Welcome again to everybody. Make yourselves at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
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Rest in peace Dolly Parton
Now Tim Curry as well ffs
Rest in Peace for both of them.
I know Mark Carney isn’t good, but there’s something about him that makes him so much more…sufferable to me than Trudeau? Idk, I’m not sure if it’s Carney or if Trudeau just annoyed me so much that I would’ve basically been content with anyone besides him.
I will note I’m extremely biased because I have a subconscious like towards opportunists like him and Talleyrand for some inexplicable reason even i can’t understand.
Also also, unrelated, but even though he was a social democrat I really wish Jack Layton lived long enough to become PM. I think that would’ve been cool
does anyone use mastodon? is there a good server I can join?
Have been vegan for some years now. Before that I was vegetarian for years as well. I have been so far removed from meat that I never think about it.
Saw a truck full of pigs headed to the slaughterhouse today and it filled me with rage. Like I legit got triggered by the unexpected sight. Wanted to burn the truck down and save them, but that was impossible sadly. We need to do better.
Me when Napoleon: “I hate you, you aren’t blamed for like millions of deaths for your ego while Robspierre is blamed for the reign of terror.”
Also me when confronted with British “people”/Ridley Scott: “I would have personally fought in the Grande Armee to rid the world of you.”
[I am more of a Clausewitz gal though]
“China just copied singapore”
“Ignoring the falsehood, then why dont we just copy singapore?”
“Uhhh freedom or something”
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Are superheroes cops?
Depends on the hero.
Some are explicitly cops/spies/soldiers while others are mercenaries, vigilantes, or even revolutionaries.
99% of them end up working for some kind of state though, usually a capitalist one.
Yes. Sometimes they fight fascism but even then it is only ever to protect liberalism. Other times they are just the fascists themselves.
I could go through a list of them and why they are cops but instead I will just point out that the only communist characters in comic books are always villains and that should tell you everything you need to know.
only communist characters in comic books are always villains.
The only major exception that I can think of is The Doctor from Doctor Who when they met Stalin. It was an old-ass episode[1] where they told Stalin that he would be vilified, but in in the end everyone would see he did the right thing despite his mistakes.
Still, not a superhero comic book story.
It was in the short story Closing the Account ↩︎
I couldn’t tell you what the comic book versions of them are like (which are many and varied) but superheroes as modern stuff like The Avengers films, I’d say they are more like spec ops / CIA than cops but that doesn’t make it any better. They often work in narratives that justify their extrajudicial use of force by making the villain be someone who is comically evil, which is shared with other copaganda.
As a cultural phenomenon, I think superheroes largely came out of US imperialism at its height, so that should tell you something about the nature of them. For good or ill, an expression of the US grappling with the idea of being so powerful it can use force to resolve just about any situation and so into violence that it is willing to do that. From there, it’s a matter of whether you couch it in a narrative that justifies the violence, or you reject that narrative and play with the idea of the superhero who causes more problems than they solve.
Either way, I’ve never heard of, like, a superhero whose power is being really good at diplomacy or something like that. It seems to always be powers that, even if not directly related to combat, could be very useful in a fight. I don’t think superheroes make much sense in a context where crime is uncommon and society actively addresses common sources of crime, like by fixing poverty and such. From that standpoint, you could argue they are a bit like super cops, since cops (though they are always needed in some form even if they’re called community defense or whatever) are needed a lot less if society is peaceful and equitable.
I think in general a “cop” is anyone who enforces the carceral systems of the status quo. Social workers are cops, people who work at homeless shelters can be cops, school teachers are cops. The primary role of superheroes is to “fight crime” and while they do have exploits against foreign terrorists, governments or even extra terrestrial or dimensional threats, that is just like a policeman joining the army in war time. They may be not acting in their role as a cop to fight an external threat but that doesn’t change their character as an enforcer of the ruling class.
superhero whose power is being really good at diplomacy or something like that
That’s a really good idea. It would be the superhero equivalent of a spreadsheet simulator game lol.
But I think a pretty important part of defining superheroes is by individualism, which is the bread and butter of Western culture. If there’s not violence, there’s still individualism. Like, think modern Sherlock Holmes. He doesn’t commit a lot of violent acts, but he’s still pretty much defined by being impossibly smart, almost to the point of having a “superpower”.
The original Sherlock wasn’t like this. Maybe I’m reaching, but maybe there was some influence from superhero stuff. He used to be an amazing detective, but had big gaps in his knowledge (like he didn’t know the Earth revolved the Sun). Newer adaptations kind of make him a superhero in a sense.
I don’t know if it’s necessarily individualism that is the source of interesting stories or if it is cultural hegemony. I think it would be interesting to read some Marxist-inspired story where some group of workers build a party from the ground up.
That’s an interesting point. Sherlock Holmes might actually be something of a precursor to the modern “great man” superhero style individualist figure. The original one (as I recall) is more down to earth than modern adaptations, but nevertheless, he has outsized ability for one person and gets called upon to solve problems that the cops can’t, which is similar to superhero writing. The narrative style of it being from Watson’s perspective also lends itself well to alluding to how “great” Holmes is without having to explicitly “prove” it in detailed writing.
Then modern adaptations tend to turn it into a dynamic that is something more like Batman/Robin, where Watson is a sidekick and Holmes is this high octane figure who we’re actually seeing do some of the wild stuff that would normally be alluded to in the original stories. So his reasoning capability ends up more showy to the point it looks more explicitly like some kind of superpower. Whereas in the original narratives (if I remember right), part of the excuse for him being so clever as a detective was that not only did he know a lot of specialized things, certain observable details also contained narrower possibility within them. In the modern world, this more falls apart, like illustrated in the Pete Holmes comedy sketch about Sherlock Holmes that is clearly parodying the BBC Sherlock representation of him; he seizes repeatedly on mundane things and tries to extrapolate, only to be wrong over and over. In a way, it parodies Holmes almost as akin to a psychic; someone who is seizing on what they see, spinning narrative from it, and trying to awe the person they’re talking to like it’s a show.
This is probably more a reasonable critique/parody of the BBC portrayal than the original though. After all, the original emphasized stuff like “whenever you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Which has more in common with the scientific method and the null hypothesis than it does with showmanship, i.e. it’s more about trying to prove yourself wrong first and then looking at what remains.
Depends.
Batman for one could be considered the bourgeoisie’s personal vigilante, along with the fact that he works with the cops.
But that’s one case and it depends.
At the very least, I don’t think any superhero is interested in changing the status quo even if they don’t do the job of the police, like commiejones said.
🦊 I am trying to remember to add more emojis.
A local swamp has dried up. It is the first time in 700 years that this happened. Nothing worrying, though!!!
Have a great week, everyone! Try to break up your bigger goals into smaller ones, this makes intimidating work more achievable.
As always, communism will win.
If Stalin had been Armenian he’d probably have looked more like Serj Tankian tbh.
Unrelated, but you ( 🫵 ) WILL have hope, comrade.
Georj Stalinian.
Thank you Comrade!
Rojava is gone
I’ve been saving up a lot of money for years at this point, usually as an emergency fund or when I need larger purchases or want to take a vacation like I did last year with going to Japan. But I feel like the money is sitting there most of the time and could be better spent for something or maybe invested? Idk, should I buy gold or something?
gold never goes out of fashion but liquidating it in an emergency could be hard.
banks usually offer savings accounts exactly for this purpose. they are very low percentage, so you don’t get much income from it (unless the saving are like upwards of tens of thousands USD). the main benefit is that its usually enough to offset inflation
Fully online banks offer a significantly higher percentage with the downside being you have no physical place to withdraw from in an emergency (most have strict ATM limits). I keep an emergency fund in a big corpo bank so I can get it anywhere in the country, then all the other money is in a fully online savings account.
This is much better than it all sitting in a checking account gaining nothing, but maybe not quite what they meant if they already do this.
What would be news like in a Communism world? time to speculate a bit.
Like, there wouldn’t be any wars or class struggle but there still would exist contradictions. Maybe “construction of new solar arrays in [place] causes discussions in Afghanistan” or “Linux OS updates break backwards compatibility. Old-timers create waves of propaganda against updates.”
Maybe also celebration of old achievements, like “XXXth Aniversary of Turtle Island liberation”, “new library in [rural city] dedicated in the name of deceased comrade educators” etc.
I dunno if there would be any global news. I assume that most contradictions would happen in a local scale; discussed and solved in cadres.
It would look more or less like the domestic news in China. Almost entirely focused on education, development, technological progress, social initiatives and culture.
True. I also think bulletin boards, forums and mailing lists would be more popular at a municipal level or for more niche subjects to fill the gap where it’s not interesting for the general population. For example, maybe you could look into the city’s local lemmy server (lol) to look for tabletop gaming groups, or subscribe to your friend’s mailing list if he discovers any interesting hobby projects (like, someone reverse-engineers MS-DOS). Advertising would still happen, but it would be voluntary.
i feel like there would be a lot of cultural discussion, scientific/medical achievements, logistical achievements (new railways built etc)
To add what you said, I guess there would also be announcements on how much of wages would be dedicated to global projects if there was a Worker’s Party of the World. Like “after much deliberation and voting, on this 5 year plan, 0.002% of your monthly labor-hours will be used for the construction of a Lunar base.”
Achievements in science would be a big deal. Natural disasters?
Oh yeah there’s that. I forgot that disasters would still happen bar some serious geoengineering.
I admit I have no clue about defences for earthquakes (which seems to be the most frequent natural disaster i see on the news) but don’t we have ways to build more stable foundations? I was under the impression most damage is done because people are living in low quality housing
Yes, earthquake damage can be minimized but it cannot be prevented.
Also, there are other types of disasters that are really, really hard to truly prepare for, like a solar storm or a random flood. Even with zero deaths or injuries, there would still be a lot of property and ecological damage.
