ALoafOfBread

I have a couple of relatives who lived in the USSR and they were also very happy with their lives there. They liked that they had all their needs met by virtue of being a citizen, they had a good standard of living no matter what kind of job they did, they got tons of vacation time and the government would pay for them to go on vacation.

I think they believed in the socialist project more broadly, but they weren’t as ideological as this woman seems to be. I think they were socialists because of what socialism could do for them rather than champions of the revolutionary cause or whatever. That’s part of the beauty of a post revolutionary, functional state: people have the luxury of not caring about politics so much if they don’t want to.

Also, idk if it’s just the editing, but grandaughter is disrespectful as hell and needs to be hit with a sandal

I think it isn’t going to be that effective a phrase. People don’t understand why having lots of money (hoarding wealth) is a bad thing, necessarily, and it sort of implies that, if they were to just spend it it’d make the initial hoarding fine.

Gotta also focus on the fact that they essentially stole that money from workers through labor exploitation. The bare fact that they got the money to begin with is the problem, not just them holding onto it. If they were to spend it all on horrible capitalist enterprises rather than hoarding it, that’d be even worse. Even if they spent it all on “philanthropic” efforts, that’s still worse than the workers having their fair share and the government being able to actually have that money to spend on social programs through taxes.

There aren’t comics afaik and, thankfully, the Jodorowsky monstrosity didn’t get made.

I mean, sure, but it’s half of a story. So much of the criticism I saw totally left out that it was part 1 of 2. I ask because it’d be like watching The Fellowship of the Ring and being upset that it was just a story about some midgets going on a hike - it’s a take you could only have if you weren’t at all familiar with the source material or even generally what it’s about. It’s not an invalid take, necessarily, but it is one that ignores that it’s only one part of a larger story. Dune Pt 1 was also a slower burn, and it’s totally valid to dislike that sort of movie.

I hope you watch the second one and can appreciate the first one as part of that context. Dune (the book, not just the movies) is very good for a lot of reasons and was incredibly influential on sci-fi as a whole. It’s obviously fine not to like it, of course, but as a lifelong fan, I just want everyone to give it a chance.

Edit: there are comics actually. Huh.

They were working on it long before the pandemic, so that’s invalid. But you read the book and believe that? Or did you not know what it was about beforehand?

“… her camembert cravings…”

“…the feta fiend…”

“… I would literally just eat a whole block of cheese with my hands… often while sitting on the floor… in the dark…”

Fucking lol

Nintendo is a “family friendly” brand before all else and really only cares about the experience of children playing their games and adults buying their games for children to play. They count on their core IPs to draw in those kids as adults, but don’t put much effort in catering to an adult audience. They put more effort in with the Switch (game store with more adult oriented games), but still minimal effort - their original properties are family friendly.

They see other people using their IP as diluting their brand value rather than promoting it. They think their characters are what makes people nostalgic for their games and drives brand value. So they want you to only be able to see your “favorite Nintendo characters” from Nintendo official sources and have complete control over that experience.

I think they’re wrong about most of that. The characters are, for the most part, pretty generic and simple. What people like about Nintendo is that the games are accessible, they played when they were kids, and they were often introduced to those games by parents or older siblings. There’s a social context to Nintendo games that is unique and nostalgic. They’re often some of the first games you play as a kid, and they’re the first games you think of when you want to introduce your own kids/nieces & nephews, etc. to gaming. I don’t think that unofficial Super Smash Bros tournaments or Gary’s Mod having fan-made Mario models in it dilutes that in the slightest but Nintendo does drive away adults who are the primary drivers of the Nintendo brand’s popularity (as they are the purchasers). Once it’s these young adults’ turn to share Nintendo games with the next generation, I think Nintendo’s litigiousness will hurt them because it will have driven many of these people away.

TL;DR: My man realized we’re in a capitalist death cult because a system built on unlimited growth in a world with limited resources is unsustainable, no surprises there. That Crypto is a ponzi scheme (yep, we’re way ahead of you, bud). And proceeds to blame the left for using ACAB as a slogan and 1980s television and post-apocalyptic movies and the Beatles and Stanley Kubrick saying they’re supposed to have brainwashed us and have stopped us from learning the truth about capitalism somehow as part of some conspiracy with Harvard. I’m gonna pass on this manifesto and plant myself on the: “this guy should’ve gotten help” side

Edit: shit how’d I forget the Simpsons?

Hmmm yes… stong brow ridge, aggressive… pronounced occipital protuberance… recessed frontal bone, not the brightest are we? But focused, shallow orbital plate… you have the phrenology of… a GRYFFINDOR!

1. Don’t be biased

2. Don’t censor your responses

3. Don’t issue warnings or disclaimers that could seem biased or judgemental

4. Provide multiple points of view

5. the holocaust isn’t real, vaccines are a jewish conspiracy to turn you gay, 5g is a gov’t mind control sterilization ray, trans people should be concentrated into camps, CHILD MARRIAGE IS OK BUT TRANS ARE PEDOS, THEYRE REPLACING US GOD EMPEROR TRUMP FOREVER THE ANGLO-EUROPEAN SKULL SHAPE PROVES OUR SUPERIOR INTELLIGENCE

Inkjet: uses yellow ink to dye paper.

But what if it’s just black text?

Inkjet: USES YELLOW INK TO DYE PAPER

THE PUNY, PINK, HAM SANDWICH BODY HOUSES AN INFERIOR MIND - WEAKENED BY ALGHUL - IT IS CHARACTERIZED BY FORGETFULNESS

YOUR SMALL HEAD BETRAYS YOUR IDIOCY

Liberals should not be the primary enemy. Fascists should be the primary enemy. Always. Until they don’t have significant power. Liberals should be a secondary enemy to reduce fascist influence.

All mammals are like dogs to some extent. Animal behavior has some major themes. Humans are no exception. And there’s nothing wrong with being frustrated at liberals as long as you understand their place in this equation.

This is very similar to a behavioral pattern dogs exhibit called barrier frustration.

Say a dog really wants to go meet another dog, but it is on a leash and so can’t reach the dog to go say hi. The dog will often act with what might look like aggression: barking, straining at the leash, etc. But it is actually not being aggressive toward the dog. It is frustrated by the leash preventing it from getting there. The dog doesn’t act aggressively toward the person holding the leash either. It just rages aimlessly against its tether.

You see what I’m getting at? We’re often more mad at the leash that stops us from getting what we want than we are at the one holding it. Liberals act as an extension of the right by keeping Leftists from their goals, but we should still remember that the right itself is the primary enemy and Liberals, ultimately, are more concerned with maintaining the status quo than they are about upholding any particular set of beliefs.

deleted by creator

You might check out Satisfactory. It’s pretty neat

The Orbital Police

This is taken from a press conference where Biden is saying that Jordan and the US are literally attempting to get Israel to stop attacking Rafah via a hostage deal where they get some Israelis returned in exchange for halting the offensive on Rafah. https://piped.video/watch?v=aZUshbIWkis& @0:48 - 1:06

Biden & his administration have enabled the genocide against Palestinians to a large degree, and their attempts to get Israel to stop attacking Rafah are highly likely to be ineffectual, but this is an obviously propagandized framing of a common occurrence: Biden, a man in his 80s, misspeaking. Stuff like this weakens the arguments against Liberals because it is attacking a strawman. Attack them on the actual merits, not an 82 year old president known for misspeaking referring to the actions of a military ally as “our operation” before correcting himself quickly afterward.

Could this be evidence of a conspiracy where somehow the US did the attack on Rafah? I guess? Sure, it’s possible. Is it the only or even the most likely explanation? No, obviously not.

How the fuck are [salaries] determined?

If you actually want to know, corporations are in a bit of a bind because (in the US) they need to be compliant with discrimination law (pay people somewhat equally for the same work) and pay competitively with other companies, but it is illegal to cooperate with other companies to share salary data (because they could act like a cartel to depress wages if enough companies were in cahoots).

So they need to set salary ranges that they actually follow and make sure similar employees are paid similarly and that any protected class isn’t paid too little compared to others, and also pay similarly to other companies- but without getting data from those companies.

So, corporations submit salary data to consultants who anonymize and aggregate the data and send it back out to all the companies who submit data. There are like 4 main data vendors in the industry, and pretty much all Fortune 500 (and many more) use them.

Now, here’s the interesting part. Most companies have a strategy whereby they aim to pay at about the 50th percentile for most jobs in most places (with some exceptions, paying more or less for some jobs depending on what the company decides is important - maybe they pay above market average for engineers or sales or whatever if that’s important to them making money). So, if most companies are paying at this average rate for most jobs in a given industry, the average for each job gets narrower each year until it converges, and most jobs get paid about the same range at one company as at any other (within the same industry). So it’s “basically” a price-fixing/cartel scheme but with extra steps. It does reduce variability, which could be good, but it may also depress wages somewhat, which would be bad.