#OUR PRETEND MONEY IS WORTH LESS THAN WE PRETENDED

[ivan-fyodorovich-k]

I think a recession is just what we call the phenomenon when too many people realize the economy is fake too quickly

[jonasgoonface]

Happy anniversary of Willem Van Spronsen's attack on the Tacoma ICE detention center. Here's a thing I drew a while back. Here's a manifesto that he wrote, it's v good. ------

What follows is the written manifesto of Willem Van Spronsen:

there's wrong and there's right. it's time to take action against the forces of evil. evil says one life is worth less than another. evil says the flow of commerce is our purpose here. evil says concentration camps for folks deemed lesser are necessary. the handmaid of evil says the concentration camps should be more humane. beware the centrist.

i have a father's broken heart i have a broken down body and i have an unshakable abhorrence of injustice. that is what brings me here. this is my clear opportunity to try to make a difference, i'd be an ingrate to be waiting for a more obvious invitation.

i follow three teachers: don pritts, my spiritual guide, "love without action is just a word." john brown, my moral guide, "what is needed is action!" emma goldman, my political guide, "if i can't dance, i don't want to be in your revolution."

i'm a head in the clouds dreamer, i believe in love and redemption. i believe we're going to win i'm joyfully revolutionary. (we all should have been reading emma goldman in school instead of the jingo drivel we were fed. but i digress.) (we should all be looking at the photos of the YJP heroes should we falter and think our dreams are impossible, but i double digress. fight me.)

in these days of fascist hooligans preying on vulnerable people on our streets, in the name of the state or supported and defended by the state,

in these days of highly profitable detention/concentration camps and a battle over the semantics, in these days of hopelessness, empty pursuit and endless yearning,

we are living in visible fascism ascendant. (i say visible, because those paying attention watched it survive and thrive under the protection of the state for decades [see howard zinn, "a people's history of the united states.") now it unabashedly follows its agenda with open and full cooperation from the government. from governments around the world.

fascism serves the needs of the state serves the needs of business and at your expense. who benefits? jeff bezos, warren buffet, elon musk, tim cook, bill gates, betsy de vos, george soros, and need i go on? let me say it again: rich guys, (who think you're not really all that good,) really dig government, (every government everywhere, including "communist" governments,) because they make rules that make rich guys richer.

simple. don't overthink it.

(are you patriots in the back paying attention?)

when i was a boy, in post war holland, later france, my head was filled with stories of the rise of fascism in the 30's. i promised myself that i would not be one of those who stands by as neighbors are torn from their homes and imprisoned for somehow being perceived as lesser. you don't have to burn the motherfucker down, but are you just going to stand by?

this is the test of our fundamental belief in real freedom and our responsibility to each other. this is a call to patriots, too, to stand against this travesty against everything that you hold sacred. i know you. i know that in your hearts, you see the dishonor in these camps. it's time for you, too, to stand up to the money pulling the strings of every goddamn puppet pretending to represent us.

i'm a man who loves you all and this spinning ball so much that i'm going to fulfill my childhood promise to myself to be noble.

here it is, in these corporate for profit concentration camps. here it is, in brown and non conforming folks afraid to show their faces for fear of the police/migra/proud boys/the boss/beckies... here it is, a planet almost used up by the market's greed.

i'm a black and white thinker. detention camps are an abomination. i'm not standing by. i really shouldn't have to say any more than this.

i set aside my broken heart and i heal the only way i know how- by being useful. i efficiently compartmentalize my pain... and i joyfully go about this work. (to those burdened with the wreckage from my actions, i hope that you will make the best use of that burden.)

to my comrades:

i regret that i will miss the rest of the revolution. thank you for the honor of having me in your midst.

giving me space to be useful, to feel that i was fulfilling my ideals, has been the spiritual pinnacle of my life.

doing what i can to help defend my precious and wondrous people is an experience too rich to describe.

my trans comrades have transformed me, solidifying my conviction that we will be guided to a dreamed of future by those most marginalized among us today. i have dreamed it so clearly that i have no regret for not seeing how it turns out. thank you for bringing me so far along.

i am antifa, i stand with comrades around the world who act from the love of life in every permutation. comrades who understand that freedom means real freedom for all and a life worth living.

keep the faith! all power to the people! bella ciao

don't let your silly government agencies spend money "investigating" this one. i was radicalized in civics class at 13 when we were taught about the electoral college. it was at that point that i decided that the status quo might be a house of cards. further reading confirmed in the positive. i highly recommend reading! i am not affiliated with any organization, i have disaffiliated from any organizations who disagree with my choice of tactics. the semi automatic weapon i used was a cheap, home built unregistered "ghost" ar15, had six magazines. i strongly encourage comrades and incoming comrades to arm themselves. we are now responsible for defending people from the predatory state. ignore the laws of arming yourself if you have the luxury, i did.

[living400lbs]

"Congressional salaries are $174,000. That pay has not increased since 2009; in real dollars, salaries are the lowest they’ve been since 1955. Our health insurance is purchased on the Affordable Care Act exchange. We pay 30% of the premium; the House of Representatives pays 70%, similar to most workplace insurance plans. ... Mandatory pensions take up 4.4% of the salary.... two residences are required; votes keep House members in Washington, D.C., about a hundred days each year. No housing allowance or per diem is paid, and no tax deduction for business housing is permitted. ...

Juxtapose these facts against the misconception that people become rich by serving in Congress. ... Congress is full of multimillionaires for the same reason that the NBA is full of tall people. It’s easier to get recruited and win with such advantages. Serving in Congress does not pad your bank account any more than playing basketball adds inches to your height. While we might accept physical attributes in athletes as natural or desirable, wealth does not give a better perspective for politics. It undercuts the purpose of representative democracy.

Americans rightfully fume that congressmembers trade stocks, convinced that insider information is misused, but we refuse to squarely address the harm that comes from representatives having such wealth in the first place. From 2019 to 2022, over 130 members of the House of Representatives each traded over $100,000 of stock. To trade that dollar volume in a year, these folks are either addicted day traders who cannot manage their money (much less our economy), or—and this is the reality—they own stocks worth many multiples of what they traded.

Representatives who are my peers in age and years of political service—like Cindy Axne, Mike Garcia, Ashley Hinson, Ro Khanna, Tom Malinowski, Blake Moore, Kim Schrier, and Mikie Sherrill—have each traded over $1 million while in office. In my life before Congress, I knew that people with net worths in the tens of millions were not my peers. Pretending they are in Congress is an indignity."

From I Swear: Politics Is Messier Than My Minivan by US Rep Katie Porter

[huriya]

We Need Revolution in You and Me

We are watching a country die.

All the while, we know why.

All the while, I see kids like me scream and cry while missiles demolish their homes.

And I sit here in my middle class house with my family and friends,

And I avoid the subject of war because not even my father knows who he’d fight for,

He only knows he would fight with hate disguised as love because that’s what he is told.

Those of you who claim you are prevented from protest by society are lying to yourselves,

You are restrained by society’s individual,

You think you are unable to do anything but watch this genocide,

Watch this genocide on your screen made from the labor of child slaves,

Your screen that is now necessary for modern life,

Your modern life is a life where corporations have told you slavery is necessary,

Where you know every piece in your wardrobe is the fruit of unpaid labor,

The clothes that cover your skin fail to cover up their origin, their sin:

Those countries we know we infiltrated as a false agent of "freedom",

Those countries we accept as sacrifices for our daily lives,

Those countries being burned by the flames of climate change,

But we’ll continue to consume oil and gas because you say it's "too hard to change",

With that sort of thinking we may as well go back to African slaves,

In our justification of the evils of life we become the evil ourselves,

When we ignore the consequences of our luxury and do nothing we are complicit,

Complicit in the generational control of those people we perceive as less than,

Those people who live to die for us without a choice,

Raised by survivors of cultural rape in a cycle of trauma,

Trauma inflicted by that same system we claim is "too hard to change",

For the system sustains our lives by taking others,

And if we want our lives to stay we must turn a blind eye,

A blind eye to hatred and love and thought,

And if we must know of the less-than-human people who die,

We can claim we couldn’t try,

Because their suffering can only be ended when we face the end of our privilege,

And we claim our privilege protects us from what we call the true struggle,

The true struggle we lay upon others while we lavish in our capitalistic society,

Where the number of zeros in your bank account determines your worth,

And the billionaires lay the blame on your neighbors to redirect it from themselves,

While they watch us pick each other apart in a battle where both sides lose,

Where every side loses except the side comparable to God,

God’s grace comes with a cost for the sake of adding to the ever-growing banks of heaven,

Those banks filled with the flow of money once meant to trickle down,

Barricaded by pearly gates to prevent the “lazy” man’s hydration,

And when we have been sucked dry we may finally look up in the sky,

And realize why no one won the wars we all believed were worth fighting for,

Because all we were was entertainment for the more-than humans,

The ones who trampled our children to get ahead,

And jailed our brothers to steal their rights with fear,

And now we fear our brothers and hate our mothers and never know our fathers,

And we don’t give a damn for the rest of them,

Because we’re too busy playing the blame game to have any real goal to attain,

And if we can’t work together we can’t hope to end the cycle of pain,

And so we’ll continue to buzz around our lives like flies coveting trash,

Because we allow ourselves to be too afraid to make real change,

And we pretend we can be truly happy in a world where our children’s time is monopolized by our own government to train good little workers who won’t question money’s authority.

-Huriya, 4/2/2024

[inherstars]

Prospect | Unbecoming (1 of 3)

I like things that are in threes. This will be the third part of the series that started with Ten Questions (More or Less) and then Learning Curve.

It was a rough few weeks, as Ezra knew it would be, though all the better for the company.  Some growing pains were worth suffering.  He hoped sincerely that Cee felt the same.

Once he was recovered enough to concentrate on star maps, and the prospector version of classified ads,  he set his sights on finding them somewhere to go and something to do.  He didn’t fancy mining for aurelac anymore, the competition having become too stiff and too bloodthirsty, but his skills didn’t parlay easily into other undertakings.  Not to mention Cee’s.

As he sat in their berth, poring over a handheld tablet and scouring the shipwide bulletin board for jobs, he asked, “I don’t suppose you have any hidden talents I should be aware of?  Something that might aid us in our approaching plight?”

Cee didn’t like the way he’d been referring to the future with more and more fraught nouns, and  fraught adjectives, and fraught nouns preceded by excessively fraught adjectives, but also understood the position they were in.  It wouldn’t be easy.  They were nomads now, rootless and -- at least in Ezra’s case -- operating within a very narrow margin of technical legality.  In order to board with her he’d had to pretend he was Damon, spitballing when he could and relying on Cee’s detailed notes about her father’s identity all the rest of the time.

But that wouldn’t work forever.  Sooner or later someone would cross-reference the two men -- their faces, their biometric scans -- and the jig would be up.  He could not fast-talk himself into another man’s skin.

“I don’t know about talents,” Cee said, glancing up briefly from her book.  “But I might have something that could help us buy some time.”

He peered at her over the top of the tablet, fetched.

“Oh?”

She’d been dreading this conversation.  She didn’t even know why, just that working up to it required far more mental and emotional effort than she assumed it would.

“My Dad had some money,” she said, closing the book.  She tucked it under her pillow, inching to the edge of her cot and hanging her legs over.  Ezra was very still, very watchful, very thoughtful.  He lowered the tablet.  This was a topic of some interest to him.

“How much money?”

“I don’t know.”  Her head shook.  “He never told me.  But he said we still owed around eight thousand, and that the piece of aurelac you stole from us could have netted all that, plus some.  But… that it wouldn’t have been enough.  He said it would just put us right back where we started.”  She shrugged, already uncomfortable with the conversation.  “So.  Somewhere between zero and eight thousand.”

“Probably not a great fortune,” he agreed, looking away. “But… even a small amount will give us breathing room.  I’m running low on my own personal funds, at least until such time as I can access the main Network, and anything extra will be invaluable to grease the palms and bureaucratic wheels necessary to digitally amalgamate your father and I into one passable and less suspicious person.”

She angled him a slightly sideways look.

“How are you going to do that?”

He shrugged, the corners of his mouth pinching downward in a dismissive frown.

“A simple enough matter of paying someone to overwrite Damon’s details and biometrics with my own.  Updating his Network ID with a picture doctored to conceivably be either one of us, to a discerning eye.  We are reasonably similar in enough respects that it shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg…” He looked ruefully to his right shoulder. “Which is fortunate.  But it will cost.  As it’s likely to cost everything I have available, if I am able to dip into your father’s funds, as well, this will be much easier.”

  Cee wasn’t sure how comfortable she was with Ezra becoming her father on paper, but also couldn’t argue against the logic of it.  He’d been nothing but decent to her, at least after their initial, unfortunate introductory period.  Hell, since then he’d arguably surpassed Damon himself.  Perhaps the word -- father -- was tainted in its association.  It required correction, not unlike his identity.

Ezra stared at her, the kind of look that meant he was deep in the secret study of his brain, locked away, plotting.

She asked, “You’re sure that will work?” 

“Oh, there is very little in this universe that a sufficient exchange of either currency, sexual favors, or some combination of the two cannot accomplish.”

Cee let out a very small breath through her nose.  He went ashen.

“Shit.”

“You forgot who you were talking to again,” she said.

“Yes I did.”

Cee inched back on her cot, stretching to retrieve her book.  “Put it in the jar.” 

With palpable frustration he stood, crossing to the room’s small sink, where sat two glass pickle jars and a plastic bowl filled to the brim with metal washers.  He took one of the washers, pinging it with annoyance into the jar marked “EZRA DID SOMETHING REGRETTABLE” in masking tape and black sharpie.  It clinked off the small pile of tokens already in the bottom.

He gave a silent but venomous eye to the other jar, similarly marked with her name, and still containing only one single washer.

Cee watched calmly from behind the shield of her book, as if making certain he didn’t cheat.

"Told you yours would fill up first."

Ezra relaxed back to his cot with a universal tired-old-man sigh.

"Remind me why I acceded to this?"

"Because after I left that red shirt in the laundry and got everything pink, you were convinced you'd win, and I'd have to buy you a milkshake."

"You're sixteen,” he argued, but seemingly to himself.  “Probability alone should be on my side."

She lowered the book by a degree, holding back a suspicious smile. “What were YOU doing when you were sixteen."

Nope. Wrong question. He should have never brought it up.

"We are not going to discuss that."

That was two weeks ago.

Ezra insisted that, once he had access to Damon’s funds, it would be a small matter to get everything else sorted.  An after-curfew visit to his contact aboard the ship, a few days for the information to be populated throughout the Network, another day at most to receive tangible proof of his new identity.  Even that was purely a formality, as largely everyone and everything defaulted to digital identifiers.

So a week.  At most.

After a week and two days, Cee pressed him for details.  Had something gone wrong?  Could his contact be trusted?

“Fret not, little bird,” he reassured her, though he had trouble meeting her eyes.  “Everything is as it should be.  The money is there, and being employed as we discussed.  Trust that I will not lead you astray.”

A week and three days.  Four.  Still nothing.  They were getting closer and closer to needing that information to even get off the ship, let alone onto another tramp steamer or a waystation.

She kept asking, but Ezra stopped reassuring her that it would be fine.

“We’ll discuss it when the time comes,” he dismissed, not coldly but with a finality that brooked no further discussion.

But she’d gotten used to discussion: question and answer games, ambling narratives that got muddled in the most florid details, ferreting questions posed to her about things she never thought anyone else would take interest in.  Ezra had thrust open a window to the tiny, private study in her own head, and she’d grown fond of his visits, leaning on the sill, having a companionable look around.  It was strange and unsettling to feel lonely again.

Suddenly, he had nothing to say to her.  His absences from the berth became more protracted, his returns coinciding with the times that she herself would be away, or asleep.

Cee wasn’t sure when she realized he was planning on taking the money and leaving her, but it felt worse than being stranded in The Green.

Continued here.

[3416]

All of your Mitch rants and raves are spot on, and it's very comforting to see another person who is just SO tired of all these narratives. Please indulge my two-cents for a moment:

Mitch has said he wants to stay in Toronto. The deal for him to waive his NMC at this point would have to be like...the best deal in all NHL history. He isn't some single, 19-year-old kid anymore who is just starting out; he's firmly established in his career in Toronto, and has his entire family/wife/friends there.

While I do think his next contract ask will be in the ballpark of what Auston and Willy are making (as it should be, he's worth the same amount, imo), I also don't think Mitch is super unreasonable. If the Leafs came back to him and said "we really want you to stay, but we can only give you $10m, I really feel like Mitch would take it, as long as it's a decent length and all the details are reasonable, etc.

All the discourse about his last contract was very much his father's influence, which he won't be dealing with this time around. He was also dealing with Babcock as a coach, so of course he wanted to get his money's worth!

I don't think he would settle for a super lowball offer if he knew he could make substantially more on another team, but he's also not a diva who won't get out of bed for less than $10000 a day, y'know?

Sorry for ranting in your inbox, lol.

no, i'm happy to have people to talk with about it!! feels like no matter how much i say, i never get tired bc i'm just soooo tired of the fanbase's narratives getting in the way of actual facts and of fans inability to sort through what media personalities are pitching as an OPTION and what's like. actually happening behind the scenes right at this moment. like no legitimate insiders are giving actual information, and if anything, i think this go around might be more tight lipped BECAUSE of what happened last time. auston and willy extensions were kept pretty under wraps tbh, the leafs know discretion.

i mean. i'm gonna be real, but 10 million would be lowballing him and he SHOULD get between willy and auston and that's not even a real problem imo. if 2 million makes or breaks a team with the cap space free from the jt deal, they're being very unserious and brad's bad at his job. they're the ones who set the precedent this time around with willy by giving into everything. it's legit not my job or any of our jobs to cap manage despite how much we all love to pretend we could build a perfect team, but he's probably not going to take a considerable discount and i don't see why people think he should, lol. HE'S had career years too over the course of this last contract, ones that surpassed someone who is now getting paid more than him. i'm obviously not mitch, so idk what he'd do in that scenario, but i can say it's HIGHLY unlikely he's taking any pay cut in his prime (literally no hockey players do). i really don't think he should be expected to despite this insane fanbase's reaction to his salary and i'm sure the leafs aren't going to approach him like that tbh. it'd be weird business. they might try to get him for a willy number which would honestly be a discount for him, so lol. i think it's less to do with being a diva and more knowing how much you're worth and your comparables in the league (and on your team) and the team you're with knowing what's fair. and that's why i think people are wrong about the leafs mindset in general. i don't think they WANT to get rid of him, lol. i think they're going to look at the market (as they do every year and have done every year since the core was assembled bc it's their JOB to do that) and see what's there, but the options are even more limited now with the nmc. i don't see it a given that the team will be like. oop we can't afford you now. i think they'll pay him and he'll get a raise, lol.

my best guess is EITHER mitch signs a longterm deal with full nmc at 12-12.5 OR he takes slightly closer to willy's deal for a shorter term to try to maximize his earnings and match what auston's doing in that way. i don't know his mindset about it all and wanting security in toronto over all or wanting to maximize the money, but we will SEE. i just hope everything is more lowkey this time around for my own sanity 😭😭😭😭 bc it's already out of control WITHOUT the team and mitch even talking yet.

[immoralimmortals]

A Song With Ten Names

Chapter 4: It's Not the End of the World

Chapter 1 ☆ Next chapter

Summary of chapter: A new normal comes into play for the two Akatsuki and their associate, though changes are on the horizon- for better or for worse.

Please regard the notes and warnings of chapter 1 if you have not read it already. The song for this chapter is It's Not the End of the World (Even As We Know It) by Faded Paper Figures as both breaks and in-universe, lyrics not entirely complete or in order.

While I'm not a huge fan of the "only girl in the group" trope, I also have eyes that can see, and Konan in her own is a wonderful character with lots of depth.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Yeah, it's hard but it's not the end of the world

Even as we know it

Yeah, it's so hard but it's not the end of the world

Even as we know it

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

What kind of life is this to lead?

For now, it’s one worth having. The traveler has a roof, job security (?), and a reason to live. She got the gig at the bar, the one in the new village closest to the house she found in the woods, though it’s quite the hike. She resides there now, along with those two guys, sometimes. “As long as our objectives are within range,” the masked one explained to her, “We’ll return.” When inquired about what will happen when it’s not, if she’ll go with them, he shrugged.

“Dunno. We’ll see.”

Hence the more dubious status of her job security.

But! While she has this...it’s going ok. There’s stability in making a routine: The day is her own, which is to say, she quickly had to find out how to not be bored. The fear of losing her livelihood and getting on Kakuzu’s bad side is enough motivation to fill it with practice. Wielding her old musical skills is like sharpening a rusty sword; she’s not sure if it’s actually up to par, but as long as it doesn’t need to go up against a real blade-- an actual performer showing up-- it seems to impress just enough. It was only ever a hobby before, but...she’d be lying if in some way this wasn’t her dreams come true.

Minus the serial killers, or whatever they are. They won’t really tell her. But she can make that work!

Besides practice, there’s the matter of meals. Kakuzu goes against his word (probably figured it’d save him the headache) and gives an allowance. It’s less her choice, though, and more “here is exactly the cost of these things I pre-selected for you at this storefront.” But! She won’t starve again. For that, she’s grateful.

Hidan rolls his eyes sometimes and throws either a bag, container, or the food itself that he probably stole right at her, making sure every single time it is in front of Kakuzu. The traveler doesn’t need much intuition to sense a bit of spite or competition, so she simply thanks Hidan and says little to question how the arrangement should be; let them argue between themselves. She’s not super interested in getting in the middle.

Boy can they argue, though.

That’s the next part of the routine, really, when they arrive-- typically before sunset or just after dusk. They’re as different as different can be. Practical vs spiritual. Pragmatic vs excessive. Money vs prayer. The only thing they can agree on, apparently, is that things are taking way too fucking long and that is the fault of the other. Threats to kill and end it all happen often- especially on Kakuzu’s end, which surprises her based on how Hidan’s religion is literally, explicitly about killing, and she learns to be wary of the silence just as much-- the pressure building before someone throws a punch. She learns to either shut her ears and pretend to be busy or simply arrange that she’ll be in her “room” when they walk through the door. Maybe she’s over thinking it, though; if they’ve hit each other, it’s not been in front of her.

The sight of conflict bothers her more than the violence itself, to be honest.

Even in the world the traveler had before, the name of the game was to make herself as little of a nuisance as possible. This new unfamiliarity and constant impending doom? It’s compounding that aspect of her like a voice in a megaphone. And here she thought she had made progress! The fact that Kakuzu stated the house was perfect because “it’s free, private, and easy to surveillance” puts a weight on her shoulders whenever she leaves on her own for meals. She nearly gave herself a heart attack making eye contact with someone watering her flowers. She swallowed, pretended she is simply going about her day, and as soon as they looked away, she circled back and left. Her caretakers are bounty hunters, at minimum; what happens to her if some asshole is pissed at THEM and sees HER in association? But she knows the answer to her situation already. If you don’t like it, just leave.

But she prefers a devil she knows.

There’s another good side, though-- Hidan is never short of conversation. She isn’t entirely sure his expectations of her and what he’s going to get out of it, but clearly he aches for a listening ear, talking on and on as any seasoned scholar could (with the mouth of a sailor drunk in a ditch). The corner of his lips even seems to twitch up, on occasion, as his follower engages the scripture. He’s disciplined only in his religion, yes, but he’s not half-assing that, praying most any time he’s not speaking with the pendant to his face. What an enigma Hidan is to her, multitudes of thoughts and attitudes and ideals somehow making one man so sure about the universe. It tampers down the fact he prods her about when she wants to “go out for some heathen slaughter again.”

Does she know he’ll defend that attentiveness to bloodshed? Not yet.

When night falls is when she earns her keep, slinging a guitar over her back and being escorted by the two Akatsuki in a beeline to her corner of the low-lit business. It’s as chill as a performance job can be, and she’s content whether or not she’s acknowledged. Once or twice a night, someone will approach her. If it’s just talk, she’ll light up like the sun. If it’s more, she’s experienced that if she can get them to accept a polite denial, that’s better than her bouncers getting to them. It doesn’t help that Hidan is always RIGHT there, same spot every time, just as the first. Sometimes he’ll watch at her, but most of the time he looks bored, dangling his glass from his fingertips, either closing his eyes or looking angry he can’t fall asleep. But it’s a sin to mistake his disinterest for laziness, that tongue of his a dagger if someone bothers her just a little too long or gets a little too close. Kakuzu, however, always stays distant, perhaps judging how well this is working out, if she warrants this much of his time for a couple of bills. Neither belong with this scene, so they typically don’t engage anyone on their own volition. She begins to thank them for their time, but neither like being accused of kindness, so it’s a habit not kept.

At the end of each shift as it’s time to close the bar, the performer always wave politely to the staff and tells them to be safe heading home. They say “you too”, eventually. Her management is more dangerous than any bump in the night, boogeyman in the shadows. Is she safe when she gets home? There’s always a bit too much hesitance before she assures yes.

Some of the weight their red clouds carry starts to stick in her brain, after a couple of worried murmurs and frantic shouts about them. Kind of dampers the gig that someone more or less walked in, demanded a job for her, and she got it based on their own merit. But no one has made a big deal of it yet, the Akatsuki themselves even brushing it off somehow. The locals start to have more ease, but she’ll never be rid of the visitors passing through that try to pull the metaphorical fire alarm.

Ah well. The motto the traveler abides by, even long before this, was that to be embarrassed is to be known. To be known is to be embarrassed. If she’s anxious all the time, regardless of what she does, might as well try to be authentic.

There she finds relief in her “gimmick”-- the traveler from a strange, distant land. No, not even just from Hoshigakure-- that’s her actual cover story if it’s time to get serious-- but being exactly from where she really is from with enough vague words to escape being too specific. When she puts on her little show, she’s not just an out-of-place weirdo anymore. In the moment, she’s THE weirdo and she’s THRIVING for it, just as she always wanted and never thought possible. This “cover” is kept up eagerly, innocently, performative, in such a way that everyone really eats it up, finds it endearing-- adorable even. The woman sings of fairy tales and regrets with a smile on her face. Who would ever accuse her of telling the truth?

That’s why she dares to keep her few original affects, no matter how overly colorful. At first Kakuzu questioned them but depriving the performer of them left her so goddamn self-conscious to have it pointed out that he begrudgingly allowed it. When it rains and the two Akatsuki wear their hats, she brings out her own from her messenger bag, to match. It’s a light straw with pink ribbon tied in a bow with long tails. Her bag is even in theme, too, shaped like a folded love letter with a heart seal on the back. There’s no doubt that, sincerely, the two men are the only way no one messes with her since she is so purposefully demure and strange, unless of course the mistake is made of not recognizing their cloaks. It’s rare to see them, but there’s even a pair of literal rose tinted glasses in that strapped envelope. Is she a mockery of something? If so...what? While both men wonder, neither care to ask.

Indeed, whimsy is down to her bones, floating in curled strands of hair and in the way she sticks her boots far out to emphasize each step. Each individual leaf is capable of captivating her, every silky thread of the spider and every flower that can hug its petals around her nose. Her eyes glitter with wonder until the second you remind her she exists in front of other people.

Indeed, over time, life somehow becomes good. It takes a while, but eventually she accidentally bargains up on those trips for lunch. “Sure, you’re a regular patron now! How about some bread to go with your soup?”

The woman with the garden will tell her hello now and she’ll say it back. She can even take a smile on the street, faces becoming recognizable in the transition of vulnerable nights to guarded days. Her stomach is fuller and so are hopes. After all, she always wanted to be a storyteller. Always tried to convey to people in her life what certain words other wrote really can mean. No writer, teller. That’s all she’s doing, trying to pass feelings along in the music that’s kept her alive. Emotion is what she has, not elegance. This is the one strength she will admit to.

In turn, the “weirder” music must be kept under wraps, no matter the pang of their memory, only picking songs she finds either innocuous or passable enough to what she perceives these people to know here. Entirely relatable subjects-- even if one has to stretch-- with the foreign concept here and there explained away as world-building. She saves the fun ones for when she practices, when she thinks herself alone; she’s seen Hidan give her a “what the fuck” face hard enough to shame her into not doing it in front of them again. Of course the shinobi catch it anyways, Kakuzu thinking it’s just more of these odd fantasies while Hidan furrows his brow till it hurts.

“The hell is she singing about?”

“Nonsense. That’s what they all are anyway,” Kakuzu convinces himself. Hidan grunts.

“Jashin make sense of this for me,” he half prays.

So she begins to be a little more bold in her personal life, but not by much. Still a small mouse, at worst a kitten hissing in fear, but getting better. Persona on or off, it’s hard to take her seriously unless you actually LISTEN to her. One side of her is apologetic to even breathe. The other side in rose-tinted glasses is more interested in hearing your interpretation, your expression change, rather than what she may actually be saying for herself.

She loves questions. She loves reactions. Who cares what’s true or not? Who cares if tomorrow isn’t a guarantee? This is what existence is.

That’s been decided by the night a spellbinding set of orange eyes sit across the table.

“Takara...” That’s the name Kakuzu gave her, after the performer waffled to pick her own.

The songbird raises her head, having not introduced herself to this woman yet. Idly, she plays some chords on the piano, filling the silence as she holds back her voice. The stranger doesn’t smile, pulling a strand of periwinkle hair behind her ear.

“I’ve heard of you.”

The piano player gives more time to slide her gaze over and evaluate this person; no, she’s not familiar. “Takara’s” face brightens. “R-really?” She’s never been recognized beyond the usual patrons before. The woman neither nods nor affirms with her voice, just tilts her head forward and to the side with hooded eyes.

“You’re from a place of legends,” the patron recalls, emotionless. “Somewhere with no proof of it besides your songs.”

The performer bobs her head side to side in a bit of a playful confirmation. “Seems to be the case...Haven’t found another person from there,” she adds with an undercurrent of somberness.

“What’s it like there?”

As rehearsed, the player breathes in and out, and she sort of tells the truth. “It’s hard to describe your whole universe. There’s a bit of everything. Of course there is! But...I can say what there’s a bit more or less of, compared to here. There’s more noise. There’s more light-- so much we say it pollutes the night sky.” Though indoors, a wistful gaze becomes fixed upward. Hoshigakure...that’s supposed to be the village hidden in the stars. How can there be more than the ones she already gets to see now?

“We know so much about the heavens, but the layperson hardly gets to see it-- as it really is. A select few are chosen and trained to go beyond the clouds and pollution to see it firsthand. We’ve had a handful of people walk on the moon!”

Semi-consciously, she drifts into playing the Nocturn op.9. No.2 by Chopin. The patron can’t help but find it befitting, sweetness drifting into something in memory, an old mirror foggy with stardust. It’s getting late; the barkeep is cleaning the glasses, trying unsuccessfully to listen to a conversation.

“THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE!?”

Kakuzu eyes glare, glittering like daggers in the moonlit rain as he and a figure stand some meters away towards the outskirts of the forest. This means nothing to Hidan, of course, who folds his arms as he sits on the steps outside the bar. The newcomer smiles with half a face, the other half not moving as the white one’s lips move.

“Simply curious.” White Zetsu’s voice is nearly saccharine; Hidan loathes it. The mouth somehow keeps still while a deeper voice speaks. “This assignment has gone long past the expected perimeters.”

While Hidan is irreverent, Kakuzu is obedient-- but childish he is not and will not take scolding lying down. “Supplementing income,” he returns, not asking for forgiveness.

“I have a hard time believing you,” Black Zetsu retorts. Kakuzu doesn’t flinch.

“The books are there to prove it.”

“...She does sing very nicely…” the softer voice defends, though the other won’t back down. “We must think critically about this,” he instructs. The Akatsuki’s treasurer exhales.

“If the command is to abandon this—”

Before his partner can go batshit over Kakuzu relenting- rolling over so EASILY like a dog- the mouthless voice continues.

“That's not the issue." Then gentler voice returns, tongue slick with mischief. "What if she’s telling the truth?”

A simple question met with baffled reactions, a shocked pause in between.

“...Will you get the hell out of here already?” Hidan’s arm sweeps in front of him in a grand “shoo”ing motion. Silently, Kakuzu can’t help but agree; at this point Zetsu is clearly just fucking around, bouncing childish ideas back at them in jest. But from past experience, just after the punchline is when the plant-man would take his leave. Indeed, it’s even more unnerving that now he doesn’t move an inch.

“I’d like to make a request.”

By this point, the angel has made it to the front row, leg folded over her thigh with full, unflinching attention on the homemade musician. Takara can’t ignore how it makes her heart race, the high of controlling the narrative and of being in the graces of someone so gorgeous. As such, she smiles and nods eagerly to the proposal. The intent of Konan’s statements will become starkly clear later: the precision of it, the delicacy.

“Play for me...a song I will never understand.”

The meaning of this is obvious, in a way; they had spent the last half hour in a hyperbolic game of ping-pong in this conversation, a back and forth about what being foreign really means. The execution, however, is the real problem. Days and weeks of mulling over the appropriateness of lyrics has made it apparent how thin the line is, how gray the concept of being incomprehensible. Everything will have a twinge of relatability. What’s so different between here and there?

Takara bites the inside of her lip. Perhaps she should think of the reasons why she left.

The humming comes first, as she often does, while she spins upon her seat to pick up her second instrument; this one is going to be a bit strange to relay only on the acoustic guitar, as its so percussion-heavy in her memory. She rolls her shoulders a couple of times and then drifts into the inexplicable absurdity of Americana, consumerism, and chaos.

Glass ceilings falling on you

Like the blessings of a choice when it's the only way

Last night I thought I saw you

With a drink, and friends, you said you go there everyday

Then I hear you say

There’s a depth to it, a brevity she didn’t allow before. If it was her watching herself, she’d call it being a theater kid.

Wicked television screen, Rockefeller energy

Politician guarantee, stupid corporate synergy

MSNBC jerks, messing with the young Turks

Yogi hippiography, sell us immortality

Democratic fail safe

Money gets you in the game

Money gets you in the game

Money gets you in the game

It’s a rompous way to end the shift, letting loose and feeling her grief seep out her pores like sweat until her fingertips hurt on the grit of the strings. This nonsense doesn’t exist for her anymore! She’s never been normal, no one WILL ever be normal. She’ll never again need to pretend normal is real while the world burns around her. She finally gets to scream it out.

Yeah, it's so hard but it's not the end of the world

Even as we know it

Unapologetic about the truth, even though no one here will get what it means without living it. It might make up for the social awkwardness of all this jargon, all these buzz words that she doesn’t need to know anymore.

Kiss and tell apocalypse, psycho-pharmacologists

Target demographic lies, revolution improvised

Artificial bleeding heart, superficial work of art

Conjure up the word of God, complicated voter fraud

Buddha-heads will save the day, calculate the DNA

Mindless droning, human rights

Shoppers camping overnight

The world's a business power-play

Money gets you in the game

Money gets you in the game

MONEY GETS YOU IN THE GAME

In a weird way, she got exactly what she wanted when she died, but that part will stay a secret to even herself, let alone anyone in this dreamland. This lady doesn’t need to know; Hidan and Kakuzu don’t need to know.

...But it’s getting late, now. Where are those two, anyway? The barkeep points to the exit, and so she goes, politely excusing herself as orange eyes bore into the back of her skull.

The atmosphere is thicker than fog. Teeth clench in Hidan’s jaw, and Kakuzu’s glance no longer goes through her but stops right where she stands. An amalgamation of two men and a venus flytrap envelopes her attention; she could swear he barely licked his lips as she walked in.

“There you are,” a dreadful voice speaks seemingly from thin air. A shadow falls on Takara’s shoulder as the patron walks by wordlessly to the creature.

“Wait, Konan, how did we not see you-?!” Hidan sputters. Takara blinks.

“...Hold on. You guys know each other?”

Kakuzu won’t even indulge the question, so the blue-haired lady answers herself, approaching Zetsu and retrieving her cloak from his hands, a matching set of black and red clouds just as he drapes around himself.

Oh.

...Shit.

Her eyes can’t keep off of the one as black and white as the piano, but no one explains anything about him. He’s just a fact of reality, an everyday occurrence for these people. He is as pleasant-- and normal-- as any other gentleman. As Konan mutely joins the stance of four Akatsuki looking down one girl, Zetsu greets her with a smile that looks like fangs sanded back down.

“Our leader wishes to speak with you.”

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Good gods abandoning you

Like a pain that fades when it's no longer in your way

No collective dreams to guide you

Have another drink, I think you'll be here everyday

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

One can only wonder how long a watchful eye had followed along if it lives in the trees. The plant-man sinks in and out of bark like a bend in reality itself, reappearing only after the long, pained walk where Konan guided their path. There’s no more joy in the performer anymore. She wants to hold someone’s hand, but she’s left alone, folding and unfolding her own in anxiety until she’s worried they might rub raw. An illusion breaks as Konan approaches an over-sized oak and apparates an arch of pure darkness, causing Takara to fall backwards and shriek. Hidan ends up catching her. While a chiding is expected, she instead receives a whisper.

“Listen," he murmurs into her ear, "Fuckers are all talk. Don’t let ‘em get to ya, okay?”

How serious he’s being scares her more than anything else.

She’s helpless but to look over her shoulder as Konan escorts her inside the black hole. Hidan is helpless but to look on as he’s dictated by Zetsu to stay and Kakuzu to obey. The Jashinist frowns at the empty space where she was.

Why is he upset? That’s what Kakuzu asks. If anything, it’s him that should be, the fate of her income uncertain. Hidan doesn’t know the answer to that, so he spits in the opposite direction and tells him to shut up.

Inside this tree, there he sits, the king with a wood knot for a throne. Though his hair is the color of fire, it’s the eyes that rule her attention, circles upon a purple like the depths of space. He too wears the cloak. Her blood turns to ice and she freezes in place, but there’s little to fear-- at least right now. No, the leader has planned this out. Honey will suit this one better than water. It isn’t a matter of breaking this one open; there’s a precision, a delicacy that’s necessary. She’s more like...a puzzle that needs to be coaxed into revealing all its pieces. The possibilities- or even more so, the unimaginable- leave too much at stake.

“We are the Akatsuki.” The man’s voice is as regal as his presence. He sits above her, distantly...but not necessarily unkindly. “Under my command are the most elite of shinobi, those who have defected their station in light of the truth. The truth…” he repeats, spirals narrowing. “We’ve observed the truth about you.”

“But...that’s just—”

Konan watches silently in the corner of her eye as the man moves an index over his lips, urging Takara hush. The performer knows now that her patron was evaluating just how convincing her outlandishness was.

“You’ve hid in plain sight,” the leader continues. “Made due with what you had. All I ask now is…”

Her breath hitches, and abruptly she’s convinced this is somehow the end. But as her eyes squeeze shut, a death-cold hand holds her cheek, and they open just as soon. The man with many piercings seems to look upon her as one does an injured animal.

“...Share your suffering with us. Among comrades who don’t belong.”

His ring-wearing hand retracts, leaving her speechless. Pain allows the air to stagnate with her confusion before he elaborates, now on her level.

“We misfits who will bring the world to peace. Shinobi or otherwise, a power beyond infinite knowledge sent you here. I want to help you. I want your help.”

“I’m beseeching you: explain how you got here.”

She remembers the sound of the ocean and the sand under her palms. The man’s confidant sends a silent warning with her expression as she sees the girl begin to slip to the edge of composure, tears threatening to fall. The leader exhales softly.

“I’m expanding the tasks that my members took liberty upon. You will remain with us. Vulnerability should be no sin.”

The two Akatsuki wait in patience, their offer like God reaching down from heaven. But she doesn’t believe in God anymore. This benevolence surrounds an exchange, and the traveler is too afraid to ask what she must give. Briefly, she imagines continuing this life as she has, just without the two bounty hunters. She tries to focus on how fun and kind and fulfilling it can be, but those target eyes pin her in place as she imagines familiar faces twisting into sneers, jeers, and nightmares as soon as she has to stand on her own two feet. Then she feels hunger. Cold. And being alone again.

The answer to the proposal can only be a yes. Her head dips in submission, and she shouldn’t be surprised when he raises it again. His fingers are like ice. “Everything will be as it should.”

A threat and a promise.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Unfortunately, life goes on

However bent and badly drawn

Unfortunately, life goes on

However bent and badly

Bent and badly

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

[departmentq]

From David Gerrold's Facebook

Text, yeah, it's tl;dr but it's worth reading:

This morning's HuffPost reports that Kamala Harris has a lead in the national polls, and even a couple of states that were considered safely red may soon be in play.

Elsewhere, I expect to hear that Mar-A-Lago's chef has had to order more ketchup, and the cleaning crew has had to order more bleach. And probably more diapers too.

He is visibly tired and has cut his campaign appearances way back. The public appearances he has been making are disjointed and dysfunctional. He doesn't listen to his "handlers" and is focused more on personal issues than political ones.

Harris has promised that in her first hundred days, she is going to take action against corporate price-gouging on food. Bringing down the grocery bill hits home for anyone who has to balance a weekly budget.

Sean and I were remembering that thirty years ago, when he moved in with me, we could go to the store and spend less than $50 on a week's worth of food. Quality food. One Christmas, we saw an old man with a dog sitting outside the store. We bought him a bag of groceries and gave him a $20 bill. I didn't even think twice about the cost. Food was a small part of the budget.

Today, the mortgage payment is the only item in the budget that is larger than our monthly food bill. Okay, we're feeding five people now. But even so, the cost of food is easily five times what it used to be only a few years ago. (Maybe closer to ten. I'd have to look it up to be sure.)

Yeah, if I'd conserved my early profits better instead of spending on life, I wouldn't be so concerned about money today. Stupid me. But we're not missing any meals and all of the monthly bills are paid and I'm out there selling books and working on ending the last few debts as well — so you might say I'm speaking from a position of privilege. I won't argue — but if I'm worried about it then I have to realize how many other people are struggling with daily despair as prices climb but income doesn't.

Back in the last century, an asshole named Milton Friedman, pretending to be an economist, said that the purpose of a corporation was to generate profits for the shareholders. That man deserves a tenth circle of hell for the damage he has done to the global economy. He created a phony justification for greed.

Milton Friedman was a corporate shill, a tool of the oligarchs who have stolen trillions from the global economy and intend to steal trillions more.

The purpose of a business is service. SERVICE.

The purpose of a gas station is to provide fuel for transportation. The purpose of a supermarket is to provide convenient access to healthy food. The purpose of a school or university is to provide education. The purpose of a trash collection company is to keep a community clean and livable. The purpose of a book's author is to provide information or entertainment. The purpose of a news agency is to provide ACCURATE information about the larger community. And so on.

I defy anyone to state an example of a legitimate business that is not designed to provide a service.

But where corporations have put their attention on monetization instead of service, you get planes falling out of the sky. You get dogs being poisoned by dangerous ingredients in the food. You get people getting sick from producers' dependence on corn syrup, a generally unhealthy ingredient. You get shrinkage, where boxes contain less product and prices go up. You get the opposite of service. You get theft.

The urge to monetize is why you can't watch a YouTube video without it being interrupted by an ad, why you can't click on a link without half a dozen popover advertisements, why so much of the internet is click-bait and scams, why our cities have become towering mazes of giant flashing screens. It's why we as a species are becoming more and more separated from the ecology we are a dangerous part of.

It's because corporations have succumbed to the addiction of greed instead of remembering service.

Let me tell you about service. I had a veterinarian who took care of all my animals and never billed me. Whenever a large check came in, I paid him in full. The local diner knew Sean and I so well that when I was traveling, Sean could run up a tab and I would pay it when I came home. Our mechanic who serviced our cars often found ways to keep his bills low because he regarded us as friends more than customers. And so on. That's what service looks like.

Our bank, here in Vermont — they know who we are. They treat us like friends. That's service.

You know what isn't service? The computer that says, "Declined." And there's no one to talk to. You know what isn't service? The website that doesn't recognize our address and doesn't provide a place to input the correct address. You know what isn't service? The corporate retreat behind phone menus and websites that deny the opportunity to talk to a human being?

And this is why (coming back to the beginning of this rant) Kamala Harris will win the election — she's talking about putting the government back in service to the people.

The founding fathers understood that government had to function as a tool to provide services to the people that they couldn't achieve as individuals. That our government has repeatedly been manipulated by business institutions is not service. It's greed.

There's an old saying, "Power to the people." That's what democracy is all about. The day that Americans recognize that is the day that we redesign government as a public service. I think Kamala Harris understands that. I'm pretty damn sure the other guy doesn't.

(Yes, permission to share.)

David Gerrold is a writer, of both novels and television. He is most known for writing the TOS episode, The Trouble with Tribbles.

[autogeneratedkahootnickname]

Ok long post buckle in.

I have a friend who's super into theme parks. Or rather, the thrill of a theme park. They're a rollercoaster person. And to this end, they asked if I wanted to take a day trip to one of the more intense regional British theme parks, Thorpe Park, just outside London.

I am not a theme park person. I am deathly afraid of heights, high speeds, drops and helplessness. All of which are fairly core elements of a theme park.

However, I love my friend dearly, so I take them up on it. Best way to conquer your fears is to face them etc.

So Thorpe Park has 5, what I will charitably call, 'nightmare coasters' (in my opinion there are a couple others that fit the bill like Rush, Samurai and Detonator, not really 'rollercoasters' but equally horrifying) that are the main attraction of the park:

1. Swarm:

2. Colossus:

3. Nemesis Inferno:

And 4. Saw

(I could only find a picture of the outdoor lifthill, there's a lot happening in the woods and inside the warehouse too. You get the general idea.)

These are the four rides that I agree to push myself to go on and get our money's worth.

But wait, keen-eyed readers may be wondering, I thought you said there were 5 nightmare coasters! What happened to the fifth one?

Well, there was one of the five that I had ruled out under any circumstances:

5. Stealth

Needless to say, fuck that.

However, my friend loves rollercoasters. And one of their favourites there is, of course, Stealth. So after we've ridden Swarm, I decide, while they're waiting for Stealth, that I'll get something else done instead. A smaller thrill before we move on to Colossus. So I head over to the Walking Dead dark ride.

The Walking Dead ride is a heavily story-driven ride about the park being overtaken by Zombies: you make your way though dark corridors to the ride inside, then afterwards you make your way out through a series of passages on the other side, also in near-complete darkness.

I do the ride, and it's fine. Having just done Swarm it was comparably a lot more chill, but it had some cool ambience. I don't, however, do what the people I was riding with did and use the props (ramps, handrails) to do cool parkour sequences: running, jumping, acting like you're really escaping zombies, if only pretending, on the way back out. I mean, they were there for a reason ig, even if I felt a bit self-conscious doing it in an empty room. I'm naturally fairly lawful and it was still early in the day, so I wasn't in a parkoury mood at the time, but I wanted to make the most of the day. So I thought, when I ride this again with my friend later, I'll ask them to do the jumping and running with me and it'll be a blast.

So I head back to Stealth, they've had a wonderful time, and we then spend the next five or so hours exploring the rest of the park: it's a wonderful day, I mostly get over my fear of rollercoasters (to the creators of SAW, FUCK you but you got me good), but we're in the denouement and in the mood for something a little less intense. So I say, hey, did you wanna try the Walking Dead thing?

They said yes, so we headed over. It was way busier than it had been at like 10:30, so they were more focussed on getting people through than doing the whole show thing, but we stumble through the passages at the start and make our way to the ride. It's a blast, have a marvellous time. And then we depart.

And I say 'hey, remember to do the fun parkour stuff on the way out!'

So we head out into the passages.

And as it turns out.

When I had first done the ride, fairly early that morning, the purpose of the bars and handrails had been to pretend like you were fleeing from zombies.

As I discovered during my second ride that afternoon, you weren't meant to fucking pretend.

So you can imagine my reaction when, having departed through a series of empty tunnels that morning, this second run-through, with no advance warning, featured fucking zombie actors. Who fucking chased you. I don't deal well with heights.

So while I had planned to jump and climb and everything, I ended up just holding both hands up and going 'nope, nope, nope, nope' as I weaved my way around the bars.

Thankfully the cast members were super nice and, realising I was not taking this very well, nodded and let me pass (while still not breaking character which was extremely impressive). My friend, not having experienced the previously actor-less departure sequence, was, of course, having a MARVELLOUS time, and was somewhat confused as to why I was dry heaving on the floor on the way out.

To the people of Thorpe Park, 10/10, very cool, I hate all of you.

[anthonybialy]

Trainee Presidents

Learn by the next shift that the pan is hot.  This is a popular time for scorched fingers.  America’s endured first-day idiocy for an entire term from a branch that should’ve had some idea how to run things when they started.  It’s tough for liberals to claim they’re openminded when they make the same mistakes constantly.  If you think smoking’s a tough bad habit to break, you should try no longer thinking executive orders lower prices.

There’s always some catch.  Why can’t money be worth the same no matter how many checks the Treasury sends for idling?  Similarly, Joe Biden fans claiming he’s experienced neglect how all that time has been spend doing nothing.  Someone born when World War II’s result remained in doubt has accumulated as much useful information as a rotten head of lettuce.  It costs 37 dollars.

There’s no practical application even if you risibly make the case that he’s accumulated a great deal of wisdom in what’s a ninth decade.  A clueless head of state has spent his life inflicting his unwillingness to heed useful lessons on everyone else.  Professional airhead Kamala Harris would keep making the same daily mistakes as the confetti-brained geezer, so continuity can be overrated. 

You’d figure mean corporate titans would want potential customers to have all the free funds they’d like.  Giving away money only makes us poorer if drinking martinis makes boozehounds thirsty.  We simply can’t print it fast enough.  Government is incapable of not meeting all our desires, so corporate greed must be to blame for how nobody can afford to drive to spend what used to be a rent payment on paper towels.  Their disdain for value is based in useful people gaining a couple bucks.

You selfishly refuse to have more taken from you.  It’s like you don’t ever want to be rich.  Getting someone else to offer payment sounds like a scam, so stay home and wait for your share.

More debt is always the answer regardless of the question.  Anyone who thinks governmental spending spurs good value can’t be enjoying a term where they’re getting every last thing they want.  At least they know how everyone else feels.  It’s cruel to not seize fortunes to be squandered by doltish vote-buying grifters.  America is on the dole.

Doing anything possible to not punish criminals reflects a steadfast commitment to injustice.  Principles are not automatically laudable.  An ideology committed to ducking personal responsibility naturally embraces felons.  Disappearing wallets can’t really surprise them.

It’s the item’s fault.  Villainizing implements offers a nice break from demonizing success.  Gun control will be effective once they’re able to break enchantment.  Biden White House witches serving as Voldemort’s proxies would ask J.K. Rowling for advice on how to destroy horcruxes, but they despise her guts for noting men cannot change into women with a magic spell.

Legalistic twits know why things are prohibited, namely because they’re written down.  One particular party enjoys pretending they can warp reality to their will by wording foolish bills in just the right way.  Their baffling excursions into control are not just defying the Constitution but more importantly what’s sensible about it.  Pondering just why these rules are in place is incomprehensible for those who think something is right because it’s enacted.

Smirking liberals mock religion to overcompensate for how their faith is never rewarded.  That’s what you get for believing daft dreck.  Federal zealots think a command to grant everyone insurance just took a law.  Nice health is simply a matter of politicians being brave enough to stand up to greed.  The same ones who break every constitutional aspect they can find believe adding restrictions will save us.

Democrats bizarrely want everyone coming to a country they think oppresses indigent minorities.  Come to this country illegally to show contempt for it while contributing less than nothing to respect it.

Math creates endless struggles for a faction that can’t add prices.  Every crime committed by an illegal immigrant as at minimum the second.  It’s apparently difficult to grasp how country crashers aren’t invited in the first place.  There’s deliberate confusion when evaders are classified as undocumented as if there were just some honest paperwork mishap in winning a game of border tag.

The world can only dole out so many examples.  Debt prevents endless entitlements, eventually.  A pending deadbeat meltdown still might not be enough for a president who’s been in politics for longer than most humans have been alive to grasp that mooching doesn’t make most people wealthy even though it worked for him.  Harris’s best case for Biden’s second term is that she’s just as dim.

The fill-in incumbent can’t stop setting bad examples.  Harris is continuing the tradition of spending and entire life in government only to never realize it sucks.  A little time in an industry that doesn’t involve swindling a percentage would’ve exposed Democratic contenders to productivity.  But any marginally cognizant human shouldn’t need outside experience to unearth how everyone else functions.

Harris is trying to catch up, sadly.  Biden lacks in empathy and every other worthwhile sense.  The disturbing lack of humanity began long before the traditional aging slide.  The president’s not allowed on the swings.

Reviewing what the oldest president ever needs to be taught would be insulting to a kindergartener of average intelligence.  There’s no real way to get stuff for free?  Well, that’s sad but good to know before first grade.

A 59-year-old substitute just needs more time.  Harris is continuing the legacy of maintaining ignorance.  Fretting about Biden’s rather high quantity of birthdays as he still wanders around his government-provided housing disregards how he knew precisely nothing half a century ago.  The biggest concern about his advanced age is never learning that his toxic notions poison.  Harris only trails by accident of birth year.  The technical president and the de facto replacement have always been steaming morons who’ve never improved, which is why the country isn’t, either.  

[animentality]

I haven’t read your books yet, you know how it is, money~, but I bet they’re pretty good and I am planning to buy and read them, they’re on The List, and I hold you in high regards as a person I kinda vaguely barely know. I say this first to preface, because, from the kindest most adoring place of my heart okay, this reminded me of you, no offense: https://www.tumblr.com/pjackk/721300009283420160/whats-up-tunblr-basically-i-just-wrote-this-book

Ouch.

Glad you preceded this with a compliment...

But brutal.

For what it's worth, I also hate having to reduce my books to tropes...and I try not to, with any of my promotional posts...

But uh...good to know this is how I come across :S

But in my defense...and in defense of other authors... it's super easy for people to make fun of how we have to promote our books, but in this terrible digital economy...I mean.

It's hard to keep people's attention, and it's hard to sell books.

It's not like selling art, doing commissions, making animations, or well-edited videos. Books are inherently harder to sell and market and build an audience for, because they're an investment of time and focus.

They aren't as easy to dive into and enjoy. A webcomic chapter you could read in twenty minutes. A pretty picture you can reblog, and you can commission the artist if you love the style. A Youtube video can be ten minutes of investment. Maybe an hour, tops.

But a book?

Books will always struggle more than shows or animations, because it takes a certain kind of person to read books, and in this day and age, attention spans are shorter than ever.

You spend fucking years writing your books, and you edit, and you revise, and write some more, and edit some more, and revise some more, and then you have to promote.

All the time, in every way you can imagine. Using whatever tools you have... all the time, every way.

Otherwise, you don't see any sales at all, and then it's like you wasted three years of your life fiddling around, while everyone you know is making bank on crypto or whatever the fuck.

If I was good at fucking BookTok? I wouldn't be fucking here promoting at all.

I could leave my blog as the little meme machine it's always been.

But I'm bad at fucking TikTok.

And I mildly resent being compared to a TikTok author, because if I was any good at that, I WOULD NOT BE HERE promoting my books at all.

Tumblr is the worst place to promote anything, ever.

That's part of why I like it...but at the same time, that's why it's such a torturous practice, trying to promote my novels here.

No one here gives a fuck. And I'm fine with that.

I'm ok with that.

But I can't throw away hard work without at least trying.

I don't really get the criticisms of authors in those comments anyway.

What have those people tried to put out into the world?

You think self published authors are just jokes, or that they aren't marketing themselves well?

Maybe both are true, but someone who makes something, no matter how shit, has still MADE something.

It's easy to tear others down. It's not easy to make something that you care about, and put out into the world for others to see and judge.

And for those people in the comments too, I have to ask.

Is a book only good, if it's published by a company?

Because books that are self published are actually a LOT LESS likely to be made up of tropes and cliches.

People who self publish tend to write weirder and more out of the box things. They RESORT to tropes because they feel you won't pay attention to their books without them.

they feel you won't give their concept a try, unless they dumb it down for everyone.

They pretend the book is something it's not, out of sheer desperation.

I market 7 Deadly Habits like it's a fucking adventure action romance comedy...?

It's actually pretty fucking dark and grim and sad.

the main character is fucked up, and so are all his exes. So is the entire world they live in.

It's really not a funny book. It has dark humor, but it's hinged on an unhinged concept, one that I find darkly interesting.

But I lie and say it's a funny adventurous romp of sex and violence.

Because that's how I have to market it.

I try other things, of course, but I have found most people would rather read a romance than an anti-romance, which is more of what it is.

People don't want to try new things. They want more of the shit they already have.

to make something new, or different, or non-conventional, is to accept that you will have to water it down when you're trying to offer it to people.

So yeah.

I get it. Authors who blaze their book promotions are desperate losers and weirdo freaks with very bizarre interests and isn't it funny, how hard they're trying?

But you know.

What else can we be?

Leigh Bardugo?

Trust me. I wish I was a good writer. I wish I wrote straight YA fantasy books that kids and adults and everyone can enjoy. I wish I had a literary agent and five star publishing houses giving me 20 million dollars for my next book.

I wish I was a multi millionaire white woman, in an industry of rich white women, who write sexy murder mysteries and cozy thrillers and steamy vampire eroticas.

But I am what I am, and that's a queer self published POC author, who has no one in my corner, but me. Whose only means of promotion is my own efforts.

So no, I don't really look at other self published authors with disdain or wry detachment.

I know how they feel.

I know how much it sucks.

[obsidianflow]

Its sad to me, seeing people of my generation argue with people before us saying that We do want to work, that our generation as a collective does want to work. It hasn't ever accounted for people like me, who are disabled at a young age and dont want to work.

I don't want to work, i truly don't. There is nothing appealing about it to me aside from money, and that is not enough reason to do something that I know will exhaust me and make my mental health significantly worse.

But I'm disabled, I don't want to work because it hurts me. I get that excuse, but that doesn't mean that other people who don't get the excuse should be forced to work either. I don't think anyone should be forced to work if they dont want to.

Maybe its because im disabled, maybe its because im young, maybe its because of all these other reasons, but I don't see anything appealing about working and I don't understand how people can live like that. I don't know why people feel the need to work to "give back" to their society that helped them get to that point, when our society gives us nothing.

You work to show your gratitude but what happens when nothing has been done to give you something worth showing gratitude for. You get neglected and thrown in the dirt your entire life and are expected to show these people that you're grateful to them for teaching you that you are worthless to them unless you work.

Working is unappealing and horrifying to me. I do not feel the need to show gratitude to the person who raised me when the least he did was the bare minimum, while throwing sand in my eyes and poisoning my food my entire life. I do not have gratitude for him putting a roof over my head out of "love" and i do not believe that bullshit lie he only tells me to try and make me not seek out better from him.

I do not feel the need to show gratitude to the people who constantly steal from my people and generation and poison our water and food. I do not feel the need to show gratitude to food companies who put addicting chemicals in our food and actively make our bodies deteriorate faster than ever. I do not feel the need to show gratitude to the people who "keep us safe" by killing us daily and causing all of out issues.

I don't think working is humane. I don't think its right I don't think its good. I think its disgusting and I think that America is one of the worst countries I have ever heard of. There is nothing but maggots in our food that the government swears is healthy while putting chemicals they dont even understand in those maggots. They don't care. They never have.

I don't need to show gratitude to them. They don't see me as a person. They see me as a leech. They think I am less than dirt, I can't even be used to grow anything. They think I am ash that seeds death and destruction when they are the ones burning my livelihood to make their pockets heavier.

They have done nothing but prove to me that they are not worthy of gratitude. They are not worth bowing down and pretending that I can work. They are not worth my effort or time.

But unfortunately this sort of view gets me and others killed. We've seen it en masse in the 2020 protests, in our history, we see it daily. We are constantly forcefed that we must conform or die.

So no, I don't want to work. And I shouldn't have to die over that.

[shaanks]

listen, I'm not inherently bothered by the fact that people from other countries don't have a good understanding of our politics or what causes the resulting atrocities they have to see on the news all the time. tbh it makes sense that they don't, bc no matter how much anyone attributes "not having a great grasp of what happens in other places" as a solely American trait, that's actually mostly just how people are.

political systems are complicated. the further away from your language and your country's version a political system is, the less intuitive it becomes to understand, and most people are just trying to survive in this world and don't have time for it. i get that.

what bothers me, really, IS the fact that people pretend this is an inherently American behavior, and that everyone else on the planet tooooooootally gets everyone else's politics at an intuitive level, like. two seconds before spouting the most insanely ignorant, insensitive, nonsensical take physically possible.

so lemme clear some stuff up. not that I'm sure it will matter bc mindlessly dunking on the people that live here for the actions of our genocidal government is what runs the best numbers on tiktok or whatever but like. here we go.

our voting system is complicated, has two separate layers that do not usually agree with each other, and has been stacked basically since the country was founded to purposefully minimize, diffuse, and disenfranchise anyone who isn't part of the ruling class (read: landed white men of a certain income and education, if you wanna go back and look).

there is a popular vote, then there is the electoral college. the popular vote sort of gives an idea of what the country's preferences are between (usually pretty monstrous) candidates, but it's filtered through a ton of weirdly shaped and purposefully obfuscated voting districts, and read based on percentages.

then there is a separate group of voters, called Electors, and those people make up the body of the electoral college. each state gets a certain number of electoral college votes, and the candidate who makes it to 270 of those votes becomes the President. the number each state gets is calculated as 2 votes for their senators and then a number of votes based on their congressional districts. are you following, is this fun?

they watch to see what the percentage of votes is from each congressional district. once it looks like there's a majority, they "call" that state in favor of a candidate, and cast their votes accordingly. (sometimes. there is a phenomenon called 'faithless electors' in which they cast the vote opposing the popular vote, but that's a story for another time.) also, since some states have relatively few congressional districts, and some have tons, certain entire states worth of votes "don't matter," and every election cycle the election basically comes down to the voting behaviors of a few key district-heavy states, called "swing states."

so, irrespective of how intense the support might be one way or the other for certain candidates, unless the votes are coming from a swing state, they mostly just kind of get. written off. they're counted! but very much treated as superfluous.

THEN, we get into the ways that presidential candidates are chosen to begin with. there are actually more than two parties in the US! Several, in fact! but due to the way campaign finance works, only the most well-funded ones end up having any say, and since corporations and their lobbying firms can basically pour money into our political system unchecked, that means that what we get are the Republicans and the Democrats. these two parties use their national conventions (the RNC and the DNC, respectively) to determine who will be the candidate representing them in the race.

usually, if there is an incumbent (a sitting president) eligible for re-election, that person will end up being their party's pick. either way, though, every candidate wanting to run for that RNC/DNC seat has to go through a number of debates and campaigning events to try to get enough traction to be voted for at their conventions.

sounds pretty straight forward, right? the problem is, you have to have money and more money and more money to be able to be competitive. for example, in 2012, it cost Obama and his campaign $2.9 million USD per day to fund his bid for the presidency. between his own money, campaign contributions, and the DNC money, in total, it cost more than $1 billion USD for him to become president.

does that sound like the type of money grassroots orgs have laying around? or that a normal person might be able to drum up? or that someone who is, say, an enemy of corporate America might be able to come up with on their own? probably not, huh.

also, since the majority of the money it takes to run ads, gain traction, and get elected DOES come from corporations, foreign direct investment (which ends up in the soft-money slush fund so it doesn't have to be reported as such), and wealthy private donors, who can shut the cashflow off at any time if they're unsatisfied with the way their candidate behaves, who do you think said candidates are more likely to be loyal to? or to vote or legislate in favor of?

the poor people (and most of the country IS poor, the studies consistently show that most of the US population is 1-2 missed paychecks away from homelessness) who already barely have a half-filtered say in how our government runs and where the power goes? or the people who are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into superPACs for them to play with?

before you even get to that step tho, remember that the RNC and the DNC are both in this for the money too. they might let an actually popular candidate play on stage for a while (Bernie Sanders is a good example), but anyone who might actually interrupt their stream of income is never getting the nomination.

we, as a collective, aren't picking monsters on purpose. our government and the rich people that own it have spent decades and generations setting up the system so that the only people who get to approach the seats of power are people willing to play the game, who are beholden to the highest bidder, and who don't care what happens to the actual country they're trying to run one way or the other.

gerrymandering is rampant, racism and sexism and corporate greed are the cornerstones of the government, and the only little bit of power we DO have doesn't even actually come from the raw power we hold as a population, but from the fact that the only thing that allows the us government to maintain political and military hegemony is the illusion of moral and ideological purity displayed by being a "democratic" society.

that's why no one has pulled the trigger on true mask-off authoritarianism yet. that's also why ANY attempt to band together and vote in our collective self-interest gets squelched. why do you think these bastards are so fucking scared of labor unions?

but I digress. First and foremost, the majority of the US wants an immediate end to the funding and militarization and support for Israel. Most Americans want a free Palestine, and the genocide to stop. y'all have phones and eyes and since everyone's constantly whining about how much of what happens here they have to see, I'm sure you've seen the protests and the mass mobilization of a hyper-militarized police force against those students, and anyone else who tries to substantively protest and push back against what's happening.

Most Americans want gun control. most Americans want nationalized health care. a good portion of the country wants UBI. most Americans want student debt forgiveness and free/affordable higher education. most Americans want high speed rail and cities that are pedestrian friendly and infrastructure that isn't crumbling and fucking rent control. most Americans want actual livable wages and an end to the necessity for tipping. most Americans want clean water and clean air and food that isn't killing us and a REAL response to climate change. most Americans want an end to the violence against and destruction of marginalized communities. most Americans want reproductive rights, they want access to reproductive care, they WANT all of the things that it appalls y'all that we don't have.

but, like many of the types of people y'all are so keen to make fun of, you've fallen prey to the fallacy that the actions of the government are the same as the will of the governed. that under-educated, sickly, poor people are at fault for the behaviors of global super powers. which is hysterical given how fucking cartoonishly evil and monstrous a ton of other world leaders are, and how easily you're able to distinguish between the actions of those governments and the will of the people involved in those cases.

the literal only thing we have, the only button left to us to press, is voting, and a lot of people don't even want to do that anymore bc of how little it seems to impact. we NEED to. bc if we really truly just roll over and give up the whole world is in for a fucking lot more pain. but it's understandable how people get to feeling that way. the government violently and effectively suppresses votes and protests where they can, and everyone else seems to feel justified in using dead children and homeless people and students who will never climb out of debt and people suffering from addiction who die condemned and in misery and the marginalized remnants of our government's past genocides as punchlines for your "hahahurrrhrurrr fat stupid fatty fat dumb ugly stupid FAT Americans hurrrhahahahaha" jokes.

you don't have to care. that's your business. but it feels like, if you're going to claim ongoing moral and intellectual superiority, maybe you ought to at least try to understand.

hope this helps.

[feralwifey]

We’ve been doing big Costco orders instead of regular grocery shopping to save money. This is the second time we’ve done it and it saves around $100-$150 a month I would say. (We do one order every two weeks). But we’re still trying to figure out how many snacks and how much water we really need so we do have to do a little shopping in between our next order.

Today I wanted to have a quick dinner and we could use a few more things, I wanted to get two rotisserie chickens, a gallon of milk (not even organic just whole), a pound of sliced cheese, three little drinks (poppis and kombucha), chicken necks for the cat, flour and water. It would’ve come to $100. That is so ridiculous that I ended up saying I’d rather go without all that than to spend $100 on one dinner, drinks and cheese and flour. I think it’s so messed up that they pretend that that’s worth that money.

We’re still good for another 5 days, and after that I’m probably going to go to a butcher and ask about prices for bulk orders. I hate that we’ve come to a point where one bag of basic food items would cost that much, that’s why the only way it’s barely reasonable is to shop in bulk instead of having more variety and make do with less.

I mean if the politicians are forcing me to spend less and I know there are many families like mine that are doing something similar all they’re really doing is getting less money from me and bringing me closer to God and nature by living and frugal as possible and making everything myself.

I can’t wait until we actually leave the city and then the system will get even less of our money once we have our vegetables and animals.

[lingshanhermit]

Lingshan Hermit: Let's Pretend 2012 Was Real

According to Mayan prophecy, a profound transformation was to occur on Earth in the year 2012, and the movie "2012" released in 2009 deepened our impression of the Mayan prophecy of disaster. I heard that after watching the film, some people decided to spend all their money before the arrival of 2012, (of course, I don't think it’s a good idea worth recommending) but most people just took it as another disaster movie.

I want to talk about an experiment I conducted recently. I wanted to see people’s reactions to the year 2012. I told a few Daoist friends, who trust me very much, that severe disasters might occur as the Mayans predicted in 2012, leading to the deaths of many people, and possibly bringing an end to human civilization, potentially bringing us back to the era of drilling wood to make fire.

Due to the recent spate of mass animal deaths worldwide, the constant disasters, and sensational news about the potential eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano in the US, they believed every word I said.

I think you could benefit from assuming the 2012 prophecies to be true. If you really start thinking that way—that the events that occur two years later could end your life and that of most people—everything will change.

You will start to find many things less important than before. You won't continue to hold a grudge against your parents (you might not even remember why you were angry in the first place—it might have been something trivial, like them disapproving of you wearing what they considered revealing clothes, but you continue to maintain your anger because you don’t know how to end it, and you put on an angry face when you see them, as they’ve grown accustomed to that attitude), because either you or they might not live more than two years, and you only have a brief time left to see each other. If you find that the supermarket has given you less change, you won't go back and argue with them; you'll spend your time on more important things.

You would find it necessary to get used to life without electricity. Some scientists believe that the solar storms that could occur in 2012 will destroy human communication systems and power, so we might live in darkness for months. Imagine life without electricity and the internet—if you're still alive. Just thinking about such a life can drive you crazy. You might only eat some pre-stored compressed biscuits—if you are very lucky.

You'll find that actually, you can live without many things. We are often told we need this or that, but their real utility is extremely limited. For example, the iPad; its utility is really limited, and it mostly serves to satisfy the self.

You will find that many things you've been working hard for are so fragile. Your property, your house, could collapse in an instant. This will help you realize how many people's efforts your current life depends on. Just a power outage could lead to a series of problems, such as drinking water; without electricity, tap water will soon run out. If you live in a super metropolis like Beijing, imagine the scenario of tens of millions of people without water. You should be thankful for those who you’ve always ignored; without them, you couldn't even drink a sip of clean water.

If you knew you might die in a year, would you still work very hard? Or save money? If the civilization collapses, your money will be worthless. Would you care so much about money owed to you? If someone scratched your car, you wouldn't care too much. After all, you might only live another year. You will find that many of your worries are unnecessary.

Oddly enough, if we talk about the disaster of 2012, everyone feels very sad because we might die in these disasters. But if we believe that these things will not happen in 2012, we become very complacent, acting as if we will live for another ten thousand years. You would continuously store things for yourself; you store enough tea to drink for ten years or money for several lifetimes. We keep shopping and consuming. 2012 is the best Buddhist teacher; it will help you end these bad habits.

I know some people who really believe in the prophecies of 2012. They are quietly stockpiling a lot of things: medicines, water purifiers, compressed biscuits, and the like. I want to say to these people, you're overlooking the most crucial thing—you haven't stored up enough merit. Without sufficient merit, you might not even get to use these things. There are rumors that governments around the world are secretly building arks, with tickets priced up to a billion euros. Anyway, the best ticket is your good deeds; Noah was chosen to enter the Ark not because he was a wealthy person like Rockefeller.

In Buddha's time, there were ascetics who, seeing their karmic retribution about to mature, tried every means to avoid the calamity. They burrowed into the seabed silt, flew to other planets, or hid underground, but still, they were struck down by their karma and died.

Strangely, I often tell people they are going to die, that they cannot choose when, where, or how they will die, and most people are indifferent to this. But if I mention 2012, they become panic-stricken.

Before knowing about 2012, you would think you still had a long time to live. If someone died, you would be surprised—how did they die? In reality, we should be surprised if someone never dies. Death is the most normal thing. Since everyone will die, and you don't know when they will go, why would you be surprised when someone does die?

2012 lets us realize that death is not far away (not that 2012 makes death not far, but it makes us realize, death has always been close to us). 2012 gives us a sense of renunciation, 2012 generates compassion in us. Thank you, 2012, even if nothing happened that year, you have already benefited us a lot. Haven't you? In Buddhism, anything that brings us closer to reality (directly or indirectly), whatever the means, can be considered the Dharma.

This article was first published on February 15, 2011.

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灵山居士：让我们假装2012是真的

[fuck-the-conquistadores]

The expert fuckers who broke this world never get to speak again.

—Godspeed You! Black Emperor

On March 29, 2023, graduate student instructors and graduate student staff assistants with GEO3550 (AFT) at the University of Michigan began an illegal strike for a living wage, increased healthcare coverage, workplace protections from ICE, the funding of a municipal non-police, unarmed emergency response, and an end to restrictions around the childcare subsidy. After months of bargaining with HR, grad workers seemingly had enough, and walked out of their classes and departments to march through the university campus.

Since September 2022, GEO members had adopted a “bargaining narrative” that would guide the rhetoric and basic principles behind their bargaining platform, both in their presentations to academic HR and to the public. The narrative was centered on issues of affordability: grad workers can’t afford rent, the university can afford to pay them money, grad workers should be able to afford to live in the city that their institution is in, the university can’t afford to go any amount of time without grad labor. For a labor union affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers with more than fifty years on the books, this narrative seems to work. It seems reasonable, approachable, important. Yet the narrative created a very narrow scope of political possibility for the union—a union that had previously adopted abolitionist, anti-policing demands, and had taken the radical leap of striking against COVID-19 policies and campus policing. The affordability narrative constrained the framing of our demands—what can we demand, and what kinds of actions and risks can we take when we are politically constrained by a single issue (the wage)?

This group of rabble-rousers celebrates the strike, not just because we want a living wage (and lord knows we’d breathe more easily every month if we did), but because we want everything. For us the strike is just the beginning of our struggle: we want a life free of exploitation and work, and we want it for everyone. We want time for our families, lovers, friends, and comrades. We want to dream, conspire together, play and party together. We want a blunt in every hand and every cop run out of town. We want the end of the university as we know it, and we want to dedicate ourselves to whatever the fuck we think would be cool (for the night, for the week, for the year, for our lifetimes). We want so much more than the union contract lets us bargain for, and we want it now, not just when this strike eventually ends and we accept a contract for the next 3 years. We want everything. Everything we want is “permissive,” and we are the only ones who can give ourselves permission to take those things.

And so we strike—striking not only for wages, but for life. The picket lines breathe life back into us, after all of the breaths we’ve expended for an institution that could never love us back (and to pretend that it will is a fool’s errand). We strike against business as usual, and we strike to take back our lives:

1) We began bargaining with the “reasonable” request that the university only be allowed to steal $170 million worth of our labor from us every year ($200 million in profits – $30 million to cover our demands). What if, instead, we had asked for everything?

2) In the MIT calculator for a living wage, we live alone (one adult, no kids) and we spend less than $11 a day on food or drink ($4,010/365 days = $10.99 per day). Is that living? (and also, what does it mean to count such a value. We are not asking for all the money they can give us—although that wouldn’t be bad, but it isn’t really like a UBI demand).

3) It seems often that people want to be told they are being reasonable. This is a fear, the fear of being unreasonable. It is an old fear, a modernist fear, a fear of being labeled one of the “crazies” like the mad, like the colonized, like women, like queer folks. Often, we feel compelled to prove that we’re “not like them,” we present elegant arguments, we read books, we’re getting our PhD—we’re reasonable. But maybe we shouldn’t be. Maybe being reasonable, having reasonable demands, only means being like the University. And the University is our enemy.

4) How did they convince us that we were supposed to suffer? Was it the promise of some pretty bourgeois future in the capital? We beg those of you who believe in that future to look at academic job reports. Maybe you believe there’s some salvation in industry. We beg those of you who believe in that future to look at climate change reports.

5) We could say that there is no future. In some sense this is true. For some people, the future is bright, it’s shiny, it has flying cars, and we’re living in some miraculous post-scarcity world. But we know that future isn’t coming. The minerals required alone would destroy half the globe, and Elon Musk would need to destroy the atmosphere, cooking us with solar radiation, in his cockamamie schemes to get off the rock. But there are other futures. There are futures together. There are futures spent growing food, cooking, and building homes with people we love, like people used to. There are futures where we wake up and work together to make clothes, sing silly songs with each other’s kids, take care of each other while we grow old. There are futures where everything we make is ours. There are futures where we demanded, and took, everything.

6) What is everything? Everything is not some abstract totality, the dream of state-makers and capital. It’s always having a cool place to sleep and hang out with your friends; it’s having fresh vegetables from the community gardens and farms, good cuts of meat from the chickens, goats, and whatever else we want, and homemade wine and beer made by and for those you love; it’s clean, fresh water; it’s never being forced to do work that doesn’t directly make your or your community’s life better; it’s communities of care where no one ever gets to tell you what sort of healthcare you need; it’s summer nights with a blunt in hand, tripping on mushrooms, and watching a meteor shower with your friends; it’s working with your friends to deck out one of those beautiful lowriders and going cruising down the open road; it’s no more cops on campus, in our cities, in the world; it’s more than you can imagine. Communism is just this: skipping class to go swimming, but for a million years.

7) Demanding everything also means the abolition of the wage. It is the ending of a way of life that decides if we live or die based on how much value we generate for someone else. It is the end of a world where bargaining over wages is not necessary for our day-to-day survival. Our dignity and our lives shouldn’t be rhetorically or politically reduced to a question of affordability, nor can it be reduced to a debate on if we are deserving of anything.

8) Neither the university, nor their lawyers, nor the labor contract process, nor the specifics between permissive and mandatory subjects of bargaining, nor the distinctions between hard and soft pickets, nor the courts and their injunctions can contain or repress this demand for everything. The demand for everything exceeds the existing processes and beckons us out of these containers of repression, respectability, and rules. We can choose to heed the siren song of a life where we have everything, or we can limit our imaginations and our actions to cut ourselves off from possibility.

9) University politics cannot be understood if the university as a site of desire for common life is ignored. Herein lies its contradictory character. Especially in the humanities, the secular collapse of the capitalist economy drives anyone who minimally hates work to the university, seeking in study a respite from the malaise that infects every other job option. At the same time, here we are more overworked than most people doing what David Graeber has called “bullshit jobs.” Yet the bullshit cannot hide that in between class, teaching and research, there is sometimes a brief moment of actual thinking. It is in the strike that we seek to expand these moments—small prologues of a life worth living. Both macho chatter about weak grad students as opposed to brutish workers outside the campus, and cosmopolitan Jacobin-esque punditry about the enlightened student organizer both ignore this crucial fact.

10) “We need your ideas, we need your insights, and most of all, we need your dreams.” This is it: in the highest stage of capitalist nihilism, the biggest lies are always shouted out as they were everybody’s aspiration. This sordid little incantation is what drives the contemporary university’s factory of unwept tears. The fact that this industry works on an image of a continually extended sameness into the linear future should foment distrust—distrust felt deep in the pits of our stomachs. The appropriation of every struggle, every radical negation, every true dream to break free from this hell-world, speaks to how pernicious liberalism’s adage can be. First, it demands that every collective aspiration be reduced to whatever makes one a “decent living”. Second, it ensconces it in the puerile and sanitized language game of ambitions, dreams, in sum, change. Everything is to be made a little bit better; nothing is to be destroyed. These cowards hate above all our hatred, our anger, our force. And the wish to dismantle this war-affect will come not only from outside, but also from within our movement.

To be clear, this critique comes from within GEO, from within the university—in but not of it, if you’ll forgive the cliché. We have no quarrel with the friends we make on the picket line, nor do we have beef with the rank-and-file folks we haven’t met yet (we don’t like the reactionaries in and around the union, but who does?). We echo the calls of the disaffected communists and disillusioned anarchists in so-called California against the UC, and we salute the brave folks who ran up on and attacked rapist frat houses in Nebraska, Kansas, Massachusetts, and elsewhere. We celebrate and honor the dropouts, the proles, the fellow travelers trapped behind bars and murdered by the state. We’re hungry for more than what union politics can give us, we’re sick of the university containing our rage. Let’s take action that pushes our demand for everything to its fullest extent: let’s feed each other, whether in expropriated dining hall food or in our strike kitchen. Let’s take campus back from administrators and security. Let’s make the football field a fuck forest. Let’s have dance parties in North Quad and print zines together in Mason. Let’s take naps in lecture halls on purpose. Let’s cut class. Let’s enjoy spring. Let’s demand everything.