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mosscoveredcowboy · 1 year

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What Each of the Disruptors masking behavior in the Arrival Scene tells us about their Character

Major Glass Onion Spoilers Ahead

Miles:

Miles is the most important, even if he's not pictured, he and how he treats the idea of masking to prevent the spread of covid is represented by the Efficient Man™

Miles Invites all his privileged friends out to his private island mid-pandemic for an unnecessary party, and he has a vaccine/"cure"/SOMETHING that makes covid not a concern and either:

doesn't share it with the world

on some level knows that it's bullshit and just wants to make his friends not mask over their Fun Weekend! and bum out the mood

tbh i don't think the second bullet is likely bc like, miles buys into his own hype that's his whole Thing but also lying to his friends to manipulate them is also very much his Thing

either way, he doesn't give them much choice about receiving this experimental "cure" nor inform them of what is in it

Miles is an egotistical self-absorbed dumbass, and harming people for his own personal gain, hell, just for his own personal entertainment, is entirely ok in his mind. I've seen people suggesting that the movie should have ended with Blanc testing positive for Covid after the trip and I think that would have been perfect. Miles's "cure" did nothing and everyone put their lives at risk during a pandemic just so Miles could have some fun and remind them all why they are under his thumb.

Birdy:

Birdy shows up wearing a flashy mesh diamond mask a la Lana del Ray (note the rest of her staff with her properly masking). She still removes this useless mask to talk to people around her and exclaims about being able to "breath again" after taking Mile's "cure".

She's clearly doing the bare BARE minimum to look like she cares about quarantining and protecting others (see earlier in the movie when asked if she should be having a party she states "they are all in my pod" about hundreds of people in her home).

This aligns with how she approaches doing the right thing in general. Kind of trying to look like she's doing the right thing, but just barely, and you can see right through (ha) her actions and tell she's really doing whatever she wants for her own personal gain. She's not informed, doesn't want to do better, and doesn't listen to those around her who try to help.

Birdy doesn't have empathy for others, and this is later shown when we learn about her sweatpants scandal, how she was unaware that the clothing she made bank off of in the pandemic was produced in a sweatshop. Birdy is more concerned with how this news will make people on twitter mad at her than the actual inhumane working conditions themselves.

Lionel Toussaint:

In the Arrival scene Claire snips to Birdy when she asks if she and Lionel stayed in the hotel that clearly she and Lionel had just arrived. However, unlike Claire, Lionel arrives alone, no one in a car driving him or staff around him. He's wearing a K95 mask, and for this point of the pandemic (it's assumed late 2020) that is still fairly new and most people were not masking this well (to my memory).

Lionel is a scientist, and clearly has a level of knowledge about the transmission of infectious diseases and general contamination protocols to make safe decisions during a pandemic.

Still, he shows up to Miles weekend party and presumably takes the experimental "cure" (though it's not shown on screen). This tells us that Lionel is smart, smart enough to know that Miles is dumb as shit, but he buys into Miles's hype, convinces himself that Miles is a genius and backs him up even when Lionel knows he's wrong or being outright dangerous (see later with his reaction to the hydrogen energy running Miles mansion).

Lionel trusts Miles even when he should be smart enough to know better. He trusts Miles because if he actually questioned Miles's motivations and morals he would have to question his own, and Lionel doesn't want to do that.

Claire:

Claire arrives wearing a cloth mask but not correctly. She gets out of the taxi she arrives in with something sticking out of her mouth and her nose completely uncovered. She constantly adjusts her mask in the scene, and gets too close to others while talking to them. She also takes Miles's cure without question.

Like Birdy, Claire is doing the right thing more because she has to, not from motivation to protect herself and others. Unlike Birdy, she seems to understand how to do this more successfully, a clear difference between the performance of a celebrity and a politician.

I think this is shown later in Claire and Lionel's discussion in the pool as she talks about losing her political base because of the actions Miles wants her to take. On some level, she must align with the environmentalist that makes up her political base, but her loyalty lies more with Miles and the power saying yes to him means for her campaign.

Claire, despite her clear disapproval of Birdy, is very similar to her in that they are both performing to an audience to not be in trouble politically.

This is also shown by her freak out about how Duke's murderer would report her being there, and how it would look if she was hanging out on a Greek island with a manosphere influencer. She seems to have more of a reaction to what people would think of her than to Duke actually being dead.

Duke:

Duke and Whisky's arrival is announced with gunshots. They arrive on Duke's motorcycle, completely unmasked from the beginning (also, like, I assume they don't live in Greece, did they ship the bike there???). He's confirmed is shown to be a right-wing manosphere influencer, along the lines of Alex Jones or Jordan Peterson, those assholes who tell boys how to harass women and then grift them into buying supplements. Duke also takes the "cure" Miles provides without question, but if he lived long enough to see it, he'd likely be one of the people who wouldn't have gotten vaccinated because he doesn't trust what's in it.

Duke has probably been acting like the pandemic hasn't been happening at all, while capitalizing on the topic in his live streams to talk about how "masking is for beta cucks" and how the government is trying to control you.

He is the character that is the most honest to himself in why he is still friends with Miles. It is all about the power and influence Miles can give him, and Duke will cross any line (including making Whiskey seduce Miles) to get it. This forwardness in playing the group's little manipulation game is what later gets him killed by Miles in my opinion.

Duke not masking is a great way to show this. He doesn't align politically with the others, yes, but also he canonically does not care what people think of him. He is a self-absorbed egotistical asshole like the rest of them, but he's proud of it, giving him more freedom to be open about that than the others.

"asshole"

anyway I love how the time period of the pandemic was used in this movie and using each character's approach to masking as a way to inform you of their character is so informative and good storytelling

#glass onion #knives out #knives out 2 #knives out glass onion #the disruptors #benoit blanc #original post #again blessings to the gif makers #i love you #please ignore my repost of this #this is me trying to make tumblr tags care about this post bc this one isn't a rb #long post #sorry but like #i do care about notes on this one #i want ppl to see it i worked hard on it #lol

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mariacallous · 1 year

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In the spring of 2022, reports showed that only 67 percent of third graders were reading at grade level in the aftermath of the pandemic. Following on the heels of the recently released National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report, the U.S. now witnesses the largest decline in reading outcomes since 1980. Children from underserved communities have lost as much as half a year of traditional normal reading progress. Learning loss has become a well-worn term for an international crisis prompting governments to seek ways to accelerate learning.

This context has ignited a major reckoning with educational policy and methods. As it turns out, reading scores were not impressive even before the pandemic. According to the 2019 NAEP scores, just 34 percent of students were proficient at reading. By “proficient,” these scores suggest that students can only not just sound out a word, but also gain meaning from text. This low starting point pre-pandemic is the real problem. Someone, something, must be to blame. According to a recent New York Times article and a widely heard podcast, “Sold a Story,” Professor Lucy Calkins of Columbia University seems to be descending to that mantle.

Professor Calkin’s balance reading curriculum was used in more than a quarter of U.S. schools. It focused on three cues that students needed to follow to become readers: semantics (is the word meaningful?), syntax (does the word fit grammatically?), and grapho-phonic (can you guess the sound from its first letter?). The bottom line is that this curriculum falls short. As “Sold a Story” reveals, balanced reading was an offspring of Marie Clay’s Reading Recovery program developed in New Zealand and used around the world. A report issued in April of 2022 noted that third and fourth graders who used reading recovery methods were behind those who did not use the program. Culprit revealed.

The science of reading has progressed a great deal in the 50 years since Reading Recovery and the balanced curriculum were introduced. Indeed, this period of scientific discovery can be seen as the end of the so-called reading wars between whole word instruction and phonics—or mastering the letter-to-sound correspondence that enables readers in an alphabetic system to translate print into language (i.e., that “b” translates into “buh”). Brain research helps to adjudicate that the winner of the reading wars was phonics. Professor Bruce McCandless of Stanford University found that children learning phonics activated the brain circuitry used in reading. Those who learned in whole-word methods did not.

Today, the brain circuitry underlying reading is well understood. Professor Stanislas DeHaene of the University of Paris is one of the leaders in this science. Reading, unlike speech, is a cultural phenomenon that must be learned. Professor Steven Pinker once said, “Children learn language in the way that spiders spin webs.” Reading does not work this way. Children need to visually recognize letters, combine the letters, and relate the sounds to the language and meaning systems in the brain. In fact, DeHaene argues that humans co-opted an area of the brain—the visual word form area—that matures as we get more experience in reading. That is, if children can sound out the words, they can tap into the vast resources of their language to glean meaning from print.

The bottom line is that children need to learn phonics and letters to sound out correspondence. Methods like Clay’s and Calkins, based on prior theories of whole-language reading, will not solve the problem. Calkin’s methods, as the podcast “Sold a Story” suggest, can generate readers who pretend to read rather than those who can actually read new words when encountered in print.

On the other hand, phonics alone, while necessary, will also not generate strong readers. A superbly written overview by Anne Castles and colleagues notes that children need to do more than translate letters into sounds: They need to make contact with a rich knowledge base and with a growing language system. In fact, educational methods that focused only on phonics had many children who sat in rows, barking out words for extended periods of time. Many of these children experienced the fourth-grade slump when their phonics knowledge did not translate into meaningful information. Jeanne Chall’s classic 2003 study suggested that the fourth grade slump results from the fact that students who have learned how to decode might not have the rich language base that they need to make meaning from the words that they sound out. Children need to learn in active and engaging ways that are meaningful and joyful.

The reading wars, it turns out, created a false dichotomy between meaning versus phonics as primary drivers of beginning—and later proficient—reading. The scientific answer is more nuanced. It takes both phonics and meaning to create strong readers. Phonics is the tool that allows children to break into the alphabetic system–to understand that the squiggles on the page relate to the words in their vocabularies. Meaning making is the key to finding richness in the narratives and the motivation for wanting to read.

U.S. student reading levels are low and have been low for decades. The pandemic exacerbated this serious educational problem. And this has prompted much reflection in education and in the public square. This is, however, an area in which the science is well developed.

We tend to oversimplify science when and if it moves from the laboratory to policy and classroom practice. Simplification comes at a cost. Even today, policymakers are pressed to understand that language and literacy are intertwined in all reading curricula moving forward. Let’s end the great disconnect between science, policy, and practice. Let’s teach reading in ways that supports a foundation in phonics while making the experience enjoyable, motivating, and meaningful by connecting to children’s lived experiences. Let’s not confuse pedagogy with content. Phonics instruction need not be drilled into children but can be learned at the same time children are learning meaning and are actively involved.

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wartakes · 8 months

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“If You Build It, They Will Come”: Military Recruitment in a Better Future

This essay was originally posted on November 29th, 2022.

The brain seed for this one came from mulling the hypothetical future I like to throw around. With the caveat of that I would NOT recommend ANYONE join the military right now, at some point in the future where maybe hopefully we have a better government we will still need a military. With that being the case, how do you attract and retain talent? Shocker: a big part of this is just treating people like human beings with dignity.

(Full essay below the cut).

If there’s one thing I’m constantly hearing people in my field go on about – whether they directly work for the national security establishment or on its peripheries – it’s some variation on “manpower.” More specifically within the overall issue of manpower, they’re talking about the issue of recruitment and retention in the U.S. Armed Forces today.

It’s no secret that the military is going through what could increasingly be called a “crisis” when it comes to recruitment and retention of personnel. At the end of FY 2022, the U.S. Army had missed its active duty recruiting goal by about 25% – or 15,000 soldiers. The U.S. Air Force only just barely met its own stated recruitment goal for the year – with its recruitment leadership openly admitting that they’re going into the next year in a much weaker position recruitment wise. Meanwhile, the U.S. Marines had to reduce its recruitment goal for the past year. Overall, the military has been struggling in various ways to keep numbers up.

Now, it should be said right away that I subscribe to the What a Hell of a Way to Die position on joining the military right now: which is that you should not do it (understanding, of course, that for some folks in bad situations it may be their only option). So, at first glance when I see these low recruitment numbers, I generally go: “good.” However, it should be noted that I subscribe to the “don’t join the military” viewpoint with an asterisk at the end that leads you to an addendum: that I believe that is the case now but that will not always be the case someday.

One of the reasons I started writing these essays is because I believe even if we fundamentally change the political and social system in this country for the better, we will still require a military for a whole host of reasons. This means that, at some point in the future when things don’t suck at much, I’m going to shift my position from “you should not join the military” to “maybe some of you should consider joining the military.” I have no idea when that will be (almost certainly not in the immediate future), but if things go the way I hope they will in the long-term big picture, this will become a reality at some point.

With all that mind, that begs the question: assuming someday that President Leftist is elected and the Democratic Socialists of America gain a super-majority in Congress and begin a top to bottom change of how we do things in this country and in the world at large, how do you attract people to join the military? How do you do that when you’re not relying upon the poverty draft, or upon Rally ‘Round the Flag effects of patriotism? How do you not only convince people to join the military for an entirely different set of reasons than they are now, but also keep them there? What issues will need to be addressed – not simply in the military itself, but in this country as a whole?

I’m glad you totally asked all those questions just now because I’ve been thinking about them myself and now that I have you trapped in my mind palace let’s talk about them.

It’s the Culture, Stupid

A number of explanations have been mooted for why the military is struggling to recruit: the pandemic not only had direct medical effects, but also affected in-person and in-school recruiting (which in itself is a really dystopian concept to comprehend); civilian companies are making better offers in terms of benefits and other perks than the military can make; only a small number of American youths meet the various requirements set by the military to join (be they physical, educational, or “moral”); meanwhile, the patriotism that two decades of the Global War on Terrorism afforded the military has long since faded. Interestingly, military brass and civilian leaders also blame what a Bloomberg Government article calls “uninformed messaging” on the risks military service to both body and mind (I’d really like to know what exactly they mean by “uninformed” after seeing the consequences of twenty years of constant counter-insurgency on a generation of veterans but go off I guess, Bloomberg). The end result of the aforementioned issues and more is that for the first time ever, more than half of all youths (52%) don’t even consider joining the military as an option for their future.

Now, all of the previously mentioned factors certainly have affected recruitment and retention in the military. But there’s also the ones that nobody in DoD leadership really, absolutely, do not want to talk about at all (though they do want to talk about “uninformed messaging” about risks apparently – again, whatever the fuck that means). That issue is one of culture.

It shouldn’t be shocking to anyone with two working brain-cells that the military has had issues with toxic culture for- well, forever. Some of those issues have been steadily terrible for as long as we’ve had a military, while others have only worsened recently alongside the overall political environment in this country. An example of the latter was seen recently when the Army reprimanded a retiring general for criticizing infamous Fox News host and fascist Tucker Carlson roughly a year ago. The right-wing broadcaster had been making misogynistic comments about women serving in the military at the time when the officer – Major General Patrick Donahoe – had fired back at Carlson on Twitter for his comments about women in the military. The Army’s reprimand of the general caused a backlash that was not aided by Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth’s comments at the annual Association of the U.S. Army convention that the Army should stay “out of culture wars.” Her comments created such an outrage that the Secretary had to backtrack by the end of the week and state that Army leaders should stand up for all soldiers who are being unfairly attacked (still adding in the both-sides caveat that said leaders should “use good judgement” and “keep it professional”).

The Carlson-Donahoe saga demonstrates how unwilling the military is overall to stand by one of its troops even if they’re doing what is objectively the right thing to the majority of people – and even if they are a two-star general – because the brass terrified of rocking the boat. When the going gets tough, the military is more the leadership are more than willing to throw one of their own under the bus – even if that person in general is comparatively high ranking. Combine that with the fact that the military is doing this over comments on an issue that is essentially settled for most sane people (the issue of women serving in uniform), only makes it worse. It is entirely understandable people would not want to enlist in the Army when it can’t even make a straightforward statement opposing misogyny without first having caused a week of outrage (and make said statement with a whole series of caveats after the fact). What else won’t the Army back them up on the future? What else might they throw you under the bus for? The Green Weenie is finding new and exciting frontiers in fucking over the troops, apparently. This shouldn’t be that surprising though, I suppose, when the Army can’t even provide livable housing that isn’t infested with black mold for its enlisted ranks. How can an Army that can’t even do that be expected to stick up for its troops against someone like Tucker Carlson?

The issues of toxic culture aren’t limited to the wider American culture war, however. The military also has its own service-specific issues of workplace culture that have been festering for years. It’s not just about right-wingers being right-wingers. A perfect example of this can be seen in the U.S. Navy, where – despite reaching its recruiting targets for this past year – has seen desertions climb dramatically over the past two years. Sailors describe being in “unbreakable” service contracts requiring up to six years of active duty, while potentially being housed in unlivable conditions. An infamous recent example was on board the USS George Washington – a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier – where not only were sailors forced to live on a ship where construction noise made sleep virtually impossible and there was often no hot water or electricity but were also berated for issues out of their own control.

The issues about the George Washington all fold into a Navy-wide problem in the post-Cold War era of increasing the stress placed on both sailors and ships in order to meet increasingly demanding requests for naval deployments and presence around the world. It was a culture like this that led to not one, but two collisions of Navy guided-missile destroyers with other ships in 2017 (both resulting in the entirely preventable deaths of sailors onboard). More and more pressure has been placed on a smaller navy with fewer sailors to maintain an extensive imperial presence overseas, all while pushing for a mentality of “zero defects” or errors. This culture issue is especially bad in the Navy’s surface warfare community (i.e. the ships that are specifically designed to shoot at things and fight wars at sea), which is notorious for “eating its young” and responds to even the smallest of mistakes with chastisement and punishment – with little to no effort to turn any of said mistakes into teachable moments or lessons.

Workplace issues aside, I haven’t even gotten specifically in the issues of sexual harassment and sexual assault (ask the Army about how things have been going at Fort Hood). I wanted to make special note of that so you didn’t think I was casually ignoring it because it too is a huge problem and a huge reason for why people may not be eager to enlist but quite frankly given how up and down my mood has been already with various bullshit this year I just do not have the strength to go into granular detail on that issue right now. If I did, I might just end up curled up in the corner in the fetal position so let’s just say for now that it is in fact a huge bad issue and leave it at that to delve into another day when I have the mental fortitude for it.

From workplace culture issues like we see in the Navy, and the overall issues of failing to push back on toxic culture in American society we see in the Army, when you add in that many young people may take issue with the ends to which the military has been used for – especially for those who grew up in the shadow of the Afghan and Iraq Wars – , it should be no wonder why man young Americans have no interest in joining the military. All of these issues, of course, are ones that the military is desperate to not have to talk about because it involves admitting faults and problems and rocking the boat in a way that awakens loud and shrill constituencies of right-wing TV hosts and retired flag officers with nothing better to do than keep things the way they knew them. Change would also mean having to devote more money to actually looking after troops rather than having it flow directly into the pockets of the board of directors at Raytheon or General Dynamics or Absolutely Not Evil Defense Contractors Inc.

A Reason to Fight

Ok, so we’ve established that the military has issues with all kinds of toxic culture in its ranks – in addition to however many other issues that are preventing it from recruiting the numbers it needs. So, with our future hypothetical of a country and society that suck less, how do you go about fixing things so that more people – including ones that otherwise might say “not only no, but fuck no” to joining – might be convinced to enlist in a military in service to said country?

I’ve said on Twitter before that the military is not an entity unto itself that exists only in a bubble; it is a reflection of society and its health (or sickness). You cannot truly reform the military without also reforming society (to different extents, depending on the issue). To that end, only attempting to solve cultural issues within the military will not solve the issue of recruitment and retention on their own (it may have some positive impacts but would only be a band aid on a wider issue). Yes, there may be some issues you might be able to solve in-house only, but that won’t solve all the culture issues that face the military and as long as wider culture issues persist in America. If you only focus on the issues specific to the military, you’ll be fighting a losing battle against bad culture in general. Cultural issues need to be addressed in tandem throughout both the military and throughout the country as a whole.

The broadest answer possible to these problems is to – for lack of a better term – make both the military and country suck less so that people actually feel more like serving. This is why I label my approach to recruiting and staffing a reformed U.S. military for a fundamentally changed United States as the “if you built it, they will come” approach. The core of this approach is that if you build a society (rather, an allied community of such societies around the globe) that people actually care about and think actually does good – not only for them, but for others both at home and abroad – that more will actually want to volunteer to join the military to protect said society and its liked-minded peoples around the world. They will feel a sense of international solidarity with all peoples and maybe feel a desire to join a force that actually, genuinely fights in order to make people’s lives better or to protect them from harm by aggressors. I feel like this isn’t that complicated a concept, but that if I tried to explain it to most of the people that I encounter in my field I’d probably get some kind of open mouth fish expression from them in response.

Having that change in culture – both in terms of how the military treats its people and what it’s asking its people to go and fight for – is crucial when you realize that the recruiting environment would be even more competitive in the hypothetical democratic socialist future that we are considering. Social welfare programs like Medicare for all, strengthened social security, and etc. would mean people wouldn’t have to join the military just to get healthcare or retirement funds. Free college education would mean you wouldn’t have to join the military to have any hope at a higher education through the G.I. Bill (something that some Republicans have gone completely mask-off over). Improved worker rights through unions and other avenues of organizing would mean that working conditions in other fields would also improve and attract employees that otherwise might shy away or quit. If the military thinks it’s hard to recruit now, just wait until we elect President Leftist – they’re gonna have a bad time.

Rather, the military is going to have a bad time recruiting if they continue to stick to how things are done now. In a far more competitive environment for recruiting the best and brightest, the military is going to have to strive to not only treat troops well (like other employers will ideally be doing by that point), but also offer them something that other career paths don’t in terms of the intangibles of things like “self-fulfillment.” The “treat troops well” part should be simple (put them in housing that isn’t riddled with black mold, protect them against abuse and harm like sexual assault and murder, generally treat them like human beings with inherent rights, etc.), and goes hand in hand with changes we need to make on a macro level in this country when it comes to how we treat our workers. Thankfully, labor activism is an area we’re seeing somewhat of a renaissance in, and we should all aggressively support and show solidarity with. Hell, some of the troops have been resurrecting an old idea and trying to unionize, which I’m all in favor of (and would be a natural part of what I’m suggesting).

But when it comes to offering something that other fields wouldn’t, that’s a little more involved compared to simply treating the troops better – but something that is still tied to national level societal changes we need to make. Under the current circumstances, if people aren’t waved off by the various other issues I’ve already described when it comes to enlisting, they’re joining the military for material gain of some kind or for patriotism. We’ve already discussed how the patriotic drive for enlistment has diminished in the years following 9/11. This is actually reflected in recent military recruitment ads I’ve seen, where it feels like in some cases the issue of patriotism is completely side-stepped or mostly a foot note. The focus appears to be far more on careerism and vague notions of professional development or even on thrill-seeking and excitement in many cases than on any sense of national pride or service to the nation (let alone its people). In a weird way, while the military doesn’t seem eager to draw the ire of far-right chuds like Tucker Carlson, at the same time it’s trying to cleanse its recruitment image of some of the old school flag-fucking that we once accustomed to throughout the War on Terror years. The result comes off as sanitized and unappealing to just about everyone.

Ideally, in the society we’re envisioning, patriotic and nationalistic impulses will have further diminished to be replaced by something less jingoistic and imperialistic. We should be building a society where people are thinking less about our country alone and how great it is, and more about making the world a better place for as many people as possible, ensuring that they have their basic needs met, have their human rights respected, and are protected from harm by those who would deprive them of those essentials and more. Creating a world where people don’t live in fear of want and can be free to live and exist as their best selves. We need to instill a sense that if you join the military and being sent overseas, you’re not going to a warzone in order to prove your country’s “greatness” or to line the pockets of a corporation or oligarch or out of xenophobia or racism. You’re going there, because there are people there who are under attack and need help and have asked for help against an aggressor. You’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do, and that requires people who are strong in both body and mind and willing to take risks in order to help those who are in need of help. That should be the draw for potential recruits in a society like the one we want to achieve. It should be about helping people both at home and abroad be able to live better lives. Anything else should just be the garnish to that central idea of what service should be about in this hypothetical future. The patriotism and nationalism that was once a draw to enlist, should be replaced by a sense of internationalism and solidarity among the free peoples of the world.

The Part Where I Admit I’m Mainlining Hopium

Out of every essay I’ve written so far, this is probably one of my most blatantly idealistic pieces. I usually tend to adopt fairly realistic viewpoints on change compared to others on the Left, but this is one of those few areas where I really stick my head in the hopium clouds, inhale deeply, and go for broke. I am well aware that what I’m saying is a tall order – not an impossible one by any means, but a difficult one. The type of change I’m asking for isn’t the kind that can be accomplished in five, ten, or even 15 years. It is, by nature, a generational project. It requires foundations to be laid and built upon for decades in order to come fully to fruition. However, if you’re a socialist and not in for the long haul than I really don’t know what to tell you after – you know – all the history of being socialist that’s ever happened ever.

I guess the inherent beauty is that if we do everything we want to as leftists and change this country from top to bottom, due to the nature of the military being a reflection of the society its serves, we’d already be well on our way to changing it. It would then just be a matter of rooting out any lingering remnants of reaction within. Therin lies a point that’s been buried amid everything else I’ve discussed: that in the society we want, the military will have to let go of its purported apolitical nature (one that can often be one-sided, as the Tucker Carlson episode has demonstrated to us). A military that is opposed to authoritarianism, fascism, reaction, and more – that is dedicated to all the principles we’ve laid out, will be inherently political. It needs to be political if it is to be successful. A military can not be divorced from the society it serves, and the society we aim to create is one of politically minded and involved people striving for a better world. Being apolitical or “neutral” will no longer be an option.

I understand that some people on the Left are going to be credulous of or openly hostile to everything I’ve written here, and I can understand that. I know some of you I’ll never be able to convince and I make my peace with that, but for those are open to being convinced, let me tell you I understand it may be difficult for many of you to feel idealistic about something like the military. No matter how you slice it, or you change it, joining the military fundamentally involves taking on risks to life and limb. You’re signing up for the possibility that you will be sent to war, where you could be grievously injured or die a horrible death. Even if you are never sent to war, you still take risks from training exercises, peacetime deployments, and any other time you’re around weaponry and heavy machinery and more. Moreover, you sign up with the intent that you may be called upon someday to take a life – multiple lives even. You take on the risk that even when everything goes right, there’s possibility innocents will die entirely by accident. Taking a life, even in self-defense, is no small thing to ask of a person and should not be taken lightly (especially with the amounts of destruction that modern warfare can muster).

Unfortunately, all of what I just described will still be necessary even in a future where we’ve affected real change at home. My whole basis for arguing for these changes and others is that we will still need a military, because there will always be a threat to those trying to live as free people from the forces of reaction and authoritarianism and fascism and more. We may not seek out conflict, but sometimes conflict is forced upon you – or upon others who are unable to defend themselves on their own and require assistance. That means we will still need a military and we will need people willing to step up and put their minds and body on the line to defend others as part of said military. It is no small order and what I’ve offered in this essay is only the beginning of trying to figure out how to square that circle of how promote a culture of service in a society that isn’t inherently capitalistic, imperialistic, and exploitative.

All I can offer to those who are skeptical and dismissive of everything I have said, is that if thousands of people have traveled across the world to defend Ukraine – a country that is not their own – from an aggressive imperialistic invader, if thousands traveled across the world to try and prevent Spain from falling to fascism in the 1930s, surely we can convince Americans of the future to step up to do the same thing on a grander scale. I believe we can change this country and the world for the better, and if we do that, we’re already well on our way to solving the problems I have described in this essay.

I will end my hopium induced frenzy here for today. In the meantime, I would remind you that while someday I may encourage some of you to join the military, for the time being I would like to remind you that you absolutely not join the military if you have a choice. That time may one day come, but for now I’d suggest you give that a miss. On that note, that’s all I have for now. As always, stay safe out there.

#essay #War Takes #War Takes Essay #leftism #leftist #socialism #democratic socialism #international relations #IR #national security #national defense #international security #foreign policy #foreign affairs #war #military recruitment #united states military #united states armed forces #military culture

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 9 months

Text

John Darko

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 19, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUL 20, 2023

A little more than two years ago, on July 9, 2021, President Biden signed an executive order to promote competition in the U.S. economy. Echoing the language of his predecessors, he said, “competition keeps the economy moving and keeps it growing. Fair competition is why capitalism has been the world’s greatest force for prosperity and growth…. But what we’ve seen over the past few decades is less competition and more concentration that holds our economy back.”

In that speech, Biden deliberately positioned himself in our country’s long history of opposing economic consolidation. Calling out both Roosevelt presidents—Republican Theodore Roosevelt, who oversaw part of the Progressive Era, and Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who oversaw the New Deal—Biden celebrated their attempt to rein in the power of big business, first by focusing on the abuses of those businesses, and then by championing competition.

Biden promised to enforce antitrust laws, interpreting them in the way they had been understood traditionally. Like his progressive predecessors, he believed antitrust laws should prevent large entities from swallowing up markets, consolidating their power so they could raise prices and undercut workers’ rights. Traditionally, those advocating antitrust legislation wanted to protect economic competition, believing that such competition would promote innovation, protect workers, and keep consumer prices down.

In the 1980s, government officials threw out that understanding and replaced it with a new line of thinking advanced by former solicitor general of the United States Robert Bork. He claimed that the traditional understanding of antitrust legislation was economically inefficient because it restricted the ways businesses could operate. Instead, he said, consolidation of industries was fine so long as it promoted economic efficiencies that, at least in the short term, cut costs for consumers. While antitrust legislation remained on the books, the understanding of what it meant changed dramatically.

Reagan and his people advanced Bork’s position, abandoning the idea that capitalism fundamentally depends on competition. Industries consolidated, and by the time Biden took office his people estimated the lack of competition was costing a median U.S. household as much as $5000 a year. Two years ago, Biden called the turn toward Bork’s ideas “the wrong path,” and vowed to restore competition in an increasingly consolidated marketplace. With his executive order in July 2021, he established a White House Competition Council to direct a whole-of-government approach to promoting competition in the economy.

This shift gained momentum in part because of what appeared to be price gouging as the shutdowns of the pandemic eased. The five largest ocean container shipping companies, for example, made $300 billion in profits in 2022, compared to $64 billion the year before, which itself was a higher number than in the past. Those higher prices helped to drive inflation.

The baby formula shortage that began in February 2022 also highlighted the problems of concentration in an industry. Just four companies controlled 90% of the baby formula market in the U.S., and when one of them shut down production at a plant that appeared to be contaminated, supplies fell dramatically across the country. The administration had to start flying millions of bottles of formula in from other countries under Operation Fly Formula, a solution that suggested something was badly out of whack.

The administration’s focus on restoring competition had some immediate effects. It worked to get a bipartisan reform to ocean shipping through Congress, permitting greater oversight of the shipping industry by the Federal Maritime Commission. That law was part of the solution that brought ocean-going shipping prices down 80% from their peak. It worked with the Food and Drug Administration to make hearing aids available over the counter, cutting costs for American families. It also has worked to get rid of the non-compete clauses which made it hard for about 30 million workers to change jobs. And it began cracking down on junk fees, add-ons to rental car contracts, ticket sales, banking services, and so on, getting those fees down an estimated $5 billion a year.

“Folks are tired of being played for suckers,” Biden said. “[I]t’s about basic fairness.”

Today, the administration announced new measures to promote competition in the economy. The Department of Agriculture will work with attorneys general in 31 states and Washington, D.C. to enforce antitrust and consumer protection laws in food and agriculture. They will make sure that large corporations can’t fix food prices or price gouge in stores in areas where they have a monopoly. They will work to expand the nation’s processing capacity for meat and poultry, and are also promoting better access to markets for all agricultural producers and keeping seeds open-source.

Having cracked down on junk fees in consumer products, the administration is now turning to junk fees in rental housing, fees like those required just to file a rental application or fees to be able to pay your rent online.

The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission today released new merger guidelines to protect the country from mass layoffs, higher prices, and fewer options for consumers and workers. Biden used the example of hospital mergers, which have led to extraordinary price hikes, to explain why new guidelines are necessary.

The agencies reached out for public comment to construct 13 guidelines that seek to prevent mergers that threaten competition or tend to create monopolies. They declare that agencies must address the effect of proposed mergers on “all market participants and any dimension of competition, including for workers.”

Now that the guidelines are proposed, officials are asking the public to provide comments on them. The comment period will end on September 18.

One of the reporters on the press call about the new initiatives noted that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has accused the Biden administration of regulatory overreach, exactly as Bork outlined in a famous 1978 book introducing his revision of U.S. antitrust policy. An answer by a senior administration official highlighted a key element of the struggle over business consolidation that is rarely discussed and has been key to demands to end such consolidation since the 1870s.

The official noted that small businesses, especially those in rural areas, are quite happy to see consolidation broken up, because it gives them an opportunity to get into fields that previously had been closed to them. In fact, small businesses have boomed under this administration; there were 10.5 million small business applications in its first two years and those numbers continue strong.

This is the same pattern the U.S. saw during the Progressive Era of the early twentieth century and during the New Deal of the 1930s. In both of those eras, established business leaders insisted that government regulation was bad for the economy and that any attempts to limit their power came from workers who were at least flirting with socialism. But in fact entrepreneurs and small businesses were always part of the coalition that wanted such regulation. They needed it to level the playing field enough to let them participate.

The effects of this turnaround in the government’s approach to economic consolidation is a big deal. It is already having real effects on our lives, and offers to do more: saving consumers money, protecting workers’ wages and safety, and promoting small businesses, especially in rural areas. It’s another part of this administration’s rejection of the top-down economy that has shaped the country since 1981.

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#political cartoon #Joe Biden #Biden-Harris #election 2024 #Bidenomics #John Darko #Heather Cox Richardson #Biden Administration #competition #consumer protection #workers protection #unions #workers wages and safety #small business #letters from an american

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ifwebefriends · 9 months

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dude . . . that post where you said you liked nagito not because he's a depressed uwu bad boy but a traumatized complex cancer patient . . . we are the same lmao i literally made a research paper on his overall condition. very interesting case study ngl

That’s so cool! I’d be interested in reading your paper if you’re comfortable sharing. It’s nice to see that not everyone boils Nagito down to a generic bad boy tumblr sexyman. I actually have a lot of feelings about him and how he affected me personally because I can relate to him in a weird kinda hyperbolic way.

Okay it’s trauma dump time now strap yourself in. (TW suicide, cancer, COVID-19, needles, medical treatment)

I’m actually a cancer survivor myself (stage 4 breast cancer diagnosed in July 2020) and because of COVID and cancer I took a gap year in my education (I had just graduated high school and was set to start college) to go through treatment, so I had a lot of time on my hands to play video games and watch TV shows. So I ended up playing Danganronpa 1 and 2 in like October through November of 2020 (I would have played V3 then too but I didn’t have access to it yet).

When I first started chemotherapy in August of that year I tried to stay optimistic, hopeful, and cheery about everything, I didn’t want people to worry and pity me (right after my diagnosis, the most painful part of it all was watching all my loved ones worry so much about me) and I was told that I would most likely survive it. But round after round of chemo along with the rampaging global pandemic that I was honestly more scared of (I was immunocompromised because of chemo and I live in a country that generally didn’t take mask-wearing or quarantine seriously) gradually wore down my spirit little by little. By November when my treatment plan got extended (at least two more rounds of chemo than initially expected) I was worn out, miserable, hopeless, and borderline suicidal. This was around when I played SDR2 for the first time.

When I first played through the game I thought that Nagito was kinda just a fun character who made the game more of a challenge since he was kinda working against you. I never hated him or anything (my first reaction to him was actually “OH MY GOD IT’S THE FINGERS IN HIS ASS GUY!!!!”). Then after I finished the game I read online that if you talk to him in his free time events (I later did the free time for all the characters myself in school mode) you eventually find out that he has cancer and dementia and that’s when my whole perception of him shifted. I felt a sense of comraderie and unity with him that I feel with other cancer patients/survivors. Also, due to my piss poor mental and emotional state at the time I found myself really relating to him in a way. I felt strangely seen and understood.

Needless to say, even in this dark time in my life, I wouldn’t even consider doing the things that Nagito did in SDR2. Nevertheless, I guess I related to him because he represented my specific agonies and pains to a hyperbolic degree. Due to cancer and the treatment related to it, I was angry, hopeless, frustrated, and at a severe disadvantage while the whole world was suffering as well. (Cough cough chapter 3 dispair disease cough cough)

I think generally that the emotional and mental health aspect of having cancer and the general dark parts of having cancer aren’t talked about enough. A lot of people like to make it this hopeful empowering thing and I think it’s fine to do that, it’s good to have hope and strength in times like that, but when one can’t stay strong and hopeful in those circumstances it doesn’t really hit well. And I think that’s what Nagito represents to me. He represents someone beaten down by his life circumstances that he had no control over, and while he puts up an optimistic front, he’s not the #strong #sobrave chronically ill person that seems to be really common in modern media. He represents the dark side and the brutally negative emotions that can come from chronic illness or just shitty life circumstances. He doesn’t care much about his own life or well-being, he’s basically given up. But he wants his short life to mean something good so desperately. In his own way he cares about the people around him and the world around him, he just thinks he can’t have a place in that world. He’s willing to hurt and kill people in order to, in his eyes, make the world a better place at the cost of himself. He’s like an antithesis or foil to other cancer patient characters I’ve seen who have a generally more positive saccharine outlook on their condition and their life (I.e. Augustus Waters from The Fault in Our Stars).

Thankfully I’m much happier and healthier these days, I’ve been done with chemo for over two years and while I’m still going through some treatment related to it (hormone suppression pills and shots since my cancer was ER+) but it pales in comparison to what chemo did to me. I may not relate as heavily to Nagito as I used to, but he still holds a special place in my heart. I see him now and still think of him as a flawed but sympathetic character who was a twisted mirror of my deep-seeded physical and emotional pains that I felt back during the most miserable time of my life. At that time, I couldn’t see the light, so he sat with me in the darkness.

Nagito’s story isn’t really a story about having or surviving cancer.

Thankfully my story has a happy ending as I survived cancer and am still in remission. I am much happier and healthier now and I have a new appreciation for life, how fragile it is, and the little joys that make it what it is. I don’t relate to Nagito as much now as I did back when I was going through cancer treatment, but when I look at him, I’m reminded of how he reflected the darkness inside of me during my worst times and how comforting he was to me.

Thankfully I beat cancer and I am much happier and healthy now, but I still look at Nagito and remember the dark comfort he gave me through my worst of times.

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bopinion · 5 months

Text

2023 / 46

Aperçu of the Week:

"How do you get revenge for killing a child? By killing other people's children? Certainly not."

(Palestinian Bassam Aramin and Israeli Rami Elhanan. Both have lost a daughter in the Middle East conflict. And still strive for reconciliation).

Bad News of the Week:

I won't be alive in the year 2100. Maybe my children will. If they have children, they certainly will. And they will look back on their grandparents' generation. And probably curse them. Because they will have us to thank for the world they (have to) live in. It will be in a miserable state. And that is our fault.

My grandparents and parents created the German "economic miracle". Primarily with sweat, coal and steel. An industrialized nation like all developed (if you can call it that way) western countries. The environment was a resource and not a living habitat worth protecting. But these generations didn't know any better. At least not in society as a whole. That no longer applies to people my age. We know better. So we have no excuse for doing nothing.

In 2100, it will be almost 3 degrees warmer than it is today. That is the result of the so-called Emissions Gap Report presented by the UN Environment Program (UNEP). The world will look fundamentally different. Apart from a remnant of continental ice in the Antarctic, there can no longer be any glaciers at these temperatures. Ocean currents will be completely different due to the warming of the upper water layers. Or won't be at all. But with significantly less oxygen, i.e. with fewer sea creatures. Which will then not only be missing from the species balance, but also from the food chain. Etcetera.

The current German government with green participation has suffered a severe setback in its already modest plan to convert the economy to sustainability. This is because the Federal Constitutional Court has ruled that 60 billion from the "Transformation Fund" may not be used for this purpose. Because it is a reallocated budget that was actually intended to deal with the effects of the pandemic. Let's not misunderstand each other: the money is there, not some nebulous air booking in the future. It just unfortunately has the wrong label.

This frustrates me in many ways. Not that I want to question our supreme jurisdiction. But I do want to question the standards by which it is measured. Just as electric cars are given preference over petrol cars when it comes to parking spaces in the city, priority should be given to ecological and sustainable measures in budget planning. Quite simply because it must undoubtedly be the top priority. It is bad enough that the urgently needed reorientation of our society is being held back by laziness, convenience and ignorance. Then please don't add bureaucracy to the mix.

Good News of the Week:

The EU is finally getting serious about prosecuting environmental offenders. In future, serious crimes against the environment will be punishable by heavy prison sentences and fines. Representatives of the governments of the member states and the European Parliament agreed in Brussels on new rules to improve the prosecution of environmental crimes.

This includes a wide range of offenses, from illegal timber trading to violations of chemicals regulations. Environmental crime is one of the world's most profitable organized crime activities and has a considerable impact on the environment and human health, the Council of Member States said in response to the planned new directive.

The proposed penalties are severe. Individuals face up to 10 years in prison, companies at least 5% of their global turnover. Equally worth mentioning: offenders will be obliged to restore the environment to its previous state or provide compensation. A clear victory for the environment. Which ultimately belongs to all of us. Or actually to no one, because it is a greater good.

Personal happy moment of the week:

My work-life balance is currently very uneven. Because I'm extremely busy at work: several problematic and time-consuming projects are stupidly overlapping at the same time. That's why I'm almost exclusively in the office at the moment and not with my family. They are kind enough to understand that daddy and hubby have very little time - and are in a bad mood. Thank you very much for your understanding and patience!

I couldn't care less...

...that Vladimir Putin wants to take part in a virtual G20 summit. Sure, he can't be arrested there either - the International Criminal Court had issued an arrest warrant for war crimes against Ukraine. The worst joke, however, is his topic. According to Moscow's announcement, he wants to present "his view of a deeply unstable world situation". Suggestion: resign. That would make the world much more stable in one fell swoop.

As I write this...

...I discover the work of Karl Jenkins. The Welsh composer is responsible for countless contemporary hits in classical music, such as Adiamus and Palladio. I know his music - from advertising and from movies and television. But I never knew that it was one and the same mastermind who created it.

Post Scriptum

Anarchy reigns in Argentina. At least Javier Milei, the winner of Sunday's presidential election, calls himself an "anarcho-capitalist". The people's longing for change was extremely strong. After all, the record of the center-left alliances that have been in power for decades is anything but brilliant: over a third of the population officially falls below the poverty line, inflation recently reached 147% and any innovation is suffocating in an over-regulating state.

Many of Milei's plans sound very radical - at least by European standards: the introduction of the US dollar as the official national currency, the closure of public institutions such as the national broadcaster or the privatization of state-owned companies. However, the political novice has neither a majority in parliament, nor a functioning party apparatus or a solid network in the regions of his country. What he can actually implement is therefore more than questionable. But he is challenging the status quo and at least bringing a breath of fresh air. And that has never done any harm.

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enneamage · 1 year

Note

hi i dont know how to start this so im just going to get right into it

i never understood why twitter got so mad at this clip ever since i saw it live i actually thought i was more good than bad? that might sound crazy but the fact as a 16 year old cis guy got called a lesbian and didnt go "ew im not a LESBIAN!??!" and actually thought about it for a second.

i think thats perfectly normal at that age to wonder that to wonder about your sexual and gender identity. hell i did and i think if i never did that as a teen i would have never accepted the idea of me being a trans guy.

now this brings me to the point of this essay. i think if twitter didnt have a shit party over that clip he would be more comfortable expressing himself femininity and accepting his bisexuality.

sure he doesnt have a problem flirting with guys as we've seen but they've always been less "masc" than his whole "big man" persona i think he finds it easier to flirt with guys (with the exception of ranboo of course) if he views them as more fem or even as a women perhaps

im not one to truthing him being trans or clem being real but im not against it. this also isnt me truthing him as being trans. i think cis people expressing femininity and masculinity is so important male or female (femininity and masculinity are ALWAYS put as things that go inherently together, but for some reason theyre never put as things that compliment eachother but thats a whole different topic)

but what do i really know? i dont have an audience of 12 million on youtube and 7 miliion on twitch i cant imagine that many eyes on you just waiting to judge you on your every move

Anon I admire the drive but I’m afraid you’ve sent this to the person who authored the “Tommy being Bi won’t fix him” post, so I must stick to my convictions on this one.

(As an aside, for those who don’t know, meet Clementine!)

I was not directly around for The Lesbian Moment, but I think I heard the gunshots down the street. I think it’s hugely under-emphasised how everyone was on the back of a world-changing mass death event spread out over the course of at least two years around that time, and the way that it (reasonably, all things considered) affected the way people handled stress. People were very sensitised to a lot of things, and it doesn’t surprise me that this would be a case where zooming out from what the problem was ‘supposed to be about’ would reveal a massive soup of situational stressors looking for a fracturing point to express themselves.

As thousands of people were all suddenly shoved online to share the same spaces, the social processes involved with creating norms and group standards had tons of gas thrown on them. It was going to be messy no matter what, people were electing scapegoats left and right to set social standards about what was and wasn’t acceptable. This is grim but important context (Tw), lockdown was horrific for rates of at-home physical and sexual abuse. Being a woman online in general is a state of psychological warfare against an objectifying culture. I remember talk about how his audience was divided even then, a group of lesbians were like “hell yeah we can let Tommy join /nsrs” and then another group were not even remotely okay with that even as a joke.

People were sensitised to feeling invaded in a time where lockdown had personal agency down to record lows, especially for teenagers and children. In a world where you have next to no agency or personal control over your circumstances, having a say in dominant moral narratives and the accepted behavior of people skyrockets in value, because you’re constantly in other people’s power. People were profoundly invested in the few square inches of control that they could/did have, so they were deeply reactive with it. A lot of pandemic reactivity was the behavior of people who felt over-activated and cornered, so while it’s possible to critique the outrage and take it apart on the terms that it presented itself on, it’s important to understand it as part of a whole as well.

👏 ON TO THE GAY SHIT

I feel like what goes into Tommy flirting with each of the men he’s flirted with in the past has been a little bit different. Tubbo seemed like possessive best friend claiming mushed into a straight lens with a side of teasing (I like girls, I like Tubbo, Tubbo is girl.) Ranboo was a fascinating intersection of girlfriend sublimation and flirtation to raise his self-esteem, also a bit of an apology for the not-so-passive-aggression from when it looked like Ranboo had “stolen” Tubbo. I wasn’t around for TimeDeo, but fuck it, that counts too. I don’t think that the majority of his homosocial flirting was to make himself seem more masc, especially with Ranboo. (I’ll spare you examples but that particular stretch has some moments.)

Tommy had a ‘playing toughguy’ problem when he was younger, and it contributed to some of his worst habits in terms of what came out of his mouth. I would have attributed a lot of this to his environment, the influences that he related to both positively (edgy youtubers) and negatively (macho schoolmates.) He was very teenage boy, but even then he had an off-beat streak that I impressionistically related to as more femme, even when he was being abrasive. Ever since being forcibly civilised through Wilbur and the forces of the internet he’s had much less of that, but his femme streak has stayed in some form or another, just evolving to fit what’s needed of him at a given time.

The rate at which Tommy being a cishet man comes up as a genuine issue that people feel compelled to try and see resolved is interesting, even as someone who occasionally feels it myself. Like there’s got to be something to unpack in that dynamic, that whatever behavioral issue he’s experiencing at a given time feels tied to his identity as a cishet male and something that can be revised if he had the right personal revelations. The issue is, I just don’t think it’s true, or at least wouldn’t make the difference that some people would want it to make. Some of his problems could even be tied up in his Englishness, and that’s straight up incurable. It’s hard for me to imagine that having a sexuality related revelation would make that big of a difference in the grand scheme of… him as a person. He’s got a lot of moving parts.

I do feel some frustration on behalf Tommy in terms of being a target of essentialist thought. He’s not allowed to be as camp as he probably wants to be because it comes off as offensive to gay culture, and he’s not allowed to be overtly femme because people are strict about policing gender expression right now if a given person doesn’t take on a certain label that corresponds with it. He’s assumed to have the worst intentions if he isn’t directly part of a certain group, and he really is clumsy with things that he doesn’t understand so he can be better off sometimes keeping his hands inside his box, but it’s still kind of sad to see the roundabout way that these binaries re-enforce themselves with someone like him. At the same time, try not to mourn over ‘what could have been’, because it’s still a form of essentialism to think that having traits more commonly associated with non-cishet identity would solve his problem-of-the-week, and there’s no guarantee that’s the case.

#Tw: Violence #tw: SA mention #Tw: Assault #Tw: Abuse #Brief mention but still worth noting for being so abrupt #As you can tell I’ve been thinking this topic over for a while #I want him to have Queer Freedom as much as the next guy but it’s not the vital jenga block that will knock the rest of him into place #Him being a sticky little man is his journey. His path #mageessay #since this is the spiritual sequel to the first one

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momentsinreading · 5 months

Text

You’re such a pioneer of American indie cinema. Do you think a career like the one you’ve cut out for yourself and enjoyed over the years is possible anymore? How do you view the current state of American moviemaking coming out of the pandemic?

“It feels like it’s gone with the wind — or gone with the algorithm. Sometimes I’ll talk to some of my contemporaries who I came up with during the 1990s, and we’ll go, “Oh my God, we could never get that done today.” So, on the one hand, selfishly, you think, “I guess I was born at the right time. I was able to participate in what always feels like the last good era for filmmaking.” And then you hope for a better day. But, man, the way distribution has fallen off. Sadly, it’s mostly just the audience. Is there a new generation that really values cinema anymore? That’s the dark thought.

“I have a film society and I run into so many young, cinema-loving kids who have the Criterion Channel and they watch all kinds of amazing movies. But I know that, culturally, that’s an exception. I fear that there’s not enough of a critical mass in the culture to sustain what was. But who knows? I don’t think I have any deeper analysis than anyone else would, and it’s not in my nature to make huge statements about whether it’s all over. I just feel we’re all treading water and hoping we don’t drown. Challenging times are certainly here.

“With a changing culture and changing technology, it’s hard to see cinema slipping back into the prominence it once held. I think we could feel it coming on when they started calling films “content” — but that’s what happens when you let tech people take over your industry. It’s hard to imagine indie cinema in particular having the cultural relevance that it did. It’s hard to imagine the whole culture is going to be on the same page about anything, much less filmmaking. We can be self-absorbed and say it’s just about cinema, but it’s really all of our modern cultural life. You could say the same things about reading books. A lot of young people can’t really read a book, because they’re just on their phones.

“Some really intelligent, passionate, good citizens just don’t have the same need for literature and movies anymore. It doesn’t occupy the same space in the brain. I think that’s just how we’ve given over our lives, largely, to this thing that depletes the need for curating and filling ourselves up with meaning from art and fictional worlds. That need has been filled up with — let’s face it — advanced delivery systems for advertising. It’s sad, but what can you do? I also don’t want to go through life thinking our best days are behind us. That’s just not productive. So, in your own area, you just have to persist and do what you can on behalf of the things that you believe in. You have to believe that everything can change and that things can go back to being a little better. Isn’t that what we all want for everything these days, from democracy on down? Can’t we just go back to being a little better?” - Richard Linklater interview in The Hollywood Reporter

#richard linklater #hollywood #movies #film #film studies #long post

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coderfortourette · 2 years

Text

Gov’s Character

Ok, so Ben has confirmed that Gov and DC from 2020-2021 is the same person. And the reason the name changed is because DC (as in District of Columbia) exists. And that makes sense. Ben started this series as a one off sketch, not expecting it to get popular. And so he wasn’t fully prepared for the whole universe to be built out. And made a few mistakes here and there, like names for characters.

“But wait! Old DC was a character in the same meeting as Gov!”

And I can explain that. In Ben’s own words “Ok so I think Old DC is like... a skin that the snake has shed”

And this- this is interesting to me. And I think it leads to some cool theories that can be formed. Especially with things like Gov’s personality change before and after the election.

So the one that comes to the fore front of my mind. Is that Gov does “shed” himself every inauguration. And the personality that he formed from the administration gets swept away. He’s back to a more general government official. He’s “washed clean” in a way. (Now, it’s not 100% washed clean. There are some personality bits that are tied with just being the government). And he still is very nervous whenever elections happen, by virtue of the anxiety from the people and departments he represents.

Otherwise, his personality will redevelop for the 4-8 years the new administration has power. And that may have to do with policies passed or other major world/USA events that happen during the administrations period.

For example. The Gov we saw when his nametag was “DC”, he was very nervous. Besides an election year, there was also like a lot of stuff going on in the world. Protesting and a global pandemic. That would probably make him nervous.

The Gov we see now started off very much as not a pushover. Not somebody the states could pick on. And it’s implied that the last version of Gov could be from the start (Florida saying Gov isn’t as fun anymore).

Now for the part of the “shed” self. I think that becomes like it’s own personification of sorts? Honestly I’m still on the fence of if it gets to be immortal like the others, or if it appears and gets to live a regular mortal life. Either way, this “shed” self retains it’s personality.

Which is why we see Old DC as such a mess. Right before he was shed there was the Jan 6 thing. And after he was shed the Orange Man almost instantly tried to create the “Office of the Former President”. So instead of getting a chance to relax and enjoy no responsibilities like the other past “sheds”, he was forced right to work when he should have been in the care of somebody.

Last Admin does show up in a later sketch. And I have a theory that “Old DC” and “Last Admin” are the same. Since he has a year and a half to recover... and likely recovered around individuals connected to the last administration, that’s why his personality was like that.

For Cryptid Lovers

For the crypid!Gov lovers out there. You can take the shedding to be more literal in a sense if you want. I think this phrasing Ben used definitely opens the way for some cryptid!Gov.

Just, a heads up for artists who want to draw it. I know the snake imagery might make you want to do scales, but I ask we don’t for two reasons.

1. It sets itself too close to the antisemitic conspiracy theory about “Lizard people who control everything”

2. Speaking as somebody with a skin disorder that causes what’s described as “scaly” patches, that’s kinda... it’s not really something I want to see associated with cryptids/etc. For like, body positivity reasons.

Outside of that! If you still want to think of “DC” (2020) and “Gov” as separate characters, I can’t stop you! I’m just repeating what Ben said in case you were in the camp of “I’m not sure if they’re the same or not. I wish Ben would clarify

And I’ll be sharing the screenshots of Ben’s words about stuff under the cut.

#welcome to the statehouse #welcome to the table #ben brainard #wttt #wttsh #Gov wttt #long post #analysis

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surpluscornbread · 1 year

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How some media progressives talk about China is WILD

China’s going through a lot of protests and there’s reasons to criticize the Chinese government. There’s even arguments that the current protests, primarily about Zero COVID policies but also talking about censorship, have decent points at this stage in the pandemic. Those are worth considering and debating. But then you get something like this from a senior editor and “progressive Montanan” Bob Brigham:

This, is insane. On many levels. First, there’s no argument that China’s population numbers would fall significantly due to COVID. Estimates are about 5 million people would’ve died without the lockdowns they’ve done which is less than .4% of their population. Huge human cost! Not much change in population.

Second, as Naomi Wu points out, there’s no argument that China is uniquely overpopulated. Density as a whole is less than a number of European states, though some large provinces in the East like Guangdong are quite dense still in the 700/sq km range putting them at about 40% of Malta’s density (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1183370/china-population-density-by-region-province/). But true, density isn’t the only thing that matters. How about water resources? Well in per capita water renewable resources, China has a similar amount to the UK and about 60% more than Germany according to the World Bank (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ER.H2O.INTR.PC). China’s forest coverage as a percent of land area is similar to Belgium (https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/forest_area/). You could think of other things like per capita emissions and there’s none of that where China is substantially higher than European countries Brigham gives a pass for. Or hell, even some US states!

What this all adds up to is fairly blatant racism because now he’s not complaining about actions of the Chinese government but the existence of Chinese people. Which if anything I’d say China’s earlier one child policy and now more relaxed two child policies deserve critique for being unhelpful interventions when birth rates drop quickly and naturally from just urbanization and women’s education being combined...two things China’s proven quite good at in recent decades! And this is combined with unhinged hatred of lockdowns far in excess of where even the protestors have been at.

Chinese people in general were in favor of lockdowns and some still are (though that number has certainly dropped more recently)! That’s why you didn’t see these protests during the rest of the past two years of them. And the lockdowns were working until fairly recently as clearly shown by China’s extremely low death toll (a death toll that is likely pretty close to accurate or at least no more wrong than anyone else’s simply because hiding millions of deaths isn’t a thing governments have ever been able to do, there are too many different threads of information to control for that).

If you want to make arguments that lockdown policies have stayed in place too long, especially since widespread adoption of vaccines, that’s a point that’s worth considering. That’s what the protestors are arguing. But to say they were always anti-science is some crazy bullshit when it’s not just China that strict border controls and lockdowns worked in for well over a year. You’d also need to throw countries like Vietnam, New Zealand, and even Taiwan under that bus.

Lots of other folks make more reasonable and measured criticisms of China, some that are still OK to argue over and disagree with since even a reasonable take can be wrong, but guys like this are in prominent positions of our media apparatus. Which should probably also give people some pause in just what perspectives they get on China relying on even progressive news sources in the West.

#China protests #bob brigham #raw story #Over population arguments #Lockdown arguments #twitter

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vaveyard · 2 years

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Please don't talk about POC and Queer authors getting hate when much of the criticism you receive IS from POC and Queer readers and you answer their asks with snark and memes, and laugh about and dismiss them with other people messaging you 🙈

How many struggling, oppressed authors could your contracts have fed? Don't speak for them when you contribute to their oppression. Redistribution of wealth and equality can't happen when white mediocrity gets 6-7 figures, and excellence from people of color gets almost nothing.

Please stop painting yourself as the perpetual victim and even comparing yourself to systematically oppressed people. Please. Surely there has to be a limit as to what you're willing to do for attention.

Most people (like me) do not criticize you for attention (hello? we're on anon? and you have all the power to delete the asks?).

The fact that you think that says a lot more about you than it does about your critics.

The fact that you think that criticism only comes from "one person", because you can't believe that more than one person in the whole world might find you lacking, that's just too absurd and improbable... is also very telling.

Most of us are people of color or members of the LGBTQ+ community or both. You're another white liberal author pretending to be anti-oppression while at the same time supporting the system, putting yourself at the center of the conversation, giving a platform to racist people making fun and/or dismissing people of color, and even participating in this behavior, and getting money and fame as a result. While the same authors of color and Queer that you speak for are left to fight for scraps.

You're not a martyr. It's obvious that you only post these asks to get sympathy and attention by people like you, because the mean oppressed people dare criticize you.

When oppressed people speak, please be respectful enough to listen. And if you can't be bothered to do that, at least keep quiet instead of dismissing them and putting YOURSELF at the center of the conversation.

Feel free to delete this if you wish, I'm not sure a public response would improve the situation. Positive change of behavior is the best show of taking accountability and apologizing for harm.

And so far, in all these years, your behavior towards readers has changed negatively.

Money, greed and entitlement really are a sickness.

Again, your issue is with the publishing industry (and the structure of capitalism in general, it seems), not with me. I'm flattered you think I have much power over either. I cannot control what manuscripts my publisher signs or who they choose as a lead title. I am also not going to refuse support for my own writing (as I am a working writing myself). I can control who I tour with and what panels I agree to be on. I'm grateful to be in a position where I can ask to do events with marginalized and/or debut authors/authors who debuted during the pandemic who didn't get a fair shake. That's been my protocol for the last few years.

And I stand by what I said. I know whatever "hate" I get is minuscule compared to what marginalized authors and creators deal with. I must acknowledge that, and I don't think that's "speaking for" anyone. Just stating the very obvious on the off chance someone thinks I'm getting an inordinate amount of negative comments. There is no comparison between my experience and their own.

I am a flawed human far from perfection. Trust me, I know many people find me lacking, some with valid cause and some without. But the vast majority of them are not on tumblr, sending a barrage of messages all at once, every few weeks, using the same syntax and focusing on the same issues every single time. It is very easy to tell which messages are from the same source.

I also have no way of knowing who a person actually is on anon. Or sometimes when it's coming from a named account. Quite frankly, I am usually the only part of the equation that is known in my interactions on here.

Regarding centering myself in conversation - I am responding to messages in my inbox, on my account. Perhaps that's the disconnect here? Unfortunately, the messages I answer are about me? As a rule, I don't answer any messages, comments, questions, or insults towards other authors that end up in my inbox. That's poor form in my opinion. And I can only talk in depth on my own experience.

#ask

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jecook · 1 year

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My Hero Academia and Mutual Aid

My Hero Academia continues to fascinate me not just for its fun cast of characters and sweet action scenes, but also for the well-observed commentary on justice.

An anecdote: this morning, my father told me a story about visiting a state park by a lake where many people bring paddleboards, canoes, etc. On his way to the restroom, he ran into a board that someone had left in the hallway, which was strangely darkened so he couldn't see what he was about to run into. His leg was bleeding--not bad enough for stitches but enough that they would need some first aid. He and one of our relatives couldn't find anyone in the lakeside building, so they went to a ranger station. There, the rangers said it wasn't their job to do first aid and they had no ability to give first aid. They informed my father and our relative that the state had sold the right to the lakehouse business to a private company, therefore the park rangers were not responsible for anything there. This of course includes surfboards left in dark hallways and injuries received from them. So my dad and my relative head to the camp store, where they say that he can purchase a first aid kit or he can find a medical center, but that's all they can do. The whole time, my father is annoyed that none of these people extend any help and each claim it isn't their job to help. Meanwhile, our relative keeps defending these people, reminding my father that "well, they're rangers, not emergency medical responders" and such. In the end, my dad was far angrier with the relative for defending these people than those who refused to do anything at all to help him.

If you read MHA, I hope you can see why I find this related. I am reminded of Shigaraki Tomura's origin, wandering the streets looking haggard whilst civilians all assume someone else will help, it isn't their job, that's for the heroes.

I speak from an American perspective. American culture is obsessed with "heroes." We look to police, to EMS, to firefighters, to military service members, veterans, and during the pandemic, "essential workers." We call all these people heroes and look to heroes to help others, to fight crime. So often, it is not our job to help. Yet, more and more lately we encourage mutual aid, we want programs like STAR in Denver, we want to help each other. I think about Uraraka's scene on the wall of UA in chapter 324 and the ending line, "The story of how we all became the greatest heroes," just as the Ordinary Woman and Kota rush to Midoriya's side. We see the beginnings of civilian people just like you and me who can become "heroes."

The messages in MHA can often become muddied under the gigantic cast of characters, issues with how women are (or really, how they are not) represented, and subplots being shortchanged in favor of shonen audiences being appeased, among other things. But I love this story and I love Horikoshi for what I believe shines through: his observation of our society (both in Japan and America and I am sure elsewhere) and his vision of the future. He sees (has seen for a long time) this problem of how we build up the notion of heroes and how we ignore other human beings because it is the job of the heroes we have created, not our own responsibility as neighbors to one another. Horikoshi wants us as readers to see that we need to reach out, we need to be the ones to lend a helping hand, we need to take initiative to help others who we see in trouble. My Hero Academia is a lesson in compassion, one that aligns with how our generation already wants to change our world.

Personally, I am excited to see how this manga ends; I want to see how he envisions this change when all is said and done. Will there be "heroes" anymore? How will regular people act to help others after the events of the story are over? I think about how our world is changing here and now and how it mirrors this story and I won't lie, I hope Horikoshi can show us a bright future. Maybe we will see first responders with the aim to de-escalate and provide care. Maybe we will see volunteer groups that aid others. Or maybe we will just see regular people who see a child alone and offer them love and shelter or who see a man bleeding and offer him some disinfectant and a bandage. Whatever the case, I'll see you all at the end of this manga, whenever that might be.

#my hero academia #boku no hero academia #bnha #mha #bnha meta

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quarantineroulette · 2 years

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The Glamour of the Ordinary: Jane Savidge’s Here They Come With Their Make-Up On and Warren Ellis’ Nina Simone’s Gum

In the early days of the pandemic, a Facebook page appeared that consisted entirely of people around the world dressing in costumes and finery to take out their trash. The page was called Bin Isolation Outing and, at its close in December 2020, it had over 900,000 members. What began as a joke among a few Australian friends quickly spread into a worldwide phenomenon, a way of injecting some frivolity and flash into a very scary, often mundane period in time.

During those early stages of the pandemic, I thought a lot about Suede’s 1996 full-length, Coming Up (this was partially because the band were intending on performing the album in full throughout the UK that fall and I kept trying to believe the pandemic would be over by then so I could fly to one, but let’s pretend I was really just tapped into this “glamour of the everyday” strand this whole time). One of the reasons I love the band so much is because of its ability to imbue the ordinary and everyday with a sense of glamour. More simply if paradoxically put, and to echo a 1993 Vox headline, “They’re ordinary, that makes them glam.”

Sometimes concurrent with this glamour of the ordinary, is an equally compelling glamorization of escape from the drudgery of the everyday. As Jane Savidge states in Here They Come With Their Make-Up On, her 2022 book on the making of Coming Up, “...(Suede) are my best means of escape from the humdrum of the everyday, even if they do write songs about the humdrum and the everyday as if our lives depended on it.” In a time when one of the few ways of dealing with the fear and uncertainty of the pandemic was trying to approach the monotony of lockdown with a little frivolity or finding escape through other mediums, Suede provided the perfect soundtrack.

Jane Savidge served as Suede’s PR Agent throughout the band’s ‘90s heyday, and is arguably the best person to write a 33 1/3-style book on a Suede album, which Here They Come... essentially is, save with a lot of insider perspective and a droller tone. In other words, it’s the perfect music book.

I know I just stated a paragraph ago that I spent a lot of the early months of the pandemic thinking about Coming Up. Now I must confess that it’s not a favorite Suede record of mine. In spite of that, it includes the first Suede song I’d ever heard (”Beautiful Ones”), the Suede song that has empowered me the most, personally (”By the Sea”), one of the band’s most definitive songs (”Trash”) and two songs that are no brainers for my “Top 10 favorite Suede songs - these are the ones - no questions asked” list (”Picnic by the Motorway” and “The Chemistry Between Us”). But the rest of the record is either “great songs but not SUEDE GREAT” (”She”) or just OK (looking at you “Filmstar” and “Saturday Night” and begrudgingly “Lazy” although I do honestly love it. No comment on “Starcrazy”). It’s a general fan sentiment, but I genuinely prefer a lot of the b-sides and kind of view the whole thing as a great pop record but also something you can put on in the background and go about your business to. For someone who loves Suede for their high drama, there’s no falling to your knees and wailing “Have you ever tried it that way?” to the point of hoarseness -- i.e. I would never scrub the kitchen sink while listening to the debut album or Dog Man Star or Night Thoughts.

And so, like all great books about music, Savidge chronicles Coming Up in such a charming and insightful way that I couldn’t help but reevaluate the record and appreciate it anew. This is in no small part to the band and producer Ed Buller as well, who offer a lot in the way of songwriting and creativity. Several times, these insights touch on the classic pop sensibilities which buoy these songs. A quote from a Guardian interview with frontman Brett Anderson which opens the chapter on “Trash” asserts, “It’s about believing in the romance of the everyday. I really wanted to make a straight-up pop record. We were listening to a lot of ‘60s pop at the time and were very much inspired by the classic three and a half minute single.”

Elsewhere, keyboardist Neil Codling mentions, in reference to “Lazy,” mentions listening to The Beatles’ “I Feel Fine” in an effort to achieve a Beatles guitar tone and says, “It had an indie sensibility and a classic ‘60s feel as well as sounding ‘90s.” He also talks about the Suede signature being “a bit of grit in the oyster, a twist in the chords or the melodies...” and it’s perhaps one of the most concise statements on one of the reasons these songs endure.

Similarly enduring and endearing is Savidge, who -- despite the aforementioned input from all members of Suede -- comes across as the biggest star, presiding over everything with wit and insight. If you’ve read either of Anderson’s two memoirs, you might notice he can get a bit florid with his words, and Savidge lovingly diffuses any threats of overseriousness here. Whether observing the “bad, bored bony” protagonist of “She” doesn’t sound very happy or reminiscing about incidents involving Elton John and a champagne cork (not as dirty as that sounds), her prose are a consistent delight. She’s also unafraid of cunningly deriding these songs that fans sometimes are a bit too precious over. In discussing “Trash,” Savidge writes that it “very much knows what it is doing -- preaching to the converted, perhaps -- but doing it with such style and grace that you couldn’t help loving it all the more.” In a way this sums up Here They Come With Their Make-Up On and Coming Up perfectly, it knows what its doing and I already love everyone involved, but its style and grace have me adoring it anew.

Perhaps nothing can be thought of as so instantly disposable as a wad of chewed gum. It’s an object that is hard to muster one thought about, but in Nina Simone’s Gum, Warren Ellis manages to rhapsodize on a piece of chewed gum for over 100 pages. Granted, this is not any old wad of gum, it once belonged to the great singer and songwriter Nina Simone, who stuck it to her piano when taking the stage at the Nick Cave-curated edition of the Meltdown Festival, which was held in London in 1999.

Ellis has a rich musical history, most famously as frontman for the Dirty Three and the most prominent Bad Seed of the 21st century, but this is his first foray into writing and hopefully not the last because his prose is eloquent and enchanting. Although a short read, I really stretched out my time with the book because I was so entranced by Ellis’ writing and, by extension, the man himself. His fascinations, his reminiscences and the occasional glimpses of his friendship with Nick Cave all made me wish that everyone had a Warren Ellis of their own.

“It’s always been other people who have brought that potential out of me. I’m the inverse of the gum somehow. It’s about connection. People who have encouraged me to be the best I can, allow me to go unrestrained. Letting ideas take flight. Letting me take flight. The wonder of playing in a band. Making music with people. I was watching something unfold in a visual way, that I sensed often as an abstract or internalised concept.”

The reverence Ellis has for those who inspired him is, well, inspiring in itself. When recounting seeing another hero, Alice Coltrane, several years after the Nina Simone gig, he writes, “Every recording I have gone into I have in my own way tried to honor her,” and “It was that moment again. Those times you think are never going to happen in your life,” and I’m sure every music lover seeing their heroes performing in the flesh can relate. I also love that, in recalling the Nina Simone Meltdown set, Ellis admits “I can’t recall much of what she played.” It’s a passing sentence but it really speaks to something about transcendence over memory, how some performances are so powerful, it’s not about what was played but rather something beyond the experience itself. In Ellis’ words, a communion.

But mostly, Nina Simone’s Gum is about collecting and the perception of objects, how something easily disposable can be charged with spiritual significance. Ellis remarks several times that, as the gum makes the rounds from a jeweler to a museum exhibition, he “became aware that the gum was bringing out the best in people.” The gum eventually finds itself on a plinth in the Hallway of Gratitude portion of Nick Cave’s “Stranger Than Kindness” exhibit at the Royal Danish Library, presented as the religious artifact it is in Ellis’ eyes. The process of managing the gum from a curatorial perspective -- from temperature control to assessing the gum’s value for insurance purposes -- is fascinating, and provokes a lot of thoughts about how settings themselves can change an object’s significance (this, paired with the overall theme of the book, reminded me many times of the New Museum’s excellent “The Keeper” exhibition from 2016).

In discussing the gum’s inclusion in the “Stranger Than Kindness” exhibition, Nick Cave writes in the book’s forward that exhibition goers will “marvel at the significance of this most ordinary and disposable of things...” Just as taking out the trash became an occasion for frivolity for some, so too can a song about the everyday become a pop anthem, and a piece of chewing gum a sacred object. The pandemic and lockdowns may have forced a lot of us to come to terms with the drudgery of the everyday, but with luck they also afforded us a few flashes of beauty amidst the mundane.

#book review #jane savidge #warren ellis #suede #nick cave #collecting #music #art

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