#turning all of your free time into capital producing time is literally a capitalist thing

[girlweepinginstairwell]

hi! :D i love your blog, so i wanted to ask, why do you think the barbie movie was bleak? i love hearing people's opinions on the film, and i thought that was an interesting adjective to describe it. you don't have to answer if you don't want to, ofc! hope you have a nice day!!! <3

oh you’re so sweet, thanks so much! ❣️ honestly i don’t know how intelligible this will be considering i spent a few days after watching the movie hashing out my thoughts with various friends and have mostly said my piece privately, but i thought it was bleak because it just… was…

like i did have fun because it is spectacularly produced & i guess in some ways it’s like oh, well it’s literally the BARBIE movie, what did you expect, but in other ways i was just like. oh my God, the faux criticism of barbie as a product, mattel as a company, and capitalism as a concept this film presents… i couldn’t stomach it! like how much of this are we supposed to believe is greta gerwig’s genuine artistic vision & how much of it is mattel indulgently financing a tongue-in-cheek critique of its own contributions to consumerism knowing it will only generate MORE of the same? i found myself reminded of a particular excerpt from chapter two of mark fisher’s capitalist realism: is there no alternative?, where he writes:

“…anti-capitalism is widely disseminated in capitalism. Time after time, the villain in Hollywood films will turn out to be the ‘evil corporation’. Far from undermining capitalist realism, this gestural anti-capitalism actually reinforces it… We’re left in no doubt that consumer capitalism and corporations… is responsible for this depredation… The film performs our anti-capitalism for us, allowing us to continue to consume with impunity. The role of capitalist ideology is not to make an explicit case for something in the way that propaganda does, but to conceal the fact that the operations of capital do not depend on any sort of subjectively assumed belief… So long as we believe (in our hearts) that capitalism is bad, we are free to continue to participate in capitalist exchange.”

i was so reminded of this passage while watching the film that the first thing i did upon leaving the theater was go through my copy to locate it.

there were also a number of scenes i found, ironically, to convey rather insidious anti-feminist messaging despite the movie’s reputation as (and attempts to live up to the title of) a feminist flick, but i won’t go into those in detail because i’m sure there are people reading this who want to see this film & haven’t yet. in the same vein, i found it to be massively spineless/inauthentic/confused? in the stances it takes because, in an effort to appeal to an audience so broad as to include Basically everyone on the planet, it… doesn’t really commit to any of the stances it presents at all. a lot of the points it tried to make about womanhood, feminism, capitalism, motherhood, and the patriarchy either fell flat or were completely undone by the movie’s end, which is why i found it very funny that some people thought this movie was TOO feminist when i thought it was, frankly, toothlessly feminist.

the sets and costumes were beautiful, the acting was genuinely solid, i liked a lot of the referential pastiche-y moments that cropped up throughout it and i laughed lots at its cleverness because it WAS very witty, but when the credits began to roll i did think, um. maybe we’re in hell. i’m sure some people loved this movie, but sadly i really could not! also mattel now has a Toy cinematic universe planned which is um… great! and doesn’t make me feel a horrible sense of despair or anything

#asks

[lampregistration3000]

people on homestuck twitter appear to be blowing up today because a big name fan wants to monetize every fandom project and turn it into some kind of a structured job instead of letting people contribute to hobbies they have without making them work obligations like a massive fucking idiot but like hey. i guess thats par for the fucking course over there so what do i know

#im not going to be mean about this on twitter because ive written two ass essays over there already today but like #fandom is hobby. its a hobby. not a job. if youre trying to turn it into a job for everyone you are an idiot asshole king of the morons and #you need to shut the hell up #'pay your workers' fandom does not HAVE workers unless people from the fandom have been HIRED to CONTRIBUTE to the property itself #fandom is a collection of folks who enjoy a property enough to want to make content for it (art or writing or headcanons or even just talk) #and that should and never will be a job for a myriad of reasons. shut up. #i hate twitter. monetizing your hobbies is not leftist its literally a conservative value. #turning all of your free time into capital producing time is literally a capitalist thing #paying folks for their labor is important but labor comes from a JOB and not contributing to a fandom project that is in fact not! a! job! #and is instead a collaboration of people who just wanna make something cool happen. #and also could get in a lot of legal trouble if money starts changing hands but like youre not thinking about that youre just being stupid #about this whole thing #screams into the void

[ahiddenpath]

My Current Thoughts on Writing Fanfics

I’m so glad I’ve had this bloggity since 2012, because I can see how much my approach to writing has changed!  I wanted to touch base on where I am now, plus answer the most common questions I receive about writing fanfics beneath the cut.

Obligatory disclaimer: I’m a hobbyist writer, this is meant to be taken as opinion/reflection, not advice, different approaches work for different people, annnnd also check out my digimon fanfics (FFN and AO3).

How do I develop a regular writing habit?

I’d start by setting aside 15 minutes a day to write.  Don’t focus on word count- writing x number of words can be intimidating, but most people can sit for 15 minutes and get something down.  If you’re writing on a computer, turn off the internet and place your phone out of reach

Gradually increase the session length.

Never worry about the quality of your writing while you’re drafting.  That’s what editing and subsequent drafts are for.  I have a post on utilizing successive drafts to combat writing paralysis here, but the tl;dr is that the pressure to write a perfect story in the first draft often turns writing into an agonizing trial instead of creative play.

Your first draft is bad, period, at least compared to what it will be.  In the kindest way possible, get over it.  Your value as a writer- or as a human!- isn’t tied into your questionable first draft.  Please explore your story in the earliest stages with enthusiasm, not criticism!  You’re going to make it so much better by the time you’re finished!

How do you write so much?

See, here’s one of the biggest changes in my mindset compared to my early days as ahiddenpath.  I used to think that doing all of this writing was like... extra credit, like a stretch goal I pushed myself to achieve.  

I learned in therapy starting in 2018 that the reason I keep writing is because I have to.  I have general anxiety disorder, and my brain...  Have you seen an old-timey cartoon with a boiler?  They are drawn swollen, metal distorting with steam pressure, rivets groaning and popping free.  That’s how I feel if I don’t write.  Don’t ask me why or how, but writing is like turning a valve to release the pressure.

(Quick PSA- my therapist calls creative outlets “coping skills.”  If you feel like you have boiler brain, make time for your hobbies, no matter how tired you are.)

For me, writing is challenging play.  Although I’m often conveying messages that matter to me or exploring ideas I want to work through, and I try to make the best product I can...  I don’t take it seriously, and I don’t sweat over it.  I’m here to wander, play, and take care of myself.

So basically, I think the recipe for producing lots of writing is: regularity/habit (do it every day, even for just a little while), minimizing distractions, separating the processes of drafting and editing, turning off criticism in the early stages of drafting, and writing for yourself and your own needs.

 Do you feel embarrassed about writing fanfic?

Nope.  I write for my mental health/because it’s fun, period.  However, I also don’t tell people IRL that I write fanfic!  But I’m a private person (I don’t tell people IRL that I’m asexual, for example, and I only tell them I have anxiety if I freeze up in front of them).

Do you feel embarrassed about writing OCs/fakemon?

Hahahaha!  Look, I know there are lots of people who won’t read OCs and fakemon.  I know there are probably people who wish I would stick to more canon stuff (both in terms of OCs and my strong preference for AUs).

But I’m here to write what I want, and while it makes me happy when people read and enjoy my work...  It’s no skin off my back if they don’t.  I already fulfilled my goal of taking care of myself.

Don’t you want to get published and make money for your writing?

No, not at this time.  For everyone who has said that I have the writing skill to be published, thank you so very much.  That’s so kind, and I truly appreciate it!

But...  The United States has the enormous capitalistic attitude problem that endeavors are only worthwhile if they generate capital.  I can’t even begin to tell you how damaging this concept is- literally, I’m not equipped with the sociopolitical educational background.  

Sometimes I think I’d like to become a published novelist?  But sometimes I recall that I have a dope research gig, and I wanna play around with writing in my free time.

To be clear, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t pursue your creative career dreams!!!  And, who knows, maybe some day I’ll get tired of research and want to try swapping to the hobby/skill I’ve spent so much time refining.  Just...  Never stop doing something fun and harmless you enjoy because “it doesn’t make money.”  

I’m not gonna sit here acting like I know what the purpose of life is, but I think having fun and meeting your needs is pivotal.

Okay, so how can I support my favorite fandom content creators?

Bless you, f’real.  The easiest way is to comment on their stuff.  For meta writers, leave comments, engage, ask questions.  For fanfiction writers, leave reviews.  I have so many lovely folks who chat with me over Tumblr or discord after reading my stuff, which is so great.  But it’s hard to find those sweet messages later.  I can always click on reviews any time I need a little positive reinforcement/boost.  So, even if you’re going to talk to the writer later...  Leave that review!

If the content producer uses social media, reblog their stuff to give them more exposure.  Likes are for you, so you can find a post later.  Reblogs are for the creators, so other people can see their work.

Things like fanart, fanfic of fanfic, cosplays, and other... fan content of fan content make our year, I promise!  We love that so stinkin’ much!

Some fan content producers have a ko-fi and/or a patreon, so sometimes there are monetary ways to show appreciation.

If you’re intimated by a content producer, please remember that we are all massive dorkasauruses.  I absolutely guarantee it.

How do you have so many ideas?!

Ah, I have a Future Projects page on my blog- I don’t think pages work on mobile.

But here’s the secret: ideas are the easy part.  They are literally a dime a dozen.  Heck, there are AU generators!  Just pick characters out of a hat and use an AU generator and bam, you’re off!  And even then, you don’t need a real idea to start writing!  I launched Four Years on the thought of, “hahaha, wouldn’t it be a mess if the Chosen went to college together?!”

We’re writing fanfic; we’re here to play.  There’s no need to crush yourself with the expectation that you must write the next hit thriller plot.

In my opinion, the much better question is: how do you manage your projects such that you complete them?

So, uh, how do you manage your projects?

I’ve established that I write fanfic to play and to take care of myself, but I do want to grow as a writer along the way.  And the best way to learn how to craft narratives is to practice completing them.  If you launch stories over and over and only write roughly 1/4 to 1/3 of the way through the story...  All you’re practicing is how to start a story.

When I first started writing as ahiddenpath, I did exactly zero planning (see the Four Years reference above).  I ended up with longfics stretching as long as 400K+ words- that’s over six novels (based on the average adult fiction novel length)!!!!!  It is so daunting to work on longfics, because you feel like the ending is nowhere to be seen.

SO most of my pointers circle around always writing towards your ending, even before you start!

-Decide what you want to say with your story before you start writing.

First, “what you want to say” doesn’t have to be a big, grand theme.  It can be as big as “how the trauma of their adventures impacted them after” or as small as “I think these dorks would have a good time at laser tag.” 

I’m not talking about a detailed outline (in fact, I personally hate outlines).  Just know what your story is about and make sure what you write points to it.  If you can make the structure of your story mimic your theme, even better!  But no worries if that doesn’t work out, it’s not always possible.

-Write linearly

The best way to keep moving along in your story is just to... keep writing it in order.  This helps achieve regular updates, and prevents you from potentially “losing” material if you change your mind about the plot before reaching the bit you wrote already.  This happened to me so frequently that I stopped writing ahead of myself.  If I have an idea, I write it down, but I don’t draft future scenes.  In my experience, they often never see the light of day.

I’m told people often write the bit of the story they most want to write first?  If you have a single scene that you’re really longing to write, but you don’t know how to get there/don’t want to write the rest...  May I suggest that you... don’t write the rest?  If your scene works as a oneshot, write that oneshot!  Don’t torture yourself with a lot of writing you don’t want to do.  Most often, people end up forcing their way through 1-4 chapters, then stalling before ever reaching the Good Bit. 

A moment of silence for all of the unwritten Good Bits out there.  Now, some Enya.

If you can’t reduce Good Bit setup to a oneshot, reduce as much as possible.  I think that sometimes, people underestimate the incredible advantages of writing fanfiction?  Everyone knows your characters already, and maybe even the setting, if you keep it canon.  You can cut out the setup and dive right into what you want to do with the characters! 

-Think about the structure of your story before you start

Considering the structure of your story is a fantastic way to estimate how long it will be/ensure that there is an ending in sight from the start.  For example, in Voices, I covered a single school year in Japan, writing a diary entry for a different Chosen every day, so I knew that I would write the story for roughly a year.  After August had one chapter per Chosen, so each child could help Taichi deal with his post Adventure trauma in their own way, plus an opening and closing chapter.  My Tri story, Tri: Integrity Lens, is written and posted in installments covering each Tri movie.

It’s fine if no particular structure strikes you.  I could see forced structure turning into a gimmick, you know?  But if it naturally works out, it’s a great way to have a solid idea of how much story is ahead of you before you start, and where the story will end.  And being cognizant of how and when a story ends from chapter one yields a tighter, shorter fic, one that you’re more likely to complete.

-Consider writing in batches/sections before posting

So lately, I’ve been experimenting with how I deliver fanfic updates.  I mentioned that my Tri fic follows the Tri movies.  Each movie is covered with a few 3,000-6,000 word updates that I post every other week.  I cover an entire movie before posting any of it, and then I plan to take a break in between movies to work on either the next movie or a different fic.

AND THIS IS SO GREAT!  Having large chunks of my story written is such a fantastic way to do things!  I keep thinking of little details I can add/things I should mention and noticing inconsistencies I can fix before posting.  Giving myself a larger picture and time to mull over it by spreading out updates is making a huge difference for me.

Plus, giving yourself little breaks between installments can help keep you fresh and motivated, while leaving your audience waiting at a nice, natural stopping point.  Plus, this way they know that you haven’t just... up an vanished or dropped a story.  You’re just taking an announced break.

How do you plan stories?

I believe I mentioned hating outlines.  I personally respond best to “structured freedom.”  I focus on things like: what are my themes/what do I want to say, how will the characters grow or regress, how is this story structured or formatted, what is the overall tone and mood.  Other than that, I keep things fluid...  Which is why it’s so important for me to enforce some kind of ending point before I begin.

Basically, for me, too much planning = a boring slog where I can’t inject the moods and ideas of the day into my work without derailing meticulous plans.  Too little planning = longfic hell.  I’m guessing that everyone has to decide for themselves where they land on this continuum!  Exploration is vital.

Okay, I am out of steam for today.  If you have any other writing/fanfic questions you’d like answered, please let me know!  Here are some other resources I’ve made.

-Combating writing paralysis with successive drafts

-Dishing with an artist

-Tips for Fanfic Authors

-More Tips for Fanfic Authors

-Tips for Winning Nanowrimo

-Resources/Advice for Digimon Adventure Fanfic Writers

#writing talk #writing fanfics #writing fanfiction #writing fics

[seaweedsawyou]

Podcasts in review

Simple and nice list of all the podcasts I discovered in 2020. I had to go to the office alone during quarantine, don’t @ me. So, let’s start with fiction.

- numbers in brackets the number of episodes listened and existing, not rating - * indicate currently ongoing productions - cursive is for the cool kids

Friends at the table (a lot/a lot) 

Hands down, the best actual play podcast out there. It rarely happens that an improvised TTRPG would end up creating a world that is as rich and engaging as the Divine universe. Also Austin Walker is my second philosophy teacher (first was Detective Pony). 

Tomorrow the void (8/8) Quantum entanglement runs in the family. Moody. Sad mad old men. Includes a robot ball. 

This planet needs a name (5/5) * The most heartwarming post-apocalyptic tale, a rare sci-fi with a soul. Instills the desire to grab coffee with all the 7 characters after the prologue. Hopeful, mindful, soothingly slow paced. The new world will be better if we try.

Lighthearts (4/4) * A new queer community space is learning to cope with ghosts and new ways to connect people. Just all around warm and nice. From the same people who do This Planet Needs a Name. 

Murmurs (10/10) A very well produced (from BBC, duh) loose anthology (separate stories loosely connected to each other). An art house movie in audio form. Episode second includes an extremely touching love story and an instance of fucking a ghost.

The tower (7/7) It's Celeste. Climbing the tower to face the challenge and free yourself from the human condition for a while. It's not literally Celeste, but you know.

Middle below (10/10) A nervous ghost whisperer has one friend. The tag line of the show is "bad things will happen", and which has been an anxiety reliever and a call to action. 

Folxlore (3/3) Short horror stories from, by, about and for queer people from Scotland. The last one about pregnancy really hurted. 

Dungeon economic model (10/10) Less than 5 minute vignettes about why you should invest in dungeons. Some nice background worldbuilding. 

London necropolis railway (7/7) Ghouls and humans learn the true value of friendship and acceptance and defiance. 

The vanishing act (2/?) The promise of urban fantasy set in the 1930s Berlin underground culture, despite its magnificent appeal, is dwarfed by how annoying the MC is. He's the not funny type of an asshole - dumb, mean to his friends, hates women, utterly insufferable (and I can tolerate a lot of mediocre audio fiction). The production quality is top notch though. 

Station Arcadia (3/?) They are trying, and it's admirable. Would really benefit from a link to the map.

Midst (19/19) Fantasy story set in the world where the accounting is worshipped as a religion, following three protagonists, and told by three narrators - simultaneously, which had proven to be an incredibly fun technique. Worth a listen to at least check it out.

Null/void (9/?) * Anti-capitalist digital goddess preventing the marketing stunts of a malicious company. Way less cool than it sounds. 

Circles (4/4) Beth Eyre is great. The rest of the story (even though it has demons) - eh.

Forgive me (4/4) * Sitcom in the form of confessional testimonies of people revealing their sins to a pastor, who himself is running from something. Yes. Surprisingly well made. 

Next stop (10/10) Sitcom about three wacky millennials. More energetic than endearing. 

Less is Morgue (5/?) * Sitcom about a ghoul and a ghost with an annoying voice. 

Me & AU (11/11) * Turns out, love can blossom on the battlefield of fandom shipping. 

Old gods of Appalachia (12.5/12.5) * Good spooky stories with impeccable atmosphere that are hard to follow for me, for some reason. 

Temujin (5/5) A small, tidy and inscrutable audio drama depicting Genghis Khan's origin story. I have not read The Secret History of Mongols, but I doubt it's that accurate to the text. 

Godshead Incidental (4/4) * There is a girl who tries to live in the world after her sister's disappearance. There are gods. There is an endearing fixer/private consultant with some family drama. Looks to be a very promising show about getting to terms with your trauma set in a fun world with fun characters. Updating slowly, but surely.

Left Right Game (10/10) Audio adaptation of a serialized story on r/nosleep. High production values, alluring mysterious world, characters that exist only to be killed off every episode. 

Valence (12/12) MC with a special depression inner voice learns to meet new people, overcome trauma, find love, fight capitalism. Would not call the world or the characters particularly interesting, despite most of them being magic users. 

Unseen (5/?) A new anthology about magic from Wolf 359 people. One can listen to them say "are you watching closely" only so many times. 

Whirlwind for hire (4/?) Musicals are very ambitious undertakings, by default. This one has immortals, gods, nature spirits? Good for them.

Fall of the house of sunshine (8/a lot) Podcast musical about a murder on a children’s tv show, accordingly fast-paced. A ton of tiny wacky details about the world of teeth and its pearly truth (and more!). The only even remotely sympathetic story was left to the antagonist. 

Mockery Manor (6/?) * An old amusement park, twins, family secrets. Even features a tiger! Not as cool as its premises promises.

Brimstone Valley Mall (10/10) A band of lovable misfit demons trying to survive the reckoning from their dead end jobs. 

In Strange Woods (3/?) A musical that is unfortunately structured as a true crime. Features Patrick Page from Hadestown, so any and all faults are immediately forgiven.

The Cipher (2/8) Textbook YA about a 16 girl that revels a bit too much in the pain it causes her. At first you think “oh, poc representation”, but it’s just so she can be an orphan chosen one.

Non fiction

Into the Zone (8/8) An actually thought provoking and well crafted podcast. By pitting “opposites” against each other, valuable philosophical and sociological ideas reveal themselves in the space in between.

HiPhi nation Real life alarming and amazing stories used to broach philosophical subjects. Sometimes veers into “we need more female drone pilots”, but for the most part interesting.

How to save a planet Literally, how people survive catastrophes individually and communally - and how should you.

Reset 

First contact 

Rabbit hole

Things that go boom

#my blog i get to choose the music #the music is people talking into my ears #like ghosts #pod heaven #c:

[semi-imaginary-place]

gamers have no rights

SEIZE THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION

Oh and Minato actually using crude (like he always speaks very politely)  speech for the last big shot was a good moment. i rather like minato  and you can  see how dear kaburagi is to him. Minato gets Kaburagi put on mod duty instead of being destroyed or sentenced to life at the waste facility. Minato then stops Kaburagi from getting destroyed a second time and even keeps his avatar which would have gotten him killed. and he does all this without Kaburagi asking him, without Kaburagi ever knowing. Minato in the finale then risks annihilation to see kaburagi in the finale and is willing to gamble his life by staying in deca-dence to execute the plan. if he hadn’t helped, kaburagi would almost certainly be destroyed by the bubble wipe. Minato just wants to be near Kaburagi and be a part of his life. me in the distance: “gaaayyyyyyyyyyyyy”

when the admins threw donatello into the poop jail, did no one think to take the arm gun?

Yuzuru Tachikawa  has a lot of good stuff. death parade, mob psycho 100 II, assistant director for zankyo no terror.

once a limiter is released, can you put it back on?

http://decadence-anime.com/en/ incase the website ever goes down and i have to use the wayback machine

5.5: ok so i did forget the part where they say that Solid Quake and the other mega corps manufacture the cyborgs. ah and the cyborgs are also property of Solid Quake. real last stage capitalist dystopia. and some cyborgs’ job is to play the mmo. Like the company mandates download of the game upon cyborg activation. yeah if solid quake has the resources to manage a population of squishy monsters and have absolute control of all matter in the bubble they totally could have dealt with the air pollution on the rest of the planet. There’s also at least 4 other structures/companies on the planet. I wonder what they are up to. i was wondering about the ruins, so they were made as set pieces/background art for the post apocalyptic story.

so cyborgs did originally have their roots in biological humans. but currently and all the ones we see are assembled by Solid Quake. I wonder about the cyborg cores, they have the same green glow as oxyone. And one of the characters (minato? kaburagi?) says that cores aren’t controlled by Solid Quake, so the cyborgs have free will.

So I doubt minato ever switched departments though I guess its possible, meaning when he says he wants to fight along side kaburagi again he means this metaphorically, he wants to be able to once against work towards the same goal as kaburagi side by side. Also Minato calls Kaburagi “Kabu” no honorifics or anything and the subtitles bastardize this into just “Kaburagi”

they ended up making a game that involves throwing around a cyborg core. isn’t that a little...

Though everyone helped out a little, the finale was all about helping kaburagi where as I would have preferred something like everyone working and changing the system rather than kaburagi having a chat and the deca dence system letting him do what he wants. but I suppose that’s a hook for season 2. So seen on its own deca-dence has a good solid ending but not a spectacular one. But I am so glad it has a good ending, you don’t know how many shows have gotten my hopes up in the first couple episodes only to fizzle out and flop. I am so happy this show stuck the landing even if there was a little wobble.

I watched all of Deca-Dence in one sitting and wow do I love this show. It's just a good solid show. There's no weak point, each episode is solid, the writing is good, the animation is striking, and most importantly the show holds itself together throughout its entire run.

funny thing is. When I first saw the promo material for this anime back in spring of 2020 i went like ”ugggg not another one of these” where the remnants of humanity fight against annihilation at the hands of some monsters like shingeki no kyoujin or kabaneri of the iron fortress mostly because I’m been thinking a lot on compassion for the Other and a lack of that combined with propaganda about how the Other is a threat to the existence of the in-group forms the basis of a lot of modern facism and white supremacy groups that justify their existence against an imaginary threat use this same kind of logic framing themselves as the last bastions of humanity (whiteness) against a monstrous other (muslims, immigrants, ethnic minorities, usually people of color/not white people). Now the premises of humanity fighting against annihilation by monsters in of itself isn’t necessarily racist, but after a year where violent racism exploded against asian americans and BLM had a lot of attention, my mind can’t help but be in that space. However by the time I watched Deca-Dence on January 25, 2021 I had completely forgotten everything and anything about the show. All I remembered was some people crying about it on tumblr and twitter whose posts I skipped over once I realized they were about a show I hadn’t seen. So I went into this with a completely blank slate, I didn’t know that this was scifi, or that there was a giant fortress city, I didn’t know that Kaburagi was featured in the promos alongside Natsume, and I didn’t know we would be fighting monsters. But the first episode was just so well directed that I was excited for a second one despite the premises, and also i was still processing that last shot when i clicked the next episode button. It was the second episode that sold this show for me.

Oh I totally forgot to talk about natsume’s arm and how the show handle’s disability. Also I don’t have a prosthetic so take this with a gain of salt. Natsume occasionally feels self conscious about her prosthetic arm since people will comment on it and it adds barriers in her life, disqualifying her from joining The Power and making it more difficult to adjust the nozzle on her pack. She has added struggles in her life that others don’t, but the show never portrays her as lesser for it, its just something she has to consider and work around in her life. The line about how its not her weakness, but her power was a good line. And she literally turned it into a weapon, that’s so cool.

Corporations generate capital for the enrichment of their shareholders. But in the world of deca-dence there are no shareholders at the end of the pipeline. The machinery of the capitalist firm continues to spin, squeezing out as much cheap or free labor as possible, and acquiring assets, but for nothing and no one. Its a system made to benefit the Few, but whose beneficiaries no longer exist (or at least we never see them in the anime). The exploitation of the Tankers and cyborgs serve no purpose but to continue the existence of Solid Quake and its system.

dissonance grieving tankers at funeral to cyborgs chatting about how fun the last raid event was. bright cartoony artstyle to the dystopia of neoliberal capitalism (and the labor camp). the cheery game trailer and company intro style exposition for the apocalypse.

The reason the ending was only good instead of spectacular is because it doesn’t engage with the themes laid down in earlier episodes enough. The ending provides an emotionally fulfilling ending for its characters but only a lukewarm one for late-stage capitalism. There’s two narratives going on in Deca-Dence. The personal narrative told through Natsume and Kaburagi about learning to try again, improve yourself, make your own decisions, live on your own terms, and push your limits. Then there’s the secondary narrative about overcoming structures and systems of oppression. The anime team did a great job at the first one, but kinda meh about the second one. When we are introduced to the people of Deca-Dence we see them stratified into classes like Gear/cyborg and Tanker. However this is a false narrative perpetuated by Solid Quake to maintain its control of both groups, after all Solid Quake owns both the cyborgs and the Tankers as literal property. Ideally the Tankers and cyborgs would realize the divide between them is false and team up to tear down not only Solid Quake but the systems that allowed mega corps to exist in the first place and build more equitable and just social systems. And we do get some of this in the ending with changes in how Solid Quake is run (no more punishment of “bugs”, got rid of the gulag), but all this is shoved to the background. Essentially management and company policy changed but the fact that the corporation or its structures exists, didn’t. I can't tell if its deliberate or not though. Its common with single cour anime to leave dangling plot threads as a bid to the funding for a second season and most of them never do. So I can see it like that, but eh I still never liked this approach. Its also a limitation of the single cour instead of being produced as a 24 ep anime where they would have had lime to develop that second narrative.

#deca-dence #deca dence

[mars-the-4th-planet]

Yuri Gagarin harasses a truck driver and talks about politics with Penny Polendina

Yuri landed on the firm Russian soil in a rural town next to a gas station. Well, not that firm, but firm enough. At least, that is what the 4th panzer Corp thought while they rolled through the area, but that is neither here nor there. "Vodka, nyet kaliningrad luftpanzer kozorvorisc niemcy?" She asked the gas station person politely.

Roughly translated the gas station persons response was "No we do not have plutonium fuel, thats not actually a planet therefore it cannot produce fuel!"

Yuri moped excessively until the gas station person handed her a small lump of uranium. "Look, you can have this okay? Maybe you can turn it into plutonium."

Yuri handed it back and shook her head. "I apologize for wasting your time comrade, please have a nice day in our glorious soviet union."

"Our wha-"

"Penny are you a communist or a filthy cappie?" Yuri asked her robot friend, surprised that she never asked this before.

Penny put two fingers together. "I dont know... I am not really into human politics... Personally I think that the best solution would be a society run by robotics like in New Polendine Mesopotamia. It brought peace and prosperity to an otherwise chaotic and violent region."

Yuri Gagarin rolled her eyes. "That is just a mechanically led puppet state overseen and funded by the United States of America."

"Yes but us Polendinas cannot be corrupted by greed or power lust and we always make calculated and empathetic decisions according to our makers... So..."

"Robots supercede the working class Penny, so a nation run by them is anti-worker by default!"

Penny shrugged, a bit nervous about the conversation and to change the subject she pointed at a Republic of Amazon truck and exclaimed "Hey look Yuri! I did not know they had amazons in Russia!"

Yuri frowned and popped up next to the truck man as he applied gas to his truck. "Hello anti-comrade, what are you shipping through my beautiful motherland?" She asked in Russian.

The truck man looked at her, puzzled. His eyes were bagged, his shoulders sagged, his skin was pale and his limbs seemed frail. The man was in bad shape, but that was to be expected of Amazon workers.

"Ma'am... No hablo Español.." He mumbled and continued with the gassing of his truck.

"What are you shipping in this truck for the foul corporation of the Republic of Amazon?" She asked again, in English. There was a slight threatening tone in her voice.

The man blinked. "Bread, ma'am."

Yuri narrowed her eyes. "Right. Give me your keys."

"Are your robbing me?"

"No. I have authority granted to me by the USSR to search any capitalist vehicle."

"My truck does not have a political idealogy ma'am..."

Yuri powered on her rocket and raised her fist. "Silence. Give me your keys in the name of the Soviet Union."

The man sighed. "The soviet union is dead ma'am."

Yuri was about to strike him, but Penny suddenly grabbed her waist and pulled her back.

Penny moved in front of her. "Sir, I apologize for my friend. She is in much grief about the fall of the USSR."

The trucker put the gas nozzle up. "It's alright babe. I best be going now."

"BABE?!" Yuri Gagarin flared up. Literally. "You FOOL! This Penny belongs to ME!"

Startled, the trucker scampered back. "Wait! Fine, take the keys, I'm sorry!"

Yuri nodded and took them, and used the keys to unlock the back door. "Aha!"

"Oh... Oh my... Um" Yuri didnt know what to say about what she saw. "Where are you taking them?"

"C-China..." The trucker stammered.

Inside the truck were what appeared to be twenty humans wearing the yellow and white Amazon Prime uniforms, except they were lacking mouths and their heads had two colorful blue and pink horns or antenna (Yuri wasnt sure which) that were aerodynamic looking like the tail fins on the back of a plane. They curved up and swooped back. The strangest thing about them however was how they all looked pretty much the same. They all had pale skin and black hair, and the males among them were all tall and muscular. While the women were all small and slim and sleek. Every one of them had striking blue eyes that gleamed in the dark. One male was making hand motions but immediately stopped as Yuri Gagarin opened the door.

"Who... Or what... Are these people?" Yuri Gagarin asked. "How could you ship people packed in like this! Like property!"

"I honestly don't know ma'am please... I am just the driver... Amazon has my son in mandatory daycare and I had to take this job to save up for the fee to see him on weekends..."

"they have him in what?"

Penny explained because the trucker was clearly scared. "When Amazon employees complain about not having the time or money to properly care for their children, the Republic of Amazon files a statuate of neglect against them and takes their child into corporate custody. The parents can still visit their child, but it costs them a fee and the price is measured by the minute spent with them. Sometimes with a government permit the parents can get their child back, but only if they make a lawsuit about it and that is even more expensive."

The trucker started crying. "I miss my boy! Please, I know this transport is wrong but it pays well and I am saving everything to see him again! I havent eaten in three days!"

Yuri Gagarin sighed. "Typical abuse of the working class... We are clearly living in the worst timeline. So what are these people? Aliens?"

"I honestly have no idea..!" The man stammered, continuing to cry.

Penny shook her head. "They seem to have mostly human DNA. I would say they are genetically modified human beings made for servitude."

"Why don't they have mouths? How do they eat? What are those things on their heads?"

"I do not know the answers to the last two questions, Yuri my friend. But their lack of mouths is likely intended to keep in accordance with international law on the property rights on genetically modified life forms. If a creature is intelligent enough to speak like a human, it cannot be made into property. This does not apply to robots like me, because I am not a biological lifeform..." Penny added sadly. While she enjoyed her friendship with Yuri, she could not shake the fact that in her mind she was in servitude to her.

"That is rather disturbing, since they are probably just as sentient as you or me or this malnourished worker here." Yuri Gagarin said, and got up into the truck. "Hello comrades, my name is Yuri Gagarin. I believe that your time as chattel is over. Come with me, and we shall run down any who seek to oppress and exploit you. First we must make it to our secret communist headquarters, alright?"

They seemed scared by this, and backed away the best they could with how crowded it was in there. Amazon officials assigned to train these people were sure to really into the idea that any opportunity to escape was just a test, and that failing the test would result in horrible punishment. So they believed that Yuri Gagarin was just another setup to catch disloyals among them.

"Come on, let's go!" Yuri Gagarin insisted. "It is not often that I am optimistic about anything, but I am optimistic about saving you."

They did not budge.

"They are not the brightest beings in the bulb, are they Penny?"

"I think they are just scared Yuri my friend. But they are already in a big truck, why don't we just drive them there?"

"The truck could have a tracking beacon Penny."

Penny doubted that possibility. "You could be right, but my sensors do not detect one. Perhaps I could try to communicate to them that they are safe now?"

"Go ahead, but I don't know how you could do so better than me..." Yuri Gagarin moped.

Penny made a bunch of ASL hand signals to them, reassuring the people that they were safe and free to go now. She added that she was an EA-built robot unaffiliated with the corporate empire of Amazon, and so they had no reason to be afraid of her. For the most part they seemed unconvinced, because they were never taught sign language as that counted as a form of speech. The hand signals they made to each other was a simple code they made themselves, which was punishable whenever they were caught doing it.

Yuri Gagarins brief optimism about the situation seeped away. "Why does everything have go be so complicated and hard! Oh, woe is us!"

She grabbed Penny and held her for comfort. "Oh, my dear Penny! Do you see now the sins of capitalism?"

"To be fair Yuri my friend, many capitalist nations have placed an embargo on the Republic of Amazon for their treatment of their workers. And some other major companies refuse to do business with them. These genetically modified humans were on their way to a communist country anyway... So it is not merely capitalism at fault, but a few corrupt individuals who have a lot of power, and that is a recurring theme in every system. And I mean no disrepect to you by saying that!"

Yuri Gagarin held Pennys shoulders and looked at her eye to eye. She smiled. "You remind me of Freedom Sayori sometimes."

Penny frowned. "Sorry..."

"No no, I meant that as a compliment! I may dislike her beliefs, but I have... A strange respect for Sayori as a person. She is naive, but she is no hypocrite and practices the freedom and kindness she preaches."

Penny giggled. "Hehehe.. I think you like her Yuri!"

"What? No! Never!"

"We should get these people to safety now Yuri. The driver too. Even if there is a tracker, what can Amazon do against a Polendina and a Rocket Girl?"

Penny's sweet and determined smile brought some optimism back into Yuri. "You are right. I am prepared to fight for what I believe is right. Let us go, Penny, and bring some small justice to the world! Even if it is neglible in the larger picture!"

"That is the spirit Yuri!...I think..."

#Yuri Gagarin

[love-and-socialism]

There’s a new Iron Curtain falling. Here’s a tiny observation. America and Britain are on the verge of forming something very much like the old Soviet Union. A new bloc, a global axis, an entity that follows its own paradigm, trades among itself, treats its citizens like dirt, enriches its elites…and shuts out the rest of the world.

Let me explain, beginning with America.

What got America to this point? It wasn’t al-Qaeda or ISIS or the commies. As it turns out, the thing that wrecked America was good ole’ home grown capitalism. Now, I catch flak for saying that, Americans get instantly defensive, because capitalism is to them what socialism was to Soviets: neither really understand their ruling ideologies well, which is the point of an ideology, really.

So let’s quickly cover with what capitalism isn’t. Contrary to popular belief, capitalism isn’t your local drycleaner or bar or bartender or the guy that polishes shoes at the train station. It’s not really small or even medium-sized business at all. Those guys aren’t capitalists — they’re barely eking out a living, weary, humble, average. Capitalism is Goldman Sachs throwing bailout money at hedge funds to build bots to trade Facebook shares with by the nanosecond…so there’s every more profit. More, more, more. Is your local bartender obsessively, ritually, fetishistically, single-mindedly concerned with maximizing profit at the expense of the planet, democracy, and the future? Does he only care about increasing his quarterly earnings, to meet profit targets set by Wall Street analysts? Is his stock publicly traded? Does he have a fiduciary duty to those shareholders? I didn’t think so. He’s not a capitalist. The capitalists, my friends, are the robber barons of American collapse…the average person trying to start something new and cool and interesting, or just making a meagre living from their passion, isn’t a capitalist, a soulless impersonal profit-maximizing entity, and they never will be. Do you see the difference? Please tell me you do, because it drives me a little crazy that Americans don’t know what capitalism actually is.

(Now, this is more like the European definition of capitalism, it’s true. The American one is more like “corporatism.” Call it what you want — let’s not get hung up on semantics. I’ll stick to capitalism not “corporatism”, because Europe has corporations too, but they’re not as insane and abusive as American ones.)

Phew. OK, let’s get to work now. What collapsed American life? Capitalism did, obviously. It can’t have been anything else, because there isn’t anything else. There’s no public healthcare, retirement, childcare, etcetera. Not surprisingly, deficits of all these very things, which are the basics of life, caused life to crater. Meanwhile, capitalists, who by now had lobbied to privatize all these industries and many more began to charge Americans an arm and a leg (literally, maybe) for things that were…free…in every other rich country. Insulin, visits to the doctor, retirement, parental leave.

Fast forward to today. The average American is effectively the weird paradox of a poor person in a rich country. The majority of Americans can’t afford food, housing, healthcare, and bills — hence, they just go deeper and deeper into debt…debt which they never pay off, hence the majority of Americans literally die in debt, too. Yes, really. Think about that for a second. What happens to nations that plunge into fresh poverty — where the middle class implodes? Fascism does. Hence, American fascism ignited at precisely the moment when Americans plunged into poverty: not a coincidence — cause and effect. And what caused the weird situation of American poverty — a new kind of poverty, poor people in a rich country — was capitalism: it ate through everything Americans had, in its quest for eternally rising profits, which meant that they were left broke, perpetually on the edge, unable to afford the very things they were often involved in producing. Again — that’s capitalism: it doesn’t care about paying you decently, it just cares about maximizing its own profits, getting as rich as possible, everything else be damned. But the inevitable result was a fascist meltdown.

Now look across the pond. There’s Britain. It’s the world’s second most capitalist country. If you understand all the above about America, what might you expect to happen to Britain? More or less the same thing — only less so, no? And that’s what did. Did you know that the only two countries in the world with the combination of falling life expectancy, flat incomes, and spiking poverty are…America and Britain? Apart from maybe North Korea and the Congo…but those are places that never were democracies at all.

So here we have these two countries — the Romeo and Juliet of modern collapse. Europeans live pretty good lives. Sure, times are tough, they are everywhere. But only in America and Britain did times get so tough that the extremists literally rose to the heights of power and controlled the destiny of nations. Europe fought them off in its most recent election, in fact.

So the Romeo and Juliet of collapsing countries — what are they doing? Well, they’ve made their choice. Their choice is capitalism. They’ve both rejected social democracy. Britain’s rejected the “democracy” part — it doesn’t want to be part of the EU, and America’s rejected the “social” part — it’s still so backwards it thinks socialism is some kind of horrible curse, not how people get working healthcare and college and retirement in the rest of the world.

So Romeo and Juliet have made a kind of suicide pact. They’ve decided to go all in on capitalism.

And that brings us to now. Trumps’s in Britain, trumpeting (sorry) a “trade deal.” What does all that really mean? Well, it means the following. Britain is effectively a strategic beggar on the global stage now, and it has to take what it can get. What America will demand is that American capitalism has access to all Britain’s remaining public goods. Britain never built a full social democracy, but it got further than America did: it has public healthcare, education to a degree, retirement of a kind, housing, and so forth. All of those will be “opened up” to American companies, which is to say, they’ll be sold to them, privatized. That means American capitalism will now be running what’s left of Britain’s public goods.

Imagine the NHS for a second. Who “owns” it? Nobody and everybody does, in fact. Local towns and cities, if you want to nitpick. But really — everybody and nobody. Now consider the fact that when it’s privatized, there will be a dude — an American “hedge fund manager”, which means some clueless Ivy League nitwit — or two who literally “owns” the NHS. And the BBC. And the retirement system. And the education system. Are you getting my drift? How rich will that dude, the guy that “owns” the healthcare system of a country, be? Obscenely, I think is a fair term to use. It’s the kind of thing we once associated with failed states.

Now think of how perfect that is for American capitalism. Why? Because it’s sucked Americans dry, that’s why. They literally have nothing left to give. Less than nothing. The majority die in debt — that’s how poor Americans are now. They never break even their whole lives long. Capitalism can’t take more from them, because they don’t have it. Nor does America have any real publics goods to cannibalize. Ah, but Britain does. Britain’s expansive public goods — though they’ve been underfunded for decades — are just what American capitalism needs to prey on.

Why? Because the crux of American capitalism is ever increasing profits. It’s bled America dry in its quest for those. But that game is done now, as Americans have plunged into lives of dire and ruinous poverty. So where to look? Britain is the perfect target. If you can’t increase profits forever…you’re not going to stay a capitalist for very long.

Do you see how perfect this setup is? American capitalism needs fresh meat to tear apart and feast on. There’s Britain, who’s rejected European social democracy, and chosen…capitalism. It’s not just a marriage made in hell — it’s a suicide pact.

Here’s what will happen — what’s already happening, in fact. America’s declaring trade war after trade war — China, India, Europe. Britain is too — thats what Brexit is. But they’re seeking succor in each others’ arms. They are building a new entity, a new bloc, a new kind of Soviet Union in a sense. A part of the world where these two countries basically trade only with each other, do business with each other, care for each other. Where these two countries will have intertwined their fates, and linked hands in a shared destiny.

That much is already happening because it’s more or less inevitable. Americans can’t ever question capitalism — and Brits rejected social democracy. So where does that leave them, except together, in a new Soviet Union of capitalism, whose Iron Curtains are already falling, to shut their people off from the rest of the world, whether Europe, China, or Mexico? What else is Brexit? Trump’s wall? The coming trade deal between them?

Now, if you’re a Brit, that means that your life is going to get worse. A lot worse. Fast. You’re going to live like an American. You’re going to eat American food, watch American TV, and get American healthcare and retirement and childcare. Oh wait, there isn’t any decent version of most of those things. You see my point, then. British livings standards will plummet to American levels — which are the lowest in the rich world by a very, very long way.

If you’re American, on the other hand…this also means that life will get worse, too. That’s because instead of learning from the better parts of Britain — the NHS, the BBC, the Royal Societies, the education system, and so forth — America’s basically intending to take a wrecking ball to them. That means capitalists will go on getting rich — imagine how rich the dude that ends up “owning” the NHS is going to be — and Americans will go on getting poorer and poorer. But worse, because this new union, only really trading with itself, thinking about itself, listening to itself…it’ll just stay stuck in a loop of collapse.

I know. A lot of you will probably whine reading this article — “that sounds outlandish!” Does it? You’re missing the point, completely. Britain’s rejected the EU. America’s rejected the EU, China, and Mexico. Both have rejected everyone else, in a kind of mass delusion, a hysterical tantrum of macho man tears. Who do they have left? Birds of a feather flock together, my friends, when it comes to political economy. Europe is a union of social democracies. So what else can the last two capitalist countries do but flock together, too?

The last two capitalist countries on earth have no one to turn to but each other. Reinforcing that, of course, is a healthy dose of entitled white supremacy, to be sure. But it’s political economy that drives it. How can a capitalist country have a union with a social democracy? A socialist one with a capitalist one? They can’t — impossible. These political economies are too different — which is why, for example, America and Canada never really joined hands in any real way. Hence, Britain and America, in choosing capitalism, have also chosen each other.

So there they are, the last two capitalist countries on earth. I don’t mean: “the last two countries where any capitalism exists” — I mean: “the last two countries on earth where capitalism is the dominant, monopolistic organizing principle of all life, thought, action.” They’re star-crossed lovers, America and Britain, the Romeo and Juliet of capitalism.

Capitalism is what led them to collapse. Collapse is what made them to turn to each other. And turning to each other kept them firmly capitalist. Choosing to stay capitalist in each others’ arms took away the chance to join the more prosperous, modern, social democratic world around them — Canada, Europe. But capitalism was the very compound whose overdose poisoned their systems to begin with. How could anything but more ruin come from overdosing together, all over again?

And yet no one asked, no one saw, and no one cared very much. Their eyes were full of dollar signs, and their blood ran hot with the thrill of conquest.

Umair 

May 2019

#socialism #us politics #American politics #UK politics #fuck capitalism #socialism or barbarism #late stage capitalism #Brexit #save the NHS #social democracy

[96thdayofrage]

Here’s a little secret. It’s going to sound obvious and trite, but I don’t think it is. You be the judge, by the end of this essay. Liberalism and conservatism won’t get to social democracy, but America’s — and the world’s — choice is social democracy or collapse. Sounds absurdly, almost childishly tautological, doesn’t it? And yet one of the most fundamental myths that many of us believe is that “progress” comes from pitting “liberalism” against “conservatism”, over and over again, forever, like beating a head against two brick walls. Somehow, these two poles, in opposition, we’re told, lead societies forwards— only no one really examines how, or why, or even if. We just believe it. But is it really true?

What’s going wrong with the world is in a way very simple to understand. Huge surpluses have piled up at the top of the global economy. So vast that there is nothing left to do with them except pile them up offshore, hide them like buried treasure. These fortunes have been earned, mostly, by doing nothing of benefit to societies, people, and the planet whatseover — merely exploiting all three ruinously. Without a way for those surpluses piled up at the top to find themselves back in the hands of the average person, discontent, rage, and fury will continue to grow, as people lose hope, faith, and belief in their systems, societies, and futures. Those sentiments and passions will fold back upon themselves, becoming extremism, fanaticism, fascism. That way lies a new dark age.

All this is precisely what happened in the 1930s — the only thing that has really changed is that nations aren’t indebted to each other, so much as average people are indebted to a class of hidden, shadowy ultra-rich, who have come to own the critical systems and structures in entire economies. That imbalance produces just the same social tensions, though, as during the 1930s — fury, panic, a sense that people are just barely hanging on, redirected at the easiest targets, the powerless, who are then scapegoated, hunted, and demonized.

Hence, the world needs more social democracy, and it needs it now. Societies like America that don’t have it, which have never had it, need to develop it in spades. Societies like Europe that do have it need badly to strengthen and recommit to it, maybe even to rediscover its values and principles, which is what I’d say the Gilets Jaunes protests are really about.

Now. The question is this. If the world needs more social democracy, then can liberalism and conservatism get it there? It’s pretty easy to answer this question, and I’d bet you already know the answer, even if part of you fights against knowing it, so let’s think about it anyways.

Which country never joined the global movement towards social democracy, that roared across rich countries after the last world war? America, of course. America’s politics, uniquely, remained stuck, split, in a weird, binary way, between “liberals” and “conservatives” — mostly because America was clinging on to old notions of supremacy, still institutionalized in segregation, which ruled out any kind of social democracy absolutely.

So what did decades of binary liberalism versus conservatism accomplish for America? Did the dialectic lead to progress? Not at all. It led to stagnation. The answer to what did liberalism and conservatism achieve for America is: precisely nothing. Less than nothing, in fact, one could argue. This is the point at which Americans will cry, “there goes Umair! Being hyperbolic again!!” Ah, but am I? What does the evidence say? The average American’s life isn’t more prosperous today than yesterday — it’s less so. Life expectancy is falling. His income is less than his grandfather’s. He’s broke, though he works longer hours, at a less stable job. Suicides are soaring — and maybe he himself is giving up on life. Who could blame him? He faces bizarre, weird, and gruesome problems, like his kids being shot at school, and having to beg strangers for money for healthcare online. He spends sleepless night wondering he ended up impoverished, despite playing by the rules — maybe not quite understanding that the rules were designed to exploit him.

Decades of liberalism versus conservatism didn’t lead America forward — they turned it into a surreal, bizarre dystopia. The empirical reality of American living standards is this: they haven’t risen during our adult lifetimes. They’ve imploded, to the point that Americans live lives of indignity, shame, fear, and rage. That’s vivid evidence that liberalism versus conservatism accomplished precisely nothing for Americans. (Nothing positive, that is. They accomplished plenty of wasteful, stupid things. Fake wars. Tax cuts for the rich. Weird “market-based” healthcare systems that worked for no one. Bailing out banks. And so forth. They accomplished a lot — for capitalists. By siphoning off everyone else’s money, power, and possibility.)

Why didn’t liberalism and conservatism lead to progress? Well, because in America, they converged to two flavours of largely the same thing — “neoliberalism” and “neoconservatism.” Neoconservatism was a little more trigger happy, always ready to start a war, and neoliberalism was a little more utopian, but their foundational precepts didn’t end up being very different. Wealth would trickle down. Trade should be free, but movement shouldn’t. A person’s worth was how much money they made. And, most crucially of all, given these first three — society must never, ever invest in itself.

Hence, this fatal convergence of “neos”, of liberalism and conservatism to the same lowest-common-denominator, produced modern American dystopia: a rich society of impoverished people, a powerful one of powerless people, a generally decent one somehow ruled by bigots, fools, and ignoramuses. It’s a place in which people are quite literally left to fend for themselves, as best they can, with zero support, investment, care, or consideration. In fact, Americans are taught from the day they are born that caring for their neighbours, society, planet, or even themselves, is something to be scorned: a moral weakness, a social shame, a cultural crime, and an intellectual mistake.

Yet despite all that, many — maybe most — Americans are emerging social democrats. They might not know it — but when 70% of them want public healthcare and debt-free education and safety nets and so forth, that is precisely what they are. They don’t know it, at least many of them, because American pundits and intellectuals act like it’s still 1962, and act as if social democracy never happened, still pitting “socialism” against “capitalism” in a Cold War that no one really won — unless the wrecked state of America today means “winning” to you. So Americans are emerging social democrats despite the tremendous stigma, misinformation, and baffling stupidity that’s become commonplace in America’s public sphere — which is a good thing.

The problem is that while many Americans are emerging social democrats, nobody, really, represents them. The GOP obviously doesn’t — it represents the poor deluded fool who wants to rewind to 1862, more or less. But neither do the Democrats. They are still focused on the same old half-baked, ill-thought-out “compromises” of neoliberalism. For Democrats, markets still trump public goods, social investment, and national institutions, every single time.

But that is precisely why liberalism and conservatism can’t get you to social democracy. Neither one has any interest whatsoever in rewriting a social contract that isn’t severely compromised. Both quite happily put profit before people, capital over society, money over meaning, accumulation before justice, speculation before investment, concentration before distribution, and the same old hierarchies above genuine equality. But what we’ve seen in America is the ruinous consequences of these beliefs — they are mistakes, which lead nowhere but downwards and backwards. Yet how can two ideologies which believe in all the same mistakes at root make any progress?

Let me put that more bluntly. Liberalism can free you — and conservatism can protect you — if you’re a rich white dude, sure. But what if you’re a poor white dude — or an even poorer brown woman? What good are “self-reliance” and “personal responsibility” to you? What if you’re a family who’s a member of the people formerly known as the middle class — does being able to buy little a Johnny a cheap Chinese-made toy, aka “free trade”, make you any better off when you can’t give him decent healthcare or an education? If you’re any of these people — which is to say, 90% of society, at this point — then you need investment in you, by everyone else, and everyone else needs just the same thing. You need healthcare, education, retirement, a decent job, savings, a sense that your life matters, that you belong, and so forth — but you can never have any of those unless everyone agrees to provide them to everyone else. The other 10% — the capitalists, the dynasties, predators, and so forth — aren’t ever going to give them to you, except at the cost of everything you will ever make, money, time, ideas, imagination, life savings. That is precisely the trap the average American is in today — why he is broke, going nowhere, stuck, and losing hope.

Do you see my point yet? Let me make it clearer. The fundamental beliefs of liberalism and conservatism, their mistaken and impoverished priorities and notions, mostly boil down to the same thing, in slightly different ways. Only the strong should survive, eliminate the weak — everyone will be better off! Exploitation will lead to prosperity for all! (Hence, time and again, soon enough degenerate into outright violence.) If one person in a society has lots of money — then we can call the whole thing a success!!

LOL. These are not just strange and foolish beliefs, my friends — they are also obviously false ones. Nobody much was made better off by enacting them. America is vivid proof of the failure of both liberalism and conservatism, and the unworkable compromises they forge. Both are now badly obsolete — maybe they worked in feudal, agrarian, or industrial societies, to better the relative lot of some, at the price of others, through things like slavery, segregation, and today’s predatory capitalism, but that work having been done, they will not work any longer in this century.

At this point, a better, fairer, wiser social contract is precisely what the world needs, or else. Or else what? Or else climate meltdown, inequality, extremism, fascism, and various flavors of collapse and implosion do. To make that point clear, let’s look at America again.

The result of relying on liberalism and conservatism as the sole engines of forward motion that progress in America is stuck, stalled, that America is in stalemate. But stalemate means collapse, because societies need ongoing tending and cultivation, just like a garden. Yet maybe no further progress is possible at all, without a genuinely social democratic movement. And whether or not the Democratic Socialists are such a thing still remains to be seen — because they seem to be focused more on pie-in-the-sky ideas than simply proposing an American NHS, BBC, or retirement system, imitating what works, improving upon it. That’s OK — they’re young, and they haven’t studied the world enough yet. Time will tell if that familiar American arrogance comes to be their undoing, too.

The lesson is very simple. Liberalism versus conservatism ends in collapse, via stalemate, not progress. It’s one of the most fundamental myths that we believe, perhaps, is that progress is only ever the result of these ideologies “compromising”, or “battling”, or “debating.” But it’s not true. Liberalism and conversatism do indeed compromise — in fatally impoverished ways. By making it impossible for people to make shared investments, for societies to measure anything other than money, by assigning life, work, being, no inherent worth, purpose, or meaning, they reduce and abstract away what matters, and privilege and protect exploitation — of people, of democracy, of nature, of the future, of life — and in that way, settlements between them are compromised things to begin with. Both are altogether too comfortable with, reliant on, exploitation to be engines of prosperity in a century where abundance can no longer come so easily from exploitation. All that is what the American example proves, in no uncertain terms.

The greatest discovery of the 20th century was social democracy. Prosperity with a minimum of exploitation, of violence, of domination. All those things are human moments, chances, possibilities, that can be put to better, wiser, truer use. It is just that simple. That insight, that breakthrough, is what made decades of peace, progress, and stability possible, and led to the highest living standards in human history. Yet it’s equally great lesson, which we are still struggling to learn, wasn’t that the future is made by pitting liberalism against conservatism. It was that the future is made by transcending both, and building societies that can invest in themselves, in order to overcome and undo the old ways of violence, dominance, and control, with true freedom, equality, and worth.

[itsthelinernotes]

Do I Need To Know About Music If I Want To Write About It?

Somehow everyone likes Music, but simultaneously we can’t agree on what music we like. So what is it that we’re all in agreement about liking? This makes for a strange bit of sociology in terms of how music is approached and talked about. Since music has this odd type of universality it’s seeped deep into our culture and our discussions of it manifest in some strange ways. My love of music, and later love for philosophy and sociology is what led me to studying why music is so universal but not agreed on for six years and two degrees.

All this time studying music has led me to what I now arrogantly believe may be one of the central contradictions of music which is that it is worthless. I’m not trying to say that it’s worth is = 0 nor am I trying to misdirect with a platitude that it is “priceless” meaning that it’s worth is infinite. What I mean is that it simply cannot be defined in terms of having a worth at all. In computer terms you might consider this as being null. I don’t believe this worthlessness is necessarily bad or even good. What I do mean to point out is that it prevents us from thinking clearly about the role of music. When considering we live in a capitalist hellscape this provides a problem because we can’t assign its value at “infinite” nor can we value it at “0”. This is what I think leads to the never ending arguments surrounding the worth of music, musicians, their work.

Before I go on, I should make this clear: I support every musician in their right to get paid. I wrote my Master’s thesis on the labour rights of musicians and how they are abused. However I have a utopian vision where all music is free for everyone. That vision doesn’t jive with our world and until we have some massive societal revolution, musicians gotta eat and we have to play by the rules of capital for now.

The most frustrating way that this valuelessness manifests is that knowledge about music, be it music theory, music history, sociology of music, whatever, is always valued as a secondary skill even in the industries and structures built around music (I pause here again to remind people that I’m a recovering academic writing blogs on Tumblr, what I’m about to describe is personal, I’m mad about it, maybe that’s improper or biased but it’s how I understand my own experiences). Let me give you a few examples.

After entering the hell of the job market with two music degrees I was encountered with a great deal of false hope. There were actually fairly frequent job postings in or around the “music industries”. This was great for living in a small city, albeit one with a rich musical history. What quickly hit me though is that despite all these music jobs no one was actually looking for anyone who knew anything about music. Go ahead and search “music” on a job board, most of the jobs listed will not have “requires a knowledge of music or musical background” unless you’re teaching (I’ll get to this later). Most jobs in music require marketing, business, social media, administration, event planning, etc. Whats more they require experience in those fields so they are not open to most musicians or people who have dedicated their time to the actual music. I don’t mean to downplay those skills or say they are not relevant, I do mean to say that any actual knowledge of music is rarely prioritized. Of course people with passion for music are attracted to these positions but they can also become bloated with people who enjoy music passively. I guess the issue there is that I don’t know a single person who doesn’t enjoy music.

At this point you’re probably shrugging off my frustration as an idiot who thought studying music instead of literally anything else would help me get employed in music. Well you’re right I am frustrated because even the people I know with music degrees who work in music had to get a second degree or diploma unrelated to music to get that job. You might also say “well there are people who write about music who get hired based on their knowledge of music.” But let me dig at that point.

As someone who keeps a close eye on these job postings I can say with relative confidence that most job postings at major music publications (I recently saw one for Stereogum) require experience in journalism first. Their interest is not in proving that you actually understand the content you’ll be writing about but that you’ll be able to produce content on anything. This is most clearly shown in music reviews. Take any review of a new popular album and jot down a one sentence summary of each paragraph. You don’t have to do much to see that not only do these writers bring up the same points in each review, they often do it in the same order. I don’t say this to slander journalists, I think it’s a noble profession, one I don’t have the skills to do. I do this to point out that if you take an incredibly diverse set of information and give it to people who have been trained to write in a certain way, you’ll get largely the same output. If you don’t, you’ll encounter an editor who, having raised through the same ranks will see that it is. Of course it’s not always the case that journalists get hired to write for these publications (for instance, you may just have connections) but it is very common.

I realize this comes across as arrogant and entitled but I think the question of credentials is an important one. After all, I’ve spent six years writing about music under the scrutiny of academia to be told over and over I don’t have the qualifications to write great content like “Every Radiohead Song Ranked” because I didn’t study journalism. I hosted a campus radio show on music for four years to be told the same thing at a radio station. What seems to be happening is that obviously music is important. We’ll create an infinite amount of publications dedicated to the topic. It has worth. But it’s still second to skills that have value to the institution. What I hear from people hiring in music is “Of course music is important... it’s just not valuable”. My encyclopedic knowledge of music is not welcome in the working world unless it’s tied to another skill that can be more efficiently employed. This is because we can’t actually place value on music the way we can on skills with more quantifiable outputs.

This brings me to education. All through my time studying music I got “so you going to be a teacher?” it was something I found frustrating but I do love to teach so I always said “maybe”. Well recently I figured I might as well look into teaching. Where I live, to get a teaching degree you need to have a certain amount of course hours in “teachable” subjects. There’s band class in every school here and luckily I’ve taken a number of conducting classes and have plenty of class hours in music. When looking at the list of subjects considered “teachable” one has an asterisk next to it. It turns out music can only be your “secondary” teachable meaning you have to have majored in another topic and maybe minored in music. I talk to teachers I know in the province and they say that there are barely any music teachers and they regularly have to try and recruit from outside the province. I called one of the univeristies in my area and they assured me that my masters degree was not applicable and that I can’t even apply to be a teacher with only music credits. What I love about this is that I, as arrogant as it may sound, almost certainly know more about music than anyone teaching it in my province (there is a small program at my alma matter that gives degrees in “music education” but having spent a good deal of time with those people I’m not too worried about competition). More people would have education degrees not from the music education program and instead would all have music as a “secondary”. Meanwhile I’m not even eligible to enter most of the teaching programs here at all.

While this article certainly comes off as the complaints of a dumbass, I think there’s an importance in asking these questions. If you decide to pursue the knowledge of music academically, why is that so often viewed as a bonus to a primary knowledge? Why are our priorities in the music world on non-musical skill sets and knowledge, even in careers that are concerned with music knowledge like teaching and music writing? I don’t think it’s anything to do with the well meaning people I’ve thrown under the bus here and everything to do with our way of measuring value. Or better, our deep inability to deal with things that can’t have value assigned to them. Consider also that every LP when it came out was sold for the same price, but immediately some of them became collectable and would exponentially increase in value while others you would struggle to give away. The universality of price of a new LP in the 60s, a new CD in the 90s or an iTunes single in the 00s was because we just can’t place a value on its contents so we had to concede that every song is worth $0.99. Because a good deal of my identity and work has been put into understanding music now my skill set and that of others is in a weird non-value. Afterall everyone loves music, what’s so special about me?

[transhumanitynet]

ARG3 Cataclysmic Renewal

Welcome to a Rabbit Hole for TNET‘s March-April 2018 Game Event. 

The following piece is FRActal MEtafiction (FRAME); a Futurist Arts & Culture paradigm which draws upon the concepts of Culture Mining and Gamification, and is inspired by artists such as William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, Joseph Cornell, Andy Warhol, and Marcel Duchamp, in addition to Postmodern theorists such as Jean Baudrillard.

  [9 4389] Letters of Blood and Fire [from “Capital (Volume I)” by Karl Marx]

The economic structure of capitalist society has grown out of the economic structure of feudal society. The dissolution of the latter set free the elements of the former … [T]he historical movement which changes the producers into wage-workers, appears, on the one hand, as their emancipation from serfdom and from the fetters of the guilds, and this side alone exists for our bourgeois historians. But, on the other hand, these new freedmen became sellers of themselves only after they had been robbed of all their own means of production, and of all the guarantees of existence afforded by the old feudal arrangements. And the history of this, their expropriation, is written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire.

We all know that Marx’s criticisms of western, Capitalist society were doomed to end in tyrannical failure, having given rise to no ethical or practical solutions… but the problems which prompted him to write in the first place still exist, and continue to get worse. Inequality spirals out of control as we stand on the verge of a new era of radical technological change, so this time around the stakes for humanity are much, much higher…

[10 7580] The Ending of War [from “The Zeitgeist Movement Defined” by the TZM Team]

The ending of war, the resolution of poverty, the creation of a material abundance unseen in history to meet human needs, the removal of most crime as we know it, the empowerment of true personal freedom through the removal of pointless and/or monotonous labor, and the resolution of many environmental threats, are but a few of the calculated possibilities we have when we take our technical reality into account. However, again, these possibilities are not only largely unrecognized, they are also literally restricted by the current social order, for the implementation of such problem solving efficiency and prosperity stands in direct opposition to the very mechanics of how our current social system is operating at the core level.

Again, accelerating technological change is now exploding into a societal milieu uncomfortably balanced between possibility and injustice. Those who control society now will not relinquish control graciously, and it is only a matter of time until technological disruption unleashes a tsunami of economic, political, and societal disruption at every possible level. In preparing for that level of change, it is best to make as few assumptions as possible.

[11 8041] The Death and Resurrection Show [from “Fight Club” by Chuck Palahniuk]

Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It’s only after you’ve lost everything that you’re free to do anything. Nothing is static, everything is evolving, everything is falling apart.

We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.

You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else.

The liberator who destroys my property is fighting to save my spirit. The Teacher who clears all possessions from my path will set me free.

Mainstream monotheistic religions encourage you to defer life to another time… or at least to imagine that it can and should be done. It’s easy to turn the other cheek when better things are waiting around the corner. Such is the stuff of children’s tales: Comforting stories designed to control. Transhumanists would do well to abandon all traditional philosophies and ask themselves: What would Tyler Durden do?

[12 7750] The Five Pointed Star [from “Srimad Bhagavatha Maha Purana” (12:2:18)]

शम्भल ग्राम मुख्यस्य ब्राह्मणस्य महात्मनः। भवने विष्णुयशसः कल्किः प्रादुर्भविष्यति॥

[from “Liber AL vel Legis (The Book of the Law)”]

I,60: My number is 11, as all their numbers who are of us. The Five Pointed Star, with a Circle in the Middle, & the circle is Red. My colour is black to the blind, but the blue & gold are seen of the seeing. Also I have a secret glory for them that love me.

II,22: I am the Snake that giveth Knowledge & Delight and bright glory, and stir the hearts of men with drunkenness. To worship me take wine and strange drugs whereof I will tell my prophet, & be drunk thereof! They shall not harm ye at all. It is a lie, this folly against self. The exposure of innocence is a lie. Be strong, o man! lust, enjoy all things of sense and rapture: fear not that any God shall deny thee for this.

III,46: I am the warrior Lord of the Forties: the Eighties cower before me, & are abased. I will bring you to victory & joy: I will be at your arms in battle & ye shall delight to slay. Success is your proof; courage is your armour; go on, go on, in my strength; & ye shall turn not back for any!

III,74: There is a splendour in my name hidden and glorious, as the sun of midnight is ever the son.

[from “Magick in Theory and Practice” by Aleister Crowley]

One last word on this subject. There is a Magical operation of maximum importance: the Initiation of a New Aeon. When it becomes necessary to utter a Word, the whole Planet must be bathed in blood. Before man is ready to accept the Law of Thelema, the Great War must be fought. This Bloody Sacrifice is the critical point of the World-Ceremony of the Proclamation of Horus, the Crowned and conquering Child, as Lord of the Aeon.

This whole matter is prophesied in the Book of the Law itself; let the student take note, and enter the ranks of the Host of the Sun.

Crowley’s style was certainly poetic, provocative, and a thing of the late 19th Century. As he noted explicitly elsewhere, literal readings of his work were dismissed in favour of individual development and understanding. His “gods” were not the infantile, over-literal fantasies of modern religion, but metaphors for radical change and renewal. What is the Transhumanist revolution if not the herald of a new Aeon?

  Thoughts to [email protected] or in comments below may be rewarded with ARG info. Conversations held elsewhere and linked back to that address or comments below will definitely win clues, hints, & info.

  ARG1 Zone of Nothing

ARG2 Twenty Thousand Years

ARG3 Cataclysmic Renewal

ARG4 MONTSALVAT

ARG5 Houses of the Outer Court

Ready Player One: AR Gaming Meets Transhumanism

ARG3 Cataclysmic Renewal was originally published on transhumanity.net

#ARG #Economics #FRAME #Revolution #Social Futurism #Zero State #crosspost #transhuman #transhumanitynet #transhumanism #transhumanist #thetranshumanity

[tipsycad147]

Stop Using These 6 Plants In Your Witchcraft Immediately

Avery Hart

How much time do you spend thinking about nature in your craft? For most witches, it’s probably a significant amount of time. Much of modern witchcraft is earth-centric. Even if you’re not a super eco-conscious green witch, your craft includes plants, stones, dirt, water, etc. that all impact our planet. I mean, there’s no escaping it. We live here.

While many witches are solitary, this doesn’t exempt us from considering our impact on the collective whole of the planet and society. In fact, with so many of us holding beliefs like animism, polytheism, and working with the energetic forces of the world around us, it would be insane for us to NOT consider the implications of our craft on the world at large. Can you imagine how off kilter you would get if you focused only on your own energy and never thought about how the energies of people and places around you could impact your wellbeing and magic? It would be bad!

In the same way, it doesn’t make sense for us to ignore the impact of our practices on the world. Each of us impacts the world and that impact collectively shapes the world we live in. If we want a better world, we’ve got to help create it! The plants we’re going to talk about today are heavily consumed in modern witchcraft and for a variety of reasons, we need to reconsider our use of them. Our planet, our spirituality, and the people we share our home with rely on us to be conscious in our craft!

1. Palo Santo

Most witches are familiar with palo santo; at this point, it’s become one of the most common cleansing agents in the Western world. This South American wood is said to have many spiritual benefits and its name literally translates to holy wood. But did you know that palo santo is critically endangered?

Yep, there are fewer than 250 mature palo santo trees left in the wild and their numbers are diminishing at an alarming rate according to the United Plant Savers Medicinal Plant Conservation. While it is illegal to cut these trees down, companies still do so in order to sell the wood for profit.

On top of this, according to the beliefs of the people that this tree is actually sacred to, cutting down the trees rids the wood of any benefit. The indigenous people who use this wood wait for the tree to die of natural causes and rest on the forest floor for years before harvesting it for sacred use. In purchasing this wood from predatory sellers, you are essentially paying for a useless tool that has been stripped of all of its sacred properties by those who have no respect for the culture or the environments they’re stealing it from. That will not do you or your magic any favours and it certainly isn’t respectful of the indigenous people who hold this tree sacred.

2. Frankincense

Frankincense, or boswellia, has been used in religious ceremonies for thousands of years but it, too, has found itself in perilously short numbers. As demand has increased worldwide, these trees are seeing a decline in population as reckless producers overtax trees, killing them faster than they can be replaced. Ecologists are now saying that these forests could be gone within 50 years, destroying centuries of religious tradition and the environment and economy of Somalia at the same time. As consumers, it’s vital that we don’t support this destruction simply to make ourselves feel like we’re doing magic “right”. Just because a plant was commonly used by magicians and witches of the past doesn’t mean that it’s the only plant that we can use!

3. Myrrh

Myrrh, like frankincense, is a plant that has also found use in spiritual traditions tracing back thousands of years, often used in purification and cleansing, banishing, hex breaking, and protecting oneself psychically. Unfortunately, it’s also another critically endangered species with fewer than 250 mature adult trees remaining globally. There’s a 50% chance of myrrh becoming extinct within 10 years!

It is absolutely insane for us to continue using this plant without regard for its continued existence. How can we view something as sacred while destroying its chance of survival? How can we claim to work with the spirits of these plants while destroying their populations? Even if we personally decided that we didn’t care about the environmental impact of our use of these plants, there still remains the fact that this is hugely disrespectful of these plants! Would you help someone who was burning your house to the ground and murdering your family? I don’t think so. Why should you expect any different from the spirits and energies that you’re calling on by using these plants?

4. Dragons Blood

While the dragons blood tree is not yet endangered, it is considered vulnerable at this point. The good news is that it’s incredibly unlikely that you’ve actually been using real dragons blood resin at all. True dragons blood resin is incredibly rare and quite expensive, there’s also no genuine form of dragons blood essential oil in existence. What you’ve been using is, in all likelihood, fake. Many incenses, resins, and oils are marketed as dragons blood when they are actually just perfumed knock offs. This is actually a good thing though! Dragons blood tree populations aren’t regenerating quickly enough due to the global warming crisis and further taxation on the species could drive it firmly into the endangered category in no time. This is a product that you should largely avoid simply because you’re being lied to. What you’re purchasing isn’t dragons blood at all, it’s simply a concoction of synthetic scents and dyes.

5. Sandalwood

If you’ve made it this far, you won’t be surprised when I say that sandalwood is critically endangered. Again, this means there are fewer than 250 trees, with a strong chance of complete extinction within 10 years. At this point, you should be alarmed and disgusted at how we’ve all been sold these “sacred” plants with no regard for their wellbeing. You should be pissed at how you’ve been used by capitalism and colonialism alike to fuel the destruction of so many plants that we hold spiritually important.

6. White Sage

White sage is actually not endangered, as many people now claim that it is. The issue with white sage is that it is being destroyed and over-harvested in the wild which is making the plant scarce and hard to find for the native people who hold this plant sacred. This is problematic for completely different reasons.

The native people who hold this plant sacred have nothing to do with witchcraft. Do you know why they consider white sage sacred? No? Neither do I, because I’m not from that culture. And yet, somehow, modern pagans have widely accepted that white sage is the go-to for cleansing. There is nothing about our own traditions that says that this plant is sacred. White sage was not used in traditional witchcraft, we didn’t start using it widely until the 70s when hippies and white feminists looking for a less restrictive spirituality began to cobble together whatever they could find out of eastern and indigenous spiritual practices. While I can understand their desire for a more grounded, freeing spiritual practice, the methods they used and the practices they stole weren’t for them, and they’re not for us either.

Native peoples have had the practice of their spirituality banned and made illegal by colonisers throughout history. Their languages, their homes, and the things they consider sacred have all been stolen from them and they are still struggling with inhumane treatment today. By using white sage that is being harvested unsustainably, we are in fact directly participating in their destruction. Our consumption of their cultures should be on their terms, in ways that benefit them and allow them to reclaim their lives and spiritualities from those who would seek to profit off of them.

What To Use Instead

Are you pissed off? You should be pissed off. We’re having our planet destroyed and sold to us under the guise of something “sacred”. Our spirituality is being capitalised upon and we are becoming numb to the true impact of our lives and practices. Magic is and always has been a practice of the underprivileged. Magic has always been an act of radical resistance against people and systems who would control us. It has always been used by the poor, by slaves, by those with no other recourse to grasp power for themselves. There is a reason that the word “witch” has such a long and unflattering history. The people in charge are terrified of us having any kind of power. They have done everything to stop us from demonising us, to killing us, to making our religions illegal.

What many don’t realise is that the sterilisation of our spirituality is just as much an attempt to quell our rebellious spirits as any show of force or legal limitation. By turning us into consumers, they strip us of our power. They plug us back into the system of powerlessness and subjugation where they decide what kind of power we are allowed to have. They turn us back into quiet, complacent consumers.

I don’t know about you, but I didn’t come to witchcraft to fill the pockets of some planet destroying capitalist scumbag. I came to the craft to take back my power. I came to the craft to take control of my life. I came to the craft because I was sick of feeling like a pawn in someone else’s game. It’s time to take our spirituality and our power back from those who would sterilise it.

You might be wondering how the hell you’re supposed to do that and what you should use if you’re not supposed to use any of these plants.

There are TONS of alternative plants that you can use to cleanse, banish, purify, hex, protect, and whatever else you need to do but the absolute best plant for you to use, hands down, is the one you grow yourself. It doesn’t matter if that plant is on this list, if you’re growing it yourself, use it! This is an amazing way to get in touch with the spirits and nature around you. What you can grow, what thrives near you, and what you are personally good at taking care of can inform your magic hugely.

Now, I know not everyone has the ability or the space to grow tons of plants so I don’t present this as a complete solution. Heck, I can’t grow much more than rosemary because my cats will eat anything green they can get their paws on. But if you CAN grow your own plants, you SHOULD. If you can’t think of how you would possibly get by without white sage in your practice, then grow it yourself.

The next best kind of plant to use is the one that grows locally and can be wild harvested without negatively impacting local populations. For example, when I lived in Austin I was regularly using mountain juniper (known locally as cedar) in my practice. In Austin, cedar is abundant, universally hated for the heinous allergies they cause, and incredibly invasive, sucking up water and choking out native species. I could harvest all the cedar I wanted without worrying that I was damaging the environment. Research plants that grow near you and figure out what you can use them for in your craft. Learn to harvest sustainably and have fun.

Obviously, preventing witchcraft from becoming reliant on capitalism is important. We should never be beholden to these power structures for our own power. If you must be granted your power by an outside source, then you don’t actually have any power. We cannot be truly independent while existing within a capitalist society, nor do I think we should try to be. Rather, we should seek to be conscious consumers. If you cannot produce your materials yourself, and you cannot wild harvest the things you need from nature, then the next best thing is learning to use our consumption in a way that disrupts the power structures that keep us at a disadvantage.

Stop buying from Amazon. Stop buying from huge monolith companies that don’t give a rats ass about you beyond your wallet. Start supporting local producers, indigenous producers, and ethical producers. If you must use a particular plant, find a way to source it that helps the culture that considers it sacred, that helps repopulate the species of plant, etc. Use your consumption as a weapon against the people who would strip you of your power.

For those of you who would like easy recommendations for replacing these plants, I do have some suggestions. White sage, palo santo, and all of the other cleansing herbs I’ve mentioned can be replaced with literally any other variety of sage, lavender, thyme, mountain juniper, or my favourite, rosemary.

These plants are not unique in their ability to affect us magically. Many plants can be used to purify, protect, hex, attract prosperity, and so on. I guarantee you have useful and magical plants growing near you that you never would have considered. Everything from dandelions growing in cracks in the concrete, to the bindweed creeping up your fence, to the herbs growing in your windowsill can be used in your craft.

It’s time for us to take our power back and reclaim our spirituality as sacred!

https://thetravelingwitch.com/blog/stop-using-these-6-plants-in-your-witchcraft-immediately

[janiedean]

Okay so I freely admit my knowledge of history absolutely sucks so this will sound stupid but - is communism a good thing or a bad thing??? I'm asking because I see SOOOOOO many conflicting ideas coming from people and everyone ends up contradicting each other, it seems like tumblr is very pro-communism but at the same time there are people on here who are absolutely disgusted with tumblr's "pro-communism" ideas and at the same time people praise Karl Marx and I'm just confused sorry.

okay, thing is, you have to make two distinctions. there’s theoretical communism and applied-in-the-real-world communism, and when it comes to theoretical communism, one thing is marx (which is why marxism is a thing and stalinism is another) and another are other communists who interpreted his thought often for political reasons. now I once had replied to a post on the topic which I never posted to avoid extra wank but I have it in my drafts let me see if I can c/p it... yeah okay no but maybe I can reuse parts of it.

anyway: communism is originally marx’s theory/system. marx conceived it in a society that was ALREADY CAPITALIST and its entire idea was destroying the aforementioned capitalist society which was founded on inequality and exploiting workers (like if you read the capital, it has chapters dedicated to child labor and how horrible it is just to mention one). communism is a philosophical and economical THEORY which does indeed look good on paper, its problem is that at most you could make it viable in small communities because it implies that everyone must be on board with it to make it work, that corruption doesn’t exist, that people do automatically their best for the others and the community/collectivity and a lot of other things that literally can’t coexist when your problem is basic human nature. never mind that marx’s system was based entirely on the situation in industrialized nations during the second industrial revolution and it’s entirely tied in that historical timeframe and it doesn’t take reading the capital for that, and now we’ve gone past that. never mind that not all nations go through what the UK did during the second industrial revolution. we’re past the second industrial revolution. marx’s system is not viable in reality because not many places are in those same conditions. never mind that marx himself knew that perfectly - ie, there’s a part in the communist manifesto which goes:

We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy. The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible. Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.These measures will, of course, be different in different countries. Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable. (….) When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character.

Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class. In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

now, why did I bold exactly those parts? because the last one states that communism’s eventual target is everyone living in an equalitarian union, and the second is to show that according to marx communism could be a thing IN ADVANCED COUNTRIES. industrially.

and here we arrive to practiced communism which is our problem. because thing is, communism on paper is great - equality! no one is exploited! everyone contributes as they can how much they can! no classism! - but in practice, it has never been introduced in nations that were already capitalist. it’s mostly been countries that either had a strong agricultural/rural economy or came from centuries of dictatorships/monarchy, which means that regardless of how much communism is viable as a way of life or not, it wouldn’t and couldn’t have been applied there the way it was supposed to because those weren’t capitalist countries. you can’t have a communist society without capitalism first. period. and when you try to merge the two you have today’s china which is basically the worst of the two systems put together, never mind that if you look at mao’s CV, the cultural revolution and the likes it doesn’t sound to me that it’s the best way of life for everyone as marx put it. (and to add to that by the way, just the exploitation of workers in china that allows us to buy for ridiculous cheap from there is the most anti-communist thing anyone could ever conceive. and I’m just mentioning one thing.)

when **communism** has been implemented in both russia and china and everywhere else it was a thing, it was never a capitalist country. add that as I stated above in order for it to work it means EVERYONE IS ON BOARD and the people in charge don’t exploit it and you have a recipe for disaster, because if you look at it everywhere it was implemented, regardless of how much they might have started decently, it turned into a dictatorship not long later.

so this whole ‘shit happened in communist countries and people died but communism is still AMAZING’ topic is ridiculous because thing is, if one grasps the spirit, the entire point of communism as an utopian society (because that’s basically the outcome of that at the end of it) is having a society of equals where everyone contributes for what they can, there are no injustices like in capitalist society and your worth as a person isn’t put after your capacity to produce money for someone else. any so-called communist system calling itself communist and allowing people to die/oppressing its citizens/exploiting workers’ labor without allowing them to have unions/creating gulags/silencing disagreeing opinions is inherently a system that marx would have loathed because it goes against everything he wanted out of his vision. like, especially exploiting workers’ labor. that’s the reason why historically why most unions were communist/socialist when unions started being a thing. never mind that marx called for criticizing the status quo/people in power who exploited it, which should automatically suggest that most people who praise communist regimes aren’t really marxist.

(now we could also discuss over how both communism and capitalism taken in their purist form don’t benefit anyone except the people in power and so the best way is midway, because capitalism does have good aspects same as communism does, and actually the reason communism was groundbreaking in its historical moment was because it put attention on the need for equality and better working conditions when most poor people were exploited by the upper class. theoretical communism advocated a world where everyone contributes according to their own capacities and doesn’t end up sacrificing themselves on the altar of factory work, and that’s not what has happened until now in real life. taking the best from either system is what actually does work all things considered - counteracting 100% bonafide capitalism with 100% bonafide communism, which by the way can’t exist today, is fried air, as we say in italy.)

so, at this point the thing is: if you’re anti-communism meaning COMMUNISM THE WAY IT HAS BEEN IMPLEMENTED IN THE REAL WORLD then you have a point or ten because most times it has betrayed its own roots (really, marx would have been horrified at basically everything **communist** regimes have implemented) and it has been a tool of oppression/communist dictators have killed thousands of people same as their fascist counterparts and so on. at the same time, if you like marx then you like COMMUNISM AS A CONCEPT THE WAY IT WAS ORIGINALLY INTENDED, as in, you like the idea of a society where everyone is equal and not exploited as above. it’s two completely different things - personally I love the idea of communism as marx presented it but I know it’s not viable and I wouldn’t say that stalin or mao were amazing people TM just because they were **communist** (tbh today’s china is like the most un-marxist thing ever soooo). and at the same time I’ll feel free to praise marx to the heavens because he was a genius, came up with an amazing philosophical system which then started irl a lot of good things ie workers’ unions as above and gave the left an ideology to aspire to and because he didn’t advocate for genocide, while I absolutely loathe most applications of communism irl (and in most cases when communist ideals work out it’s in *socialist* countries, not communist ones).

we can also add that kids on tumblr being pro communism most of the time just read ‘communism = equality’ and think OMG AWESOME when they haven’t read marx or a history book so they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about so let’s not even count them into the discussion. but never mind.

tldr: communism as a theory/political ideology the way it was conceived was a good thing and is still a good thing if you take the good parts from it (tbh the US could totally do with some more marxism especially when it comes to reviving workers’ unions, striking when you want things and the likes), never mind that in western countries that were under the US influence post WWII and in european countries pre-WWI communist parties were generally the ones protecting workers/their rights to strike and pushing for leftist policies along with the socialist ones. communism as an actually applied system in the real world is almost always a bad thing because it’s not what marx conceived, it betrays its own roots and I can only understand people who grew up under the ussr when it was a thing (or eastern europe) who loathe communism since a communist regime was what fucked their countries over. (that’s also valid for places like cambodia and NORTH KOREA I mean in theory north korea is *communist* but there’s literally nothing communist about NK.) we can argue about cuba for the next century or so since when it comes to it there’s pros and cons (ie: castro was a dictator? yes, not good, not communist. everyone getting free healthcare and instruction including curing people from other countries? yes, good, marx would have approved. and so on.), but even if you consider cuba the only place where it sort of worked (sort of, because if you ask people who flew cuba they certainly don’t agree and really it’s so complicated only people who studied the situation for years or live there could give an opinion), cuba has eleven million inhabitants and it’s not CHINA or the former USSR, which makes it fairly more manageable to govern. same as I said above: it maybe sort of POSSIBLY worked out not somewhat in a small country. in large countries it’s just not a thing you can reasonably conceive.

so: some people praise marx because marx said a lot of good things, but being uncritically pro-communist means ignoring that communism when implemented (successfully-ish or not) has caused a lot of harm and isn’t that much different from other regimes, and that what marx preached was good for his historical moment and time, not for us, because the second industrial revolution is that and gone. never mind that people who come from communist regimes that hurt their nations or were political dissenters have all rights to be anti-communist, since as stated when applied irl it’s not what marxism preaches. and that said if you praise marx then you should criticize all of the irl applications of communism because marx would balk at pretty much 99% of what *communist* countries ended up being. but like there’s a lot of good in what marx says and that’s why some people say they’re communists - because they like it as a concept and want to make reality what they can of it, not because they approve of stalinism.

hopefully it was clear. xD

#janie rants #communism for ts #to be tagged further later #Anonymous #ask post

[pointdotph-blog]

From Selfies to Tyrants: A Series of Conclusions Jumped To

I.                    

2015 – “Okay sana na maraming tao, but it’s not like they know how to appreciate art properly.” These were the first things out of M’s mouth the moment we had separated ourselves enough from the crowd bottlenecked at the entrance of the National Museum. M is a long-time friend who has always been into art. When we found out that the National Museum was removing its entrance fee for the entirety of June, we immediately decided to go.

     We had just spent the last couple of hours almost lost in a crowd of air conditioned-sweat, murmurs too loud to be murmurs, and children bugging their parents for things I really didn’t care about, – a crowd which, like us, had decided to avail of the free entrance the museum was offering that day, so I brushed off what he had just said as a result of stress.  I mean, who doesn’t say stupid shit when hassled by the summer heat?

    Except that wasn’t the last time that day that M said something I found rather elitist.

    In the shadow of Juan Luna’s Spoliarium, I had asked M, who apparently had been here multiple times just the previous year and was no longer impressed by the mural,  to hold up, as I found myself amused by the throng of people trying to reposition themselves to get better pictures of and with Luna’s most accessible masterpiece.

    I was furiously thinking of a joke that would bridge the difference between the furious bobbing and weaving of the crowd in front of the Spoliarium and how (western) tv shows and movies set in museums almost always only provide reflective, dramatic scenes, when M decides to drops a bomb, “Why go to museums just to take pictures of paintings, you can do that over the internet?”

    Something about his insistence on appreciating brush strokes up close and personal, as well as enjoying “the much livelier blending of colors in “real life” had me thinking that this was less about redundancy and more about an insistence on a more technical, or as others would put it, [theoretically] “informed” way of appreciating works of art. More importantly, his remarks were too on point to be simple results of the entry hassle we had gone through just a few minutes before.

    Just like that, the trip to the national museum I had looked forward to for over a week had begun to sour.

II.                  

    By the end of the day, all that talk of shoulds and so-called “proper ways” of appreciating museum pieces had left me in a terrible mood. I spent most of the shared portion of our long commute to our respective homes not talking to M, instead selfishly brooding about all the things that had been bothering me since the incident in the shadows of the Spoliarium:

i.) M’s undeniably normative approach to the consumption-qua-appreciation of art;

ii.) the implicit arrogance that comes with such a standpoint, as if to imply that the deadlock of  a millennia-old debate regarding the proper purpose of art, and by extension the proper ways of receiving it (interpretation vis-a-vis appreciation), if it even has one, has finally been definitively solved;

iii.) the concession that M, regardless of actually being at fault or not, cannot actually be faulted for this expressed arrogance in so far as he himself is only a product of the dominant modes of  generational (and always class-related) discourse that he’s found himself enmeshed in – his stance only symptomatic of a greater widespread attitude towards art;

iv.) lastly,  my own indignation with such a “claim” which reveals an own personal reluctance to concede to M’s claims (perhaps pride?), perhaps brought about by tangential complicity, or arrogance, or both.

    What was I so riled about, that wasn’t just brought about by my own arrogant refusal to take M’s word as they were. In an age where most of the people I know are millennial scared of commitment, shouldn’t it actually be a nice breath of fresh air to see someone so starkly committed to their opinion, even if it’s on something as simultaneously banal and important as the consumption of art?

    I found the answer in extending the millennial analogy I had (accidentally) already begun (as an inside joke with myself): everyone’s allowed their own opinions regarding the appreciation of art, but the usual lines have to be drawn, between the responsibility to voice out and fight for your opinion on what is right, and what isn’t, and at the same time making sure that your expression of your opinion does not commit the same sets of mistakes generations of bigots and fascists have committed, on the other, between positing an answer and refusing to close the question to the possibility of alternative responses, to,  perhaps, even better answers.

III.                

    I do not wish to claim that I have somehow found the definitive answer to  the question of art, its purpose and existence in this universe, a question that has consistently, without fail, stumped great thinkers all the way back to the Classical period, from Plato to Pope to Deleuze and Guattari’s Plateaus, but, and I proceed with this assumption with a diligent recklessness, I do not think that any of them would even as much as turn in their graves when I assert that the very development of art hinges on the very act of response.

    One does not have to be well versed in art history or hegelian dialectics to get the general feel that the development of art, like practically everything else in the world that has seen some form of improvement, hinges on the sincerity of response, either from the winds of the time, or to art posited before it, from poetry as a response to the unassailable hunger of the heart, to revolutionary art in response to state censorship and violence, from impressionism as a revolt to the dominance of, well, expressionism, to postmodernist architecture as a reflection of the logic of late-capitalism. After all, what work of art has been produced that isn’t a response to something that has come before it, that hasn’t been, in some way, necessitated by the world before it? This, without even taking into full consideration that no artist has ever lived a life untouched by the greater logic of the world surrounding him.

    And yet art is a response asking for another response, as is the very principle governing the act of sharing a work of art, be it guided by ancient ritualistic functions, or by modern commodifying logic. Whether or not a piece has lost its aura or not, it is always already having asking for a response, be it an emotional, economic, or even a physical one – indeed, it is this very space provided by the act of readying itself for a reaction that what Benjamin calls as the work of art’s aura assumes, from installments opened for public consumption, to images shared as alternative to the written word. Even paintings kept in the closet are made for the self that cannot help but respond with a feeling or two.

IV.

    To personally align oneself to a particular way of responding to art isn’t a bad thing in itself, indeed, it is necessary, as a form of providing oneself direction, guidance, as he tries to navigate his way through the chaos of this universe, towards enjoying it further, in the guise of living an enjoyable, fulfilling life.

    But it is one thing to posit this personal inclination towards how art is to be responded to, is to be consumed, as the best way, and quite another to say that it is the (implicitly, only) proper way, as if to close the very dialog opened by the question. Where the former is to personally wrestle with the question, the latter is nothing short of dialogic tyranny.

    The claim here is that such a closing, or even a mere attempt thereof, of the very dialog on the existence and purpose of art, whether or not it should even have one, and so on and so forth, is not only contrary to the very historical development of art as a medium, but also, more disturbingly, that it is counterintuitive of today’s (millennial) attitudes towards art, revealing an underlying paradox between this millennial façade of openness, on the one hand, and the implicit class-related (redundant, I know, it always is) cultural territoriality, a widespread problem that M represents, but is not entirely representative of.

V.

    Walter Benjamin talks of art in the age of mechanical reproduction as having undergone a process of liberation – taken from the limitations of its ritual function, and transformed into something more social; what was once limited to the temple for consumptions of the priest has been moved to the museum, for the greater public to behold.[1]

    In recent decades, this stripping of the aura of authenticity, towards this so-called process of democratization, has been furthered by the advent of the digital, with the classical now just a few clicks away. Of course, where an attempt at democratization exists, capitalism shortly follows, seeking to reestablish order – and this it does largely at the back of one of its greatest weapons in history: through the academe, largely agreed upon as one of the capitalist state’s strongest, most effective ideological apparatuses.

    What advanced art school has done to art today is akin to what Frodeman and Briggle, in a previous issue of The New York Times, argue, that the University has done to Philosophy: it is here, in the academic institutions of the elite, that art and its long-time search for liberation, for response, in a sense, lost its way [2]

    As more and more theories on art production, and more importantly consumption, are taught in thy hallowed halls of the paid-for-classroom, there arises this trend to resist liberation, to return to a new form of authenticity. With the increase of so-called culturally literate graduates, the museum, or the gallery, continues to replace the temple as the new home of the work of art’s ritualistic function – the new priests that take it upon themselves to dictate the function or art, no matter how hard they deny it.

    And here I must return to cannibalize Benjamin’s warning, in order to take it further. Where mechanical reproducibility once worked to shift the work of art’s dependence on ritual towards the political, it now instead uses the political to revive the new ritual – which in itself is never devoid of politics.  This foreclosure around the new ritual mandated by the academe is nothing short of a survival mechanism: for they must maintain the rules of the field, in this case the rules of art, or otherwise risk falling from their position at the top – exclusivity, control of its premises, as the principle of autonomy.

    Yet is it not this very same principle at work now that I find myself rather guilty of the same sins: that I am using the very same theories I learned in the university to assert a way of consumption in this very composition and at the same time protect my imagined position in the field’s hierarchic logic?

    Perhaps, perhaps not. But even at the risk of patting myself on the back too early, I remain steadfast on my insistence that one can assert without looking to oneself off from the promise of the response, and that this should at least be enough to let the dialog press on.       For it is this very foreclosure that is at the heart, no, core – for a heart here simply does not exist – of cultural elitism.

VI.

    Art, and issues of its consumption, like everything else, has always been closely tied to matters of class difference, from writing as a sign of the privilege, to the Germans undertaking the question of popular art, even up to matters involving the MMFF. This is nothing new, and indeed dominates all forms of art production and consumption.

    Why do you think a vast majority of men and women who consider themselves to be “well-read” find it necessary to diss on Lang Leav’s poems, poetry they somehow consider as not up to par with what the highly political, yet ultimately arbitrary hierarchies of reading that they subscribe to categorize as good poetry? Even the so-called “liberal” ones are complicit with this elitism: “At least they’re reading”, “Well, I suppose it’s a good stepping stone towards “actual” poetry.”

    Who the fuck cares if majority of today’s concert-goers insist on video recording the performers on their smartphones instead of just “losing themselves in the moment?” Well, these essence-purists certainly do, because apparently only they know how to properly enjoy a concert.

    Why is it that every time the MMFF rolls around and the movie that many “serious” filmgoers like ends up hardly being peopled at the cinemas, or even worse actually pulled out for whatever reason, the immediate response is almost always that the whole festival is stupid because it caters to a stupid audience? Or, if you happen to be talking to someone with a kinder tongue, then it becomes an issue of educating the apparently (good) film-illiterate masses. Except it’s almost always a vertical issue, and hardly addressed horizontally: education as sophistication, because diversification entails accepting their taste as valid, the movies they like as anything more than trash. All because the non-Film educated Filipino would rather enjoy a film by losing himself in the jokes and sketches, instead of concerning himself with “good writing” and “amazing cinematography” that’s supposed to “reflect the ails of 21st century life.”

    Even bullshit maxims like “don't collect things collect moments” that offer unsolicited advice on how to best enjoy your vacation are symptoms. God forbid there actually exist people who want to preserve their moments in the form of souvenirs.

    And God forbid I ever have the desire to supplement a personal trip to the National Museum with a selfie with Juan Luna’s Spoliarium. Thank God for memes that serve as our new site of struggle.

VII.

    Among the upper echelons of society, where the so-called “culturally literate” people reside, is where this cultural tyranny manifest in one of its most potent form – hidden under the veil of formal education. For years now, people have used academic/theoretical rigor as a way to limit other people’s wonder, if only because they do not like other forms of curiosity.

                                                          ***

    “I don’t understand why people are in such a rush, you’re not actually supposed to finish a museum in one go,” M tells me at some point in our tour. I don’t understand why people are so adamant on telling other people how to eat their food.

[1] Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936) [2] Briggle, Adam and Robert Frodeman. When Philosophy Lost Its Way (New York Times, 2016)

#point #ph #pointph #pointdotph #magazine #philippines #blog #article #art

[politicalfilth-blog]

Luckbox Mark Cuban Hates Bitcoin And Gold, The Two Best-Performing Assets

I was around for the 1990s tech bubble and the most shocking deal I remember from that time period was when Mark Cuban sold what was basically just a domain name, Broadcast.com, along with some recording equipment he had at home, for $5.7 billion to Yahoo in April of 1999!

At the time, I was moving my company, Stockhouse.com, which was the top financial website in many countries across the world then, towards a Nasdaq listing and we had just rented out the office across the street from the New York Stock Exchange for some extravagant sum, like $1 million/month.

We were preparing to raise $300 million, though, and become essentially an online version of CNBC in what was called “broadband” then. We even hired away one of CNBC’s top producers, who turned out to be the worst employee I’ve ever had and after three months, we ended up paying him out some obscene sum just so he’d leave.

Well, a year went by and the tech bubble burst so I ended up selling the company for peanuts. I looked back on Cuban’s deal and thought two things. Wow, his timing for the sale was perfect, getting out before the tech bubble popped.

And, secondly, he must have been the luckiest guy in the world or, more likely, had participated in some sort of collusion with some directors in Yahoo to manage to sell what was basically nothing for over $5 billion!

It was literally worse than most ICOs these days… it was simply a web address and some cheap recording equipment lying around Mark’s house! And, Yahoo never even did anything with it… at all. In fact, if you go to Broadcast.com today, it just forwards to Yahoo.com.

This was easily the most expensive domain name sale ever!

Since then, the bumbling Frankenstein look-alike has gone on to buy a basketball team with his fortune and be featured in a few reality shows where he seems to seek constant attention.

So, when he came out this week and made a fool of himself, I had to laugh.

“I hate gold. Gold is a religion,” said crony-capitalist Mark Cuban in a recent interview, adding that he views cryptocurrencies as simply “collectibles.”

Mark clearly knows nothing about money or investments if he thinks gold is just a “religion” and cryptocurrencies are just “collectibles.”

In fact, if he had invested his profits from the ludicrous sale of his domain name into gold and then bitcoin he’d be the wealthiest person on Earth. Let’s do the math.

He owned approximately ⅓ of Broadcast.com when it sold for $5.7 billion, netting him $1.8 billion in 1999. According to Forbes, as of January 2018, he is now worth $3.8 billion, meaning he has averaged a 4% annual increase.

If, in 1999, he had put his $1.8 billion into gold, which was trading at $290, and just kept it there until now at $1,350, he’d be worth over $6.5 billion. Or, more than double what he is currently worth.

And, if he had taken his gold holdings and put it into bitcoin in, say 2011, when we recommended bitcoin at $3, he’d have made a gain of over 230,000% and his $1.8 billion, which would have been over $5 billion by investing in gold, would then be worth $12 trillion, easily making him the wealthiest man in the world… well, except for the Rothschilds and the secret banking families.

Of course, he couldn’t have possibly purchased that much bitcoin at that price as it simply didn’t exist at the time.

But, if he had just picked up some gold and bitcoin along the way, he’d certainly be worth much, much more than he is today.

Thus, he really hates gold.

“Hate is not strong enough,” Cuban said, “Hate with extreme prejudice… hate with extreme prejudice is not enough, hate with double extreme prejudice with an ounce of hot sauce.”

No wonder he’s so angry. He wasted most of his wealth trying to be a reality TV star and purchasing a company of guys who chase each other around bouncing a ball and throwing it in a basket to lull the enslaved masses into a beer-infused stupor.

Simultaneously, though, Cuban endorses both the corrupted, top-down education system and the centrally planned, fiat dollar-based fractional reserve banking system that is responsible for at least one major financial crisis each decade and impoverishes everyone except the rich… like him.

Precious metals and cryptocurrencies happen to be the free market solutions to a collapsing dollar system, empowering people everywhere to survive and thrive, but Shark Cuban hates them.

The fiat system of debt is a house of cards supporting his favorite religion, the State. Now there’s something to hate.

Religion may have been first, but the State has become the most dangerous religion, robbing millions and killing countless in endless wars for oil and power.

The reason gold is preferred by people who care about freedom is because a gold standard handcuffs the State. It restricted politicians from overspending on rackets like “national defense” and it prevented government from rapidly building up the "public debt."

As Alan Greenspan put it, a gold standard checks the welfare state. That's probably why Cuban hates gold.

Actually, it makes perfect sense why this clown would love the State: he regularly uses it to protect his corporate patents.

Ironically though, it’s another case of “do as I say, not as I do,” because Mark also claims to despise the patent system.

As IP Watchdog detailed:

“Cuban has an outsized influence in this patent debate, and is walking both sides of the aisle. He has personally invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into the fight to stop what he characterizes as stupid patents, and he has invested millions into a business that only has those same stupid patents as the main asset.”

IP Watchdog goes on to describe how Cuban raised his “personal financial stake in a non-practicing entity” that also just so happened to be suing Google over a patent claim.

How convenient…

This kind of hypocrisy and doublespeak has become expected from the guy who announced in January that his sports team will begin accepting bitcoin payments “next season.”

Instead of worshipping at the altar of the State for so many years and telling his followers “the most patriotic thing” a person can do is “Pay your taxes. Lots of taxes,” Cuban should’ve read TDV (subscribe HERE), where we’ve helped thousands of people capitalize massively on gold and crypto.

But who needs to be a wise or savvy investor when you can just use the guns of your government god to impose your will on others?

Sorry Mark (not sorry), but the religion of the State is collapsing while assets like precious metals and cryptocurrencies are helping usher in this new era faster than your goons can regulate.

How ‘bout them Mavs though?

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The world famous white sand beach of Boracay will be the venue for the first in a series of the Beach Blockchain Conference. The event will be a sunny celebration of the inroads that blockchain has made in the past year, and how companies around the world are adapting the use of decentralization.

Infinite Man Summit

Start date: July 13, 2018

End date: July 15, 2018

Location: lisbon, portugal

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The Infinite Man Summit is a new event that inspires men to create extraordinary lives. We are a group of free thinkers who believe in truth, authenticity, and living outside the box. We believe an inspired and well informed man can achieve success in all the critical aspects of life, including health, wealth, relationships, and purpose.

Precious Metals Investment Symposium

Start date: October 3, 2018

End date: October 4, 2018

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Australia's largest precious metals event Symposium is presenting the 8th Annual Precious Metals Investment Symposium. This 2-day investment and educational event is being held at the Pan Pacific Perth Hotel, on the 3rd-4th of October 2018.

The conference and exhibition brings together every aspect of the precious metals investment industry from mining explorers and producers, to bullion companies and other investment vehicles.

Keynote speakers from across the globe will present their views on the future for the sector and ASX listed mining companies will provide updates on investment opportunities.

About the Author

Anarcho-Capitalist.  Libertarian.  Freedom fighter against mankind’s two biggest enemies, the State and the Central Banks.  Jeff Berwick is the founder of The Dollar Vigilante and host of the popular video podcast, Anarchast.  Jeff is a prominent speaker at many of the world’s freedom, investment and cryptocurrency conferences including his own, Anarchapulco, as well as regularly in the media including CNBC, Bloomberg and Fox Business.  Jeff also posts exclusive content daily to the new blockchain based social media network, Steemit.

from The Dollar Vigilante https://dollarvigilante.com/blog/2018/04/11/luckbox-mark-cuban-hates-bitcoin-and-gold-the-two-best-performing-assets.html via The Dollar Vigilante

#Politics #Investing #The Dollar Vigilante

[screaminghellion]

My thoughts on Capitalism vs. Communism and Social Justice. A bunch of rambling, probably disorganized philosophical thoughts.

First of all note that I am only talking about America.

Okay so I think I can safely draw the conclusion that SJW’s are pretty much entirely liberal/left-wing. And that’s fine, by the way, but what I also noticed is that they have a tendency to vigorously denounce capitalism, which I don’t really agree with.

Now mind you I’m just a mouthy 14 year old so don’t expect me to have a degree in economics, but I think I can say that capitalism is a system that takes from some and gives to others. Communism is a system that takes from all and gives to all.

Now, on paper communism doesn’t sound all that bad, but in practice there’s no way it could ever work while maintaining a strong economy. Here are my points regarding the matter:

In a capitalist society, the basic concept is that there are richer people and poorer people. Poorer people don’t do as much work as richer people so they don’t get paid as much. Richer people have found a way to conquer life despite many setbacks and challenges and made it into the working world. Because the poorer people have less money, the richer people have more money. However, the amount of money rewarded for the amount of labor is fair and proportional. This way, the way the amount of money in the system there is to offer is distributed fairly and rewards those who contribute to it more. However, the rich cannot exist without the poor so there will always be poor people in a capitalist society.

However, life isn’t that simple. There are many factors that determine the strength of the economy and the standard of living in a capitalist society.

1.) For example, a good balance between government interference and free markets must be established. Markets that are too free lead to a weak government, poor standards of living for the workers, unregulated products and possibly monopolies (or at least, giant brand-name companies that suck up any chance of a small business growing and inhale it further into its gaping maw). Though, very free markets produce a lot of products. An economy that’s too government-regulated has good standards of living and safety regulations for the workers but because of all the extra hassle and limitations, companies can’t get their products cranked out the way they want and as cheaply as they want, reducing their profits and driving up the price for the extra labor which then makes everything more expensive and leads to inflation.

2.) Fiscal vs. Monetary policy. Though some people prefer fiscal policy over monetary policy, it’s generally a good idea to keep fiscal policy on a tight leash and let monetary policy do most of the work because never once has fiscal policy worked. Never once has raising debt and devaluing currency helped to get rid of debt and make the economy stronger. In fact, it does the opposite, it weakens the economy by decreasing the spending power of the populace, little by little. America uses the monetary policy with a set “debt ceiling/fiscal cliff” that determines the maximum amount of debt we can owe to foreign nations but with every presidency, the debt ceiling may be raised or lowered without much resistance.

3.) Society. America is a HUGE country compared to some of the European nations in geographic size and the way certain parts the country are run may vary from place to place because of this. This is called sectionalism. It’s why agriculture is found more often in places like Kansas and why big cities, big industry and manufacturing are clustered more often around the east and west coast. Because of this, many people are living in different conditions, with different nationalities, with different personalities, with different states of physical and mental health and so on and so on. I’m saying that the people living in America are pretty diverse, and have many different mindsets, opinions, setbacks and advantages. That’s why freedom is the ability not to have all the things other people have, but to have the same opportunity as everyone else to become successful. That’s why disabled people receive welfare and public schools exist. In fact, this is where social justice comes into play and thrives. Social justice in its correct use benefits society by making sure people aren’t denied jobs or are denied that opportunity to thrive because of trivial prejudices like race or gender. In its incorrect use it stifles free speech by unnecessarily bubble-wrapping speech and keeping intellectual thought and creativity smothered in an attempt to create a “safe” atmosphere while forcing everybody to conform into the same mindset. As I mentioned earlier, America is an incredibly diverse nation and trying to cram everybody into one narrow tube of thought isn’t wise or really easily achieved. It’s also a mentality that tries, absurdly, to stamp out necessary pains and some basic human rights and ironically enough, denies the suffering of the poor. Pain is a motivator and it’s actually what gives a lot of people born into socioeconomically poor lives motivation to GET OUT of that pothole. If you were happy being poor, why would you want to stop being poor? So social justice needs to have its limits as well, so that it trims out unnecessary prejudice that tramples on others’ rights but doesn’t end up turning the country into a totalitarian communist country in its futile but at least well-meaning attempt to eliminate all pain (an impossible task).

Following that idea, communism is essentially a good example of social justice taken too far. In an attempt to create a perfectly equal society, it treats everyone the same way, which won’t work at all because as I mentioned earlier, people are different and can’t be blanketed under one giant generalization. Not everyone wants to work for the same wages if the work they’re doing is more difficult than other’s. They won’t be motivated to work very hard because regardless of your quality of work, you still get the same wages so you can basically just do fuck-all and still get some participation money. People who don’t follow the ideology like one giant, brain-washed army are instantly belittled and berated and considered social outcasts of the lowest caste (like calling someone a dirty no-good racist today) and without a proper and fair justice system literally anyone can be called out for that unforgivable offense and have their lives instantly ruined. 

So then, what can be done to balance out social justice/government intervention and the cruelty of a free market?

Well, a good way to do that is to balance welfare spending so that the government isn’t using a lot of tax dollars on welfare and doesn’t need to draw a lot of money from taxes anyways, since high taxes make the economy worse by reducing the spending power of the populace and redistributing that collected money to the government. In my opinion, welfare should be focused on rehabilitation and education so that people won’t have to consistently rely on it for long periods of time (which costs more money). For example, making prisons rehabilitation centers so that criminals won’t become repeat offenders, giving proper treatment to mentally ill prisoners, issuing the death sentence instead of lifetime terms and making drugs legal but opening up “drug centers” where addicts can register and turn in their medical records to receive clean and safe drugs in accordance to an individualized plan so that every time they come back the dosage is steadily lowered in accordance to their body and it’s lowered in a rate that they can tolerate it without withdrawal until they’re off the drug and don’t need a very high dosage (they can always come back if they need help staying off the drug. Also, the drugs are government-regulated so addicts won’t have to spend all their money on dirty meth cooked up in some guy’s garage and filled with God knows what.) As for payment, these programs can be paid for either through taxes or through private companies who can offer this service for free or for really cheap prices and are government regulated but receive some sort of reward for providing the service.

I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot but I just have a bunch of ideas and thoughts swirling in my head and they’re pretty vague concepts so it’s kind of difficult to word it right so if you have a question or something you can ask me.

#communism #capitalism #social justice #poverty #drug use #economics

[nofomoartworld]

Art F City: We Went to Gabriel Orozco’s OXXO

Gabriel Orozco Kurimanzutto Gob. Rafael Rebollar 94, Col. San Miguel Chapultepec 11850, México D.F. On view until March 16th

What’s on view: An exact replica of an OXXO (the ubiquitous Mexican 7-11 competitor) except without monetary exchange. Visitors are instructed to pick out three free objects, so long as they aren’t marked with the artist’s own sticker (because those products are artworks for collectors, despite being otherwise identical to the other goods in the store).

Whitney:  Through the wooden barrier which separates the gallery from the street, past the door guard and the gallerists, we entered into a minimalist shi-shi open air courtyard, and then through the sliding doors of an OXXO, which seemed normal because OXXOs are everywhere. Ryan and I turned around to go find some art upstairs. But Michael, being the seasoned critic, knew. It’s not a real OXXO. It’s commentary.

Michael: I honestly can’t think of another artwork that straddles a weird indoor/outdoor space to such uncanny effect. I had heard a lot about this show and thought I knew what to expect, but I too was caught off guard. Whitney, you and I have seen more than our fair share of fake-businesses-as-artworks, from visiting a seedy massage parlor in the Lower East Side to helping run AFC’s pop-up gay bar in Miami Beach. I’m sure we’ve been to many a fake business at art fairs we don’t even remember. But there will be no forgetting this day. Gabriel Orozco has elevated the fake-business-as-medium to the next level in so many ways.   

Whitney: This triggered a Supermarket Sweep fantasy I didn’t realize I have been actively repressing every time I go shopping. You’re allowed to take three items (as long as they don’t have stickers on them, but not many do), so immediately all of us starting weighing the best combinations.

I went for the cookies first, but then it turned out there was beer, and that we weren’t allowed to drink beer in the courtyard without cups, so that knocked out two of my items, and then I got distracted by the gum at the checkout counter, so there went the cookies. After we’d checked out, I think we all got buyer’s remorse. Michael probably should’ve gotten water for his house. I remembered condoms and toothpaste, but luckily those had stickers.

Now I’m hungry for cookies and debating running to the actual OXXO across the street while Michael writes his response.

The bags of dog food with the circle motif are not available—they’re art. The unmarked cans of dog food are free, however.

Michael: One of the most impressive things this piece accomplished: it made us consider the act of shopping differently than any of its myriad artistic predecessors. I’m literally in an OXXO at least once every day (it’s where most Defeños do everything from paying utility bills and refilling drinking water jugs to buying cigarettes and Doritos) but with the aspect of monetary value removed, yet another set of limitations imposed, an almost-mania set in as we tried to adjust to a new value system.

Ultimately, I settled on a beer and two Kinder Sorpresa chocolate eggs. I figured I could have a snack, and still get an “object” as a souvenir. I grabbed two of the “niña” chocolates (even candy is gendered?) because Molly Rhinestones introduced me to the fact that the girls’ toys are usually little glamorous figurines that look like white versions of RuPaul. When I opened my eggs, however, they contained art supplies. “Art supplies” in the old-school sense—one came with a watercolor set in the shape of a frog and the other held colored pencils in the shape of a teddy bear. It felt like the most meta end to this Russian-doll of a game. I like to think Orozco rigged this detail somehow—and in his OXXO, all children’s candy prizes contain gender neutral art stuff that could theoretically yield a traditional “art object”.

Whitney: I think your sense of wonder shows what immediately sets this apart from a zillion other art-as-commerce shows. A convenience store populated entirely with art viewers with Canon cameras and little backpacks doesn’t sound so exciting now that we’re officially past the relational aesthetics wow factor.

But what sets this apart from so many Creative Time commissions, art fair projects, and pop-up gallery-stores is that it’s not a fake store where you can’t get anything, or a fake-real store where you have to buy art, or a real store where you have to “perform” capitalism, or a store manned by the unpaid intern, or a store that provides fake jobs for a month. It’s that this is sponsored by OXXO, and you can get the stuff you want, rather than playing an in-the-know game that doesn’t meaningfully relate to commerce anywhere outside the art gallery. This is a real OXXO store.

It makes me think a lot more about what I consume, for one. (I now have cookies from OXXO). But it’s also not a smirky reveal.

Michael: Exiting the “store” from the opposite door, we found ourselves in an unsettlingly conventional gallery environment. I honestly wouldn’t have lingered among these color-coordinated products—devoid of any implied interaction—if it weren’t for the super-enthusiastic, frank, and helpful gallery attendant who gave us the backstory.

Whitney: This person told us that OXXO’s parent company Femsa is treating the show as a promotional opportunity, so it’s provided the workers, the shelving, the fridges, and all of the products. The stark difference in environments, from the colorful store for regular people to a fluorescent Stanley Kubrick vacuum for elevated people, highlighted how art caters to an entirely different set of consumers, which I think is why art-store projects usually don’t work, because in the end they’re not really for us.

Michael: But I am more interested in the economics of the gallery’s products than the giveaway nextdoor. Orozco has calculated a pricing scheme wherein the first edition of the series (his own artist’s proof) is valued at $30,000 (USD). The next collector to buy a set of these art-stamped OXXO products pays half—$15,000. The next collector pays half of that, and so on and so forth until the last edition only costs $60. The price drops the more “demand” there is for the product (opposite the logic of rarified art objects). It’s an economy of scale, not unlike Tesla’s ambitions to engineer accessible electric cars from the luxury market on down, or the fact that mass-produced shit costs so little because it’s mass-consumed (and, of course, exploitative labor, etc.)

Orozco’s relationship to the market (both high and low) is a smart one. He seems to be playing everyone by just blatantly playing by capitalism’s own rules. There’s not necessarily a critique here that’s so explicit a multinational corporate sponsor would be scared off, but he shines a light on the absurdity of the commercial art world by applying other market principles to the weird, weird system in which art operates. Namely, the power artists and dealers wield to assign arbitrary monetary values to objects that could cost much less, or in this case, be free. And in the bizarre era of late-capitalist neoliberalism, I suppose approaching a sponsor that sells nachos and bags of pre-cooked refried beans feels downright democratic in comparison to the usual art-world check-writers: luxury car brands, LVMH labels, overpriced champagne manufacturers…

Whitney: Completely agree. Orozco’s making a game out of buying with the high-low pricing structure, and your understanding of the rules depends on where you are in the economy. I personally consider the first buyer (of the $30,000) to be the loser and the last buyer (of the $60 work) to be the winner, as the bargain-getter. That’s funny because the only rationale for spending the most money on the same item is to be a winner: buying value which has no real meaning unless all the rich people agree that it does. So I think most people would consider the biggest spender to be a complete idiot, but it doesn’t matter anyway because our opinions literally count for nothing and theirs count for $30,000.

I think the Russian doll is a really accurate metaphor. The larger concept of speculative economics for the super rich is wrapped around the economy of goods, something tangible which the rest of us can understand.

It was a good show.

Michael: My only complaint is that I couldn’t take the Juan-Gabriel-Orozco:

More recent Mexico City coverage:

SLIDESHOW: Mexico City Galleries, Part 1

Museum Punk Show in Need of A Sound Guy

Material Light on Substance, Heavy With Dick Pics

Slideshow: Zona MACO, The Art Fair Where Commerce and Politics Make Strange Bedfellows

We Went to Mexico: General Idea at Museo Jumex Restored Our Faith in Art For Fuck’s Sake

We Went to Mexico: Barbara Kruger and Juan Pablo de la Vega Take the Subway

The Timelessness of Sex, Violence, and Portraiture: Otto Dix at MUNAL

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#IFTTT #Art F City