Power lies where men believe it lies

— George Martin

Go go gadget archive.ph[1] !

No luck.

Say what you will about Disney, they know how to make a theme park experience.

The only Disney park I’ve been to is Hong Kong. And to be honest, it was a very subpar experience. Much worse than the other parks I’ve been to like Movie World & Dreamworld in Australia, or Lotte World in Korea.

So the studio decided to just pretend that everyone wants more, and the entertainment media repeats it so the studio stays happy and tells them things.

I think you just described a non-political example of manufactured consent.

First, to clear up, I understood that you meant that “capitalism can (sometimes) profit without exploiting workers”

So to be clear, I absolutely was not saying that. Almost by definition, capitalism requires exploitation. I’m not sure I agree with the Marxist point of view of the labour theory of value that labour is the only thing that provides value (because it seems obvious to me that capital does provide value—I think there was a great video from Unlearning Economics on the subject), but I do agree that when workers don’t own the capital, their labour is going to be exploited and the surplus value extracted.

If you could provide an example where there is profit without exploitation of worker

Because of the example I described earlier. I could run a business consisting only of myself, and still theoretically have a profitable business.

By extension, it should be possible (maybe in a worker-owned co-op) for multiple workers to work in a business which is also profitable. Maybe they decide to spend that profit on bonuses for each other; maybe they invest it back into the business by buying more capital to make themselves more efficient. Maybe something else. But the point is that workers don’t have to be exploited for profit to exist.

I didn’t like the art style of the cartoon

Hard to say much about that. If you don’t like it, you don’t like it. Personally, with the exception of a few moments where it goes “all anime” (because personally, I cannot stand anime, and have never found a single anime show that I could stand to watch for very long, in part because of the preponderance of ridiculous over-the-top reactions)

I find Avatar to be one of the most beautifully-animated shows out there. Especially in moments like the climax of Crossroads of Destiny or during the Last Agni Kai.

the movie cut out what amounts to about 11 hours of padding

This I could not disagree with more strongly. And I don’t think this is opinion, but pretty solid fact. There’s a little padding for sure, but on the whole Avatar is an incredible example of how to do serialised storytelling well. With very little exception, every episode makes some major steps towards advancing the main story, deepening the characters, or deepening the worldbuilding to help heighten the stakes. Usually at least 2 of the 3. The first season is definitely the worst in this regard with episodes like The King of Omashu (which adds some worldbuilding that is important later, but is otherwise not a brilliantly-utilised episode), The Great Divide (an infamous joke within the community), and The Fortuneteller (whose only real redeeming quality is its role in effectively kicking off the romance arc). But in a 20-episode season, and for a show where this is the worst season, that’s a pretty damn good record.

but I think the point of their spirits being broken is even more pronounced when they’re literally on ground

That’s something that could be a good point, but the movie doesn’t really do anything to show why their spirits are broken.

The episode does a great job of this, by showing that even once Aang provides them with coal to earthbend, they are too broken to take it up right away. In the movie the prisoners outnumber their guards, and always have done, and there’s nothing stopping them using their powers whatsoever, either in theory or in the narrative.

And in fact, I think when it’s one smallish scene within a much larger movie, it’s always inevitably going to be hard to adequately “show, don’t tell” why the prison is able to break their spirits despite being surrounded by earth. So ironically, this is something that, if they wanted to do it, a longer runtime in a show is what could have made it work.

I watched that episode just for Sulu voicing the bad guy

It really does have a spectacular voice cast. Outside the core cast, Mark Hamill, René Auberjonois, Jason Isaacs, and Clancy Brown are also among those really worth mentioning.

Ok I’m trying to be as open minded as possible here, but…how?

Well, there’s Sully, and, uh… Well the blue people are called the Navi, does that count?

It didn’t help that it came out around the same time as the ATLA movie.

There is no movie in Ba Sing Se.

There also is no live action TV adaptation.

Pretty sure it now has a theme park or something, doesn’t it?

It’s bizarre how much “stuff” there is for the blue people Avatar franchise, considering what a tiny lasting cultural impact the original movie had.

The original movie was an incredible tech demo. It was an utterly forgettable movie. I had no desire to bother watching the sequel.

there was an old redditism that the best way to get off with murder is to use your car

Not a redditism. An urbinist-ism. Reddit had a healthy contingent of urbanists, but you’ll find us here on Lemmy too, over at !fuckcars@lemmy.world, or !urbanism@slrpnk.net. (Or, frankly, because it’s a movement with significant overlap to anticapitalism, just all around the threadiverse.)

And it’s completely true, too. I can easily think of half a dozen cases where someone killed someone else with a car and got away scott-free in my country alone (in fact: with just one exception, the ones that come to my mind are all in my city alone). And only one of those cases even went to court as far as I know.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/threema-the-secure-messenger/id578665578

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.threema.app

ASIO (aus federal police)

I mean, sort of? The Australian Federal Police would be the Australian federal police (the hint is in the name!). But it’s true that ASIO does take on many roles that in America are done by the FBI, while AFP does more typical things associated with policing.

Threema is a good option. Not an easy option, but a good one. It uses the Signal protocol, but your private key stays on your device, and you manaage which users you trust to save their public key for communicating with them yourself, including giving three levels of verification for (1) if it’s a random person and you have no way of verifying who they are, (2) if it’s a person whose ID matches someone in your address book, and (3) if it’s someone you’ve met in person and scanned a verifying QR code.

No, I understand that capitalists exploit labour for profit. I’m not disputing that. I’m disputing the nonsensical claim that profit always comes by exploiting workers, and that in a non-capitalist system there would be no such thing as profit.

Oh right! I’ve actually seen that already, lol. I think it got passed around in my HEMA groups. Does seem a little unfair to lump Lloyd in with the likes of Shad and Metatron, who are both out and proud members of the “anti-woke” alt-right and bordering on Nazis, but on the whole the video does paint him quite fairly, in my view.

Usually, one would make an example of people who caused some harm so that nobody else does the same harm.

What harm was done here? Or, if you prefer: why, exactly, should an example be made here?

I posted a video showing a pretty detailed critique of Lindybeige

Oh, you did? The only links I can find from you are his fire-arrow one and a link to the !nerd_streams@ibbit.at community. Sorry if I missed something elsewhere.

Sure, but the chemical structure of teflon itself is pretty safe and can be easily expelled by the body, which puts it in a whole different category in terms of safety compared to the far more dangerous so-called “forever chemicals” that are produced and released during the production of teflon.