Under communism this will be the only allowed format of super hero cape-shit movie. Just a series of movies where Magneto is right and vindicated and eventually wins in the series with the help of his human communist comrades and a broad group of mutants. And it ends with him visiting his friend Professor X in a comfortable low security re-education facility (actually located in the professor's mansion for some reason) and playing chess with him in a
homage to the old movies where Magneto is imprisoned and Xavier visits him to play chess. Then as the credits roll Magneto appears for a short message to remind the audience that in real life hundreds of thousands of ordinary people risked it all, sacrificed greatly and gave their lives to overthrow capitalism and that they are the true super heroes. - Posts
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Glad I rolled my own server solution with network storage rather then buying into this. Also does transcoding a lot, lot faster than these. Admittedly would love to find some way to have a working SLC cache for serving files but oh well. Access times haven't been a problem.
Conspiracy theory 2: Trump is just doing this to pump the economy with lots of (panic) consumption so he can proclaim that his first 100 days resulted in tremendous success and is proof he is a genius unlike Biden.
They've entered a new phase definitely. Without Bernie and unable to create any other movement to unify around they were already in trouble a bit. Losing first Virgil then lately Matt which was a much bigger hit hasn't done them any favors. They can definitely continue like this doing side show stuff, their movie reviewing stuff, interviews with random press personalities and such, video game stuff and a bit of politics but I don't see them ever becoming the face of anything ever again. They'll continue to make money, maybe even enough that they don't have to dip into savings and retirement funds and continue producing content for a while yet though I think.
Fact is two regular hosts (Will and Felix plus Chris the producer) are just not enough, they don't have the right dynamic between them. They need a Matt or at least a Virgil type in there to get a winning formula.
I suppose an issue to adding a new person in their minds might be they agreed that everyone got full shares for all time I believe. Meaning Virgil still gets checks for the patreon and Matt of course they're not cutting off but there's a good chance he won't be able to work in the same way with them again anytime this decade. So they have two former members to support from their current take, plus Amber who's only around sometimes. So that's 6 mouths right there, 6 ways the patreon is already being split and will be forever short of someone dying or refusing payment. Adding another person means either making a special exemption where they don't get the same rights as the others which would be weird or else risking that money pool being split 7 way, perhaps even 8 if that person doesn't work out, if the fans tire of them, if they dip for personal reasons after a year, etc. And with the way things are, the doldrums I guess I'd be hesitant too as well. Even with a great, incredible host I don't see them gaining that many more subs or gaining that many back to make up the difference in lost money for each member from doing so. They're just not likely to break out given the deliberate suppression of anyone left of the pod Jons by the Democratic party and mainstream media and tech companies. I'm not sure they resonate with younger generations the same way either compared to someone like Hasan so they may be a kind of relic of last gasp of the Millennial left compared to your newer streamer centered, video content producing personalities who have more cachet with gen-z and younger.
They're stuck in this place where they're further left than Bernie's pathetic pandering and sheep-dogging and are critical of him but they're not willing to get into Marxism or anything much stronger than some strain of reformism. And this is down to other than Matt none of them probably being there, certainly Amber gives off annoying Trot academic ivory tower elitism vibes at times which isn't really appealing to any significant group of people. So they're not really even useful anymore as part of a pipeline I think. I think they have some interesting and decent cultural commentary. I've said before I'd love to listen to more movie commentary tracks with them as they're not bad at it and no riffing group exists that's explicitly left in even the softest ways.
Well hiding bunkers tends to be a very basic tenant of them so I assume they'd go to great lengths to conceal where exactly such bunkers are beyond being in a vague 20 mile region.
Secondly I'd assume they be might be clever enough to think to conceal the vents. To put serious resources into hiding them a distance from the actual bunker in say fake houses or office buildings that have a concealed level in the attic or basement with an intake. All kinds of ways to hide these things that would require extensive search to locate and maybe equipment.
One should assume they'd also conceal the entrance, also a common thing for anything but military bunkers. Could do that to fake buildings, a wall in a basement of a house that opens or even something more elaborate like an elevator that pops up from a concealed space in an area people wouldn't look which you cover with a layer of dirt to hide the signs of until it's first used (or just put it in a fake closet or bathroom in a building).
All of which is to say the wealthy have good reason to feel this wouldn't necessarily be an issue. People assume that the rich would run into these things to hide from a successful worker's revolution when that's not IMO what they're for (that's what the bunkers tech billionaires build in New Zealand are partially for being remote, on an island run by a pliant settler-colonist state). These are for mythical things like an asteroid impact, solar flares, or more realistically instigated nuclear war that the US government informs important people to shelter from an hour ahead of time. Maybe for things like a proletariat uprising in a given region ala BLM summer type situation where people are trying to Luigi CEO's but don't really have the ability to completely control an area for an extended period and without a vanguard party would at any rate mostly target visible banks, homes of the rich, police stations, etc.
If they set off nuclear war (a real fear I have that they'd rather destroy most of the world rather than give up power) and nuke China and get nuked back they also won't have to worry about that many people being around to try and kill them and those who are around will probably be so messed up with grief, pain, hunger, and other immediate needs that they won't dedicate the resources to finding and killing people in bunkers if that information even still exists (hall of records could be destroyed entirely or at least thrown into disarray) because they'd be too busy trying to survive. At least for the tech billionaires they do tend to surmise in their planning that they/their servants/guards/remnants of the state apparatus of violence will be able to emerge eventually and re-assert order under their control of course and that's something that obviously could go wrong for them but it would potentially buy them the ability to survive the immediate threat and even be rescued if some elements of the state still survive (as is likely in a situation where they set off nuclear war intentionally as the government has their own bunkers as well as remote military bases not worth being hit by an enemy nuke) the bourgeois state might rescue at least some of these people to manage their rebuilt society or at least that's what they're banking on.
Trump does this for this questionable guy because someone whispered his name in his ear and yet Biden only commutes Leonard Peltier and puts him in a position where Trump can either have the FBI harass him to death in home confinement or maybe even send him right back to prison because he merely commuted the sentence rather than pardoning. Fuck Biden. Even when he does something sorta good it's done so
incompetentlyincompletely and badly as to be almost more a taunt than a good deed.And they have an advantage in that they own the biggest global media production and distribution houses. They can just pay some Hollywood producer a few million to insert some anti-China lines or propaganda in random movies or TV shows and it goes global just like that (though it's usually a bit more complex and would involve wining and dining various people via think-tanks paid to to do this and sharing talking points with them). And China has no real power to push back on that outside its borders and given its foreign policy of non-interference they couldn't if they wanted to without doing a dramatic change there.
Compare to the US reaction if China tried shopping around a TV series or show that had some minor anti-US and pro-China sentiment? US and aligned media across Asia would light up screaming about it being China propaganda, about how it has to be censored, about how weak any given country will be if they allow it to be shown and stirring up a shit-storm over it. So the US is definitely able to actually make use of their dollars here and get good value. China by comparison can spend as much as they want on shoving propaganda into products, the US will handily get a large chunk of it censored or subject to boycott.
People need make no mistake. This will go to think-tanks who will produce slander which is picked up by western and non-western news and ran near verbatim as stories. They will create chains of citations and credibility in academia and in the NGO world about China being up to no good. This will filter into western and non-western media, public consciousness, etc. It will likely end up nearly as complete as the propaganda about the USSR was for Americans and the western world. Just like indoctrinated Americans who can go to the DPRK and see what they want to see instead of the reality, even travel will not dispel this for many and at that point the task is simply to make it impossible to challenge their narrative, for any westerner who speaks truth to be cast as mad, as a bot, as a propagandist, as indoctrinated by China, as fooled by potemkin villages, as gullible, naive fools.
And that's just the west, their real goal is to propagandize to Africans, to people in Asia, to potential partners of China, to undermine the material goods Chinese projects do with suspicion, lies, and fantasy about what it's all /really/ about to create space for the US to drive a wedge and to operate, to create terrorists and coups with some amount of popular support to remove China-friendly governments and replace them with US friendly puppets. Such is the problem of short human lives. Though the older generations may remember and know of what the colonizers did, the young may buy the "that was the old us but we've changed" routine the US has so perfected. And without class consciousness this can work.
I very nearly wrote a comment about this long or longer going off on religion in reply to a post here but decided against it.
Christianity is a slave religion. It is not revolutionary. It is for the status quo, it demands slaves obey their masters, masters obey the state (render unto Cesar) and dangles above them all this idea that submitting here and now doesn't matter because you're on this plane of existence for 60-100 years and then if you're a good Christian you go to heaven literally forever and get to live in a paradise so it's just not worth struggling over. You can sit there as a smug slave, as a smug serf, worker etc as you're beaten and starved because you know you have a ticket of this, you know you have a reward waiting for you so none of this matters. The Protestant work ethic is the Christian work ethic. It demands false peace instead of justice, says CSA victims must forgive their abuser in their church and says that abuser as long as they repent to god (not even the victim, they don't matter) they're golden and their ticket to heaven remains reserved and they can stand up in front of church, forgiven by god and cannot be judged.
You want to be a Christian and push for a better world? Fine I'm not going to go out of my way to make fun of you but I am judging you because you're a cafeteria Christian, I find it unserious, you're picking and choosing and ignoring parts of your religion to suit what you want it to say. You're not an ounce of a more genuine Christian than the reactionary Christians who never do any charity at all who also pick and choose and twist the religion to be what you want it to be to suit your way of thinking.
Additionally Jesus says by the way that the OT is totally valid until he returns. Matthew 5:17-20:
I get you know being afraid of death. I honestly think it's the task of a world communist government to create a new religion for people who need this kind of thing, one that's defanged and harmless, one that cannot be misinterpreted in any charitable way to support bigotry, one with equal rights for women at its core and which is simple and short in tenets and wildly progressive. And it should make all the wanted promises, eternal life, etc, etc, only you don't confess to Jesus in your head, you confess to the local commissar in a self-crit and then you're forgiven unless it's a serious crime in which case you're imprisoned or sent to reform labor or whatever but promised your spot in the afterlife is preserved as a result. The point being not to go out of our way to preach and convert the masses to worshiping the party or anything bizarre like that but having an out, an option for these people so they don't get drawn into ancient, patriarchal, homophobic, reactionary ideologies.