#go largely ignored by the western world at large despite their importance to their countries of origin

[just-wublrful]

not to be obnoxious on main but classic literature is not global literature. it's western literature at best

[aces-and-angels]

IMPORTANT UPDATE FROM SHAHED:

Note : this post is a repost of @appsa update on Shahed's campaign with updated infos on the current amount of raised funds.

I am so grateful to everyone who shared and donated, i really do count it as a miracle that we were able to reach the goal at all, never mind that it happened within the deadline we set. Your support has felt like a blessing in a truly wretched time, especially after all those baseless accusations were made.

Unfortunately, as is the norm with these fundraisers, it seems that shahed has run into some problems with the bank while withdrawing the funds she raised from this campaign. Apart from the unexpected $3.5k cut gfm took from the total amount, it seems the american bank her campaign manager using to send the money will also take a tax of $2k.

This has left her short of $5,500 from getting the full amount she needs to evacuate her whole family.

And it seems because the amount the campaign initially raised is so large, the campaign manager cannot afford to officially increase the target on the gofundme campaign page itself without putting himself at risk of having his bank account and its funds frozen.

As you may know already, there are lots of roadblocks when it comes to transferring funds from western countries to countries of the global south but especially gaza right now. People having their accounts frozen for sending money to gaza and having to go through legal hassles for it is not anything new.

Shahed doesn't want to put the campaign manager, who is their family friend, at risk of legal troubles like that, especially given the hostile political climate towards palestinians in the USA right now.

So i want to make this clear:

Shahed is currently unable to increase the target on the fundraiser on the gofundme itself, but she still needs to raise another 5.5k to cover the tax cuts taken by both gfm and the banks.

The goal on the fundraiser may say $80,000 is the target but the new one we have to aim for is actually $85,500 now

She is currently at $81,525 / $85,500

Believe me when i say that no one is more disheartened by this development than shahed herself. The morning we had reached the goal of $80,000 she told me that she felt she was the happiest girl in the world, and had bought and distributed sweets to the kids at the camp she was at to celebrate despite how expensive it is in Gaza right now.

She had also begun plans to help boost other fundraisers of palestinians, so that no one would have to feel the hopelessness she felt during those months where her fundraiser had been stagnant and had already gotten started on that barely a day or two after she'd completed her campaign.

Shahed was very nervous to tell me about this, especially after this whole racist hate campaign that was led against her so recently. She does not want her and her family to be accused of lying about their torment a second time. Especially when the violence has begun to ramp up once again even after her recent displacement, she can't bear it. Frankly neither can i.

Please know that she would not increase amount again unless times were desperate.

Please do NOT punish her during this difficult time by ignoring this. We have seen time and time again how gfms from gazans have to increase their goals even after they have been reached because of various issues, so this is not unprecedented. I've said it before- the goalposts will always be changing because they are going through a genocide.

So i urge you to please be kind and show her your solidarity and urgency once again, because the deadline is still the same. The raffle still hasnt ended so please check out the link above, and partcipate.

PLEASE HELP HER REACH $85.5K WITHIN THIS WEEK. THIS CAN'T WAIT.

current total: $81,530 USD

[xtruss]

What Putin Got Right! The Russian President Got Many Things Wrong About Invading Ukraine—But Not Everything.

— Argument: An Expert's Point of View on a Current Event | Foreign Policy | February 15th, 2023 | By Stephen M. Walt

Vladimir Putin speaks during the Preliminary Draw of the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia at The Konstantin Palace on July 25, 2015 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Dennis Grombkowski/Getty Images

Russian President Vladimir Putin got many things wrong when he decided to invade Ukraine. He exaggerated his army’s military prowess. He underestimated the power of Ukrainian nationalism and the ability of its outmanned armed forces to defend their home soil. He appears to have misjudged Western unity, the speed with which NATO and others would come to Ukraine’s aid, and the willingness and ability of energy-importing countries to impose sanctions on Russia and wean themselves off its energy exports. He may also have overestimated China’s willingness to back him up: Beijing is buying lots of Russian oil and gas, but it is not providing Moscow with vocal diplomatic support or valuable military aid. Put all these errors together, and the result is a decision with negative consequences for Russia that will linger long after Putin has left the stage. No matter how the war turns out, Russia is going to be weaker and less influential than it would have been had he chosen a different path.

But if we are honest with ourselves—and being ruthlessly honest is essential in wartime—we should acknowledge that Russia’s president got some things right, too. None of them justify his decision to start the war or the way Russia has waged it; they merely identify aspects of the conflict where his judgments have been borne out thus far. To ignore these elements is to make the same mistakes that he did: that of underestimating one’s opponent and misreading key elements of the situation.

What Did He Get Right?

The Biden administration hoped that the threat of “unprecedented sanctions” would deter Putin from invading and then hoped that imposing these sanctions would strangle his war machine, trigger popular discontent, and force him to reverse course. Putin went to war convinced that Russia could ride out any sanctions we might impose, and he’s been proved right up till now. There is still sufficient appetite for Russian raw materials (including energy) to keep its economy going with only a slight decline in GDP. The long-term consequences may be more severe, but he was right to assume that sanctions alone would not determine the outcome of the conflict for quite a while.

Second, Putin correctly judged that the Russian people would tolerate high costs and that military setbacks were not going to lead to his ouster. He may have begun the war hoping it would be quick and cheap, but his decision to keep going after the initial setbacks—and eventually to mobilize reserves and fight on—reflected his belief that the bulk of the Russian people would go along with his decision and that he could suppress any opposition that did emerge. The mobilization of additional troops may have been shambolic by our standards, but Russia has been able to keep large forces in the field despite enormous losses and without jeopardizing Putin’s hold on power. That could change, of course, but so far, he’s been proved right on this issue, too.

Third, Putin understood that other states would follow their own interests and that he would not be universally condemned for his actions. Europe, the United States, and some others have reacted sharply and strongly, but key members of the global south and some other prominent countries (such as Saudi Arabia and Israel) have not. The war hasn’t helped Russia’s global image (as lopsided votes condemning the war in the U.N. General Assembly have shown), but more tangible opposition has been limited to a subset of the world’s nations.

Most important of all: Putin understood that Ukraine’s fate was more important to Russia than it was to the West. Please note: It is by no means more important to Russia than it is to Ukrainians, who are making enormous sacrifices to defend their country. But Putin has the advantage over Ukraine’s principal supporters when it comes to being willing to bear costs and run risks. He has an advantage not because Western leaders are weak, pusillanimous, or craven, but because the political alignment of a large country right next door to Russia was always bound to matter more to Moscow than it was going to matter to people farther away, and especially to individuals living in a wealthy and secure country on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

This fundamental asymmetry of interest and motivation is why the United States, Germany, and much of the rest of NATO have calibrated their responses so carefully, and why U.S. President Joe Biden ruled out sending U.S. troops from the get-go. He understood (correctly) that Putin might think Ukraine’s fate was worth sending several hundred thousand troops to fight and possibly die, but Americans didn’t and wouldn’t feel the same way about sending their sons and daughters to oppose them. It might be worth sending billions of dollars of aid to help Ukrainians defend their country, but that objective was not important enough for the United States to put its own troops in harm’s way or to run a significant risk of a nuclear war. Given this asymmetry of motivation, we are trying to stop Russia without U.S. troops getting directly involved. Whether this approach will work is still unknown.

This situation also explains why Ukrainians—and their loudest supporters in the West—have gone to enormous lengths to link their country’s fate to lots of unrelated issues. If you listen to them, Russian control over Crimea or any portion of the Donbas would be a fatal blow to the “rules-based international order,” an invitation to China to seize Taiwan, a boon to autocrats everywhere, a catastrophic failure of democracy, and a sign that nuclear blackmail is easy and that Putin could use it to march his army all the way to the English Channel. Hard-liners in the West make arguments like this to make Ukraine’s fate appear as important to us as it is to Russia, but such scare tactics don’t stand up to even casual scrutiny. The future course of the 21st century is not going to be determined by whether Kyiv or Moscow ends up controlling the territories they are currently fighting over, but rather by which countries control key technologies, by climate change, and by political developments in many other places.

Recognizing this asymmetry also explains why nuclear threats have only limited utility and why fears of nuclear blackmail are misplaced. As Thomas Schelling wrote many years ago, because a nuclear exchange is such a fearsome prospect, bargaining under the shadow of nuclear weapons becomes a “competition in risk taking.” Nobody wants to use even one nuclear weapon, but the side that cares more about a particular issue will be willing to run greater risks, especially if vital interests are at stake. For this reason, we cannot entirely dismiss the possibility that Russia would use a nuclear weapon if it were about to suffer a catastrophic defeat, and this realization places limits on how far we should be willing to push it. Again, not because Western leaders are weak-willed or craven, but because they are sensible and prudent.

Does this mean we are succumbing to “nuclear blackmail”? Could Putin use such threats to win additional concessions elsewhere? The answer is no, because the asymmetry of motivation favors us the further he tries to go. If Russia tried to coerce others into making concessions on issues where their vital interests were engaged, its demands would fall on deaf ears. Imagine Putin calling Biden and saying that he might launch a nuclear strike if the United States refused to cede Alaska back to Russia. Biden would laugh and tell him to call back when he was sober. A rival’s coercive nuclear threats have little or no credibility when the balance of resolve favors us, and it is worth remembering that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union ever engaged in successful nuclear blackmail during the long Cold War—even against non-nuclear states—despite the enormous arsenals at their disposal.

There is one way in which this situation may be changing, however, and it is not a comforting thought. The more aid, weaponry, intelligence, and diplomatic support that the United States and NATO provide to Ukraine, the more their reputations become tied to the outcome. This is one reason why President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainians keep demanding more and more sophisticated forms of support; it is in their interest to get the West tied as closely as possible to their fate. I don’t blame them for this in the slightest, by the way; it’s what I would do if I were in their shoes.

Although reputational consequences are often exaggerated, such concerns can keep wars going even when vital material interests are not at stake. In 1969, Henry Kissinger understood Vietnam was of little strategic value to the United States and that there was no plausible path to victory there. But he insisted that “the commitment of 500,000 Americans has settled the issue of the importance of Vietnam. For what is involved now is confidence in American promises.” Based on that belief, he and President Richard Nixon continued U.S. involvement in the war for another four years, in a futile search of “peace with honor.” The same lesson may apply to sending Abrams tanks or F-16s to Ukraine: The more arms we commit, the more committed we become. Unfortunately, when both sides start thinking that their vital interests require inflicting a decisive defeat on the opponent, ending wars gets harder and escalation becomes more likely.

To repeat: None of the above suggests that Putin was right to start the war or that NATO is wrong to help Ukraine. But Putin hasn’t been wrong about everything, and recognizing what he got right should shape how Ukraine and its supporters proceed in the months ahead.

— Stephen M. Walt is a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.

[gladiators-intoxication]

In Search of Justice, Concerning Chivalry

Part two of three: Kaeya’s final act of service, and his final betrayal.

Warnings: Spoilers for Kaeya’s companionship stories, arson

[1], [2], [3]

“Are you sure?” Diluc asked for what seemed to be the millionth time.

“I’m not sure of what’s changed since I left,” Albedo replied, “but there’s a fair chance he’s still alive.”

Diluc scowled, muttering something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like ‘why are we doing this again?’

Albedo frowned a bit. “The killing of innocents is unacceptable in Teyvat’s eyes. Do you not consider yourself to be the voice of true justice?”

Diluc’s scowl darkened, but he didn’t respond. Somehow, the prodding question felt like something Kaeya would say.

A few corners later, Albedo unceremoniously shoved Diluc into an alcove behind a statue, before leaning against the pedestal, arms crossed over his chest. It was comical, almost, unsubtle. Albedo was nowhere near large enough to physically hide Diluc with any measure of success. It seemed, though, as the conversation began, that that hadn’t been his intention.

“You,” came a venomous voice.

“Me,” Albedo agreed. “I’m not here to cause trouble.”

“Your being here is trouble,” the unseen man said coldly.

“I’m not here to give you any more reason to want to kill me, that is,” Albedo amended, somehow sounding wholly unconcerned. “But if you’re anything like I remember, His Highness’ wellbeing is more important to you than this ruined country.” Diluc could only see a flash of a black cloak around Albedo’s foot. Albedo paused, feigning a thoughtful silence. “Unless all these years has changed you.”

Privately, Diluc thought that if Albedo ever got tired of alchemy, he ought to join a theatre troupe.

The unseen man muttered something that sounded like a curse in an unknown language. “What do you want?” he relented finally.

Albedo made a pleased noise, as if to say ‘still got it.’ “The keys to His Highness’ room.”

“So you’ve turned traitor too,” the stranger sighed. “Am I the only one left?”

Albedo snorted. “I know where your loyalties lie, Dainsleif. Don’t pretend you care for these ruins any more than His Highness or myself.”

Dainsleif scoffed, but the jingle of keys could be heard. “His Highness is in the third room from the end of the hall in the western guest wing,” he said. “He hangs at dawn if you fail. You’ll follow next.”

“Scary,” Albedo replied drily, righting himself as if to leave. “You were scarier the first time, though.”

“Wait.”

Albedo did.

“To think that two of our people have been recognized by gods that have scorned us,” Dainsleif said, more to himself than Albedo. “I do wish to speak with you on such matters at a different time, should we meet again.”

“I look forward to it,” Albedo said, dry and unconvincing. “I care little for the goings on of the gods, but I’d be delighted to share my research with you.”

“Oh, and your friend can come out now. You’d best get moving before the patrol gets to this corridor.”

“You talk too much,” Albedo grumbled, stepping away. “You heard the man, let’s get going. It’s not far, but we’ll likely have to fight our way out.”

Diluc only caught Dainsleif’s eyes widen before Albedo was walking away so quickly Diluc had to jog a bit to keep up with him.

Diluc didn’t really like how far ‘not far’ was to Albedo. Admittedly, Albedo spent most of his time in Dragonspine of all places, nearly a week’s trip from Mondstadt, but even so, it shouldn’t change Albedo’s perception of space that much.

“Where are you going?” Albedo asked, dragging Diluc out of his thoughts. “This is the room.”

Albedo leaned on the wall beside the door, twirling the key around a finger. Diluc couldn’t help but be distracted once or twice by the flash of the red palm of his glove. “It has to be you,” Albedo said. “You understand, don’t you?”

Diluc stared at the still-locked door. “Are you sure?”

“His Highness’s personal retainer, for all his dislike of me, would be quite lost in the world without him. Put simply, Dainsleif’s loyalties lie with His Highness. Not necessarily with Khaenri’ah.”

Diluc frowned. “How does that work?”

Albedo shrugged with one shoulder, held out the key. “Plausible deniability.”

As long as Khaenri’ah didn’t know that Kaeya had betrayed her, Dainsleif wouldn’t have to choose.

Albedo had joined the Knights after Diluc had left, so he’d never had a reason to know Albedo, but his blue eyes were piercing, cutting. Diluc wondered for a moment if everyone from this godless country had cold, cruel eyes like that.

Dainsleif’s, for the brief moment Diluc had seen them, had been hollow, deep, devoid of meaning, full of confusion, but they’d held no human warmth.

Albedo’s eyes felt like a scalpel cutting into Diluc’s very soul, cold, so sharp he couldn’t feel where they cut, only that he was bleeding.

Diluc’s heart twisted, just a little, to remember that Kaeya’s eyes had laughed far more than they’d cut. They’d danced much more than they’d hardened. Even if it had been a lie.

Diluc put the key in the lock.

“Back already?” Kaeya’s voice asked from inside, but it wasn’t Kaeya’s voice. Not really. It was tired and melancholy in a way that Diluc had only heard once or twice.

The same voice that had made a confession one night in the rain.

“I was left here to spy on Mondstadt. Khaenri’ah wants war. I don’t know what I want anymore. I know you’re in no place to help me, but I’m asking anyway.”

“You’ve come a long way,” Albedo said softly. “Young Master Ragnvindr.”

Diluc startled at how gentle the title sounded. Affectionate, almost.

It had been Albedo that appeared in the rain, eyes blazing. “They have him.”

“Who?”

“His Highness’ betrayal has finally caught up to him,” Albedo said coldly.

“Who?”

Albedo’s eyes, Diluc realized with a shudder, didn’t burn like fire. More like frostbite, or hypothermia. There was no passion, only a steely glint of the blade he’d use if he needed to. “Your brother,” Albedo spat. “And you’re coming with me to retrieve him.”

“No, I’m not,” Diluc replied. “If the Knights want him back, they can do it themselves.”

Albedo, despite his frame, managed to be more intimidating than anything Diluc had encountered up until now as he stepped forward, murder flashing in his eyes. Perhaps this is what it felt like to be one of Diluc’s unfortunate guilty, to stare up him standing over them with his flaming greatsword in their last moments. “You will come with me. You are going to right your wrongs or die trying.”

Albedo, Diluc noted, does not mince his words.

“What wrongs?” Diluc asked, briefly afraid for the answer.

“He’d lost everything but what little place here that the Knights could give him. Now come, while Klee’s occupied with the Outlander. I don’t need children interfering.”

“Why should I go with you?” Diluc challenged. “He was a spy.”

Albedo’s eyes, bright and blue as they were, felt like a sword through Diluc’s gut.

“The night he went to you was the same night His Highness betrayed Khaenri’ah.”

Diluc’s temper flared. “How do you know about that night?”

Albedo scoffed. “The young master Ragnvindr is a fool. There were two of you involved in that fight, no?”

The title cut more than the words did. “Why would he tell someone like you about that?” Diluc snarled.

“Never mind my relationship with him. This is about your relationship with him. I see you kept the vase. Do you want to keep him alive?”

“I want him to rot for a while,” Diluc hissed.

Albedo’s lip curled in disgust. “He has been. Perhaps you wouldn’t know it, but the only inescapable prison for one of our people is one’s own mind.”

“’Our’?” Diluc echoed. “Are you a traitor too?”

“Khaenri’ah never had any love for me,” Albedo said dismissively. “My craft stems from her, but I was never one of her subjects. My point is that he’s been rotting in a prison he couldn’t hope to escape.”

“Why can’t you help him on your own?” Diluc grumbled, still angry.

Albedo sighed, as if Diluc were some ignorant child. “Because he isn’t looking for my forgiveness.”

For a moment, one hand on the doorknob, Diluc doubted. Himself, Albedo, everything he’d done to get here. For a long moment, Diluc doubted the sky blue eyes that cut deeper than any blade ever would. He pushed that aside. If Kaeya wanted a rematch, Diluc supposed he’d brought it upon himself. Quietly as he could, Diluc opened the door and stepped inside.

“I guess not, then. So soon? I swear Dainsleif just left,” Kaeya sighed. “I was hoping for a sign from the Tsaritsa at least.”

Diluc couldn’t stop his mouth fast enough. “Are they your gods or not?”

Kaeya’s head snapped around at the sound of his voice.

“That’s not what I-”

“What are you doing here?” Kaeya was in his face in a heartbeat. “What are you doing here? Get out. Do you think they’ll let you live?” Kaeya’s eyes weren’t laughing, they weren’t dancing. They weren’t smug and calculating. They were hollow and intelligent, full of a resigned sort of despair.

“Come with us,” Diluc said, because somehow he couldn’t find something more meaningful to say.

Kaeya hesitated.

After a moment, Diluc realized how rare it was for Kaeya to hesitate. He always had some kind of plan, some kind of mischief. He always had something else going on.

“Someone’s coming,” Albedo hissed. “We can have a touching reunion after we’re out of this godforsaken city.”

“It would’ve been easier to get the four of you there together- ah. They’re still here.” Diluc whirled around at the sound of Dainsleif’s voice.

Dainsleif only inclined his head. “Young Master Ragnvindr.”

“I thought I told you to keep her away from here,” Albedo snarled, bloodlust in his voice.

The Outlander gave him a sheepish smile. “She wouldn’t stop insisting. She said you let her go to Dragonspine…” he trailed off, sort of bewildered. “What is this place?”

“Khaenri’ah,” Kaeya said, in an attempt to save Aether from any more of Albedo’s tongue-lashing than he needed to endure. “We really do need to get going.” He hesitated for a second time. “Will you stay behind?” Kaeya asked, seemingly to no one. “I don’t plan on returning again.”

“If that is the case,” Dainsleif said slowly, “Then I too have no place here.”

Diluc’s eyes found Klee, clinging to the Outlander’s leg, eyes wide, staring at Dainsleif and Kaeya. “Kaeya, who is this?” she asked.

Diluc could see Albedo’s shoulders relax a little, even if his scowl didn’t.

“Dainsleif, dear,” Kaeya said warmly, as if he hadn’t been awaiting his own execution five minutes ago. “He’s… a friend of mine.”

Dainsleif and Klee both paused, confused, but Albedo went over Aether and picked up Klee, eyes stormy, but relieved. “You’re a terrible babysitter,” Albedo sighed, to the Outlander, inspecting her for injuries.

Aether, appropriately contrite, looked down at his shoes. “Sorry,” he muttered.

“Never mind that,” Albedo said. “Let’s just get going.”

Of course, it would never be that easy.

Bitterly, Diluc couldn’t help but laugh a bit at how his relationship with Kaeya would never be ‘easy.’

“I can hear the guards coming,” Dainsleif sighed. “I’ll meet you on the surface, yes?”

Kaeya smiled, a brittle, forced thing. “If you would kindly.”

In a foreign gesture of subservience, Dainsleif took Kaeya’s left hand in both of his own and knelt, pressing his Prince’s knuckles to his forehead. “If I fail, please don’t remember me in contempt.”

Kaeya’s sad little smile wavered. “Never. You are the only part of this place I wished for when I was away.”

Dainsleif nodded, as if satisfied with that answer, as he got to his feet. “Please excuse me, your Highness. I won’t be long.”

Kaeya didn’t wait to watch him go, taking off at a brisk clip, as if he still owned the place, a hard, well-practiced mask of determination already in place. Albedo was quick on his heels, despite carrying Klee. “We shouldn’t lose them,” Aether said, sounding nervous, tugging on Diluc’s sleeve. Diluc only hesitated a moment longer before following Aether’s anxious scamper.

As they approached the chamber Albedo had originally argued with Dainsleif in, the walls shuddered with a blast of biting cold.

“Tell Diluc to stop dragging his feet!” Albedo shouted over a shoulder. Diluc scowled a little bit, but picked up the pace. He faltered at the chamber.

Diluc blinked.

They were still underground, weren’t they?

A generous layer of snow covered the polished stone floor, and the walls of the great, round room were freshly decorated with a coating of ice several feet thick. Several humanoid guards were frozen in it.

“Come on,” Albedo barked, “or we’re collapsing the tunnel without you!”

Diluc shook off his shock and caught up.

Kaeya was leading Klee by the hand, pointing to seemingly random places in the floor, near the walls. Aether accompanied them, sword drawn. This hallway, Diluc noted, was peppered with small bombs. Albedo still looked tense, eyes flickering, scanning. “Keep moving!” he snapped. “We need to get out of here, and if anything happens to Klee, I’ll bring you lot back to life so I can kill you again with my own two hands.”

“Just a couple more, Albedo,” Kaeya said. “Then we run.”

Albedo opened his mouth to protest, but thought better of it. “Make it quick.”

Diluc had been present for a few of Klee’s infamous escapades, but none of the ones he had or would experience would rattle him like this one did. The main entrance to the city was housed in a temple to a god Diluc had never heard of, and Klee, Kaeya, and Albedo were running around, placing explosives in no pattern Diluc could discern. Columns that didn’t seem to hold anything up, walls that seemed oddly placed, random patches of floor.

By the time they were done, Diluc could hear the boots on the stairs leading from underground.

Klee lobbed her specialty- a round, especially large, admittedly cute bomb- at the temple. “Run,” Albedo said, taking her hand. “Now!”

And they did. Diluc could feel the heat behind him, smell the burning grass.

Klee’s was a terrifying Vision. Diluc shuddered to think of the day where she’d be allowed to use such power unsupervised.

The blast had sent Albedo and Klee tumbling over each other, laughing good-naturedly, and launched Aether a few feet, but they seemed unhurt. Kaeya had stopped and turned back, staring at the pile of rubble that remained.

Diluc wanted, as he so often had when they were younger, to ask what was on his mind.

“My last service to my country,” Kaeya said softly as Diluc approached. “Fitting, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?” Diluc asked. He had no love for Khaenri’ah. “You could’ve destroyed it entirely.”

Kaeya’s smile was bitter and crooked. “The only thing left of my glorious kingdom were sinners. Her time was long over. You should know about holding onto things past their worth.”

Diluc found himself with questions, but didn’t get a chance to ask.

“Pardon me, your Highness, but might I ask what in heaven, on earth, or in the pits of the abyss was that?” Dainsleif’s voice asked.

Kaeya offered his best charming smile, eyes dancing with mischief. “That would be Sir Kaeya to you, Dainsleif.”

[kyndaris]

2020: Unprecedented Times

Most people, at the start of the year, had high hopes for 2020. For many, it was the start of a new decade (though, ask anyone on the street and the start of a decade is open to debate). Here in Australia, the start of 2020 merely carried on the disasters of 2019. Beset by bushfires all along the Eastern coast, we watched as our tourism numbers slump as the denizens of Sydney wore masks as a means to fight the harmful effects of smoke inhalation. Many small businesses, particularly in small towns, felt the brunt of the natural disaster. Homes were destroyed by the thousands. Worse was the fact that livelihoods that were dependent on visitors from all around the world (in particular, China) were also badly affected.

Why would anyone come to Australia, after all, when there was smoke in the air and the air quality was teetering on dangerously toxic?

Many hoped that once the fires had petered out, however, life would return to normal. Little did they know that by March, the world would be caught in the grips of COVID-19. After all, though there were the occasional news headlines of a new disease plaguing China in early January (which resulted in me warning my grandmother that maybe she not go over to celebrate the Year of the Rat), most people were focused on Donald Trump’s impeachment.

Then, of course, there was the assassination of an infamous Iranian general:  Qasem Soleimani. Once again, the world’s attention was arrested by the acts of the United States of America. Most were worried that the tension between Iran and the United States of America would boil over. At the time, it almost felt like a repeat of Trump’s antagonism towards North Korea.

In the United Kingdom, Brexit was well underway. After his re-election in December 2019, Boris Johnson continued his negotiations for a way that Britain could leave the European Union.

On a more personal scale, Australia was wracked by sport club funding scandals and climate change protests.

As for me, I was more concerned about the video game delays. Now that I write this, in December of 2020, I look back and think that perhaps it was appropriate for Cyberpunk 2077 to have been delayed until next year in order to fix the bugs that have the plagued the title ever since launch. Still, I was also vastly disappointed that Vampires the Masquerade II would not be releasing anytime soon. And saddened to hear that The Last of Us Part II had been pushed back.

After COVID-19 swept across the globe and taken hold in most countries and continents (which now extends to Antarctica thanks to a few Chileans testing positive), I watched as stupidity rose to the fore. Lockdown protests, the politicisation of the wearing of masks and the attacks on East Asians. Despite the severity of the virus and how infectious it was, I was disheartened to see so many people flout social distancing rules and break lockdown requirements. Most notably among the rich and famous such as politicians and NRL (National Rugby League) players.

Of course, being in Australia, our bid to ‘flatten the curve’ proved incredibly effective. Articles I’ve read indicate that this was mostly due to Australian’s observance of laws and regulations, as well as our trust in science. In fact, I’ve heard the refrain, ‘at least we’re not America’ spoken quite a few times this year. And honestly, after looking at the statistics, with the Land of the Free having upwards of 18.5 million cases with 326,000 (and counting) deaths, I couldn't agree more to the sentiment.

The whole ‘do as we say, not as we do’ approach by its President further served to fracture society and gave rise to conspiracy theories that served no purpose but showcase the height of people’s ignorance and distrust. It didn’t help that most Western countries also placed more importance on the ‘economy’ than people’s lives. Many global leaders were of the opinion that the ‘cure should not be worse than the disease’ and that a few deaths to keep the budget afloat was a necessary evil. 

Well, to that, I say, ‘Bah! Humbug!’ Without acting decisively and quickly, many nations have ruined their economy AND seen their people die in droves. When people are falling sick and suffering from long-term effects, they’re hardly likely to spend money. Nor will they be able to contribute to society and be able to continue working. Instead, you’ll be saddled with additional welfare taxes. By going hard and fast, closing down the economy for two months, maybe three, you can bounce back harder and stronger without fear of contagion.

Now, many countries are struggling with high numbers of new infected each day AND an economy that’s in tatters. Good job. 

It also doesn’t hurt to give back to the community and help struggling businesses. Schemes such as Jobkeeper and Jobseeker (at least in Australia) were able to alleviate some of the stress for many workers. And honestly, perhaps if the world had implemented a universal basic income, this would also enable people ensure their basic needs are met without sinking into poverty.

The fact that so many only see the short-term rather than long-term is astounding. And as for Sweden’s model? The less said about it, the better. ‘Herd immunity’ without a working vaccine? Madness. Utter madness. Particularly when the virus is airborne.

After enjoying a decent summer, numbers rose again in Europe and much of it was back under lockdown. A new strain, that has proven much more infectious, was discovered in the South of England! Trump tested positive for COVID-19, but to the dismay of many, he recovered quite quickly.

But 2020 did not end there. Once again, the struggles between ethnic minorities were brought again to the limelight. The death of George Floyd saw the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and served to highlight the disproportionate number of those living in poverty and in prison. As a person of colour myself (being of East Asian descent), I tried to explain some of this to my colleagues. But some of them saw Black Lives Matter as a predominantly American issue - and disregarded the fact that many Indigenous Australians were also in prison, caught in a vicious cycle of crime and violence.

It wasn’t long, however, that Australia experienced its own second wave in Melbourne, due to breaches in hotel quarantine. And honestly, it came as a surprise when it also happened in Adelaide and we learned that they weren’t testing hospital workers or those in high-risk workplaces on a REGULAR basis. You would have thought that all workers that transported aircrew or worked as security for those quarantining in hotels would be temperature-checked and given a swab every few days (or at least once a week). But no.

This is why we can’t have good things. 

Christmas in Sydney has also been somewhat neutered by the fact that there has been another sizeable outbreak in the Northern Beaches local council. And, of course, many people in Greater Sydney have been barred from other states. Gotta love those hard state borders where we treat each other as separate countries. Still - if it protects the people, the Premiers will stop at nothing. Even if it means families can’t be together. But better that than seeing Australia become the United States of America. 

Jumping from COVID-19, 2020 also saw an explosion in Beirut due to the storing of large amounts of ammonium nitrate at the port. Approximately 178 people were killed and more than 6,500 were injured. Locust swarms in Africa  descended upon crops, threatening food supply and livelihoods for millions of people. The West Coast of the United States of America suffered from catastrophic wildfires. Meanwhile, in south-east Asia, countries were hit by flooding and typhoons. As a side note, Armenia and Azerbaijan  restarted their ongoing feud. 

And to cap it all off, 2020 decided to further traumatise the future generation, a suicide video was uploaded to Tiktok. 

And oh, the US election. Where our favourite President tried to delay and impede mail-in-votes. In the days following the 3 November 2020 election, the world eagerly watched as the votes were counted and each state was certified. Trump, as is always his way, attempted to claim victory in the early hours of the morning of 4 November 2020, before deriding voter fraud with no evidence to substantiate his claims.

The weeks that followed saw a number of lawsuits that were lodged. Most, of which, were simply dismissed out of hand. And while his supporters have continued to claim that fraud was evident in the 2020 election, there has been no substantial pieces of evidence provided. Affidavits and hearsay, fortunately, do not a case make.

In Australia, our once promising relationship with China took a turn for the worse. While instances of racism, after the initial COVID-19, did not help, it also seemed that the finger pointing among government officials and demands for inquiries into wet markets only served to fuel the fire between the two nations. After initiating a trade war with the United States of America, China then saw fit to put significant tariffs on Australian beef, barley, wine and coal (to name but a few). 

The spat between Australia and China also took on a more insidious tone when several Australian journalists were forced to flee.

And with the unveiling of alleged war crimes committed by Australian troops in Afghanistan, the relationship between the two nations have come to an all-time low. China’s tweet of a doctored image that had an Australian soldier about to cut the throat of an Afghan child saw our Prime Minister taking to social media to demand an apology. 

All in all, 2020 has felt like both an incredibly short and long year in equal measure. For an introvert, such as myself, it’s been mostly the same. In fact, I can’t believe that it’s already at an end. Though my gaming has continued, as has my writing, I felt like I hardly interacted with any of my friends or did anything conducive to my social skills. While I’ve been made permanent at my place of work, it’s also felt a little stagnant. For a good long while, particularly in March, it felt like we were on the cusp of something huge and terrible. As the numbers climbed, I desperately wanted a hard lockdown to be called when leaders vacillated. 

2021 does not promise to be much better. While vaccines have rolled out in several countries, it’ll be a long time coming before the world manages to attain a sense of normalcy. For this blogger, I look forward to just kicking back and finally getting my hands on a PlayStation 5.

As for anyone that has worked on the front lines during this pandemic, I just want to say a big hearty ‘thank you.’ All of  you have sacrificed so much and seen so many terrible things. I wish that we all listened to your warnings instead of inundating emergency rooms thinking COVID-19 was a hoax.

Remember: keep at least 1.5 metres away from another person, wash/ sanitise your hands regularly and wear a mask if you can’t socially distance or are in an enclosed space. 

[thrassa]

I'm glad you found my addition interesting - I hope it could be a bit eye-opening - though, I see that you didn't really understand what I was saying or else you wouldn't respond in this manner. In all honesty, I fear that you missed my point, rather than the opposite.

1) In all honesty, while you might have read about some of the events that have occured throuought our history, I doubt you know even half of it. Not due to personal ignorance, of course, but simply because most of our tragedies aren't discussed as they do not interest the Western World. For example, you're hardly going to hear about the Bulgarian occupation of East Macedonia and how we had our language stolen from us, how we were massacred, how our heads were left by the village well as a warning, how our kids (mainly girls) were stolen and how important structures such as schools and city halls were destroyed. Also, I hardly think that anyone would write about how the Arab Slave trade largely featured the theft of Greek and other South-Eastern European as well as Caucasian women (actual Caucasus, not the current terminology), simply because they were seen as more 'exotic' and therefore, were priced higher.

So, yes, we've lived through horrid atrocities and we deserve respect. However, even if we'd had a relatively peaceful existence without occupation, colonisation and genocide and even if we weren't discriminated against to this day by Westerners, we'd still be worthy of respect and proper representation.

Just like any other person and ethnic group in the world.

2) I believe I addressed your point, earlier, but allow me to do so again. Having POC Greeks or foreigners in this game or any other piece of media isn't bad in the slightest. On the contrary, it's quite positive. The thing is, though, as I understand it, that "representation" for the creators of this game was simply a change of skin colour and ethnic characteristics, following an imperialistic narrative created by the West to further seperate us from our culture - if I understood correctly - as they claim that the Greek Gods aren't Greek and that they were merely worshipped by Greeks but somehow belong to the entire globe (Which is simply erasure of other Pantheons and cultures as well as disrespectful to Hellenes) - despite being made in the image of Hellenes.

Had they wished to show the diversity of the ancient Hellenic world, they ought to have been a) more considerate of the demographics of the region (in other words, depict more Middle Easterners, North Africans, Balkans etc) and b) more considerate of the cultures of those characters and portrayed them properly (as I offered you the example of Michalis Afalagian with his role of Baku in Magissa) - as well as portray Greeks accurately.

3) I understand the fact that there might have been some form of miscommunication between you and @margaretkart - either due to the linguistic barrier or the heat of the moment. Personally, I don't use the term "illegal immigrants" as I don't support the connotation that humans can be "illegal" in any way (mainly because of the Hellenic term 'λαθρομετανάστες' which has always left me feeling a bit nauseous) but I am certain that is not what they were referring to. They aren't that type of person, to put it simply.

4) Now, Greeks do vary in appearence. As I said, there's a difference between someone being culturally Greek, ethnically Greek but mixed with another ethnic group (and, therefore, having two ethnicities) and just being ethnically Greek (with no intermixings) or, even, being a foreigner who simply lives in Greece but neither is nor feels Greek.

If they were meant to be ethnically Greek (but not mixed) then, yes, they would have certain features commonly found in their region of origin (for example, Cretans are usually darker-featured than Macedonians) or even the country, in general- the same goes for all other ethnic groups, as well, no?

Also, again, while Greeks vary in appearence, I don't believe that skin colour in itself offers representation.

Culture matters.

Ethnic features matter (our noses, our eyes, our lacking height etc).

Now, personally, I am the product of a Peloponnesean-Athenian and Macedonian Union and so I'm a bit on the medium spectrum (somewhat light featured but tan a lot in the summer and without any particular effort - the type of olive-toned that looks like a sickly yellow Victorian child during the Winter, in other words). In all honesty, I just consider myself Greek - involving skin colour in my identity is something I do not really support but I do acknowledge the fact that I am viewed as 'white' by other ethnic groups (especially when it suits them - but that's another discussion all together which I believe is mentioned in the article I sent), without that meaning that I or any other Greek are somehow interchangeable with people of other ethnic groups who have light features or skin or that we feel represented when we see them depict us (Brad Pitt, for example, didn't make me feel the least bit represented. Had they wished for a blond Greek man, or, at least a light featured one, we had options - the same goes for the others with Helen being the most obvious one - a German woman wasn't needed). A few examples compared to him and her:

You see the difference, right?

Lastly, yes, darker-featured and skinned people do face bias in most societies around the world (even in certain African countries) but that is a much larger and complex topic than what we are currently discussing, which - for me, at least - is the proper representation of Greeks in foreign-made media and our erasure as well as the proper representation of people of either a mixed background or even foreigners which - I believe - is something that was handled in a good enough manner (please correct me if I'm mistaken, it's been a year since I watched it) in the Anime Blood of Zeus where an Ethiopian character named Kofi was directly inspired by an actual historical figure. In fact, they did a pretty solid job depicting the variations of (ethnic) Hellenes in terms of skin tone and features.

Side note: I just saw your tags and I feel the need to stress my earlier made point as it seems you might not have read it in the previous response. Your tags:

Once again, "light skinned" characters do not represent us, either. Let me repeat myself: Whitewashing our Gods and Heroes isn't representation for us, either. Wasn't I clear, before?

Ps. I hope I covered your inquiries and objections. If not, I'd love to discuss this topic further and resolve any remaining matter.

When people say "the Greek gods should be ethnically Greek in Hades" they mean white.

Like they literally mean that they want all the Greek Gods to be white in the game

No, they don't mean culturally, if they wanted to talk about culture they wouldn't have brought up the word "ethnicity" and equal that to race (ethnicity doesn't mean just race, it can also mean a shared tradition or shared language, so yes, POC can be ethnically Greek if they had lived all their lifes there)

And it's so silly because like, oh, then Chaos isn't "greek" either because they're Grey and there aren't any actual Grey Greeks?

Also they're Gods! They can be anything they want, like sure, Zeus can be a swan and that's fine, but if he was a man with dark skin, that's too much?

They aren't criticizing the cultural hegemony the US has, they're just being racist and then masking their racism with "progressive" language

And then people here go and be like "Oh, poor little white people!! They have a right to demand a game without POC because it's their culture!!!"

Like what?

I'm sorry but you do remember that Greek mythology has been used, and is still being used as far right propaganda?

Like do you remember that the protagonists of the games are white and green eyed (on one eye) and the only POC are on secondary roles!?

(There can be a valid criticism about cultural hegemony in Hades, but this, isn't that)

[workersolidarity]

You had this post about the villification of socialism and the Soviet Union vs how fascism is becoming more acceptable and you mention something about Stalin not being guilty of murdering millions. I'm studying gcse history, and in our Cold War unit it talked about the purges, gulags etc. I understand there is going to be some western bias but I thought that the purges and deaths caused by Stalin were pretty much undeniable truths? I'm not trying to be malicious, just actually curious.

Actually, there's no evidence Stalin ever committed anything remotely close to a war crime.

First off, most people can't wrap their heads around one very simple but important fact. Stalin was not even close to a dictator and never had powers anywhere near what even the US President has. Barack Obama launched a secret CIA Drone strike without Congressional Authorization in a country we not only weren't at war with, but that wasn't even recognized as having open hostilities with the US.

Everything Stalin did had to go through the Politburo and the Communist Party Leadership. The Western lies about the Governing structure of the Soviet Union not only ignores the countless Beaurocratic hurtles there were before the Secretary General of the Soviet Union could engage any major Policy changes, but it negates and ignores the tens of millions of Soviet Citizens who fought to the death to install the Communist Party to power, and paid the price of seven years of Western Interference leading and arming Nationalists and Fascists to fight a Civil War within the Soviet Union.

The Red Army was nothing but a motley crew of peasants with dated rifles and pitchforks fighting for what they believed in, fighting for the right for their families to live halfway decent lives without Aristocratic landowners taxing away the fruits of their labor.

The Peasants and Proletariat won the Civil War because the Communist Party had won the hearts and minds of the Soviet Citizenry. A Citizenry that gave their lives for Socialism. It was those Soviet Citizens who were responsible for installing Lenin followed by Stalin to power and they trusted him to lead the Communist Party.

That doesn't, however, mean he could snap his fingers and have anything done. And in nearly every single case of some kind of mass trials or murders of dissidents, these cases were approved by the entire Communist Party leadership. The NKVD was given their powers to investigate and make mass arrests, not for no reason at all, but because the Western Colonial Powers, at the height of the Western Capitalist international order, were CONSTANTLY interfering with the affairs of the Soviet Union.

They never stopped supporting with money and arms Ukranian and Russian Nationalist Groups that were responsible for terrorist acts throughout the first decades of the CCCP's founding.

In one famous case, Nikolai Bukharin was speaking to the Communist Party leadership, where he suggesting that the Party forgive the Anarchist groups responsible for terrorist acts across the country. He was hoping that by making peace with the Left-Wing and Anarchist Organizations fighting the Communists they would have an easier time fighting the far more dangerous, Western backed Right-Wing Nationalists that were far more prevelant and dangerous to the young Socialist Republic.

In the middle of Bukharin's speech, an Anarchist group bombed the Meeting of the Party leadership. This wasn't some peaceful situation with evil dictator Stalin murdering his own people for the fun of it! That would make no sense whatsoever!

Instead this was a consistent problem in the early years with Terrorism unlike anything Al Qaeda or ISIS could have ever hoped to accomplish. These were highly organized Terrorist groups made up of Western Backed Paramilitary Organizations, mostly made up of Right-Wing Nationalists and the Capitalists who lost their Industries, Land, and other Property when the Communists Nationalized industry. These were ruthless Kulaks that, although they were offered compensation for the loss of their land, preferred to burn millions of acres of crops and kill millions of Farm Animals rather than see Stalin's Agricultural Co-Ops succeed.

In fact the Kulaks were responsible for the vast majority of the loss in crops during the early 1930's when Western History books tell us Stalin for some reason out-of-the-blue just randomly decided to starve Ukranians and Russian Peasants responsible for putting him in Power in the first place.

The entire Western Narrative of Stalin as brutal dictator is completely absurd. Millions of people across Soviet Union mourned Stalin's death and still celebrate his memory in the streets of Moscow every year. Does that sound like a horrible evil dictator to you?

From beginning to end, the stories were told about Stalin are completely and are in fact varifiably false. Like when they claim Stalin felt threatened by Bukharin and so he was "tortured" and "forced to plead guilty" to the crimes he was put to death for. Uh... yeah no.

Actually Bukharin had a perfectly normal trial, which like today's largest high profile trials in the US were made public. It was maticulously investigated, and Bukharin pled guilty to some but (importantly) NOT ALL of the Charges he was on trial for. If Bukharin was "tortured" and "forced" to plead guilty, why would he plead guilty to charges he knew he was going to put to death for, yet still ademently deny the other charges???

Again, that would make no sense whatsoever.

In fact, in the decades following Stalin's death, many of the lies that are STILL taught as fact about Stalin in Western Schools, were traced to Trotsky in letters released by his children after his own death. In many cases Trotsky's either admits privately to making up stories for the Western Media to help his own position, or he directly contradicts privately the things he was stating publicly that were reported as fact in the Western Media and are STILL treated as such in Western History books.

Another example: the famous quote supposedly from Stalin about one death is a tragedy but a million deaths are a statistic. Actually comes from a FICTIONAL book written by a Russian dissident which was then (once again) quoted as fact by Western Media outlets until it became a fact in the Western History books.

This kind of thing goes on and on and on throughout Stalin's time in leadership. The Western History books of try to depict (conveniently without listing sources) Stalin as a common dictator who was stealing from the Soviet Citizenry, just hustling the Public.

Which is awfully funny for a guy who spent his entire time as Leader of the Soviet Union sharing a Dacha with Chekov, another famous Soviet era Leader. Kind of a curious way to live if you just want power and wealth, don't you think?

Professor Grover Furr, who's spent more time than any other researcher in History studying Stalin and the early years of the Soviet Union, has not found, in any of the Soviet Archives or anywhere else, any example of even a SINGLE CASE where Stalin gave an order to have someone killed. In fact he's hasn't found ANY evidence of even a single case of gross Human Rights Violations, War Crimes or ANYTHING we could classify as a crime. Not one.

And he had written about the results of his research in countless books documenting his work. The Purges: a demand of the Communist Party at large, the Holomodor famine: completely discredited by the late 1930's yet is written about as fact to this day despite the fact that the only newspaper that claimed to have direct source evidence of this "horrible famine" that supposedly killed millions was a newspaper owned by notorious American Fascist William Randolph Hearst who paid shady writers to get dirt on Soviet Society, and also paid Mussolini the equivalent today of $40 million US Dollars to write Fascist Opinion articles in his Newspapers. And the only writer who actually claimed to have seen this famine in person? Went to prison a couple years later for defrauding banks and the US Government and during his trial admitted to making up the stories while he was under oath. It's been completely and utterly discredited. Yet it's in every History book as if it were fact.

I could literally go on and on all day about this. I've done my own research. And as soon as you start getting your information outside of Western sources of History, it's absolutely ASTOUNDING how quickly the veil falls away and the Emperor is standing there with no clothes. It's all bullshit. Top to bottom. When the Communist Party did away with an entire class of Elections that were important for some kind of accountability within the Communist Party, it was Stalin who fought tooth-and-nail with the Party leadership to reinstate public accountability elections and eventually had to come to a compromise with the Party that didn't quite return power to the Soviets but did reinstate certain levels of Public Elections and also gave suffrage to women and opened up Party Elections to women as well.

Stalin was a true believer in Socialist Principles. He fought his whole life to give power to the Working Class. Was he perfect? Of course not. Did he make mistakes? Obviously.

Two things you must keep in mind.

One: this was the world's first attempt at true actually existing Socialism. It's nothing short of amazing how much the Soviet Union, especially at it's peak under Stalin, managed to accomplish in such an incredibly short period of time without a single example in History to follow. In a few short years the Soviet Union went from a backwards, third-world country of extreme poverty made up mostly by peasant Farmers, of whom only a couple percent owned ANY kind of tractors or modern farm equipment at the time. To becoming a behemoth of an Industrial Superpower. Accomplishing what took the US and Britain over 100 years to accomplish in only two decades. Stalin literally installed Farm Equipment depots with all kinds of modern machinery at the time, including tractors, where Farmers could walk right up, take what equipment they needed free of charge, and return it when they were finished.

Rent in the Soviet Union averaged between 2-4% of income. Rent averages between 25-50% of income right now in the US.

Between the early 1930's and 1989, inflation within the Soviet Union was exactly 0%. Prices never changed from the time Stalin stabilized the Economy until perestroika began in 1989.

Literacy was 100% by the time Stalin died. Education was mandatory and college free along with Healthcare.

It's unquestionable that life improved DRAMATICALLY for the vast vast majority of Soviet Citizens. 99% of the 100 million people within the Union saw MASSIVE improvements in public services, Economic stability and growth, income growth, lifespans, huge drops in mortality rates, and in every single measurable way, life improved rapidly on a scale unseen in world history.

Maybe, just maybe, for once we should begin judging the Stalin Era based on the facts and not Capitalist Fiction.

[antoine-roquentin]

i’ve noticed that my shorthand critique of the “south park caused anti-semitism” theory of media has been getting some attention, and it’s funny cause it dovetails with another round of “the youtube algorithm is responsible for turning everybody into nazis” rhetoric as well, sparked by a recent new york times article. this sort of navelgazing is pretty popular because it works nicely with beliefs that both elites and liberals in general have, namely, that public opinion needs to be managed by an enlightened few, that some people are too stupid to participate in civic life and that’s why right wing populists get elected, and that if people are educated correctly, they will simply accept that liberalism is the best model for society. in short, it’s behaviorism, namely, the hypodermic needle model of media.

the liberal elite in interwar america believed themselves to be creating a better society through management of public opinion. figures like walter lippman were committed to benevolent elite rule through the manipulation of opinion, the “manufacturing of consent”. many of them came out of the milieu of manipulating popular opinion through propaganda work in the first world war, successfully convincing americans to join and support the british side in that war. edward bernays, for instance, worked for the committee on public information, the “largest propaganda machine the world had ever seen“, before becoming the intellectual forebear of the public relations industry in america. he and other similar figures, like lippman, carl byoir, and charles merriam (who combined behaviouralism with political science), were the leading lights of the “Progressive” movement of the time. they relied on the notion that media was passively consumed by people, who simply accepted the claims made without hesitation and then acted accordingly. the psychological theories behind this found form as a body of work known as behavioralism. human beings had a set of limited or “latent” responses to stimuli. by providing the correct stimuli, human beings could be made to behave accordingly. one day, society would be governed by the truly intelligent who would suss out the correct stimuli through trial and error and then apply them to the masses, a society of pavlov’s dogs. this top-down model not coincidentally empowered liberal elites to do what they will without any input from the masses.

this was termed the “hypodermic needle” or “magic bullet” model of media. both of these are medical terms, the latter referring to a drug that treats only the disease without any side effects, and that’s quite telling. american progressives have traditionally exalted medicine as a neutral, rational way to develop a better society. many were advocates of eugenics as a form of medicine, “cleaning” the human race of its “unfit” members. recently, there’s been a strong resurgence of interest in eugenics, behavioralism, and the use of medical terminology to describe media (viral video, using the metaphor of contagion).

proponents of the model in the 1930s referred to the success of the nazis in their use of mass media (ironically, using the same propaganda techniques they’d developed. joseph goebbels was known to be a reader of bernays’ books) as well as the payne fund studies, a series of works done on the responses of children to movies with poor methodology and funded by oil magnates hoping to drive moral panics (the hays code was strongly influenced by them), and the panicked reaction to the 1938 orson welles radio production of war of the worlds in support. of course, all three of these shared very specific material conditions of the people involved that drove them to react in the manner they did apart from the media involved in persuasion. for the decade after the first world war, while germany muddled along without growth but also without significant collapse, the nazis failed to attract more than a few percentage points of electoral support, despite consistently using similar tactics. it was only after the economic collapse of germany, when the economy had shrunk by about a quarter, that the nazis gained traction. even then, this was by using the failures of a liberal constitution to turn their electoral base, only one third of voters who were largely based in rural areas and included almost nobody in the major cities, into a workable governing coalition, particularly by playing on the fact that german liberals feared communism much more than nazism. likewise, the panic over war of the worlds was largely a myth created by newspapers which feared they were losing their audience to a new, more dynamic form of media and wanted to stoke a moral panic (see a parallel with the nyt story?). those who were convinced that an invasion was occurring, according to a study done afterwards (in part by theodor adorno), for the most part had only heard a bit and were concerned about a german invasion, given the heightened geopolitical tensions at the time, or were from the town of concrete, washington, which suffered a blackout midway through the performance.

you can see the same sort of threads in the nyt story, while the important parts go ignored by twitterati eager to engage on the most superficial level. “young men discover far-right videos by accident“ thanks to “YouTube and its recommendation algorithm“, “the most frequent cause of members’ “red-pilling”“ according to a study done by the NED(ie western intelligence)-funded bellingcat, after which they fall “ down the alt-right rabbit hole” as passive subjects reacting to stimuli. clearly, these videos spread like a contagion, and it’s our job to ban them in favour of much more legitimate content that supports major western foreign policy objectives. oh wait, hold up, mr cain was a “college dropout struggling to find his place in the world“, at a time of wage stagnation and a tough job market for newer entries that’s especially pronounced as you go further down the education ladder? he “grew up in postindustrial Appalachia”, an area destroyed by rapacious neoliberalism that has increasingly seen its industries move offshore in search of lower wages, its most dynamic members leave for major cities due to a lack of jobs, and those that remain become increasingly socially isolated, prompting them to either resort to social media or kill themselves through drugs and guns in what famed economist angus deaton calls “deaths of despair” (not to mention the limiting of public spaces to those who can pay, another aspect of neoliberalism, which particularly drives teens like mr cain into "online games with his friends”)? in a world where capitalism justifies itself by telling those it fails over and over that it’s their own fault, that they need to improve themselves and that there is no such thing as structural problems because, in the words of margaret thatcher, “there is no such thing [as society]! only individual men and women”, mr cain was drawn to propaganda masquerading as a self-help grift with an emphasis on supposedly knowing more than the brainwashed masses (”To Mr. Cain, all of this felt like forbidden knowledge“)?

most of all though is the fact that most of the people cain watched are either funded directly or take most of their talking points from a network of right wing intellectuals cultivated by major dark money backers for decades. david rubin takes money from dennis prager, who in turn is funded by fracking billionaires and evangelical christians the wilks brothers, and the bradley foundation, who have funded literally every major right wing cause of note. lauren southern is only famous because she worked for rebel media, funded by much of the oil industry including the kochs as well as the bradley foundation. paul joseph watson is associated with ukip and its funder arron banks. gad saad is funded by molson coors, whose corporate heads not only once praised hitler but founded the most famous republican think tank in the country, the heritage foundation. two of the major members of the “intellectual dark web”, charles murray and christina hoff sommers, work directly for the heritage foundation. and other youtube luminaries of note, like alex jones, thunderf00t, and stefan molyneux, make their money solely by doing interviews with these people and by citing material produced from these think tanks. in a world where inequality is increasingly dividing the rich and the working class, the former spend more and more on maintaining the division, while the latter are driven into a state of fear in which absurd theories about the collapse of western civilization and their replacement with latin american and muslim people seems much more reasonable. There’s also the social isolation that makes youtube celebs and discord chat buddies seem less like distant weirdos and more like the only friends one has. 

the solution, of course, is to modify youtube’s algorithm. just a bit of top-down tweaking to educate the masses on their correct course. surely, nobody would be stupid enough to think that the material conditions created by the neoliberal elite in the past few decades has driven a complete collapse in trust in american society, to the point where only a third of americans "trust their government “to do what is right”“, compared to over 80% of chinese people. surely this breakdown in trust is due to youtube and not the complete economic decimation of the country by its elites, to the point where many rural counties have not even recovered the jobs they lost a decade ago. a redistribution of wealth should not even be on the table, because material conditions play no part in how people react to media. just accept your daily helping of bullshit from the bourgeoisie and never question them when they say certain people need to be censored, because the powers you let them have will never be abused or turned against you in any way. and hey, don’t listen to any critiques of behaviorism, because it’s not like anarchists blew that shit out of the water in the 1950s.

[httplovecraft1890]

The Theme of Free Will in Yandere Simulator

So in the past, I’ve speculated at length about what some broad story points might be for Yandere Simulator and while I’ve revised my opinion on the significance of a character like Fun Girl (her statement of “YOU BELIEVE EVERYTHING I SAY. I WONDER WHAT ELSE I CAN TRICK YOU INTO BELIEVING?” feels a bit embarrassing in hindsight) I do think there are broad strokes that can be taken from what I wrote and applied to newer story points that’ve been shared with us since. You can consider everything below a refinement of those original ideas, I suppose. Let’s start by going back and revisiting Saikou Corp. Note: some of this information doesn’t have a specific source other than vague recollections aside from what YandereDev has said on Twitter, Reddit, etc. so apologies in advance.

What, exactly, do we know about Saisho Saikou? If we’re taking Fun Girl less as an actual plot point herself and more as a vehicle to deliver exposition to the audience then we can summarize a fair few things:

He was drafted into the service of the Imperial Japanese Army at age 17 in the closing days of the war. This retroactively confirms his date of birth was some time in 1928, meaning Saisho is 91 in 2019.

Saisho was confined to kitchen duty after being transferred to Okinawa at first. This changed after a bomb tore his dorm apart and he was trapped with the corpses of his friends for hours until he was rescued by other troops. During the attempted retreat after their rescue operation he called them cowards for wanting to fall back in the face of American forces. The memories of being stuck there with his dead friends still haunts him.

After being moved to a bunker, he was under constant stress from air raids and a chronic lack of sleep as well as malnourishment. When the U.S. finally found their hiding spot he tried to pull a pin on a grenade but it failed to detonate; he was promptly captured afterwards.

- From the June 1, 2018 Fun Girl text files We know little of his life after the war at the moment other than in 1946 he was reduced to running the company that would become Saikou Corporation out of his family’s garage (much like the company it parodies, Sony, was forced to do at first in our world by its creators). Given his later characterization I suspect that he probably ruthlessly took advantage of the breaking of up so many of the zaibatsu (large financial or industrial conglomerates owned by specific families; Mitsubishi is an example) by the American occupying forces following the war. In the decades following his country’s defeat Saisho created an enormous megacorporation that makes most of the consumer products seen in Yandere Simulator’s universe. As Headmaster Shuyona later relates to us, once he puts his mind to something he never takes no for an answer. Aside from the obvious wealth aspect that it grants him, though, what else is at work in his mind?

Like so many others, the defeat of Japan in the war simply unimaginable to him and, as far as he’s concerned, even if everyone else surrendered he never did.

The brainwashing and propaganda of the early Showa period never left him; as more and more Western influence began to creep into Japan, the more he began to freak out about it. Progressive politics and democracy are things he utterly despises.

Unsurprisingly, his reactionary politics have a racial component to them. For Saisho, the only people fit to rule the world are the Japanese and that if only everyone else realized it, there’d be a worldwide utopia. Though not outright confirmed, this also goes some way to explaining the almost eugenics-like obsession with ‘purity’ in the modern Saikou clan.

Even so, probably through careful PR stunts and knowing when to keep his mouth shut, Saisho’s worst beliefs aren’t known to the public.

- From the December 1, 2018 build’s Fun Girl files

It’s with some surprise then we know for a fact that Saisho wanted his firstborn daughter to inherit the company after he was ready to retire and only kept his son, Megami’s dad, as a backup. Despite the grueling and inhuman training that each Saikou generation seems to be put through, it seems that Saisho did genuinely love his daughter based on what Headmaster Shuyona confirms in Headmaster’s Tape #1. While this seems incongruous at first with his far right politics I think it’s helpful to see it less as a belief in equality between men and women, but instead that since she was a Saikou, she was inherently a cut above others because of that. Not many fathers would have schools built for their children in their honor if something wasn’t genuine, I think.

Megami’s aunt is a very interesting character at the moment. We know nothing about her other than the fact that she was first in line for the proverbial throne and hasn’t spoken to Saisho in 30 years because of him disowning her after they got into an argument. Fun Girl seems to hint that the conversation revolved around her trying to remember a supposed sister of hers (i.e., her) but this might just be her trolling us all. I think there’s something else very important given that time frame we also need to keep in mind: the date. What’s 30 minus 2019? 1989.

If we assume for a moment that Akademi opening its doors in 1985 was her first year, then following traditional Japanese high school length, it stands to reason her graduation occurred in 1988. The following year, Ryoba’s murder of the girl who was almost certainly Headmaster Shuyona’s daughter must’ve sent serious shock waves through Buraza Town. Megami’s aunt would’ve probably followed the proceedings with a lot of interest and I think a reason she parted ways with Saisho is because Saikou almost certainly tipped the scales in favor of Ryoba during her trial against the journalist. Why? Because of the country’s insanely high conviction rate. It’s greater than 99%. You’d practically need a miracle to get through it all and make the person who tried to take you to court look like a monster for doing so - something we know she pulled off. It’s not something that she could’ve done on her own without money changing hands or judges being properly blackmailed and flipping the media circus around. Headmaster’s Tape #6 also confirms that by 1999 Ryoba had seemingly regular contact with Saisho and Megami’s dad but it’s easy to extrapolate that they must’ve been speaking with one another prior to then; after all, just because Shuyona didn’t know about it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen (it doesn’t help him either that Saisho almost certainly sees him as a useful idiot). Learning a dark secret like this about your own family, coupled with the hell they put you through growing up, would break anyone and I think it’s a good explanation of why she left. If we accept that Saikou Corporation are Ryoba’s and Mr. Aishi’s employers then several things fall into place - why they haven’t ever had to move, why they live in a well off neighborhood, how they can simply up and leave for 10 weeks at a time to a foreign country - and the picture comes into focus. One of the things that Fun Girl seems to confirm is that Saisho’s love for Japan is equally as strong as what Ayano feels for Senpai. Knowing what we know about how the Aishi family curse seems to work, that’s pretty bone chilling. Coupled with every other horrible thing he thinks, combined with his vast wealth and influence, and it’s a recipe for disaster. The question becomes, however, what the point of all of this is. What could a murderous young woman possibly offer one of the most powerful companies in the world? Her body and mind. Stick with me here. Pretend you’re a scientist working for Saikou Corporation and you’re tasked with finding out what makes Ryoba tick; we’ll ignore for the moment any possible supernatural angle that the story might develop to explain their condition. The Aishi ‘curse’ seems to be a psychological condition, effecting the maternal line, that results in its carriers possessing severely stunted emotional growth, antisocial personality traits, flat affects, monotone voices, etc. This begins to alter in the host, however, an intermittent time after puberty in their late teens when, through various circumstances, meeting an individual causes an unknown psychological trigger to occur, acting as a kind of drug that for a time rewires the brain to enter a euphoria-like state wherein they begin to function on a neurotypical level, but only in contact with the source of this change (19 being the median age when an Aishi woman typically marries their victim). What if you could isolate the factors that cause such a thing to occur? 30 years is a long time to study something, after all, and decades’ worth of research must’ve meant some kind of breakthrough. Assuming that Saikou Corporation is like any other megacorporation in fiction then they’re sure to have their hands in medical technology. Imagine taking the research you’ve done on a so-called ‘yandere’ and began to try recreating it. After all, the idea of being able to use certain external symbols or things as stimuli is practically dystopian in its usefulness. Like, say, introducing a corporate symbol and ensuring its customers only felt a sense of satisfaction when buying a certain product.

Let’s go further than that. What if you could engender the same feelings of emptiness, followed by unbridled joy, when looking at something as simple as a flag? Not only could you brainwash an entire nation, but any other place on earth that allows the services you provide as a global company...

From this perspective, the “why?” of Saikou Corporation involving themselves with Ryoba becomes evident. After coming to this piece of speculation, if it is the case, something else also really clicked for me. Two things, actually. The first is that it’d give new meaning to the speech Megami tells you on the Skype chat you can have with her at school:

Is someone there?...Ah! It's you...Why have you come here? Have you come here to taunt me? Do you even know who I am? I know who you are. I know WHAT you are. My father won't allow me to attend school while you are..."active". He has a reason for tolerating your presence at this school. I don't. You are a vulgar creature that is only allowed to exist because you serve a purpose. If it was my decision, then every last one of you would be exterminated. Have fun while you can. If you and I ever cross paths...you're going to have a bad time.

The purpose is to further Saikou Corporation’s knowledge of the yandere condition and to find further ways to exploit it. Megami’s dad is in on this scheme and has purposefully kept Megami off campus while Ayano is on her murder spree as a way to keep her safe. What’s more, Ayano isn’t the only yandere that’s active either. Such a statement is more revealing than you might imagine it to be too. I think it’s pretty accepted at this point that the journalist’s wife was a yandere herself. He tells us as much in Mysterious Tape #6

But as soon as we met, she wanted to spend every waking moment with me. She wouldn't let me out of her sight, and got possessive if another woman so much as looked at me.

I quickly began to depend on her for everything. It wasn't long before I couldn't live without her. I certainly wasn't in any state to take care of myself... I was like an adult-sized baby. Helpless and vulnerable. Who knows...maybe that's what she was attracted to. Maybe she just wanted to experience the sensation of owning a person. Maybe she wanted to keep a human pet.

Isn’t it odd how she showed up in his life only a year after his ordeal with Ryoba in court? How his marriage to her didn’t involve them leaving the town at all? If I were him, I would’ve probably left it behind a long time ago, especially if it brought up memories as traumatic as what he’d experienced (and the fact he was directly threatened by Ryoba too). But instead his marriage and alcoholism caused him to never get out until it was too late. The timing seems... convenient, doesn’t it? Almost as if it were planned.

It wouldn’t be hard, I think, to sic some girl afflicted with the condition on someone either in hopes they’d ‘imprint’ on them or alternatively try to induce that very same response in them somehow. It’s a safe bet, again, considering how long Saikou Corp. would’ve had to pour over the data they’d collected. There surely would’ve been theories on how it happened and they’d be unethical enough to try it on human test subjects. So if they could do that, who might it happen to?

I think that an overarching narrative theme in-game is going to be that of free will. Let’s consider for a moment both Megami and Ayano as parallels to one another. Both are incredibly driven women who will stop at nothing to get what they desire - order for Megami, Senpai for Ayano - with familial histories of treachery and abuse. If Megami’s life has been lain down before her without her having much say in the matter, how does this similar struggle reflect in Ayano? Arguably, Megami could have everything she ever materially wanted in life just as Ayano has in the form of the feelings Senpai gives her but the issue goes deeper. If the price for Megami was having every moment planned out for her, is it not possible that the feelings Ayano has are just as manufactured? I don’t mean that in the ‘love at first sight’ kind of way; I’m questioning if the meeting with Senpai was something that was set up for her to go through, a test to see if this poor schmuck could be the thing that would let them begin to move onto a new test subject to put them through their glorified obstacle course (Akademi). Not to mention the fact that it essentially occurs right after Ryoba and Mr. Aishi leave for America is an immediate red flag. If Megami is trying to stop Ayano, though, then it must mean that she’s rebelling against the wishes of Saikou Corporation itself. After all, they don’t want something that they’ve put years of investment into slipping through the fingers if they can help it. The end game she has in mind is anyone’s guess at this point but I suspect it will be the purge of anything related to the above secret project. As such, there’s going to have to be someone to offer us an alternative to bringing down the current iteration of Saikou - and I think we also have an inkling of who’s going to aid us in bringing her down.

Kencho is emblematic of the status quo. He desperately desires his father’s approval (the one who’s likely continuing his father’s wishes and pursuing this whole endeavor to begin with) and will do anything to gain it. If Megami steps out of line too much, he’s certain to know that means she’ll fall from grace. He’s only been prevented from doing anything about his current situation because he’s only second best and hurting Megami would upset his dad. However, if she were to have an unfortunate accident... well, it isn’t as if he could be ignored anymore. In exchange, I imagine he’ll give Ayano exactly what her mother had: a nice house, a life untouched by anyone who’d take Taro or Taeko away from her, and a way for the two of them to have children if you go the latter route. All Ayano has to do is just give in to being a pawn like her mother did, like Kencho did, and like his father did. Or she can, at last, have the first real choice she’s ever had in her life by siding with Megami and tearing it all down (with Senpai still the promised reward in exchange for her help, certainly...).

[thessalian]

Thess vs the Opposition

It says something that I check the Guardian website for my daily check-in on the world at large and my thought as I click the bookmark is “Okay, let’s see who’s on what bullshit today”.

Because dude, there is such bullshit right now. Our shiny new Leader of the Opposition - Keir Starmer, who replaced Jeremy Corbyn to the cheers of ... well, a fair few Labour supporters - is turning out to be kind of a shitheel. He’s clearly less interested in actually supporting official Labour policy (whatever the hell that is now) than he is in scoring points off the Tory government. Seriously, while I support calling the Tory government on their bullshit (because there is a lot of bullshit to be called at the moment, all things considered), I don’t support ignoring the needs of the country to do it.

Yesterday’s Starmer-related bullshit was his refusal to support extending the transition period for Brexit in the wake of the economic fallout of the pandemic. His reasons for it were absolute bullshit, for one thing. His quote was effectively, “I don’t think they can get everything negotiated in time, but they say they can, so I think we should let them have a go”. This screams of long-game political tactics. Starmer’s basically turning around to one of the most hubris-riddled politicians in the Western world and issued a challenge. Starmer clearly expects this to fail, expects us to crash out of the EU with no deal, and then will use that failure and the economic mess that will follow to score points and either force an early election or at least make him the clear choice in the next election in a few years’ time.

The other day, it was refusal to support the idea of rent forgiveness for those affected by the pandemic. In this case, his logic is straight-up ridiculous; “If we don’t make people pay their rent, the landlords will still need money and that expense will fall on the government’s shoulders”. So instead he’s supporting an extension to a scheme that bans landlords from evicting tenants who can’t pay rent, but that just puts the financial burden on the tenant. Eventually, the financial juggling that the average individual has to do in order to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table during this mess is going to come crashing down, and that’ll cost the government too, one way or another. But Starmer’s trying to play both sides here, and this is the result. I know that everyone referred to Tony Blair as Tory Lite, but this guy is currently making Blair look like the leftiest leftie in the universe.

Today, Starmer is on the attack, and using an awful lot of time that could be used to help guide policy to help us get through the current crisis by playing the blame game, attacking Johnson over the deaths in care homes. Yes, I agree that Johnson needs to be called to account over this, but given the current situation, there are way more important things to take Johnson to task over. The COVID-19 death toll in care homes is just a good soft target.

If you want something to attack the current government for? The insistence that people go back to work if possible. Particularly in London, there’s a tiiiiiiny issue with that; public transport. Social distancing doesn’t work on public transport, because the Tube in particular routinely runs at 130% capacity or so during rush hour and there’s no earthly way you can get everyone to work. The trains are already heaving and we’ve only just started trying to get back to work. The transport secretary said he would not under any circumstances get on public transport right now ... while advising others to do so. And fucking Rees-Mogg is saying that Parliament should “set an example” and come back to the Houses of Parliament instead of doing video converencing. This despite the fact that a) we’re still encouraged to work from home where possible, b) they don’t have to take public transport because they have subsidised private travel, and c) most of them have second homes near to Parliament so the commute wouldn’t be as bad even if they weren’t driven there. Look, I get that people need to get back to work, but the way things are organised at the moment, you can have a return to work or you can have social distancing. You cannot have both. This is something Labour could be stressing, but nope; instead, Starmer’s going for the heart-strings with pensioner death. Like I said - obviously important and Johnson’s whole government deserves to get called to account for that, but we do also have to do something about what the current party in government’s muddled excuses for policy are doing to the people who are still alive, so we don’t have another spike in the death rate.

So ... yeah, I greet the news with, “Let’s see who’s on what bullshit today”, and there is never, ever a moment where I go, “Oh, hey, this isn’t actually bullshit”. Blegh.

[agrawalmoorti]

The Hindu God Ganesh Represents Wisdom and Success

A couple of years ago I finally met someone I had known for many years, but only on the Internet. I noticed that she always wore the same pendant, a strange figure of a man with an elephants head and wondered why such an elegant lady would be so attached to what looked like a funny plastic figure. When I finally got round to asking her about it, I was ashamed of my ignorance. It was the first time I had heard of the Hindu God Ganesh.

To a western eye, Ganesh looks really strange; an almost comical figure who has a man's body (and a bit of a paunch) an elephants head, four hands (at least), only one tusk, and spends his time riding around on a very small mouse. But Ganesh is not a clown and to see him as a joke is to misunderstand centuries of belief and symbolism. He is highly revered in the Hindu religion, where the same attributes, looked at in a different way, make him the embodiment of wisdom and learning, the patron of science and the arts, the remover of obstacles, and hence called on at the beginning of every enterprise as the god of success. It was as such that my friend wore her pendant, not plastic but very old jade, a talisman designed to bring success to each one of her ventures.

The Hindu religion is very old and practiced over a wide area, so it isn't surprising that there are many stories about the origin of the Hindu gods. In most Hindu traditions, Ganesh is the son of Shiva and his wife Parvati. Hindu's recognize four major denominations all of whom regard Parvati and Shiva as important, but for the Shakta, Parvati, whose name means 'she of the mountains' is the Supreme Being and Shiva is her consort. It was Parvati who created Ganesh.

Parvati is said to value her privacy, so one day when she wanted to bathe and had no-one around to keep watch for her, Parvati used turmeric paste to create a boy. She gave him life and asked him to be sure to guard her privacy, and this is how Ganesh was born, without any real intervention from his 'father' Shiva.

When Shiva returned home he wanted to go inside, but Ganesh followed his Mother's instructions and stopped him. There was a battle, and Shiva, who is Lord of Destruction, cut off the boy's head.

When she saw what had happened, Parvati's anger knew no bounds. She demanded that Shiva amend the situation, so he sent his servants to bring back the head of the first living thing they found. The head belonged to an elderly elephant they had found just as he was about to die, so Ganesh was brought back to life and given the elephant's head.

By association Ganesh is regarded as strong, affectionate and loyal. Such a large head can only be a sign of wisdom and intelligence, while the huge ears are used to carefully separate the good and the bad and to listen to the requests of supplicants. Like the elephant Ganesh is powerful if provoked, but loving when shown kindness. Unlike most elephants, Ganesh has only one tusk.

There are many stories of the reason for the broken tusk; the most popular is that Ganesh was given the job of writing down the epic tale known as the Mahabharata. At one point his pen failed and rather than stop, Ganesh removed his tusk and carried on, showing he was willing to make a sacrifice to acquire knowledge. Other, less poetic stories say that the tusk was removed by a villain who stole it to make ivory earrings for beautiful ladies.

It's not always immediately obvious that statues of Ganesh have four (and sometimes more) hands. One is usually shown in abhaya pose that is held up with palm out and fingers pointing upwards, while the second holds a sweet, a symbol of the inner self. The other two hands will usually contain a goad and a noose, the former being used to prod followers along the path of truth, while the latter represents the snare of earthly desires. At his feet most statues of Ganesh show a mouse, his traditional steed. The mouse is the symbol of the intellect, wandering in and out, but tamed by the greater power of the whole.

Many devotees believe that the strange shape of the one tusked elephant headed God mirrors the symbol OM, a symbol which represents the primeval sound which was the first thing to be created and from which the rest of the universe arose. This is the symbol which is commonly used to represent all of Hinduism and its beliefs.

Although the Hindu religion has four main denominations, all worship Ganesh, whose image can be found across India, Nepal and many areas of the Far East. For Buddhists, Ganesh appears as the god Vinayaka and is usually shown dancing. His statues appear in Nepal and Tibet. In Japan he is seen as a minor god and young people call on him when looking for success in love. Throughout Malaysia, Java, Bali and Borneo there are temples to Ganesh and in Thailand his position as remover of obstacles and patron of the arts mean that there is a ceremony where offerings are made to Ganesh before any movie or TV series starts shooting.

Indonesia is a Muslim country, but even there Ganesh is revered and his image can be found in many Cambodian temples. Yet despite spreading across the Eastern world Ganesh was unknown in Europe until relatively recently, though some scholars, commenting on a statue of Ganesh where he is shown with two heads (one of an elephant one of a man) facing in opposite directions have likened the image to that of Janus, the two headed God of the Romans, but no actual link between the two has been found.

Whatever your view on the gods of the east or of the ancients, their statues and associated symbolism are always thought provoking. However we view something, other cultures often see (or saw) it very differently; one reason why museum quality statues and other artifacts make fascinating and artistic conversation pieces for any home.

There is too much written about Lord Ganesha in Hindu mythology. Anybody who has worshipped Ganesh with true dedication and feeling has never ever failed to get the prosperity and riches that he is entitled to. You too can solve your financial problems forever by bringing Lord Ganesha to your home.

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[thesovietbroadcast]

how do you explain china being capitalist if its the only country thats significantly reduced poverty in the past 40 years

A lot of it really amounts to the government of China actively redefining what it means by poverty line and relying on the same number-setting used by the World Bank to falsely portray global poverty as rapidly shrinking (claiming an 80% reduction globally since 1980 thanks to capitalism) despite it being larger today when utilising reasonable metrics. In China measures poverty with a standard equivalent to $1 a day, which is actually lower than the already absurdly low World Bank standard, and going by Chinese prices is not even enough to provide a 1500 calorie per day diet even if 100% of income goes towards food.

What poverty reduction has occurred is only temporary and there is an ever increasing wealth gap between urban and rural areas, minimum wages range from $1.40 to $2.70 per hour depending on the province making it extraordinarily difficult for workers to live in urban centres (particularly more affluent ones where prices are very much similar to prices in western countries), not to mention that most of western China is impoverished and largely ignored by state authorities. The share of the “growth in wealth” in China since 1978 seen by the proletariat has continued to shrink further and further with time. It also must be kept in mind that by far the greatest reduction in poverty predates the 1978 reforms, seeing as the so-called “Mao period” saw widespread electrification, infrastructure development, housing development, urbanization, etc. that is unrivaled in history since. The price reduction in agricultural goods brought about through collectivization have also been reversed with and since the 1978 reforms, increasing the percentage of income spent on food considerably compared to the Mao period. Besides the benefits which cannot be accurately measured through the typical capitalist means of measuring poverty, the Mao period was stronger in terms of economic growth by those systems of measurement China relies on today as well. "Mao era” China saw stronger GDP growth than post-reform China, even despite the losses after the Great Leap Forward, while growth in agricultural and industrial output has been unrivaled since that time. This is despite the claims from the “China is socialist” crowd that the economy was stagnant and on the verge of collapse.

When you factor in all these elements it’s very hard to believe China has a “socialist economy” when its current leadership actively calls for the enhancement of the private sector, defends the allocation of resources based on market capitalism, and engages in extractivist missions in third world countries. The “growth of wealth” in China was not brought about by the 1978 reforms and those which followed, they only changed which classes benefit the most from that growth.

Only very delusional people who don’t understand important Marxist principles such as ownership of the means of production, relations of production, and dictatorship of the proletariat can claim that China’s socio-economic system is “socialism.”

[arcticdementor]

Though its origins go back many years, Boris Johnson’s decisive victory in the general election was made possible by the unwillingness of most of the political class to learn the lessons of the 2016 Brexit referendum. Labour has suffered a cataclysmic defeat. The Liberal Democrats have been reduced to a disoriented rump, while the Independent Group for Change has evaporated along with the phantom of a new centre party. The DUP has been marginalised and the Brexit Party effectively liquidated. The unified Conservative Party that has been created in a matter of months, following generations of division over Europe, is an astonishing feat. The power Johnson commands in the Commons has no precedent for decades, and there is no serious opposition.

Yet outside government, British institutions are vehicles for a progressive mindset that is hostile to much of what he aims to achieve. This places a question mark over whether he will be able to secure the conjunction of political power with cultural legitimacy that Antonio Gramsci, one of the most penetrating 20th-century political thinkers, called hegemony.

…

For the two wings of British progressivism – liberal centrism and Corbynite leftism – the election has been a profound shock. It is almost as if there was something in the contemporary scene they have failed to comprehend. They regard themselves as the embodiment of advancing modernity. Yet the pattern they imagined in history shows no signs of emerging. Any tendency to gradual improvement has given way to kaleidoscopic flux. Rather than tending towards some rational harmony, values are plural and contending. Political monotheism – the faith that only one political system can be right for all of humankind – has given way to inescapable pluralism. Progress has ceased to be the providential arc of history and instead become a prize snatched for a moment from the caprice of the gods.

…

In these pages in October I suggested that British politics had reached a Hobbesian moment. Voters demanded a government, not anarchy presided over by a gibbering rabble. The clean-out in the Commons followed from this imperative. The single most important lesson of the previous three and more years is the abject incompetence of Britain’s centrist political class. Their comical despair today comes from their inability to grasp the part they played in the debacle that has engulfed them.

…

A hint of what was to come could be seen in the debacle of the People’s Vote (PV) campaign. Reported as the outcome of organisational conflicts and clashing personalities, its implosion in the run-up to the election revealed the basic contradiction in the Remain movement. Alastair Campbell, an éminence grise of the campaign, has written that it failed because it could not explain to people why, when the country had voted for something, it should not happen. In fact, everyone knew the sole reason for a second referendum was to nullify the first. That is why a section of the PV campaign opted for Revoke. Searching for a unique selling point, the Liberal Democrats did the same. Preferring the risk of a Jeremy Corbyn government to Brexit, Remainer grandees and centrist journals and commentators backed Jo Swinson’s extremism. In turn, she triggered an election that made Brexit inevitable. There is a certain rationality in politics, it seems, after all.

…

While the liberal centre has disappeared as a significant force in politics, the future of the Corbynite ascendancy has yet to be decided. If, as some are already speculating, Keir Starmer proves most able to unite the party and its affiliated organisations, Corbynism could become not much more than a divisive faction. Wisely, Starmer has accepted the finality of Brexit. In the interests of continuity, he has talked up his humble origins and will make much of his work with trade unions. But he remains ineffably the candidate of the woke bourgeoisie in the party’s mass membership and metropolitan redoubts, and in practice could well complete the detachment of Labour from its working-class roots that Corbynism has accelerated. Rebecca Long-Bailey, the Corbynite continuity candidate despite her protestations otherwise, is campaigning on the basis that Labour voters who rejected Corbyn’s message were mistaken, so it is they – not her party – that must change.

…

Corbynism was Marxian in the sense that Oswald Mosley was Keynesian. But it is by using a Marxian idea of hegemony that Labour’s future, and that of Johnson’s Conservatives, can best be plotted. Corbynite Labour is a morbid symptom of the decay of centrism. The problem Johnson faces is that while he exercises unassailable power in government, British institutions as a whole remain vehicles of progressivist ideology.

…

Representing Johnson’s government as neoliberalism in populist clothing misses the regime shift that is taking place. Horror at the spectre of “Singapore-on-Thames” is a sign of ignorance and confusion. Singapore is far from being an untrammelled market economy. Land is the property of the state, and around 80 per cent of the island’s housing supplied by a government corporation. A highly effective civil service is engaged with companies and active throughout society. Singapore is a success story of managed capitalism, not the free market.

A Singaporean model cannot be transplanted here. Britain is a large, multinational, unevenly developed country, not a city state (though London now resembles one). But Johnson will need something like Singapore-style government if he is to keep his working-class voters on board. Dominic Cummings’s proposals for renovating the state machine reflect this fact.

…

Whether Johnson can retain his commanding position depends in the short term primarily on how well he maintains his pact with his new voters. If working-class jobs are hit hard by tariffs in the event of a hard Brexit, Labour has a chance to revive rapidly. The votes that have been lent to Johnson were part of a transaction in which greater economic security was a vital component. Working-class Labour supporters who turned to Johnson after a decade of Conservative austerity did so, in part, because they perceived him as a different kind of Conservative. A spate of closed factories and bankrupt farmers could discredit this perception.

…

If only people aged between 18 and 24 had voted in the general election, Corbyn would have won an enormous majority. No doubt this is partly because of Corbyn’s promise to abolish student tuition fees and the difficulties young people face in the housing and jobs markets. But their support for Corbyn is also a by-product of beliefs and values they have absorbed at school and university. According to the progressive ideology that has been instilled in them, the West is uniquely malignant, the ultimate source of injustice and oppression throughout the world, and Western power and values essentially illegitimate.

Humanities and social sciences teaching has been largely shaped by progressive thinking for generations, though other perspectives were previously tolerated. The metamorphosis of universities into centres of censorship and indoctrination is a more recent development, and with the expansion of higher education it has become politically significant. By over-enlarging the university system, Blair created the constituency that enabled the Corbynites to displace New Labour. No longer mainly a cult of intellectuals, as in Orwell’s time, progressivism has become the unthinking faith of millions of graduates.

When Labour voters switched to Johnson, they were surely moved by moral revulsion as well as their material interests. As polls have attested, they rejected Labour because it had become a party that derided everything they loved. Many referenced Corbyn’s support for regimes and movements that are violently hostile to the West. Some cited anti-Semitism as one of the evils their parents or grandparents had gone to war to defeat. For working class voters, Labour had set itself against patriotism and moral decency. For Corbynites, in the form in which they are held by what is still a majority of British people, these values can only be expressions of false consciousness. Labour’s dilemma is whether it continues to promote progressive orthodoxy or tries to reconnect with its traditional voters.

…

Liberal or Corbynite, the core of the progressivist cult is the belief that the values that have guided human civilisation to date, especially in the West, need to be junked. A new kind of society is required, which progressives will devise. They are equipped for this task with scraps of faux-Marxism and hyper-liberalism, from which they have assembled a world-view. They believed a majority of people would submit to their vision and follow them. Instead they have been ignored, while their world-view has melted down into a heap of trash. They retain their position in British institutions, but their self-image as the leaders of society has been badly shaken. It is only to be expected that many should be fixated on conspiracy theories, or otherwise unhinged. The feature of the contemporary scene progressives fail to understand, in the end, is themselves.

Johnson’s dilemma is how to cement his alliance with the working class while the cultural establishment remains wedded to progressivist values. It may be that hegemony is no longer possible for his or any political project. Society may remain fragmented indefinitely, and in some areas unalterably polarised.

…

Boris Johnson has come to power at a moment of high uncertainty. Progressive theories that claimed to divine the future have proved as trustworthy as Roman auguries. Gramsci’s belief that the working class makes history has turned out to be right, at least in Britain, but not in the way he and his disciples imagined. Somewhere in the heavens, the gods are laughing.

[go-redgirl]

U.S. President Donald Trump during the daily press briefing on the Coronavirus pandemic at the White House, Washington, D.C. - March 17, 2020 - (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

Multi-Pronged Approach Means Trump Will Win on Coronavirus

As the coronavirus crisis rapidly develops, the Trump administration must cope with two paradoxical problems looming above the race to prepare the public health service and shield the population as much as can be done, before the full force of the pandemic arrives.

An imaginative campaign by the government of the Peoples’ Republic of China to represent its response to the coronavirus as a triumph of Chinese efficiency predictably has won the hearts and minds of the credulous Western Left. In fact, it was a disaster of complete unpreparedness, insolent official refusal to pay the slightest attention to incoming facts, totalitarian dissembling and censorship, and the persecution of those who gave unheeded warnings.China now purports — with what must be acknowledged as majestic (though not simply admirable) aplomb — to be laying out a "silk road" of medical assistance to late-coming sufferer-nations. Of course, these nations are all victims of China’s official lies about the medical dangers it had inadvertently fostered and negligently transmitted. 

Having inflicted this pestilence on the world, China now claims to be the indispensable world leader in mastering the problem.Of course, the Chinese must not be allowed to get away with this colossal rodomontade. The United States must take the lead in repatriating pharmaceutical production from China, demanding the World Health Organization cease to be a shill-and-whitewash operation for the Peoples’ Republic, and render a truthful and objective account of how this virus got started and how it got so completely out of control.

The Chinese role must be exposed in effectively assuring the exportation of the coronavirus to the whole world, including through the large concentrations of Chinese workers building the self-important "Belt and Road" with which the Middle Kingdom will assert itself across the Eurasian land-mass, and through its failure to give advisory warnings to international travelers.China deliberately ignored the universally recognized responsibilities of all countries to report outbreaks of communicable diseases promptly and accurately.T

he world must understand that the Hong Kong protesters and the huge numbers of persecuted Uyghurs in their concentration camps (which China denies) are not freakish aberrations from some almost uniform munificence of the Peoples’ Republic.

They are the successors to other completely inoffensive groups who have been trampled underfoot, oppressed and traduced by the Beijing regime, from the long Civil War (1920s-1949) through the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962), the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the occupation of Tibet and persecution of practitioners of all the world’s religions, especially Christianity, but also authentic Chinese religions.

There are limits to what the world can reasonably aspire to do in jurisdictions that are not our own and boil down ultimately to Chinese internal affairs. But this attempt of the Chinese government, as it blames the United States for this debacle and threatens to be sluggish about the transmission to the United States of medical supplies produced in China by American companies it had induced to invest there, requires a sharp rejoinder.

Where this creates a conundrum for the United States is that although all Chinese comments on the coronavirus have to be somewhat, or even substantially, discounted, China’s partially plausible claim that it has turned the corner and that the virus is now in retreat, is extremely useful in combating the profound panic which is sweeping the United States and the entire Western world.

In democratic countries, the media are free to hype any version of events, no matter how terrifying, and the temptation to do so in the United States is aggravated by the possibility presented to the anti-Trump media to hammer the president for incompetence and deception in an election year, and destroy the benefits of his skillful management of the economy.

This is going to require the administration to execute the sophisticated maneuver of exposing China’s duplicity and negligence, while citing the fact that even despite the Beijing regime’s blunders and disinformation, the incidence and impact of the coronavirus are clearly now declining in China.

Proper emphasis on this point will close the door that has been hurled open to unlimited panic. It has been impossible to steady the country’s nerves, and especially the shaky-legged, sweaty-palmed managers of the nation’s and people’s money, who flee like asphyxiated cockroaches whenever any threat appears that can’t be measured precisely. 

The prudent course is to assume the worst and plan and act for it. But when the worst is indiscernible, the usual response is for the great money-managers to drink the Kool-Aid of outright panic, and flee to the front of the unsettled masses and lead them over the cliff. This can be combated in only two ways: a plan of believable action based on the assurance that the country possesses the ability to deal with the problem—FDR’s genius exhortation that “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. 

"As he said at his first inauguration on March 4, 1933, our "difficulties, thank God, concern only material things." That is not the case here, and no one knows exactly where this might end since it is distinguishable from previous pandemics. Where the danger could be infinite, the Roosevelt response is not a complete solution. 

This is why, as China’s official misconduct, ineptitude, callousness, and deceit must be highlighted, the demonstrably finite character of the coronavirus threat must also be emphasized.As a completely legitimate reference point to cure panic and focus on “flattening the curve,” as the scientists say, we are doing what China did not do: take every appropriate action to minimize the human damage and shorten the life of the crisis. 

And this is where the second paradox arises: the commendable scientists, who are senior in managing the official American response, seek the most radical measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.This is natural.But the possibility of a shut-down on almost the entire population, which is already in effect in Italy, France, and Spain, and is creeping upward in the United States also, reduces the likelihood of severe attacks of an influenza that is often much nastier than any flu but is not life-threatening to more than a tiny fraction of healthy people beneath the age of 70. 

This will shorten the duration of the medical crisis. But we saw in China that it also strangles the economy, which collapsed for at least two months—there were almost no sales and little production of durable goods in China during that time.The remit of the scientists is to end the medical crisis, but the administration has the challenge of imposing total risk-avoidance measures on the susceptible elements of the population (the infirm and elderly), and urging those with minimal chance of serious, much less, mortal illness, to pursue their occupations as best they can on as risk-free a basis as they can.These are delicate balances the administration will have to sort out.

The results of the national voluntary mobilization the administration has led are already emerging. A preliminary vaccine was tested on Monday in Seattle, and the ability to test Americans — which had a very wobbly beginning, aggravated by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar’s promise of four million tests last week, the almost complete failure to occur he blamed, a bit unconvincingly, on a "less seamless" passage from production to application — seems to be coming in a week late. 

Tests are not cures.They’re only useful for quarantining, and a person who is virus-free today may be infected tomorrow. But the psychological impact of the testing failure and the reflection on the administration’s credibility and competence were significant, but not irreversible.I predict that the administration will thread this needle and that the coronavirus crisis will be seen to be receding before the end of May.

[famous-aces]

Alfredo Guttero

Who: Alfredo Guttero

What: Artist and Art Promoter

Where: Argentinian (active in Argentina and throughout Western Europe) 

When: May 26, 1882 - December 1, 1932

(Image Description: Retrato del pintor, Victorica, 1929 [a self portrait]. It shows Guttero in his apartment. Outside is a very geometric skyline of smokestacks, steep roofs, and a brown sky. His room is slate colored and he sits in a chair in the foreground. He has a jacket thrown over the back of his chair. His pose is casual and he looks as if we [the viewer] have just distracted him from painting. He sits with his legs to one side, turned almost unnaturally toward the viewer. One leg is lifted slightly and one hand is on the chair's seat as if he is in the middle of turning completely to the viewer. He is a man with a receding hairline and a high forehead. He has a dark mustache and dark hair and low eyebrows. He is wearing a white shirt and bowtie and has his sleeves rolled up to the elbow and his collar is ruffled and loosened. The whole thing hangs very loose but you can still see some of his body's lines of musculature. His tie undone and hanging around his neck. His pants are ordinary and green/brown. His expression is calm but confident and he looks directly at the viewer. The colors are bold but not really bright. The style blends geometry and flatness and realism in a way I am explaining very poorly. End ID)

Guttero is not terribly well remembered today, which is too bad. Looking through his oeuvre I quite like his work. Maybe it is because he lacked the bombastic personality of many modernist artists, maybe it is due to his diversity of styles without one that seems to define his work, or maybe it is because he was one of so many talented artists of his generation. He was well renown in his era, however, and used his popularity and skill to foster the next generation of Argentinian artists.

Guttero's life began mundanely enough. He always loved art, appreciating it and creating it, but pursued a legal career instead. But he was unhappy with his life as a lawyer, so Guttero left it to become a painter. He pursued his dream and passion, inspired and pushed by other Argentine artists. In 1904 his reputation was good enough that the Argentinian government sponsored his move to Paris, then the epicenter of the truly exciting and revolutionary art world, its influence expanding outward. He studied there for a few years under Maurice Denis before appearing in the Salon.

He remained in Paris until 1916 when he began to travel extensively across Western Europe for more than a decade, first to Spain, then Germany, Austria, and beyond. He traveled to nearly every country in the area between the years of 1916 and 1927.  His work was shown in various exhibitions around the continent from being featured in the Salon in Paris to a major solo exhibition in Genoa.

After that he returned to Argentina for the first time since his initial departure in 1904. Guttero remained active in his native country including creating free art classes called, aptly enough, Cursos Libres de Arte Plástico, with other Argentine artists. During this time he focused on his work as an art promotor, perhaps even more than his own art. During this time he introduced and showed new Argentinian artists to a wider audience. Indeed he created an organization for this purpose: the Hall of Modern Painters. He was dedicated to promoting and preserving modern art in the face of a world growing increasingly dark and reactionary. He died young and without much warning.

His art is undeniably modernist but trickier to pin to a specific movement. He has many different styles he utilizes with different degrees of naturalism and curves vs geometry. His scenes are by and large mundane and human, he uses bright colors, often huge central subjects, kinetic poses and positions, modern settings, and by and large human or urban subjects. He often painted on plaster using a "cooked plaster" technique of his own devising.

(Image Description: Martigues for Charles Jacques [1909], a brightly colored painting showing a scene in a Martigues canal. It is not completely realistic nor completely geometric and abstract. He favors color over outlines. In the background is a bright blue sky interrupted by yellow buildings with tile roofs, maybe houses, lit by the unseen sun. One of the building's lower doors is open. There is a small tree to the far right. In the foreground in the sparkling water of the canal are several small work boats, probably fishing boats judging by the silvery nets lying over the hulls. On the right a boat is coming in, there is a pale skinned, dark haired man working on one of the nets. His sail is red and white. On the left is a pale man in an orange hat and yellow shirt. He is stooped and just by his pose appears older, both of the men are too far away for many identifying details. End ID)

Possible Orientation: Mspec ace, gay ace, or aroace with an aesthetic attraction to multiple genders. (I am so unsure I have changed "probable" to "possible.")

I admit this one is a stretch on my part.

I am classifying Guttero based largely on absence, i.e. the absence of a remembered/recorded spouse, sexual/romantic partner, or liasian. I have no quotes or historical documents to prove my point. I have none of his personal philosophy or writings to draw from. Just the fact that he dedicated his life to art more than human relationshipa. That this is something I have seen before: Cause and its role in the life of many aros/aces/aroaces (outlined in Weil's entry the other day) and the fact that he had no recorded romantic/sexual partners that I can find in hours of research.

This illustrates why it is so, so difficult to find aspecs in history. We are not, as aphobes believe, impossible to locate, there is externally visible evidence, but it is less obvious than most other orientations. And cishets would rather we didn't exist so we are often buried under excuses. The easiest ways to find them are 1) if they were notably "married to their job" in their lifetimes (e.g. Jeanette Rankin and Carter Woodson), they talked/wrote about it in some capacity (e.g. T.E. Lawrence or Frédéric Chopin), they were distrusted because of it (John Ruskin and James Barrie), they made it part of their persona (Nikola Tesla and Florence Nightingale), aside from that I really need to search deep into their personal lives. Information not always available.

And often even when people essentially say "I am aromantic and/or asexual" the general population will not accept that. After all Newton is often remembered as allo and gay, despite never expressing interest in men. Chopin is often listed as allo and bi. Rankin is often considered cishet but too deeply concerned with her work. Barrie gets called a pedophile despite showing no interest in children. For eccentric aspecs like Weil/Tesla/etc. their being aspec becomes part of their oddness. If they weren't Like That they would be allo. Their being aspec becomes a symptom of their weirdness and would be unacceptable in a "normal" person.

History with a capital H does not want to acknowledge aspecs and, as with other queer identities, will go to insane measures to erase them. But even other queer historians will do this to aspecs. I am shocked how many people do exactly to Newton/Lewis/and the like what cishet historians do to Alexander the Great. In the case of Alexander the cishets ignore the obvious accounts that he loved Hephestian in nearly every way possible and queer historians and history buffs call them out, then often the non-aspec ones look at Newton and Lewis who had no interest in men and say they must have been gay. And it isn't really just history, Tim Gunn is by his own admission both gay and ace and the second part of that statement is either erased or, even crazier, I have seen aphobes say that he is mistaken about his own identity.

Anyway the root cause of this lack of nuance in the discussion of sexual orientation is a long sidebar that this is not the place to explore. I have left Guttero behind paragraphs ago. I have written a lot about how aces and aros end up getting erased from history and this isn't about that.

This is about Guttero and the difficulty of finding aros and aces. The presence of something is so much easier to find than the alternative, obviously, like if Historical Figure X exclusively slept with/courted men and was a man we can say he was (most likely) gay. But if Historical Figure Y didn't sleep with anyone/court anyone it is harder to prove. This is obviously severely simplifying identity but for the purposes of this example I beg your apology.

Long Story Short: the absence of evidence of something is not proof of the absence of something. A lot of aphobes will point this out and utterly ignore the fact that sometimes it is.

So, Guttero. The only thing I can say conclusively is that he never married and he was romantically or sexually tied to anyone as far as I can find. He was, in his time, very active in the art world. If he had been involved someone would probably have taken note. Especially considering his art is often very appreciative of the human form, especially the male one, it would not be hard to believe he was allo and gay or mspec.

I am going to take his art another way putting some dusty analysis/critique/art history skills to good use. Here's the thing, those who follow me on my personal blog or even here know I find the Death of the Author extremely important but it is also extremely complicated (it was actually the topic of my senior thesis). I don't want to use an artist's work to talk about their personal lives because art is often not reflective of life, but there is always some cross contamination in one way or another. I am going to explain what I mean on a superficial level, using myself as an example so I can say this is 100% accurate. I love the found family trope, and I think those relationships are the best in the world. So whenever I write something you can be damned sure if I can get some found family goodness in there I will. What I am saying is, I don't love or even approve of everything I write about, but I do write about some things because I love them and want to explore them and experience them on some level. The same may be true for Guttero and the subjects he painted.

Guttero often pays a lot of attention to human form. Look at his work The Market (I couldn't find a large enough image to put it in this post) and you will see his appreciation for amab musculature and on the other side of the male spectrum...

(image description: Retrato de Lucien Cavarry [1911] It shows a thin, lanky, and well dressed young man reclining on a green floral patterned couch and a black pillow. He is pale with neat, dark hair. He has a shadow of 5 o'clock shadow on his super hero jaw. His suit is white, his slightly rumpled tie is black, as are his socks and polished shoes. One arm is across the back of the couch and a red and gold pillow the other is dangling. This style is very different from the other portraits I showed/referenced. Still a modern but more realistic style, more flowing, less geometric. The man is drop dead gorgeous by Western beauty standards. End ID)

As for women...he seems to find them colder, more distant, but there is still a physical appreciation there. (Linking Mujeres Indolentes so I don't get flagged for "female presenting nipples" or whatever Tumblr's BS is. [The name alone tells you a lot]). Or the somewhat judgemental gaze of the woman below:

(Image Description: Georgelina. It shows a portrait of a pretty young woman sitting in front of a field. She is pale and long and beautiful. She has red hair, sharp eyes, a long flowing white dress with a gold sash around her waist, and a white hat with a black bow that is blowing in the wind. She takes up most of the frame and her expression is challenging and she holds eye contact with the viewer. The colors are bright and she is almost porciline in color. The background is mostly flat planes of color. In style it is somewhere between the self portrait and the portrait of Cavarry. End ID.)

Not all of his portraits of women have them so sour/distant but they all have a sort of challenging look. Beauty tinged with something dangerous, while the men always seem more innocent.

So here is why I say aspec rather than allo using his work alone, none of his work is particularly sexually inviting even with the sexiness/physical European attractiveness. The men are bashful or unaware of the viewer, the women are certainly not interested.

And back to the self portrait at the top: Guttero is in a fairly sexy pose, but it is sexy without being sexual. He is rumpled but the thing he was doing was painting, there is a sexless explanation. He is looking at the viewer, but you are distracting him from working. At first glance I thought his legs were spread, but they are simply in motion so he can face his guest more comfortably. This all could mean nothing, but I found it striking that this is how he chose to depict himself, at first he appears to be inviting the viewer in for a more physical interaction, but then it seems he is doing exactly the opposite, his passionate energy has been instead put into painting.

And in reality toward the end of his life that was what he did. He dedicated himself to his own art and the art of others.

So again, this could mean nothing. But...it could mean he is aspec.

And that is how the person I am least sure about got the longest entry.

(image description: Elevadores [1928]. A painting showing a factory complex. There is a raised platform running around it and several buildings in bright colors. There is a tree to the right side and a green hill. The building in the near-center [lightly left] is red. The sky is yellow and blue, perhaps the unseen sun is rising up behind the right-hand buildings. In style it is mostly geometric and flat color. End ID.)

[rootsooman]

When are we going to acknowledge that plenty of African food staples are already vegan (AND gluten free)?

With dairy not being the most ancient food staple for *most* tropical and savannah Africans, plenty of various African food staples are already vegan because of that fact. Everything from gari to fufu to injera to tiger nut milk to agundai fitfit and shiro to jollof rice and chapatis... those plus dishes from Africa's diasporic cuisine in the West Indies and Latin America.... are absolutely RIFE with already vegan and gluten free options and here are some of the obvious reasons:

1. The abundance and ubiquity of starches in warm environments. Starches are filling, swell and carry water, and are abundant in warm hot climates and easy to prepare and store for long journeys too. Yams, non-European grains (millet, sorghum, teff, kamut) and other starchy vegetables, tubers, fruit and grains are super-staples that are curiously missing from the superfoods hype list despite their nutrition and accessible pricing. Just 3.5oz of millet contains 11 grams of protein. It prevents diabetes, lowers triglycerides, is packed with vitamin B6 and Manganese too. It's gluten free just like teff. These are affordable grains.

2. Spices gone wild! Spices make vegetables and savory fruits very very agreeable to the palate, resulting in simple dishes like collard greens or calaloo with nightshades being jam-packed with flavor, making it easy to forget that you're just eating leaves. You would think that with the abundance of spices and flavors that appeal to most tastes, these diverse cuisines would be hyped up.

There seems to be a food hierarchy that literally pushes the media-fed lie that certain people groups don't eat and have nothing to contribute to veganism and thus need to be "saved" by veganism. This ignorance bolsters the fallacious idea that veganism and food in general must be handed out or "taught" to them, which actually continues and validates the current colonial capitalist order that veganism is tiptoeing around with its shortsighted activism.

3. Lack of (or relatively late) non-human Animal Slavery. Due to a lack of total reliance on domestic bovids, many (but not all, I repeat, not all) African countries and cultures do not prioritize dairy, (with many many exceptions of course). Dairy is not exactly a base in most African cuisine. That includes the areas close to Mediterranean Europe (even nearby Greek and Italian food have plenty of dairy free options). Camels and dairy cows were not always present on the continent. They were actually introduced, so you'll find that a lot of very ancient dishes are dairy free. Nigeria actually has been drinking nut milk (tiger nut milk, coconut milk etc) for centuries! Why aren't vegans talking about this? The world NEEDS to know that nut milk is neither new nor unusual to human beings.

Mainstream veganism tends to fetishize Asian food in the same way Asian women are fetishized, and this hyping up of third world Asian countries for rich western vegans also has a problematic angle, because those same places (Thailand etc) have a big sex tourism industry as well as rampant rape culture that I am afraid is being swept under the rug due to it not happening to non human animals. See the whole Durianrider controversies....

This "ripe for the picking" attitude amongst elite vegans is eerily similar to the colonizer mindset. We do not, as vegans, need to fetishize one or two regions unsustainably. Central America and Southeast Asia are not to be plundered. Please spread out your interests and boost other economies too. Vegans should be first in line NOT to over-harvest specific regions of the world where indigenous folk are being pressured. Africa's economies are ripe for support and desperately need to EXPORT and make some money rather than be forced to import poisonous American food that wipes out local, native economies.

So next time you go to a small grocery store, pick up a box or bag of fufu, gari, cassava flour or groundnuts from an authentic, African brand. Let's show some support to these untapped markets and help introduce the world at large to the vegan foods so many people have been sleeping on for ages. Please try to promote accessible, affordable vegan food. Not every meal has to include avocados or açai berries. Sometimes the humble plantain is enough.