ve been repeatedly bullied and disregarded because I’m a wuss or a wimp. But I’m still game. I’m still open to an argument:
Tell me of a positive human trait that is particular to men that is not also expected of women by our society?
I’m not saying good men don’t exist. To the contrary, there are plenty. But I am saying what makes them good is not a feature of their masculinity, rather it’s a feature of being a functional adult in a (rapidly deteriorating) liberal society.
- Comment on How to move a sofa 1 week ago:
Except women also have those connections.
The price may be different, like a baby blanket for their neice.
- Comment on How to move a sofa 1 week ago:
Can confirm. Until I threw my back in my forties, I was Tony.
I threw my back helping someone move an exercise machine. For someone else.
A pizza is the price. Two toppings is typical, or the everything special.
For a while I was also the guy with the cordless drill you could borrow.
- Comment on No Spoiler 👁️⃤ 1 week ago:
It’s why, out of habit, I call them the 9/11 attacks since that’s a websearch-able term that will yield informative results. I am often caught flat footed, not knowing things that are assumed to be common knowledge.
- Comment on A small moment in gaming history 1 week ago:
This reminds me of the recent removal of the Enola Gay in US government history archives because LGBT+ is DEI.
Forgetting that gay not only has multiple meanings, but only predominately referred to homosexuality in the 1980s.
I remember looking it up as a kid. 1970s era dictionaries did not include the present definition.
- Comment on It'll be ok. Nobody's going to judge you. 1 week ago:
This is a thing that mathematicians do. Rather than just assume you can’t divide by zero they’ll go ahead and try and see what happens.
- Comment on No Enforcement ⚖️ 1 week ago:
The UN has a long history of having this complaint and no-one being willing to enforce international law. It turns out the US (allegedly the world police) doesn’t actually engage in military adventurism for humanitarian reasons, but for colonial ones (which it then tries to justify by pointing to humanitarian crises.)
In the 1980s, GURPS Supers (the superhero supplement to the Generic Universal Role-Playing Game) offered an alternative reality in which high-powered superheroes worked for the United Nations and gave them actual teeth.
It was before the internet and we didn’t have as much cause to be so cynical then.