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blockgamepirate · 1 year ago

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This is my petty complaint time, this video annoys me SO MUCH and even more so what annoys me is that the latest comment on it is this:

HE TAUGHT YOU SO MUCH BULLSHIT, PLEASE NO, DON'T LISTEN TO HIM

And yes, I've been thinking about this stream for nearly three years now, I've been meaning to go through it to critique Wilbur's arguments, I just never got around to it

Wilbur: "Tubbo, you've created an anti-state capitalist dystopia"

So all Tubbo had explained so far was that his town had a big company that owned two other big companies. Nothing about the government or anything. It's true that one company owning all the major businesses is pretty dystopian, sure, but I have no idea where Wilbur got the "anti-state" thing from, usually capitalist companies are fine with the existence of states, states do a lot of dirty work for the capitalists

Spoiler alert: Tubbo's city turns out to be pretty much a city state so Wilbur is just wrong anyway, not that he ever acknowledges it even when it does come up

Also it's not like corporate acquisitions are completely unheard of in the UK, as far as I know. Admittedly the UK is also arguably a capitalist dystopia but you know what I mean, the concept shouldn't be all that shocking to Wilbur

He's being so dramatic and trying to make it sound like he's caught Tubbo in a mistake or something. He also keeps asking questions and then not letting Tubbo answer properly before taking like one word Tubbo says and running with it

But this is the one that I find the most obnoxious:

T: "I did some research into like economics and stuff and I discovered this thing called UBI, have you heard of it?"

W: "What's it stand for?"

T: "Universal Basic Income"

W: "Yeah, I know about that"

He clearly does not know what UBI is.

It becomes very apparent very quickly:

W: "So you've got universal basic income but then also the rich exist still?"

T: "Yeah! Yeah they do."

W: "How does that come about then,"

T: "So in my mind--"

W: "is this universal basic income different for different people?"

T: "No, no, the universal basic income is better for everyone, just the people who have--"

W: "In order for there to be a 1% that means someone's earning more,"

T: "Yes, someone is earning more"

W: "but that means the universal basic income isn't universal!"

T: "No no no, not everyone's getting paid the same but everyone gets the same to begin with, okay? But then you can build on top of it."

W: "Oh no, you've got a-- Tubbo, you've got a fucking social point system!"

T: "Have I made a social point system??"

W: "Tubbo, you've made China!"

None of what Wilbur says makes ANY sense here. The only explanation I can think of is that he didn't know what UBI was, made an assumption that it just meant "everybody gets paid the same amount of money" or something like that and then just spoke fast enough that Tubbo couldn't correct him

Tubbo is correct here, Tubbo knows what he's talking about, but he can't out-speak Wilbur who is just throwing so much bullshit out of his mouth that there's no time to even respond

So, UBI means that everyone in the society gets a regular payment of a specific amount of money that's the same for everyone regardless of their life situation (and generally a requirement would be that it has to be enough to live on, altho people do like to water this down a lot...) This would be completely irrelevant to your wages or salary or capital gains. You can choose to either live on the UBI or you can just do the regular capitalist things to earn extra money on top of the UBI

Obviously I'm not one of those people who think that UBI would solve all of world's problems, I mean I am an anarchist and all (and not an ancap either), but it's literally just a very streamlined welfare system. That's all. It would probably be a lot better than the current models we have but it's not fundamentally different. There's nothing particularly weird about it, the point is just to make sure that everyone has enough money to live on, in every other regard it's just normal capitalism

Wilbur completely misunderstands the whole thing (because, again, he does not know what UBI is so he's just trying to imagine what it might mean based on what Tubbo is saying) and jumps immediately to something he apparently has heard of, which is the Chinese social credit system, which has nothing to do with UBI. In fact I'm pretty sure it also doesn't actually have anything to do with income either, or at least not directly, so I don't think Wilbur knows what the social credit system is either

He's literally just talking in buzzwords

Like if you actually wanted to make a leftist critique of Tubbo's city, you could, don't get me wrong. But instead Wilbur keeps insisting that he's made a social point system despite Tubbo trying to explain why it's not that at all

Wilbur just keeps yelling over Tubbo until his own chat turns against him and finally Tubbo himself also kinda gives up

And from there Tubbo also kinda just starts playing into the bit and just lets Wilbur direct the whole conversation, the rest of it is just them getting more and more into the roleplay. Wilbur keeps talking about the state pension plan, even though Tubbo already tried to explain that it's part of the UBI (this actually is how UBI is supposed to work, it does indeed streamline most of the welfare spending! Obviously you can still raise questions about that (I can think of a few at least) but Wilbur didn't let Tubbo explain so I have no idea what Tubbo actually had in mind)

I could try to go through all of what Wilbur says here but it's just too much, so maybe some other time. Although to be honest there are so many other streams that I probably should talk about instead that some fans unfortunately took a bit too seriously because they assumed Wilbur knew what he was talking about

My point here is mainly that just because someone sounds really confident and knows a bunch of buzzwords doesn't mean they know what they're talking about.

#wilbur soot #tubbo #this is literally just petty grumbling #not a serious post #altho i do genuinely hope that people reconsider all the things they've 'learned' from wilbur

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kcinpa · 10 months ago

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TL;DR Project 2025

Project 2025 has crossed my dash several times, so maybe tumblr is already informed about the hellish 900-page takeover plan if Trump wins office again. But even the articles covering Project 2025 can be a LOT of reading. So I'm trying to get it down to simple bulleted lists…

Navigator Research (a progressive polling outfit) found that 7 in 10 Americans are unfamiliar with Project 2025. But the more they learn about it, the more they don't like or want it. When asked about a series of policy plans taken directly from Project 2025, the bipartisan survey group responded most negatively to the following:

Allowing employers to stop paying hourly workers overtime

Allowing the government to monitor people’s pregnancies to potentially prosecute them if they miscarry

Removing health care protections for people with pre-existing conditions

Eliminating the National Weather Service, which is currently responsible for preparing for extreme weather events like heat waves, floods, and wildfires

Eliminating the Head Start program, ending preschool education for the children of low-income families

Putting a new tax on health insurance for millions of people who get insurance through their employer

Banning Medicare from negotiating for lower prescription drug costs and eliminating the $35 monthly cap on the price of insulin for seniors

Cutting Social Security benefits by raising the retirement age

Allowing employers to deny workers access to birth control

Laurie Garrett looked at the roughly 50 pages within Project 2025 that deal with Health and Human Services (HHS) and other health agencies, and summarized them on Twitter/X in a series of replies. I've shortened even more here:

HHS must "respect for the sacred rights of conscience" for Federal workers & healthcare providers and workers broadly who object to abortions, contraception, gender reassignment & other issues - ie. allow them to deny services based on religious beliefs

HHS should promote "stable and flourishing married families."

Require all welfare programs to "promote father involvement" – or terminate their funding for mothers and children.

Prioritize adoptions via faith-based organizations.

Redefine sex, eliminating all forms of gender "confusion" regarding identity and orientation.

Eliminate the Head Start program for children, entirely

Ban all funding of Planned Parenthood

Ban birth control services that are "egregious attacks on many Americans' religious & moral beliefs"

Deny pregnancy termination pills, "mail-order abortions."

Eliminate Office of Refugee Resettlement; move all refugee matters to the Department of Homeland Security

Healthcare should be "market-based"

Ban all mask and vaccine requirements.

Closely regulate the NIH w/citizen ethics panels, ensuring that no research involves fetal tissue, leads to development of new forms of Abortions or brings profits to the researchers.

Redirect the Office of Global Affairs to promoting "moral conscience" & full compliance w/the Mexico City policy

The CDC should have no role in medical policies.

"Because liberal states have now become sanctuaries for abortion tourism," HHS should use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence & by what method.

I'm still looking for a good short summary of the environmental horrors that Project 2025 would bring if it comes to fruition…

#us politics #project 2025 #2024 elections #vote democrat #vote vote vote

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everparanoid · 1 year ago

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love languages w/ Wriothesley

F! Reader, Fluff, NSFW, MINORS DO NOT INTERACT

𝐍𝐨𝐰 𝐥𝐨𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠...

╭────────────────────────╮

"Love should be warm."

Wriothesley grew up hearing words of affirmation from parents who did not love him or his siblings. Thus, as an adult, he cares little for spoken declarations of love and adoration--though they do stroke his ego. Instead, he savours acts of service, quality time, and physical touch. This is reflected in how he gives and receives love. When Wriothesley falls in love, he falls hard. It is not a love he will declare to the world but rather a subtle love, at least in front of the world. His love is not one of words, though he does say them and will if they happen to be your love language, but his love is wordless. It is a love of the tiny things. The insignificant things. The things that others would dismiss as unimportant things. He will notice how your tone changes when you tell him that you love him; how you bring him his morning tea just the way he likes it or how your gestures soften to his touch. He will be thankful for all the little things you do to express your love that you may not realise he has noticed, but it is that innocence in itself—that pure unfiltered action of love that will make his heart defrost.

Wriothesley is not fussy about gifts. That is not to say that he does not like them, but he does not like owing people. If he were to receive a gift from you, however, he would be thankful. But he would still repay your kindness in other small ways. He will do trivial things to make your life easier even if it is as simple as making sure your Welfare meal is your favourite dish rather than the rubbish everyone else gets; it will be even better than his. It may also be listening to you rant about something that you do not want advice about but just need an ear to hear you and a person to be on your side. He is your shoulder to cry, but he won’t force his presence on you. And he will speak sense into you if you are beating yourself up for something he does not believe you should be beating yourself up for. He does not expect anything in return from you but if you were to bring him his super welfare meal whilst he is sorting through Meropide’s recent pile of paperwork, it is safe to say the paperwork will not be the only thing getting done in his office that afternoon.

Wriothesley is a man with more time on his hands than he likes to let people in on. Mostly because he likes not being disturbed. Nor does he like letting people know that his time is free. After all, it is not. Even if he does not have strict plans for his day, he is still a remarkably busy man. He’ll have something that he is doing even if that something is you. Wriothesley is not co-dependent, but he does love to spend as much time as he can in your presence if he can. Which he can… so why wouldn’t he? That means when he has won a fight in the pankration ring and he is having his injuries tended to by Sigewinne, he will be wrapped around you like a giant sweaty Koala. Which will be a nuisance for all parties involved aside from Wriothesley—he’s in heaven. Another time would be when Clorinde comes to visit he will have you within touching distance whilst he engages in conversation… that is if you agree to be there.

These small acts of service and love of physical touch come into play in your sex life as well. As a self-proclaimed king of foreplay, Wriothesley loves to make sure that you are pleased first. Most of this comes down to the principle that sex is one of the most intimate acts a couple partake in. Expect long sleepless nights under the sheets of your shared bed with him completely pussy-whipped, eating you out until you can't take anymore. He'll grin devilishly as he appears from under the sheets, resting his chin on your chest as he tries to coerce you into giving him one more.

"Come on, my love," he says softly. "One more."

"I thought the last one was the last one," you respond. You take in shallow breaths in hopes of soothing your racing heart. He loves the feeling of your heart racing under your glistening skin.

"I promise this time will be the last," he says, rubbing circles along your inner thighs. He bats his eyes innocently. Though the man staring at you with the eyes of a shark is nothing less than a wolf in sheep's clothing. And you were the idiot who kept falling for his trick. With a kiss to your stomach, he coos your name. "Have I ever broken a promise?"

Even if the only thing that happens that night is you reaching your climax, it would be enough for him. If you were to do the same for him, he would become putty in your hands. It plays into his whole Dom but with a switch undertones vibe that he has going on. It isn’t the words of praise that get him off in the end but more so the idea of you wanting to do this for him that will push him over the edge. Pillow talk is a must; Wriothesley doesn't fall asleep straight after sex surprisingly. He savours these moments after sex to catch up and make it known--even though you were near him most of the day--how much he adores you. He'll try his best to fall asleep after you; to watch your body relax in his arms. But on the nights that he doesn't, he'll hold you close keeping you both warm in the cold underwater fortress.

Loving for Wriothesley is warm. It’s about trust and transparency. It is about being honest even if it makes one of you look weak or less than public pretences expect you to be. It is about meeting each other not exactly halfway but close enough. It’s about the small things that you do for each other that are unnecessary and minor in the grand scheme of things but are filled with love.

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A short one to get back into the flow of things.

Reblogs w/ tags and comments are very much appreciated! If you enjoyed this, feel free to consider dropping a follow as well! <3

KO-FI MASTERLIST

#wriothesley imagines #wriothesley x reader #wriothesley x you #genshin impact x reader #wriothesley fanfic #genshin fluff #genshin headcanons #genshin drabbles #genshin fanfic #wriothesley smut #foreverparanoidupdates

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centrally-unplanned · 1 year ago

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So because I tend to be described as "center-left" by the forces of all that is evil and unpure assailed against me in their limitless and merciless cruelty, the way the far-right in the US misuses economic statistics tends to find no sympathy from me - in ways that I find difficult to even engage with. (Also, for balance's sake, true libertarians tend to be the ones who make this mistake the least, a solid W for them - they average the highest on this kind of economic literacy alongside the technocratic left). I am on the other hand more sympathetic to the reasons some on the left have for this mistake - but it is still unproductively misguided.

The idea from far-left is is essentially that the US economy is and must always be broken in all ways, because that is a premise that implies the platform of reform they endorse. This is a stance that, imo, most leftists will have because they want to help the poor. They will discuss child poverty and homelessness in the same breath as "living paycheck to paycheck" and the "immiserated middle class". They see these things as united, both causally but also practically - that the solution for the homeless and for the working class are the same, the bonds that will form a united front strong enough to cut the chains of capital in one fell swoop.

This is not only not true, but it is the opposite of true. A middle class that believes itself immiserated and struggling is one least likely to support the redistributive policies necessary to address chronic poverty because they are in fact very different problems. Those people are going to ask for tax cuts! They have jobs, they don't think they need welfare checks, but they do (correctly!) think lower taxes will help them. Cheaper grocery prices means cheaper wages for workers in the grocery industry, the current economy has been really good for the lower income working classes as the tight labor market has boosted their relative wages. Which middle class white collar people haaaaate, because it raises their prices. And since you want lower taxes but the money has to come from somewhere, you are more willing to cut things like welfare to pay for them.

When the problems are real they can align - like yes the housing market in the US is pretty busted, "everyone" will benefit from just making more houses. But even then, the "everyone" doesn't include all the incumbent upper-middle class housing owners, and it particularly doesn't help new home owners who have a mortgage to pay off that are banking on rising real estate prices. All these policies have real tradeoffs. Opportunities for solidarity do exist, don't get me wrong, but its not the default state. You think America won't raise taxes on the rich just to expand the mortgage tax deduction? In your heart you know we would.

Obviously none of this applies to you if you think the world is corrupted root to stem and only the blood of the capitalist class can water the soil of revolution and birth the flower of a new age, or whatever. But unless you want that you are gonna need accurate policy analysis to actually solve the problems within the system, and they will have tradeoffs. And a middle class that thinks itself too poor to help is not an asset in that.

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berrryparfait · 21 days ago

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maybe this is too niche or wtv but you know how you mentioned the stardew valley soundtrack in your sex pollen lads fic. ok so. in your glorious mind palace, what would you envision the lads men like as stardew valley bachelors??? LIKE would raf be like elliot and live near the sea in a shack or would it be more bougie??? instead of an aspiring writer he’d be the mysterious and talented artist….would zayne be the town doctor with the crush on the new farmer (mc) that drops by and warns her about the mines but it’s just an excuse to talk to her. sylus would be like the wizard living alone and kinda distanced from the townsfolk and xavier would perhaps be another adventurer that sometimes teams up w mc on mine explorations and and calendars would be your personal farmhand bc he just wants to help and be near you and and and AHHH ive never thought of this concept before until i read that offhand comment on your au 😭😭😭 brain rot to the max i fear

lads as stardew bachelors ⋆˚✿˖°⋆˚✿˖°

HELP nothing is too niche and i mean nothing.

***even though i know this isn’t what you meant, my mind immediately went to how similar xavier and sebastian are in terms of personality and lifestyle like 😭 deepspace hunter career aside ofc, they’re both on the reserved, lowkey side and wake up hours after everyone else lmao (i digress)

xavier would be the local sheriff, deeply concerned with the town’s welfare even if he isn’t always the most punctual (zzz). he’s a chill, laid-back guy on the surface but when it comes down to it, he knows how to deal with the mischief makers!! he’s buddies with linus and buys him a meal from time to time, and though he never directly participates in town events, he’s always there to offer his support in other ways. i also hc that he feeds the stray cats (along w sylus) 😻

ur so right, rafayel would totally live in an elliot shack by the sea 😂 but he would also appear as a humanoid ocean creature(?) who shows up every now and then while you're fishing to say strange cryptic things and give you weird magical gifts. you don't know him and goofy land rafayel are the same person but find out eventually when you reach a high enough level of friendship/romance with him.

sylus IS the wizard. u hit the bullseye with that one bc i tried so hard to think of an existing bachelor that matches his vibe and failed. but lord imagine sylus as an enigmatic sorcerer who teaches you magic and gifts you potions and is intimidating at first but turns out to be such a darn sweetheart once you get to know him.

and yes, zayne is the town doctor, but slightly different from harvey in that he's a little shy. he's got a bit of a complicated past that needs unpacking—mainly to do with him giving up his dreams of becoming a big-city doctor to stay in the valley and look after the people he loves most. after so many years of status quo (and maybe a pinch of resentment), you come along and he's hit by a whirlwind of love <3

caleb has something to do with the railway station. don't ask how i came to this conclusion. i just know it in my heart that he's either the sexy mechanic who stops by for a beer once in a while or the equally sexy train conductor who unknowingly seduces everyone in town. he's friendly but he's got an edge to him. and one hell of a mysterious past... 🤔

#‧˚˖✩ bp asks #love and deepspace #lads #lnds #sylus #zayne #xavier #caleb #rafayel

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brucewaynehater101 · 1 year ago

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Jason takes Damian w/ him to Gotham and accidentally gets them both scammed into becoming Tim's Fake Uncle and Cousin

Jason is getting dragged into actually caring for this diaster of zero-selfcare kicking and screaming

Damian has latched onto his cousin big brother

The Bats are hella sus about Tim's so called family, especially with his Uncle who showed up only after Red Hood did

And Tim is feeling his heart break as he goes through with the plans to illegally become a premature 18 year old with a fake identity, false paper trail and get an income, then go back to seeing Robin only through his cameras

Only after reuniting Jason and Damian with the bats, and the whole family (alongside Young Justice) have their fotting settled enough that his loss won't be felt emotionally or mentally, of course

. . . Why are you looking at him like that?

Based on the fake uncle fic "Say Uncle" by Megaerakles

Oooh! The "Say Uncle" fic but with Damian too? That's brilliant!

The basic background is that Tim is Robin, his parents are dead, and he doesn't want to be adopted by Bruce. He's looking for an actor to play as his uncle so he won't end up in the system either.

There's a few ways to start this AU. One, Tim posts an ad or something, and Jason, who needs to pay for Damian's welfare, figures it's an easy enough job. He asks if he can bring his kid, and Tim ends up creating a cousin too. Tim figures it will help solidify the identity a bit more.

That, or Tim is looking for an uncle and, while out and about, stumbles upon Bruce's dead son grown up and what looks like a mini copy of Bruce. Seeing that neither appear to be trying to contact Bruce, Tim sighs as he figures he'll have to be the one to bridge that gap.

Damian, at first, will be suspicious about Tim. I think, in order to get them to bond, he shouldn't know about Robin. He thinks Tim is a regular civilian, and Jason is asking him to practice "civilian etiquette" with Tim. It goes better than expected because Tim, who is not a regular civilian, shrugs when a ten year old threatens him with a sword. It's Gotham.

Damian, expecting a regular civilian, ends up slowly finding out that Tim knows quite a lot about weird skills. He knows how to throw the batarangs that Damian found on the street (Jason does too, but Damian expects that). He knows how to hack, how to spar, and how to dismantle traps. When Tim finds out that Damian is interested in learning traps, he starts to bring back stuff from patrol.

Tim also let's Damian keep a few animals in their place (dealer's choice on whether they live at Drake Manor or at a new place).

Jason figures out pretty quickly that Tim is Robin (the kid keeps coming back with injuries). A combination of Tim being a wet paper bag for survival and him getting close to Damian endears Tim to Jason as he reluctantly becomes fond of the Placeholder.

Tim feels peace and comfort from these people who are probably Bruce's sons (maybe he even takes their DNA to test). Despite that, he's slowly building himself an identity that would stand Batman's scrutiny and an escape plan for when the others are ready to speak to Bruce and Dick and Alfred.

Perhaps Damian stumbles upon these plans and, after becoming a part of the Waynes, decides to stop them. He straight-up asserts to Tim that he doesn't know how to act and that Bruce will kick him out for being a murderer. Tim just has to stay behind to help Damian integrate with the family.

This buys the Waynes enough time to prove they actually do want Tim around.

#dc comics #tim drake #dc universe #jason todd #damian wayne #dc au #thank you for the ask!!!!

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fatehbaz · 1 year ago

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[A]nti-homeless laws [...] rooted in European anti-vagrancy laws were adapted across parts of the Japanese empire [...] at the turn of the 20th century. [...] [C]riminalising ideas transferred from anti-vagrancy statutes into [contemporary] welfare systems. [...] [W]elfare and border control systems - substantively shaped by imperial aversions to racialised ideas of uncivilised vagrants - mutually served as a transnational legal architecture [...] [leading to] [t]oday's modern divides between homeless persons, migrants, and refugees [...].

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By the Boer Wars (1880–1902), Euro-American powers and settler-colonial governments professed anxieties about White degeneration and the so-called “Yellow Peril” alongside other existential threats to White supremacy [...]. Japan [...] validated the creation of transnational racial hierarchies as it sought to elevate its own global standing [...]. [O]ne key legal instrument for achieving such racialised orders was the vagrancy concept, rooted in vagrancy laws that originated in Europe and proliferated globally through imperial-colonial conquest [...].

[A]nti-vagrancy regulation [...] shaped public thinking around homelessness [...]. Such laws were applied as a “criminal making device” (Kimber 2013:544) and "catch-all detention rationale" (Agee 2018:1659) targeting persons deemed threats for their supposedly transgressive or "wayward interiority" (Nicolazzo 2014:339) measured against raced, gendered, ableist, and classed norms [...]. Through the mid-20th century, vagrancy laws were aggressively used to control migration [and] encourage labour [...]. As vagrancy laws fell out of favour, [...] a "vagrancy concept" nonetheless thrived in welfare systems that similarly meted out punishment for ostensible vagrant-like qualities [...], [which] helps explain why particular discourses about the mobile poor have persisted to date [...].

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During high imperialism (1870–1914), European, American, and Japanese empires expanded rapidly, aided by technologies like steam and electricity. The Boer Wars and Japan's ascent to Great Power status each profoundly influenced trans-imperial dynamics, hardening Euro-American concerns regarding a perceived deterioration of the White race. [...] Through the 1870s [...] the [Japanese] government introduced modern police forces and a centralised koseki register to monitor spatial movement. The koseki register, which recorded geographic origins, also served as a tool for marking racialised groups including Ainu, Burakumin, Chinese, [...] and Korean subjects across Japan's empire [...]. The 1880 Penal Code contained Japan's first anti-vagrancy statute, based on French models [...]. Tokyo's Governor Matsuda, known for introducing geographic segregation of the rich and poor, expressed concern around 1882 for kichinyado (daily lodgings), which he identified as “den[s] for people without fixed employment or [koseki] registration” [...].

Attention to “vagrant foreigners” (furō-gaikokujin) emerged in Japanese media and politics in the mid-1890s. It stemmed directly from contemporary British debates over immigration restrictions targeting predominantly Jewish “destitute aliens” [...].

The 1896 Landing Regulation for Qing Nationals barred entry of “people without fixed employment” and “Chinese labourers” [...], justified as essential "for maintaining public peace and morals" in legal documents [...]. Notably, prohibitions against Chinese labourers were repeatedly modified at the British consulate's behest through 1899 to ensure more workers for [the British-affiliated plantation] tea industry. [...]

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Simultaneously, new welfaristic measures emerged alongside such punitive anti-vagrancy statutes. [...] Such border control regulations were eventually standardised in Japan's first immigration law, the 1918 Foreigners’ Entry Order. [...] This turn towards instituting racialised territorial boundaries should be understood in light of empire's concurrent welfarist turn [...]. Japanese administration established a quasi-carceral workhouse system in 1906 [in colonized territory of East Asia] [...] which sentenced [...] vagrants to years in workhouses. This law still treated vagrancy as illegal, but touted its remedy of compulsory labour as welfaristic. [...] This welfarist tum led to a proliferation of state-run programmes [...] connecting [lower classes] to employment. Therein, the vagrancy concept became operative in sorting between subjects deemed deserving, or undeserving, of aid. Effectively, surveillance practices in welfare systems mobilised the vagrancy concept to, firstly, justify supportive assistance and labour protections centring able-bodied, and especially married, Japanese men deemed “willing to work” and, secondly, withhold protections from racialised persons for their perceived waywardness [...] as contemporaneous Burakumin, Korean, and Ainu movements frequently protested [...]. [D]uring the American occupation (1945–1952), not only were anti-vagrancy statutes reinstituted in Japan's 1948 Minor Offences Act, but [...] the 1946 Livelihood Protection Act (Article 2) excluded “people unwilling to work or lazy” from social insurance coverage [...].

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Imperial expansion relied on not only claiming new markets and territories, but also using borders as places for negotiating legal powers and personhood [...]. Japan [...] integrated Euro-American ideas and practices attached to extraterritorial governance, like exceptionalism and legal immunity, into its legal systems. [...] (Importantly, because supportive systems [welfare], like punitive ones, were racialised to differentially regulate mobilities according to racial-ethic hierarchies, they were not universally beneficial to all eligible subjects.) [...]

At the turn of the century, imperialism and industrial capitalism had co-produced new transnational mobilities [which induced mass movements of poor and newly displaced people seeking income] [...]. These mobilities - unlike those celebrated in imperial travel writing - conflicted with racist imaginaries of who should possess freedom of movement, thereby triggering racialised concerns over vagrancy [...]. In both Euro-American and Japanese contexts, [...] racialised “lawless” Others (readily associated with vagrancy) were treated as threats to “public order” and “public peace and morals”. [...] Early 20th century discourse about vagrants, undesirable aliens, and “vagrant foreigners” [...] produced [...] "new categories of [illegal] people" [...] that cast particular people outside of systems of state aid and protection. [...] [P]ractices of illegalisation impress upon people, “the constant threat of removal, of being coercively forced out and physically removed [...] … an expulsion from life and living itself”.

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All text above by: Rayna Rusenko. "The Vagrancy Concept, Border Control, and Legal Architectures of Human In/Security". Antipode [A Radical Journal of Geography] Volume 56, Issue 2, pages 628-650. First published 24 October 2023. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Text within brackets added by me for clarity. Presented here for criticism, teaching, commentary purposes.]

#abolition

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horreurscopes · 1 year ago

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So, I could be out-of-bounds here since I think you meant it as dark humor, but what did you mean in the tags of that 'israel-hamas war' post? I suspect you(and op) are criticizing that framing because Israel is obviously demolishing much more than 'Hamas'(and probably doing a terrible job of actually targeting terrorists- they seem content to reduce Gaza to rubble even if the brass of Hamas escapes). I'm guessing that by saying "joining the Israel-Hamas war on the side of Hamas" you mean, if they're going to conflate Palestinians with Hamas unilaterally, then you're saying, whatever the media wants to call Palestinian civilians- you still support them. I am asking anyways though bc, given reports of increasing antisemitic activity in the US and Europe, I am worried about the potential for blurring lines between the cause of Palestinian civilians and the alt-right individuals who are likely masking their antisemitism in the context of being anti-Zionist. Although Israel's government has been the source of Palestinian loss for decades, (it seems to me that) even joking about supporting terrorism is enough to reinforce the persuasion that Israeli/Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Arabs must be mutually-exclusive peoples. I don't think it's fully rational per se(tho I'm not claiming to have all the relevant information myself, and I'm white US American goyim so like- grain of salt-), but I think that existential fear is the incredible hurdle facing Zionist Jews. (Idc too much about the opinions of non-Jewish Zionists bc I don't grant that they are dealing with the same emotional complications at this time, although that doesn't stop me from arguing w my acquaintances abt their callous acceptance of US/Israeli propaganda.) I just think..... isn't it overall harmful to allow anti-semitic rhetoric, even used sarcastically, to enter the genuine humanist cause for Palestinian liberation? Or, have I misunderstood, and you actually are not in opposition to Hamas, or something else I didn't think of?

hi! thank you for approaching the question thoughtfully and with curiosity, i really appreciate it. i was being kind of flippant with that meme, but this is the only ask i'm going to reply to on the matter given that i am neither jewish nor arab, so i'm going to answer in earnest:

hamas is a political resistance movement with an armed wing, much like the black panthers party was, and like the bpp, a large part of the organization is dedicated to social welfare and civic restoration.

they have stated that they are not against judaism, but against the zionist project. they openly support political solutions.

labeling hamas a terrorist group is a propaganda tactic used by the united states and israel to justify the horrors of settler colonization.

hamas is palestine, a part of it, even if palestinians like any other demographic on earth, are not a unified, single-minded people. to declare hamas a separate entity falls prey to the imperialist lie that there is an enemy to fight "fairly" within the people they are displacing and exterminating.

am i rejoicing in the deaths of israelis? of course not. killing civilians and taking civilian hostages is a war crime, whether it is committed by the opresor or the oppressed. the israeli government is not its people, and many jews, within israel as well as in the US, are bravely risking their lives to publicly dissent the criminal acts of the israeli government. all loss of human life is a tragedy.

no one should ever be faced with the choice between annihilation and murderous violence after exhausting all other forms of peaceful protest and being massacred like animals.

but why is it that we consider a resistance group formed within a population with a median age of eighteen a terrorist group, and not the IDF, a US-backed military force with an annual budget of twenty billion dollars?

i am currently reading hamas and civil society in gaza by sara roy to learn more about hamas and the history of israel in palestine. i'll remember to post more excerpts which i am admittedly terrible at.

but all of the information above can be found by reading wikipedia. investigating with duckduckgo searches (not gonna pretend google isn't prioritizing propaganda, to be fair), and reading reliable news coverage like aljazeera and the many journalists who are at risk of, or have lost their lives, reporting on the ground.

i have also appreciated reading posts from @determinate-negation @opencommunion @fairuzfan @ibtisams and @bloglikeanegyptian amongst others

in conclusion:

#palestine

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year ago

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How America's oligarchs lull us with the be-your-own-boss fairy tale

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/16/narrative-capitalism/#sell-job

Capitalism is a vibes-based system. Sure, we all know about Keynes's "Animal Spirits" that see "bulls" and "bears" vying to set the market's future, but beyond that, there's just a hell of a lot of narrative.

Writing for The American Prospect, Adam M Lowenstein reviews two books that tell the histories of the stories that are used to sell American capitalism to the American people – the stories that turn workers into "temporarily embarrassed millionaires":

https://prospect.org/culture/books/2024-02-16-stories-corporations-tell-williams-waterhouse-review/

The first of these books is Taming the Octopus: The Long Battle for the Soul of the Corporation, by Kyle Edward Williams, a kind of pre-history of "woke capitalism":

https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393867237

Taming is a history of the low-water marks for Big Business's reputation in America, and how each was overcome through PR campaigns that declared a turning point in which business leaders would pursue the common good, even at the expense of their shareholders' interests.

The story starts in the 1950s, when DuPont and other massive firms had gained a well-deserved reputation as rapacious profit-generation machines that "alienated workers and pushed around small businessmen, investors, and consumers." This prompted DuPont's PR chief, Harold Brayman, to write a memo called "The Attack on Bigness," where he set out a plan to sell America on a new cuddly image for corporate giants.

For Brayman, the problem was that corporate execs were too shy about telling their social inferiors about all the good that businesses did for them: "The businessman is normally reluctant to talk out loud. He frequently shuns the spotlight and is content with plugging his wares, not himself."

This was the starting gun for a charm offensive by American big business that included IBM president Thomas Watson Jr ("I think there is a world market for about five computers") going on a speaking tour organized by McKinsey & Co, where he told audiences that his company's billion dollar annual profits had convinced it to assume "responsibilities for the broader public welfare."

This set the template for a nationwide mania of "business statesmanship" that Fortune celebrated with an editorial announcing "a great transformation, of which the world as a whole is as yet unaware" that put the "profit motive…on its last leg."

Fortune then spent the next seventy years recycling this announcement, every time the tide went out on business's popularity. In 2019, Fortune platformed IBM president Ginni Rometty for an announcement that the company was orienting its priorities to the public good: "It’s a question of whether society trusts you or not. We need society to accept what it is that we do."

The occasion for Rometty's quote was a special package on the Trump tax-cuts, a trillion-dollar gift to American big business, which lobbyists for the Business Roundtable celebrated with an announcement that American capitalism would now serve "stakeholders" (not just shareholders). Fortune celebrated this "change" as "fundamental and profound."

Fast forward five years and corporate leaders are still telling stories, this time about "stakeholder capitalism" and "ESG" – the dread "woke capitalism" that has right-wing swivel-eyed loons running around, hair afire, declaring the end of capitalism.

For Williams and Lowenstein (and me), all this ESG, DEI, and responsible capitalism is just window dressing, a distraction to keep the pitchforks and torches in people's closets, and to keep the guillotines in their packaging. The right-wing is doing a mirror-world version of liberals who freak out when OpenAI claims to have built a machine that will pauperize every worker – assuming that a PR pitch is the gospel truth, and then repeating it in criticism. Criti-hype, in other words:

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

Think of ESG: the right is freaking out that ESG is harming shareholders by leaving hydrocarbons in the ground to appease climate-addled greenies. The reality is that ESG is barely disguised greenwashing, and it's fully compatible with burning every critter that died in the Mesozoic, Cenozoic, and lo, even the Paleozoic:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/15/sanctions-financing/#profiteers

The reason this tactic is so successful is that Americans have also been sold another narrative: that American problems are solved by American individuals as entrepreneurs and businesspeople, not as polities or as members of a union (let alone the working class!).

This is the subject of the second book Lowenstein reviews, One Day I’ll Work for Myself: The Dream and Delusion That Conquered America, by Benjamin Waterhouse:

https://wwnorton.com/books/one-day-ill-work-for-myself/

A keystone of American narrative capitalism is the idea that the USA is a nation of small businesspeople, Jeffersonian yeoman farmsteaders of the US economy. But even a cursory examination shows that the country is ruled – economically and politically – by very large firms.

Uber sells itself as a way to be your own boss ("No shifts. No boss. No limits.") – even though it's a system where the app is your boss, and thanks to that layer of misdirection, Uber gets to be the worst conceivable boss, while its workers have no recourse in labor law:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

In labor fights, Uber represents itself as the champion of innumerable "small businesspeople" who drive its unlicensed taxis. In consumer protection fights, Amazon claims to be fighting for "small businesspeople" who sell on its platform. In privacy fights, Facebook claims to represent "small businesspeople" who buy its surveillance advertising.

But large firms are actively hostile to small firms, seeing them as small-fry to be rooked or destroyed (recall that when Amazon targeted small publishers for bankruptcy-level discounts, they called the program "The Gazelle Project" and Bezos told his executives to tackle these firms "the way a cheetah pursues a sickly gazelle").

Decades of this tale have produced "a profound shift from a shared belief that individuals might come together to solve problems, into a collective faith in individual effort." America's long love-affair with rugged individualism was weaponized in the 1970s by corporations seeking to shed their regulatory obligation to workers, customers, and the environment.

As with Big Tech today, the big business lobby held up mom-and-pop businesses as the true beneficiaries of deregulation, even as they knifed these firms. A telling anecdote comes from someone who worked for the Chamber of Commerce's magazine Nation's Business: when this editor pointed out that many of the magazine's subscribers were small businesspeople and asked if they could start including articles relevant to mom-and-pops, the editor in chief said, "Over my dead body."

The neoliberal era has been an unbroken string of platitudes celebrating the small business and policies that annihilate their chances against large firms. Ronald Reagan's dewy-eyed hymns to American entrepreneurship sounded nice, but what matters is that he attempted to abolish the Small Business Administration and refused to address the 20,000 attendee "White House Conference on Small Business."

In the years since, American has sacrificed its small businesses while pulling out all the stops – bailouts and tax cuts and elite bankruptcy – to keep its largest firms growing. New regulations like Dodd-Frank were neutered in the name of saving mom-and-pop shops, even though the provisions that were cut already exempted small businesses.

Today, millions of Americans are treading water in a fetid stew of LLC-poisoning, rise-and-grind, multi-level-marketing, dropshipping and gig-work, convinced that the only way to get a better life is to pull themselves up by their bootstraps:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/10/declaration-of-interdependence/

Narrative does a lot of work here. The American economy runs on bubbles, another form of narrative capitalism. Take AI, a subject I sincerely wish I could stop hearing about, not least because I'm certain that 99% of that thinking is being wasted on whatever residue remains after the bubble pops:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

AI isn't going to do your job, but its narrative may convince your boss to fire you and replace you with a bot that can't do your job. Like what happened when Air Canada hired a chatbot to answer customer inquiries and it started making shit up about bereavement discounts that the company later claimed it didn't have to honor:

https://bc.ctvnews.ca/air-canada-s-chatbot-gave-a-b-c-man-the-wrong-information-now-the-airline-has-to-pay-for-the-mistake-1.6769454

This story's been all over the news for the past couple of days, but so far as I've seen, no one has pointed out the seemingly obvious inference that this chatbot probably ripped off lots of people. The victim here was extraordinarily persistent, chasing a refund for 10 weeks and then going to the regulator. This guy is a six-sigma self-advocate – which implies a whole bell-curve's worth of comparatively normal people who just ate the shit-sandwich Air Canada fed them.

The reason AI is a winning proposition for Air Canada isn't that it can do a customer service rep's job – it can't. But the AI is a layer of indirection – like the app that is the true boss of Uber drivers – that lets Air Canada demoralize the customers it steals from into walking away from their losses.

Nevertheless, the narrative that AI Will Change Everything Forever is powerful – more powerful than AI itself, that's for sure. Take this Bloomberg headline: "Nearly all wealth gained by world's rich this year comes from AI":

https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/nearly-all-wealth-gained-by-world-s-rich-this-year-comes-from-ai-124021600006_1.html

Dig in and you find even more narrative. The single largest beneficiary of AI stock gains last year was Mark Zuckerberg ($161B!). Zuck is American Narrative Capitalism's greatest practitioner: the guy who made billions peddling a series of lies, from "pivot to video" to "metaverse," leaping from one lie to the next just ahead of the mass stock-selloffs that wiped out lesser predators.

The Narrative Capitalism Cinematic Universe has a lot of side-plots like AI and entrepreneurship and woke capitalism, but its main narrative arc was articulated, ad nauseum, by Margaret Thatcher: "There is no alternative." This is the most important part of the story, the part that says it literally can't be otherwise. The only way to organize society is through markets, and the only way to organize markets is to leave them alone, no matter how much suffering they cause.

This is a baffling story, because it's so easily disproved. Zuck says the only way to have friends is to let him surveil you from asshole to appetite, even though he once ran Facebook as the privacy-forward alternative to MySpace, and promised never to spy on you:

https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1128876

Likewise, the business leaders – and their chorus of dutiful Renfields – who insist that monopoly is the natural and inevitable outcome of any market economy just handwave away the decades during which anti-monopoly enforcement actually kept most businesses from getting too big to fail and too big to jail.

I'm no champion of market efficiency – especially not as the best and final arbiter of social and economic questions – but when I hear my comrades repeating the Thatcherite claims that all forms of capitalism necessarily degrade into monopolistic quagmires, that there is no alternative, it sounds like more criti-hype.

This is a frequent point of departure during discussions of enshittification: some people dismiss the whole idea of enshittification as "just capitalism." But we had decades of digital services that either didn't degrade, or, when they did, were replaced by superior competitors with a minimum of switching costs for users who migrated from the decaying incumbent to greener pastures.

The reality is that while there are problems with all forms of capitalism, there are different kinds of capitalist problems, and some forms of capitalism are less harmful to working people and more capable of enacting and enforcing sound policy than others.

Enshittification is what happens when the constraints on the worst impulses of companies and their investors and managers are removed. When a company doesn't have competitors, when it can capture its regulators to trample our rights with impunity, when it can enlist those regulators to shut down would-be competitors who might free us from its "walled garden," and when it can fire any worker who refuses to enact harm upon the users they serve, then that company will enshittify:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel

A company can be made to treat you well, even if it is run by a wicked person who sees you as a mark to be fleeced – that mustache twirler just has to be constrained – by competition, regulation, self-help and labor. He may still hate you and wish you harm, but he won't be able to act on it.

As MLK said:

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, religion and education will have to do that, but it can restrain him from lynching me. And I think that's pretty important also. And so that while legislation may not change the hearts of men, it does change the habits of men. And we see this every day.

#pluralistic #narrative capitalism #oligarchy #temporarily embarrassed millionaires #late-stage capitalism #enshittification #disenshittification #vocational awe #fobazi ettarh #ai #bubbles #bubblenomics #rise and grind #Benjamin C. Waterhouse #One Day I’ll Work for Myself #Kyle Edward Williams #Taming the Octopus #woke capitalism #llcs with mfas

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melrosing · 7 months ago

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I’m sorry if you’ve been asked this before but what do you think brienne’s endgame is? I hate got and how it ended but it made me hopeful my baby girl is surviving the series :’) esp since everyone treated her dying as a foregone conclusion

hello! I have talked about it here and there but I’m not really certain of anything except that she survives :) one thing I keep coming back to is that Brienne is (in my mind) very much a figurehead for the next generation. to me she really represents a kind of optimism for what tomorrow could be. whether jaime survives or doesn’t, his story is about what was wrong w yesterday, so I think of Brienne’s story as an answer to his, w the two characters joining in the middle.

in terms of where she ends up circumstantially…. I like the idea of her becoming a hedge knight of some kind, bc I think what annoys me about the idea of Bri guarding Sansa or Bran (at least the way the show portrays it) is that she ends up treated like a reward for the Starks, or getting to serve the Starks IS her reward. I love the Stark kids but i really believe that part of Brienne’s story is learning that it’s not about serving people but purposes, and finding her own purpose in this world. her worth isn’t determined by the person she has sworn her sword to, she gets to define it.

and also I really feel one of the most moving things about Bri’s story is that she stands up for those who have no one else to stand up for them, I.e. no chance and no choice. spending the rest of her life in service to House Stark feels like a waste of her.

HOWEVER, I wouldn’t entirely rule out the idea of KG Brienne…. but in my mind that would have to look really, really different to how the show portrayed it. for one thing, the books serve to dismantle the KG as an institution. the KG as it currently stands means that members sacrifice everything they believe, want and are for the sake of the King or Queen, whoever that might be. that can leave you serving ppl like Aerys. could also leave you serving ppl like Egg! but still, soon enough you’re serving Aerys.

I can imagine King Bran’s KG being a really different kind of institution. fisher king Bran is supposed to serve and represent the realm; his welfare is theirs. he is not a political entity. so I can kind of picture a version of the KG that kind of harkens more to what knighthood is supposed to be: literally knights of the seven kingdoms, who serve the people, not the person. perhaps they aren’t even tied to Bran’s side. maybe they’re representatives who wander up and down the 7K serving its peoples in whatever way they can. and they are chosen for the roles bc they represent true knighthood as Brienne does.

anyway to me this resonates more w what Brienne has represented in the narrative so far, and I don’t think it strips her of her personhood the way the GOT finale does, where she’s serving a king she doesn’t know who apparently doesn’t care to know her, has been made to look a fool and is essentially punished for falling in love, is now just a cold, sterile sort of character who has been rewarded with a promotion in place of her personhood. Brienne is a character w so much heart, and that ending was empty of it :/

I don’t hate the idea of Brienne taking her place as Evenstar of Tarth but I’ve never quiiite been able to picture it bc I think it limits the scope of the kind of good she wants to do as a knight. I don’t know that I see her future as entirely divorced from Tarth, but I think it resonates more for me that Brienne can keep roaming and following her heart where it leads her. and as I say lol I have no idea whether Jaime lives or not but I think that’s what he would want for her also either way.

anyway those are just some ideas! I’ve been thinking about fisher king Bran today following the ask from earlier and this made me think a bit more about how I see Brienne tying into that endgame

#ask #brienne of tarth #dream would be jb both serving as knights of the 7K but I have to maintain a level of pessimism where Jaime is concerned #asoiaf

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gatheringbones · 2 months ago

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[“A deep grievance of the peasant was the contempt in which he was held by the other classes. Aside from the rare note of compassion, most tales and ballads depict him as aggressive, insolent, greedy, sullen, suspicious, tricky, unshaved, unwashed, ugly, stupid and credulous or sometimes shrewd and witty, incessantly discontented, usually cuckolded. In satiric tales it was said the villein’s soul would find no place in Paradise or anywhere else because the demons refused to carry it owing to the foul smell. In the chansons de geste he is scorned as inept in combat and poorly armed, mocked for his manners, his morals, even his misery.

The name Jacques or Jacques Bonhomme to designate a peasant was used by nobles as a term of derision derived from the padded surplice called “jacque” which the peasant wore for protective armor in war. The knights saw him as a person of ignoble instincts who could have no understanding of “honor” and was therefore capable of every kind of deceit and incapable of trust. Ideally he should be treated decently, yet the accepted proverb ran, “Smite a villein and he will bless you; bless a villein and he will smite you.” An extraordinary passage from the tale Le Despit au Vilain breathes hatred with an intensity that seems more than mere storytelling. “Tell me, Lord, if you please, by what right or title does a villein eat beef?… And goose, of which they have plenty? And this troubles God. God suffers from it and I too. For they are a sorry lot, these villeins who eat fat goose! Should they eat fish? Rather let them eat thistles and briars, thorns and straw and hay on Sunday and pea-pods on weekdays. They should keep watch without sleep and have trouble always; that is how villeins should live. Yet each day they are full and drunk on the best wines, and in fine clothes. The great expenditures of villeins comes at a high cost, for it is this that destroys and ruins the world. It is they who spoil the common welfare. From the villein comes all unhappiness. Should they eat meat? Rather should they chew grass on the heath with the horned cattle and go naked on all fours.…” These tales were addressed to an upper-class audience. Was this what they wanted to hear, or was it a satire of their attitude?

In theory, the tiller of the soil and his livestock were immune from pillage and the sword. No reality of medieval life more harshly mocked the theory. Chivalry did not apply outside the knights’ own class. The records tell of peasants crucified, roasted, dragged behind horses by the brigands to extort money. There were preachers who pointed out that the peasant worked unceasingly for all, often overwhelmed by his tasks, and who pleaded for more kindness, but all they could advise the victim was patience, obedience, and resignation.

In 1358 his misery had reached a peak. Brigands seized the seed grain out of his hand, stole his animals for their food, his carts for their loot, his tools and plowshares to forge their weapons. Yet the lords continued to demand fees and taxes and extra aids for their heavy ransoms, “and even for that hardly put themselves out to protect their vassals from attack.” The common people “groaned,” wrote Jean de Venette, “to see dissipated in games and ornaments the sums they had so painfully furnished for the needs of war.”]

barbara w. tuchman, from a distant mirror: the calamitous 14th century, 1987

#barbara w. tuchman #history stuff #currently reading

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