#corporate american hellscape

[mbrainspaz]

The thing about our american capitalist system as it stands is that there is a giant fucking Murder Axe swinging back and forth over all of us, and you don't ever see it unless you're unfortunate enough to fall into the axe pit. Sure, sometimes heads went missing but that was just the world you lived in. Then one day you got a chronic illness and lost your job and your housing and suddenly THERE'S THE AXE COMING TO KILL YOU. You dodge for all you're worth. Again and again. And you don't know how you were ever blind to it. Even if you survive long enough to crawl back out of the pit you can never unsee the Murder Axe. You arrive back in normal society only to realize everyone around you worships the Axe.

#capitalism #late stage capitalism #corporate american hellscape #personal trauma #end capitalism before it ends us

[bongosinferno]

A devastating and confusing thing about the Fallout setting, when you explore the pre-war aspects, is what the creators think about pre-war America. In the first games we only get hints of the pre-war world, but they seem to be some sort of wild fascist nation invading Canada. In Fallout 1, the first thing we're introduced to of the pre-war society is seeing a soldier shoot civilians and laughing.

Now, for the first 2 games and New Vegas we don't really know much. What we know is that there's a fascist military group known as the enclave who were a sort of US deep state even before the war, and that the government teamed up with corporate interests to preform vaguely MKULTRA-ish experiments with the Vaults. Basically, the government was an extreme version of the 50s American jingoism and McCarthyism.

This is well and dandy, I guess issues come up more when we get to the later games, especially 4, where it seems like none of this extreme plotting and societal civil unrest which would exist is seen. The society as presented in 4 also seems quite progressive, gay people are featured in the opening, and none of the baggage of say, civil rights not existing are included. Now on a baseline, I don't want settings to be more conservative, homophobic and sexist etc., but it becomes a very confusing setting when it's displayed both as this jingoist extreme thing with fascist tendencies aswell as a progressive place where everyone is seemingly equal. If you're focusing on the 50s as your setting, and American nationalism in the 50s, then you can't have McCarthyism spoofs and anti-communism as a societal paranoia norm while also general equality is the norm without misunderstanding why McCarthyism and nationalist jingoism is bad. A massive harm done in anti-communist paranoia is how it degrades and vilifies any progressive movements (women's rights, civil rights, homosexuality) as being morally un-American and therefore connected to communism. To ignore this just makes any critique of MacCarthyism and jingoism weird!

Basically, pre-war America in Fallout 4 becomes this both sides thing where America is both pure and equal and white fences in every instance that we see as the player (the intro), while also supposedly being this dystopic MacCarthyist hellscape that's broadcasting gladly about their war crimes in Canada, and wants to root out communism. I guess the only fix for this issue without getting into the fine print like they had to do is just not to focus too much on the pre-war world.

#fallout #fallout 1 #fallout 2 #fallout 3 #fallout 4 #fallout new vegas #fo1 #fo2 #fonv #fo4 #I'm almost half-way through the show #it suffers from this too but whatever I'm just going to count it as it's own thing #it gets a pass or whatever. telling a video game story and telling a tv-series is completely different #they can do what they think is useful. #We see a bit of what the I'm talking about in New Vegas with mr house being able to be that rich etc #but new vegas cares more about the fallout of Fallout 2 + new ideas than some pre-war America. The most we get is like Poseidon energy and #Raul. but Raul doesn't really care that much about the details of the past world #his life seems pretty normal. it's not that important. #dead money and owb did this like... Okay. wasn't too bad it was fine. I don't like those DLCs too much. Dean Domino is whatever

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Washington State's capital gains tax proves we can have nice things

Today (June 3) at 1:30PM, I’m in Edinburgh for the Cymera Festival on a panel with Nina Allen and Ian McDonald.

Monday (June 5) at 7:15PM, I’m in London at the British Library with my novel Red Team Blues, hosted by Baroness Martha Lane Fox.

Washington State enacted a 7% capital gains tax levied on annual profits in excess of $250,000, and made a fortune, $600m more than projected in the first year, despite a 25% drop in the stock market and blistering interest rate hikes:

https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/06/01/lessons-from-washington-states-new-capital-gains-tax/

Capital gains taxes are levied on “passive income” — money you get for owning stuff. The capital gains rate is much lower than the income tax rate — the rate you pay for doing stuff. This is naked class warfare: it punishes the people who make things and do things, and rewards the people who own the means of production.

The thing is, a factory or a store can still operate if the owner goes missing — but without workers, it shuts down immediately. Everything you depend on — the clothes on your back, the food in your fridge, the car you drive and the coffee you drink — exists because someone did something to produce it. Those producers are punished by our tax system, while the people who derive a “passive income” from their labor are given preferential treatment.

The Washington State tax is levied exclusively on annual gains in excess of a quarter million dollars — meaning this tax affects an infinitesimal minority of Washingtonians, who are vastly better off than the people whose work they profit from. Most working Americans own little or no stock, and the vast majority of those who do own that stock in a retirement fund that is sheltered from these taxes.

(Sidebar here to say that market-based pensions are a scam, a way to force workers to gamble in a rigged casino for the chance to enjoy a dignified retirement; the defined benefits pension, combined with adequate Social Security, is the only way to ensure secure retirement for all of us)

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/25/derechos-humanos/#are-there-no-poorhouses

Washington’s tax was anticipated to bring in $248m. Instead, it’s projected to bring in $849m in the first year. Those funds will go to public school operations and construction and infrastructure spending:

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/was-new-capital-gains-tax-brings-in-849-million-so-far-much-more-than-expected/

That is to say, the money will go to ensuring that Washingtonians are educated and will have the amenities they need to turn that education into productive work.

Washington State is noteworthy for not having any state personal or corporate income tax, making it a haven for low-tax brain-worm victims who would rather have a dead gopher running their states than pay an extra nickel in taxes. But places that don’t have taxes can’t fund services, which leads to grotesque, rapid deterioration.

Washington State plutes moved because they relished living in well-kept, cosmopolitan places with efficient transportation, an educated workforce, good restaurants and culture — none of which they would have to pay for. They forgot Karl Marx’s famous saying: “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

The idea that Washington could make up for the shortfalls that come from taxing its wealthiest residents by levying regressive sales taxes and other measures is mathematically illiterate wishful thinking. When the one percent owns nearly everything, you can tax the shit out of the other 99% and still not make up the shortfall.

Meanwhile: homelessness, crumbling roads, and crisis after crisis. Political deterioration. Cute shopping neighborhoods turn into dollar store hellscapes because no one can afford to shop for nice things because all their income is going to plug the gaps in health, education, transport and other services that the low-tax state can’t afford.

Washington State’s soak-the-rich tax is ironic, given the propensity of California’s plutes to threaten to leave for Washington if California finally passes its own extreme wealth tax.

There’s a reason all these wealthy people want to live in California, Washington, New York and other states where there’s broad public support for taxing the American aristocracy: states with rock-bottom taxes are failed states. All but two of America’s “red states” are dependent on transfers from the federal government to stay in operation. The two exceptions are Texas, whose “free market” grid is one nanometer away from total collapse, and Florida, which is about to slip beneath the rising seas it denies.

Rich people claim they’d be happy to live in low-tax states, and even tout the benefits of a desperate workforce that will turn up to serve drinks at their country clubs even as a pandemic kills them at record rates. But when the chips are down, they don’t want to depend on a private generator to keep the lights on. They don’t want to have to repeatedly replace their luxury cars’ suspension after it’s wrecked by gaping potholes. They don’t want to have to charter a jet to fly their kids out of state to get an abortion.

This is true globally, too. As Thomas Piketty pointed out in Capital in the 21st Century, if the EU and OECD created a wealth tax, the rich could withdraw to Dubai, the Caymans and Rwanda, but they’d eventually get sick of shopping for the same luxury goods in the same malls guarded by the same mercenaries and want to go somewhere, you know, fun:

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/06/24/thomas-pikettys-capital-in-the-21st-century/

We’re told that Americans would never stand for taxing the ultra-rich because they see themselves as “temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” It’s just not true: soak-the-rich policies are wildly popular:

https://balanceourtaxcode.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/WA-State-Wealth-Tax-Poll-Results-3.pdf

The Washington tax windfall is fascinating in part because it reveals just how rich the ultra-rich actually are. Warren Buffett says that “when the tide goes out, you learn who’s been swimming naked.” But Washington’s new tax is a tide that reveals who’s been swimming with a gold bar stuck up their ass.

It’s not surprising, then, that Washingtonians are so happy to tax their one percenters. After all, this is the state that gave us modern robber barons like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. And then there’s clowns like Steve Ballmer, star of Propublica’s IRS Files, the man whose creative accounting let him claim $700m in paper losses on his basketball team, allowing him to pay a mere 12% tax on $656m in income, while the workers who made his fortune on the court paid 30–40% on their earnings.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#economic-substance-doctrine Ballmer’s also a master of “tax loss harvesting,” who has created paper losses of over $100m, letting him evade $138m in federal taxes:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/24/tax-loss-harvesting/#mego

These guys aren’t rich because they work harder than the rest of us. They’re rich because they profit from our work — and then, to add insult to injury, pay little or no taxes on those profits.

Washington’s lowest income earners pay six times the rate of tax as the state’s richest people. When the wealthy squeal that these taxes are class warfare, they’re right — it is class war, and they started it.

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Edinburgh, London, and Berlin!

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/03/when-the-tide-goes-out/#passive-income

[Image ID: The Washington State flag; the circular device featuring George Washington has been altered so that it is now the head of a naked man clothed in a barrel with two wide leather shoulder straps.]

#pluralistic #steve ballmer #irs files #washington state #soak the rich #capital gains #taxes class war #euthanasia of the rentier

[hyperfixationsplz]

(this is an american perspective so i could be trippin but lemme cook)

am i the only one who thought that oliver’s portrayal of poverty was 2D? Like, the moment he claimed to be poor I didn’t believe him. Not only that, but the more he developed the lie about his home life the more in disbelief I was in.

Like, the first time this boy rolled into the mess hall, he looked like someone who worked at Oxford. This is his FIRST semester of college, the FIRST time he’s away from the alleged hellscape that was his home, and he strolls into the courtyard looking like a quintessential academic? Hmm.

And his wardrobe! The plaid button ups and the perfect slacks and his perfectly styled hair—who taught him this look? This generic manifestation of corporate offices and lukewarm conversations. His parents are drug addicts, his father a drug dealer—who taught him how to dress, and more importantly, why this sort of dress would be important in a setting like college?

Oliver never gave poor boy from a broken home to me. Even before the movie confirmed my beliefs, I thought Oliver Quick was an example of middle class psychopathy/sociopathy. Think Ted Bundy, the BTK killer, John Wayne Gacy. Men who lived relatively stable, middle class lives before turning into some of the most infamous serial killers in America.

#saltburn #oliver quick #felix catton

[episodeoftv]

Round 1 of 8, Group 8 of 8

propaganda and summaries are under the cut (May include spoilers)

Twin Peaks: 3.08 The Return, Part 8 (Gotta Light?)

Gotta light?

Part 8 is easily the grandest, most horrifying, most expansive, and most beautiful episode of television to ever grace the screens. If David Lynch has spent his career peeling back the surfaces of quaint towns to explore the roots of evil in humankind, this is where he puts all of his cards on the table. Broken into five more or less distinct parts that seem to have nothing to do with each other but really have EVERYTHING to do with each other, Lynch and Frost take us to the very edges of the world: a '40s New Mexico desert is cracked open by an atomic bomb shot greater than that of Oppenheimer from where a great evil is born; a wailing, lonely rock anthem is performed on a roadhouse stage; a doppelganger is shot in the wilderness and revived by soot-covered, shadowy woodsmen that smear his blood over their semi corporeal, tv-static-like bodies; a woman and a giant listen to distorted jazz and watch the White Sands test from some liminal netherworld; a woodsman terrorizes a '50s town and repeats some truly terrifying dialogue while a pair of sweethearts share a chaste kiss. All of this, in black and white and near silence. Part 8's expressionistic, utopian hellscape escapes all genres and narrative confines, even that of the surreal. There is nothing like this episode to haver ever existed before, and it's unlikely there ever will be again.

Yellowjackets: 2.06 Qui

TW for cannibalism, stillbirth, and cops

Trapped inside on a snow day, the Yellowjackets revisit the highlights, humiliations and traumas of Health Class. Tai and Van help each other rewind, while Misty explores joining a classic Cosmic American tribute band.

Sure, Yellowjackets isn't over, and I actually have no doubt that the show has yet to deliver its best episode. But this one is a heartwrenching look at Shauna's relationship with motherhood and loss and trauma in the face of two extremely difficult circumstances at two different points in her life.

#twin peaks the return #twin peaks #yellowjackets #poll #polls #round1 #r1g8

[aclickbaittitle]

Language (s) in Moonbase Theta Out:

English as a language is taking over the world at an alarming rate, most other countries in which English is not the majority language have it as part of their school curriculum, and like math, you can fail the year if you do not pass the subject.

Why? Well, most of your job prospects will be severely impacted if you do not have at least a grasp of it. Though not as “present” as other consequences of USAmerican and England’s hold over the world, language imperialism is still something to worry about.

Like Minnie Degawan, activist of indigenous people’s rights says: “For Indigenous peoples, languages ​​are not only symbols of identity and belonging to a group, but also vehicles for ethical values. They constitute the fabric of the knowledge systems through which these peoples form a whole with the land and are crucial for their survival. The future of their young people depends on them.”

Of course it is not only the English language that is guilty of the linguistic masacre, my own mother tongue: Spanish is equally if not more guilty. And, unlike how I would like to blame the Western Europeans for everything, Hindi, Mandarin Chinese and many more also play their part. Please notice how all of this is backed by Nation-States Agenda of “Linguistic-Ethnic Unity” like Mexico’s “not-white, not indigenous but (light-skin) mestiz@” project that asked for indigenous peoples to exchange their language (and culture) for social integration.

But what does this have to do with a small little podcast called Moon Base Theta Out?

Moonbase Theta Out is a sci-fi audio fiction podcast produced by Monkeyman Productions. It is 2098. The Moonbase program has been determined unprofitable. The last base, Theta, is twenty weeks from being decommissioned. Most of the crew is in stasis awaiting retrieval. Five remain – Roger Bragado-Fischer, Nessa Cheong, Ashwini Ray, Michell L’Anglois, and Wilder. (monkeymanproductions.com)

In Moonbase Theta Out, our current way of organizing the earth in nation-states has fallen out of fashion. Instead we got corporate enclaves run by mega corporations, and if it sounds terrifying it is because it is. There is a saying that goes “english is the language of money” and in a world where neoliberalism has taken over every character is expected to know english from Brazil to North Africa to France.  It is not uncommon for US american media to portray a world in which everyone knows english somehow, but in Moonbase Theta, Out it actually makes sense. 

However, english is not the only language spoken in Moonbase Theta Out, within the constraints of the audio medium (in which subtitles are not possible, and the only way translations can be provided is through transcripts) the podcast manage to include portuguese, french, arabic (don’t ask me which dialect) and even some few words in spanish and bengali. The reason for this linguistic diversity? Because Moonbase, even amidst the cyberpunk hellscape, wants to show a future that is blooming with diversity and love. 

In a small mini-episode showcasing the poems used in the show, writer D.J. Sylvis talks about how poetry is the connecting vehicle between our main-lead Roger Brigado-Fisher and his husband, Alexandre Brigado-Fisher (their relationship also works to tie the events that happen in the moon and earth). I want to extend this sentiment, and argue that language is the way in which several characters expressed their unique relationship.

Alexandre, for example, is Brazilian (go my latin boy!) and a native Portuguese speaker, Roger on the other hand is not but has learned the language, however when he takes a job for the Consortium he is asked to only speak english. His job causes a rift between him and his husband which ends up in a fight, when Alexandre slips into Portuguese, Roger tries to do the same but ends up forgetting the words; just another example of how their relationship is deteriorating because of the corporate overlords.

Then we have Michelle and his sister Maria, both French. They have had a very rough life that led them to security jobs for the Consortium and said jobs have led them apart.

Michelle tries to establish contact with her while knowing that everything he says would be listened to by his boss (and his enemy Roger). He slips into French when in distress, and the only one to calm them is another French speaker, her sister. 

There’s also this very short moment in which Dr. Ashwini Ray has made a friend ze didn’t expect to make and can’t do anything about it because ze is going to the moon in just a few days with hopes of never came back, so ze says a few works in Bangla that ze knows hir friend, Jen Ponton, won’t be able to understand but that anyways, is a subtle way to express hir love for her.

Moonbase Theta Out is far from the only multilingual podcast out there (see: Desperado, MOONFACE, Hi Nay, Dos After You, Monster Dash and Celestial Blood) and I hope we continue to see more. 

I also want to motivate you, reader, if you speak any other language, to write a story with it. The best way to help a tongue live is through the beauty of literature, afterall.

#article #opinion article #moon base theta out #mto #audio drama #audio fiction #fiction podcast #language

[zenosanalytic]

On the one hand, I agree with you that Google/Facebook/Twitter/et al should be removed from corporations. On the other hand, as someone who is not American, the idea of them being nationalised by the US government specifically and it being the only entity in control of these places is horrifying.

Yeah, I absolutely agree with you on this but at the sametime the corporations, and the Billionaires at their hearts, which are in control of them NOW are even MORE horrifying. In an ideal world, sites that have become institutions like these have, which can and have in the past exercised significant impact on State-politics, would be overseen and managed by some rotating multinational collective of sober-minded and ethically-rigorous professionals the way the old Internet URL authority was managed. Unfortunately we live in the capitalist hellscape wherein that impartial, multinational professional oversight board was effectively bought-out to let corporations do whatever the hell they want.

There really are no good, practical, immediate choices here in our current situation. When your political institutions allow certain private individuals to wield the sort of power ours do, the only immediate non-criminal check to that power is The State itself. In the long-term of course there are better answers to this -like organizing to create and maintain our own non-profit, decentralized, volunteer/community-operated alternatives ala Ao3- but so long as that's not happening I'd rather have then run as unbiased public-utilities, similar to how, like, the US post office or NPR work(Of course: both of those are ALSO gr8 examples, over the last 30 years, of how good public services can be undermined by determined capitalist wreckers. Politics is a constant struggle <:T).

#Anons #ask repies #Politics #The Internet #Institutional Sites #Public Utilities #Capitalism #zA's Inveterate Politicism #Aristos #The Public #The State #Republican Fuckery

[battleangel]

🦋Accept Death🦋

There are no serious thoughts on the transformative process of dying in mainstream modern American society.

Work, fun, scroll, stream, eat, fuck, sleep, repeat.

Just avoid death as much as possible until youre 75 or 80 then, youre dead.

This place is such a set up, top to bottom.

All society teaches is fear, fear, fear and mindlessness.

It guarantees the vast majority go through life keeping themselves constantly busy and unthinking.

Theres a ridiculous societal assumption baked into the United States late stage capitalist hellscape that conditions everyone to assume that they will work from 21 to 65, retire at 65, "enjoy" retirement for like ten fucking years after working and slaving your entire life away for the capitalist corporate machine, then "die of old age" at 75 or 80.

Which is patently insane as there are too many outliers and exceptions for this to be a societal assumption in any logical sense but it is because it is a critical underpinning of the foundations of capitalism.

🦋Our Westernized upside down society & reality teaches, brainwashes, conditions and endlessly grooms us to fear death.

🦋Death is presented as the ultimate unknown, ceasing to exist, the cessation of all activity, nothingness, the loss of all current family and friends and the loss in a single moment of everything we have strived for, worked for, achieved and accomplished as well as everything we love and enjoy from hobbies to pasttimes to fandoms to friends, family, pets, jobs, careers, interests and anything else we have emotionally connected to while alive.

🦋Given how grossly death is misrepresented, naturally whenever it occurs, and due to a lifetime of conditioning, grooming and brainwashing, we reflexively fight death, struggle against it, are overcome with fear and existential panic and dread and do everything we can to delay it, stop it and avoid it.

🦋However, death is not the end of anything, and instead it is a beautiful transformation.

🦋Death is simply a metamorphisizing process in which we shed our temporary human caterpillar selves and we transform back into the limitless energetic eternal beings we have always been in the dreamscape where we originated.

🦋What we call "life" is an extremely temporary state of being that is actually nothing but a virtual reality simulation of the dreamscape, where we all originated from, that is limitless and endless because it is our imaginations and our minds.

🦋Unlike our current limited 3D simulated reality, the dreamscape is 10D ten dimensions and is all dimensions simultaneously at once. It is lush, vivid, surreal, colorful kaleidoscopic explosion, panoramic, expansive, stars, supernovas, black hole suns, wormholes, time rifts, collapsing stars, galaxy expresses, its everything at once.

🦋Death is nothing to fear.

🦋Death is a transformative process that should be embraced, meditated upon, reflected upon, a transition that we prepare our minds for, ruminated on, focused on, accepted, looked forward to, esoterically and cosmically understood and a journey that we willingly prepare our minds, souls and hearts for.

🦋We are nothing but cosmic travelers and death is just our journey back home to the dreamscape.

🦋Our ego deaths prepare us esoterically and energetically for our physical deaths which lead to our eternal energetic lives in the dreamscape.

🦋Ego death is experiencing the death of your human ego and psyche and the esoteric realization that you are only temporarily physically manifested as a human being in our current "reality" and that you are actually an eternal limitless energetic being that originated from and will return to the dreamscape which is just our imaginations.

🦋Experiencing an ego death is opening your third eye, having a kundalini awakening, activating and aligning all seven chakras and self-ascension.

🦋Your ego death is the realization that all the 3D concerns that are so obsessed over in "reality" are completely meaningless -- benefits, stock options, bi-weekly salary, 401k, doctors appointments, what kind of car you drive, how much money you make, what your job title is, what compant you work for, clout, prestige, status, how big your house is, luxurious vacations and resorts, designer clothes and shoes, expensive perfume and handbags, keeping up appearances, keeping up with the joneses, impressing people, verified accounts, blue checkmarks, fucking for clout, linkedin employment updates, being influential admired and respected, resume that speaks for itself, accolades and accomplishments, bling bling, reputation, climbing the corporate ladder, being an executive, promotions, year end performance reviews, raises, sign-on bonuses, negotiating salary, compliments, popularity, your net worth, extensive network, politicking, executive presence, trends, popularity, being liked, fitting in, social life, social calendar, being a busy bee, being booked and busy, social climbing, kissing ass of all the people that you want to know, stability, security, safety, work life balance, rainy day accounts, something to fall back on, backup plans, playing it safe, doing whats expected of you, living up to other peoples expectations of you, moralism, preening, inflated ego, inflated sense of self worth, egocentrism, consumerism, materialism, overconsumption, fast fashion, capitalist excess, corporatism, luxury cars, luxury life . . .

🦋Exactly none of that 3D bullshit can you take with you when you die.

🦋Only the things that exist in the 10D dreamscape actually matter -- love, energy, speaking truth, being a voice for the voiceless, soul, spirit, emotion, the mind, imagination, dreams, creativity, self expression, poems, improv, comedy, humor, satire, esotericism, wisdom, magick, spells, fantasy, trippy thoughts, mindfucks, rabbit holes, looking glasses, divination, crystals, gems, spells, tarot, esp, palmistry, singing, dancing, body movement, manifestations, turning thoughts to reality, alchemy, wishes, daydreams, fever dreams, art, painting, sculptures, hieroglyphs, third eyes, shifting consciousness, sex, mind melds, karmic soul connections and ties, twinflames, soulmates, eroticism, platonic love, sexual energy, dualism, fire, splendid suns, prophecies, visions, minds eye, ancestral wisdom, akashic library, walking through walls, walking on water, falling through the sky without dying . . .

🦋The process of death itself may be challenging or physically painful but that does not change the fact that it is a transformative process leading you back to your eternal energetic limitless butterfly self in the dreamscape.

🦋When you "go" to sleep, when you "fall" asleep -- where are you "going" and where are you "falling"?

🦋When you enter REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, you are simply shifting and altering your consciousness which is reflected in your shifted and altered brainwaves and this allows you to return to and visit the dreamscape that you originated from prior to your physical human manifestation on a nightly basis when you dream.

🦋So, when you "fall" asleep, you are actually "awake" because the current "reality" is actually a dream, the real reality is the dreamscape which you visit on a nightly basis when you dream and then when your alarm goes off and you "wake up" you are back asleep in the dream which is what our so-called reality actually is.

🦋So, there is no reason to "fear" death as you literally "die" temporarily every time you "fall" into a "deep sleep" (REM sleep), shift and alter your consciousness and temporarily return to and visit the dreamscape from which you originated on a nightly basis when you dream.

🦋Death is nothing but the permanent return of your self back to the dreamscape that you originated from and back to actual reality.

🦋Death is nothing to fight, fear, delay, deny, avoid, dread, or seek to escape from.

🦋Death is a beautiful transformation to be embraced, meditated reflected and introspected on, deeply thought about, esoterically accepted and philosophically energetically and emotionally prepared for throughout our very temporary human lives.

🦋Society and especially ofcourse capitalism teaches the exact opposite -- that you should cling to this "life" as much as possible beyond all reason, you should desperately hang on to everything that 3D "life" has to offer -- the wealth and assets you accumulated, the corporate ladders you climbed, the properties youve bought and invested in, the cars that you own, the vacays that you flexed on the gram, the corporate career that you slaved your life away for, the executive title that you accepted your golden handcuffs for, the six figure salary that you sold your soul for, the net worth, the network, the influential friends, the social circles, the clout, the respect, the admiration, the ego stroking, the self aggrandizement, the mythmaking and mythbuilding, the personas constructed, the reverential treatment, the automatic deference, the zeros in your bank accounts, your stock portfolios, your returns on investments, your LinkedIn profile, your Facebook friends, your social status, your so-called family and friends -- society teaches that you should cling to this meaningless garbage as much as you can and that you should fear and loathe losing it aka "losing your life".

🦋Death is not losing your life. You are shedding your temporary physical human manifestation self to eternally transform back into your limitless energetic self.

🦋All the 3D stuff they tell you to cling to is meaningless anyway. Its just how they keep you on the hamster wheel, keep you chasing, keep you working your life away in a 9 to 5, keep you working for the weekend, keep you logging into Slack, keep you signing on to Teams, keep you jumping on Zoom and into meetings, keep you performing like a circus animal for your performance reviews, keep you fighting for yearly 2 to 3% raises, keep you fighting for bonuses and promotions, keep you working mandatory schedules, unpaid overtime as a salaried employee, middle management hell, corporate malaise, golden handcuff night terrors . . .

🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋

#ego death #fear of death #death #ascension #third eye open #third eye #kundalini awakening #chakra alignment #reiki #dreamscape #night terrors #daydreams #meaning of dreams #dreams #afterlife #meaning of life #anti capitalism #socialism #social justice #overconsumption #materialism #consumerism #corporate slave #corporatism #metamorphosis #esoteric #ego dissolution #ramblings #musings #deep thoughts

[mbrainspaz]

God is dead and Jeff Bezos keeps what’s left of him in a freezer at his second largest summer home

#life of a texan peasant #capitalist hellscape #corporate american hellscape #the rich ate god

[aquaburst3]

I've seen posts in the TWST and Percy Jackson fandoms both on here and TikTok where OP decried supporting Disney in the slightest and even one where they said you should avoid that sorta content all together, even in the fandom sense. To be honest, I think this is wasps (anglo-white Americans/European) being overzealous in showing support to Palestine.

This isn't a JKR, Hobby Lobby or Chick Fil A situation where you can just boycott one person/company and be done with it. The very sad reality is that if you are Western or Northern European (except Irish), Canadian or especially American, your money was already used to support Israel. Every single company that makes over a million dollars in the west has donated to Israel, not just Disney. Burger King, Mcdonalds, Coca Cola, HP, Microsoft, Pfizer, JP Morgan, Starbucks, Paramount, Tim Hortons, Popeyes, and countless more. These just the known ones. There probably even more quietly funding it. Even both Canada and the US are funding it outright.

If you already bought from these companies or need to do so, especially in the case of Pfizer, don't be so harsh on yourself. We all live in a capitalist hellscape, and there's not much we can do in these situations. Your own health and safety should be your first priority.

By that same token, try to avoid buying things from these mega corporations if you can. Buy local or from small businesses, support Palestinian authors or businesses, sign petitions for a ceasefire and donate to charities that support Palestine if you can. If you are in any sort of Disney fandom, try to buy fan merch over official if you can. In case of the Percy Jackson series, I would say support it on Disney+ if you already have an account on there, because that's one of the only ways to get a second season. But if you don't have an account on there or feel uncomfortable doing that, pirate it and talk about it on social media, especially Twitter.

#aqua rambles #free palestine

[idreamtofmanderleyagain]

One thing about the anger directed at AI from other artists right now is that what I'm alarmed and frustrated by is not the legitimate concerns of the usual corporate hellscape issues the tech industry created with it. It's not the concerns over theft and plagiarism (although I think there is misinfo about some aspects of this and a lot of intense reactionary shit. Even so, it's okay and normal to feel alarm and concern and want to discuss protective/ethical measures). And it's certainly not people fighting and advocating for worker's rights.

No. What's bothering me is the weird borderline elitist shit being the loudest voice in artistic/fandom spaces. It's "I worked so hard and suffered so much and now because people can ask a machine to make stuff, it's ruined my special identity." It's "people who make anything at all with AI will never be real artists like I am, and that's why we should ostracize them all, deny them legal protections, gatekeep all our spaces, etc." It's "everyone who uses AI for any reason is uncreative, a liar and a thief." It's "only people who endured my definition of hard work are real artists." It's "art can only be made by certain people under certain parameters that I dictate as legitimate." It's the insinuation that the bad shit that AI did to our jobs should be happening to everyone else but artists. It's the way I'm for some reason seeing fanfic writers, the queens of 'taking inspiration,' literally pull arguments from Anne Rice's famous hits.

I didn't know that my understanding of art was so different from so many people. And I think that's part of what is bothering me so much about this.

Like, listen. I put in the hard work. I have taught myself for decades. I have taught other people for a living. I have struggled, and shared my work to the world, and known what it was like to try and fail to make financial successes happen. I have known what it feels like to have others take 'heavy inspiration' from my hard work. I have known what it feels like to project that kind of "they're copying me!" anxiety and self-protectiveness unfairly onto others who did not deserve it.

But the way some of us have been behaving, the vicious pettiness, the fearmongering, the misinformation, the sheer anger directed at folks who are *not* shady corporate tech bros. It's ugly.

Art is not just all the hard work we put into being ~special~, or the endless struggling to get paid for it, or even the fucking attention. And if your voice in the conversation is just "weh all those ~less creative~ people might use this to make better looking, more financially successful art then me, when I should be the one rewarded with attention because I worked so hard!" Well. Welcome to having your work automated like everybody else ~less creative~ than you already has. Can we get back to just...enjoying ourselves making art for each other? Sharing the experience of creativity? Teaching one and other? Communicating deeper ideas about the human condition? Because nothing about AI is actually interfering with those things for me. AI hasn't taken my hands or my mind or my voice (not even if it manages to actually plagiarize my public work), but late stage capitalism has taken all my time and my energy and my money. AI's not ever stopping me from making art. People who play with it and make things are not interfering with my capacity to create, they are not actually harming me at all by playing in my sandbox. The mere presence of it will not crush the human drive to create (it might even open new doors). But the daily grind of exploitative american labor sure will. AI might take away what would be an already shitty, soulless, exploitative job that drains me creatively, but uh...that's the system I was already living in. The issue of workers rights is much bigger than just automation.

AI alone won't take anything away from you but a shitty job you would probably hate anyway, but billionaires sure will find ways to take away all your time and energy and financial security to be creative. And whether AI is a fad or is here to stay, unless we advocate for our rights politically, unless we hold politicians and corporations accountable, that will not change.

#I'm sorry #I promise I will give it a rest #i think the content algorithms are getting to me and im getting too much influx on this one topic #tomorrow is Hellraiser only #ai #ai controversy #ai art

[wealmostaneckbeard]

The California-to-Texas War: A Dark Near-Future Political Drama/War Game

I read a complaint somewhere that mainstream realistic fiction isn't political enough so I decided to write this outline for a super-political near-future story:

An Anti-federalist movement sweeps through Congress of the United States of America. Enough far left and right politicians unite to indefinitely shut down the federal government.

This is the ridiculous premise that sets up the rest of the narrative:

Authority shifts to state governments backed by corporate consortiums. These governments need taxes and corporations want social stability so they work together to keep everything fine for about a decade. Trading state/corpo currencies becomes a somewhat lucrative trade for some people. Micronations form (somewhat) unopposed, some out of Native American reservations, others are religious or ideological enclaves.

Then on a particularly hot day, a number of illegal immigrant laborers die of heat stroke while working at a factory farm in the fictional town of Damocles, Texas. The survivors go on strike and demand better working conditions. The corporation that owns the factory refuses to negotiate and sends in scabs and strikebreakers. The workers don't let anyone cross the line, and in the resulting chaos a local neo-fascist militia gets involved by killing the families of striking workers. The violence is captured on cameras and put on social media.

Meanwhile the Governor of California, Stan Yee, needs to boost his popularity with the local labor unions. So Stan sends a task force to investigate the Damocles Massacre (as it's now being called) and bring to justice whoever was responsible for the killings. Doing so will violate the Texas Republic's territorial sovereignty, but Yee is betting that his Texan counterpart, Randolf Marshall, will allow a few neonazis to be dragged across state lines.

It turns out that Randolf Marshall has several personal connections to the militia, so he'll be damned before he lets some Leftists into His State. The delegation of californian investigators are threatened by various factions and are forced to flee.

Stan attempts to defuse the tension between the two states by opening up diplomatic channels. But Randolf decides to retaliate by secretly hiring PMC paratroopers to air-drop into the Port of Los Angeles and seize control of it. These mercenaries cause a lot of damage and kill a lot of employees working for overseas corporations from Korea, China, and Japan. But they are overwhelmed by angry dock workers, local police, and other security forces. Some of the mercenaries surrender and turn over evidence that Governor Marshall hired them.

Under pressure from all sides, Governor Yee declares war on the state of Texas with the goal of removing it's Governor from power. Shortly after, Governor Marshall reciprocates with his own declaration.

The Northern Theater of the war consists of New Mexico and Arizona, with Nevada, Utah, and Colorado and being on the fringes. The Southern Theater of the war consists of Chihuahua and Sonora, with both Baja California and Tamaulipas being fringe areas.

The forces arraigned against each other are diverse: There are Apache, Navajo, and Hualapai led militias, Foreign Corporate/National Legions, State Guards, and Private Military Companies. They fight each other over rural battlefields and urban fortresses using drones and other advanced weapons developed by the long gone United States. But a death by heatstroke is far more likely for the average soldier than one caused by a weapon, thanks to global warming.

In this near-future hellscape any number of small stories could be told.

#politics #usa politics #fantasy #fiction #modern #near future #post apocalypse #second american civil war #libertarianism #speculative #world building #Texas #California #Arizona #New Mexico #sci-fi #science fiction #dystopian #cyberpunk #Navajo Nation #Apache #Hualapai #Sonora #chihuahua #military #warfare #climate change #outline #synopsis #economics

[unofficial-sean]

1940′s, the U.S.’s industrial capacity explodes, and with it, their empire expands across the globe from conquered territories. Talent from defeated axis powers were absolved of their atrocities and invited to participate in the technological advancement of the U.S.

1950-1990′s, the CIA is tasked with sabotaging multiple socialist revolutions in central and south America. But sure, there are no successful communist countries and capitalism rules; only if you have to force those countries into civil war and install puppet dictators. Sure sure.

1980′s, with larger and larger corporations forming from the economic boom brought on by WWII, neoliberalism takes hold and massive wave of deregulation ensues, leaving a dark scar on American politics to this day.

1950′s, the fossil fuel industry becomes aware of global warming and spends resources suppressing information and convincing the public that it’s nothing to worry about.

1970′s, leaded gasoline is banned after dacade’s worth of evidence links it to many health issues.

1970′s-1990′s, displaced, abused, and mistrustful Vietnam war veterans begin forming militias in what would soon become America’s persistent right-wing domestic terrorism issue.

1960′s, massive improvements in civil rights enfranchise millions of Americans, yet racism, sexism, and homophobia persist. The end of segregation now becomes a bandaid for racists to point to and say “what racism? We gave them rights!”

1970′s, the mass militarization of police begins with the creation of the very first SWAT teams.

1980′s, criminalization of many substances gives police new excuses to discriminate, imprison, and kill people of color in a “war on drugs.” Regan ignores the HIV epidemic spreading throughout the country’s LGBT people, stigmatizing the virus and giving evangelicals ammunition for hate speech. The first moral panics emerge.

2000′s, 9/11 sets off the chain of events that results in the Patriot Act, which increases the government’s power to surveil its own citizens. Neoliberal deregulation’s haunting echoes catch up and contribute to the greatest economic collapse since the 1930′s.

2010′s, right-wing reactionaries gain ground blaming America’s continued financial suffering on its first black president.

1990′s, Al Gore’s run for president turns climate change into a blue vs. red wedge issue, politicizing the issue for all days to come.

2020′s, America’s occupation of Afghanistan, the last shudders of the war on terror, fails. Right wing legislators roll back authority of the EPA, regress civil rights in a wave of reactionary politics erupting from the election of a failing billionaire in 2016. Hate crimes are on the rise, and social media allows propaganda and misinformation to spread like wildfire.

All this to say, and I’m sure I didn’t cover everything, that America’s decline into a capitalist hellscape giving up ground to hate movements and corporate interests is all the result of a few pivotal moments stemming from WWII. Eroding trust in the government after Vietnam leads to new reactionary groups forming, and sets the stage for Regan to take hold in the next decade (he was perceived positively as an anti-establishment candidate, after all, and Gen X ate him up).

We are in an obvious decline (well, this country has always been shit, lets be honest. there’s just so much blood on our hands. we werent saints before WWII, that’s for sure). And as the saying goes, “Rome as not built in a day, and so too did it not fall in a day.” Good riddance to the American empire, whenever it falls apart.

[skimblyspones]

Since entering Trek fandom, every time I come up against some medical bullshit (usually pertaining to medication bc of course) I find myself thinking "Leonard McCoy wouldn't stand for this"

and anyway yeah given his reaction to medicine of the 1980s/the 20th century in general, the fact that he lives in a moneyless, presumably debtless, largely socialist future, and also bc he's a Country Doctor, I'm telling y'all he would be so hated by modern day conservatives if he were real and popped down into today. Like.

Bones would support Marijuana legalization and also support decriminalization of drug use in general. He'd support universal Healthcare and then some. He'd support razing our current pharmaceutical corporate hellscape and starting ground up with borderless, patentless teams. He'd support demedicalization of transition. He'd support abolition of forced procedures on intersex youth.

He'd be volunteering to supervise at injection sites. He'd be fighting the damn fight to make medical care consistently accessible to undeserved communities. He'd be fighting like hell to make up for the harm done to those communities by the medical field.

You know he'd break current regulations and laws if it meant getting people the treatment they needed.

Like idk I've had to have the field of Medicine on my mind a lot lately. So I've had a lot of time to ruminate on its many manifestations of bullshit corruption and white supremacy.

And we've known since Dagger of The Mind that Bones has a strong stance towards patients' rights. That episode remains so prescient, and honestly I think it's part of why Bones is my standout fave. I, personally, have not been institutionalized. I have not experienced that environment, nor have I encountered the abuse and mistreatment many people have. But like, I'm mentally ill, I'm trans, and I have known people personally who were. I'm not ignorant to the state of that stuff, and I'm v eager to discuss the fact that even with what I could -potentially- experience in institutionalization, people with even more stigmatized disorders, especially psychotic disorders, are even more likely to be victimized. All that to say, the scene where Van Gelder begs Bones not to hypo him, and Bones puts the hypo down. I think that maybe cemented him as my fave? Like. Not great that Van Gelder is in restraints, of course, but like. Bones has been sus of Tantalus the whole episode. He gets Simon in bed, listens to him talk, and tells Jim that he believes his patient is telling the truth, even if he's struggling to get it out coherently to others. And when he hears an explicit request not to do something, he doesn't do it. Like. That is STILL something of a standout action for a doctor to be shown doing? Generally when we get curmudgeonly doctors it's "you'll thank me later" when a patient doesn't want a shot/pill/etc. And Bones does fall into this sometimes, but if it isn't someone he already knows and has a personal relationship with, there's usually still an attempt on his end to communicate with them and get both of them on the same page.

And on that note, there's absolutely something that I'd say needs to be discussed when looking at Bones and that's the the Deinstitutionalization Movement that had been going on in the US since the 1950s into the 1960s. Like, I'm not convinced Dagger of The Mind wasn't primarily about that, especially since, following the refusal of the government to respond to the Deinstitutionalization Movement, a large percentage of mentally ill Americans are in prisons.

But to actually explain the Movement, it began due to the downright torturous ways people were being treated in these institutions ostensibly for "mental healthcare". Like, as bad as the current systems continue to be, multiply by three and remove any potential of outside oversight.

These were under-maintained holding pins for people deemed too "sick in the head" to be part of "normal" society. And of course during this time you could be institutionalized for: having taruma, having psychotic disorders, having anxiety, being autistic, being a teenage upstart, being a woman with any neurodivergence, being gay, being a transsexual(lord forbid it), and/or, as has been v well noted, being black, particularly a black man, and fighting for your civil rights, among other things.

And all of this was being done with p much no oversight at all. Often with overcrowded lodging, and medical treatments that patients had no say in and no way to opt out of.

So the Desinstitutionalization Movement was a response to the conditions of these places, and more largely a response to our societal response to mental illness and developmental disabilities that allowed this system to begin and to thrive. The Deninstitutionalization Movement's goal was to remove treatment from these isolated, long term stays under people with absolute control over patients, and instead bring them back into their communities through use of outpatient care, short term visits and emergency stays, publicly accessible resources, and, most importantly here, a reallocation of resources into strengthening communities and providing people what they need to recover.

The goals have yet to be met.

There were strides made by the Movement, I will never diminish that, and the continuing failure to meet the original goals of Deinstitutionalization is not an inevitability; it's a deliberate refusal to break from our capitalist model of exploitation. States and cities closed and/or "reformed" their mental institutions, sure, but there was no large scale effort to provide the social safety net that the Movement required.

Just abt the entire unhoused population in the US (and elsewhere, of course, but I am from here and speaking abt here) are suffering from mental illness. This isn't surprising, being unhoused is traumatic in and of itself with the life it brings with it. Many of the unhoused population have psychotic disorders; many have PTSD; many have turned to substance use as a means to cope with the unacceptable conditions they are forced to live in.

If an unhoused person is forcibly institutionalized. And that does happen. Best case scenario is they get a bed, they get a diagnosis, they get medication that they start and seem to have a good response to. But the inpatient care is on a time limit. They are released from the hospital with a prescription but no way to buy it. No pharmacy to give it to. They made progress in a building with a bed and air conditioning and food and drink, but now they are back to living unhoused and reliant on shelters which are their own can of worms.

Or let's say an unhoused person is arrested. There are many charges with which to arrest an unhoused person, most of which come down to "being unhoused". Conditions are vile. But they are a shelter, food and drink, and sometimes a level of mental healthcare. They serve their sentence and are released. They have nothing to go back to. They continue to be unhoused. They are repeatedly arrested for being unhoused.

Or, let's look at something else. Someone, housed or not, arrives at the hospital in suicidal crisis. They have 5 days tops, maybe 7 depending where you live, before they are released, as the hospital does not have enough beds for longterm care. Maybe they began receiving therapy. As with the unhoused person with a prescription they can't fill, there's no way to be sure this person will have access to therapy once out.

And these are a very small pinch of outcomes occurring in our modern day, "post" deinstitutionalization world, bc our government is more interested in profit (private prison-industrial complex, skipping out on veteran Healthcare, insurance and/or hospital costs for multiple admission, etc.) Than it is in Healthcare.

Patients continue to be talked over, their consent continues to be violated, especially whenever they are deemed "incompetent." Being deemed incompetent doesn't actually, inherently say a thing to your actual level of awareness over yourself and your actions, but it does say a lot about how badly people in authority over you want to be able to control you. This disproportionately effects those with psychotic disorders, those with developmental disabilities, children, the elderly, the unhoused, and whichever demographics we can medically subjugate for political and financial gain this week. None of the medical abuse has gone away since the Movement began, it's just gotten better at making friends in high places.

Dagger of The Mind aired in 1966, during the second wave of the Deinstitutionalization Movement, which had started to shift that focus from not just the conditions and treatment of those in institutions, but specifically the violation of rights and autonomy for those deemed incompetent.

The episode itself is p clearly a stance on this movement and on our prison system, imo.

And to get back to my initial point with this post, Bones, as a doctor, is critical to the episode's message. He is the one who immediately dislikes institutionalizing those deemed "criminally insane." He is the one who immediately calls bullshit on Dr Adams, and refuses to give Adams back Van Gelder. He believes his patient is telling him the truth as best he can. He fights Kirk on this and forces him to go down and investigate.

There's something of an implication that, yes, he'd been tranq'ing Van Gelder whenever he seemed to get "too agitated," and that's definitely not great. At the same time, again, I can't get over the impact of Bones visibly putting aside his hypo when Van Gelder begs him not to give him the shot again. The Mind meld happens because Van Gelder had been so tortured on Tantalus that he physically could not disclose what he went through on his own.

And I really do need to give a shoutout to Spock in the episode, too. Before initiating the mind meld he literally walks over, asks Van Gelder if he wants to do it, and tells him what will happen as the act takes place. He talks through the sensations with Van Gelder as they happen. His mind meld in the episode is built on his patient's consent.

And just. The contrast between Bones (and Spock) and everyone else with regards to Van Gelder. Helen Noel (legit one of my least favorite characters jfc) in particular just. Out here representing the worst aspects of the field. Even Kirk. Kirk is almost upsettingly ignorant until Bones makes him go down and he insists on doing his job. It was a good call for Kirk, I think; and I do sometimes wish the show had a bit more episode-to-episode continuity if only for the effects of the neural neutralizer + what happens in Requiem for Methuselah like hi fjdjfne.

But yeah idk just. Dagger of The Mind is one of my favorite episodes, bc it remains so specifically timely.

But in terms of Bones, even beyond Dagger of The Mind, we have him in his overdose-induced-mania in City on the Edge of Forever, moving from fascination and excitement to breaking down in tears when he remembers the state of Medicine in the 1930s. Yes, he was specifically crying abt needles but come on fjdjfjdj.

The One with the Whales has him disgusted that we're still using dialysis in the 1980s and giving a random old lady who he doesn't know a pill to regrow her kidney. As much as it is his deepest pain and regret, he did what his father wanted by taking him off life support. Would his father have lasted 2 more weeks? Maybe. But if he could feel anything, it was probably misery. He was in pain every moment he was still alive. There wasn't a cure yet. There wasn't a way to ease his pain. I doubt he had a doctor for a son and didn't know that when he asked his son to stop the pain. The guilt bones feels for not waiting for the cure–he can't know how it would have turned out if he had. We don't know what his dad had. We don't know how long he would've lived after the fact. We know his dad was being kept alive by the biobed. We know he was in pain. We know he repeatedly asked his son to stop the pain. His son did what he could. Maybe in an objective practice of medicine, he ought to have kept his patient alive— as a son, he most likely wanted to keep his dad alive— and yet ultimately he looked at the situation, the pain that prolonging life was causing to his dad, and he did what he thought he had to.

Like. Bones' ethos as a doctor is his dedication to his patients. My man was told to operate on a silicone-based lifeform and figured out a way to do it by himself. He's so awash with guilt in Operation--Annihilate!, not only when Spock is blinded, but also just by the fact that he doesn't know how to help these people in immense pain; he sees Kirk's SIL die from it, sees the pain readings on Spock, knows Kirk's nephew will be in the same pain should he wake up, and he knows that he can't help them or even tell them what to do. Btwn s1 and s2 he familiarized himself with Vulcan anatomy (and if ur hcs swing that way, potentially requested M'Benga, a high-ranking doctor familiar with treating Vulcans, aboard). My guy delivered a baby and was from the drop already on correcting ppl on how to hold the baby properly.

I'm just saying Bones would be a fucking radical in 2022. He lives in a future world where most physical ailments can be cured with a single device. He lives in a post-scarcity future where we don't continue to deprive ppl of readily available resources in the name of profit. His method of care is anchored on his patients as people. He'd be a guy who'd risk being caught drug trafficking to get medication to people who can't afford to buy it/can't afford an appointment with a therapist or psychiatrist to get a prescription/can't afford insurance. He literally did exactly that in movie IV.

Anyway I love Bones.

#bones mccoy #leonard mccoy #dr mccoy #star trek tos

[eldritchtouched]

James Cameron is a fucking coward. Iinstead of risking alienation with his audience by either making the Na’vi flawed but still better than a corporate hellscape that strip-mines places instead of realizing the beauty and value of alien biology, or by making the Na’vi look truly inhuman, he made them idealized “noble savage Native American stereotype take #13832″ and “sexy blue humans with some cat features.”

The same can be said if you watch Sideways’ commentary about the soundtrack, where anything close to not traditional Western orchestra was essentially stripped out of the music during composition because of Cameron’s interference.

Avatar would not have been nearly so lucrative, and most audiences would not have sympathized with the Na’vi, if they actually looked inhuman instead of like sexy blue humans. You wouldn’t even have to change the script around, just plop in freaky alien slug people and a bunch of audiences would’ve rejected it and thought Jake was an absolute freak for falling for Neytiri and turning on Quaritch.

#anthropocentrism can suck my fucking dick #avatar #james cameron #I care about alien and spec fic designs deeply #make your aliens alien dammit #be weird!

[shadowmaat]

Independent Texas

It seems the saber-rattling over Texas wanting to secede from the US has started up again. The sources I read all assure that it's impossible since blah blah historic precedent makes it illegal, but that's assuming that "illegal" means anything. Judging by the hellscape that is current American politics I don't think "illegal" means much anymore. The Senate and Supreme Court are filled with Fascists and I wouldn't trust them to put a stop to this. If it's illegal they'll just rewrite the law to allow it. It's what they've been doing in other areas already.

Of course they'd still have to put it to a vote, but I'm not sure that would stop them either. Between gerrymandering, extreme voter suppression, and corruption at the highest levels I don't think we could count on that to save Texans, either.

Do I think this will actually go forward? Not really. But I also wouldn't trust "the System" to save Texas. Or anyone else, for that matter. There's too much corruption, too much deliberate misinformation, and too much unchecked hatred for "the System" to be reliable anymore.

And for those who think "good riddance," I urge you to consider that the government of Texas and the people of Texas are two separate things. Sure, they have a lot of rabid idolators there, but they also have tons of innocent people who are stuck in place due to finances, obligations, and other factors. Folks who can't move away and will be royally fucked over by every vicious, terrible decision their government makes. Remember all the people who died because of power grid failures? Failures that happened because of corporate greed and a stubborn insistence to stay separate from the national grid? Imagine that but a million times worse across the entire spectrum of services and basic human rights. Hell, it's already starting to happen given all the anti-trans legislation being enacted (whether it's "legally enforceable" or not).

Again, I don't think secession will happen, but I also wouldn't dismiss the threat just because of "legal precedent." And even without secession on the table Texas can still terrorize its populace, as they've been proving for some time now. And they're hardly the only state doing it.

#politics