fifilamoura

fifilamoura, 2 months ago

@rysiek also, overly polished things are only really funny if they're making fun of an overly polished thing. The Yes Men's satire is funny because it looks like what it's imitating. Memes are funny because they're crude, throw away riffs (that can echo and also be riffed/ripped off of). Memes are slapstick, basically.

fifilamoura, 3 months ago

@blogdiva I think White people in America kind of don't think Black people exist anywhere except in America and Africa. A bit like some White people in North America seem to think there are no Black people in Europe and that White Supremacy doesn't exist in South America. Or how White liberals get confused when immigrant communities vote for conservative or right wing politicians because they think all immigrants are poor refugees (when immigrants are often actually quite well off, that's how they can afford to leave and get accepted as an immigrant....money buys citizenship almost everywhere).

fifilamoura, 3 months ago

@BigAngBlack Black market meat already exists, there's a very big trade in things like bush meat.

fifilamoura, 3 months ago

@icastico Yep, it was a bit "for people new to feminism/into "you go girl, lean into it, up with girls" type feminism. Enjoyable enough fluff but not about to actually get too radical in any way. It wasn't intersectional feminist Barbie but that's okay, it's still pretty entertaining considering what the big studios are churning out these days.

The studio/production house that keeps releasing phenomenal movies is A24. The work they release is almost always great storytelling, fosters genuine diversity instead of tokenism, and it's Incidentally, one of the few studios/production houses that met striking workers demands so got a waiver to continue filming during the strikes. We need more of this kind of integrity, creativity and love of filmmaking. They do exactly what studios are meant to do, they support and nurture talent and get really extraordinary films made (EEAAO was one of theirs, and more recently the very remarkable The Zone of Interest, they're both remarkable films that really use film as a creative medium and not just "a visual book" type filmic storytelling). @mekkaokereke

fifilamoura, 3 months ago

@davecarter @mxtthxw My mom's a GP and we had the same conversation. Particularly after it became clear that many Western nations weren't going to do the rapid quarantining and shutdown of international travel needed to contain it. That said, how quickly researchers spun up vaccines by working together at first was impressive (the subsequent pharma bullshit and denial it was airborne were pretty depressing though and made it very clear we were fucked because corporations put profits before life).

fifilamoura, 3 months ago

@cstross Are they objecting because it's illiberal or just because the Tories are crabs in a barrel and constantly trying to usurp and unseat each other? I suspect the latter. It's not like any of them suddenly developed ethics.

fifilamoura, 3 months ago

@cstross One can always dream that the garbage will take itself out, though I doubt we'll get that lucky.

fifilamoura, 3 months ago

@gwynnion The original identity politics is White suprenacy so identity politics isn't inherently antifascist (see the issue with Vichy gays, White feminism, etc). From my perspective, one of the main problems with those guys is that they're not actually collectivist and are often engaged in identity politics themselves (just class and often male based identity), otherwise they'd see how identity and human rights intersect and practice intersectional politics that understand that fighting racism, homophobia and ableism are part of class politics as well. Also, they often have an odd view of who is and isn't working class that's often less about economics and more about, well, identity politics. These things are not mutually exclusive and we're doing the masters work and fostering tokenism when we believe they are!

fifilamoura, 3 months ago

@adamgreenfield I do kind of love that by the time I go to look at the original offending post you're replying to that the poster has almost always been suspended already! Means I don't know what idiocy or hate they were peddling but that's kind of a perk. @mapto @inquiline

fifilamoura, 3 months ago

@inquiline I get a 404 error if I click through so it's not just hidden, the poster or post no longer exist (for me at least). @adamgreenfield

fifilamoura, 3 months ago

@rolle I enjoy the Fediverse but it's got plenty of bullies and trolls too because it's made of people (and they do tend to target racialized or higher profile people). I have a pretty good time here but I do sometimes see other people being harassed or have to block people myself, but not having advertising/engagement algorithms definitely helps in that it's not inciting conflict.

fifilamoura, 3 months ago

@rolle It's safer for you and that's great but it's good to be aware that our subjective experiences are just that and not objective (especially on social media where everyone is having a highly subjective and different experience for all kinds of just practical reasons). We can love the fediverse without needing to pretend it doesn't come with the usual issues people come with (while also appreciating that it doesn't make them worse via advertising/engagement algorithms).

fifilamoura, 3 months ago

@MHowell Harper's people were pretty deeply involved with Trump and vice versa. People really need to understand how global the movement for a kleptocratic theocracy actually is and start paying more attention to geopolitics (if they want to understand national politics, which are downstream from international politics). https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2023/09/06/Mike-Roman-Canadian-Ties/ @msquebanh @hannu_ikonen @blogdiva

fifilamoura, 3 months ago

@stationkeeper Actually, the US Republican party is just one branch of a global organization run by evangelicals and the owners of extraction and construction/development/exploitation/war industries (mining/oil/real estate and development/prisons, arms and surveillance)....whether it's God or surveillance technology, the idea is to create a society were everyone self oppresses because they're being watched all the time. This is why all issues related to privacy and whether we own our own body are pivotal issues (digital surveillance, policing and for-profit prison systems/IP and who owns and profits from knowledge and creative work/trans, women's and disabled people's rights and refugee rights...as you can see, many of these issues intersect because they're all about the core issues of self ownership and personal freedom).

The Republican Party isn't actually running the show, it's an outpost itself because the corporations and religions behind this are global organizations not national ones. This is part of what makes it so hard for the parts of government and politicians who aren't already captured to respond, corporations literally often have more global power than nations do (it's even worse for poorer nations but that doesn't mean America or the Republicans are running the show). Americans and the rest of us in the West really need to learn how to not always center America and to understand there's a whole big world out there we need to pay attention to...particularly if we want to understand what's going on in our own nation (and, yes, the US is a bad actor because Americans have been very groomed by evangelicals and corporations to accept a form of fascism that provides some citizens the illusion of freedom). @MHowell @msquebanh @hannu_ikonen @blogdiva

fifilamoura, 3 months ago

@violetmadder It's more like a coalition of interests, there's no one owner or mastermind at the top but a mixed bag of religious fascists and corporations working together. I'm sure there are groups and people with more or less power, but they're more a coalition working towards a common goal. One suspects there would be a lot of stabbing each other in the back once that was achieved (and probably along the way too but we're less likely to hear about that). @stationkeeper @MHowell @msquebanh @hannu_ikonen @blogdiva

fifilamoura, 3 months ago

@lispi314 See also pretty much every think tank funded by right wing millionaires and billionaires (which is most of them). They usually have some incredibly banal name. Right wingers do their real high level work by hiding behind a screen of impenetrable banality, often made to sound official/bureaucratic, impartial and the opposite of what it actually is (doublespeak as communications policy, basically). @dalias @msquebanh @blogdiva @MHowell @hannu_ikonen @stationkeeper

fifilamoura, 3 months ago

@msquebanh Fraser Institute is constantly treated like a neutral source by Canadian media, despite being the source of Koch funded oil industry antifactual nonsense. @lispi314 @dalias @blogdiva @MHowell @hannu_ikonen @stationkeeper

fifilamoura, 3 months ago

@violetmadder I'd disagree about politics, one reason they've worked so hard to weaken democracy around the world and to work around governments (which is what a lot of "free trade" deals actually are and why they exist) IS because democratic governments/collective citizen actions and enforced legal guardrails are the only way to fight them. This is why they've worked so hard to convince everyone that "small government" is good, to capture the Supreme Court in the US so they can change the rules, and why they buy politicians to keep in their pockets and spend so much money fighting the government/regulations. It's also historically why they've fought against women getting the vote (until White supremacists needed women to vote in the US, which is a big reason why White women got the vote in the US) and Black people voting. Destroying our collective power so they can curtail our freedoms is all part of the same war on democracy and the Commons. @stationkeeper @MHowell @msquebanh @hannu_ikonen @blogdiva

fifilamoura, 3 months ago

@violetmadder Some of them are ideologues, some are just travelers of convenience, so some of them believe very deeply and genuinely that they're God's chosen people (and that their power is proof of that). I wouldn't underestimate how messianic a lot of this is on multiple levels. @stationkeeper @MHowell @msquebanh @hannu_ikonen @blogdiva

fifilamoura, 3 months ago

@violetmadder See Orban's Hungary or Putin's Russia for examples of this. @stationkeeper @MHowell @msquebanh @hannu_ikonen @blogdiva

fifilamoura, 3 months ago

@violetmadder An additional factor on the local level too is the slow death of a lot of local media, especially good investigative reporting. But also just to keep people informed about local politics and issues. @stationkeeper @MHowell @msquebanh @hannu_ikonen @blogdiva