#but obviously mostly antis as this is a more common issue on their side

[hottakes-of-twosided-logic]

Hot take of today

This goes out to both sides, but considering a certain side has more of a problem with this *antis*

Invalidating others for their trauma, shared views or not is never fucking ok

It’s especially not fucking ok under ANY circumstances to tell someone that they should

KYS or much less don’t fucking say someone deserves or deserved to be SA’d , it’s not fucking cool it ain’t fucking cute and it’s especially not “morally correct” you don’t get a pass just cause you believe to be of higher standing than them

It goes without saying that internet drama should never be reason enough to tell a survivor that their trauma was deserved proship or not

[matan4il]

hello! as someone who's very much uneducated about the israel-hamas war but wants to educate themself more on the topic, I just want to ask if wikipedia is a good place to start? obviously it's not the be all end all and further research is necessary but do you think it's a good starting place? since with longer texts after some point my brain stops being able to properly comprehend them lol. if it's not then can you direct me to other, more reliable sources? I know it's quite a big ask but I don't want to go around using terms and saying things I don't understand and spread misinformation in the process ^^;;

Hi Nonnie! I just wanna start by commending you for the desire to educate yourself. It's not easy, this conflict has many aspects, and goes back quite a while, so I understand people who don't want to. All the more respect to you for having this willingness to dive in! *hugs*

Wikipedia is def not a reliable resource. I was an editor for a while, because I wanted to contribute my Jewish history knowledge. What I discovered as a Jew is, that it's a website with a bias towards antisemitism. Because Wikipedia is open for anyone to edit, the dominant narrative between two conflicting sides is always going to come down to numbers. Which side has more people to add new pages, or edit existing ones? Which side has more representatives for when disputes are settled with a vote (which is a dumb way to settle encyclopedic disputes... at a certain moment in history, the popular vote would have determined that the earth is flat). So consider that there are a mere 15 million Jews worldwide. Meanwhile, according to a global survey by the ADL, about 26% of the adult human population harbors antisemitic views. That's over one BILLION adults. When those are the proportions, unsurprisingly Wikipedia has an antisemitic bias. I've seen it on pages that have nothing to do with the Israeli-Arab conflict, too.

But don't just take my word on it! Here's an example of an academic article that touches exactly on the antisemitic bias of Wikipedia:

A resource that I like for understanding the Jewish/Israeli POV is the Jewish Virtual Library. It's dedicated to Jewish history in general, and as part of that, covers the conflict. I like it as a resource, because it's encyclopedic in nature, it contains a lot of parts of the conflict that tend to be erased by less history-oriented websites, it is organized in a manner that's relatively easy to use (I would recommend starting with "Israel" and "Myths & Facts", but you also have a search function), it doesn't look away from some criticism of Israel, and at the same time, I've never seen any anti-Palestinian sentiment/bias on there. Another resource is Unpacked, a project that aims to do about the same thing, but mostly in video form (they also have a website). I think its biggest downsides are, that with the video format, it's sometimes too condensed to do some issue justice, and that the website is a bit harder to navigate.

I looked at other encyclopedic resources online and... most of them are just not that in depth, because not being dedicated to this conflict specifically, they start for the most part in 1947, and miss a lot of the historical context that precedes the events of that year.

If I were to recommend specific books, on why a false narrative has become very common regarding this conflict, I would point to The New Historians by Efraim Karsh (it deals with how biased historians fabricate a false narrative about the conflict... To prove the falsifications, Karsh goes back to some of the most critical documents and events in the history of the conflict, examining the original evidence. I learned A LOT that I had no idea about from this book), and Industry of Lies by Ben Dror Yemini (same thing. This book was the first place where I learned stuff like... that Israel had actually offered to take as citizens some of the Arabs who had fled the 1947-1949 War, or that during the war, there were places where Jews were asking Arabs not to leave, such as over the radio in Haifa). You can also search both of these men online, they have stuff they've shared since publishing these books.

I hope this helps? And of course, if you need help with any specific question, I will try my best for you! Have a great day! xoxox

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[anakinsafterlife]

More Thoughts on Dune

I had to go see Dune again, so I booked the afternoon showing in the Imax theatre, which was bound to hurt my ears, especially whilst fasting, but I just couldn't stop thinking about it. 😅

Having now seen the 1984 movie and the 2001 miniseries, I realize what a comparatively great job Villeneuve did with heavy issues like race and religion (1984 Fremen were all white, while 2001 looked mostly like tanned/slight darker Caucasians, with a few dark skinned extras. But both older versions are mostly very silly and, artistically speaking, poorly rendered. I can see why people kept trying to remake it).

I do still stand by my original post, because of course the director could have done better, but the movie is still a masterpiece and honestly a thousand times more sensitive and informed than the other two attempts to film it. I just feel like if they were going to go to comparatively great effort to get it right this time, why not go all the way and hire more Arab actors (there are plenty even in Hollywood), use more Arabic terms and religious accuracy, etc, instead of indulging in orientalist tropes.

Anyway, I won't go back into the rant, but basically the only negative things I noticed...

... the second time around, were 1) Added, probable anti-Russian racism in the Harkonnens. I didn't notice the first time because I was focused on the mixed treatment of the Space Arabs, but given that Dune was written in the 60s, I'm fairly sure that that the struggle between Harkonnen and Atreides represents the Cold War struggle between the USSR and the United States and Western Europe over physical resources and land power.

2) I also noticed this time copious usage of the "Yellow Middle Eastern Filter."

Even if you haven't heard of it, you have most definitely seen it. It's that yellow haze that lies across the landscape whenever American movies go to some place "exotic," like the Middle East, Mexico, India, etc. It's unspoken propaganda of the most insidious kind, as it imparts to the audience a sense that this place is dry, dusty, and dangerous. (Someone else IRL also mentioned to me that the yellow filter makes people's skin look darker, which is another valid point given the potentially racist implications and assumptions).

The yellow filter is so common, in fact, that I remember being shocked and uneasy when I moved to Dubai, some years back now, because the sky looked blue and normal and not, in fact, hazy and yellow. I didn't even know why I was confused at the time, as the filter is insidious enough that, even when you see it, you often don't really notice it. I only learned officially about the yellow filter a couple of years or so ago, and it makes me mildly furious now every time I actively notice it used in a movie.

So yes, that the yellow desert filter was used is another 'code' for Space Arabia. Which...obvious.

On the story side, I noticed that Jessica and Paul change sides in terms of their opinion of the "prophecy" and whether Paul should claim that narrative. Jessica seems initially opposed, saying, "Your father didn't believe in revenge," while Paul says that he does. But once he grows close to Chani, he eschews the prophecy, only embracing it again after he drinks the Water of Life. That is interesting, because the water gives clear prophecy that the drinkers see as absolute truth. They then attempt to fulfill those truths, which makes me think that these prophecies, like so many, are self-fulfilling. That also explains why Jessica's demeanor changed so absolutely after she drank the water. In becoming a Reverend Mother with prophetic insight, she ironically became less Fremen than she might have before. Is this a metaphor for even the friendliest Westerners losing their sincerity once they have 'tasted' the profits to be made in the Middle East/Global South? 🤔 (But also, obviously, Jessica was always a mother in this story and she would do anything to protect her son, including exploiting an entire culture and religion, *even* if it meant driving him away from her. That is, of course, why one of the first scenes in the movie is of her saving Paul's life by brutally murdering a man.)

I am so, so torn about this movie. I love it and am drawn to it in numerous complex ways that tie into my own personal history as a person who lives, culturally, at the crossroads of east and west. It also clearly articulates the struggle for power and resources that lies at the heart of colonialism and other extended occupations. Yet, again, I recognize the weaknesses of this movie as well as its many strengths.

So torn. Going away to cry now. 😢

[mbti-notes]

Anon wrote: Hi there, and Happy Holidays! I hope you’re doing well. I’m having trouble determining my type - I’m currently torn between INFP and INFJ. You seem very well-informed on Jung’s theory, so I’d like to ask for a type assessment from you. My main conflict is what feeling function I use.

For extra info, I’m 21F. I have ADHD-PI, social anxiety and depression, as well as some trauma, which may affect how I present myself as well as my level of health. I think, regardless of which functions I use, I use them in an unhealthy manner. It’s also worth noting that I don’t have a lot of life experience due to a sheltered upbringing (over-protective parents and relatively lavish home life meant that I never felt the need to demand much from the outside world).

INFP:

Dominant Fi:

I do have a one-sidedness when it comes to my values (if you could call them that, I’m really not sure), deeming types of hobbies, fashion, ambitions, and as such subsets of people as superior or inferior depending on what I think of them. My judgment affects how I see others in a big way. For example, I’ll judge people for dressing in a way I perceive to be “lazy”, because “do they not realise how they look to other people?”. Then, I’ll assume that they’re not associating with beyond common courtesy. Obviously, I know this line of thinking could seem haughty of me, so I don’t express this to others.

I place a lot of value on sophistication, intellect and manners, and expect the same of everyone else as well. My values mostly revolve around my expectations of how people should behave. I’m easily disappointed when I fail to notice these values in others, because my perspectives are based on what I truly believe is best for humanity at large. I recognise that this could be seen as imposing, and I never directly call people out for behaviour I dislike - I would rather persuade them to my side diplomatically.

I’ll be honest, the main reason I believe my feeling process to be introverted is the fact that I just can’t connect to my country’s culture, and it makes me resent it. It’s so heavily focused on everything I have no interest in; drinking, sport, nights out, TV. There’s a worrying amount of anti-intellectualism beginning to prevail too. It bothers me to the point that I want to emigrate, just so I can find likeminded people elsewhere. As such, I have difficulty seeing any values I hold as objective (as much as I wish for them to be universal), when I’m so disconnected from the objective world around me.

Inferior Te:

I lack the fundamental ability to implement solid solutions to my problems. I’m generally very inefficient and dependent on others to help me with this, such as homework in the past or filling in applications. I do struggle to fathom how people navigate the business world and the likes so seamlessly, and I often find myself admiring their ruthless nature. This is probably because my lack of natural assertion has led to problems within my personal life.

I become extremely cold and judgmental under stress, and only care about myself. I tend to self-centredly blame everyone but myself for the issues in the world, including me not being able to identify with those around me, and desperately want to “correct” them. This could be construed as black-and-white thinking in terms of morality. I rely on external standards to amplify my self-image, such as high grades in the past. Despite my coldness, I can flip to being ridiculously sensitive when someone makes me feel inadequate or beneath them, and it can lead to me being snappy with others.

Auxilary Ne:

I believe I use Ne as an escape from the world. I’ll often turn to fantasy as a way to cope. I have used this to procrastinate more pressing issues that I didn’t want to deal with, preferring to live in my daydreams where everything is easier. While I do have very complex worlds in my head, this can be enriched by things outside of it too. For example, I’ll admire the dynamics of a friendship group in a show, and wish for that for myself. So, I form an ideal group in my mind. This serves as a double-edged sword, because while it can be meaningful inspiration for me to implement in reality, it can also lead to bitter disappointment if these ideals can’t be realised.

However, Ne can cause larger issues than just procrastination. I will envision only negative outcomes to situations, leading to complete inaction. Eventually I lose hope altogether, thinking there’s nothing in the future for me, and reject the world altogether. My mind becomes more narrow, only choosing to stick to very specific situations and trains of thought.

I often turn to external forms such as music to identify my feelings, seeking to find myself within the feelings and expressions of others. I then wish to embody the images I find within the song, in hopes that I can discover my identity that way. This also gives me the opportunity to explore different perspectives, which can often help liberate my typical one-sidedness.

Tertiary Si:

In terms of Si loop, this tends to manifest in the form of craving my childhood back. I wish I could lose the responsibility on my shoulders and just go back to playing imaginary games and being completely oblivious to the world.

I also have a tendency to become closed-minded, immediately shutting out other people’s ideas that don’t “fit” in my own head. I would rather take no action at all than risk making the wrong move, because the regret would just be paralysing. My past experiences tend to drastically influence how I perceive things, and it’s difficult for me to wrap my head around how someone can see things so differently to how I do. As such, I cling onto my perceptions of the world heavily.

INFJ:

Dominant Ni:

I have always been known as an idealist, and someone that lives in my head. My mind was always my escape from the harshness of reality. Ever since I was young, I’ve developed deeply personal mental images and narratives, and purpose has been my driving force. When I was a child, I had myself fully convinced for years that I was a fairy queen doomed to live inside a human husk to test my fortitude for my “kingdom’s” sake. Even now, I always need to have some sort of abstract ideal propelling me forward.

The future has always been my main priority in life. Even if I don’t have a concrete idea of my life’s trajectory, I always know if something does or doesn’t fit into it. Others around me have complimented my insightfulness and my ability to predict what will eventually become of a situation. This can be anything from the plot of a story, to a relationship, generally anything can lead my mind to spiral towards a single-minded prediction.

However, this has been a large source of pain and isolation throughout my life. When I’m at my lowest, I make sweeping generalisations such as “everything is meaningless”, “everyone is so boring”, “every form of media I consume is shallow”. It makes me feel self-conscious, wondering if my expectations are too high, but I can’t seem to let go of my ideals regardless. I’ve been noted as a very detached person, taking my inner world too seriously.

Inferior Se:

The mundane has never interested me. I’ve never taken the world at face value, which does lead to warped perceptions and dashed expectations at times. I honestly tend to look down on those that exhibit more impulsive, hedonistic traits. I’ve been told that I need to “let loose” more, but I just can’t fathom doing that. I don’t understand why someone wouldn’t want to be in full control of themselves and their presentation at all times. I can’t envision my life or the world without meaning, and as such, I unconsciously reject anything I deem surface-level or crass. This does tend to overlap with typical Se traits.

However, there are times where I fall into Se traits during stress. I blurt out things I don’t mean to say, hyper-focus on insignificant details to the point that I lose sleep, and indulge myself needlessly in sensory pleasures, such as food, or deliberately delve into more shallow forms of communication, such as social media. A lot of the time, I obsessively seek out people or outside circumstances that prove my personal narrative about a concept, in a way to prove it to both myself and others. I expect and take from the world, but ultimately provide nothing.

Auxilary Fe:

As probably highlighted in my Fi section, I do exhibit some resistant behaviours towards Fe. Generally, any area will come with stereotypes of those that live there, and I don’t fit that mould at all. I’m quiet, prudent and abstract-minded in comparison to what’s expected. It’s a complicated experience for me, because as much as I resist what a lot of common behaviours represent, another part of me wants to beat myself up relentlessly for not fitting in perfectly. I often hope that I’m just viewing people negatively and tarring everyone with the same brush, so I will find my crowd eventually. I have never once rejected the concept of following objective values - if anything, it appeals to me greatly. I just think I have been extremely unlucky with the ones I’m expected to follow. Rather than following a greater purpose or meaningful relationship, I feel stuck in the monotony of my home.

Honestly, my default state is still to go along with everyone else’s wishes and forget my own feelings. It got to the point where I questioned if I could feel at all sometimes, and I’d lose my sense of identity altogether. I can’t bear any kind of conflict and I’m always trying to harmonise with those around me. The resentment I mentioned has only blossomed within the last few months, when I realised that the environment can’t always play to my preferences and strengths. It came to me like a flash of lightning. I often find myself wishing I could “unsee” the issues that led me to this constant frustration, so I could lose myself again and just comply. At least that sort of mindset could be seen as romantic or pitiful - my feelings now are just pure pettiness, and deliberately targeted at those I seek validation from.

I adjust my behaviour quite a bit to suit the emotional atmosphere, both to avoid exposure and to be seen in a positive light. I know what I can and can’t express, maintain etiquette, and try to carry myself well. As well as adjusting, though, I do try to have some sort of influence and warp the atmosphere to suit myself as well. I always strive to be a positive influence on others, and tend to view myself in the light that I want to be seen by the world at large. This is all in the hopes that eventually, I’ll be recognised by everyone as the ideal I’m trying to live up to, and others will follow in my footsteps.

I’m ridiculously sensitive to any form of criticism or rejection, and isolate myself often to protect myself. Any negative comment made towards me, even someone looking at me the wrong way, can completely throw me off and ruin my self-perception. This is amplified tenfold when around new people - I’m extremely self-conscious and try to come across as almost too perfect.

Tertiary Ti:

I see detached analysis as a comfort, in a strange way. The relief that comes with being able to detach and let go of emotional baggage is therapeutic for me. However, when I do use Ti to navigate my emotional life, it tends to take the form of rationalising my feelings, figuring out why I feel a certain way before I can accept it and express it to others. Naturally, this line of thinking extends to how I work around other people’s feelings, too.

However, I believe I can use Ti in an unhealthy manner too. When I detach from the emotional realm too much, this can quickly lead me to a misanthropic and cynical worldview. I tell myself that nobody is worth engaging with because they won’t understand, let alone accept, what’s going on in my head. I flip between desperately wanting to be loved and questioning why, when I can only think negatively of people.

I acknowledge that my logic can be flawed, but it’s hard to grasp that in the moment. It really throws me off when someone points out holes in my logic, though - even if I know I’m wrong deep down, I will often cling to my way of thinking just for the sake of it.

Any insight would be immensely helpful, I hope I followed your instructions well enough. Thanks so much if you read all of this.

---------------------

You're really pulling and stretching at the INFP functions to try to make them fit and even ignoring strong counter-evidence, whereas the INFJ functions are a much more natural fit. You seem to have a long journey of function development ahead of you but I believe Ni+Fe lie at the heart of the project rather than Fi+Ne. As such, I would conclude your type is INFJ with a high degree of confidence.

[pro-anomalocaris]

Puerto Rico is considered Caribbean, not LATAM, but the same issue is 100% at play here. Puerto Rico, where Miles' mom is from, is, as anon said, 49.8% people who are mixed (two races or more). There are some unconfirmed fan rumors universe 42's Miles Morales' mom is Dominican, a country in which 70% of the population is mixed. The only way for fans of his to claim mixing races is wrong is if they just flat-out do not understand how diverse the Caribbean and LATAM are.

Whenever I see US Americans complain about white Latin people, it boggles my mind. The earliest instance I saw this was when the producer of the Disney Junior show Sofia the First said he had intended for Sofia to be Latine and the internet ate him alive for it, as if 1. no Latin girl could be brunette with light skin and blue eyes and 2. we didn't already see Sofia's mother, Miranda, have noticeably darker skin than her, meaning it's obviously a case of Sofia taking after her (deceased, never seen on-screen) father. People genuinely acted like they couldn't fathom that her dad could be from a Spanish speaking fantasy culture and be light skinned. Attempts were made to call him a colonizer, which fell flat given he and Miranda were working class and he died poor, while she later married into royalty.

And then there was the Big Hero 6 hatedom's meltdown over Honey Lemon being Latin and looking like this:

It was wild seeing white people tear into her at the same time as Latin fans were happy to see a Latina scientist superhero. I saw white people tear into people and yell at them they were "self-colonizing" or "self-hating" because they were okay with Honey Lemon. There was, as there would later be with Pepa, anger she wasn't brown-skinned like in the concept art, and people saying you couldn't call her Latin because she's white and you're anti-Latin if you call this character Latin. "She's not darker than [Korean American character] Gogo!" was a common complaint, because I guess some people think that if a Latina and a Korean woman are in the same cast, the former needs to be darker than the latter, or you're doing it wrong.

I'm white and Central Asian so I don't have a ton of knowledge about LATAM. However, I lived in a majority non-white neighborhood for the first ten years of my life, and we had a lot of Latin people in our neighborhood (mostly Cuban and Mexican). They ranged from Afro-Latin to as light as my white mother.

This is going to sound scathing and rude but can people just... look around? Look at people? This is such an easy thing to fix. Just look at any given group of Latin people. It was that easy. No one had to take me aside and educate me on the history of LATAM and in fact I was very ignorant of that history until my university years, but it was so obvious even my neurodivergent ass picked up on it. (And for those of you about to go, "well, I don't live near Latin people" - please just do one single internet search for the demographics of any given country before talking about it! Just one! It's that easy!)

It's so obnoxious to me that people cannot get this because they'd get really annoyed if you implied the US is just one race, yet it never dawns on them that that's true of other countries, too.

This is how we end up with fandom wank where one side says Pepa has more power than her husband and the other side says he has power over her due to her mood swings and the original side starts yelling about how even a mentally ill white woman has more power than a black man, etc. and both sides agree it's bad to date outside your race.

Also to answer original anon's question of who they're allowed to date: I've seen discourse about mixed characters enough to know the answer is that you're not supposed to date anyone. The discourse that happens when anime fans hip Star Twinkle Pretty Cure's character Elena Amamiya (who is half Japanese and half Mexican) is too toxic and exhausting to even detail here. I can best sum it up as "all your options are problematic", "you're fetishistic and sexist for saying a Latina woman needs a man at all", and of course that classic take, "and then the white people from the US talked over both the Japanese and Mexican audience members, loudly and repeatedly, because what would Japanese or Mexican people know about Japan or Mexico?"

Sometimes real people's statements are more absurd than any fiction and I hate those moments very deeply.

It's really funny to me that people get angry at me for shipping Miles/Gwen due to them being an interracial couple when the comics clearly show us that Miles' mom is mixed. His grandma on his mom's side is light golden brown and has straight, non-textured hair. His grandfather is unambiguously black. If we didn't have interracial couples, Miles' mom wouldn't exist, therefore he wouldn't exist. 49.8% of Puerto Ricans are mixed race. If you truly hated mixed race people, wouldn't you have to hate Miles? Or are we doing the Harriyanna Hook thing where blood quantum determines race and thus Miles is black by virtue of having 3/4ths black heritage and you can only be mixed if you're half and half?

As a side note, as someone who's Inupiaq, white, Arab and indigenous Belizean Mayan (my dad and his dad are both pilots who fell in love abroad, hence the mixture) I always wonder: am I allowed to date anyone? If interracial relationships have "inherent power imbalances", does that mean I can't date? My blood quantum doesn't let me be a specific race under how antis view race, because there's no race of majority. I get that the "woke" racist line is that non-whites are never, ever equal to whites and thus cannot date white people. Does that mean I could date a fellow mixed person, provided they had one fourth white heritage, and it'd be equal? This is not a rhetorical question, I legit want one of these people to answer me.

This "social justice" version of segregation is so fucking unclear and complicated and contradictory. I'd be mad at it but I legitimately find it so funny. Why do the mental gymnastics when you could just say, "I think Margo/Miles is cute! No hate tho" and move on?

--

[manstrans]

the transandrophobia/transmisandry argument is so fucking exhausting because like you don’t really see this in other communities, at least not rn anyway. for example, and as a tmoc the first issue that pops up is obviously on the topic of racism, as a nonblack Latine i would never tell a nonlatine Black person that calling specific antiblack racism antiblackness is wrong or that they’re anti-Latine for it, and likewise a Black person would never say that calling out anti-Latine racism specifically is being antiblack. we both recognise the need to fucking call a spade a spade. it’s important to have the overarching umbrella of “racism” to describe general racism and xenophobia to describe xenophobia, but that doesn’t mean that words like antiblackness, anti-Latine hate, anti-Asian hate, or anti-Indigenous hatred/genocide/erasure are therefore unnecessary. that’s not how it works. but maybe this kind of thing is less common in communities of color because we have more overlap (for example, you can be AfroLatino, but you can’t really be a trans man and a trans woman in the sense of having the lived experiences of BOTH a binary trans man and a binary trans woman, and while bigender trans people who consider both their manhood and their womanhood to be trans do exist, it’s not the same as having your lived experience mesh both worlds together in the same way as being a mixed poc)

so maybe for a closer example, like, yes this was a prominent belief previously on queer tumblr, but now if someone says biphobia is “misplaced homophobia” or something in the year of our lord 2022, i would simply have to laugh because biphobia involves very specific things that aren’t directed at gay men and lesbians (the idea that we’re all cheaters/sluts, that we can’t pick a side or are confused gay/straight people, bi erasure, etc) as well as things that stem from general homophobia… or for example, if someone refused to acknowledge the fact that while homophobia specific to gay men and lesbophobia are related, they do have specific differences in the way they manifest (for example, lesbians having a higher risk of SA from cishets and corrective SA in particular, and being fetishised, while gay men are fetishised it’s in a different way and less mainstream because the cishet male gaze doesn’t allow for it, and gay men have a higher risk of hate crimes resulting in injury or death and not involving SA). and it’s the same with transmisogyny and transmisandry, they both stem from transphobia and misogyny (because newsflash, all transphobia was misogyny the whole time, asshole!), and they have a lot of similarities, but the way that transphobia manifests is different depending on the perceived sex of the victim. recognising the differences is important, and i see a lot of arguments against the use of the term(s) transmisandry or transandrophobia where people (and notably, this is mostly cis people who have no fucking stake in this at all) claim that trans men are saying transmisogyny doesn’t exist or the word is not important, which is far from what any of us have been saying—we’ve been saying that we ALL need language to talk about our specific issues without it being derailed to talk about how transphobia affects other trans people. we just won’t stand to let our issues be silenced or dismissed, because they frequently are and have been since people started even acknowledging trans people exist at all. i’ve met many, MANY people who don’t even know that trans men exist, much less any trans person who isn’t a binary woman or man. now that i pass, when i tell people im trans, if i don’t SPECIFICALLY say something about, like, idk casually mentioning my menstrual cycle or something specific to being transmasculine, ive noticed if i just say to someone “i’m trans” and they know my masculine legally changed name, they ask me what my name is because they assume i must be transfeminine, and the idea that i could be transmasculine doesn’t cross their mind for a damn second.

my point ran away from me a bit here but the point is, you should never, EVER try to take away the language a marginalised group uses to talk about their oppression, even if you’re also marginalised, but especially if you have privilege over them (ie the cis people who are involved in this argument, who, again, greatly outweigh the trans people opposing this language both in number and especially in social privilege, which honestly i think they’re intentionally leveraging both against us to tear the trans community apart because if we can’t stand together we WILL buckle under the weight of cis supremacy). and ESPECIALLY groups that are erased and shoved to the side in discussions of oppression, like bisexuals, intersex people, asexuals/aspecs and aromantics/arospecs, and of course also trans men in particular and transfeminine nonbinary/genderqueer people in particular. honestly noticing the similarities between the treatment of trans men and more visibly ‘masculine’ nonbinary/genderqueer people (including those who are transfeminine or transneutral with masculine secondary sex characteristics) is something that i think could help a lot to bridge the gap, because both trans men/transmascs who aren’t men but can pass as men at least partially, and transfeminine/transneutral nonbinary/gq people who can’t or don’t want to pass as women, are highly erased and silenced in the trans community and the queer community in general, from all sides. but idk. it just feels like we are starting here by asking for help and receiving so much rage and accusations of bigotry simply for asking to be recognised that i honestly worry about if this damage is already beyond repair :(

Thank you for sharing!!!

Yeah there's a lot of problems that some people intentionally exacerbate, but I don't think it's beyond repair even if it can seem like that sometimes

There's a lot of trans people of every demographic who support us! It can just get drowned out sometimes

I think it's important to seek them out so it's easier to form that solidarity

[stellacaerulea]

Miraland After Dark

In this post, I will write a few canon-compliant headcanons the game cannot get into for rating reasons.

Given its nature, beware of potentially triggering and spoilery (no pictures) content.

Under the cut.

The Nations

Ninir

The nation's obsession with beauty makes it so that cases like Ashley's are ridiculously common. So while the canon says orphanages are overcrowded with abandoned "defective" children (Sweet Dreams Lullaby), it's not hard to infer that quite a number of people don't even get that far in life - Ashley's fire itself was canonically a case of attempted suicide (v2c3), so it stands to reason she was far from the first, let alone the last.

While as a mostly artistic nation Ninir probably has recreative drugs legalized, the indiscriminate use of controlled medicine like appetite inhibitors, strong antidepressants and anaesthetics is probably a widespread health issue.

Even though Ninir highly values beauty, Lolory's story states that even being the Starheaven Swan is not enough for a person to make an easy living (v1c6, Daisy's Diary). While she made it big as a model, a substantial number of people is likely to have to resort to prostitution...

... Which is probably very popular for both locals and tourists because of Ninir's adoration for beauty. Likewise, most workers in Miraland's equivalent of OF is probably from there.

Other people are probably not even that lucky - Ninir is likely to be a hub for human trafficking, both importing and exporting slaves from other nations for all sort of work. Most exportees are "ugly" people who would have trouble finding a job anywhere in Ninir and are lured in by a too-good-to-be-true work agency and sent elsewhere to do menial work, while most importees are beautiful young people - particularly girls - sent from other nations to fuel Ninir's entertainment underworld.

Ruin

The little we unfortunately know about Ruin's society states that there is some sort of caste system between artificial lifeforms and humans (Into the Ruins). While it's obvious, considering the machines have some sort of sentience, it's still unfortunate.

This same caste system has Caprico expelled once he replaces one of his legs with a prosthetic. While transhumanism irl is a source for immense debate, their society's reaction to it leads us to believe that Ruin is just a high-tech version of fundamentalist Pigeon.

The isolation of Ruin in an industrial archipelago the other side of the planet makes it hard to reach anything coming from the mainland, like food and people. This way, cultural exchange rests at an absolute minimum, with Ruin people being seen as weirdos by the mainland and people from the mainland seen as stupid savages by Ruin.

A common issue among real life developers and engineers is burnout due to stress. In a society that concentrates most of the electronics development in Miraland, most of the nation would be in dire need of therapy.

Said absurd levels of stress coupled with Ruin's natural dependency on robotics and electronics makes digital entertainment extremely popular, further isolating the individuals from each other...

... Which leads to a severe drop on natality rates within Ruin borders. Most people prefer to spend time on games or, in case more physical pleasures are required, purpose-made machinery, which, they believe, saves them the stress of maintaining a relationship.

As a result, most young people in Ruin Island are the rare immigrants or, more rarely, tourists looking for shiny neon lights.

Wasteland

For being one of the most sparsely populated regions in Miraland, Wasteland is probably heavily exploited for its natural resources, that are rare elsewhere in the world.

The more traditionally tribal ways of the several ethnicities in Wasteland are constantly seen by the other people in Miraland as primitive and barbaric, despite the probable modern levels of technology within its general society. As such, Wastelanders are a constant target of prejudice by the rest of Miraland even within Wasteland borders.

As an effect of it, the poorer regions of the nation - especially those in the desertic mountains bordering Apple Federation - have colossal criminal rates.

One of the more common crimes in such regions is drug trafficking - Wasteland's vast nature provides several different plant and funghi-based drugs popular both internally for ritual purposes and externally for recreative purposes, especially in Ninir, and the mountainous region makes it hard to track smugglers and their stashes.

Another extremely common crime would be forced sex work - as mentioned previously, Wastelanders are probably seen as barbaric people inferior to the "civilized" nations northeast of it, so Wasteland girls are seen as little more than an exotic delicacy by some people. And as such, there are quite a few people, both in and out of Wasteland, willing to make money out of it.

Pigeon

It's already known that Pigeon is a theocracy ruled by the light elves, that see themselves as the race closest to God. We also know they see themselves as higher than both humans and the other elven races (Elves' Elegy and too many other reflections to count). With that said, it's highly likely that crimes are judged differently between elves and humans in some sort of apartheid style.

Not a long time ago, Pigeon government - read: the clergy - was strictly against technology, going as far as to sabotage a power generator made by their own queen (Past and Beyond). While Pigeon capital seems to have modernised to modern standards ever since, there probably are very influent anti-tech parties in positions of power, actively preventing smaller cities from evolving and isolating them from the rest of Miraland.

Pigeon is probably one of the nations with the oldest population in Miraland, if not the oldest. Not because of the natality rate, which is probably high due to religious views on birth control, but because the heavy moral restrictions have most young people flee to the neighbouring Apple Federation as soon as they can.

A very recurrent issue within Pigeon are half-elves. Elves see human people as inferior and as such, little more than toys to have fun with. Coupled with the aforementioned lack of control measures, several unwanted pregnancies are expected, which cannot be legally interrupted. The resulting rare - but visibly growing - population of half- and quarter-elves are seem as undesirable by both humans and full-blooded elves and cast to low positions in Pigeon society (Song of Snow).

Cloud

While Cloud society as a whole is mostly pacific with more uniformly spiritual ways, things get a bit more chaotic in the individual level. For example, we already know for a fact that some people sell their children for workplaces (mm3). Given the more traditional way of Cloud culture, it's not much of a stretch to believe child labour is somewhat commonly used in factories and large workshops, besides theaters.

The pacific and orderly style of the Cloudian society strongly favours opioids instead of hallucinogens, which makes it one of the main black market exports from the nation.

The existence of mafia-like hubs both in Azureink (Midnight Impressions) and Cloud Capital (v2c4-5) makes us believe that organized crime is a common issue in Cloud, especially in the northern regions, where the proximity with the North Kingdom facilitates access to weaponry.

North

Speaking of North, from the get go we have the statement that child soldiers are far from unheard of (Mercenary Queen).

While North is even more sparsely populated than Wasteland, not only is the region a very literal icy wasteland, but the constant conflicts between the several warlords that control the territories that compose the nation makes it extremely difficult to invest on anything other than war industries - and even that is too much of a risk for most investors, which makes it so that most of the workforce (including children) is employed as farmers or soldiers.

The politically unstable nature of the region makes freedom of speech and information nearly a legend. Every warlord that comes to rule a certain region implants their own mis/information network to make sure rival warlords or the people don't pose a challenge to their rule.

Apple

As we already know, Rosset is a modern transportation hub built inside a dome and over a depleted mine, which houses the slums (v1c5), which reveals two facts. The first of it is the economic inequality in the city, that is harsh enough to drive people into living in an abandoned mine underground.

The second issue is the dome itself - it was made to prevent the pollution of the city industries to reach the rest of the planet, which leads us to believe that industrial activity in Apple is such a major source of environmental damage that physically isolating the pollution sounded like a good idea.

While larger cities like Lodden seem like developed places with low criminality, most worldwide criminal organizations are run from its several penthouses. From there, drugs are dealt, people are smuggled and wars are declared anywhere else in the continent.

Speaking of drugs, the several different people that compose Apple's society make a variety of drugs have common use, although synthetic stimulants are more used both to help cope with the common workplace stress and as "extra inspiration" for artblocked designers.

Meanwhile, several "model agencies" are little but fronts for human trafficking, both receiving and sending pretty people to sell their bodies elsewhere. Apple's main "commercial partner" in this business is, obviously, the neighbouring Ninir, but occasionally girls are brought in from Cloud and Wasteland to serve in Apple's brothels.

A decent amount of Apple's riches come not from the treasures left behind by Pigeon during the independence, but from wars financed in the North Kingdom, where warlords are financed to conquer natural resources, especially the mineral reserves that fuel Apple's advanced industry.

[noshitshakespeare]

I read in multiple places that Coriolanus has been performed "both as pro-fascist and pro-communist" and I desperately need to know more about that, but none of the places I've read it elaborated in any way. I guess I'm asking, what leads to those - so drastically different - interpretations? And do you know of any good examples of both?

Thank you for this great question! The staging history of Coriolanus and the politics of it all is a really fascinating subject (lots has been written on it). 

Many of Shakespeare's plays can be interpreted in drastically different ways, because the representation of the characters and their positions tend to be pretty nuanced and even-handed. the plays themselves don’t always give a full sense of who it sides with, or who the audience ought to side with. Even characters who do great evil, like Macbeth, are given the kind of psychological depth that makes it difficult to condemn him outright, though the case there is a little clearer than in Coriolanus. 

The chief reason that Coriolanus invites such diametrically opposed interpretations is because of the central themes: the class conflict between the patricians and the plebeians, war, patriotism, and the right to rule and authority. There’s some historical context for this. When Shakespeare wrote the play sometime around 1605-10 there had been especially bad harvests and high food prices for a few years, which led to the Midland Uprising of 1607-8 (pretty close to Stratford-upon-Avon). One of the chief complaints here was that rich people were storing their grain in order to drive the market price up so that when they do bring out their store to sell they could sell it for more. It’s precisely what the rioters complain about at the beginning of the play: ‘They ne’er cared for us yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses crammed with grain’ (1.1.76-78). But the bigger question here is who has the right to authority over others, control of land and food? These are issues that are not quieted easily, and in one form or other, led to the Civil War of 1642 that dissolved the monarchy.  

To put it very simply, what splits interpretations is whether you see the play as about the people rising up against an unfair government and potential dictator, or whether you see a potential dictator overcoming a corrupt democratic government and a weak-minded mob. Is it more patriotic to rise up and take control of a bad government, or to support power and expansion at all costs?

Coriolanus wasn’t a great favourite, and wasn’t performed in its original form in England for a very long time after Shakespeare’s death, but these questions remained and made it a very topical play all around Europe in the early twentieth century. For instance, just before the second world war, there was a big scene in Paris in 1933 when the Fascist Party, Action Française, got the Comédie-Française to put on a production of Coriolanus. The production presented the protagonist as a hero against a corrupt democratic government in protest against the then left-wing and scandal-ridden French government. The show even featured something that resembled the Nazi salute at the moment Martius returns in victory from the battle in Corioli. There were shouts then of ‘Bravo, Hitler’ in the audience, and, indirectly or not, the theatre became the focus for a riot that led to 15 deaths and 1300 injured people. Before this point, Coriolanus hadn’t been performed much in France after Napoleon banned an 1806 performance because he thought the Martius in the production was modeled too much after himself. Evidently, he didn’t think it a straightforwardly flattering enough portrait of martial prowess to risk the potential subversion that could be read into the play, especially given the fall of the hero at the end.  

But the real focus here has got to be the treatment of the play in Nazi Germany itself. Germany has a long history of love for Shakespeare, and even before the war, there were more performances of Shakespeare in Germany than by any native German playwright. This was, of course, some embarrassment to the emerging Nazi government, but instead of banning Shakespeare as a writer from an enemy country, they appropriated Shakespeare by emphasising that all great artists belong to the world, not to a particular country. And given the beauty of the Schlegel-Tieck translations of Shakespeare, Germans were even inclined to say that Shakespeare is better in German than in English (I still hear this sometimes. ‘Unser Shakespeare’, as they say). 

Coriolanus became part of the school curriculum in Nazi Germany, used to show the 'Hitler Youth the unsoundness of democracy and to idealize Martius as an heroic führer trying to lead his people to a healthier society “as Adolf Hitler in our days wishes to lead our beloved German father-land”’ (Oxford Shakespeare Coriolanus, p. 124). Coriolanus was perfect because it showed the military power of Rome, like the Germany Hilter was trying to create, and because it could be used to show Martius as a powerful warrior above the common people, with a personality that is ‘above’ democracy. Thus, translations of the play in Germany at the time called Coriolanus ‘the true hero and Führer’ against the plebians, who were ‘a misled people, a false democracy’. The strength of this teaching was so powerful that the Allied forces banned the play in Germany during their occupation, and it wasn’t performed in Germany again until after 1953. There’s no particular version you need to read (unless you can get your hands on a copy from the time and read it in German). The point is that they got this version mostly via interpretation, so the play itself is not changed very much. 

The communist readings obviously emphasise the other side of the divide and sees Martius as an anti-democratic fascist. There were, apparently, quite a lot of Soviet stagings of this play that emphasised this aspect, but, unfortunately, there aren’t very many records of those. You can readily see, though, how the play might be presented as the destructive power of egoistic individualism at the cost of social order and cohesion. The most obvious choice if you want to read one, would be Bertolt Brecht’s Coriolan, which is a re-written version of the play that was staged in East Berlin after his death. The focus there is on class warfare and the power of the plebeians in ending the tyrannical rule of Coriolanus. In other words, it centres on the dictatorial rise of Coriolanus and the plebeians’ restoration of democracy at the end instead of lauding the power of Coriolanus himself. This version is especially powerful when you consider that Brecht chose to write and stage it for an audience that would have been educated mostly under the Nazi regime and were used to seeing Martius as the representative of the heroic individual and power of the fatherland. 

To move away from these political nuances, many productions (especially in England) tried to focus more on Coriolanus the individual for many years, especially the Freudian interpretation of Martius’ relationship with his mother -- as in the famous RSC Olivier production -- or on his incredible rage. The key, it seems, was to try to focus on Martius as an individual -- his feelings and motivations -- rather than on the political circumstances of his rise and fall. But I think it’s difficult to divorce Coriolanus from this hero versus the people dichotomy, perhaps even more so after the political upheavals of the twentieth century, and maybe now once again in our politically unstable times. How power should be distributed; whether power lies with the people or the government; what to do when a government or leader is corrupt or tyrannical; and how to balance the amount of leadership someone has at times of war with national defence, are all complicated questions that will never cease to be relevant while we have borders, leaders, and governments, and the play contains a lot of potential for all sides to argue their case. 

[bigendering]

Hey, thanks for your analysis of the situation with the creator of the bigender flag. I overall agree, although I'd like to push back against your assumption that this person has necessarily recanted their anti-trans man views. Unfortunately I've seen some non-binary people express fairly transphobic views towards trans men, and I think this is a blindspot for many people as they feel that also being trans gives them a pass. In general I'd like to see more recognition that this is a problem.

I think in this case, having a non-binary identity is totally compatible with feeling that trans men have betrayed womanhood or are otherwise morally compromised. I've had non-binary people question my identity to my face because "What does it even mean to identify with the oppressor class?" or, in other cases, degender me. It's very transphobic and people rarely address it.

And when I talk to other trans men, I often hear that they've witnessed cases where non-binary friends get colder towards someone who's come out as a trans man. Hell, I've noticed cases myself. For certain people it's more palatable if an AFAB person identifies as non-binary and dissociates from manhood as much as possible, which isn't to detract from the fact that it's hard to be non-binary and many people are shitty about it.

That's a good point. As a side note, I wonder if people like that are accepting of bigender people who identify as men and women, which is quite common in the bigender community, since the creator specifically made a bigender flag, rather than just a nonbinary flag. But that's more tangential to the issue you're bringing up.

I'm mostly in nonbinary and queer spaces as opposed to spaces with a lot of trans men, so I wasn't aware this was a thing. I don't really have much to say other than I'm sorry that this happens, it's obviously unacceptable, and thank you for bringing it to my attention. I know that viewing men and masculinity as bad is a problem in the pride community, and that trans men are often seen as gender traitors by terfs, but I didn't realize that antagonism towards trans men was such a common attitude among nonbinary people specifically.

For anyone who needs to hear it: masculinity is not bad, maleness is not bad, and men are not bad. If you are masculine, male, and/or a man, partially or fully, that's something to be celebrated, not hated.

We can talk about the patriarchy and all the problems it causes somewhere else, but manhood itself is never the problem. Being masculine, male, or a man doesn't make you a bad person, and if a man is a bad person, it's not because he's a man, it's because of the intersection of his personality and how society has taught him it is acceptable to behave.

Sapphire

[freehawaii]

OLYMPIC SURFERS - "IʻM PRO-HAWAI`I"

New York Times - Published May 17, 2021 HONOLULU — When John John Florence travels the world for elite surfing competitions, he carries a flag with him, to fly if he wins. It matches the flag on the shoulder of his jersey and on the scoreboard next to his name. It is not an American flag. It is a Hawaii flag. That is because, in the World Surf League and in surfing more generally, there is an understanding: You represent Hawaii, or you represent the United States. You do not do both. The simplest reason is that Hawaii is the birthplace of surfing and remains the sport’s cultural heart. Hawaii residents — particularly Native Hawaiians, but also those merely born and raised there, like Florence — cling to that heritage because surfing may be the strongest of the fading connections to their pre-colonization history. But when surfing makes its debut at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, there will be no such delineation between Hawaii and the American mainland. Hawaii will disappear as a separate surfing entity. Two of the four Americans on the team, Florence and the four-time world champion Carissa Moore, were born and raised in Hawaii and have always competed under the state flag. Moore is continuing to do so this month as the global tour holds major events in Australia. (Florence is recovering from a knee injury.) The other Olympians, Kolohe Andino of California and Caroline Marks of Florida, compete under the American flag. All four will be in Japan representing the United States. “There’s a little bit of tension with that, going into the Olympics under a U.S.A. flag,” Florence said at his home on Oahu’s North Shore, on a patio overlooking one of the greatest stretches of surf breaks on the planet. “I don’t want to divide at all. I’m not anti-anything. I’m pro-Hawaii.” Florence and Moore are eager to avoid politics, but it is impossible to ignore the historical and cultural waves churning around them. Old debates have flared in recent years, over appropriation and independence, over colonization and commercialization, over how to protect what it means to be Hawaiian, or from Hawaii. Across the islands, on cars and on porches, Hawaii flags fly upside down, a sign of distress. The fight over plans for a giant telescope atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii’s highest mountain, boiled over in 2019 and still simmers today. The project is seen by many as the latest case of outsiders disrespecting Native Hawaiians. Some say this is a periodic reawakening and defense of a culture that many Native Hawaiians feel slipping away. All of it is backdropped by what the Americans did in the 1890s, deposing Hawaii’s queen and annexing the islands. Plenty of Hawaiians still view the United States as an illegitimate occupier. Surfing was nearly stamped out by white colonizers in the 19th century. Adding the sport to the Olympics is both a matter of pride and a way to thrust issues of identity into the open. “Hawaii has had so much erased history,” said Duane DeSoto, the 2010 longboard world champion. “Surfing prevailed against the possible suppression into oblivion. It endured the challenge of being exterminated at one time. And now it needs to be a source of Hawaiian pride.” ‘Riding on an Immense Billow’ Makaha Beach, on the west side of Oahu, may be the home of modern competitive surfing, but it does not draw many tourists. Out of the way from Waikiki or the North Shore, it is a locals’ beach, a crescent of sand where the waves break hard in the winter. Under the trees by the parking lot on a Saturday in November was Brian Keaulana, part of a family of surfing royalty. He is a bear of a man and a classic “waterman” — the highest term of respect in Hawaii for those well trained in all types of surfing and ocean sports, in the tradition of Duke Kahanamoku. Keaulana is a big-wave surfer and founder of the Hawaiian Water Patrol, which works at surf competitions and commercial filming around the islands. On weekends, he can often be found with family and friends on his home beach, where unofficial world surfing championships were held in the 1950s. They play in the water and relax in the shade, sharing old stories and bites of sushi-like Spam musubi. “In surfing culture worldwide, everybody looks at Hawaiian surfing as different,” Keaulana said. “Even California surfers look at Hawaii different. But the Olympics see us as the same.” While most early Polynesian cultures developed some form of rudimentary body boarding, none did it like the Hawaiians, according to the surf historian and author John Clark. The expedition of the British Capt. James Cook landed in 1778 and observed people surfing. The earliest-arriving outsiders were astounded. “To see 50 or 100 persons riding on an immense billow, half immersed in spray and foam, for a distance of several hundred yards together, is one of the most novel and interesting sports a foreigner can witness in these islands,” a missionary named William Ellis wrote in 1822, according to Clark’s book “Hawaiian Surfing: Traditions from the Past.” There is no evidence of anyone stand-up surfing before the Hawaiians, Clark said during an interview on the North Shore. They held competitions, created surfing temples and imagined surfing deities. “The bottom line is that the Hawaiians took surfing far beyond anyone else in the world — technically, in board design, and in their skill level,” Clark said. “And surfing becomes so embedded that it becomes the national pastime. Everybody does it. Royalty does it. Commoners do it. Children do it. Seniors do it. Men do it. Women do it.” The British never got around to taking charge in Hawaii. In 1810, the loose string of Hawaiian islands became united under Kamehameha I — a renowned surfer himself. The United States recognized Hawaiian independence in 1826 and spent decades persuading other countries not to annex the islands. But news of Hawaii was out, like a genie from a bottle. It was a fertile land for outsiders to reimagine. It drew whalers, missionaries and plantation owners, bringing Bibles, illness and a colonizer’s sense of entitlement. Disease wiped out as many as 90 percent of Native Hawaiians by the end of the 19th century, shrinking their numbers to about 30,000 to 40,000. They were soon outnumbered by immigrants, mostly from Asia, who came to work on the growing sugar cane plantations, largely owned by Americans who ruled island politics. The United States saw economic and military advantages in Hawaii; Pearl Harbor was established as a naval base in 1887. In 1893, with the blessing of the American government and the backing of Marines, plantation owners led by the politician Sanford B. Dole overthrew Queen Liliuokalani. Dole was installed as provincial president. Full annexation came in 1898, statehood in 1959. History has left a stain not easily removed. In 1993, the U.S. Congress passed a joint resolution, signed by President Bill Clinton, formally apologizing for “the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii on January 17, 1893 with the participation of agents and citizens of the United States, and the deprivation of the rights of Native Hawaiians to self-determination.” Lingering grudges and disputes flare at different times. In 2001, many residents were in an uproar when the American flag was raised over the Iolani Palace, the 19th-century seat of the Hawaiian monarchy, in a gesture meant to honor those lost during the Sept. 11 attacks. Apologies were issued. These days, the presence of upside-down flags seems to be rising. “To be subtly disruptive,” said DeSoto, whose organization, Nā Kama Kai, teaches Hawaiian culture and ocean safety to children. “Hawaiians are in distress.” And then there is surfing. A Connection to the Waters Seth Moniz, a Native Hawaiian, was competing for a spot on the American Olympic team. This was late in 2019, at the end of the World Surf League season, when no one had an idea that a pandemic would delay the 2020 Olympics an entire year. The World Surf League season traditionally ends with the “Vans Triple Crown” — successive events at Haleiwa, Sunset Beach and Pipeline, all on Oahu’s North Shore. It is the heart of world surfing, a stretch of white-sand beaches backed by a two-lane road and fronted by epic waves. “I’d be honored to represent U.S.A., obviously, but I would prefer to represent Hawaii if I went there,” Moniz said between heats. “I do wish we could have a voice or representation. Me and other Hawaiian surfers, maybe we have to make a push for that, to have the Hawaiian flag at the Olympics.” The tour is dominated by surfers from four places: Brazil, Australia, the United States and Hawaii. In surfing terms, there is no conflict between the Americans and Hawaiians, just a distinction. Surfers had hoped for separate Olympic teams, if only to expand their chances of getting in. “If that happened, I’m in the Olympics,” Kelly Slater said during the final weekend of Olympic qualifying in December 2019. It didn’t happen. Slater, from Florida, lost out to Florence for the final U.S. Olympic spot. Moniz was the second-ranked surfer from Hawaii but will not be in Tokyo, either. Fernando Aguerre, an Argentine who lives in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego — he and his brother founded Reef sandals in 1984 and later sold the company — has been president of the International Surfing Association since 1994. It has been his mission to get surfing included in the Olympics. Creating a separate team for Hawaii was never seriously considered by the International Olympic Committee, which paints some fuzzy borders around island territories, using vague language about autonomy. Puerto Rico is among the American territories with its own Olympic team. “Hawaii is different within the surfing world,” said Aguerre, whose son has Kahanamoku as a middle name, honoring Duke. “But in the geopolitical world, Hawaii is part of the United States.” Last year, the Hawaii Tourism Authority created a 15-member Surfing Advisory Committee, in part “to ensure that we re-establish Hawaii as the home of surfing,” said Kalani Kaanaana, the group’s director of cultural affairs and natural resources. The Olympics may not have been the sole reason for the committee’s formation, but it was a catalyst. DeSoto is a member of the committee, which met for the first time this month. “We need to amplify Hawaiian voices in surfing globally and ensure that Hawaiian culture is not further stripped from global surf culture,” DeSoto said afterward. “Not having a Hawaii surf team represented in the Olympics is a travesty.” In the back of the crowd at Haleiwa, anxiously watching their son, were Tony and Tammy Moniz. Like Keaulana, the Moniz name carries heft in Hawaii’s surf culture. The family runs a surfing school in Waikiki. A daughter, Kelia, is a two-time world longboard champion. The Moniz family created an opening ceremony for the Triple Crown, with Hawaiian rituals, as a way to remind the surf community of the sport’s roots. A request from the Hawaii Tourism Authority for a similar cultural blessing before the Olympic contest was denied. “When people ask, ‘Where are you from?’ it’s Hawaii,” Tony Moniz said. “Although we’re proud to be a part of America, and we don’t want to be part of another country, there is a lot of animosity, a lot of hurt, because of a lot of deep things that have happened.” Even within surfing, within Hawaii, there is a nuanced hierarchy. Credence is given to those with native roots, like Moniz. Florence was born and raised in Hawaii, but has no Hawaiian blood. Some think of Carissa Moore as the only true Hawaiian on the Olympic roster. “I’m really proud that I do have a little bit of Hawaiian blood, so I feel a connection to the people here, and the waters,” Moore said, sitting outside a Honolulu coffee shop one afternoon. Back in 2019, Moore competed at an event in Japan overseen by the International Surfing Association. “I was totally wrapped in the Hawaiian flag, but we had U.S.A. shirts on,” Moore said. “It felt like I was betraying Hawaii. It was weird.” Sebastian Zietz, a veteran pro surfer, competes under Hawaii’s flag. He was born in Florida but moved to Hawaii when he was four months old. “I’m a haole, a white guy who moved to Hawaii, so I can’t be claiming anything,” he said. “But I definitely show a lot of respect to all local people, and walk on eggshells, because if you know the history you know Hawaii was illegally overthrown. That’s why they kind of don’t like haoles.” “I’m really proud that I do have a little bit of Hawaiian blood, so I feel a connection to the people here, and the waters,” Moore said, sitting outside a Honolulu coffee shop one afternoon. Back in 2019, Moore competed at an event in Japan overseen by the International Surfing Association. “I was totally wrapped in the Hawaiian flag, but we had U.S.A. shirts on,” Moore said. “It felt like I was betraying Hawaii. It was weird.” Sebastian Zietz, a veteran pro surfer, competes under Hawaii’s flag. He was born in Florida but moved to Hawaii when he was four months old. “I’m a haole, a white guy who moved to Hawaii, so I can’t be claiming anything,” he said. “But I definitely show a lot of respect to all local people, and walk on eggshells, because if you know the history you know Hawaii was illegally overthrown. That’s why they kind of don’t like haoles.” ‘Hawaii’s Gift to the World’ Bishop Museum in Honolulu is the major natural and cultural museum of the state. In late 2019 it unveiled a surfing exhibit, timed for the Olympics (and extended into 2021 because of the pandemic). The collection included the oldest known surfboards, used by kings and queens, and those used more recently by Florence and Moore, royalty of a new sort. It was another not-too-subtle reminder, to locals and tourists alike, that surfing did not originate in California, which claims it as its state sport, or Australia or Brazil, both of which sometimes dominate surf contests. Surfing persisted, barely, through the decline and takeover of Hawaii in the 1800s. Colonizers saw it as a leisure activity, indicative of a poor work ethic. But late in the century, photography and travel helped spread surfing around the world, rejuvenating it. In 1885, three Hawaiian boys, part of the royal family, attended school in Santa Cruz, Calif., and introduced surfing there. The first surf movie might have been in 1898, showing Princess Kaiulani riding at Waikiki. No one symbolizes Hawaiian surfing more than Kahanamoku. Born in 1890 and raised in Waikiki, he became Hawaii’s first famous “waterman” and surfing’s greatest ambassador. A three-time Olympian and a five-time medalist in swimming — surfing was a century away from becoming an Olympic sport — Kahanamoku is memorialized by a statue that stands at the center of Waikiki, in the tourist heart of Honolulu. “He went around surfing, sharing it with people around the world, and it was his greatest gift,” Ezekiel Lau, one of the top Hawaiian surfers on the world tour, said. “Which made it Hawaii’s gift to the world.” Popularity spread, fueled by advents in foam and fiberglass, by the Beach Boys and surf movies, by tiki bars and ABC-TV’s “Wide World of Sports,” by the World Surf League and today’s chase for the biggest waves. Lau is among those who are glad to have surfing in the Olympics, but adamant that the ties to Hawaii not be forgotten. He sat on a porch overlooking Sunset Beach, one of the great surf spots in the world. You can wipe out our population, annex our kingdom, borrow our traditions in the name of cheap trinkets and commercialization, the thinking goes. You might try to build telescopes or international hotels or military bases that threaten to dilute our ancient culture, Lau said. You will not take surfing from us. “The Hawaiian culture’s been a little suppressed, but it feels like there’s a new energy, a rebirth in sharing our culture with the world,” Lau said. “I feel like surfing’s at the forefront of that, and surfing becoming a part of the Olympics is huge for us.” On Makaha Beach, Keaulana sat under a tree, pondering the connection between Kahanamoku and today’s Olympians from Hawaii. “I’ve known John John and Carissa as kids, as babies,” Keaulana said. “Regardless of the flag, they’re Hawaiians. And they win for Hawaii. If the rest of the world sees them as something else, that’s OK. But we in Hawaii recognize them for who they truly are.”

[rotationalsymmetry]

Hello! I hope you’re doing well. I saw your post about UUs and I myself am one as well! I was wondering if maybe you could explain some of the issues there are in UU congregations so I can better understand what’s going on. I can’t change much, but I’d like to know what can be improved and how I can better use my privilege. Thank you :)

Hi there. Thanks for reaching out. I think. Oof. Are you sure you want to ask this? I don’t have a really straightforward “here’s precisely what Unitarian Universalism needs to do to improve (broken down into concrete, realistic steps!)” I have a whole tangle of feelings and personal biases and incredibly subjective experiences. OK? All right. With that disclaimer out of the way. Eh, actually, more disclaimer: all institutions have problems. There are things that Unitarian Universalism does better than most other religious institutions. There’s a reason I was going off about what I like about UU before what I dislike. This is not saying that Unitarian Universalism is bad. OK?

Putting in a cut because this is long:

Unitarian Universalism has an ongoing, well-known problem around being kind of fuzzy around what it is and what it wants to be. Do we draw on multiple faiths, and if so what does that look like in practice? Are we Christianity lite? Are we basically a bunch of secular humanists who like to get together and sing sometimes? How far exactly does (or should) our tolerance stretch?

Unitarian Universalism has a whiteness issue and a class issue. Now, I’m white, so the race part isn’t mainly coming from my own experience. There’s something I’ve seen that sums it up well, but I can’t find it right now. Basically: there’s a bit of a tendency for UU’s to nominally want to more diverse congregations, but when a new person of color shows up, sometimes they get treated kind of...weirdly. Like they’re not one of us and not going to be.

a bit more on UU and race here: x

And, class wise, I was raised middle class, but I’ve been broke for an awful lot of my adulthood and a lot of the people I know in my generation (Millenials) are broke/struggling financially. So when the lead minister of my congregation made some random comment about having trouble attracting young people because church and brunch with friends are competing for the same time slot. I thought of a young adult in the congregation who was active in the youth group but couldn’t make it to Sunday worship because he had to work on Sundays. And the time one of my coworkers got a promotion at my workplace, and definitely she was competent and I don’t begrudge her getting it, but also she ended up working an awful lot of Sundays and that was very likely a factor in her getting the promotion. And I’d been trying to avoid pledge drive Sunday for years because it always, every time, made me feel like I wasn’t really welcome if I couldn’t contribute much financially, even when I was contributing a great deal of my time. This is subjective and it could mostly be an issue with my then congregation. But I don’t think it is.

While Unitarian Universalism likes to think of itself as trans friendly, and it’s certainly much friendlier than some denominations, sometimes it drops the ball. Here’s an apology for an article about trans people that centered a cis person’s perspective and had some other issues: x

Anecdotally, subjectively, etc: this is an issue across the board. Unitarian Universalism’ self-image and what the organization actually is has a substantial gap. I attended a few workshops at GA this year, and: on the surface, great! So many workshops on such great anti-oppressive topics! But...when I actually went to the workshops, it was unsatisfying. It felt very introduction-ish. Maybe that was on purpose. But...I was hoping for better. 

Super anecdotally: UU’s tend to forget that disabled people exist. UU’s tend to not support disabled people and parents of disabled children.

Back to the “are we Christianity Lite?” thing. I dropped out of seminary. One part of thatwas this: x  Another was that at the time (it’s apparently since changed) the MFC requirements (uh, this is getting a bit technical: congregations ordain ministers, but in practice fellowshipping is important as well, and that’s what the MFC does, basically it’s saying other UU ministers think you should be a UU minsiter) prioritized knowledge about Christianity and the Bible over knowledge of other religions, even though nominally Unitarian Universalism is not Christian and Christianity isn’t especially prioritized in our Six Sources. As someone who is not Christian and didn’t expect my future ministry to involve a lot of Bible talk and really didn’t think prioritizing knowledge of the Bible among our religious leaders was good for the denomination as a whole, this bothered me. A lot. (For what it’s worth, most Starr King classes were actually really good at not doing this.) (The classes that did, though, made me want to tear my hair out. And made me wonder if this denomination I was studying to be a minister in, was the same as the denomination I’d participated in as a lay person for years.)

This is hard to put into words. But: sometimes people will say they believe a thing, but their follow-through is bad. Or they say one thing but act another way -- not because they’re lying, but because what they believe on the surface hasn’t been fully internalized. This is, anecdotally etc, a really common issue in Unitarian Universalism.

More super anecdotal etc: UU’s need to break the habit of seeing RE as daycare, and worship services that involve kids as being about showing off the kids to the adults. I took a quick look at you and it says you’re 18, so if you grew up UU you probably have your own opinions on this. But...sometimes the adult congregation and the kids’/youth programs are entirely separate worlds, and that’s not healthy for congregations.

YMMV: I’m not a huge fan of approaches to worship that involve sitting passively for most of the service. If the worship is going to be the same whether you’re there or not, why bother showing up? (Obviously some congregations are more like this than others, and apparently some people like the “lecture and a concert” format?? I’m not one of them.)

Basically, I think UU’s need to work on connection more and mutual support of each other more. While I approve of the social justice focus of course, social justice starts at home. You need to support the people who are actually in your congregation. I moved a year and a half ago, and haven’t joined my local congregation. Why? Because my illness makes it almost impossible to go anywhere in the mornings, and while they livestreamed each worship service, before the pandemic (presumably it’s all zoom worship now), there was zero effort to actually include anyone watching the livestream. Not so much as a PDF of the order of service. No verbal acknowledgement that some people aren’t present in the room. Nothing. (Side note: I tried one worship service at a “normal” congregation after the pandemic started, and all the mourning of not being able to be together in person was extremely frustrating to me, since I hadn’t been able to attend in person worship before the pandemic either. No one was thinking of people like me, and it was really, really obvious. I’ve since joined Church of the Larger Fellowship.) You say you want to use your privilege. That’s great! Some thoughts.

Trans people: How’s your congregation on pronouns? If your congregation uses nametags, can you push to normalize people putting their pronouns on nametags? What’s the bathroom situation: is it clear that trans women (whether you currently have any trans women in your congregation or not) can use the women’s bathroom? Is there a unisex bathroom that non-binary people and binary people who don’t feel safe using “their” bathroom can use? Also: a lot of older people weren’t raised with this and never really caught up, (and tbf some young people are ignorant too) so there’s a need for some trans 101 education.

Disability: for zoom worship, is there closed captioning for people who have hearing impairments or language processing issues? For live worship, what’s being done to make sure deaf and hard of hearing people are included? What’s being done for blind people (eg, electronic copies of the order of service being available for people who are blind but have screen readers?) For people who just have a little trouble seeing, are there large-print orders of service? What about the agendas for committee meetings and so on? This doesn’t have a quick fix, but are there places in your congregation that can’t be reached in a wheelchair? What about the chancel? (ie that area that the minister and whoever else is leading worship is speaking from?) Is there a wheelchair-accessible entrance that’s open during worship but closed during other programming?

How’s ministry to people who are sick or injured or just too old to get out much? And: is that support available to newer or prospective members, or only people who contributed to the congregation first? How available is information on how to get that kind of support: is it a thing where only some people are in the know, or is there outreach?

Are there unspoken rules about who’s the “right kind” of person to be in the congregation and who isn’t?

Sexual harassment, abuse, etc: is there a clear way to report sexual harassment? Does everyone know what it is? Does the congregation have a policy for what happens if a congregant is accused of sexual abuse? If a minister is? What's the congregation’s child abuse prevention policy? Do the people who work/volunteer with kids know what to do if a child or teen reports abuse to them? Are they screened in any way?

What accommodations does RE make for special needs children? If a child needs one on one assistance, does the RE program force the parent to provide that assistance if the child is to be part of the program?

What’s the policy on support animals? (these days: what’s the policy on emotional support animals?) How are the needs of people with allergies or other issues with dogs etc, balanced with the needs of people who benefit from support animals? (This can be tricky, I’m not saying there’s a clear right/wrong here, but it’s something that can make a congregation inaccessible.)

I don’t know the details on this, but I know sensory issues can be a problem for some people, eg flickering overhead lights. Scents can be an issue for some people, one possible solution is to have part of the sanctuary marked scent-free, dunno how well that plays out in practice.)

Representation: who’s speaking up during worship, and what are they speaking about? Something to be aware of.

Us/Them language: especially relevant if you’re speaking to the congregation during worship, but important in casual coffee hour chat too: who’s “us” and who’s “them”? Do people in your congregation tend to talk about, say, people below the poverty line as “them”? Homeless people? Black people? Immigrants?

Finding ways of making small talk that aren’t “what do you do for a living?”

I haven’t said anything about racism yet; a lot of congregations have some sort of anti-racist discussion group or something? Those things are good; there’s only so much they do by themselves, but as part of a larger whole, they’re important. Also, presence at Black Lives Matter protests, putting up a Black Lives Matter banner or sign if your congregation hasn’t done that, stuff like that.

Oh, culture and music and stuff. What kind of music gets played. Congregations that have made a specific attempt to be multiracial often find it’s necessary to do a lot of hashing out of what the music is going to be like.

And there’s a representation aspect to who gets quoted.

Small Group Ministry/Covenant groups: my former congregation liked to ask what your demographic info is and then split things up for “diversity” purposes. This is actually a really bad idea. In a congregation that’s mostly white, it means that often the non-white people end up being the only non-white person in their groups. Great for white people who want to “experience diversity”, but not so great for actual poc. My congregation had enough queer people that it wasn’t one queer person per group, but I could see that maybe happening in other places. And I think it did tend to separate out trans people into separate groups.

Cultural appropriation/cultural misappropriation: uff. I think some people go off the deep end on this. But, some things to consider. If the congregation is doing something to celebrate a Jewish holiday, is it run by someone who is Jewish or is of Jewish heritage? Stuff like that. Sometimes Unitarian Universalists’ desire to be all multicultural and interfaith and stuff, leaves out important things like “is this part of the culture that it’s ok for outsiders to share?” and “are we actually in relationship with this group of people?” And “are we cherry picking messages from sacred texts that we like, and leaving out the stuff we don’t like, when it’s not our sacred text and we don’t have enough context to do that respectfully?” x for overview and in more detail x

Also RE: is this Native American story one that it’s actually OK for us to tell? I’m not necessarily suggesting you go over what other people are doing, but if you’re teaching RE yourself, you get a say in what you teach.

If you happen to be a UU pagan or there’s a CUUPS group at your congregation that you sometimes participate in, there’s kind of a ton of work about untangling cultural appropriation in specifically pagan spaces, honestly I don’t know where to start with that. Don’t put that on yourself if you’re not part of that kind of group though, focus on groups you are part of.

Land acknowledgements.

Oftentimes if someone brings up an issue that requires work to change it, especially a younger person, the people who get stuff done are going to be, “ok, that sounds like work, we’ve already got a ton on our plate so are you going to do it?” So, if you offer to do some of the work of running the congregation, you’ll be in a better place to implement these sorts of changes. (I know a lot of times older adults don’t want to trust young adults with responsibility, so it might take some time to earn trust.) But also some are things you can just do: like you can say your pronouns every time you introduce yourself or put your pronouns on disposable nametags, if you’re comfortable with it.

General advice: you don’t have to (and shouldn’t try to) change everything at once. Be aware of a lot of things and be willing to be a “follower” on a lot of things. Signing petitions, saying “yes, that sounds like a good idea,” stuff like that. Be a leader on a small, manageable number of things. Maybe see what other people in your congregation are already doing that seems like a step in the right direction, and see how you can support that. Some of what UU’s are already doing is already really good, and most likely there’s already people around you who want Unitarian Universalism to act in closer alignment with its ideals.

[mashounen2003]

Here is the text of the video, translated into English. Seriously, check out this video, this guy is awesome.

"Conspiracy Theories" by Guille Aquino.

Posted on June 27, 2019.

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Warning: if you're influenceable, you need to watch this.

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Alright, before we start, I want us to welcome and applaud our new friends from the CIA, the FBI, NASA, the former SIDE -today, the AFI-, the KGB, Interpol, and the lazy virgins at the troll centre on Miserere Park, who are surely already watching this video because today we're gonna talk about...

Conspiracy Theories.

We all know some: the humans didn't go to the Moon, the 9/11 was a self-attack by the USA's government, Bin Laden never existed, Walt Disney is frozen, Elvis Presley is alive, the Simpsons predict the future, Marcelo Tinelli went to a famous hospital with a famous object inserted in a famous place on his body, and Dengue and Zika fever were created by Bill Gates who genetically modified mosquitoes to depopulate the Earth because it most likely was easier than making work that "Internet Explorer" bulls*** he sold us. But let's get to the news: in early 2019, YouTube modified its recommendation algorithm to avoid promoting conspiracy theories and false information. And let's stop here because I want us to become aware of the magnitude this matter took on and how this little joke of the conspiracy theories videos completely went to Hell.

Think of it this way: YouTube, the second most trafficked website in the world after Google, with over 30 million visitors per day and over 1.3 billion users -almost a third of all people connected to the Internet in the world-, where 300 hours of videos are uploaded per minute and almost 500 trillion videos are viewed per day, had to change its own recommendation system because all of us were watching too many videos denouncing that Lali Espósito is an Illuminati:

Video excerpt: [with obvious robotic voice] "Also, at the second Number Ten, she covers one of her eyes again, obviously symbolizing the All-Seeing Eye."

And I'm very sorry to tell you that, in today's world, if YouTube has a problem, we all have a problem.

Conspiracy theories are the Internet's new porn. In fact, if you filter the words "conspiracy" and "theories" by the number of views, the most viewed video has 36 million views. THIRTY-SIX! MILLION! VIEWS! That's like putting together the total populations of Belgium, Greece, Cuba and Jamaica, and then lighting a giant reefer to everyone and making them watch this video of people saying the Earth is flat:

Another video excerpt: [Channel 13 interview with Flat-Earthers, recorded in a park in Buenos Aires] "I pour water into this dish... Look, I pour water, and it stays, you see? But we pour water into the globe... and it goes down, people."

Okay, now we're gonna go over some of the most popular conspiracy theories of recent times, and we're gonna try to deconstruct the psychological profile of the average consumer of the conspiranoid world.

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We'll start with everyone's favourite...

The Flat-Earthers.

Excerpt of the second video: "This first meeting began to be announced in the groups I followed on YouTube. (And the tattoo you have there, what is it?) This is the flat Earth, the Sun and the Moon."

The Flat-Earthers basically hold the theory that the Earth is not actually spherical, and they claim Galileo Galilei was an old smoke-seller blabbermouth who often played into the Far-Right's hands, cut his hair in an old-fashioned barbershop and used the 1610 telescope mainly to bed with chicks. And I have nothing personal against the Flat-Earthers but I find it difficult to take them seriously, mostly because much of their scientific hypothesis can be explained with this blooper.

Excerpt of another, different video: "There's an inflatable pool filled with water and with two people in it, a third person suddenly jumps into the water, and the pool deforms and overflows on the other side, as one of the two previously present people also falls over the edge."

(Images from the film "Armageddon".)

The truth is that the "flat Earth" theory has one fundamental premise, and it's the same one that supports 100% of conspiracy theories:

There's a power above us that manages everything.

Governments, lobbies and other de facto powers are capable of lying on a massive scale, just as intelligence services, the New World Order and FlyBondi hostesses do.

Excerpt of the second video: "(And you can't see the curvature of the Earth from the plane.) Uh... I travelled by plane to Bariloche, and no, I didn't see it. There's some aircraft glass with a small magnification or something that changes your perspective, due to the thickness of the window, and because aircraft glass also has something."

Alright, stop, let's not turn this into "Point at the crazy assholes and laugh" either, right? Well, yes, a little- But we go beyond that! We're better than that!

Why do so many people choose to believe we're puppets of an evil system? One might say that, in the absence of a sense of real control over our own lives and in the face of the desolation of living in a seemingly random, chaotic world, believing there's an external force exerting control is, to some extent, comforting. Yes, phone the Vatican.

And according to a certain old white upper-middle-class snob who teaches at Harvard University, conspiracy theorists share several or at least one of the following features: they're paranoid, radical, extremist in their opinions; they aspire to a feeling of superiority, and basically, they feel special for possessing information that exceeds the common citizen. Yeah, it's like the row for an indie film festival.

Umberto Eco even said:

"The control syndrome invades us. When someone claims to have a secret, their strength is not in hiding something but in making people think there's even a secret in the first place."

And I didn't understand a f*** because I've never read a book in my life, but it sounds ultra-mega-hyper cool. I dare you to deny it!

So who would be the most likely to believe in these kinds of theories? People who had bad experiences in life, people in search of an answer that would rescue them from a deep existential crisis, and the most important: people in search of a place of belonging.

Excerpt of the second video: "Well, no, this opened a door for me to start thinking more, to question things, about a supposed alien invasion."

Wait, stop right there. Excuse me, but if I'm an alien and I have the power to cross the universe in a spaceship, with my own army and the ability to colonize a celestial body, I don't even waste my time invading a paper-thin planet. Give me a round planet or give me death!

And that's when the contradiction comes into play. Because if you believe in one conspiracy theory, you immediately start to believe in all of them. It's like the weed. Even the refutation of a plot fits within the plot itself: for example, if you believe Lady Diana was killed by the British Crown, you're also prone to believe Lady Diana is actually still alive.

(Woah, Mind Blown... She was totally killed anyway, sorry.)

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Good, let's move on to the next one:

The Anti-Vaccination movement.

Okay, here we come to a key point, since clearly there are the "harmless" conspiracy theories and the... rather dangerous ones. We've all heard someone say vaccines may cause autism in kids. Now, I'm clearly a specialist in absolutely nothing, and I ain't gonna explain why you guys have to vaccinate your children, so I better recommend to you the websites of any Ministry of Health or Wikipedia, so that you later visit them and find out how very important it is to inject legal drugs to your sweet little angels. And it's not to detract from any position or to err on the side of bigotry, but if you're an anti-vax and your baby coughs next to me, I swear I'll kick their head off.

(Tack! That bag of germs...)

And after all, that's why we invented Democracy!

(Ha, of course not, but...)

In fact, I dunno who gives a f*** about this but maybe someone will find it useful: I follow a pretty simple method when it comes to ideologically locating myself regarding any issue. And this is:

Always do the opposite of whatever Gisela Barreto says.

Gisela Barreto: [speaks with a flag in the background] "Vaccines show up, and they show them to us as something that heals us. Actually, they're part of our death."

(Seriously, she came this close to being in the Avengers.)

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Okay, and now let's move on to one that touches us all closely (at least here, in my country):

Hitler in Argentina.

It's the conspiracy theory ensuring that, after losing World War II, the Nazi leader, the most disgusting dictator and genocide in Human History, came to live incognito in our country. And I ask myself: what the heck did we need to shelter Hitler for? The birth of Alejandro Biondini, who's pretty much our local version of Nazism, was imminent:

Interview with Biondini in 1991 by Mariano Grondona in his program "Key Time":

Grondona: "Would you condemn Adolf Hitler?"

Biondini: "No, we vindicate Adolf Hitler."

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Okay, question: is it possible to keep a secret on such a large scale for so many years? Well, the Math says no. Seriously! I've read that a physicist at the Oxford University (Where else?) took the "humans didn't go to the Moon" theory, and then this guy created a mathematical calculation based on the number of conspirators involved, the time elapsed since the conspiracy, and the inherent possibility that a plot would fail.

For example, in the case of Apollo 11, 411 thousand NASA employees were involved, and according to the variables this physicist analyzed, the lie should have been known in less than four years; half a century passed, and no employee denied the mission. What does this tell us? Well... they were threatened and killed off, of course! It's obvious! [imitating Mirtha Legrand] Stanley Kubrick was not in the coffin! Nobody saw him. Nobody saw him!

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Gimme more!

Famous people who are actually dead.

For example, Paul McCartney. On the cover of the album "Abbey Road", he's barefoot; a clear subliminal message that the real one died and was replaced with a stand-in. (Why?!) It sounds silly, but the rumour got so big that McCartney himself had to go out and publicly deny it... Although come to think of it, he also came out to congratulate the butchers who named their butcher shop "Paul Mac Carne" ["Paul McMeat"], so maybe he's truly a stand-in and, to top it off, looks like a raisin.

Excerpt of another video: "Well, thinking of different names, someone said "Paul Mac Carne". And well, he, being a vegetarian, says the idea was very good, started laughing and sent us a greeting."

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I love this one:

The Reptilians.

It's basically the theory that there's a race of amphibian aliens [Wait for a second: aren't they called "reptilians"?] living among us for centuries and hiding their reptilian features behind human faces.

(Oh, you were telling me they're not actually aliens because they were born here?)

Excerpt of the 1996 movie "Mars Attacks!".

And who discovered this? David Icke! Or "Ique". An unsuccessful former soccer player and sportscaster. (How can you be unsuccessful as a soccer sportscaster?! All you need is a suit!) It's like believing in a religion where your Pope is Diego Latorre.

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Now, I know what you're thinking: after all, how dangerous can all this get? I mean, no conspiracy theory has someone popular to represent it, no spokesperson of ridiculous and implausible plots has reached a truly important position in today's world.

Bah... There's actually only one.

The President of the United States of America.

That's right! Donald Trump, once the leader of the most powerful country in the world, had come to power mostly by throwing out fake news and conspiracy theories. And here are some:

Barack Obama is an immigrant.

Trump: "And I just say: why doesn't he show his birth certificate?"

Global warming is a myth.

Trump: "Obama is saying all of this has to do with global warming and I say all that is a hoax..."

Gisela Barreto was right.

Trump: "At two and a half years old, the baby, the beautiful baby, went to get the vaccine. Now he's autistic."

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Okay, then... Conspiracy theories. For what? Well, in the case of Trump: influence on public opinion and accumulation of power. In the case of people who upload videos to YouTube... What do you think? A profitable, monetizable business! In fact, there's the conspiracy theory that we're actually making this video about conspiracy theories in order to have lots of views and earn buttloads of cash. (We'd never do that!)

And finally, a much deeper, inherent aspect of the human condition:

The need to believe in something.

The world is divided into two types of people: some think everything happens for a reason, everything is a sign, and perhaps there's also a magical entity organizing things for us; the other half of the people think we live in a desolate world without meaning or messages, there are only atoms randomly colliding with each other, and the Universe gives no f***s about us. Which of these two groups seems happier to you? Which one do you belong to? Which one would you like to belong to? I choose to join the conspiranoids! And listen to this, I know exactly what's going on:

The New World Order organized the Lollapalooza at the request of the Illuminati, who wanted to marketingly manage Lali Espósito, who actually wears a mask and underneath is "La Mona" Giménez, who's not actually a monkey but a reptile and has drank all the wine to get immunized against the vaccines at the request of Gisela Barreto, who was born in Corrientes just like Barack Obama, who claimed to have killed Bin Laden, who's actually alive and was driving the car that crashed that night and carried Chano Charpentier, who taught driving to Lady Diana, who was actually Mexican and was assassinated by Donald Trump, who was matched on Tinder with Hitler, who lives in a nursing home in Recoleta and has glaucoma, so he's hitting the reefers with Biondini, who is actually a hippie and a fan of León Gieco, invented global warming and, when being in a bad mood, takes a bus and goes to dinner at "Paul Mac Carne", where they invented the extra-thin Provoleta cheese, which coincidentally has the same shape as the Earth, which is actually flat!

*sigh* Knowledge is power. Quiero creer.

Soundtrack: State Anthem of the Soviet Union.

[elenathehun]

Watching the Clone Wars, part 7

Well, this is a better batch of episodes than last time, solely due to not having to actually skip an episode because it was too awful to watch.  With that said, click on keep reading to see reviews of "Brain Invaders", "Grievous Intrigue", "The Deserter", "Lightsaber Lost", "The Mandalore Plot", "Voyage of Temptation", and "Duchess of Mandalore".

"Brain Invaders" (2x08)

I'd rate this as above-average.  I am not really into horror as a genre, as I previously noted, so I was pretty grossed out by the brain worms.  However, it was a pretty nice Ahsoka and Barriss episode, although I think it's a bit weird that four Jedi Knights/Masters are necessary to interrogate Poggle. 

Anyway, it's not an episode of The Clone Wars without some unexpected graphic clone violence.  I don't blame Ahsoka or Barris for killing poor Trap - I even think this was well-written and conveyed the desperation of their situation well - but good god, it was startling.  Also tense: that final approach to the medical station.

Not good: Kit Fisto entering a ship that's infested with brain worms with no PPE.  C'mon, man, I know your headtails are majestic, but keep it covered up!  Also not super great: Anakin and Ahsoka's little talk at then end.  A lot of their interaction just feels forced.  I honestly feel like this should have been a dialogue of some kind between Ahsoka and Barriss.

"Grievous Intrigue" (2x09)

Sort of a meh episode.  I understand Eeth Koth is a bit of a bad-ass in the comics, and that does sort of carry over in this episode, but mostly it just seems like a vehicle for various Jedi Masters to quip while crossing blades with this somewhat delightful murder-cyborg.  Obi-Wan gives a furious monologue to Grievous, which rings a bit hollow since the clone army has had precious little screen-time (at least relatively speaking) to exhibit their loyalty or spirit.

Shout-out to Cody and those 212th soldiers dog-piling Grievous.  If only you'd had a lightsaber, Cody, you probably could have killed him right then and there.  And if the writers let you and your fellows out of the background more often, Obi-Wan's speech would have rung more true at the time this episode aired.

"The Deserter" (2x10)

I struggled with accurately summarizing why this episode left me cold.  After all, the focus is split between Rex and the pursuit of Grievous, and I love most of the clone-centric episodes I've seen thus far.  But after some thought, I realized this episode felt like the culmination of a character arc that never actually occurred for Rex, at least on-screen.  After all, this episode is only the third time he's been promoted to something more than the token Clone Character Who Doesn't Die At The End - the previous two episodes I thought were legitimately Rex-centric were Season One's "Rookies" and "The Hidden Enemy".  We still barely know the guy, but in this episode we watch him wrestle with doubt about his role and reason for existence when faced with a fellow clone who's made radically different choices than he has, before triumphantly stating his place is with the army.  This feels like it would be a great episode, if only we were more attached to the character. Writers have to build-up to those kind of moments, or they ring false.

Anyway, is it just me or is Obi-Wan getting a little angry in this episode?

"Lightsaber Lost" (2x11)

I wasn't expecting much from this episode, but it was actually very good.  Aside from the annoying Cad Bane arc at the beginning of the season, the Ahsoka episodes have been improving a lot this season - possibly because she's been separated from Anakin for a lot of them.  Losing a lightsaber feels like the sort of problem a Padawan might face, and the solution feels like the sort of thing an impatient teenager would resort to.  Tera Sinube is a gem - I am always a sucker for the elderly teaching the next generation, and he does it so well!  The animation was well done too, especially in the chase scenes. 

I've been ragging on TCW for it's lack of interconnectivity between episodes and episode arcs, but this is a stand-alone episode done right: it focuses on what a secondary character (yes, I know she's supposed to be a main character, but she doesn't feel like it quite yet), allows them to learn a lesson that develops their characters in an organic way, and reverberates through future episodes (I hope!).

"The Mandalore Plot", "Voyage of Temptation", and "Duchess of Mandalore" (2x12 -2x14)

Oof.  So, this was the arc that actually made me quit watching TCW the first time around.  I am very lukewarm on Mandalorians in general, so that wasn't great.  But aside from that, and from the well-attested issue of everyone on Mandalore looking like a Storm Front fantasy, this arc exhibits the same structural writing defects the entire show has shown far - and honestly, life is too short to watch bad TV.  At this point, I know this main issue will never be corrected in the entire show run, so I can accept it and push through in the name of completionism and writing research, but at the time I wasn't active in fandom and it was enormously easy to just stop watching and move onto other, better, shows and books.

Now, I thought long and hard about how to review these episodes, but I think it's useful in this case to interview them as a singular block instead of individual episodes.  The story is largely cohesive, if a bit strained. It is essentially Palpatine's PT plot writ small: he wants to take over Mandalore (a reason is never really explicated in the actual story, so who knows why), and he's doing it by essentially creating a false war between the CIS proxies, Death Watch, and the Republic proxy, which is Duchess Satine.  If all goes according to plan, Satine will be shown as ineffectual and unable to rule her people, and the GAR can occupy Mandalore for reasons of "public safety".  This will inflame the Mandalorians, who aren't part of the Republic and don't want to be, and send them rushing in the arms of the CIS-allied Death Watch, starting a cycle of radicalization and violence which will end (at least from Palpatine's POV) with Mandalore firmly in his grasp, and all potential opposition killed in the Civil War he engineered.   

As enormously stupid as the whole plot sounds, it's a valid historical tactic for imperial powers looking to expand.  And that's lead us the the primary flaw of this story: The Jedi are the Bad Guys.  Just ignore the tangled mess of Mandalorian canon, retcons, and expanded universe, past and present - in the show itself, they are presented as a smaller, weaker neighbor-state, and the Jedi are acting as agents of an expansionary military power, interfering with their internal politics specifically for the purpose of a soft invasion.  And that's an interesting story!  But that story is deliberately obfuscated and hobbled because the writers and producers of TCW were and are ever-so-concerned with making the Jedi as sympathetic as possible, even in situations where they shouldn't be.

Part of that hobbling is Satine's character.  Satine is badly written, but she's badly written in a very specific way that has been common to most of the non-CIS political antagonists the show has presented thus far.  Satine's most interesting characteristic is that she doesn't want to involve Mandalore with the war - and who can blame her?  The Republic and the CIS have nothing to offer to her or her people.  The only thing that will happen is the exploitation of Mandalore's natural resources (at best) or the destruction of her people, caught between two Great Powers who obviously don't care for her people's struggle.  That's an interesting character, right?  A POV we haven't seen in this show so far, which has consistently been from the Jedi POV, which is pretty firmly in the CIS = monsters and Republic = assholes (but democratic assholes!) camp.

But it's a POV that is pretty uncomplimentary of the Jedi role in this war, which means Satine must be crippled by an obnoxious belief in pacifism, like the unlikably-written Lurmen in season one, and also weighted down by a personal connection to an avatar of the Republic, like Senator Farr and his "family friendship" with Padme overcoming the fact that his people are starving and getting no support from the Republic.  I have heard people argue that TCW, written as it was in the late 2000s, is reacting against the excesses of the War on Terror.  I am less than convinced, mostly because every single anti-war character is reduced to a flat caricature of an annoying pacifist that can be safely defeated by the ever-so-kind warrior monks in the space of an episode or two before being cast aside for the next adventure. 

Because Satine's motivations are poorly written, her actions don't make a lick of sense. In "The Mandalore Plot", she's clearly escorting Obi-Wan around under duress - but in "Voyage of Temptation", she's apparently going with the Senators willingly to the Coruscant, to essentially beg the Senate to not invade.  Why not write her as an unwilling "guest" of the Republic, invited without recourse to defend her people's sovereignty?  Well, that would show Obi-Wan in a very unflattering light, wouldn't it?  But in "Duchess of Mandalore" she's back to being a prisoner in everything but name, escaping custody to receive an unaltered copy of her dead minister's speech.  

Now, Obi-Wan helps her at that point...but it's clearly due to some poorly-written romantic feelings.  I am not interested in any Padme/Anakin parallels, mostly because I find it incredibly tedious and honestly not helpful in exploring Anakin's Leap into the Dark Side.  This story is a gigantic missed opportunity to show the Jedi (or at least, a representative of the Jedi) wrestle with their roles as avatars of the republic, when the republic is so obviously manufacturing a reason to invade Mandalore.  Palpatine is obviously orchestrating this whole thing, but he still (at this point in the show) requires the consent of the Senate to essentially annex more territory - and the Senate is perfectly happy to give him that consent, by the way.  There is a fantastic story on the Jedi side about the clash of ideals vs realities, and the writers totally side-stepped it.

But pulling the focus out a little further, that has actually been par for the course for most of the Obi-Wan stories of season 2.  He's been consistently more and more irritated about the war as the season has gone on, and made some off-hand comments about the ungratefulness of the Republic populace that, in the hands of a more competent writer, could have been a multi-season character arc about loss of faith in fallible human institutions, which would dovetail pretty well with his characterization in both RotS and ANH.  Instead, his character remains the static wise-cracking Good Guy; Satine is the Designated Love Interest, unable to develop along more interesting and independent lines; and this arc falls deeply flat as a result.  

They're not the only characters who are horribly underwritten.  I mean, here we are at the end of Season 2, and have we yet seen a sympathetic CIS character, or an accounting of how Palpatine was able to take advantage of already extant fractures in the Republic to create a shadowy cabal dedicated to tearing it apart?  No.  It's all war crimes and evil laughter so far.  The Good Guys always win (until they don't), the bad guys are always Very Bad, and there are no shades of gray in this massive galaxy.  Again, ignoring the complicated Mandalorian backstory, Death Watch is extremely under-baked as villains.  There could have been a fascinating interplay between Satine and Pre about their different visions for their people's future, but just as Satine is a flat Pacifist caricature, Pre is a dull Terrorist caricature.

I have to give a special mention to the horrible Love Confession of "Voyage of Temptation".  This is the episode where Satine is written most consistently as Peak Pacifist.  If she had instead been written as anti-war (but not necessarily a philosophical pacifist), her escape from Tal Merrik would have been a great inversion of that trope - and in fact, I thought it was at first, when she "confessed", and then had to make an annoyed face when Obi-Wan didn't immediately play along.  Instead, they played it straight, and I've never felt more simpatico with a villain than when Tal Merrik complained about their timing.  That fact that Satine's "pacifism" is then used as an excuse for Obi-Wan and Satine to hesitate to kill a terrorist, leading Anakin to kill him...like, c'mon.  I get it, the writers want to show his fall to the dark side, you gotta play the ominous theme music, but is this really a particularly evil act by Anakin?  I'm gonna be honest, if a cop or an armed civilian kills a mass shooter, no one is castigating them for doing so, but instead congratulating them for stopping a murderer from killing again.

Final note and the only one that explicitly addresses the Mandalorian elephant in the room: I hate the Darksaber.  Like, I know we all gave KJA shit for the original Darksaber novel, but the fact that Filoni (or Lucas?) repurposed the name for a SPECIAL MANDALORIAN LIGHTSABER fills me with intense rage.  They're fucking gun knights, you coward, stop inserting your weird Arthurian hard-on into my western samurai sci-fi pastiche.

And that's it for this batch of episodes.  Up next: Boba Fett makes his first appearance in our chronological viewing, and we return to Mandalore a second time, much to my sorrow. 

[ill-will-editions]

Against Pandemic Capitalism. An Interview with Milan’s Emergency Volunteer Brigades

Interview conducted March 21, 2020. 

1. How are you all? Are you managing to keep in touch virtually? Are you still managing to exist as a "group" or to keep to a "common position" despite the isolation?

We are fine. The situation here in Milan has been building into a crescendo. After February 23rd, there were weeks of uncertainty, during which there were contradictory orders from the government. During the first week the government closed some businesses, then they reopened them; later the awareness of the epidemic grew, and the more drastic measures were then applied. Now that everyone is pretty much isolated, although we are keeping in touch with each other frequently, it is more complicated to come up with  common positions and to exist as a group. At the same time, various communication channels and types of reflection and action have opened up,  yes. Some of us have focused more on the conditions in prisons, while others are engaged in translating or sharing thoughts. Some others converged in the local Solidarity Brigades, and others are looking for more contacts with comrades abroad to have a broader picture of the situation.

At the beginning everyone had their own perception of things; there were those who panicked and those who claimed that it was yet another way to instill fear in the population, since in any case politicians and medical experts seemed to espouse different opinions. From the governor of Lombardy, who published a selfie video locked in his house with a mask, to the mayor of Milan, who made a video entitled #milanononsiferma (#milanwillnotclose), in which he tries to show that the hyperproductive city would keep going; to virologists, who were insulting each other on various TV programs. Then the number of infected increased and the red zone was extended from Codogno (where the so-called “patient zero” was found) to the whole of Lombardy. People started to develop a different perception of risk: by that point, we all knew someone who had been infected. As I mentioned, nobody had really understood what was happening and we continued our everyday collective routines (collective football training, meetings, assemblies, and so on). From March 9th, the government took a unified national approach; the red zone was extended across the whole of Italy. Orders were given not to leave the house, unless you had a certificate provided by the authorities. The restrictions have been very strict: an evening curfew begins at 6pm is in place. Since then, all of Italy has been “online”.

Many initiatives were born, from tutorials about how to defend against COVID-19, to new radio and streaming sites, meetings (especially on Zoom) filled with people who often have never even met, some from all over the world. The absurdity of it is that we are experiencing a more conscious use of our devices. While before we perceived them as instruments of alienation and distraction, we now use them better as ways of sharing knowledge.

As for our group, we had been facing a period of great fragmentation. Ironically, the work of the brigades and the presence of a common but invisible enemy now involves everyone, since we are all touched by the same problem.

2. What is the situation in working-class neighbourhoods? How are the cops and the army behaving? In Milan, as we know, the police are generally very aggressive, but their attitude can change according to zone, acting civil enough and "teacherly" in more well-to-do neighbourhoods, and with the arrogant and violent "colonizing" approach in more working-class neighbourhoods. 

The situation in the working-class districts of Milan changes depending on the area. In the densely-populated areas, filled with small and overcrowded houses, and mainly inhabited by foreigners, life continues to take place in the streets. Walking around in neighbourhoods like Giambellino or via Padova, you might see smaller food shops still open, creating spaces to meet for people who seem unconcerned with the directions issued by the authorities to stay at home. The police patrol the streets, but not in an overly dominating fashion, mostly trying to limit these numerous gatherings. The army was already present in some areas with an anti-terrorist function. Since the 23rd of March we've seen their number increasing and they have begun to patrol as public officials with the possibility of stopping and asking for documents or ID. It seems that for now, they don’t seem particularly comfortable in this role, showing a certain reluctance in being aggressive. In neighbourhoods where the presence of the police is usually regarded with hostility, the discouragement of gatherings and “dangerous” kinds of behaviour becomes difficult to put into practice.

Other working-class neighbourhoods on the outskirts, where people normally only go home to sleep, seem deserted. After the closing of the shops inside the shopping centres (the only places in these areas where social life takes place), life has died out, and everyone hides in their own apartments. In the last few days, media-induced fears of the dangers of walking and doing sports in parks have spread, with people looking out from their balconies and railing against neighbours who go out to take a walk in the yard, or even call the police.

And it’s obvious that the slogan #iorestoacasa (#Istayathome) is not considered relevant to everyone. Those who can afford to pay rent and have a job are locked in their homes, doing online shopping, while the rest of the population, either precarious or unemployed, working in logistics or infrastructure, experience a quite different situation. A very wide gap between the classes has opened. Confindustria (General Confederation of Italian Industry) forced workers to keep on working in factories without any health and safety precautions.

So in working-class neighbourhoods, many people are continuing to work. The increase of police and military in the streets is considerable but there isn’t a huge gap between neighborhoods: they are simply everywhere. We are seeing another phenomenon too, which is the becoming-policemen of normal citizens, which is perhaps stronger in bourgeois residential areas: there have been many episodes of people denouncing others to the police, or just people shouting “Go home!” to people walking in the street. Those who have been most affected by these severe measures have been homeless people and migrants.

3. How do the volunteer Brigades work? How do you handle the relationship between institutions (the state, local council, NGOs…)? How do you train those who participate? Where did the idea originate? How many people are involved? Are you trying to extend the idea to the whole of Italy?

The Brigades were born out of an idea that circulated as word of mouth on social media and it quickly became viral. The idea which came out of it is that we can obviously talk about who are responsible for all this, and they will have to pay the consequences, but in our current situation in which there is a diffuse sense of fear among people, we have to look out for the community, especially those of us who have experience with many different forms of organization, since we have learned in these years to manage with “extreme” situations, to act with courage, for the sake of everyone. We were inspired by several examples of mutual aid and organizations which worked throughout Italy after the earthquakes in the center of Italy (in the 2000s).

We understood pretty quickly that this situation was much larger than us, and that it wouldn’t be sufficient to do things autonomously or even on the national level, so that we would be vulnerable from multiple sides, especially vis-a-vis repression. If you’re found out of your house without any particular reason they can sanction you.

We looked for an organization that could give us the possibility of having an official status, and found Emergency, the humanitarian organization which provides aid in war situations and which has its offices in Milan. Through this we were able to construct an infrastructure which legitimates us and which mediates between us and the Milan local council. In the same way that we created the “Brigades” through our personal involvement, which began from social media and word-of-mouth, we also found individuals for each area to coordinate the groups. This structure has organized training sessions, first of all for the group leaders, who in turn started training the people in their own groups. The structure also allowed us to have passes in order to be able to move around the city freely. Currently we have more than 200 volunteers and many people on the waiting list to be trained and many others who continue to write saying that they would like to join. We are managing to cover all the 9 districts of Milan and the calls are increasing daily. In some areas we are connected to social centers or self-organized spaces which make up the base of the Brigades.

Our structures are being tested daily but it is still small and spread out, and we are being contacted by people from other parts of Italy who are beginning to organize themselves in the same way. Our goal is to create an infrastructure across the whole of Italy.

4. Can you update us on the situation in the prisons? Are there ways to stay in contact with people inside? (Here they gave a “bonus” of €40 for every inmate, which allow them to make more phone calls, and they gave free TV access to everyone, hoping in this way to placate unrest)

After the riots, and the deaths in prison, and the first case of Covid-19 in the Voghera prison, the “Cura Italia” (“Heal Italy”) decree established new orders on how to confront the pandemic in penitentiary institutions: house arrest and electronic tags for those serving less than 18 months; those under 6 months and minors are to be directly sent home, without tags.

Beyond this, it was established that those accused of having participated in the revolts of March 9th/10th will not be allowed to benefit from these alternative measures. Following the protests many sections were destroyed, and for this reason there has been a decrease of 2000 prison places, due to works that have to be carried out immediately.

News reached us (from allies and family members) of many reprisals in the Opera prison: the inmates report going hungry and fearing for themselves, they describe being denied TV, food, showers, phone calls; having only half an hour of air, and being beaten, hands and bones broken; “riot police entered the cells and beat us up in the dark”; the guards took away cooking materials and gave the inmates only water and cigarettes.

After the events of March many inmates were separated in order to put down the unrest; this was the case in Ferrara and Alessandria; 60 inmates in Melfi, 500 in Modena, 107 in Foggia, and 60 in Naples, were transported on a military boat belonging to the Italian navy to the correctional facility on the island of Procida; 650 from Poggioreale were separated and put into different jails in Brindisi, Messina, Bari, Lagonegro, Melfi, Potenza and Reggio Calabria.

Day after day the numbers of guards and inmates infected and testing positive increases.

At this link you can find the account of Nicoletta Dosio on the situation in the prison of Vallette in Turin here [in Italian].

5. Do you have any advice on how to manage – emotionally, psychologically – the fact of having to stay inside all the time? Here it is only the third day and many are still experiencing it almost as though it were a game. What are your reflections after ten days?

The first thing we believe is important is not to allow oneself to be infantilized, but to assume responsibility. Despite the state wanting the former, it is important to understand that this situation concerns us all, our loved ones, and the more vulnerable members of our society both on the social and physical level. Staying inside all the time with this awareness can really notably help our sense of self-discipline. Moreover, moments like these, which people who have experienced house arrests know well, are moments to keep oneself occupied to the utmost. It is almost redundant to say: study, train, reflect. In the end I maintain that it is important to treat it as a kind of “suspended time” when we can finally concentrate on our collective strategies (or the lack of these), also in the light of recent events, without the stress or the lack of time caused by the frenetic pace of our normal daily routines (work, militancy, etc.)

At first it seems like a game, especially for the many of us who have for a long time been trying to flee hyper-productivity. We have found ourselves obviously amused by the hysteria of people, who in the first hours became enraged at supermarkets and shops who sold face masks. Added to this is the sensation of living in an episode of Black Mirror – the streets are empty and the few people on the streets are walking around with masks on.

At first we passed the time reading, discovering things on the internet or having dinners restricted to a small number of friends, where obviously the main theme of discussion was the virus. Slowly as the days passed we began to understand the seriousness of what was happening: people are now all stuck at home and our contact with the outside world has been reduced to three or four people, which is, the people we were always in contact with. Further contact was avoided for good reason, and those with family over a certain age stopped all contact with others. For now, on the emotional and psychological level we keep struggling, perhaps because the Brigades give a practical sense to these days, and also because we are seeing the exasperating effects of the virus on capitalism: people fighting outside supermarkets in queues, or because social distancing is not being kept up, or other kinds of unrestrained egotism.

At this point the question has a global importance and we have the possibility to turn this into a potential and to grow the network we have been building for years, though, on the other hand, power also has this potential. It is not incidental that in these days we have been able to have virtual assemblies with comrades from many different places, where we have been able to discuss the experience of the Brigades.

The idea is that when our methods will have been tested a little we will also be able to go further than just helping out those who need it most. Maybe one day on the streets there will only be the brigades and the police and this could be an interesting scenario. We have to consider however that the state and global capitalism are using this moment as a kind of experiment on a massive scale and we cannot underestimate this; we have to remain attentive and to study the movements of power to try to understand what will happen afterwards. Perhaps certain things could enter into the daily lives of people, for example this question of sociality and work. The experiment that is happening is moving on different levels; from the repression of those who leave the house to “tele-working”, the many working from home. Schools are continuing to conduct courses online, thus in part people at home are being employed to “produce” in a new way.

Further, the virus, being immaterial and invisible, seems insurmountable and so it legitimates the state even more to project a voice that everyone necessarily listens to, keeping us all suspended since no one has any idea when this will end. There is an extreme pressure exerted upon individual responsibility so as to move away from all kind of social tension which might allow a realization of who the real people responsible for this are.

It’s a strange feeling leaving the house alone to go to the supermarket. Even if people don’t talk to one another, many people exchange complicit looks, since we all now have this in common, even if we’ve never known these people as friends, in the sense that they’ve never been this side of the barricade. This should make us reflect. We have to remain immersed in this situation and be strong in order to turn the situation in the right direction when the time comes.

6. Given that protests, demonstrations, and street presence are now impossible, what are ways of maintaining pressure on the authorities, in order to give voice to objections to the discourse that says “let’s save the economy at all costs”?

In this respect the most combative elements have been the militant unions such as SI COBAS (a small communist union operating on the national level), which are also the most directly involved given that, as we said, the majority of factories remain open undisturbed, in flagrant disregard of all the warnings to stay at home. So the voice of opposition has for now been principally represented by strikes, in which however, most of us don’t have the occasion to physically participate. The situation in prisons is different; groups of comrades are trying to get organised even if also here the difficulties are not at all few. After the first wave of protests in prisons, protests are continuing but they have been repressed with impunity, and the main task now is getting news out from inside, and to circulate it as much as possible.

We have to take account of people’s emotional reactions to what is happening, and acknowledge those people who have lost a relative or loved one to the virus. It’s difficult to imagine a movement exploding as yet, in this context. On top of this there is the fact that in Italy over the last years movements have suffered many setbacks and steps backward in terms of confronting power, and there is no united front, nor strong position from which to begin. Everything is very fragmented and so what we manage to bring forwards in struggle is a reflection of this pacification.

One practical example was the 8th of March – the global trans-feminist strike. Already being in the period of the quarantine we had to think what actions people could do. Hundreds of initiatives came about around the city; a new radio program, and many actions, from banners and posters, to writing, to whatever other form of protest which allowed people to feel involved. But nothing that meant direct conflict.

It’s moreover clear that contradictions have emerged; from one side the politicians who have  made many gross errors, the public health system which is falling apart (as a result of the cuts over the last years), the fact of the middle class being at home, while delivery workers are in the streets delivering food, Confindustria deciding not to close down production and the larger unions which are playing around, the logistics workers who continue to work without any safety measures, the workers with unprotected faces who are risking their lives; on the other side, the campaign emphasizing individual responsibility of #iorestoacasa (#Istayathome) which is, of course, a way of concealing the truth of the situation.

Anger is coming to the surface, the autonomous unions have begun their strikes and are distributing provisions and masks to those in need, trying to impose a stop on production; the precarious workers have opened disputes in the hope of obtaining an income during the quarantine; and people are making appeals trying to stop online shopping because it puts those people who are making the deliveries at risk. The workers at the Amazon offices in Milan went on strike. As yet it hasn’t been possible to construct a strong position on how to give a positive sense to economic failure. 25 million unemployed people are expected once this is all over, and fear is high. For now it is very difficult but we think that with the work of the brigades it will be possible to construct a strong common position.

7. Have you noticed any new forms of solidarity among generations and in neighborhoods? What’s happening out of town? Do you have any updates from comrades in the countryside?

Our comrades living in the countryside describe a much quieter picture, free from the anxiety about contagion that one feels in the city. It’s easier for people to move around because controls are limited. You can buy food and any kind of “essentials” without difficulty, and farms that are still operating still receive the supplies they need. They’re dealing with labour shortages though.

8. Have there been moments of panic, people fleeing from big cities? Leaving Northern Italy to go south? (We had a huge flow of "bourgeois" migration here. Many people have left to be isolation in more comfortable conditions in their countryside or seaside holiday home – thus threatening remote areas, typically inhabited by the elderly, with the risk of contagion)

Yes, panic broke out on the evening of March 8th. A lot of people took trains from Milan and left Lombardy. All because of leaked news about the government's decision to isolate the region. Obviously, having hundreds of people crammed into a train certainly didn’t help prevent the virus from leaving Lombardy. Sure enough it had the opposite effect, leading to an increasingly higher number of infected people in Southern Italy in the following days. This kind of panic-induced internal migration continued for some days, with such intensity that some Southern regions decided to close their borders. At the beginning many people perceived the quarantine as a holiday, rushing towards ski slopes, beach resorts and second homes.

Yes, as I said, it has been a crescendo. In Northern Italy, for example, the start of quarantine took place when lots of people were on holidays, so many were stuck in the mountains or in their country houses. We witnessed great panic when the government decided to quarantine the whole of Lombardy  – creating the so-called “red zone”. When the news came out, there was an exodus. Southern people who work or study in the North traveled back home en masse. This was a totally irresponsible thing to do, insofar as they risked bringing the virus to other areas, especially since young people can be healthy carriers with often no symptoms at all. The sheer selfishness of this gesture brought out all the counter-revolutionary power of the Italian family.

9. How does the contrast between the North and South feel now? Can we say that the tables have turned regarding the famous "Southern question"? Any thoughts?

This is not about the classic, even ironized, North-South opposition. The issue must be considered in relation to the different healthcare systems. Of course, we are not happy that the crisis broke out in the region where we live.  Still, Lombardy is the richest region, with the best healthcare system in Italy and probably Europe (despite a succession of administrations cutting its budget). So we can be kind of relieved that it happened here. The Southern healthcare system has many more issues. Some problems are related to the staff, but the biggest issue is the inadequacy of infrastructure. A crisis like the one we’re having in the North would probably have brought the South to its knees.

In the last few days, the number of new patients in other regions – mostly Puglia and Campania, respectively South and Central Italy – has been increasing. We don’t really know how they’re facing the crisis (I mean, whether there is a network of mutual aid organizations and how they work), we’d need to ask people and healthcare personnel in those areas to get a better picture of it.

Some friends and relatives told us they’re very afraid, as though the epidemic had broken out there, as though Bergamo were a Southern city, so they respect the "safety" measures carefully. I don't think we can say the tables have turned on the "Southern question”. Many thought they could get away with leaving the North and going back home as soon as the lockdown was imposed – they proved to be very selfish and harmful to those who had a chance not to be as affected by the epidemic. Because of this grave error we risk having ten Codognos instead of one. People who left the red zones are likely to infect relatives in isolated areas.

There is still a great economic and social divide between the North and the South, we know that pretty well. In Sicily, in Calabria or in Basilicata, people are very aware that hospitals do not have adequate means and tools to face this kind of emergency. As long as people have to stay at home it will be impossible to discuss these issues – we’ll probably have to wait until everything is over.

The North is the new South! Or not. Originally, the North of Italy (great center of production on an international scale) was floored by the epidemic and showed its weaknesses. It became the laughingstock of countries all around the world – nobody accepted tourists or travelers from Northern Italy. A great blow that hurt the pride of the colonizers, who had always been free to roam around the world. For once they found themselves on the ‘not welcome’ list. Obviously the North-South relationship in Italy has changed and become an object of humor. But what is actually very worrying is that the healthcare system in Lombardy, which is despite all one the most efficient in the country, is collapsing. So if the virus were to reach the South, the situation would be truly dramatic.

10. What is the general feeling about what the government is doing? Is it considered partly responsible for the situation, or are its efforts to face the crisis appreciated?

For what our perceptions are worth, the government is generally receiving good support from the people. Prime Minister Conte is considered a wise politician, and the fact that Italy acted immediately and firmly made people forget many doubts they had at the beginning. In fact, until the first weeks of March, most Northern politicians were pressured by business leaders into keeping the borders open and letting Milan run at full capacity. Moreover, the government has taken strong measures concerning healthcare and movement of goods and people, but gave in to the pressure of Confindustria. So big cities are under great restrictions, whereas in the rest of the region industries and businesses, even the non-essential ones, continue their activities adopting only laughable safety measures. No decision has been made on the issue of overcrowded prisons, despite many judges and courts asking for new policies. But people have become more aware of the situation – the current climate of emergency makes everyone more sensitive, even past the issue of hospital capacity. The stern but inspiring campaigns in favor of prisoners have moved many people as well. We should consider in this respect the old nationalist cliché about Italians selflessly coming together during hard times to fight for the community, which has resurfaced in this situation. “Sovereignist” leaders like Salvini and Meloni, surprisingly, are at the moment managing to act under the radar. Their beloved game of finding someone else to blame for every single problem and identifying an enemy cannot be played so easily in times when there are these appeals to unity, so they’re clutching at straws. The feeling is that they’re preparing for the aftermath, when the emergency will be over and we’ll have to rebuild everything from the ground up.

As I said, the situation is controversial. At first the government made some incredible mistakes, and revealed that it wasn’t able to respond to this emergency adequately. We’ve seen this in every crisis that affected the country in the last decades, from the earthquakes in central Italy to the collapse of the Morandi bridge in Genoa. There are many issues we have to deal with, most importantly budget cuts to the healthcare system and the lack of protections for logistics workers. We are talking about people dying here not because they are crushed by a crane, but because they are attacked by a virus, which actually affects everyone without distinction. People are therefore intensely focused on the issue but are “waiting for instructions from above".

Many political collectives have highlighted the link between the capitalist system and the virus, and how it is transmitted. But for the time being, unfortunately, this is all talk, with a kind of academic character, especially given that we can’t even leave our homes.

11. How are people reacting to the plans for generalized digital surveillance (as already implemented in Israel or Iran)? Is it perceived as a "necessary evil"? Are there any ideas to counter these policies? Is the issue being addressed or is the health crisis preventing it?

So far it is not being addressed that much, certainly not at the level of general public opinion. As far as activist groups are concerned, it’s a bit complicated because the debate is now quite mixed up. From the beginning, philosopher Giorgio Agamben focused on the measures relating to the “state of exception”, and their possible consequences. Maybe he did so with a certain smugness and without caring too much about being understood correctly, so he was accused of minimizing the health crisis. The result is that now most of the comrades have slipped into a somewhat sterile debate between supporters and critics of the imposition of the state of exception. The critics accuse the supporters of being too abstract in front of real emergencies such as safety conditions in factories or prisons. As a result, it’s not easy to focus on the whole picture and avoid ideological squabbles.

We can talk about what has been happening in the last weeks. On March 19th, AgCom (national regulatory authorities for Italian communication industries) issued a press release asking social networks like Youtube, Facebook and Twitter to remove videos reporting false information or information from unreliable sources. It is the first time in Italy since 1948 that some fundamental freedoms, such as the freedom of movement, of assembly, and of expression, have been suspended. We will witness the effects of this measure in the upcoming days. The risk is that, the state taking advantage of an "emergency" situation, we could emerge from the catastrophe in much worse cultural conditions than when we entered it.

Personally, I’m very worried about this question. Many people are working from home and online 24/7, and are wondering about the future of our society. We fear that our movements will be GPS-tracked to check who is respecting the quarantine and who is not. On the other hand, many people see this situation as a positive change for the environment – since traffic has slowed, we experienced a significant decrease in air pollution, which is a major issue in Milan. So many now believe that this could also solve other problems. For the time being we need our devices to remain connected, but this situation will certainly have a significant impact on our lives.

12. What’s the general opinion on how other countries are approaching the situation? Were people angry at the thoughtlessness of countries still untouched by the pandemic?

Surely one of the most widespread feelings is disbelief and amazement. Italy had watched from afar the Chinese government dealing with the pandemic, a country that seems far away but is of course not so distant in our globalized world. However, we can’t understand how it is possible that European countries did not act as soon as they sensed what was happening in Italy. The example was there, before everyone's eyes, even sometimes just a few kilometers away. This highlights once again the inadequacy of our leaders as well as our lack of preparation, awareness and independent sources of information.

Anti-European and Eurosceptic feelings are as always resurfacing. Some see the EU as a mindless bloodsucker that refuses to support Italy during this emergency. The best thing is probably the general discredit that people like Trump or Boris Johnson are suffering. In the midst of the crisis, their bullshit now sounds dangerous and crazy even to those who previously admired them as strong and charismatic leaders.

This is significant. We were very angry at first, when we couldn't understand why they kept the information about when the virus first appeared concealed. Many people were disappointed in how Germany and England responded to this emergency. There’s also fear that if the pandemic breaks out in a serious way in the US, a huge number of people will die as a result of the private healthcare system. The only positive news we saw was that Bolsonaro came into contact with someone infected with Covid-19. That could save many more lives! However, at the moment, attention remains focused on our country, with 900 deaths per day and new outbreaks.

13. Can you imagine things on a longer scale? Do you think it’s possible to predict how things will be in the longer term? It almost seems like there will be no return to normality. What do you think will happen in the next few months?

It's hard to say. It’s very difficult to make predictions while all these different newspapers and media throw news at us. It’s hard to reflect while isolated. Everyone knows that the more you stay at home, the less fresh air gets to your head. One day we experience pessimism and the next day hope, or at least you see new chances for some unexpected turn of events. Surely the months to come will be harder and harder. We’ll have to be ready to go out again and see how this situation has changed things. But how they will have changed, as I said, is impossible for us to know.

It's hard to imagine what will happen now because we don't know how long the lockdown will last. The whole world will change for sure. It's also difficult to express “cynical” or critical ideas as many people are very sensitive about the pandemic. Some issues will be affected – the Mediterranean geopolitical scenario, Italy’s alliance with China for the new ‘silk road’ in Africa, the war in Syria that brings millions of migrants to Europe. It is no coincidence that borders are now closed all over the world, this seems to us as well to be a form of experimentation. 10 years ago we were studying the NATO Urban Operations in the Year 2020 report, and now here we are.

An interesting scenario could open up for us. We spent years traveling the world to build networks wherever people tried to confront the government, often getting in trouble with local authorities. Now we are experiencing a worldwide scenario that unites us all, especially in the West. We have the opportunity to create a common model that can apply to many places in the world. Once the emergency is over, that can legitimize us to speak up against those who have created these problems. For the time being, we can’t say what our next steps will be. We know that some activist groups from all over the country are planning to mobilize, inspired by the Volunteer Brigades. In order to create a common trajectory, we will need to connect with this broader viewpoint.

[randomrainman]

american conservatism and the minds of people: a black man’s perspective.

Hi, it is I.

I often think long and hard about the mind states of the people around me, and my inevitable conclusion is that the vast majority of people are monumentally and irrevocably fucking stupid.  As it turns out, people have a really hard time letting go of things with which they have grown familiar or fond, and therein lies the basic principle of conservative thought.  

“But aren’t some things okay to keep?”

Well, obviously, not everything needs to be thrown out in order for improvement to occur.  In the Army, we have things labelled “sustains” and “improves”.  The two terms are pretty self-explanatory (as are most things in the military): sustains are the things that work, and the improves are the things you either completely nix or need to, erm, improve.  Of course, this begs a question: as it relates to a society of living, (mostly) breathing human beings, how does this apply?

"Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water,” it is commonly said.  I am not entirely sure who was throwing away bathing children, but that’s a discussion for a different time.  The baby in this idiomatic expression is whatever it is we are supposed to be maintaining.  Let’s start with an example: police.

Obviously, it is entirely infeasible to literally abolish police.  We absolutely need the police force as an institution, and good and effective policing is a pillar to a modern, functional society.  However, we can abolish unprofessional, unnecessarily violent, racist, or otherwise unbecoming behaviour from police departments, and also demonstrate that such things are intolerable and met with appropriate punishments every time these rules are broken.  NWA didn’t make “Fuck The Police” because they wanted to express interest in having thoroughly arresting cop sex; it exists because they don’t trust the police.

Above: An Autistic Swedish dude spitting shockingly accurate commentary-by-proxy about American society. Flames!

Due possibly in part to dubiously worded slogans such as “defund the police”, modern conservatives balk at the thought of changing anything of significance about how policing in many communities in the United States is conducted, even going as far as to label the reform for which we call as an attack on the very idea of police.

That said, historically, the very pillars of police forces in the United States have their foundations in slavery and post-slavery racist institutions, which means that, while much has changed on the surface, the way police implement policy reflects structural and societal racism.  As a result, simply attacking individual instances of misconduct will almost always fail to elicit any meaningful progress, which is why some do seek to dismantle police departments (an option I cannot fathom as being realistic, especially not in the short term). 

The lack of a centralised police organisation from which to implement policy certainly does not help, and while some police departments, to include the Department of Justice itself, have introduced implicit bias training, it would appear that change was difficult to measure. Additionally, many police departments have not addressed the more overt problem of explicit racism in law enforcement, which is a nigh-impossible thing to tackle expeditiously without a top-down structure to deal with it. It has improved steadily overall, however, but not without significant disapproval...

Pictured: “disapproval”.  A civil rights demonstrator is attacked by a police dog in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963. (Photo credit: AP)

The Origins

As I noted earlier, there is plenty of shit people want to keep, and most for relatively understandable reasons -- after all, those things provide a sense of familiarity.  “It’s always been this way -- why change it?” they ask.  One needs only to look at our, um, flowery history to see countless examples of things that required change...

The transatlantic slave trade transported up to 12 million forcibly enslaved Africans to the Americas, many of whom arrived in what is now the United States.  As unspeakably horrifying as the actual journey was, this was only the beginning of the tribulations that would befall the slaves and their descendants in the future.

While Europeans played a large part in introducing the idea of race-based caste systems into colonised lands, the American brand of discrimination is different in the fact that the idea that Blacks and Native Americans were genetically inferior to whites was endemic to our inception, and thus, formed the basis of the things enshrined into American democracy.

Photo credit: Alexander Gardner / Wikimedia Commons

Abraham Lincoln entered the chat.

Naturally, having someone even so much as threaten the idea of racial dominance after literal fucking centuries of treating Black people as property did not sit well with the slave-owning populace (even if Lincoln’s motives were not exactly altruistic).  While the Southern states did in fact operate an agrarian economy heavily dependent on chattel slavery, it was that notion of superiority combined with societal comfort they felt that ultimately catalysed the secession of the Southern states from the Union...

Pictured: Civil War reenactors (from the Confederate side) simulate the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest battle in US history.  Also, why the fuck is Civil War reenactment a popular thing to do? It’s deeply weird. (Photo credit: MPRNews.org)

...and then they decided to have the deadliest fucking war in American history over that comfort.  Spoiler alert: the Confederates lost both the war and their precious bullshit institution of slavery -- but even after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, many Southern slave owners did not even pass the news of freedom to their slaves for months.

In keeping with the preservationist and racist mindset which occupied most Southerners’ brains, any attempt to integrate Black people into society during the Reconstruction period was stymied at every turn.  To them, despite Black people being de jure full citizens in accordance with the Civil Rights Act of 1866, we were still subhuman.  Due to Jim Crow laws, Ku Klux Klan terrorism, and other assorted nonsense, we made virtually no progress toward equality until the Civil Rights Movement and resulting laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

“Well, you got what you wanted!  YOU’RE EQUAL!  Quit yer bitchin’!”

Ah, if only things worked that way in real life.  As previously noted, even if things are codified into law as changes, there are still people who try really hard to keep everything exactly the fucking same, so it does not end up happening in practice.  Things such as residual effects of redlining and continuing disproportionate and excessive imprisonment of minorities, amongst other issues, still affect people in the present day. In other areas, people exploit loopholes in order to lawfully discriminate against others they might deem “undeserving”.

Lots of things, especially when it comes to role of minorities in society, have historical precedents.  When arguing said precedents with conservative types, the conversation almost always leads to one of several (predictable) conclusions: the person believes that 1) negative historical events (e.g., slavery, Native American genocide, etc.) were not that bad; 2) those things did not happen at all; or 3) those things were bad, but somehow do not affect modern society.

Obviously, all three are emphatically wrong.  This is why typical conservative behaviour, even in this modern era in which information sharing is instantaneous, does not surprise me: often, the rhetoric is not rooted in reality, and often resorts to appeals to emotions to elicit a knee-jerk response.  This is not to say that this does not occur on liberal ends of the spectrum, but modern conservative rhetoric is rooted primarily in unjustified fear of change and anti-intellectualism.

Pictured: A screenshot I took of someone on a pro-President Biden post desperately trying to be oppressed.

This kind of shit is utterly exhausting.  Neoconservatism, in a nutshell, is people literally inventing problems and subsequently getting angry at their own creations.  It is the equivalent of setting up a bear trap, immediately stepping in it, and wondering why the fuck you’re stuck in said bear trap and your foot doesn’t work anymore. During the Obama administration, the only thing I would witness is people insisting (without any evidence, of course) that President Obama was the Antichrist and that he would usher in the New World Order and take everyone’s guns.  All zero of those things happened, of course, but when Donald Trump assumed the presidency, the rhetoric completely reversed, and he was named “God’s chosen" by evangelical figures, despite him having broken perhaps all of the Old Testament’s Ten Commandments.  Of course, as you can see with the above screenshot, clearly, they have returned to the Obama bitching method, but diminished, partially because President Biden is also an old, white male, and they don’t need to ask where he was born.

Pictured: what happens when you fuel millions of self-victimising people with QAnon conspiracy theories and possibly loads of Bang energy drinks.  Photo credit: ABC News

The hypocrisy is absolutely palpable amongst these types of people, and if I tried to sit here and continued to provide examples of conservative figures contradicting themselves, I would die either of old age or myocardial infarction, whichever happened first. The difference in the reaction to Black Lives Matter protests versus the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 makes the double standard quite transparent: justice and equality, while technically codified into law, are clearly are not administered equally in modern-day America.  We’re still not like the others.

Our brand of conservatism, by and large, is the enemy of those two very important American ideals.

|the kid|

[thisnerdsadventures]

i graduated.

i graduated yesterday from MIT!! with a BS in computer science and engineering :)  a few of my friends and i celebrated over zoom with my mom in the background as they played video after video on the commencement live stream while only taking 10 minutes to scroll through our names lmao. the ceremony was done and done after 12pm PST, and i spent the rest of the days watching suits.

cw: protests, police brutality

I wanted to spend a good amount of this post talking about how it feels to graduate and what I’ve learned over the past 4 years. I’m still going to do that, but I want to start with how I felt this morning, as I watched protest videos on Twitter and tapped through an endless stream of call to action posts on Instagram. In the hours around commencement, I didn’t feel as happy as I should’ve, probably because the world we are graduating into is an actual Hot mess. We should’ve graduated onto Killian Court, with the sun out and hope and optimism with the world smiling upon us, but instead we graduated at home, separated by a global pandemic that our country refuses to take seriously and surrounded by protests and anger and racism, sent out into a world where people refuse to take a virus that has killed over 100,000 people in the US seriously and where a white police officer can literally kill an unarmed black man on the streets in broad daylight and nothing will happen without an actual public uproar. 

Frustrated, helpless, sad, angry are a few of the things I’m feeling. I feel frustrated because I know the community I grew up in and currently am in is a part of the problem. (For those of you who don’t know, I grew up in Orange County, California, which is surprisingly conservative for California, and has a lot of middle to upper class Asian and white people who are the types to denounce things like affirmative action, black lives matter, taxing the wealthy. Obviously not everyone here is like this, but actions like this make me remember why i wanted to leave :/ -- https://www.reddit.com/r/orangecounty/comments/gt7ift/oc_sheriff_department_raises_blue_lives_matters/) And I feel helpless because I don’t know how to help - if we were back on campus, we’d take the T out to Park St or even just walk there to Boston Common protesting, marching to City Hall, but we’re dispersed now, and not as many of us can drive out to the nearest big city protest, esp with COVID. So it begs the question of what we can do from our laptops, our homes?

Here’s some links that I’ve seen recently and have found really great:

Where you can donate, and where you can learn, a summary.

The Minnesota Freedom Fund is an organization that helps pay for immigration bonds and bails, but I think they’ve recently posted that they’ve gotten a lot of donations, and are now encouraging people to donate to other local organizations [x] and George Floyd’s family [x]. 

As an Asian-American, I recognize the privileges in society that we benefit from, and it’s our responsibility to stand up in solidarity now and actively fight anti-Blackness today. Here is an awesome Medium post I read yesterday, listing out some of the ways we can help -- https://medium.com/awaken-blog/20-allyship-actions-for-asians-to-show-up-for-the-black-community-right-now-464e5689cf3e

One thing that I’ve been thinking about lately is how much anti-blackness actually appears in our own families and communities - I know I’ve heard many many racist comments from the people around me, so now more than ever, it’s important to have these conversations and educate one another on how we can do better. Another thing I found really interesting was reading about where the model minority myth came from, why it exists, and the damage it does. NPR article. tl;dr educate one another, educate oneself

I also just stumbled upon this google doc that is so in depth, so if you want to read more about more actions you can take, look here -> [x]

welp. that’s all i can really say on that, or at least I think the links do a better job.

1) So going off of that, the first thing i guess i can say MIT did for me was instill a drive to action. I remember before college, I was mostly in this socal bubble, shit in the world definitely happened (ok maybe not global pandemic level) but we didn’t see its effects as much. When I moved to Boston and started meeting people from different backgrounds, that changed. These people here are so inspiring in the way that they don’t sit around or mope or ignore the problem, they choose to do something about it, whether its a pset, the next MIT admin shitshow, or COVID. They go up and beyond what’s expected for them to make the world the better place, and I think that’s something i learned to do a bit of.

2) Another thing I learned was to forgive myself - we all have to forgive ourselves for being less perfect and for whatever dumb stuff we’ve done in the past. Like you might not even realize it’s happening to you, but taking stuff out on yourself way harder than you should might be a product of you just being angry at yourself for mistakes in the past. Everyone wants to be perfect, that’s just a product of who we are as people, a product of the environment we’re in. But the sooner we forgive ourselves for not being perfect, the faster we can move to growing and being better.

3) We are all pretty valuable people. It angers me to no end when people settle for less than they should, whether it's out of fear that something else might not come along, or they just don’t know their own self-worth. A big example of that is how often people will accept lowball offers and fail to negotiate salaries at all. And it drives me up the wall that it happens to people I know and love because it makes me wonder if they can see how much they really are worth. So much of our time at MIT is spent just wondering if we’re enough. But once you leave the MIT bubble, you realize how open you options are, and that maybe we should spend more of our time advocating for ourselves and believing in our own worth than letting people define that for us.

4 and 5) i learned that moving too quick to label people as completely good or completely bad never ends well. Same goes for companies, organizations, issues, everything. This was a hard lesson to learn, I had to learn it, relearn it, unlearn it, learn it again, and I made mistakes after mistakes after mistakes. When confronted with a bit of bad, I closed my doors, thinking I had all the good in the world I needed. But what I really needed was perspective. That maybe there was some x, y, and z, and those were bad, but there was also a, b, c, d, f, g and those were all so, so good. I can get pretty angry in the moment - I did this again just the other day, when I was projecting my anger towards someone to the whole two year relationship. But this time, I had another friend watching my situation on a balcony three floors up who heard and listened to all the good they had done for me and reminded me about it. This is why its points 4 and 5, that its also so important to have friends around that will listen to you, not just during the bad, but also the good, so they can tell you when you’re being irrational and to really be there for you when you dont even know you need someone to be there.

6) one of the things i learned the hard way was how to know when someone is your friend, and how to know when friends truly have your back. something that my experiences have shown me (and 11.011, ngl) is that when it seems like someone has your back, they might not, and when they have to choose sides, they may very well not choose yours. But here’s the thing I have learned: when faced with that, good close friends do not leave. They show up. Do friends fight? hell yeah. and they apologize and grow from it. They confide in you and answer your call at 1am. They know you better than you know yourself, so when you start losing sight of your true self, they remind you. There is no condition to your friendship, no prereq. When a crisis happens like COVID, they show up, they help you pack, they calm you down when you’re panicking, and if they’re not there in person, they reach out, they ask how you’re doing, and they offer support. When you graduate, they send you surprise gifts or join your zoom party or at the very least, remember the date and text you congratulations. Turns out, good, real friends are hard to find in this world, but it’s important to remember to not give up on finding them. it might take a couple years longer than you had thought it would for finding friends in college, but that’s ok. someone once told me that although the journey was hard, it led me to this point, and that that’s what made it worth the struggle.

So yeah, graduating was a lot to deal with. I’ll be back in the fall for my masters and im starting my internship in 2 weeks, so there will still definitely be updates on this nerd’s adventure!