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Cake day: August 19th, 2023

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  • You need a bit balance of everything. I used to be snooty about small-talk. Eventually I started noticing that the most personable people, who make someone new feel welcome, included, and who make you feel like you’re noticed and worth remembering through recalling basic personal details–these people have excellent small-talk skills.

    I think part of why small-talk often feels pointless is because people don’t enter into it intentionally, with purpose. If you go into it with purpose, like creating a good social experience for others, or building/maintaining 2nd/3rd order social connections in a humanizing way, it feels a lot different. Like anything, it’s still exhausting after a certain amount.


  • The online comment context and usage of “Why won’t you debate, are you scared” suggests the response is directed at online trolls, people who argue in bad faith, and imperiously demand rigourous debate without offering the same let alone an ounce of intellectual generosity, i.e. sealioning. In contrast, something like a movie review is a structured evaluation is still an opinion, but it doesn’t deride readers for not engaging with it.





  • Soleos@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlJerkoff
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    6 months ago

    Sometimes the “realism” critique is certainly pedantic and unproductive, but other times what’s really meant is contradiction. Situations should make sense within the fictional world. And in the fictional world of DC, norms around politics and economics are portrayed to be analogous to western neoliberalism with capitalism assumed and unquestioned. So with the Wayne family being a relatively well-regarded billionaire family like the Gates or the Buffets, there is still the issue that it is clear under the current system and that portrayed in DC universe that such wealth cannot be accumulated and sustained without massive exploitation of working class people somewhere along the line. So billionaire + “good guy” starts to become more of a glaring contradiction even in DC. But sure, we can explain it away as fiction with magically ethical capitalists. The interesting thing about the billionaire Wayne discussion though, is when people apply this fictional view of capitalism to how they interpret the real world. And now we’re back to propaganda.

    What I would say that sets West Wing and B99 apart is sometimes there’s a tonal difference or way in which certain themes are handled/portrayed that signals to the viewer that the writers acknowledge this isn’t what real life is like but we hope one day we can get there. And it’s a spectrum right. Some do this to varying degrees, other more propagandistic media do not.









  • I don’t want to shake the ruling class, I want to take away their power to exploit people. I want insurance companies reigned in. Getting Obamacare passed did more than what a thousand vigilantes could, and that was after the Republicans and lobbyists gutted it.

    If people really want to stick it to the man (conservatives and liberals alike), then they can vote in representatives and Senators who will actually legislate for the people, rather than ones who will enrich themselves off their backs.

    You can revolt, you can eat the rich, it feels great. But what matters is how the system gets changed or doesn’t change. Plenty of revolutions have replaced the system was something worse, with these heros who took down the ruling class in their place. Keep a close eye on Syria, here’s hoping for the best.



  • Lol that’s some serious cherry picking my dude. One is one of the best action movies of the last 20 years and launched a franchise. The other is a middling coming of age story made for streaming. There are plenty of bland action movies just as bad as Damsel and without an ounce of activism that come out every year. Try comparing it to Get Out, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Mad Max Fury Road, hell even Inglorious Basterds might be considered activism now that fascism is back in fashion.



  • Sure we can quibble about the median quality of a college education in the US, you you have to draw the line somewhere. But the issue I’m pointing at is people get lazy conflating education with social progressiveness and egalitarianism and dismiss people with different worldviews as “uneducated”. There are plenty of intelligent well-educated people who are morally bankrupt or deeply mistaken. After all, eugenics came from some of the most “educated” minds in the world.