#i like robots a normal ammount

[naricats]

Ik i said i was gonna take a longer break from drawing but i felt like robots and it made me happy so now i want to share it with you guys

[nixnephili]

Ability Personification A.U. -

"The Overcoat" -Nikolai Gogol

Ok, so the bird motifs are pretty straightforward. They allude to Nikolai Gogol's ideology/ metaphors.

Most often than not, with these Personifications, I need to find the fine line between the actual historical figure themselves and the specific work utilized as their ability.

Following Gogol as an author and "The Overcoat" as his work.

"The Overcoat" is a story following the life and death of a poor unfortunate government worker in charge of copying files. It essentially falls into 19th century Russian realism, and it tackles social constructs within the ranks of society.

The main plot of the story revolves around action and reaction, as well as a new overcoat and an old overcoat.

Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin

(which is a ridiculous name, btw, basically says, "Akaky Bashmachkin, the son of Akaky."

It's like saying John Johnson, for instance.

Gogol says: **"Perhaps it may strike the reader as a rather strange and farfetched name, but I can assure him that it was not farfetched at all, that the circumstances were such that it was quite out of the question to give him any other name..." **

The joker card on the hip of "The Overcoat", as much as it is a callback to Nikolai's clowning, it also stands for how much of a joke Akaky was to his colleagues and superiors.

The chains serve a double purpose as well. As much as they represent the confines of one's soul in this world as a general idea, it also points out Akaky's inability to escape social standards. Akaky owned an old, patched up overcoat. Once learning it was beyond repair, he saved up enough money, with the help of a larger holiday paychec, and got himself a brand new coat.

As soon as his coat changed, so did his social life. He was all of a sudden liked and respected. His superiors threw a party in his honor.

And then again, when the new overcoat was lost? Akaky returned to being a "low-life" amongst his peers.

Additionally, the robotic arm refers to Akaky's job, the fur, to the coat, the face to his way of death.

Further symbolism:

-The fur around the shoulders is cat fur. As Akaky's new overcoat didn't have marten fur as it was too expensive, so they use cat fur for the collar.

-The split in the ability's overcoat represents the 2 overcoats themselves.

-The birdcage in the chest will host a white little sprite as a stand in for a "soul"

-Looking at the outfit structurally you'll notice it "ties him in" at the middle

-The one normal arm and one metal/ robotic arm alludes to Akaky's job, which was to copy papers. He did so diligently and tirelessly. Aswell as an addition to society's superficial attitude and the lack of humanity with which they treated Akaky.

The excessively long braid can also be seen as a symbol of how Akaky allowed time to worn down his overcoat. And much like that ammount of hair needs a lot of time to grow, the old overcoat needed a lot of time to be patched up and ragged.....and much like the long braid of hair, it represented a weight that dragged after Akaky.

The stitches hinted to the ragged, old, patched up overcoat.

-Nix🌙

[exoticalmonde]

Part I. Hortus de Escapismo Dr. Evealia's Reaction

Ah, finally.

Hortus de Escapismo

Garden of Escapism

Full experience includes waiting for 19837364 endless hours for the servers to open, rewatching the PV (English Version)

The animated PV

And listening to the biggest banger of a boss music without knowing any context. Including to whatever this splash art is meant to be about why does he look so... sad?

The following contains only the aftermath of the gacha and me being real chatty about the way characters look + expectations, so if you're looking for commentary of the story, please refer to Part II!

Hortus de Escapismo is on the horizon and Dr. Lundi is a radiant and unavoidable ball of excitement during the pulls. How could she NOT be??? Six months of saving, an ungodly ammount of pulls and a surprising eagerness of Executor to arrive home later (i.e. the fact out of eight 6*, only two were strangers).

Speaking of strangers, an obscure horse wandered into the pulls to remind her that he's still her number one husband and Executor comes second. Most likely because to summon Federico she changed Mlynar on her homescreen to Executor normal version and he got a little worried, the old man.

Among the 4 Doctors there's always 7 pots of each Elite, so it's no wonder the other one went to Dr. Pinkie before pity, which pretty much concluded our pulls. I don't know what happened to Dr. Kryo, but I personally didn't pull because Hoederererer is on the horizon four months from now and I am BEHIND because of Silverash Kernels.

Fastest character build ever in the world. I think maxing out characters ASMRs have to exist. It's so nice to see it happen so fast. Aesthetically pleasing, complete and right.

But since I'm giving statements that are already unrequested, I just want to say that Executor is not my type. I don't like stiffly blunt and I am also on the side of Sarkaz, so just Sanktas in general are a little... off for me. Except Enforcer, Enforcer is my baby and I would kill for him.

Go on, TRY and convince me this isn't one of the coolest arts ever. I need old 6* characters to get a revamp on their E2 art, because compared to this few can truly compare. God is behind him, holding the scythe, the statue is half a robot for whatever reason???? And it's so cool???

Not to mention that he looks exactly the same face-wise versus his E0 art, which cannot be said about, I don't know, SilverAsh, who looks like he was born in a wet cardboard box all alone in an alley.

His token is also so so so so cute, I don't know what the overall experience with listening to him talking into your ear feels like, but just-- just read this:

'A wireless earpiece. The latest of the Lateran Curia's tech products, and the same model that Executor himself currently uses. Is he giving this to you so you can stay in contact with him at any time, perhaps?'

??????????????????????????????

Cutie patootie.

Base skill not all that impressive. For some reason while looking into it Dr. Pinkie expressed surprise, because she couldn't find any other operator who gives productivity for EXP cards, but by complete accident I saw FEater is another one.

Insider's splash looks great, he's the embodyment of that one weirdo who always gets in trouble for some reason. Might be the spiky hair. Might be the army of pigeons following him.

Their voice actors are amazing so far as I heard, so we wait and see what he's like personality wise.

HIS POTENTIAL IS ABUBUBUBU

'A handwritten dessert recipe. With proportions finetuned to Insider's own personal tastes, the sugar content ABSOLUTELY exceeds recommended guidelines! This one's a pick-me-up!'

Ma'amn...

Not me. Not with that look.

Jail.

'A user manual for precision machinery. Though the only thing inside is a special phone number, since she thinks telling you what to do directly is easier. (But sometimes she'll teach you wrong on purpose–depends on her mood.)'

JAIL FOR YOU

[columbojumpscare]

Children are gullible by nature of being children. Glancing over worded disclaimers and grown up logic and only remembering information that was significant to them about what they interract with is normal because children are still learning how to Exist in the world they live in.

No ammount of things older people may percieve as logical will deter what visually appears real to a child, the only thing that will is an adult explaining exactly How it was made to them.

At least in the case of kids thinking JP's dinosaurs or the Dragons: a Fantasy made Real dragons are real, it's endearing and somewhat easy for an adult to explain that no, those are cool computer special effects and robots made by people who do that as a job, dinosaurs are only known from fossils and dragons are mythological creatures.

..As for one of my own (embarassing) cases of that (outside of thinking all things like JP, WWD&co, and Dragons: A fantasy made real were actually all real footage, which i definitely did)

.. When i was a kid i thought those furry Orangina ads's claims were real because the logic of "you can't use soda to clean the floor or your face" was overshadowed in my tween brain by "The gay CGI puma said it in an ad and ads must say real things about products."

Which as you can imagine, gave my mom a much harder time explaining how ads that want to sell a product to do a things can say it does other things, in this case as a joke expecting people to already know about Orangina and what it really is, and as such making these ads to help with sales only by reminding people of the product existing while not showing what it actually does even though ads are not supposed to be allowed to lie

What was the point in animal planet airing those incredibly convincing fake documentaries about dragons and mermaids

[pstelwitchcraft]

You know, I'm actually not normal about how much I love Orym of the Air Ashari (and Liam of the motherf*cking O'Brien but that's beside the point). I think it's something to do with the fact that, in theory, he's just... a guy. A little guy at that. He's the most normal looking out of this whole nightmare group of robots, dead ladies and werewolves, but he's still one of the more (if not the most) compelling characters on the table and the ammount of just straight up flavor Liam has put into this tiny dude is honestly insane.

And the deeper we get into it the more I love him, because he isn't just an ingenious little battle Master with some of the coolest action moments I've ever seen in D&D like trapping the giant monster with the magical rope (R.I.P) and battle ramming that guy off the motorcycle with his own body, he also sleeps curled up between a blue air genasi and a giant goat lady like a puppy, he piggybacks off Fearne's shoulders and tells her excitedly about their race before immediately passing out like a toddler that had too much sugar, he calls Ashton "Ash" and jumps on his shoulder to see better over all the other people, he calls dorian late at night just to tell him he's missed (and to listen to his voice again ofc, I'm watching you, Liam), he has a heartbreaking story that he literally carries around on his sleeve, and still he cares so deeply and is so willing to still love and protect other people it's impossible not to see in everything he does, and it's... UGH. I have no more words. Liam has me by the throat once again with another angsty blorbo and I'm not even mad.

[rjalker]

Tumblr said the first is illegal so here it is again because I saved the meme to my computer.

Finding out The Murderbot Diaries was inspired by The Imperial Radch series is the opposite of propaganda. I don't think I've ever heard worse news about a story I enjoy in my life.

Let's take the ideas this story did right -- but make it bad!!!!!

it's so fucking funny and just. proves even further Martha Well's inability to understand the concept of gender as separate from sex.

She can imagine dozens of nonhumanoid fantasy species, but couldn't once imagine a gender system that was no still locked into the white western gender binary, even when her prominant fantasy race has what ammounts to six different genders if she'd actually given it a single moment of thought.

Martha Wells literally looked at what Ann Leckie did and then went "Oh that's so cool. Let me just not follow any of the examples you set in regards to gender tho"

[ID: A two panel meme.

The first panel shows cupcakes based on the Cookie Monster from Seaseme Street, with expertly decorated icing, a cookie, and eyes.

It reads, "The Imperial Radch series talking about pronouns before the first scene is even over and then consistantly bringing them up and having them play an important role throughought the course of the story".

The second panel says "Nailed it!!!" in large comic sans font, and shows a failed attempt to replicate the cupcakes from the first image, with the icing flat and melting, with the eyes falling off.

It reads, "The Murderbot Diaries literally not even having the word "pronouns" i nit even one single time, never discussing them or having characters share theirs, even though the protagonist uses neopronous."

End ID.]

do you think the word "pronouns" will appear even once in book 7, which is coming out November 2023?

I guess we'll find out, won't we?

If a single character tells anyone else their pronouns, Martha Wells can have this sticker:

[ID: A gold star against a transparent background, surrounded by smaller golden sparkles. Black comic sans text on the star reads, “You did the absolute bare minimum required to respect trans people”. End ID.]

I'm serious I'll never be able to get over the knowledge that she really really really read The Imperial Radch series, which has more understanding and representation of gender in its first two pages than the entirety of The Murderbot Diaries series has in its entirety, and then decided, yeah, I'm not going to do any of the things that actually made that radical and interestng actually. This robot is nonbinary and aroace because it doesn't have genitals teehee that's how gender and sexuality works :))))))

Like. how did you manage to fail that badly when Ancillary Justice is already talking about pronouns in the very first scene.

this is the opposite of propaganda and it's fucking hysterical.

Especially because it is a perfect mirror to everything this fandom does with the things Martha Wells actually does right. She says "Don't ship slaves with their owners and don't demand peopel conform to your idea of normal" and they're all screaming and crying that if they can't ship this touch averse aroace slave with its owner they'll just die.

LOL

[rollflasher]

You know, we're on similar grounds.

My main issue with Eggdad is that this was pulled off with the clear intention of softening up Eggman, it's very blatant that this was done in an effort to give the message that he has a heart and the whole fandom is eating it up.

And my biggest gripe is that this Despicable Me type of dynamic plays it too safe and results in a gigantic ammount of wasted potential for exploring Eggman's darker traits.

This may sound bonkers but ironically, I really love Sage's character. Even in the final game I can't bring myself to dislike her, I find her concept really interesting and I don't care what anyone else says, I also found her whole arc where she develops a more complete personality enjoyable...which is why I find the Eggdad dynamic so frustrating.

See, one thing I found very interesting is that Sage actually behaves like a child in certain instances despite her advanced AI, in particular something that caught my eye is how it's brought to our attention that Sage only antagonizes Sonic because that's what Eggman wants, and she goes out of her way to avoid connecting with him too much because she slowly realises the ''enemy'' she's after is actually not so bad after all, and this becomes stronger as Sonic shows to care about her and Sage realises he has a strong bond with his friends resembling family.

In fact, Sage cries because the thing she wants the most is to have a family, she even mentions briefly the whole detail of related family and found family.

And here's when I say...wouldn't have been way more interesting to see Sage realise how much of a toxic father Eggman is and slowly develop the will too move on and find a real family in Sonic and his friends? Or more interestingly, have Sonic save her from Eggman in that regard.

During the game we see that Sage is truly hurt when Eggman gets frustrated with her, not only that but she does everything that would normally enrage him like constantly failling to kill Sonic, talk with the hedgehog, actually talk back to Eggman and even suggest him to do things like join forces with him.

Sage is pretty interesting because she's not a mindless creation bound to Eggman's order the same way as the rest of his robots...yet at the same time, she can't defy him not only because she truly cares about him, but also because just like actual children with abusive parents she simply doesn't have the will to stand up to him and accept her father is a bad person, which is a very potent concept in paper.

Just imagine how much you could cover with this if instead of forcing Eggman to like her, he was written IC and their father-daughter relationship was potrayed as the abusive dynamic it should be.

Imagine Sage trying her earnest to please Eggman only for it to not be enough, because Eggman doesn't care if someone has good intentions, he wants results and control and if a creation of his talks back, then it's as good as broken.

Imagine Sage wondering how Sonic and his friends are so happy and united while she's only miserable whenever she tries to make Eggman happy.

Imagine diving deeper into Eggman's ego and manchild personality by showing to what extent his attitude can damage others and how he became this way, recontextualizing his evil in the process. (Something that's actually kinda in the game, with an Egg-memo mentioning Eggman's reaction to Maria's death was pure jealousy because it meant less attention for him).

Imagine the contrast you could draw by making Sage show empathy for others, while reinforcing how much Eggman lacks such thing unlike his ''daughter''.

Imagine humanizing Eggman by actually taking a much bigger look into his vices, like his ego, jealousy, greed, pride and lack of empathy instead of trying to make him more sympathetic.

Just imagine Eggman actively manipulating Sage and using her to his own advantage while potraying his pride on her as an act of self-congratulation rather than a genuine compliment of affection. Just think of the crushing revelation Sage would have to go through when Eggman eventually got rid of her and she had to face the reality that Eggman never saw her as a person, because the doctor doesn't have such thing as partners in crime, only tools.

Just imagine the powerful message this dynamic could had about how family is not dictated by who made you, but rather the people who actively accept you and cares for you. Not to mention the importance of accepting that some people will simply hurt you regardless of your intentions and learn to move on to a better life.

But no, screw all of that, people like soft Eggman, people like sympathetic villains and the Despicable Me formula is an easy win, yay.

Since this game is meant to be darker and more serious, I don't think something like this would have been out of place. (Besides, Sonic already showed toxic relationships before with Shahra and Erazor)

This is one of the things that frustrates me the most about the game's writing, it had a lot of potential but it was botched down by being too meta.

It's a shame how this game is amazing and feels a lot more like Sonic since a long time but the writing doesn't quite live up to the rest of it :'/

I'm getting really tired of Ian using the whole thing about the writing and characterization in the series being inconsistent throughout the years as an excuse. Yes, there has many wildly different interpretations and takes of the characters in the many different spin-offs in media that have been made throughout it's history. Imo it's why the franchise has remained so relevant and it's fandom so active to this day, because it's made the characters and series more accessible that way. Anywhere can be a jumping on point for people. But I really don't think people are asking too much for there to be some consistency or set of rules within a continuity that he and the others working on IDW have, or tried to have, established. Unlike with Archie, where they were literally making things up as they went along, they're supposed to be starting completely from scratch with IDW.

And it doesn't help with him doing writing work on a mainline game like Frontiers, because it's meant to take place in the same exact canon as the main games. Assuming he had something to do with it, I wouldn't have any problem with how the whole Eggdad thing was done(aside from it just feeling completely rushed) if it was in a completely different continuity that was it's own thing, as the character has had so many different portrayals throughout the franchise's history. But since this is meant to be the same Eggman from the games, I have to look at it through the lense of how he's been in the previous games up until that point- which I would say has actually been pretty damn consistent- and because of that, it feels so off-putting for him to suddenly soften up out of nowhere, when he normally would have immediately pushed the off button on Sage, or do a bit of "reprogramming", the second she started talking back.

It's a lazy copout, not befitting of Best Sonic Writer The Veteran, and it's not even true!

You know what, I'll just put this from the FAQ, which wasn't written for sport:

“Games!Sonic is inconsistent.”

Yes, different writers choose to emphasize different aspects of Sonic’s personality. In ShTH, he was overly giddy and excited, and even seemed to not notice Shadow being upset because he remembered his own death. In ‘06, he was overly stoic. In Colors, he gained the sudden quirk of taunting robots who couldn’t respond.

However, Sonic still has core traits that no game has changed: for example, Games!Sonic is always supportive towards his friends, and trusts them to know what they’re doing… something that isn’t always present in IDW. Games!Sonic remarked that Shadow saved the world once and thus he isn’t just a weapon in Battle; IDW!Sonic guilt-tripped him by reminding him that he tried to obliterate the planet once in #6. Games!Sonic listens to Tails, and he makes sure to apologize to him after the one time he has offended him in Lost World;  IDW!Sonic brushes Tails off and deflects blame when Tails confronts him about his decision to let Metal Sonic go in #50. Games!Sonic is fairly terse when it comes to himself, and only speaks for longer when he talks about the power of friendship; IDW!Sonic goes on whole speeches about his general modus operandi (granted, this is an issue with Flynn’s writing in general, who really seems to like writing many words).

Sonic is a simple character at his core, and as such, the traits that make his very being have always been respected. Sonic is friendly, kind although with a noticeable ego, he always always tries to save people in need even if he has no idea of what's going on, always sees the best in those people, but he's somewhat uncaring of villains, especially the ones who have crossed the line in his mind - he doesn't automatically go for the kill, but if he has to kill them, he'll do it. The fact that he's more of a chatterbox in Colors than he is in '06 doesn't mean that there is one game where Sonic has suddenly turned into a manipulative bastard, or somehow thinks that Eggman could ever reform.

The games. They're meant to be played. With care.

And of course, same with Eggman. Yes, the Eggman from '06 is a much more serious, less hammy version of the character, that is inconsistent. But throughout 31 years, Eggman never, ever displayed any positive quality that would suggest that he'd grow emotionally attached to a child, even one of his creation. This is why I hate the argument "well Bowser can be a dad and still be evil!" sure! Bowser. Not Eggman. They're not the same character. Anti-heroes who slash everyone in their way and still are heroic exist, but that doesn't mean that Sonic would be one of them!

Justifying it with "muh inconsistency" means you're not above the level of a 6 year old who makes up the rules of the game as they go along, because they really want to win.

[rjalker]

List of Mods I’m currently using for Fallout 4:

Integrated Commonwealth Makes DLC plants and animals rarely spawn in the commonwealth

Cages Overhaul & More adds more cages, and removes the need for a beta wave transmitter

Finch Farm and Graygarden Overpass adds a highway thing to Graygarden and Finch Farm that you can get to via elevator

Overgrowth Adds leaves to the not-dead trees and makes the grass greener

SCR4PSPRINGS lets you scrap more stuff

Stronger Dogmeat exactly what it sounds like

Scrap that Settlement lets you scrap even more stuff

Gone Hunting/Fishing adds hunting and fishing options to the food recourses in settlements. Chairs to be placed near water, hanging deer or tanning racks, ect.

Farm Plots adds patches of dirt that you can place in a settlement to put crops on

Wild Plants, Drinks, & Chems lets you grow wild plants for food. (and other stuff with chems and drink that I don’t really use)

Hangman’s Alley Extended makes the settlement size include the terrace thing out front

Child Settlers rare chance to spawn children settlers instead of adults

Legendary Effects lets you add and remove legendary effects from armour and weapons (literally just so I can get rid of my massive pile of unwanted crap that I’m too lazy to sell)

River View Row House adds a new settlement

Robotics Disposal Ground Settlement adds a new settlement

Busy Settlers adds player-non-interactive objects to keep the settlers happy, like cooking stations

Better Boston Airport makes it so you can build anything at that stupid place

Post Endgame Minutemen actually makes the Minutemen relevant by replacing caravan guards with them, and giving them a chance to spawn with enemies, to help drive them back.

Build Anywhere lets you summon a workbench anywhere. Not even going to lie, I’m using it to get the trash off all the roads. Eventually I’m going to name every street and include sign posts like Skyrim has so I can walk anywhere without having to check the map. 

Workshop Interactive Objects Adds Misc furniture items that, when itneracted with, with play animations. So settlers can sit in a chair and read a newspaper, or lean against a balcony, or paint a wall, ect.

Shut. Your.  FACE. stops every settler within a hundred feet from randomly saying stuff to you. (I’m looking at you, Marcy.)

Forest Grove Marsh Settlement Lets you scrap and build at Forest Grove Marsh, but you can’t actually summon settlers or connect a caravan. 

Human Cooking Lets you scrap obnoxious dead bodies. Finally, Kingsport Lighthouse is freaking sanitary. Also, you can cook them.

Lakeview Terrace adds a new settlement (I build a skyscraper and it’s epic)

Functioning Stereo lets you build stereos that ACTUALLY WORK as radios.

Diamond City Red Rocket adds a new settlement

Simple Camping 2.0 lets you build campfire and camping sites

Fairline Hill adds a new settlement (WARNING: if you bring a companion here, they will NOT shut up about it. It’s kind of annoying. 

Clean and Smooth: Murkwater Construction Site makes it nice and clean and gets rid of most of the swamp crap. Doesn’t stop You Know Who from spawning though.

Pre War Settlement Items MMMMMM this and OCDecorator don’t seem to get along so I can’t say much, since I haven’t actually been able to USE it yet.........

Clean and Smoooth: Outpost Zimonja gets rid of all the random buildings

Crazy Safari 3.0 makes DLC monsters spawn in the commonwealth alongside normal ones

Hunter’s Moon makes realistic ammounts of meat drop from animals, and adds Animal Fat, a junk item that can be converted into oil.

Cambridge Red Rocket adds a new settlement--comes with four named NPCs. Wonderfully detailed. Not even going to change anything besides getting rid of the usesless shrubs and building a few small buildings. It’s already so nice the way it is. Except for the doors, which automatically close after a few seconds. They creep me out.

Animals/Children Settlers lets you set up radio beacons to specifically attract cats, dogs, and children. 

No Smoking gets rid of smoking animations and related items. Literally just so that Curie can stop smoking. Darling, you’ve had those lungs for less than a year DON’T RUIN THEM.

Dogs not Brahmin replaces supply line pack brahmin with dogs. No more cows inexplicably stuck on the roof of your house, or blocking your door, or wanding aimlessly, getting in the way of everything. Plus, the dogs are adorable.

Dog rug adds a rug that dogs will lie on so you don’t have JUST the dog house.

OCDecorator lets you place static objects in Building mode that can’t be knocked over or moved in normal mode. BEST. THING. EVER. Before this mod. I once spent half an hour decorating a table in Sanctuary Hills with plates and food and drinks and then a settler sat down at the table and everything EXPLODED into the air like it was the exorcist. Now I can decorate to my hearts content, and not have to worry about poltergeists, or certain dogs...............

OCDecorator (DLC) adds DLC items to OCDecorator

[brunhiddensmusings]

i believe a huge part of this discussion that some people arent getting is to define ‘work’ people have the notion that ‘work’ is spending 60+ hours a week busting your ass at top speed just to scrape by, and that anyone who isnt scrapign by must be lazy. working when sick or injured is normal, workers getting heat stroke or risking loosing a limb is ‘borderline’ that clearly wasnt always the case, and it clearly does not NEED to be the case if the same ammount of work can be done with fewer people consider a world where ‘work’ is 25 hours a week, at a healthy relaxed pace, and pays a full time wage. immediately people will complain and claim thats unreasonable, but why? if you break down the profit per hour of work rather then the pay per hour of work you find the average worker is producing in about 2 hours the money they ‘earn’ in eight hours of work, and a great deal of workers earn their employer far, FAR more then that. so why do we pay someone who worked 8 hours the money they actually produced for 2? would it be insane to have a worker there for 4 hours and pay them the same? the employer is still making out like a freaking bandit but is seriously upset that they arent making MORE money its the same notion as explaining to people that burger king in sweden pays its employees the equivalent of 20 dollars an hour, with ample vacation pay and sick days- if they were not still making a profit on every damned one of those workers they would not see a point to even having a burger king open in sweden, so clearly 8 dollars an hour employees are super flipping proffitable and they would hate to have 12 dollar an hour only ‘very’ profitable employees and LOATHE having 15 dollar an hour moderately profitable employees imagine a world like the jetsons, only people have finally dropped the victorian mindset of the industrial revolution that relied on working every daylight hour only because lamp oil cost money, putting children to work and calling it an education or an orphanage. a jetsons where people realize that if you have a self cleaning house and a robot maid you dont need a housewife. its a world where you put in maybe a 3 hour shift, 4 days a week. considering how much automation and robots are around keeping productivity up your basic needs are easy to meet, nobody expects you to be producing 400 times the wealth you get paid to justify your existance. what if i told you thats a future most of us could live to see? the robots may look nothing like the jetsons and flying cars are not nessicary, but if we replace a lot of mindless gruntwork jobs with robots this is exactly where we could be in under 20 years. your coffee was made by a robot, most of the produce at your grocery store was planted and harvested by robots. a good chunk of jobs are overseeing and managing robots doing the work, the shifts are short and the work isnt backbreaking but you still earn enough to afford housing, food, and entertainment. now consider that in under 5 years we could accept that ‘work’ could be 6 hour shifts 4 days a week and still get a full time paycheck able to cover rent, food, utilities, and have money left over. if that happened today your employer would still be making a profit off of your labor, they just hire more people to distribute the new shift changes. the only thing standing between us and that is the enshrined greed of people who dont see making a profit as enough unless theyre getting a high score, even if that means killing people to get there

If you would go out of your way to argue how easy it is for capital to automate away jobs when labor costs become too high, then you should probably know that you’re giving all kinds of credibility to those of us who advocate fully-automated luxury communism. I mean, think about it: you’re arguing that so much of human labor ISN’T NECESSARY because said jobs can be done by machines, and yet you STILL want the bulk of humanity to pointlessly scrape by laboring for the capitalist class, receiving meager wages to buy the shit they helped generate in the first place. The above billboard is a THREAT. Let’s not mince words – that billboard is bourgeois propaganda designed to turn the working class against each other and against the broader goals of resource democratization. “If you fight for a basic livable wage, just know that you’re easily replaceable, peon!”

This is what leftists mean when they say that capitalism is an economic system filled to the brim with tensions and contradictions; it’s also what they mean when they say that capitalism inevitably produces its own gravediggers. Automation is one of those gravediggers, and it’s a major one at that. As more and more jobs become automated in the coming decades, the working class will face widespread dispossession, ramping up revolutionary class consciousness in the process. At that point, capitalism will either focus on generating more superfluous jobs for people to work or set about instituting a universal basic income – regardless, the point is to keep enough scraps flowing downward so that people don’t call for a broader system change. In this way, capitalism’s ruling class can maintain control over the wealth-producing means of production and imperialist capital accumulation can continue unrestrained.

For these reasons, “more jobs” and universal basic incomes are not enough. We need to democratize the broader social infrastructure and eliminate the profit system. If you recognize how possible it is to automate away human labor, then you should defenestrate yourself out of the Overton Window and use some political imagination – cut out the unnecessary jobs, automate all the labor you can, produce for human need rather than elite profit, and you end up with drastically reduced working hours and bountiful leisure time. This is the essence of fully-automated luxury communism – the natural conclusion of the conditions that capitalism set in motion.

Be wary of automation in the present climate, but always trace it back to the class struggle. Robots taking our jobs SHOULD be cause for celebration; why should we treat these potential liberators as harbingers of dispossession? Technological advancements are pushing us exponentially towards a de facto post-scarcity world, where everyone’s needs can be comfortably met alongside their desires for community and leisure and entertainment, and yet we’re held back by Empire’s insistence on keeping the means of production hoarded under the command of a superfluous ruling class. As long as we are divided into capitalists and workers, humanity will never know full liberation.