Hence why I said low tide and zoom out. Right now shit seems like its regressing, BUY WE ARE STILL AHEAD of where we used to be, so the TREND is still hopeful, even if the right now sucks.

tldr; in the immediate present/future things are looking worse, but the overall timeline/trend things are looking and have been getting better

For me its because if you zoom out, the world is a better place to live in now, than it was 1000 years ago. Progress moves in waves, and right now it definitely feels like a significant low tide, but over time the coastline keeps creeping forward.

• Humanity is the only meat eating animal that has significant percentage of its population willingly avoiding eating meat and instead finding ways to obtain essential nutrients without it (need to add that I am NOT one of those animals, I’m personally waiting for lab grown meat before I obstain from death based meat, if I ever do)

• Humanity by and large no longer needs to leave its sick and wounded to die because we invented technology and infrastructure to both heal, and take care of those we cant heal

• We’ve progressed to the point as a species where in order to bring more prosperity to our community, we no longer have to take from other communities, and that wasnt always the case (unfortunately this is only a recent achievement, and as such, not all of our population has adapted to this, hence our current problems)

Here’s a summation from another dutch poster @[email protected] a while back:

I’m sorry, but this is just really kind of disingenuous to start something like this next to a topic such as this. Your experience with one company or something is purely anecdotal and the controversy around Zwarte Piet is also very nuanced to this very day. The kind of nuance someone not from here will not get from a casual google search. For anyone that cares about actually understanding, here’s a rundown:

Many people attributed Zwarte Piet as a fun and good role model for kids, not some kind of caricature clown to laugh at. Literally almost everyone grew up knowing and having a fond enjoyment of Zwarte Piet, like a childhood imaginary friend that always showed up when you needed a smile the most. And that creates a strong desire to set that positivity forth by continuing the tradition. It takes really good reasons to destroy something most people attribute to be part of the greater good of their lives.

We try to understand racism, and strive to effectively reduce it rather than just mindlessly treat symptoms. Many people saw the existence of Zwarte Piet as a way to instill positive experiences to kids who might be isolated from having positive experiences with actual people of color. We know that in part racism comes about from not having enough (or too many bad) real world experiences with people of different skin colors. It is a type of fear of the unknown. As such, this still seems like solid reasoning. (Fun note, rats will also not help other stranger rats with a different fur color to escape even with no direct harm to themselves except when they have already lived alongside aside a rat with that fur color)

Even people of color were not completely on one side, but for the ones that it hurt, it hurt loudly. Black people in the Caribbean (Also part of the Netherlands) still use Zwarte Piet to this day, because they do not care - They do not see the racism in it. Unfortunately there seems to be a correlation between being affected by racism and seeing the racism in Zwarte Piet, as many of us learned as the conversation marched on. And racists definitely did wield Zwarte Piet to make their racism be known. In a world without racism, Zwarte Piet would not be controversial. And many people were not acutely aware of the racism some people of color faced.

The majority has wanted to get rid of it (since about 2018, actually), and most places have more accepted solutions in place now. But this does not mean that many people agree because we think Zwarte Piet is actually inherently racist. It’s because we’ve heard the concerns of people of color and weighed their burden to be more important to relieve than the perceived benefit of tradition and instilling a positive message on people that look different from yourself. It also didn’t help that the vast majority of people that still wanted to overrule those concerns were pretty obviously racist, which pushed even more people over the edge, because we don’t want to hold traditions in place that shield racists and bigots. Some countries could really learn from that.

Dude they even said that Zwarte Pete is being phased out because while Zwarte Pete themselves in the context of only the Netherlands wasnt very problematic, the fact that the world is more globalized and Americans who HAD been hurt by THEIR history of Blackface took precedence over an overall positive tradition for people of the Netherlands. Nuance exists, and American history is not WORLD history

I mean, this person is either a troll or not fully connected to reality sooooo…

and the site/article I grabbed it off of

This isnt going to work though when the PNW is the only inhabitable place on this planet left that has infrastructure though

How high are you?

“Creating art for yourself is a fiction. Doing nearly anything for yourself is a fiction. As much as some feel they prefer to be alone, noone lives in a bubble.”

Damn man, your life must suck if you do absolutely nothing for yourself, I dont really have anything else to respond to this with

"When you talk about barriers to entry for art, you really mean high quality art. "

I absolutely do not, most forms of art takes a shitload of hours invested to start producing anything that doesnt look like absolute garbage, the high quality stuff takes YEARS of investment yes, but even passable quality stuff takes a considerable time investment.

“The barriers to making art have been incredibly low for all of human history if you really are talking purely about the cost to begin making art.”

Which costs are you talking about? Because as I just said, the time costs are huge

“It seems to me you would find it easier to work on your perspective that prevents you from enduring the failure required to learn high quality art than to advise we steal all art globally and historically, combine it into a program using the energy of a large nation, and present it to you at your home over the internet.”

Ah there we go, twisting the wording to make the other side look bad morally. Nothing any of you have brought up I would classify as stealing. Thankfully, since I AM producing my art for myself, I could give a rats ass what people like you think since theres nothing you can do to stop me from making my art.

Once again, art means different things to different people. The process is important to some, but not to everyone. Being able to access creativity has never had fewer barriers to entry which means more people will find enjoyment in it instead of being put off by the previously inescapable barriers. Further, if your creating art for yourself, it shouldn’t matter if the market gets flooded and visibility gets harder. Those things are only important if you are looking to sell, and, well, welcome to capitalism.

Yeah thats fair, I guess my example isnt very comparable to what you’re talking about

Creativity isnt necessarily about skill level though, and while in the past you’ve NEEDED skill in order to fully access your creativity, as technology progresses that becomes less and less true. Different people get different things out of art and creativity, and for me, the final product is a huge part of the payoff for me, and before, for the type of art I like looking at, that would have required a multi year - lifetime investment in order to be able to achieve. Now, my skills in Photoshop alongside Stable Diffusion allow me to collage myself my costume designs in hours, which wasnt even possible for me to achieve previously. Similarly, this tech is likely to snag future people into an art path because they experience the joy of creativity enough that they then decide to learn the skills to bypass the limitations of Generative AI

Counterpoint, image gen ai has afforded me far greater time and ability to access my creativity than I’ve ever had before it. Different people can be creative in different ways, and have different Muse’s for their creativity

lmao

Are you guys playing a bit or is someone gonna link the youtuber for those interested?

edit: I’m an idiot, ignore me

Tbf, Stein’s Gate grabbed a LOT of real world shannanigans to weave into their Science Fantasy plot

Ok Boomer?

Fair enough, it doesnt sound like I’d have any problems with you in particular, not that you need to justify yourself to me

So like, I get that first point, echo chambers arent particularly healthy, but I have two points counter to that

1: The people I’ve decided to shut out arent really driving any real nuanced discussion. Its heavily “America Bad, Russia Good”. Sure we can talk about American Hegemony, but if you want to bring it up in response to Countries seeing one of their neighbors invading another neighbor and seeking military protection from being invaded themselves, yeah no, America wasnt the driving force behind this recent push. Further, it was the most recent ignition of the Isreal Gaza clusterfuck that drove my particular hatred of Tankies. You see enough people cheering on a massacre and you dont really want to listen to them anymore

2: I’m on the internet in my free time, I’m not paid to be here, nor am I here to make the world a better place, my own mental health takes priority over contributing to a more fair and varied discussions, and Tankies are particularly bad for engaging in bad faith discussions and I dont want to get 4-5 comments into an arguement before I realise that half of what a person is saying to me is manipulative bulshit, so if they are showing all the red flags of being a Tankie, I’m just going to remove them from being a problem for my future. I’ve half quit Lemmy about 3 times already because of the extremism present here. I dont particularly want to hang out on r/thedonald to see the rights opinion, I’m not gonna listen to a tankie to try and figure out what a reasonable communist might think

I wonder why its specifically the Countries surrounding Russia. You arent adding anything to my worldview with braindead takes like yours