I’m against any authoritarian structure, China included. At the end of the day, the state is just the threat of legalized violence, an industry monopolized by the police. Communist, Capitalist, doesn’t matter. It is unjust and stifles human freedom.

That has little to do with the ethics of profit, which are dubious at best.

Edit: actually it has everything to do with profit, as most profit seeking ventures are authoritarian and exploitative in nature

Hell yeah. Exo one was kinda what I had in mind, something with stupidly simple mechanics. But I am definitely intrigued by POOLS. Looks spooky. Thanks!

omg lmaoooo my bad disregard that last part then

But definitely still recommend The Dispossessed if you like sci-fi or anarchist thought experiments – it’s so good

You should check out Ursula K Leguin’s sci-fi novel The Dispossessed. It explores a society that has no concept of ownership at all, and the good and bad that comes with that. It’s really really good.

But the whole idea that profit/private property is inherently theft is a major tenant of Marxist theory as far as I understand it, so you saying

I wonder if anyone has ever thought of something like that before.

Is funny because people have been trying to think of solutions for the past ~150 years haha

Edit: behold my inability to sense irony lmaoo

I know you’re distinguishing between wage theft vs robbery, but especially since we are in a solarpunk community, and that has some ties to anarchism, is there really much point in distinguishing? Profit is just an owner taking for themselves what is due to the workers who produce the value, essentially stealing it. You could argue that, well the owner created the company with their investment and therefore incurred risk, but at the end of the day the only risk they incurred would result in them having to become a worker, themselves.

Profit isn’t illegal, so it’s not technically theft in any legal sense. But if a single individual (the owner) takes the fruit of an organizations labor and doesn’t distribute the entirety of that fruit to the workers (including themselves) and continual operation of the business, they are essentially stealing what is due to the business and workers. If the owner skimming off the top weren’t there, the workers would distribute the fruits equally, and ensure some is set aside for business costs.

I got an OLED the other day and splurged hard during the summer sale.

I got Stray and Little Kitty, Big City to show off to my cat-loving GF, and for me I got Dave the Diver, Sifu, and Babu is You. Also picked up Hollow Knight for good measure, but have yet to start it. 9 Sols, Mullet Madjack, Warhammer Boltgun, Baldurs Gate 3, and Return of the Obra Dinn all on my wishlist.

Thanks, I’ll check out strange horticulture. I’m looking for arthouse games in a sense. Outer Wilds completely changed me, for example, and I want to try to recreate that feeling, but I don’t want an Outer Wilds clone, like how Lords of the Fallen is to Dark Souls.

I want something that’s going to destroy me and make me think, or just be ultra fun and different from anything else I’ve played.

It took me a bunch of tries, too. It’s not really a “fun” game, more like a visual and interactive novel. Once I got the hang of the dice rolls being the biggest part of the game, and knowing/remembering where to seek them out, and getting used to the map, it became easy to pick up and put back down. It’s amazing, but not easy to get going.

My OLED is coming in today, so hyped. Will definitely help with the commute. First off is finishing up Disco Elysium, then maybe playing Edith Finch? Anyone have any other recs? Besides Hades 1, I guess.

There are a lot of weird cringey exchanges in this show similar to this that end up being stylized writing to trick or subvert the viewer. You should continue watching

I live in a small city about an hour away from a major city. I’m also an hour away from what I would call the boonies – rural, remote areas where owning guns and open carrying is normal. In fact, I’ve seen open carry around here, in the city, quite a bit. It’s pretty normal around here.

I heard a shooting happen in the suburbs near my house when I was a kid. It’s what’s considered the “nice” part of town. An old woman walking her dog was killed. I heard the shot through my bedroom window. Only til I moved into the inner part of the city did I witness guns being shot in the city more often. Most of the times you hear pops, it’s fireworks. A couple times, it’s been guns. Those couple times are pretty freaky.

Every once in awhile I’ll walk past a crime scene downtown, usually something happened like a stabbing the night before. One day I scrolled through reddit and saw a video – a point-blank execution had occured outside the club down the road. That one was disturbing. I think the kid is going to jail for a long time.

The inner part of this particular city is not as safe as the suburbs, but for the most part you should be okay, as long as you’re not looking to start trouble. When I’m walking around town, especially the immediate area I live, my eyes are open. At night, they’re wide open.

Mainstream media is generally propaganda, too, even lots of “left leaning” media.

For example, we don’t hear about the war crimes committed by Ukraine, only ones by Russia.

We don’t hear about how the US was actively working with right-wing groups in Ukraine to overthrow the government in 2014, efforts that helped further fracture relationship between Ukraine and Russia.

Or the military posturing by NATO in a geographically adjacent country to Russia.

War makes us forget nuance and accept simple absolute truths like Russia attacked Ukraine and therefore Ukraine must defend itself.

And for the record: fuck Russia for this ongoing conflict. They are the perpetrators, for sure. But all historical context to this conflict is completely thrown out in the eyes of the mainstream media.

Where are the anti-war democrats? Where are the people looking to end the war, rather than further fuel it with weapons? Nowhere to be found.

You know why? Because war makes too much money. Americans are paying to subsidize the cost of weapons to keep the war going. We the people are funding this.

We say “what are we supposed to do? Just let Russia invade Ukraine?” And then turn a blind eye to Palestinians occupied by Israel.

God. All I can think about is how this feels like a Voat situation. I really really hope not, but I have a bad feeling. I haven’t seen a ton of activity since I came in, but maybe I need to look harder.

At least I found mastodon. I feel like that could blow up.