The cool thing is that if you believe in Marxism there never was room for change in that system because the base (what we can possibly make and who decides what to make) determines the superstructure (culture).
You’re simply complaining about the change in strategy of selling cultural commodities, something that you never had a say in.
Farm House Modern with a Roman Statue core.
Yeah I love having to watch shows that basically called me the fslur otherwise I would have no friends.
This is such a nostalgia level argument. Monoculture was supremely fucked up in the hierarchies that it allowed people to form in schools and workplaces. If you think racism and homophobia and transphobia is bad now, you aren’t ready for how they actually were in monoculture times. Not only that monoculture was in reality often anti-poor/assimilationist because monoculture is literally consumerism. So if you were poor (or an immigrant) and your parents couldn’t afford (or understand the culture and why you needed these things) the cool new JNCO jeans or to take you to see a Starwar then you were fucked socially twice over once for being poor (or “weird”) and once for not watching the latest thing.
Videogames weren’t monoculture until like Xbox 360. You were considered a massive dork for being a gamer most of my childhood.
Also god forbid you had a different taste than other people and had opinions. When the first Iron Man came out and half way through the movie in theater I felt like I was at the Nuremberg rally. Y’all don’t remember everyone pretending bad movies were good. The argument that there was “common ground to fight over” isn’t real. Monoculture meant that the battles were settled before they started, everyone looked at you like a redditor when you started doing anything close to AKSHUALLY LUKE SKYWALKER AND THE REBELS ARE VIETKONG. All these nostalgia media analysis things feel cute and trite now but socially they weren’t really welcome, they only became exposed to normie circles because the monoculture was dissolving.
Haha yeah. I remember the first one where it went from flat to skeuomorphic, that was OS/2 and System 6 to Windows 3 and System 7.
I just got a little fixated on the Dreamcast being representative of monoculture.
Yeah trap music is a good example shit was everywhere for a while.
Indie sleaze is another.
Mumblecore movies.
“Prestige TV” literally ongoing.
I think the need to have a shared monoculture is a deeply reactionary way of thinking that prevents us from developing human empathy. You don’t need to say “Bazinga” at the same time as another person in order for you to relate to, care for, and understand strangers. I think the yearning for monoculture in people 25-40 is a mirror of boomers who complain that they cannot relate to kids anymore because nobody really believes in the pledge of alligence or some such other “things r different” nonsense. Yeah I haven’t played Hoop and Stick 3, we don’t need to play the same video games to relate to each other.
It’s a crutch for a brutal culture where you are too scared to show a modicum of openness or vulnerability with other humans because deep down you need to be reassured that they won’t scam/harm you simply because they believe in the magic words of Burgerstan. People are uncomfortable with change and things they don’t know because we’ve built a society where change often begets material vulnerability in people, and information and even cultural media have become a weapon to be used against others.
Monoculture was never good, it simply was. Also despite this being a real aesthetic trend, you should also remember that the vast majority of consumer technology produced at the same time was not clear plastic tech. If anything the monoculture of tech products of that era was that gross beige that yellows in about a year or two. It’s just not aesthetic enough to remember, and in 10 years everything just defaulted black. I’ve actually never seen a clear plastic Dreamcast/ Dreamcast controller IRL. I’ve been a tech guy forever and despite knowing about it, I only know of 1 person that had actually experienced the Dreamcast internet. This is very much nostalgia bait vs actual how things were.
To put it into perspective for one of those phones with clear plastic, there were 10,000 of these
General Strikes are escalated to not planned. That’s why the AFL the most idiotic union basically banned escalations into a general strike by requiring striking locals to have national authorization or risk getting kicked out of the union. This was in response to the Seattle General Strike which happened in Feb 1919 and the AFL amended the constition in June 1919. Similary Taft-Hartley which outlaws general strikes in the US was passed in 1947 was a response to the Oakland General Strike of 1946.
Also lol at #3 what is this? 2012?
The reason I disagree is that “dog/cat food” implies it’s something that is widely eaten culturally, a “default meal” of sorts. I don’t think pate fits the bill there most Americans cannot handle offal. Nuggies sure, but not really pate.
I think that criteria is a bit too loose. In the American context liver pate would qualify.
Should be fine. Taste may be every so slightly affected if you don’t wash them. They’re not really being cooked, and the smoke isn’t concentrated enough at that distance to “cold smoke” them. In a perverse way they might actually come out better because smoke carries potassium which is part and parcel of plant nutrition.
In reality given the last several years of crazy North American wildfires almost everyone has eaten produce that was affected by wild fire smoke in this way.
if time travelers kidnapped a few thousand scientists, engineers, and so forth from the present and took them back thousands of years and dropped them naked in the post-glacial northern european steppes, … they certainly aren’t building a chip manufacturing plant to start making computers.
You can blame British adventure novels for this bullshit idea. Every other day a Kickstarter of “THE END OF THE WORLD BOOK WHERE YOU CAN BUILD COMPUTER FROM SAND AFTER NUCLEAR BOMB” gets launched.
the apparent contrast of “low-tech” and “high-tech” is only going to feel like a contradiction to people (like me) who have internalized liberal economic theory based on the notion that value is ultimately created by the very smartest of fail-children having the very best ideas.
As an immigrant form the former Soviet Union, it’s not liberal economic theory notions. Plenty of Post Soviet Liberal morons out there with the same notions. It’s living in a rich country where you are isolated from the practicalities of the systems that shape your life.
This Archer clip on the origin of meat (before it becomes dictatorial lulziness) sums up the distinction nicely:
https://youtu.be/JHMJxFICUjk?t=57
One of the things that most Soviet Intelligentsia complained about was the fact that as students they had to work on Kolhozes (communal farms) during college summer break. But because of that everyone in the Soviet Union effectively had an intimate and direct relationship with their food supply chain. At one point (when all forms of back filling fail e.g. trade, stockpiling, etc), someone has to pick the food, fire or no fire. Otherwise nobody eats. The practical problem here is how to make that as fair and as safe as possible. This is why communist theory is the theory of misery.
It’s a capitalist solution to a capitalist problem - the problem of accessing the wholesale pipeline. It’s obviously not this anymore anyway, but that’s what the membership is for. You’re buying at the “convenience store” level, but without the volume that’s what the membership makes up for. Using Costco as your distributer is still a thing in rural areas, esp in Washington. Last time I was near Mt. Rainer there was a convenience store in the town that was clearly breaking up Costco packs, but they were like 1 of 3 places you could actually buy stuff.