sir-skeletal:

yuji-cuddler-sukuna-bully:

yuji-cuddler-sukuna-bully:

catsi:

a-thesis-film-destroyed-me:

wizardshark:

catsi:

pretty fucked up how christian beliefs are referred to as “stories” but indigenous beliefs are referred to as “mythology”

im gonna start calling it all “christian mythology” now and watch people literally melt in fury

I call it Christian mythology and the amount of angry looks I get from old people in public when I say it is honestly baffling and hysterical.

how come everyone here saw a post clearly meant to point out how people treat indigenous peoples’ religions with disrespect and decided to make it all about pissing off Christians?

the point of this post was very obviously “treat indigenous peoples better” but you have chosen to read it as “treat Christian religious beliefs more poorly”. i wanted people to reflect on the language they use to talk about the religions of indigenous peoples but that intent was apparently lost on many people.

i want you to ask yourself why you are more willing to make the effort to treat certain people unkindly than to treat other people with respect.

Because under the facade of justice most vocal users on this website are bitter hoe who seek to make other as miserable than them.

“i want you to ask yourself why you are more willing to make the effort to treat certain people unkindly than to treat other people with respect.”

THIS IS THE WHOLE PROBLEM

You did it! You broke down social justice to it’s basic components.

TSC Sociologist, Valerie Chepp, recently published a new edited volume titled, “Readings in Social Justice: Power, Inequality, and Action.” A particularly poignant excerpt is from bell hooks’s “Engaged Pedagogy” https://titles.cognella.com/readings-in-social-justice-9781793527677

Complicit®
Brent Pruitt, 2021

Each member within society is responsible for the perpetuation of institutional oppression.

To what extent do we, as an individual, or collective, acknowledge our participation? How do we hold ourselves, and each other, accountable?

Complicit® is a declaration of recrimination and confession.

Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore…

And we sure as Hell aren’t going back.

faelapis:

secret-fanat1c:

zoyzauce:

mr-elementle:

thebucca2:

nudistbae:

recommendad:

recommendad:

i survived too much steven universe discourse to have to suffer through a new age of she-ra discourse

unless she-ra personally commits a hate crime, i dont want to see you grown ass adults attempting to philosophically dissect yet another kids show

REMEMBER WHEN PPL TRIED TO SAY STEVEN UNIVERSE WAS PRO FASCIST

but it is??? like maybe they didn’t mean to be pro fascist bc Rebecca Sugar is too incompetent to do anything on purpose but it is like. irreparably pro fascist.

I don’t understand how y’all look at Steven genuinely trying to befriend dictators who’ve committed genocide on innumerable accountsand are intolerant of deviation from the norm unless they can weaponize it, and say that’s not fascism.

Like you can still watch the show and everything (hell I will myself) but.  That’s literally the textbook definition of fascism.

Rebecca Sugar probably didn’t mean to write it that way, but the fact is that she wrote a narrative that condonesforgiving people no matter how terrible they are, to the point where it is apologizing for people who’ve willingly committed genocide, which is a hallmark of fascism.

Steven trying to turn the Diamonds to his side is fine.  But the point where it crosses into fascist apologia is when she started trying to write the Diamonds as sympathetic.  You cannot write fascist dictators as sympathetic and not expect to get called out on it.

You know what? Fuck it. I haven’t posted a single fucking thing to this blog yet, but you cretins have disgusted me so much that I just can’t take it anymore. This is the last straw. I’m not going to argue with you, because there is no argument. You just parroted a really stupid narrative that’s gotten somewhat popular lately, and I’m gonna tell you exactly why it’s stupid.

“Steven is genuinely trying to befriend dictators!” No. Steven is trying to protect his family and his planet, and he’s trying to save all the corrupted gems. His strategy, for now, is to get on their good side and appeal to their emotions by reminding them that they’re family (which they technically are). There has been no indication in the show that Steven likes the diamonds or that he forgives or excuses the atrocities they’ve committed. He empathizes, because he literally has empathy powers and he can’t physically help it. That is not the same thing as forgiveness, or even sympathy.

“Recebba wrote fascist, genocidal dictators as being sympathetic, which is a Bad.” No. You know what’s bad? SYMPATHIZING WITH REAL LIFE GENOCIDAL DICTATORS. Sympathizing with Hitler and calling him a poor, misunderstood artist is BAD! You know what isn’t bad? Fucking giving your fictional villains more than one dimension! Giving them some fucking personality, some damn motivation. It kind of makes for a more compelling story, you know? You might even say that the Diamonds are multifaceted, harr harr. Anyway, I don’t know how to tell you that the Diamonds are cartoon space aliens who are more comparable to indifferent goddesses or queen bees than they are to nazis. I guess calling the sjw cartoon “fascist propaganda” makes for a juicy narrative, which brings me to my next point:

“I’m sure Recebba didn’t MEAN to write fascist propaganda! She’s just too incompetent, that’s all. That dumb, stupid, weak, pathetic, white, white… uh, uh, guilt, white guilt, milquetoast piece of human garbage.”

This is really what makes me the most crazy. I’m sure that people know that Rebecca Sugar is Jewish (incidentally, this means that nazis don’t see her as “white,” or even as a human being). I’m sure that they know that she’s a bisexual, Jewish, non-binary woman who’s in love with a black man. It’s more like they just don’t care. “B-b-b-but just because she’s Jewish herself doesn’t mean that she can’t accidentally write fascist propaganda! She’s just a bad writer!” Yeah, no. Do you honestly believe that Sugar, who lives in America as a Jew, who uses the internetas a Jew, who has a Jewish family, who is descended from a gotdamn Holocaust survivor, and who (alongside her partner, Ian) has survived white supremacist violence herself, doesn’t know a thing or two about what it feels like to be hunted? It shows so clearly in her work, too. It shows in how desperately the Crystal Gems fight to defend the Earth and their way of life, it shows in how the Off Colors desperately hide themselves for the sake of their survival, and it shows in how miserable and stifled the lower caste homeworld gems are in their rigidly strict assigned roles.

So, why do all the great, critical thinkers of this nightmare hell site call this show “fascist propaganda?”

Because Steven is squeamish about the idea of killing. Because the villains where shown to have a little depth. That’s it!

The fact that so many people are willing to interpret this show in such bad faith really astounds me. If you don’t like the show, then you don’t like the show. Maybe the show makes you deeply uncomfortable. That’s fine; the show is supposed to be uncomfortable. It shows emotion in all its raw irrationality; it puts mental illness on full display and it doesn’t squirm away from showcasing the consequences of trauma. The good guys do fucked up things sometimes, and the bad guys appear sympathetic sometimes. There’s nothing fascist about that, and it certainly isn’t bad writing. In fact, it’s so real that it’s uncomfortable. And that’s a good thing.

Rebecca Sugar is a really good writer. :)

this reply is excellent, and it touches on something i love about SU:

it’s SUPPOSED to be uncomfortable to watch sometimes. 

did this moment make you uneasy?

or this one?

or how about this?

if they did, congratulations, that’s intentional!

there are so many cartoons that go out of their way to be as affirming and coddling as possible, by making their antagonists so Other that there’s no way you would ever see yourself in them. thus, telling this comfortable lie that people who do bad things are just genetically designed for evil, and as long as you’re not a literal monster, you never need to challenge yourself or confront your own demons. 

SU says fuck that. 

SU says that people can do terrible things while fully believing that they’re doing what’s best for everyone. SU says that you can be mentally ill, and traumatized, and vulnerable, and downtrodden, and STILL be selfish. SU says that sometimes, people who are on the “right” side in the Great Battle can still be toxic. SU says that sometimes, you don’t have the support network that helps you grow as a person, and the consequences of that can be scarring for both yourself andothers. 

most importantly, SU says that all of this depends not just on the person, but on how you’re shaped by society. not because you don’t have a choice, but because societal ills can never be cured just by wishing really hard that everyone raised in toxic environments will just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and instinctively know what’s right, without any help from others.

that’s what i love about this show. if it was like most other cartoons, where the “good girls” are expected to be born knowing what’s right, and the “bad girls” (yes, especially girls!) are so inhuman that nobody could ever relate to them, i wouldn’t be watching.

look, i’m not saying it’s for everyone. no piece of media is.

if you want a show to tell you everything’s ok and nothing was ever your fault, i don’t recommend SU. if you want a show where the protagonists’ only flaws are insecurities that they never take out on others, i don’t recommend SU. if you need the women and lgbt+ characters to be safe, heroic role-models who never hurt anyone who doesn’t deserve it, i don’t recommend SU. 

but. if you want to challenge yourself, i recommend it.

if you’ve ever felt guilty, i recommend it. 

if you’re ready and willing to confront the worst things you’ve ever done, and still keep believing that there’s hope for you, i wholeheartedly recommend it.

Popped on after being gone forever just to post this slice of amazing

If there’s one thing we know about power, it’s that it is most effective when it is obscured; we do not question what we cannot see, what we take for natural. This is something which the UC system depends on, positioning itself as a space of accessible education and “inclusive excellence” while refusing to engage with the way that the very infrastructure maintaining the UC is inherently antithetical to these goals. Wildcat strikers and organizers for the COLA4ALL movement currently sweeping through the UC system have done much to excavate these oppressive systems and contradictions foundational to the UC through the fight for a COLA (Cost of Living Adjustment) and the simultaneous refusal to disconnect this specific goal from the need to address the broader violence of the institution.

For those unfamiliar, the movement initially started at UC Santa Cruz. UCSC graduate students, like nearly all UC graduate students, are rent burdened. During the Fall 2019 quarter, graduate student instructors began a wildcat grade strike, calling attention to the contradiction between the university’s dependence on graduate student labor to function and the university’s refusal to provide graduate students with a reasonable standard of living through a refusal to submit grades. The movement quickly spread, and now spans all 10 UC campuses (many of which are on a full or partial strike). COLA4ALL’s overall vision, taken from the inter-campus website StrikeUniversity.org, centers free and accessible public education for everyone (without student debt), critical thinking and skills that are not bound to the imperatives of the market, replacing competitive models with communities of care and shared struggle, brilliance that refuses hierarchical models of “experts,” and the decolonization, democratization, queering, and abolishing of the university.

The UC has responded to COLA organizers with violence which is deeply revealing of the anti-black, carceral power foundational to the entire system. Militarized police presence has been prevalent at COLA picket lines, walk outs, and other organizing events. During a COLA rally on February 20, 2020 at UC Irvine campus police officer Trish Harding tackled and arrested a Black alumna who was not even involved with COLA and simply on campus trying to pick up her transcripts (please sign the UCI Black Student Union’s petition demanding accountability). UC-wide, many students have been harassed, assaulted, and arrested for daring to tell administration that they cannot survive under “business as usual”.

Recently a student in one of my classes asked the professor about their stance on UC graduate students organizing for a COLA; the professor said that it was up to us as their students, asking if we would be willing to have our grades withheld. Framing the issue as one of undergraduate willingness to go without grades fundamentally misrepresents what is going on. None of us want our grades withheld. Many of us cannot afford to have our grades withheld. But the consequences of having our grades withheld only exist within the context of institutional intransigence, not graduate students going on a wildcat strike.

It is imperative that graduate students be paid fairly and the university reevaluates the oppressive model it is currently operating under.

One of the things that stands out to me in the way that COLA4ALL is discussed is the emphasis put on the fact that the strike is illegal because UAW 2865, the graduate student union, has not voted to strike. As those of us who have critically engaged with criminality and the construction of “illegal”, part of the discourse surrounding illegality is an undermining of the value and contributions of those who are positioned as “illegal.” This is something which is, of course, multiply impactful to those who are already criminalized, as we can see clearly in police response to Black alumni existence on campus. The law is so often unjust and frequently sides with those who hold power and money. Why is it illegal for workers to organize outside of a singular union? Why is it legal for the UC system to put union busting measures into their contracts? Why do we talk about the wildcat strikes in terms of legality instead of engaging critically with the University as an institution?

The extraction of wealth from students is central to the current operation of the UC. This is evident in the high cost of tuition and the rate of student debt, and further heightened through the multitude of ways in which the UC system profits off of its students; while we can think about this in the insane cost of parking, the use of work-study to maintain a labor force of minimum wage workers, the denial of sick pay to undergraduate student workers, the tokenization and marketing of students, and the obviously inflated prices at on-campus stores like The Hill or Zot-n-Go, no where is it more apparent than in housing. Focusing on graduate students, since COLA4ALL is currently focused on improving pay and labor conditions for graduate students, not only are the majority of students extremely rent burdened, but many are living in “subsidized” campus housing, paying large portions of their paychecks back to the very institution already underpaying them and exploiting their labor. It very much feels like company scrip.

Under the social distancing/remote learning model being deployed in response to COVID-19 many of these already untenable circumstances are only being heightened. Housing insecurity, a major problem for many undergraduate and graduate students alike, is significantly increased through the rise in un-and-under-employment resulting from shelter-in-place closures; meanwhile, the UC system is encouraging students to leave campus while doing nothing to assist those who live in off-campus housing who are now not only rent burdened and frequently living in highly crowded living quarters during a pandemic, but given no option to break their lease without penalty and are still required to somehow continue paying rent despite changes in their ability to work.

Similarly, while some campus employees are now able to telecommute to work the administration obviously has no intention of allowing those working in food services, maintenance, custodial services, etc to “conference in”, leaving them at continued risk while prioritizing the safety of those in higher wage positions. Additionally, graduate students and professors without access to the technology needed to teach from their homes are being encouraged to continue to come to campus and teach from classroom spaces. What this means is that those with the resources (stable housing, internet access, a computer with a webcam and mic) can work safely from home, while the most marginalized (those most in need of a COLA) will have to risk exposure.

Furthermore, many telecommuting workers are being told they must sign a contract which includes the provision that employees are “responsible for establishing and maintaining a safe, ergonomically sound, and secure work environment. The employee will establish a functional workspace, including appropriate computer and communications equipment within their telecommuting worksite.” Forcing workers to sign this contract creates a situation where the UC is not obligated to ensure students/workers have access to either the tools they need to work remotely or paid leave, and further establishes that the UC is not responsible for work-related damage to the health and personal equipment of workers. It also makes it possible for the UC to fire those who are not able to independently establish and maintain said work environment.

The level of exploitation and discriminatory violence on this campus and in the UC system is unethical and untenable. The fact that a billion dollar institution would rather negatively impact graduate and undergraduate students, would rather pay for a militarized police presence at the picket line, would rather heighten the risk to their most marginalized students and employees, would rather arrest a Black alumna than pay graduate student workers a living wage speaks for itself. This is not about whether undergraduate students can afford to go without grades, it is about refusing a system where the interests of graduate student workers and the interests of undergraduate students are falsely constructed as oppositional.

The stakes are too high not to speak candidly. I hope you will consider openly standing in solidarity with COLA4ALL. 

Once again I am feeling overwhelmed by the number of assignments I have to work on, and am dealing with this by writing about a completely unrelated topic that my goblin brain has decided to become fixated on. This time, it’s the way in which universities are imagined as neutral actors involved in generating and transmitting knowledge, when they are of course not neutral (nothing is neutral) and involved the production of a gender-and-national normative student body. Before I get into this, I would like to situate this commentary and clarify that while I am using Academic English courses as a central example in my discussion, I am certainly not limiting this discussion to Academic English courses specifically; rather, I am using these courses as a kind of informal case study which might illuminate the way academia is more broadly involved in the production of certain kinds of subjects and subjectivities. 

Per the Merriam-Webster dictionary, academia is “the life, community, or world of teachers, schools, and education.” I would argue, however, that it might be useful to additionally consider academia as a set of discourses and institutions. Through this kind of lens, we can think about the way that the classroom is always a site of power, and all classes are involved in the production of particular (although occasionally conflicting) subjectivities. These subjects/subjectivities are created through the way that the classroom is invested in a communication of knowledge which is generative/productive–what is produced is not only “new” knowledges, but also “new” subjects shaped through certain disciplinary processes and discursive frameworks. Although larger arguments have been made about the way grammar is inherently racist (and classist, ableist, etc), my focus here is more on thr role universities have in disciplining the production of what is called “higher-order thinking”. The Academic English course is a useful point of entry into considering what this means and what this looks like because it is a course specifically interested in teaching not just English as a language/rhetorical process/technical craft, but as it specifically pertains to the American subsection of institutions called “academia”. 

At my university, Academic English courses are “themed”, with the particular theme this quarter being “equality”. This is of course implicitly a national discourse, with the readings thus far frequently privileging the idea of equality/fairness and often linking it to “the West”. This is further heightened by the fact that the students of Academic English courses are predominantly non-native English speakers (NNES), sometimes international students and frequently positioned as being from outside of the U.S. regardless. As one student noted in response to an assigned article which asserted that human societies are more equal than primate societies, equality is an abstract concept and our understandings of what qualifies as a “more” or “less” equal society is heavily situated in the particular way through which we perceive equality (for example, in the U.S. the association of equality with democracy allows many to imagine that the U.S. is uniquely equal, and yet we can clearly see that this is in fact not the case through not just the prevalence of racism, capitalism, colonialism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc in our society and especially in our institutions, but in the way these intersections of oppressionare foundational to the nation). Essentially, assigning readings which tell students to view equality/equity as good things associated with “the West” in ways which imagine the Global North as fully embodying (or at least uniquely striving to embody) equality and further exclude the possibilities of other ways of navigating or experiencing equality in other nations/communities is a method of producing students who internalize these myths of American exceptionalism and engage in U.S. academic writing through these kinds of implicit frameworks. 

In this same way, gender normative subjects are produced through the university as well. Professors, for example, frequently continue to (incorrectly) teach that singular they/them pronouns are grammatically incorrect and teach students to use awkward, implicitly ranked, and exclusionary phrases such as “he or she” in their academic writing. I have also observed exercises designed to teach things such as the use of adjectives and verb conjugation being used to police gender; one male (presenting) student, for example, told the class that he was “motherly”, prompting a roughly five minute detour while the professor wondered whether it was possible for him to be “motherly” and suggested he probably meant “caring” because he couldn’t really be motherly. In another lesson, the professor promised to upload several articles on gender equality for anyone who might find them interesting, before commenting (and therefore suggesting) that the guys probably wouldn’t. Because of the power professors hold over their students, when a professor comments that men will not be interested in gender equality, they are implicitly instructing their students that men cannot be interested. Only women are invested in gender equality and men have no reason to care or be invested (and those who are not cis women or cis men are invisibilized). Similarly, when a professor supposedly teaching adjectives uses the lesson to discourage students from defining themselves through the “wrong” gendered descriptors, they are actually teaching how to be an appropriately gendered subject in the academic institution. 

If these examples feel like they’re too small or insignificant to be worth excavating in this way it is only because of they ways the larger patterns which shape them are naturalized and obscured. I do want to emphasize, however, that while institutions and (hegemony more broadly) are constantly in the process of attempting to produce us as specific kinds of subjects, it is important to remember we still have varying degrees of agency within these systems. When I say the university is invested in the production of subjects/subjectivities, I do not mean to suggest it is universally successful. Rather, I want us to consider and acknowledge this attempt at production, because by denying and obscuring this process we increase the likelihood of its success. As I said earlier, there is no such thing as neutrality–the production of knowledge will always coincide with the production of frameworks of interpretation, methodologies of production, and subjectivities which can access, produce, and engage with knowledge through these methodologies, discourses, and frameworks. However, we can acknowledge these processes and, through this acknowledgement, choose what subjectivities we are complicit in producing and demand more inclusive and accessible academic practices in our institutions. We have an ethical imperative to acknowledge the violence that accompanies dominant productions and the disciplining that surround them, to come together in solidarity and resistance, and to intervene in the places we see this violence play out.

pretty pretty bird bird

fireortheflood:

fireortheflood:

update: this shit is so fucked but the way it was leaked is incredible

(source)

actualaster:

derinthescarletpescatarian:

cumaeansibyl:

alpa-the-internet-cowboy:

cumaeansibyl:

sandersgrey:

sandersgrey:

Unpopular opinion but literally not one person in the world should have their human rights violated

If one person’s rights can be waved away, so can yours

yes, even those people.

But I have a question.

At what point a human being can be called “person”?

Where’s THE line? There’s gotta be a line, after all, no?? So where is it? How many horrible things can someone do, and still be called a “person”?

Why does there have to be a line? That’s the assumption you need to look at.

I’m not talking about whether someone can be trusted, or redeemed, or any of that. It doesn’t matter. Human rights are for human beings. There’s no point at which we can sacrifice or destroy our personhood because it’s not separate from existing as a human.

Any framework that divides humans into “people” and “not-people” leads directly to humans doing horrible things to each other, and creating a new class of “not-people” is not going to fix the issue.

“There’s gotta be a line” is the most horrifying assumption I’ve heard in a while

The mere act of having a line at all has led to absolutely horrific atrocities committed against innocent humans because something about them was deemed unworthy of personhood. (Not that horrific atrocities against the guilty are good, either, mind you.)

History is rife with examples of this.

The second you draw the line is the second you give hateful people a vested interest in conflating entire groups of people with whatever line you’ve drawn.

That is not a hypothetical–that is provable history that has happened, is still happening, and will continue to happen as long as people consider there to be a line one can cross to justify stripping them of personhood.

Also, by deciding that if a person does something bad enough they’re not really a person that blinds people to the fact that each and every one of us has the potential to behave in a monstrous way. Each of us is capable of committing atrocities–there isn’t some inherent wiring in somebody’s brain that makes them think doing unspeakable things is alright. By pretending only not-people do such things, we defend and justify ourselves and those around us.

Every time you see a celeb or other famous person accused of something and their friends rush to their defense because “no, they’re a good person, they’re not a monster”? That’s the fallacy of “only monsters do horrible things, not people” at work.

Every human has the potential to commut unspeakable acts, what pushes people to actually do them is variable. But when you insist that only a monster could do something, you blind yourself to the potential you and yours have to also do the unspeakable which makes it harder to recognize warning signs and call people out before they do something terrible.

It hurts everyone when we conflate certain behaviors with a lack of personhood, and it’s extremely dangerous to do so from several angles.

skitzofreak:

winneganfake:

greenycrimson:

mostlysignssomeportents:

Microsoft has a DRM-locked ebook store that isn’t making enough money, so they’re shutting it down and taking away every book that every one of its customers acquired effective July 1.

Customers will receive refunds.

This puts the difference between DRM-locked media and unencumbered media into sharp contrast. I have bought a lot of MP3s over the years, thousands of them, and many of the retailers I purchased from are long gone, but I still have the MP3s. Likewise, I have bought many books from long-defunct booksellers and even defunct publishers, but I still own those books.

When I was a bookseller, nothing I could do would result in your losing the book that I sold you. If I regretted selling you a book, I didn’t get to break into your house and steal it, even if I left you a cash refund for the price you paid.

People sometimes treat me like my decision not to sell my books through Amazon’s Audible is irrational (Audible will not let writers or publisher opt to sell their books without DRM), but if you think Amazon is immune to this kind of shenanigans, you are sadly mistaken. My books matter a lot to me. I just paid $8,000 to have a container full of books shipped from a storage locker in the UK to our home in LA so I can be closer to them. The idea that the books I buy can be relegated to some kind of fucking software license is the most grotesque and awful thing I can imagine: if the publishing industry deliberately set out to destroy any sense of intrinsic, civilization-supporting value in literary works, they could not have done a better job.

https://boingboing.net/2019/04/02/burning-libraries.html

If you’ve got an ereader and want to actually own your books, I heartily recommend using cailbre to scrape the DRM off and so you can backup the files.

Cailbre d/l:

https://calibre-ebook.com/download

How to use cailbre to remove DRM:

http://www.geoffstratton.com/remove-drm-amazon-kindle-books

Seconding calibre as a brilliant tool for ebook management in general. 

Remember: you are not renting your life, especially not from a corporation!!

Some more tutorials and tools:

removing DRM from your kindle purchases

Removing DRM from epubs

Removing DRM for cross device use and archiving

I know this is old news but the point is still valid. As an e-book author, please, remove the DRM after you buy my shit. Once you pay for a copy, that copy is yours and Amazon shouldn’t have the power to snatch it away.

(After is the operative word here, since if you pirate a book without buying, that hurts the author a lot more than the megacorporation.)

Get physical copies of books if you can. With large chunks of the world getting trigger-happy with their censorship, this is especially important if you want to keep your LGBTQ stories.

yinx1:

sleepyfangirl18:

elphabaforpresidentofgallifrey:

disney employees are starting a full week of walkouts leading to their big walkout on march 22nd, 2022. they’ve asked people to not use disney products during this week. (no disney+, hulu, espn, playing games, watching videos, reviewing/blogging about any of their IP, no going to the parks). this is a targeted and timed action you can concretely participate in.

they’re asking people to also support by using those hashtags and to sign their petition in solidarity.

https://www.whereischapek.com/

Disney Do Better Walkout

SIGNAL BOOST

sniperct:

maa-pix:

explorerrowan:

katelyndanger:

zoethebitch:

Biden announcing a Russian oil ban this morning and pushing an end to remote work while gas is already $4 a gallon

While this is definitely going to raise gas prices, gas price is actually decoupled from demand and we have a lot of oil in reserve that we could release to lower the prices by increasing supply. Gas companies are artificially inflating the price independent of supply because they’re greedy. In reality, Russian gas only accounts for around 8% of oil imports. Biden is definitely fucking up here, but also keep in mind the greed of oil executives and US politicians who invested heavily in energy stocks immediately before the invasion.  They see this as a convenient excuse to get rich, blame Biden, and make the conflict seem worse than it actually is to increase defense spending.

Stay angry, but be angry at the right people. 

Also don’t forget, the oil companies have a vested interest in making the Democrats look as bad as possible right now, in the middle of the midterm elections. If they can make you hurt at the pump and then get you to blame Biden for it, they can con you into either not voting or voting Republican, and maybe get a Republican Senate out of it.

I find Paul Krugman’s arguments more convincing:

There are three things you need to know about gasoline prices. First, the price of crude oil — the stuff that comes out of the ground — is set in a global market, not country by country. Second, fluctuations in the price of gasoline, which is refined from crude, overwhelmingly reflect fluctuations in that global price. Third, U.S. policy has little effect on world oil prices, and virtually none at all in the short run — say, the 14 months that Biden has been in office… .

… Rising gas prices in America, then, are part of a global story that has nothing to do with the policies of the current administration. Still, can’t the United States have some impact on that global story? We are, after all, the world’s largest oil producer, accounting for about 20 percent of world output in 2020. Can’t America do something to reduce global oil prices?

Yes, in principle. Not so much in practice.

U.S. oil production did increase a lot after 2010 — a trend that, as it happens, began under the Obama administration and continued for part of Donald Trump’s term.

But this had little to do with policy; it was all about new technology, specifically fracking. Oil production then slumped in 2020, not because of policy but because prices plunged during the pandemic. Now it’s coming back, again thanks to events rather than policy. It seems safe to say that nothing either Trump did or Biden did has had any appreciable effect on U.S. oil production, let alone U.S. gasoline prices.

Of course, that’s not what Republicans would have you believe. They want the public to give Trump credit for low prices in 2020, when demand for oil was low because Covid had the world economy on its back. They want voters to blame environmental concerns, which have blocked the Keystone XL pipeline and might block drilling on public land, for high prices at the pump right now — even though it will take years before these policy changes will have any effect, and that effect will be modest even then.

From “Wonking Out: Lies, Damned Lies and Gasoline Prices”, by Paul Krugman, NYTimes, March 11, 2022

 What oil companies are doing is profiteering. They make so much profit they could easily absorb any price increases (and oil prices have started to drop again but good luck hearing that being discussed and I’ll bet dollars to donuts we won’t see a huge drop in gas prices despite that)

: the act or activity of making an unreasonable profit on the sale of essential goods especially during times of emergency

On top of that, they have a vested interest in tearing down an administration and political party that has been working to enact environmental protections and address climate change.

Because letting the world burn means more profits for them, and damn the future.

There are people who like to make others feel worthless. Some of them use the language of social justice to get away with it.

Often, this comes in the form of proclaiming to hate allies and then demanding unbounded deference from allies. This is typically conflated with accountability, but it’s not the same thing at all.

Hatred and accountability are different things. Accountability as an ally means, among other things:

• Listening to the people you’re trying to support instead of talking over them.
  
• Making good-faith efforts to understand the issues involved and to act on what you learn.
  
• Understanding that you’re going to make big mistakes, and that sometimes people you’re trying to support will be justifiably angry with you.
  
• Accepting that your privilege and power matter, not expecting others to overlook either, and taking responsibility for how you use both.
  
• Facing things that are uncomfortable to think about, and handling your own feelings about them rather than dumping on marginalized people.
  
• Being careful about exploitation and reciprocity, including paying people for their time when you’re asking them to do work for you.
  
• Understanding that marginalized people have good reason to be cautious about trusting you, and refraining from demanding trust on the grounds that you see yourself as on their side.
  

When people use the language of social justice to make others feel worthless, it’s more like this:

• Telling allies explicitly or implicitly, that they are worthless and harming others by existing.
  
• Expecting allies to constantly prove that they’re not terrible people, even when they’ve been involved with the community for years and have a long track record of trustworthiness. 
  
• Berating allies about how terrible allies are, in ways that have no connection to their actual actions or their actual attitudes.
  
• Giving people instructions that are self-contradictory or impossible to act on, then berating them for not following them.
  
• Eg: Saying “Go f**ing google it” about things that are not actually possible to google in a meaningful way
  
• Eg: saying “ shut up and listen to marginalized people” about issues that significant organized groups of marginalized people disagree about. https://www.realsocialskills.org/blog/the-rules-about-responding-to-call-outs-arent
  
• Eg: Simultaneously telling allies that they need to speak up about an issue and that they need to shut up about the same issue. Putting them in a position in which if they speak or write about something, they will be seen as taking up space that belongs to marginalized people, and if they don’t, they will be seen as making marginalized people do all the work.
  
• Giving allies instructions, then berating them for following them:
  
• Eg: Inviting allies to ask questions about good allyship, then telling them off for centering themselves whenever they actually ask relevant questions. 
  
• Eg: Teaching a workshop on oppression or a related issue, and saying “it’s not my job to educate you” to invited workshop participants who ask questions that people uninformed about the issue typically can be expected to ask.
  
• More generally speaking: setting things up so that no matter what an ally does, it will be seen as a morally corrupt act of oppression.
  

Holding allies accountable means insisting that they do the right thing. Ally hate undermines accountability by saying that it’s inherently impossible for allies to do anything right. If we want to hold people accountable in a meaningful, we have to believe that accountability is possible.

Someone who believes that it’s impossible for allies to do anything right isn’t going to be able to hold you accountable. If someone has no allies who they respect, you’re probably not going to be their exception — they will almost certainly end up hating you too. If someone demands that you assume you’re worthless and prove your worth in an ongoing way, working with them is unlikely to end well.  

If you want to hold yourself accountable, you need to develop good judgement about who to listen to and who to collaborate with. Part of that is learning to be receptive to criticism from people who want you to do the right thing, even when the criticism is hard to hear. Another part is learning to be wary of people who see you as a revenge object and want you to hate yourself. You will encounter both attitudes frequently, and it’s important to learn to tell the difference. Self-hatred isn’t accountability.

Tl;dr If we want to hold allies accountable in a meaningful, we have to believe that accountability is possible. Hatred of allies makes this much harder.

It’s important to have morally neutral language to describe actions. This is especially important for actions that are always, usually, or sometimes morally wrong.

For instance:

• In English, ‘killing’ and ‘murder’ mean different things.
  
• ‘Murder’ always means killing that is either illegal or morally wrong. 
  
• ‘Killing’ can describe any act that causes someone to die. 
  
• This distinction makes it possible to talk about when killing is and isn’t justified. 
  
• Even for people who think that killing is always murder, this is important. 
  
• Without morally neutral language, it’s impossible to express a clear opinion on whether or not killing is ever acceptable.
  

For instance (names randomly generated using http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/gen-random-us-us.php):

• Heather: *shoots Sonja*.
  
• Sonja: *dies as a result of being shot by Heather*.
  
• In this situation, Heather definitely killed Sonja. Whether or not she murdered Sonja is something people can argue about.
  
• Eg: If Sonja was trying to kill Heather and Heather shot her in self-defense, almost everyone would argue that this isn’t murder.
  
• Eg: If Heather was trying to rob Sonja’s store and shot her to prevent her from calling for help, almost everyone would consider that murder.
  
• Eg: If Heather felt threatened by Sonja in a public space and shot her rather than trying to run away, most people would consider that murder, but some people would vehemently disagree.
  
• Because ‘murder’ and ‘killing’ are different words, everyone would be able to express their opinion in a clear way.
  

When it’s impossible to describe actions without condemning them, it can be impossible to describe what people are actually doing. This makes it hard to have an honest conversation, and even harder to hold people accountable.

Here’s a disability services example (randomly generated names):

• Charles (a staff person): I don’t believe in coercion. I never control my clients or tell them what to do. They’re totally in control of their own lives.
  
• Patricia  (a disabled adult client): I want to eat some cookies at 3am.
  
• Staff person: You can’t eat cookies at 3am. You agreed to take care of yourself by making healthy choices, and it’s important to keep your agreements.
  
• Patricia: You’re telling me what to do instead of letting me decide. 
  
• Staff person: No I’m not. I’m telling you that you can’t eat cookies at 3am because staying up past your bedtime and eating junk food aren’t healthy choices. I would never tell you what to do.
  
• Patricia doesn’t get access to cookies, and is put on a behavior plan if she leaves her room after 10pm.
  

In this example, Charles is blatantly and unambiguously controlling Patricia and telling her what to do. When Patrica says ‘telling me what to do’, she means it literally. When Charles says, ‘telling people what to do’ he really means ‘telling people what to do (without a good reason)’. He doesn’t realize that coercion is still coercion even if he thinks it’s justified coercion. Without a direct literal way to refer to the act of controlling people, it becomes nearly impossible to discuss when coercion is and isn’t justified.

This happens a lot, in any number of contexts, often following this kind of pattern:

• Person: I would never do The (Unacceptable) Thing!
  
• Person: *does The (Unacceptable) Thing*.
  
• Someone else: You literally just did The (Unacceptable) Thing.
  
• Person: No, I didn’t do The (Unacceptable) Thing. I had a good reason, so it wasn’t The (Unacceptable) Thing. I would never do The (Unacceptable) Thing.
  

Sometimes people who talk this way are lying — but not always. Sometimes it’s that they don’t understand that reasons don’t erase actions. Sometimes they think actions only count as The (Unacceptable) Thing when they consider the actions to be unjustified/unacceptable. If you point out that they are, in fact, literally doing The Thing, they think that means you’re accusing them of being bad — and that you couldn’t be right, because they have a good reason.

This language problem is breaking a lot of conversations that need to happen, particularly around privilege and misuse of power.

Tl;dr: It needs to be possible to describe what people are doing in morally neutral terms. This is especially important for actions that are always, usually, or sometimes morally wrong. Scroll up for more about why and a concrete example.