It doesn’t matter what you want the solution to be based on your values. If your solution jeopardizes your values more than the alternative solution would have, all you’ve done is make yourself feel better at the expense of others.

If you let people accumulate power unopposed, they will use less of it on improving the common good than if it was in the hands of more people. Poorer people give a greater proportion of their wealth to charity. A lower portion of the excess wealth controlled by billionaires goes to improving people’s lives than if that excess wealth went to those who had barely enough, or not enough. Wealth has diminishing returns on happiness. A million dollars to a billionaire won’t be noticed, while a million dollars to 99% of people would be life changing.

Taking from the wealthy and giving to everyone is tyranny of the majority on a tiny minority. The wealthy would still be on top and live comfortably, but they would now live in the same economic reality as everyone else. They could no longer burn money for fun while their fortune passively accumulates to see a net gain in wealth. Losing a million dollars would actually be felt, and they would need to adjust their lives in reaction to the loss.

On the other hand, if you rely on voluntary charity in the spirit of freedom, you see tyranny of a minority on the majority. They give far less of their money to the common good, instead spending more of their wealth on protecting their riches. This is what we see in reality. They lobby the government to serve their interests at the expense of the public, or in non capitalist systems, hire guards to protect their interests directly.

Feudal lords pay their workers wages that are lower than the value their work generates because they control the farmland. They control the farmland by protecting it with guards they pay, think knights and samurai. If the workers complain or try to sell food made on the land without giving the lords their cut, the guards suppress them using violence. The lord’s ownership of the land is only valid if they are protected, with violence, by their personal guards, payed for by the workers.

Does that sound like freedom? Do those workers sound free? By allowing people the freedom to gain power over a resource, the land and crops on that land, the workers have lost their freedom to see the fruits of their labor, sometimes literally. The fruits they pick are given to the lord, who trades the fruit for resources, but only give the workers enough resources to survive.

Freedom without limit destroys freedom for most people. Freedom must have a ceiling and a floor, or the freedom of others can be taken by that of another. I value everyone having freedom, which requires a cap on the freedom people can have. No one can be free to horde too much power.

I am very much in favor of using violence to take resources from people that don’t give back to the community they rely on. It’s a good thing to take money from the rich and greedy using violence. There is no imaginable society where people should be permitted to not contribute when they are capable of contributing.

If people are permitted to not contribute excess power, it places more of the burden on everyone else to make up for it. On top of that, as the tax dodger accumulates too much control over resources(wealth), they can use those resources to hire people that then impose violence on the community when they try to take the resources back.

If anything, an anarchist society should be more vigilant of resource accumulation, forcing each other to contribute through violence and ensuring that large power imbalances don’t emerge. There would be no state to handle redistribution, so it’d be the responsibility of every individual to make sure everyone has enough. There’d be no justification for anyone to have too much exclusive control over important resources, nor would there be a justification to not give excess resources to ensure everyone has the essentials.

In a society that prohibits excessive wealth imbalance or centralization of control, there’d be power inequality, but there’d also be a well established ceiling and floor to the inequality. That will always require some form of progressive “taxation” or system of redistribution. There’d also need to be taxation on almost all worker productivity to help develop public goods that everyone will benefit from. Everyone would need to chip in what they can if they need a new communal well, or if they need to maintain the roads, or need to put someone’s home out if it caught fire. People would need to contribute even if they don’t benefit from the particular public service, as they might benefit from another one more than others.

A well functioning society must require people to contribute what they can to maintain & improve the community, must take from those that don’t contribute by force, must tax people even if they don’t consent. This isn’t optional for any system, state or no state. If it fails, exploitation, abuse, and suffering will destabilize the system until it falls apart from under its own weight. A society that taxes properly can minimize violence, maximize efficiency, and be far safer for everyone without exception. Even those on top are constantly in danger of being deposed by someone who wants their position, as well as the people they exploit.

Tldr: Yes, we must use violence to force contribution. Not doing so only causes more violence. Violence is unavoidable, and can only be minimized by ensuring no one gets too powerful to oppress.

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If retirement homes don’t have videogames when I’m old, I’ll lobby for voluntary euthanasia. Aging is a straight negative. Arguments about it making life meaningful are copium. I can have a meaningful life of gratitude without my body falling apart.

The most foundational concept to America is economic exploitation and cut throat entrepreneurship. Selfishness is more foundational to American conservatives than the church or the state. Trump was openly a selfish asshole. One would think that open disregard for others would disqualify someone from the highest elected office, but the right thought otherwise. Being a bully meant that Trump was strong. A lack of empathy isn’t a vice, but a virtue.

Omg, I instantly knew what it meant and assumed the poster said it was loss even though he didn’t. I translate loss references into the word "loss’ like it’s a fucking hieroglyph. I bet it would be the same with amogus drawings.

Omg, I instantly knew what it meant and assumed the poster said it was loss even though he didn’t.

Obesity itself is probably too vague and non specific to be usefully called a disease. The basic measurement for obesity, BMI, would classify bodybuilders or strengthen based athletes as obese. Bodybuilders and strong people can often be unhealthy, but it’s not quite the same as someone with high body fat.

Even then, people who are obese because of high body fat might have their lives shortened through multiple mechanisms. It could be heart disease that kills them, skeletal problems due to weight, immune issues, digestive issues, practically every organ can be affected. Any or all of these things could occur in a chronically obese person, so even if pathologized, obesity is less useful as a diagnosis.

Excess weight is bad, but you can calculate weight/height without a doctor. Focusing on better nutrition, eating habits, and exercise is the solution, even if you’re young and have a high metabolism. That sugar in our food needs to be taxed or regulated, as economic incentives drive obesity rather than people being uniquely stupid or culturally degenerate.

Non gaming streams have their own categories, and they certainly add value. Everyone loved the Bob Ross stream when it started, but now there’s something wrong with cooking or musicians? Some people who come for the sax player might get into games. Twitch has problems, but adding variety to their streaming platform isn’t one of them.

There aren’t less gamers on twitch because of non gamers. I don’t even think game streams have suffered much as a whole.

Maybe growing up in a warm, costal area makes it more common, but young women just wear similar outfits to most feminine streamers where I’m from. They usually aren’t making a statement about it, it’s just hot outside and they don’t mind showing off. It’s normal.

Some streamers do embody the meme. Some focus cameras on their ass. However, feminine streamers aren’t the majority, and most of them aren’t even that sexual. On a whole, men have more viewers, with almost every top streamer being male.

Part of why the discourse around sexual streamers seems so prudish is that they don’t dominate on twitch. There are a few popular ones, but women don’t even dominate the site; there’s just more of them than in the past. Most feminine streamers aren’t sexual. People see what they want to see.

The only male streamer ever suspended for showing his bare chest was crossdresser. Masculinity is normalized, so femininity is othered.

That’s honestly kind of insulting to say that, and it shows a lack of awareness on your own part. You’re making one hell of an assumption that people aren’t informed and that they’re making a diagnosis without putting any thought behind it.

I’m not out of line in thinking that people can’t diagnose Joe Biden of being mentally unfit. People couldn’t definitively diagnose Trump with narcissistic personality disorder, and he didn’t have a known disorder that could interfere in a diagnosis. Biden has a well documented stutter, making it hard for any observer to parse his communication disorder from cognitive impairment.

People who are informed would recognize this, and even those willing to diagnose politicians from TV appearances would need solid examples of abnormal behavior that could only be explained by cognitive impairment. I don’t take armchair diagnosis seriously because I have some expertise in psychology. People want a reason to have someone other than Biden, so they assume mental disability can be determined by the public. I don’t think we can with the info available. Gut feelings will just reinforce your biases.

I get the physical part of Biden being unfit, but not the mental part. I’ve not seen any evidence of his age making him less intelligent or mentally. He’s not physically well, but whenever someone says he’s senile, I automatically assume they don’t know what they’re talking about. “Senile” is not synonymous with “out of touch.”

With the recall, concern wasn’t just coming from some rando or only Democratic partisans. I heard it from respected political scientists. They thought Newsom was likely to win, but there was still great risk of a Republican governor getting elected without popular support. It’s how Arnold Schwarzenegger, a moderate Republican, managed to get elected. The Governator never could have won a Republican primary, and didn’t even win the popular vote. If it weren’t for serious campaigning in the last few months, the recall could have been close.

Newsom always had majority approval, but the concern about the recall came because people were only lukewarm on him. He isn’t an exciting candidate, which is what the left claims to want. Like I said before, Biden seems more genuine about his morals and principles than Newsom. Newsom is more of what the left hates than Biden.

Newsom hate isn’t new. There was genuine worry he was going to lose his recall election, replaced by a radical Republican with a plurality of support from only those that voted for his removal. Left wing Democrats who were critical of Newsom united and organized to prevent a fascist rising to power. We put aside our gripes with corpocrats to prevent someone even worse from winning.

California is guaranteed for the Democrats in the modern era, so we usually sit on the sidelines of the fight for the presidency and hope other states make the right call. However, the recall race showed that we were also willing to hold our nose and vote for the lesser of two evils.

That’s part of why I get so frustrated by the anti voting shit. Biden is more of a genuine human being than Newsom, yet people fall for accelerationist propaganda. They delude themselves into thinking that not voting will strengthen the left when the opposite is true. The unreliability of young, left wing voters reinforces the establishment bias of not appealing to them. If they won’t even turn out for Bernie in the 2020 primary, why rely on them?

As someone who grew up with the goofy Toho movies, I felt like the Americans used that formula more than the Avengers formula.

The human characters have little control over the monsters, relying on Godzilla or Kong to win fights and only being able to help them do what they already wanted to do. That’s fairly in line with what the Japanese movies did.

Marvel movies have more quipy heroes with emotional backstories who rise to the occasion and save the world. There are some comedic human characters, but they’re sidekicks to the monsters and aren’t self aware like in Marvel movies. The monsters sometimes do silly things, but they don’t quip and aren’t sarcastic because they can’t talk. There’s tragedy in them being the last of their kind, but that’s never the focus.

I really think the Monsterverse has carried on the legacy of Japanese monster mashes fairly well. They’ve actually been on the better end of the spectrum.

Not a fan of saying people only like something because they’re delusional. You can dislike something by your own personal criteria, but other people have their own.

Star Wars and superhero movies are often liked because people enjoy the characters, the world, or simply the action and artistry.

Not understanding that other people care about different things than you do is immature.

Most movies have always sucked. We remember the good and forget the trash, so the past seems better than it was. Social media and other forms of entertainment have changed things, but never underestimate survivorship bias and nostalgia.

Damn. This comment is more insulting than the first one.

That’s what most Japanese Godzilla movies are like if we’re being honest. If you’ve only seen the original, I get why you might think Godzilla is usually a villain, but even the direct sequel had him fight another, more evil monster. Let’s be real, the human characters in most of those sequels were awful and boring. Those movies exist mostly for the monster fights.

If you’re unaware, just look up Godzilla’s dropkick to understand what I’m talking about. That scene might be the pinnacle of the silliness, but it was by no means an outlier.

Compared to the goofy trash that encompasses 90% of Godzilla movies, the 2019 Godzilla movie where Godzilla goes super saiyan was one of the best Godzilla films ever made. Big fights, badass moments, and human characters that exist to compliment the monsters. The original Gojira, Godzilla Minus One, and even Shin Godzilla aren’t comparable to or representative of most Godzilla movies.

As a Cali native, Newsom would be worse than Biden. If he ran in a Democratic primary, he might lose California because Democrats here don’t like him that much. If the primary was between him and Biden, I would vote for Biden because he’s less elitist and has a better moral compass. Newsom honestly doesn’t seem to have serious principles beyond political success. He’s a distilled version of what people hate about Democrats.

America isn’t that free of a country. Democrats were always going to run their incumbent. The time to choose a left wing candidate was the 2020 primary, which is why I was devastated when Biden won. I knew we would be stuck with him for 8 fucking years. The left didn’t turn out enough in that primary, and the establishment went with one of the worst choices.

The fact that there isn’t some popular Democratic alternative at this point means it will not happen. Biden has been the most left wing president in over half a century, and none of his shitty decisions have been due to his age. Organize with the DSA or promote left wing Democrats if you’re fed up with the establishment. Recognize that becoming cynically apathetic makes you a pathetic asshole, not a person who’s better than those that try.