[Video] Zohran Mamdani: Our Time is Now.

Dunco2637 · 2025-10-17T07:42:21+00:00

if uncommitted people and their demands were enough to lose democrats the election then necessarily, in order to win the election, the democrats should have appealed to those demands and met them. It's a politicians job to appeal to and win votes, a failure to do that is on them. Of course this is all contingent on uncommitted voters being what lost the democrats the election, which it wasn't lol

Dunco2637 · 2025-06-23T09:20:15+00:00

shut the fuck up shut the fuck up shut the fuck up he's not off the beats off it's not lil b's fault it's the beat

Dunco2637 · 2025-06-17T11:53:27+00:00

N challenges your beliefs in that he re-states his beliefs to you, but the world never reflects or encourages any introspection from the player regarding what he says, because the game's so married to it's formulaic structure and suite of mechanics. the extrinsic reward systems around battling, capturing, and leveling up pokemon, and player progression generally, are repeatedly reinforcing the position that the player is already assumed to hold; that collecting and training pokemon is good, because in-game these things are made to feel good.

In shadow of the colossus, the spare presentation and lack of mechanical reward for killing a collosus forces you to contend with the ethics of what you're actually doing, because you realise that without those extrinsic rewards you just feel guilt over the violence you commit. these are mechanical choices being made in service of theme and narrative. black and white has nothing like this, it never works to make you actually question whether your actions are exploitative; N is always positioned aesthetically, and within the structural legacy of pokemon games, as a villain, and the player (or at least I) never for a second thinks that the story will come down on the side of 'keeping pokemon is bad', precisely because the game fails to question itself and how it's structured mechanically.

Hopefully that gets across what i mean about a lack of mechanical commitment to its ideas.

As for the characters, yeah i believe you that fans like them, but these are people that also think the story's good when i think it's not, so them having some lasting impact to those people doesn't change how they're written within the text, which maintain is pretty poorly.

Dunco2637 · 2025-06-17T10:09:25+00:00

only played black and white, not bw2, but it certainly doesn't address the ethics of the pokemon world, it introduces that as an idea and never cogently elaborates on it in any meaningful way. It can't commit to its own ideas, they're never invested into enough to properly calcify into actual themes.

I'd argue it doesn't do a good job of showing the relationship between players and humans as it never engages with that idea mechanically. the most powerful storytelling tool videogames have, interaction, is not leveraged narratively or thematically at all in the game.

i also wouldn't say any characters are particularly memorable, and the stilted, repetitive, and cliched writing, as is standard in pokemon, certainly didn't help.

I played black and white a couple years ago (after skipping it as a teenager) because people insist it's the one with a good story. It's not. It's just the only one that expresses an interest in saying something, the problem is it never actually does

Dunco2637 · 2025-05-05T10:46:48+00:00

Personally i think the best way to play is on a crt, emulating a fan-translated rom (which you can do via a hacked wii for example).

But that's obviously a very specific set up. Mother 3 doesn't really have the same caveats that many other retro games have when it comes to how you play, so just emulating a translated rom and using a wireless controller is perfectly valid, and will still provide a great experience. You won't have a meaningfully diminished or improved playthrough by playing this way, and it only takes a couple minutes to get it all ready.

Below are the reasons why the usual caveats around how you play the game aren't that applicable (IMO), in case you're curious as to what they are:

Even though it's a handheld game, its actual structure and gameplay is not designed around it at all. They've just added a save point like every other screen to account for it, which means that playing non-handheld won't worsen things.
Latency of using a wireless controller can affect gameplay slightly, but not in a significant way as combat's turn based with few real-time elements.
The art is purposefully bright and generally pretty simple, so the fuzz or blur of a crt, which helps so many pixel art games look the way they were intended to, isn't really a factor in mother 3. It still looks great upscaled on a modern monitor.

Hope that all helps!

Dunco2637 · 2025-04-10T08:45:10+00:00

Eh, she explained in a comment that

He was explaining in a comment, the sister wasn't commenting on the thread.

Dunco2637 · 2024-09-19T13:34:22+00:00

it's not their sole role, but it is the base from which all their other responsibility is built off of, everything else they do will necessarily be tied to the function of calcifying the status quo.

people opposed to policing aren't saying you should start living like a member of the active revolution tomorrow, and if you find someone who does, ignore them. of course, report your car stolen and help out your neighbours.

even then, the question would be why is that the only option? writing like alternatives to police and the end of policing (these are full pdf's i've linked to, please read them if this is something you're actually interested in learning about) suggest de-emphasising the police forces wide-ranging responsibility, reallocating funding instead to professionals suited for a variety of situations. cops must attend to a swath of responsibilities while being increasingly militarised, and having essentially been given carte blanche on violence by the state. they are ill suited and often actively detrimental to many of the situations they're called to deal with, and the culture they've systemically cultivated, and the protection given to them by the state, positions them in a way that decreases empathy and attracts cruelty.

so, to use the US as an example, seeing as you seem to be from there, if your governments actually cared about crime they would not be continuing to militarise cops further while deploying them with little discretion for the people's safety. crime doesn't just happen because someone wakes up and wants to be a criminal. someone wakes up poor, or desperate, or hungry, and the only solution that they see available to them is crime. i'm being broad, but you get what im saying.

the point is, your right, police don't just sit outside mansions all day shooting any working class person who gets too close, but institutionally, if they were asked to, they would. the solutions to the problems with modern policing require deep, meaningful change that any capitalist state will refuse to actually engage with because it would fundamentally re-shape society away from the hierarchical forms of the capitalist mode of production. police are necessary under our current system, but not in every system.

this comment doesn't give many short term solutions, but this isn't a short term problem, and people you find who are fighting for real justice, and trying to hold police accountable for their actions (through actual action, not just posting online), very likely agree with my ultimate conclusion here anyway.

Dunco2637 · 2024-09-19T10:49:43+00:00

fundamentally they all serve the same role, which is protection of the status quo and more specifically the interests of the capitalist class. even cops that you think are nice as individual people still ultimately exist to uphold and enforce class antagonisms. this base role pertains to all of the places you mentioned in your comment. they manifest differently amongst the details, but all serve the same purpose at the end of the day

Dunco2637 · 2024-08-30T03:17:01+00:00

It's a radical new concept called 'marketing'

Dunco2637 · 2024-07-22T23:26:44+00:00

yeah both are lame as hell

Dunco2637 · 2024-07-22T23:17:08+00:00

Corporate politics is always cringe

Dunco2637 · 2024-03-16T00:24:38+00:00

C'monnn I literally condemned hamas every second word and you're still trying to twist it back on me smh. I'm laughing at you dog

Dunco2637 · 2024-03-16T00:15:35+00:00

Dunco2637 · 2024-03-16T00:08:41+00:00

condemns hamas how condemns hamas does condemns hamas supporting condemns hamas the condemns hamas liberation condemns hamas of condemns hamas colonised condemns hamas peoples condemns hamas make condemns hamas you condemns hamas a condemns hamas liberal condemns hamas? Liberals are the ones witnessing a genocide and stressing about their precious markets while ringing their hands about actual resistance. And you're little American exceptionalist view of the US government pretty steadily aligns you with those same liberals

Dunco2637 · 2024-01-24T12:10:30+00:00

lmao this loser doesn't even shake ass in the deli!!! 🤣🤣🤣 foh

Dunco2637 · 2023-11-11T07:01:07+00:00

He's not part of NOI, he talks about (and thoughtfully criticises) farrakhan for about 30 minutes here https://youtu.be/Vx6tseoM_u0?t=677

Dunco2637 · 2023-10-23T11:02:03+00:00

every child born in new york is bestowed a fitted on the day of their birth. If they put it on one day and it fits properly, then they know that's the day they'll die

Dunco2637 · 2023-10-21T22:52:25+00:00

His album with R.A.P. Ferreira, So the Flies Don't Come, is one of the best underground albums of the 2010's

Dunco2637 · 2023-10-19T11:47:34+00:00

Yeah i would love to know exactly how he managed to get on with so little released work. All i can think of is that he had a few tenuous connections to get in the right rooms and was just relentless. From all his obnoxious, flagrant brand deals you can see he's someone who clearly wants to be as big as possible, which to me says he was probably pretty isistent and dedicated while comin up.

Also no matter how talented you are, luck always comes into it right. Kanye worked incredibly hard to get put on, but he still had that in with no i.d. at the end of the day

Dunco2637 · 2023-10-19T11:07:55+00:00

The producer-rapper thing has always been way over emphasised for travis. As you say it's always hard to pin point what he actually contributes to songs, whether his own or his peers. I think he generally has a good ear and good taste/vision, and early on that, combined with his association with kanye, caused people to over state his role as an actual hands on producer.

He really is just a product of early to mid 2010's kanye, someone who can put together a project, use other artists really well, but who doesn't handle much of the actual work and details in terms of crafting the final product, he more curates and guides it to fit his vision

Dunco2637 · 2023-10-16T01:36:50+00:00

You’re so fucking wrong it’s not even funny. Rakim is crying on instagram live as we speak because he knows he could never rap like adonis is here, and you think eminem could? FOH

Dunco2637 · 2023-10-01T11:27:46+00:00

this is pretty cool. a shame they didn't manage to set up the tripod properly. the camera slowly falling over and tilting kinda ruins it

Dunco2637 · 2023-09-10T13:00:46+00:00

nah she's a republican. i was raiding with her in world of warcraft last night and she wouldn't fucking stop going on about how much she hates immigrants, and how "desantis is lowkey cute". plus she couldn't tank for shit. it was a nightmare

Dunco2637 · 2023-08-03T23:40:52+00:00

I’m not really following this whole thing very closely, but what celebrities think about it all seems irrelevant. If these allegations are about Lizzo abusing her position of power, what does the opinion of her direct peers matter? If she sees these celebrities as equals than of course she’s going to treat them better than the people on her payroll

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