I’ve mentioned before that my computer is having a bit of a problem with 3D graphics. They run fine most of the time, but then there are bizarre crashes that ultimately stop the whole program from functioning, and even alt-tabbing out takes skill and preparation. I’m guessing it’s a hardware problem, since I’ve done just about anything you can possibly do to the drivers, but what it affects is how textures are displayed. Basically everything gets swapped around in increasingly crazy ways, skin turning to stars, faces appearing on walls, lights turning to text. Sometimes the results are disturbing, sometimes oddly beautiful. Here’s Mass Effect 2 – a game I’m greatly enjoying, by the way – with the view of space replaced by a green eye and a mysterious red circle. I guess Mordin Solus must have been putting something in the water again.

Until then, here’s a video I would like you to watch. I know it’s long, and I know it’s all about economics, but this is crucial information about the world we live in. And even if you disagree with it, it might still get you thinking.

Edit: So you want a better reason for why you should watch this? Jeez, people, whatever happened to curiosity? Just think of how many times a week you spend far more time on utter bullshit. Listening to a speech about economics will definitely be more valuable than that, right?

But let me say a few words anyway. The wonderfully bearded man in this video is Prof. David Harvey, a notable Marxist scholar and one of the best and clearest voices speaking out against capitalism today. And when I say “Marxist” please do not imagine some stereotypical fanatic who cannot see past his own dogma, as the media present anyone who thinks outside the box imposed by their owners. Harvey is a serious thinker who approaches economics scientifically; which, after all, is the point of Marxism. (OK, Marxism is a stupid word, as Marx himself also thought. But Harvey prominently uses Marx in his own work.) Thus Harvey’s arguments are hard to refute – they’re based on the mathematical instability of the system.

This video is just one of many you can find. I am particularly fond of it, however, because it addresses several issues that are rarely mentioned these days. Its demonstration of why capitalism cannot and does not work, while not as detailed as others Harvey has provided, contains many important facts about what’s going on in the world of finance that people simply aren’t aware of; it’s an economic critique, not a moral one, and one which is fairly complex, looking also at what countries like China are doing (and why that won’t work either). It genuinely exposes some of the fundamental mathematical/logical problems of the whole setup; it shows what capitalism does, and why, and makes it self-evident that this logic simply cannot be sustained.

As the title suggests, Harvey also speaks about the end of capitalism. This is particularly interesting because so few on the Left do anymore, and that’s disastrous. One of the biggest problems in the world right now, in my opinion, is that people simply cannot imagine that capitalism could come to an end and a different system could be created; we’ve been conditioned to think it’s impossible, as if capitalism had always existed. Which is, historically speaking, utterly absurd. Harvey addresses this peculiar belief. At the end he also spends a bit of time discussing what kind of system could replace capitalism, and how it might be organized. His suggestions on that matter are excellent and thought-provoking; like Marx, he doesn’t actually demonize capitalism, but believes a great deal can be learned from it.

If all of that wasn’t enough, David Harvey is also immensely likeable and funny, and listening to him is very pleasant. I could listen to David Harvey analyzing Das Kapital just to relax.

I’m serious when I say that you need to watch this. The media never provide us with a real critique of capitalism; sometimes, rarely, we hear someone speak out against one excess or another, but always as if it were an individual crime or mistake, something that can easily be fixed with a law or two. And the alternative we usually get is some kind of anti-modern technophobic bullshit about going and living in the wild, eating tofu and drinking homeopathic cocktails. Thus most people end up thinking that capitalism is immoral but unavoidable, the “only system that works.” But a proper critique shows us that it fundamentally does not; not because bankers are evil, but because of the economic processes that underlie it. And such a critique also allows people to start thinking about real change.

Now you have a vague summary, but you don’t have the actual contents, the actual arguments. You need those. So go watch the video.

(You can skip the introduction.)

…but then I changed my mind.

Links, thoughts, stuff:

• Occupy the first person plural. If you only read one thing on this list, read this one. An excellent piece of writing.
• Anonymous: An ignorant assault on Shakespeare. The WSWS rarely has good film reviews, but if there is one thing that sets my teeth on edge, it’s bullshit like the Shakespeare “authorship question.” And no, I haven’t seen the movie, and you might say I’m strossing, but I don’t think that’s the case here. I can tell you that any movie that claims the Holocaust didn’t happen is crap, and the same goes for any movie that tries to push this long-disproven elitist rubbish on people.
• We attended a presentation of the new Robert Harris book, The Fear Index, featuring the man himself. He was charming and nice and signed Verena’s copy of Imperium.
• I’m currently reading China Miéville’s Iron Council. After Perdido Street Station impressed me with some of its ideas but massively pissed me off with its plot and structure,  this one is a pleasant surprise. I’m not done yet, so there’s still room for a fuckup, but everything I’ve read so far has been much more enjoyable and meaningful.
• I recently read The Alphabet by David Sacks (a book known under a variety of titles). Parts of it were quite interesting, but there was entirely too much repetition, to a large degree because the book originally was a series of newspaper articles. It also contained a number of annoying factual errors, mostly about the pronunciation of words in languages I happen to speak, which unfortunately had the effect of making me question what else might be wrong. Still, if you know nothing about the subject matter (and I happen to know a fair amount, given my general interests and my studies, so I’m probably not the book’s intended audience), you’ll probably find that the story of one of our most important inventions is quite a fascinating one.
• I can’t wait to have a proper internet connection again. This situation has really crippled our ability to work.
• Anne McCaffrey died. I don’t want to be mean about her. I think her books are astoundingly terrible, and sexist to boot. I don’t know what to say without sounding condescending. Verena read her books as a child and thus got into reading, so I can’t say the woman didn’t do any good in the world; inspiring people to read is a great thing. But I still think her writing is terrible.
• The Gnome’s Lair review of Fate of the World is interesting, and mentions something that I think deserves a detailed analysis: the way the climate change situation is often discussed only within the parameters of the current economic and political system, when in fact it is that very system which is causing the problem, or at least making it near-impossible to fix. It’s kind of like wondering how we could get the Nazis to treat the Jews better. By not electing those fuckers, that’s how.
• It’s getting more and more uncomfortable to be Greek in Germany these days. Newspapers raving about “the Greeks,” people casually repeating the most absurd nonsense, and of course everyone having to comment on the situation the moment they realize you’re Greek, as if you were personally responsible for destroying Germany. The other day we were shopping and someone had put up an anti-Greece poster on the wall next to his stall. I never fail to be shocked by how willing people are to be fed the latest scapegoat. Especially in Germany, where they should really know better.
• And in Greece itself, as well as in Italy, we now don’t even need the appearance of democracy anymore, we just switch governments when the markets tell us to. As a friend of mine recently put it to me, “I hate the markets because they made me sympathize with Berlusconi.” Do we really have to keep taking this crap so a few douchebags can keep paying for cocaine and hookers? Our ecocomic system isn’t just problematic, it’s a fucking joke. Does anyone even know what these “markets” are? What do they have to do with the reality of work and production? Nothing, absolutely nothing. We’re shutting down schools to pay for a casino.
• Something more positive from Greece: Greek adventure gaming site Adventure Advocate published an article about me. That doesn’t really counterbalance the whole, you know, destruction of the country by an idiotic international financial elite thing, but it did make me smile, so hey. I was particularly fascinated by the part where my work is categorized into two “phases” (the first being darker and more lonely, the second more open, more satirical and generally more social and colourful) – it may even be true (though I don’t see my work like that), but it’s extremely odd to be talked about in this way. Not bad-odd, just odd.
• Is it just me or does Skyrim have some of the worst voice acting ever recorded? I read various journalists claiming that it all sounded so authentic, so Scandinavian, but… err, what? Is this like that thing where English-speaking people really, really don’t get what German is supposed to sound like? (If you actually speak German, going to the movies can be a painful experience. X-Men: First Class caused a mixture of shock and giggling in the cinema when Kevin Bacon spoke… eh, “German.”) Granted, I’ve only seen the first 30-40 minutes of the game, since my PC is going to hell and I can’t get any 3D game to work without hanging, and no I haven’t bought Skyrim (I’m waiting for the GOTY edition)… but I have seen quite a few NPCs speak, and there is nothing authentic about that shit. In fact, their accents sound half Russian, half Austrian, their pronunciation of names is utterly American, and their children apparently all went to a boarding school in the US. It is, sadly, hilarious. How can a big-budget title like this be so amateurish? And let’s not even mention the writing, which made me groan before the intro was even over. What happened to the people who made something as brilliant as Morrowind?
• I hope you’re enjoying The Oneiropolis Compendium. We certainly are, and while it’s not making us rich, it’s keeping us from starving (literally). If you enjoy the entries, it would be awesome if you could retweet them, share them with friends who might like them, rate them up on StumbleUpon, and generally use the potential of social media to spread the word. Thanks.

Ah, Frankie Boyle. Now there’s a genius.

How did we come up with our latest crazy project? It’s quite simple, really. As our friends will attest to, Verena is an amazing cook, and one thing she’s always said is that cooking isn’t as incredibly difficult as a lot of writers make it out to be. So why not make a fun little show that explains how to cook things from a low-budget perspective? That’s the reality most people face anyway, whether they’re starving artists or not.

We’re just getting started with this, and if this goes well, we’ll expand the show’s web presence as we go. For now, you can visit us on Facebook. Mainly, though, we hope you enjoy our first episode! (And, as usual, spread the word.)

Now go learn how to make bread.

Nope. No philosophy, no announcements. Such things may be posted very soon, but not right now. Right now there is a photo of our cat. And I’m going to bed.

• The Book of Living Magic is completely finished. Currently just waiting for some tester feedback and trying to decide how I will approach sponsorship.
• I finally sent Terry my complete outline for the Nexus City prequel. I’ve already got a ton of notes, so if he likes the general direction of what I’m suggesting, I’ll be able to put together the script rather quickly.
• Speaking of Terry, At a Distance, his game for the No Quarter exhibition, is getting rave reviews.
• Glenn Greenwald is one of the most serious journalists writing today. One of his recent articles: They hate us for our freedoms.
• Johann Hari, another serious journalist, writes about David Cameron’s environmental policy. Worth reading, even if you’re not in the UK.
• The glorious, democratic Greek police force. (requires YouTube login)
• I participated in the comments thread of this article about Greece. It’s depressing to see how widepsread these bullshit ideas about lazy Greeks and their supposedly bloated public sector are. Well, the only thing one can do with these right-wing idiots is fight to create a better world in spite of them.
• Speaking of bullshit, Verena writes about a particularly nauseating variety thereof.
• And finally, to wash away the depression, a very cute snow leopard.