Random thread of randomness
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I never thought I’d see Nickelback do a James Blunt cover.
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Sorry guys, don’t mean to derail it but I’m thinking about this Maus situation and the books that were put under consideration possibly facing being excluded from the curriculum.
What books would you put in a “required reading list” for school children? I realise we’re not teachers (except @bruce but he’s just a maths teacher) and we live under different societal and cultural backdrops but I’m intrigued as to what you’d think should be classified as “required reading” nonetheless.
I’m just on my way out the door, so I’ll respond with my own ideas a bit later.
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I don’t like the idea of required reading when it comes to literature. Just let kids pick books they like. We had a long list (I think 100-200 books) for Dutch, English, French and German literature which we could pick a number of books from, but it was also allowed to pick something which wasn’t on the list, as long as the teacher thought it qualified as “literature”. So you couldn’t pick The Great Adventure of the Teletubbies.
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Yeah, I think there’s few things that turns kids off reading more than being given a book and told “you must read this.” I don’t think anything I was forced to read at school ever really won me over. The things I enjoyed most were the ones I picked for myself out of the library.
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The problem is, in the current situation the dissenters are definitely less moral than the experts, because in every single case they’ve turn out to be selling some product or other for personal gain while hiding behind a veneer of moral correctness and manipulating your fears.
I think that’s a dodgy argument to use because it can so easily be turned on its head. Somewhere some people are making large fortunes out of selling vaccines, masks, testing kits. Maybe they are manipulating fears for personal gain? (I’m not saying they are, just pointing out a problem in your argument.)
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The problem is, in the current situation the dissenters are definitely less moral than the experts, because in every single case they’ve turn out to be selling some product or other for personal gain while hiding behind a veneer of moral correctness and manipulating your fears.
I think that’s a dodgy argument to use because it can so easily be turned on its head. Somewhere some people are making large fortunes out of selling vaccines, masks, testing kits. Maybe they are manipulating fears for personal gain? (I’m not saying they are, just pointing out a problem in your argument.)
It’s not a problem in the argument, it’s a problem with capitalism. We can’t have a situation where nobody profits because that’s how the system is set up. The difference is that masks are proven to work, vaccines are proven to work, and testing kits are a vital part of controlling the spread. In an ideal world we’d all be communists and the people creating these would be fully in control of the fruits of their labour.
When I say people are personally profiting off this, I mean that the doctors who go on TV and podcasts talking about how vaccines are bad and Big Pharma is boosting the vaccine to profit, and all you need to take is Ivermectin are running the website that will write you a prescription for Ivermectin and post it to you for $50. Not to mention that Ivermectin is made by the Big Pharma. Or they’re selling books about how The Man is coming to get you, or you need to take Brain Force Plus.
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The problem is, in the current situation the dissenters are definitely less moral than the experts, because in every single case they’ve turn out to be selling some product or other for personal gain while hiding behind a veneer of moral correctness and manipulating your fears.
I think that’s a dodgy argument to use because it can so easily be turned on its head. Somewhere some people are making large fortunes out of selling vaccines, masks, testing kits. Maybe they are manipulating fears for personal gain? (I’m not saying they are, just pointing out a problem in your argument.)
It’s not a problem in the argument, it’s a problem with capitalism. We can’t have a situation where nobody profits because that’s how the system is set up. The difference is that masks are proven to work, vaccines are proven to work, and testing kits are a vital part of controlling the spread. In an ideal world we’d all be communists and the people creating these would be fully in control of the fruits of their labour.
When I say people are personally profiting off this, I mean that the doctors who go on TV and podcasts talking about how vaccines are bad and Big Pharma is boosting the vaccine to profit, and all you need to take is Ivermectin are running the website that will write you a prescription for Ivermectin and post it to you for $50. Not to mention that Ivermectin is made by the Big Pharma. Or they’re selling books about how The Man is coming to get you, or you need to take Brain Force Plus.
But Lorcan, you forgot that your own urine is free! Drink all you want because Big Pharma doesn’t control that!
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But Lorcan, you forgot that your own urine is free! Drink all you want because Big Pharma doesn’t control that!
Subscribe to my Substack for all the best advice on how to drink your own urine, and visit my shopify site to get UCDs – Urine Collection Devices
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What books would you put in a “required reading list” for school children?
Forget about school children; every book I was required to read as a school assignment was an unwelcome chore that I hated, particularly because we were required to read them during summer break or during the Christmas/New Years holidays. Fuck that shit.
Instead, here’s my Top Ten list of required reading for adults, in no particular order, because they will expose you to ideas and situations that everyone would benefit from thinking about:
The Catcher in the Rye — JD Salinger
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — Mark Twain
To Kill A Mockingbird — Harper Lee
A Separate Peace –John Knowles
Fahrenheit 451 — Ray Bradbury
The Handmaid’s Tale — Margaret Atwood
Animal Farm — George Orwell
The Color Purple — Alice Walker
The Cider House Rules — John Irving
Stoner — John Williams6 users thanked author for this post.
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Animal Farm — George Orwell
Nineteen Eighty-Four or Homage to Catalonia might be more appropriate these days.
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Spotify podcast fans will notice a new content warning will air ahead of any podcast episodes discussing Covid-19, CEO Daniel Ek announced on Sunday.
The news arrives on the heels of Neil Young removing his catalog from the service in protest of Joe Rogan‘s podcast which has been criticized for spreading misinformation. In solidarity with Young, Joni Mitchell said she’d also ask that her music be removed.
In his message, Ek spoke of knowing Spotify’s responsibility to find a balance between supporting their content creators and protecting the safety of listeners—without playing censor.
“Based on the feedback over the last several weeks, it’s become clear to me that we have an obligation to do more to provide balance and access to widely-accepted information from the medical and scientific communities guiding us through this unprecedented time,” he wrote.
In addition to publishing their long-standing platform rules and a commitment to test ways to highlight said rules “to raise awareness around what’s acceptable and help creators understand their accountability,” the addition of the content warning.
“We are working to add a content advisory to any podcast episode that includes a discussion about COVID-19,” Ek said. “This advisory will direct listeners to our dedicated COVID-19 Hub, a resource that provides easy access to data-driven facts, up-to-date information as shared by scientists, physicians, academics, and public health authorities around the world, as well as links to trusted sources. This new effort to combat misinformation will roll out to countries around the world in the coming days.”
Prince Harry and Megan Markle’s Archwell released a statement Sunday morning about their concern over Covid-19 misinformation on Spotify without mentioning Rogen. The pair have a deal with Spotify worth a reported $25 million to make podcasts.
Rogan has a reported $100 million deal to license his podcast to the streamer.
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Today is the
21st15th anniversary of Cartoon Network putting up a series of LED signs with the Mooninites on them as a viral advertising campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Boston Police assumed they were IEDs because they had “batteries and exposed wires” and even after it was pointed out to them that they were characters from a cartoon they refused to back down. To this day the investigation into the signs is ongoing, has cost the city 4 million in overtime and the BPD continue to insist they may have been put there by ISIS(EDIT: Oh thank Bob I misread the date when I was looking at something about this earlier. I’m not that old!)
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A partially contrite Joe Rogan admitted today that he doesn’t “always get it right” on his podcast and promised to “do better” going forward as Spotify scrambled to contain the growing backlash to the ex-Fear Factor host’s take on Covid-19 vaccines.
The same day that CEO Daniel Ek announced adding content warnings and disclaimers to the streaming service, Rogan took to social media to “address some of the controversy taking place over the past several days” with Neil Young and Joni Mitchell pulling their tunes off Spotify. The duo have a big problem with Rogan’s vaccine “misinformation,” as Young called it.
Today, self-proclaimed Neil Young fan Rogan said he was “very sorry” the iconic musicians felt they had to get off Spotify because of him. “I most certainly don’t want that,” Rogan declared Sunday. Copping to the fact a lot of what he says on his hugely popular podcast is “not that prepared or fleshed out,” one-time self described “moron” Rogan also thanked his $100 million paymasters Spotify for “being so supportive during this time and I’m very sorry that this is happening to them.”
With rising Wall Street anxiety that a plethora of high profile artists could follow Young off Spotify, the company saw a loss of over $2 billion in market value the past week.
“If there’s anything that I’ve done that I could do better, it’s having more experts with differing opinions right after I have the controversial ones,” The Joe Rogan Experience host said, noting he agreed with Ek’s disclaimer and content warning plan. “I would most certainly be open to doing that. And I would like to talk to some people who have differing opinions on the podcasts in the future. I do all the scheduling myself and I don’t always get it right.”
“I don’t know what else I can do,” Rogan states too.
Regaling in his confrontational contrarian take on Covid-19 since the dawn of the pandemic, UFC commentator Rogan and Spotify got slapped down in the figurative octagon last week by “Heart of Gold” singer Young.
“Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform, though the company presently has no misinformation policy,’ polio surviver Young wrote to the Swedish company on January 25. “I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform … They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”
Agreeing to the musician’s request with no word on Rogan, Spotify was essentially Neil Young-free by January 28. That same day, fellow Canadian and fellow polio surviver Mitchell said she wanted her music off the service too over. Mitchell proclaimed that Spotify were doing nothing about “irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives.” The “Both Sides Now” singer added: I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue.”
Mitchell and Young are far from the first to call out Rogan and Spotify. Just in the past few weeks, a group of 270 scientists, professors, doctors and healthcare workers penned an open letter to Spotify expressing concern about “false and societally harmful assertions” made on Rogan’s podcast. The January 12 letter asked Spotify to “establish a clear and public policy to moderate misinformation on its platform.”
Or, as Neil Young once sang: “keep on rockin’ in the free world.”
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I was perusing some dating apps last night when the profile of a girl I went to school with turned up (well, woman now, obviously, but “woman I went to school with” makes it sound like she was a dinnerlady or teacher, which she wasn’t. Anyway). We’ll call her Rowena, just for the hell of it. Rowena mentions in her profile that she’s a wellness coach now, which was a little surprising as last I heard, she was working for the National Trust or Fair Trade or something like that. Some sort of business type job thing. So I thought I’d check out her business and hmm. You know, just hmm.
There are three people in this business. Rowena, who is the coach type person, Rowena’s friend (let’s call her Dorothy) who is the wellness guru type and the Teklenaktia or something, an interdimensional being who speaks through Dorothy to provide life advice that is unbiased by human existence.
Now, call me a cynic, but I dismissed out of hand the notion that Teklenaktia exists and I’m assuming it’s just Dorothy doing some cold reading and spitting out some usual wellness platitudes, maybe while putting on a silly voice. It’s quite clearly a grift, but I’ve found myself oddly consumed by the question of whether Rowena is in on it or has also been duped too. I’m not sure which I’d respect more. The company’s instagram page is almost exclusively short videos of Rowena, always in a yellow jumper (I assume just for some kind of branding purpose or to avoid having to worry about how her clothes look on camera, but the result is it makes her look like one of the Wiggles) either lip-syncing to something off TikTok or just doling out a few trite wellness tips. It’s quite low key on the whole “interdimensional lifestyle guru” stuff, outside of it being mentioned in the profile. There’s a vague mention in one of these posts about Rowena having personal experiences with serious stress or anxiety or something, which does make me worry that she did have some kind of small breakdown and then got suckered into this. I remember her being fairly level-headed at school, but we weren’t close (we were in the same tutor group in five years but we weren’t friends particularly) so maybe she always believed in benevolent extra-dimensional entities with business plans.
Anyway, I just found it weird and I can’t really talk to anyone else about it because they’d likely work out who “Rowena” is and I’m not looking to ridicule her or anything.
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Either way, I hope the date goes well.
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I don’t like the idea of required reading when it comes to literature.
Maybe it is different elsewhere but in school we just had the set texts for study. E.g. everyone reads Romeo and Juliet and you sit a paper based on that. I don’t see how that could work with ‘read what you want’ because the marker would also have to have read and know the text very well.
Outside of those set texts though we didn’t really get recommended reading, it was read what you fancy.
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Throughout my years in school, there were books, stories, poems, and plays we read as a class. Part of it was an exposure to classics but it was also a tool to learn and develop reading comprehension and other lessons. We would tale tests and quizzes as we progressed through the book but they were never part of the final exam, as I recall. The classics were a good tool because so much has been written and understood about them that they could be used in a learning environemnt and to evaluate students’ skills and knowledge.
We also did book reports where we would read a book of our choice and write a report based on criteria set out by the teacher.
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If you get this you are old. pic.twitter.com/v4sO6LQlUR
— Tony “must touch the wet paint” Moir (@tmoir0) February 2, 2022
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Ok… Regarding required reading and the school curriculum:
In grade school on Columbus Day, we learned about him as this great explorer challenging the notion of a flat Earth,
the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, the crew almost mutineed then they found land, etc.That was it until.. The other side that was not taught in schoool came from findings of Columbus’ own logs of what he and the crew really did to the indigenous people in the islands of the Carribean.
That “other side” of the Columbus account poses a threat to many who insist on the simple innocent school lessons from their childhood, which in their view was an “innnocent” and a “simpler” time. Rose colored glasses…
Also… in grade school racism is pretty much over because of MLK and the civil rights movement of the 60’s. In reality…
How much should children and teens be taught? What is truth? And so many other questions along those lines.
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And because of course:
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The books being burned in that photo are the largest collection of research into LGBT people that existed in the 30s, bea tea dubs
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In grade school on Columbus Day, we learned about him as this great explorer challenging the notion of a flat Earth,
the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, the crew almost mutineed then they found land, etc.We learned that at school too. The church believed the world was flat and Columbus would sail off the edge, but brave and clever Columbus proved them wrong.
I don’t know if they still tell it like that, but it’s completely untrue. The church knew the world was round. The reason they wouldn’t back the expedition was that Columbus was a terrible navigator and mathematician, who thought the globe was much smaller than it was. The church knew it was five times further to China than Columbus thought it was, and that his ships would never make the true distance. Nobody knew about America of course, and it was pure dumb luck that it was waiting there to save Columbus just as his rubbish calculations were about to get all his crew killed.
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What is truth?
Truth is what you believe to be true.
Philosophy solved.
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What is truth?
Truth is what you believe to be true.
I thought the truth was out there.
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What is truth?
Truth is what you believe to be true.
I thought the truth was out there.
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I have to say that after grade school, especially when you move on to a liberal arts college/curriculum, you start to hear of and learn about the “other side” of things as I said before regarding my example of Columbus.
Things is, it would be so much better if it were taught in grade school appropriate to the age of the student.
This posting by Todd to limit teaching about slavery will just cause more of the population to think of it as an institution, a means to an end to make the South strong. Of course, the horrors and extreme cruelty and brutality will be edited out so as not to make white students ashamed and feel guilty. They will continue to say “That was centuries ago. It is in the past. So is Jim Crow segregation. It didn’t happen to you” etc and more gaslighting.
This extreme opposition to CRT being expanded is a measure of keeping the populace in a state of ignorance. No effort to raise consciousness, therefore no real future social uprising to threaten the status quo of power.
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One more thing: In most of the Western World that highlight capitalism and it’s structure of the 5 day workweek, etc. it is highlighted that the free market economy of firms competing with each other will bring about the highest quality of products and therefore a higher standard of living. This is always contrasted with other economies under communism and other state owned economies, that they have no incentive to innovate etc. and no freedom.I catch some of these online memes and one of them uses the Simpsons with this open space for whatever message. This one:
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This reply was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by .
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The Soviets were amazing at innovation, they came up with great ways to increase crop yield.
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The bedrock of our civilization is good, Western countries are the best places to live in the world.
To this day, our quality of life comes from the exploitation of the Global South, which often includes state-sponsored violence up to and including genocide.
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Blame Canada.
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Blame Canada.
eh, it’s not even a real country anyaway
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Blame Canada.
eh, it’s not even a real country anyaway
It’s America Junior!
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Blame Canada.
eh, it’s not even a real country anyaway
It’s America Junior!
America’s hat
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Blame Canada.
With all their hockey hullabaloo and that bitch Anne Murray, too.
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One more thing: In most of the Western World that highlight capitalism and it’s structure of the 5 day workweek, etc. it is highlighted that the free market economy of firms competing with each other will bring about the highest quality of products and therefore a higher standard of living. This is always contrasted with other economies under communism and other state owned economies, that they have no incentive to innovate etc. and no freedom.
Is there much to contrast against? Cuba and North Korea perhaps?
We don’t really have communist states apart from those two. While some places have a more generous welfare state system it’s not as if you can’t do business freely. Sweden has brought us Spotify and Ikea, Finland gave us Nokia. Nothing really there to say business and innovation can’t succeed.
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Is there much to contrast against? Cuba and North Korea perhaps?
There are plenty of imaginary regimes to choose from.
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Actually, socialism isn’t that well defined.
Socialism is perfectly well defined.
Every American has their own take on it.
That’s because they’re talking out their ass, not because sOcIaLiSm iS’nT tHaT wElL dEfIneD.
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In sweden there’s sometimes talk about the “red wine-left” and the “champagne left”, I don’t know if that translates to english very well because I don’t read a lot of political discourse prone to use slanguage (sic) like that in other languages.
I wonder if there’s a “young girl in a bikini left” on instagram. Al-X?
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It does translate. “Champagne socialist’ is a very familiar term in the UK.
I think it’s often unfairly used really as very few socialists (as we tend to define it in Europe) stand on any platform that people can’t be rich and must live purely austere lives, just that they pay their fair share of tax to support the rest of society.
Bypassing her other problematic stances that was something JK Rowling espoused, Warren Buffet has said the same. Champagne socialists I guess.
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Here in the States, everyone has their own take on what socialism means.
That’s because they’re talking out their ass.
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Here in the States, everyone has their own take on what socialism means. It is probably why Sander’s message (which everyone heard to mean free this and free that) wasn’t really clear during his run for office.
True enough and why pragmatically they probably shouldn’t use the term. I understand many in the US equate it with Communism so they should maybe just go with ‘social democrat’ which is used by many centre left parties in Europe.
Essentially most of Bernie’s policies on things like education and health are status quo in somewhere like Germany, he’s really not that radical left. I know Americans generally don’t like comparisons to other countries but if they do Germany is hardly the most frightening. They like a good amount of free market, check out how many German cars and electronics they export.
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It does translate. “Champagne socialist’ is a very familiar term in the UK. I think it’s often unfairly used really as very few socialists (as we tend to define it in Europe) stand on any platform that people can’t be rich and must live purely austere lives, just that they pay their fair share of tax to support the rest of society.
I think it was Anthony Wedgewood Benn (I could be wrong on who it was, it was a while ago, but the story still stands) who was taken to task for driving an expensive Jaguar, as it was seen as an example of “Champagne socialism”.
His reply: The aim of Socialism isn’t that nobody can have a Jaguar, it’s that everybody should have a Jaguar.
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How exactly are all these promised “free” services going to be paid for?
Taxes.
That question begs to be answered.
Well, that was easy
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Not exactly DavidM…
Occasionally, here in the States, we hear of some nice programs in European countries like some childcare in France some time ago, more vacation weeks in some countries, better health coverage.
We even hear of some things done better north of us in Canada!
My question is: Why can’t some of the nice things we hear of in Europe and Canada be implemented in the States?
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What will socialism mean for Kylie Jenner and other insta influencers?
Joking aside, there’d be plenty of space in socialism for things like social media and stuff like influencing. If nothing else Influencers who are doing it as a job tend to own their means of production.
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My question is: Why can’t some of the nice things we hear of in Europe and Canada be implemented in the States?
Because you’ve been propagandised to hell and back to accept that private industry is better than public services, and it’s in the US Government’s best interest to keep it that way. Like you pay more per capita for Medicaid and Medicare than most European people do for public healthcare, and it covers less of the population with worse results than a large chunk of the developed world’s public healthcare. That’s on purpose.
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Speaking of Healthcare, I often see doctors and think a good amount of them would say “if I couldn’t have my country club, trophy wife, and Jaguar, I wouldn’t have put in the effort to become a doctor”
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My question is: Why can’t some of the nice things we hear of in Europe and Canada be implemented in the States?
Because the people in charge in the US would rather give HUGE FUCKING TAX BREAKS to corporations and the uber-wealthy than to tax them appropriately and use that revenue to pay for some of those “nice things” for the general population. This goes back to the days of Ronald Reagan and “Trickle Down Economics”, which still doesn’t work the way they promised.
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Would there still be advertising for businesses under actual socialism (rather than Western Europe style social democracy?) I assumed socialism would mean an end to independent businesses having to compete with each other, so advertising would change accordingly ( or disappear?)
The core of socialism is that the workers control the means of their production. That means that if you work in a company the profits are shared appropriately by everyone, the company’s assets are owned by everyone, and everyone has a fair stake in the company’s decision-making processes. This kind of model is often called Market Socialism, while you can also have Non-Market Socialism which is more likely to have a top-down command economy.
When you move further towards Communism or Anarchism, models like business and for-profit work would hopefully wither away in favour of people working for the communal good. In that sort of situation Influencing could still have a place, but more as part of a community discussion around what services are better than other ones.
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Would there still be advertising for businesses under actual socialism (rather than Western Europe style social democracy?)
What is actual socialism? Who outside of Communist states hasn’t allowed advertising?
This whole conversation is really weird.
Are you a history buff? ;)
Sure like I’ve never heard of WW2, *sigh*. My mother lived in London from 1939 through to 1945 under frequent bomb attack.
I’m nearing 49 years old and grew up only with vibrant economic Germany and Japan that made and innovated things. Societies we set up and encouraged with the Marshall Plan. Is anyone non-loony threatened by modern Germany that is nearing 80 years old?
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Good summary of what socialism is upthread.
On a side note, if you do go on twitter and look at some of the tweet/postings regarding
what some think socialism is (I remember posting some real funny ones on the Picture Thread)
it will have you in the smh and facepalm emoji.There is a failure of the education system and ignorance, which I vehemently would like changed.
————————Believe it or not, this all started with me when the former POTUS wanted TikTok banned. I reasoned that if he doesn’t like it, I must look into it to see what the fuss is all about. So I signed up, found out about the cultural appropriation with stealing dance moves and taking credit, a lot of video snippets on Jan 6 at the time, the real reason TikTok is so popular these days, etc. Then that spread to some other platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, some reddit, etc. Now Facebook and Instagram has their own video snippet section to take away from TikTok and on it goes.
Now, I wouldn’t say I am the Carrier expert on social media trends. I like TikTok for its section on social commentary, race issues, politics, pop culture. It takes the place of the once popular Village Voice newspaper for me.
So.. Should I blame or give credit to Tr*mp for accidentally getting me started? 😂
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My question is: Why can’t some of the nice things we hear of in Europe and Canada be implemented in the States?
Because the people in charge in the US would rather give HUGE FUCKING TAX BREAKS to corporations and the uber-wealthy than to tax them appropriately and use that revenue to pay for some of those “nice things” for the general population. This goes back to the days of Ronald Reagan and “Trickle Down Economics”, which still doesn’t work the way they promised.
See, this is why I say everyone needs to read The Shock Doctrine, because it illustrates brilliantly the horrorshow that is Neoliberal Capitalism. And as bad as it’s been for us in the Imperial Core, it’s been a hell of a lot worse for the people of the Global South.
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Do you see what Labor used to be back in the 70s for instance as socialism?
You mean the UK Labour party? Yes. I grew up in an area that was very happy to define itself as socialist, it would be a non controversial stance to take, even status quo. It just meant a belief in trade unions and universal healthcare.
In that context Bernie Sanders is right to use it but due to different definitions in the US ‘social democracy’ would probably cleverer to be used. Nobody where I grew up would ever imagine equating socialism with communism, that’s why there are two different names.
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My question is: Why can’t some of the nice things we hear of in Europe and Canada be implemented in the States?
Because you’ve been propagandised to hell and back to accept that private industry is better than public services, and it’s in the US Government’s best interest to keep it that way. Like you pay more per capita for Medicaid and Medicare than most European people do for public healthcare, and it covers less of the population with worse results than a large chunk of the developed world’s public healthcare. That’s on purpose.
The irony is that the poverty-stricken whites in small poor country town that consistently vote Republican and are against “socialism” would reap huge benefits and find their quality of life greatly improved.
But, yeah, keep helping the rich get richer and you stay in your shithole life because MURICA…
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Cuba or China IIRC totally communist
It’s worth noting that you can’t be a nation and Communist. Communism is a stateless, classless, moneyless society. A nation can aspire to Communism but that’s all.
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In the States though, just the word socialist is considered bad given how confused (ignorant) the people are.
Yeah we get that, you’ve said it a dozen times and I agreed that’s why Sanders probably shouldn’t use it.
Hence offering alternatives.
I mean if it has to be already familiar in the US they could call it ‘biscuits and gravy politics’ or ‘cheese in a canonomics’.
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Well champagne socialist is a backhanded comment meant to disparage, it’s not something you put on your campaign leaflet. 😂
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Honestly I think most of the discourse in the modern world is “toxic”. The best is to have as little to do with it as possible, and instead concentrate on people in your local community, friends, family etc and maybe join something like a meditation group. Easier said than done of course.
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social media
Sounds like Communism to me!
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I don’t know if I should get back into starting Thought Provoking Threads again
I don’t recommend that you start a Thought Provoking Thread just for the sake of having such a thread. Instead, if you have something you want to discuss, then just start the discussion by providing your opinion about it. If you have an issue/opinion/concern with “mansplaining”, tell us what it is. Tell us what AL-X thinks.
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