#what end stage capitalism bullshit is this?

[maddy-katt]

WHY IS THERE A NAPSTER AD ON MY FORTUNE COOKIE FORTUNE???

#what end stage capitalism bullshit is this? #i hate this #also Napster? #of all things

[writers-hq]

WHY IS WRITING IS SO FUCKING HARD?

Ten types of fuckery that stop you from writing the thing:

1. Imposter syndrome

You think you're not good enough or everyone else is better than you and you're just winging it AKA ye olde imposter syndrome bullshit. Yeah nah you're fine. No really, you're exactly where you need to be right now, and you'll keep getting better and better so long as you don't stop. Chances are, if you're filled with doubt about your abilities it means you've actually improved to the point where you can really start to understand what makes good writing. It means you know where you wanna end up and goshdarn it you're gonna get there.

Read this: 4 tips to kick imposter syndrome in the face and also genitals

And also this: How to silence the inner critic

2. Fear of rejection and/or failure

Yeah, us too. It fuckin sucks. BUT. Not all rejections are equal. And rejection is a necessary part of the process. Sometimes it takes a rejection to realise that a story isn't ready. Sometimes a rejection is entirely subjective and has ZERO reflection on the quality of your work. But shying away from the very idea of possibly maybe hypothetically getting rejected is only going to hold you back from even trying. And knowing why you got rejected and how to learn from it is one of the most valuable writing skills.

Read this: The different types of rejection (and how to deal with 'em)

Then read this: How to cope with rejection

And also this: Writing lessons from Groundhog Day

3. Not enough planning / too much planning

Leaping into a new story with nothing but a glimmer of an idea is exciting as heck (and can sometimes be a great way to begin) but at some point you're gonna need some sort of outline or plan to keep you on track. HOWEVER. Planning your story to within an inch of its life can also sometimes be a hindrance - leaving you stuck in the hypothetical stage of the process where your story doesn't quite exist yet (and therefore avoiding the prospect of it sucking). The sweet spot is in the middle. Having just enough of a plan to know where tf you're going, but enough freedom and flexibility to let the story lead the way...

Read this: Planning vs pantsing

Then read this: Five plotting techniques

And also this: The perils of overplanning

4. Your WIP just isn't working

Sometimes things just fall flat. Sometimes you work on the same story for yeeeeears and then it just kinda... dies. Sometimes you have the best plans (see above) and the best intentions and things still don't work out. Sometimes it's just time to move on. And sometimes it's not! Sometimes a story can be revived, fixed or changed. Sometimes you just need time. Sometimes YOU'RE the one that's changed and this isn't the story you need to be writing right now. Many variables. Muchly personal. Read the things below for more advice cos this is a big question:

Read this: What to do when your WIP isn't working

And also this: Give it space - how to grow a story in your head

Or how about this? Editing 101

5. You keep deprioritising it

Ah the irony of writing being the thing you love/want to do most of all AND YET the thing you procrastinate over and avoid and shove to the very bottom of your to-do list all the freakin' time. Maybe it's the comodification of art destroying our freedom to create without pressure. Maybe it's late capitalism sucking up all our available time and energy. Maybe it's a lack of self-belief subconsciously telling us our 'little hobby' doesn't really matter. Maybe it's maybelline. Whatever it is, you have the power to reclaim and revalue your writing. To say, "I'm a fucking writer, goddamnit!" and mean it. To ringfence your creative time so nothing and nobody gets to interrupt it. To do that thing you love.

Read this: Prioritise your writing

Read this: How to write in 30 second bursts

6. Shiny Thing Syndrome

You know that feeling when you're just getting stuck into a writing project and then — SQUIRREL! — you get distracted by another, better, more shiny writing project? Or maybe you're deep in the editing phase and your current WIP just isn't feeling very shiny at all and pretty much ANYTHING seems more exciting? Or you simply can't decide which of the many squirrelly writing ideas to actually start? You, fine writerperson, may be suffering from Shiny Thing Syndrome (STS). But fear not! There are a few ways to combat it, depending on the cause, and most of them involve embracing the squirrel-brain and injecting a bit of fun into your writing, like so:

Read this: Shiny thing syndrome - a writer's malady

Aaaand read this: Get excited about your writing again

And also this: Write like a kid

7. Perfectionism/self-sabotage

Look. Writing is scary as shit. What if someone READS it? What if they don't like it? What if they see into your soul and gain a deeper understanding of you through your words? Writing your truth, being vulnerable, smearing your heart juice all over the page? No thank you. But also, that's where the good shit is, so actually yes please. Just make sure you smear responsibly. And rest assured, even the most 'successful' and experienced writers ALSO feel like this sometimes, so you're in good company. It's just part of the art, bruh.

Read this: Why writing is scary (and why that's a good thing)

Read this: Beginning a story - what stops us starting?

And also this: Get out of your own way

8. The dreaded blank page

Oh godddd the blank page. It should be an exciting palimseset of possibility but is somehow also the most terrifying thing known to humankind. You wanna write something but where to start? HOW to start? You type that first line and immediately delete it. You watch the cursor blinking at you—taunting you—until you just give up and shut your laptop again. It's probably tied up with a bunch of things we've already covered so far: perfectionism, imposter syndrome, fear of failure, maybe a lack of planning or faith in your story or whatever. But it doesn't have to be this way. A blank page IS exciting and full of possibility. We just have to get over ourselves and learn to embrace the unknown...

Read this: Don't fear the blank page

And also this: The moaning method

9. Not enough time/energy/motivation/gnuuuughh

Dude, same x 1000. But you don't have to get up at 5am, do hot yoga, drink a kale smoothie and write a thousand words before sunrise to be a Proper Writer. You don't even have to write every day. But what you can do is hack your writing brain and figure out when, where, how, and why you write most effectively. Then tweak your schedule, your habits, and your attitude to ensure you're making the most of your time. Productivity is a big ol' lie but finding the secret to getting in your own personal writing zone is actual MAGIC.

Read this: Maximise your writing time

And also this: Get in the writing zone

And also unto this: The Writers' HQ Guide to Productivity

10. You're just fucken stuck

Got the writing morbs? In need of some literary sudafed? Stuck as a pig in a poke? Writing is a whole puzzle of a process—and to be honest that's what makes it so fun and exciting and addictive, because your writing brain is hardwired to both create AND solve the wordy puzzles within your story. Sometimes the answer is time. Sometimes it's a second opinion or a fresh eye. Sometimes a totally different approach or just a hefty kick up the bum. But whatever the problem, there IS a solution. You just gotta keep going and trust that you'll find it...

Read this: Troubleshoot your writing - why are you stuck?

And also this: Break through the writing blockage

And also also this: Write yourself into a pit (and then dig your way out again)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Alright, that's it for today. Now go write, you flithy animals.

(And if we missed anything, stick a question in our ask box or check out the rest of our shit here)

#writing #writing advice #writers of tumblr #writeblr #writing community #writers community #writing life #creative writing #national novel writing month #nanowrimo #nanowrimo 2022 #imposter syndrome #perfectionism #writer's block #writers block #writer things #procrastination #productivity #writer problems #blank page #the blank page #WIP #pantser #editing #plotting

[shakingparadigm]

Ivan seems to be playing himself down a LOT in his interview. Calling himself average-looking despite being hired as a model by several brands, saying he wasn't very popular in the Garden despite having many friends and admirers, and mentioning his flaws when asked about his charms. He does so in a rather light and casual manner, so it comes off as being humble, "grounded", as the interview describes. His answers are quite different to Luka's interview.

Luka is openly confident in his abilities, mentioning all his training and the support given to him. All of his answers are self-assured and well-structured, not pausing even once. He has something to say for every question, and never cuts himself short. He's proud to the point where he doesn't even care to learn about who his opponent is. He states that "it doesn't matter" to him.

Ivan's answers, on the other hand, come off rather vague. He can go into detail about his modeling career and his ranking, but when it comes to personal questions he always answers the bare minimum. There are several pauses during his answers, and moments where he laughs in-between as well. It's as if he's trying to extend time so he doesn't have to properly answer the questions that are more sensitive to him. The persona that he's trying to cultivate, although incredibly impressive and glamorous in its own right (a "prince charming" as QMENG calls him), seems to be a lot more down-to-earth as opposed to Luka's untouchable aura. He wants to seem more amicable, more easily charismatic, which is why he's so loose and casual with his answers, yet he closes up during certain parts of his interview in a way that Luka doesn't.

The answer that sticks out like a sore thumb is obviously "We were fine, I guess. That's about it." When asked about his relationship with Till. Everyone who knows Ivan as a character can smell the utter bullshit from across the continent. Many of his answers involving Till are dismissive and closed-off, as if he's trying to end the question as quickly as possible. He even regards Till as if he's not too familiar with him. "They say Till is a genius...", like it's a rumor and not a fact that's been evident since their childhood. He mentions that Till is his childhood friend yet refuses to give more detail about their relationship beyond that fact. It even seems like he tried to reel it back a little later on in the interview with the "We were fine" statement.

It seems like Ivan is purposefully hiding a lot from the public, and his relationship with Till especially is something that he protects. It's not too far off to assume that he holds a certain contempt towards the aliens. It could be why he refuses to reveal how much Till actually means to him, maybe in fear that once they acknowledge it, they could use it against him. Even worse, it could put Till in danger. The media, despite singing their love and praise, will always be ruthless and hungry for any sign of weakness. The producers of the ALIEN STAGE competition know to capitalize on this desire for drama, and we witness it firsthand with Mizi and Sua. Perhaps the fact that they adored each other so openly in their interview lead to the aliens' growing desire to watch them fall apart. Ivan knows of this, so he'd rather distance his feelings for Till away from the public. Always play it down so they don't know what you're hiding. Play it down so they don't know the cards you hold to your chest, so they don't expect you have a motive for a plan. Who knows what kind of "aggressive" act he could play out in ROUND 6....

#alnst #alien stage #alien stage ivan #alnst ivan #alien stage round 6

[cat-mentality]

More of my favorite silly qsmp headcanons that have zero evidence in canon

The Spanish version:

Willy has creeper dna and he can communicate with them

He however has literally declared the whole species his mortal enemies, and the feeling is mutual

For some reason turtles really like Willy, Tallulah's turtles once staged a break just to hang out in his base (Philza was not pleased)

Vegetta and Rubius fought once and Rubius cursed him to be a werewolf, it was supposed to be temporary but Rubius legitimately forgot about it and Vegetta kinda of likes it now

Vegetta as a result will sometimes howl at the moon and he is like, weirdly, into smells, especially Foolish's for some reason

No one really questions it even if Maximus is the only one who knows he is a werewolf

Maximus is one of the only humans in the Island so he just takes the weirdness on strike, nothing fazes him

Maximus doesn't won a single matching pair of socks and its on purpose

He also owns more sunglasses than he does furniture

Roier is a spider hybrid and he can climb walls like one, he uses that power to scare the living shit out of people

He doesn't do it to Rivers anymore because one time her first response was to set him on fire and then yell at him while he was burning

One time he also took her makeup without asking and she chased him around with a ax

Mariana recorded the whole thing

As a payback Roier stole his glasses and Mariana had to walk around the Island seeing jack shit, he ended up groping so many people by mistake that he legitimately buried himself into the sand until Luzu made him some new glasses

Arin will sometimes hang out inside of people's machines just for fun (He is the one that taught Pierre's machines to swear)

Arin and the codes are enemies with benefits (Luzu refuses to acknowledge this)

Pol pulls out the "old man" card literally every time something mildly inconveniences him or when he wants someone to do something for him

Roier and Quackity always end up getting falling for it

One time Willy and Vegetta blew up a part of his studio and he dead ass pulled their ears and made them redo the whole thing

No one has gathered the courage to ask Pol what he is, but let's just say that when he says old, he means old

He and Abueloier are childhood friends

The reason Missa takes so long to come back every time he leaves is because he has the worst sense of direction ever, he has inadvertently managed to map out the whole Island when he just wanted to find a river.

The mobs just kinda stopped attacking him at some point because it genuinely made them feel bad, they will try when he is with someone else and some token attempts from time to time but mostly they just ignore him

Quackity will say the most absurd things about the Island with a very straight face and he always end up tricking at least one poor soul in believing his bullshit

Quackity can speak to ducks and they have very long and deep philosophical conversations about the meaning of life and the mysteries of the universe

Luzu one time found him while he and the ducks are discussing the dangers of capitalism and he just backed away very slowly

German got lost trying to walk around the Island and he still haven't found his way back, on a good note he has been adopted by the slimes because they like his shirt

Rivers can talk to chickens and they obey her orders, Mariana was once chased down by an army of chickens and he still doesn't know how that happened

Luzu can literally sleep anywhere, he once feels asleep in a bush of thorns

Roier however can only fall asleep in the best sheets with the most luxurious mattress, but he sleeps like the dead, Quackity likes to play a game called "how many random objects can i stack in Roier before he wakes up"

Roier still doesn't know who does that

Missa doesn't know that he can be really fucking scary when he approaches someone in the darkness and he has hurt his feelings many times when people screamed when he wanted to say "hi"

#qsmp #qsmp headcanons #i have more of those but it was getting very long already #i just enjoy thinking about them being silly and stupid #qsmp el mariana #qsmp luzu #qmsp quackity #qsmp maximus #qsmp missa #qsmp roier #qsmp vegetta #qsmp german #qsmp polispol #qsmp rivers #qsmp willyrex #holy shit that's a lot of tags

[obscurecharactershowdown]

Group C Round 1

[image ID: the first image is of Bob Sparker, a man with a long pointed nose, with short, light colored hair, wearing a suit and tie. he's holding a microphone and is standing on stage in front of a crowd. the second image is of Kirinda, a robotic eye attached to a mechanical stalk in a futuristic-looking room. the closed caption on the image says: "thank you for the description." in all capital letters. end ID]

Bob Sparker

Bob is a guy who runs a gameshow called shock till you drop, where he straps people in an electric chair & increases the amount of electricity until the person gives up. He constantly shocks himself with the chair & seems to be able to withstand any amount of electricity. In fact, it seems to energize him, and he even stood on a lightning rod during a storm with the purpose of getting struck. Apparently (don't quote me on this) he was partially the inspiration for both Mettaton of Undertale and Spamton of Deltarune.

Kirinda

Kirinda is a "space-time transmitting machine" in the shape of a giant kirin. His job is to take the main characters to Novel Worlds (worlds that contain every story, myth, or legend ever created by humans) so that they can figure out what's corrupting them, and then he comes in at the end of the episode to clean up by purifying the monster responsible. However, he is no ordinary giant robot. He is sentient and speaks to the titular Rangers (with the world's most hokey and out of date Kansai/Southern accent to boot) through a camera shaped like an eye, and is often the one explaining the story of the world the characters are going to visit, as well as choosing which characters are going by the way of a roulette... which may or may not be complete bullshit. You see, while his role is incredibly important, he is very irresponsible and is constantly just dropping the characters off in a haphazard, dangerous manner without finishing explanations, screwing around with the roulette just to see what will happen, teasing the other characters (or subjecting them to horrible puns) and generally being incredibly vague and unhelpful beyond the bare minimum job requirements. At the end of the day though, he does really like his job (so much that he gets very salty if his screen time is threatened), and when push comes to shove, will go above and beyond to make sure everybody is safe. ( he also has an incredibly catchy image song and everyone should go look up Kirinda Ondo! on youtube right now)

#obscurecharactershowdown #group c round 1 #obscure poll #bob sparker #electricopolis #kirinda #juuni senshi bakuretsu eto ranger #if u want some behind the scenes: #the primary reason i picked bob sparker was b/c the first line of the description reminded me of a movie called deathrow gameshow #which is kinda a hidden gem so id recommend it if you havent seen it #but its about a gameshow where death row inmates can compete in life threatening challenges to earn their freedom #but the whole thing is that they never make it out alive #so its a spectacle execution #and the movie is a critique of the for profit prison system #and the spectacle of suffering #while also being a comedy w other plots going on #anyway! vote in the poll

[obsessivelollipoplalala]

I'm sorry but the nerve of some people??!?!?

Okay, fuck who made that YouTube video. That is straight up misinformation. There is no universe in which “We Will Rock You” was meant to upstage “We Are the Champions.” It’s just not true! It’s bad fanfiction! And Brian has considered the songs as a single entity for decades.

You know what’s worse? Brian was asked like last year what his favorite memory was in the recording studio, and you know what his response was? Being at the soundboard with Freddie for “We Are the Champions.” He said he wanted to turn the sound of his guitar down towards the end, but Freddie insisted it be as loud as his voice because it was meant to be a duet.

It’s just absolutely fucking incredible that Brian has quite literally said his favorite musical memories are with Freddie and he’s cried over him on stage multiple times over the past few decades, and fucking brain rotted YouTube comments are like, “No I’d rather believe bullshit videos and that Brian hates him <3”

Again—why prefer to believe one of Freddie’s band mates resented him and now capitalizes off him? It’s so fucking terminally online, I really hate these freaks. They just sit around and straight up lie about these real people, and for what? What do they get out of lying about Brian and Freddie’s friendship? It’s insane and these people should be shouted out of the fandom

#Freddie Mercury #Brian May #replies

[theculturedmarxist]

I think what artists, musicians, writers, pretty much every creative person really, all need to understand is that under capitalism, everything they make is worthless. AI, piracy, whatever, they're all just windmills you're tilting at. Even if by some miracle you did manage to defeat it, it would soon be replaced by some other terrible mechanism which alienates you from your creation, because that's how Capitalism works.

This is just the latest iteration of a process that's been happening for over 500 years now. It's just now instead of enclosing a physical commons for the private profit of aristocrats, oligarchs are enclosing the digital commons. Consolidating the public spaces of forums, message boards, webrings, and other democratically driven online spaces into the few mega-sites of Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and so on has run its course. Now the capitalists have turned to trawling the rest of the internet to try and wring whatever value they can get from it.

And just like the process of enclosure or mechanization or industrialization, there's no putting that genie back in the bottle. They've already scoured the internet for untold trillions of pages of data and images and what not. The damage is done. It doesn't matter what further damage is going to come from it either, because the dirty not-so-secret of the tech world is that this is it. They have no more bright ideas. Pretty much every great thing to Google's name, they bought. All their in house initiatives failed. Google video? Google groups? Google glass? They make their money selling ads that nobody cares about. Same with Facebook. They just spent billions to create a crappy Second Life clone that no one gives a fuck about. These tech corporations are massive, lumbering, doomed empires, especially now that covid has pretty much brought the era of 0%-interest loans to an end. Without the billions of dollars of venture capital being pumped into Uber and Twitter and all the rest, now they've got to actually start making money, which none of them are actually able to do. Now they're desperate for some new gimmick to latch onto to try and turn a profit or attract ever dwindling venture capital. Bitcoin was the last big scam. Remember Libra? NFTs were the big thing after that. NFT images! NFT tv shows! NFT games! Here we are a year later and no one fucking talks about them any more. AI is just more of this magic bean bullshit.

Aside from all of that, even if AI was managed to be beaten back, you can assume that whatever the cure the powers that be settle on will be worse than the disease. Whatever "protections" get put into place will only be used against individual artists. At the end of the day, these big corps are just going to end up keeping all the information they've already stolen, the algorithms they used to steal it, and then will put laws into place legitimizing that theft after the fact. You're simply not going to win that fight, because the battle's already been lost.

The only long term solution to this is to attack the root cause, which is a system that relies upon exploitation in order to accumulate profit. Profits are what feed these massive corporate beasts, and as they're starved by falling profits, they'll only grow more ravenous and rapacious. We're only at the opening stages of this trend now, and things are only going to get worse.

#inteligência artificial #artificial intelligence #capitalism #economics #art #artists

[kuwdora]

January 20 - i don't think this is even remotely on your active WIP list (or mine) but i think about it all the time: share something about the Witchyr app! (or puppetskier if you don't have anything you haven't talked about already) @littlestsnicket

Ahhhha, you are correct. The the modern Witchyr AU is not on my active WIP list. I have too many WIPs…For those who missed it, I wrote over here what it would look like if witchers and sorceresses were living in a modern gig economy and had a bullshit app platform and late stage capitalism awfulness. Lots of character details and how witcher signs would get adapted in a modern context, things about Triss and Regis. How I might do Ciri and Emhyr in a mdoern context. I wish I had a Witchyr snippet for you, mayoho, but alas I think everything that I had is already on that post. I didn't work on this mostly because I'd been more interested in working on my yennskier and geraskefer stuff and wrestling my Ciri feelings into a fic.

As for the puppetskier story Coin Operated Boy. I can’t recall if I mentioned this... But at one point when Shani was with Jaskier at the Department of Supernatural Phenomena, I almost went off on a tangent about an item Shani finds on a a shelf. Something that is the equivalent of Big Mouth Billy Bass....which I don't know if this is an American novelty toy that people have heard of.... but it's That Talking/Singing Fishhead. I would've given it some kind of Oxenfurt spin since they're right next to the ocean and all. Be an item that Mortimer confiscated from previous students who used it to troll other students and/or maybe cheat on exams. Maybe it could record messages. I started thinking how maybe Shani would repurpose it as a study tool lol. @sassaffrassa listened to me go nuts over an unimportant detail like that. It did not make into the story because I needed that chapter to end sooner rather than later, ahah.

January posting meme + claim a date - prompt me.

#January posting meme #january posting meme 2024 #my witcher fic #my witcher wips #puppetskier #witchyr au #textpost

[bigsnzstanacct]

I've seen a lot of members in the snzblr-sphere openly condemning gAI and its use. I guess, I wonder how that makes you feel since you use it quite frequently here

Well, this is a sneeze fetish blog but since you asked… here’s a sermonette on AI, lmao:

I work irl in an industry and in roles that have I think fairly significant risk of being displaced by AI in the next 5-10 years, so I have some empathy and understanding particularly for visual artists who feel that all generative AI is parasitical not only on work they and their friends may have done in the past, but in particular harmful to their ability to be paid for their work presently and into the future. And in fact for the purposes of visual art I rarely/never use generative AI anymore, not so much because I found it unethical, but just because it isn’t very good at drawing what I want to see. But like idk if people want me to delete the generative AI images I’ve posted in the past, I would, sure.

I feel quite a bit differently about generative AI text, and that’s probably just cause like… listen, I can’t draw for shit so on some level I don’t really feel qualified to understand how visual artists feel about generative AI, so I think in that sense it’s maybe easier/healthier to defer to practicing artists who feel strongly and otherwise mind my business. But I am a writer, both in the context of this fetish community and irl (technically getting paid—albeit a very small amount—to write for a bit starting at the end of this month, actually!) And for me generative AI is a really effective tool for combating the anxiety of the blank page and virtually nothing else. Like it’s not… good… at writing? And because I’ve used it so much I currently don’t have any fear of it becoming good enough at writing to replace professional writers? (Also at a deep level, I do believe that novel ideas and perspectives exist and the core social utility of writing is to provide those new ideas and perspectives, which I just don’t think generative AI is capable of doing, at least not any time soon). But on some level that makes it perfect for churning out endless variations on simple sneeze fetish themes that land in our silly fetish horny hitboxes. So because it is not capable, in my opinion, of replacing professional writers even for basic corporate marketing type shit, I see it more as a tool for writers to use as we see fit? And I have zero problem using the tool to recreate slight variations on the theme of “big sneeze blows things away” to satisfy fetish cravings and frankly I think y’all should use it in the same way lmao. And also use it to help you write actual stories! It works well as essentially an outlining tool. I wouldn’t even use it to generate dialogue or language because again I think it is very bad at that, but it is good at like… providing options for how a story could flow from point a to point b. And sometimes just revising something is easier than starting from scratch, you know?

AND THEN more broadly, I don’t think that generative AI is inherently harmful, I think we (as Americans/westerners/consumers in capitalists societies, not as sneeze fetishists lmao) have a social structure that makes it potentially harmful. The issue with generative AI taking your job isn’t that it’s going to replace your true original artistic expression, your brilliant webcomic, your sprawling fantasy universe, your masterpiece painting. The issue is that it’s going to take your bullshit graphic artist job for a marketing firm, or even your job as a storyboard artist, etc. AND maybe it SHOULD take those jobs! If gAI can speed up the intermediate stages of artistic production like storyboarding, then great storyboard artists can simply work on more films, enhancing the quality of those films, by using AI to speed up their work. And for the marketing gig, if that work that frankly does more to sap creative energy and funnel it towards greasing the bullshit wheels of capital could be done by generative AI, that would be GREAT for artists, *if* the value created were shared equitably across society. If there were an “AI dividend” that took 50% of the savings created by generative AI and invested it in grants and free classes and free drawing tablets and free housing and funds for creatives to do creative work, then you wouldn’t need the bullshit marketing job that saps your energy, you could work part time in a job unrelated to art and still afford the necessities of life while you work on the stuff you actually care about.

But, of course, we have a bullshit capitalist system. But even within the confines of that system, trying to just reject a productivity enhancing technology rather than harnessing it to the benefit of workers (rather than just allow capital to use the technology as it sees fit, which we have seen unions like the WGA in particular fight very effectively against, SAG-AFTRA less so but that’s a whole other can of worms) is, imo, always a fool’s errand. What we need isn’t to ban AI or create taboos against its use; what we need to emphasize that it is a tool for creatives to accelerate our work, to create more time for us to attend to the details, to ultimately help us make better stuff (and here I am lowkey or maybe high key talking about my day job tho I am being intentionally vague) rather than simply a way for capital to cut down on labor costs. Don’t hate the new robot player, hate the game lol. And in all seriousness, *organize* so that the game gets better rules. And share some of the benefits with capital too, because that’s how it works in the mixed economy (for now). AI generally is eventually going to automate away a lot of junior and entry level work in my industry… and I actually think that can be GREAT! Because then junior level people can actually be apprentices to the creatives that are doing the jobs they one day want to do, instead of getting stuck (as I did, for nearly a decade) doing boring technical work under the guise of assisting creatives, but not actually getting any better at the creative skill you are supposedly apprenticing to one day do.

“But bigsnzstanacct, what if I really love my marketing job greasing the wheels of capital using graphics and art work?” you say. Awesome! Then you should be mastering generative AI to get the most possible benefit out of it, because After The Revolution, we will need people to get the best out of the generative AI and touch up their work and fix their errors either inside or outside of the gAI programs. That is also part of how we harness AI to actually benefit society, by getting good at using it.

So anyway, sermonette over tl;dr: message me or send me another ask if you want me to delete my old posts of generative AI images; generative AI and AI as a whole is just a tool, the tool in itself is not good or bad, the institutions shaping its use are good or bad (and the capitalist institutions that dominate workers presently are very very bad and will incline towards using AI badly and in an anti-worker way in already precarious creative fields, BUT there is power in a union, and we can work together to improve the institutions such that AI can benefit us all, perhaps creatives especially.)

[thebendsbyradiohead]

tagged by @berrytart thank u so much bc i have Thoughts & now an excuse to share them lol

last read: severance by ling ma & the new me by halle butler

so i was going to just include severance here but i was rly curious where the new me would go & i literally just finished it & liked it a lot!!!

both books deal with blithe, depressed & passionless protagonists stuck in the never-ending loop of what it means to exist in late stage capitalism which despite all evidence of it in the real world, i apparently also seek out in fiction to reassure me i'm not broken to feel that way too?

severance is amazing & i highly recommend it altho fair bit of content warning for an eerily prescient pandemic plot down to the ghoulish response of governments & businesses. (seriously, it was released in 2018 & if i was ling ma, i'd be buying lottery tickets every single day since march 12 2020). it also does a masterful job of depicting the immigrant experience abroad, especially if you're going thru it alone & without a large support network. the protagonist is also a chinese woman & her relation to her race is also a significant theme that's tied up in the overall arc of the novel, making you realize the title works on several levels: severance from your culture, from your family, from happiness, from humanity. is there nothing capitalism can't take from you?

the new me is a bit more condensed and focused on the inner machinations of a lonely depressed woman who can't seem to hold down a permanent job surrounded by vapid self-interested people & slowly becoming more like them (if not already). it's highly reminiscent of my year of rest and relaxation but i found the descriptors of the banality & pointlessness of office life poignant since it singled out how stupid all of it is. i also appreciated the glimpses of the minds of random side characters who the MC often judges but the author shows us they're as frail & human & pathetically hopeful just like she is, like we all are. while it might not be as layered as severance is, the claustrophobic feeling it gave me & the portrayal of bullshit jobs in late stage capitalism & the way it punishes weakness, vulnerability, and authenticity was painfully familiar. i wish i could give it to my therapist to understand my perspective but she'd probably tell me stop reading shit like this & taking it as truth

currently reading: play it as it lays by joan didion & imagining the balkans by maria todorova

i'm gonna be real with you chief (didion), carrie fisher did this better. this is my first time reading fiction by didion & the year of magical thinking was truly a cathartic read for me but this ain't it. it's a story about a failing actress who's divorcing from this director that made her famous & they have a sick kid & she drinks & hangs out with other rich people & she's not even funny. idk, maybe it's just not resonating with me at this point of my life but i doubt i will be a famous actress at any point & i'm not aiming to be an alcoholic mother so. it's a pity that the things i liked in the year of magical thinking, like the direct prose & complex human relationships, just fall flat here. i guess knowing the things in the year of magical thinking were real made them seem that much more impactful (as much as i hate that). i still have half of it left so i'll finish it but atp i'm not even curious what happens

i just started imagining the balkans so i can't say much abt it except that it's dense and very philosophical which makes sense ig lol. until now she's brought up several arguments i've kind of realized myself but it's nice to have the theory and historical research behind them presented. otherwise, how could i know some random american dude joined one of the sections of the macedonian liberation movement in the 1900s simply because he was bored at home & looking for mystery & intrigue?

To read: miracle in the andes by nando parrado

as a kid my favorite type of story was A Weirdo Stuck In An Inhospitable Environment Survives Against All Odds so this memoir from one of the survivors of the uruguayan air force flight 571 crash whose skull shattered & he still walked an entire mountain & found help is bound to be good

i tag @cuntextual @yugocar @christianbalegf

#i'd say i'm sorry for the long ass post but u guys knew what u were getting into when following #anyways go read severance #lina laments.txt

[meatballerino]

2, 20, 25 for the end of year asks!

thank you my friend :))

2. Album of the year? nothing revolutionary but i listened the Fuck out of Speaking In Tongues (1983) while i went crazy writing my disco fic, it's good material to remember to get loose and funky and experimental with art u know? 20. What’s something you learned this year?

ok on a literal level i learned more about communist and socialist theory/analysis/history and it's really expanded the way i think and view the world and legitimately kept me sane while late stage capitalism fucks my ass w/o lube on a metaphorical spiritual level i actually had such a hermit/recovery year, in a way i felt like i had just come full circle back to myself in a lot of ways, which in its own way is self-discovery self-growth shit idk man 25. Did you create any characters (in games, art, or writing) this year? Describe one

YEAH so i really committed to my TCFC bullshit this year and i've been rotating these original characters in my mind like crazy. v challenging as a writer to consider them in the bigger thematic pictures, and challenging me bc they're so slippery slimey. i also have a problem w the two deuteragonists being Too Perfect and Too Evil and yeah it's one thing to exaggerate characterization but when i'm trying to Say Serious Shit i want to keep it real. idk is this too vague. one character i do wanna talk about is Autumn Summerland because she's dead the whole time and is remembered and mis-remembered and re-contextualized by local history, her husband, the media, gossip, etc. people use her name and artistic legacy to further their own agendas and opinions and i want the readers to read between the lines to figure out what's myth and what realistically happened, what's been omitted, obscured, and why?

end of year asks!

#meatballerino

[bluraydisco]

A bunch of news sites are reporting that Vince McMahon is selling to a Saudi private investment firm making more money than God, it returning back to a private company, Thusly offering more money and incentives to talent contracts amongst other things. This will also lead to a power grab by McMahon to take the reins of creative again.

If these rumors are true, this is possibly the reason why Stephanie McMahon resigned. I am certain that there will be mass layoffs coming soon for the wrestlers and creatives that Triple H hired back to the company. People that Vince doesn't see value in.

I'm also sure that Triple H, William Regal and the newly appointed head of continuity Rob Fee will see either their roles diminished or be let go all together as well.

It will also lead to an exodus of one of their most popular characters right now, Sami Zayn. (who is of Syrian descent).

It might also lead to their stacked women's roster being depleted and every lgbtq person within the company either being fired or let go.

Just note this is just speculation on my part due to the fact about how the Saudis treat women and homosexuals. However, thanks to a Twitter follower of mine (Alex Morrison) I understand the ins and outs of how these investment firms work. They own many soccer teams in the UK, including women's league, which are thriving financially and they are paying the players well. I thank Alex for his insight into these side of things.

I hope that this is just a private investment firm that won't have any influence on the company itself. But I, personally, highly doubt it.

It's strange that a company that was so "pro American" especially during the Hogan years with the "giant foreign heel" rising against America and "Hulkamania" will come to a deal with such a ruthless organization. Heck, they are so "USA" that they often fundraise for certain orange-tinted Buffoon's that claim to be for "America First".

Another odd thing, and a fact about Vincent Kennedy McMahon, is that he created the character of "The Million Dollar Man" to be a send-up. He was taking the piss out of rich people because he detested so much how they acted and flaunted their wealth and means. How money changes people's perspective through age and time is equally interesting and disturbing. " Greed is good", I guess.

In the end it's all about the dollars and it doesn't have to make sense. They've had pay-per-view events for the Saudi Prince for multiple years now. In a way I'm not really surprised that this is happening.

It's actually an interesting allegory to late stage capitalism and the rise of the extremist politics, in a way. Money talks and bullshit walks as long as an elderly, out of touch white man that holds all the cards is in control.

Also, this Billion Dollar Man and his corporation/conglomerate subduing all, if any, creative youth movement from within. It's a tale as Old as Time.

So far this is only a rumor. A very big rumor. WWE has not confirmed the sale. However I wouldn't be surprised if they did.

I am hoping for the best for Shawn Michaels, Triple H, Stephanie, Rob Fee , Bray Wyatt and the other big names that have returned during Vince's brief "retirement". Anyone affected by this news.

I hope that they would be able to, if they are all relieved of their duties, create their own promotion. A promotion that loves the business for what it is and even though money is good, the art form of pro wrestling will always be the central point.

I might reluctantly continue to watch WWE as long as Triple H is in charge of creative. But if it turns back to the cluster fuck it was during late stage McMahon, I'll just say: "Thank Christ for the AEW, Mexico, Japan AND the thriving Indy scene".

In the end, the Federation (or the "E" as they call it) will die when Vince McMahon does. Professional wrestling lives on. If worse comes to worse, there are alternatives out there. Subscribe to #iwtv to see the purest and most passionate form of professional wrestling

Okay I'm off my soapbox now.

#VinceMcMahon #WWE #SaudiDeal #StephanieMcMahon #TripleH

[borisbubbles]

Eurovision 2022 (#30)

30. GREECE Amanda Tenfjord - “Die together” 8th place

Decade Rank: 60/79 [Above Ana, below Blas]

Lol this bullshit of including her surname in the title card. She Really Is Greek, Honest, We Swear!

I is tricksy I is. -- ERT

Bitch, I ain’t fooled! Amanda couldn’t be more BOREwegian if she tried. 🙄  If there’s ONE thing Norwegians love (besides insultingly stupid mememongering it would appear), it’s ~fragile ballads~ by wispy wenches, and I’ve had more than my fill of of them in MGP 2022 (which I re-iterate was VERY BAD ). You better deliver something grandiose if you want to rank higher with your Scandi-Blandi mumbo-jumbo!

And honest, it seemed like they might, when the demo leaked? “Die together” deviated from Norway’s accursed “I’m secretly very dangerous, Trust Me” [feat. Zero Semblance Of A Threat] formula and instead goes the route of fatalism, and this I really fucking like.’ A classically Greek take on a romance tragedy, ohhh this could be COOL’, I thought! ‘Maybe they’d add some synths to make it like “City Lights”, or Robyn’s “Dancing on my own”, two excellent synthpop ballads?? Or they could turn it into a better (not shit) Better Love with a beat?' Greece could really make their song stand out as the romantic tragedy of our modern Eurovision times, even with Maro and Cornelia in the mix.’

I forgot of course that Amanda is from Norway, and so her ballad wound up DULL AND STERILE!!!! 😒 It’s Ana “Definitely Not A Ballad” Soklic levels of “ugh, I SHOULD have fucking KNOWN, damn’ you!” and while that’s *partly* on me for getting my hopes up, onto the Mild Contemp pile you go with zero regrets!!!

You see, the take from “Die together” was that, no matter how finite the relationship is, romance is a constant and can survive anything. it’s a sapiosexual and mature PoV, nothing wrong with that. 

I think the execution is too cerebral, however.

The capital mistake that “Die together” makes is that it glosses over the single most important thing about nailing romance, and that’s the love which drives it.. 

WHERE. 👏 IS.   👏 THE.   👏 GODDAMN. 👏 PASSION.  👏 IN.  👏  THIS?

The first minute of “Die Together” is a dead minute, and the remainder two (the ones after the *actual* music kicks in) barely drag it out of stagnation. I understand why they went there. Intimacy and desolation need to be built up, so we can move on to showing the catharsis in the final act. 

The problem runs two ways, however. Greece went with a stripped-down instrumentation to better accost their Quirky Scandi Merc vocalist, but this approach also glosses over the emotional rollercoaster that drove it to this point. Love is an immense force of both creation and destruction, like fire, or electricity, or glam metal, and “Die together” skips over it like it’s an afterthought.   Even the STAGING, with its molten chairs focuses on the post-mortem, what happened *after* the fatalistic deaths of the protagonists, without really visualizing the passion that led them there. Show that, don’t tell us about it. Do you WANT me to be bored???? 

Furthermore, Amanda is just... not very engaging. She can sing, sure, but she’s too morose and twee to carry it convincingly.  There are coma patients with better emotional resonance than Amanda Georgiadi. *THAT* is what you get when you cast the Farida’s of this world to sing your songs, they just get swallowed entirely by the trueborn painbearers of passion (like Cornelia!) because all they can do amounts to “uwu im a smoll bean uwu”.

Also, she smiles like this: 😩 

coincidentally, i had the same expression when i first heard the song as well :-) 

Greece petitioned to be about all-consuming lovestorm, and gave us “pre-nuptual marriage certificate”. Instead of fatalistic and fiery, “Die together” is disappointingly sane and business-like, here to collect your jury’s high-end marks, a televote twelve from Cyprus and Norway, and nothing else. Mission accomplished I guess, (it IS the best Greek result since 2013 and their best result EVER in a jury vote), but it required them to douse “Die together” in musical disinfectant and that’s never a price worth paying imo.

We could have received an all-time classic dramatic ballad from Greece. 

What we got in its place was a misguided cop-out.. 

THE RANKING

30. GREECE - Amanda Tenjford - “Die together” 31. POLAND - Ochman - “River” 32. MONTENEGRO - Vladana - “Breathe” 33. FINLAND - The Rasmus - "Jezebel" 34. BELGIUM - Jérémie Makiese - “Miss you” 35. NORWAY - Subwoolfer - “Give that wolf a banana” 36. AUSTRALIA - Sheldon Riley - “Not the same” 37. SWITZERLAND - Marius Bear - “Boys do cry” 38. AZERBAIJAN - Nadir Rustamli - “Fade to black” 39. ITALY - Mahmood & Blanco - “Brividi” 40. ISRAEL - Michael Ben David - “I.M”

#Eurovision #Eurovision Song Contest #ESC #ESC2022 #ESC 2022 #Eurovision 2022 #Turin 2022 #Greece #Amanda Georgiadi #Amanda Georgiadi Tenfjord #Amanda Tenfjord #Die Together #BorisBubbles

[darreinhardt]

Bread Conquered

We finished Kropotkin’s Conquest of Bread Last week! XD And fucking FINALLY! Four weeks no book club near the end, and that was with us reading two chapters a week for most of it. Like I said when we started, it was really good at the start. However, he REALLY started falling apart at the end. I mean, much love to Piotr, but it gets too rosy around the middle, and he gets unrealistically romantic about agriculture. He starts getting so bad with his description of his society that I took a nap during the end of the final chapter. Seriously; you can see where his aristocratic upbringing (that, to be fair, he disowned, but still) starts to color his understanding of the feasibility of what he says. That said, it was published in 1892, and anarchist thought has changed significantly since, and I can’t wait to read Fields, Factories, & Workshops and Mutual Aid anyway.

And now we’re starting out next book: Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism by Vladimir Lenin. Come join us at our Discord server, the Red Paw Collective at https://discord.com/invite/69SzUZZtfm. Book club meets Saturdays at 4:00 PM EST and continues to… honestly when we get bored and start bullshitting. Be sure to read the server constitution and introduce yourselves, including political tendencies, in the introductions channel. And for the sake of full transparency: while some of us, myself included, are anarchists (with most of us, myself still included, being anarcho-communists or anarcho-syndicalists), most of the other members are some tendency of Marxism-Leninism.

#conquest #bread #conquered #anarcho-communism #ancom

[gemini--witch]

Social media activism is important, actually

Background: I'm a 30-year-old mother attending university. So, I'm a nontraditional student. The vast majority of my fellow students are traditional students, meaning they went right into college straight out of high school, and are consequently no older than 22. Which means they're all on the younger end of Gen Z. Overall, I love Gen Z. Y'all are some of the funniest people on the planet, you're radical and intelligent AF, and I really feel for you having to grow up in the hellscape that is climate catastrophe and late-stage capitalism, so I really am against any kind of class warfare bullshit.

With that being said.

In my last class of fall term (incidentally a short story genre class, but the fun part of university is getting to apply fiction to real life in order to deepen our understanding of it), our class got into a spirited debate about the merits of social media in terms of being exposed to the nitty gritty of world events, such as what's happening in Gaza. Many of my fellow students held the opinion that all the videos of Gaza genocide (and other atrocities against humanity) are just trauma porn and people should stop scrolling and actually do something about it if they care that much because social media doesn't actually help anything at all.

In part, I agree. Doomscrolling in itself is not helpful to anything. They're not wrong there. And for a hot minute -- because I care about other people's opinions and when there are that many people disagreeing with me, I take the time to think through everything for a few weeks afterwards to see if I was really wrong -- I questioned my instincts. I know that sometimes I'm awful at communicating my ideas out loud and in person. I'm so much better at writing things out. But after really sitting on this topic almost constantly for a solid three weeks, I've finally formulated a strong opinion.

Social media activism is fucking important.

Does doomscrolling help anything? No. But the entire reason why the world actually CARES about the Palestinian's plight right now is because of social media! Because of people on the ground filming what's happening and blasting it for the world to see!

One fellow student said that people shouldn't have to view trauma porn in order to care about others. That's the sort of idyllic view that I would have had at 18. It would be WONDERFUL if people could see genocide and corruption and evil where it exists and automatically take a stance against it and have a huge, collective outcry. But even before social media existed, that sort of thing simply did not happen on a big, collective level without activists first getting the dirty, awful imagery and information disseminated to the mass populace. I mean, by 1970 most of the general population of the world didn't even remember Palestinians resided in Israel. The propaganda machine was (and is) loud.

In 2023, most of the earth's residents are too consumed with simply getting by in the dystopia of their own countries to think about atrocities without them being blasted in their face on their preferred social media. Even people in the middle class are too stressed to think a lot of the time. So many of us are experiencing a mass feeling of helplessness, and social media activism gets us out of our own heads and helps us care about someone else for a change.

Yes, we can't stop at doomscrolling. I of all people understand how doomscrolling and posting on social media can make the brain feel like it actually did something big and it's so easy to just stop there. Yes, we have to move on from the screen to signing petitions and carrying signs and sending angry emails and phone calls to our representatives and donating money to mutual aid if we have the privilege to do so.

But the first step to being part of the solution is first being aware of the problem. And as hard as it may be to see, "trauma porn" is often the first door into awareness for a lot of people, especially white people. I totally get people who are directly affected by the atrocities not wanting to see the videos and pictures of it on social media (for example, one student in my class has family in Gaza). But for people not directly affected, they need reminders that it's still happening, in order to keep the momentum. It's too easy to be swept up in the tide of distraction and hardship and survival in everyday life, and forget that we have values of freedom and mutual compassion on a global scale. Social media activism helps us remember.

tl;dr social media activism is an important doorway for people into IRL activism

#personal opinion #social media activism

[ramrodd]

What does Vivek Ramaswamy mean by a "revival of the ideals of 1776"

COMMENTARY:

He doesn’t know what he means. It is pure sound bite politics. It’s like playing “God Bless the USA” at any white supremacist gathering in their rolling orgy of sentimental Lost Cause frisson on a KKK cross burning. Ramaswamy is crowd surfing the same dumb-ass white bigot Man Cave emotional security blanket. Just picture any gathering of white ammosexuals bending a knee to a prayer by the anti-Christ of Pro-Life Fascism of Pat Robertson, that George Santos rode into office and that’s what Vivek Ramaswamy means by “revival of the ideals of 1776:

This is a favorite trope of the white supremacist agenda of the Ivy League Socialism of the John Birch Society, That’s the background music in any venue to the seductive appeal of the lynch mob. A lot of college football comes down to that is what I consider healthy ways. My belief is that the US Constitution is the leading edge of the Enlightenment and that America’s model of national athletics, pick your sport, are the benefits of social enlightenment. This is why it is important to bring back the “Redskins” brand to the NFL to complete the cycle of the American Iliad. But I am a combat veteran and Vivek Ramaswamy is like Tommy TUberville: total bullshit when it comes anything in the same universe of the military arts and sciences.

If you are woke and want to build on the validation of the wisdom of your vote for Biden, moving forward into the economic paradigm Eisenhower projected in his 1956 Presidential Platform as the seed capital for the transformation of the Military Industrial Complex to what Apollo 11 revealed to the world that 2001: A Space Odyssey was inevitable. We are a cunt hair away from the critical mass of the voting population of America required to complete the paradigm shift from 1947 to the 2022 midterms, which created the January 6 majority that is continuing to obstruct the emergence of the social organization required to get the biggest bang for the buck with the Starship Capitalism of Stage 3 of Eisehhower’s intentions.

There are two parts to the Mueller Report. The first part establishes that the Kremlin has never had any business relationship with Trump, ever. There are no side deals with Putin. There were none with the Soviets, Doing business with the Kremlin is an exercise in Free Market capitalism. trade between kings. Trump could have done business with The Kremlin if he had done it by the numbers and then delivered on time and below budget. Armand Hammer got very rich doing business with the Bolsheviks, then, with Stalin, on that basis. Doing business with the Soviets was the metric against which the end of the Cold War would be credited, historically.

And Trump didn’t do business with Putin. Part 1 of the Mueller Report.

Remember the right-wing outrage at “Russia-gate” and the whole John Durham January 6 Majority bood doggle? Thanks to Hillary Clinton’s Russia narrative at State, Americans tend to confuse Putin with Russia in the same way they could, legitimately, before Yeltsin. But Gorbachev pulled the plug on the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation is a legitimate constitutional republic, They are stuck about half-way between Soviet Marxism and a Russian version of Swedish socialism and Australian Penal Colony anarchy and a bias for French rationalism. Reagan promised Gorbachev that if the Soviets continued their Glasnos and Peristroica reforms, that Russia would be part of Star Wars in a 2001: A Space Odyssey kind of way.

Reagan basically committed America to a latter-day Marshall Plan for the Soviet Union within the understandings of Nixon-Brezhnev Detente, which had been interrupted by Reaganomics. Gorbachev took Reagan at his word and not only called Reagan’s table bet, but raised the pot by pulling the plug on Soviet Communism We didn’t defeat the Soviets: Gorbachev joined our side.

America never kept Reagan’s promise because both Reagan and Gorbachev was betrayed by Donald T. Regan, who was running some Wall Street scam out of the Oval Office that has evolved in various ways connected to Citizens United and why clarence Thomas needs to be impeached and convicted and removed from the court.

And Donald T, Regan was part of the vast right wing conspiracy that put the Clinton White House under siege from the get-go and has emerged as the January 6 Majority in Congress. Part 2 of the Mueller Report involved the Russian business associations Trump had developed after Yeltsin made commercial trade legal and Trump could do business with people in Moscow that Merrill Lynch was doing business with, part of Donald T. Regan’s Wall Street scam. Moscow Mitch and Bill Barr obstructed the transparence of the evidence of criminal obstruction by Trump in regards to his Moscow partners in the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant. Whoever they were, Mueller found them unsavory and characteristic of the meaning of the “Pee Tapes” in the Steele Dossier.

The British intelligence community knew that someone Russian had Trump by the balls. The issue wasn’t “How?” but “Who?” The “Pee Tapes” was just a short hand for a probable reality. The people Trump was doing business with turns out to be the Nazification Oligarchs who are the existential threat to Putin’s constitutional authority, which includes the keys to all the Russian nukes.

And that’s the segment of the American body politic Vivek Ramaswamy is trying to tweak with his appeal to the ‘spirit of 1776″. He sounds like Thomas Jefferson and his heroic stance that the roots of the Tree of Liberty must be refreshed, from time to time, by the blood of patriots.

“Patriots” means for me the people enlisted in George Washington’s chain of command as a soldier. That defines the republican Patriot: the people who cross the boundary of the 2nd Amendment and enlist in well-regulated military organization.

What Vivek Ramaswamy is surfing, rhetorically, is essentially the same pattern of rhetoric of Newt Gingrich, who is like a bullfrog hopping from lily pad to lily pad, metaphorically, in the way he skips around ideas to discus any subject, but, especially the disinformation of his GOPAC political strategy. The difference between the bullfrog and Newty is that all of the lily pads are anchored, existentially, while most of Newty ideas are little more than comic book thought bubbles.

I’ll say this for Ramaswamy: he is the absolute essence of the collective presidential platform of the GOP. In a rational world, George Santos is Ramaswamy’s metaphysically necessary running mate.

Remember, they all represent the Tommy Tuberville wing of the GOP and that Dan Sickles was the Tommy Tuberville of Gettysburg. That’s the actual meaning of anything any of those guys had to say.