2007 wasn't just the year the internet went to shit, it was the year everything went to shit. It's really something else, you take a look at a movie from that era, and maybe a little bit after that, and a lot of the time they're fun. Like, it was still okay to have pretty girls in movies, and it was still okay to notice that they were pretty. Everyone wasn't sitting on pins and needles and so people could make jokes and have fun. A lot of the people who are poster children for the insufferable postmodernist left today we're actually really funny people back then. And go figure, most of the people who used to be funny have disavowed everything that they ever did that made them good.
We used to live in a primarily guilt-based society, where everyone was sort of expected to have their own moral compass, and to follow that moral compass. For many reasons, including the corruption of the internet and pop culture and also the new economic realities brought about by the great financial crisis worldwide, we live in a primarily anxiety based society, where everyone is terrified that they're going to set off someone else's moral compass and in this economic game of musical chairs have their chair taken away.
In a guilt-based society, you can make a joke about something like racism, even if you're not racist, because you are the one judging yourself and so you know what your intention was and you would correct yourself if you felt that you were doing wrong. In an anxiety based society, you can't speak of evil because you are not the one judging yourself, everyone else is judging you so that they can kick you off the carousel.
We used to live in a primarily guilt-based society, where everyone was sort of expected to have their own moral compass, and to follow that moral compass. For many reasons, including the corruption of the internet and pop culture and also the new economic realities brought about by the great financial crisis worldwide, we live in a primarily anxiety based society, where everyone is terrified that they're going to set off someone else's moral compass and in this economic game of musical chairs have their chair taken away.
In a guilt-based society, you can make a joke about something like racism, even if you're not racist, because you are the one judging yourself and so you know what your intention was and you would correct yourself if you felt that you were doing wrong. In an anxiety based society, you can't speak of evil because you are not the one judging yourself, everyone else is judging you so that they can kick you off the carousel.
Played a new game called XEL yesterday I got on sale.
The gameplay was ok, but the writing and voice acting had me uninstalling pretty quickly.
The female MCs massive underbite jawline was a warning sign (2020 art style). I liked the art style other than the MCs jawline. It reminded me of something bright from the PS2 era. That's one of the reasons I bought it (even at a dollar or whatever I paid for it)
Then the writing ended up sounding like peak 2020. As an example, the MC accused the a village elder of running a cult almost immediately after meeting him. Just a very snarky, entitled character. As another example, the MC snarkily attacked the first person she'd seen in the entire game for not helping to fight the boss she just beat -- it's like, why do you think you're entitled to some random passerby putting their life on the line to help you beat some robot you woke up by fat fingering a button just now?
You can have an unlikable protagonist in a video game and have it work -- Kain from the Legacy of Kain series is specifically an arrogant, murderous, Machiavellian, and so on. But he's well written and interesting. Actually, contrast the Kain from most of the series with Kain from Legacy of Kain 2 who was written like a bad fan fiction version of Kain. In the same way, you can do the snarky unlikable protagonist, but you need to walk a line because there needs to be things that make you want to continue on your journey with the protagonist. In the Legacy of Kain series, it's that as the player you do like hearing his insights into the world and there was a good amount of world building in Nosgoth. To an extent, Raziel from the same series was an judgmental, snarky, and in some ways unlikable protagonist, but you can see a sort of nobility and a desire .
The voice acting had decent audio engineering, but there seemed to be a lack of effective direction in the line reads. It was really distracting. An example of this from shortly before I uninstalled the game was a one-off line read by a villager. The MC speaks to the villager who randomly speaks in this drawn out, breathy manner, like deep awe just talking about someone who isn't present. It's hard to describe since I'm not in that field, but it was just a relatively constant mismatch in tone between what was occurring and what was being said. It's not as bad as the first Resident Evil which is the gold standard in this, but it was still distracting, sort of sitting in the uncanny valley of voice acting.
I think these two things might even be OK, but there's another balance that you need to be careful of in game design: This game has long sequences in between puzzles or combat where you're just walking around the environment in linear paths to the next thing to do. Pacing in this way can be appropriate in some cases, but you have to be very careful. In some game worlds, long sequences of environmental travel are an opportunity for the player to see the world that's been built, and it's an opportunity for environmental story telling. In other games, this sort of pacing can be helpful because it gives the player time to anticipate the next reward in the form of a cutscene or something. Again, Legacy of Kain is a great example of this, where you might travel through the semi-open world to the next puzzle or cutscene, but when you arrive you're rewarded with excellent writing and voice work.
Anyway, I don't recommend. There's many better choices out there, including the Legacy of Kain series that's on sale for similar prices right now on GOG.
The gameplay was ok, but the writing and voice acting had me uninstalling pretty quickly.
The female MCs massive underbite jawline was a warning sign (2020 art style). I liked the art style other than the MCs jawline. It reminded me of something bright from the PS2 era. That's one of the reasons I bought it (even at a dollar or whatever I paid for it)
Then the writing ended up sounding like peak 2020. As an example, the MC accused the a village elder of running a cult almost immediately after meeting him. Just a very snarky, entitled character. As another example, the MC snarkily attacked the first person she'd seen in the entire game for not helping to fight the boss she just beat -- it's like, why do you think you're entitled to some random passerby putting their life on the line to help you beat some robot you woke up by fat fingering a button just now?
You can have an unlikable protagonist in a video game and have it work -- Kain from the Legacy of Kain series is specifically an arrogant, murderous, Machiavellian, and so on. But he's well written and interesting. Actually, contrast the Kain from most of the series with Kain from Legacy of Kain 2 who was written like a bad fan fiction version of Kain. In the same way, you can do the snarky unlikable protagonist, but you need to walk a line because there needs to be things that make you want to continue on your journey with the protagonist. In the Legacy of Kain series, it's that as the player you do like hearing his insights into the world and there was a good amount of world building in Nosgoth. To an extent, Raziel from the same series was an judgmental, snarky, and in some ways unlikable protagonist, but you can see a sort of nobility and a desire .
The voice acting had decent audio engineering, but there seemed to be a lack of effective direction in the line reads. It was really distracting. An example of this from shortly before I uninstalled the game was a one-off line read by a villager. The MC speaks to the villager who randomly speaks in this drawn out, breathy manner, like deep awe just talking about someone who isn't present. It's hard to describe since I'm not in that field, but it was just a relatively constant mismatch in tone between what was occurring and what was being said. It's not as bad as the first Resident Evil which is the gold standard in this, but it was still distracting, sort of sitting in the uncanny valley of voice acting.
I think these two things might even be OK, but there's another balance that you need to be careful of in game design: This game has long sequences in between puzzles or combat where you're just walking around the environment in linear paths to the next thing to do. Pacing in this way can be appropriate in some cases, but you have to be very careful. In some game worlds, long sequences of environmental travel are an opportunity for the player to see the world that's been built, and it's an opportunity for environmental story telling. In other games, this sort of pacing can be helpful because it gives the player time to anticipate the next reward in the form of a cutscene or something. Again, Legacy of Kain is a great example of this, where you might travel through the semi-open world to the next puzzle or cutscene, but when you arrive you're rewarded with excellent writing and voice work.
Anyway, I don't recommend. There's many better choices out there, including the Legacy of Kain series that's on sale for similar prices right now on GOG.
My posts keep being so long because I end up giving a lot of examples. Sorry.
You can say that in no way did you suggest that collective ownership did not exist, but you said "Tribal communism isn't a thing". When I read that, I interpreted that it could mean two things: Either that tribal communism as a term doesn't exist, or that tribal communism as a concept doesn't exist. I elaborated that both do exist and explained in some detail and referred to a century of anthropological literature that references the term, from the early 1900s to today.
I've given examples that show that free markets (the core of capitalism) do increase the size of the pie. The example I've already given you shows that democracy is not a requirement to increase the size of the pie. The free market reforms of Deng Xiaoping were not accompanied by free government reforms. At least one Chinese commentator has suggested that this was the cause of the Tiananmen Square massacre, that Chinese students believed the free market reforms had come with free democratic government reforms and they were disabused of that notion by force.
Another example of free markets but not democracy increasing the size of the pie is Singapore. It's a single party state, a longstanding dictatorship, but the pie has grown massively there because of the free market capitalism exercised by the country, and it's considered to have high levels of economic freedom.
A third example of free markets but not democracy would be Dubai. It's run by a dictatorship, but the pie has grown massively there because of free markets. (It's also an example of the dangers with unfettered capitalism, since there's an underclass of virtual slaves imported from other countries)
By contrast, there are a number of democratic republics in South America that moved away from free markets and the pie got considerably smaller. My own home country of Canada is a parliamentary democracy that had relatively free markets for a long time, but it has implemented more and more central control of the economy, and in the process the pie has shrunk (though they play with the numbers so they can pretend it didn't happen, but in another post I pointed out the astronomical cost of living increases in the past 20 years that are not properly captured by CPI)
The idea that we're both using smart phones or personal computers to discuss, and I'm commenting using a website I run myself using open source software on servers I own and operate myself and you're also on servers someone owns and operates independently sort of breaks the idea that you can just say "technological progress" in a vacuum, or that the pie doesn't grow except for some nebulous concept of "Capital". The first computer companies were doing brisk business creating mainframes for other big companies or for governments. Some of the employees of these companies tried to get them to consider less expensive microprocessors and small personal computers, but the big companies and governments had no interest in these things at first. In free market economies, these employees often left the big companies with their expertise, and started for example MOS technologies who created the famous 6502 processor that brought microprocessors to the masses at large discounts over Motorola's high cost processors, or a number of different personal computer companies such as Apple and Commodore that produced innovative new computers. The company founders were able to acquire equipment and make their own thing, and in both cases there were massive payoffs. The same goes for smart phones -- Steve Jobs took a risk building the iPhone. His design brought existing technologies together and also introduced many new innovations. Apple at the time was a bit player in the market. They had something like a 2% share in the personal computer market. The new product effectively created a new product category. Both personal computers and smart phones dramatically increased the size of the pie because entirely new product categories came to exist because individuals were able to take risks with their own money and their own skills. And right now, I'm writing this post on a website I run myself because I'm allowed by capitalism to buy computers without having to ask permission from a central authority. Open source software primarily comes from capitalist countries where individuals with the skills to create it have enough independent wealth to engage in creative endeavors like open source software as well.
There's longstanding innovations that came directly from the sort of small scale innovation you can achieve under free market capitalism. An early computer company out of England called Acorn ended up trying to keep some promises to build special modules that would provide much higher CPU power. One of the innovations they tried was reducing the instruction set so they could manufacture the chips inhouse. This was called Reduced Instruction Set Computing, or RISC. It ended up surprising everyone with high CPU power but low actual CPU power use. If you're reading this on a smart phone, there's a very good choice this story is highly relevant to you, because most smart phones use Acorn Risc Machine processors, or ARM processors.
These innovations might not seem important -- it's just another product, who cares? However, the decentralized process of people taking risks and many failing but some succeeding is how many unintuitive innovations succeed, and surprisingly many seemingly intuitive innovations fail for reasons their inventors didn't anticipate, and reinforcing successful innovations and ending the unsuccessful innovations can go on to massively grow the pie in ways other economic systems can't. Acorn created a surprise processor in the early 1980s that went on to run most smart phones, but at the same time Intel has tried to get rid of x86 or x64 numerous times but failed because the reality didn't meet the fantasy, and in free markets failed products generally stop wasting money. One example of this was the Merced program, which looked really good on paper but ultimately ended up being a waste of time and money.
Actually, open source software proves that markets can create different incentives than you might expect. Despite not being directly profitable, many large cap companies contribute routinely to the Linux kernel or other open source projects because the commons ends up being something that's more useful than just each individual contributors contributions.
You can say that in no way did you suggest that collective ownership did not exist, but you said "Tribal communism isn't a thing". When I read that, I interpreted that it could mean two things: Either that tribal communism as a term doesn't exist, or that tribal communism as a concept doesn't exist. I elaborated that both do exist and explained in some detail and referred to a century of anthropological literature that references the term, from the early 1900s to today.
I've given examples that show that free markets (the core of capitalism) do increase the size of the pie. The example I've already given you shows that democracy is not a requirement to increase the size of the pie. The free market reforms of Deng Xiaoping were not accompanied by free government reforms. At least one Chinese commentator has suggested that this was the cause of the Tiananmen Square massacre, that Chinese students believed the free market reforms had come with free democratic government reforms and they were disabused of that notion by force.
Another example of free markets but not democracy increasing the size of the pie is Singapore. It's a single party state, a longstanding dictatorship, but the pie has grown massively there because of the free market capitalism exercised by the country, and it's considered to have high levels of economic freedom.
A third example of free markets but not democracy would be Dubai. It's run by a dictatorship, but the pie has grown massively there because of free markets. (It's also an example of the dangers with unfettered capitalism, since there's an underclass of virtual slaves imported from other countries)
By contrast, there are a number of democratic republics in South America that moved away from free markets and the pie got considerably smaller. My own home country of Canada is a parliamentary democracy that had relatively free markets for a long time, but it has implemented more and more central control of the economy, and in the process the pie has shrunk (though they play with the numbers so they can pretend it didn't happen, but in another post I pointed out the astronomical cost of living increases in the past 20 years that are not properly captured by CPI)
The idea that we're both using smart phones or personal computers to discuss, and I'm commenting using a website I run myself using open source software on servers I own and operate myself and you're also on servers someone owns and operates independently sort of breaks the idea that you can just say "technological progress" in a vacuum, or that the pie doesn't grow except for some nebulous concept of "Capital". The first computer companies were doing brisk business creating mainframes for other big companies or for governments. Some of the employees of these companies tried to get them to consider less expensive microprocessors and small personal computers, but the big companies and governments had no interest in these things at first. In free market economies, these employees often left the big companies with their expertise, and started for example MOS technologies who created the famous 6502 processor that brought microprocessors to the masses at large discounts over Motorola's high cost processors, or a number of different personal computer companies such as Apple and Commodore that produced innovative new computers. The company founders were able to acquire equipment and make their own thing, and in both cases there were massive payoffs. The same goes for smart phones -- Steve Jobs took a risk building the iPhone. His design brought existing technologies together and also introduced many new innovations. Apple at the time was a bit player in the market. They had something like a 2% share in the personal computer market. The new product effectively created a new product category. Both personal computers and smart phones dramatically increased the size of the pie because entirely new product categories came to exist because individuals were able to take risks with their own money and their own skills. And right now, I'm writing this post on a website I run myself because I'm allowed by capitalism to buy computers without having to ask permission from a central authority. Open source software primarily comes from capitalist countries where individuals with the skills to create it have enough independent wealth to engage in creative endeavors like open source software as well.
There's longstanding innovations that came directly from the sort of small scale innovation you can achieve under free market capitalism. An early computer company out of England called Acorn ended up trying to keep some promises to build special modules that would provide much higher CPU power. One of the innovations they tried was reducing the instruction set so they could manufacture the chips inhouse. This was called Reduced Instruction Set Computing, or RISC. It ended up surprising everyone with high CPU power but low actual CPU power use. If you're reading this on a smart phone, there's a very good choice this story is highly relevant to you, because most smart phones use Acorn Risc Machine processors, or ARM processors.
These innovations might not seem important -- it's just another product, who cares? However, the decentralized process of people taking risks and many failing but some succeeding is how many unintuitive innovations succeed, and surprisingly many seemingly intuitive innovations fail for reasons their inventors didn't anticipate, and reinforcing successful innovations and ending the unsuccessful innovations can go on to massively grow the pie in ways other economic systems can't. Acorn created a surprise processor in the early 1980s that went on to run most smart phones, but at the same time Intel has tried to get rid of x86 or x64 numerous times but failed because the reality didn't meet the fantasy, and in free markets failed products generally stop wasting money. One example of this was the Merced program, which looked really good on paper but ultimately ended up being a waste of time and money.
Actually, open source software proves that markets can create different incentives than you might expect. Despite not being directly profitable, many large cap companies contribute routinely to the Linux kernel or other open source projects because the commons ends up being something that's more useful than just each individual contributors contributions.
People who are going to effortpost really need to hit platforms that let you effortpost. (Unrelated to the joke)
Everyone should have a nas and everyone should have drm free copies of their stuff because this can happen at any time.
You gotta admit -- it's pretty hilarious watching people who called everyone who disagreed with them a Nazi for the past 10 years now calling for the end of israel and death to all the Jews.
"We should not have published this cartoon depicting a fight between semites and semites because we were worried it might come off as anti-semitic."
The Daily Show became massive by speaking truth in an era where everyone else was lying. Since it looked like this was going to be just another show where some jackass from hollywood tells you about how to doubleplus rightthink the market is already fully saturated.
What Some Call “Anti-Science” Is Just Anti-authoritarianism
https://brownstone.org/articles/what-some-call-anti-science-is-just-anti-authoritarianism/
https://brownstone.org/articles/what-some-call-anti-science-is-just-anti-authoritarianism/
That would interrupt the cultivation, the smacking the shit out of people, and the busloads of people coming to vouch for the MC.
lol
https://video.fbxl.net/w/oFthi6CFmxGvSr15VAJR7W
Is it happening again? Because I wouldn't hate that.
https://video.fbxl.net/w/oFthi6CFmxGvSr15VAJR7W
Is it happening again? Because I wouldn't hate that.
Chinese Manhua are sorta funny for being strangely formulaic and also strangely strange.
1. MC is overpowered.
2. MC acquires whatever to reach the golden rod in arby's sandwich levels of cultivation
3. Someone disrespects MC
At this point, one of two things happen.
Either,
1. MC smacks the shit out of the person who disrespected them
or
2. Every single person the MC has ever met gets bussed to the current location and talks about how great MC is, making the person who disrespected them grovel and beg for forgiveness.
Then return to "MC is overpowered"
I wonder if it's related to the sort of society it is written in? In a shame based society having an MC who has to struggle to succeed may not be considered as acceptable as a main character who is already strong enough to win easily.
OTOH, Japan is a similarly shame based society as far as I know, so why would they be able to produce stories that include struggle?
Man, it's a complicated thing to think about.
1. MC is overpowered.
2. MC acquires whatever to reach the golden rod in arby's sandwich levels of cultivation
3. Someone disrespects MC
At this point, one of two things happen.
Either,
1. MC smacks the shit out of the person who disrespected them
or
2. Every single person the MC has ever met gets bussed to the current location and talks about how great MC is, making the person who disrespected them grovel and beg for forgiveness.
Then return to "MC is overpowered"
I wonder if it's related to the sort of society it is written in? In a shame based society having an MC who has to struggle to succeed may not be considered as acceptable as a main character who is already strong enough to win easily.
OTOH, Japan is a similarly shame based society as far as I know, so why would they be able to produce stories that include struggle?
Man, it's a complicated thing to think about.
Tribal communism is an established anthropological concept spoken of in academic literature for at least a century. In many primitive societies, the community collectively owns and controls the assets of the tribe. It predates modern capitalism for sure, but by some measures it predates private ownership as a concept. It may even predate homo sapiens.
It seems like a form of cultural chauvinism to imagine that a concept like communal ownership and leadership is something that didn't exist until a European decided to grace us with his wisdom. Marxism didn't exist before Marx created it, but the idea that communism didn't exist until Marx or before capitalism is rather ahistorical.
Capitalism has its problems for sure -- I've written a lot about them myself -- but the one thing it's really good at is increasing the size of the pie. That's why the richest countries in earth all implement it, including so-called "communist China" which went from starving millions of people to death to bringing millions of people into the middle class when Deng Xiaoping introduced some free market reforms, introducing a measure of capitalism to a nation that previously fully rejected it.
Inequality doesn't matter nearly as much as people pretend it does. What matters is that people's specific part of the pie grows, and if that happens because they're getting a smaller piece of a much bigger pie, that's just as good as getting a bigger piece of a smaller pie.
There is historical evidence that income and power inequality does have some balancing mechanisms. Secular cycles exist where populations grow and thrive, then are slowly stifled by increasing inequality often to the point that a crisis occurs, then that leads to eras where the population shrinks and the value of individuals increase which forces the powers that be to share the wealth and power more in order to get access to the benefit of individuals. Some examples of this are the post black death period, the postwar period, and even some periods outside of modern capitalism such as the waxing and waning of imperial China.
Inequality generally matters most when the pie isn't growing enough so individual people's share of the pie is shrinking or stagnating. That does happen, and arguably has been happening for quite a while in the west. unfortunately, just as the postwar boom inevitability led to better conditions for the common man, the baby boom inevitability led to deteriorating conditions and so the cycle will likely begin again soon. the population is set to collapse more than it has ever in history, with Japan already being on a demographic cliff where there are many more old people than young people and below replacement birth rates, and almost all rich countries facing a similar trajectory.
It seems like a form of cultural chauvinism to imagine that a concept like communal ownership and leadership is something that didn't exist until a European decided to grace us with his wisdom. Marxism didn't exist before Marx created it, but the idea that communism didn't exist until Marx or before capitalism is rather ahistorical.
Capitalism has its problems for sure -- I've written a lot about them myself -- but the one thing it's really good at is increasing the size of the pie. That's why the richest countries in earth all implement it, including so-called "communist China" which went from starving millions of people to death to bringing millions of people into the middle class when Deng Xiaoping introduced some free market reforms, introducing a measure of capitalism to a nation that previously fully rejected it.
Inequality doesn't matter nearly as much as people pretend it does. What matters is that people's specific part of the pie grows, and if that happens because they're getting a smaller piece of a much bigger pie, that's just as good as getting a bigger piece of a smaller pie.
There is historical evidence that income and power inequality does have some balancing mechanisms. Secular cycles exist where populations grow and thrive, then are slowly stifled by increasing inequality often to the point that a crisis occurs, then that leads to eras where the population shrinks and the value of individuals increase which forces the powers that be to share the wealth and power more in order to get access to the benefit of individuals. Some examples of this are the post black death period, the postwar period, and even some periods outside of modern capitalism such as the waxing and waning of imperial China.
Inequality generally matters most when the pie isn't growing enough so individual people's share of the pie is shrinking or stagnating. That does happen, and arguably has been happening for quite a while in the west. unfortunately, just as the postwar boom inevitability led to better conditions for the common man, the baby boom inevitability led to deteriorating conditions and so the cycle will likely begin again soon. the population is set to collapse more than it has ever in history, with Japan already being on a demographic cliff where there are many more old people than young people and below replacement birth rates, and almost all rich countries facing a similar trajectory.
It's only been a few times in history that a collapse like that has happened. When they do, all bets are off. You can have all kinds of guns, but if the gang coming after you has even more then it probably won't matter. At that moment you're living by the seat of your pants, for all we know you could end up joining them. In the bronze age collapse or the collapse, something like 50% of people died, and it doesn't matter how paid up they were on their homes or not, because the cities were completely abandoned. Even the fall of the Harrapan civilization wasn't quite like that.
We've seen a lot more collapses where people are just trying to keep on doing what they were doing before, but the material wealth just isn't there so the dollars that they're spending become worth less and less and people struggle for basics. There are quite a bit few examples in South america, but also after the fall of the Soviet Union. In that case, the key to survival is quietly having access to the essentials.
The phone with the Roman empire had a little bit of both. Depending on where you were, you could have had it where just a new ruling class to go for such as in Gaul, or you can have a situation where there was more widespread societal collapse and you had issues with bandits, such as in england.
We've seen a lot more collapses where people are just trying to keep on doing what they were doing before, but the material wealth just isn't there so the dollars that they're spending become worth less and less and people struggle for basics. There are quite a bit few examples in South america, but also after the fall of the Soviet Union. In that case, the key to survival is quietly having access to the essentials.
The phone with the Roman empire had a little bit of both. Depending on where you were, you could have had it where just a new ruling class to go for such as in Gaul, or you can have a situation where there was more widespread societal collapse and you had issues with bandits, such as in england.