#politics n culture

[lookwhatilost]

desantis is intent to sign a six week abortion ban. if he ends up running in the general presidential election, this is going to sink any hopes he has of winning it in general. if the midterms and wisconsin supreme court losses for republicans proved anything, it's that this issue is a real loser for them. there's a reason why some of them want to change the subject so desperately.

it's very clear that giving the government a role in pregnancy at all is a slippery slope. people understand that there's a religiously motivated wing of republican voters who want to ban abortion entirely and would be unsatisfied with anything intermediate to that. not rape or incest exemptions. not the life of the mother, even though the united states has the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world. even voters who feel kind of icked about abortion conceptually are wise of this, and understand it to be a really bad outcome.

abortion probably isn't going anywhere in us politics, but it isn't an abstract idea like many of the other culture war topics. what unites trans issues, illegal immigration, and police shootings is that the vast majority of americans don't have firsthand experience with these things and can defer to partisan cues. but you can't propagandize that way with abortion, because half of this country is shaped by the decisions they make about pregnancy and childbirth. if you want to trigger the libs by asking them what women are, i have your answer – a large and powerful voting bloc. you'll find out soon enough.

[tyger-land]

𝗪𝗮𝘁𝘁𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘅 Documentary/1973. Wattstax was a benefit concert organized by Stax Records to commemorate the anniversary of the 1965 riots in the Watts community of South Los Angeles. The event took place at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, August 20, 1972.

[kristiliqua]

CHUNSIK MY BELOVEDDDDDD

[victusinveritas]

[frenchie-fallen-angel]

French leftists are making edits and Fancams of French left politician to increase our chance to beat the far-right next month.

You might see it as stupid or funny, but this is actually a very smart strategy. We know a part of the people who voted for far-right this weekend don't care about politics and just voted for the guy because he has an active tiktok account.

So if people want to be dumb let's play at their level.

[khattikeri]

maybe a controversial opinion but while i really love jiang cheng as a character he is deeply self-centered as a person. and seeing people fight tooth and nail claiming he isn't, or is just misunderstood, or that he has genuine valid reasons to be selfish when plenty of other characters make the difficult choice to forego status and opportunities for what they believe is genuinely right to do (read: wei wuxian, wen ning, wen qing, lan wangji, jiang yanli, mianmian, etc.)

it's just odd to me. especially if they're talking about the novels.

mxtx didn't give jiang cheng the name "sandu shengshou" as a quirky coincidence. there's a REASON she named him & his sword after the 3 poisons of Buddhism (specifically ignorance, greed, and hatred). it's crucial to the story that jiang cheng is NOT selfless and that wei wuxian IS.

it's important to accept that wei wuxian is, by their society's standards, not morally gray; he represents several Buddhist ideals in direct contrast of jiang cheng and multiple people attest to wei wuxian's strong moral character, which is a lot of why jiang cheng even feels bitter about him to begin with.

it's crucial, because by the end of the novel jiang cheng realizes the extent of this and begins to let go!

the twin prides thing wasn't jiang cheng wanting them to 100% mirror the twin jades. he does care about wei wuxian, but he wanted wei wuxian to stay his right hand man, in part the way wei changze was for jiang fengmian.

and if there's one thing you can notice about wei changze in the novels, it's that literally nobody talks about him. he is only ever mentioned when his cool mysterious mountain sect wife cangse-sanren is mentioned, or (even more rarely) when they discuss him as a servant to jiang fengmian. regardless of jiang fengmian's own feelings, wei changze was considered lesser to him and didn't seem to outdo him, since nobody's out there years later still waxing poetry about wei changze's skills.

it may not be the only thing jiang cheng wants out of a twin pride dynamic, but it is a big part of it. regardless of his parents' intentions in taking wei wuxian in and treating him certain ways, this twin pride right-hand man thing is what jiang cheng has felt owed since childhood. he gave up his dogs for wei wuxian, people gossip about his sect heir position with wei wuxian there... jiang cheng wants the reciprocation of what he views as personal sacrifices.

he is ignorant to the depth of what wei wuxian must've suffered for over 6 years as a malnourished orphan child on the streets. he hates how wei wuxian's intelligence, witty charm, and cultivation abilities are naturally stronger than his own. he does care about wei wuxian a lot and want them to be together as sort of-brothers, sort of-friends, sort of-young master and sect servant...

...but if it's between that unclear (yet still caring) relationship and being able to save himself just a little bit more, jiang cheng nearly always manages to clam up in the face of danger and choose the latter, which ultimately benefits himself most. maybe it's a stretch to call that sort of thing greed, but it certainly isn't selfless.

there are of course plenty of justifications for this. it's his duty as sect heir. his home and sect was severely damaged by the wen attack and subsequent war; he had to protect himself, etc.

but doesn't that prove the point?

wei wuxian may be charming, but in terms of pure social standing, he is lower and far more susceptible to being punished or placed in harm's way by people who have more power and money. to protect wei wuxian, yunmeng jiang's long-term head disciple and semi-family member, even in the face of backlash and public scrutiny would've been the selfless thing to do. this is what wei wuxian does for the wen remnants in the burial mounds.

jiang cheng does not choose this. it's not even an unreasonable choice for him to make! nobody else in the great clans is doing such a thing, stepping out of line to take on a burden that could weaken them in the long-run. wei wuxian himself doesn't hate jiang cheng for it; he lets go of these things and focuses on what good he can do in the present.

jiang cheng thinks further into the future - what would happen to him if he continued vouching for wei wuxian and taking his side? what about jiang cheng's face, his sect's face? would wei wuxian even care to reciprocate somehow? everyone expects him to cut off wei wuxian for being dangerous, for threatening his position, for...

do you see what i mean? to call jiang cheng selfless for falling in line with exactly what people expected him to do after the war is not only wrong, it's foolish.

"but they faked their falling-out!" okay. why fake it to begin with, except to protect jiang cheng and the jiang sect's own face? is that selfless? who does it ultimately serve to protect? wei wuxian canonically internalizes the idea that he stains all that he touches, including lan wangji, and agrees to the fake fight because he doesn't want to cause the jiang sect harm. regardless, it eventually slides into a true falling-out, and in the end jiang cheng is more or less unscathed reputation-wise while wei wuxian falls.

that isn't selfless. it's many things! it's respecting his clan and his ancestors, it's making a good plan for the future of his sect and cultivation... but it isn't a truly selfless in the interest of what's right rather than in the interest of duty and what's good for him and his family lineage.

that brings me to my next point: even though wei wuxian hid the truth of the golden core transfer, jiang cheng spent nearly 20 years believing that the golden core "renewal" he was given was a birthright gift of wei wuxian's from baoshan-sanren, an immortal sect teacher of wei wuxian's mother's and a martial elder to wei wuxian.

of course we all know that's a big fat lie, but jiang cheng believed that wei wuxian gave up a critical emergency use gift to him for decades! he was lied to, yes, but jiang cheng immediately agreed without even needing to be convinced. the light in his dead eyes came back with hope the moment wei wuxian even said baoshan-sanren's name. he accepted wei wuxian's offer to give that up to him and take it via identity theft without missing a beat.

with how mysterious and revered baoshan-sanren is, that's obviously not a light sacrifice to just give up to anyone, no matter how close they might be to you. pretending to be wei wuxian to take the gift could even be considered dangerous. what if she found out and got offended? could wei wuxian be hurt by that?

jiang cheng doesn't even hesitate. wei wuxian is the one who mentions that if jiang cheng doesn't pretend to be him, the immortal master could get angry and they'd both be goners. and funnily enough, the day they do go to "the mountain", jiang cheng is the one worried and suspiciously wondering if wei wuxian was lying to him or had misremembered.

of course they've both been traumatized like hell prior to this point. but still: it speaks to how broken he was at the moment as well as to his character overall.

i digress: jiang cheng "gets his golden core back" via what he believed was a gift that should've been wei wuxian's to use in serious emergencies. rather than use it for himself, wei wuxian risked his own safety and gave it to jiang cheng... and jiang cheng still ends up embittered and angry, believing that wei wuxian is arrogant and selfish.

if he truly views them as 100% brothers and equals with no caveats, why would he think that way? it's not like he needs to grovel before wei wuxian for doing that, or to reciprocate... but this is what i mean when i say jiang cheng feels he is owed things by wei wuxian. wei wuxian's actions hold a very different weight in jiang cheng's mind, and jiang cheng himself doesn't ever act the same way, except once.

is it wrong for him to feel like he is owed something? it depends. many asian cultures, including my own, feel that a person owes their family in ways that may not make sense to westerners. for example, it's considered normal for a child to owe their parents for giving birth to them, or to other caretakers for feeding, clothing, sheltering, educating them, etc.

however, something like verbally saying "thank you" or "i'm sorry" to family is considered crazy- why would you owe that? you're supposed to inconvenience your family; saying thank you or sorry is the sort of thing you say to a stranger or acquaintance. i get half-seriously lectured by my elders on this a lot even now, even though they know such phrases are just considered good manners in the US.

this muddies up the idea of wei wuxian being jiang cheng's family vs his family's charge or servant even more. jiang cheng wants wei wuxian to be close... but ultimately doesn't really choose to use what power he DOES have to protect wei wuxian. he considers himself still owed something that in his mind wei wuxian flagrantly never repays.

this isn't even getting into how despite spending a majority of his time with the yiling patriarch he never once noticed that wei wuxian stopped using any spiritual power-based cultivation. even lan wangji, who met them far more rarely, realized that something was wrong and that wei wuxian had taken some sort of spiritual damage, hence the "come with me to gusu".

of course manpain is fun and i'm not immune to the juicy idea of them reconciling and talking things out... but jiang cheng is deeply mired in his own desire to be "above" wei wuxian in multiple ways, and doesn't realize the extent of wei wuxian's actions, the intentions behind them, and the consequences wei wuxian knowingly faced for them.

to not recognize this about jiang cheng, especially in the novels, is really revisionist if you ask me. i reiterate that i really do like him a lot. he's flawed, angry, traumatized and has poor coping mechanisms, an overall fascinating character... but he is not selfless nor ideal, and i seriously draw the line at people saying he is.

wen ning shoves this all into his face at lotus pier to disastrous results. it is the reason why jiang cheng's a total mess at guanyin temple, and the reason jiang cheng ultimately doesn't tell wei wuxian about the fact that he ran towards the wens on purpose.

for that one last act of his to have really been selfless, he needs to not seek anything in return. he did it purely because it was right to do to protect someone else. if that means wei wuxian never finds out about it, so be it.

that moment that ended up causing jiang cheng irreversible harm is not a debt that wei wuxian owes him. it hurts, but no matter how bitter it is, that realization is so important to him changing in the future.

[iicherrl]

first page of my sketchbook lolz

[grecoromanyaoi]

13th n final class in intro to greek myth. old man raises his hand mid lesson to ask 'so the polis is kind of like a state?'

[lookwhatilost]

Ages ago, I'd started writing a draft effortpost about the damage that I think leftist control of trans issues does to trans issues. It was half rant – as probably most trans people in my reader base here can attest to, leftist culture and leftist norms dominate trans rights spaces, and being out of line with them will lead to you being made an example of in some vicious, nasty ways. It's not just damaging when you're a target. It's damaging even when you're part of the in group, because it fucks with your head in an invisible way when you swallow some of the insane social norms and practices. You get all your opinions from social pressure. And like everyone who escapes from a seemingly all-pervasive in group with such totalizing, black and white, social pressure, like I have been for a long time now, you're desperate to see your escape from that social pressure validated, or to try to hit back and go hard to reclaim your sanity. You first start with tentatively questioning things with a lot of caveats, when deep down, you feel insane that you're having to add caveats to things that seem to make perfect sense, while also feeling insane because "why does nobody else realize this?".

But as the public dialogue got just that little bit worse on trans issues, I shelved it indefinitely. It's the sort of thing that'd probably be fine to post somewhere when there's less macro question of attitude to trans issues, but at a time when "DAE anti-woke?" posting is at an all time high, it didn't seem appropriate.

But I started that post by pointing out that one of the first trans athletes in American olympic history said, on her facebook, was that her dream was to win an American gold medal, so she could burn the American flag on the podium.

Holy fuck.

Could you imagine what that would've fucking done? Trans issues can already seem, to many people, like the fringe, radical, weird "obviously some stuff goes too far" invalid social issue because of its association with leftists, cancel culture, "twitter Wokes(TM)", and so forth. How much worse when you dig that association in with concrete headlines like "First trans olympic medalist burns the American flag on podium"? How many normie moderates would this push over the line, or how many of the few remaining "live and let live" conservatives would radicalize in response to this as right wing and other Facebook media jumped up to say "You see? Trans people really are these radical extremists!"

And the worst part is that we know that a significant number of other trans women, in their continued attempts to burn their hard won, minuscule social capital to the ground, would immediately start celebrating it, and making this very, very, aggressively clear to everyone online, just to make sure the discourse is as bad as possible, and just to also make sure there's extra fuel for anyone who wants to link being trans to being a leftist antifa extremist anarchist who hates America. They'll make sure to tell everyone "Yes! You're right! That's what it means! We are unironically in favor of this!".

So I think it's pretty intuitive to say, leftists are probably hurting liberal social causes.

This isn't an online issue. Leftist activists take over boards of things like NYC pride because of leftist culture online, and remaining part of the in group, is very important to the types of young people who get that involved. That's why NYC Pride banned cops from attending, despite this being opposed by the actual members of NYC pride, because the board overruled them. All those twitter threads about how if you support cops you're being homophobic, or endorsing violence to anyone who's LGBT, and so much else, is kind of undermined by that fact that the rank and file NY pride people couldn't even support that measure, and had to have it ruled over them.

That means liberals should try to take those social causes back.

I think a lot of people's first instinct is "That's not possible, they own the issues now, there's nothing we can do about it". I'm gonna address that in a moment. Because first, it's not really enough to go on our intuitions, we should also probably get some evidence that a certain breed of leftist activism hurts liberal social causes.

One way to do that is go into the evidence that a certain brand of leftist behavior around social issues probably damages the social issues. In terms of tweets online, here's a December 2022 study that shows evidence that leftist posts about race are rated as less informative, more objectionable, generate more backlash from conservatives, and fail to persuade "racial moderates". While meanwhile, "moderately progressive" posts generated more persuasion. That's pretty good evidence!

Also worth considering are backlash effects from corporate diversity training, which given how much of a shift there is in these spaces to be informed by people like Tema Okun, well... I think that supports the premise as well.

That's not much evidence to support the intuition that leftist activism is harmful and liberal activism would be more effective, I grant – but I figure the intuition is strong enough that you just saw some links while I confirmed your priors and went "Damn! Based and Evidence-pilled again!"

But I think frankly, even if there wasn't evidence of it harming the cause in terms of public opinion, the evidence that it harms the causes via the effects it has on the people it's supposed to advocate for are frankly reason enough to care. I genuinely, legitimately don't think there will be one trans user who will read this post and go "Actually, leftist dominance of trans spaces has never negatively effected me".

Some people would say "But that's just online, not real life" – again, remember NY pride. Gay leftists are the ones who overruled the normal people, taking over positions of power in important organizations, and probably the types of important organizations that say, media people consult with to learn what the appropriate, sensitive language is, or what kind of things are correct to say about trans people. In a real way, it provides really strong control over the narrative!

Leftists also believe in intersectionality – that is, that all these causes and issues are inseparable, and that this should be emphasized as much as possible. The practical result is that the issue will never be separated, in public, from other causes, and so whatever cause is being represented by leftists will be associated with every other leftist cause as they grow more power over activist organizations.

It's very easy to sound like you're exaggerating, alarmist, and insane over this stuff, but huge swathes of leftist culture are basically dangerous to liberalism! It's bad mentally to be in, and it basically outright encourages thinking not based on the facts, or reason – which can be hostilely dismissed as debate bro culture or whatever the fuck – but on basically just pure social influence. I have posted about this before, but opinions in leftist spaces get washed through a complex process of authority, social proof, and rationalization, while also creating immense social and moral pressure to make adopting whatever the Right Opinion is mandatory. If you're someone who touches grass, and doesn't get involved in these sorts of things, this might seem like an insane, alarmist description of it. But it's why opinions spread in leftist spaces the way they do, and it's one more reason why it's important that we try to ensure that liberal perspectives can win out for liberal causes.

I have a really simply solution to this: Liberals should become activists, or interested in supporting activists.

But as people would generally recognize, social causes are very hard, and doing social causes to attempt to replace leftist influence is an extremely steep mountain to climb for the amount of liberals who can be bothered to do something at all. All of that's true, but it's not an argument against doing activism. A marginal positive effect is a marginal positive effect. Why shouldn't we pursue that? If you pursue marginal positive effects over time, then they add up. I'm fully aware that there's not going to be some massive liberal activist org over night that can engage in Evidence Based Activism or fund and support mass deep canvassing efforts, since I don't even know if the HRC can afford that sort of thing.

But a beginning investment in the kind of infrastructure, knowledge, framework, experience, support, or spaces in general for liberal approaches to social causes, particularly anything that emphasizes an evidence based approach, could have a lot of potential for success. Even if they're small successes, over time creating these networks of liberal social activists, even if they don't do much other than assist in research for effective ways of reducing prejudice, or create and promote liberal perspectives on the issues with like meme instagram pages, or whatever, can build up over time. That's the value of organizing.

It's definitely not much. But we don't need to leave marginal positive utility on the table while the cost per unit is low enough to make it profitable!

[tyger-land]

ᴡɪʟʟɪᴀᴍ ɢᴇᴅɴᴇʏ San Francisco 1966-1967.

[binders-and-beanies]

Tbh I’m convinced a lot of people would not be satisfied no matter where they live. Cities are trash, suburbs are trash, rural areas are trash. Every region and climate and state and country is trash to some people. Like what is it that people actually want in a home or community bc I hear from so many people who cannot see the good in Anywhere no matter how much privilege and resources and beauty they have in their life. To the point where they’re mad at other people finding anything to appreciate despite their own challenges. I understand there is a lot to be afraid of and complain about rn but running away will not make you feel better if you will continue to shit all over whatever life you build somewhere else

[gerandor]

Ngl im kinda pissed at wwdits' continued erasure of Nandor's iranian origins. They keep calling him an ottaman soldier without mentioning his iranian roots. They call his country a madeup name and have given him a non-iranian name. They have nandor speak farsi but the fandom just keeps saying Alqulanadorese as if farsi isn't a real language. They even give nandor persian-themed outfits but they don't talk about the references as if its supposed to be a secret that only iranian people would know. It doesn't help that kayvan doesn't say anything about Nandor's iranian background and cultural influences. I think now more than any other time iranians need to be seen and heard. And i love wwdits with all my heart for giving us an iranian character but...barely anyone watching the show actually knows he's supposed to be iranian and that really hurts.

[marbleheavy]

i love love watching things and thinking critical thoughts! it i so much fun! i am being so garfield /srs rn! it is so exciting and fulfilling to be able to engage with what i watch and think about what it does & means

[knxfesck]

If I see one more usamerican white girl with parents from jalisco talking about how "I'm not white I'm mexican" I'm gonna throw my phone. This dumb ass country's racial categories oh my fucking god

[femslashspuffy]

Colorado is so greedy my hometown now has a Raising Canes, In-N-Out, AND a Buckees. Plus if you drive a little more than an hour you can go to a Pizza Ranch. There's a reason no one can agree on what part of the country Colorado is because it wants to be every part.

[lookwhatilost]

to return to this thought and keep it relatively brief, tumblr 2011-2014 wasn't what most people outside tumblr thought it was. The popular perception outside here was that it was some sort of sjw hellhole, when in reality, it's better thought of at the time as a warzone, with no particular side really having total control of the site. i would say that until 2014, in general, the anti-sjw side was winning, and of course the "hipster side of tumblr" (read: normal people who use instagram now) was always the biggest, and the "fandom side" could go either way depending on which part of the fandom you walked into.

within the sjw side of tumblr, you had a lot of different factions, which more or less unified into one unruly chaotic blob sometime around 2017-ish. but in 2014, the anime communists were still a relatively small faction on the site, and the bigger names on the sjw side were people like medievalpoc, who was notoriously exposed as lying about their ethnicity and for getting a significant amount of the history wrong or oversimplified (the blog's theme in case you forgot, was to point out non-white people existing in european history). other things are a lot like how people might imagine – great focus placed on offensive jokes, on particular approaches to social issues, things like that. but what might surprise people who didn't use tumblr at the time, is that a lot of the people who were in that sjw side were very different to the outside perception of tumblr as being soft and sad about having ~le fee fees hurt~, but were actually extremely aggressive people, o, were just people who held a real life ideology that basically matched the people who say, comment on youtube and say that huey's ronald reagan speech in the boondocks represents them perfectly.

something changed around 2015-ish. whereas before, most people would respond to someone saying "cisheteropatriarchy sounds weird lol" or "these critical theory texts sound a little goofy" with defensive and earnest explanations of why you only think this because of a particular bias society has inspired in you, the freedom to actually be able to make fun of this stuff developed. I remember distinctly posts about bikini bottom written in the style of critical theory discourse at the time, and in fact, this is the year that gave us the actual term discourse as it's used on the internet now! it comes from here, of this era! it was a term that was used by tumblr leftists to make fun of what tumblr leftism was like, primarily arguments after argument after argument over the most inane shit (yes, even to us) with no resolution in sight, but also over things you were convinced had to be important, melded together with the inane shit in a way where nobody could cleanly separate the two. hence, why it just got reduced to the discourse chef meme image, to sort of sum up a general frustration with what existed at the time.

this transition from the earnest white feminist posting to aggressive irony leftism never actually stopped, it just kept going and going and going, until now on you can use homophobic slurs and tell people to kill themselves and it's generally socially acceptable. not to say current tumblr is good or a haven of epistemic perfection, but it's stupid in different ways than most people imagine because almost nobody has actually ever used tumblr, and so most people can't imagine what it was actually like.

it's quite bizarre that this is one of the most influential websites and subcultures of all time, but also is barely actually known and understood by nearly anyone, and almost all of this is because this website has like the worst fucking SEO ever, and whenever I want to find an old, famous post, no I can't lol, I feel very very lucky whenever I manage to locate a post from the old days that sums everything up for me (I have a particular favorite about discourse flip flopping). it's not documented well. there are popular tumblr posts out there – in fact, I can even think of ones that I wrote and are spread around in screenshots – that only make true sense in the context of what other posts were popular on different dashboards at the time, and that's knowledge that's almost completely lost to time and that you had to be there for. everything else important about tumblr is even more poorly documented. i think the internet would be a very different place if tumblr had had good SEO all along.