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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 years ago

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Brian Merchant’s “Blood In the Machine”

Tomorrow (September 27), I'll be at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles with Brian Merchant for a joint launch for my new book The Internet Con and his new book, Blood in the Machine. On October 2, I'll be in Boise to host an event with VE Schwab.

In Blood In the Machine, Brian Merchant delivers the definitive history of the Luddites, and the clearest analysis of the automator's playbook, where "entrepreneurs'" lawless extraction from workers is called "innovation" and "inevitable":

https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/

History is written by the winners, and so you probably think of the Luddites as brainless, terrified, thick-fingered vandals who smashed machines and burned factories because they didn't understand them. Today, "Luddite" is a slur that means "technophobe" – but that's neither fair, nor accurate.

Luddism has been steadily creeping into pro-labor technological criticism, as workers and technology critics reclaim the term and its history, which is a rich and powerful tale of greed versus solidarity, slavery versus freedom.

The true tale of the Luddites starts with workers demanding that the laws be upheld. When factory owners began to buy automation systems for textile production, they did so in violation of laws that required collaboration with existing craft guilds – laws designed to ensure that automation was phased in gradually, with accommodations for displaced workers. These laws also protected the public, with the guilds evaluating the quality of cloth produced on the machine, acting as a proxy for buyers who might otherwise be tricked into buying inferior goods.

Factory owners flouted these laws. Though the machines made cloth that was less durable and of inferior weave, they sold it to consumers as though it were as good as the guild-made textiles. Factory owners made quiet deals with orphanages to send them very young children who were enslaved to work in their factories, where they were routinely maimed and killed by the new machines. Children who balked at the long hours or attempted escape were viciously beaten (the memoir of one former child slave became a bestseller and inspired Oliver Twist).

The craft guilds begged Parliament to act. They sent delegations, wrote petitions, even got Members of Parliament to draft legislation ordering enforcement of existing laws. Instead, Parliament passed laws criminalizing labor organizing.

The stakes were high. Economic malaise and war had driven up the price of life's essentials. Workers displaced by illegal machines faced starvation – as did their children. Communities were shattered. Workers who had apprenticed for years found themselves graduating into a market that had no jobs for them.

This is the context in which the Luddite uprisings began. Secret cells of workers, working with discipline and tight organization, warned factory owners to uphold the law. They sent letters and posted handbills in which they styled themselves as the army of "King Ludd" or "General Ludd" – Ned Ludd being a mythical figure who had fought back against an abusive boss.

When factory owners ignored these warnings, the Luddites smashed their machines, breaking into factories or intercepting machines en route from the blacksmith shops where they'd been created. They won key victories, with many factory owners backing off from automation plans, but the owners were deep-pocketed and determined.

The ruling Tories had no sympathy for the workers and no interest in upholding the law or punishing the factory owners for violating it. Instead, they dispatched troops to the factory towns, escalating the use of force until England's industrial centers were occupied by literal armies of soldiers. Soldiers who balked at turning their guns on Luddites were publicly flogged to death.

I got very interested in the Luddites in late 2021, when it became clear that everything I thought I knew about the Luddites was wrong. The Luddites weren't anti-technology – rather, they were doing the same thing a science fiction writer does: asking not just what a new technology does, but also who it does it for and who it does it to:

https://locusmag.com/2022/01/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-is-a-luddite-literature/

Unsurprisingly, ever since I started publishing on this subject, I've run into people who have no sympathy for the Luddite cause and who slide into my replies to replicate the 19th Century automation debate. One such person accused the Luddites of using "state violence" to suppress progress.

You couldn't ask for a more perfect example of how the history of the Luddites has been forgotten and replaced with a deliberately misleading account. The "state violence" of the Luddite uprising was entirely on one side. Parliament, under the lackadaisical leadership of "Mad King George," imposed the death penalty on the Luddites. It wasn't just machine-breaking that became a capital crime – "oath taking" (swearing loyalty to the Luddites) also carried the death penalties.

As the Luddites fought on against increasingly well-armed factory owners (one owner bought a cannon to use on workers who threatened his machines), they were subjected to spectacular acts of true state violence. Occupying soldiers rounded up Luddites and suspected Luddites and staged public mass executions, hanging them by the dozen, creating scores widows and fatherless children.

The sf writer Steven Brust says that the test to tell whether someone is on the right or the left is simple: ask whether property rights are more important than human rights. If the person says "property rights are human rights," they are on the right.

The state response to the Luddites crisply illustrates this distinction. The Luddites wanted an orderly and lawful transition to automation, one that brought workers along and created shared prosperity and quality goods. The craft guilds took pride in their products, and saw themselves as guardians of their industry. They were accustomed to enjoying a high degree of bargaining power and autonomy, working from small craft workshops in their homes, which allowed them to set their own work pace, eat with their families, and enjoy modest amounts of leisure.

The factory owners' cause wasn't just increased production – it was increased power. They wanted a workforce that would dance to their tune, work longer hours for less pay. They wanted unilateral control over which products they made and what corners they cut in making those products. They wanted to enrich themselves, even if that meant that thousands starved and their factory floors ran red with the blood of dismembered children.

The Luddites destroyed machines. The factory owners killed Luddites, shooting them at the factory gates, or rounding them up for mass executions. Parliament deputized owners to act as extensions of law enforcement, allowing them to drag suspected Luddites to their own private cells for questioning.

The Luddites viewed property rights as just one instrument for achieving human rights – freedom from hunger and cold – and when property rights conflicted with human rights, they didn't hesitate to smash the machines. For them, human rights trumped property rights.

Their bosses – and their bosses' modern defenders – saw the demands to uphold the laws on automation as demands to bring "state violence" to bear on the wholly private matter of how a rich man should organize his business. On the other hand, literal killing – both on the factory floor and at the gallows – was not "state violence" but rather, a defense of the most important of all the human rights: the rights of property owners.

19th century textile factories were the original Big Tech, and the rhetoric of the factory owners echoes down the ages. When tech barons like Peter Thiel say that "freedom is incompatible with democracy," he means that letting people who work for a living vote will eventually lead to limitations on people who own things for a living, like him.

Then, as now, resistance to Big Tech enjoyed widespread support. The Luddites couldn't have organized in their thousands if their neighbors didn't have their backs. Shelley and Byron wrote widely reproduced paeans to worker uprisings (Byron also defended the Luddites in the House of Lords). The Brontes wrote Luddite novels. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was a Luddite novel, in which the monster was a sensitive, intelligent creature who merely demanded a say in the technology that created him.

The erasure of the true history of the Luddites was a deliberate act. Despite the popular and elite support the Luddites enjoyed, the owners and their allies in Parliament were able to crush the uprising, using mass murder and imprisonment to force workers to accept immiseration.

The entire supply chain of the textile revolution was soaked in blood. Merchant devotes multiple chapters to the lives of African slaves in America who produced the cotton that the machines in England wove into cloth. Then – as now – automation served to obscure the violence latent in production of finished goods.

But, as Merchant writes, the Luddites didn't lose outright. Historians who study the uprisings record that the places where the Luddites fought most fiercely were the places where automation came most slowly and workers enjoyed the longest shared prosperity.

The motto of Magpie Killjoy's seminal Steampunk Magazine was: "Love the machine, hate the factory." The workers of the Luddite uprising were skilled technologists themselves.

They performed highly technical tasks to produce extremely high-quality goods. They served in craft workshops and controlled their own time.

The factory increased production, but at the cost of autonomy. Factories and their progeny, like assembly lines, made it possible to make more goods (even goods that eventually rose the quality of the craft goods they replaced), but at the cost of human autonomy. Taylorism and other efficiency cults ended up scripting the motions of workers down to the fingertips, and workers were and are subject to increasing surveillance and discipline from their bosses if they deviate. Take too many pee breaks at the Amazon warehouse and you will be marked down for "time off-task."

Steampunk is a dream of craft production at factory scale: in steampunk fantasies, the worker is a solitary genius who can produce high-tech finished goods in their own laboratory. Steampunk has no "dark, satanic mills," no blood in the factory. It's no coincidence that steampunk gained popularity at the same time as the maker movement, in which individual workers use form digital communities. Makers networked together to provide advice and support in craft projects that turn out the kind of technologically sophisticated goods that we associate with vast, heavily-capitalized assembly lines.

But workers are losing autonomy, not gaining it. The steampunk dream is of a world where we get the benefits of factory production with the life of a craft producer. The gig economy has delivered its opposite: craft workers – Uber drivers, casualized doctors and dog-walkers – who are as surveilled and controlled as factory workers.

Gig workers are dispatched by apps, their faces closely studied by cameras for unauthorized eye-movements, their pay changed from moment to moment by an algorithm that docks them for any infraction. They are "reverse centaurs": workers fused to machines where the machine provides the intelligence and the human does its bidding:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/17/reverse-centaur/#reverse-centaur

Craft workers in home workshops are told that they're their own bosses, but in reality they are constantly monitored by bossware that watches out of their computers' cameras and listens through its mic. They have to pay for the privilege of working for their bosses, and pay to quit. If their children make so much as a peep, they can lose their jobs. They don't work from home – they live at work:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/22/paperback-writer/#toothless

Merchant is a master storyteller and a dedicated researcher. The story he weaves in Blood In the Machine is as gripping as any Propublica deep-dive into the miserable working conditions of today's gig economy. Drawing on primary sources and scholarship, Blood is a kind of Nomadland for Luddites.

Today, Merchant is the technology critic for the LA Times. The final chapters of Blood brings the Luddites into the present day, finding parallels in the labor organizing of the Amazon warehouse workers led by Chris Smalls. The liberal reformers who offered patronizing support to the Luddites – but didn't imagine that they could be masters of their own destiny – are echoed in the rhetoric of Andrew Yang.

And of course, the factory owners' rhetoric is easily transposed to the modern tech baron. Then, as now, we're told that all automation is "progress," that regulatory evasion (Uber's unlicensed taxis, Airbnb's unlicensed hotel rooms, Ring's unregulated surveillance, Tesla's unregulated autopilot) is "innovation." Most of all, we're told that every one of these innovations must exist, that there is no way to stop it, because technology is an autonomous force that is independent of human agency. "There is no alternative" – the rallying cry of Margaret Thatcher – has become our inevitablist catechism.

Squeezing the workers' wages conditions and weakening workers' bargaining power isn't "innovation." It's an old, old story, as old as the factory owners who replaced skilled workers with terrified orphans, sending out for more when a child fell into a machine. Then, as now, this was called "job creation."

Then, as now, there was no way to progress as a worker: no matter how skilled and diligent an Uber driver is, they can't buy their medallion and truly become their own boss, getting a say in their working conditions. They certainly can't hope to rise from a blue-collar job on the streets to a white-collar job in the Uber offices.

Then, as now, a worker was hired by the day, not by the year, and might find themselves with no work the next day, depending on the whim of a factory owner or an algorithm.

As Merchant writes: robots aren't coming for your job; bosses are. The dream of a "dark factory," a "fully automated" Tesla production line, is the dream of a boss who doesn't have to answer to workers, who can press a button and manifest their will, without negotiating with mere workers. The point isn't just to reduce the wage-bill for a finished good – it's to reduce the "friction" of having to care about others and take their needs into account.

Luddites are not – and have never been – anti-technology. Rather, they are pro-human, and see production as a means to an end: broadly shared prosperity. The automation project says it's about replacing humans with machines, but over and over again – in machine learning, in "contactless" delivery, in on-demand workforces – the goal is to turn humans into machines.

There is blood in the machine, Merchant tells us, whether its humans being torn apart by a machine, or humans being transformed into machines.

Brian and I are having a joint book-launch tomorrow night (Sept 27) at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles for my new book The Internet Con and his new book, Blood in the Machine:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-internet-con-by-cory-doctorow-blood-in-the-machine-by-brian-merchant-tickets-696349940417

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/26/enochs-hammer/#thats-fronkonsteen

#pluralistic #books #reviews #brian merchant #luddism #automation #history #gift guide #steampunk #makers #tina #inevitablism #reverse centaurs #amazon #arise

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dailyanarchistposts · 4 months ago

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Author: Anarchist Communist Group Topics: health care, NHS, United Kingdom

Save our NHS?

Healthcare in the UK is by no means “socialised”, as critics in the US claim. Though healthcare in the UK is undoubtedly better than healthcare in the US – just as other countries have better healthcare than the UK – it is still subject to the pressures and dynamics of capitalism, existing as it does in a capitalist society. It has also been increasingly marketised over recent decades, with attacks on both social provision and NHS workers coming under the cover of “privatisation” – the introduction of payment by results has introduced a market in health services, many non-frontline services have been privatised or contracted to companies like DHL, the introduction of wholly privately owned and operated “NHS treatment centres”, the rollout of Private Finance Initiatives etc all represent part of the same project of “rationalising” social provisions to the benefit of the overall capitalist system. Even the NHS in its classic form, as the centrepiece of the post-war welfare state, came as part of the attempt to stave off prewar-style class conflict and integrate the working class more closely into the state following the end of the war, and to provide a healthy working class that could fight and die for the bosses in their wars (our masters struggled to find enough fit cannon fodder for their First World War) and healthy enough to slave for their profits in paid jobs, and in unpaid childcare and housework, as well as from the needs for capitalism to stabilise itself after the turbulence of the 1920s, in a change of tactic well-known as the post-war settlement.

We need to defend health services, but critically. The NHS was never ‘ours’ and it is far from perfect.

Since the inception of the NHS, consultants were allowed to use NHS time and resources for their private gain, freeloading that the Daily Mail and their mates are happy to ignore. The Health Service treats our illnesses as individual cases, but most of our illness is due to economic and social conditions that we face collectively: unhealthy and dangerous workplaces, overlong hours and night time working, pollution from factories and cars, poor food, unhealthy housing, lack of trees and greenspaces, all exacerbated by racism and sexism for large sectors of the population. In the 1960s and 1970s women highlighted how unequally they were treated, particularly around childbirth. They won some improvements through struggle, but we are still miles from a genuine community health service.

We know that the current Tory government is making massive cuts to health services with closures of hospitals, casualty departments, rationing of services by age, cuts to services for the elderly and people with disabilities, near frozen wages of overworked staff etc. The whole idea of running healthcare as a business is contradictory (treatment based on ability to pay rather than need), and only benefits the well-off who can always pay for treatment, and the drug companies and other corporate vultures who are taking over more and more of the health service. The whole idea of ‘choice’ in this context is similarly a nonsense. We don’t want to choose which doctors or hospital service to use (the one round the corner / or the one 20 miles away?), we need local services, all of which are accessible and good.

Who Is To Blame?

What is causing the ongoing and deepening crisis in the NHS (and) the ‘lack of money’? Is it –

All those old people selfishly ‘bed blocking’ hospital beds rather than going home unwell and dying quickly so that they are no longer ‘a burden’.

The obese smokers and drinkers: no not the rich ones, and as always, blame the consumer, not the producer (the alcohol and tobacco industries have no responsibilities).

Migrant workers and ‘health tourists’ (the first pay taxes too, and the second cost less than the NHS pencil budget, and no, ignore the rich ones)

The rising cost of the NHS – due to an ageing population (as above), all those poor people who are overweight and smoke and drink too much etc.

NONE OF THE ABOVE!

Back in 2005 the now Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, co-wrote a pamphlet calling for the replacement of the NHS with a market insurance system, with the heavy involvement of private enterprise. A fox in charge of the hen coop! The policies pursued are obviously part of a death by a thousand cuts /privatisation by stealth strategy. The idea that the slow death of the NHS is just down to the Tories is delusional however. The PFI (Private Finance Initiative) was a Conservative idea they left on the shelf, with little of it being implemented. It was Labour’s Tony Blair and Gordon Brown who activated it when in government: schools and hospitals were built with finance from the private sector (banks etc) who then leased them to back to the government, who paid for them over the long term on a mortgage basis at a much higher cost (40% more). Old hospitals were closed, so overall there were fewer beds. Labour also introduced ‘the market’ into the health service, the equivalent of putting leeches into a blood bank, and introduced Foundation Trusts. These Labour policies left the NHS with debts of £81.6 billion, and they together with massive ongoing cuts are the cause of the crisis.

What Do We Want, And How Do We Get There?

We need to stop hospitals, casualty departments etc being closed, attacks on GPs, staff cuts, freezing of the wages of health service staff (which are cuts as rents, food etc go up). We need to stop the increasing marketisation of the NHS. We need to stop the NHS being run as a business concern, with vastly overpaid administrators at the top, with at least 800 of these on six figure salaries. We need to end the rigid hierarchies in hospitals, where decisions cannot be questioned, as witness the recent revelations about Gosport War Memorial Hospital where over 450 patients died after being prescribed dangerous painkillers and with according to a recent report “patients and relatives powerless in their relationship with professional staff”. We need to end the grip of drug companies on the NHS. In 2016 alone, the NHS payed these companies £1 billion for drugs for arthritis, cancer, MS, etc. The research for these drugs was funded by public money. “Big pharmaceutical companies are ripping us off by taking over drugs developed primarily with public money and selling the drugs back to the NHS at extortionate prices”. Heidi Chow, Global Justice Now.

How we do this is crucial however. If we use the same old tired methods of petitions, relying on union bureaucrats, trusting in political parties (whoever they are) not only will we probably lose, but we will remain powerless, divided, and with an illness service that doesn’t meet our needs or tackle the causes of our ill health. We need methods and organisation that empower us: to organise ourselves, control our own struggles, without leaders, and to use direct action methods: occupations, work-ins, strikes, work to rule etc. We need to break down the barriers between staff and patients, carers and service-users, workers and unemployed to link our struggles.

What do we want? – A free health service controlled and run by the staff and users. An emphasis on empowering people through helping them to educating themselves in groups about their bodies and health (e.g. books and pamphlets such as ‘Our Bodies Ourselves’ and the collective work in the last wave of feminism). Communities working together to tackle the causes of ill health: dangerous and unhealthy workplaces, an unhealthy, car-based transport system, poor food, widespread pollution, lack of green spaces for relaxation, and exercise etc. Move away from processed and unhealthy food, and from the current over-reliance on drugs. Again, self-organisation and direct action are key. But surely this is pie-in-the-sky? No, we are drawing on what people have done, and are doing, both here and abroad. In Greece, massive health cuts have resulted in health workers running hospitals and clinics etc for free, with the support of their local communities.

London Anarchist Communist Group [email protected]

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probablyasocialecologist · 6 months ago

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At September’s UN General Assembly in New York, Brazil’s President Lula described the international financial system as a “Marshall Plan in reverse” in which the poorest countries finance the richest. Driving the point home, Lula thundered, “African countries borrow at rates up to eight times higher than Germany and four times higher than the United States.” Lula is not alone in this diagnosis. Centrist technocrats par excellence Larry Summers & NK Singh coauthored a report earlier this year arguing that the development world’s mantra to scale up direct financing to the global South—from “billions to trillions”—has failed. Instead, global finance seems to be running in the opposite direction, from poor to rich countries, as was the case last year. Summers and Singh summarize the arrangement thusly: “millions in, billions out.” Added to this is the great global shift to austerity that makes a mockery of climate and development goals. It’s in this context that talk of “green Marshall Plans”—proposed by Huang Yiping in China and Brian Deese in the US—must be received. Negotiations over technology transfer, market access, and finance deals are a permanent feature of the new cold war: call it strategic green industrial diplomacy. Both the American and Chinese proposals, such as they exist, aim to subsidize the export markets of allied countries to build foreign support for domestic industries. For developing countries, this could mean manufacturing green goods to grab a slice of the trillions of future green economic output and develop themselves, and a policy choice to meet their development goals by either making or buying cheap, clean energy generation, electricity storage, and transport. Putting aside the dubiousness of the historical analogy to the United States’ postwar aid program to Europe, the critical element—and the one that seems least likely for either China or the US to pursue in earnest given their domestic political obstacles—is the provision of the kind of financial and industrial support that low- and middle-income countries need. The geoeconomic contest between the US and China rests on which of the two can forge domestic political coalitions that meet the demand of developing countries for local manufacturing value add in green value chains, without which the South will remain merely an export market or a resource colony.

[...]

The optimistic Marshall Plan proposals are not entirely hot air; each attempts to extend aggressive domestic policies globally. China and the US have both made bids on an investment-led partial solution to their respective domestic political and economic challenges, with a focus on clean-energy industries. Their shared formula can be summarized as national strength through industrial renewal. In both countries, domestic industries have been offered ample fiscal support; Biden’s suite of tax credits and subsidies has already spurred more than $400 billion in investment in clean energy and clean-tech manufacturing and generation, and China’s central government, already dominant in clean tech manufacturing, is now concentrating its efforts on next-generation technologies and economic self-reliance.

11 October 2024

#china #usa #economics #Belt and Road Initiative #industrial policy

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botaniqueer · 3 months ago

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I think one bit of reframing Americans can do to help think of ways to move forward instead of being stuck in the same cycles is to step away from the idea of "The system isn't serving us anymore" and instead engage with the fact that this system has never been for most people in the first place, even when things are running more smoothly. (And also even if the system did serve us and everything was good on our end, it's no excuse for the settler-colonialism and genocide that our society runs on.)

The US's origins are heavily that of land speculation and business decisions by rich white slavers who killed the Indigenous populations. One of the big breaks in the colonies that formed between them and the British is the British not wanting to expand further west due to seeing it as being too costly, while the founding fathers wanted to keep expanding.

But also to set up colonies and continuing to extract profit and land, you need colonists to act as placeholders, which is where American settlers and thoughts about "freedom" come in. The talk about Freedom and Liberty is a marketing pitch to get more people to come and act as a means of displacing and keeping the Indigenous populations displaced so they can't gain back power. They (the powerful rich white folks in charge) may or may not have done this consciously and just rationalized it, but it is very much what this all is. Settlers who aren't useful for colonialism and capitalism and suppressing the natives (whom along with Black folks here are the most important and relevant marginalized group in this context even if there are marginalized settlers!) get tossed aside and become homeless or institutionalized.

The return of the land to Indigenous folks, and also the returning the people to the land is the only real way to prevent what is happening now from happening over and over again. We can have a blue wave for a century straight, or even have the Green party become a major party, but it won't be meaningful and the threat will never go away while the US and other settler colonial states are still around and kicking.

#alex says words #colonialism #Sorry if this is jumbled I am half asleep but am having a lot of thoughts on colonialism and capitalism #There are probably typos as well #Typing out longer posts are my way of relieving the tension I'm feeling

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literallybyronic · 3 months ago

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What's A Paladin Grey Warden?

So, if you want to understand what's been going on at Bioware over the last decade, why Veilguard was so bad, why people are blaming EA even though it's not EA directly making each individual terrible choice that led to what we got, and why I've been predicting this since Gaider left, I'd advise checking out the Spoony review of Ultima IX: Ascension. Ultima was the top fantasy RPG franchise of the 80s/90s, developed by the studio Origin Systems. They also had the top story-driven sci-fi franchise of the time, Wing Commander. (starting to sound familiar?) These games had rich stories, drama, statements to make about war and philosophy and religion, and were the first or early to implement a lot of immersion-based features that we now consider industry standard. They also pioneered the graphical MMO, which was the "live service" of the time, and which EA started visibly shaking and drooling over once the constant income stream of "freemium" online games became apparent. This actually being wildly successful did not save them from the EA-driven issue of the top talent getting frustrated with shit management and undervaluation, and leaving the company. Origin was literally top of the heap at the time and EA ran them into the ground in the span of about a decade. And of course not just Origin Systems, this has been EA's modus operandi for as long as I can remember.

Here's the video (part 1; links to part 2 & 3 should pop up in your suggested if you want to continue the horror show.) I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

CONTENT WARNING: this video is old (2012), and does use some offensive language (r-slur). however the points it makes about EA and the way it highlights issues that are very closely paralleled by DATV are spot on. Watch, or don't, by your own volition.

youtube

If you want the full context of the studio's decline, look up the Spoony Ultima Retrospective on YT, which this is a portion of, but you can find the entire thing covering all Ultima games on YT as well. Be warned, it's 4 and a half hours long, but you can really see the full arc the studio went through, from some dude in his garage, to top of the market, to oblivion.

#bioware #dragon age #mass effect #bioware critical #veilguard critical #origin systems #EA (derogatory)#yeah i know vaguely about the spoony shit but the video has nothing to do with it and is spot on #Youtube

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jenn-the-butterfly · 8 months ago

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Would like to present...

Xeros

Model: Rulle

Grade: Goldlite

Owner: Cosmos Above

Xeros (zehr-ohs/ksehr-ohs) is the figurehead/face of Cosmos Above, one of the major distributors of Task Managers in the world. Cosmos Above is an "affordable luxury" company best known for their customization options and availability planning (the Apple of Azil in a way). A majority of their advertisements make use of Xeros's signature design to be recognizable, tying his image to their brand completely.

Xeros himself is very aware of his status and the fact that his longevity is a point of honor, as he's one of the few TMs to undergo a transfer from older to newer models several times--this is due to him being a Goldlite from inception. One of the first ever designed by C.A., Xeros's custom build and programming allows much more creative thinking as opposed to the more rigidly structured lower grades, allowing him the means to be ported into new bodies that are made uniquely for him. Over time, Xeros acquired a lot of insider knowledge of the company, is capable of analyzing market trends in real time, and has ingratiated himself to business partners with his charm so much that even the idea of replacing him is unheard of; there's a company rumor that Xeros is tied into the company's mainframe and if he wants to he can simply shut the entire facility down on a whim, or if he goes offline the company will brick up. While this is touted as untrue, Xeros enjoys the leverage it grants him alongside his notoriety and fame. While having humans in charge is the norm, Xeros being a consistent figure that has context to the entire company's (recent) history that does not age or lose mental sharpness makes him indispensable.

Xeros loves this about himself. Arrogant, selfish and proud, Xeros likes to throw his weight around and make decisions even when he doesn't need to simply because he can and no one can say no to him. It's gotten to a point where "If Xeros says it, it will be done" which has become a double-edged sword the company is desperate to curb. Because of his rich-boy lifestyle, Xeros has almost no real life experience from outside his ivory tower, thus his scope of the world is very limited. He's grown used to money, connections and charm being the only thing that matters and all it takes to get anything he wants, thus the idea that there are limits to his wishes never crosses his mind. Nor what it might do to those behind the scenes in the process of accomplishing his outlandish promises. In order to keep their image clean and stop their spoiled son from falling from his golden balcony, C.A.'s board of directors agreed to "decisive action".

During his most recent upgrade cycle, Xeros was given a Tidal Lock to a bot named Narii who was gifted by a business partner to avoid her being decommissioned. With her advanced neural networking ability and responsible, no nonsense personality, they hope Narii will be able to tone down Xeros's flamboyant, destructive pattern of behavior without him needing to be reprogrammed. While both being Nebula-class in terms of processing power, Xeros's features are geared toward adaptability as his original purpose was to test new features for Task Managers and showcase them at events. This is the one part of his job he is required to do and one he takes very seriously, to everyone's surprise; despite his arrogance, Xeros takes the quality control part of his job and treats it with a lot of respect. Narii's abilities are coordination related, which placed her directly in charge of all staff and bots in the company's headquarters, acting as a barrier between them and Xeros.

While Xeros still believes he's the head honcho of everything, the higher ups and Narii all know SHE is now the one with the power and all of Xeros's whims must pass through her to be actionable. Their Lock is a very minimal emphasis one, the barest of ties that make it so Xeros cannot access the company's inner systems without her help, but do not allow for immediate access to the other's inner mind though they can send each other messages if they need to. For the most part, he can simply "ignore" it by switching off his awareness of it, but he cannot remove it.

They both dislike this arrangement immensely but Narii knows better than to disagree with a direct order or to argue her purpose.

Good soldiers follow orders.

Xeros's signature

Bonus "under the clothes" version below cut, not shared yet elsewhere ;3

Original adopt design by InsomniacsArmy

#azil #free runner au #world building #robots #task manager au #rulle #goldlite #science fantasy #xeros #cosmos above #character design

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rollercoasterwords · 2 years ago

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PLEASE tell us your barbie opinions!!!!! pls pls i also have opinions

happy 2 share but i will be putting it under a cut bc. a lot of people seem 2 think this movie is god's gift 2 earth and i am not in the mood 2 deal w barbie evangelists lol so if u do not want 2 see barbie movie criticism just scroll away

will preface by saying i enjoyed the movie i thought it was fun etc + i don't think there's anything wrong with enjoying it or finding it fun or even feeling very personally empowered/seen by what the movie had to say. that's all very nice on a personal level and i understand why so many people are finding the movie cathartic.

that being said i do not think the movie was feminist or subversive by a long shot and seeing so many people talk about how radical it was makes me feel like i'm being gaslit!!! like. did we watch different movies lmao. maybe i'd understand a little more why everyone was being taken in if barbie had like, gone to the real world and fought patriarchy in the movie--but she didn't even do that! they introduce the concept of real-world patriarchy only to have barbie go back to barbieland and destroy fake barbie patriarchy (which is rooted simply in one man's insecurity and easily resolved by gently encouraging him to seek self-worth outside his relationship--not exactly a cutting examination of the material investment that men have in patriarchy which makes it so difficult to challenge) and leave real-world patriarchy intact at the end (the big #feminist moment for real women is...mattel's sexist ceo saying he'll use a woman's idea for the next barbie, since he can make a lot of money off it? he doesn't even say he's going to pay her for the idea lmao).

so all in all the whole "barbie destroys patriarchy" bit of the movie just. did not feel particularly feminist to me beyond a very surface level acknowledgment that sexism exists and is bad. and like--i get that it's the barbie movie, and people could say "well of course it can't be that subversive but it did a good job for what it was!!" but i'm just like. ok yeah then let's call it what it was...instead of calling it subversive?? also every feminist message the movie tried to champion was immediately undermined by its fundamental investment in gender essentialism, which remains unchallenged throughout the whole film. like--barbies are literally canonically sexless and so u can't even try to argue that the gender binary which their society is based around is anything but 100% socially constructed, and we see that that gender binary affords privilege to some and not to others and also leads to ostracization of those who fail to conform to it, yet the happy ending of the movie is barbieland just...staying that way. and i feel like the movie then kinda says the quiet part out loud when barbie becomes a "real woman" by getting a vagina like...ok. lol

so like. even the interior politics of the film i struggle to understand how it could be considered groundbreaking feminism; and then when we zoom out and look at the material impact of the movie that just cements it as un-feminist to me. this is a really good article about the beauty standards being pushed + perpetuated by barbie marketing, and of course as with basically any hollywood movie the rich (and mostly rich men) will be getting richer, cycles of consumerism will be perpetuated, etc. honestly the "feminist" aspect of the film almost feels insidious to me in this context, as if it's meant to provide the catharsis of feeling like there's been some big challenge to patriarchy while quietly reinforcing the systems of oppression it publicly decries.

and like. at the end of the day i was not expecting barbie to be a subversive feminist film nor do i think it like...has a responsibility to be one. and it's nice that so many people feel like they're getting something out of it! but i think it's important to evaluate both the personal and societal impact of the media we're critiquing, and in that context it just seems silly to me to claim that barbie is subversive. i also find the amount of rhetoric i've seen about how the movie "encapsulates the female experience" so fucking irritating lmfao like...i am sorry but the idea that watching a group of hyperfeminine women flirt with men as a method of destroying patriarchy (<- not an exaggeration that is literally the plot. flirt with each other's boyfriends to make them jealous so they fight each other. zero lesbians in barbieland i suppose) is THE quintessential experience of #womanhood...well alright then.

anyway. there is more i could say but i am going 2 get dinner w a friend so. stopping here <3 not gonna post the link but i do have a full/in-depth review on my substack if u wanna poke around over there!

#ask #ranting and raving #spoilers #also found the 'self-awareness' somewhat insufferable #'oh hehe we're having margot robbie talk about how ugly she is!! silly us!!' shut up....please...

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kycken · 3 months ago

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[DISCLAIMER] Kaminari-zoku, bosozoku, yankii, chinpira: These are NOT terms to be used interchangeably, but they’re also not mutually exclusive either- There is a fluidity to these identities and like the past bosozoku gangs that existed during the height of the 1980s- There are always personal differences as to how they operate, what they’re willing to do or not do, and so forth. I just want others to keep an open mind about this kind of thing, since many of the details concerning these subcultures MUST be examined within historical and cultural context.

The topics covered in descending order:

WWII & Allied Occupation of post-war Japan

Kaminari-zoku

Bosozoku

Female bosozoku/sukeban

Chinpira

Yankii

Downfall of bosozoku as a subculture

Assorted sources used in the creation of this post

-World War II & Allied Occupation & Rehabilitation of Japan-

We cannot get into post-war Japan without looking at the Allies plans for Japan’s unconditional surrender.

The groundwork for the Allied occupation of a defeated Japan was laid during the war. In a series of wartime conferences, the leaders of the Allied powers of Great Britain, the Soviet Union, the Republic of China, and the United States discussed how to disarm Japan, deal with its colonies (especially Korea and Taiwan), stabilize the Japanese economy, and prevent the remilitarization of the state in the future. In the Potsdam Declaration, they called for Japan’s unconditional surrender; by August of 1945, that objective had been achieved. In September, 1945, General Douglas MacArthur took charge of the Supreme Command of Allied Powers (SCAP) and began the work of rebuilding Japan. Although Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the Republic of China had an advisory role as part of an “Allied Council,” MacArthur had the final authority to make all decisions. The occupation of Japan can be divided into three phases: the initial effort to punish and reform Japan, the work to revive the Japanese economy, and the conclusion of a formal peace treaty and alliance. The first phase, roughly from the end of the war in 1945 through 1947, involved the most fundamental changes for the Japanese Government and society. The Allies punished Japan for its past militarism and expansion by convening war crimes trials in Tokyo. At the same time, SCAP dismantled the Japanese Army and banned former military officers from taking roles of political leadership in the new government. In the economic field, SCAP introduced land reform, designed to benefit the majority tenant farmers and reduce the power of rich landowners, many of whom had advocated for war and supported Japanese expansionism in the 1930s. MacArthur also tried to break up the large Japanese business conglomerates, or zaibatsu, as part of the effort to transform the economy into a free market capitalist system. In 1947, Allied advisors essentially dictated a new constitution to Japan’s leaders. Some of the most profound changes in the document included downgrading the emperor’s status to that of a figurehead without political control and placing more power in the parliamentary system, promoting greater rights and privileges for women, and renouncing the right to wage war, which involved eliminating all non-defensive armed forces.

-1945 to 1952: Allied occupation of Japan, after WWII.

-Kaminari-zoku-

World War II was the catalyst for obvious and major changes that shook Japan as a nation to its core. In 1950, Japan was still in a state of shock after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki- Their long held hierarchies were being dismantled and replaced with new and alien concepts via the Allied powers. American military presence brought in cultural exchanges, foreign goods, and other such exposure to what was considered ‘radical’ concepts.

Many surviving members of the imperial army were massively disillusioned by Japan’s surrender in the face of even the catastrophic violence that had taken place, having genuinely believed that Japan and its people would rather ‘die fighting’ than give in to threats and violence. This nationalistic sense of pride and unwillingness to adapt to the times and shift in cultural norms gave rise to a new wave of imperialist-glamorization, one of many socio-political movements protesting Westernization that would soon establish themselves.

Before the onset of the Korean War in 1950, Japan had very little by the way of raw resources and the Allies were extremely concerned about that, as they feared that Japan’s economy would collapse due to the industrial inability to produce finished goods. Once the UN joined the Korean War, Japan was established as the source of supplies for that war. Pre-1950, the ex-soldiers conglomerating together to ‘keep Japan the way it should be’ had very little by the way vehicles available to them (automotive industries were still just starting up and suffered from aforementioned lack of materials), so the 350cc motorcycles left over from Japanese military surplus- and in the US’ case, ‘Willy and the Poor Boys’/cheap military Harley-Davidsons & the Indian Scout- were all they had, if they weren’t driving literal stripped-down Rat Bikes.

The Harley-Davidson WLA and the WLC version had the same engine 750 cc/45 ci. side-valve V-Twin, but minor differences in accessories and their positions existed. Saddle bags were mounted for provisions, tools, documents and medicaments. The Harley WLA was equipped with leg guards (against the cold, rain, and mud), with a shovel and a windshield. The off-road capacity of this Harley was limited, though they had moderate knobby tires for sand/mud tracks and a guard plate under the engine for the protection of the crankcase against debris and cobbles.

Compared to the motorcycle being a status symbol of privilege and luxury in 1930s Japan, the motorcycle of 1950s Japan became the symbol of the enduring Japanese Imperialist-mindset and rebellion against the West. These war veterans were bitter and clung obsessively to the past, seeking out adrenaline-fueled races through Shinjuku’s populated city streets to vent their anger and frustration. They were very quickly dubbed nuisances and a legitimate societal issue, which then led the members of various kaminari-zoku to even further strip down their bikes, removing mufflers from engines so they caused raucous noise pollution wherever they roamed.

Kaminari-zoku often are seen as Japan’s version of the US’ Hell’s Angels, but in the same way you can’t dub the yakuza simply ‘the Japanese version of the Italian mob’, their identity and origins are intrinsically tied to Japanese culture and it’s post-war sentiment of rugged individualism, practicality, and the seeming importance of bonds forged during wartime trauma. You CANNOT divorce kaminari-zoku from Japanese imperialist dogma and its denial of human rights violations committed against other cultures and places during WWII- This remains a staunch and transparent difference between kaminari-zoku and the evolution of bosozoku and yankii subcultures.

-Bosozoku-

In the later 1960s, but primarily around the 1970s, the next generation of young rebels unhappy with the status quo decided to VERY strongly embrace fashion and aesthetics as their visible hallmarks of societal upheaval. Whereas the kaminari-zoku banded together for survivalist purposes and didn’t care about appearances beyond military garb, bosozoku were the true grease-monkeys salvaging frames and junk bikes from scrap or garbage piles, trading parts, learning how to rebuild these ‘trash heaps’, as well as customize them in completely insane ways to be as flashy as humanly possible. This was the 'Golden Age' of bosozoku, where your ride was an extension of your body and soul.

Modified bikes were known as kaizosha and always embodied these three core traits: Make it SHOWY, LOUD, and above all- FAST. These typically had extremely loud and obnoxious airhorns added on, and the ideal exhaust system was always the shugo (a multiple tube header that makes a metric ass-ton of, you guessed it, NOISE).

A typical kaizosha starts by taking an average 250 to 400cc Japanese road bike, adding a shugo exhaust system, squeezing the handlebars inwards (shibori), and adding a 3 or 4-trumpet airhorn (sanren or yonren)- This is the ULTRA CLASSIC/TRADITIONAL kaizosha look. The bikes will also be adorned with stickers and/or flags depicting the gang's symbol or logo. Among the most iconic and sought-after were the Honda CBX400F and the Yamaha XJ400, due to affordability, as many members devoted their entire incomes to customizing their bikes.

**Note:** I personally headcanon that Inupi found and fixed up a 1979 Honda CBX1000 for Koko- The cult classic & extremely notorious six-cylinder beast with that epic screaming banshee wail- A total wheel-smoker, though. He wanted Koko to have the most intimidating and cool-ass bike out of everyone in the 10th Gen. Black Dragons. I made mention of how the CBX handles in an RP thread with my long-time friend and writing mutual, Cas.

During the late 1960s-early 1970s, the Japanese Big Four found themselves in a “Superbike war” after Honda launched their game-changing CB750. Kawasaki answered in 1972 with the historic Z1 900, with Yamaha and Suzuki jumping into the 4-cylinder performance fray as well. Across the decade, all four brands produced bigger, faster, and better bikes to one-up the competition. Then as the decade drew to a close, Honda dropped the outrageous CBX. The Honda CBX ran a four-stroke 1047cc inline six, each with its own carb, and four overhead cams, 24 valves, dual Hy-Vo cam chains and a wet-sump system. Pounding out 105 hp at 9000 rpm, the CBX topped out at about 140 mph via a 5-speed gearbox. It was a heavy beast for its day, tipping the scales at about 600 lbs wet, but could allegedly muster about 39 mpg, if you could resist the temptation to pin the throttle. Which was tempting, as the CBX could clock a quarter mile in 11.64 seconds at 117.95 mph.

-Legendary Bikes by Rob Brooks

There are also marked regional differences in motorcycle modifications. For example, Ibaraki bosozoku are known to modify their motorcycles in an extensively colorful, flashy way. They will often have three or four oversized fairings in a tower-like structure and an abundance of bright lights.

Kaizosha aesthetics focusing on personal expression even influenced street racing and the modified car culture in Japan, specifically Kaido Racers who use ‘silhouette-style’ inspiration from old race cars of the 80s. They also add wide body kits and huge wings, resembling the Group 5 ‘Special Production Cars’ of the 1970s.

The biggest event for bosozoku usually occur on holidays such as New Years (just a commonly popular date, according to personal testimonies)- These are massive gang-wide tours without motorcycle helmets (illegal in Japan) where they all end up weaving in and out of traffic, running red lights, speeding in city streets for the thrill/fun of it, and famously- Overtaking entire freaking highways such as the 357 by driving extremely slowly (like, we’re talking 10-15 km/h) while making tons of noise, intimidating pedestrians and any nay-sayers trying to criticize them, not paying tolls, showing off by pulling stunts, and causing fights with other gangs.

With that many bikes involved, it actually takes a great deal of planning, teamwork, and toughness. The lead bike is always driven by the Branch Leader of the gang and their Captains (typically have their own ‘divisions’ denominated by number/generation- Or ‘Squads’ such as ‘Defense Squad’ or ‘Special Attack Squad’), who are responsible for the event and were not allowed to be overtaken. Rank and file members and Recruits made up the bulk of the touring group, who’d proudly wave their gang flags, make lots of noise with their ridiculous airhorns and engines (some even had gang-specific THEME SONGS playing from portable stereos, I am not even making this shit up), but the undisputed badasses of any bosozoku were ALWAYS at the very back of the line up- Because their specific and integral role was to taunt but also successfully fend off any forms of law enforcement trying to stop and arrest them all. Police code for such gangs was the term ‘maru-so’: マル走

Being a bosozoku member was more about the ‘spirit of youth’ and what that embodies- Very strict and even traditional rules were used as the basis of every gang’s code of conduct- Such as ‘never hurt women’, ‘don’t involve nor harm members of the public such as family members & other unaffiliated citizens’, even fostering a sense of ‘giving back to the locals/your community’ similar to the old school ideals of the first yakuza brotherhoods and similar evolution of Chinese kongsi into legitimate Triads.

The iconic tokkofuku or toppuku bore more similarities to the average construction worker’s uniforms (dokajan), jinbei sets, and jumpsuits, rather than a distinctly military influence, but some gangs still employed the ‘rising sun’ iconography on their rides and gear without really adhering to Japanese imperialism at all. It was more like a spiritual homage or acknowledgment to their forebears. Incredibly fine and detailed (not to mention EXPENSIVE) embroidery covered their ‘battle dress’, an array of gang-wide sayings, mottos, and even personal slogans of the individual members represented their unique ideals and ethics. Some also had tribute pieces done for their mentors- elder or retired bosozoku members who first introduced them to that lifestyle, before ‘graduating’ from their positions in the gang.

Graduation is just as it sounds- Regardless if you actually graduated from school or not, once you became an adult, you were expected to keep your head down and join the rest of society. Most were okay living these incredibly violent, flamboyant lifestyles as a ‘kid’, but that was expected to be the signature period where you have the free time to lash out and act up. Anyone still continuing on with the culture well into adulthood was often seen as some old ‘has-been’ who couldn’t let go of when they ‘peaked’, or considered a chinpira: someone involved in escalating criminal behavior on the fast track to becoming street-level flunkies for the yakuza.

Various region-based branches of bosozoku would establish themselves in the 1970s, but the absolute height of the subculture occurred during the 1980s- In response to the Bubble Economy of Japan. These weren’t a bunch of old codgers lamenting about ‘the good ol’ days’, these were very pissed off and disenfranchised young people (including some below 16 to slightly above 20s, in age range- Typically Branch Leaders were never older than 25) who came from less wealthy backgrounds. They were left behind by academic institutions for having poor or middling grades, ‘no prospects for the future’, difficulties at home, and were basically treated like parasites afflicting ‘proper, well to do’ citizens who adhered to the faulty belief that if you just conformed, worked hard and achieved the best grades due to pure dedication, you would join the wealthy elite and were proof of a successful lifestyle. Many bosozoku members never even finished high school nor graduated since they had to join the workforce immediately, in order to provide for themselves and family members.

In the 1980s, there was a surfeit of bosozoku gangs in every city, even smaller groups in the countryside (these would persist even after the 80s, becoming somewhat of a ‘past cultural fossil’ that ‘bored country bumpkins’ would idolize). The major players began as gangs such as Nona Lisa, Spectre, and the infamous Black Emperor (literally the real life inspiration for Ken Wakui’s fictional gang ‘The Black Dragons’ in Tokyo Revengers). Recognizing that territorial disputes fueled much of the bloodshed, inter-gang alliances began to take shape. The Number One gang, started in Urayasu, was the first to forge an alliance between bosozoku in Eastern Tokyo & Western Chiba. Later, all Chiba-based gangs united under the banner of the United Chiba Soumei Rengo, consolidating three smaller coalitions into a formidable force.

Individual gangs during their peak would have around 200 members, while alliance meetings could grow as big as 1000 to 2000 members riding together. By the peak of the bosozoku era in the 1980s, their collective membership was said to have exceeded 42,000.

Gangs like Spectre, according to media containing interviews, struck me more like the Haitani Brothers- They'd string up ropes or wires across highways during bike races to take out their opponents, an act that very commonly lead to hospitalizations and actual deaths. However, the rose-colored lenses happen to affect even the more notoriously bloodthirsty accounts of bosozoku groups, as seen in this description of a documentary covering Spectre: Revisiting the Glory Days With One of Japan’s Most Violent Biker Gangs (VICE 2015).

The biker group “Specter” was founded in the 1970s by Kokushikan students. The Specter group originated in Machida and had branches in Asakusa, Shinjuku Nakai, Minami Senju, Kanamachi, Nerima, Sagami, Mitaka, Higashi Nagasaki, Nakano, Urawa, Nagatsuta, Hachioji, Ichikawa, Matsudo, Narashino, Yamanashi, Ehime, Sendai, Ibaraki, Tochigi, and other areas, and further increased its members in other areas through the division of goodwill, becoming the largest single motorcycle gang group in Japan. The group boasted the largest scale of a single motorcycle gang in Japan. Kazuhiro Hatsuki was the 21st head of the Narashino Specter in 1989. The rallies were so large that the streets were filled with headlights, the passion for the special attack uniforms that were proof of the team’s control and embodiment of the delinquents’ souls, and the fierce motorcycle gang fights that even resulted in deaths…. Looking back on those days, we will visit the current Narashino Specter, which is now alone, the still-running Kamagaya Minami-Mujo A-arm, Ryuichi Otake and Yasutetsu Igarashi of the Killer Union Nina-Mona, and Keizo Kanami, the legendary leader of the Specter, and talk about their hot, intense and exciting times, as well as their future They also talk about their “dreams” for the future.

-LIVING ON THE EDGE by VICE Japan

Inter-gang violence was frequent and increasingly common amongst bosozoku- When one group was threatened by another, it was a matter of life and death to defend your own. Fighting to solve disputes was a leftover part of behavior/conduct structure from the bushido code (which also has a whole thing about the ‘virtues of manly love’, which kinda explains why the groups were usually/predominantly men, yet they also were not considered ‘gay’ for having extremely intense emotional and personal bonds with other men- American fans do NOT fucking come for me, Japan & Korea as societies can barely handle the fact that non-stereotypical examples of LGBTQIA+ people EXIST in real life).

The virtues of honor and loyalty were perhaps the biggest influences on that mentality, as members were religiously dedicated to their gangs and willing to do whatever it took to protect their dignity. Massive turf wars, kidnappings & torture, and even homicide were not uncommon acts at all. Weapons such as wooden swords, metal pipes, baseball bats, and molotov cocktails were not viewed as ‘cowardly’ nor ‘cheating’ in the slightest- Defending your turf and your reputation could make or break an entire gang. The only ‘off-limits’ weapons were firearms, which are illegal in Japan.

-Female Bosozoku/Sukeban-

There were all-female bosozoku in existence during the 1980s and 1990s, but there are barely any legitimate resources on such groups historically or in pop culture. Typically, the all-female gangs would initially begin as friendly groups between the girlfriends of male bosozoku members in the same gang- Who eventually desired their own spaces, get-togethers, and tours.

-Chinpira-

Bosozoku are often lumped together with chinpira- As both are often recognized in pop culture as the first rung, or even a direct gateway to the yakuza. The stigma of their apparel is so potent that even tokkofuku embroiderers are accused of being accomplices to crime. In 2002, the Osaka family court authorized a request by the police to confiscate tokkofuku worn by local bikers, claiming that the uniforms inspired “terror and disrespect for driving laws.” A former bosozoku member fought the ordinance all the way to Japan’s Supreme Court to declare it as unconstitutional.

-Yankii-

Yankii, to my knowledge and according to sources, is more a modern/’recent’ youth subculture concerning JUST fashion- Similar to the groups that hang out in Yoyogi Park where greaser-era enthusiasts show up in various 1950’s & classic biker-inspired fashions and dance in public for views/videos.

-Downfall-

In the 1990s, the Japanese government introduced the Boryokudan laws, whose sole purpose was to fight organized crime. The laws were created to crush activity of the yakuza, yet as the public opinion against criminal activity took a drastic turn, it threatened the existence of bosozoku due to their wide-spread public visibility. The laws made it easier to lock up bosozoku members, especially large touring groups- who were even arrested while on the streets despite not committing an actual crime. It led to a zero tolerance attitude, which directly caused the number of gangs to dwindle rapidly over time. The very outspoken cultural attitude shift towards delinquency was the final nail in the proverbial coffin.

Bosozoku nowadays simply do not exist- Aside from as a commodified pop culture fashion and media fad.

Other Sources:

Crime as Play and Excitement: A Conceptual Analysis of Bosozoku by Ikuya Sato

Tamura, H. 1980 Recent Trends of Bosozoku. Cendai no Esprit. 154, 128-142.

Krauss, E.S. 1974 Japanese Radicals Revisited. California: University of California Press.

Nakabe, H. 1979 Bosozoku 100 nin no shisso. Tokyo: Daisan Shokan.

National Police Agency 1979, 1981 Keisatsu hakusho. Tokyo: Ministry of Finance Printing Office.

https://www.stripes.com/news/okinawa-putting-brakes-on-local-gangs-1.537

Personal accounts & observations from former members (VICE news interview with ‘Keizo-san’, now defunct AOL-era gang websites, & one-on-one conversations with a former bosozoku member OP was personally friends with ‘Kayano-san’)

YouTube : BangSquadPrez

YouTube: bkc4test

Police recordings released by the Okinawan Police

GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR (1976 film documentary) **Note:** NOT THE CANADIAN POST-ROCK BAND!

Bakuon Rettou (autobiographical manga about bosozoku)

#rxsolvx #kakuseii #✘ ooc.#✘ META.#✘ RESOURCES.#Kkeungi introduces you to his frankly INSANE longterm hyperfixation with the history of Asian organized crime and Asian youth subcultures #TL;DR- I am so autistic

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rohitpalan · 1 year ago

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Revolutionizing Connectivity: Context-Rich System Market Surges to a Projected $6.35 Billion by 2033

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Latin America

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Eastern Europe

Asia Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ)

Japan

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#Context-Rich System Market

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thesplendidspiderweaver · 9 months ago

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Just your friendly neighborhood menace!!

(This is a spiderverse rp account.)

I’m Spider-Weaver! But most spider-people just call me Weaver. I’m 19 years old and I live in New York.

Any pronouns but They/Them is the most accurate

Only Spider People allowed below the cut

My name is Carmen. I go to Cornell University and I’m a bioengineering major. I got my powers in a lab accident at an internship with my best friend Collie. We both got bitten by different spiders.

I don’t know why there were so many radioactive spiders in one location, but I’ve been investigating the sponsor of the lab, Luther Brown. I have reason to believe that he is a supervillain. (He’s rich)

Anyway, this has been my audition for spider-society?? Please let me in! G’bye!!

Ooc: so I have a whole notes page for this character that I made years ago so I’m just gonna copypaste it here so yall have more context

Weaver

The Splendid Spider-Weaver

Origin

Weaver was an arachnologists intern to make money during their junior year in college. They worked alongside their best friend, Collie. The lab was in the middle of a top secret experiment exposing different types of spiders to radiation to try and identify the kind of spider that bit the original spider-man and therefore discover some of his weaknesses.

When spider-man learned about it, he enacted a virtual attack to corrupt the data. This, however, caused a panic in the lab, leading to a few of the spiders escaping.

One of the many bit Weaver. This particular spider was a Splendid Dwarf Spider.

Weaver, after discovering what had happened, started to investigate the lab and it’s funders. Namely, Luther Brown, a shady young man with a strange obsession with spider-man.

Abilities

Weavers super abilities are limited, but enough.

The webs they produce aren’t the normal “spider-man” webs and are rather cotton like Sheet Webs. Though they are still sticky, they can’t shoot out in strings like the original Spider-man’s can. Weavers webs are used mainly for sticking, securing, and padding. (Weaver is quite a bit smaller than their suit suggests, but the stuffing of web makes it much safer for them to fight and be places that are high up.)

Weaver does have a healing factor, though it is weak.

They have minimal super strength, limited to the weight of a standard car.

Weaver’s main ability, however, is psychic. When the spider bit Weaver, their vision split into four, making it quite a headache for them to see anything. In their normal day attire, they have a pair of glasses designed to stifle the other three sights. In their suit, however, they have eyes built in to effectively split the sights into different paths that feed a computer interface and interpret the signals. This gives Weaver thermal vision, and mind reading capabilities. The last sight that Weaver gained from the spider was something that Weaver considered to be a person’s “vibe.” With this information, they were able to code a system to identify the vibe and hypnotize people. Keep in mind that hypnosis only works with getting people to do things they aren’t opposed to doing.

Weaver also excretes toxic jelly from their fingertips involuntarily that can cause people to pass out.

Core beliefs

Nemesis

Weavers nemesis is the aforementioned Luther Brown. A rich, straight, cis, white boy that has way more power and money than he could ever earn. He was born into a billionaire family and uses insider trading to game the stock market and only get richer. He is a Viola player, and though he is very talented, most of his orchestra positions and solos were bought rather than earned. He has followers by the barrel that seek out information for him. As previously mentioned, he has a strange obsession with Spider-man rooted in admiration and jealousy.

His alter ego is known as the recluse. A cannibal that leaves viola music playing at every crime scene he makes. He tends to leave the victims head at the crime scene as well.

He gained his abilities from being bitten by the brown recluse spider at the lab. He did this on purpose to gain similar abilities to Spider-Man however slightly stronger so that Recluse could capture him of so desired.

Recluse, though well known and feared to the civilians, is under no investigation by the police and never appears in official news. Though the crimes are reported, the offender remains nameless despite having a name. This is because Luther Brown has paid off the police to not investigate these mysterious murders.

Possible dialogue

Recluse: You know, Collie will die

Weaver(pissed): now is not the time to be threatening me

Recluse: it’s not a threat. It’s a prediction. All spider-men have had a caretaker figure die, and yours is Collie.

Weaver: good thing I’m not a spider-man then

Recluse(smug): then what are you?

Weaver: Spider-Weaver

Recluse: many spider-men have had different names

Weaver: I’m not a man

Recluse: then what ARE you?

Weaver: a communist

Recluse(getting annoyed): what’s in your pants?

Weaver(rifling through their pockets): I got some doubloons, uhhh, a mint, you could use that, and I got this (flips him off)

Recluse: >:(

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icarusbetide · 1 year ago

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the time my friend argued that jefferson would be a raging capitalist today

questions along the vein of "would this founding father be a democrat or a republican", etc. etc. are impossible to answer for a lot of reasons - 18th century politics don't match up nicely with our idea of left or right. even if we really really dumb it down to big gov, small gov; manufacturing vs. farming; it gets complicated. throw in modern issues and it's a whole other deal entirely. and obviously if they were resurrected and dropped into this world today they would be so overwhelmed and irrelevant it doesn't even matter.

but as someone who believes environment has a huge impact on people, i do wonder what they would be like if they were born and raised in today's world. how many political convictions or personality traits are going to translate directly?

my fellow history geek who studies economics had a really interesting argument about hamilton and jefferson. (all of this is based off of the assumption that they were born and raised in the modern era. this was a stupid conversation we had while procrastinating, don't take it too seriously!)

Hamilton:

obviously based on history, the first thing i said is that hamilton would be a wall street capitalist dude. but my friend said that you could make a (simple, rough) argument that his economic policies were radical for the time, moving away from the existing more mercantile structure. if we're going by solely what's considered radical today, it's a different picture. and he made the point that hamilton had a focus on energetic, involved government - very clearly clashing with fiscal conversative values of free markets and reduced debt, etc. so even if we translated him as a capitalist, it wouldn't be purely fiscal libertarian/conservative.

he wasn't by any means a destitute rags to riches story, but he did face quite a lot of early trauma and prejudice. illegitimacy and being west indian aren't as stigmatized in today's world - but if he still goes through similar experiences in a modern context, in a world less bound to enlightenment ideals? my friend (again over simplistically, he wants me to emphasize that) said "okay. let's say we translate that struggle to him being raised by a single mom and a deadbeat dad, with an immigrant status? he faces the problems in the existing structures, maybe the foster system? and if we accept that he might have had feelings for john laurens, that's probably going to affect him heavily; in today's world i can see him being more of a left-leaning person politically."

we both hesitantly agreed that given some of his qualities, childhood experience, etc. the fanfics that depict a modern hamilton to be at least liberal might not be too off? he'd still be a realist, wary of perceived demagogues, etc. and always fighting on twitter. my friend very strongly made the case that "just because he created and backed a capitalist financial system in the 1700s doesn't mean he would be right-wing now. simplifying but if he genuinely believed that his plans back then would improve the lives of americans, then he might see the system we have today and hate it. because it's not working: we're falling behind in a lot of important statistics; hamilton had negative qualities for sure but i do think he was genuine in trying to find what he thought would actually improve people's lives. he wasn't entirely motivated by money, right? he cut off his other incomes as treasury secretary? yes he was ambitious but he wanted to get things done. if anything, he'd see the ineffectiveness of a whole bunch of crap happening today and hate that."

he also thinks that because hamilton dedicated a lot to working on systems (both federal governmental and economic, perhaps the two most controversial and important ones at that time) it's valid (given that earlier childhood translation as well) that he'd be very interested in social programs and economic programs today. less of the federal government thing since that's more set in stone.

so his tldr: "i know it seems like presentism and wishful thinking for me to say that modern hamilton might've been left-leaning, but i really do think it's a possibility, if we translate some of his experiences to our world. there are other founders i'd argue that would be much more conservative and or capitalist. please don't attack me."

me: "wait who do you think would be the raging capitalist?"

him: "Jefferson. if we assume he's born into a rich, rich, prestigious family today - chances are he's the son of a ceo or some corporation. and that isn't exactly old money but you can argue that any colonist family is less old money compared to the actual british nobility. and how far back is old money? if it was his grandfather who struck it big then he's still got that trust fund kid energy. so in a way, we could argue that he'd actually be the raging capitalist, probably still wanting a smaller government but for the free market and tax cuts."

this was hilarious because i focused in on his ability to hone into what the public wants to hear, and thought he'd be one of those hipster, seemingly social justice warrior people who still harbor a great amount of elitism and hypocrisy.

my friend pointed out that both can be true. he can be like kendall roy and tweet "we must overthrow the culture of corruption that silences women" while being a piece of shit with a crazy family.

you'll probably notice that this is entirely speculatory, and a lot of it is based on vibes. and we made a lot of logical jumps in terms of translating influential experiences at that time to something equivalent in the modern day. this isn't scholarly or well justified in any way - we aren't trying to prove anything but it's fun to see what aspects of their personalities we pull out. how hilarious is it to consider a hamilton raging against the financial systems and structures of america while jefferson supports big corporations or whatnot?

#one thing we agreed on would be that if betsey and alexander still had kids she'd probably be a pinterest mom #historical hamilton #well actually not historical. that's the point.#alexander hamilton #thomas jefferson #stuff i do in my spare time #don't attack us pls this is just for fun

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probablyasocialecologist · 2 years ago

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While Marx often shows enthusiasm for the potentiality of enhanced forms of human cooperation enabled by globalizing production, already in the nineteenth century, he observed an antagonistic separation of town and country and suggested that production chains were overstretched and wasting resources. Today, lessening the spatial disjuncture between production and consumption must be an explicit feature and aim of sustainable and just transition and, in this context, calls on the left for partial deglobalization, including the shortening of commodity chains, have merit and are quite consistent with Marx’s analysis. In a process of partial deglobalization, production for local and domestic needs—rather than production for export—would again become the center of gravity of the economy. A move away from the export orientation of domestic corporations and a process of renationalization could also allow enterprises to begin to develop their own strategies, moving away from the whims of the global market and choices taken by corporate controllers. Such transformation could enable spaces for independent development in the Global South. To do so, they could focus on shifting agrarian systems, orienting their production away from agro-export (which is a source of tremendous ecological irrationality and unequal exchange) toward food sovereignty. Such shifts would need to be accompanied by simultaneous, coordinated shifts toward enhanced local and domestic food production in Global North, alongside a move from high-input agriculture to agroecology, and, in settler colonial contexts, enhanced Indigenous sovereignty. Within domestic spaces or regions, efforts must simultaneously be made to mend a rift between the city and the country. For a model of the environmentalist city, one could look to Havana for inspiration. During Cuba’s Special Period in the 1990s, organic, low-input agriculture was developed both in the countryside, as well as in the island’s capital through urban farms. Urban agriculture is here not niche or small-scale—it covers large expanses within and at the outskirts of the city, where rich land is located. In the transition to renewables, energy production should also be localized as much as possible. This is a potentiality inherent in renewable energy “flow,” in contrast to concentrated energy “stock,” or fossil fuels. While lessening the spatial disjuncture between production and consumption is part of developing ecologically rational production, this aim should be recognized to be in some tension with economic planning (at least in the longer term), insofar as expansive planning is potentiated by the socialization of production. Thus, calls for localization of production imply a diminishment in productive association across firms and regions and the potential to plan such interconnections. Practically, it is important to recognize that such a process confronts material interdependencies, as existing productive networks and infrastructural configurations support and sustain huge swaths of human life. Different regions and cities also have different specializations and different ecological capacities. In an existing world of evolved economic interdependencies, the reproductive needs of various communities require continued global resource flows. Climate change also creates severe survival and livelihood challenges on a highly uneven basis, and global trade and divisions of labor can act as safeguards against issues such as pandemics related to water-supply failures and reduced agricultural yields. More broadly, we should carefully consider Marx’s suggestion that well-organized territorial divisions of labor are collective powers and can be a part of collaboration in human affairs. This extends to territorial specialization, which, consciously organized, could involve a collaborative partitioning of resources and capacities.

#ecosocialism #planning #globalisation #degrowth

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dailyanarchistposts · 11 months ago

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F.6.2 What are the social consequences of such a system?

The “anarcho” capitalist imagines that there will be police agencies, “defence associations,” courts, and appeals courts all organised on a free-market basis and available for hire. As David Wieck points out, however, the major problem with such a system would not be the corruption of “private” courts and police forces (although, as suggested above, this could indeed be a problem):

“There is something more serious than the ‘Mafia danger’, and this other problem concerns the role of such ‘defence’ institutions in a given social and economic context. ”[The] context … is one of a free-market economy with no restraints upon accumulation of property. Now, we had an American experience, roughly from the end of the Civil War to the 1930’s, in what were in effect private courts, private police, indeed private governments. We had the experience of the (private) Pinkerton police which, by its spies, by its agents provocateurs, and by methods that included violence and kidnapping, was one of the most powerful tools of large corporations and an instrument of oppression of working people. We had the experience as well of the police forces established to the same end, within corporations, by numerous companies … (The automobile companies drew upon additional covert instruments of a private nature, usually termed vigilante, such as the Black Legion). These were, in effect, private armies, and were sometimes described as such. The territories owned by coal companies, which frequently included entire towns and their environs, the stores the miners were obliged by economic coercion to patronise, the houses they lived in, were commonly policed by the private police of the United States Steel Corporation or whatever company owned the properties. The chief practical function of these police was, of course, to prevent labour organisation and preserve a certain balance of ‘bargaining.’ … These complexes were a law unto themselves, powerful enough to ignore, when they did not purchase, the governments of various jurisdictions of the American federal system. This industrial system was, at the time, often characterised as feudalism.” [Anarchist Justice, pp. 223–224]

For a description of the weaponry and activities of these private armies, the Marxist economic historian Maurice Dobb presents an excellent summary in Studies in Capitalist Development. [pp. 353–357] According to a report on “Private Police Systems” quoted by Dobb, in a town dominated by Republican Steel the “civil liberties and the rights of labour were suppressed by company police. Union organisers were driven out of town.” Company towns had their own (company-run) money, stores, houses and jails and many corporations had machine-guns and tear-gas along with the usual shot-guns, rifles and revolvers. The “usurpation of police powers by privately paid ‘guards and ‘deputies’, often hired from detective agencies, many with criminal records” was “a general practice in many parts of the country.”

The local (state-run) law enforcement agencies turned a blind-eye to what was going on (after all, the workers had broken their contracts and so were “criminal aggressors” against the companies) even when union members and strikers were beaten and killed. The workers own defence organisations (unions) were the only ones willing to help them, and if the workers seemed to be winning then troops were called in to “restore the peace” (as happened in the Ludlow strike, when strikers originally cheered the troops as they thought they would defend them; needless to say, they were wrong).

Here we have a society which is claimed by many “anarcho”-capitalists as one of the closest examples to their “ideal,” with limited state intervention, free reign for property owners, etc. What happened? The rich reduced the working class to a serf-like existence, capitalist production undermined independent producers (much to the annoyance of individualist anarchists at the time), and the result was the emergence of the corporate America that “anarcho”-capitalists (sometimes) say they oppose.

Are we to expect that “anarcho”-capitalism will be different? That, unlike before, “defence” firms will intervene on behalf of strikers? Given that the “general libertarian law code” will be enforcing capitalist property rights, workers will be in exactly the same situation as they were then. Support of strikers violating property rights would be a violation of the law and be costly for profit making firms to do (if not dangerous as they could be “outlawed” by the rest). This suggests that “anarcho”-capitalism will extend extensive rights and powers to bosses, but few if any rights to rebellious workers. And this difference in power is enshrined within the fundamental institutions of the system. This can easily be seen from Rothbard’s numerous anti-union tirades and his obvious hatred of them, strikes and pickets (which he habitually labelled as violent). As such it is not surprising to discover that Rothbard complained in the 1960s that, because of the Wagner Act, the American police “commonly remain ‘neutral’ when strike-breakers are molested or else blame the strike-breakers for ‘provoking’ the attacks on them … When unions are permitted to resort to violence, the state or other enforcing agency has implicitly delegated this power to the unions. The unions, then, have become ‘private states.’” [The Logic of Action II, p. 41] The role of the police was to back the property owner against their rebel workers, in other words, and the state was failing to provide the appropriate service (of course, that bosses exercising power over workers provoked the strike is irrelevant, while private police attacking picket lines is purely a form of “defensive” violence and is, likewise, of no concern).

In evaluating “anarcho”-capitalism’s claim to be a form of anarchism, Peter Marshall notes that “private protection agencies would merely serve the interests of their paymasters.” [Demanding the Impossible, p. 653] With the increase of private “defence associations” under “really existing capitalism” today (associations that many “anarcho”-capitalists point to as examples of their ideas), we see a vindication of Marshall’s claim. There have been many documented experiences of protesters being badly beaten by private security guards. As far as market theory goes, the companies are only supplying what the buyer is demanding. The rights of others are not a factor (yet more “externalities,” obviously). Even if the victims successfully sue the company, the message is clear — social activism can seriously damage your health. With a reversion to “a general libertarian law code” enforced by private companies, this form of “defence” of “absolute” property rights can only increase, perhaps to the levels previously attained in the heyday of US capitalism, as described above by Wieck.

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poshpriya · 6 months ago

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