• 0 Posts
  • 57 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: August 19th, 2023

help-circle



  • Sometimes the “realism” critique is certainly pedantic and unproductive, but other times what’s really meant is contradiction. Situations should make sense within the fictional world. And in the fictional world of DC, norms around politics and economics are portrayed to be analogous to western neoliberalism with capitalism assumed and unquestioned. So with the Wayne family being a relatively well-regarded billionaire family like the Gates or the Buffets, there is still the issue that it is clear under the current system and that portrayed in DC universe that such wealth cannot be accumulated and sustained without massive exploitation of working class people somewhere along the line. So billionaire + “good guy” starts to become more of a glaring contradiction even in DC. But sure, we can explain it away as fiction with magically ethical capitalists. The interesting thing about the billionaire Wayne discussion though, is when people apply this fictional view of capitalism to how they interpret the real world. And now we’re back to propaganda.

    What I would say that sets West Wing and B99 apart is sometimes there’s a tonal difference or way in which certain themes are handled/portrayed that signals to the viewer that the writers acknowledge this isn’t what real life is like but we hope one day we can get there. And it’s a spectrum right. Some do this to varying degrees, other more propagandistic media do not.






  • Assuming you’re coming from a place of arguing in good faith, you raise an important point. We must always scrutinize the alignment of our means with the ideals of our ends. And in war, even with a just cause of repelling invaders and securing a people’s future, there is a spectrum of injustice against their people that leaders must weigh against achieving these goals. Conscription is a good example of this. War makes monsters of even the most well intentioned. However, we must consider the alternatives that appeal most to us with equal scrutiny, using history as our guide. If Zelensky surrendered at the very outset, it would have avoided this particular bloody war, but what injustice would it have incurred for the Ukranian people? If Zelensky sued for peace terms and conceded territory 2 years ago instead of leaning into conscription, what harms does it risk for the Ukranian people and their long term security using Crimea as an example? I am not qualified to say what are better choices. I just know that when a superior force invades you, the grim situation that results means that any choice you make as a leader will involve harm to your people.




  • I don’t want to shake the ruling class, I want to take away their power to exploit people. I want insurance companies reigned in. Getting Obamacare passed did more than what a thousand vigilantes could, and that was after the Republicans and lobbyists gutted it.

    If people really want to stick it to the man (conservatives and liberals alike), then they can vote in representatives and Senators who will actually legislate for the people, rather than ones who will enrich themselves off their backs.

    You can revolt, you can eat the rich, it feels great. But what matters is how the system gets changed or doesn’t change. Plenty of revolutions have replaced the system was something worse, with these heros who took down the ruling class in their place. Keep a close eye on Syria, here’s hoping for the best.


  • Lol that’s some serious cherry picking my dude. One is one of the best action movies of the last 20 years and launched a franchise. The other is a middling coming of age story made for streaming. There are plenty of bland action movies just as bad as Damsel and without an ounce of activism that come out every year. Try comparing it to Get Out, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Mad Max Fury Road, hell even Inglorious Basterds might be considered activism now that fascism is back in fashion.



  • Sure we can quibble about the median quality of a college education in the US, you you have to draw the line somewhere. But the issue I’m pointing at is people get lazy conflating education with social progressiveness and egalitarianism and dismiss people with different worldviews as “uneducated”. There are plenty of intelligent well-educated people who are morally bankrupt or deeply mistaken. After all, eugenics came from some of the most “educated” minds in the world.


  • Yeah… that’s the uneducated citizens part dude…

    Yes and no. Yes, it is true that more uneducated people voted for Trump, and lack of education means people do not understand the risks and negative implications of voting for Trump over Harros for themselves. No, that argument doesn’t explain the whole picture. It is also true that educated people who understand the implications voted for him anyway because they saw it as benefiting them/their worldviews. Keep in mind half of college educated male voters and over a third of college educated female voters went for Trump.


  • I think there’s probably something wrong with the math around per-response water consumption, but it is true that evaporative cooling consumes potable water, in that the water cannot be reused until it cycles through the atmosphere and is recaptured from precipitation, same way you consume water by drinking and pissing it out, or agriculture consumes it for growing things. Fresh water usage is a major concern and bottleneck, especially with climate change. With the average data centre using 300k gallons of water per day, and Google’s entire portfolio using 5bn gallons per day, it’s not nothing.



  • First, I am not on Israel’s side in this matter. I denounce their historical and ongoing oppression of Palestinians to say the least and generally see a two state solution as an ideal outcome, along with the outcomes you mentioned, dismantling apartheid and establishing self-determination for Palestinians. However I would not condone atrocities to achieve this goal. Just as I am in support of Ukraine’s resistance against Russia, I would not condone any war crimes if they were to commit them. How we achieve our goals matter.

    Sure, neither of us are directly affected won’t be the ones deciding, yet here we are expressing our opinions and hopefully having a worthwhile conversation about it. Perhaps all of social media is just political noise, yet us humans seem to like to weigh in on world events.