Journal of Other Forum Analysis (Volume II, Issue 2)

[benji]

Maybe the funniest part about that Hasan thread is that the entire thread is acting like they're targeting Hasan specifically and there's even people asking if other people who went with Hasan will get subpoenaed too. But the article from the OP literally says it's everyone who went:

In mid-March, organizations in the Singham network — from the Venceremos Brigade to People's Forum, a hub for communist causes in New York City — were leaders of the Nuestra American Convoy, which included an estimated 650 delegates from 33 countries and 120 organizations. The organizations included Democratic Socialists of America, a U.S. nonprofit that promotes Piker as a headline member.

The investigation by the Office of Foreign Assets Control is part of a broader dragnet that includes as many as 40 American citizens who joined foreign nationals, including a controversial Brazil activist, Thiago Avila, who are part of a global network of anti-U.S. Marxists, communists and socialists. Additional subpoenas are expected.

And that's it part of a general crackdown, something only one person in the thread even seemed to understand:

As reported, a Fox News Digital investigation has identified 145 U.S. nonprofits and activist groups with $1 billion in collective revenues that Justice and Treasury Department officials are investigating as part of a wider influence campaign by Cuba's communist regime and other foreign actors.

I also don't think they understand that much of the article is telling people who Hasan is and why he's been in the media, it's completely normal stuff in every kind of news story. They're acting like it's some kind of nefarious hit piece to bring up this stuff rather than standard reporting. There's a bunch of it in the article about the head of Code Pink as well since she's the other "name" of the subpoenas.

It's like if a sports star was charged for, say, a double murder of his ex-wife and her new boyfriend, the story would mention a bunch of stuff from his sports career and the trophies he won and his acting in The Naked Gun movies and so on.

edit: I'm also starting to wonder if such administrative subpoenas are in fact normal for any Americans who travel to Cuba like this. And this is simply a "story" because of who is getting them. Maybe I should investigate that for additional amusement!

[benji]

He also repinned the greatest moment of his life, a 279K like tweet defending Zionists and opposing marginalized people being able to arm up against fascists:

[filler]

zeo killin' it on x 

[benji]

zeo killin' it on x 

We need to seize his likes and redistribute them for equity.

[filler]

benji a hater. zeo put in work for them likes! the tim duncan of woke! 

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

why did hasan go to cuba with a group that denies uyghur genocide? kind of telling, not going to lie.

[benji]

Unrelated: apparently Twitter, the app about nothing, marks tweets with images that also say Bluesky as "NSFW" and won't allow them to embed.  

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

Spoiler: NOT SAFE FOR ANYONE BUT FILLER (NSFABF) (click to show)(click to hide)

https://x.com/acvalensVT/status/2058254909904961631
https://x.com/acvalensVT/status/2058256692425482433

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

but I thought x is a nazi website? what the heck! 

[jooseloose]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/yujiro-hanma-baki-confirmed-for-tekken-8-early-2027.1529026/

Will ERA protest given Yujiro Hanma is one of the most hilariously problematic characters in fiction that takes itself seriously enough?

EDIT: WAIT ZEO LIKES BAKI?   

Surprise, surprise Echoes has gone running to the Burka thread to cry about it rather than posting in the announcement thread itself  https://www.resetera.com/threads/why-women-criticise-sexualised-character-designs-ot3-make-her-look-more-corpulent-more-stuffed-where-the-eyes-cant-escape.275780/post-155376088

Content Warning: discussion of a character who is a rapist just announced for Tekken 8, I will put my post in spoiler tags.

Tekken 8 having a sexist serial rapist as a guest character is REALLY making me want to stay away from the game.

Seeing the fandom downplay that (or treat it as a "fun" fact or not a big deal) and in the ERA thread about Yujiro Hanma being announced for it, talk down to at least one woman user not comfortable with that with "It's fiction" is REALLY pissing me off right now and kind of really making me wish I didn't check the web this morning. God this is not going to be fun.

And anyone about to post the Marduk clip where it's implied he raped Anna in Tekken 5, DON'T. I know about it, I despise it and despise Marduk for it and whoever the fucks who put that into the game (honestly WTF was with Marduk in that game he was never like that in T4 and stops being that gross and fucked up in T6, it makes Armor King II wanting to kill him completely justified). Marduk is one of my most hated characters in fighting games for that reasons and someone I try to pretend doesn't exist because I don't want him to ruin my favourite game series.

I can't believe I have to say this but don't justify to women (or anyone) why they should be comfortable playing or having playable in a game a rapist or in this case serial rapist, just fucking don't. Really fucking hating the fighting game fandom and the people who fought including THIS character in Tekken 8 was a good idea.

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

It's a fictional character. Vegeta committed mass genocide. Darth vader did the same. People love Char and he wanted to kill basically half of the population. It's fiction

 dare I say based?

https://www.resetera.com/threads/yujiro-hanma-baki-confirmed-for-tekken-8-early-2027.1529026/page-5#post-155377084

Now they just need to do women skins for the whole roster, so whenever you play as him it's lore accurate.

Let's not forget he's got so much testosterone that he sees everyone else as women.

ban incoming

[benji]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/being-told-you-dont-look-like-your-race.1527022/#post-155252980

Lol one white guy asked me after I prattled off about something or other: "How are you so smart?"

I answered "I read. :3"

Let's read too:

You put a population into an environment where their government lies to them everyday either through carefully crafted wording, omission, or just straight brazenness, where their lived experience just trying to survive everyday is different from the common elitist narratives of "You're lying; the economy is perfectly fine" or "The immigrants/queers/terrorists did it," where the information environment is either bought out by private entities who also are aligned with the continuance of colonialism and fascism and/or is filled to the brim with AI, where trying to access, accumulate, and verify outside sources of information is either paywalled, firewalled, or dismissed by folks who- for some weird-ass reason- still wholeheartedly and blindly believe in the narratives of the aforementioned private and governmental entities who lie to them all the time...

And you wonder why people are becoming increasingly skeptical and conspiratorial lol.

This thread is such an illuminating demonstration of one of the issues the Biden administration kept running into when trying to tout the economy: even when the data, overall, showed wage growth relative to inflation, nobody felt like it was happening. And, obviously, for average statistics, it straight-up wasn't happening for a lot of people, but even overall people didn't feel like it was happening even when the data suggest it was.

Aaaaand that negative economic sentiment is going to be even more difficult to overcome when, as it seems to be doing now, the trend reverses.

The data regarding economic growth and advancement is largely based in carefully-worded metrics meant to communicate just how much fucking bullshit is produced and how capitalists evaluate the financial market, not how the average person lives day-to-day within the context of a specific country (because why would these people care about the average person?) So yeah, you can cut thousands and thousands of jobs every month, cut unemployment and welfare benefits, increase food, utility, and car prices, make home-buying unattainable for most, and still have a "good economy." It's all nonsense meant to obfuscate.

No but racism and bigotry isn't a dealbreaker which is HUGE problem on its own. Indifference to racism enables racism and makes you complicit.

Sure, but there's no competitive party that's truly anti-racist though, and as a result, Democratic voters will happily ignore/excuse racism from the Democratic Party. The reality is that some folks don't like the embarrassing, overt racism of the Republicans but will take Democrats' brand of more sophisticated racism instead because it just feels better or is disguised as "pragmatism."

Even outside of politics, what are y'all even doing to combat racism? Seriously, what is your daily routine? What is your organization? You don't have one/don't belong to an anti-racist organization? Yeah, that's what I thought. Half the time you can't even check your family members or neighbors from doing or saying reactionary shit because y'all are legitimately afraid for your lives or don't want to host the argument again because your family members are stubborn as shit and have had half their intellect rotted away from TikTok.

Most people in general don't have any real principles they will stand on in the real world. America is really full of nothing but a bunch of chicken shit LARPERs regardless of the political affiliation, and my advice at this point is that it would be much more honest if people admitted that and tapped out- just go to work, come home, play video games, and repeat- if only for the sake of their own sanity and lack of contradiction, than to play in ethnic minorities people's faces that y'all are really bout it-bout it.

Can't disagree with what you are saying here. What I was referring to was the fact these people who switched from Obama to Trump in 2016 voted for the most overtly racist major presidential nominee since the Civil Rights era. Have other presidential candidates (from both parties) had racist policies or policies that knowingly or unknowingly would disproportionately impact minorities, of course. However, no MAJOR presidential candidate during my voting lifetime (leaving David Duke out) has started their campaign on pure, unadulterated racism the way Trump did in 2015. This wasn't a situation where you had to look into policies, etc. to see the racism. This was a campaign built primarily on overt racism that was obvious and plain to all whether they acknowledged it or not.

Democrats doubled down on a racist genocide last election cycle.

Trump is an omega racist. Okay. But so what? This entire country is racist to its core- not just the people, but the job distribution, the wages, the bank loans, the housing, our infrastructure and lack thereof, the food distribution, our tainted water supplies, the policing, the jails, the entertainment, everything- and most of us have done little to nothing towards actually fighting it, either because we do not know how and yet don't seek out the knowledge to be able to understand how, or we do know how but choose not to because people would rather play video games than to give up their precious free time towards the betterment of humanity.

You vote Democrat. Who cares? What have you done for your Black, Brown, and Indigenous neighbors inbetween the election cycles? You asking them if they're okay? You giving them money? Time? Supplies? You part of an organization? What are you doing? What are you building? The answer to these questions for the vast majority of Americans is going to be "nothing." And there's a myriad of reasons for why "nothing" is being done- our system is really good at stealing time, energy, and the ability to form human connections. But you yourself made the argument that complicity is also condemnable, and most of us here are complicit in allowing the systems of racism to continue.

The lives of ethnic minorities within America and the Global South are nothing but an optics issue for liberals. Again, it's about how embarrassing the Republicans are, about how Trump is singularly awful, and not about the racist systems in play regardless of who is in office. Meaningless. Most people don't really care about the things they say they do because they don't make time, and again my advice for those people is to actually tune out politics and disengage so their mental health is in check rather than doomscrolling and posting about shit that upsets and outrages them but which they have made it clear they will not exercise any autonomy or responsibility towards being part of the solution towards fixing.

The funny thing is, most political work within a revolutionary manner does not have to be conducted with a significant risk towards one's life/personal well-being. People cite the myriad of political figures that have been assassinated by the US government as reason not to do anything. Ignoring the fact that people haven't properly reconciled with the reality that the American state being willing to kill you for being too right is just straight up authoritarianism that they accuse other countries of participating in, they miss the hundreds of thousands to millions of people behind these figures who were doing the dishes, taking roll call, and filling out paperwork who weren't really significant targets of the FBI and CIA. An armed vanguard doesn't have to be, and usually isn't, a significant part of any leftist movement outside of times of actual armed struggle like the Algerian front or something. But we ain't there yet, and some of us can admit to ourselves we can get out from in front of the TV and computer more often and go down to the local organization and help with set-up for an event or something.

"How about we just tax them more?"

Okay.

Who's going to make them pay more taxes?

I don't think y'all are sincerely engaging with what it's going to take to fix this country.

It's not "much of." The entire Democratic Party is fundamentally compromised because it's capitalist.

Until people understand this, at most you will get useless entryism which swallows up revolutionary energy, and at worst you just actually won't do anything towards solving the problem.

Agree that voting is, at best, a stop-gap measure and not a solution; however, you have a lot more faith in liberals than I do. I think another Republican term of any sort will just result in the same reactionary responses it always does when Republicans win: "Voters are stupid/evil and there's literally nothing we could've done to change the outcome." Nothing will be learned. Nothing will be gained. No one will take a look at themselves. Same shit, different election.

I think the greatest chance of spurring meaningful civic and organizational participation will simply be the continue degradation of the American of life for more income brackets. Black people being poor? Who cares about that; those wretched souls are supposed to be poor. When the managerial and tech folks are in the breadlines, thoroughly severed from the idea that they can achieve the American Dream and must now live a lot more like the Blacks that they only acknowledge during national elections or large mobilized upswells like the Floyd protests, you might see some movement because then there will be no choice but to confront the problem. And I say might because I also don't trust these folks to just leave for better pastures.

Regardless, one major obstacle in the way of organization is Americans' comfort, self-interests, and delusions of assimilation within the capitalist framework. Getting these kinds of folks to sacrifice time and energy towards a better vision is difficult when they can block it all out with access to entertainment.

He's kind of right in a way but just not the way he thinks.


We could tax the rich into the dirt and it still wouldn't change anything unless the government took that money and used it to help the people instead of embezzling it or shoving it all into the military like usual. Which the current Administration obviously has no interest in doing whatsoever.

No American administration is interested in funding a humane government lol.

What's so frustrating about this is that you can't even pretend like this is out of character for the US - even outside of Trump, we've always been more than willing to destroy people's lives and target vulnerable communities just trying to make it through the day. It's sickening, shameful, and horrifying.

I think this knowledge should ultimately be part of the starting point of any serious political movement that aims at ending (not curtailing) the United States' ability to continue unfettered imperialism. The constant parade of people "shocked" that Trump is just doing typical American things is the actual frustrating thing- it's a parade of willful ignorance and naivete, an inability to see and critically analyze the problem for why people within and without the imperial core continue to be harmed with no consequences to the perpetrators because the perpetrators are simultaneously the ones that materially own the executive and judicial system. That is what this country was founded upon- the ability for delusional rich white men to do whatever the fuck they want- and it has not meaningfully strayed from those ideals in over 200 years for a multitude of reasons.

Until the country can understand that the United States fundamentally does not and never has deserved to have the power it does, where we continue kicking the can down the road with bullshit platitudes of outrage and indignation that certain singular political actors and parties could dare act in such an undignified manner (I call it the "embarrassing white person" principle, where American imperialism is okay so long as you doll it up with the ignorable decorum of old fashioned liberalism), then we will absolutely continue killing schoolchildren, and the only thing we will ever materially do about it as signal online that it really hurts our fucking feelings.

I didn't say they did.

My point is that whatever someone might have thought was bad about her campaign, the alternate choice should have been wholly unacceptable to society no matter what.

Even if you outright hated Harris, her Presidency should have been something you would just have to live through because letting Trump and the Republicans have power should not have even been a potential option.

It is more a failing of the American people that they couldn't see what they were doing in voting for Trump to get a Republican trifecta than it was a failing of Harris to not be "convincing enough" to stop the country from setting itself on fire.

Because you should just already know that you shouldn't set yourself on fire.

All of this ultimately is just an admittance that Democrats have no actual responsibility to the people. They should be voted for mindlessly; no care, concern, or critique of their platform or their performance once they get into office. They can openly call for genocide, and even perform genocide, and that's just totally dandy because "Well, they're not Republicans." Ultimately you are again insisting people are beholden to their politicians, when this is (ideally) not how it should work. Politicians should be beholden to the people. They should work for the people. They should be driven out to the fringes if they step out of line. Shifty politicians should be afraid of the people, terrified even, and work to make sure that we're satisfied with our lives.

We currently live in a world where some of y'all will bow and prostrate yourselves before Democrats even as your lives fall apart around you, even as you're already on fire, completely unable to discern and make the connection that as part of the political class and as self-avowed capitalists, Democrats are in league with the Republicans to continue the imperial pilfering that we've been doing since this country's founding. We are not really fighting over material change, but rather over who controls and is allowed favor in the empire. There is no questioning on part of most liberals as to whether or not the empire should even continue exerting the oppression it does. There's no movement. There's just nothing.

how many trump terms will it take for folks to learn the other lesson?

I am slowly coming to the potential conclusion that some liberals just don't want to learn anything. They already think they know everything. They already think they're correct on everything. They already think there's no where else to go, no potential for critique. When the very act of critique has been shunned as a negative ("stop infighting/tone policing/purity testing." "You're going to help the Republicans win!" "How does it help to criticize a person saying the right things?"), you are unable to look at the situation, much less yourself, and to grow. I've been two steps away from considering the political situation as relatively hopeless within the United States for a few months now, even if Democrats take ground back in the midterms, because I do not think liberals are concerned about anyone except for themselves and the few minorities who agree with their neoliberal project. Everyone else can get fucked as far as they're concerned.

A basic understanding of history is a good buffer against surprise and indignation, because white people getting paid/rewarded/let off the hook by the state for basically being punished for their own fuckery is a centuries'-old tradition. Hell, it's basically why this country exists to begin with.

 Taxation without representation is white people getting punished for their own fuckery?

I hate this, but the fact is no one has come up with a way to actually get people to regularly attend such communal institutions that doesn't involve the threat of negative social or spiritual consequences if you don't.

tbf there's no way to maintain any kind of relationship without some level of consequence for you being neglectful to that relationship. Showing up for anything cannot and frankly should not be free of coercion, otherwise you get the situation in America now where grown adults are shocked- shocked, I tell you- that even maintaining basic friendships sometimes requires doing shit you don't wanna do in the moment, active maintenance, and the risk of being shamed for being a lazy bum of a friend.

Totally, and social sanction — being openly judgmental of and shunning towards people who don't participate — can be very effective if you have enough people doing it. It's just difficult to reach that critical mass when you have a right wing who have realized they can hack this by offering unconditional social approval to any amount of degeneracy coming from the disengaged, so long as they're white, male, and will commit to publicly disdaining anyone even marginally left of center.

Each of us has some ability to bend the people who are close enough to us personally that our individual opinion carries weight, but also I imagine most who have tried have seen at least a person or two slip away and decide that if you're going to be judgmental they'll just have an unjudgmental parasocial relationship with some right-wing podcaster instead

White/European epistemologies regarding religion and the nature of God just naturally lend themselves to the kind of white, hierarchical colonial degeneracy you describe within a right-wing Western society because that is part of the cultural foundation of our current society, but that isn't a universal thing for all religion. For example, I don't have anyone in my social circle who has slipped into alt-right nonsense, much less from my political and moral arguments towards them for, like, any capitalist realist bullshit they've been propagandized with.

Part of it is because I'm Black and the nature of Blackness lends itself to a fundamental contradiction towards white brands of conservatism, but it's more nuanced I am lucky enough as a Black person to have found other people of various backgrounds to have hammered out and tempered the rather pro-human sentiments I've always had growing up, and I'm still learning; specifically, I am in community with a few Muslims, and the sheer amount of knowledge I've gotten about Islam just by being in such community has opened up new paths of knowledge for me to consider. Ironically enough we were having an extended conversation about the surprisingly fluid nature of knowledge, science, and basic theoretical frameworks for society we all take for granted this morning, and it was quite riveting, much more than you would believe possible if you took it from most white people what Muslims actually have to offer to science and philosophy even from a religious perspective.

It's why I can see Deleter's frustration. I'm not religious or a believer myself, but atheism has no meaningfully tangible connection to community because it is a self-described negation, a lack of belief. There's nothing connecting people to anything beyond a lack of belief/hostility towards God, and from my dialectical point of view, it's all well and good not to believe in God, but what do you actually believe in? What vision of the world do you have? What are the principles underlying this vision? How are you going to get there? There is no movement. There's nothing to atheism beyond a lack of belief in any God. Cool. Like, I don't believe in the fucking Greek or Shinto pantheons. Who cares? I don't base any meaningful identity or potential movement on that; I base it in what I do believe. At this point in my life, I would much rather hang around Muslims than with white atheists. At least they believe in something and they are pretty much one of the only meaningful vanguard against the colonialism killing this planet of which I am very interested in also ending. Same with the Black leftists in the church of the 20th century.

My thing with the lack of belief in religion defining this is that it doesn't necessarily equate to believing in nothing, or a lack of connection to community. Sure, religion comes baked in with the premise of people in the world mattering oftentimes, and ends up being more readily pro-human than not. But often the rejection of religion comes from a place of ethical understanding, and ethics can be arguably a more solid foundation of belief and morality to frame our lives around. If people talk about atheism first and foremost without discussing the aspect of ethics, then they're focusing on the negation without understanding the core many people find themselves revolving around simultaneously.

When you find yourself surrounded by western Christianity and how they view atheism, they often deride the concept of having a sense of morality without their religion, as "without objective good", then there is only relativistic morality with no actual foundation to justify itself with. But the concept of ethics, and those ethics being driven by empathy towards one another, flies in the face of that, and is always ignored in those arguments, in spite of them oftentimes being the bedrock of said philosophies questioning the existence of God and the nature of religion's morality.

But, if the pursuit of moral ethics has merit, is that enough to replace God and become something everyone can pursue just as easily? Is it as immediately recognizable as inherent good to center your life around in the same way? It should be if it's enough to support the abandonment of previous moral frameworks in favor of a more robust worldview. But if everyone defaults to saying that atheism is the core tenant of these people's state of being, without the pursuit of that ethical foundation, then it seems like it is failing for the time being.

I don't equate atheism as nihilism; I equate it to a lack of belief in God(s). It's an inherent negation, but a negation, in and of itself, is meaningless as far as political development is concerned, where you are required to believe in something (not necessarily something religious.) It's similar to why I have begun to chafe at calling myself anti-capitalist. I certainly believe in the destruction of capitalism, but the natural question that follows is "What economic system are you for?" I have to subsequently advocate for a replacement (which at this point is looking like African scientific socialism) for people to rally behind me or to find like-minded individuals with which to work with.

Similarly, I don't see atheism, in and of itself, as anything meaningful upon which to base a movement upon unless your movement is strictly for the elimination for religion, which I am not interested in nor find all that possible or even tasteful. Because that's what we need more of; a bunch of "enlightened" Westerners telling the pitiable, stupid, backwards masses that they are indeed stupid and backwards and should abandon their cultural and religious frameworks and thus all of our problems will magically be solved. I've had enough of that kind of short-sighted chauvinism for one lifetime, thank you very much.

I don't particularly care about Western Christianity either, or rather the hwhite-ass version of Christianity which has been one of the moral frameworks for the rampant capitalism and settler-colonialism that we see today. It is indeed evil to me; however, its epistemological frameworks are not universal to all religions. Not all religions view God(s) and the supernatural within a strictly hierarchical and carceral manner as the white Western church we are used to dealing with underneath a white-dominated world does. Hell, there are religions and sects of religions where God(s) are not even really personified at all, or where the nature of the religious material as practiced leans more towards the realm of philosophy, science, and historical materialism rather than contradictory, dogmatic tradition which I feel anyone can glean value from if they can get over their ego.

And finally, my interest in people's personal ethics or goodness is tempered by a typical lack of underlying movement towards a better world in which those personal ethics are the basis of material and measurable operations and new ways of living. What does it materially look like to "pursue moral ethics?" What does this definitionally mean? What are we physically doing in this pursuit? What is the contradiction to be solved? What is the goal? This is why I find myself simultaneously bored with and sometimes short with people- they have no goals! They have no plans! They apply no analysis! No thoughts, just vibes.

People spend all day arguing online about "morals" and "ethics" but they have less organization around those morals and ethics than a damn Pokemon VGC group: at least the VGC group has goals, principles, rules, meet-ups, materials, hell, sometimes even an actual building to physically meet other human beings at, and thus it has built itself an actual community! Like, no shit that the "pursuit of ethics" isn't going to be a replacement for God/religion for a lot of people, because there is no tangible community in the real world upon which so-called enlightened people are actually building anything of worth!

The only way at this point to be sure that works from newcomers after like 2022 are real is to force these machines to always have some irremovable watermark or metadata proving they're AI. But that inherently defeats the purpose of these fucking hacks slipping into the arts undetected, so it won't be done/advocated for.

I just wish the losers who used AI to "write" stories like this just came clean.

They're not going to do that because, ironically, no one wants to actually try and advocate for the merits of AI-generated content as valid art and thus openly expose where their art came from due to fear of backlash. The entire point of the grift is to pretend to be an artist with none of the education involved in actually learning to make art. It's a whole population of Malachi Love-Robinsons.

It's what happens to the people who rely on their art to live?

The same tech people who shit on us for having useless art educations in the first place are not going to give a shit what happens to us economically lol.

I'm sort of thinking that the tides will turn as more and more people use this crap and embrace it. Particularly with younger people.

One thing I'm noticing a lot of AI acolytes having in common is their openness to it. They view themselves as messengers of some great prophet or something, and are more than willing to hype up how AI "unlocked" some potential in them (despite having zero creativity).

I dunno, maybe it's a glass half full approach to this terrible situation. But I think the divide will eventually become more clear over time. A majority of self-described artists will use AI to write their stories, draw their pictures, play their songs, etc. A very small but vocal minority will continue to make human art for humans, and we'll just have to gravitate towards this.

What a bleak future. My passion got ruined by the very people who looked down on me for making art in the first place- fucking tech bros. I can't even meaningfully use search engines for reference anymore because it's just full of absolute slop.

I hate these people only a smidge less than I hate capitalists lol.

Capcom thread made that very clear. I'm sure it wasn't the first example but it was the first time I saw someone so blatantly say they don't care about job loss and it kinda shocked me.

I'm used to at least seeing some (i'm sure faux) concern and a statement made about how things need to be regulated. But now its starting to sound like that's too much effort now.

Job loss is only as much of an issue as it affects access to products for consumers within the more padded economic sectors who purchase those products largely without interruption to their living standards: your tech folks, managerial folks, aka the people who make up a good portion of our userbase. So yeah I am not surprised that people here who can still afford to significantly buy games and peripherals en masse don't give a shit about the human cost of the system through which access to those products are realized. Consumers gonna consume, and what hobby is more consumerist than gaming?

This is all before we get to the real issue, which is the commodification of humanity itself underneath a consumerist model of self-expression. Your value as a human being is tied up primarily in your access to commodities and ability to commodify yourself as independently as possible. The accumulation of stuff, your ability to brand yourself, is how you spread your peacock feathers, show off, and prove you are a success to others. This does not necessarily trend with the material or use value of your labor, and certainly not in how useful you are to humanity at large; after all, the very people who make the commodities upon which our humanity is expressed underneath neoliberalism are the same people who likely do not actually make a wage large enough to afford those same commodities to the same degree as upper classes in the first place.

That's because the value of a commodity is not actually in its use value but what it can be sold for. The higher a profit margin on a commodity, the more the seller necessitates stealing wages from the people who produce that commodity. This is why a lot of artists "starve" and it's why there has always been an inherent contradiction in trying to be an artist underneath a capitalist model: despite the facts that art only really matters philosophically and as a species-defining characteristic because it's made by humans and is a form of expression akin to spoken language, capitalism necessitates stripping out the humanity by marginalizing and sometimes brutalizing the artist in the pursuit of the final commodity of whatever art they produce; after all, fascists are happy to jail and kill artists as much as they are whatever minority is in their crosshairs at the time.

This is partly what makes AI so enticing to capitalists and the petit bourgeousie all up and down the Internet, including Era, who are enthralled with this garbage. You can get rid of the human altogether and just produce the commodity directly. The flaws and sheer meaninglessness of it all are trivial because AI is not human. You cannot beat it over the head with strict standardization like you can the artists at Disney who must be "on-model" and bend to the whim of the director to an insane degree and thus run into any contradictions on part of the artist who may be inclined to tell you that your vision is wrong (Fun story to hammer the point home: Walt Disney wanted to cut the spaghetti sequence from Lady and the Tramp because he didn't think audiences would believe in two dogs going on a date. A single animator, Ollie Johnston I believe, did that whole sequence by himself to prove him wrong. Imagine then a world where Walt had access to AI and was not contradicted by a pesky human worker; it's likely Bella Notte wouldn't actually exist.)

AI, as flawed as it is, is now a fixed cost- whatever it takes to churn out the bullshit is what it costs. The tech bros have finally "solved the problem of art," which is that it was made by people to begin with. The idea that humans expressed themselves through the abstraction of painting, writing, or whatever medium is an fucking affront to these ghouls. And they pat themselves on the back or express utter thrill that they feel they are a part of some special, defining moment in humanity- some great leap forward. They look at this crap like children look at the rockets that took us to the moon.

I think part of it is also folks these days are getting dissuaded from making art from feeling like there's this incredibly high entry barrier of demonstrates skill, but three page long fanfics and crayon drawings of Sonic are as legit as anything else.

I mean, for most people there is a high barrier to entry with regards to making professional-level art. You need to know the principles of a bunch of different sub disciplines if you're trying to compete with the likes of Drew Struzan (rest in peace). That requires practice and discipline which most people don't want to do. That's why it's considered professional fucking art, and this standard applies to every potential career out there.

The problem is people somehow got it in their heads that art is only worth attempting if you are already at Drew's level. That's why they also simultaneously think that artists are just genetic freaks or Biblically blessed with some talent that they can never possibly possess. They don't think we worked for it.

The most major difference between someone who can draw and someone who doesn't want to draw is that the former person didn't scare themselves out of practicing. That's it.

It'd be similar to people refusing to play any video game with a rank system because "I'll never be Top 500."

Like you...

You can still play....

Thing is there are OTHER entry level people who need help for THEIR entry level work. Okay so you're not doing a poster for a blockbuster that will make a billion at the boxoffice, but indie film makers just getting started need posters too!

You don't even need to create art to make money off of it though (most artists don't break even; even a bunch of the greats we highly regard now died penniless.) You could draw just for personal satisfaction. But that undermines the implications of the people who are like "I have all these ideas but can't possibly realize them without AI."

They wanna be rich/worshipped as auteurs off this shit.

Sorry Bill, apologies Suzie, you're likely not going to create the next fucking Pokemon no matter what you do. Art under capitalism needs to possess a broad economic function to be profitable (is it "crowd-pleasing," easy to understand, largely reformist/apolitical in its politics, able to be adapted to multiple forms, etc.?), and if you can't even find it in yourself to sit down and learn to draw basic forms for like 10 minutes every day to be able to draw something as simple as a goddamn Pikachu, you do not have what it takes to create a pitch for something which can be truly be milked for all its worth even with AI, a technology whose own self-ascribed purpose for lowering the barrier of entry to creating "art" such that a lobotomized goldfish can shit out some garbage means that you can't even pen it down as a valuable skill.

It's like a cashier trying to apply for CEO of Goldman-Sachs because they can handle a register. So can a chimp, homeslice. That's the funny thing; these folks have fundamentally helped ruin whatever credibility they could have had as skilled artists from the jump by clamoring for the accessibility angle.

Sorry, let me indulge myself:

This does not necessarily trend with the material or use value of your labor, and certainly not in how useful you are to humanity at large; after all, the very people who make the commodities upon which our humanity is expressed underneath neoliberalism are the same people who likely do not actually make a wage large enough to afford those same commodities to the same degree as upper classes in the first place.

That's because the value of a commodity is not actually in its use value but what it can be sold for. The higher a profit margin on a commodity, the more the seller necessitates stealing wages from the people who produce that commodity. This is why a lot of artists "starve" and it's why there has always been an inherent contradiction in trying to be an artist underneath a capitalist model: despite the facts that art only really matters philosophically and as a species-defining characteristic because it's made by humans and is a form of expression akin to spoken language, capitalism necessitates stripping out the humanity by marginalizing and sometimes brutalizing the artist in the pursuit of the final commodity of whatever art they produce; after all, fascists are happy to jail and kill artists as much as they are whatever minority is in their crosshairs at the time.

Just 

And this isn't her but was in the one thread: Oh, of course oty is a MMTer.  

Case in point: you don't even need taxes to fund public services. That's just neoliberal economics talk that has been politically used to destroy the remaining public services out there.

A nation that emits it's own currency and majoritarily uses it's own currency only has to consider the structural elements of it's economy to fund whatever service it deems necessary. Economically speaking, taxes are not a funding tool. They are a regulatory tool.

That's how behind most nations are, and how damaging neoliberal economics has been.

Pretty much this. Nations already "spend first" and then auction and issues bonds for interest rate managements, safe assets, etc, as in, countries do not behave like household economies (not just countries either, private banks also are not like household economies). They spend money (literally eletronically create it these days) and then have various tools to "deal" with that creation.

Every economically developed nation already lives through yearly deficits (and public spending was absurdly massive during the "golden age" of capitalism aka post WW2). People wonder how China became what it became and, well, now you know why. Well, partly why. They also have stuff like direct, state controlled credit system which is unbelievably powerful. Literally a cheat code in modern economics

I would even add that it's really not conditioned to low interest rates. It would take several different factors to spiral into a "debt payment loop", these factors not being connected to the debt itself, since you don't really "print to pay debt" (you just refinance it). You could also have higher interest rates if the nominal growth rate is higher too, but then it would depend on exchange rates and would impact the refinancing. Anyway, interesting stuff that is unfortunately sidelined because mainstream economics is like a couple centuries outdated in certain notions

But...that's kind of the thing, isn't it? Why are we debating the "means to and end" and not...the end? Specially since it's not even a "means". Countries do not need billionaire taxation to fund these public services. They can just...do it, operationally speaking. It's completely a matter of political will (more like...ideological breakthrough, but still, you get the point)

[Boredfrom]

There was no dog abuse but people really hate Hasan so they'll latch onto anything to vilify the guy.

Doesn't surprise me when you see right wing fascists and liberal chuds suddenly aligning on this one person.

Oh, fuck off with that shit.

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

they can cry about libs all they want but it's not actual socialists winning any positions.

Mamdani is libbed as fuck 

[benji]

I'm splitting this Nepenthe post out so we can look at the entire thread: https://www.resetera.com/threads/trump-destroyed-usaid-now-people-are-dying.1527673/

Honestly can't type what I want to have happen to Elon and the rest of the racists in this admin. Absolutely senseless, meaningless deaths.

The USAID cuts are very symbolic of the moral rot and idiocy that's taken over America. The concept of charity and helping the needy is seen as some grand moral sin by a solid half of the country.

There's also an irony in the "America first" crowd failing to understand the entire concept of soft power. The US flexing its overwhelming wealth and power for good is benefiting the nation and its reputation abroad. Offering a helping hand to developing countries pays dividends in the long run as those countries develop and relationships are formed. It's a win-win for everyone, and just about the most ethical way for the US to have its hands in global affairs.

I can't tell whether this whole thing is more stupid than it is evil. The fact that DOGE was in charge of this tells me they didn't have a clue what USAID even did.

Now people are dying? People have been dying by the hundreds of thousands already. It's been pretty well known.

Btw, I remember how some people were cheering this here.

Absolutely horrible. I constantly think about this. In fact, it's the first thing I think of whenever musk is mentioned.

I wish I could hold down every American and make them read this. Most don't give a fuck either way tho. I wish people would give a fuck. Fuck.

Btw, I remember how some people were cheering this here.

Curse anyone who cheers this. You are fucked in the head and heart if you cheer this on.

I can't even say what I want to because I would get banned for it.

I think of stuff like this every time someone mocks the idea of harm reduction voting....


Horrific, I don't know what else to say.

I remember reading an article (cnn) a few months ago, about how cutting usaid would lead to 10 million dead by 2030. That's FOUR fucking years from now. I also read many are already dead because of trumps and musks decision.

I wish more people would fucking care. Those two deserve to be in the worst jail imagined. I'm so fuckin mad I don't know what to do anymore.

Yeah, I think this is one of the most evil things this administration as has done -- this is just abject depravity to see them so eager to wipe out USAID. It was a drop in the bucket for the cost. For Africa, they're doing this on purpose so they can wipe out African citizens gone so they can take the resources. And that's not even talking about the US/Europe/China instigating civil war within the country too.

It's also unfortunately something that's easy to miss and/or ignore.

Yep. This gave me the most anxiety when reading about it happening last year. I really hope a future administration can go after Musk especially for this somehow.

I wish the worst on the people that made the decision to cut usaid. Real life monsters walk amongst us. Drug addled, stupid fuckin monsters.

Thank you. Three quarters of a million people dead for less than what they gave ICE in the goddamn bill.

Trump's name should be spoken of in the same breath as monsters like Hitler and Stalin.

Musk has a lot of blood on his hands.

This is infuriating beyond words. And it didn't have to be this way.

Almost a million dead (mostly kids) because Elon wanted to save a few bucks due to "waste"... there isn't a hell hot enough for him to suffer through eternity.

I think of stuff like this every time someone mocks the idea of harm reduction voting....


Horrific, I don't know what else to say.

Yup.

People were dying with the establishment of USAID on two fronts.

First is that the metrics that determined the distribution of food aid would incentivize countries to stop growing their own food in order to receive the cheap grain available, while other markets who genuinely needed that grain were left out and thus experienced caloric shortages. Second is that the marketing surrounding USAID where countries were displayed as backwards, war-torn hotspots of famine decimated some countries' tourism sectors as well as their foreign investment potential. Both led to tens to hundreds of thousands of deaths every year, depending upon the surrounding political and climate conditions that may have been exacerbated by the so-called aid.

From where I'm standing, most people don't actually care about the plight, safety, and autonomy of Africans nor about the root causes of the continent's destitution, which is deliberate Western underdevelopment and capitalistic encirclement after the abolition of slavery, economic warfare by institutions like the IMF and World Bank, and continued exploitation of their natural resources through aggressive extraction and foreign exacerbation of needless conflicts such as what Rwanda is doing to the DRC right at this moment.

Africans are totally free to die unnecessarily, just in manners you can't see, or ones that benefit Westerners in terms of what products they can buy, and only by the hands of your political allies. Then it's silence. I am not moved by the outage here. Where was it before for my people? And where will it be once Trump is gone?

Africa as a whole must fundamentally be liberated from an economic and political system that was, from the start, built on the dehumanization of the African in order to benefit white settler. That's all there is to it.

Nobody even replies to her.  

Also, that middle paragraph is a single sentence.

[benji]

Until y'all hermetically seal off Africa as some kind of Wakanda for my people (potentially four centuries removed and so only have our skin color in common) no matter what Africans actually want, y'all aren't serious and I am not moved by your outrage at possibly millions of people dying.

[Boredfrom]

It's a fictional character. Vegeta committed mass genocide. Darth vader did the same. People love Char and he wanted to kill basically half of the population. It's fiction

 dare I say based?

https://www.resetera.com/threads/yujiro-hanma-baki-confirmed-for-tekken-8-early-2027.1529026/page-5#post-155377084

Now they just need to do women skins for the whole roster, so whenever you play as him it's lore accurate.

Let's not forget he's got so much testosterone that he sees everyone else as women.

ban incoming

I don’t exactly like the character but is funny to me how a bunch of ERA are fine with him because either memes or Baki being so over the top to take seriously beyond crazy fights. Any other fictional character that is just as half as “problematic” as Hanma and most of the glazers will try to cancel the game or shit on any thread about it.

[Boredfrom]

BTW, isn’t the FGC always wishing to become a clean and friendly enough to become more mainstream? I know Baki is popular enough to be a hit on Netflix, but not mainstream enough to people care about the character that comically raped Trump and Musk. So dunno if anyone will care either way.

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

esports killed the fgc so fuck em

[HaughtyFrank]

There’s also the “full send” thing which means to give it everything lol, you bc old use that too in this instance, “God, this guy is full SEND”

(Oscar nominated performance)

[HaughtyFrank]

People were dying with the establishment of USAID on two fronts.

First is that the metrics that determined the distribution of food aid would incentivize countries to stop growing their own food in order to receive the cheap grain available, while other markets who genuinely needed that grain were left out and thus experienced caloric shortages. Second is that the marketing surrounding USAID where countries were displayed as backwards, war-torn hotspots of famine decimated some countries' tourism sectors as well as their foreign investment potential. Both led to tens to hundreds of thousands of deaths every year, depending upon the surrounding political and climate conditions that may have been exacerbated by the so-called aid.

From where I'm standing, most people don't actually care about the plight, safety, and autonomy of Africans nor about the root causes of the continent's destitution, which is deliberate Western underdevelopment and capitalistic encirclement after the abolition of slavery, economic warfare by institutions like the IMF and World Bank, and continued exploitation of their natural resources through aggressive extraction and foreign exacerbation of needless conflicts such as what Rwanda is doing to the DRC right at this moment.

Africans are totally free to die unnecessarily, just in manners you can't see, or ones that benefit Westerners in terms of what products they can buy, and only by the hands of your political allies. Then it's silence. I am not moved by the outage here. Where was it before for my people? And where will it be once Trump is gone?

Africa as a whole must fundamentally be liberated from an economic and political system that was, from the start, built on the dehumanization of the African in order to benefit white settler. That's all there is to it.

Nobody even replies to her.  

Also, that middle paragraph is a single sentence.

Hell yeah, without USAID Africans can finally organically grow vaccines and Aids medication. Take a syringe, leave a syringe

[HaughtyFrank]

Hey, Hasan didn't care about people he didn't like getting investigated for trumped up charges by the current admin so I'm not going to shed a tear here. He sure doesn't seem to care about fascist moves by the US government if it's against his political opponents.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/feds-subpoena-hasan-piker-medea-benjamin-over-cuba-trips.1528717/post-155362834

User banned (permanent): troll account


Dumbass mods really banned him

And B-dubs keeps wondering why his forum is going to shit

[benji]

I absolutely completely love that her fundamental organizing belief is one that's just blatantly false. That capitalism is "fundamentally" built on the African slave trade, when slavery obviously predates capitalism by millennia, the "white settler" colonialist powers that engaged in it were all mercantile instead of capitalist and the African nations that supplied it were both African/Muslim and not capitalist.

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

Lol one white guy asked me after I prattled off about something or other: "How are you so smart?"

I answered "I read. :3"

[Nintex]

Imagine if Hasan gets the death penalty for treason

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

I absolutely completely love that her fundamental organizing belief is one that's just blatantly false. That capitalism is "fundamentally" built on the African slave trade, when slavery obviously predates capitalism by millennia, the "white settler" colonialist powers that engaged in it were all mercantile instead of capitalist and the African nations that supplied it were both African/Muslim and not capitalist.

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

Lol one white guy asked me after I prattled off about something or other: "How are you so smart?"

I answered "I read. :3"

bwc

[kaleidoscopium]

OP, I don't know if your limited worldview is the result of being terminally online, being in a video game forum bubble, or a case of arrested development. But human beings are complex and each come with their own baggage, lived experience, and views that aren't worn on their sleeves. To even suggest that being "possibly MAGA" and "kind" are mutually exclusive is an unfortunate symptom of equating the real world with scripted fiction.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/ever-had-a-neighbor-who-is-likely-maga-but-treats-your-family-with-kindness.1528948/page-4#post-155374531

[Let's Cyber]

First is that the metrics that determined the distribution of food aid would incentivize countries to stop growing their own food in order to receive the cheap grain available, while other markets who genuinely needed that grain were left out and thus experienced caloric shortages. Second is that the marketing surrounding USAID where countries were displayed as backwards, war-torn hotspots of famine decimated some countries' tourism sectors as well as their foreign investment potential. Both led to tens to hundreds of thousands of deaths every year, depending upon the surrounding political and climate conditions that may have been exacerbated by the so-called aid.

Is this even remotely true? I feel like I need to do several hours of research fact-checking every dumbfuck Nep post I read to eventually come to the conclusion she's full of shit.

[HeavenIsAPlaceOnEarth]

Imagine if Hasan gets the death penalty for treason

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

[HeavenIsAPlaceOnEarth]

OP, I don't know if your limited worldview is the result of being terminally online, being in a video game forum bubble, or a case of arrested development. But human beings are complex and each come with their own baggage, lived experience, and views that aren't worn on their sleeves. To even suggest that being "possibly MAGA" and "kind" are mutually exclusive is an unfortunate symptom of equating the real world with scripted fiction.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/ever-had-a-neighbor-who-is-likely-maga-but-treats-your-family-with-kindness.1528948/page-4#post-155374531

Just look at era. None of them are maga, yet all of them are huge fucking arseholes.

[HeavenIsAPlaceOnEarth]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/being-told-you-dont-look-like-your-race.1527022/#post-155252980

Lol one white guy asked me after I prattled off about something or other: "How are you so smart?"

I answered "I read. :3"

Let's read too:

Okay. 

drivel

How dare you. 

[jooseloose]

OP, I don't know if your limited worldview is the result of being terminally online, being in a video game forum bubble, or a case of arrested development. But human beings are complex and each come with their own baggage, lived experience, and views that aren't worn on their sleeves. To even suggest that being "possibly MAGA" and "kind" are mutually exclusive is an unfortunate symptom of equating the real world with scripted fiction.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/ever-had-a-neighbor-who-is-likely-maga-but-treats-your-family-with-kindness.1528948/page-4#post-155374531

Incredible post that should be nominated for their mod-sanctioned likes highlighted post thing. I see they joined yesterday and have 13 messages? Yeah they're getting banned for """trolling""".