The last level is living in a cabin in the woods and writing manifestos about industrial society and the ills of technology O_o

Sheldon S. Wolin talked about the fact that the US system was a "managed democracy" and a form of "inverted totalitarianism" in his book Democracy Inc about twenty years ago. In a managed democracy the pretense of democratic voting is maintained, but the system is so heavily managed as to render voting ineffective and largely irrelevant. The US voting system is so heavily gamed that to expect the average US citizen to have any power through the ballot box is laughable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guided_democracy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism

"Well, Steve [Jobs]… I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbour named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it."

In this post: making a case against electoralism without realizing they're making a case against electoralism...

lemmy.world is basically the fediverse version of Reddit from what I've experienced in terms of overall culture.

"If we the voters can kick this football, then the Dems will move left"

cops are generally trustworthy

Oh man, you must not deal with cops a lot.

the market works when regulated by a well functioning democracy

I see you believe in fairytales

The Gaza genocide has been actively going on for over 70 years my man, Octobe 7th just showed the world what a mask off Israel looked like.

We have had a name for it for awhile, my fellow Washingtonians call the Washington/Oregon/California union 'Cascadia'. Wouldn't be such a bad idea.

Ugh, so true. The insidious nature of Steam is the fact that they're basically a PC gaming business monopoly, but they're benign compared to other corporations, so gamers tend to turn a blind eye to that fact, or find various grasping ways to convince themselves otherwise (there's still Epic and GOG! etc). The fact that 80%+ of PC game sales are through Steam doesn't seem to faze or disturb them, when it most definitely should. What happens when Steam drops the facade? I imagine it won't be long before Steam turns into the badguy.

In this thread a guy justifying morally reprehensible actions by declaring them legally justifiable :/

Please no

It's amazing to me that you could read that quote, and your take, unironically, is exactly the sentiment that Arendt was warning about.

I live about 15 miles outside of a small town (~20k) in a trailer park on the side of a mountain. Been here 6 months and it is AMAZING. Super quiet at night, can see the stars and it has a great view of the adjacent mountains nearby.

It'll most likely be awhile, but the plan is to save for a small piece of property with a similar rural location. In my teens and twenties, I used to think that I'd live in the big city, but as I got into my late 30s I couldn't stand being in the city much. I don't mind being able to visit occasionally, but city life just isn't for me anymore. Too big, busy and noisy. Give me a nice, peaceful spot where I can read and enjoy nature quietly.

It's like banging your head against a brick wall inevitably causes you to see the truth, but at that point your brain is so addled that you are hallucinating the truth, despite your best tries at avoidance.

Man, I never knew he was an ass.

Honestly, unless it becomes news I never dig down into a band enough to know whether or not one member or an another are pieces of shit.

The last time I remember was the front man from Queens of the Stone Age having multiple instances of attacking photographers at his show, which turned me off of QotS after that.

Sadly, I love Radiohead, but there's no way I can conscientiously listen to Radiohead now.

Now it makes me nervous who else I listen to is a douche. Well, douche I can deal with to an extent, but genocide denial is a whole other level of fuckery.

Edit: From reading the article he is critical of Israel, but in that 'both sides' type of rhetoric, and doesn't mention genocide at all, but regrettable lose of thousands of life. Which is the same wishy-washy rhetoric that many in the mainstream media use that don't want to be accused of being anti-semites or pro-Hamas. Which basically amounts to denial but in an indirect way.

Ugh, I don't see why at least one major figure can't just grow some fucking balls and tell Israel to go to hell outright. Seems like everyone in the mainstream is so damn mealy-mouthed about this issue, it's absolutely insane how much sway Israel has over the media in the US and Western countries in general.

After the past twenty years, coming of age during the Bush W years, I've tried hard to resist becoming a misanthrope. But good, goddamn is it harder than ever before. I thought it was bad (and it was) when W. was the president growing up, but the amount of insane and woefully misinformed and hateful people in this country has reached a fever pitch I never could have imagined back then. It's truly awesome in the most negative sense of that word.

Wow. There's a huge disparity between the brows on those two. No matter how blurry the first pics are, the thickness of Luigi's brows would be noticeable. The person in that camera footage definitely doesn't have thick eyebrows like Luigi :/

And Batman doesn't exist, so the quote still checks out. But, if he did, he shouldn't either. Absolute Batman has a great take on Batman as a poor, working-class person. I think Batman works better as that. Batman inherently is problematic, as a billionaire playboy beating up mentally-ill people. (This coming from a Batman fan myself).