Toss Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood in there.

In addition to the other thread descendants, staring with u/jjjalljs@ttrpg.network:

For all the bitching about capitalism, which basically every country on Earth uses for an economic system

This is only the case because it was instituted at gunpoint. The exploration, colonization, settlement, expropriation, amassment, warfare, thievery, and conquest of the world’s economy is soaked in blood, laden in exploitation of people, places, and things and destruction of the commons. You’d know that if you were subject to it. Or, if you’d paused to read, ask, or think about it for 5 seconds.

And, I can’t believe I’m saying this in public, “just because everyone is doing it, that doesn’t make it right.”

• We can vilify, undermine, and lead smear campaigns against unions under capitalism.

• We can break, or prevent, unions under capitalism.

• Our governments can attack us using local, state, provincial, and federal police forces whenever there is a perceived threat to capitalism.

Everything works fucking horribly with those 2781 billionaire capitalists robbing the world blind while blaming the victims.

Imagine that.

Im ready for the hate, but I content myself that I’ve gotten through these before having kids:

• Fullmetal Alchemist

• Hellsing

• Voltron (80s, I think I saw them all)

• Serial Experiments: Lain

And since having kids:

• Neon Genesis Evangelion

• One Punch Man

Alex Jones

Steve Bannon

Stephen Miller

I read this in 2011, the same year I got my first iPhone and started teaching in a middle school.

Yeah, things have trended dystopian and proven this book prophetic in many, many ways

The way into Island is really buying into the paradise that it would be and being willing to learn the ways of the Palanese. Oh, and a healthy disdain for the world you’d leave behind.

I figure that’s only gotten easier with time.

I can see you re-read it after. Hope you had a chuckle.

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.

"One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.

“The other, of course, involves orcs.”

[John Rogers, Kung Fu Monkey – Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009]

Was offered this in high school. I read Brave New World and Island by Aldous Huxley instead. I’d say those.

Yeah, a whole-country general strike in America would only last a day, two tops. They don’t have the wherewithal to be good neighbours and politically aligned against monied interests the way a nation-state that has a deeper, older history can.

The history of America is money, interest, and interested money.

Southern plantations, 17th century land ownership, trade in enslaved persons, ranching, gold prospecting… and war.

War against the Indigenous, the French, the Spanish, the Mexica, the French again, the British, the Bolivarians, themselves, and then everyone else, forever.

The way to defeat America is to end its war-making capacity. Explosions, attacks, weathering, budget restrictions, out-competition, and mutually-assured destruction have all failed as gambits. What remains is to undercut the human element — wounding warriors without wielding deadly force. A loss in military preparedness, a disbelief in the stated mission, a war-weariness.

None of these things will stop the US. What will is a general strike, a new constitutional convention, and the reconstruction of the nation from the ground up.

Was glad to see the Huxley interjection. If you are so inclined, you could also read his final novel, Island. Both offer utopian visions and dystopian realities. Huxley, in the 30 years between those books, had a LOT of experiences. Not the least of which was becoming a teacher for a young, impressionable George Orwell.

I read both Brave New World and Island in my senior year of high school. Island has stayed with me longer because, and this is the important part here, it offers the one thing this world sorely needs and actively rejects, compassion. It “forgive(s) us our trespasses” — to quote a prayer — while emboldening us to live differently than capitalism demands.

Reside: Auckland or Barcelona, as long as I can make a living there and be in solid with a like-minded group of locals.

Vacation: Lago Atitlán or Lombok & the Gilis. I’ve never been to an island in Oceania, so Indonesia is as close as I’ve experienced. Atitlán is tough to beat as it’s in reach to Xela, Chichi, and the much more touristy Antigua. Plus volcano hikes, kayaks, and lots of yoga spots. Good food, great people, and low cost. I wish only two things: more power to the Campesinos (particularly solar power and less cow dung heating), and fewer military-types on their gap-year.

Party: Seoul, as nostalgia. Or, if I had an unlimited budget, a Berlin, Amsterdam, Prague loop. I’m old. I deserve parties at whichever impact level I choose on that day.

Used as insult by Uhura in first J.J. Abrams Star Trek (2009) film.

Urban Dictionary has an entry from 2004

Makes you wonder whether the calculations serve anyone other than the top 0.1%.

Their portfolios bring up the average for the US because some swinging dicks decided that a (temporarily) decisive strategic advantage in faster calculators makes the graph look “good.”

Meanwhile, people are hungry, getting furloughed, evicted, bombed, arrested, bound, gagged, and shot in America. Democratic institutions, the fundamental raison d’être for the American experiment, are undermined, bulldozed, disregarded, or blown up.

That’s fine, they say. That’s who and what they VOTED for. That’s the mandate, they say.

Horseshit, I say.

DS9 does so much right. It is certainly on point in its treatment of moral gray.

Sci-fi all the way.

Battlestar Galactica (2003-2009) shows the fall of an empire (loosely, America) at the hands of their AI creations. I guess Rome or Britain could also sit in for America. This show aired while Bush the lesser was taking Afghanistan and Iraq apart piece by piece.

The Expanse (2015-2022) is the worthy heir to the throne of casting harsh light on the oligarchs and hegemons. Belters could be any people put upon by this corrupt system: migrant workers, Indigenous people, refugees, the unhoused, the descendants of the enslaved — anyone who was expected to bootstrap success.

Both are good shows. The Expanse is proving to be somewhat more resilient to the passage of time.

Psilocybin sparkle.

Now I’m confused. I thought it was 50% grey. Wikipedia has a lot more middle greys.

Know what works better than boycotts? A general strike. Stop the economy in its tracks. Have a clear, articulated goal. No leadership. No one to arrest. No one to identify as a troublemaker.

The trouble, when systemic, is the system. A boycott is meant to strike at an individual or group of allied organization(s). A general strike is the last level.

Governments tend to be allergic to general strikes. Their reactions are heavy-handed, thoughtless, and reactionary. Howard Zinn recounts several in A People’s History of the United States. But, when primed and done well, it is a demonstration of political will unlike any other. It is a change agent.

I was in Guatemala in 2015 for the one-day general strike that led to the arrest of then-President Otto Perez Molina. His party had been funnelling tax revenues into a slush fund. Look up #noletoca and #LaLinea. He was removed from the presidency, tried, convicted, and served time.