Everything is Political

[Holdrüholoheuho]

even in chaotic & barbaric East-Central Europe we are duly informed Biden stumbled on the stairs.
it is a pity Muybridge is dead, he could make out of it a film.
and such a film could rotate film festivals and harvest awards.

[pabs]

I'd like to know people's thoughts on deliberative democracy as represented here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UcFQ-eDhTk

[Holdrüholoheuho]

in my twisted view of human society arrangement, i see...
1/ the gated communities of oligarchs (& the members of their clans) who consider themselves to be entitled to live in communism (abundant resources & freedom from ruthless competitive pressure).
2/ plebs fully exposed to ruthless pressure of competitive capitalism.
3/ politicians (elected by plebs, sponsored by oligarchs) who are supposed to play the role of mediators (making sure that tiny communist paradises and the vast landscape of capitalist sweatshops will stay segregated).

"citizen's assemblies" might be very useful if coming up with minor idpolitics issues and alike (thus helping politicians to play their mediating role). however, once the citizen's assembly would come up with silly egalitarian ideas like f.e. eradicating tax evasion or implementing progressive taxation, then there will be the end of "citizens’ consultations" and "dialogue" (i expect).

[Holdrüholoheuho]

perestroika & glasnost ca. 35 years later (or perestroika & glasnost for millenials).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perestroika
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasnost

[pabs]

Very depressing, but you're most probably right.

[---]

Came up with something

AmeR1can5

Not quite as tight as tre45on but yeah

[rischka]

at the risk of being called a biden apologist (again) his press conference is going quite well (and he hasn't fallen at all)

[Holdrüholoheuho]

UNEXPECTED FINDING
The thief deer is no longer "armed". Two hunters found the lost rifle

After many months, the case of the "armed" deer is almost over. The rifle with which the animal disappeared in the forests around Boletice was found by two hunters while looking for deer trophies. Police have yet to perform a ballistic analysis but do not expect a deer with a weapon to commit any misconduct.

Last autumn, news of a "deer assault" flew around Czechia during a hunt in the Horní Planá forest administration district. Unexpectedly, an animal rushed out of the bushes at the hunter, passed very close to him, tore his sleeve. However, the rifle got tangled in the deer's antlers and the deer disappeared with a weapon to an unknown area.

Fortunately, the CZ 527 repeating rifle was without loaded ammunition. After many months, it finally got found. While searching for trophies, the hunter Mr. Zdeněk and his colleague found it.

"They found the weapon in the Boletice locality. Because he knows what happened to his colleague last November when the deer escaped with a weapon hung on an antler, he believes that it is the same weapon, the CZ 527 repeating rifle," police spokesman Jiří Matzner described.

The metal parts are considerably corroded, the wooden stock is puffy. The weapon is also quite shabby, according to the police, probably because of the way the deer tried to drop it. How long the deer has been "armed" will probably remain a mystery forever.

"The police took over the weapon from the finder. According to the rules, the rifle is still awaiting examination at a professional ballistics workplace. However, we do not assume that the deer would commit any crime with it.

[sally]

next month 100 years ago is when ireland was partitioned. does not bode well

thanks for voting for brexit everyone

https://twitter.com/lisaocarroll/status ... 4138457093

[---]

https://twitter.com/sairasameerarao/sta ... 40101?s=19

Hm, interesting. It appears to be a common belief that when a POC calls out a white friend's problematic behaviour it's actually a sign of respect, not merely some game of idpol one-upmanship...? Hmm

[flip]

about the tweet, it's the latter i'm fairly sure, you reframed it differently which changes things. the tweet doesn't say anything about problematic behaviour.

[---]

Well that's what challenging whiteness is, pointing out when cats are unintentionally framing things from their privileged perspective

[flip]

the tweet talked about "regularly challenging whiteness". you talked about challenging problematic behaviour. those are only the same thing if whiteness is inherently problematic, independent of behaviour.

[Holdrüholoheuho]

btw. lately has been raised on this forum a question of "eccentric rentiers", "conspicuous leisure", "ostentatiously wasting time" and alike.

i remember when i read "Theory of the Leisure Class" a few decades ago i was rather impressed.
(tho i must admit in my youthful days the book was already out of prevailing discourse).
so, i am curious if millennials read it these days and discuss it with their peers in their fee time???
or if the book became completely obsolete and nobody cares about it anymore???

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theor ... sure_Class

Contemporary practices of barbarian-tribe consumerism

The subjugation of women: Because women were spoils of war captured by raiding barbarians, in contemporary society, the unemployed housewife is an economic trophy that attests to a man's socio-economic prowess. In having a wife without an independent economic life (a profession, a trade, a job) a man can display her unemployed status as a form of his conspicuous leisure and as an object of his conspicuous consumption.

The popularity of sport: In the case of American football, practicing the sport is socially and psychologically advantageous to community cohesion; yet, in itself, sport is an economic side effect of conspicuous leisure that wastes material resources.

Devout observances: Organised religion is a type of conspicuous leisure (wasted time) and of conspicuous consumption (wasted resources); a social activity of no economic consequence, because a church is an unproductive use of land and resources, and clergy (men and women) do unproductive work.

Social formalities: In contemporary society, social manners are remnants of the barbarian's formal, social practice of "paying respect" to one's socially powerful betters. In itself, etiquette has little value (practical or economic), but is of much cultural value in identifying, establishing, and enforcing distinctions of place (social stratum) within a social class; thus the practice of "Hail to the chief!" establishes a place for everyone, and establishes everyone in his and her place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theor ... sure_Class

Chapter III: Conspicuous Leisure
Among the lower social-classes, a man’s reputation as a diligent, efficient, and productive worker is the highest form of pecuniary emulation of the leisure class available to him in society. Yet, among the social strata of the leisure class, manual labour is perceived as a sign of social and economic weakness; thus, the defining, social characteristics of the leisure class are the “exemption from useful employment” and the practice of conspicuous leisure as a “non-productive consumption of time”.

Chapter XIV: The Higher Learning as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture
Education (academic, technical, religious) is a form of conspicuous leisure, because it does not directly contribute to the economy of society. Therefore, high-status, ceremonial symbols of book-learning, such as the gown and mortar-board-cap of the university graduate educated in abstract subjects (science, mathematics, philosophy, etc.) are greatly respected, whereas certificates, low-status, ceremonial symbols of practical schooling (technology, manufacturing, etc.) are not greatly respected to the same degree, because the contemporary university is a leisure-class institution.

[---]

the tweet talked about "regularly challenging whiteness". you talked about challenging problematic behaviour. those are only the same thing if whiteness is inherently problematic, independent of behaviour.

I don't think it meant whiteness as in white skin. It meant whiteness as framing things in a white perspective, seeing the world through the white gaze, so to speak, and acting/speaking according to that worldview. Which all white ppl (including myself, the mixed race king) do sometimes, whether unintentionally or intentionally

There's probably an argument that that does in fact make whiteness inherently problematic, in that this white worldview, and the white supremacy it engenders, can't exist without whiteness.

But once again this is not a matter of white skin, but all the social implications that come with it. If in the year 2200 our species has improved, where race truly doesn't impact life, and people literally cannot conceive of a world whereb it does, then whiteness ceases to exist, even if blonde haired blue eyed ppl still exist

[sally]

i remember when i read "Theory of the Leisure Class" a few decades ago i was rather impressed.
(tho i must admit in my youthful days the book was already out of prevailing discourse).
so, i am curious if millennials read it these days and discuss it with their peers in their fee time???
or if the book became completely obsolete and nobody cares about it anymore???

i read it when i was younger (i think, memory is useless) but then i'm not a millenial. it's the old roman god thing about their play and nonsense being the proof of their godhood (i think bataille trod the same ground in his economics stuff but much more poetically. or maybe that was someone else entirely) or this is possibly why i remember it, being at the same time attending a course on statistical genetics and to stop us all dying of boredom it was structured around the evolution of sexual selection (at the time, dawkins-ism was still raging apart from a few incomprehensible radicals) eg the peacock tail, the bigger therefore more cumbersome and problematic the tail to the bearer, the more attractive it was to the mate, as it demonstrates good genes to be able to cope with obstacles (that you impose on yourself). honestly don't know why we didn't turn up to lectures with chairs taped to our heads or anything, but we were young

thing about people writing on labour is that, due to them having the leisure time to write about labour (being not therefore labourers themselves) is that the absolute drudgingly ignoble vegetable-death of non-existence aka 'work' is never really commented upon (maybe i have read the wrong books). work as experienced by the majority of the population (as in necessary to not starve/provide shelter as opposed to 'work' to produce something) is AWFUL. senselessness without the god bit.

okay. lunch hour over bye

[Holdrüholoheuho]

i was always rather indifferent to economics.
therefore i was never really urged to study f.e. Marx.
arts & esthetics seem to me much more intriguing.
but somehow or other i started to read this Veblen and i was impressed by the language he uses to address the socio-economical issue.
i usually don't scribble into the books but my Veblen copy was soon full of encircled words and phrases that i tried to learn by heart.
"conspicuous leisure", "conspicuous consumption", "positional goods", "pecuniary culture", "pecuniary emulation", "barbarian-tribe consumerism", etc., etc. had a great deal of poetic charm (within my perception) and i wished to use them in my common speech.
besides, i liked his idea that the contemporary pleasure of looking at mown lawns around a suburban house comes from the archaic pleasure of a "barbarian" looking at grazed pastures (implicating the ownership of numerous cattle herd).
and i also liked he was painting etiquette (social formalities) as a residue of barbarism.

the other time i pondered into socio-economics was while reading "Sade, Fourier, Loyola" by Barthes.
i don't have a strong affinity to Barthes but i like this particular book a lot.
he operates (in this book) with the concept of a "logothet", i.e. someone who starts & frames a certain type of discourse.
Sade (logothet of the erotic pleasure), Fourier (logothet of socialism, i.e. someone who paves the way how to speak about social welfare), Loyola (logothet of the religious experience).
when i read this book i realized Veblen is a logothet of my social criticism vocabulary.
besides, i learned in this book that Fourier was of the opinion that being preoccupied with a certain type of work continuously longer than two hours is detrimental to one's well-being.
considering that my pre-epidemic job consisted of 12 hours long shifts, we are still very far away from an ideal state of affairs envisioned by Charles Fourier.

i also have to mention that i never associated the pursuits i am passionate about with my profession.
i always felt that things i am passionate about should be my hobby and my profession should be something i feel rather indifferent about.
i believe there might be some lucky bastards who are making their livelihood by doing something they are passionate about without any constraints.
but in general, i think it is highly unlikely to be able to successfully "sell" one's cherished activity without making many embarrassing compromises and thus ultimately turning your cherished (possibly eccentric) activity into a dreadful routine (compatible with standards of those who pay for it).

thus i never really cared about my "occupation".
when i was first officially asked till the end of elementary school what is my planned occupation (i was supposed to write it down), i filled the column with "football player" (without really playing football anymore).
it was in the middle of 1980s, in socialist Czechoslovakia were (officially) no professional football players.
all local football players were officially employers of some factory and played football in some quasi vacuum of "free time" (then socialist economics didn't really count gladiator-like occupations as something that should be officially part of the system marching towards communism and thus everyone was pretending there are no professional football players in the country).
so when i came up with the "football player" nonsense, i got immediately called to the rug.
i was rebuked by the teacher how dare i to write such nonsense.
otherwise, i was a very good pupil and thus this "nonsense" seemingly didn't fit my "intelligence".
form with "football player" was thrown into the garbage can by the teacher, i was given another one and during the weekend i was supposed to come up with something serious.
so all my concern was not "what occupation i am aiming for" but "what occupation i am supposed to mention to avoid suspicion and persecution".
i was good at math and was able to draw nicely so it was not that hard to figure out something like an architect might work.
but my second thought was that all my classmates were mentioning occupations like shop assistant, plumber, bricklayer, etc. so i felt if i come up with "architect" it might sound again as unrealistic.
so, i came up with (architectural) draftsman — the profession of Achilles Rizzoli (tho i didn't know Achilles at that time).
it was accepted so i was repeating "draftsman" through the rest of elementary school with success (without being persecuted for writing nonsense).
when i entered subsequent grammar school and my new classmates were aiming for professions like lawyer, doctor, economist, pedagogue, etc. i realized "draftsman" might sound suspicious and thus i came up with the original "architect" (facing no anti-nonsense policy persecution).
but i was not really aiming for this occupation.
i was passionate about arts but my interest in (specifically) architecture was rather weak.
but somehow or other i was accepted on Tech Uni and once i started to study architecture i got passionate about it — and thus i had to turn (sooner or later) my passion into a hobby because when i came up with some architectural project i had a hard time withstanding criticism of my teachers and i realized with (the real world) clients it would be a bigger nightmare.
besides, i became passionate about architecture rather as a cultural phenomenon than being passionate about really building something that is supposed to stand (structures complicit with all kinds of building standards).
thus i am making my livelihood via dreadful menial jobs and my hobbies are kept pure and sacred.
tho my idealistic approach has also its flaws because many times my dreadful job makes me so exhausted that i have no energy for my cherished hobbies.
this epidemic gave me a short unique opportunity to have an income and simultaneously plenty of time & energy for hobbies.
god bless plague!

[sally]

totally normal

https://twitter.com/joncstone/status/13 ... 4968414208

[sally]

well at least finally it swings back from north korea to something british. i'm writing to complain that you're making it too easy to complain...

https://twitter.com/MatthewWells/status ... 4053139462

[pabs]

Just wanted to share how relieved I am that America might finally begin punishing white policemen for killing innocent black people.

I nearly cried today.

[Monsieur Arkadin]

Minneapolis is my hometown. I don't currently live there, but spent a lot of time at George Floyd square over the last year and working with the defund the police movement there. Absolutely cathartic to watch them read of the verdict on all three charges. 10 years ago I remember that if you said anything critical of the police in polite society you'd be shouted down pretty quickly.

[pabs]

Absolutely cathartic to watch them read of the verdict on all three charges. 10 years ago I remember that if you said anything critical of the police in polite society you'd be shouted down pretty quickly.

So sad.

<3 <3 <3

[Monsieur Arkadin]

I know some people don't appreciate comparisons unless the 2 things being compared are literally exactly the same. But there are pogroms happening in Jerusalem right now. Hundreds of Israeli settlers are storming the streets chanting "death to Arabs" asking anyone who looks "different" if they're an Arab and assaulting anyone who doesn't seem to understand Hebrew well. This is after weeks of escalating violence from Israeli settlers. The IDF has ramped up patrolling of Arab neighbourhoods in both Israel and the West Bank.
This, of course just "coincidentally" is occurring at the exact time that the Israeli Government is ethnically cleansing the neighborhood of Sheik Jarrah of all Arabs and giving their homes to Jewish settlers. The Palestinians who live there currently, were largely refugees who were forced from their homes during the initial colonization period.

[nrh]

the covid situation in india is so awful - and what is reported is just the tip of the iceberg from what i can see by friends and even just people i've followed on twitter for years - that's it's been hard not to just spend hours a day scrolling horribly through news reports.

the absolute triumph of right-wing populism and neo-liberalism.

[sally]

what's gone so wrong with india? they locked down pretty hard in the first wave

[nrh]

what's gone so wrong with india? they locked down pretty hard in the first wave

they locked down brutally, for just a few weeks, with no prior notice, causing the forced migration (largely by foot) of thousands of people from the labor force. then immediately lifted the lockdown, banged pots in the street and declared covid was over.

the suspicion for the last year has been that cases are much higher than reports indicated (especially in the north of the country) as well as deaths (something like 80% of the deaths in the country don't have medical cause of death listed, and there has been anecdotal evidence for awhile that hospitals have been pressured not to list covid as cause of death on certificates), with the government being aware of the more contagious variants circulating since december. even before this wave was supposedly happening we talked to someone who said half the families in her apartment building were sick with covid. gurgaon declaring zero covid deaths the other day while there were hours long waits at the crematorium is just a broader example of something that's been happening quietly for awhile.

modi and his proxies have also been holding enormous political rallies in a bunch of states they hope to win in the elections upcoming this month, and not only failed to cancel but actively promoted the enormous kumbh mela religious events that seem to have been super-spreaders. all of which is just exacerbated by the complete failure to build up medical infrastructure in the last year (government made a big deal of exporting a large portion of its vaccine production overseas, even when it was failing to fulfill local targets).

bjp declaring they were going to "liberalize the vaccine" (allowing private hospitals to charge high prices for it) is just one of the more grotesque details. it is just a total top down state level failure of incredible proportions.

[sally]

my twitter timeline is currently about 75% just retweets of people in india looking for beds/oxygen. horrific

[nrh]

modi and bjp get not just defeated but humiliated in bengal election, communist party sweeps bjp out in kerala (and keeps power for a second consecutive term, which they haven't done in 40 years), and Stalin's DMK alliance wins in Tamil Nadu. maybe not all that much but it's the first time i've woken up and seen anything from india that's not just misery.

[sally]

prince john is back

(also cannot find decent gif of alan rickman as the sheriff of nottingham, ridiculous)

https://twitter.com/BritainElects/statu ... 4950089737

[greennui]

Another decade of Labour turmoil?