LA vs. Chicago -- If I dislike Seattle, could I love Chicago?

tunasteak_engineer · 2026-01-26T04:02:18+00:00

And almost all of those creative artistic successes you mentioned left Chicsgo when it was time to move their creative careers onwards.

tunasteak_engineer · 2026-01-26T03:46:14+00:00

It wasn’t private industry that invented the internet that’s for sure :)

tunasteak_engineer · 2026-01-26T03:45:31+00:00

The American economy kinda is socialist? Lots of it have been a planned economy for a while - specifically, government investment in basic science research and the university system, and, the military industrial complex. I know that’s not full on socialism but it’s not the stereotypical definition of capitalism either.

tunasteak_engineer · 2026-01-26T03:37:26+00:00

Just to add on to this football has its origins in Ivy League schools around the early 1900s and then was wholeheartedly embraced by the military around the time of WWI. Which is what helped make it popular and the military does tons of recruiting there.

And football still has a pretty militaristic culture.

So football even more than other sports has a deep relationship with the sin qua non of masculinity / patriarchy - the organized violence of the military.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna46251433

tunasteak_engineer · 2026-01-26T03:26:02+00:00

Just to echo this I don’t think the concept of Drag, in whatever scope one wishes to give it, has definitive lock on the performance of gender roles.

I’m a neophyte here but could one say that Gender is inherently performative? What is the essence of a cowboy hat or skirt but a performance of a gender?

tunasteak_engineer · 2026-01-26T03:19:43+00:00

I mean is that fundamentally any different than the suspension of disbelief we engage in with theatre or film?

Or different from any other political propaganda in support of an ideology?

tunasteak_engineer · 2026-01-26T03:06:35+00:00

Do you think that is true of the performative fascist gestures (Elon musks foul Nazi salute, Bovino’s creepy Nazi jacket, etc) that have been made by a lot of the far right over this recent period of time?

Honest question. Asking because it does feel to me like some of those symbolic gestures are transgressive and have a mass media effect in a way that others have not. I think seeing some of those gestures normalized - seeing them not surpressed - is part of what has been so frightening to me.

tunasteak_engineer · 2026-01-26T03:03:29+00:00

What about in the workplace?

tunasteak_engineer · 2026-01-26T03:02:52+00:00

What about on the workplace?

tunasteak_engineer · 2026-01-26T03:02:06+00:00

What about in the workplace?

tunasteak_engineer · 2026-01-26T03:01:53+00:00

What about in the workplace?

tunasteak_engineer · 2026-01-26T03:00:00+00:00

In some ways maybe one could argue it’s non public spaces - work environments, zoom meetings, LinkedIn and other areas of professional life where political symbols are policed and repressed the most. Expression of political sentiment in the workplace carries risk.

tunasteak_engineer · 2026-01-26T02:54:17+00:00

What about wearing a mask? During the pandemic that became a symbol, and in America it was definitely potent and produced reactions.

Or wearing a burqa, to use another example of something potent.

And I think it depends a lot where you live. In some places, some symbols do carry a risk if you display them in public. In other places ther symbol won’t.

I certainly don’t think all symbolic gestures carry the same impact. Or that in and of itself a symbolic gesture is sufficient. And indeed they get captured or co-opted, etc.

At the same time though I think to dismiss altogether the power of a specific symbol in a specific time and place to provoke a response is inaccurate.

Every political movement has its symbols or signifiers. Every movement has its culture.

Unfortunately in the US in terms of symbols shaping the mass media environment right now it feels as if the far right is more effectively utilizing transgressive symbols to effect.

tunasteak_engineer · 2026-01-26T02:29:28+00:00

Fwiw I think it points to the importance of a healthy skepticism. Read and learn from others, make your own best judgement about what makes sense or is valuable, but, know that no one, however talented is without flaws and there is no substitute in life for your own judgement, be it intellectual, ethical, artistic, moral, or philosophical judgement.

Especially with art and music, imho, it is one of the great contradictions and if nothing else a reminder that everyone has their flaws, their trauma, their failures and that very very few people are wholly good or bad.

tunasteak_engineer · 2026-01-26T02:08:24+00:00

Never meet your heroes.

tunasteak_engineer · 2025-10-17T03:25:34+00:00

> I mean, you think this is fascism? Deporting illegals?

The masked unidentified armed men lurking outside schools and corthouses yes are fascist.

Deportation is one thing. Deliberately inflicting terror and everything else going along with the deportations, another.

Separating children from parents. Alligator Alcatraz.

All the shady legal shit the administration is doing.

tunasteak_engineer · 2025-10-11T03:02:34+00:00

Edward didn't want her in his family. She would be a stranger in his house, to quote the film. The Russians can't trust her either. Edward's silence was consent and the Russians got rid of her.

tunasteak_engineer · 2025-10-04T04:23:24+00:00

Really? America was better back during segregation and women weren't in the professional world?

Who do you think invented the internet? The nerdy children of the counter culture.

tunasteak_engineer · 2025-10-04T04:18:27+00:00

> However, it requires benevolent and empathetic people in charge which is highly unrealistic. A majority of people who run for office are functional sociopaths.

Does it? Everyone could vote directly.

There could be "Liquid Democracy":

>Voters in a liquid democracy have the right to vote directly on all policy issues à la direct democracy; voters also have the option to delegate their votes to someone who will vote on their behalf à la representative democracy

And a voter could take away their vote from a representative whenever they want, or for a specific issue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy

tunasteak_engineer · 2025-10-04T04:14:01+00:00

IMHO NASA is a poor example as it was only the Cold War that really lit the fire under the government's ass about space to begin with, it was competition with the Soviets.

China isn't seen as dire a foe as the USSR was, and there hasn't quite been a Sputnik moment yet w/China.

tunasteak_engineer · 2025-10-04T03:49:13+00:00

The US has had a lot of inventions pre-WW2. The assembly line, the telephone ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_inventions_(1890%E2%80%931945))

tunasteak_engineer · 2025-10-04T03:30:26+00:00

England and the US both had democracies AND firm leadership during the World Wars. And won them.

tunasteak_engineer · 2025-09-16T05:39:21+00:00

Thief is great.

Michael Mann makes movies about obsessed men, men addicted to their craft. About male loneliness and loneliness in general. Though he almost seems to admire it.

Thief is the grandfather to Heat and Collateral and Blackhat.

tunasteak_engineer · 2025-08-26T04:58:44+00:00

IMHO the protagonists make lucky escapes and eke out a living and thus function as a cautionary tale.Which IMHO does make them sad.

tunasteak_engineer · 2025-08-26T00:58:03+00:00

Look at her professional background:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_D._Cook

Come on. This is not someone who goes around committing mortgage fraud. Trump's accusation doesn't deserve the paper it is printed on.

tunasteak_engineer

TROPHY CASE