Ugh you’re probably right, it’s going to be our generation’s DMC DeLorean. The vehicle itself will age poorly, but slap it in a BTTF reboot in five years and it’ll fit right in

Probably low-hanging fruit here, but Cybertrucks

Tbh there’s lots of stuff in the Barbie movie that I would consider timeless, especially the feminist aspects of it. What parts of the movie do you think applies to the 2020s but doesn’t apply to, say, 1990 or 1960?

EDIT: I may have interpreted this comment too pessimisticly-- this question is about the future, not the past. Maybe, hopefully, societal views on gender will change in the future enough that the Barbie movie will become outdated

I had a chance to play for a couple hours this morning, and I’m impressed so far! It’s a metroidvania game, but with a souls-like bonfire/estus flask/lose experience on death and try to recover it mechanic. Movement and combat feel fluid, and deflecting attacks feels great. The combat system seems simple right now, but I have barely unlocked any of the systems in the game and it’s a metroidvania so I know the complexity will only grow.

The world is beautiful and has a complex history that I want to learn more about, although the dialog is a little bit jointed, probably due to localization issues. There are definitely some aspects of body horror to the game, with humans Apemen from the Big Blue Planet being used as livestock in a creepy, gory, ritualistic fashion in the first level. It’s definitely not a horror game, though-- the protagonist is powerful and can fight back against enemies without fear of running out of resources, although combat is definitely unforgiving.

I can tentatively recommend it right now, although I haven’t played it enough to give it a full review yet. I haven’t played it on my steam deck yet, but I’ll give it a shot tonight and give my thoughts over on the steamdeck community

I ended up grabbing this, I’ll come back soon and let y’all know what I think. Gonna mostly play on Steam deck

Porno for Pyros, is that you?

Have you heard of REITs? Rent-seeking capitalists have been working together for decades to speculate on housing. Wealthy people have billions and billions of dollars invested in the status quo, and they are quite interested in maintaining their position of power.

Absolutely, and thanks for pointing this out! I don’t have anything to add, I just wanted to let folks know that you’re 100% correct.

It seems like in this situation, it’s reasonable to just use the word “trans”. I really appreciate how much thought you’re putting in to inclusiveness, but it seems like it isn’t the queer community at large who your older coworkers are struggling to accept, but specifically trans people.

I don’t know all the details, but I would recommend two things:

First, you need to help trans people feel safe while they’re in your place of work. They are the people who are at the center of this conversation, not you and not your older coworkers. Get a small Progress Flag and put it somewhere in your workspace where it is visible to the public and also clearly associated with you. Your goal here is to put up a little flag that says “if you’re in the queer community, come to me and I will make you comfortable”. These statements of inclusiveness are aimed to the public, not your coworkers–your coworkers already know that you’re an ally because they know who you are and what kind of actions you do, but the general public doesn’t have that luxury so this is where your efforts for inclusiveness should be focused.

Second, if you do want to buy clothes or accessories to show your older coworkers that you support trans identities and try to change their minds about doing the same, make sure you support trans artists when you do so :) don’t “get them made”, buy them from a trans artist who has already made them. Not only will you be financially supporting the people you want to support, but you’ll also be elevating the voice of an actual trans person–which I think is what you wanted to do when you made this post.

That being said, hostile phrasing like “I’ll identify as a problem” may not be the best way to change someone’s mind. I don’t know a lot about your coworkers, but you might be the only person to ever speak to them with empathy about empathy for trans people. You’ve got an opportunity here to prove wrong the stereotypes about “screaming SJWs”, stereotypes that are so baked in to our society that they have even managed to enter the discussion we’re having here. In a world like the one that we live in, kindness and patience are radical and powerful tools, if we choose to use them.

Exposing my own ignorance here, but is “gay” necessarily gendered?

The difficulty of answering that question, and the fact that both “yes” and “no” are both valid answers that individual people of every gender could sincerely give, are two of the reasons why “queer” has become more popular than “gay” as an umbrella term. The people who do think “gay” as an umbrella term is gendered prefer the word “queer”, while the people who don’t think “gay” as an umbrella term is gendered are not upset by the word “queer”.

Another reason that “gay” isn’t used as an umbrella term is because it’s also a specific term. Imagine being a man and saying “I’m gay” and having someone ask you, “ok but are you gay or are you gay gay?”. Sexuality and gender are already sensitive and difficult things to explore, so removing ambiguity from the language surrounding those topics will make things clearer and easier for everyone involved.

That being said, you should always respect the way that people want to be identified. If you know a lesbian woman that identifies as “gay”, then just accept it and use it while understanding that not every lesbian woman will feel the same way.

The best term you can use is just “the queer community”. It’s a broad and vague word that asks no questions and offers no answers beyond “these people have sexual orientations and/or gender identities that are not exclusively heterosexual and/or cisgender”. It’s gender-neutral unlike the previous catch-all term “gay”. It includes people who were originally excluded and unrepresented by the original LGBT acronym, such as intersex and third-gendered people. It also includes people who find it culturally difficult to put a label on what they do, such as same-gender-loving Black people who don’t call themselves “gay”.

That being said, it is not always the perfect, use-it-all-the-time panacea that you’re looking for. “Queer” was originally a pejorative term, and although it has been reclaimed as positive terminology since the Stonewall Riot days (think of the chant, “We’re here! We’re queer! Get used to it!”), some older members of the queer community remember it as hurtful.

In addition, sometimes it’s important to be specific. Exclusively using the word “queer” to refer to the queer community flattens the queer experience to one single uniform word, when reality is anything but uniform. For example, when trans people are targeted by executive orders and bathroom bills, it’s important to be specific about who those actions harm: trans people, intersex people, and so on.

For these reasons, while it is safe to use “queer” as a blanket term, some individual people don’t like the term and some individual circumstances call for a more specific word.

As far as your flag question goes, if you’re looking for a visible signal to signpost that you’re a queer ally, you’re probably looking for the Progress Flag. It’s the original rainbow pride flag, but with added representation for trans people, intersex people, people of color, and those who died during the AIDS crisis.

Yep! I wouldn’t say it would be “yours” exactly because you would never have actual ownership of the thing while you’re using it, but it would be your right to use it and profit from it so long as you don’t destroy it. A good example would be the way Native Americans viewed land use, following herds of wild animals wherever they went and moving from depleted areas to more fertile ones. This clashed heavily with European and American colonialists, who enforced their views of exclusionary ownership with barbed wire fences and violence.

It’s the idea that because you own something, you’re the only one who is allowed to use it, whether you’re actually actively using it right now or not. You can contrast it with usufructuary rights, which are based on the idea that you only have rights to something while you’re actively using it

That’s pretty fair. It may feel impossible for me today to afford any capital, but if I were somehow able to accumulate enough money I would be legally allowed to own capital. Under monarchy, even if I got that much money, it would be illegal for me to purchase capital as an individual. That’s enough of a distinction to make them different for me, thanks for bringing it up.

Does the exchange of land between kingdoms via wedding dowries/treaties/violence fulfill the definition of a “market for capital”?

I would call monarchism a form of religious capitalism where the ruling class claims divine right as the methods to accumulate capital, rather than using financial means to accumulate capital

I think the simplest way to put it is “an economic system where individuals are allowed to have exclusionary ownership of capital”

Man, I don’t know what you think we’re talking about, but I’m talking about DoorDash and DoorDash drivers in reality as it is today. I do not own DoorDash, so you are not subsidizing my business. The service offered is just bringing your food to your door, there isn’t really any “good” service that can be used to justify a tip or vice versa. If people decide that the cost of a DoorDash delivery plus a tip is too much, they won’t close the app and go get their food themselves–they will just not tip like OP did and like you do and they will both receive a message like the one above. If you want to have your order picked up quickly, you have to place a winning bid.

THAT is what capitalism is–not some idealized pursuit of profit that refuses to exploit its workers; but a house of cards built out of dozens of competing contradictions, full of people hoping to leave someone else holding the bag when it all comes crashing down. I recommend reading Contradiction 7 of Seventeen Contradictions and The End of Capitalism, “The Contradictory Unity of Production and realisation”. It’s all about how capitalists are fighting the competing contradictions of wanting to sell their goods for as much as possible while paying their laborers as little as possible, and what the broader social impacts of that may be.

Why is it my responsibility to ensure they’re paid fairly by me directly?

Because the price you pay for a service is a reflection of the relationship you have with the person providing that service, and to believe otherwise is something known as commodity fetishism

"What is, in fact, a social relation between people (between capitalists and exploited laborers) instead assumes “the fantastic form of a relation between things.”

We are defined both individually and societally by the relationships that we form with other people.

If you can’t pay your workers fairly, why does your business deserve to exist?

It does not deserve to exist. However, it does exist, drivers drive for them and are not paid enough for their labor, and you continue to use it despite all of that. I’ll ask again: why don’t you personally be the change you want to see in the world and pay them more now?

Ok, call your extra payment whatever name you want, and get the ball rolling on legislating new regulations to ensure fair pay. They deserve to get paid more, and when/if those regulations go through the drivers will have a better future.

That didn’t answer the question, though. We both agree that drivers deserve to get paid more, so why not open up your wallet and start paying them more now? Why wait months or years for legislation to go through to force you to pay more, when the power to make sure your driver is paid well is sitting in the palm of your hand today? Your individual act of tipping or not tipping will do nothing to address the system at large, but it will do everything to ensure your driver driver gets paid fairly for the labor they perform while they serve you.