Yes, exactly this. The book by Andreas Malm had a review which read like "this book is less how to blow up a pipeline, and more why to blow up a pipeline", and the movie is working on a metaphorical level to argue the case. You're not meant to emulate it directly.

mmmm Tomacco...

They're using "Mr Kumar" as an example here, but this story goes back a long way. Huge parts of the wealthy northern suburbs, and prime real estate near the most popular beaches in Sydney are held by a handful of people. They bought this property a long time ago, but the "newer" property investors are basically working off that template. You can actually walk around those suburbs and find a bunch of empty properties. They don't care about the rent, they prefer to show as little income as possible. They just want the capital gains when they sell. Often these people are retired and can get significant tax concessions.

The "newer" investors are doing this but with properties which are much cheaper. They do it like a job or a business. It's not healthy for the country either, but it's actually less of a rort than the institutional wealth in this country.

My main issue with it is that everyone is using it to push their own narrative about why the game failed. People doing the "It's a woke game, so it went broke", or "it's a saturated market", or whatever. These are just reactions, not data driven analyses.

Watched this recently. "I'm here to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and I'm all out of bubble gum".

"Are you sure you want me to dress up like Optimus Prime?"

Recently went to India. Pretty far along the energy transition in some ways. E-Autos (tuk-tuks) were semi-common, as were electric buses and cars, and ebikes and e-scooters too. Some places also had e-rickshaws. India is honestly like 90% of the way to being completely Solarpunk.

I think I read it here that this is tied to municipalism, the idea of solving climate problems at the council level where individuals habe some hope of fixing their lived environments.

He's a jerk but he's our jerk.

I think this is how secrets are kept. If they even let a single whistleblower go, then all the secrets of the state are "up for grabs". Courage is contagious, so to speak, so they have to punish it harshly whenever it is seen.

I think this is less corruption and more vanity. There are a lot of charitable organisations out there who will routinely donate over a million dollars. They'll get a hospital wing or entrance or statue or something named after them. I think compared to those charities, open hand is incredibly small.

My guess is their strategy was to do a bulk donation to get some kind of recognition for their mum. They were probably hoping they'd have much larger sums in a shorter time, and then time just kept on going.

The problem is, that would have been fine if it was their money they were doing this with, but they're doing these shenanigans with other people's money, and now open hand is probably done for as a charity.

I think a lot of arguments put money at the root. The point of money is to remove context from the equation. The example is:

• I will bake you a cake because I like you, but
• I will not bake a cake for the king because fuck that guy.
• Oh wait he's threatening to kill me.
• The king is annoyed that he has to threaten to kill everyone all the time.
• King invents money and taxes. Now he only threatens people who don't pay tax
• He has money so he can ask baker to make him a cake.
• Baker now has no option. Money is effectively a proxy to violence
• Baker has to buy cheaper flour from his enemies across the river
• Enemies across the river get flour from slave labour and profit massively
• Globalisation.

So, money is the tool, yes, but it's also how the king can be completely evil and get away with it. Being evil in non-fungible, but you can turn that into money, which is fungible.