voldage

I meant to convey something more of a "yes, and..." rather than argue. It would be different kind of messed up if it sounded angelic but required a blood of a endangered turtle to be fed into the unholy tube in order to keep playing. But like this, there wasn't even the point. Vain, cruel, corrupt. Which is to say, I agree.

I do think that there are layers to the corruption in play here. It'd be plenty evil even if it sounded good and looked bad, since cruelty and stuff. Pianos are expensive, and were even more back in 1853, so having and playing one was a hobby limited to elites, which had to exploit the work of the poor to afford it and the rest of their luxurious lifestyle, which makes it worse again. Due to it being one of the possible symbols of the class status, it's very ownership rather than a function became a priority, which then made it a piece of visual art to be admired rather than the tool to create such art, which degenerated the meaning of such expense even further. The author most likely wasn't thinking about the cruelty, about the class or about the demeaning the art, or maybe they were and it was the point. Either way, the result is something beautiful that shouldn't have ever existed, and the "incredible poetic" characteristic that I mentioned earlier (maybe a bit of an overstatement) referred in part to this contradiction.

I'll counter your trees with my humans. Would you agree that skinning children to make drums would be "needlessly cruel"? The creator might have thought that it was necessary for whatever reason, but neither the children nor any sane observer would agree. It's fine to disagree on what's moral and what's not, and it's up to the invidual to decide for themselves. I think killing turtles for vanity project is cruel, especially since you have all those trees that just deserve to be carved up for being so tall. I believe there is some common ground most interested parties can agree on. And if not, then the situation is probably quite complicated and you should rethink making those drums.

There is something incredibly poetic about the hubris and cruelty required to create an instrument or other tool that enables art, something that does makes us distinct from the animals, out of the remains of needlesly taken lives. Transcending through art beyond human morals, somehow landing us back in the dirt with other worms, struggling only to self-satisfy. It's only fitting that it looks pretty, it better does when the price is so high.

Funnily enough both can get you stoned if you hang around the wrong crowd.

There is that quick and funny operation that you can do using guilotine (or anything you can get your hands on if you're creative enough!) that significantly reduce the need for oversight. I agree we should put monitoring around the mass grave in case those ghouls can actually get up. It's a stretch, but better safe than sorry.

Yes, but not necessarily the way you put it. You may recall some of the lawsuits against Trump, where he massively (and illegally) elevated value of some of his properties (I think he elevated Mar-a-Lago by an order of a magnitude? might be wrong on that) while devaluing others, it depended on whenever he was supposed to pay taxes on something or leverage something to get better loan. Those billions they "have" are based in valuation that they often had opportunity to tamper with. For example, there are vast expanses of privately owned land that are undervalued - if you were to give that land back to the community and build housing there, its monetary value (and more importantly utility) would dramatically raise, thus leading to getting more out of the guillotine mileage than the original estimation might suggest. Alternatively, billionaire could have their assets valued as such due to having a gallery of modern AI art used to launder drug money, which would be otherwise completely worthless. And that, I think, is even more important point than the repossession of their wealth - we, as society, would benefit tremendously from making sure the rich can not manipulate prices of anything. If a guy with a "art" gallery is able to leverage it to get a massive loan, and then use it to buy a ton of housing, then you need to compete with their unearned billions with nothing else than the results of your honest work and whatever meager loan banks are willing to give you. It's less important how much stuff is "actually" worth, and more what is the relationship between the purchase power of the rich versus the purchase power of regular folk. If they can outcompete all of us at once and we're left without healthcare, food, water, housing etc. then they can more easily extort us for greater share of our paycheque (which again, is not exactly related to our actual work because very similar dynamics take place in job market), which makes us more dependent on them and more willing to be exploited in other ways.

tl;dr I agree it's simplistic, but I think that getting a 1$ out of 1$ of removed billionaire is pessimistic estimation, and we would actually get far more, even if only long term.

That's not an argument against removing billionaires though, right? You'd rather want to stop the spread of cancer instead of bemoaning the fact that we got sick at all. The best we can do is reposes their frivolously purchased assets and recycle them as much as it's reasonable, and cast away what remains. It's not all yachts, some of that wealth is locked in empty flats/houses, and giving those back to community would be very beneficial without needing to transform those assets further.

That's so irresponsible. Someone could leak those files to the public and use them to smear and accuse good and innocent people that happened to be there. In those files. Tremendous.

In Polish, bela could mean shaft or bolt. While not what I'd personally call it, it's hard to ignore the fact he just had a meeting with Putin. Maybe he taught him some new words.

Not with that attitude

I also use dollars instead of integral symbols, I don't do math though.

Nationalism as a function, to use your terms, doesn't have to specifically be a result of a desire for cultural identity. It might, but when speaking of it as a function it has a narrower meaning and doesn't have to carry additional baggage like that, though it may often imply it. When speaking of nationalism as ideology, it definitely fits my definition of evil, by putting artifical values above the wellbeing of people, which nationalism does by definition. Following that logic, nationalism as function isn't necessarily evil (though it may be if you flavor it with racism or such, like Confederation did), while nationalism as ideology necessarily is. I'm not sure what specifically you were disagreeing with, so I hope I made my point clearer.

Nationalism as a political ideology and nationalism as advocacy for independence of people sharing national identity that isn't broadly recognized as official nation are two different things sharing the same name. Nationalism as political ideology is inherently evil, as it puts interests of an artifical construct above interests of people, with specific attention put to ingroup and outgroup dynamics. Separatists movements aren't inherently evil, with the desire of liberation being usually something everyone can stand behind, but if those movements co-opt the nationalist ideology, then they may be classified as evil in my book. Or evil-er. There are no perfect victims and such.

I feel like it's a meaningful distinction to make.

General strike lets gooo

Well, imagine him being broke, homeless, despised by everyone and treated like interacting with him could lead you to the exclusion from the society. Warms your heart, doesn't it? I don't want him dead, I wish him worse. I want him thanking bums for pissing on him so he doesn't lose more fingers to the frostbite and cursing himself for pushing for cutting social safety net.

Sounds like DEI, so I think it's not going to fly in the current political climate.

voldage

@ voldage @lemmy.world

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voldage

A piano made of mother-of-pearl and tortoiseshell, from 1853, New York City

A piano made of mother-of-pearl and tortoiseshell, from 1853, New York City

A piano made of mother-of-pearl and tortoiseshell, from 1853, New York City

A piano made of mother-of-pearl and tortoiseshell, from 1853, New York City

FACTS

Palantir CEO Says a Surveillance State Is Preferable to China Winning the AI Race

Permanently Deleted

Permanently Deleted

Do you like systemd?

All trick no treat

Probably bad for your hearing too

Bela

The Coriolis Force Won't Reverse Your Toilet

Mental voice-over

UwU brat mathematician behavior

Greatest ally

Greatest ally

Great plan

sad Elon

Here, have some unpleasant knowledge about Mario.