josemanuel @josemanuel@qoto.org

@lichess His _Manual of Chess_ is still, in my opinion, the best chess book ever published. It helped me understand and appreciate the game instead of just teaching the rules and a few openings, like most, if not all, the others.

Talent is just the absence of fear.

@LydiaConwell@exile.social The reason politics is always shifting to the right, is that people on the right _hate_ people on the left much more than vice versa.

This is relevant because all politicians are shite, but right-wing people will brush aside their representatives' shortcomings for as long as they manage to keep the left from getting elected.

On our side, on the other hand, whenever we see a candidate betraying their voters, we walk away from them, never to return.

This leads to a very interesting phenomenon: the rise of a right-wing working class, which feels alienated by what they call The Left (which is really just a bunch of center-right liberals who no longer care about working and economic conditions). That's why I always advocate for the real left to reach the working class before their hate for us becomes burned deep in their brains.

So, answering your question, how much of that is due to social media? Well, seeing how those on The Left keep using social media to promote a divisive view of the working class (i.e., not recognising working and economic conditions as the main cause of marginalisation, focusing on race and sexuality instead), I'd say a lot.

Just as the artist is entitled to make art as he feels like it, the audience is entitled to like it or not, but, in both cases, we should be intellectually honest. The artist cannot criticise the audience for not liking his art, and the audience must never dismiss art based on their own prejudices.

An extreme case of this is, of course, Leni Riefenstahl, whose movies were nazi propaganda, but one can't judge them based on that, but on their own artistic merits or demerits.

@LydiaConwell@exile.social It is not. Jonathan Demme felt genuinely distressed by that criticism, because he had always been an ally (on a time when nobody was). Besides, Buffalo Bill is _not_ a real transexual, as Lecter explains. He's just a fucking psycho.

@LydiaConwell@exile.social Only one?

@LydiaConwell@exile.social The movie is not racist. You have to understand that Ford makes you look through the eyes of a racist, but that doesn't mean the movie is or Ford was. (He was beloved by indigenous people. That's one of the reasons he shot at Monument Valley, because he loved the people there.) And even that is not the point. Racism has nothing to do with the movie. Forget about that already. The movie is about someone who, when he finally returns to his family, loses it. He's suddenly left alone, not belonging anywhere. That fills him with rage. You could say racism is a McGuffin here. He could be raging about something else entirely. But the point is that you go through what he's going through. It's the story of a man destroyed by hate.

The genius of John Ford is that, in a modern movie, you would be judging Wayne's character, even if the director said: “I wanted the audience to see the story through the eyes of my psychopathic killer character.” John Ford says: “I don't give a fuck. He's going to be the hero all the way through.”

But, seriously, saying _The Searchers_ is racist is like saying _The Silence of the Lambs_ is transphobic of that it endorses cannibalism.

@swurl The PC in the 80s was a useless piece of metal and much more difficult to configure (I remember needing a professional to make MS DOS work in Spanish. That's where the meme about “not repairing your computer” came from) than a Spectrum, but that's not even the point.

A Spectrum was affordable. In a way, it was the first personal computer. IBM PCs were mighty expensive. You could say sir Clive Sinclair was the real creator of home computing.

Also, a Spectrum (and by Spectrum I mean all Z80-based computers, and even the Commodore and the Amiga) put you in control of your machine, which is what delighted us. The PC demoted all of us to users until Linux appeared. Nobody programmed on a PC in those days. We didn't even know it was possible until the 1990s, and even then only with crap like GW BASIC.

So, yes, if you wanted to use WordPerfect or dBase III, I guess a PC was fine, but if you wanted to do real, creative, amazing stuff with computers, a PC was not the best option.

@coolboymew

@LydiaConwell@exile.social Ok. First of all, you should have started with _The Man who Shot Liberty Valance_, _The Quiet Man_, _Stagecoach_ or _The Grapes of Wrath_, but that aside: you missed the whole point of the movie.

Wayne's character is supposed to be racist. That's what makes the drama. I mean, the Comanches took her niece and killed his family. From his point of view, this is a revenge story. He's so blinded by it that he doesn't even want her back. He's perfectly willing to kill her on sight.

Jeffrey Hunter's character, on the other hand, only wants to find his sister, so, from his point of view, it's a tale of undying hope.

They search for her for years. It's fucking epic.

About the acting: John Wayne was a bad actor, yes. but that's not what matters in movies. What matters is _presence_. Humphrey Bogart or Gary Cooper were also bad actors, but they had an enormous presence on film. That's why they are stars.

Now go finish the movie. Everything gets explained at the end. And stop judging art using those petty standards. Oscar Wilde would be so ashamed of you.

And sorry for my tone, but I'm mad at you. You don't have to like it (it's not my favourite Ford movie, either), but you should have at least recognised it greatness.

@mrsaturday See my “etc.” at the end of the non-exhaustive list or architectures.

The chan poster derided Amigas, too, if I understood him correctly. Maybe not the Commodores, given that they came from the US, but these had two things against them: they were more expensive (thus most people n Europe prefering a Spectrum or an Amstrad) and not interoperable, like the MSX, which was more of a Z80-based standard.

What I'm saying is that Commodores were for rich kids, basically. Most people didn't have them here.

@coolboymew

@fluidlogic To me, it was the MSX2, but I'm biased, because that's what I grew up with. That said, I could compare it with the Spectrums and the Amstrad CPC, and I still stand by my Philips VG-8235.

@coolboymew Burgerlanders would never understand the happiness of having a cheap home computer that was designed, not only for playing, but also for learning and tinkering. Most of us discovered the pleasure of computer programming and electronics thanks to the Spectrums, Amstrads, MSX, etc.

Also, having a whole ecosystem of microcomputers, as opposed to today's PC/Mac monopoly, lead to the publishing of technical books and magazines where you could learn more about your systems and get in touch with other fans.

It is my belief that the PC becoming the dominant architecture is responsible for us not having flying cars today, as we were promised, but a fuckton of js frameworks instead.

@euklidiadas Ya contarás qué tal. Mucho ánimo.

I've criticised Evan in the past, but this seems to me like a pretty good idea.

@euklidiadas No sé cómo será el libro, pero el título es horrible. Parece salido de la mente enferma de un experto en SEO.

@realcaseyrollins
> Why should it be taught in schools though? Neither of us are pretending that schools should be teaching every single fact of life, I am sure.

Of course not. Only the ones that are needed for being a fully functioning human living in an open society. I assume we both agree that sex is one of those.

> Interesting, since I believe that you also said that sex education should be “sex positive”

Yes, positive in the sense of Positivism, but also as in something to be celebrated and not shameful. (This derives from it being a fact of life. Should anyone be ashamed of being bound by the laws of gravity?)

One of the saddest things anyone can do on social media is announcing that they're blocking someone. The other is thinking that being blocked by others is a badge of honour.

@realcaseyrollins Well, sex is a fact of life, and facts should be taught objectively, which is what schools are all about.

If you want to teach morals, that's another thing entirely, but confusing the two leads to learning neither, as the meme showed.

@SirBemrose

@realcaseyrollins Because, as the meme proved, people don't know the literal first thing about it. And they should, if only to avoid looking like idiots on the Internet.

@SirBemrose

@Kyrylys
> no pongas en mi boca palabras que no he dicho

Dijo la persona que puso unas cuantas frases en boca de universitarios que han realizado un estudio científico (y de los que están de acuerdo con sus conclusiones). Si tanto te molesta, no lo hagas tú.