#and make the product and the people making it suffer

[mesetacadre]

107 years ago today an organized group of workers in the Russian Empire decided they had had enough of war, misery, the oppression of women, and of a corrupt democracy that had promised much and changed nothing, the Tsar still in his palaces, the workers still giving their life for a cause foreign to the working class of Europe and the world. Most bolsheviks were industrial workers, with an insufficient formal education, precarious salaries and conditions. The working class in the Russian Empire had tried liberal democracy, had seen its hipocrisy in the months following the election of the provisional government, and understood their historic goal of progressing further beyond the democracy of the landowner, businessman and aristocrat. It wasn't the first time the proletariat had attempted to take power, both worldwide and in the Russian Empire, but this time they were ready, educated, an organized enough.

The armies of 14 imperialist powers combined could not stop the will of a mass of workers that had realized their worth, their potential, and most importantly, their dignity. They no longer had to bow down to paternalism, electoralism, and the capitalists to whom they sold their labor, no armed intervention, no amount of propaganda, no adventurist distraction, could take away from that fact. This isn't a fantasy, it isn't idealistic, it's a historical fact, that revolutions are possible, have happened, succeeded, and that the opportunity presents itself sooner than most expect. The only task at hand is to organize towards it. Agitation, education, an actual dual power structure predicated on a unified will, not on voluntarism and horizontalism.

I understand the topic at hand for the last 2 days and many more to come will be the results of the US election. But the US is not the only liberal democracy that increasingly creates disappointment among the social majority. After all the posting about the various liberals that make up the US electoral environment, it is imperious that nobody falls into despair. Not in a self-care way, not in the way most left-liberals have been talking about, referring to an abstract sense of "preparing", but because of the simple necessity for this election to further erode any popular faith in reformism, whether it's Trump's reforms, Harris' reforms, Bernie's reforms, or Stein's reforms. Wallowing in despair is as useful as placing yet more stake into whoever is wheeled out next to promise even less, in what will most certainly be also called the most important elections of our lifetimes.

Return to the working class of the Russian Empire, of a fractured and hungry China, to the colony of Indochina, to the plantation island that was Cuba. And I urge you to exercise some perspective. These masses of people had suffered more than you for longer than you. Nobody's asking you to feel guilty about your economic position in the world, we're asking you to realize that, for as long as there have been modes of production predicated on the exploitation, division and discrimination of a producing class, there have always been options, better options than sinking into despondent depression. They have managed to cast off their yoke and build towards a society not based on exploitation. They're not utopias, and mistakes have been and will be committed, but they all realized and understood that it's better to commit our own mistakes, than to toil under the rational oppression by another class for any longer.

[psychotrenny]

I reckon the whole HalimedeMF thing was a funny enough bit by itself, but it's a really grim sign that so many people completely missed the point. Like you've got this comical exaggeration of a Chaser "ally", someone whose "support" for trans women is clearly nothing but the product of dehumanising sexual desire, and yet Trans Women are such a viciously marginalised demographic that so many girls will latch onto every illusory shred of support and "acceptance" they see. It's especially miserable when you think about how that's more or less the way real chasers operate too; exploiting our vulnerability for their own gratification and half the time getting thanked for it

Your average HalimedeMF post was something like "It's so sad that Trans suffers when she should be giving me dick. Dick specifically. Did I mention the dick?" and so many people responded like "Wow she actually thinks it's sad when Trans suffers? I need her so bad". Like girl this isn't someone you're meant to want around this is the caricature of someone to be laughed at and blocked.

And I know a lot of girls were just playing along with the bit but there was consistently a scary amount of sincerity to that sort of thing. Like seeing girls so desperate to feel wanted in any way that they develop positive feelings towards the shadow of an exploitative creep really reminds you of just how dire things are. Living under societal transmisogyny really does make you feel like a lower form of life; even scraps of decency seem like a privilege

[kirks-slutty-red-tights]

be nice to each other. help and support each other. be nice to yourself because you deserve it, and so that you can help your community.

yes, even those people.

we do not benefit from fighting each other. politicians see all of us as people who can make them more money and give them more power, and they lose that when we are a community.

love must win. simple acts of kindness must win. trump's biggest goal is to foster hatred towards each other; to get instinctual emotional reactions from us.

you may be angry, you may be fucking enraged, and you are valid for feeling that way. but i believe that you can channel that towards something productive: kindness.

and i want to be clear, for usamericans reading this, this does not just mean kindness for your fellow americans. support those that suffer in other countries when you can.

if you ever feel like there's nothing you can do, remember that even a small act of kindness goes a long way.

[thealogie]

Gotta preface it with ‘I’m not from the US, so obviously don’t understand lots about how election results affect everyday life of people living there’. Also, if I suddenly, still being myself, became a US citizen with a right to vote, I can’t imagine voting for Trump. Saying all that, I don’t think labelling half of the country, tens of millions of people, genuinely evil is very productive or even mentally honest.

I am from the part of the world, which suffered from both republican and democrat US administrations, and lately most of the geopolitical games resulting in tons of blood, have been played, obviously, by democrats. I have to say that I find their utter hypocrisy deeply disgusting. At least your republicans, how I see it, don’t even mask being monsters, they say it like it is. When two negotiating sides state their goals outright, it is possible to come to an agreement at least marginally better than when one side is always being two(3,4,5)-faced, making a point to wrap their actual goals (if they even know them) in pretty words about democracy while double-crossing their negotiation partner even before the ink has dried.

I know that you’re from Iran and are aware of how deeply destructive US foreign policies can be, increasingly so since the start of this century. With one caveat that Trump seems to be especially hostile to Iran, and a democrat would’ve been marginally better when it comes to the US policy regarding Iran. It’s not the same for all parts of the world though, so we might not all be unbiased observers here.

I know that foreign policy doesn’t decide US elections, I only wrote this longwinded nonsense to say that maybe there are solid reasons for half of the US to prefer Trump and reject the democrats, like for the rest of the world there are reasons for either. Economic, political, whatever. Maybe liberals should look into these reasons before dismissing millions of people as genuinely evil, like Hillary did in her time. Idk about you, but when she called half of the country ‘deplorables’ or whatever, no one I know and no one I read (not from US) felt sympathetic. It just sounded incredibly entitled and delusional, and plain dumb. And it looks like since Hillary democrats haven’t learned or even attempted to learn anything, it’s still ‘half of our nation is broken and evil and we can’t do anything about it’. But it’s not how people work, in my opinion. Yes, they might not care about minorities first, they might care about themselves first, but doesn’t it mean that politicians should identify their problems and offer solutions? Isn’t it how it works? Dehumanazing Trump supporters will only radicalize them more, isn’t it what in fact happened, and how it always works with people in general?

Idk about life inside the US, like I said, but how I see it, the only ones to blame here are democrats and liberals in general. If people in the world, and I’m sure inside the US, will see that they finally start addressing the problems instead of hiding behind empty rhetoric, if the level of hypocrisy and delusional entitlement decreases at least to some degree, the support for right-wing populists will also decrease, I’m sure of it. Because most people are not ‘genuinely evil’, but they become embittered and cruel when their concerns are continuously dismissed, things start to fester resulting in ugly political outcomes. I mean, I know you know all this, sorry for being so boring and longwinded. It’s just that I usually like your takes (I came for MASH and stayed for the neighbors as well), including political ones, but here I got a bit of a whiplash, sorry.

I appreciate this thoughtful note. You don’t have to like my takes for us to be on friendly terms. And to be clear I do forever and always blame democrats and liberals for not energizing the people who agree with them.

But as you say you don’t live here and so there’s no way for me to convey to you without asking you to spend months reading right wing political accounts here and talking to people here that a sizable number of the people who support this man are genuinely bad people and want me and people like me out of this country.

This comes from hundreds of personal encounters over the past 8 years and spending the past three months reading dozens and dozens of pieces of reporting that are like “I went to talk to voters in a small town, here’s what they had to say.” And the things you hear are: purge this country of immigrants, make America a dominating force in the world again, get us back to traditional values where women are popping out babies…oh yeah and also the economy would be better under him.

Like idk what you want me to call sexist, homophobic, white supremacists but I think they are evil. And I think it used to be that the Republican Party was more polite about all of these beliefs so I could understand people being disaffected and voting for them for reasons other than hating other humans but now we’re just saying the quiet part out loud and there’s no plausible deniability

[snattachcanine]

Edit: My political ideology can be summed up as, "No living thing should be forced to suffer to exist. Especially for the sole benefit of a tiny population. That's called parasitism, kids, and that's bad."

US political BS:

To every single woman that voted red, why do you fucking hate other women so much. You just signed the rights away to your body, your right to work and be independent, your right to education, and your right to vote.

To every single person that voted red, why the fuck did you vote the Nazi party into power. Did you all bloody forget the lead up to the Nazis being voted into power in Germany? Why is the collective memory of you ingrates so horrible?! Oh wait, it's because the Republican party destroyed the US school system under Bush. That would explain it!

Trump is a puppet and clown but he's a dangerous one and the groups this orange moron is aligned with know that. Trump isn't the problem (other than literally being a felon but the asshole is rich and we know the justice system can be bought if you know who to talk to), it's who's lining his pocket and pulling the strings, that will be getting these bullshit laws passed.

I don't care for Harris but Project 2025 is a literal Nazi party takeover manifesto underneath a Christian Nationalist veneer.

You people are shit Christians, the actual teachings of Jesus as they are in the bible are NOT what is written in that horrifying document.

As it stands, the US just elected a religious extremist group into power. The same type of religious extremists that are making life god awful for regular Muslims (as they're the dominant religious group being affected in these countries) in the Middle East. Why did you vote in the Christian equivalent?!

Just... There literally is no future, is there?

All because people that think the world can't change vote in people (let's face it, usually men) that make life worse because they can sell a good product. This is the vast amount of how actual Republicans around me think, they don't believe the world can be better or that people can do good so they make everyone around them bloody miserable.

Project 2025 destroys women's rights, LGBTQ+ rights, agriculture, and a whole host of things we fought hard for and subsequently took for granted.

Good job guys that voted red. Bravo.

[arseniccattails]

Like, I genuinely do think the fascist voters are gonna wake up one day and realize they're in the bad timeline. They're going to rationalize away their responsibility, but their kids and elders will die of disease. They won't be able to afford agricultural products. If you don't think these people watch porn, you're kidding yourself. They probably watch it a lot more than you. Liberal women—who are still most women, white women aside—will want much less to do with them (this is already true). Rent won't go down, because high rent benefits the business owning class—they're who's making it high already.

They're so, so stupid. But I think even they will understand that they're suffering. Cold consolation.

[rmelster]

@alaskan-wallflower YESSSS! Finally someone talks about it.

Would have been much better if instead of starting his povs with “the albino” or “Silas the Albino” he would have put some more though and started them as “the monk”. Silas may have been very mindful of his albinism when it was the supposed cause of the mistreatment his mother and himself suffered from the hand of his drunken father, and the contempt he received from those he met afterwards as a homeless youth and as a prisoner, but now? Now he would much better deem himself as “the monk”, “the weapon of God”, “the faithful”, because that is what his brainwashed head would think.

I grant Dan Brown that representing albinism can be quite difficult (specially since there is a great lack of classical character with albinism that have not been portrayed as “evil”, “witchy” or “mad”, the only one that comes to my mind being king Zāl from the Shahnameh), but for God’s sake, it was 2003, not 1803. He did try to fend himself saying that Silas “was a tragic character, product of the manipulation of his spiritual guide and the mistreatment he suffered as a son and as a stray boy”. But not only does he represent the character’s behaviour in a very stereotypical way -“he liked the pain”-, but the whole representation of his albinism (AND HIS HEALTH STATE) is like. Wattpad level.

It should also be noted that Dan Brown seems to believe that Silas’ many trials and hardships made him thrive in the physical aspect, turning him into a very strong guy. And honestly, I DON’T BELIEVE HIM. I would much rather believe the ol’ reliable of “genetics” -since Silas’ father, a docker, was said to be strong too- before believing than him being half starved, always cold and alone since he was seven, and the many “physical punishments” he bestowed himself, turned him into the deathly weapon he is by the beginning of the book. It would be more realistic if he was some sickly, lanky and anguished man that had to use his wits and what little force he has left to kill the people.

But Dan Brown just went “what if I make this guy have albinism, that would be so cool” and forgot any research. Anyways.

i’m reading the da vinci code because i heard there was a character with albinism and holy shit lmfao

they had me when they said he had ‘translucent white skin and red eyes’ but when i got more into it and found out he’s a fuckinf SHARPSHOOTER?? and he can drive? and READ FINE PRINT?

Also I think this quote from an article is important:

“Michael McGowan, an albino who heads the National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation, said "The Da Vinci Code" will be the 68th movie since 1960 to feature an evil albino.” this article was written in 2006 btw (i love the referring to McGowan as ‘an albino’ too, shit goes hard./s)

god i love the portrayal of albinism in media. it’s so warped.

[uncanny-tranny]

The bourgeois or "exploiting class" doesn't inherently include the person who gets their nails done biweekly, or the disabled person who has a carer, or the guy who got a $70 video game for full-price, or the person who relies on medication (yes even the ones you don't think they "need"), or anything else like this. None of these people will, on average, have the ability to exploit workers by means of ownership or whatever.

While you are busy fighting with fellow workers, you are still being exploited by your boss, by capitalism, by (potentially) not having healthcare, by being overworked and underpaid, and so are they.

[waterlinkedgirl]

Musical Touken Ranbu: Michinooku ~ Hitotsu Hachisu (Michinooku ~ A Single Lotus)

Here we go! Only a few days after the archive release and toumyu's ninth anniversary (congratulations!)

Michioku, or Michihasu, is a myu I have many conflicting feelings about, both positive and negative. However, I do believe that with the right amount of care in the next Mika-related story myu, the negative can still be cleared. Plus, I'm glad about a lot of things being re-established. The writer does need to step up her game a little on the plot-writing side of things, as well as the understanding-and-respecting-past-myu side of things, but as long as she does, this can still be given a proper place within what was already established.

Keep in mind that these are only the subtitle files, timed and tled to the DMM senshuuraku and the bluray respectively. The archive version will have a talk at the start, so the starting times of the subs will have to be delayed accordingly.

You can find the subtitles and my TL notes document here!

[jewreallythinkthat]

Call me old fashioned but when I see suffering alongside those who are not suffering (in the same way at least), my first thought is not to drag down those who are happy so they can experience suffering themselves, but to instead try and work out how those suffering can be raised up so everyone is living happily and peacefully.

And if to stop one group suffering, I must instead pass that pain onto others, I simply don't make a decision about who I executively decide to be mose deserving of suffering but instead put in the effort to find another way

[legionofpotatoes]

star wars outlaws

[faunandfloraas]

Can someone let companies know it's okay to make like lipsticks and face moisturisers that don't have strong ass perfumes in them

[julnites]

Do you have any drawing of your own Spiderman?

I do In fact! I made a spidersona a bit ago and then just touched up the design elements recently. It's mainly inspired by corvids, specifially crows and european magpies!

[miamicommune]

.

[starredforlife]

If you fucking morons cared one ounce as much for palestine as you do for this horrid little show.

[homophyte]

there is a rapidly evolving rhetoric against transgender cowardice that is deeply shaming nd it worries me a lot