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Comments
this website exists apparently
Huh. That article was actually more informative than I suspected. Thanks.
^Time to place everyones' avatars on that site.
https://mediacru.sh/J0_3OJm-CICw
https://mediacru.sh/EvOHHYtdWgwb
https://mediacru.sh/Jkh_R03smEs6
That's much more amusing than I expected.
It's unrelated, but there's something funny when libertarians re-use an old socialist poster for their propaganda, eh?
edit: disregard that feel
So someone quoted a user going by the name "AsukaLangly" on the Steam forums. "suka" got censored.
...turns out that "suka" is Russian for "bitch".
as a fan of (the character) Asuka, not sure what to say
A clbuttic Scunthorpe problem.
cyka
I just read that some bot passed the Turing test. The key to success was to give it the personality of a thirteen year-old. Makes a frightening amount of sense, if you think about it.
Alternative conclusion: thirteen year-olds can't think.
And I thought thirteen year-old Eternal September kid AI was weird... So, I just read another science article. It said that... ugh. This was some crazy shit. Just have a link. I'll just throw some quotes so you know what the story's about.
Basically, it began with work on dolphin intelligence.
The idea perhaps the most appealed to the astronomers, already searching for other sentient species. They pulled some strings, and NASA found some cash to spare for a new lab on a Caribbean island, and the human-dolphin communications project went underway. But it truly got wind when a newcomer suggested a novel approach.
And then shit started to get weird.
The press got the wind of the little tryst...
But those were the Sixties, time of mental freedom and expanding consciousness, and the boss the team came up with the idea it would be fun to give the dolphins some LSD. And since that moment, all went to Hell in a breadbasket.
And so, against the wishes of the one closest to him, Peter the dolphin was moved to another tank. And what happens when a man gets forcibly separated from the love of his life? This story has no happy end.
From a 'somebody's wrong on the internet' moment:
Le strawman: *Longpost on why Beethoven was actually black*
Moi: Actually, no, but he did work together with George Bridgetower, a virtuoso violinist who was black.
Le strawman: *argues that the dominant white narrative doesn't need defending*
Assuming it's a genuine SJW and not a troll, this is why I loathe them with every fiber of my being. Plenty of real historical role models and inspirations that are not widely known and deserve the spotlight, and instead they built their sense of cultural legacy on tacky conspiracy theories.
I was thinking for a while, the one advantage a rightie has to a leftie is that a rightie's wankery of choice is waning in popularity, but I feel there might be some oversimplification in there.
As for other political shit, I've been mildly concerned with a story recently circulating the local 'Net. Apparently, a man in America saw some thugs assaulting his daughter, so he drew a gun (America fuck yeah) and shot them. Around here, a man had fended off a carjacker with a kitchen knife, so he is accused of an attempted murder. There's also been the wifebeater who sued the state for unlawful arrest (the victim retracted her confession) and has a decent chance of winning, and the preteen rape victim whose school's principal sees nothing wrong with her rapists casually attending the same school (they're underage, the court decided they won't be arrested, and a verdict hasn't yet been issued). Granted, neither of those stories has to be true (heh heh, trusting the media), but the stink they give off is nice enough, folks are a bit jaded.
The underdog I'm rooting for this World Cup is Ghana.
So I had this conversation on Skype (no, I don't go by "Naas" there, but I'm not gonna post my name either)
Yes, by "swords guy" I was referring to @MadassAlex
The problem lefties have is that their movement has been co-opted by people who only really care about identity politics.
Today I learned these things exist.
My favourite is Dark. Or maybe Fugue.
Edit: After listening to the midi file, definitely Fugue.
^^ Some of the righties in here like to theorize that at some point around the Sixties and Seventies, with all sexual revolution and feminism and stuff, the western Left (the Eastern left is mostly former regime personnel pretending to be the western-style New Left) lost contact with the original aim - betterment of the economic conditions of the common man - and latched onto those identity issues, and this is the reason why all those neo-Nazis and populists are popular with the lower classes. They're rather gleeful about that idea, don't ask me if it's true though.
Actually, I'd say that the main reason why the populist right became so popular is simply because it's much readier to publicly adopt (or claim to adopt) anti-elitist and anti-institutional views, unlike much of the European left (I'm not even counting mainstram socdems as left-wing, and am talking mostly about the slightly more radical "democratic socialist" parties) - for example, compare their stances when it comes to the EU - much of the Left realizes how and why its problematic, but has a hard time completely renouncing it. The Right, not so much.
I'd say that the main sin of the post-1968 Left is its elitism, not identity politics. Even though identity wankfest is indeed harmful and counter-productive, from my own experience with the radical left I'd say that those who claim the only relevant struggle is class struggle and completely dismiss anything else, often even to justify their own sexism, racism or homophobia, are way more prominent and harmful than identity activists. Paradoxically, it's not rare for such people to be stuck into the elitist institutional/academic rut more than anyone else.
It probably depends on where you live. In Western Europe/America, the liberation-through-consumer-culture type is much more prominent, at least in my perception.
Oddly, the same guys whom I described adopt the position that consumer society is, in fact, a good thing, and that any criticism of popular culture is in fact shamelessly elitist and probably latently racist.
Really, don't attempt to find any common underlying theoretical framework, because it simply doesn't exist.
Twenty-something wannabe academics with a hard-on for Althusser are the worst.
Yeah, you can't ignore the identity aspect lest you shut out a good chunk of the people you're supposedly fighting for. If anything, I think the real issue with identity politics is how it got appropriated by consumerism. While we arguing about Beyonce's feminist credentials, we end up overlooking the pay gap among other things.
Of all the issues, you had to go on and pick the one that is most overstated.
The problem I have with Identity politics in the western world is that in so many cases feels like an enormous expenditure of effort, with quite a few negative side effects for issues that are basically negligible in the face of something like wealth inequality. That's not even taking into account whether they are correct or not, whether the rhetoric behind them is agreeable or not or even if they are actually achieving their goals.
As far as I'm concerned, "identity politics" (I don't like the term itself or its political implications, but whatever, I don't want to wank over semantics) are absolutely vital in order to give a voice to marginalized groups, but only as long as identity activists accept that the root of their problems lies in economic relations - the very moment issues of identity are claimed to be fully autonomous from the economic base, the identity movement becomes (self-)destructive and tacitly offers support to the system. But hardline economism is no better.
The ideal strategy, I think, is for a wide leftist mass movement to focus on battling all sorts of oppressive structures, primarily on economic issues, while allowing autonomy within its grasp to various smaller groups focusing on more specific issues of "identity", in order to ensure that the movement doesn't lose sight of their agendas. Also, the working class, which is the prime agent of social change, builds class consciousness through political experience. Through contact with other marginalized groups and realizing that their struggle is mutual, they tend to adopt those groups' agendas as their own.
I have a very heartwarming example from my own personal experience - I belong to a mostly student-oriented revolutionary socialist group, and it's widely known that almost a half of our members are LGBT. On the other hand, homophobia is quite strong in Serbian society outside of the urban middle class, including the workers.
Well, this one time we went to support a strike held by the workers of a factory in a town some 200 km from Belgrade. The situation escalated, and it turned into a violent conflict with the police, where we fought by the workers side to side. Obviously, someone in the police recognized us, because one of them shouted at the workers : "these students from Belgrade, they are all faggots, what are you doing with them"?
Cue two hundred grizzled, hardened workers repeatedly chanting "we are all faggots" in unison. It was really inspiring.
Aww, that is heartwarming.
In other news, it seems that every time I post in the "new to Steam" subforum of the Steam Community forums, I get some random person friending me.
I have nothing worth saying, so I'll just second the opinion above.
I turned 19 yesterday!
And as I posted in IRC:
Happy birthday, fourteenwings!~
LOL i tried to tab-complete "four" into "fourteenwings" just now
Happy day-after-Birthday!
The hours from 12 midnight - 6 AM are for doing the things that you wanted to do in the hours 8 AM to 12 midnight but haven't done yet.