Heh. Kind of surreal to see local (South African) stuff making an appearance in your daily summaries.
The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond might be of interest to you. He spends a great deal of the book talking about how differences between the sexes affects social structures, mate selection, and cultures around the world.
Ah, this must be the elusive "systemic racism" I keep hearing about.
That's a bold marketing strategy, let's see how well it plays off.
Cherry flavoured Soy-ence, hand-picked for 100% authentic confirmation bias flavour.
Not only did he do a sterling job of writing diversity and tackling racism (speci-ism?) better than any of the current SJWish have even bothered trying, he wrote more fleshed-out and well-rounded female characters than pretty much the entire left movement put together.
Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, Magrat, Tiffany, Susan, Angua, and Lady Sybil — all proof that you can write great female characters without making them a cardboard cutout for yelling "Men bad, womxn good, the future is female!", or making their characters men with boobs intentionally ugly androgynous features (since male gaze is bad, and anything that pisses off their fragile egos is good).
And the costume design looks like they sent an intern dumpster diving behind a charity shop, the set design and the props looked like it was shot on location in Portland, Oregon, 2020, and the cast looks like they were picked for a movie about a high school musical.
The Sky1 adaptations look absolutely flawless in comparison to this.
So, yeah, just another casualty in the Culture War, and a reminder that we should have gatekept harder.
Hell, back in those days I didn't even know what a Marxist was.
Karl Marx was just "that Russian philosopher guy", communism and socialism may as well have been the same thing, and I thought post-modernism was one of those snobby art movements.
I'll definitely admit though, back then I thought that all the politically correct nonsense would eventually cycle out of fashion, and that the early SJW movements were just another phase for naïve sociology freshmen looking for something to make a noise about.
Oh how wrong I was...
That is the look of someone who has lost all desire to live.
Yeah. I think that this year, I have only (re-)watched 70's and 80's movies.
And in every single one of them, it felt like everyone was their character first, instead of just showing up present and in attendance in order to tick off the next box on a diversity checklist.
Fast forward to 2020, and almost every single time, this woke bullshit comes up, it's not so much "telling different stories from marginalised people's perspectives", but just "we're going to shit on everything you love and hold dear, and you're going to pay us for the privilege."
They march under the banner of anti-racism, and they talk about how they want to end racism, but they are nothing more than race hustlers who need to ensure they have a constant stream of (often fabricated) injustice to campaign against.
Not sure if character, or cardboard cutout being used to push a political agenda.
Sadly, the common sense approach doesn't work with these people, as they literally make a living out of "deconstructing language" and shitting all over the existing definitions of words.
I'm not even sure why they give the player any choices.
The player isn't there to have have fun and be entertained, they're just showing up for their next voluntary ideological re-education session.
Same, they couldn't even pay me to pirate it.
"Calling everyone 'deplorables' worked really well in 2016, let's try it again!"
I wonder if Scott Adams ever gets tired of being right all the time?
It's like they've taken "I don't want solutions, I just want to complain!" and created an entire service industry around it. It's almost kind of impressive in some macabre way.
Make Tittypussy Great Again.
Exactly.
It's a Perpetual Motion Machine, but instead of creating energy out of thin air, it creates social status for people who have not earned it.
And even if you want to discount the Greed angle, there's still the Laziness one: why put in the effort of fixing things when you can just whine about it instead?
Coulter's Law.
It doesn't matter how righteous you think your protest is, playing in traffic is never a bright idea.
Didn't that literally happen yesterday in Austin?
Protester with an AK-47 allegedly shot out some guys car tires, and the driver fired back in self-defense.
Facts, reason, logic and common sense are all social constructs invented by the white man yadda yadda yadda.
It's $current_year, feels before reals.
I'll have a closer look at Stalker 2 once it's released (for PC).
Everything was either not my jam, or was pushing it's agenda with about as much subtlety as a flashbang grenade.
These are some heavy questions, and I haven't formally touched economics since high school, but I'll give some of the easier questions a shot.
Watching the video, I'm not in the least bit surprised. I live in South Africa, and our GINI coefficient is some of the highest in the world. There are millions of people here (and in the USA, and the rest of the first and third world countries) who are living below the breadline — people who will go their entire lives making less money than some CEOs make in a single day.
Is it fair? No. But is the current system fairer? I'd have to say, compared to the alternatives, absolutely.
It's far from perfect, and there is enough room for improvement to keep generations of economists busy. But right now it's the fairest system we have, especially considering that an economic system cannot live in a temporal vacuum, it doesn't start off from a clean slate — it needs to work with decades and centuries of legacy, often unpleasant.
There are people who will go their entire lives working their hands to the bone, while struggling to put food on the table for their children, while there are people who were given every opportunity at every turn, and are just coasting through life. It's not fair, but it is also not something that I believe you can fix solely through political means, because that means that at the end of the day, a group of people will have to decide what is fair and who deserves what, eventually the goal skews from "More effort equals more reward", to "More political sway means more reward". This is where the whole free market vs controlled economy comes in.
Welfare and social safety nets are another subject that might seem simple at first but is deceptively tricky and intricate. On one hand it makes perfect sense to have a safety net for those who, through no fault of themselves, cannot provide for their own care and well-being. Whether through accidents, chronic disease, or unforeseen market trends. On the other hand, you cannot have half your population entirely dependent on welfare — that burden has to be carried by someone, often the dwindling middle class, who, while reasonably well off, are often struggling to maintain their status quo themselves.
With the current Covid situation, rising unemployment, poor job prospects, and the threat of automation and robotics, it definitely paints a bleak picture.
What does the world do with 8 billion humans, 65% of which are in the working age, when simply don't have the economic need for 5 billion workers in jobs? Do we promise them some welfare cheque every month as long as they keep voting for the political party in power? Do we try to have the middle class subsidise them? Or do we try and promote people going back to rural lifestyles and subsistence farming?
To anyone interested in this topic, I'd recommend The Strange Death of Europe, and The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray. Alternatively, search for his name on YouTube and pick whoever your favourite interviewer is.
On topic: It's a myriad of things.
One of which I've heard of recently calls the ultra-progressive social justice movement a "Luxury Belief System". Instead of showing how well off you are by buying an expensive car, or living in an upper class neighbourhood, your signal your high status via your (political) beliefs.
Another is the idea of Biological Leninism. To paraphrase, the far-left panders to all the degenerates and (previously) low status people in society, and becomes the only group offering them social status. This creates the staunchest of allies, as they know that if they stop supporting the cause, they'll lose all their ill-gotten social status.
The third idea I'll offer is the idea of a God-Shaped Hole. In the absence of a religion which they believe strongly in, people with lesser convictions (to phrase it politely) are more likely to fall for the cult tactics that the more radical and extremist left utilises.
The most interesting facet of this situation is the role that ubiquitous social media has played in propagating these ideas. Everything you say is being judged. The posts you like and the people you follow must pass muster with your peers. When the mob gathers, you need to chant the correct words at the correct times, or they'll turn on you next.
And the scariest thing is, you will be bullied by people who don't believe in truth, logic, or facts. They unironically believe that people's feelings and emotions matter, and that objective truth is just a tool used to oppress the underprivileged.
How do you reason with these kind of people?