Narrative-driven games give players the illusion of choice. To me this seems like it would lend itself to being even more effective than traditional propaganda because it’s capable of tricking the player into thinking they came to a conclusion on their own.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Disco Elysium, but it is very effective communist propaganda. Propaganda has a negative connotation but is not inherently bad or dishonest, though it certainly can be.
Put those monkeys underwater and you might conclude that drowning is in their nature. I know of the studies you’re referencing regarding monkeys being taught to use money and I’m aware that they were done with monkeys in captivity. In the same vein, the debunked study about “alpha” wolves was done on wolves in captivity and observations of wolves in their natural environment countered the study’s findings. Our actions are a result of the context and material conditions that we are in.
People dominate others for personal gain because they live in a system that rewards them for doing so. Place those people in a system that rewards them for helping others and the very same selfish impulse will make them saints. The “tragedy of the commons” is enlightenment era defeatist bullshit. The commons existed and were managed by people for thousands of years before capitalists enclosed them and dared to claim that it was the inevitable result of human nature.
If that’s something they need then that’s something they should get. No one will be happy doing nothing forever, in that year they will likely find something that makes them happy, especially if opportunities are made available to them.
These kinds of movements are a consequence of over-exploitation. The “lie down” movement - also “let it rot” - is similar to the “quiet quitting” movement in the US. People will not be motivated to contribute when they are struggling and do not see any benefit to trying harder. If these people were fairly compensated for their labor and had greater autonomy over how to contribute they would not lose motivation. Alienation from the result of their labor is also a huge contributor; feeling rewarded for your work can be as simple as seeing the result (a teacher seeing their students find their passions, for example).
The technology we create takes the form of the incentives that drive its’ creation. If we create technology for the exploitation of others we shouldn’t be surprised that people use it for the exploitation of others.
Communism envisions a society where there are no haves and have nots (classless) and socialism is put forward as the economic system that will get us there eventually. There are criticisms to be made about the method but the vision is good.
Capitalism does what you’re doing here, snarkily talk down to anyone who dares suggest such a society might be possible and is worth working towards, and puts forward instead that there must be haves taking advantage of have nots for society to function and that no other way is possible.
Thank you, this looks great! Permaculture is exactly the purpose I intend to use the software for so this seems like it could be the right fit.
Thank you, this is a great resource. Some of these look promising.
Anti-Jewish sentiment was and is never justified, but anti-zionist sentiment certainly was and still is. I don’t doubt that xenophobia played a role in this protest, but it is inappropriate to say that it was purely motivated by xenophobia.
It’s like ZA/UM exploded and left behind little fragments that are still alive somehow.
For those curious, this account on Xitter claimed responsibility. Their stated reasons are indeed ridiculous, but I don’t at all have a hard time believing that people can be that misguided.
The US government stores over a billion pounds of cheese in enormous caves. I think we can probably get away with reducing production quite a bit.
historically humans aren’t usually burning down libraries on purpose.
How on earth have you come to this conclusion.
The corporations that took control of the Internet don’t want us to remember.
Really thoughtful and smart sci-fi animation. Don’t want to spoil it so I’ll be vague, it has the most realistic depiction of modern tech and how people interact with it than any other show I’ve seen. Really great commentary on big tech corporations and even a bit of geopolitics. Super ambitious yet it somehow pulls it off.
There is also a scene that still gives me nightmares (not even joking, I still dream about that shit) which is more than any horror movies or shows have done for me. Anyone who has watched it knows exactly what scene I’m talking about.
his solution (for a class of “intellectuals” like him to take charge) however, are just neoliberal swill
This is such a common pitfall that even self-described communists fall into it as well. When you hear people talk about a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” what they’re describing tends to devolve into “a class of intellectuals needs to guide the working class to the correct decisions” when questioned about what a “dictatorship of the proletariat” actually entails. Often they’ll try to justify it by saying it’s only temporary, but we all know how that pans out (see the USSR). This is why I consider myself an anarchist rather than a communist and regularly critique marxism-leninism.
Whose propaganda did you suck down blindly?
Chill out a bit, my comment could not have possibly given you the impression that I’m a supporter of capitalism if you had read it carefully. I began my comment by putting forward the capitalist argument for copyright - a steel-man argument - and ended it by debunking it.
Copyright is meant to foster and improve the commons and public domain
You said yourself that copyright establishes art as private property (or “intellectual property” if we’re being more precise). That does the opposite of fostering and improving the commons and public domain.
If copyright was not tradeable or transferable
Then it wouldn’t be copyright. Copyright is a capitalist construct, not a public good corrupted by capital.
At the root of this cognitive dissonance is who benefits and who doesn’t. Copyright law is selectively applied in a way that protects the powerful and exploits the powerless. In a capitalist economy copyright is meant to protect people’s livelihoods by ensuring they are compensated for their labor, but due to the power imbalance inherent to capitalism it is instead used only to protect the interests of capital. The fact that AI companies are granted full impunity to violate the copyright of millions is evidence that copyright law is ineffective at the task for which it was purportedly created.
It’s because this isn’t about privacy at all, it’s about a popular social media platform being outside the control of domestic intelligence agencies. The US is unable to control the narrative on TikTok the way they do on American social media, which allowed pro-palestinian sentiment to spread there unhindered. It had a huge effect on the politics of the younger generation (IMO a positive one) by showing them news and first hand accounts they wouldn’t have seen otherwise.
Edit: And yes, China is able to control the narrative on TikTok and that is a potential problem, but so far they’ve had a fairly hands-off approach to US TikTok aside from basic language censorship. I figure the way China sees it is that an unmoderated free-for-all will do more to sow divisions in the US than a carefully controlled (and therefore obvious) pro-China narrative ever could.
Because the electoral college was established with the explicit purpose of giving less populated states an advantage, and that would defeat the point. A lot of my fellow Americans don’t know or don’t want to admit that the electoral college was intentionally undemocratic from the start.