In my lifetime, China lifted 850 million people out of poverty, while the US created one trillionaire. It is clear as day that socialism is the key to our future.
Lo que parece plantearse como una pregunta retórica forma parte de un goteo propagandístico poco sútil. Las preguntas correctas son; ¿Mandarán los ricos a sus hijos a la guerra? ¿Estás dispuesto a que tus hijos mueran por los beneficios de unos pocos?
La IA generativa también le permite al fascismo de mercado tomar venganza contra los artistas e intelectuales, sentir que no los necesita, que los puede sintetizar, que puede tener arte sin artistas y –más importante– pensamientos sin pensar. Por ahí por eso los fascina tanto.
I saw a post on Reddit that said that “The underlying purpose of AI is to allow wealth to access skill while removing from the skilled the ability to access wealth.” And I don’t think I’ve ever seen AI described so incisively.
@xinfolive Ukraine was the capital of global black market arms dealing since the 1990s.
I projected in 2022 we would know when Ukraine had lost by the flooding of NATO supplied weapons into global hot spots and criminal gangs.
Well, here we are.
@IraninIndonesia Why are you guys even taking part in this ??
This is the most shameful and corrupt shitshow in sports history. Not even Hitler dared to do some of the things we're seeing here.
Walk out. Period.
John Cleese is a genius. I will not be one of those who deny the evidence. Monty Python changed comedy forever, and "Fawlty Towers" remains a masterclass in comic construction. His wit, his timing, his ability to dissect the absurdity of social conventions are beyond dispute.
That said, the fact that someone is brilliant does not grant them a perpetual moral pass. Nor does it immunise them against criticism. And here is where Cleese, the iconoclast who mocked every established power, has become what he used to satirise.
He now spends his days complaining about "cancel culture", "wokes", political correctness. His new show is called "Cancel Me", turning his own supposed victimisation into the centre of his business. But reality is stubborn: Cleese has not been cancelled. He still gives interviews, still fills theatres, still has platforms. What has happened is that he no longer receives unanimous applause. There are people who criticise him, who call him out, who do not laugh at everything he says. And that, in his mind, has become censorship. This is the difference between freedom of expression and impunity of expression. He demands the right to say whatever he wants without anyone being able to respond. That is not freedom. That is privilege.
Schopenhauer, in The World as Will and Representation, defined the technical mechanism of humour as "the sudden perception of an incongruity between a concept and the real objects that have been thought through it in some relation". The comic arises when reality resists fitting into the conceptual box we have prepared for it, when "the identity of the concept is transferred to objects, but later a complete difference of the objects in other respects makes it clearly visible that the concept only fitted them from a one-sided point of view". That is the definition of the joke as a technical artifice, as a piece of intellectual clockwork.
But humour is more than that. Especially the sharp, intelligent humour of Cleese, of Monty Python. Humour is a form of knowledge, a very effective expression of criticism or political positioning, a transgression of the limits of discourse, a re-framing, a release that ultimately expresses a preference. It is not merely "making people laugh with absurdities". That is why it was great. And that is why now that some of those same comedians have become conservative, they pretend that humour is just a game, that there is no message, that it is all a joke. Hiding behind a reductionist view of humour to protect oneself from these deeper dimensions is, quite simply, bad faith. As the Spanish saying goes, between joke and joke the truth peeks out.
And here is the finest detail, the one that betrays the bad faith. Cleese and his ilk practice exactly what they claim to fight against. They mock the "wokes", ridicule them, present them as puritanical authoritarians. They cancel those they consider to have crossed the line. But when someone criticises them, when someone gives back the joke, then they become victims of intolerance. This is the asymmetry of one who wants to hit without being hit back. It does not work like that. Whoever uses humour as a battering ram must accept that others may use the same battering ram against them. Laughter is not a blank cheque. And those who use it to transgress boundaries cannot complain when those boundaries transgress them.
Humour is not something we must all share. What one person finds funny, another finds not funny at all. And I am not saying it should be censored, but one must accept the consequences of others rejecting it. Whoever transgresses boundaries can in turn be transgressed: you cannot laugh at others without expecting them to laugh back at you, or to point out the chip on your shoulder.
The Pythons themselves understood this perfectly. In "The Life of Brian" they decided not to make fun of Jesus. Because what he said was "quite decent". It was not mockable. They knew how to distinguish between the core message and the institutions that had perverted it. They were intelligent enough to know that humour cannot do everything, that if you mock someone who does not deserve it, the joke is not transgressive. It is simply cruel or gratuitous.
One might ask, for instance, would those same Pythons have dared to mock the Parable of the Good Samaritan? That story, after all, is about a member of a despised ethnic group (a Samaritan) who is the only one to help a wounded Jew, while the religious authorities pass by on the other side. In a context where ethnic and racial hatreds are resurgent, where the far right recycles old prejudices about who counts as a neighbour and who does not, that parable is not "material". It is profoundly decent. It cuts against the grain of power. And just as they respected Jesus, they would likely have respected the Samaritan. Not because the story is sacred, but because its substance is, in the Python's own words, "quite decent". It is the opposite of what they now rail against.
Now, some of them complain that you cannot make jokes about anything anymore. But what really bothers them is that certain topics they once considered harmless no longer amuse everyone, and that minorities who previously had no voice now point out why those jokes hurt.
The audience is not a herd of idiots. The audience laughs at what it wants to laugh at. And it does not laugh at what it does not want to laugh at. That is not censorship. That is the sovereignty of the receiver. Cleese can tell his jokes. And others can say they find them in bad taste. Everyone is within their rights. What he cannot do is confuse criticism with cancellation. Because if someone points out that his humour has lost its compass, that it no longer distinguishes between the powerful and the vulnerable, that he has become the grumpy old man at the party... that is not silencing him. It is doing him a favour. Or at least, trying to.
In the end, Cleese's problem is not that the "wokes" have cancelled him. It is that the world has changed, and he has not been able to change with it. His humour, anchored in nostalgia for a consensus that no longer exists, has become predictable. And there is nothing less funny than a comedian who always tells the same joke: the joke about being censored. Between joke and joke, the truth peeks out. And the truth is that Cleese, like so many others, has ended up becoming what he used to satirise: a bitter authority figure who cannot stand being contradicted. And that, for someone so intelligent, is sad. But above all, it is boring. And in comedy, the original sin is not giving offence. It is being boring.
@DonXhimbo@Absalom421 Hawai independiente, que es lo que era antes de los putos gringos le pusieran las zarpas encima. A los putos japos se lo van a dar, lo que les faltaba.