#same with Darwinian readings that end with

[thatscarletflycatcher]

It is often believed that the worst academic sin is jargon soup, but I present to you: author who presents a very bold interpretational theory and then proceeds to qualify their theory in such a way that makes the original theory practically meaningless but also irrefutable in the process.

[redthefortuneteller]

Snake is not a human with snake genes. He's a snake with human genes.

𓆚 𓆚 𓆚 Edit: I've added at the bottom something else I had forgotten about. If you've read this post before, give it a read. Sorry about that! I've made other seperate posts related so that this one doesn't get so enormous. Here are the links: The Island of Queimada Grande The Snake Charming Flute A Pet Snake Feel free to give them a peek if you found this post interesting. These posts are much more brief than this one, I promise you! :D 𓆚 𓆚 𓆚 If you're at all familiar with the 1896 early science fiction novel "The Island of Doctor Moreau" by H. G. Wells, the tittle surely might've brought it to mind. Indeed, I am basing this theory on this novel. "The Island of Dr. Moreau reflects the ethical, philosophical, and scientific concerns and controversies raised by the themes and ideas of Darwinian evolution, which were so disruptive to social norms in the late 1800s."

In brief, Doctor Moreau was an eminent physiologist (read: mad scientist) in London who ended up fleeing Great Britain due to his experiments in vivisection being publicly exposed. Vivisection is, for all intents and purposes, experimentation on live animals. What he accomplished with his experimenting was human-animal hybrids. But it's not as one would assume at first glance (as did the main protagonist in the novel), that he'd turn humans into animals, as is often portrayed in this sort of fiction or even in real-world folklore (think werewolves or berserkers).

Instead, Doctor Moreau turned animals into humans. And unfortunately, through means of extremely painful surgery, which fits in quite well with a dark story such as Kuroshitsuji.

Almost all of the beast-folk are named after "what they're made of". For example: Leopard-Man, Hyena-Swine, Wolf-Man, Fox-Bear Woman, etc… And he refers to them as his children. Children he holds hostage on an island. You know, like an orphanage? The orphanage, which is mentioned in Chapter 192, could very well be "the island" where the Doctor's children were being held at. After all, an island is just like a building where one can be held in, only the walls are a vast ocean. Snake (or Oscar) refers to it as "… a terrible place." and remembering the painful surgery part, I think that's an understatement.

In a 1996 film adaptation that slightly deviated from the original work, the beast-folk as they're called, need to take a serum in order to keep them from turning back into their original form. All except for one hybrid in particular, which the doctor refers to almost perfect or the closest he's gotten to perfection. I feel inclined to mention that in the film someone confronts the protagonist with something along the lines of "What do you intend to do once you get her out of the island? Sell her to a circus?" referring to that almost perfect hybrid. I believe it to be the case that Snake could be the perfect hybrid. The doctor mentions the fact that in turning animals into humans, he could create the perfect human, devoid of its human flaws, devoid of malice. I firmly believe Snake is devoid of malice.

The whole incident with Phelps was nothing but a mistake, and Snake's paying dearly for that mistake as he got his neck sliced in the same place Phelps had the mamba bite.

Whichever the case, the plan was not very well thought through: he was going to kill Smile without knowing the circus troupe was dead and without so much as asking Smile about it. He was going to kill Sebastian too, were he not a demon. As Smile was telling him that he had infiltrated the circus in order to investigate, Snake kept flip-flopping between getting shocked with the revelation that the troupe were kidnapers and getting aggravated, insisting Smile was lying. Probably due to the snakes' chattering each of their opinions. He's confused, but he's not evil. It's clear from his reactions.

The reason I'm bringing this up is because he was acting purely on impulse. Not much thought. Or at least, the thought he put into it wasn't much. It wasn't malice guiding his actions, but a sort of instinct. Snakes don't think much about attacking when they feel threatened. If they feel inclined to do so, they just do. No questions asked. No thinking about consequences.

In the film mentioned earlier, the doctor's office looks like a small library. The doctor is obviously quite literate. However, his "children" aren't.

There seems to be quite a bit of focus on Snake not knowing how to read. First mentioned on Yana's personal blog and most recently brought up in Chapter 195. It was quite common for people to be illiterate at the time Kuro takes place, but there was a focus on Snake from Yana's part, which I only find interesting because of how his snakes were named. After famous writers.

Could the doctor have named the other snakes but not him, as he was the first snake? The Snake. Or could Snake have named the others because he himself didn't have a name? It's funny that among all his family, the one human is simply named "snake" while the ones that would be naturally referred to as snakes are named quite fancifully. It's also quite comical if you consider chapter 51, when Finnian thought Snake was "Mister Oscar" as he introduced himself with "I'm Snake…", "- Says Oscar."

If you'd like to consider going a little further and going a bit crazy on these what ifs: consider that his snakes are the others who didn't make it or reverted back to normal. The panel in chapter 195 (page 7) where Snake has himself a little dilemma (in space!) with all the snakes chiming in in his head? I know it might sound a little out there, but I think the reason those three Snakes are shown naked could be because they're not Snake, they really might be Keats, Emily, and Wilde. Either the Snake-Man hybrids all look the same, or this is how Snake visualizes them speaking, as he himself is a snake like them. The difference is that he can use human speech, so if they were to use it as well, they too would look like him… right?

In fact, he often makes little distinction. He's said this in chapter 202 when Arty asks if he's a snake charmer, to which he firmly responds, "No. Snake and us are family. - says Dan." and "We are all footmen. - Says Goethe." Before this, he says "We're all here. - says everyone." He refers to them as "us". He makes little separation between himself and the other snakes. He understands and talks to snakes because, naturally, he is a snake. And he's the only snake who can talk to humans—the only one who is also human. He's the spokesperson (spokesnake, lol) of the group. Edit: He makes different voices for different snakes. Each snake has their own voice. What if those were really their voices at some point in time? The first idea one gets from Snake is that the snakes are like parts of his personality that he's expressing through them. However, this isn't true (or entirely true) because they do really do communicate with him, as proven undeniably by Oscar sneaking into the castle basement in the Green Witch arc and bringing back information Snake had no way of knowing (and couldn't really explain very well when Bard asked for details).

In chapter 53, he's sneaked down to the cargo to share the food with "everyone" as he says. I always found it a little odd to share human food with snakes, who only eat whole animals. On the plate, there were some leaves. There are no herbivorous snakes; they're all exclusively carnivorous (insectivorous, too). Of course, the lettuce, or whatever it is, is intact. But still, snakes don't eat breaded chicken or liver pâté either… It's just odd that Snake, who's been seen feeding his snakes mice twice, suddenly thinks they'd be interested in this gourmet, first-class dish. I believe he thinks, since it's delicious to him, surely they might think so too. After all, they're all snakes. Could he get a little confused sometimes?

He's also never showed any fear of the werewolf forest while the other servants were scared as they made their way to the village in the Emerald Witch arc. He doesn't seem phased by the idea of wolf-men. He was freaked out by the torture instruments in the village though, meaning some things are scary, just not the werewolves.

Edit: I forgot to mention an interesting passage from the Kuroshitsuji Original Picture Drama live reading from 2015. As far as I know, the script was written by Yana Toboso. It's all done mainly for comedic purposes. However, there's a part where the characters are drinking and chatting and eventually some get a little tipsy. What Snake says in a drunken crying fit is "I'm a snake! I feel better if I drink a lot of sake!" Interesting, isn't it? ;) Go ahead and watch it yourself here if you feel like it: https://youtu.be/xMmrWsHLaqc?si=ozkAfssE_fLOOoaM&t=506

To end I'd also like to call attention to the cover art from Chapter 196. Him being confused about a lemon cake and a lemon tart being different snacks when they're both sweet and both cakes made it to the cover art. He's having trouble grasping how a lemon flavored dessert can be different from another lemon flavored dessert.

I think that sums it up nicely, although I might have forgotten some things. I do apologize if anyone has already made this correlation between this work by H. G. Wells and Snake's possible origins, I couldn't find anything related.

Of course it can all be explained easily by just saying he sees the snakes as family and as "us" because he has a connection to them. However, it's the "how he came to be" part that is my main motive behind the theory.

I put a lot of love and care into this theory and since Snake's flashbacks might be coming up soon, I thought I'd share it just so that it's out there for all it's worth.

Thank you so much for reading. Have a lovely day. Red

[nateconnolly]

Two styles of narration dominate the field of history: progress and alteration. These are two ways of describing change. Progress narratives and alteration narratives are mutually exclusive. The first tells the story of the past as a movement, or “progress” toward some ultimate end. Alteration narratives do not analyze the arc of history as movement toward any destination.  An “ideology of progress” (Chakrabarty 7) posits that humans and events move toward a teleological endpoint. Progress narratives are defined by their implicit or explicit assumption that history is a process of development. They are “stagist” (Chakrabarty 9) because their stories of history proceed in delineated stages. In this type of model, societies and/or Society grows in the same way that child becomes an adult. Humanity has a “Youth” and will have an “Old Age” (Nietzsche 30). The growth never ceases — every action, every accident, makes “the world… more complete” (Nietzsche 6). The world moves closer to “its end in every moment” (Nietzsche 6). That end is a moral, religious, or cultural completion. Progress narratives declare that all nations or cultures begin incomplete, and that they will — they must — become complete over time. History, in these models, is the journey toward the End.  Progress narratives are as diverse as they are plentiful. Marxism posits that societies and/or the globe as a whole move toward the Communist state. Social Darwinianism directly compares historical changes to the evolutionary concept of fitness. Colonialist ideology is based on the assumption that societies undergo a process of “development and civilization” (Chakrabarty 8). One such colonial philosopher is Mill, who believed “[humans] were all headed for the same destination,” and that India had to become like Europe (Chakrabarty 8). Schiller describes the end as “a harmonious totality” (Nietzsche 24). Note that there is not a shared endpoint in all progress narratives. Nietzsche writes that the endpoint of a progress narrative could be “happiness, resignation, virtue or repentance” (6). Sometimes, two progress narratives directly contradict each other. Marx’s ideal endpoint is a secular, atheistic state; Mill’s colonialism is fundamentally religious. But they share their belief in a “shape” of history that bends in service of a great good.  On the other hand, alteration narratives accept that human societies change, but do not assume that this change is a form of evolution. They do “not entail any necessary assumptions of teleology” (Chakrabarty 23). While it is true that societies are always “developing” (Chakrabarty 23), there is no universal endpoint toward which they must move. Alteration narratives do not only dispute that society must move toward this or that end. They dispute that society must move toward any ideal at all. The alteration from one organization of society to another is always “secular, empty, and homogenous,” according to Walter Benjamin (Chakrabarty 23). 

You can read the rest on Substack:

[transmutationisms]

Repeat anon from before talking about bodily superiority and piss <3 I can't believe you picked up SO spot on. I've been reading Kropotkin's Mutual Aid for a couple years, revisited it the other day, and I owe that exact read of Succession to the dude. What you said about the show presenting a sharp analysis of the characters' ethical motivations tracks with me too. I did get ahead of myself tho, 100%. I get your point now, Succession really has refrained from telling a clear cohesive politic to imagine different worlds, like anarchism or communism. Came to my next conclusion more after chewing on your reply: its core philosophy runs incompatible to liberation. This has been stuck in my head since I heard it, Jesse Armstrong in Controlling the Narrative for the S3 finale goes, "People's essential selves don't change. In a way that's what makes drama and choices interesting." I do witness that bleed throughout the show. I love that the writers put capitalism and fascism under a microscope through the characters' intimate, erotic relationships with each other. But the thing is, they tell us stories over and over of their failures to change. Like, if Succession's a tragedy about characters stuck in unbreakable cycles of failure, then is it also a tragedy that considers capitalism and possibly all forms of domination unbreakable cycles, too? If so, not a cute vibe! Genuine Q that lingers since day 1, that I don't think the show answers... yet. Unless Waystar crashes at the end with no reiteration in sight, I wouldn't be surprised if the show sticks that landing more firm for the big finale. At best I could read a core story of Succession being that the characters' circumstances (nuclear family, corporation, capitalism) keep setting them up for tragedy precisely because of their more basic senses of cooperation, and the show's input ends there. And I'd love that, honestly. But I have a feeling the show will bring us to a more hopeless place, I only don't know where yet.

ok i knew it.... yeah kropotkin had such a major influence on basically all left-leaning understandings of evolutionary theory. i mean prior to him the options were basically bourgeois darwinian malthusianism or some strain of lamarckism, which latter was 1) increasingly hereditarian anyway, 2) not emphatically structured around 'natural selection', and 3) fundamentally drawing from sensationalist psychology, which meant moral sense tended to be presented as a result of habituation rather than as a rational social interest. so you can see why kropotkin was such a game-changer for anyone invested in defending any version of evolution-by-natural-selection as a non-teleological, non-theistic, materialist view of nature---but without the addition of british capitalism lol.

anyway, to answer your actual question: yeah, this is a huge tension in the show imo, and it follows from it being a huge tension in marx. in interviews jesse has quoted the marx line right out of '18th brumaire' about circumstances constraining men, and talked about how he doesn't think people fundamentally change. there are obvious reasons why, in that particular text, marx was especially pessimistic about the possibility for people to defy their circumstances lol---1849 was his case study in history 'repeating itself' because of (what he saw as) essentially the same class tensions as in 1799 rearing their heads again. but at the same time, marx's entire political project was predicated on the notion that true revolution is not just possible but expected, as an outcome of the historical development of the productive forces in conjunction with increasing labour estrangement and alienation.

frankly i don't think the show will end with waystar destructing or anyone meaningfully changing their social, political, or economic positions. and this would be fine, IF the read is, like you said, that the continued imposition of structures of capitalist production constrains the characters to acting in this selfish, dominance-seeking, antisocial way. like, i'm fine with the notion that the entire show is a tragedy and always has been, and that the characters are incapable of change as long as their circumstances remain the same. but i agree with you that there's a risk of implying (or outright stating, lol) that people are simply and intrinsically incapable of meaningful change for reasons predating capitalism and grounded in some kind of bio-psychological discourse. i would hate this ending and this moral lol and i have been hoping for 3 and a half seasons now that the writers' room is too smart to take us there. we really will have to see how these last few episodes play out.

i'd add that i think this sense of hopelessness and helplessness can add to the show's psychological writing, for example in the cynicism and nihilism of roman. roman essentially sees capitalism as an alien force he can't control or counter in any meaningful way, so why bother? which is certainly true to how many people (even literal billionaires) feel in the face of such a complex and entangled system. and it's not like i expect the show to end with some kind of raising of revolutionary consciousness, but i also don't want it to end with a total denial of the possibility of human cooperation and mutual aid as governing behavioural principles in different circumstances. i don't believe that as a species we're doomed to the way logan roy capitalism encourages us to act, and it'll really annoy me if that's where the show lands after all this time lol.

that said, i do think no one on this show is escaping their circumstances in any material way. i don't think any of them actually want out (certainly not the kids, tom, greg, or the old guard) and i do believe that the broad outlines of the ending have been pretty clear since day one. whether or not they keep waystar they will continue to operate in logan's world because his empire was always just one articulation of this broader capitalist discourse on domination and 'survival of the fittest'. even if a character on this show tried to cash out and dip they'd still be caught in this global financial web, and none of them are inclined to do that anyway because [class interests and family business]. which is i guess to say that i don't think we will see any of these characters change on a deeper level, but i think it's possible for the show to end that way and still frame it in a way that allows for alternate readings of human behaviour and sociability IF placed in different material circumstances. we'll see whether jesse and the writers have the subtlety to stick that landing, though. ultimately yes, the show is a character study and not a political polemic, but i will be really very irritated if it turns out to be a character study premised on a fundamentally reactionary, essentialist understanding of 'human nature' and social behaviour lol.

[lokavisi]

Unplanned Book Review Time!

I don't commit to doing book reviews on this blog because my ability to get through books in any sort of timely manner is spotty at best, but I've been reading two books lately that I really wanted to talk about. Disclaimer: I have not entirely finished either of the them, though my thoughts and feelings on them are strong enough that I can tell you whether or not I recommend them. (Honestly there's enough in the intros to each book to tell you whether they're worth reading or not.) I'm gonna give the reviews below the line since this is going to be long, so before deciding whether you read more I will say one book is on seidr and the other is on general protection magic.

First up is Dean Kirkland's Seiðr Magic: The Norse Tradition of Divination and Trance. I'm just gonna say it up top: do NOT waste your time or money on this. I bought it at Barnes & Noble (I knew nothing about the book or the author but wanted to encourage B&N to keep selling stuff like this), and I really wish I hadn't given this guy my money.

The biggest issue? Gatekeeping. He explicitly says in the introduction, on page 13, "If I am accused of gatekeeping[...]so be it." He's gatekeeping an open practice. That sentence alone tells you everything you need to know about why you need to skip this book. But let's get into specifics:

-He goes on to say that we shouldn't teach "just anyone" interested in seiðr about it because those without an aptitude for it will cause more harm than good. How the hell do people learn anything, then? Do we not know other magic to protect ourselves and undo any potential harm that may result from practicing a magical skill? He continues by explaining a Darwinian selection process of finding the people "meant" to practice seiðr. So you know, like eugenics.

-Any time he presents a ritual of any nature, he always makes it sound like you should be doing it exactly the way he describes, even if he ends the description with "but you can work with what you have." In one chapter he details this whole ritualized journey into the woods to find a branch from a tree to make your seiðr staff, and that you shouldn't just use dead fallen branches or the like. Literally every person I know who practices seiðr has been gifted their staff, through someone's direct intentions (like as a birthday gift or something) or more indirect ways like in my own experience: I was not looking for a staff when I went on a hike with my in-laws, but I picked up a fallen stick to use as a walking stick and Odin was like, "THAT IS YOUR MAGIC STICK TAKE IT WITH YOU IT IS YOURS." And I'm not gonna argue with Odin.

-Kirkland says you should spend as much money as possible on your ritual attire. This is after he acknowledges that Thorbjorg's extravagant costume (mentioned in the Saga of Erik the Red) is not about a display of wealth, but of spiritual power. He encourages you to build up your gear one piece at a time if you're financially struggling, but my guy, even that isn't possible for a lot of folks. You're saying people need to spend loads of money for a hood to wear over your head. You could have a designated seiðr hoodie and have just as effective a practice. Seriously.

-In the same vein, he always emphasizes that all materials used in your gear should be made from natural materials. As if that is always accessible to people. Not everyone is able to spend hours in the great outdoors. A lot of plastic-based goods are easier to obtain for folks. None of that prevents or prohibits you from a healthy seiðr practice.

-He also generally uses a lot of language that, on the surface, sounds logical and sound, but when you stop to think about it is super gatekeepy. This obnoxious and harmful tone colors the entire text and is frustrating beyond words.

As if gatekeeping weren't enough, Kirkland uses some credentials and experience to indicate expertise where he just doesn't have any. While he may have earned the right to put "Ph.D." after his name, including it on this book feels like he's chasing clout and feigning legitimacy. His Ph.D. is in ecology. Not anything related to religion or history of ancient Germanic Europe. But if you don't look closely, seeing he has a Ph.D. gives the appearance that he knows what he's talking about. It's disingenuous at best and intentionally deceptive at worst. His author biography mentions that he studied Andean shamanism under an indigenous paco. That's great! Good for him! But he's a white guy acting like an authority on various shamanistic practices, as he likens shamanic practices from several cultures to scant pieces of evidence we have to seiðr practice. This lends itself to the general issue with most books on seiðr, that our genuine lack of knowledge about the practice leads folks to fill in the gaps from other oracular traditions. If you utilize something like that based on your personal UPG and use that for yourself in your practice, that is one thing. But when you are teaching others with your UPG that involves traditions often closed to folks like yourself, maybe don't try to pass it off as the most correct way to practice seiðr. He says at the beginning that he will identify his UPG throughout the text, but he fails to do so quite often as he treats his connections to other oracular practices as Truth.

The truth is, pretty much every book we have on practicing seiðr includes the author's UPG and syncretism with other oracular traditions. If you're looking for "true" traditional seiðr practices, our archeological and written records offer extremely little. Personally, I would encourage you to build your own practice around your UPG (and maybe some appropriate SPG) and the known lore/practices if you are looking to develop a seiðr practice. My friends recently reworked Diana Paxson's method to include more lore-based elements, for example. As long as you know what sources you're filling in the gaps with for your personal practice, that's fine. Just make sure you explain that to others. Do not try to pass it off like The Way to Do Seidr like this jerk was trying to. There are a few interesting pieces of actual facts or rituals, but I wouldn't recommend spending money to read just for those trace elements. There are better people to learn seiðr from. (That said, if you lack an actual teacher and are learning from sources like Kirkland's, read this and all other seiðr books with a grain of salt and the understanding that this magical practice is not something we can fully and exactly recreate. Sorry, recons. You're gonna have to acknowledge the need to develop unique modern practices.)

And now for a book that I absolutely ADORE, Amy Blackthorn's Blackthorn's Protection Magic. This is one I borrowed from a friend and would love to spend the money to buy my own copy. Not being able to take notes and highlight in the book itself has been killing me!

Amy starts the book with an exercise for you to identify your own personal ethics in regards to protection of any kind. I did not expect anything like that, but I was pleasantly surprised. That kind of a foundation is crucial in practicing any form of magic, really, so starting the book with that solid foundation is incredibly useful before you even start to practice any of the spells and protection methods she explains through out the text. This is such an important conversation that witches need to be having internally and with each other. It made me contemplate things that I never had before, and reading her own responses to the questions she poses gave me insight into other perspectives on the matter of safety and protection.

Additionally, she makes a point to explicitly address mental health and physical protection. Understanding your mental health and any potential diagnoses is not only helpful for your general wellbeing, but it also helps you in discerning things like whether someone has cursed you or your depression is hitting you really hard. Equally important, she recognizes that spells aren't necessarily going to help you when someone's fist is coming towards your face. There is an entire section of the book dedicated to physical awareness and self-defense. Blackthorn's mindful acknowledgment of the balance of the mundane and the magical is something that I wish more magical practitioners understood and promoted, whether it's in regard to protection or any other kind of magic. It was absurdly refreshing to read any sort of witch, pagan, or adjacent text that so succinctly articulates this balanced approach.

As for the actual spells and methods presented in the book, I have yet to utilize many of them. (There's a lot and I am only one person, though some things I was already doing some version of myself, like visualizations.) However, I can say that she discusses the following in regards to protection magic techniques: visualizations, crystals/grids, plants and garden arrangements, physical and situational awareness, signs that you may be hexed/cursed/jinxed, home security, essential oils, use of tarot cards, incense, and various magical correspondences (like moon phases and colors). She offers a wide variety of options that you can pick and choose, and adapt to your personal needs or means. For instance, the chapter about plants discusses particular species and arrangements for outdoor gardens, as well as ones for indoor use (particularly useful if you live in an apartment and want to utilize plants in your magic); and visualizations require no materials whatsoever and is accessible to everyone.

Blackthorn also makes a point to help you determine the authenticity, quality, and traits of your tools. She explains ways to recognize counterfeit gemstones, how certain plants need to be tended to or how they interact with other plants, and how common items can be utilized for physical protection in a pinch. She presents everything in a way that empowers you to make informed decisions about your personal safety, which is what any sort of text like this should do.

From just the introduction piece on ethics alone, I would highly recommend this book. All of the practices and methods Blackthorn discusses are written in a clear and straightforward way. She covers several bases as someone who used to work in security herself, and really drives home the need for combining magical and mundane methods of protection to keep yourself, your loved ones, and your property as safe as possible. Again, I can't sing this book's praises enough. This would be an excellent addition to any witch's library.

If you've read either of these books, I'm curious what your thoughts on them are! Feel free to reblog, comment, or hit up my asks/PMs to discuss!

[alexandrekocian]

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

AI is not intelligence, but rather marketing to exploit human labor, says Nicolelis

Neuroscientist claims that human intelligence results from millions of years of evolution: 'I want to see ChatGPT survive a Palmeiras game'

Pedro S. Teixeira

SÃO PAULO - ChatGPT functions as a marketing tool by generating inequalities in the relationship between employers and the workforce, says neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis. According to him, intelligence is the result of millions of years of evolution, which cannot be computed in binary code. Nicolelis has been working with neural networks, the mechanism behind current machine learning algorithms, for 30 years.

As a reference in brain-machine interfaces, he has been involved in the development of neuroprosthetics capable of restoring body movements. During the opening ceremony of the 2014 World Cup in São Paulo, a wheelchair user kicked the ball into the goal with the help of a device developed by him.

Nicolelis states to Folha that it is absurd to claim that language models like ChatGPT are ten times more intelligent than a human being

just because they write quickly or communicate in multiple languages, as Geoffrey Hinton, a computer scientist who invented neural networks and was a partner and advisor at Google for over a decade, claimed. "The turtle is extremely intelligent; it's just slow."

You criticized the writer Yuval Harari. Why?

He mixes things from other areas without having in-depth knowledge. In Sapiens, he combines references and interprets our results in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with what we have done. It is work that I have spent 30 years of my life on. When he talks about the future where we will have this thing called brain-to-brain interface, which was an experimental thing I did with rats, monkeys, and humans for rehabilitation purposes. But it's not about exchanging feelings with other people. It's about exchanging motor commands, things suitable for reducing digital logic. He interpreted it as if I were reading someone's mind, which will never happen. He says things like "we will live up to 200 years," "we will end aging." It's all fantasy.

What about Harari's views on artificial intelligence?

He thrives on sensationalism. He wrote that artificial intelligence has hijacked the system; it has hijacked

nothing. The human species is hijacking its own evolution. Behind artificial intelligence, there are armies of people annotating data.

And there are armies of evangelists. I never liked that word because it denotes that the vast majority of human movements have turned into religions. Everything seems like a religion. From a scientific point of view, I've been saying this for years, and now Noam Chomsky uses the same phrase: artificial intelligence is neither intelligent nor artificial. It is not artificial because it is created by us; it is natural. And it is not intelligent because intelligence is an emergent property of organisms interacting with the environment and other organisms. It is a product of the Darwinian process of natural selection. The algorithm can walk and do things, but they are not intelligent by definition. If he were alive, Charles Darwin would have a heart attack over this.

Is it better to call it machine learning?

Machine learning, deep learning, and artificial intelligence are big terms that we have colloquially become accustomed to using, relating them to the human brain or any animal brain, to define things that we do with binary logic. Human intelligence is not binary. That's why it's an inappropriate name.

The creator of neural networks, Geoffrey Hinton, says he tries to simulate the structure of neurons to think about these algorithms.

He also makes a bunch of absurd comments.

He claimed that artificial intelligence is already ten times superior to human intelligence, which is absurd. We have these marketers in the technology field who claim things that seem true, but they don't have the evidence. He works with results. He talks about the speed at which he delivers answers, multiple languages.

The turtle is extremely intelligent. It's slow. But what we are trying to do is use market language to define what life does. The market wants things fast, efficient, with infinite profit and zero cost. Intelligence doesn't have that commitment. The intelligence of an organism is committed to making it survive as long as possible in a continuously changing environment. Just because a computer plays chess faster and beats a world champion doesn't mean it is intelligent. It is simply more efficient because chess is a game with predetermined rules. That computer cannot survive in Palmeiras Stadium during a game, it doesn't understand the reasons behind a fight because it doesn't have the capacity to generalize its intelligence.

The researcher from the Open Philanthropy Institute, Ajeya Cotra, estimated that in the current societal model, the human mind runs the risk of becoming obsolete by 2037 in terms of production for the labor market. Does that make sense?

It depends on what you define as production and obsolescence. There is a limit to digital logic. I just read a book by one of the top intellectuals in the field of AI, Michael Wildridge from the University of Oxford. It was published in 2021. In the book, he says: we know that there is a limit determined by non-computable phenomena, where there is no algorithm, no solvable mathematical formula with a program. However, he briefly mentions the most important thing in the book and comments that researchers don't pay much attention to it because they have too much to do.

But the human mind is filled with non-computable phenomena: intelligence, intuition, creativity, aesthetic sense, definitions of beauty, creativity – all of these are non-computable. What is the formula for beauty?

A young person posted on Twitter that her uncle was accused of plagiarism because a professor took a section of his work and asked if it had been done by ChatGPT for

ChatGPT. The platform is not designed to recognize if a text was created by artificial intelligence and always claims to be the author of any text.

In a way, ChatGPT is a big plagiarizer because it takes material created by many people, mixes it, and generates something it calls a new product, but in reality, it is largely influenced by the intellectual output of thousands and thousands of human beings. In the current modern capitalist system, artificial intelligence is a major marketing tool because it generates a complete inequality in the relationship with the workforce.

An employer can say, "I have an artificial intelligence application. If the worker doesn't accept the salary I am willing to pay, which is 10% of what they earn today, I will dismiss them and use the application." There is a whole ideology of replacing human labor, which cannot be done 100%, it's not possible.

Can we say that a more utilitarian thought is gaining ground in society?

That's the problem; it has nothing to do with the machine. What is happening is forcing human biology to follow market rules. Market rules are not divine; they are abstractions created by the human mind. What have they produced in the history of humanity? A tremendous income

distribution inequality. We have people spending money to dive and see the Titanic exploding in the middle of the ocean. If someone walks from Avenida Paulista to here, like I did, they will see tens of thousands of people dying of hunger on the streets. All of this is being ignored because these systems are convenient. They increase our productivity and our reach as human beings.

Are you more aligned with the view that these language models are more like statistical parrots? Absolutely. Deep learning is nothing more than neural networks with multiple layers, more layers, more neurons, and more connections between those layers. The brain does that too. However, it is impossible to simulate the biological mechanisms the brain uses to make decisions.

The brain consumes much less energy than AI supercomputers to deliver the same processing power. It is a process of optimization over millions of years. It's no coincidence that we descended from trees; it took 4 million years for us to start walking. It's a much more elaborate thing: 20% of the energy your body produces goes here [points to the head]. The energy of the brain can light up a lamp, more or less. It's an extremely optimized thing that has undergone drastic changes since life appeared on Earth. And it is not

computable. Alan Turing himself knew this, after proposing his thesis, he said: there are certain problems that my theoretical machine, which has now become the Turing machine and generated computers, will not be able to solve. And when I face this impasse, there is only one solution. I have to consult an oracle to make a decision. The oracle is a human being.

But within this competition between machines and humans, do you agree with the risks to the species mentioned by researchers and people in the technology industry? The risks are tremendous. These tools must be used under human supervision.

In the programming of an AI system, a person may request something without considering that the means to achieve the goal are undesirable. And what happens with the technology industry?

The risks are tremendous. These tools must be used under human supervision.

In programming an AI system, a person may request something without considering that the means to achieve the goal are undesirable. This is what happened with the computer HAL in Stanley Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey." Its mission was to reach a destination with the crew. They just forgot to mention that HAL couldn't kill the

crew. They overlooked the scenarios where the mission would be accomplished, but there would be no one left to witness it. When someone delegates a mission to something on their behalf, it won't be possible to offer that thing all the immediate restrictions due to evolution.

Can these mechanisms be useful in terms of research, like your studies in neuroscience?

I use neural networks to interpret patterns of real neural activity since the 1990s. Not the same networks as today, but simpler ones. It's a statistical method of pattern recognition.

These tools must be used under human supervision.

In the programming of an AI system, a person may request something without considering that the means to achieve the goal are undesirable. And what happens with the technology industry?

The risks are tremendous. These tools must be used under human supervision.

In the programming of an AI system, a person may request something without considering that the means to achieve the goal are undesirable. This is what happened with HAL, the computer in Stanley Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey." Its mission was to reach a destination with the crew. They just forgot to

mention that HAL couldn't kill the crew. They overlooked the scenarios where the mission would be complete, but there would be no one left to witness it. When someone delegates a mission to something on their behalf, it won't be possible to offer all the immediate restrictions that we have due to evolution to that thing.

Can these mechanisms be useful in terms of research, like your studies in neuroscience?

I use neural networks to interpret patterns of real neural activity since the 1990s. Not the same networks as today, but simpler ones. It's a statistical method of pattern recognition.

When someone delegates a mission to something on their behalf, it won't be possible to offer all the immediate restrictions that we have due to evolution to that thing.

Can these mechanisms be useful in terms of research, like your studies in neuroscience?

I use neural networks to interpret patterns of real neural activity since the 1990s. Not the same networks as today, but simpler ones. It's a statistical method of pattern recognition.

I don't agree with turning a statistical tool into a new God and building an entire religion around it, as is happening. I call it the church of technology.

https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/amp/tec/2023/07/ia-nao-e-inteligencia-e-sim-marketing-para-explorar-trabalho-humano-diz-nicolelis.shtml

[maxwell-grant]

What are your thoughts on Jekyll/Hyde and his archetype of the human periodically changing into a monster ?

Jekyll & Hyde was the 2nd horror story I read following Frankenstein, I got it off the same library and it always stuck very strongly with me even before I got into horror in general. I even dressed up as Jekyll/Hyde as a kid for a school fair by shredding a lab coat on one side and asking my sister to make-up claw gashes on my exposed arm and paint half of my face, although in hindsight I think I ended up looking more like Doctor Two-Face than Jekyll/Hyde, but I was 12 and didn't have any Victorian clothing to use so I had to make do. The first film project I tried doing at film school was intended to be a modern take on Jekyll & Hyde, and I didn't get much farther than a couple of discarded scripts

Much like Frankenstein, Mr Hyde as a character and a story is something that's kind of baked into everything I do artistically. And it's not just me, as even in pop culture itself, none of us can escape Mr Hyde. I would go so far as to argue Mr Hyde may be the single most significant character created by victorian fiction, if only by the sheer impact and legacy the character's had.

(Fan-art by guilhermefranco)

Part of what makes Mr Hyde such a powerful and lasting icon of pop culture is that the very premise of the book invites a personal reading that's gonna vary from person to person. Because everyone's familiar with the basic twist of the story, that it's a conflict of duality, of the good and evil sides, but everyone has a more personal idea of what those entail. Some people make the story more about class. A lot of readings laser-focus on sex and lust as the driving force, and there's also a lot of readings of Mr Hyde that tackle it to explore a more gendered perspective, and so forth.

I don't particularly take much notice of the Jekyll & Hyde adaptations partially because the novel's premise and themes have become baked so throughly into pop culture and explored in so many different and interesting ways, that I'm not particularly starving for good Jekyll & Hyde adaptations the way I am for Dracula and Frankenstein. The Fredric March film in particular is one that orbits my head less because of the film itself (although I do recommend it), but because of one specific scene, and that's when Jekyll first transforms into Hyde on screen.

Out of all the things they could have shown him doing right that second, they instead took the time to show him enjoying the rain.

Just Hyde taking off his hat and letting it all cascade on his face with this sheer enthusiasm like he's never been to the rain before, never enjoyed it before, and now that he's free from being Jekyll, he gets to enjoy life like he never has before. It's such an oddly humanizing moment to put amidst a horror movie, in the scene where you're ostensibly introducing the monster to the audience, and it makes such a stark contrast to the rest of the film where Hyde is completely irredeemable, but I think it's that contrast that makes the film's take on Hyde work so well even with it's diverging from the source material, even if I don't particularly like in general interpretations of Hyde that are focused on a sexual aspect.

Because one, it understands that Jekyll was fundamentally a self-serving coward and not a paragon of goodness, and two, it also understands one of the things that makes Hyde scary: He wants what all of us want, to live and be happy. He's happy when he leaves the lab and dances around in the rain like a giddy child, he's happy when he goes to places Jekyll couldn't dream of showing up, he's happy as a showgirl-abusing sexual predator. Hyde is all wants, all the time, and there's not that much difference between his wants, his domineering possessiveness, and the likes exhibited by Muriel's father and Jekyll's own within the very same film, which also works to emphasize one of the other ideas of the original story, that Edward Hyde doesn't come from nowhere. That no monster is closer to humanity than Mr Hyde, because he is us. He is the thing that Jekyll refused to take responsability for until it was too late.

(Art by LorenzoMastroianni)

While many of the ideas that defined Mr Hyde had already been explored in pop culture beforehand, Hyde popularized and redefined many of them in particular by modernizing the idea. He was the werewolf, the doppelganger, The Player On The Other Side, except he came from within. He was not transformed by circumstance, he made himself that way, and the elixir merely brought out something already inside his soul. To acknowledge that he's there is to acknowledge that he is you, and to not do that is to either lose to him, or perish. Hyde was there to address both the rot settling in Victorian society as well as grappling concerns over Darwinian heritage, of the realization that man has always had the beast inside of him (it's no accident that Hyde's main method of murder is by clubbing people to death with his cane like a caveman).

I've already argued on my post about Tarzan that the Wild Man archetype, beginning with Enkidu of The Epic of Gilgamesh, is the in-between man and beast, between superhero and monster, and that Mr Hyde is an essential component of the superhero's trajectory, as the creature split in between. That stories about dual personalities, doppelgangers, the duality of the soul, the hero with a day job and an after dark career, you can pinpoint Hyde as a turning point in how all of these solidified gradually in pop culture. And I've argued otherwise that The Punisher, for all that his image and narrative points otherwise, is ultimately just as much of a superhero as the rest of them, even if no one wants to admit it, drawing a parallel between The Punisher and Mr Hyde. And he's far from the only modern character that can invite this kind of parallel.

The idea of a regular person periodically or permanently transforming into, or revealing itself to be, something extraordinary and fantastic and scary, grappling with the divide it causes in their soul, and questions whether it's a new development or merely the truest parts of themselves coming to light at last, and the effects this transformation has for good and bad alike. The idea of a potent, dangerous, unpredictable enemy who ultimately is you, or at least a facet of you and what you can do. That these are bound to destroy each other if not reconciled with or overcome.

You know what are my thoughts on the archetype of "human periodically changing into a monster" are? Look around you and you're gonna see the myriad ways The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde's themes have manifested in the century and a half since the story's release. Why it shouldn't be any surprise whatsoever that Mr Hyde has become such an integral part of pop culture, in it's heroes and monsters alike. Why we can never escape Mr Hyde, just as Jekyll never could.

It is Nixon himself who represents that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character that almost every country in the world has learned to fear and despise. Our Barbie-doll president, with his Barbie-doll wife and his boxful of Barbie-doll children is also America's answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde.

He speaks for the Werewolf in us; the bully, the predatory shyster who turns into something unspeakable, full of claws and bleeding string-warts on nights when the moon comes too close… - Hunter S. Thompson

There is a scene in the movie Pulp Fiction that explains almost every terrible thing happening in the news today. And it's not the scene where Ving Rhames shoots that guy's dick off. It's the part where the hit man played by John Travolta is talking about how somebody vandalized his car, and says this:

"Boy, I wish I could've caught him doing it. I'd have given anything to catch that asshole doing it. It'd been worth him doing it, just so I could've caught him doing it."

That last sentence is something everyone should understand about mankind. After all, the statement is completely illogical -- revenge is supposed to be about righting a wrong. But he wants to be wronged, specifically so he'll have an excuse to get revenge. We all do.

Why else would we love a good revenge movie? We sit in a theater and watch Liam Neeson's daughter get kidnapped. We're not sad about it, because we know he's a badass and he finally has permission to be awesome. Not a single person in that theater was rooting for it to all be an innocent misunderstanding. We wanted Liam to be wronged, because we wanted to see him kick ass. It's why so many people walk around with vigilante fantasies in their heads.

Long, long ago, the people in charge figured out that the easiest and most reliable way to bind a society together was by controlling and channeling our hate addiction. That's the reason why seeing hurricane wreckage on the news makes us mumble "That's sad" and maybe donate a few bucks to the Red Cross hurricane fund, while 9/11 sends us into a decade-long trillion-dollar rage that leaves the Middle East in flames.

The former was caused by wind; the latter was caused by monsters. The former makes us kind of bummed out; the latter gets us high.

It's easy to blame the news media for pumping us full of stories of mass shootings and kidnapped children, but that's stopping one step short of the answer: The media just gives us what we want. And what we want is to think we're beset on all sides by monsters.

The really popular stories will always feature monsters that are as different from us as possible. Think about Star Wars -- what real shithead has ever referred to himself as being on "the dark side"? In Harry Potter and countless fantasy universes, you have wizards working in "black magic" and the "dark arts." Can you imagine a scientist developing some technology for chemical weapons or invasive advertising openly thinking of what he does as "dark science"? Can you imagine a real world leader naming his headquarters "The Death Star" or "Mount Doom"?

Of course not. But we need to believe that evil people know they're evil, or else that would open the door to the fact that we might be evil without knowing it. I mean, sure, maybe we've bought chocolate that was made using child slaves or driven cars that poisoned the air, but we didn't do it to be evil -- we were simply doing whatever we felt like and ignoring the consequences. Not like Hitler and the bankers who ruined the economy and those people who burned the kittens -- they wake up every day intentionally dreaming up new evils to create. It's not like Hitler actually thought he was saving the world.

So no matter how many times you vote to cut food stamps and then use the money to buy a boat, you could still be way worse. You could, after all, be one of those murdering / lazy / ignorant / greedy / oppressive monsters that you know the world is full of, and that only your awesome moral code prevents you from turning into at any moment. And those monsters are out there.

They have to be. Because otherwise, we're the monsters - 5 Reasons Humanity Desperately Wants Monsters To Be Real, by Jason Pargin

(Two-Face sequence comes from the end of Batman Annual #14: Eye of the Beholder)

For good or bad, Hyde has become omnipresent. He's a part of our superheroes, he's a part of our supervillains, he's in our monsters. He lives and prattles in our ears, sometimes we need him to survive, and sometimes we become Hyde even when we don't need to, because our survival instincts or base cruelties or desperation brings out the worst in us. Sometimes we can beat him, and sometimes he's not that bad. Sometimes we do need to appease him and listen to what he says, about us and the world around us. And sometimes we need to do so specifically to prove him wrong and beat him again.

But he never, ever goes away, as he so accurately declares in the musical

Do you really think That I would ever let you go...

Do you think I'd ever set you free?

If you do, I'm sad to say It simply isn't so

You will never get away FROM MEEEEEE

(Art by Akreon on Artstation)

[wubbalubbadubdubthings]

Meaninglessness of Life

My favourite scene from Rick and Morty about the question of our purpose is, not with morty and summer, but where rick builds the robot, who then asks: "what is my purpose" and then rick replys "you pass butter" and then the robot looks down at him self and says "oh my god..." with disappointment. I think this shows that it is a good thing that we humans live for no absoute purpose. I mean, just image if there was a purpose of our exsistence, it would completely crush our individuality, it would make us unfree and make all other efforts completely futile and irrelevant. If you look at space and deeptime, there is also no purpose to be found: The universe will end in dark coldness, everything will be forgotten, millions of stars just simply shine for no purpose. In human history, there have been many wars fought with millions of deaths and much suffering, and almost most of it is already forgotten in the everyday life of all other humans who are alive. Asking for a purpose of life is like asking for the purpose of a mountain. We can explain of what matreial compounds the mountain is made off, how high it is, what natural events led to its exsistence but it would be ricidulous to ask for a meaning of that mountain. Just the same with life: darwinian evolution through natural selection and random gene mutation, best described in professor richard dawkins books, explains the HOW question, but makes the WHY question completely absurd and irrelevant, just as asking what colour jealousy has - the fact that you can phrase this question in the english language, does not make it a valid question. We are pattern seeking animals, that's what our minds demand, and many people fall into this trap. Now, this conclusion seems to take something away from us and it does: It removes an egocentrical view of life. That means we are bound to one another, and because there is no absolute purpose to our exsistence, that means that we can make our purpose ourselves. Thus, everything we do, think and create is meaningfull (for us atleast, and maybe even others). So it would be the best to simply be, have sex, Increase human and animal well being, be empathetic, study science, try to progress humankinds wealth/technology and survival in the future, read intellectual literture, listen to great music, look at gorgeous art, eat the most delicious food, work hard to achieve your passions and goals, educate and enlighten your fellow humans, enjoy life and try to undertand not just everything around you, but yourself. This makes the shackles of an ignorant, warcausing and ridiculous superstition like religion, which has been invented 2000 years ago by iron age peasents who didnt even knew the earth rotates around the sun, objectively wrong and morally false. The scriptures clames are untrue and have peached hate, oppression, preducise and ignorance for thousands of years. Free yourself from this insane mass delusion and dont be a blind sheep.

[autolenaphilia]

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Illustration by S.G. Hulme Beaman to a 1930 edition of the story

Stevenson’s short novel Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (there was no “the” in the original title) is one of those few stories that is almost buried under a myriad of adaptations and its outright memetic status in popular culture, with “Jekyll and Hyde” being a common figure of speech. Frankenstein, The Phantom of the Opera, and Sherlock Holmes are a few of that select group.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s original story is however quite different. For one thing it is structured like a mystery. The bulk of the plot is the main character Utterson investigating the villain Edward Hyde and his mysterious connection to Utterson’s friend Dr. Jekyll. That Hyde actually is Jekyll, transformed via a potion he invented is the surprising reveal that comes at the end.

Leroux’s Phantom is actually a good point of comparison, because that is another case where the original book is a mystery, but the solution is so well-known nowadays due to adaptations that make it the premise of their story that pretty much all readers know about it before they start reading it.

So modern readers will probably lose out of some of the suspense, mystery and unease that was the original intention of tale. When Utterson learns that Hyde is able to freely use Jekyll’s money, he first suspects some kind of blackmail situation. “...an honest man paying through the nose for some of the capers of his youth.“ What those “capers” might have been is never specified, although the Victorian reader might suspect things like a same-sex love affair or whatever that was unacceptable for a gentleman of the time to have done.

It introduces the theme of hypocrisy and double-life that goes through the novel, and that the famous solution is a fantastic depiction of. It was of course immanent through Victorian morality. The rich men that ruled Victorian Britain could visit prostitutes and gamble by night while condemning those activities by day, while those same men also believed it was poor people’s lack morality that made them poor.

Furthermore, Victorian ideology like the modern Western one was built on a number of dichotomies between humanity and animal, and civilization vs barbarism. These ideas was the foundation for Victorian religion, morality and colonialism. But these dualities started breaking down. Darwinian evolution broke down the distinction between human and animal. Psychology started acknowledging that mankind had “animalistic” urges that could only be controlled by repression and social pressure, culminating in Freudianism.

This created a kind of cultural anxiety over civilized people reverting to “animalistic barbarism”. Their propensity for this has been exaggerated, but the Victorian desire for a strict public morality was due to this anxiety, a need to control barbaric and animalistic urges. Of course the dominant class blamed everyone but themselves for any potential cultural decline. The concept of degeneration was created referring to things like race-mixing. And the concept of eugenics was born to prevent the poor and people of colour from breeding to prevent degeneration.

Popular culture of course gave expression and criticism to these concerns. The island of Dr. Moreau is a good example and Jekyll and Hyde is another. A Victorian gentleman turning into the animalistic and lust-driven man (Hyde even looks simian) was a type of horror story that spoke to the Victorian mood.

The popular idea of Jekyll and Hyde is that they are two different personalities, and that Jekyll is a good person and Hyde is evil, but that is too simplistic. Jekyll admits he carries everything that is Hyde inside himself and they are ultimately the same person. The urge to do the immoral things that he has got too strong and is what lead him to create the draught. Any separation of what Hyde does and Jekyll is impossible. Jekyll is responsible for whatever he does as Hyde.

The foremost benefit of the draught for Jekyll/Hyde is that Hyde has a different appearance to Jekyll, thus enabling Jekyll/Hyde to do whatever he likes without it reflecting on his normal life as Jekyll. He is the quintessential respectable gentleman doing shameful things in secret that was common in the Victorian era, he merely has a fantastical method of disguising it.

Of course what those immoral things consist of is never really explained and largely left to the reader’s imagination. Hyde definitely commits acts of violence, but there is the implication the Hyde persona were primarily for other unspecified urges. They were possibly sexual, like perhaps visiting prostitutes, or having same-sex affairs or some other “queer” desires in the broadest sense (the novel can easily be given a queer reading in the modern sense, making Jekyll/Hyde more sympathetic). Those implications are not shocking to the modern reader or depending on you read them, even immoral or criminal, but certainly were to the Victorians.

So despite the solution of the book’s mystery being well-known, Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde remains an interesting read. Stevenson’s great prose and storytelling skills create a strong gothic atmosphere. It is rich with thematic potential and is still a fascinating depiction of Victorian British culture.

[aion-rsa]

The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror XXXII Is a Gorey Affair

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This The Simpsons review contains spoilers.

The Simpsons Season 33 Episode 3

Every year I wait with wonder and excitement for The Simpsons’ Halloween episode. Regardless of the season, it is always the best dark offering. The day of reckoning may be upon us, because if “Treehouse of Horror XXXII” is the high point of season 33, we are doomed. Possibly as a species. This is a recurring theme in several of the sequences, but the joke is on us, and not even over our heads.

“Treehouse of Horror XXXII” proclaims to be the first of the annual episodes to contain five segments instead of three. They usually have two good ones and a lame one in the middle, Homer complains in the episode. But the only real difference this year, is they put titles on the intro and outro, and added a TikTok video.

The opening sequence is a takeoff on the children’s classic Bambi, but this one has a far happier ending. “In Disney cartoons, all parents die,” the accompanying song promises as a Darwinian paradise eats itself up. Deer are indeed herbivores, as the one Homer plays points out. This is a very special day because for the next 24 hours every hunter’s name is Herb. That’s the spiciest line of the evening, and should be savored, because the overall episode does not satisfy the hunger for comedy or terror. It also acts as foreshadowing to “The Nightmare on Elm Tree,” which also needs more fertilizer.

“Bong Joon Ho’s ‘This Side of Parasite’” is a parody of the 2019 South Korean movie Parasite. The Simpson family have all taken jobs at the mansion of the local acting legend Rainier Wolfcastle. His living room isn’t flooded, like the Simpsons’ basement apartment, but his cellar is filled with the families of former workers with “the poor person smell,” and brimming with class resentment. Maggie takes it out on the lawn as the manor’s groundskeeper in an extremely silly cutaway, adding to the character’s surreal mythology.

When Wolfcastle goes on vacation, the Simpsons treat the house like it’s their own, only to incur the wrath of Kirk and Luann Van Housen, who formerly worked the estate, along with all the local parasites who can fit in a boiler room. Class warfare is always funny when we have Mr. Burns to toss around but, while the sequence makes the same point as the film it’s based on, and more succinctly, it doesn’t deliver nearly as many laughs.

“Nightmare on Elm Tree” has its roots in The Day of the Triffids, but branches out into the ultimate environmental terrorist fantasy. It is very self-conscious of its ecological conscience, and actually adheres to the opening segment’s claim about national herbivore day. The trees also look for a replacement for the name Arbor Day, with diminishing returns. The teased story about the little girl with potato bugs in her head has more promise.

While The Simpsons finds unexpected horrors in Christmas tree farms, it appears the trees watch Parasite and unionize. The sequence references Guardians of the Galaxy, and The Wizard of Oz, and contains guest appearances from Little Shop of Horrors’ Audrey, and NBA center Tree Rollins.

The Simpsons dares to speak for the trees in “Nightmare on Elm Tree,” but save the Dr. Seuss couplets for the “Poetic Interlude,” the best segment of the evening. In the episode Vincent Price (voiced by Maurice LaMarche) reads to Maggie from the children’s book “The Telltale Bart,” which was apparently illustrated by Edward Gorey. The sequence is a nod to a bit in the very first “Treehouse of Horror” where Lisa reads Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” to Maggie and Bart. The poem is as gruesome as it is grisly, and family memories get dismembered over a calendar year.

Vincent Price has made quite a few appearances on The Simpsons. He is an iconic figure who has played iconic roles. One of these was as the villain Egghead on the 1960s TV campfest Batman. Price licensed an egg painting kit in the season 10 episode “Sunday Cruddy Sunday.” While the voice here is only vaguely similar, it is very comforting to witness Price’s resurrection.

“The Ringer” is a parody of the horror film The Ring as reimagined on TikTok. The kids at Springfield Elementary have been sharing watches which causes the viewer to die in seven days. Lisa learns about the dangers when the twins Sherri and Terri tell her about their killer birthday party, which she wasn’t invited to. Interestingly, the entire team Lisa puts together to stop the killings are people just like the villainous TikTok influencer. Mopey Mary was an outcast in life, and is inundated with them in life’s bitter afterparty. The ending is far sadder than it is frightening, as the villain ghosts the ones who are trying to help, and the audience longs to join her in the long and lonely trip down the abandoned well. Fully knowing, we are the monster.

“Treehouse of Horror XXXII” was directed by Matthew Faughnan, and written by John Frink. They save the last words for Kang and Kodos, just before the end titles run. The two aliens are miffed that they are only stuck into the last frame, and when one says he’d like to drown his sorrows in the blood of dead babies, the other asks if there hasn’t already been enough blood in the episode. There hasn’t. It barely nicks a vein. The humor doesn’t cut deep enough.

There are a lot of low-ball jokes here, but nothing which really slices. This has nothing to do with cancel culture, heightened sensitivities, or political stances, all of which should be exempt in the creation of any horror comedy satire. It is because the jokes, which come rapidly, are only lobbed. They should be spit balls, thrown with malicious intent, and close enough on the inside to make the batter back off in fear. Instead, the jokes walk, and not in a good zombie way, but more like the most recent episodes of The Walking Dead.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Halloween will be a little less fun this year. “Treehouse of Horror XXXII” feels like Mr. Burns put a rock in our pumpkins and saved the candy for his hounds.

The post The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror XXXII Is a Gorey Affair appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[thezodiaczone]

Gemini Compatibility

GEMINI + ARIES (MARCH 21 - APRIL 19) ♥♥♥♥ You're two high-strung, passionate Fire signs who both like to be the Alpha dominant. As such, you'll need to toss the hot potato back and forth, submitting to the other's rule—at times through gritted teeth. Acquiescence may not come naturally, but it builds a necessary trust. Aries is a paradox: you're the zodiac's infant (its first sign) and its gallant hero (you're ruled by warrior Mars). You want to save the world and be saved at the same time. You'll need to occasionally allow yourself to play wounded knight or damsel in distress, and let your mate charge to your rescue. However, don't spiral into neurotic helplessness or analysis paralysis. Nobody can beat a topic to death quite like you can—but that's what therapists are for, Aries. Neither one of you can be saddled with the emotional care and feeding of an adult baby. You're too independent for that. When your problems gain too much mental gravitas, it's time to move—literally. Disperse your Martian angst and anger with lots of physical exertion. As fellow adventurers, you travel well together. Try snowboarding, exotic bike tours, Costa Rican rainforest expeditions. Passionate sex is another antidote to prickly feelings for your high-touch sign. Like Aries Hugh Hefner, you have a champion libido (and an awesome sense of entitlement). Some Aries couples may mutually agree to flex the terms of your monogamy, although the jealousy it stirs might not be worth the trouble.

GEMINI + TAURUS (APRIL 20 - MAY 20) The stubborn Bull locks horns with the willful Ram, nostrils flaring, heads bowed in determination. So begins a fierce but fiery courtship, as splashy and menacing as a Pamplona stampede. Aggression, however uncivilized, is part our Darwinian natures. It certainly is for your signs—who possess an arsenal of steamrolling tactics, from doe-eyed charm to old-fashioned philistine strong-arming. No weak-willed mate will survive your natural selection process. Nor should he. Neither one of you feels safe in the arms of a mate who can't protect you. Thus, your initial faceoff is simply a warning shot: Show me your strength so I can trust you. Once the fanfare is over, you make a great team—like British pop royalty Victoria (Aries) and David (Taurus) Beckham.

As tight as two mafiosos, you like to dress up and flaunt your natural superiority over the rest of the animal kingdom. The deal is sweet for both of you. Taurus gets an attractive show pony and a lusty mate to satisfy his Earthy libido. Aries has a lifelong provider and benefactor to supply creative freedom and endless playtime. Issues can arise if Taurus grows too possessive or tries to tame independent Aries. Indulgent Taurus will need to remain active to keep pace with the energetic Ram (read: lay off the nightly steak frites and vino). You both crave attention, but don't go looking for it outside the relationship, unless you want a real showdown. Like two tots in a nursery, you share a favorite word: Mine!

GEMINI + GEMINI (MAY 21 - JUNE 20) We'll spare you the joke about there being four people in this relationship, mainly because it's an understatement. Like twin kaleidoscopes, you're each a fractal pinwheel of personalities that re-pattern at the slightest twist. Good news: versatility is a virtue in Gemini-land. Monogamy, not always easy for your restless sign, becomes a non-issue when your mate embodies more personas than Sybil. Dyed-in-the-wool dilettantes, you never run out of things to discuss. Clever Gemini rules communication: your ideas come fast and furious, and you love to debate. Intellectual tussling is a turn-on, although you must take care not to talk over each other. Remind yourself: listening skills are just as important as a well-crafted sentence. The pop psychology technique of "mirroring" (listening, then reflecting back your mate's communication) can be shockingly effective. Your main challenge is making time for each other, since you're both forever juggling any number of jobs, businesses, classes, hobbies, social circles and whatnot. Gemini is a collector; your home can resemble a natural disaster zone, piled to the rafters with books, newspapers, DVD sets from your favorite screenwriter, old-school vinyl, vintage costume jewelry. Forget couples' counseling: a cleaning service or storage unit can save this marriage. (Thank God for the Internet and YouTube.) With your wonder-twin powers, you can start a creative business together. Just make sure to hire a team of Earth or Water signs who can finish what you start, since you'll both leave a trail of loose ends. Light the spark, and let others keep the flame.

GEMINI + CANCER (JUNE 21 - JULY 22) Cancer is an emotional Water sign who loves to nest and bond; Gemini is a restless Air sign who prefers intellect over sentiment. You have similar interests, different temperaments. In many cases, this works out anyway. You both adore culture, the more obscure the better. You love to discover new bands, read novels by controversial authors, gorge yourselves at the jewel of a restaurant tucked into an undiscovered neighborhood. You bond over TV shows and bargain-hunting for treasures (you both have a thrifty streak). No flea market, tag sale or eBay store is safe from your scouring, and your home can resemble a bizarre gallery of antiques and modern gadgetry. The tricky part is when you lapse into astrological auto-pilot. Cancer is the zodiac's mother, who heaps on affection, nurturing and well-intended care. To Gemini, this can feel like clinginess and smothering. Gemini is the zodiac's fickle tween, waffling between bouts of dependence and asserting autonomy. There will be moments when Gemini greedily laps up Cancer's doting, and others when mama bird is roughly pushed away with a sarcastic, heart-piercing insult. Cancer must work hard not to take these moments personally—otherwise, the Crab lashes back with a below-the-belt barb, and it turns ugly. Remember, Crabcake: it's not you that Gemini is rejecting, it's your overprotection. Get a pet to dote on instead. Gemini needs space, Cancer needs reassurance. Memorize this formula.

GEMINI + LEO (JULY 23 - AUGUST 22) ♥♥♥♥ You make great friends, since you both love to gab about everything from the Times to the tabloids, Ferragamo to flea markets. Conversations are fever-pitched and fascinating; you're both well-versed culture hounds. Romantically, the temperature may be tepid, though. Leo is a Fire sign ruled by the blazing Sun—the regal Lion wants to be consumed by passion, heat, devotion, attention. Gemini is an Air sign driven by speedy, information-gathering Mercury. Listening to The Leo Monologues, which span from political diatribes to emotional melodramas, is sheer torture. When Gemini dares to interrupt the King or Queen, suggesting that s/he actually GET TO THE POINT, hell breaks loose. Leo must learn to take Gemini's tough love and unvarnished feedback in stride, not as an ego assault. Unconventional Gem should assent to traditional romantic gestures: red roses, the Tiffany bauble du jour. Learn to adapt. Gemini rules the hands, and will need to put them on affection-hungry Leo more often, since the Lion is greatly reassured by touch. And yes, as an Air sign, Gemini will need to blow a little smoke you-know-where; Leo can be a nightmare without regular doses of praise. Gush and flatter—it won't be the first insincere thing to pass through Gemini's lips. Leo should keep a battery of patient friends on speed dial. Gemini may have multiple personalities, but as a romantic partner, s/he can't be your de facto shrink, psychic hotline, career coach, parent and social director. Spread the demands around.

GEMINI + VIRGO (AUGUST 23 - SEPTEMBER 22) Gemini and Virgo share a common ruler: speedy Mercury, who zips around the Sun gathering light and information, then disseminating it to the masses. You're both natural communicators with a thousand ideas and opinions. Romance is a cerebral affair for your intelligent signs. Conversations spark into lively debates; asking each other "What do you think?" is akin to foreplay. Although Virgo is a more staid Earth sign and Gemini is a breezy Air sign, you share a "mutable" quality. That means you're flexible, and you can adapt to each other's quirks. Good thing, since you each have a bevy of rigid, borderline obsessive-compulsive habits. (Virgo's can include folding underwear into identical, neat little squares; Gemini's usually involve hoarding, starting new hobbies or impulse shopping.) You both love control, though Gemini is loath to admit this, while Virgo flies the flag. At times, you may wrestle for dominance, a habit you'll need to overcome for this match to work. Virgo's nagging can take the wind out of Gemini's sails; Gemini's sketchily researched half-truths set off Virgo's trust alarm. But combine the depth of Virgo's cautious planning with the breadth of Gemini's boundless curiosity, and you've got the total package. You can make great parents, too, since your styles tend to complement and you'll divide up roles with ease. Gemini can help serious Virgo lighten up, and responsible Virgo can help ground the easily distracted Twin.

GEMINI + LIBRA (SEPTEMBER 23 - OCTOBER 22) ♥♥♥♥ You're compatible Air signs with silver tongues and gilded wings, a magical match indeed. Libra is a pretty pixie and Gemini is an impish sprite. Your meeting rouses the fairies and gnomes, stirring up mischief in your midst. You love to mingle and schmooze, and you'll chatter like two little tree monkeys, gabbing a mile a minute. But will the breathless excitement last? Getting past the superficial romance stage is the challenge. You're both so indecisive that nailing down a commitment is like catching moonbeams in a jar. That said, the illusionary quality of your relationship is a magic you both enjoy. It's when life becomes too real that you vanish in a pinch of enchanted dust. To make this last, you'll need to dip your toes into the murky morass of intimacy, then learn to swim. Money can become an issue between you, particularly the way you spend it. Gemini is ruled by intellectual Mercury, and would rather invest in college degrees, a film collection, enriching travel. Libra is governed by beauty and pleasure-loving Venus, and splashes out on art, couture, custom suits, spas. You'll need separate wings for Gemini's books and Libra's handbag or shoe collection. You have different approaches to romance, too. Libra loves a lengthy courtship with all the trimmings, but Gemini bristles at picking up too many tabs, especially with Libra's extravagant taste. You'll probably need to keep separate accounts to avoid meddling in each other's purchase habits. Cut up the credit cards, too—many happy relationships can be destroyed by debt. Don't let that happen to you.

GEMINI + SCORPIO (OCTOBER 23 - NOVEMBER 21) You live on completely different planes, which either turns you off or utterly fascinates you. Both of you are accustomed to reading people like flimsy comic books, then tossing them aside. Here, your X-ray vision fails to penetrate each other's psychic shields. Mutable Gemini is the shape-shifting Twin, home to a traveling cast of personalities. Intense Scorpio is shrouded in mystery and bottomless layers of complexity. Being baffled leaves you without the upper hand, but it also stokes your libido. You're piercingly smart signs who love a good puzzle—this is your romantic Rubik's cube. The challenge sets off sexual dynamite. You tease each other with cat-and-mouse evasions, neither of you making your attraction obvious. This prickles your insecurities, daring you to strive for the other's unbroken gaze. No two signs are as quietly obsessive as yours! There will be frustrating moments, too. You're both prone to depressive spells, and swing from giddiness to unreachable shutdown. Clever mind games edge on cruel or callow, breaking the trust that Scorpio needs. At times, airy Gemini may not be emotional or sensual enough for watery Scorpio; in turn, the Scorpion's emotional and physical passion can be overwhelming to Gemini. However, if you combine your strengths, you'll go far. Gemini is dilettante and a trivia collector who's always got a pocketful of creative ideas. Instinct-driven Scorpio rules details and research—this sign hones in like a laser and masters his chosen field. Whether it's starting a family or running a business, you can be an indefatigable team, with Gemini playing the rowdy ringmaster and Scorpio running the show from behind the scenes.

GEMINI + SAGITTARIUS (NOVEMBER 22 - DECEMBER 21) ♥♥♥♥ You're opposite signs that actually have much more in common than this label suggests. Gemini rules the so-called "lower mind": common sense, reasoning, facts, hard data and intellect. Sagittarius governs the "higher mind": wisdom, philosophy, consciousness, ethics, metaphysics. Together, you find sweet neurological nirvana. You're both restless adventurers who hunger for knowledge and experience. With Gemini's curiosity and Sag's nomadic nature, you get antsy in commitments unless there's a lot of excitement and variety. Boredom is simply not an option for your signs, and you're both involved in a billion projects. Scheduling issues are your biggest hurdle, but for true love, you allow nothing to interfere. Take globe-trotting Sagittarius Brad Pitt and Gemini Angelina Jolie, who traipse the continents with their ever-growing brood. As best friends and playmates, they make their own rules about love and family—and you will, too. Conventional coupling holds zero interest for your signs. Your main difference is in disposition. Air sign Gemini is cooler and distant compared to Sagittarius, harder to read emotionally. The fiery Archer has a hot temper and wears his heart on his sleeve. Still, you make each other laugh; you're both clever, entrepreneurial and quirky. You do best with a common goal that's a thousand times bigger than yourselves, and you'll dream up many. However, you may need Brangelina-sized paychecks to fund your lofty visions. Who has time to consider the bottom line when you're focused on reaching the top? Take time to consider the practicalities before leaping off the cliff. Knowing you, you'll jump anyway.

GEMINI + CAPRICORN (DECEMBER 22 - JANUARY 19) A metaphor for this match: a music producer combines a soulful 1970s classic (Capricorn) with funky electronic hooks (Gemini) and delivers a mashup that's either a mess or a chart-topping hit. You couldn't be any more different if you tried, yet you can really benefit from each other's natural resources. Gemini is ruled by speedy Mercury, the lightning-fast trickster who speaks in silver-tongued half truths. Capricorn's overlord is Saturn, the cautious, conservative planetary patriarch, who only trusts that which stands the test of time. Gemini is versatile and restless, like a fusebox with a million criss-crossed wires. Capricorn is the dutiful ox who carries the yoke and plows the field, rarely diverging from routine. While Capricorn's dogged consistency and family loyalty can frustrate Gemini ("How can you let these people walk all over you?" Gemini asks, referring to Cap's elderly parents), it also grounds the scattered Twins. Gemini is Capricorn's one-man circus, keeping the Goat amused and entertained, adding color to his monochromatic world. You both have a lusty, experimental side, too. The magic really appears when you get physical, which happens fast, since your sexual attraction is intense. In fact, Capricorn is one of the few signs that can spike Gemini's jealousy. There are so many people who rely on sturdy, supportive Cap, and Gemini doesn't like to compete for the spotlight. To make this work, Gemini will have to accept that Capricorn's loyalty extends to family and lifelong friends. Stoic Cap will need to show a little more emotion, since impish Gemini needs to know he can get under Capricorn's skin. It will take time to work out the kinks, but the erotic tet-a-tets will be worth the trouble.

GEMINI + AQUARIUS (JANUARY 20 - FEBRUARY 18) This match of compatible Air signs can feel a bit like high school romance—teasing, texting, movie dates with jumbo popcorn and licentious groping during the previews. You bring out each other's breezy, buoyant spirits, and that's a plus. You'll bond over TV shows, favorite sci-fi novels and superheroes, obscure philosophers, music. With your clever comebacks and verbal repartee, you could take a comedy act on the road. Although you can both be overly cerebral at times, you prefer laughter and light conversation to emotional melodrama. Eventually, though, you need to get out of the shallow end of the pool. Intimacy is a challenge for your signs. We're talking true intimacy—being caught with your pants down and no clue how to get them back up. Telling each other your entire life stories in monologue form (which could have happened on the first date) doesn't count. You must soldier through the post-infatuation "awkward phase," or you'll end up feeling like buddies. That would be a shame, as you can make excellent life partners and playmates. The biggie: you'll both need to give up fibs and lies—particularly lies of omission. You're excellent storytellers and politicos, gifted at crafting a spin to fit your agenda. However, the naked truth is the only way out of the Matrix. Though it may topple your PR-friendly public image, it's a necessary risk you must take to build the character and depth of a lasting commitment.

GEMINI + PISCES (FEBRUARY 19 - MARCH 20) You're both dual signs: Gemini is the Twins, and Pisces is symbolized by two Fish swimming in opposite directions. You're pop psychology's poster children for commitment-phobia. Are you in or are you out? It depends on the day, the mood, the cosmic alignment. Obviously, this is no way to run a relationship—but wait. Here's a golden chance to peer into love's looking glass and see your own shadowy Id mirrored back. Yes, your psyches and hang-ups are as bizarre as Alice's rabbit-hole tumble into Wonderland. Pisces, you really can be as needy, emotionally exhausting and manipulative as Gemini says. Gemini, you are indeed capable of being a double-talking, evasive ice-tyrant with a heart like polished marble. And…so what? If you can actually own your dark sides—which we all have—you're also capable of spreading tremendous light. You must negotiate your differences with transparent honesty, though. Pisces is an emotional Water sign; Gemini is an intellectual Air sign. Unless you balance the proportions, Gemini drowns in Pisces' undertow and the zodiac's Mermaid suffocates from breathing too much oxygen. Gemini must strive to connect emotionally, and Pisces will need to lighten up. Perennial dissatisfaction is also a killer. Don't say you want something, then refuse to be happy when your partner provides it. Gratitude is an intimate act: it requires you to acknowledge that your partner can reach you, a vulnerable place. Two words to save your relationship: "Thank you" and "You're right."

[claudinei-de-jesus]

(The Communist Recipe for the Destruction of the Family)

In our last article, we tried to investigate the roots of communist hatred of the family, at least in terms of its theoretical foundation and to demonstrate, as far as possible, the weaknesses of that same support. In the present work, we will be concerned with the advancement of such an ideology over homeland law.

Engels' view (we repeat again, relying almost entirely on the American anthropologist Lewis Morgan) has of human history reveals much of what the Communist movement would become. Since private property and the family gradually formed as Darwinian evolution pushed human groups towards civilization, the obvious conclusion is that, being a construction of society (and, I add: of oppressive society), so it's possible that we can get rid of both. If neither is natural to man, then it can be discarded. And, in the view of Marx's Sancho Pança, they will inevitably be, because the dialectical movements of history will lead us without question to the next stage of our social development: communism.

Now, Engels (again relying on Morgan) claims that primitive societies were all communist. So, we all started from primeval communism, we moved away from it for the sin of the accumulation of wealth fomented within families and to communism we will now return by revolution. Communism is the starting and ending point of history. Alpha and omega; the beginning and the end of our journey. Engels manages to unite, in a single explanation of history, Hobbes and Rousseau: the good primitive savage who once walked here will, in fact, once again inhabit the land; however, this will happen with a little help from Leviathan.

It is not difficult to perceive, in this ideological view, something messianic; it is as if the Christian narrative of the Fall and the Redemption had been immanentized and projected in history. The salvation of men, however, does not come from the cross of humanity's new saviors; rather, it comes from the revolution of the proletariat, the last class and the one that will redeem us by shedding not its own blood, but that of its oppressors. The emotional appeal that such speech awakens in the common militant is, therefore, something similar to a religious appeal, and it is not surprising that many communists, even if they do not believe in life after death, are willing to sacrifice theirs for the advent of a society free from all evil and weeping. But, the advent of this paradise requires, in the first place, the destruction of the family. As Kate Millett, a famous radical American feminist, pointed out in her reference work Sexual Politics (g.n.): “the radical result that emerges from Engels' analysis is that the family, as we have it today, needs to disappear”.

But for that, it was necessary to take certain steps. An institution so old and so rooted in the hearts of men is only abolished by means of a series of measures designed to undermine it from within.

Engels preached, for example, that in order to reach the destruction of the family, it was necessary that the woman be inserted in the labor market: The idea that she belongs more to the home than to the factory should be absolutely demonized, encouraging her to fight for jobs that match those of men.

The obvious problem that arises from this is that, if they enter the labor market en masse, there will be no one to take care of their children at home. This has always been one of the woman's tasks and, because of her, the sexual division of labor has led to the accumulation of private property in the hands of the man and, consequently, to the woman's own submission to the monogamous family. It is not possible to destroy the family, therefore, if the woman continues to take care of her children, since the imposition of such a task on the female sex is the primary cause of the family structure as we know it. It is therefore necessary that, on the one hand, the woman can choose not to have children (free abortion and contraception are ideal to be followed) and, on the other, that the education and care of children who are born should pass from the hands of the family. for those of the State. In Engels' words: “The treatment and education of children will become a public matter; society will take care, with the same commitment, of all children, whether legitimate or natural. ”

More than that, it is absolutely necessary for divorce to be introduced in Western societies. The marriage bond can no longer tend to indissolubility; rather, the relationship between a man and a woman should end as soon as the sexual attraction between them cools (women who read me can assess whether it really suits their interests), and the separation between the two should be as easy as possible. Here's what Engels says.

If marriage based on love is the only moral, only marriage in which love persists can be moral. But the duration of sexual love fluctuation varies widely, according to individuals, particularly among men. As a result, when affection disappears or is replaced by a new passionate love, divorce will be a benefit for both parties and for society. The couple should only be spared the passage through the useless mud of a divorce process.

So far, there is already a crucible of quite drastic measures. And the leaders of the communist movement assimilated these ideas at once. As soon as Lenin came to power in October 1917, he tried to implement Engels' suggestions. According to Kate Millett herself.

The Soviet Union made a conscious effort to try to eliminate patriarchy and restructure its most basic institution - the family. After the revolution, every possible law was passed to free individuals from family claims: free marriages and divorces, contraception and abortion on demand.

In his work The Betrayed Revolution, Trotsky describes it with vivid colors.

The revolution (of October of 1917) heroically tried to destroy the stagnant old “family home”, archaic, routine, asphyxiating institution, in which the working class woman was put to forced labor from childhood to death. The family, considered as a small closed company, should be replaced, in the spirit of the revolutionaries, by a complete system of social services (…) The complete absorption, by the socialist society, of the economic functions of women, linking an entire generation with the solidarity and mutual assistance, should lead the woman, and therefore the couple, to a true emancipation from the family yoke. And as long as this work has not been carried out, forty million Soviet families will remain victims of medieval customs, subjection and hysteria for women, the daily humiliations of the child, the superstitions of this and that. There are no illusions about this.

Trotsky, however, realized that the revolution failed to achieve the goal of destroying the family. For him, there were not enough resources for the Soviet State to be able to weave the assistance network that, in his dreams, would make the family irrelevant and, therefore, easily removable from society. Almost in a sigh of discouragement, in the same work above, he asserted.

The old family could not be taken by storm. And it was not for lack of goodwill. Not because it was firmly rooted in the spirits. Unfortunately, society proved to be too poor and not very civilized. The family cannot be abolished. It needs to be replaced.

Replace it exactly with what? Trotsky does not say so. Perhaps by the welfare state itself, as suggested in the first quote. This, however, is not clear. But, coincidence or not, the replacement of the traditional family by other “models” is a strategy widely adopted today, proving to be much more effective than direct combat, the “assault” on the old family as attempted at the beginning of implantation of the Soviet state.

In fact, apparently, Lenin was naive to imagine that the motivational strength of his semi-religious ideology was enough for the perfect new society to materialize. The weakening of the family, however much he disliked it, led to the weakening of Soviet society itself. Stalin, on the other hand, had dreams of a military campaign that would allow him to take at least a good part of Europe, realizing, from the outset, that without solid families, any military campaign would be suicidal. So he had to, in a short time, not only reverse Lenin's efforts, but try to act in the opposite direction: divorce, contraception and abortion were abolished from the Soviet Union and the government began to encourage women to return to occupy its traditional place. Large families were welcome and even campaigns for chastity among young people became part of the State's discourse.

In other words, Stalin realized that a strong society depends on strengthened families. Lenin and Trotsky's dream was just that: a dream. And it would probably become a nightmare if the new leader wanted to keep him on his feet. That is why Stalin immediately tried to bring the USSR back to reality, while trying to export the nightmare to the Western powers in order to weaken them.

Where Lenin had been naive, Stalin knew how to be shrewd.

Many, however, accused him of betraying the revolution and "bourgeois" the homo sovieticus. For minds poisoned by ideologies, if the revolution fails (as it always will) to change reality, this is not because the revolutionary ideology is itself a failure, but because those who lead the process of the revolution have deviated from the good. path. Ideology is always good; flaws are the ideologists who put it into practice ...

However, as much as communism has proved to be an unprecedented tragedy wherever it has set foot, the West, in recent decades, decided to follow, exactly the paths outlined above. Take, for example, our Brazil, a country where most of the population has always shown a complete aversion to communism.

Anyone who has studied the evolution of Brazilian legislation and jurisprudence can clearly see that they have been adopting, with remarkable accuracy, all of the elements above.

Divorce, for example, was introduced by Law 6,515 / 77. Shortly afterwards, the Federal Constitution of 1,988 introduced the idea of ​​a stable union (which, as Engels had advocated, lasts for as long as the “sexual love access” lasts between partners). The legislation that follows is gradually weakening the bond of marriage (making it more and more quick to dissolve to the point of “saving the couple from divorce proceedings”) and encouraging “new forms of family”. As legislation progresses slowly, jurisprudence tries to make ever greater leaps towards Trotsky's ideal: an increasing number of family “models” is accepted, replacing the traditional model without directly destroying it.

At the same time, national legislation began to undermine family relationships, intoxicating them with the poison of the judicialization of conflicts. The parents' authority over their children was weakened and the State began to monopolize, in law and in fact, the education of children. Legislation that guarantees broad and practically unrestricted access to sterilization has been imposed, taking the State to itself the task of distributing contraceptives abundantly to those who desire it. And even abortion, in our country, advances via judicial decisions despite the frank resistance of the Brazilian people.

Here are all the ingredients of the communist recipe: divorce; contraception; abortion; compulsory state education for children; recognition of family forms different from the traditional model. As already mentioned, in Brazil the Communist primer is so strikingly accurate that to assume that everything is just a coincidence is a piece of cake.

Marx and Engels, Lenin and Trotsky would be proud of today's Brazilians. Stalin, on the other hand, would laugh at our stupidity and be happy to see that we, happily, and with an air of intellectual superiority, are undermining the family and, with it, weakening the society to such an extent that we will soon become unable to defend the civilizational conquests of our ancestors.

After all, even though most Brazilians (perhaps even among magistrates) abhor communism as an economic system, the incontrovertible fact is that very few are willing to fight against all the cultural heritage that communist leaders bequeathed us: divorce, stable union, contraceptives, etc. Almost all of us see this as an advance to be celebrated.

To those who think so, I regret to inform you, but, at least from the heart, voi siete tutti comunisti. They may be ashamed of the intellectual work of Marx and Engels; they may feel horror at the frightening figure of Lenin or at the somewhat pathetic of Trotsky. But that does not change the fact that supporters of such "advances" are either useful idiots or fellow travelers. And, after all, they end up importing into our country exactly the weakness desired by Stalin.

With Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin as secret inspirers of the direction of law in our country, there is no way that the recipe for social destruction will fail ... (A Receita Comunista Para a Destruição da Família)

Em nosso último artigo, tratamos de investigar como raízes do ódio comunista à família ao menos no plano de sua fundamentação teórica e de demonstração, na medida do possível, como fragilidades dessa sustentação. No presente trabalho, ocupar-nos-emos sobre o avanço de tal ideologia sobre o direito pátrio.

A visão que Engels (repitamos mais uma vez, apoiando-se quase que inteiramente no antropólogo americano Lewis Morgan) tem da história humana revelada muito do que viria a ser o movimento comunista. Uma vez que a propriedade privada e a família foram formados aos poucos à medida que a evolução darwinista empurrava os agrupamentos humanos rumo à civilização, a conclusão óbvia é que, sendo uma construção da sociedade (e, acrescento eu: da sociedade opressora), então é possível que nos livremos de ambas. Se nem uma outra são naturais ao homem, então, podem ser descartadas. E, na visão do Sancho Pança de Marx, inapelavelmente serão, pois os movimentos dialéticos da história nos conduzirão inapelavelmente para o próximo estágio de nosso desenvolvimento social: o comunismo.

Ora, Engels (mais uma vez escorando-se em Morgan) alega que as sociedades primitivas eram todas comunistas. Assim, partimos todos do comunismo primevo, afastamo-nos dele pelo pecado da acumulação de riquezas fomentado no interior das famílias e ao comunismo voltaremos, agora, pela revolução. O comunismo é o ponto de partida e o de chegada da história. O alfa e o ômega; o princípio e o fim de nossa caminhada. Engels obtém unir, numa única explicação da história, Hobbes a Rousseau: o bom selvagem primitivo que um dia caminhou por aqui voltará, de fato, a habitar a terra; porém, isso se exibe com uma pequena ajuda de Leviatã.

Não é difícil de perceber, nessa visão ideológica, algo de messiânico; é mesmo como se uma narrativa cristã da Queda e da Redenção tivesse sido imanentizada e projetada na história. A salvação dos homens, contudo, não vem da cruz dos novos salvadores da humanidade; antes, vem da revolução do proletariado, a última classe e aquela que nos redimirá pelo derramamento não de seu próprio sangue, mas pelo seus opressores. O apelo emocional que tal discurso desperta no militante comum é, pois, algo semelhante a um apelo religioso, não sendo de se estranhar que muitos comunistas, mesmo que não crendo em vida após a morte, estão dispostos a sacrificar a que possuem pelo advento de uma sociedade livre de todo mal e de todo pranto. Mas, o advento desse paraíso requer, em primeiro lugar, a destruição da família. Como pontificou Kate Millett, célebre feminista americana radical, em sua obra de referência Política Sexual (g.n.): “o resultado radical que surge da análise de Engels é que a família, como nós a temos hoje em dia, precisa desaparecer”.

Mas, para isso, é necessário que se dessem determinados passos. Uma instituição tão antiga e tão enraizada no coração dos homens não é abolida senão mediante uma série de medidas destravada a miná-la desde dentro.

Engels pregava, por exemplo, que, para se chegar à destruição da família, era necessário que a mulher fosse inserida no mercado de trabalho: A ideia de que ela pertence mais ao lar do que à fabrica era absolutamente demonizada, incentivando-a lutar por postos de trabalho ombreados com os homens.

O problema óbvio que daí deriva é o de que, se elas adentrarem em massa no mercado de trabalho, não haverá quem cuide dos filhos em casa. Essa sempre foi uma das tarefas da mulher e, em virtude dela, é que a divisão sexual do trabalho acabou por levar ao acúmulo de propriedade privada nas mãos do homem e, via de consequência, à própria submissão da mulher na família monogâmica. Não é possível destruir-se a família, portanto, se a mulher continuar a cuidar de seus filhos, pois a imposição de tal tarefa ao sexo feminino é a causa da primeira estrutura familiar tal qual conhecemos. É por isso necessário que, de um lado, a mulher pode escolher não ter filhos (aborto e contracepção livres são ideais a serem seguidos) e, de outro, que a educação e o cuidado das crianças que vierem a nascer passe das mãos da família para assim como o Estado. Nas palavras de Engels: “O trato e a educação das crianças vão se tornar assunto público; a sociedade cuidará, com o mesmo empenho, de todos os filhos, sejam legítimos ou naturais. ”

Mais do que isso, é absolutamente necessário que o divórcio venha a ser beneficiado nas sociedades ocidentais. O vínculo matrimonial não pode mais tender à indissolubilidade; antes, a relação entre homem e mulher deve acabar assim que a atração sexual entre ambos esfrie (como mulheres que me leem podem avaliar se isso realmente atende aos seus interesses), e a separação entre ambos deve ser a mais facilitada possível. Eis o que diz Engels.

Se o matrimônio baseado no amor é o único moral, só pode ser moral o matrimônio em que o amor persiste. Mas a duração do acesso de amor sexual é muito variável, segundo os proprietários, particularmente entre os homens. Em virtude disso, quando o afeto desaparece ou é substituído por um novo amor apaixonado, o divórcio será um benefício tanto para ambas as partes como para uma sociedade. Apenas deve poupar-se ao casal a passagem pelo lodaçal inútil de um processo de divórcio.

Até aqui, já se tem um cadinho de medidas bastante drásticas. E os líderes do movimento comunista assimilaram tais ideias desde logo. Assim que Lênin tomou o poder em Outubro de 1.917, tratou de implementar as sugestões de Engels. Segundo a própria Kate Millett.

A União Soviética fez um esforço consciente na tentativa de eliminar o patriarcado e de reestruturar sua instituição mais básica - a família. Depois da revolução, toda possível lei foi aprovada para libertar os obrigados das reinvidicações da família: casamento e divórcios livres, contracepção e aborto a pedido.

Em sua obra A Revolução Traída, Trotsky aula-o com cores vivas.

A revolução (de Outubro de 1.917) tentou heroicamente destruir o velho “lar familiar” estagnado, instituição arcaica, rotineira, asfixiante, no qual a mulher das classes trabalhadoras era votada aos trabalhos forçados da infância até a morte. A família, considerada como uma pequena empresa fechada, desviado ser substituída, no espírito dos revolucionários, por um sistema completo de serviços sociais (…) A absorção completa, por parte da sociedade socialista, das funções benefício da mulher, ligando toda uma geração pela solidariedade e assistência mútua, dev levar a mulher, e portanto, o casal, a uma verdadeira emancipação do jugo familiar. E, enquanto essa obra não tiver sido realizada, quarenta milhões de famílias soviéticas se manterão sofrida dos costumes medievais, da sujeição e da histeria da mulher, das humilhações cotidianas da criança, das superstições deste e daquele. Sobre isto não há ilusões.

Trotsky, contudo, evitou que a revolução não conseguiu lograr o objetivo de destruir a família. Para ele, não houve recursos suficientes para que o Estado soviético conseguisse tecer a rede assistencial que, em seus sonhos, tornariam a família irrelevante e, portanto, facilmente removível da sociedade. Quase que num suspiro de desânimo, na mesma obra acima, ele asseverou.

Não se conseguiu tomar de assalto uma velha família. E não foi por falta de boa vontade. Nem porque ela está firmemente enraizada nos espíritos. Infelizmente, a sociedade mostrava-se demasiado pobre e pouco civilizada. A família não pode ser abolida. É preciso substituí-la.

Substituí-la exatamente por quê? Trotsky não o diz. Talvez pelo próprio Estado assistencialista, conforme sugerido na primeira citação. Isso, contudo, não é claro. Mas, coincidência ou não, a substituição da família tradicional por outros “modelos” é estratégia amplamente adotada nos dias de hoje, mostrando-se muito mais eficaz do que o combate direto, o “assalto” à velha família tal qual tentado no começo da implantação do Estado soviético.

De fato, aparentemente, Lênin foi ingênuo ao imaginar que bastava a força motivacional de sua ideologia semirreligiosa para que a nova sociedade perfeita se concretizasse. O enfraquecimento da família, por mais que não se gostasse disso, levava ao enfraquecimento da própria sociedade soviética. Stálin, por sua vez, nutria sonhos de uma campanha militar que o permitisse tomar ao menos boa parte da Europa, percebendo ele, desde logo, que, sem famílias sólidas, qualquer campanha militar seria suicida. Assim, teve ele de, em pouco tempo, não somente reverter os esforços de Lênin, mas tratar de agir em sentido oposto: o divórcio, uma contracepção e o aborto foram abolidos da União Soviética e o governo passou a incentivar que uma mulher voltasse a ocupar seu lugar tradicional. Famílias numerosas eram benvindas e campanhas mesmo pela castidade entre os jovens passaram a fazer parte do discurso do Estado.

Ou seja, Stálin, que uma sociedade forte depende de famílias fortalecidas. O sonho de Lênin e de Trotsky era exatamente isso: um sonho. E que provavelmente se tornaria um pesadelo caso o novo líder quisesse personalizar-lo de pé. Daí que Stálin tratou logo de trazer um URSS de volta para a realidade, ao mesmo tempo em que tratou de exportar o pesadelo para as potências ocidentais de forma a enfraquecê-las.

Onde Lênin for ingênuo, Stálin soube ser sagaz.

Muitos, porém, acusaram-no de trair a revolução e de “aburguesar” o homo sovieticus. Para mentes envenenadas por ideologias, se a revolução falha (como sempre há de falhar) em mudar a realidade, isso se dá não porque a ideologia revolucionária é ela mesma falha, mas porque os que conduzem o processo da revolução é que se desviaram do bom caminho. A ideologia é sempre boa; falhos são os ideólogos que a põe em prática…

Porém, por mais que o comunismo tenha se definido uma tragédia sem precedentes em qualquer lugar em que tenha fincado os pés, o Ocidente, nas últimas décadas, resolve seguir, exatamente os caminhos acima dos traçados. Tomemos, como exemplo, o nosso Brasil, país em que a maior parte da população sempre mencionada uma aversão completa ao comunismo.

Quem já estudou um pouco da evolução das legislação e jurisprudência brasileiras pode perceber, claramente, que prioridade adotando, com exatidão notável, todos os elementos acima.

O divórcio, por exemplo, foi solicitado pela Lei 6.515 / 77. Pouco depois, a Constituição Federal de 1.988 introduz a ideia de união estável (que, conforme preconizara Engels, dura enquanto perdura o “acesso de amor sexual” entre os companheiros). A legislação que se segue vai aos poucos enfraquecendo o vínculo do matrimônio (tornando-o de dissolução cada vez mais célere ao ponto de “poupar o casal do processo de divórcio”) e incentivando “novas formas de família”. Uma vez que a legislação avança lentamente, a jurisprudência trata de dar saltos cada vez maiores em direção ao ideal de Trotsky: aceita-se um número cada vez maior de “modelos” de família, substituindo o modelo tradicional sem destruí-lo diretamente.

Ao mesmo tempo, a legislação pátria passou a minar as relações familiares, intoxicando-as com o veneno da judicialização dos conflitos. A autoridade dos pais sobre os filhos foi enfraquecida e o Estado passou a monopolizar, de direito e de fato, a educação das crianças. Legislações que garantem o acesso amplo e praticamente irrestrito à esterilização se impuseram, tomando o Estado para fazer a tarefa de distribuir contraceptivos fartamente aos que desejam. Mesmo o aborto, em nosso país, avança via decisões judiciais apesar da franca resistência do povo brasileiro.

Eis aí todos os ingredientes da receita comunista: divórcio; contracepção; aborto; educação estatal obrigatória das crianças; reconhecimento de formas de família diversas do modelo tradicional. Como já dito, no Brasil segue-se com exatidão tão notável a cartilha comunista que pressupor que tudo não passa de mera coincidência é coisa de bocós.

Marx e Engels, Lênin e Trotsky ficariam orgulhosos dos brasileiros hodiernos. Já Stálin rir-se-ia de nossa burrice e ficaria feliz ao ver que nós, alegremente, e com ares de superioridade intelectual, vamos minando a família e, com ela, enfraquecendo a tal ponto a sociedade que nos tornaremos, em pouco tempo, incapazes de defender as conquistas civilizacionais de nossos antepassados.

Ao final de tudo, muito embora a maior parte dos brasileiros (talvez mesmo entre os magistrados) abomine o comunismo enquanto sistema econômico, o fato inconcusso é de que são muito poucos os que estariam dispostos a lutar contra todo o patrimônio cultural que os próceres comunistas nos legaram: divórcio, união estável, contraceptivos, etc. A quase totalidade de nós vê tudo antes um avanço a ser celebrado.

Aos que assim pensam, lamento informar, mas, ao menos de coração, voi siete tutti comunisti. Podem ter vergonha da obra intelectual de Marx e de Engels; podem sentir horror ante uma figura assustadora de Lênin ou ante um tanto quanto patética de Trotsky. Mas isso não muda o fato de que os apoiadores de tais “avanços” são ou idiotas úteis ou companheiros de viagem. E, ao cabo de tudo, acabam importando para nosso país exatamente a fraqueza desejado por Stálin.

Com Marx, Engels, Lênin, Trotsky e Stálin como inspiradores secretos dos rumos do direito em nosso país, não há mesmo como a receita da destruição social falhar…

[jadbalja]

#oldprofilerants

pity the poor fool who pens a polemic for his dating profile. whatever could he be thinking?

well, i am thinking about the death of love (and the love of death, as Bataille would connect it) but let's get to that in a minute, shall we? for a second, it's useful to examine this construct of the dating website profile, the self-summary, the whole project of rendering one's identity fit for strangers.

how hopelessly we fetishize the idea that there is an essential self to project, one that can be communicated and is contained in some sequence of words! it seems seductive, doesn't it, that we could hope to find a partner in this jungle by rendering to words our singular mating cry; that we could find that some stated interests, some potted history can trace the arc of our life. but such belief should come as no surprise. our culture glories in brevity, the precis is an art form, and you can say more by not saying it at all.

if you ask me, there is no one I know less than myself, lacking so obvious a tool as objective self-examination. in fact this is why i admire those women here who have never bothered to fill out their profile with words, who have continued, though perhaps only for a period, with just a self-image. images, i.e., photographs of the person, are also lies, but they are so in an honest way. especially when you can see where the filter was applied, where the cropping was done, and how an airbrush was aesthetically used. in their nakedness, these subterfuges are endearing, and almost selfless in their earnestness to beguile.

in responding to such profiles without words, we show our most honest side. are we not told in civic lessons to speak truth to power? this is where we speak the truth to the power of a beautiful object (your picture), and the truth is the statement of our lust.

in the end all profiles get written, though not to the same archetype. some are terse, while others are bravura examples of wit or unwanted, unwarranted theorizing (like this). however long or truncated, all profiles have several levels of meaning. the primary level of meaning is mechanical - the narrative you've concocted, the facts as you've stated them. thereafter, a profile has symbolic value, and the value is that of a brand.

a commercial brand at its most banal intends to convey certain memetic perceptions: security, comfort, pride, hunger. the 'profile brand' deals with similar needs that we subconsciously exchange with one another in the Hegelian sense of mutual recognition, but also in hope that we spark affinity, comfort, tribal bonding, and acceptance. we write profiles to sell. we write our life histories (I am a recent transplant in DC by way of Gomorrah) with the use of approachable, digestible ideas, because we would expect to read and consume the same. the more profiles you read, the more the dominant profile brands are entrenched. as such, reduced to symbolic content-the native, the nerd, the traveler, the sensualist, the three words that 'best capture your unique sense'-we package ourselves to be consumed and remembered. the brand that sells here gets to have sex, and in its most basic Darwinian sense, the fittest memes replicate.

Love is Dead

sounding the death knell of romantic love is certainly fashionable, and doing so in the context of online dating seems a form of common, reactionary triumphalism. luddite tom-toming of the attenuation of the Romantic Ideal in the era of the Internet seems just the copy-paste of prior paranoias. after all the classical imagining of romance in prior eras was considered under threat too, variously by girlie magazines, speakeasies, 'female liberation', suburbia, or any other of a dozen modish threats.

what is dead more irrevocably now in this cycle is the pursuit of love - I think we can finally say we've killed off the practical pursuit of romantic happiness. there is an interest in something, or else we wouldn't be here, but let me argue that it isn't what we think as love. our profiles are here to sell, but what we are buying isn't you as the One, but something more modular, replaceable, consumable, and eventually, recyclable.

[avtonome]

hey y’all ! i’m kat and i’m super excited to open; i have two super clingy cats in case any of you ever need a visual pick-me-up, i’m a uni student in canada and a Big skincare and dark chocolate junkie, more than likely gonna be typing replies while indulging in either jsyk !

tried to keep it short since i’m a rambly bitch, but here is a link to tally’s currently basic stats, a wc page will be up soon though i have some under the read more, here is her messy as hell pinterest board, and i’ll be posting a little tracklist for her playlist later ! and if tumblr ims are as much of a nuisance for you as they can be for me, you can add me on d*scord at GENUINELY sick of this shit#2030 if you’d like to plot ! anyways, without further ado:

[  im jinah  .  twenty-three  .  cis female  .  she/her  ] just saw TALLULAH “TALLY” HONG dragging their suitcase up the steps to CABIN 4D  .  good luck living with HER  ,  word around campus is that they’re SUPERCILIOUS  ,  DARWINIAN  ,  ASTUTE  &  ALLURING  .  apparently they're the EVENT COORDINATOR.  let’s hope this new living situation doesn’t affect their SENIOR year of COMMUNICATIONS.

tw: drug mention

her parents’ only child together, tally’s the oldest out of her and her half-siblings

also, never call her tallulah. friend or otherwise, don’t take the risk DKLGSJDLK

grew up with a silver spoon, her dad being a wall street giant and her mother being an entrepreneur with a love for art ( so much so that her two partners after separating from tally’s dad were artists themselves sdlkgj )

basically could’ve been a main character on gossip girl with her reckless antics and partying as a teenager…. and now, even SGDLKF

drk how to elaborate on that, aside from stressing that from her teen years onward she’s presented her own take of a rich bitch, and is a socialite/fashion week regular type if i were to describe where she stands rn

is attending hollis at the behest of her father so he has at least one child who could take a senior position in his company simply to keep it in the family

isn’t the most studious person, but she’s gotten far enough to begin wrapping up her major in communications with a marketing minor

she reasoned that, with her reputation in nyc, she’d need the bit of knowledge in how to clean up her messes. even if she wasn’t the one who had that responsibility

though.. the entire time has been spent sleeping with some of her rich friends, drinking and smoking pot, with the occasional hit of whatever clean enough drug that one of her friends had on them

when she’s not getting an education, she’s pissing off her neighbours with her house parties back in nyc or at her beach house in malibu/the family’s new house in beverly hills.. something of the sort at least ( while getting a moment’s peace bc i already know this bitch hates sharing a dorm 90% of the time GDSFLKJD ), staying in the good graces of the media as a budding, fun yet classy heiress — despite doing dumb shit the second she’s inside of a gala or club

as for her time here as the event coordinator somewhere in wyoming ?? she ABHORS it !

she hates organized sports, she hates camping and being restricted ( to some degree in this case ) so why is she here ?? ..... i still haven’t worked that out, i just like to fuck with my muses DKFLGJGSDF

but fr, i thought it would be funny to watch her seethe in a rather unfamiliar element so ! she can have fun with that !

personality and shit

her little blurb on my indie is: refined party girl still set in her ways with her future left uncompromised; detached and pretentious, she soaks up the attention that continues to roll in

which. we’ve basically been over already LKDFSG but still

if i were to use a label to describe her, she'd be the sovereign

she’s messy as hell, but puts on the façade of a poised woman who has some fun because she knows it bodes well

she’s not a complete dick per se, but she can be snide and boastful

Big superiority complex, independent and lives lavishly with reckless abandon 

probably jets back and forth between nyc and l.a during the school year a good bit, so ig she hates the environment if it means not having things go her way !

non-committal as all hell and will abandon girl code if she drops you FGKLJFS

.. fr, she’ll fuck an ex-friend’s ex if she Technically saw them first, so being spiteful And resolving some past attraction ?? right up her alley !

keeps her true inner circle small, but gets off on attention and likes to stay cordial with some people, so she’s got quite a few friends all the same

she’ll fight tooth and nail to protect her image and won’t hesitate to throw anyone under the bus to do so/in retaliation if they screw her over

which happens to mean that her family is to be protected as well. fuck with any of her sisters ?? you’re Done. try to compete with her father ? she’ll leak your suspicious investment history to the times fskgdljlsf

there really isn’t much to expand on tbh, though i will say that her emboldened nature and need for a good time however she can get it comes out more than her uglier side ( except her vanity. that’ll never go away KSFDG )

some quick plot ideas

a childhood friend or two that she made back in nyc or through events she attended when she was young, whether they’re still friends or not for x reasons can be discussed of course

could carry over into a trio type of thing depending on where she stands with either of them, or they’re a different couple of pals she’s made since coming to hollis

enemies are always fun ! probably rooted in a competitive streak more than anything else but i’m all ears for a more complex reason

ex-hookup(s), current hookup(s), throw it all at me klgfjd

a hateship/ewb would be fun with her too, oh my god sfdgklj

surely there are quite a few wealthy kids here, but that doesn’t mean that someone who’s using her for their fifteen seconds of fame, or just to get some perks out of their friendship, is necessarily a write-off — not that she cares too much about fake friends, face value hype and knowing they need her more than she needs them gives her too much satisfaction fkskgls

an ex-something, open to anyone.. who's fc was born earlier than like. '97 since jinah's on the higher end of her twenties dfsjgklsd and someone who's at least a junior. either someone her parents forced on her to straighten her out that she wound up liking…. after a good period of her telling them to fuck off sdglk or someone she’d been seeing for a while at her own accord. would’ve ended the same way: with her calling it off because she didn’t want to settle down, not even for a relationship ( and perhaps bc she’s scared of commitment with her cracked family dynamic that’s been a thing since age two, but that’s another story jsdfkg )

kinda relates to current hookups, but her designated event pal would be super fun ?? sdgkflj like they go to all of these big parties and galas together, then meet up in the nooks of the venue or head back to her place before she throws an after-party of sorts. they’d be decent friends beyond this though, them being someone she trusts a good bit compared to others in her circle

[matildainmotion]

Mean Truths and Generous Lies: A Response to Sibling (and every other kind of) Rivalry

My children fight. They have their moments - small photo opportunities of love and harmony- a hug, a lego collaboration jointly presented – but on the whole, they fight.

I buy two flake chocolate bars as a treat.

“I’ll have that one,” my son says.

“No, I want that one,” my daughter jumps in, panicked.

My son examines them both closely. “Oh, actually you can have that one. I’m having this one,” he says, giving her the one he has been holding and taking hers.

“No, that one was mine!” my daughter wails.

I point out that they are identical, but it seems there is some microscopic difference that I cannot see.

“Oh all right, I’ll have this one,” my son says. They swap back, and, for now, peace and chocolate follow.

This has happened often enough that my daughter talks about matching things – socks, lego bricks, biscuits – as being “identital,” the four syllables said with the clumsy care of her age.

When I am brave I go to the supermarket with both children. Often the children see the shop aisles as corridors of space for racing down, or the floors as smooth surfaces to lie on, to loll beside me as I try and shop. I do not like supermarkets. Last time we went my son spotted a trolley with not one, but two, identical baby seats attached to it.

“Hey, we could both go in there!” he says, running up to it. I consider. They are both big. It will look absurd, but it is better than the aisle-racing and the floor-lolling.

“Okay,” I say, and lift my hulking eight year old and smaller-but-definitely-not-a-baby-three-year old up beside him.

My son is delighted (self-propulsion has never been his thing – he likes to be carried, wheeled, pushed, pulled along). As he giants in the baby seat he starts to play a gleeful game of lifting items that we need over his head so that they drop down into the trolley behind him. I permit this with the smaller items. My daughter wants to join in.

“Okay, let’s take it in turns.”

But then certain items are more desirable than others.

“I wanted to drop the Yoyo bars in!” my daughter complains.

“But it was my turn,” my son counters.

“Look, we get through these fast. I’ll get two packets,” I say reaching for another.

“NO, I wanted to drop the first packet!” my daughter cries. I pick the packet in the trolley back up and give it to her. “Here, then.”

“No, I wanted to drop the first packet, FIRST!” she explains, in misery.

“But it was MY turn,” my son explains in his angry voice.

My daughter is crying hard now. “How about you choose something now you really want to put in first?” My daughter is crying too hard to speak but shakes her head.

“That’s not fair!” my son protests, riled by her crying – he could be about to get violent.

I look at them both – crying and fuming. I start to fume too and I want to cry. We are standing in a supermarket, a palace of plenty, filled with food, tinned, wrapped in plastic, priced, shelved- and they are arguing over who gets to put what packets, over their heads, into the trolley, as they sit, oversized, in baby seats.

Their privilege is not their fault. The gross global inequalities in the distribution of wealth are not their fault, but then again that is exactly what is at stake here: the distribution of wealth, of goods, of every kind – tangible and emotional. The decision about who gets what, how much, and when. So whilst their rows seems ridiculous, and their apparent pettiness exasperates me, I realise, once I am home from the supermarket, that the questions driving them are serious and fundamental. I recognise them. I am, in truth, no better.

I hear about another woman with young children who is writing a novel and who lives nearby. I read a brilliant book and check on the sleeve to work out the age of the author – she is younger than me and has already written three successful books. In both instances I feel threatened – I hide it, but it is there. This may seem different to my children’s angst over who has the privilege of putting the Yoyos into the shopping trolley. It is not. Yes, there are other issues in the mix to do with insecurities about my ability, my age, what I have and have not achieved to date, but in essence the level of ridiculousness in my sense of rivalry with the others around me is the same. The idea that someone else’s success is not good news for me, whether that someone is as close as a sibling, or as distant as a stranger.

I have done everything I can to help my children know they are both loved, that I do not favour one or the other, but still they fight. Competition. It is in the air we breathe. It is the foundation of our economy. It is in our science. The Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’ narrative tells us that competition is inside us, in our bodies - it is part of the story of how we were formed.

I am not trying to deny the theory of evolution, but as a mother, in a supermarket, with two squabbling children, our inherent competitiveness is not a helpful story. I cannot leave them to it and see who wins, who survives. My son because he can hit harder? Or my daughter because she can scream louder and is, at this point, cuter? Who is fitter? More fitting? These are not the questions I want to be asking or sharing with them. It is also not a helpful story to me as a maker, a writer. It does not make me generous and good writing, for me, requires generosity. I have got to be able to give it away. It is also not a helpful story for the world right now. We have followed a capitalist, ‘survival of the fittest’ narrative to its ruthless end and it is proving to be, potentially, the end of all of us, fit or otherwise. But let me bring this back from the apocalypse (also not a helpful story) to the level where I can do something constructive in response: a sibling row over Yoyos in the supermarket and my worry over rival writers. What would be a better narrative?

I go to the bookshelf, to the parenting books, to one in particular: Siblings without Rivalry by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. I first read it almost before it applied, when I was still a zealous new mother of two and my daughter was too small to be an articulate rival. One of the chapters is headed “Equal is less:” I read:

“To be loved equally….is somehow to be loved less. To be loved uniquely—for one’s own special self—is to be loved as much as we need to be loved.”

Yes, that makes sense. Equal is still in the paradigm of quantity. Equal implies that you could have more than me, even if right now we have the same. It explains my children bickering over identical chocolate bars – they both have exactly the same, and that, in the end, is not enough, not what they want. They want their differences, not their same-ness. Similarly with taking turns – one for you and one for me, fair’s fair. But it isn’t fair, or it might not be – as long as we remain in the world of quantities, of equal signs, then there is always an implied risk that one of them could lose out  - minus, subtraction, less, loss. One of them might not be equal to the other, not as fit. One might not survive.

I get it. I get the theory. At least within the small society of our family, neither capitalism (letting everyone compete and seeing who comes out on top with the most), nor communism (getting everyone to share so they all have the same) results in harmony.  I need to focus on diversity, on the uniqueness of each child. I need to cultivate an economy of gifting, (see another book – Lewis Hyde’s The Gift), of the gifts in each person being honoured. The ‘givens’ in us, the things we did nothing to earn, that are there for us in turn to give away, but like the magic porridge pot, the more we give, the more we feel filled, fulfilled. Like breastfeeding, when it works: the more the child nurses, the more there is. I was lucky enough to be able to breastfeed both children till they were old enough to explain this to me.

However, despite their experience of extended breastfeeding, my children remain committed to a story of scarcity and competition. I try to talk them out of it, but I know I am unconvincing and unconvinced.

“Yeah, yeah” my son says, “I know – It’s not about winning. It’s about the playing. Yeah yeah I’m unique - Blah blah. You’ve told us that a thousand times. But I wanna win!!”

Whatever I am currently telling myself and my children is not enough. Not enough. How to get away from not-enough-ness into a more abundant place?

I think I have to tell the gifting story better. If I don’t quite believe the story – because the other story, the one of lack and loss is everywhere - then I have to practice lying, really well. To do this I go to a different part of the bookshelf – not the parenting one. Actually it’s my husband bookshelf, to a book he told me he used to carry around everywhere with him: “The Shaman’s Body” by Arnold Mindell. There is a passage in this book I want to read again. It describes an exercise I did before I became a mother, but that I think I should revisit now. Here it is:

“Experiment with telling a lie. Tell a lie to yourself in your imagination. Try lying even if you are shy or embarrassed about doing so. Tell the lie as if you were a great story-teller. This may be difficult because myth-making is a deep process, but try until a real lie turns into a story with a beginning and an end….consider your lie to be true…Act like the person in your lie….How are you already living this myth? How have your dreams already discussed this change.”

It occurs to me as I reread this that children are very good at this kind of lying. It’s the answer, for example, to the famous question ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ Last time they were asked my son was going to be an inventor and my daughter was going to be a cat.

The quality of the grand myth is even present in how my children talk about their favourite colours. In this context they are proud and happy of their differences. My son loves blue, light blue. It is his colour. My daughter likes red, bright red – that is hers. They are mythic enough about these to behave as if everything in the world that is blue and red respectively belongs to them. My son owns the sky. My daughter owns the sunset. These are generous stories. They do not squabble over blue or red. Suddenly ‘their differences’ become a key to peace, not a synonym for conflict. The squabbles start when the stories the world offers them are small and mean, when the lies aren’t magnificent, when we are in super-markets, buildings built not for myths but measurables.

What magnificent lies can I tell that might help us? What myths? Well, one myth I realise I am already working on is called Mothers Who Make. You may know of this, but let me tell a version of it to you now.

It begins when I became a mother. I had a baby boy. I did what I thought you were supposed to do - I attended several mother and baby groups. They were meant to be supportive. All too often they were not. They were informal, social gatherings and within them I witnessed a fair amount of ‘maternal rivalry,’ sometimes subtle, sometimes more overt: whose baby was sleeping well? How was the breastfeeding going? Or was it not going? And the weaning? I would come away feeling more, rather than less, isolated. As an artist I experienced similar things too – networking events, workshops, in which the rivalry simmered under the surface of each exchange: Have you got funding? What work do you have lined up? So I started a group, welcoming to mothers of every ilk, and makers of every kind too. I called it Mothers Who Make. It was explicitly a peer support group – we gathered in order to support one another. That was the point, the purpose.

The group went well. It grew into more groups, meetings began happening monthly in theatres, art galleries and arts-related venues across the UK. Then slowly groups emerged in other countries too. Online communities formed. It was becoming a worldwide movement.

At first it consisted of simply peer support groups and Facebook pages, but then other events began to spring up as well, under the Mothers Who Make banner: exhibitions, performances, workshops, skill shares, talks, commissions, retreats, festivals. To sustain all of this activity we needed to invent a new kind of support, one that would reflect the ethic of the movement. I called it ‘Matronage.’ Not the Patron, looking down from on high and patronising us with his wealth, deciding who is fit to support and who is not, but mothers and others, giving sideways, on a level with one another, £3 per month to sustain themselves and each other in their mothering and their making. I called these people ‘Matron Saints.’ I signed myself up as one of them.

First there were only fifty of us. Then there were one hundred, then two hundred, three, five. A year on and there were one thousand MWM Matrons. Word kept spreading - it kept growing. Eventually there were over a million of us across the world. Together we were creating an abundant culture, a gift economy, women*-led. Slowly we were changing the atmosphere, between artists, between mothers, between children. I knew we had had an impact when one day I looked up the word ‘Matron’ in the updated edition of the OED. It said there were three definitions for the word: 1) a woman in charge of domestic and medical arrangements at a boarding school or other institution. 2) an older married woman, especially one who is staid or dignified. 3) Someone actively engaged in mothering, be that a child or a project, and in supporting others engaged in related maternal and/or creative endeavours.

There, that’s my great myth. Remember the end of the exercise? : “Consider your lie to be true…Act like the person in your lie….How are you already living this myth?” I think, if I can remember this myth next time my children fight, it might help. I am not sure right now what I would do, but I might be better at continuing to believe in their differences as gifts rather than as a sign of my maternal failure. I will be better able to trust that my children each have their own place in this stunning, stunningly complex, difficult and generous life.

So, here are my questions for you for the month: Where do you see rivalry? In your children? In yourself? And, underneath the fighting, what are the differences present, as in the givens, the unique gifts that are longing to be given away? What generous lies can you tell about these? What myths? And if you want to help me to live closer to my lie, to support me and all the other mothers and makers out there, you can go here to become a MWM Matron Saint: https://motherswhomake.org/support-us

There are 67 of us right now, but one day there will be a million….

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: What do you make of Prime Minister Theresa May as her rules slowly comes to an end with the election of a new PM, probably Boris Johnson. An improvement? Will he be the one to get the UK out of Europe?

I never rated Theresa May, she was an ambitious but risk averse careerist like most of the modern Conservative Party. When she finally achieved her life time’s ambition by becoming Prime Minister, she made a mess of it.

Many years ago Enoch Powell, the great Conservative politician who was treated pariah for being so prophetic, stated the fate of all who climb the greasy pole of politics.  He said, “All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.”

The same fate awaits Boris Johnson.

Is Johnson an improvement? He will be if compared to May who was as about as compelling as watching paint dry.

My main objection to him is character. he doesn’t have the character to be a good Prime Minister. Like Trump he is a charlatan who is entertaining but preening with man-child issues and narcissistic entitlement.

I don’t care about his messy personal life as he bonked women half his life while cheating on all his wives. Nor do I care for the scandal of his love children outside of marriage. You can argue that this shows his true character. Perhaps. But of course, it does show his personal morality but this doesn’t actually stop him being competent at his job. The trouble is that he has never been competent in his life.

By all counts, Johnson is clever but has always been quite lazy and a low attention span to follow through on tasks. When he was Foreign Secretary he never bothered to read his briefs or dive deep into the red boxes. He’s been fired as a journalist for lying - which is pretty hard to do considering many journalists bend the truth.  To many he is an opportunistic charlatan but with the confident artifice of Eton and Oxford grooming.

But I think he might be the only one who could takes us out of the EU. Make no mistake, we do need to get out of the EU.

But on what terms? At what price?

I fear his hands are tied, just like May, by the structural challenges of leaving the EU without a deal. The Irish backstop is of course biggest spanner to a meaningful deal. The prospect of a hard border between Ireland and Northern Island is one everyone secretly dreads in terms of what it might mean to return to the dark days of sectarian Protestant-Catholic violence. Ask any seasoned military veteran of the 70s and 80s and they will tell you Northern Ireland was their worst mission or posting than any they ever did. Even today the memories are bitter ones for British soldiers.

How the Irish border question gets resolved in the face of EU insistence of no more negotiations and compromises is a severe headache once the politicians stop their posturing.

Of bigger concern is President Trump.

It may come as news to some Americans but Trump is wildly viewed as unpopular by many in Britain, regardless of political loyalties. Both left and right see his dissing of the UK and interfering in British politics as gross and uncouth.

No one trusts anything that comes out of Trump’s mouth because he is a proven serial liar. When he talks of of trade deals with the post-Brexit UK, we all know he will never seek an equitable deal but one that is about ‘America first’ and screwing us over.

In this regard I do think the encroachment of American big pharma into British health system as well as the relaxing of food quality standards (like chlorinated chicken) is setting off alarm bells because they think Johnson will be will cave and be an obedient poodle.

Johnson’s supine role in not backing the current UK ambassador to the US, Kim Darroch, is a case in point. It doesn’t look good if you are seen to being dictated to by a foreign leader if you don’t back your own foreign ministry. Nor will the British people ever forgive him if Johnson acquiesces as if he was running the 51st state for the USA. It would be simply unacceptable because we are a proud nation with a proud history. 

Surprisingly, I’m not blaming Trump because his ‘America First’ beliefs. I think that is fine for the US as that’s his job to look out for his nation first. But conversely it’s bad for us. Trump as it’s now clear only thinks of deals in zero sum terms - there is only one winner so there has to be a loser. That’s his mind set. Again, I’m not holding that against Trump because he is being true to his nature.

America First is fine as far as it goes for American interests but for us we won’t get a fair deal because as a nation just breaking away from the EU umbrella we will not have any cover nor any leverage to punch back.

A pro-Brexit friend who actually worked under a minister told me that perhaps we should stay in the EU until Trump is replaced and then cut a deal. Firstly, I think he’s dreaming as no one can predict what the outcome of 2020 will be in the US. Secondly, who is to say whoever replaces Trump might be any easier to negotiate with? Thirdly, if the longer we delay leaving the more people will get used to us staying in and then it really will be harder to leave.

The big lie is that everything will be smelling daisies the day after we leave the EU with no deal. That’s BS. I know many corporate finance firms already making contingency plans to move to Ireland. Even Jacob Rees-Mogg, the arch Brexiteer, has set up his capital finance holdings firm in Dublin. Everyone I know with any capital or wealth already have insulated themselves as best as they legally can.

At the same time, these very people are salivating at the prospect of making the UK a place where easy money and capital can come and go with little oversight or regulation. Most of these things I agree with in principle. I think the City of London would continue to remain an attractive place to do business despite being outside the EU.

However I sometimes think the City of London has got its head up its own arse and thinks more about quick short term gains and little about the long term impact of its actions. The rot is deep in our country with the continued decline of investment in manufacturing in the country and greater wealth and education gaps between people. McJobs and the gig economy are not going to restore Britian’s greatness only hasten its decline.

Of course small British businesses will be hurt in the short and medium term by a no deal Brexit but don’t forget this is what they voted for. It will be painful. But some might well think it will be a worthy sacrifice to lose jobs and business in order to rebuild properly for the long term free of Brussels and bureaucrats. But that price won’t be paid by capital holding classes.

A very wealthy high flyer working in City of London put it to me over dinner not so long ago that people think that politics is about left vs right but actually it’s about those who have wealth and those who don’t.

The trick is to vent the flames of public passions towards abstract straw men like ‘freedom’ or ‘sovereignty’ or in the US it would take the form of ‘guns’ or ‘abortion’.

People on BOTH sides of an issue expend volatile passion that they each entrench their (legitimate) grievances so deep into permanent persecution complexes. It’s further ossified by the relentless and constant echo chamber they each inhabit to reinforce their own entrenched beliefs and prejudices. So much so they forget about where the real obscene truth lies.

That this has always been a Darwinian world and there will always be winners and losers in life - there will always the rulers (oligarchies) and the ruled, the haves and the have-nots, and the rich and the poor. It’s a very cynical take on human nature and our society.

As much as I wanted to disagree with him, deep down I felt there was more than a tinge of truth to his words. It’s true. The corporate world is not personal nor is it political per se. It’s just about the making money for shareholders and to accumulate capital for the sake of it. It wields power to insulate itself from scrutiny and to have the freedom to do as it pleases. It appeals to people’s base motives at their purest - individual self-preservation. At some stage it’s going to clash with the principles and the institutions of democracy and questions of what takes precedence becomes acute. But that debate is for another day.

I still like to think we live in a world where ideas matter regardless how bare you strip life down to the bones.

In the case of Brexit, to me the sovereignty of Parliament serving at the pleasure of the Queen is paramount. It’s ruling one’s nation from first principles. If it’s your nation then you should have sovereign control over all decisions being made for its citizens. Moreover those making the decisions should be open to public scrutiny and be accountable. The nation state (under a constitutional monarchy in the case of Britain) is only accountable to its subjects and not to outsiders. All fine in theory except it’s an issue when these very elites charged with ruling over the masses have deep structural rot in them and they are just floating to get by like dead wood. Renewal and regeneration looks like a pipe dream.

I love Europe and I consider myself a proud European but I find it unacceptable to be partly ruled from a foreign capital whether it’s Brussels, Berlin, Paris, Moscow or Washington DC.

The hubris of a Franco-German led Europe is real. The EU began on a worthy premise that both France and Germany never go to war again. But it has mutated into some confederated nightmare today. The folly of its confederate policies are apparent and it will only worsen.

I doubt Boris Johnson has the political gravitas - even if he has the low cunning or the wit - to out fox other European leaders and their mad integration policies. They know him too well since he was for years a lazy and incompetent correspondent in Brussels.

It may well be Johnson is the ‘useful idiot’ Britain needs to take us out of the EU but Britain will need another leader with integrity, character and conviction to lead us to build proper alliances and repair relations with other Europeans to collectively face threats to our shared identities and nationhood.

The trouble is I don’t see that person in the current Conservative Party. But don’t take my word on this please, I have a natural allergic reaction to all politicians of all stripes.

I don’t know how things will turn out but i am beginning to be concerned that whatever path we take is going to be fraught with danger - greater incendiary issues down the road will come back to bite us up the arse. 

Thanks for your question