We got that one in Germany as well

I’m sorry, but these protests are going to far! That was a perfectly fine soup!

I don’t think that’s how it goes, either. I mean sure, for Pride Month all the corpos glam on to it to market their stuff “to the gays” and there is the odd product line designed for them as well. But I’m pretty sure nobody is adding gay characters to video games, shows or movies, because the market research shows that it’s popular now. It’s still quite the opposite.

Companies would still rather have nothing that could be seen as “controversial” in their products, with the odd exception that wants to be controversial. Games, shows, movies are made by creative people and among them are and have always been queer people. They have always been pushing for representation. Over time this pushing of the envelop as well as social movements lead from characters that can be read as queer (mostly villains, though), to clearly queer coded (still mostly villains) to finally openly queer characters (only villains and side characters). Only in the last decade it has become acceptable to have openly queer main characters in media. Not because marketing pushed for it, or because it’s trendy, but because queer people exist and they also work in media and they write their experiences and it has now become socially acceptable enough for them to get a little representation in mainstream media as well.

In my opinion the reason why “queer” seems “trendy” and everything seems “woke” and “political” is because we are still so used to the conservative, status quo, straight white guy/girl media that anything outside of that sticks out like a sore thumb. And, as they say, the nail that sticks out gets hammered down.

…because they know how to swear in Russian?

I just realized I didn’t respond to your hearing issues: I generally don’t think that these would be a problem for learning martial arts. Of course it depends on your teachers teaching style, but generally they show you what to do and that is the most important part. They might have a metaphor or say for how long the next training sections go, but if you can read lips, you should be fine. The essential stuff you can only learn by watching and doing it yourself.

At first it’s hard to follow what’s being demonstrated, but you will get better at that fast. The beginning is always hard and you will feel like you’re slow and clumsy and stupid, because everybody else doesn’t seem to have trouble. That is completely normal and everybody there knows it, so don’t worry! As soon as you’ve had more practical experience your mirror-neurons will help you translate what you see into what you need to make your body do.

Also if you let your teachers and training partners know you’re hard of hearing, I’m sure they will be happy to accommodate. Everybody is there to improve and help others to improve as well. If they aren’t, that’s a huge red flag. Go find a better gym.

I trained Aikido for 10+ years, but that’s now also 10+ years ago. Aikido used to be pretty well regarded and was hyped for some years thanks to being featured in martial arts movies and Steven Seagal in particular. Unfortunately, with MMA fights becoming popular, people realized that a lot of “traditional” martial arts where more art than actual fighting. Over time Aikido became a laughing stock among martial arts enthusiasts. This process was again helped by Steven Seagal, who -as the defacto face of Aikido to the rest of the world outside japan- just got more and more ridiculous and heinous in his statements and actions.

This is all very unfortunate, because Aikido is a really fascinating and cool looking martial art. To this day a lot of the throws in action movies (for example in the John Wick franchise) are actual Aikido techniques. (Some traditional Ju-Juitsu practitioners might argue that it’s actually JJ, because Aikido has adopted a lot of techniques from JJ and Judo, but I would disagree, looking at the way they are applied. In the end that’s just a nerd argument either way.)

Aikido was developed by Morihei Ueshiba, a man with a fascinating history! It grew with his physical, spiritual and philosophical development from a straight forward, practical combat system (at the time called Aiki-Jutsu) into a non-violent, spiritual martial art (then called Aikido). One of the reasons there are very different kinds of Aikido practiced today, distinct in how violent and spiritual they are, is that their masters studied at different times under Ueshiba, who continually became softer and more spiritual with his age. However, although developed decidedly after the time of the Samurai in Japan a lot of the techniques still focus on disarming people carrying swords or reversely focus on attackers trying to prevent you from drawing your sword. This means most of the attacks trained in Aikido are people grabbing your wrist and then not letting go, which looks weird if there is no sword. This also limits the practicality. Towards the end of Ueshiba’s life his focus was not to teach a system to defend yourself anymore. His goal was to unite the world spiritually through Aikido, literally. He sent his top students out into the world often in countries, which languages they don’t even speak, to teach and spread Aikido. Not to gain money or fame, but genuinely to make the world a better place by helping people to spiritually grow through the practice of Aikido.

What and how Aikido is practiced varies depending on the style and your teacher. It goes the extreme from what is called practical Aikido, which is still dedicated to self-defense, to styles that are practiced solo in the form of Katas, resembling what you might see from Tai-Chi or Qui-Gong practitioners in the park. Generally, it is practiced in pairs with a so-called “cooperating” opponent (as opposed to an “resisting” opponent as would be usual for Ju-Juitsu). Actually, in Aikido we don’t speak of an opponent. There is only a “giving”/“throwing” and a “receiving”/“getting thrown” partner, because Aikido is supposed to be peaceful. I’ll still call it opponent or attacker here, though.

The central idea of Aikido is to embrace and merge the attackers energy with yours and then redirecting it without harming anyone, breaking only the attackers balance and/or throwing them. This is of course a very high-level goal. Basically you’re trying to skip all the nitty-gritty, violent, messy fighting (that Ueshiba did learn and teach extensively back in the day) and concentrate on the end goal of non-violently dissolving confrontations. Assuming that with enough training this goal can be reached, it means you will not be able to use most of what you practice in a real-life fight until you pretty much have “mastered Aikido”. Then you will, supposedly, be at such a level that you can defend any attack peacefully. Most Aikido practitioners are wise enough not to test this out, mostly because they prefer peace and harmony and aren’t training to prove anything. Most Aikidokas I know are training to better themselves, but there will always be exceptions. The teachers I’ve trained under did not make Aikido out to be about self-defense at all. When questioned by new students they usually say, that it might help you a little, but this is not what we train here.

Practicing Aikido will help you get in better shape, improve your health and especially your balance. Aikido practice will teach you how to properly roll and fall, which -at least where I live- will come in handy much more often than fighting skills. It is also a lot of fun to practice and it looks cool. Most schools will also train with wood swords (Aiki-ken) and short staffs (Aiki-bo). This all will be especially cool, if you’re into Japan, because Aikido is very much a traditional Japanese martial art, even though it is rather young, so we’re basically cosplaying as Samurai while training.

The best advice I can give you for selecting a martial art and gym is this:

• It is almost more important who you train with and under than what you are training. Try out every gym and see if you like the people and vibe there.
• Pick something that’s fun. Otherwise you will have trouble going regularly and making progress. If you don’t do it for fun, you will most likely quit the first time you encounter resistance or stop making fast progress
• Pick a gym that’s easy to get to, because having to travel a long time will make it harder to stick with it
• Prepare your training bag and put it besides your door so you just have to pick it up and go. This will make it much easier to go, when your motivation is low

I’m all for suing, but this is the worst kind of video. Vertical, with minimal information and no sources. There is no reason this should be a video 👎

Threads (1984) by Mick Jackson

Not sure who recommended it to me, but IMDB says its about “[t]he effects of a nuclear holocaust on the working class city of Sheffield, England and the eventual long-term effects of nuclear war on civilization.” Didn’t have a lot of motivation to seek it out, but it has great ratings. Top review says “Very few films have the ability to suck the life out of a viewer and leave them feeling drained and shaken in quite the same way that this does.” Yeah, so I’m not sure if I will ever be in the mood for that to be honest.

Second monitor and huge mousepad

We got similar stats here in Germany.

Not surprising to be honest, but considering how much fear mongering the right does about antifa and climate “terrorists” a good reality check.

Don’t get the down votes. That was a fun video 🤷

Yeah, it kind of does. What made me think ChatGPT were the many awkward word repetitions that I don’t think non-native speakers would do:

“The world of anime has explored several genres and the Cyberpunk genre is one of the popular ones.”

There are more examples in the video. For example repeating the name of the show in 2-3 sentences in a row. I don’t think anyone would naturally write that, even as a non-native speaker. The sheer amount of videos the channel pumps out made me suspicious as well, but ultimately I don’t know…

Cool recommendations, but the video sounds like it was written by ChatGPT. Just read the video description:

Remember the times when you were forbidden from watching anime and you could not understand what the fuss was all about? Well, a first glance might give the feel that it is just a regular cartoon but many a times, the Japanese counterpart dealt with some deep, dark, and adult subjects. The nature of anime has always been more serious and although there were some anime for kids as well, most of the content was for a mature audience.

The world of anime has explored several genres and the Cyberpunk genre is one of the popular ones. As a subject that concerns some dystopian futuristic elements, it involves concepts of artificial intelligence and advanced technologies. They give importance to the visual aesthetic and primarily focus on the theme of ‘high tech and low life’. We can see a lot of Cyberpunk anime emerging every now and then but they cannot match up to the classics of 80’s and early 90’s. We have avoided popular anime in this genre like Ghost In The Shell, Akira and Bubblegum Crisis, because we wanted to cover a bit more underrated stuff. So let’s begin!

Honestly, the whole channel looks a bit sus.

Here is a way more in depth (and well written) video essay by STEVEM covering most of these Anime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbE9LqPULZY

Same

There is already a bit of good advice what to do, here is what not to do: You already wrote that you don’t think you have what it takes for it, but I want to stress: Don’t try to make money as an online creator, on Etsy or similar. Basically everything popular with a low entry threshold is overcrowded and will only pay out if you put in massive amounts of time and effort AND are very lucky. GoFundMe is similar, it’s probably not worth the effort if you don’t already have a big reach or good hook.

You could try OnlyFans with a clever approach. Don’t go for the obvious. Think feet or worn underwear. Alternatively you can go donate blood and plasma in some places for money. You can sell your hair if you keep it in good condition. In general I’d say get scrappy: Food stamps, discounts, free wifi only, decrease your spending wherever you can. And keep looking for better jobs. There is always a better job somewhere.

When you’re living in a corporate hellscape you might as well be a survivalist. See how far you can take it. If you are dependent on your car for you job, maybe you need to move into your car and get rid of your apartment. Get a gym membership instead for showers. Research living on the street, frugality. There is a lot of valuable information online. You are not the only one going through this.

As for the mental part: Pretend you’re Mad Max. If your survival depends on it, you’re not far off. There is no shame to struggle in the this system. Concentrate on your survival. If you’re at the bottom, you can only go up.

I want to add that the box office income is simply one of the only objective metrics to compare the success of films.

“This is a free country, mate! We’re not in communist China now!” Calm down, mate. You’re in the UK.

But obviously, as insufferable as he is, that is his right. He probably was exactly the right person to really blow this all up. I doubt though that it will actually go anywhere.

There is a lot of confusion around anarchism, because it is a negative description: It’s a collective without leader, without governing institutions. It doesn’t say much about how this collective organizes instead. So you could call the chaotic state after a government coup Anarchy. But that isn’t what anarchists are talking about and I don’t think that is what OP meant either.

Anarchy as a deliberate system is when a group of people decides to work or live together without selecting a leader or any other form of government, instead resolving decisions that affect everyone together. In that sense it is not an interim state, a leadership-vacuum just waiting to be filled. Although of course Anarchy can transition into another system by various means, but so can every other system as well.

I think it is important to add that even though no system is perfect and every system has it’s pros and cons, that doesn’t make them equal. As soon as we define goals, for example equal rights, some systems will be better equipped at achieving those while others might be actively hostile to them.

That is a misconception. Anarchism is a equal distribution of power among all participants. This will not change “naturally”. It can be changed by either efforts from within to establish a single individual or group as a ruler over the rest, or by outside forces. Neither I would classify as happening just naturally.