Comicfury is alright for indie mirroring, spiderforest is a good collective i personally enjoy, but a comic’s own website is usually the best.

I felt the same way. I would liken it to the author technically living in the same city, but they were describing the other side of it and mistaking their small sphere and local description for the rest of us in that city. Their idea of the art world was similar yet very foreign. A few proverbial landmarks could be seen from both our relative places, but they lost me with their inaccuracies so their critiques and conclusions didn't land.

Art has already been industrialized. Content, which is the only thing AI can make, is not all of art. Art and the creative fields are part of an evolutionary survival strategy to impart experiences to others. If you've ever wondered why the Greeks had only two genres, Drama and Tragedy, it is because Drama was about helping people navigate the world, and tragedy was a warning of what not to do and why. So if class consciousness will help people the most, then the most substantial form of art will pass that experience along (e.g., Social Realism). Modern narratives are mainly content—and we can see that they are unsubstantial because they are "just entertainment" (Fun fact: American films had their right to free speech revoked in 1952 for this reason). They exist for profit. Art is much more than that, and if art helps us, the working class, better navigate life with experiences we don't yet have, I would argue such art is inherently revolutionary. That is why the ruling class can't make new stories; they only make entertainment and content, lest they risk imparting valuable lessons to the working class. And yes, this is a summed-up version of a fascinating thread of soviet art philosophy but one that the author of that article has either never encountered or has a more limited audience (i.e. western lib artists) the article is applying to than let on in the preamble.

Oh this takes me back. We used to play everyday before school. Its a classic

No DEI in games is how you get unmodded Rome 2. I ain’t going back to that!

;)

Isn't this the plot of A CHRISTMAS CAROL?

Of a strictly ML nature, not many immediately come to mind. We have the Socialist Realism movement, but it is often examined through a western lens, which loses much of its nuance unless the audience is well-versed in art history. A few speeches by important figures touch on art and it's purpose, but rarely in a way that would help us construct better, more engaging stories. But all this was also the problem identified. We don't have a strong tradition to compete with capitalist media and their methods of confining stories to mere, and often shallow, entertainment. And what examples I have stumbled across, such as Han Qixiang, I'm not fluent enough in the language or culture to delve into their work as much as I'd want for contextual analysis to really comment or advocate from. And Western works, usually more hidden in history (pockets of French and German expression), such as Walter Benjamin's DER ERZAHLER, I should probably re-visit before fully recommending since the last time I read through it I was only a baby commie.

The best Martial Art is whichever one you would enjoy doing the most on a regular basis.

At the end of the day, it's mostly going to be about exercise and not being a badass or even self-defense. The best thing you can do when faced with danger is to get out of that situation. Most martial arts will not help you a great deal except keep you calm and rational. If someone has a gun, there is no way to remove the chance it will go off, even with a disarm (and that is unsafe for everyone around you). If someone has a knife, there's almost certainly going to be blood no matter how good you are—although you might not feel it until the adrenaline and blood loss kick in. And that's without getting into, even if you win the hypothetical fight, knowing what constitutes legal self-defense before, during, and after the fight to ensure you were within those bounds. These aren't an "always" thing, but most of the time what you get out of MAs is more on the mundane side. Get into a martial arts because it's something you enjoy, you want the exercise, becoming more comfortable in your body and how it moves, and you want to improve your discipline. And learning how to break fall—that will help you more than anything else because falling can happen anywhere, not just in a fight.

Personally, I do HEMA (Historical martial arts; primarily sword fighting) and traditional archery, because those are what I enjoy and their relevant to a lot of the illustrations and creative endeavors I do. I've dabbled in others MAs and there are fun techniques, but I keep coming back to those practiced in the past (mainly European but will reach into as many regions as I can get my hands on) when it comes to my time and money....even if that means having to workshop how they may have worked in their historical context (because for some of them, we just don't know). Just have realistic expectations with what you choose.

I didn't even know that was an instance. I saw someone else post the link a while back and saw lemmy was blocked by a bunch (must have been before lemmygrad was blocked by that particular one?). Good to know!

You can see a map of the 'verse here - https://lemmymap.feddit.de/ And can check the blocked box to see who has blocked who