#they're radicalized and want to form a union

[djhinnwe]

Ineffable Interns (?)

New Headcanon for Muriel and Disposable Demon Eric after they become friends via bonding over being the lowest tier demon/angel. (Ineffable Grunts? Ineffable Minions? Ineffable Interns?)

Muriel ends up finding music and falling in love with the likes of Buffy St. Marie, Tanya Tagaq, and The Halluci Nation (as well as Brazilian protest music along the same veins). She is somewhat radicalized by them against the Church and is moving towards having more faith in herself and the Universe than in God and Heaven. Crowley finds himself bemused, but does put in effort to keep her from falling similar to Aziraphale (though she'd be fine on her own). [Little Wheel Spin and Spin] [Tongues] [Colonizer Halluci Nation Remix]

Disposable Demon Eric on the other hand ends up really liking stuff that's a little more fluffy and varied. Think Joker Out, Michael Bublé, Walker and Wylde, etc. He's taking Sanctuary in the bookshop because he's kind of sick of being disposable to people. He, like Crowley, continues to do the right thing for the right reason and goes along with Hell as far as he can (which is less than Crowley could at the same point in Crowley's arc). Eric continues to be brave and ask questions, which Crowley hasn't seen from any other demon and he's kind of impressed tbh. [Carpe Diem - English] [Feeling Good] [Life of the Cursed Intro / Outro]

They still dress in their respective side's colours, with Muriel being modest and liking pale colours (pastels are her fave, especially pastel pink) and Eric continuing along with his black/green goth motif. They like to do a book club once a month. Neither fall into the pitfalls of Crowley/Aziraphale in the way they fall for one another (ie. they figure out that they need to learn how to communicate effectively rather than speaking in nuance), nor do they fall in love in a selfish way like Gabriel/Beelzebub. Their love is the most platonic out of the angel/demon pairings and once they figure out that they won't die from touching one another, they are very physically affectionate with one another. Eric is not jealous if Muriel goes out on a date, though he does pout sometimes because he enjoys her company.

On a separate note, Hastur meeting a human and threatening them only to have the human be like "Oh, who are you? Christopher Columbus? You going to cut off my hands? Chop off my genitals and eat them for lunch? Going to skin my children alive, season them, and have some long pork jerky after fucking their corpses? No? Then get outta here with your nonsense. Anything you're threatening is a faster and less painful way to die than the death my own people offer." And that is how Hastur learns that humans are scarier and more depraved than he could ever hope to be.

[inkskinned]

one of the things that i think we should pay attention to, socially, about the disney v. desantis thing is that it is really highlighting the importance of remembering nuance.

in a purely neutral sense, if you engage in something problematic, that does not mean you are necessarily agreeing with what makes it problematic. and i am worried that we have become... so afraid of any form of nuance.

disney isn't my friend, they're a corporate monopoly that bastardized copyright laws for their own benefit, ruin the environment, and abuse their workers (... and many other things). this isn't a hypothetical for me - i grew up in florida. i also worked for the actual Walt Disney World; like, in the parks. i am keenly aware of the ways they hurt people, because they hurt me. i fully believe that part of the reason florida is so conservative is because it's been an "open secret" for years now that disney lobbies the government to keep minimum wage down, and i know they worked hard to keep the parks unmasked and open during the worst parts of Covid. they purposefully keep their employees in poverty. they are in part responsible for the way the floridian government works.

desantis is still, by a margin that is frankly daunting, way worse. the alternative here isn't just "republicans win", it's actual fascism.

in a case like this, where the alternative is to allow actual fascism into united states legislation - where, if desantis wins, there are huge and legal ramifications - it's tempting to minimize the harm disney is also doing, because... well, it's not fascism. but disney isn't the good guy, either, which means republicans are having a field day asking activists oh, so you think their treatment of their employees is okay?

we have been trained there is a right answer. you're right! you're in the good group, and you're winning at having an opinion.

except i have the Internet Prophecy that in 2-3 months, even left-wing people will be ripping apart activists for having "taken disney's side". aren't i an anti-capitalist? aren't i pro-union? aren't i one of the good ones? removed from context and nuance (that in this particular situation i am forced to side with disney, until an other option reveals itself), my act of being like "i hope they have goofy rip his throat out onstage, shaking his lifeless body like a dog toy" - how quickly does that seem like i actually do support disney?

and what about you! at home, reading this. are you experiencing the Thought Crime of... actually liking some of the things disney has made? your memories of days at the parks, or of good movies, or of your favorite show growing up. maybe you are also evil, if you ever enjoyed anything, ever, at all.

to some degree, the binary idealization/vilification of individual motive and meaning already exists in the desantis case. i have seen people saying not to go to the disney pride events because they're cash grabs (they are). i've seen people saying you have to go because they're a way to protest. there isn't a lot of internet understanding of nuance. instead it's just "good show of support" or "evil bootlicking."

this binary understanding is how you can become radicalized. when we fear nuance and disorder, we're allowing ourselves the safety of assuming that the world must exist in binary - good or bad, problematic or "not" problematic. and unfortunately, bigots want you to see the world in this binary ideal. they want you to get mad at me because "disney is taking a risk for our community but you won't sing their praises" and they want me to get mad at you for not respecting the legit personal trauma that disney forced me through.

in a grander scheme outside of disney: what happens is a horrific splintering within activist groups. we bicker with each other about minimal-harm minimal-impact ideologies, like which depiction of bisexuality is the most-true. we gratuitously analyze the personal lives of activists for any sign they might be "problematic". we get spooked because someone was in a dog collar at pride. we wring our hands about setting an empty shopping mall on fire. we tell each other what words we may identify ourselves by. we get fuckin steven universe disk horse when in reality it is a waste of our collective time.

the bigots want you to spend all your time focusing on how pristine and pretty you and your interests are. they want us at each other's throats instead of hand in hand. they want to say see? nothing is ever fucking good enough for these people.

and they want their followers to think in binary as well - a binary that's much easier to follow. see, in our spaces, we attack each other over "proper" behavior. but in bigoted groups? they attack outwards. they have someone they hate, and it is us. they hate you, specifically, and you are why they have problems - not the other people in their group. and that's a part of how they fucking keep winning.

some of the things that are beloved to you have a backbone in something terrible. the music industry is a wasteland. the publishing industry is a bastion of white supremacy. video games run off of unpaid labor and abuse.

the point of activism was always to bring to light that abuse and try to stop it from happening, not to condemn those who engage in the content that comes from those industries. "there is no ethical consumption under late capitalism" also applies to media. your childhood (and maybe current!) love of the little mermaid isn't something you should now flinch from, worried you'll be a "disney adult". wanting the music industry to change for the better does not require that you reject all popular music until that change occurs. you can acknowledge the harm something might cause - and celebrate the love that it has brought into your life.

we must detach an acknowledgment of nuance from a sense of shame and disgust. we must. punishing individual people for their harmless passions is not doing good work. encouraging more thoughtful, empathetic consumption does not mean people should feel ashamed of their basic human capacities and desires. it should never have even been about the individual when the corporation is so obviously the actual evil. this sense that we must live in shame and dread of our personal nuances - it just makes people bitter and hopeless. do you have any idea how scared i am to post this? to just acknowledge the idea of nuance? that i might like something nuanced, and engage in it joyfully? and, at the same time, that i'm brutally aware of the harm that they're doing?

"so what do i do?" ... well, often there isn't a right answer. i mean in this case, i hope mickey chops off ron's head and then does a little giggle. but truth be told, often our opinions on nuanced subjects will differ. you might be able to engage in things that i can't because the nuance doesn't sit right with me. i might think taylor swift is a great performer and a lot of fun, and you might be like "raquel, the jet fuel emissions". we are both correct; neither of us have any actual sway in this. and i think it's important to remember that - the actual scope of individual responsibility. like, i also love going to the parks. Thunder Mountain is so fun. you (just a person) are not responsible for the harm that Disney (the billion dollar corporation) caused me. i don't know. i think it's possible to both enjoy your memories and interrogate the current state of their employment policies.

there is no right way to interrogate or engage with nuance - i just hope you embrace it readily.

[psychotrenny]

There's a real unearned confidence to the way that Social Democrats talk about their ideology, like they've cracked the code and found the perfect way forward and the only reason people disagree is because they're misguided or evil. Like they'll correctly point out problems within Neoliberal Capitalism before spouting some absolute nonsense about how uniquely evil and dysfunctional Communism was (nearly always in the past tense too; they take it for granted that the end of the USSR was the end of all Communism) and then going "Don't worry though, there's a third way; a mixed regulated economy. We can have a free market in consumer goods while making sure that corporations pay their fair share in wages and taxes that can fund the welfare that looks after everyone". And like putting aside the fact that such a model relies on the super-profits of imperialist exploitation to actually function, and the inherent instability of an arrangement where the Bourgeoisie make concessions even while maintaining ultimate control of the economy, there's the simple fact that much of the Imperial Core did indeed had Social Democracy but does not anymore.

Like these Social Democrats never think about why that might be, why their ideology failed and what they can learn from it going forward. They just act as though some dumb individuals (i.e. Ronald Reagan, Milton Friedman etc.) managed to slip into power and make bad decisions and like the best way to fix this is to vote good people in who'll change it back. Like hell a lot of these people take the previous existence of these policies as like a good point, the whole "We had them before so we aren't being radical by wanting them back. We don't want anything crazy we just wanna bring back The New Deal or Keynesian Economic policy or whatever". There's never any thought about why those policies failed (how often do you hear these people even talk about "stagflation" or "the oil crisis" let alone the impact of the fall of the soviet union) and what implications this might have on the viability of bringing it back. They also love talking about how Social Democratic institutions are still largely intact in the Scandinavian countries, but rather than even consider what specific factors in their political-economic situation led to this these people just go "Damn isn't Sweden great. Why aren't we doing exactly what they do?"

And sure some people might compare this to Marxism-Leninism, the whole "trying to bring back a defeated ideology", but for one it's stupid to treat the dissolution of the USSR as the end of Communism as a global political force. It may have been a major blow, but even if you write off like Cuba and Vietnam as too small and insignificant to matter you can't just fucking ignore that over 1/6 of the world's population continues live under a Marxist Leninist party. Whatever concessions these countries may have made to global Capitalism, it's just plain ignorant to act as though Communism suffered anywhere near the humiliating loss of global power and credibility that Social Democracy has. Sure the latter may be more politically acceptable to toy with in "The West", but "The Western World" ≠ The Entire World. Also, nearly every ML on the planet is painfully aware that Soviet Communism collapsed and that it collapsed for a reason. There might be plenty of contention about why exactly it died and what exactly we can learn from this, but nearly everyone agrees that we need to learn and ideologically grow. No serious Communist wants to "bring back the USSR" in the same way that many Social Democrats want to "bring back The Welfare State". Far from being a form of "best of both worlds" mixed economy, Social Democracy is nothing more than a flimsy tool to stabilise Imperialist Capitalism at its moments of greatest strain. And if people are still gonna promote it wholeheartedly as the best possible solution, I wish they'd be a little less arrogant about it. It's not as though they have history on their side

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Inkjump Linkdump

For the rest of May, my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) is available as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!

It's the start of a long weekend and I've found myself with a backlog of links, so it's time for another linkdump – the eighteenth in the (occasional) series. Here's the previous installments:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

Kicking off this week's backlog is a piece of epic lawyer-snark, which is something I always love, but what makes this snark total catnip for me is that it's snark about copyfraud: false copyright claims made to censor online speech. Yes please and a second portion, thank you very much!

This starts with the Cola Corporation, a radical LA-based design store that makes lefty t-shirts, stickers and the like. Cola made a t-shirt that remixed the LA Lakers logo to read "Fuck the LAPD." In response, the LAPD's private foundation sent a nonsense copyright takedown letter. Cola's lawyer, Mike Dunford, sent them a chef's-kiss-perfect reply, just two words long: "LOL, no":

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/19/apparel-company-gives-perfect-response-to-lapds-nonsense-ip-threat-letter-over-fuck-the-lapd-shirt/

But that's not the lawyer snark I'm writing about today. Dunford also sent a letter to IMG Worldwide, whose lawyers sent the initial threat, demanding an explanation for this outrageous threat, which was – as the physicists say – "not even wrong":

https://www.loweringthebar.net/2024/05/lol-no-explained.html

Every part of the legal threat is dissected here, with lavish, caustic footnotes, mercilessly picking apart the legal defects, including legally actionable copyfraud under DMCA 512(f), which provides for penalties for wrongful copyright threats. To my delight, Dunford cited Lenz here, which is the infamous "Dancing Baby" case that EFF successfully litigated on behalf of Stephanie Lenz, whose video of her adorable (then-)toddler dancing to a few seconds of Prince's "Let's Go Crazy" was censored by Universal Music Group:

https://www.eff.org/cases/lenz-v-universal

Dunford's towering rage is leavened with incredulous demands for explanations: how on Earth could a lawyer knowingly send such a defective, illegal threat? Why shouldn't Dunford seek recovery of his costs from IMG and its client, the LA Police Foundation, for such lawless bullying? It is a sparkling – incandescent, even! – piece of lawyerly writing. If only all legal correspondence was this entertaining! Every 1L should study this.

Meanwhile, Cola has sold out of everything, thanks to that viral "LOL, no." initial response letter. They're taking orders for their next resupply, shipping on June 1. Gotta love that Streisand Effect!

https://www.thecolacorporation.com/

I'm generally skeptical of political activism that takes the form of buying things or refusing to do so. "Voting with your wallet" is a pretty difficult trick to pull off. After all, the people with the thickest wallets get the most votes, and generally, the monopoly party wins. But as the Cola Company's example shows, there's times when shopping can be a political act.

But that's because it's a collective act. Lots of us went and bought stuff from Cola, to send a message to the LAPD about legal bullying. That kind of collective action is hard to pull off, especially when it comes to purchase-decisions. Often, this kind of thing descends into a kind of parody of political action, where you substitute shopping for ideology. This is where Matt Bors's Mr Gotcha comes in: "ooh, you want to make things better, but you bought a product from a tainted company, I guess you're not really sincere, gotcha!"

https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/

There's a great example of this in Zephyr Teachout's brilliant 2020 book Break 'Em Up: if you miss the pro-union demonstration at the Amazon warehouse because you spent two hours driving around looking for an indie stationer to buy the cardboard to make your protest sign rather than buying it from Amazon, Amazon wins:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/29/break-em-up/#break-em-up

So yeah, I'm pretty skeptical of consumerism as a framework for political activism. It's very hard to pull off an effective boycott, especially of a monopolist. But if you can pull it off, well…

Canada is one of the most monopoly-friendly countries in the world. Hell, the Competition Act doesn't even have an "abuse of dominance" standard! That's like a criminal code that doesn't have a section prohibiting "murder." (The Trudeau government has promised to fix this.)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-an-overhauled-competition-act-will-light-a-fire-in-the-stolid-world-of/

There's stiff competition for Most Guillotineable Canadian Billionaire. There's the entire Irving family, who basically own the province of New Bruinswick:

https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/dynasties-2-the-irvings/

There's Ted Rogers, the trumpy billionaire telecoms monopolist, whose serial acquire-and-loot approach to media has devastated Canadian TV and publishing:

https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/canadaland-725-the-rogers-family-compact/

But then there's Galen Fucking Weston, the nepobaby who inherited the family grocery business (including Loblaw), bought out all his competitors (including Shopper's Drug Mart), and then engaged in a criminal price-fixing conspiracy to rig the price of bread, the most Les-Miz-ass crime imaginable:

https://www.blogto.com/eat_drink/2023/06/what-should-happened-galen-weston-price-fixing/

Weston has made himself the face of the family business, appearing in TV ads in a cardigan to deliver dead-eyed avuncular paeans to his sprawling empire, even as he colludes with competitors to rig the price of his workers' wages:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-12/a-supermarket-billionaire-steps-into-trouble-over-pandemic-wages

For Canadians, Weston is the face of greedflation, the man whose nickle-and-diming knows no shame. This is the man who decided that the discount on nearly-spoiled produce would be slashed from 50% to 30%, who racked up record profits even as his prices skyrocketed.

It's impossible to overstate how loathed Galen Weston is at this moment. There's a very good episode of the excellent new podcast Lately, hosted by Canadian competition expert Vass Bednar and Katrina Onstad that gives you a sense of the national outrage:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/podcasts/lately/article-boycotting-the-loblawpoly/

All of this has led to a national boycott of Loblaw, kicked off by members of the r/loblawsisoutofcontrol, and it's working. Writing for Jacobin, Jeremy Appel gives us a snapshot of a nation in revolt:

https://jacobin.com/2024/05/loblaw-grocery-price-gouge-boycott/

Appel points out the boycott's problems – there's lots of places, particularly in the north, where Loblaw's is the only game in town, or where the sole competitor is the equally odious Walmart. But he also talks about the beneficial effect the boycott is having for independent grocers and co-ops who deal more fairly with their suppliers and their customers.

He also platforms the boycott's call for a national system of price controls on certain staples. This is something that neoliberal economists despise, and it's always fun to watch them lose their minds when the subject is raised. Meanwhile, economists like Isabella M Weber continue to publish careful research explaining how and why price controls can work, and represent our best weapon against "seller's inflation":

https://scholarworks.umass.edu/econ_workingpaper/343/

Antimonopoly sentiment is having a minute, obviously, and the news comes at you fast. This week, the DoJ filed a lawsuit to break up Ticketmaster/Live Nation, one of the country's most notorious monopolists, who have aroused the ire of every kind of fan, but especially the Swifties (don't fuck with Swifties). In announcing the suit, DoJ Antitrust Division boss Jonathan Kanter coined the term "Ticketmaster tax" to describe the junk fees that Ticketmaster uses to pick all our pockets.

In response, Ticketmaster has mobilized its own Loblaw-like shill army, who insist that all the anti-monopoly activism is misguided populism, and "anti-business." In his BIG newsletter, Matt Stoller tears these claims apart, and provides one of the clearest explanations of how Ticketmaster rips us all off that I've ever seen, leaning heavily on Ticketmaster's own statements to their investors and the business-press:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/antitrust-enforcers-to-break-up-ticketmaster

Ticketmaster has a complicated "flywheel" that it uses to corner the market on live events, mixing low-margin businesses that are deliberately kept unprofitable (to prevent competitors from gaining a foothold) in order to capture the high-margin businesses that are its real prize. All this complexity can make your eyes glaze over, and that's to Ticketmaster's benefit, keeping normies from looking too closely at how this bizarre self-licking ice-cream cone really works.

But for industry insiders, those workings are all too clear. When Rebecca Giblin and I were working on our book Chokepoint Capitalism, we talked to insiders from every corner of the entertainment-industrial complex, and there was always at least one expert who'd go on record about the scams inside everything from news monopolies to streaming video to publishing and the record industry:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

The sole exception was Ticketmaster/Live Nation. When we talked to club owners, promoters and other victims of TM's scam, they universally refused to go on the record. They were palpably terrified of retaliation from Ticketmaster's enforcers. They acted like mafia informants seeking witness protection. Not without reason, mind you: back when the TM monopoly was just getting started, Pearl Jam – then one of the most powerful acts in American music – took a stand against them. Ticketmaster destroyed them. That was when TM was a mere hatchling, with a bare fraction of the terrifying power it wields today.

TM is a great example of the problem with boycotts. If a club or an act refuses to work with TM/LN, they're destroyed. If a fan refuses to buy tickets from TM or see a Live Nation show, they basically can't go to any shows. The TM monopoly isn't a problem of bad individual choices – it's a systemic problem that needs a systemic response.

That's what makes antitrust responses so timely. Federal enforcers have wide-ranging powers, and can seek remedies that consumerism can never attain – there's no way a boycott could result in a breakup of Ticketmaster/Live Nation, but a DoJ lawsuit can absolutely get there.

Every federal agency has wide-ranging antimonopoly powers at its disposal. These are laid out very well in Tim Wu's 2020 White House Executive Order on competition, which identifies 72 ways the agencies can act against monopoly without having to wait for Congress:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/post-bork-era/#manne-down

But of course, the majority of antimonopoly power is vested in the FTC, the agency created to police corporate power. Section 5 of the FTC Act grants the agency the power to act to prevent "unfair and deceptive methods of competition":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

This clause has lain largely dormant since the Reagan era, but FTC chair Lina Khan has revived it, using it to create muscular privacy rights for Americans, and to ban noncompete agreements that bind American workers to dead-end jobs:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/25/capri-v-tapestry/#aiming-at-dollars-not-men

The FTC's power to ban activity because it's "unfair and deceptive" is exciting, because it promises American internet users a way to solve their problems beyond copyright law. Copyright law is basically the only law that survived the digital transition, even as privacy, labor and consumer protection rights went into hibernation. The last time Congress gave us a federal consumer privacy law was 1988, and it's a law that bans video store clerks from telling the newspapers which VHS cassettes you rented:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act

That's left internet users desperately trying to contort copyright to solve every problem they have – like someone trying to build a house using nothing but chainsaw. For example, I once found someone impersonating me on a dating site, luring strangers into private spaces. Alarmed, I contacted the dating site, who told me that their only fix for this was for me to file a copyright claim against the impersonator to make them remove the profile photo. Now, that photo was Creative Commons licensed, so any takedown notice would have been a "LOL, no." grade act of copyfraud:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/the-internets-original-sin/

The unsuitability of copyright for solving complex labor and privacy problems hasn't stopped people who experience these problems from trying to use copyright to solve them. They've got nothing else, after all.

That's why everyone who's worried about the absolutely legitimate and urgent concerns over AI and labor and privacy has latched onto copyright as the best tool for resolving these questions, despite copyright's total unsuitability for this purpose, and the strong likelihood that this will make these problems worse:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/13/spooky-action-at-a-close-up/#invisible-hand

Enter FTC Chair Lina Khan, who has just announced that her agency will be reviewing AI model training as an "unfair and deceptive method of competition":

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/4682461-ftc-chair-ai-models-could-violate-antitrust-laws/

If the agency can establish this fact, they will have sweeping powers to craft rules prohibiting the destructive and unfair uses of AI, without endangering beneficial activities like scraping, mathematical analysis, and the creation of automated systems that help with everything from adding archival metadata to exonerating wrongly convicted people rotting in prison:

https://hrdag.org/tech-notes/large-language-models-IPNO.html

I love this so much. Khan's announcement accomplishes the seemingly impossible: affirming that there are real problems and insisting that we employ tactics that can actually fix those problems, rather than just doing something because inaction is so frustrating.

That's something we could use a lot more of, especially in platform regulation. The other big tech news about Big Tech last week was the progress of a bill that would repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act at the end of 2025, without any plans to replace it with something else.

Section 230 is the most maligned, least understood internet law, and that's saying something:

https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/

Its critics wrongly accuse the law – which makes internet users liable for bad speech acts, not the platforms that carry that speech – of being a gift to Big Tech. That's totally wrong. Without Section 230, platforms could be named to lawsuits arising from their users' actions. We know how that would play out.

Back in 2018, Congress took a big chunk out of 230 when they passed SESTA/FOSTA, a law that makes platforms liable for any sex trafficking that is facilitated by their platforms. Now, this may sound like a narrowly targeted, beneficial law that aims at a deplorable, unconscionable crime. But here's how it played out: the platforms decided that it was too much trouble to distinguish sex trafficking from any sex-work, including consensual sex work and adjacent activities. The result? Consensual sex-work became infinitely more dangerous and precarious, while trafficking was largely unaffected:

https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-21-385.pdf

Eliminating 230 would be incredibly reckless under any circumstances, but after the SESTA/FOSTA experience, it's unforgivable. The Big Tech platforms will greet this development by indiscriminately wiping out any kind of controversial speech from marginalized groups (think #MeToo or Black Lives Matter). Meanwhile, the rich and powerful will get a new tool – far more powerful than copyfraud – to make inconvenient speech disappear. The war-criminals, rapists, murderers and rip-off artists who currently make do with bogus copyright claims to "manage their reputations" will be able to use pretextual legal threats to make their critics just disappear:

https://www.qurium.org/forensics/dark-ops-undercovered-episode-i-eliminalia/

In a post-230 world, Cola Corporation's lawyers wouldn't get a chance to reply to the LAPD's bullying lawyers – those lawyers would send their letter to Cola's hosting provider, who would weigh the possibility of being named in a lawsuit against the small-dollar monthly payment they get from Cola, and poof, no more Cola. The legal bullies could do the same for Cola's email provider, their payment processor, their anti-DoS provider.

This week on EFF's Deeplinks blog, I published a piece making the connection between abolishing Section 230 and reinforcing Big Tech monopolies:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/05/wanna-make-big-tech-monopolies-even-worse-kill-section-230

The Big Tech platforms really do suck, and the solution to their systemic, persistent moderation failures won't come from making them liable for users' speech. The platforms have correctly assessed that they alone have the legal and moderation staff to do the kinds of mass-deletions of controversial speech that could survive a post-230 world. That's why tech billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg love the idea of getting rid of 230:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/facebooks-pitch-congress-section-230-me-not-thee

But for small tech providers – individuals, co-ops, nonprofits and startups that host fediverse servers, standalone group chats and BBSes – a post-230 world is a mass-extinction event. Ever had a friend demand that you take sides in an interpersonal dispute ("if you invite her to the party, I'm not coming!").

Imagine if your refusal to take sides in a dispute among your friends – and their friends, and their friends – could result in you being named to a suit that could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to settle:

https://www.engine.is/news/primer/section230costs

It's one thing to hope for a more humane internet run by people who want to make hospitable forums for online communities to form. It's another to ask them to take on an uninsurable risk that could result in the loss of their home, their retirement account, and their life's savings.

A post-230 world is one in which Big Tech must delete first and ask questions later. Yes, Big Tech platforms have many sins to answer for, but making them jointly liable for their users' speech will flush out treasure-hunters seeking a quick settlement and a quick buck.

Again, this isn't speculative – it's inevitable. Consider FTX: yes, the disgraced cryptocurrency exchange was a festering hive of fraud – but there's no way that fraud added up to the 23.6 quintillion dollars in claims that have been laid against it:

https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/US-v-SBF-Alameda-Research-Victim-Impact-Statement-3-20-2024.pdf

Without 230, Big Tech will shut down anything controversial – and small tech will disappear. It's the worst of all possible worlds, a gift to tech monopolists and the bullies and crooks who have turned our online communities into shooting galleries.

One of the reasons I love working for EFF is our ability to propose technologically informed, sound policy solutions to the very real problems that tech creates, such as our work on interoperability as a way to make it easier for users to escape Big Tech:

https://www.eff.org/interoperablefacebook

Every year, EFF recognizes the best, bravest and brightest contributors to a better internet and a better technological future, with our annual EFF Awards. Nominations just opened for this year's awards – if you know someone who fits the bill, here's the form:

https://www.eff.org/nominations-open-2024-eff-awards

It's nearly time for me to sign off on this weekend's linkdump. For one thing, I have to vacate my backyard hammock, because we've got contractors who need to access the side of the house to install our brand new heat-pump (one of two things I'm purchasing with my last lump-sum book advance – the other is corrective cataract surgery that will give me lifelong, perfect vision).

I've been lusting after a heat-pump for years, and they just keep getting better – though you might not know it, thanks to the fossil-fuel industry disinfo campaign that insists that these unbelievably cool gadgets don't work. This week in Wired, Matt Simon offers a comprehensive debunking of this nonsense, and on the way, explains the nearly magical technology that allows a heat pump to heat a midwestern home in the dead of winter:

https://www.wired.com/story/myth-heat-pumps-cold-weather-freezing-subzero/

As heat pumps become more common, their applications will continue to proliferate. On Bloomberg, Feargus O'Sullivan describes one such application: the Japanese yokushitsu kansouki – a sealed bathroom with its own heat-pump that can perfectly dry all your clothes while you're out at work:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-22/laundry-lessons-from-japanese-bathroom-technology

This is amazing stuff – it uses less energy than a clothes-dryer, leaves your clothes wrinkle-free, prevents the rapid deterioration caused by high heat and mechanical agitation, and prevents the microfiber pollution that lowers our air-quality.

This is the most solarpunk thing I've read all week, and it makes me insanely jealous of Japanese people. The second-most solarpunk thing I've read this week came from The New Republic, where Aaron Regunberg and Donald Braman discuss the possibility of using civil asset forfeiture laws – lately expanded to farcical levels by the Supreme Court in Culley – to force the fossil fuel industry to pay for the energy transition:

https://newrepublic.com/article/181721/fossil-fuels-civil-forefeiture-pipeline-climate

They point out that the fossil fuel industry has committed a string of undisputed crimes, including fraud, and that the Supremes' new standard for asset forfeiture could comfortably accommodate state AGs and other enforcers who seek billions from Big Oil on this basis. Of course, Big Oil has more resources to fight civil asset forfeiture than the median disputant in these cases ("a low- or moderate-income person of color [with] a suspected connection to drugs"). But it's an exciting idea!

All right, the heat-pump guys really need me to vacate the hammock, so here's one last quickie for you: Barath Raghavan and Bruce Schneier's new paper, "Seeing Like a Data Structure":

https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/seeing-data-structure

This is a masterful riff on James C Scott's classic Seeing Like a State, and it describes how digitalization forces us into computable categories, and counts the real costs of doing so. It's a gnarly and thoughtful piece, and it's been on my mind continuously since Schneier sent it to me yesterday. Something suitably chewy for you to masticate over the long weekend!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/25/anthology/#lol-no

[qqueenofhades]

Ignoring his inflammatory rhetoric, do you think Bernie's *POLICIES* are actually that extreme? I've read them over and, if he had a softer approach, they seem like they'd be sound policies to me

The problem with Bernie is that it's hard to know, in actual practice/reality, what his policies are. Yes, on paper, everyone knows what they are, and it's not a week if he's not writing yet another op-ed in the Guardian about Workers' Rights or Climate Justice or whatever. But like.... what good does that do anyone? Everyone who reads the Guardian probably agrees with those things already, and that includes me -- I read it, I financially support it, etc., but it's not where I come for policy actions or where I want to see US senators spending all their time. (Like, Bernie, aren't there other people you could be talking to, who could actually do something about this?) It's the definition of preaching to the choir, where he's regurgitating a boilerplate piece of progressive ideology but not actually doing anything about it or attempting to reach an audience who doesn't already agree with him. (Plus the Guardian, unfortunately, is always also willing to let his ex-campaign manager, David Sirota, bash the Democrats for something, but never mind that.)

Likewise, Bernie's actual voting record in the Senate isn't always a match with the things for which he has (very loudly) advocated, and he's a multi-millionaire old white man from Vermont (one of the whitest states in the Union) who has often seemed interested in preaching socialism for everyone else but resisting any scrutiny or participation in that for himself. He has gotten a lot of mileage and built a disproportionately influential political career out of championing so-called leftist progressivism/socialism, but as I keep saying about him, he never seems to do anything about it. "Tax billionaires" or "save the planet" are extremely broad-brush statements that everyone in the liberal camp can mostly agree on. And no, I wouldn't say those positions are particularly extreme; they're pretty much mainstream Democratic ideology at this point. Indeed, I think Bernie gets unwarranted traction out of positioning himself as the "radical" alternative to the Democrats, when most of the things he says are now basically part of the party platform and have been adopted or explored in some shape or form. Just because they can't actually be implemented at the moment, whether due to legislative roadblocks or otherwise, doesn't mean that they're not moving in that direction.

Likewise, Bernie's favorite hobbyhorse of Medicare for All is often used by his fans to irrationally bash the Democrats, as if we don't have universal healthcare -> quod erat demonstrandum, Democrats Are Neoliberal Shills. I've written many posts about the state of the healthcare debate in America and how passing even a much-watered-down Affordable Care Act cost Obama control of Congress for pretty much the rest of his presidency. So if Bernie and co. want to offer a roadmap for how to pass another major healthcare reform/overhaul that goes even further than the ACA -- trust me, everyone's listening and wants to know how to do that. That is neither extreme nor particularly, at least among Democrats, controversial in the way it was in 2009, when we still had Blue Dog Democrats in red states like Nebraska and South Dakota. But a) we have the united fascist bloc of Republicans who would object and obstruct it on principle, and b) we DON'T have enough Democrats to just pass it by fiat and have that be the end, because that's not the way things have worked in the history of anything.

So basically: if progressives want to endlessly harp on the Democrats for not magically pulling Medicare for All out of a hat, they're welcome to do that if, and only if, they can produce a credible policy/platform/program of action to actually get it passed that the Democrats could be following and aren't (and "they don't care enough about this and could fix it if they wanted!" is not that). That way, they could actually show that the reform is empirically possible and the Democrats are not carrying it out. But flatly ignoring all the political realities and blaming them for not producing a miracle in an extremely adverse legislative and political climate does not count as good-faith engagement and isn't directed toward any constructive end. It's just performative gesturing to show that they are Better Than The Establishment, something something something, and Bernie is usually one of the chief offenders in this regard, despite actually being part of the Establishment for decades.

I will give Bernie credit for two things: he has voted for all the major Democratic legislative packages with the relative minimum of selfish hostage-taking/sabotaging such as that carried out constantly by Manchin and Sinema, and he quickly shut down any talk of running (yet fucking again) in 2024, in order to support Biden's re-election bid. But as far as policies go, he's still not shown me that he either has a concrete plan to carry them out, that he knows what they are aside from broad-brush, vague and general talking points, or that he will put in the work to get them achieved, so yeah.

[pscottm]

OKLAHOMA CITY (KOKH) — Some Oklahoma parents say they want to opt their child out of any Bible-related teaching.

A nonprofit called the Defense of Democracy created a Bible opt-out form that parents can fill out, and send to their child’s school district.

"Parental choice has always been a thing in public education," Regional Director and parent Erica Watkins said. "This [form] is just to kind of solidify that, and show that there are parents who don’t want their children to be involved in any Bible-based curriculum.”

State Superintendent Ryan Walters tells Fox 25 it's unfortunate that parents "have been lied to by these radical, left-wing individuals."

"Look, it’s history," Supt. Walters said. "You going to opt out of history? You going to opt out of math? You going to opt out of science next? I mean, here’s the reality: the Bible is the most cited book in the 17th and 18th century from the writers in America.”

As a Jenks Public Schools parent, Watkins doubles down on her stance against Walters' directive.

"I want my school to know there are parents in favor of letting the school do what they know is best, by the professionals and educational groups that have developed this curriculum," Watkins said. "We can't just have somebody coming in and saying "we need a Bible in every classroom" to fix the very real issues that are going on in public education."

Walters responds to that statement, saying the Oklahoma State Department of Education has been taking on how the "teachers unions destroyed education from day one."

"We have more parental rights than any other state," Walters said. "We've brought in teacher pay based on performance. We have record signing bonuses, and we've driven up scores through our tutoring programs. Very proud of the work we're doing. Frankly, we're setting a blueprint for every state to follow on how to get education back on track. We are happy to take this state away from the path the teachers unions had it on: a Marxist dumpster fire, and putting it in on the right track to be a leader in the country."

Nonprofit co-chair for Payne County and Stillwater Public Schools parent Saralynn Boren says if her district has the Bible in the classroom, she will fill out the template.

"You don’t know what is going to be taught," Boren said. "When your kids go to church, they’re being taught by someone who is an expert in that religion, so you know that they’re going to be taught well. Whereas if you’re just having a random teacher teach that, you have no idea what that teacher’s background is. There's no telling what kind of lesson they're going to get from the Bible if you have just a random teacher teaching it. This is really not something that's in their area of expertise. We should let the teachers take the teachings of things that our kids need to be taught in school."

Walters reiterates that it's unfortunate how "leftists have lied" to parents.

"It's in its historical context," Walters said. "When it fits into the standards as they've been laid out for years now, we're going to make sure those standards are taught. There's absolutely moments, like when the pilgrims came to America so that they could practice their religious liberty, what religious liberty are we talking about? We're not going to lie to kids and say, 'Well we're not going to tell you that it was Christianity.' We're not going to lie to kids and not quote the Bible when Martin Luther King Jr. quoted the Bible."

The state superintendent offers a final thought to concerned parents.

"I’m going to continue to stand with the parents of Oklahoma who want to make sure their kids have history taught to them not through a Marxist perspective being pushed by the teachers unions and Kamala Harris, but a robust history that understands American exceptionalism and frankly, includes the Bible in its historical role."

Walters says he's not not forcing religion on kids, and that he wants to make sure they understand the Bible from a history standpoint. Watkins tells Fox 25 she doesn't believe that.

"Walters' rhetoric of saying that the Bible also correlates with American history is just nonsensical," Watkins said. "It's political pandering to his base. We see right through it."

[fauyen]

Feelings about the left in America? Asking because your posts come off as right-leaning or at least seem to be from a right-wing perspective?

I'm a radical feminist. I think both Democrats and Republicans are anti-woman, and therefore neither support my politics. Conservatives are in the business of upholding white supremacy and the patriarchy. They've lost the script of what they claim to care about and they are clinging to the most vile among us for money and power. Conversely, leftists have no spine or ambition to progress society towards a better future. Instead, they're riding on the coattails of past achievements, being marginally better than Republicans, and appeal to people's basic deceny to get them hired. Then when they do have power they do the bare minimum but don't actually try to dismantle sexist, classist, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, colonialist or imperialist institutions/policies/laws that keep white, old, heterosexual men in power and everyone else subjugated. I'm pro-female seperatism, pro-choice, anti-porn, anti-prostitution, anti-surrogacy, anti-war, anti-capitalist, pro-universal healthcare, pro-union, anti-fgm, and anti-money. Women have the right to say no and have their boundaries respected. I support all women, Black Lives Matter, first nation's and indigenous people, lgb rights, disability rights, immigration reform, refugees seeking asylum, and the poverty stricken. I believe the homeless should be given homes, treatment, and mental healthcare. I believe the wage gap needs to be closed, period products should be free, childcare should be free, women should get paid days off for their periods, birth control and abortions should be free, clothing regulations should ensure that women's clothing is the same high quality, durability, and affordability as men's clothing, rapists should be executed and people shouldn't be convicted for murdering them because rape is the only crime that has no justification and offenders will rape again, abusers and murders should be locked up and denied child custody, all advertisements should be illegal, prisons shouldn't be for profit, the 13th amendment shifted slavery from a private institution to a state mandated one, all drugs, medical procedures and health recommendations should be retested on woman to know how they affect us. I think trans people deserve respect, dignity and compassion. They deserve the same things all humans have a right to: safety, rights to privacy, access to healthcare, affordable housing, clean drinking water, food, clothing, opportunities to achieve their dreams, justice, and freedom. However, males do not have the right to redefine women, to take away our rights, endanger us, to silence us, abuse, rape or murder us, take away our opportunities, use our resources that we built for women, or demand that we cater to them. Sex is real, but gender is a hierarchical form of oppression with men on top and women on the bottom. I want to get rid of gender. I want to dismantle the patriarchy and liberate women from men.

I'm an environmentalist. Climate change is a very real threat to humanity and all living things. We should produce less. Constant growth is a cancer. A flood. And we are all going to drown. Or burn. We should repair the things, houses, infrastructure we already have rather than always throwing it all away and buying new. All around the world there should be fast, safe, reliable public transit. Cities and towns should be walkable or bike-able. We should only produce that which we need. Food should be produced as we need it, organically and locally. Farm animals shouldn't be in factory farms, but in fields and sunshine. We should also eat less meat. Biodiversity should be a number one priority. People should be able to live where they work. And they should be given priority over people that don't work there. People should only own one home. If they own more than one, then they should be heavily taxed. Everyone should own their own home. The rich should be taxed heavily with no loopholes. Militaries and police should be heavily defunded. Corporations should not be considered people, should not be allowed to fund politicians, and need to be more regulated. Same with banks. Women should be 100% independent and child free if they wish. And life shouldn't cost more for them. Schools, libraries, music and art, public works, parks and recreation should get the bulk of municipalities revenue. Taxes should be spent on the people.

[sunflowertaters]

I swear to God, stop relying on electoralism for your attempts at political change, and especially from PSL

PSL is a high control group:

https://medium.com/@jacobscb/documentation-of-corruption-institutional-bigotry-and-high-control-group-cult-like-behavior-in-6afa65b8072e

PSL, including Claudia De La Cruz, doxxed abuse victims to defend an abuser:

https://archive.is/QKiEe

PSL is known for working with cops and leading protesters into kettles. Literally a lot of radical movements in several cities refuse to work with them because they try to co-opt movements to funnel money and people into their org.

But this shows the underlying problem. We're so used to our only political action being voting that we can't think of what else to do. You want to know what does more than voting third party? Talk to your neighbors. Literally, talk to them, food helps. The common rule is 80% listening, 20% talking. Learn what skills they have, what needs they're lacking, what drives them to act, and organize your community.

Here are some links to help you actually organize and fight in 2024:

General Direct Action Guide: https://crimethinc.com/2017/03/14/direct-action-guide

Here's a resource on how to make an affinity group: https://crimethinc.com/2017/02/06/how-to-form-an-affinity-group-the-essential-building-block-of-anarchist-organization

Here's one on organizing community councils: https://decarcerating.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/self-defense-manual-merged.pdf

The Formation of Local Councils by Omar Aziz: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/omar-aziz-the-formation-of-local-councils

Here's A On Organizing Unions: https://youtu.be/JvrldZlUwe0

Here's Another: https://youtu.be/ewDeJwMJG28

Here's How to Start A Neighborhood Pod: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwMYzpB1sLE

Here's a general series on organizing: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEOy9JY5fHo39CJsMQYHyzHYvcQcv2QpQ

Jackson Rising is a great book on dual power: http://libgen.lc/item/index.php?md5=BF09C57360A7D52B6F13BACA00555FBA

A Useful Guide for both protests, riots, and direct action: https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/view/Qp0Jh2U1ppNtosT393fKDe3bIsY8gOMum1uHn9CDN0I/embed/

How to start a cop watch: https://youtu.be/2d_pgEStUbA

Tenant Organizing: https://atun-rsia.org/resources

Making your spaces safe: https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=18134E0D84D81564546EF6374EC9C9C4

General guide on how to do stuff: https://we.riseup.net/assets/35370/crimethinc.recipes.for.disaster.an.anarchist.cookbook.pdf

Remember Security Culture: https://crimethinc.com/2004/11/01/what-is-security-culture#:~:text=A%20security%20culture%20is%20a,government%2C%20designed%20to%20minimize%20risk.

If you're going to vote next year, we need to vote third party so we can to prove to democrats that we won't put up with their shit – because you know what happens if we vote blue again? We let the dems know that they can do whatever they want and they'll still have our support because "at least it's not a republican."

There's literally a socialist candidate out there who wants to break up the billionaire class, switch us to clean energy, fight racism, sexism, transphobia, etc and aligns with our views more than any other candidate has.

If we're going to organize a vote for next year, that's who it needs to be for. Not someone who is actively committing genocide. WE HAVE OPTIONS. Quit acting like we don't.

[antifainternational]

Hi, I'm from Germany and it's bothering me that you're using the three arrows in your avatar. 1933, the german communist party called for a general strike against Hitler and the iron front who used the arrows as their symbol refused to participate, weakening something that could've been a very powerful action of all workers. One of the arrows symbolizes fighting communism, which means that the iron front rather sat and did nothing against fascism instead of working with communist. If you show up with the three arrows at an antifascist protest in germany, you get side eyed, not only by communists but also by anarchists. To us they symbolize being inactive in a time where action would've made a huge difference, and today only the party SPD is using them sometimes when they want to act like they're part of the antifascist movement while they're in reality centrist cowards that have been busy butchering worker's rights for the past 30 years. They're using the arrows specifically to distance themselves from more radical anti-capitalist groups and groups who feel that parlamentarian democracy is not enough and call for a government that makes it possible for everyone to participate way beyond voting. Some of them think talking to nazis is a good strategy. I gather that the symbol is seen differently in America, but for a worldwide antifascist group I feel like you should consider the origins

Ah, it's that time the year again when we get to school folks about the antifascist "three arrows" symbol!

The antifa “three arrows” symbol is one of the most recognizable anti-fascist symbols in the world.  It originated with the Iron Front - a militant antifascist organization created in late 1931 in Germany by the Reichsbanner, the socialist SPD, and various labor organizations (Bray, Mark; Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook; pg. 23).  The SPD had a lengthy history of hostilities with the KPD, the German communist party at the time, which is probably why some people have misconstrued it as an "anti-communist" symbol.

Mark Bray writes in his book that the “three arrows” symbol was created for the Iron Front by a Russian socialist living in Germany named Sergei Chakhotin.  “While walking around town, Chakhotin noticed that someone had drawn a line over a swastika to cover the Nazi logo.  This gave him the idea of turning the line into a downward facing arrow.  After discussing it with receptive comrades, he turned it into three arrows (Drei Pfeile).  In his mind, they stood for ‘unity, activity, discipline,” or the SPD, the unions, and the Reichsbanner. (Ibid, pg. 24). Let’s reiterate that last point for you, Anon: In his mind (the mind of the person that designed the symbol!), they stood for ‘unity, activity, discipline,” or the SPD, the unions, and the Reichsbanner.  

Some people (like yourself, Anon, and also Wikipedia) claim that the three arrows symbol is anti-communist, but the person who created the symbol was a socialist who created it for a coalition that included socialists and trade unions and clearly did not conceive of it as an anti-communist symbol.  Eighty-six years later and any “anti-communist” or even specifically socialist meaning that may or (more likely) may not have been implied with this symbol has been lost as it’s become as commonplace and recognized an anti-fascist symbol as the “two flags” symbol of Antifaschiste Aktion (which was formed by the KPD in response to the popularity of the Iron Front [Ibid., pg. 25]).  

Like we always say, anti-fascism is non-partisan.  It’s a big tent where people of all sorts of different political inclinations unite in their mutual opposition to fascism.  We don’t believe that the three arrows design ever symbolized anti-anything besides anti-fascism and even if it once did over eighty years ago, we certainly don’t think it does in this century.  

[vanishedangels]

Clan of Warriors

Click here for First chapter

Summary: While rebuilding Mandalore, Mand'alor Din Djarin is questioned by his people because of his beliefs and origins. In the dawn of a civil war, the council resolves that The Mand'alor must join in marriage with someone close to Bo-Katan Kryze. He's forced to marry Koska Reeves and accept a loveless union. In the meantime, Din is having a secret relationship with his son's Master, Jedi Luke Skywalker, his dream of having his own clan of warriors is about to fade away.

Pairing: Din Djarin/Luke Skywalker

Characters: Din Djarin, Luke Skywalker, Grogu, Leia Organa, Cara Dune, Koska Reeves, Bo-Katan Kryze, Axe Woves. OC. Peli Motto. Fennec Shand. Boba Fett, Paz Vizsla. Owen Lars. Beru Whitesun, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Wedge Antilles.

Rating: Explicit (+18)

Warnings: Canon Typical Violence. Explicit Smut.

Tags: Canon Compliant, Post Season 2 Finale, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, Friends To Lovers, Fluff, Angst, Demisexual Din Djarin, Top Luke Skywalker, Bottom Din Djarin, Top Din Djarin, Bottom Luke Skywalker, Protective Din Djarin, BAMF Luke Skywalker, Adorable Baby Yoda, Sassy Leia Organa, Gai Bal Manda, Blindfolds, Sub Din Undertones, Fantasies, Jealous Luke, Keldabe Kiss, Hand Jobs, Oral Sex, Praising, Frottage, Jealous Din.

Chapters: 22/?

Navigation: <;- Previous Chapter • Next Chapter ->

Chapter 22: Glumness

Din looked around "They want you to take the throne... If you're so pleased with my negotiation skills, then why don't you just persuade them to accept that I'm the right man to rule them?"

"It's not like that, they're radicals, they hate the idea of a child of the watch and Jedi lover to be their leader..."

Din flinched the moment he heard her saying Jedi lover. "What? Jedi lov...?" He choked on his words.

Din was walking down the Mudhorn's ramp, astonished staring at the two lines of mandalorians assembling, making a human corridor in order to protect him while he was entering the building. He kept walking looking at both sides, the mandalorians bowed their heads in respectful recognition.

"Welcome Mand'alor!" Paz was standing by the main door raising his arms waiting for Din to meet him.

"What the kriff is this?" Din asked him.

"I missed you too, Vod." Paz gave him a hug, Din looked back at the mandalorians behind him. "They're the royal guard. They're your men from now on." Din rested his hands on his hips. He snorted with laughter, only if Boba had accepted his offer, what an incredible royal guard he would have made.

They walked embracing each other as the brothers they were, Din didn't realize how much he missed his friend.

"Shrune is off planet, vod."

"I was expecting to talk to him." Din stopped walking. "Where the kriff is he?"

"You wouldn't believe this, but he left to Coruscant yesterday."

"What?"

"You did good, Djarin. The Senate asked to meet our chancellor, you really made it, man. The Core Words are impressed by you, they love you, I bet they even want to fuck you too." Paz was laughing punching his right pauldron. Din sighed. "But, seriously, the council is so pleased. This is big, vod."

"And the other thing? The protesters?" Din asked.

"Ugh, okay. They are night owls sympathizers, they even formed a political party organization, they named a representative."

"So this is about Bo-Katan, she's the leader of the night owls. Where is she?"

"I can send her to your room." Paz offered, Din agreed.

When he found himself in his living room he stared at the comfy couch were Luke was sleeping with Grogu in his arms a week and a half ago. He caressed the fabric, his stomach clenched at the feeling of emptiness. He was missing his boys.

Bo-Katan knocked the door, Din answered. "Welcome home, Mand'alor." Home? Home is on Yavin IV right now, Din thought.

"I was expecting to talk to Shrune, but I guess you're the second best..." Din sat down on the couch still thinking about Grogu and Luke.

"I am." She grinned sitting next to him "Look, I respect you, Djarin. I do. We've had our differences but you're a good man, that's why The New Republic is willing to help us and take us in. I've been asking them for support since way before we've met, and back then they said we were unstable and unpredictable. You made them reconsider our value." She stared into his visor "I admire you."

The kriff was going on? Bo-Katan was sucking up to him? "And, what about that party supporting you as their real and rightful Mand'alor?"

She raised one eyebrow "That..." She breathed in. "Alright, Djarin, you're the one who came here with a Jedi beside you. Maybe you don't realize it, but a lot of people found that disturbing, they felt that like an effrontery."

"They felt? They found? Seems like you talk to them quite often, huh?" Din deadpanned.

"Don't you dare charge me with treason!" She was narrowing her eyes and clenching her jaw. "We did receive their representative. We, the council, not just me..."

Din looked around "They want you to take the throne... If you're so pleased with my negotiation skills, then why don't you just persuade them to accept that I'm the right man to rule them?"

"It's not like that, they're radicals, they hate the idea of a child of the watch and Jedi lover to be their leader..."

Din flinched the moment he heard her saying Jedi lover. "What? Jedi lov...?" He choked on his words.

"You adopted a force-sensitive kid, who's learning the ways of the force to become a Jedi and you befriended a Jedi Master. People are concerned, we needed to prepare your royal guard racing against the clock, we didn't want a Jedi beating the crap out of one of us in front of our headquarters like the last time." She tilted her head as she raised her eyebrows.

Damn Kryze. She was right. Din knew that.

"I can always give you this thing, you know." Din pointed at the darksaber hanging from his belt.

"Nonsense. Just, give me time, we'll keep talking to them. I'll come up with something." She waved one hand staring down.

"Alright. Where's Bo-Katan and what did you do to her?" Din chuckled.

She sighed "You're more helpful than I thought, and believe me, I want the same as you, to unify our people." She stood up. "How's your ad'ika?"

Din looked up to meet her eyes "He's fine." He smiled behind his helmet.

"And the Jedi?"

Din looked down "He's fine too."

"Are you going off planet soon?"

Gods, he wanted to leave Mandalore right away. "That depends."

"Be careful, people are watching you. If you spend more time off than on planet you're asking for trouble." She bowed her head "Goodnight, Mand'alor, I already ordered your dinner."

"Thank you." She closed the door behind her.

~

Paz came over to his room to have dinner with him.

"I can't believe Bo-Katan told you that. I mean, she's changed since you came back from Coruscant, but she... Kissing your ass? That's mind-blowing, vod!" They laughed. "But, let me try your food for you, maybe she put poison in your soup."

"My soup's fine, Vizsla. Thanks." Din lifted his helmet and took the bowl to his mouth, giving his back to Paz.

When they finished dinner, they were sitting next to each other on the couch again.

"So..." Paz said, resting his big hand on Din's thigh plate.

"So..." Din repeated after him, staring at Paz's hand.

"How's that mesh'la jetii, huh? Did you see him in his underclothes? Please, tell me you did. He's so tiny and perfect, imagine kih jetii riding you for hours till you're crying in pain. Dank farrik! I'm so horny right now!"

Din was staring at him behind his visor. If looks could kill Paz would be dead right there on the spot. He didn't say a word, suddenly Solo's words were running through his head "Everybody wants a piece of Luke." "Things like these are going to happen all the time." Solo was right, he shouldn't take it personal, he understood that Luke was the most interesting man he had ever met, it was natural that men found him alluring. He shrugged "Take it easy, vod. He's Grogu's Master."

"So what? He's hot as kriff! You know what I mean." He laughed and slapped Din's thigh.

Din snorted "Yeah, he's perfect..." He said under his breath.

"Oh! Oh! What was that? My little vod is alive!!!" Paz was holding him now.

"Stop it, Vizsla! Stop." Din was moving his hands to get rid of him.

"Yeah, that kih jetii awoke something in you, huh?"

"Shut up."

"No, you shut up!"

"You!"

They ended up fistfighting on the ground. Their backs against the floor, both staring at the ceiling. "I take back what I said on Tatooine, you're not getting old." Paz said holding his ribs "Kriff, vod, I missed kicking your ass." He laughed.

"I missed kicking your ass too." Din panted.

~

That night Din thought about Grogu, he smiled remembering the little green bean eating a red crayon the last day he was on Yavin IV, the way he pulled a face when Din took it from his little hand as he told him to stop eating crap, ad'ika looked so offended.

He kept tossing and turning all night, feeling uneasy and exhausted.

He thought about Luke in his arms, the touch of his skin against his body, his lips on him, the pleasure noises that escaped his delicious mouth when Din was pushing him to the edge. Din was squeezing the pillow beneath his head with one hand and with the other he was taking care of himself, moaning Luke's name with every stroke, closing his eyes, pretending his little Jedi was sitting across from him, with his blue eyes fixed on his hips, telling him to be a good boy, to show him how much he was enjoying himself. Din could imagine Luke sitting on the bench with his back propped up against the wall, legs spreading, caressing his crotch through his pants, groaning "Such a good boy, Din. Don't hold it back. Give me everything baby, I want to hear you." Din let himself go, his hand over his mouth, muffling his desperate scream. He nibbled down his index finger moaning "Luke. Luke..." He turned around burying his face in the pillow cursing in mando'a as his whole body vibrated with pleasure.

His body was resting on that bed on Mandalore. But his heart and soul were on Yavin IV.

[strawberryblondebutch]

Holy shit yeah, I was at riot fest too and it was so crazy that you could actually visually tell that this was a lot of people's first festival and they were all really so young that it worried me quite a bit. I have to say that Gerard really tried his best to try to go above and beyond what he could do to keep the crowd safe though. But I can't help but shake the worry that I feel for some of the younger crowds.

Besides the worry, I do have to say I encountered quite a lot of kids who were TOTAL dicks, this was inevitable but also made me question why the fuck they would decide to go to a fucking festival that celebrates a COLLECTION of bands and bash on bands that aren't MCR, like buddy if you wanted to only see them they're literally touring right now, no need to glare at me for fucking shouting out Passing Through a Screen Door, it's a song to be belted and I won't have a high schooler who just got their license a week ago glare at me.

I was far enough back during MCR's set that I didn't see a lot of the craziness until after the fact, I just heard Gerard trying to settle down the crowd, and over the course of the weekend I started getting more frustrated with people who were clearly there just to see MCR and hadn't prepared for the realities of an outdoor music festival.

I was with my parents (like a total dork, but let's be honest: they were in the Philly hardcore scene before I was born, and they still go hard as fuck), and it was pretty easy to pick out the first-timers. The shoes were the deadest giveaway: some people were already stumbling in their big leather boots by noon, when we got there on Friday. Wear what you want, but it's outdoors. In a park. For eight or more hours. I switched between my old Adidas and Vans with the insoles, because the first lesson of hardcore is to wear what's comfortable, not what's trendy.

I've been bitching for a while about kids not knowing concert etiquette. My frustrations actually came to a head in April when I saw grandson at Union Transfer. I tried to stand in the middle back area, away from where the circle pit would form, but I kept getting crowdkilled by kids in braces, and halfway through the show I had to go and hang out by the bar with the other olds. I get that everyone has to start somewhere and that concert etiquette is learned, but holy shit, please learn sooner. I'm more patient with kids than I am adults (sorry not sorry to the guy I laid the fuck out at a La Dispute show a couple years ago), but my patience is wearing thin. Everyone just needs to learn the same couple rules: 1. Every human being has a designated minimum amount of space they take up. 2. You cannot spontaneously generate more space by pushing. 3. If someone falls down, pick them the fuck back up again. (4. Don't throw full beer cans, cough cough Touche Amore fans)

From where I was at the Wonder Years set (at the rail, to house right/stage left) I had a good time, but that was not the case for Taking Back Sunday or Alkaline Trio. I was already annoyed with the people who acted like my existence at TBS was interfering with their lives when they didn't know any songs (also, who the fuck doesn't know Cute Without the 'E'?!?), and it really didn't help when I went online afterwards and saw 1) a picture of a kid fully reading a book during TBS's set and 2) multiple people referring to Alkaline Trio as "some other band that played before MCR".

I don't want to bash MCR. They're great. I went to their set. But you know who else is great? Sincere Engineer, Hot Mulligan, The Wonder Years, Mothica, The Get Up Kids, the Menzingers, Bad Religion. Fucking Sunny Day Real Estate was there! I've been waiting just as long for Sunny Day to get back together as I have MCR!! At the end of the day, I can't tell if I wanted the kids who camped out at the Riot Stage to actually get out and explore the festival, or if I was happy that they weren't at Radicals grumbling about all my favorite bands.

This rant got long, but I've seen way too many people throwing out the baby (a crowd crush confined to one band) with the bathwater (a fucking awesome festival with so many cool bands).

Side note: Passing Through a Screen Door was when I lost my voice for the day. "I don't want my children growing up to be anything like me," specifically.

[theculturedmarxist]

>russia has been destroying ukrainian lands and pointing at ukrs and going 'THEY did it' for at least 100 years. And every time EVERY TIME!! the world goes 'um. wait a minute. that makes no sense' and people continue to peddle that fucking stupid idea. tell me, is your name Walter Duranty by any chance? the quintessential Mr. "there is no famine in ba sing se ukraine"?

>The Holodomor. Ukrainians sabotaged their own food stores, right? Killed their own animals, right? Destroyed their crops with fire and salt, right? Millions only starved to death because of what they did to themselves, right? All to make poor little russia look bad, right?

Yeah, actually.

First, there’s no consensus on whether or not the famine was unleashed to wipe out ethnic Ukrainians as a people. In fact, as far as I know, all evidence points in the opposite direction: It was not genocide but a result of both political-economic and natural forces. It was a horrible famine — millions died, millions more suffered. And it would not have gotten going on the scale it did if the Soviet Union hadn’t been doing its industrial accelerationism and strong arming and collectivizing agriculture and brutally crushing the peasants who wanted nothing to do with it. That’s all true, and that basically an argument that historians like Stephen Wheatcroft have made. The problem for the genocide claim is that the famine wasn’t just restricted to Ukraine but affected a huge swath of Southern Russia and other Soviet Republics — including an even more deadly collectivization-and-bad-weather famine in Kazakhstan that killed more than a third of the population. In Kazakhstan, communists wanted to quickly transform a pastoral and nomadic society into a one based on centralized and industrialized agriculture. I mean, what could go wrong?

The people behind the Holodomor myth have vested interests in making the USSR and now Russia look bad. They're doing that exactly for the purposes of what you're doing now: characterizing them as evil monsters that deserve to have war waged on them.

There’s been a big decades-long push by a Ukrainian nationalist diaspora, backed up by the usual anti-communist/Cold War interests here, to recast [the Holodomor] as a ‘classic’ ethnic genocide in the mold of the Holocaust: the famine was meant to wipe out Ukrainians. But for this narrative to work, Jews and other ethnic minorities living in Soviet Ukraine had to be left out of the story — and that’s exactly what’s been happening.

And who constituted this Ukrainian diaspora? Well

Stephen Cohen, who was Professor Emeritus of Russian studies and politics at Princeton, in an article on Ukraine called “America’s Collusion With Neo-Nazis,” says that the coup government in Ukraine has systematically rehabilitated and memorialized Ukrainian Nazi Germany collaborators. Among the Nazi collaborators memorialized by the government of Ukraine is Stepan Bandera who allied with the Nazis and committed atrocities against Jews, Poles and Russians. Sakwa reports that “a giant portrait of Bandera was . . . on the stage during the Maidan protests.”

Stepan Bandera and the less known Mikola Lebed were prominent members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). In 1940, the OUN split, and Bandera became the leader of the more radical OUN-B faction. The Bandera OUN allied with the Nazis. And though the alliance may have been formed primarily on the opportunity to establish a Ukrainian state, Bandera’s OUN proved to be very willing collaborators.

According to Sakwa, "Bandera espoused a virulent form of integral nationalism, an exclusive and ethnically centered definition of the Ukrainian nation, accompanied by the murderous denigration of those who allegedly undermined his vision, notably Poles, Jews and Russians. . . ." Bandera’s forces would participate in the mass killings of those people.

In Covert Regime Change, Lindsey O’Rourke cites the July 1941 OUN-B declaration that Jews "have to be treated harshly. . . . We must finish them off. . . . Regarding the Jews, we will adopt any methods that lead to their destruction." She says that "In the days following the German invasion, OUN-B troops launched pogroms throughout East Galacia, killing an estimated 12,000 Jewish civilians.

The OUN-B and others would later join into the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) to fight for Ukrainian independence from both the Russians and the Nazis. To realize their dream of an ethnically exclusive nation, O’Rourke says they "engaged in widespread terrorism, mass killing, and ethnic cleansing amongst the Polish, German, Soviet, and Jewish populations in the region." Their call was "Long live greater independent Ukraine without Jews, Poles and Germans: Poles behind the San, Germans to Berlin, Jews to the gallows." OUN-A leader, Mikola Lebed declared, according to O’Rourke, that they should "cleanse the entire revolutionary territory of the Polish population." And they tried. "In the first half of 1943, UPA partisans . . . murdered about 40,000 Poles in Volhynia."

But why would anyone get the idea today, among Putin’s perhaps exaggerated claim about denazifying the Ukrainian government and forces, that the US and its allies would partner with neo-Nazi elements in Ukraine in order to fight the Russians or bring about regime change in Russia? Because they have.

Between Bandera and Lebed’s Nazi collaboration and the ultranationalist hijacking of the 2014 coup is a less told story of US and UK collaboration with Bandera and Lebed’s OUN to fight the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

In September 1947, US intelligence encountered a group of Ukrainian partisans in Germany. In Safe for Democracy, CIA expert John Prados says the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council had ordered the partisans to go west "in order to get the attention of the Allied intelligence services." It worked. And there began the top-secret story of the covert marriage between the US and UK and the Ukrainians who had collaborated with the Nazis in their Cold War fight against the Soviet Union.

So yeah, the Holodomor is a Nazi fabrication meant to disparage the Soviet Union and which has been perpetuated because it's a useful lie, both to exonerate the Jew Killers the United States collaborated with and to justify further aggression against Russia.

>Tell me what sense does it make to sacrifice thousands upon thousands of lives for the sake of blaming an invader when it was really the invaded and occupied all along?

So far the only "proof" you and your ilk have been able to provide has been that it had to have been Russia because Russia is evil.

But what sense does it make? Because first of all, the Nazi government ruling Ukraine and the Ukrainian people are not the same. Zelensky and his band of skinheads don't give a shit about the Ukrainian people. If they did, they'd never have signed up for the fool's errand of fighting Russia in the first place, much less dumping hundreds of thousands of their fellow Ukrainians into the meatgrinder that the Russian military has prepared for them. They're literally being slaughtered at the behest of traitors in their government all for the benefit of the US government.

>"oh but occupied peoples blow up their own buildings all the time" YEAH!! AS EMPTY AS POSSIBLE BUILDINGS FOR THE SHEER SAKE OF SAVING LIVES. Resistances the world over would and do bomb harbors, ports, train tracks, bridges. And they do it at times where they can best minimize casualties!! It makes no fucking sense other wise!

lol

>You want so bad for ukrs to be demons that you will make yourself dizzy with cognitive dissonance to make it happen.

I'm not the one whose entire arguments rests on Russians being evil.

>The whole war has been about saving Ukrainian lives. russia couldn't give a flying FUCK about their own people and they prove it time and time and time again! And still 'ukrs did it'. How many russkis have returned home from being POWs compared to Ukrs? How many russkis have been caught showing off what they do to ukr POWs? and being cheered on? How many the other way around? How many civilian russians have been murdered on a walk to the corner store?

This whole war has been about sacrificing Ukrainians for the benefit of the US.

As former special advisor to the Secretary of Defense Col. Douglas Macgregor told The Grayzone, “it looks more and more as though Ukrainians are almost incidental to the operation in the sense that they are there to impale themselves on the Russian army and die in great numbers, because the real goal of this entire thing is the destruction of the Russian state and Vladimir Putin.”

This conflict didn't start when Russia invaded Ukraine last year. It started when the United States overthrew Ukraine's government with the help of Neo-Nazi militias.

As the Ukrainian army squares off against ultra-right and neo-Nazi militias in the west and violence against ethnic Russians continues in the east, the obvious folly of the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy has come into focus even for many who tried to ignore the facts, or what you might call “the mess that Victoria Nuland made.”

Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs ��Toria” Nuland was the “mastermind” behind the Feb. 22, 2014 “regime change” in Ukraine, plotting the overthrow of the democratically elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych while convincing the ever-gullible US mainstream media that the coup wasn’t really a coup but a victory for “democracy.”

Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who pushed for the Ukraine coup and helped pick the post-coup leaders.

We even have audio evidence of them doing it.

The United States then spent years collaborating with, arming, and supporting these Neo Nazi groups, training them for war with and insurgency against Russia.

According to a recent Yahoo! News report, since 2015, the CIA has been secretly training forces in Ukraine to serve as “insurgent leaders,” in the words of one former intelligence official, in case Russia ends up invading the country. Current officials are claiming the training is purely for intelligence collection, but the former officials Yahoo! spoke to said the program involved training in firearms, “cover and move,” and camouflage, among other things.

Given the facts, there’s a good chance that the CIA is training actual, literal Nazis as part of this effort. The year the program started, 2015, also happened to be the same year that Congress passed a spending bill that featured hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of economic and military support for Ukraine, one that was expressly modified to allow that support to flow to the country’s resident neo-Nazi militia, the Azov Regiment. According to the Nation at the time, the text of the bill passed in the middle of that year featured an amendment explicitly barring “arms, training, and other assistance” to Azov, but the House committee in charge of the bill was pressured by the Pentagon months later to remove the language, falsely telling them it was redundant.

Despite sometimes open acknowledgement of its Nazism — its former commander once said the “historic mission” of Ukraine is to “lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival” in “a crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen” — Azov was incorporated into the country’s National Guard in 2014, owing to its effectiveness in fighting Russian separatists. US arms have flowed to the militia, NATO and US military officials have been pictured meeting with them, and members of the militia have talked about their work with US trainers and the lack of background screening to weed out white supremacists.

This fact was openly acknowledged for years until it became politically expedient to forget about it. Years of neo-Nazi violence occurred with the tacit approval and sometimes willing participation of the Ukrainian government.

Since the beginning of 2018, C14 and other far-right groups such as the Azov-affiliated National Militia, Right Sector, Karpatska Sich, and others have attacked Roma groups several times, as well as anti-fascist demonstrations, city council meetings, an event hosted by Amnesty International, art exhibitions, LGBT events, and environmental activists. On March 8, violent groups launched attacks against International Women’s Day marchers in cities across Ukraine. In only a few of these cases did police do anything to prevent the attacks, and in some they even arrested peaceful demonstrators rather than the actual perpetrators.

International human rights groups have sounded the alarm. After the March 8 attacks, Amnesty International warned that “Ukraine is sinking into a chaos of uncontrolled violence posed by radical groups and their total impunity. Practically no one in the country can feel safe under these conditions.” Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, and Front Line Defenders warned in a letter that radical groups acting under “a veneer of patriotism” and “traditional values” were allowed to operate under an “atmosphere of near total impunity that cannot but embolden these groups to commit more attacks.”

To be clear, far-right parties like Svoboda perform poorly in Ukraine’s polls and elections, and Ukrainians evince no desire to be ruled by them. But this argument is a bit of “red herring.” It’s not extremists’ electoral prospects that should concern Ukraine’s friends, but rather the state’s unwillingness or inability to confront violent groups and end their impunity. Whether this is due to a continuing sense of indebtedness to some of these groups for fighting the Russians or fear they might turn on the state itself, it’s a real problem and we do no service to Ukraine by sweeping it under the rug.

In addition to arming these neo-nazi militias, the US spent years arming and training the Ukrainian army with the specific purpose of fighting Russia. As for the Ukrainian government, it is totally corrupt and profiting from this war while sending its citizens to die.

The Ukraine government, headed by Volodymyr Zelensky, has been using American taxpayers’ funds to pay dearly for the vitally needed diesel fuel that is keeping the Ukrainian army on the move in its war with Russia. It is unknown how much the Zelensky government is paying per gallon for the fuel, but the Pentagon was paying as much as $400 per gallon to transport gasoline from a port in Pakistan, via truck or parachute, into Afghanistan during the decades-long American war there.

What also is unknown is that Zelensky has been buying the fuel from Russia, the country with which it, and Washington, are at war, and the Ukrainian president and many in his entourage have been skimming untold millions from the American dollars earmarked for diesel fuel payments. One estimate by analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency put the embezzled funds at $400 million last year, at least; another expert compared the level of corruption in Kiev as approaching that of the Afghan war, “although there will be no professional audit reports emerging from the Ukraine.”

“Zelensky’s been buying discount diesel from the Russians,” one knowledgeable American intelligence official told me. “And who’s paying for the gas and oil? We are. Putin and his oligarchs are making millions” on it.

Many government ministries in Kiev have been literally “competing,” I was told, to set up front companies for export contracts for weapons and ammunition with private arms dealers around the world, all of which provide kickbacks. Many of those companies are in Poland and Czechia, but others are thought to exist in the Persian Gulf and Israel. “I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there are others in places like the Cayman Islands and Panama, and there are lots of Americans involved,” an American expert on international trade told me. 

So no, this whole war hasn't been waged to "Save Ukrainian lives." It's a prolonged operation on the part of the United States to wage a proxy war against Russia, using neo-Nazis bent on a genocidal murder crusade to do it.

>Farmers stole tanks without firing a shot and you want us all to believe Ukrainians would flood their own lands and kill thousands. A people that saw millions dead because their lands were made unusable.

>Ukrs have proven time and time again they can do so many things in their fight against the russkis that doesn't have a giant body count of their own people. russia has the exact oppposite.

Ukraine's body count has actually been catastrophically high.

July 1 was in the 17th week of the war and the total number of likely dead on the above list is 81,066. That makes for an average kill rate of 4.767 per week or 681 Ukrainian soldiers per day. As the first weeks of the war were not exceptionally bloody the number of current dead per day is likely higher. Nine weeks have passed since the reference date of the above report. They have likely added another 42,000 dead to the list. These numbers are consistent with the Russian military's daily 'clobber list' which reports of several hundreds Ukrainian casualties per day due to air strikes and well target artillery. A recent New York Times piece about the costs of war also gives some numbers:

Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, the top commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, said Monday that about 9,000 Ukrainians had been killed at the front. ... [T]his month, Pentagon officials estimated that 70,000 to 80,000 Russians had been killed or wounded; they put the number of deaths at 20,000.

Those numbers are simply not believable. Here, from the same piece, is why:

Analysts estimate that Russia is firing around 10,000 artillery shells a day, down from a peak of as much as 20,000 during the campaign to take Luhansk, and that Ukraine is firing several thousand artillery rounds a month.

10 to 20 thousand rounds per day(!) means some 450,000 rounds per month fired from the Russian side. The Ukrainian counter fire is down to 'several thousand artillery rounds a month'. That is ratio of 100 to 1. How the heck is that supposed to result in only 9,000 killed Ukrainians and 80,000 Russian casualties? It simply can't.

---

Their entire US trained army was wiped out, and NATO had to supply them with a second one in a hurry, which was also wiped out. Now with this "counteroffensive" Ukraine is in the process of throwing away a third army. The only place Ukraine is beating Russia is in NATO propaganda.

>don't cry 'doesn't make sense' when all the other explanations make far more sense than 'ukrs did it'. Hell, someone could pop up and go 'actually I think alpha centauris did it' and it would STILL make more sense than 'ukrs did it'.

Sorry man, but the reality is the complete opposite and I wish you luck in reconciling with that fact.

Russia destroying the Kakhovka dam doesn't make the least bit of sense if you think about it for even a minute.

[rsmrymnt-tea]

I'm pretty tired so maybe there will be stupid typos here but that's not gonna stop me lol

The weird thing is that they say it's a Sports Festival but we immediately start with a scavenger hunt? Which definitely feels more like last day we've gone through all the official sports competitions and now we're wrapping up with some fun children's game-esque stuff.

Honestly I feel like any regular person would be sick of playing mediator by then too. MC's been with the brothers for a couple of years now, there's no way they're not tired of it. And also with RAD too, first year they're forced, second year it isn't a full school year so maybe they're more willing to tolerate, but now when they've fully been told that they can be in the Devildom as a guest?? Then immediately get shoe-horned back into being a student??? Maybe I'm just not academic enough but uhhh I'd be very upset about that tbh

And I've definitely heard people comparing Raph to Belphie!! Thing is that to me he doesn't really have vibes?? He's reminiscent of Belphie but otherwise he's got like.... Nothing??

Oh I hadn't thought that it might be a translation issue. If it is Barb's grimoire we're tasked to get, then from a story standpoint that's kinda good. They set it up as a thing last season. But then also if you think about it, it gets really squicky. Two strangers (one who is likely prejudiced against demons, the other who seems to enjoy mischief at other people's expense??) and MC who Barb is indifferent to at best?? Getting ahold of the thing that allows them to override his autonomy?? What does it mean for Barb and Solomon if they can actually get it?? Definitely isn't better if it's a grimoire that controls all 70-something other demons he has pacts with too but, less impactful to our cast ig??

The meeting in the council room was actually brilliant. Letting the characters actions and reactions tell the story, especially when there is a lot of emotions around is so tasty!! Despite it being an interesting hint about his former apprentices, I don't really like the implication that MC gets to be special again, as the only student he's taken that isn't awful?

Oh and Thirteen's reaction to Solomon is super interesting!! Definitely gives me the idea that maybe he's been misrepresenting their relationship, despite what little info he's given. And definitely reinforces why she'd be upset with MC for helping him break back in. I hope they expand on that instead of just.. Forgetting.

And Raphael!! I feel like seeing Lucifer might actually help encourage his character development. I do think it'd be kinda funny if every angel they send out of the celestial realm just comes back radicalized. MC and Simeon encourage the angels to form a union against.. Michael? God? Idk ajdks

I think it could've been cool if this season was sort of more focused on the side-characters. If we could have explored MC rejecting Diavolo's offer (that one chapter last season with Belphie was not enough for him to be okay with people not just doing what he wants). Or even get a peak at the brothers standing with MC as they stand against him? Give us some good character conflict followed by growth?? Bringing Simeon's stuff to the forefront so we can have some relationship development with him. Let the characters drive the plot rather than the other way round?

(we're a quarter way through????? A quarter???? Oh boyyy I feel like they haven't been making the most of their time if that's the case)

- 🐝

Yeah it’s super odd? Seems like the most lukewarm way to open a sports festival… But it seems like the game’s favorite way to have a game going but also have plot because I feel like half of every challenge MC’s had has been a scavenger hunt, or a scavenger hunt with a slight twist lol

AND honestly the thing about going back to school for further learning is that it’s usually by choice… And while we might have wanted to in S2 because it’s been established that the main reason for MC to be in the Devildom with the brothers is because of the exchange program, S3 has revealed that we don’t need that anymore (because the brothers can just come up to the human world on break + we’re working on being able to summon them) and it’s either the brothers + other characters come to MC in the human world or as per what S4 has given us, MC can just show up in the Devildom for a visit whenever they want now.

No need to be a student anymore for a reason to be with them or the other characters. Yet we somehow have no choice but to be a student again :/ A student who’s actually tasked to go babysit a reaper and an angel sigh

Lmfao Raph having just no vibes at all >.<;;; He’s like Belphie + and even more boring Lucifer since he’s such a sticker for rules… At least Lucifer’s fun and interesting? But this is his introduction so hopefully we eventually see that he has a personality… Thirteen and Mephisto are outshining him by a long shot so far

AND YEAH to all those points about getting a grimoire… Like I don’t understand lol?? I just want them to get it for some Solomon content but the premise is so… huh. Especially in contrast to what Levi’s team’s item is (which is just MC) and the odd clue that Lucifer’s team has (which according to @still-a-morosexual-help is a haiku that’s probably referring to Simeon last I checked?)

Tbh it might just be that Thirteen doesn’t like people who don’t fall for her traps and pranks, and his students have just been keen enough to like… Not fall for her traps and pranks because they know Thirteen doesn’t like Sol, and by extension the student themself. I’d love to think that they turn out actually nasty, but… This is OM… They made Raph sound nasty, so far we get a pathetic little meow meow lmfao

And to be fair he seems to keep dismissing the fact that she hates his guts lol so I think he’s just bound to misrepresent their relationship all the time. Right now my thought on why she seems fearful is that she’s had more than a millennium to take his soul but he wins every single game… What insane magic must you have to be able to evade every effort the reaper makes to kill you? That, and since he wins every game he could theoretically ask for anything as a prize, and Thirteen seems competitive enough to actually take him up on any challenge he proposes if he presents it the right way for the slight hope that she’ll finally get him.

But she won’t. And Solomon could ask for some rare magical item she has that can fuck shit up big time.

Really hoping Lucifer’s current existence encourages change in Raphael too, Nonnie. I like to think the reason why Lucifer’s all buddy-buddy with him is for that reason? What better revenge than to destroy your former ally’s perception of demons? Of the world? That being turned into a demon didn’t turn Lucifer into some kind of vile monster like the Celestial Realm probably says it did?

(Wishful thinking I guess. I really want more angst and more… Idk just more heavy shit in this game because Raph did, you know, side with God against Lucifer.)

AND MAN. I too want some fucking proper conflict but noooooo we’re here to go through the same shit MC always does, this time with new people who currently have beef with them, one of which should be someone we actually should’ve met ages and ages ago since apparently MC’s been mingling with the Newspaper Club as per chat… But whatever ugh I just want to get the Lessons faster >.< Having the last several chapters be all setup is making me mad disappointed even tho it’s literally all setup lol I wanna get to the meat of the season already

(And yeah… In S3 we found the angels working in the cafe by Lesson 43 and in 44 MC was sent to the past to when the brothers were still angels. Hefty stuff compared to what we got in Lessons 63 and 64 lmfao >.>)

[workersolidarity]

For years I've been waiting to witness the moment when Kentucky voters finally turn on Mitch McConnell. I remember shouting at the TV about him when I lived in Kentucky from 2006-2007.

But what never could have imagined was voters turning on the single most corrupt politician in American history for the imagined crime of "assisting Russia and Vladamir Putin".

A quick word before I get to that.

If you think Trump is the most corrupt politician in American history, think again. Spend an hour going through Mitch McConnell's political history, his shady dealings, his giveaways to donors in amounts adding up to hundreds of millions of dollars in a single vote.

No politician in our history has done more damage in their career to the Working Class. Blocking Minimum Wage hikes, sabotaging Union Rights at every turn for decades, weakening Worker protections and eliminating regulations that prevent the most obscene forms of Worker exploitation, weakening environmental regulations and citizen's right to sue big corporations for damages caused by their environmental destruction. McConnell is also notorious, not just for blocking Worker priorities, and tricking Democrats into trusting deals with him before he reneges on agreements, but McConnell is most notorious for his "starve the beast" political strategy. Wherein He rams MASSIVE tax cuts on the rich and corporations, and then guts Worker and Poverty Programs when his tax cuts blow a hole in the Federal Budget.

And McConnell has always managed to blatantly and obviously work for the richest and most powerful while stomping on ordinary people, and somehow still easily winning re-election by getting disgustingly massive amounts of donations from his rich buddies he's made so much richer over his career.

This is a man who truly deserves the Gulags. If prison camps were ever made for anyone, they were made for Mitch McConnell, the man who "represents" one of the poorest, most rural States in the Nation, yet has enriched himself dozens of times over and then some, all the while squeezing Working families more and more each year.

Mitch McConnell is sub-human. He is the ultimate servant of the Bourgeoisie.

So you can imagine just how happy I was to hear that voters were finally turning on that creep.

So after work, I went straight to YouTube and played this video of him being jeered. The video started playing, and within seconds my smile had melted into a frown.

Moscow Mitch? Really? That stupid nickname made up by that awful excuse for a media figure, the notoriously anti-worker, pro-tax cuts for the rich, Neoconservative Bourgeois douchebag of an ex-Congressman Joe Scarborough????

Seriously????

This is what is finally making Kentucky voters, and Americans more generally finally turn against this shitty caricature of the Monopoly Man Mitch McConnell????

Earth to America! Russia is not, and hasn't been, a threat since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Why would Mitch McConnell need corrupt dealings with Russia of all countries, and Vladamir Putin of all people? It simply doesn't make any sense.

We're literally talking about a man who does his corrupt dealings in broad daylight for all of America to see. And does it completely legally. Why? Because he's helped shape our Laws for decades to allow for the type of corruption he's neck deep in! He doesn't need Russia to get rich. He already has the American Bourgeoisie, as well as Chinese Shipping companies worth billions through his wife.

Mitch McConnell is the Vladamir Putin of the United States, he sure as hell doesn't need some kind of stupid conspiracy with Russia and Putin to achieve his goals.

You want to know why Democrats are whipping up a frenzy over Russia???

It's not because Trump is some Manchurian candidate for Vladamir Putin, that was a stupid distraction from the beginning.

No, it's because Americans finally were catching on to the fact that Democrats, just like Republicans, represent the Ruling Class; the Bourgeoisie, and they never represented Workers at any point in their History.

If it weren't for the fact that the Ruling Class needs an Institution to perform this function, than America would be a Single-Party State and the Bourgeoisie wouldn't bother to hide their intentions.

The Democratic Party is itself a deeply corrupt institution of the Ruling Class, designed to co-opt social movements along with any movement by voters towards a more Leftist and Socialist society.

You can see this in the fact that the majority of the tippy top . 01% of Richest families and Corporations donate to both Republicans AND Democrats!

Clearly the Democrats efforts to again co-opt a movement by the public towards the Left has been a resounding success.

They have successfully whipped the public into a frenzy over Russophobic, Xenophobic, Reactionary conspiracy theories that in the end will do nothing to make Worker's lives any better.

Instead Democrats will tinker around the edges of the Capitalist system just enough to make Americans think they're doing something, though what that something is will be next to impossible for most voters to describe, but never risk upsetting their donors and always ensuring that any Reforms to the system won't cost the Ruling Class a dime.

This has always been Democrat's strategy. And the only time they ever deviated from that strategy was when a massive Labor Movement working in conjunction with Socialist and Communist Organizations during the Great Depression scared the Bourgeoisie into agreeing to the New Deal Reforms in order to quell dissent and stabilize the Nation.

Mind you this was only a dozen or so years after the Western Ruling Class watched in horror as the Bolsheviks successfully led a Revolution against the Russian Ruling Class and establishing the world's first Proletarian State. They were terrified, and for good reason at the time, that the Labor Movement and the CPUSA were on the verge of capturing the support of the majority of American Workers, and they knew they had to do something to satisfy the American Working Class.

So sorry for this long ass post, but it's truly distressing to see, at a time when so much energy on the Left is finally beginning to radicalize some Workers, that Left-leaning Americans could fall for such a Reactionary conspiracy theory.

I just hope that when Democrats repeat the disappointing Obama years, that Americans will stop falling for the same trick again and again.

[rametarin]

The weariness well is forever deep, for USSR sympathizers and tankie communists will forever argue against their adversaries and exaggerate or demand all conversation of their badness filibusted by negative talk of their enemies, because to them, that's a legitimate tactic to avoid having the conversations about what shit the USSR was.

They absolutely will "AMERICA BAD" specifically so no conversation can be had about how bad the USSR was, because you can only have one real conversation at once, and if they refuse to allow people around them to have the conversations they don't want spoken, they can control the distribution of that information, and it's as good as no one saying anything about it at all.

Up to and including starting to LOUDLY scream about how bad the Nazis were and then tangentially talk about how the USSR/Russia opposed them, oh also the US had a Nazi party, therefore the Soviets were "better because they weren't fucking Nazis."

They won't accept that a great deal of US shenanigans overseas was specificlaly to oppose the Soviet Union, because the Soviet Union specifically was an empirical, tyrannical organization hellbent on Russo-Supremacy and using any means necessary to incite domestic bolshevism and "radical revolution," seeing themselves as the gods of Marxism getting to dictate the form and expression of socialist and communist states.

They know they're full of shit. You cannot get them to admit it, because they don't see conversation as a way to compare notes and exchange information that is true. They see it as a way to convince you via strongarming you and ignoring what you say to get you to think their way is right. It doesn't have to be based on fact or reality, just on ideology.

If they don't see it as possible to trick you into accepting their dogmas that allow interpretation of the facts in their way, they smear you in front of your friends and try to have people that think the way they do to take up positions of administrative and institutional power, where they can institute their beliefs and dictate the recipes for things based on their values, and everybody has to first dislodge them in order to not do as they want from a position of authority.

I've seen them use such cynical and bad faith tactics while putting o nsuch aires of "scientific integrity" and feigning being good ole honest dreamers being beaten down by greedy capitalists, I'm just not surprised anymore. These people study the social subjects of psychology as a textbook on how to control people.

People on Twitter got really mad when someone said that USSR, and I quote, "nailed the evil Empire aesthetic".

[nudityandnerdery]

Don't miss the threat in this. It's trying to hit up your liberal guilt, but it's also listing all the benefits they offer with a heavy implication of "You don't want us to take any of this away, do you? Then play by our rules."

A "radically thoughtful and ethical company" shouldn't feel threatened by their employees forming a union. They should feel that they're already negotiating in good faith and that they trust their employees to do the same.

woke liberalism was a mistake