[CW: violence/gore]. As the title suggests, is there a left case to be made against ultra-violence in video games? I'm thinking mostly about MK11 and MK1 fatalities, as opposed to less gratuitous and less hyper-realistic violence--in Dark Souls or something. Whenever this topic is brought up, other factors usually take up the oxygen in the room: People might immediately think of family-values conservatives, such as the Media Research Center, who act like wet-blankets towards entertainment. Or we think of nerdy Joe Lieberman, who showed the 1993 Sub-Zero spine fatality to Congress (lol). There was Hillary Clinton who decried the Grand Theft Auto franchise, and the host of rightwing politicians who blamed Doom for the Columbine shooting (clearly as a way to absolve gun legislation from any culpability). So this is what I mean when I say that the conversation on video-game violence has been ceded entirely to these dudes, as opposed to something left spaces can discuss without sounding like squares or censors. This came to mind after I was reading about the video game designer who developed PTSD after working on Mortal Kombat 11. His dreams became excruciatingly violent, and his day-to-day was interacting with coworkers studying medical anatomy and watching videos of slaughtered animals. That can't be good for anyone. I guess what I'm asking is: should leftists see this as harmless fun, or something problematic? And, will photo-realistic Fatalities exist in the communist future?

... and the whole expansion is a poison swamp?? Jk, although From Soft should just commit to the bit and troll us all.

(If you're not on twitter, good for you, and you can ignore this). For everyone else: What's the deal with this annoying turbo-lib, Will Stancil? I don't know if this guy is getting DNC money or what. But he seems to be everywhere in "the discourse" now, quibbling about rent, inflation, wages, and line graphs. His message is that the left's pessimism is not commensurate with the reality of Bidenomics, and that economic conditions are good, actually. His logic is to then support the Democrats, who are looking out for us.

I keep seeing responses to his posts that say he has read the graphs wrong, that they're misused, and that he ignored other--more damning--graphs, etc. He then replies by saying it's his critics, in fact, who've misread the graphs (which is happening in a current fight he's in with Nate Silver lol). But my question is: a small uptick in wage here, a small drop in inflation there, maybe ketchup is cheaper... isn't this all moot anyway? We know that capitalism and imperialism form labor aristocracies at one pole and slums at the other pole, and that sure, wages can go up, but as Marx says in Capital, "the profit of capital rises disproportionately faster."

So something can be subjectively true and objectively false at the same time. Wages go up, but the whole system is rigged against us proles. If you miss the big picture as Stancil does, then you're left ignoring the vast disparities in wealth that capitalism has wrought. I mean, fuckin' a, even mainstream news reported that the ten richest people doubled their wealth during COVID. It's been known that there's something like $15 trillion stored in offshore bank accounts, untaxed. Meanwhile there is something like 1 billion people consigned to live in slums around the world. Anyway, I'm just irked by the dude and wondered why (a) he wasn't getting ratio-ed on twitter, and (b) no one was making this bigger picture argument about wealth disparity--at least that I noticed. Most of the dunks were limited to his misinterpretation of data.

The content of CushVlogs often veers into religious commentary (the most recent one especially). Why do you think Matt is so invested in it? I'm wondering if it's due to one or more of the following reasons: Americans are uniquely religious, so trying to divine anything about their politics requires interpreting their faith. Or: Part of being a revolutionary is believing in a prophecy that an ultimate goal will be achieved one day--a goal there's not much concrete evidence for--and in this way the revolution is faith based. Or: Studying religion comes with the territory of being a history buff (things like Luther and the Hundred Years War midwifing capitalism onto the world stage, etc). Or: Matt is obsessed with his mortality and is more and more curious about the big "Why are we here" questions. The reason I ask is because I don't hear much analysis of religion in left spaces now, and I think there's somewhat of a vacuum left by the Bush-era /stem cell-era libs who would call out jesus camps, televangelists, and mega-churches. (Like, that part of the culture war was deemed over by 2008-09)

Some guy will post a picture of a pretty standard looking pepperoni pizza and say: "Imagine not living in new york." And then there's the whole bodega discourse, which is also funny. "For you non-new yorkers, let me explain: a bodega is not a corner store. It's a place where you can buy gatorade, toilet paper, AND eggs." Thank you sir for explaining that to a slack-jawed yokel such as myself.