It depends what the point being made here is, since only the last is unique to capitalism (and that only due to its specificity). And the worst famine in history occurred under the CCP.

If the point is “‘capitalism is harmless’ is bullshit” I’m onboard; if it’s “capitalism is the cause of these things”, I’m not.

Senua is great. The combat felt fine to me, though it definitely wasn’t the game’s focus.

“Longer-term”

So it’s not going to reach them with Putin’s puppet coming into office in the short-fucking-term.

It’s not her pants I’m aiming for, damn you, it’s empathy and headpats! Can’t a man crave headpats from a pretty girl? 😭

It’s something that always hits me acutely. I grew up in a poor area, with a family from a different but equally poor area. The total net worth of the past three generations of my family, combined, at their peak and adjusted for inflation just for fun, from grandparents and great-uncles down to me, wouldn’t break a mil. Yet I also recognize that people can own a house worth a million or even two without being absurdly wealthy, or even more than just middle-class.

On one hand, when people start wringing hands and crying about their taxes going up on their million-dollar house, I get the emotional urge to sneer and spit at their feet. Poor babies! On the other hand, I do try to recognize also that all wealth is relative, and that we, as human beings, should not and cannot be judged solely on how we try to make our own way in this miserable world, but rather on how we interact with others. Even I am extraordinarily wealthy, as a disabled man who ekes out a below-poverty line existence in the US doing clerical work, compared to someone doing back-breaking labor to provide for their family in Mali.

The condemnation should not be when we buy a nice meal for ourselves, but when we refuse a loaf of bread to a beggar, sort of thinking. And above all, most non-ultra-wealthy people are not making decisions that explicitly hurt others for their own gain, nor even that deny help to others for their own convenience, but simply buying themselves little luxuries to forget the misery of existence. That’s… just how human beings work. And the solution is in structural reform, not condemnation of people for trying not to go crazy in a universe whose laws were not constructed to suit thinking beings.

Should billionaires exist? No, fuck no. But of the people who are billionaires, “I lucked out in a field I’m legitimately talented in, and it scaled to the tune of billions instead of the normal artist existence of ‘barely surviving’” is probably one of the least objectionable. In Swift’s place, most of us probably wouldn’t be much different. One can argue, and not incorrectly, that the activities of billionaires is disproportionately more damaging than us lowly thousandaires with a PC and a bicycle, but the fundamental principle of selfishness behind taking an uber for non-essential round-town travel and taking a private plane when a few well-planned train tickets would’ve done just fine is the same. We differ from THOSE billionaires not in nature, but in scale. It’s a scale that MUST be reduced for the survival of both the planet and the polity, but it doesn’t spring from some essential evil in the individual - unlike, say, some cunt jacking up the price of life-saving medication so they can buy a third yacht.

Ultimately, a billionaire like Swift is the rare creature who DOES perform legitimate labor, whose actions do not fundamentally come at an increased cost to people just trying to survive, and largely no more exploitative than any other musician or participant in the industry or wider economy (which is a condemnation of the industry and our economy, arguably, but neither here nor there), just one who has managed success on a more massive scale than her peers. She SHOULD be brought down to a reasonable level of wealth - but she’s not some demon who deserves the guillotine. Just massive asset seizure. She’s probably a pretty ordinary human being, as far as human beings go.

Found the cat’s account.

Explanation: The Nazis used high doses of amphetamines and especially methamphetamine to give their soldiers ‘staying power’ in the field, part of why they overran France - some Nazi tankers were driving and fighting for a week straight without sleep or rest. Lower doses of extended release amphetamines are used in the modern day to treat ADHD. One imagines the occasional lone guy with ADHD and a pervitin pill was sitting under a tree and rethinking some life choices instead.

I have a confession to make.

It was me, Barry.

you just need like 40bucks

Look at Dr. Moneybags here! I need that 40$ for REAL expenses, like books on obscure topics no one in their right mind would ever give a shit about.

Lack of recognition is the only payment I need. No need to thank me.

On the ultra-rare occasion when I see a meme I actually made and not just reposted getting passed around, it’s such a warm fuzzy feeling. I only wish I could get a notification every time it happens.

The government may not negotiate with terrorists, but corporations are absolutely terrified of them. Do with that information what you will. :)

This is why you should always ugly cry on the first date, to establish whether they’re gf material.

A working class hero

Heyyyy, you’re starting to get it!

Careful, the middle-class socialists on Lemmy who dream of owning a nice house will get mad.

But more pertinently, the argument can be applied to anyone as long as there is suffering in the world and unnecessary luxuries. And while I think most of us here agree that there is a structural issue with that, I’m far less fond of the idea that Joe Schmoe working a soul-crushing minimum-wage job should never do anything other than work, sleep, and donate every spare penny to charity because keeping or using wealth while others are suffering would make him a bad person.

You could also argue there are no good millionaires by the same logic.

The existence of billionaires is a systemic problem, largely not a personal failing.

I’m not a swiftie, but the message here should be “We need better redistributive institutions” or “We need a new economic system”, not “Artist being an unexceptional artist (in terms of industry behavior) is BAD because she is one of the more successful ones”

Conservatives love fraud when it’s rich people doing it.

I mean, the Mongols under Genghis were dirt poor in medieval terms initially. The Mongols still had significant numbers of their forces using bone-tipped arrows during the conflict with the Tatars, out of sheer poverty, and doubtlessly some continued using such low-quality missiles into the initial conflicts with the Western Xia and Jin.

Nomads having horses doesn’t mean much; there are far fewer of them on a larger amount of land than sedentary peoples, and high-value goods outside of a functioning and united market economy means very little. It’s one of the reasons why one of the high priorities of early Mongol looting was the enslavement of artisans - they lacked both goods and the expertise (or industrial base) to make them.

They said they wanted it over quickly. As opposed to biden who wants to broaden and expand the fighting so the west can take more power and wealth from that area.

Jesus fucking Christ. I love how quickly the online left turned to downplaying Trump. What a bunch of fascist bootlickers.

“hey guys please care about these guys we are giving 100s of billions weapons to die fighting our competitors

Ah yes, the “Ukrainians should just submit to genocide” argument. Lovely. Thanks for displaying that you have no actual morals, you just use Palestinians as a shield to play Whatabout games.

“Please stop bullying me, hot people, you’re utterly crushing my once-independent spirit into a pliant, malleable, servile, eager-to-please husk of what it was 🥺”