#i am literally pro social democracy

[i-am-having-an-emotion]

i literally need to stop trying to get anyone online to understand economics, i keep getting called a corporate shill

[the-fox-collective]

This is the personal account for @coining-system-terms and @saltyfoxes-artist I'm gonna talk about whatever I want here but here's some things you should know:

Basic:

We're 18, we mostly use singular first person pronouns to refer to ourself but sometimes use plural to reduce confusion about collective vs individual alter.

We use the terms alters, headmates and sysmates for Most of the system. There are certain areas where the inhabitants are parts but do not refer to us as parts by default.

We have medically recognised dissociative disorder and plurality but a diagnosis is a struggle to get and we're working on it. We are physically disabled and will complain about it.

Stances:

Literally couldn't care less if endos exist or not. I'm not them, I have no idea what their life has been, I'm also not a psychologist specialising in plurality, and certainly not their psychologist. I do not want to talk to endos about their plurality because I will not be able to relate to them, so I don't want them adding things to my posts. It's easier to say anti endo.

I believe everyone should access therapy/counselling about their mental health, even if they have had bad experiences because not all professionals are evil incarnate. I think these are good first steps into introspection and can lead to getting the right support when needed. Pro recovery, psych critical (institutions should be improved with the actual well being of patients in mind, nonconsensual "support" is more harmful than good).

I believe transmisogny and transandrophobia are both real and I believe that when people of a marginalised group coin terms to describe their OWN oppression you should use their words instead of making your own FOR them. Intersexism is also real and therefore using AGAB and TME/TMA is not useful in a majority of discussions. They're also not identity terms.

I don't hate anyone based on their identity, but I believe some identities are used ignorantly. This means I am pro contradictory labels, pro mspec monos, pro multigender, pro xeno, pro neoprns.

I am neutral mostly on radqueer stuff because it's a complex issue, for example transrace being used by POC adopted children who were put into white families and felt they had to rebuild(?) or reconnect with their race. I think there could be better terminology that doesn't end up conflated transitioning and reconnecting though. Again, it's complex.

War shouldn't happen and in the current political climate is a tool of capitalism and imperialism. Be nice to all people. Prison abolition. Harm reduction. Socialism. Pro abortion. Libertarianism is fucking moronic. Literally "Treat people with kindness and let them do as they wish to their own body." Government as it is is corrupt but more democracy could lead to big governments, high taxes and support for everyone.

I use the term OEA (organised extreme abuse) instead of RAMCOA and the term ITBC (intentional torture based conditioning) instead of mind control/programming

My life, simply:

I was born into poverty, into a high control group and was kicked out as a preteen for a multitude of reasons. I have experienced neglect, lack of privacy and many types of abuse. In the high control group there was a lot of ITBC. I am not in a place to talk about it online in detail.

As a teen, I was not a kind person. I have been working on that for a long time, sometimes I become cruel again and I am working not. Radical acceptance of other people has been key to this.

I cut off contact with my blood relatives a few years ago and have been stalked by one. I have very few friends because I fear human connection that leads to being perceived. This account is to help with that, as my therapist has advised.

I currently live with my wife. She is a singlet and has a supportive family. Her family know about my suspected DID and I have had no issues with them. I do not work, I have taken a gap year to work on my physical health.

[straynoahide]

this kind of bullshit arguments is why (mostly white) leftist fifthcolumnists can unironically defend october 7th as "resistance" and spend every second of their western lives shitting on the west, with barely no opposition in "progressive spaces". israel isn't exactly part of the west, the jewish democracy isn't exactly liberal democracy, but our enemies certainly are the same... pro-terror, yes, this is what this is, but also something worse.

what's this great anti-western resistance stand for?

the CCP seeing taiwanese gay marriage as a casus belli and reeducating muslims? juche's trigenerational punishments? fossil fuel oligarchs and ruscist bureaucrats that still praise stalin enforcing conscription of native siberians? the theocratic ummah and arab imperialists that do not at all envision human trafficking in some neo-caliphate for kafir girls? failed narco-states and femicides in latin america's powerhouses? more jihadism done by black people against each other, or the zimbabwe experience in africa? endless civil war? what is it? what is our salvation? socialism in one planet?

what else am i supposed to applaud, as an european, to deconstruct whiteness and embrace this multipolar future, to get a medal for being with the resistance (ie the imperialism of some other awful regime or proto-totalitarian nightmare) and not with the "american empire"? how great 9/11 and how bad the pax americana.

yes let's go back to elder councils that rule out a woman raped is solved by the prepetrator's sister raped and that dancing boys are great entertainment cos if they're poor nobody will complain they get serially abused by patrons. let's pretend anti-american sentiment and the taliban help afghans more than democracy would.

or maybe, i don't know, let's pretend traditional cultures aren't hit-and-miss half of the time with unscientific, anti-scientific, obscurantist explanations and prescriptions. how great stone age justice is in the name of cultural relativism. chemotherapy and antipsychotics are just as good, or worse, than bear bile, cos cancer is just bad vibes and the shaman will cure you.

liberal western hegemony my ass. just look the fuck around and see what humanity is doing and it's not that hard to see what's up, life isn't a boogeyman economic system and 'structures' it's also people and values and some fucks don't engage the former besides out of touch abstractions nor would know the latter if it hit them in the face.

leftism is just postmodern soteriology. it's empty, and it is braindead.

also btw rainbow imperialism and anti-antizionism are the best praxis for progressive values.

LGBTIQ rights belong in every little recess of every nation i don't care it's "traditional" to stone bottoms bc that culture has 6 genders and the elder council decided sth else. i literally don't care. and i don't care how traditional and nationally sensitive jew-hatred and anti-israel propaganda seep into the multipolar discourse, either. if every country says one (1) nation/ethnoreligion is to blame for every bad thing humans do then fuck every country and their big lie.

fuck all of that. all of humanity needs to drop bullshit beliefs if we're gonna live on the same rock, whether we like it or not, and i'm not going to pretend the taliban's voice or some deluded communist monarch in north korea should have a say in it as loud as mine because the west is "just as bad or worse". the nazis didn't get a say in rebuilding europe. they won't either and if that's through liberalism and america then so be it.

The thing with 9/11 is that no one cares that much about the death and destruction itself. Buildings fall down and people die all the time, including in the US. Like at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic you had entire 9/11s worth of USamericans dying on a regular basis. If all that damage was caused by an earthquake or faulty building practices or whatever, there wouldn't have been nearly as much fuss about it. It's not as if the insane response from US population was a matter of "two building fall down"

The reason why 9/11 was so upsetting to the US population was their widespread feelings of Imperialist Chauvinism and the subsequent outrage at seeing it so openly and violently defied. The US was at the height of its Imperialist power at the turn of the millennium, a hegemonic superpower that was dominant in some way over more or less the entire world. Whether they'd phrase it in such a way or not, most people in the US were very well aware of this; as far as they were concerned the US was truly the greatest country on the Earth. For some this was a point of pride, for others it was a simple fact of the world. This made them feel secure; bombings and mass killings might happen in those "shithole nations" of the earth but it couldn't happen over there. The US military could wipe entire cities off the map and like maybe that was good, maybe that was unfortunate and maybe it meant nothing at all. Either way that was normal; the violence flowed from the Core to the Periphery.

Until one day it didn't. One day a group of people from that Periphery, from some shithole group of nations, struck back. Now the sorts of destruction they'd seen on TV were happening right outside their window; the US got the smallest taste of the sort of brutality they had long inflicted on the rest of the world. And they did not like that taste at all. The US people as a whole went mad with grief and rage, not at the death of any people but the death of their sense of unquestionable safety and superiority. And the only hope of getting that feeling back was to inflict a revenge so terrible that no one would dare resist or retaliate again.

If bloodshed was how they'd built their empire, only more bloodshed could keep it safe. And this time they didn't even have to feel bad about it. It's not as if the US empire had ever given the world any peace, but now they had the perfect pretense to escalate it to levels not seen in decades. If they talked about this isolated and comparatively limited attack as though it was some great invasion, the US government and its supporters could take all the moral high ground of "self defence" even as they slaughtered impoverished peoples on the other side of the world. So it made sense to treat the 11 September attacks as though they were the greatest tragedy of all time. 9/11 didn't break the US psyche, it just made them express it in a more shameless way. It's not as though genocidal Imperialist violence was anything new to the USA. Afghans were just the new Apaches; the "Middle East" a new "Wild West"

[disk-and-horse]

since this is a politics blog i feel i should give a general overview of my views. an overviews, if you will. that way, if you want to yell at me, you can at least do it for the right reasons.

well unless you're going to yell at me for something hyperspecific. but i guess i can't stop that.

anyway. im a queer leftist of some kind, more or less market socialist. i like democracy and i think we should do more of it. i lean towards pragmatism in most things. i think leftists need to cooperate with liberals more and argue with each other less. i think its more important to do the right thing than to never do wrong things, especially since we live under a system that makes it more or less impossible to never do wrong things.

as demonstrated earlier i use the term liberal even though its. you know. something of a meaningless term in most peoples' usage. im using it here and pretty much always to mean "center-left person who's mildly pro-capitalist and generally in favor of social progress". basically, usamerican mainline democrats. i think they are in practice often more useful towards the general goals of leftists than many leftists.

im a military history nerd and i have a lot of thoughts about international relations. i sometimes look at the world from the amoral perspective of states and i find this a useful model to understanding the world. this does not mean i endorse opinions that come from this analysis. as bret deveraux says, war is bad and i think we should do less of it. but also i find it fascinating.

in my day job im a programmer. most programmers are not techbros in my experience but i expect to be called one anyway due to not wanting to literally wipe silicon valley off the face of the earth. or due to preferring data to rhetorical frameworks. i don't think its important to read theory or conform my beliefs to the latest iteration of marxist-hegalian thought or w/e.

im pro-voting and revolution-skeptical. most revolutions end in the revolutionaries getting shot. and most revolutionary leftists aren't anywhere near prepared for the realities of war.

i think being queer is good and more people should be queer. generally anti-assimilationist but still in favor of things like gay marriage and allowing gays in the military.

im deeply cynical and am not convinced anything i support will ever be implemented. that probably comes across in the way i write.

i don't consider this blog activism. mostly i have lots of thoughts about politics and i want to shout them into the void.

there's probably more i could say but i think this covers the important things. go forth and be mad on the internet.

[fullhalalalchemist]

it is 8/26/22 and all i can think about is the idea we might live to see the literal death of internet anonymity/privacy in the span of a few months because of AB2273 (California bill that might get passed into law by next week) and all be forced to upload our government ID's online since most social media companies are based out of Cali. lmao. and the fact that the bill wasn't even written by americans it was literally written by some random British royal and she paid the California legislative to sponsor the bill. what the fuck. oh and yes, they are playing this off as a "protecting the children" type BS. and yes, nearly every tech expert/internet/cybersecurity expert who's heard about this bill (and there's not many because it's a state law and not a federal law but it's an internet bill that will impact the entire web) is properly freaking the fuck out right now, as they should.

anyway, please call governor newsom (yes even if you dont live in Cali) and tell him to veto this horrible bill.

Phone: (916) 445-2841

call/email script posted under the cut

I am calling you today to urge you to vote NO on AB 2273, the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act. Tech experts and internet safety experts are rightfully worried that this dangerous bill would end the free and open internet as we know it, as well as actively harm children.

It targets websites "accessed by kids", anyone under 18, which is every website on the internet. It's being sold as protecting privacy for kids, but it forces websites to verify everyone's ages, and the only way to do that is to submit your govt ID or scan your face to third-party sites. This will lead to warrantless surveillance of everyone. This is coming at a time where people are being charged with felonies for accessing abortion care online, and being fired for posting pro-LGBT content online. More surveillance will literally ruin people's lives and get people killed.

This will force websites to surveil everyone and kill encryption, and with increasing right-wing attacks on minorities, abortion, and LGBT, this could spell a death-sentence for people.

Professor Eric Goldman claims this law will destroy the entire internet, and he is right. We need privacy protection, but not like this. This destroys our privacy, our 1st amendment rights, and our human and civil rights. You can't block children from the internet, to protect them you need parental oversight, not governmental or private from companies.

VOTE NO on this bill if you care about privacy, the open internet, freedom, and stopping right-wing attacks on our democracy and human rights.

[edgyartkid]

The Political Stances of the Avengers and other MCU Characters (imo)

this took way too much time

Iron Man - Tony Stark

Anarcho-Capitalist. Socially progressive. Unironically thinks corporations should run the world. He’s a literal government-hating billionaire, what can I say. Firm believer of Individualism. Voted for the Libertarian Party. Thinks Trump is a moron. Pro-Choice, Pro-Same-sex marriage, Anti-Gun Control.

Captain America - Steve Rogers

Look. He’s an old white dude. Though, I’ll give him credit, in the original comics he was very progressive. His first debut contained him punching Hitler, which, surprisingly, was taboo at the time.

Mind you, Germany still hasn’t threatened the US at the time of the debut, and Captain ‘Merica whacking Hitler was quite controversial back then. Some people even supported his ideals.

At the begging, i’d imagine he’d be quite confused. He wouldn’t be outwardly racist, just… confused. But in a “Oh…! How brave of you to drink out of that water fountain…! Are you sure you want to risk arrest…? I could pour it into a cup and hand it to you if you’d like :)” sorta way. He’d get used to it and understand that the world has progressed later on. Relieved, even.

Currently, I imagine he’d be centrist, leaning liberal.

He’s all for gay marriage and women’s rights but hears the world “socialism” and goes into cold sweat.

Patriotic, but not nationalist. Pro-Choice, Pro-Same-sex marriage, Pro-Gun Control, Voted Biden.

Hawkeye - Clint Barton

Republican. Authoritarian, economically, and culturally right win. Loves Cops. ALM supporter, Pro-Life. Thinks he’s libertarian (he’s not.) He believes in many conservative policies, such as American nationalism and a strict opposition to illegal immigration. Anti-Gun Control.

100% a Ronald Reagan fan. I’m not saying he’s racist, but he would stop a black man in a hoodie cause he looks “suspicious”. Says he’s okay with gay marriage but doesn’t want them to kiss or even hug in front of him. Doesn’t mind watching lesbian p0rñ though.

Voted for Trump all the way.

Black Widow - Natasha Romanoff

Marxist-Leninist. Tankie. Socially Progressive, but tends to concentrate more on economic then social issues. Based af. Voted Bernie.

Pro-Choice, Pro-Same-sex marriage, ehhhh… Pro-Gun Control. But Not Anti-Gun.

Thor Odinson

Not much to say here. Absolute Monarchist. Economically, He’s a social authoritarian.

Social Authoritarianism is an economically center-left, authoritarian and culturally variable ideology that advocates for a strongly regulated capitalist economy with a strong welfare state and unions but unlike Social Democracy, has no democracy.

Pro-Choice, Pro-Same-sex marriage, Pro-Gun Control.

Socially, mmmm….. kinda progressive. As progressive as a 1,500 years old individual can be. Which is surprisingly leftist for American standards.

If he could, would vote Biden.

Loki Laufeyson

he’s so pretty- my baby 🌞❤️

i iuv him so much 🌸

[Loki from the 2021 Disney+ series is a separate category, since he’s simply so different.]

[Im not gonna be considering Thor 3 too much either, considering Taika Watitit admit multiple times to not understating Loki’s character, but I am going to keep the movie in mind. It’s not like Thor 3 looked at Loki’s moral compass too deeply either, so. BUT. We do have a nice insight off what Asgard would look like under Loki’s rule, which is VERY helpful!]

Socially Progressive (He’s gender-fluid and bisexual/pansexual for christ’s sake) Monarcho-Socialist.

Despite how Monarcho-Socialism is often portrayed, he doesn't support the king being the leader of the revolution in most cases, instead preferring to have the monarch as the constitutional head of state while the socialist government does the politicking.

While Loki is portrayed to some degree as a stereotypical king or other member of royality, however, he is known to take a paternal role in regards to his people and vehemently defends their right to be protected from the oppressive nature of capitalism, often through his government.

Pro-Choice, Pro-same-sex marriage (duh.) ehhh with Gun-Control.

Wouldn’t vote, even if he could. But, if he REALLY had to, would probably vote Bernie.

Loki Laufeyson [“Loki” 2021]

Anti-Authority. (ironic, isn’t it?). Anarcho-Socialist. Individualist. Socially Progressive. (Again, he’s Gender Fluid and Bi/Pan.) Anti-Fascist; The TVA is literally a fascist regime.

Pro-Choice, Pro-Same-sex marriage. Kinda iffy with Gun Control.

He’d be 100% for free healthcare - Would vote Bernie.

Bruce Banner

Liberal. Not much to say, really. Pro-Choice, Pro-Same-sex marriage, Pro-Gun Control. Voted Biden.

EDIT: Nvm he’s literally Anti-capitalist in the comics lol.

Update: Leftist. Anti-Capitalist. Progressive. Pro-Choice, Pro-Same-sex marriage. Pro-Gun Control. Voted Bernie.

Bucky Barnes

💗🌺 my beloved 🌺💗

Democratic Socialist. Leftist. Anti-Authority. Pro-BLM. Pacifist. Pro-Choice, Pro-Same-sex marriage, Pro-Gun Control.

ASAB - Assigned Sexy At Birth.

Look, if you’ve seen FATWS, you know what i’m talking about.

Voted Bernie, you cannot tell me otherwise.

Let me know if you want more!! 🌸

[mamenchisaurus1717]

a thought experiment doesn't work with a loaded question. 'how many babies would @mamenchisaurus1717 have to kill before it's justified to chop his head off' is not a thought experiment. it feels like you're just trying to say "i am right and people who disagree with me are wrong" instead of fostering a genuine intellectual debate (which is what a thought experiment is supposed to do).

but fine. i'll play ball. as to which city would have to be destroyed before i wouldn't vote for biden, and if i ignored alliances and borders... i'd probably say my hometown (no, i am NOT doxxing myself), maybe one of the bigger cities right next to it. i am inherently selfish, and think about the community i actually live in before anyone outside of it.

of course, we don't live in the thought experiment you described. alliances and borders exist. it is netanyahu doing this, and biden is putting pressure on him to sign a ceasefire. trump is literally saying he'll arrest pro-palestine protestors if he gets re-elected. and in the first past the post voting system that the us has, it's either biden or trump for president, and one will become president regardless of who you choose. the real world is complex, and you can't just simplify it and then return to the real world and say "see? that's why you're a fascist for not agreeing with me"

speaking of fascism, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as a political ideology involving a) nationalism above personal identity, b) a social and economic pressure to conform to said nationalism, c) an autocratic regime led by a dictator, and d) a suppression of opposition. b and d are very much not the case in the US, with how vocal and cynical people can get about the government, and the fact that democracy and separation of powers exist make the nation not, in fact, led by a dictator. with that in mind there's no way that a is possible because b, c, and d are not available. you know who is a fascist in ideology (as in, supports a, b, c, and d)? donald trump. you know whose campaign you are indirectly helping by making this post? donald trump. it would be funny if it weren't so dangerous

alright gang, let's do a fun little thought experiment.

which city would biden have to completely annihilate before you decide not to vote for him?

for the sake of this thought experiment, let's ignore actual real-world alliances between countries. it can be london, or paris, or athens, or barcelona, or rome, or berlin, or even an american city like new york or new orleans or los angeles or honolulu. this is all a hypothetical after all.

really consider it. if you're gonna bother to yap in my notes, at least try to engage with this question in good faith. imagine opening up the news, and you see that a bomb was dropped on this city, and then the bombs never stop. imagine you had a friend there. imagine you'd had a trip planned to meet them and see the sights. imagine every museum, every historical monument, every theatre, every university destroyed. imagine that one day, you lived in a world where this city existed, and the next, it has completely ceased to be. it's effectively been pompeii-ed out of our world entirely. there is no longer a big ben, or a parthenon, or a colosseum, or what have you. there is no longer that foreign musician you loved from this city. there are no longer sweet old grannies to share old family recipes from this part of the world. there is no longer the online friend you wanted to visit. there is no longer your vacation plans.

don't hit me with, "but it's netanyahu doing this," because israel would literally run out of ammunition in weeks without the US. don't hit me with, "but trump!" because that quite literally is not the fucking question.

which city has to completely cease to exist before you even consider that this system isn't ever going to work?

if you are still planning to vote for biden, then either a) biden could drop a nuke on any city on earth and it wouldn't be a dealbreaker for you, or b) in your mind, people and places are divided into ones that are acceptable to destroy and ones that are not. or at least, there are ones that are more acceptable to destroy than others.

come up with your answer and either realize you sound like a fascist and work to change it, or embrace that you are a fascist and stop lying to us about caring about people of color.

[walkwithheroes84]

Rest of 2021 Watch List

With only six and a half months left of 2021, it’s time to get serious about my drama watching habits. I’m so behind and there are several things that are (supposed to be) coming out in the later part of the year. So, here is my list of things that I want to start/am interested in. Granted, some of these things may change as more information comes out about them. Or I may just decide not to watch them. And some may get pushed back into 2022. 

Already Aired:

Lucifer: season 5b (USA) - Though the first half of season five left us on a cliffhanger, I just cannot seem to sit myself down to finish out the season. It may be the mixed reactions of long time fans or the knowledge that season six is the last, either way, I’m having a hard time getting back into the show. 

Youth of May: (South Korea) - This romantic, moody, slice-of-life drama. I was waiting for it.The ending is going to break my heart, so I have to be ready for it. I hear the preformances are amazing, but I know I’ll be crying. 

Word of Honor: (China) - Everything I’ve heard about this drama makes it sound amazing. And while I know things will be heartbreaking - I just need to prepare. 

Currently Airing:

Doom at Your Service: (South Korea) - I watched the first four episodes (I think?), but I am waiting to binge it after it ends. Why? The first few episodes were so good, I want to be able to watch it all at once. 

The Penthouse: War in Life, Season 3: (South Korea) - I was super excited for this one...then I heard about Logan’s “brother” and, uh...maybe I’ll just watch the clips of my favorites?

Mad for Each Other: (South Korea) - I know very little about this drama, but it looks amazing and I’m hearing good things. 

Mine: (South Korea) - So, it sounds like two daughter-in-laws of a rich family work together to get what they want. It looks good.

My Roomate is a Gumiho: (South Korea) - It just looks fluffy and adorable. And I need that. 

Coming Soon:

June:

Ancient Love Poetry: (China) - It just sounds sweet and sad and I love a good Chinese drama that will make me smile and eat up the angst.

Nevertheless: (South Korea) - Honestly? The Netflix trailer looked interesting. 

July:

The New Version of the Condor Heroes: (China) - I love this story and the 2014 one was a hotmess. The promo pictures look good, though they were released in 2018. Rumor is the drama has been shelved, but we’ll see what happens. 

The Devil Judge: (South Korea) - You have Ji Sung staring in a dystopian drama, where he is the as the head judge of the highest court in the land. The court has become a TV reality show, with viewers invited to participate in a live. The one person looking to take him down is Kim Min Jung as the director of a corporate social responsibility foundation. And then you have two childhood friends: Park Jin Young and Park Gyu Young, idealist who want to make their world better. I look forward to Ji Sung and Kim Min Jung battling it out, and maybe corrupting the idealist cop and younger judge.

Boku no Satsui ga Koi wo Shita: (Japan) - This one may not ever get English subtitles, as Japanese dramas aren’t really subbed anymore...however, the story sounds amazing. A young man finds out his dead foster-father was a professional killer and this young man decides to take up the “family business” to avenge for the father.  The young man approaches a womanwho is his assassination target. Despite his skill as a hitman, he can’t ever kill her, not matter how hard he tries. Instead, he ends up protecting her and the two fall  in love. This could go so many places and I want to see it.

August:

Red Sky: (South Korea) - A beautiful and genius painter meets a blind officer in charge of astronomy, geography, art of divination, and meteorology. The two fall in love. And it’s marked as a “historical romantic fantasy”? Yes, please! 

October:

The Red-Stained Sleeve Cuff: (South Korea) - The story of Sung Deok Im, a court lady.  She catches the eye of Crown Prince Lee San. Once the prince becomes king, he wants Sung Deok Im to become his concubine, but she refuses. Yet, Sung Deok Im becomes the concubine of King Jeongjo. This could be angsty. Also, it stars Lee Jun Ho (who you may remember from Just Between Lovers) and Lee Se Young (who always brings it). 

December: (or 2022...?)

Twenty-Five Twenty-One (South Korea) - The love story of two people, who have really bad-timing, told over the period of four years. Personally, I’m hoping for a poignant human drama ala Just Between Lovers or Come And Hug Me. (Minus death and murders),

Return: (South Korea) - This is literally described as: “A fantasy drama about the stories of young magicians who deal with heavenly spirits.” It will be on tvN, which usually has really solid dramas. There is a cast of talented up-and-comers: Lee Jae Wook, Arin, Park Hae Eun, and Hwang Min Hyun. There are also some talented vets in the cast: Yoo Joon Sang, Oh Na Ra, and Joo Sang Wook. It’s beingdirected by Park Joon Hwa Everything looks great on paper. It’s just - the drama will be written by the Hong Sisters. During my early days of Kdrama viewing (way back in the mid 2010s), these ladies wrote some of my favorites. And while I did love Hotel de Luna and A Korean Odyssey - it has become very clear over the years that these writers don’t do well during the second halves of their dramas and they aren’t always great at endings.

Snowdrop (South Korea) -  It takes place in 1987, and follows students at a prestigious university in Seoul. It will be written by Yoo Hyun Mi, who wrote SKY Castle and The Bridal Mask. I’m looking forward to it, even though I heard there was pushback (which has resulted in the show airdate being moved back a couple of times) from the South Korean citizens'  who believe that the drama distorts facts related to the pro-democracy movement of the 1980s in favour of the authoritarian regime. This was based on an incomplete version of the plotline that had been leaked online, which describes one character as a “spy” and another lead as working for the NSP. We’ll see

At Some Point in 2021/early 2022...?:

The Witcher, Season Two

The Umbrelllla Academy, Season Three

The Boys, Season Three

[awkwardhumann]

I’m interested in polysci for uni could u elaborate on ur field of study

disclaimer: im only in my second yr of university (kind of) so keep in mind this is all from an undergrad view where i don't get to engage with more specific topics in political science. also strap in this is literally the longest thing ive ever typed on this website. im also assuming you're left-leaning since you are on blue hair and pronouns dot com

i have a complicated relationship with political science because i am a communist. i find polisci interesting and i engage with it on my own time, however, what they teach you in university (this depends on your professors and university as well imo) is to evaluate political issues from a neoliberal and western perspective. most of your course material will be written by westerners heavily influenced by neoliberalism. the biggest indicator of this is when you study any geopolitics. you might get good readings on imperialism and colonialism or you will get straight Nixon era warmongering that deems whatever nations the west views as an "enemy" as "autocracy" or "regimes" or "authoritarian" all of which are useless terms .(in the field of polisci prob not but these r all stupid buzzwords they use to conjure up negative associations w whoever is the big geopolitical enemy) for one of my classes on democracy and technology we had a whole unit on china's social credit system which, i, as a Chinese person, knew was complete bullshit and exaggeration coming from western media. when i challenged this notion to my professors and TAs i was met with dismissal.

basically what i despise about my field is that its a machine that churns out puppets for state agenda who use academia as justification for imperialism and ultimately, to ensure the dominance of capitalism.

you learn about the roots of all this structural inequality, on a local and global scale but they evade any discussion that the effective solution to this inequality is to abolish capitalism.

im not saying there are no leftist or even communist political scientists out there. many revolutionary figures and writers have studied or are even professors of political science, but you will almost never learn about them unless you enter a very specific niche area of research.

what i do like about my field of study is that i have enough interest in it to stay engaged with the political issues we discuss despite hating the "solutions" that are brought up with it. you also learn the roots of western political ideology which, while i despise it, it gives you a basic layout of how neoliberals/capitalists think (and also how fucking stupid they are). you also will meet a lot of left-leaning people. even if the people i meet are not communists it is obvious we are trying to fight the same thing. and depending on which classes you take, you will get a lot of good education on political issues even if it is tinged with neoliberalism.

im not saying don't study political science if you are a leftist. im just saying as someone who was already very left-leaning (albeit not yet communist) before entering university, there was a lot of dumb bullshit to wade through to get to the actual stuff i was interested in. also hearing the term "corporate capitalism" makes me want to scream.

im a communist, and like i said earlier, despite most universities being generally progressive, western academia is grossly neoliberal and anticommunist and does not evaluate things from a dialectal materialist view, something that literally all Marxists must understand and base their theory on. thus there is an inherent contradiction on how i analyze and process the world vs how they want me to analyze and process the world. occasionally you will also get a lot of pro-capitalist historical revisionism specifically written to paint (usually the USSR and associated countries) as the "bad guys" and downplaying of American war crimes and western imperialist aggression on other countries.

lastly, i want to say im not studying political science as a career aspiration (clearly LOL). im studying it because im stupidly bad at school and will only be able to complete schoolwork if im interested enough in the topic and even then it is a struggle for me. every person is different. i would say ask yourself why you want to study political science and can you stand reading a lot abt neoliberalism and western liberal democracy and about free and fair elections for your first two years. you also read a lot of classic philosophy if you're interested in that!

this is the general gist of my love-hate relationship with my major. if you have any other questions feel free to dm me! i know i shit on the field a lot but i think if you find the right professors and the right courses there's a broad selection of topics and even other fields you can venture into that help really narrow stuff down to your specific interests. <this applies to university in general. 

[rairii]

dumbassrights replied to your post “After the election fraud that happened in Bolivia was uncovered and...”

hey! are you bolivian? can you explain bolivians situation right now? everything i see is outsiders opinions and i know that i can't really trust that. if you can't, thats fine, thank you!

Hello! Yes I am Bolivian, though I currently live in a different South American country, but I’ve been keeping in touch with my family with WhatsApp and I try to keep up with the basic news from back home, so I think I can explain the basics.

The basic start is with Evo Morales, a cocalero (coca leaf grower) who became a politician and came to power as president in 2006. He’s the first indigenous president of Bolivia (he is Aymara), and when he came to power was widely seen as a game changer, destroying the oligarchical, upper white class hold on Bolivian politics. He was received with much fanfare, including from white leftists, who were keen on a president who would enact social reform and change and concentrate on helping reduce poverty and racism. I was too young to vote back then, but the majority of my family voted for Evo. He was... he was hope. It’s hard to explain. We thought it was the turning point. Finally, an indigenous president, someone who knew discrimination first hand and would be able to listen to the many indigenous peoples of our country. Someone who would fight imperialism, and the scars of colonialism.

He managed to do some good things. If I remember correctly, education spending and welfare spending increased, he increased the taxes on many companies, such as hydrocarbons, allowing the state to invest more and have less of a deficit. Bolivia also received an economic boom unrelated to his actions and policies (it had more to do with the price of minerals, since Bolivia is a mining country, and so on and so forth), so for a while poverty did reduce and the middle class grew. He also increased the number of indigenous and campesino (farmer/rural lands) representatives and their influence in politics.

However, as time went on, Evo’s party began to systematically remove any opposition they could, with many political leaders jailed for charges of tax evasion and the like. There is a lot of shady stuff going around that topic, and it’s too much to get into in a short explanation. It turned out that the party sought to remove any rising leadership, even within their party, that could threaten Evo’s dominance. His party also began to stack the legislative branch and pushing new judges through, setting up people who’d be grateful to him and thus legislate in his favor. While this was happening, MAS, the party’s social base, expanded their power and influence in other ways.

Now, the actual constitutional fuckery that angered a lot of leftists. He had the constitution rewritten in 2008 and it was approved in 2009, which had really mixed opinions from people, though I personally liked that he changed the name of “Republic of Bolivia” to “Plurinational State of Bolivia” to recognize the indigenous nations of Bolivia. The constitution maintained its two term limit for the presidency, but the thing was, he claimed that since there was a new constitution, his first mandate/government no longer counted, and he got it approved legally that he could run two more times again, which he did. Which like. What the fuck?

In the process, we began seeing cracks in his pro-indigenous, pro-environmental discourse. For example, he ignored and overulled the indigenous peoples of TIPNIS, a national park and indigenous territory, when they legally stated that they did not want a highway built through their lands, because it would bring in deforestation and cocaleros who are known for deforestation. He basically steamrollered over this, despite indigenous peoples of the TIPNIS walking all the way to the city of La Paz to make protests. He began to approve infrastructure projects that would destroy natural spaces, including hydroelectric dams that can and will flood Madidi, one of the most important national parks and biodeverse areas of Bolivia. And so on and so forth, he began to act in such a way that was at odds with the platform he ran, betraying indigenous peoples and Pachamama (mother earth) at every turn. He also never took any reasonable criticism in stride, blaming it all on American Imperialism.

However, because of MAS’ stronghold and no unity among the opposition, Evo ran two more terms after his first (including the third which really shouldn’t have been legally recognized), and he stated that after his third he wouldn’t stay in power.

If you guessed that he changed his mind or was lying, you’re right.

He called for a national referendum in 2016 for whether he should be allowed to run for a fourth term, but he lost the referendum, which voted “No”, though it was a narrow margin. And instead of respecting the will of the Bolivian people, he ignored it and pushed himself forward as a candidate for the next (these) elections, to the point that he pushed so that the Supreme Tribunal of Justice would rule that the constitution was inconstitutional (wtf) because it did not respect his right to reelection (wtf) and decided that no public office would have a term limit. I hope I don’t have to explain why that is just. A horrible decision for democracy. Term limits exist for a reason. It’s so no one person can get a stranglehold on power. After this it became clear to us that he had become enamoured with power, and was mainly seeking to establish himself in power indefinitely, which well, it pissed a lot of us off. It was heartbreaking too. To see someone we’d pinned our hopes on becoming... a dictator.

This finally brings us to three weeks ago, when the general elections were held. Now, in Bolivia, we have it so that any winner of the presidential elections has to have at least 10% points more than the guy in second place, or we go into a second round of elections between the higher scoring candidates. And as the official electoral authority reported throughout most of the counting process as results came in, Evo didn’t have the 10% lead needed to avoid a second round, and statistically even if the remaining votes were majority Evo, he wouldn’t be able to get the 10% needed. Also, the remaining votes were City votes, and the cities are in general, not Evo supporters anymore. Until at around 80% of all votes counted, the website and reporting of the electoral authority just. Stopped. It cut off. It cut off for 24 hours, during which the government first claimed that oh, it’d had some technical difficulties, and then (this part I actually don’t understand, so I’m paraphrasing what I maybe undersood) claimed that because some voting places had finished counting already, so they wouldn’t have two places reporting results, they stopped the main authority. Which like.

That’s really fucking fishy.

So people were really suspicious, and when the authority began reporting again those 24 hours later, reporting that oh, actually, Evo had won with the required 10%, a lot of people didn’t believe it. This smelled like electoral fraud. So people began gathering to protest because Evo shouldn’t have been running in the first place and now he wanted us to take this lie and swallow it.

Evidence came out over the next few days about electoral fraud: non-Evo vote ballots were found in trash bins, and the official databases of the electoral authority were found to have “irregularities” that all favoured Evo. People got pissed even as Evo claimed that it was imperialist forces and that the counts were all valid and legit and transparent. But the damage was done. Bolivians took to the streets in big numbers to protest and froze the cities, stopping transport and literally putting the cities in a standstill, only letting emergency services and food trucks coming to the supermarkets through so people could live. The protesters in the cities began to get threats, because Evo began trying to sell these protests as “the racist cities trying to stamp the rural vote”, from Evo supporters, that they’d shut the water supplies to the city off. Counter protesters began massing too. Clashes happened. Evo supporters were pushed out of the city of Cochabamba, but they set fire to the grasses around a city landmark and place of pride because they wanted to give a last fuck you. MAS supporters attacked hospitals that had protesters and even the doctors and nurses who weren’t supporting MAS. Photo and video evidence, and people coming forward, showed that the government was paying people to counter protest. The protesters were mostly non-violent, but there were clashes when the police wasn’t able to keep people separated. One mayor near Cochabamba was found to have paid two thugs to beat up protesters, to the point that one young man of 18ish was thought to be dead, and her hair was cut off and she was sprayed red - supposedly by protesters, but now there are cliams of people from her town that it was her own people that did it to make the protesters look bad. (My opinion? It could be either at this point, I don’t know). The protesters wore the Bolivian flag and called for democracy to be respected. The Evo supporters primarily wore the party flag, and got their hands on dynamite that they set off on streets to intimidate protesters. Protesters have died at the hands of Evo supporters - I haven’t heard of one case of dead Evo supporters. The police started to get unhappy, because they didn’t want to throw tear gas at the people protesting. To try and sweeten them, the goverment paid a bonus... but it turned out the bonus money was taken from the police officer’s pension. Police departments began to ... not sure if mutiny is the right word, but to defy the government, in several cities.

At first, people were pushing for a second round of elections, but when we realized that actually, legally, when there is fraud of a significant impact the elections have to be annuled and new ones held, and the people who did the fraud jailed, the movements began to call for new elections completely, with a new electoral authority that could be trusted.

In the meantime, the military was quiet and not sent out to repress anything even after the police began to rebel, with military subordinates presenting letters that they would not repress the people, while it was known that military high command is pro Evo.

While this was going on, the OEA, The Organization of American States, had issued from the start of the 24 hour blackout from the electoral authority that they had concerns about the election process. Evo ended up accepting an audit from OEA representatives, and said that he’d stand by their resolution. When they finally came out with a report saying there were serious irregularities in the election that cast it into doubt, he called it politically motivated, but did call for new elections...

Then the high commander of the military said Evo should resign so that the country can be peaceful again. And a few hours ago Evo presented his resignation to the presidency.

It’s not over by a long shot - we need to establish a transparent, trustworthy electoral process in record time and hold new elections, and people are afraid that Evo will take back his resignation, and Evo incited his supporters in his resignation speech - but we’ve managed to get this far after three weeks of non spot protests.

There’s a lot more going on, a lot of context I’ve skipped, on Evo, on the political opposition - including Camacho, a religious right wing religionalism whose gotten a worrying amount of support with the protests in reaction to Evo’s excesses - but so far, I am proud of Bolivia. We’ve not let a wanna-be dictator establish himself. Now we just need a good left wing leader to help build us up to the promise that Evo gave us, and to stand strong against right wing pendulum reactionaries.

I leave you with the protest chants that spread in Bolivia these past three weeks

Quien se cansa? Who gets tired? NADIES SE CANSA! NOBODY GETS TIRED! Quien se rinde? Who gives up? NADIES SE RINDE! NOBODY GIVES UP! Evo de nuevo? Evo again? HUEVO CARAJO! [Pun involving the word egg, which sounds like Evo, and a swear word that doesn’t have a translation]

[purplepink-blueberry]

continuing political posting

there are some positive things about the elections. while the pro russian party winning is horrible, there’s still some aspects that are cool.

1) 18% of votes went to a progressive political party which is most well known for having cool human rights and social policy approach and programme abt ecology

2) neonazi parties are out! i mean, there are some nationalist parties that do have some fascist members in parliament BUT parties that either celebrated nazis in the past or claimed not to know enough history to say the Holocaust was bad are out. we had like 3 parties candidating that view slovakia and germany during ww2 positively. one (republika - republic) had 4,75%, the second (ľsns - folk party our slovakia) had 0,84% (at one point they had 0,88% which I found very symbolic (the number 88 is a nazi dogwhistle)) and the third (sho - slovak movement of revival) had 0,04% (but they never really had a chance)

to be clear. the treshold to get into parliament is 5% (7% if a coalition of parties is running), if a party has less than 3% they don’t receive funding from the state

3) weird right wing party named “we are family” led by a conservative dude fighting for “traditional family” while having like 10 kids with 9 different women didn’t get into parliament. lately the leader guy was also accused of domestic violence by several of his exes (and he literally admitted it…). they had less than 3% votes as well.

4) right now the future coalition depends on one party - hlas (voice/vote, depending on the context) “social democracy” consisting of former members of the leading party smer (direction) because without them they won’t be able to have majority in the parliament. the leader of this party is sometimes terrible, ocassionaly based and there is a tiny little chance that he won’t go into coalition with the leading party (i am not really hoping though)

that’s all i have for now. fun.

later when i am a bit less sleep deprived i might sum up politics in slovakia cause i’ve been following it for a while (since i was like 13, i’m 22 now). no surprise i am studying political science lol

(i woke up at 8 yesterday, voted and then in the evening i went to my school to spend election night with my classmates, we watched the broadcasts and stuff, we left at 3am and I got home, where I kept following news and developments, went to sleep at 5am and woke up at 8am… so I am sleep deprived as fuck XD)

so, hello to blueberry political posting

because i can do whatever the fuck i want, this is my blog and my echo chamber.

so, i have slept 3 hours. because i am a political science student and there was a parliamentary election in my country (slovakia) yesterday

not gonna explain how that all works. if something is unclear, ask or google bc idk what y’all know

the elections were won by this pro russian party. it’s bad because they are 1) xenophobic 2) racist 3) queerphobic 4) pals with orban (if you don’t know who orban is, lucky you and pls google him, he is a hungarian wannabedictator) 5) at best ambiguous towards ukraine and wants to stop sending military aid 6) sceptic towards nato and eu

dont get me wrong i am also critical of nato and eu but the fact is that if we werent in nato it’d be much easier for russia to attack us (which they expressed the desire to do, as we used to be in ussr’s sphere of influence) so us being in nato is one of the ways to keep us safe from that

i am also a queer person in slovakia and a wannabe activist studying at a liberal arts college which isn’t something… likeable to them. my friends are immigrants and minorities (im not doing the “im not homophobic my friends are gay”, im just expressing my worry about our wellbeing)

this will suck. this will be difficult.

18% of votes went to a progressive party though

slovakia isn’t a lost cause

and… uh, yeah this might turn into my political and historical BS echochamber

[i-love-pomegranates]

Pro capitalism and pro socialism discourse are dumpster fires, while anti capitalism and anti socialism discourse are both pretty much on point. Now I am very much antiestablishment and while I could veeeeeery much expand and will at some point, the main idea is: neither the current (capitalist) system nor any wide scale implemented system has ever succeeded in making it better for the individual. BUT lately the greed of a handful of people has made it worse for the entire planet. Because it was allowed to. Now, if USSR had won the cold war, it’d all be just as grim, maybe even worse. Why because in both cases a couple of greedy, authoritarian, sociopaths hold and have held power, either social or economical. The power should stay with the people, supposedly that’s what democracy is. Clearly it does not. Pragmatically speaking neither should it because people are d u m b. SO I cannot really fathom any sort of feasible system that might work to make it better for everyone other than fucking adopting some socialist policies like Sweden and Norway have. And limiting LLC freedom and fucking imposing restrictions on markets cus laissez faire is bullllllllshit. Now allegedly that’s extremely difficult to do since one transaction implies a shitload of national markets which one government cannot regulate. See where this is going? Capitalism works because it’s made to look impregnable. It ‘works’ as in it stands, cus obviously it fails the majority. It boasts concepts of meritocracy while deeming ‘merit’ a life long struggle and grind, and for many a fleeting goal. It abuses and exploits covertly while socialism did it in the open. It literally sells dreams of riches and encourages people to trample each other in fruitless, unnecessary competition, while at the same time promoting (“involuntarily”) social unrest, unequality and disparity (cus honestly how would it not? hoarded weight minus limited -financial- resources equals inflation equals less to acquire for an already too increased demand). Again I’m not saying it’s not feasible, I’m saying it’s an exception. And a system should not be built on exceptions, but on equity. The ‘dream of wealth’ is such an absurd idea in and out of itself and the whole history (remember when IOUs were used as currency? same shit) of how we got here, to the point of numbers in a bank account determining your entire worth and whether you can or not live is even more so. We ourselves have decided it’s alright to commodify our time and our actual selves and even others for numbers. Nobody is kind anymore. There is no freedom, especially in this day and age what with, you know, 24/7 supervision and data collecting and all. This is all an Orwellian panopticon bubbled up by social expectations of happiness and positivity. Look I’m talking BROADLY. Thought stream. I cannot come up with any solution, but no solution should never be an impediment to social criticism or critical thinking in general. @the ‘that’s the way it is, if you can’t change it why bother’ mentality which I thoroughly disagree with. Gotta go WORK, stay tuned for actual examples and data.

[dimpledsarcasm]

Election Night - A reminder

Friendly reminder (with links!)

This is a president that has:

been impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, the 3rd president in US history to be impeached 

Articles of Impeachment Against Donald John Trump: https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/hres755/BILLS-116hres755enr.pdf

How did he get away with it? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/05/how-donald-trump-got-acquitted-after-impeachment

has 26 counts of sexual misconduct against him https://www.businessinsider.com/women-accused-trump-sexual-misconduct-list-2017-12 

And consistently shows misogynistic behaviour (refer to his twitter, or literally the hundreds of compilation videos online, or the ads run by his own party against him: https://lincolnproject.us/video/mirror/)

“avoided paying federal income tax in 10 of the 15 years preceding his election. In 2016, he paid $750 in federal income tax, less than one night’s stay in a suite at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.” (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/three-interpretations-of-trumps-tax-records/616570/) 

The full report by the NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/27/us/donald-trump-taxes.html

has arguably led the worst response to the novel Coronavirus pandemic on the global stage, which has caused 1.2 million deaths to date, however he continues to play down the threat of the virus 

Timeline of intel conveyed to the president and how he’s conveyed it to Americans: https://doggett.house.gov/media-center/blog-posts/timeline-trump-s-coronavirus-responses

An other timeline: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/15/835011346/a-timeline-of-coronavirus-comments-from-president-trump-and-who

doesn’t believe in climate change and has very little regard for the environment

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/03/how-trump-is-changing-science-environment/

Openly racist (I’m not linking anything, just look at his twitter) 

but he did say to a white supremacist group to 'stand back and stand by’ (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/proud-boys-trump-debate-1.5744467)

A huge hypocrite 

Ex: consistently denied vaccine efficacy and pushed the narrative that it causes autism, now views a vaccine as the cure to COVID-19, while I admit personal growth and education can shift someone’s views on a topic, considering his determination to steadily ignore scientific evidence up until a couple months ago and his consistent efforts to undermine his public health officials, I would argue that this is entirely politically motivated —> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/09/health/trump-vaccines.html

is a well of misinformation 

Some of his most damaging claims include his insistence on the effectiveness of unproven coronavirus treatments, for instance the use of hydroxychloroquine or the antiviral cocktail manufactured by Regeneron: https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/trump-hails-experimental-treatment-for-his-virus-recovery-1.5136141

has weakened trust in political institutions by threatening the very foundations of democracy via tactics such as voter suppression and misinformation: https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/5/21499009/harvard-berkman-klein-center-paper-voting-misinformation-trump-tweets-media-framing 

not a team player (this is the nicest way I can put this)

again I look to his response to covid, simply because of how disastrous it’s been; he has undermined science and scientific institutions and subverts his own administration, holding gatherings without the use of social-distancing and mask and in Nevada, flaunted that state authorities failed to stop him https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02800-9

If this person showed up to a job interview, would you hire them? Would you let them babysit your children? If the answer is no, or if you hesitate in saying yes, why are you letting them run a country?

If you voted him in. Shame on you.

I can respect republican views, although they significantly differ from my own, I can understand and debate these points without hesitancy, we can talk about the pros and cons of different legislation and policies, etc. However, this election is not about supporting a political party anymore, this is about deliberately placing an abomination in office and making a mockery of the United States of America. The world believes you to be clowns and maybe that’s because you are.

Even if Biden wins based off of absentee ballots, the fact that this election has been so close, the fact that there is so much support for Mr. Donald J Trump and that we are seeing a repeat of 2016 voter distribution, makes me absolutely lose faith in the American People. WAKE UP.

PS: to all my babes struggling in the US and trying to grasp what is happening in your country, know that my thoughts lie with you, I am distraught at American news so I can only imagine what it feels like for it to be your national news.

[cayr]

Enclosed lands

Searching

For week two, I went in search of elderberry. This is because I recently followed Poppy Okotcha, a forager, on Instagram and in the past few weeks she spoke about this plant. She clearly explained how to identify it which gave me confidence to search and refer back to my screenshots if I was unsure. This was helpful because on my previous river searches I didn’t know where to start because I was unsure what to look for.

The first berries I spotted were by the busy t-junction before the river, so were likely unsafe to eat due to pollution. This wasn’t disheartening at first as I thought there would be some further up the river, away from the road and industrial estate. However, the further I went, I couldn’t see any more elderberries, except one tangled up behind ivy and poisonous hogweed. As I walked back through Inveresk, I noticed the Lodge Gardens were reopened, so I thought I would take the chance to see it. Inside were a few elder trees which I picked a small bundle from and made a syrup.

Barriers

Kolmunn and Agyeman (2002) detail what barriers limit people acting sustainably; on my search for elderberry I noticed several. Firstly, time constraints can limit people. For example, if I had taken another course I would be inside reading more often. Next, I lack personal knowledge about foraging. I overcame this by following foragers on Instagram. Books will be useful as I learn more. However, to start instagram offers a mix of video, voice, text and links which feels more rounded. This personal barrier can be linked to an infrastructural one: food identification wasn’t part of my school curriculum. Linking to Kasser’s (2011) discussion of values, the UK is a nation that promotes individualistic values that correlate to engaging in environmentally destructive behavior.

Do our cultural values limit us taking pro-environmental behaviour by prescribing what seems possible, shaping our personal aspirations and infrastructure? Kolmuss and Ageyman illustrate that this may be the case, showing how external factors - like politics and culture - influence our value system and therefore what steps we may take towards learning more about a particular environmental behaviour. Point in case, I have limited knowledge and confidence, but I do have nature-oriented values and access to a university course that allows me to overcome these barriers. They also note how these personal factors - what knowledge and values we hold or how confident we feel about a topic - may direct whether we take indirect environmental action that impacts the wider world.

For example, there was the infrastructural payment barrier to enter the garden. Although not pertinent to me, not everyone can spare money to be around nature. More to the point, the walling off of land once likely owned in common - meaning shared and worked by the community - is part of a history of dispossession from knowledge and literal sustenance (Shiva, 2016). Non-commercial foraging is allowed on National Trust sites. Yet, it still struck me how there was an abundance of food on this private land and over the wall, only roads and monoculture. How can people en masse tend a relationship to nature and food systems when land ownership is unequal? This leads me to see how taking a small, personal action in foraging engages me in considerations about the politics underlying how I am able to engage with it. In time, I feel this must play into the public sphere activism I take towards a Just Transition.

References

Kasser, T., 2011. Ecological Challenges, Materialistic Values, and Social Change, in: Biswas-Diener, R. (Ed.), Positive Psychology as Social Change. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp. 89-108.

Kollmuss, A., Agyeman, J., 2002. Mind the Gap: why do people act environmentally and what are the barriers to pro-environmental behavior? Environmental Education Research 8, 239-260.

Shiva, V., 2016. Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability and Peace, Zed Books: London, *insert page*

[itsniroboy]

Week 11 Blog - Global Social Media : China

When people talk about social media what mostly comes up are platforms likes Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat among others. But if you tell that to someone who’s been living in china, they would probably ask “what are those”?. This is because services like Facebook and such which are widely available to almost every other country in the world, in China these platforms are non-existent. The blockage of all the western social media platforms is thanks to something known as the Great Wall of China which is arguably the world’s biggest and most sophisticated censorship system(Shen, 2019). This allows the Chinese government to highly regulate the internet and protect its citizens from dangerous content from outside nations, at least that’s what the Chinese government states. But many have criticized China for the sheer lack of internet freedom that is provided which has landed china as the leading country containing the worst internet freedom.

But the lack of popular social media platforms available to china doesn’t mean that the country is out of the grid of the internet. It is rather that there are Chinese equivalents to almost all the western applications or platforms available to its citizens. In place of Facebook, WeChat has taken its place which is a combination of Facebook, WhatsApp, Amazon and Google News. The primary search engine for Chinese internet is Beidou instead of Google, Twitter’s applications have been replaced by Sina Weibo, WhatsApp replaced QQ and online demand video and live streaming is done through Youku instead of YouTube and the list just keeps on going(Kong, 2019).

In terms of the argument that states that Chinese internet users are missing out, I believe that it isn’t entirely true. China being the most populated country in the world has a staggering number of more than $880 million internet users which accounts to more than 50% of the country’s population, and even though do not have access to social media platforms that we are generally used to, they have access the apps and social media platforms that the Chinese government has approved such as Beidou, WeChat and Youku thrive in the Chinese internet space.

Although there are unfortunate effects that occur because of this private intranet that China has created. The Chinese government maintains full control over what can and cannot go on the their platforms has everything from short form video to images to even messages online are subjected to harsh censorship laws where if any image/video/post or any other type of media online is seen to be opposing it insulting the Chinese government they will be taken down immediately. One of scariest steps taken by the Chinese government in terms of censorship is the cover up of the Tiananmen Square Massacre which occurred on June 4 of 1989 where thousands of pro-democracy protesters were gun downed and killed which was completely wiped out from the china history(Griffiths, 2019). Literally every record of Tiananmen was destroyed or wiped out from the china’s internet and even from the history books in Chinese schools. If someone recently searched up the incident on a search engine like Google they would be able find information regarding it but if you search it up on Beidou(which is the Google equivalent in China) you would find no trace of it.

It is terribly sad to see the situation in China where people are given no freedom to do what they can do online and it is a grim reminder of how technology can be used against the people in order to confine them and make them follow under the government’s authority. 

This brings me to the end of the last blog of this unit, I thoroughly enjoyed the unit and I am extremely happy to have had conversations about so many mature topics with our blogs and the discussions on MS Team each week. I wholeheartedly thank Dr.Bertha and everyone in the unit for making this unit a fun one. Take care my friends and peace out!

References

Ruan, L. (2019). Regulation of the internet in China: An explainer. [online] Asia Dialogue. Available at: https://theasiadialogue.com/2019/10/07/regulation-of-the-internet-in-china-an-explainer/.

Griffiths, J. (2019). World marks 30 years since Tiananmen massacre as China censors all mention. [online] CNN. Available at: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/03/asia/tiananmen-june-4-china-censorship-intl/index.html.

Kong, C. (2019). Top 10 Chinese Social Media and Western Equivalents. [online] New Digital Noise. Available at: https://newdigitalnoise.com/top-10-chinese-social-media-and-western-equivalents [Accessed 29 Nov. 2020].

Shen, X. (2019). The story of China’s Great Firewall, the world’s most sophisticated censorship system. [online] South China Morning Post. Available at: https://www.scmp.com/abacus/who-what/what/article/3089836/story-chinas-great-firewall-worlds-most-sophisticated.

Chiu, C., Ip, C. and Silverman, A. (2012). Understanding social media in China | McKinsey. [online] www.mckinsey.com. Available at: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/understanding-social-media-in-china#.

[firelord-frowny]

LMAO omg so. I am ABSOLUTELY sure that literally none of you care about this at all whatsoever, but like 

I’ve mentioned a handful of times about the big giant crush I have on a particular social media ~influencer~, Sean Buranahiran, who’s basically this devastatingly beautiful Thai guy who posts a bunch of ~inner peace~ self-help content, sharing parables and whatnot, and he basically seems like a real life version of a grown up Aang, and I just?? Fuckin adore him. And he sells this whole ~tragic backstory~ of having been wayward and misguided and violent and going to jail, and he used to be a rapper or something lmfao. 

But anyway like. 

Despite my big crush on him and despite all of the nice happy peaceful stuff he posted, I aaaallllways got the sense that he’s actually into something sinister as fuck, like, maybe he was using his influencer ~business~ to launder money for organized crime or maybe he was funding the acquisition of weapons or drugs or, maybe he was just a big giant fraud going around supposedly teaching people about how ~happiness is cultivated within~ and then he turns around and buys fancy cars and lives a luxury life financed by telling people that luxury and fancy cars won’t make them happy...idk, man, he just seemed hella Off to me. But I didn’t really care bc 1) he’s allegedly all the way in Thailand and a huge majority of his content is in Thai and so idk wtf he’s talking about most of the time anyway, and 2) even if he is up to some illegal shit, my swooning over his smile and soothing voice isn’t gonna make or break his criminal career. 

So like. 

Just now, I was like “huh, I haven’t seen Sean Buranarihan post anything lately, I wonder what’s up, I hope he didn’t catch covid or something” and so I gave him a google 

and the first headline I see: “Thailand Influencer Sean Buranahiran’s fall from grace...” 

????? I was like!!! I KNEW IT!!!! I KNEW HE WAS SECRETLY EVIL!!!

So I clicked on it to read about whatever the fuck he did that was Bad, and like. Omg lmao. The site was in English but was definitely a Thai site, focusing on the pop culture and current events and politics in Thailand, so I lacked a lot of the necessary knowledge and context that would be needed for me to have an actual Opinion about what I read, buuuuut the gist that I was able to glean was:

basically, he said some nice things seeming to endorse a particular Thai political figure that’s unpopular with the ~pro democracy young people~ or something, and people got HELLA pissed at him and he lost tens of thousands of followers on social media, and somehow as a result of all the backlash, he was under two different police investigations?????? At least one of which, I think, deals with the ~misappropriation of funds~ from his various charity endeavors. 

And like????

I KNNEEEEEEW IT!!! I CAAAAAALLED IT!!!! 

Idk how I knew but I KNEW!!!