Man, fraggles really do love radish though.

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Don’t know if I’d say “people” want more of this. Me, a nearly middle aged adult does, but the traditional battle system is more than enough for their primary audience who are children.

That sounds fascinating. If I were interested in those shows, where would I start? Are there at least some that are easily listenable to on the open internet?

Sorry for the double reply, but another useful perspective in this is derogation. I often forget this idea because I’m very class minded, but it’s also very important. This is the idea that a culture can be profited off of while simultaneously despising the people that practice it. In practice, this exists as a business around a specific cultural item succeeding specifically because the business is NOT owned/operated by the original cultural group. Some of the best examples of this are around Black American culture in the US. Some cultural products were only valuable AFTER they were owned, operated, and proliferated by White Americans. Which is kinda just Racism Classic™ but allowing certain useful things to cross the cultural line for profits sake.

I think you can apply the socioeconomic and derogation lenses here. Socioeconomically, Japan has been ahead of nearly every other Asian country for a long while, with only places like China and Singapore recently catching up to them. So, I think that makes it feel okay. And derogatively, I don’t think these restaurants are successful because they specifically aren’t being run by Japanese people. So that’s good on the front as well. So I’d say, yeah, overall it feels fine. However, I’m not Japanese and don’t have a wealth of additional context that might provide counter arguments.

The popularization of Black American music is indeed a complex topic in this arena. Like, obviously a lot of cultural outsiders made a lot of money off of the situation, but there were at least some benefits to the arrangement, although whether or not they outweighed the cons is perhaps difficult to say. For example, if outsiders had abstained entirely from profiting, what would have changed? Obviously more of the money made percentage-wise would’ve gone to the owning culture, but would there have been less money overall? Would it have reached the same levels of popularity? If so, it almost certainly wouldn’t’ve happened as quickly, right? These are difficult questions to answer and I’m not educated enough in this area to really offer any. So, while not worth a damn, my gut feelings is that there are at least some strong arguments as to why overall the absence of outsider profiting would’ve been better for the owning culture.

I think academically, derogation is often considered as a component. Like profiting off a culture while simultaneously despising the culture and the people who own it.

The know of cultural ownership is absolutely unravel-able in many situations, just not all. In some situations it’s exceedingly clear and in others, not. I think you’re trying very hard to find hard-and-fast, absolute rules for these situations, but they don’t exist. The keyword is nuance, nuance, nuance. Each situation is different and each situation deserves scrutiny as to whether or not it crosses the line. This is a judgement call made by each and every person.

If you really want me to engage on the specific situation of Tostitos/chips and salsa I will, so you can see the process of my scrutiny.

First, I think that as any item of culture becomes more and more diffused (ethically or not), it’s original ownership becomes diluted. Things that were once appropriation in the distant past, if done today, would not be considered as such as the context around them changes (in a myriad of ways).

So, if Tostitos started as a company today, I’d say making chips and salsa is not appropriation. But, if Tostitos was founded a long time ago, before chips and salsa were a foodstuff ubiquitous across the US and Tostitos was created by one outside of that cultural ownership, then I’d say it likely was appropriation. It also might be fair to argue that in the modern day for Tostitos specifically, “the damage has been done” and there really isn’t much fixing it, so consuming their products isn’t necessarily problematic. But this would be a point as to why identifying appropriation early on and stopping it is especially important.

As to whether I’m part the problem - for Tostitos no, but for other things almost certainly yes. I’m human and I don’t know everything, and I’ve certainly made mistakes in this area, but that’s okay. What’s important is that once I’ve learned something is in fact a mistake, I own up to it and stop making that mistake.

I think each of the described situations has a different specific answer because the topic is nuanced. As stated above, it can sometimes to be messy to say who owns some piece of culture. But beyond that, the most useful tool is an examination of socioeconomic power dynamics.

If there is a cultural group that is poor, and an outsider from a rich/wealthy group commodifies and sells their culture, while giving nothing to those people, you’d probably agree that that’s a shitty thing to do. Their culture obviously had some kind of material wealth value that they received none of.

However, if you take a situation where both parties are well off it seems a lot less shitty. Especially if the cultural group in question is already commodifying and profiting off the same piece of culture.

Absolutely loved the first game. I’m a little biased because it’s one of my favorite kinds of settings, but it’s really good all around. Killer art direction, palpable atmosphere and tension, interesting narrative choices, high level of intrigue, and while the mechanics are pretty simple they are snappy and engaging.

Enjoying other cultures isn’t appropriation. I think the line where it becomes appropriation is profiteering. If you are commodifying and profiting off someone else’s culture that’s pretty shitty. Obviously that’s not a perfectly clear cut line (who ‘owns’ culture?), but it’s a good place to start.

There is a better way! Ranked choice voting means no more voting for the lesser of two evils. Look into fo yourselves and others - vote to change the voting systems near you!

In these cases being granted citizenship for another country means gaining “dual citizenship”, I.E. he’s a citizen of both countries and thus still eligible for presidency in Argentina.

My man! Kindred spirits.

I’ve often that about that if I could design a house, I’d have a room just like this. Like there would be a section of the house that was tower like and the only way to get to the room at the top would be to take an exterior balcony-like-staircase from the second floor to the room in question - the sole room on the “third floor”.

There’s just something about a room like that that makes it fell so isolated, peaceful and serene. And the exterior access makes it feel like a little adventure getting there. Like if the weather were bad you might opt not to go there because it would mean gearing up to make the trip.

Phonograph commits the same sin as every other player in that swipe changes tabs and is therefore a total waste of a premium gesture.

I went into the offline mobile music player rabbit hole recently too. I tried like a dozen and personally I think none of them are sufficient, including Symphony.

The most important functionality for me is queuing e.g. how it works and how easy it is to use and it’s just a horrible experience for virtually every player. So disappointing 😣

“Might be cool”

Neuters negative campaigning, increases political competition, no more lesser of two evils I.e. third parties can win, reduced disenfranchisement reducing influence of extremist and fascist organizations, the list goes on. People actually being able to express their will through the government is the solution to every problem.

And I hate to say it but your support for PSL means nothing, literally zero without something like RCV. So again, if you care about your party, you have to work for RCV or some other improved voting system, or you’ll smugly do nothing for the rest of your political career. It sucks, but it’s reality until we change it.

You’re way better of spending your time and effort getting ranked choice voting implemented. Then this candidate you support would actually have a chance of getting elected. And with the increased power over our government, stopping the next genocide in it’s tracks would be trivial.