#polemate

[thehorizonmachine]

the distinction between board games and TTRPGs only exists in your heart baby

[mychlapci]

*holds you tightly by the shoulders until you're bleeding* haha funny joke about pharma's chainsaw hands. but you understand that pharma is actually a really tragic character? you understand that he did not work with the DJD willingly and was forced to harvest organs for them under the threat of the entire delphi outpost getting destroyed if he didnt? you understand that while his "crazy doctor DJD" reputation in the fandom can be funny he actually suffered a lot and it only makes sense he ended up cracking under the pressure and the venomous scrutiny from the people he once called his comrades? you understand that his life was literally just a horrible mess of incredibly unlucky coincidences made worse by his bad decisions, which he was making out of fear and self-preservation instinct? you understand how deeply fucked up ratchet stealing his hands and adaptus possessing his body really was and how extremely damaged he must have been? can anyone hear me? are you going to let me out of here now? i swear i wont lick the electrical outlets again.

[will80sbyers]

STRANGER THINGS 4 | S4E09

[realbeefman]

say what you will about svu and copaganda but the consistently repeated theme that olivia benson was fundamentally born Wrong and the way the violence of her conception radiates out and impacts every single relationship she has. she cannot conceive of an existence that does not render her as an agent of justice rather than a complex person and it infects her interactions with anyone who is able to balance that responsibility. the way law & order manages to successfully recast the police as superhero-esque christ figures is genuinely incredible and like. even the way the show itself oscillates as to what her exact fate is episode to episode. does it get better? worse? can she ever prove herself worthy? is the past ever really past? is this thing she’s been justly burdened with her burden to carry at all? in the eyes of the Law. Our Father who art in heaven. i wash my hands of this.

[st-just]

It was nothing that the local EMS and fire departments couldn't handle. What rankled them was that they were providing their services for free. The deal negotiated by Amazon and the state had freed the company from paying local property taxes - the taxes that paid for the functions of local government, from schools to the police and fire departments - for fifteen years. The warehouses were in Licking and Franklin Counties, but they weren't really of them. They put many hundreds of cars and trucks onto local roads every day, and they put out emergency calls, but Amazon paid for neither snow plows nor ambulances. The basic social compact applied to others but not to them; in 2017, voters in the area served by West Licking Fire Station 3 would be asked to approve a 5-year, 6.5 million property tax levy to keep the fire department going. They would be making up what the company withheld.

-Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America, by Alec MacGillis

[communistkenobi]

have you ever read something so good you realise you’ve never written a coherent or useful sentence in your life

[hms-no-fun]

in your view of things right now, with the political climate so hot coming into the election, and companies doing worse than ever in terms of amassing greed and power and fucking us all over... what do you think has to change to find a way out?

oh boy, what a question. i've got a BA in film studies. i pay my bills by making youtube videos and writing homestuck fanfiction. i am not an authority, i only kind of vaguely know what i'm talking about in any given conversation. but i do think about this question a lot, and i've been wanting an excuse to arrange some of my thoughts on the matter. so, you know, don't take my words here as gospel, or as a coherent platform, or whatever. i'm just a goat with some opinions who hasn't read enough theory but means well.

alright. as a communist my answer is always gonna be "proletarian revolution," but that's an endgoal we're currently nowhere near achieving. the path to getting there is impossible to truly know, because of course revolutions are historically contingent on an organized vanguard being prepared to take control in a moment of national crisis. we don't have a leftist vanguard in this country, haven't done since the FBI and state governments went to war with the Black Panthers. my ideal vision of an effective communist party is one unlike any that currently exists on a large scale in the USA, built by organizing communities to coordinate neighborhood needs, as part of city/county organizations coordinating local needs, as part of state organizations that etc. right now political parties are exclusively focused on electoralism. i want a party that can organize eviction blockades, free community daycare, reading groups, high-capacity cafeterias, and all manner of mutual aid. i want a party that can operate with solidarity, as the Panthers did by supporting the 28 day 504 sit-in that resulted in the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. an effective vanguard party interfaces directly with the working class and builds its policy platforms based on their needs with no apology, rather than the acceptable liberal half-measures we've grown so accustomed to.

but it's a loooooooong road to get even that far. and you might say such an organization would be offputting, but like. the Panthers won over a lot of moderates over time because they weren't just out on the streets posturing. they took care of people. we only have free school lunch programs at all because of them. this is the thing that drives me nuts about so many leftists today-- you don't win over a moderate or conservative by debating the merit of their ideas. you help improve the material conditions of their day to day life, thanklessly, as you'd do with everyone in that community, because you cannot adopt means testing by another name without selling off an essential part of yourself. slowly, over time, some of those people will be won over. it'll never be everyone, but it doesn't have to be everyone. it doesn't even have to be a majority. you can get a hell of a lot done with even just 30% of people, especially if those people are even mildly-disciplined members of a well-organized party apparatus.

so, okay, that's my sense of the broad strokes. i want a proletarian revolution by way of a militant vanguard party. not saying this is the ONLY way forward, just the one i think would be most likely to succeed under the right circumstances. but again, we're a million miles away from having a communist vanguard in this country. quite frankly, such a thing feels an impossible pipe dream at this exact historic moment. so the question for me then becomes, how do we create the conditions that would allow for such an organization to emerge, claim power, hold it long enough to build a substantial base, then act on it towards a revolutionary goal?

first you've gotta ask why it's so hard to imagine this fanciful 20th century ass operation today. obvious answers: it's fucking impossible for a third party to gain a foothold in the system as it stands, so let's fix that. ranked choice voting would be a good place to start. i'm no electoralist, but if we're presuming that the revolution isn't happening tomorrow then some element of its foundation must be in making our democracy an actual democracy that can reflect people's needs. repeal citizens united. put HUGE limits on campaign donations and make it harder to conceal donations through super PACs. redistricting is another essential piece of the puzzle-- there is precisely one map of every major usamerican city and it's the map of redlined districts where people of color were not allowed to buy property. look at wealth distribution in communities and it'll map 1 to 1 to historic redlining, guaranteed. we gotta fix gerrymandering, loosen restrictions on poll access (such as the ad hoc poll tax that is government ID requirements), and if we're really feeling frisky push for a mandatory federal voting holiday so that no one has to work on election day (which elections count for "election day" is a whole other quagmire of course). less obvious answers: the cops and the FBI are still imprisoning and murdering black, poc, native, and queer activists in broad daylight. the national prison population is an IMMENSE locus of potential revolutionary energy. some goals on that front: abolish prisons, massively defund the cops, and curtail the surveillance state. restore the convicted felon's right to vote, and otherwise remove the many bureaucratic roadblocks that artificially create the cycle of recidivism. put money into nationwide job training programs (NO PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS) not just for ex convicts but for everyone, for reasons we'll get to momentarily.

i focus on electoral reform at the start here because i think it's an illustrative example of just how sprawling the task before us is. my goal isn't to overwhelm you or make you feel doomed because "holy shit that's already a lot of stuff that feels totally impossible and you haven't even mentioned healthcare yet," but to hammer home that the class war is being fought on a million fronts. you will go completely numb if you expect any one person or organization to address all of these issues simultaneously and as soon as possible. in an ideal world, there are many many affinity groups working towards these ends all over the place, either as part of or in solidarity with our imagined vanguard. i'm trying to look at ways to materially improve the lives of people in our political economy as it currently exists, rather than just saying "we need revolution" and leaving it there.

alright then, so what about capitalism? another major factor in the systematic disenfranchisement of the working class is the role corporate employers play in maintaining the class war. nobody has time to participate in local political actions because everyone has to work crushing hours, and when they do have days to themselves they still have to personally drive to wherever things are happening and find parking, instead of grocery shopping, taking care of kids, just fucking relaxing, whatever. obvious answers: medicare for all. right now, healthcare access is tied to employment status unless you are COMICALLY poor (i just got kicked off of medicaid a couple months ago because i now make marginally more than the cutoff, which now means i'm paying $200+ more a month on healthcare and am now way more worried about money than when i was on welfare. what a great and functional system!). if you're afraid of losing your health insurance for any reason, then you are disincentivized from expressing any opinions you might have about the conduct of your employer by, say, quitting. just passing universal healthcare alone would cause some major turmoil in the US economy. invest in mass public transit with rigorous local neighborhood access, and now a hell of a lot more people are empowered to participate in civic duty. less obvious answers: get rid of at-will employment! make it much much harder for employers to fire people, and regulate the ability of corporations to do mass layoffs. this would go a long way towards throwing some wrenches into the methods corps use to invent economic prosperity through the creative application of spreadsheets. on top of that, let's nuke the absolute fuck out of means-testing for programs like food stamps, medicaid, social housing, or literally any other form of "charity" that made Reagan shit his pants.

speaking of means testing, let's talk about bullshit jobs. there are a TON of pointless, degrading, wasteful jobs in this country. corps playing middlemen to middlemen. endless state and business bureaucracy using hundreds of systems that rarely if ever communicate with one another, putting a huge administrative burden on working people while the rich beneficiaries of this exploitation get to launder their guilt through the public-facing punching bags of customer service representatives. too many people work at the office factory. there are a lot of industries that need to be massively curtailed if not outright destroyed, a fact that intersects with the threat of climate change when you include coal and oil jobs. it's not enough to get rid of these positions, you also have to have a plan for those displaced workers-- hence the job training program i mentioned before. if we actually want to see a transition into a more egalitarian society that doesn't run exclusively on fossil fuels, then there needs to be a pipeline that gives purpose to the people whose lives will inevitably be radically altered by the kinds of changes we're talking about. there's an important thing, actually-- we all need to be prepared for this line of questioning and have a good answer in the back pocket. there is no shift from pure capitalism to even lite democratic socialism that won't hurt some cohort of people that doesn't deserve it. unless you want them to fall in with the fascists, you're gonna want to have a plan for how to integrate them into the world you're trying to build.

here's a wildcard for you. a lot of folks are on that "break up the monopolies" grind these days, and i appreciate the sentiment. i also think we would be vastly better served in the long run by simply nationalizing the monopolies. obviously there are plenty of worthwhile concerns to be had about any usamerican government gaining that kind of control over anything at this precise moment, but we cannot let that impede the horizons of our imaginary. i don't want market reform, i want the abolition of markets. the internet should be a public utility and ISPs should be government institutions. tech needs UNENDING regulation as we are all aware. social media should be public and interoperable. there needs to be a rolling back of internet surveillance. i've been toying with the idea of a Federal Department of Digital Moderation as an intervention on the current fascist radicalization pipeline that is social media, but that raises so many other concerns that i don't have an answer for. mostly i just think that the profit motive needs to be excised from as many sectors of public life as possible, and nationalization is a pretty good way to get there.

affordable housing! lower rents means fewer hours at work to make ends meet means more time to spend with family & community means more chances for more people to participate in civic action. abolish student debt and make college free! and make it illegal for colleges to invest in shit like fucking israel! a more accessible system of higher education means a more educated proletariat. this wouldn't by any stretch automatically lead to a more leftist proletariat, but conservatives have worked very hard to curtail access to higher education and that alone is more than enough reason to push for it. i've really buried the lede here, honestly. to my mind, medicare for all, mass public transit, free education, and national rent control are THE milestones we ought to be aiming for in terms of domestic policy. it is simply impossible to estimate how seismically and immediately these four policies (if applied equitably and without means-testing) could transform civic life in the USA. any systemic social ill you can name has some connection to one of these four ideas. i personally hold prison abolition & police defunding as equally essential, but these are unfortunately a MUCH harder sell for a lot of folks and will require some solidaristic frog-boiling from the likeable progressives/socialists of the world to naturalize the idea. but then, on that front i'm speaking very much outside my lane, and would defer to the wisdom of actual abolition activists in a scenario where we were talking concrete policy.

then there's foreign policy. this post has gone on a long time and i'm not the person to talk about this at length, but: the united states military needs to be defunded, and its outposts across the world removed. to curtail global climate change, the american imperial project must end. our meddling in foreign affairs is directly responsible for the domination of capital, and so long as this and other western states exist as they do, no communist outpost is safe. then there comes the question of reparations. all those billionaires didn't invent their money, they stole it. in quite a lot of cases they stole it from US citizens, but they've stolen far more from the rest of the world. tax the rich at 99% and distribute billions no-strings-attached to african and pacific island nations? other countries deserve a right to self determination without the threat of foreign interference. our nation's wealth doesn't just need to be taxed and redistributed to working class usamericans (particularly black communities), it ought to be redistributed internationally to all the countries we've fucked with over the last century and a half. but that's a pretty late stage pipe dream.

i guess the last thing that i've been thinking a lot about is more esoteric, and certainly difficult to implement. i believe we need to seriously interrogate "progress" as a concept. right now our society is defined by technological advancements as encouraged by a capitalist economy. if you fuck around with old analog tech at all, you've probably said to yourself more than once "they really don't make em like this anymore." i think about that fucking Hot Ones interview with matt damon about how streaming has stabbed the established profit model in the heart, where he says something like "we had a pretty good thing going before they showed up." i think about small museums closing down in the pandemic because they couldn't turn a profit, small local shops closing down for the same reason. constant newness paired with engineered obsolescence. disruption of the equilibrium in order to steal profit. it's easy to argue that socialized healthcare is good because it's actually more cost efficient than private healthcare. but those are the terms set by capitalists. i believe that healthcare and profit-seeking should be mutually exclusive. i believe that some things are a public good, however small --museums, quirky shops, parks, art spaces, open lots, movies, music, theater, whatever-- and that these things should be protected from the market at all costs. the alternative is corporate consolidation of everything, as every piece of local color cannot compete with economies of scale and asphyxiates to death. i refuse to accept the idea that "progress" means throwing away anyone who specialized in the thing being progressed beyond. i refuse to accept the idea that "progress" is linear and exists beyond the purview of morals, values, and ideology, nor indeed that it is inevitable and in any event an unalloyed good.

i believe that it doesn't matter if making higher-quality clothes at greater cost in unionized factories is "less efficient" than fast fashion. all "efficiency" means is spread everything as thin as possible, just enough just on time regardless of context. it's a mask for robber baron bullshit. it's an attempt by the bourgeoisie to naturalize the laws of economics as if they were on the same level as the laws of gravity, and we just can't accept that anymore. there's that meme, "i want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and i’m not kidding." i think we ought to apply that sentiment far more broadly. if we truly believe in the dignity of a self-determined life, then we must agree that some things are above profit, above efficiency, and are worth doing right. i haven't quite nailed down yet how exactly to verbalize this idea in a way that can be easily & quickly understood. but i feel it intensely, and only moreso as time goes on. as we push for these seemingly-impossible policy changes, it's of equal importance that we not lose ourselves to the limitations of the system as it exists under capitalism. to transform the world we must transform ourselves. to save the world we must save ourselves. if we hold a value to be true, then it must be constant and uncompromising. we must agree that our lives are better off when certain things exist even if they aren't efficient or fail to turn a profit, and thus decimate whatever part of us has been raised to believe that efficiency and profit ought ever to enter the equation. of course, in any revolution costs quickly become a huge going concern. there will always be painful compromises in policy along the path, always disappointments and mistakes. no revolution can be perfect. but through all these material challenges, the world that must be needs a place at the table with us. impractical, impossible, unfeasible... necessary.

you will probably not live to see that world, anon, and neither will i. we are all in the long game now, and it can never stop with one good policy, one good politician, one needed win. it's everything or it's nothing. socialism or barbarism. it is this belief which guides me, that no one ought to suffer the indignities i've suffered in my years working for shit wages, struggling to find housing, watching family die from economic abandonment. that there is simply no reason for society to be the way that it is, and that "the world isn't fair" is no excuse when we are the engineers of that "world" in every way that matters.

anyway, those are some of my thoughts on the subject. i hope i haven't made a complete fool of myself here.

[philosophybits]

Polemic, or the art of throwing eggs, is ... as highly skilled a job as, say, boxing... keep your face straight and throw them well! The difficulty is: not to make superfluous noises or gestures, which don’t harm the other man but only yourself.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, in Recollections of Wittgenstein, Rush Rhees, ed.

[apenitentialprayer]

Okay, maybe religious social media posting was a mistake

[transhawks]

as a fandom, I hope in 2023 my fellow villain stans (and those of us who identify as anarchists or socialists/communists and still try to find something ideologically worthy in this copaganda) realize that the League of Villains are not revolutionaries or antifa or any of the brave people standing up to fascism, and are incredibly traumatized people mostly on suicide missions led by a megalomaniacal man whose political views are best described as fascist. It's just not happening, y'all.

Spinner's embracing of Tomura led to his depersonalization and dehumanization. Twice's blood is being used in the worst way possible; his ultimate fear of being a clone while the original is dead is now realized and utilized. Dabi's grasping at anything to hurt his father while burning himself to death since he can't beat Shouto and because he's realized that people will use any excuse to not care about abuse victims, and he gave them the biggest one by trying to destroy society. Toga has given up on trying to make the world love her and discarded her need for it. Compress entrusted a society where the rich can't exploit the poor to Tomura, but actually managed to entrust it to a man whose plan involves tanking local economies so he can control them. They aligned with an ancapitalist-crypto-fascist army that preaches eugenics to achieve so much of their goals.

Tomura spent months trying to show he was his own person outside of All For One only to end up possessed. All For One wasn't kidding when he said it was all for him.

This is not a good end for them. This is not any shape or way or form of good. They're not going to come back from this sort of thing alive unless the heroes assigned to them save them.

Yeah, this is pessimistic, but someone really needs to wake y'all up. wake the fuck up. The League aren't happy. And they haven't managed to be happy. Tomura never wanted to be happy, either, even if he respected the wishes of his allies. He says it over and over because his trauma made him a depressed nihilist who justifies his lack of will to exist over and over again.

It's just so fucking frustrating, and I know I played a role in this for years, this beating of the drum of how much Hero Society is shit. it is shit, but the League aren't offering solutions. They're too hurt and traumatized to and some of you should really read upon on trauma-based politics and its short-comings.

Please, in 2023, get your head out your asses.

Boku no Hero Academia is a story with liberal values and ideals about reforming the status quo, not breaking it. You are not going to find far-left of center ideas actively pushed in this manga even if they are entertained, because in the end, the story will not have the League "win".

The ending to BNHA will not be revolutionary but reform, which means the saving of the villains will fall down to hero kids. You will not get amazing parables about how the villains should save themselves in this story because that's not what this story wants to tell. Please be realistic, for fuck's sake.

I'm so tired of reading takes that hinge on the idea that the League is a tight-knit family of antifascists and antistatists who love each other and will destroy the hegemonic systems around them. No, that's not what's happening. I'd fucking love if it did, but that's not Boku no Hero. Learn to read.

I love you all, but I truly think you would have happier times in fandoms if you started expecting less and less and realizing that the majority of the media produced in our zeitgeist is far from perfect and will also not cater to leftist ideals. Certainly not something published in Shounen Jump.

[alicentsultana]

The way we see mothers in fiction reflects our relationship with our own mothers.

Unless we're going mommy dearest and similar works that show narcissistic mothers and problematic/toxic relationships and portrayals, those are undeniably horrible and bad.

However, when we talk about general mothers portraiture we're going to immediately judge also through what we live and experienced.

I have a wonderful relationship with my mom, though she had me hours after she turned 18, and of course, have committed errors, she still succeeded in parenting and raised me with the best of her abilities. Therefore, I tend to see mother-sons/daughters relationships in a good light, as as depth and development goes by, I can change and adapt my initial opinion.

Therapist and Psychology Professors oftenly remarks that mothers, in a way or another, have some parcel of guilt over how her kids will develop and turn out, some more, some less. Relapse mother? Troubled kids. Distant mother? Insensitive kids. Overbearing/Overprotective? Kids learn to lie, omit, rebel. So on and so forth.

Mothers do have a hand on how you deal with your life. But a loving mother, a zealous mother, a young mother, an older mother, a religious mother, a free spirit mother... All of them doesn't have to justify themselves beyond maybe acknowledging where they went wrong, because, after all, aren't all of them also bound by expectations, morals, time and beliefs? And weren't all of them doing what they thought was right? Weren't all of them dealing with motherhood differently and in their particular ways? With or without support, they did what they could.

But take a look at these mothers:

They made mistakes, do they have to justify themselves and ask for forgiveness? Because they did what they have to? To survive, to attend demands, to protect, to ensure their safety and success...

There are mistakes, and there is also another even greater problem: you have to grow up and learn how to deal with this pain yourself, talk, digest, transform it, but no one but yourself will have to learn how to deal with it, even when it was done with such toxic and cruel behaviors, you will have to deal with it. To love or to hate.

Now, let's focus on the love part.

Mary, Elizabeth, Isabel, Januaria, the Bennets girls, Khadija, Alicent, Hürrem and Rhaenyra's children, all of them wouldn't even ask for their justification, ask why they did what they did, because they all know their mother loves them no matter what, they did what they had to do. Distant or not, overbearing, hysterical, insensitive, and doomed by the narrative. They know, and eventually recognize that those actions were done by love.

So yeah, go on, ask your loving mother to justify herself, I dare you all. Ask your grandma and aunt too. Ask that one mother who pissed you off online too.

Also, don't forget that maybe, that parenting style was all they came to know about. And unless one breaks a very long and, shockingly, difficult to recognize cycle, they will unknowingly perpetuate it.

Anyway. That's how I see it. Because oh boy, I wouldn't even ask my mom to explain herself to me, no matter my grievances. But that's a me thing. How do you see it?

[thehorizonmachine]

franchises that most need 5e licensed adaptations

south park

the bangles

100 years of solitude

arrested development

peter and the wolf

twitter.com/dril

the iliad

steamboat willie (this one's free game boys. kobold press are you listening this one's easy money)

caillou

jerma985

portugeuse (the language)

the grapes of wrath

dennis the menace (uk)

dennis the mance (us)

dark souls no wait they actually fucking did this one lol

the got milk? ads

pathfinder

[determinate-negation]

the culture of narcissism being part of the dimes square reading list is kind of funny at this current juncture since they seem to have taken it as a how to manual

[cl0ck-killer]

Now, amid intensifying social and environmental breakdown, there is a growing realization that daily life overshadowed on every level by the internet complex has crossed a threshold of irreparability and toxicity. More and more people know or sense this, as they silently experience its damaging consequences. The digital tools and services used by people everywhere are subordinated to the power of transnational corporations, intelligence agencies, criminal cartels and a sociopathic billionaire elite. For the majority of the earth's population on whom it has been imposed, the internet complex is the implacable engine of addiction, loneliness, false hopes, cruelty, psychosis, indebtedness, squandered life, the corrosion of memory and social disintegration. All of its touted benefits are rendered irrelevant or secondary by its injurious and sociocidal impacts.

Jonathan Crary, Scorched Earth: Beyond the Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World

[kaiasky]

A little bit emotional about this stackexchange post where someone, presumably a kid, teaches themself C using K&R the c programming language.

and so it's like. Outsider art almost. K&R doesn't have many large examples, so it's somebody figuring out programming idioms from first principles basically. And like--yknow--it's all there. it's all fucking there!

It's like how people talk about meeting aliens and them playing go and they might play some things differently but they'd know a 3-3 invasion.

idk. for some reason this has got me choked up all evening. K&R hands you like. here is how to reason through the execution steps of an if statement, but iirc it doesn't have any examples of complete code. It sure doesn't hold your hand on like, idiomatic code. and so you hand that to somebody and they say okay and.

they write fucking CODE. they write fucking CODE and you look at it and you go this isn't idiomatic but dear god. you have fucking written CODE you have felt the computer in your bones. i have never met you and yet I know you.

[st-just]

A central misconception regarding American education is that we are a uniquely terrible nation when it comes to schooling. This assumption is not defensible. It’s certainly true that our performance does not look good relative to expenditures, but then school funding is not consistently or simplistically associated with student performance. Overall, I think the evidence is strong that the United States has mediocre mean academic outcomes and that this disappointing average performance is the product of a relatively small number of schools in economically-challenged parts of the country that perform truly terribly. Our median student does alright, not great but alright, but our worst-performing students struggle dramatically compared to the rest of the developed world. Meanwhile, the top-performing American public school students are competitive with those from anywhere; I would put our top 1% or 3% or 5% of students up against those from any country. In events like the International Chemistry Olympiad and the International Mathematics Olympiad, for example, American students have excelled for decades. American high school students go on to flourish in the most elite universities in the world. Our problem isn’t at the top. The story of American education is not of generically bad or even mediocre results but of extreme inequality. Which is the general American story.

-Freddie deBoer