#Slow Death of a Pseudo-Intellectual

[cryptidcalling]

Just finished Midnight Mass, adored every moment of it, absolutely bawled my eyes out multiple times, and I've got a thing to say. I can absolutely understand why it's not for everyone. It's slow, there's a lot of talking, and most of that talking is about philosophy (mainly religious philosophy of course, but there's some other stuff too, death and purpose and personal choice and all that). And from what I've seen just scrolling Tumblr and Twitter a bit, the main reason I see people give for not liking it is "There's too many monologues, and monologues don't create art." And that second part is true. Just having long monologues about philosophy doesn't automatically create art. But, that's the thing, Midnight Mass isn't full of long monologues. It's full of long dialogues, where each character is given the time and space to say their piece without being interrupted. When a character IS interrupted it's almost always by Bev, the main villain of the whole show. I think it's an important distinction to make because I totally see how that distinction could make a world of difference to a viewer. If someone's watching this show and interpreting the scenes as monologues then of course they're finding them boring and like they're just attempts to be deep and artistic. It feels like a character is talking to the viewer and just infodumping about deep topics. That can feel condescending, and it can take you out of the scene because you're just hearing the writer rather than the characters. But that changes when you remind yourself that there's another character in the room that this character is speaking to. Riley isn't just rambling about atheism to the camera, he's an ex alter boy having a discussion with a priest about how people use faith, the same priest who was the first person to hear about Riley losing his faith and NOT try to rush him into doing communion and just being Catholic again or treat him with disdain and judgment. When Riley and Erin are talking about what happens after you die it's not just the writers doing pseudo-intellectual speculation into the camera, it's two people who have been desperately struggling with their faith and what that means for their eternal soul, or whether they even have a soul, and how that affects their reasons for even being alive. You've got to remember that these characters are having dialogues. Remember that there is someone else listening and that the person listening plays a big part in the tone and meaning of the scene. You'll enjoy the show a lot more that way, I think.

[phantom-webber]

some of you lot will 'satire' and 'it's just a joke/not that deep' a little to close to the sun and before you realise it, your spouting white supremacist and fascist beliefs. Remember kids fascism isn't always gonna look like violent racists waving around colonial insignia to provoke and antagonise people, that shit builds up like a slow burning building and will seem insignificant at first, but when the smoke starts to build and get into your eyes your not gonna know how you got to the building being on fire and your gonna start cooking to death.

and while I may sound like the friend that's too woke I genuinely don't like how some people are using the excuse of shit being a joke and satire as a way to not want to show basic empathy and understanding of other people's experiences and feelings, and even on the flip side some of you using pseudo intellectual takes as a reason to be a bigot IS TIIIRRREEDD AND IM SICK OF IT.

I don't hardly even type at all on here because I doubt I'm saying anything brand new, but this is the shit that pisses me off and I wanted to just verbalise it. anyways off my soap box ✌🏿

[collegiatesins]

they  were  only  in  this  pretentious  little  gallery  because  adrien  had  wandered  in,  and  where  adrien  went,  maximo  begrudgingly,  inevitably  tended  to  follow.  now,  with  the  night’s  liquor  slowly  leeching  from  his  bloodstream,  max  was  beginning  to  feel  the  full  weight  of  their  late-night  escapades.  a  dull,  insistent  throb  pulsed  behind  his  right  eye,  as  if  his  skull  was  auditioning  for  a  percussion  ensemble.  he  leaned  heavily  against  the  nearest  wall,  broad  shoulders  slouched  and  head  tilted  back  slightly,  hoping  the  surface  might  anchor  him  just  enough  to  stay  upright.  the  voice  beside  him  droned  on.  a  slightly  slurred  guesstimate  of  what  the  meaning  behind  the  painting  could  be.  prompting  max  to  squint  at  the  art  piece  in  question.  it  looked  like  someone  had  spilled  wine  and  cried  about  it.

why  adrien  had  led  them  in  here  in  the  first  place  was  beyond  him.  and  the  longer  maximo  stood  there,  the  crankier  he  became.  his  body  begged  for  sleep,  or  coffee,  or  death.  honestly,  any  of  the  three  would  suffice.  “  i’m  pretty  sure  i  have  class  in  three  hours,  ”  he  muttered,  mostly  to  himself.  “  not  that  i’m  going.  ”  still,  max  would  rather  be  half-asleep  in  a  lecture  hall,  blinking  at  a  bored  professor,  than  subject  himself  to  another  minute  of  this  pseudo-intellectual  rambling.  he  glanced  sideways  at  adrien,  whose  hands  were  gesturing  too close for comfort  to  the  art  as  he  tried  to  wax  poetic  about  a  painting  that,  max  was  fairly  certain,  had  nothing  to  do  with  lost  love  or  tax  evasion.  “  you’re  using  too  much  brainpower,  ”  he  finally  interrupted,  tone  dry  but  laced  with  affection.

“  what  have  I  told  you?  i’m  the  brains,  you’re  the  beauty.  don’t  think  too  hard,  mi  hombre.  you’ll  strain  something.  ”  he  winced  as  the  overhead  lights  flared  against  his  tired  eyes.  maybe  adrien  wasn’t  completely  unjustified  in  his  ongoing  campaign  to  normalize  wearing  sunglasses  indoors.  the  lighting  in  here  was  a  war  crime.  “  you  promised  me  breakfast,  ”  max  added,  dragging  the  words  out  like  an  accusation.  “  so  why  the  hell  are  we  looking  at  art?  don’t  tell  me  this  is  about  impressing  another  fine  arts  major.  ”  he  fixed  his  friend  with  a  slow  blink  that  screamed  i’m  too  hungover  for  this,  the  faintest  curl  of  a  smirk  tugging  at  the  corner  of  his  mouth  despite  everything.

WITH: whoever! @langstonstarters WHERE:  the palladium forum. WHEN:  10:37am.

adrien’s leaning too close to a canvas in the campus gallery, smudging fingerprints near the “do not touch” sign, narrating his thoughts like he’s on a date with himself. he’s wearing aviator sunglasses inside — unashamed — despite the fluorescent lighting and the fact that he clearly hasn’t slept. his shirt is half-buttoned, collar askew, and there’s glitter near one eyebrow that refuses to be explained. his breath still smells vaguely of mint and regret. a crumpled energy drink can rattles in the pocket of his coat every time he shifts, like it’s trying to escape before whatever shame spiral he’s circling around pulls it in too.

he squints at the painting in front of him — “untitled” in all caps, emotionally vague — and then gestures lazily toward it, that trademark adrien beaumont smirk already forming. “they call this ‘untitled.’ i call it ‘emotional damage in oil paint.’ what’s your critique, art student number seven?” he tilts his head without looking over, lifting the edge of his sunglasses just enough to lock eyes with whoever’s unlucky or curious enough to be standing nearby. “be honest. is it the painting that’s making me dizzy, or the fact that i may or may not still be drunk?” he doesn’t wait for an answer. instead, he lets the sunglasses fall back into place and mutters, mostly to himself now: “looks like heartbreak and tax evasion had a baby.”

[project-paranoia]

Live Watch: Guardian  Episode One, Part One

It's Guardian!  The show that got me interested in this genre!  I love spooky things and I love mysteries and fantasy!  I simply adore it so much!  When I can't sleep I just put on a playlist of Guardian in the background.  I was aware of censorship before - every country has some version of it, but to some degree this was my first deep dive into how it might effect a piece of media.  Guardian is exceptionally acted and incredibly written, as well as suffering from obvious dubs where the dubbing voice actor sounds nothing like the previous actor and odd cuts that are disrupted.  In some ways it's the little drama that could fighting its way past their studio going bankrupt while they were filming, reshoots, and being taken down and altered several times.

In some ways Guardian's struggle fits the spirit and aesthetic of the show. Worn in like an old pair of jeans but still making an effort.  Putting emphasis where things count and hoping the kindness of the universe will make allowances for the rest.  Attention to detail where the story really matters.  It has the charm of a community production put on out of love with actors and crew who would not be anywhere else in the world for any amount of money.  That feeling of love comes through, and whether or not I'm barely literate I have so many words to share.

Part of why I love it as well is it has that feeling of 80s and 90s fantasy, like Moomin, Xena or Condor Heroes. Everything feels lived in, nothing's been spit shined except for Shen Wei's suits. It's an old city street of a show, it has history and character built in. 

*After all that I don't know that I have a tonne to say about the intro.  It's very good but it's also full of spoilers.  I think having the intro song be in English does make a difference in making it appealing to English speaking audiences as well as standing out as different and interesting, which the show is. Speaking of Spoilers!  Spoilers below!

* The obligatory beginning narration is beautifully animated, I have another post that will be done some time before the heat-death of the universe talking about the fascinating world building options.  Unlike some Make It SciFi plots, this one has legs and implications.

* Remakes rarely are able to meet the original on equal ground - and I struggle to believe the actors would Fit as well - but part of me really wants to have a chance to have the Dixingren worldbuilding really leaned into.  The writing is good enough we get implication but no real follow through.  I want fifty episodes of how Dixing functions, give me more pseudo-science behind the mutations, what are the biological differences.  I'm hungry for more!

* I love the cameos of later characters, and the way there was some effort to be discrete with spoilers.

* It's Ya Boy!  I love Shen Wei.  With that music cue and that sinister turn around they really set him up as dubious.  I wish they went with something a little different with the intro so his character wasn't spoiled.  The writing, directing, and acting was so good and spoiling who Shen Wei is kind of took the teeth out of that.

* Also cheers to the costume designer who outfitted Zhu Yilong so well and made him look jacked with the fit of those clothes.

* Also you can tell this is a real university because the staff has to sit in tiny student chairs.  I'm not joking, please be warned if you're going into academia.  Unless you have tenure life is An Adventure - and even then.

* Also shout out to Shen Wei's Prized Cabbage and the Queen of our hearts, Li Qian.  Why is this actress not in more things?  She has such an expressive and lovely face and she really goes all the way in with her acting.  I respect an artist that acts from their chest. Also that windbreaker, white skirt combo is chic and fun all at once, it draws the eye and makes her melt into the background all at once - perfect for the character.  I love her so much.

* Here's another one of Shen Wei's coats, it's a lovely color for him but it also is so thin that it looks like it crinkled up just from being worn.

* I'm being distracted by details and missing plot stuff.

* Story of my life.

* I love Li Qian hovering along behind Shen Wei like a duckling following their mother.  A) Mood and B) it quietly informs their dynamic.  Shen Wei has like one person he can trust but no one he can really confide in and it's the same for Li Qian. A ship will find a port in a storm and Shen Wei has Big Da-ge Energy. My fanfic heart hopes they found comfort in the pseudo familial relationship with each other while it lasted.

* Even in episode one we receive foreshadowing, we love and respect some excellent writing.  For those of you who missed it - Professor Ouyang is talking about Lin Jing who I love partially because he's so outrageous large but has the total opposite of intimidating energy.  

* What did they feed you Lin Jing? He is so tall and wide, but they do a lot with camera work to try to make him not quite as big.  Side note, I would really love to see the actor who plays Lin Jing (Liu Minting) both in more dramas but more specifically in a role where he was like a minister or scholar - someone intellectual.  I think the combination of being such a big gentleman and also someone who like plots or plans would be really dynamic if it was written well.  

* Also I like the exchange where without a word Professor Ouyang indicates he has one last thing to say, it's private and that he would like Shen Wei to ask Li Qian to leave. That's What You Can Do With Good Actors!

* Li Qian is just so pretty and the actress emotes so well!

* Shen Wei totally understanding what's going on with this shady research immediately and wanting to stay as far away as possible.  We see one of the first examples of him being aggressively polite to remove himself from a situation.

* "i'M jUST aN oRDINARY sCHOLAR." No one buys it Shen Wei.

* Angy Thinking Face

* One thing the show is really good at is using establishing shots really well so you always know where everything is and everything is going

* Guo Changcheng, all around good boy and angel.  We stan a nervous legend

* Zhou Yunlan Arriving.  Why is everyone on this show an Absolute Legend

* Guo Changcheng protecting himself with his certificate is too cute.  This young man is trying his best and I support him.

* Also that coat is Young, Pure, Stylish; I love it

* Zhao Yunlan, what's wrong with you? You are amazing!

* His irreverent style and disregard of usual policy makes him fit in really well with his band of misfits and special cases

* Guo Changcheng's OO face is too good, elastic face

* Da Qing my love!

* Jin Ling, I think he has an all seeing eye on his hoodie thing. Illuminati Confirmed.

* Also they filmed the shots so well, so you always know where everyone is in relation to everyone else

* Our Prized Cabbage!  I love her!

* Great handheld work: shaky and unhinged, but not migraine inducing

* Foreshadowing in the form of a shadow and reaching for the necklace

* Da Qing's cat behaviours. I really want behind the scenes of the actor discussing how cat was he going to cat

* We get our first real example of how Zhao Yunlan doesn't feel safe emoting negatively and so he uses a super sunny mask to hide his feelings, except with Da Qing who he lets his anger show with because he trusts him.

* I'm not even halfway through and I've written so much, peace and blessings to the readers of this.

* Zhao Yunlan's swagger, after his childhood having a little power must feel comforting and good

* I love how Da Qing is talking as a cat less than a meter from the medical examiner.  Does the examiner not care or does he know?  Is he deaf?

* Harassing Guo Changcheng is the new team sport

* Zhao Yunlan Realises Something Music

* Also, Lollipop Measurement

* It's nice to see Zhao Yunlan just being himself with Da Qing, he's able to really be honest and genuine with him

* Slow Look Moment

* This moment is so fascinating!  Shen Wei doesn't know what's going on yet.  He just sees an old friend who winces when he sees him and disappears.  We mostly see things from Zhao Yunlan's point of view, but from Shen Wei's perspective this is a first part of just some Odd and Confusing Happenings

* This cat though!  I love him!

* The delicate way they’re both feeling each other out.  This must be so confusing and startling for Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan is trying to figure out if this teacher is going to bust him or what.

* He forgot to let go, way to set off Zhao Yunlan’s suspicions

* “Mark Stewart” Is he though?  Who picked out that English name?

* Li Qian!  I love her and I love that striped blouse. Fashion.  Got to look good when you’re resisting a mental break. *Also she hears a meow and looks around at eye level, I love that for her.

* Zhao Yunlan!  You can’t take pictures of young ladies without their permission.  What is wrong with you!

* I love Da Qing’s very cat attitude of I Will Have Vengeance for These Wrongs

* Two for one! Shen Wei meets two faces from his past.

* Also, I get a little frustrated about people making a big deal about the 10,000 years versus 1,000 years age thing with Da Qing.  a) He has amnesia and b) the thousand years refers to the amount of time needed to cultivate to a certain stage in Chinese mythology - usually by absorbing energy from the sun, moon, or depending on the animal other sources.

* I feel so bad for Shen Wei, who knows what he thinks.  Were his friends brainwashed?  Did they forget?  Can they not say for some reason?  What is happening?

This review is getting a little long, so join in tomorrow for Part Two~~!

[meeptropolis]

Just watched Ad Astra

You can consider this a review if you want, but these are mostly my thoughts about the movie a few hours after seeing it.

Mild spoilers ahead, I guess.

I really loved Ad Astra.

I’ve heard comments about how it “has been done better in the past”, or how “the story sucks because it wasn’t really about sciece fiction”, or how it’s just “the daddy issues movie in space”. To be honest, I slightly agree with those comments, and I say ‘slightly’ because I don’t believe they take any points away from this movie.

Ad Astra gives the impression of being another simple science fiction/action movie in space, but it is a lot more than that. Some might say it really is about a man trying to reconnect with his father or about a man trying to deal with his conflicting feelings about just learning that his father is still alive after decades.

In my opinion, this movie is about a man dealing with his father’s death. It’s about a man trying to let go of that same father. It’s about a man learning and accepting how the abscence of his father has affected him as a person. It’s about a human being dealing with feelings of loneliness, of regret, of disconnection with the world and the people around him. It’s about a man overcoming all of that. Some might call the movie ‘pretentious’ for its pseudo-philosophy about all of these issues, but I don’t think the movie is trying to present a profound way of thinking. In my opinion, Ad Astra is trying to show how feelings all of us probably have experienced (or will experience at some point in our lives) can become complex when explored, and how hard it can be to overcome our thoughts, our emotions, our past actions, and the uncertainty we feel about the future. These isn’t some deep philosophy or idea that can only be understood by intellectuals. These are simple and real feelings we all deal with every day in our own ways.

Music (Max Richter did an amazing job scoring the film), cinematography, dialogue, and acting are all presented in a minimalistic way, and I think this resonates with how the movie portrays simplicity as something complex.

While not every shot is a work of art, I think there are some outstanding moments in the film, especially those that don’t rely on CGI (the sequence in Mars is the best one. Keep an eye out for that one).

I do have to say some moments in the movie and how physics work at times disconnected me from the film for a few seconds, but even with those issues, Ad Astra still works.

I really want to recommend this film because I feel like some people will be driven off it due to its slow pace (which never feels that slow to be honest), or ‘lack’ of story, or because of it being another pseudo-deep space journey sci-fi film. Like I’ve said, beneath that interplanetary layer there’s a film exploring a common human with common feelings going through a common experience, and how all those ‘common’ things can become as extraordinary or complex as a trip across the Solar System

Please, go watch this movie. Even if this isn’t the best movie ever. Even if it is ‘forgettable’ as I’ve heard some say. Even if it doesn’t present its ideas in the best way for you. Watch it! Show the industry that we still care about human films. Show them that dumb explosions and jumpscares, or cinematic universes shoving their movies down your throat every month aren’t the only reasons we enjoy watching movies.

We need more films like Ad Astra. We need more humanity in cinemas.

PS ~ Thanks for reading all the way. I really appreciate the fact you took time off your day to read some of my thoughts about a film. If you want to discuss Ad Astra or anything at all, send me a DM. I’ll gladly reply!

[poopsheet]

March's Monthly Mini-Comics: Steve Willis and Hal Mundane

The March minis are currently on their way to all subscription patrons. Hooray! This month we’ve got: ● Hal Mundane‘s Slow Death of a Pseudo-Intellectual (Wag Rag #5), underground comix about a creative type who overanalyzes and over-agonizes (nope, can’t relate to that, nope). ● Steve Willis‘ As I Recall the ‘Sixties. Originally published in 1983, this mini calls out the remarkable similarities…

[sidpah]

Kali Yuga

With all of Kali’s mad handiwork visible in every corner on any given day, at peace I welcome the extinction of humanity.  It’s okay.  Dinosaurs are plenty happy with no more their thick ungainly forms lumbering down fern, starving.  We too can calcify into fossils for a new race to unearth with knowing curiosity, and just a tinge of pity.  No urge to pass on traits, ill predispositions, weakness and paranoias, hard-sought insights and half-absorbed insults, when we could make a clean break for a million years.  Allow the Earth to spin back.  Release its pent up rage at us insane parasitic intellectuals with our plots of conquest and manipulation.  She just needs some time alone to cry off her desperate toxic woes…

Well, goodbye to Us with pink cheeks and black socks in 21 years.  Cloud of ash will remedy the warming of the globe. Drawn to each other’s bulk, mighty rocks collide – Sparks and debris in satellite-cluttered no-space – asteroid diving into one aquamarine puddle spraying steam craters for the next incarnation to visit and measure with awe.  Because it probably won’t be There yet.  Still one step closer to the curtain wrapped up with applause by the Jolly Laughing Jester God of Everything.

Why shoot rockets into space when we’re all, right now, hurtling straight through it?  We’ll all get there eventually…

While here on Earth, civilization is collapsing. Capitalism running rampant, an outdated system, a failed experiment hanging on like the last sinewy threads of a vestigial tale being excised and left behind for the betterment of the species; anachronistic intolerant religious dogma enforced as a code of laws for believers and nonbelievers alike should be stoned to death at the public’s behest like the condemned heretics, adulterers and liberated women of centuries past, rather than being lauded as the hallmark of a true patriot, or most moral of politicalized beings… While the few last acres of unspoiled wilderness are bulldozed to raise cattle to be eviscerated and hacked to bits and sold to Americans already obese, plaque-veined and lacking the empathic compassion of an even marginally evolved species…

The world as we know it is heating up, burning down, melting, being washed away, bombed by soulless drones steered by soulless drones, irradiated, shredded, chewed up and shat out. Why bother fighting against the tide at all? Surely inertia has already taken over. Why not fiddle while everything we once loved turns into one giant cinder, again, for the first time before our eyes?

Nothing changes because everything changes so there is no stability like there’s no Golden Age that ever was or ever will be. Constant transformation. Slow, steady, brutal and beautiful… We’re afloat amidst the torrents of disintegration and Walmartification.

And I don’t pray… because I am not a total hypocrite… but I hope to remain aware, incorporeally if not still present in body, to observe the next changing of the guard…  

The militaries and militants all watch the same sky go black as we forever lose sight of that beautiful roaring star always taken for granted.  The Hummers and factory farms and all the glittery shops of Rodeo Drive are covered in dust three feet high… raging black waters lap up to consume skyscrapers, vacant city streets, penitentiaries and recruiting offices and diamond mines and barricaded gubernatorial mansions and all else that was rightfully theirs… man cannot exist without the water’s blessing… Radioactive isotopes have all the lives they need to reconcile their potential with their old nasty habits… And the wealthy politicos run miles toward the Earth’s core only to find it no brighter or warmer underground… and their profligate rations keep them conscious just long enough to wonder what the last thoughts of a species should be.  What’s a fitting tribute to millennia of nanotechnology and astral-travel and eco-destruction collapsing in on itself with all the majestic pulchritude of the avenging cosmos laying it to waste?  In these hours they can replay their home movies of cause and effect and their best-of campaign reels as tribute to their own everlasting insanity and those thoughts are a waste, inconsequential, frivolous and self-righteous. Perfect in their own scared helpless childish innocence… thinking there could ever be an end to this unyielding consciousness… Those of us who know, we laugh as it crumbles down!      

But what is a fitting soundtrack for this, Kali’s Yuga? Perhaps something delicate, fragile, treading lightly on the rotting floorboards of our childhood home, yet bold and violent and horrifying like those things lurking in the basement of our collective subconscious, because that subconscious is enacted upon and brought to light every day by genocidal sociopaths drunk on power and bloodlust, and belligerent boyfriends drunk on whiskey and self-loathing…

Something in a constant state of decay, audibly crumbling into dust of 0s and 1s, while also meditative, psychedelic, entrancing and eternal. Repetitious, mesmeric, entraining as a shamanic ritual, her sound should transmute the mental state of the listener to something either more base and earthy thick with congealing plasma and mud and thumping of hooves trampling earth, or more transcendent and ethereal, striving for the sublime vibrational perfection of OM… Anything to break us from this fucking retina-display haze of tablets, smart phones and laptop screens impersonating valid experience. Whether it’s a Zen monk staring out over a vast, barren rock garden or the same monk struck across the shoulders by his master’s keisaku. It doesn’t matter. It’s all the same. Because it’s something else. And we need something else… desperately. Churn it out like you’re exorcising a demonic presence! Because this whole goddamned world possesses us every second with biased pseudo-facts or jaded propaganda slander. Deceptive slogans spouted out with the religious fervor of a true Blind Believer to coerce a gullible populace into feeding its children toxic food, destroying its ecosystem in the quest for more energy to power its enormous gaudy SUVs and microwave ovens and convincing them that perpetual war for the sake of profit and resources is the only thing that will keep their families safe and ultimately bring about everlasting sustainable peace…

But most of all, it must have a sense of humor. Since that Jolly Laughing Jester God of Everything is constantly forgetting himself as he playacts a hundred billion roles at the same time, forgetting too his dispassionate air.  Stifling all existence with his thoughts and dreams, his professions and aspirations.  His constant birth and death; his constant peerless life.  Of course he’s Jolly, laughing at his own tears! He can laugh always because he can see clearly through them! The Jester God eats his weight in his own bodies every living hour… Why else could he be Laughing all the time?

What we really need is communion, compassion not only for other humans but for all the species who share this planet with us and whom we see as little more than commodity, nuisance or intriguing curiosity. We need non-romantic love that cares about other people, even if they refuse to rub their genitals against ours, for the simple fact that just like every other species of animal on the Earth, they are just like us and want only to be free of pain, fear, and all the other causes of suffering… What we need is a fucking revolution, political, spiritual, emotional… We need the mass’s willingness to reach the saturation point… As a species we need to embrace the necessary doubt and uncertainty and vast uncomfortable change, creating a hospitable environment in which these things can exist, and maybe one day thrive…

Until then, what’s left to do but to wait for it all to fall down around us… And hope only that the next incarnation has learned from the mistakes of its extinct forbearers…

[aion-rsa]

Zack Snyder’s Justice League Review

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

When fans gathered beneath the “#ReleaseTheSnyderCut” billboard at San Diego Comic-Con a few years ago, a finished version of Zack Snyder’s Justice League didn’t exist. Sure, there was a rough edit the director kept for his own collection, saving it from Warner Bros. after being effectively replaced by Joss Whedon during reshoots in 2017. But with unfinished effects, no music, and apparently little polish, this version turned out to be a glorified assembly cut which contained everything, plus the kitchen sink. Yet that fact mattered little to fans who demanded more—more movie, more Snyder, and ultimately more content.

Well, Zack Snyder’s Justice League, as it’s now called, is here. And if more content is what you really want, you’re about to be submerged up to your eyeballs in it. With a running time of just over four hours, the Snyder Cut is four minutes longer than Gone with the Wind and nearly 15 minutes lengthier than Lawrence of Arabia. One suspects Snyder hopes this is considered a cinematic epic on that scale. The new version even bizarrely reverts to a square frame, foregoing the widescreen format the film’s shots were originally composed for—and perhaps coincidentally mirroring recent arthouse darlings like The Lighthouse and First Cow.

But these details are simple affectations, the pretensions of a filmmaker who is otherwise making no hard choices about the excess of comic book gibberish he’s assembled. And for all its now (mostly) finished CG and numbing slow-motion, this still very much is gibberish: a movie that mistakes ponderousness for poignancy, and which remains an assembly cut so rough you’d be forgiven for wondering if anything was left on the cutting room floor. Despite its cinematic airs, this has ironically become bona fide streaming service content, the kind that’s as undercooked or unwieldy as anything else greenlit solely in fealty to an algorithm.

Picking up where Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice left off, Zack Snyder’s Justice League is at heart the same dopey story as the theatrical cut. Following Superman’s death, “the bell has been rung” and a computer-generated behemoth named Steppenwolf—now with a lot more spikes on his armor and a gravellier voice courtesy of Ciarán Hinds—has arrived on Earth to retrieve three “Mother Boxes.”

In spite of that Saturday morning cartoon setup, these elements are unspooled at a glacial pace and with a funereal self-seriousness as Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) recruit a team of superheroes. The newcomers include Barry Allen/The Flash (Ezra Miller), Arthur Curry/Aquaman (Jason Momoa), and perhaps most importantly Victor Stone/Cyborg (Ray Fisher). Together they will brood, recite copious amounts of exposition, and eventually resurrect Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) from the dead. Also they’ll tease an armada of sequels featuring far off aliens, and heavily foreshadowed betrayals, that will never come to anything.

As a finished product, the most interesting thing about Zack Snyder’s Justice League is how it contrasts with the studio-approved version rushed into theaters by Whedon. While effectively the same story, Snyder’s version is the more satisfying iteration, if only because it’s so purely Zack Snyder. It is also a noticeable step up from Batman v Superman thanks to concessions made at the beginning of the Justice League‘s production. Gone is the pseudo-intellectual dialogue about gods and character motivations that better resemble Philosophy 101 term papers.

Nevertheless, we again have a film in which the heroes spend as much time posing for some unseen sculptor as they do interacting with one another, and the protagonists still have a uniformly glum outlook on humanity. Superman remains an ambiguous presence (if not outright insidious at times), and Batman again enjoys blowing holes in his enemies (now with digital blood!), although they’re Parademons instead of human beings this time.

All that said, this is wholly Snyder’s vision played to the hilt, with the filmmaker occasionally finding his peculiar brand of grace notes, such as when he puts Nick Cave’s “There is a Kingdom” over an Aquaman swim. By contrast, the “Whedon Cut” is further revealed for the Frankenstein’s Monster it is—a patchwork of unfinished ideas stitched together on the proverbial slab of a studio committee’s table. There are elements that work much better here. For example, Lois Lane’s grief over losing Clark Kent. And there are others that don’t, such as Batman’s mentoring of the Flash (gone is the “save one” speech).

But taken as a whole, this is a piece with Snyder’s Batman v Superman and Man of Steel, and his insistent grandiloquence can at times be charming in its stony-faced earnestness, if still also exhausting.

Perhaps the characters who are best served by the extended edition are the hero Cyborg and the villain Steppenwolf. The former was reduced to a handful of clichés in the theatrical version. Here Ray Fisher gets a lot more screen time and is good in all of it. New flashback scenes still stumble at making the character fully compelling, but Fisher at least depicts a complete arc across the four hours. None of his other teammates can say that.

Meanwhile Steppenwolf is given a discernable motivation for retrieving Mother Boxes, even if it essentially transforms him into a middle management baddie in the process—the supervillain equivalent of a parking valet waiting on the off-screen Darkseid. Indeed, the latter appears briefly as a CGI brute who’s built up to like Sauron from Lord of the Rings, even as he comes across closer to a mindless Cave Troll in his first big scene.

Darkseid is eventually given a fuller texture as the film shambles along, but then that might be the biggest problem of this iteration of Justice League: the amount of time it takes to get anywhere. Divided into seven chapters, complete with title cards, Zack Snyder’s Justice League is structured, and more frustratingly paced, like a television series. If it had been released in that medium, then more power to HBO Max. But the refusal to make any attempts to wrangle the material down to even three hours means a full 68 minutes will go by before the Flash is introduced, and hours will pass before supporting characters reappear. It gives the proceedings a listless, meandering quality, and that includes the action sequences.

In the end, Justice League 2.0 breaks the cardinal sin of not committing to anything while indulging everything. Even its new scenes from Snyder’s own reshoots last year (you’ll know them when you see them) add nothing to the overall film other than gratifying the director’s worst impulses, which are now unburdened from the restraints of logic or cohesive storytelling.

For the most devoted disciples, moments like Justice League’s new, inexplicable epilogue will be treated like scripture, which is fine. To everyone else though, know that Zack Snyder’s Justice League is a cold and it’s a very broken hallelujah.

Zack Snyder’s Justice League premieres on HBO Max on Thursday, March 18.

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[darkstarmie]

Guess Im doing this all for Azvel

1. How does your character think of their father? What do they hate and love about him? What influence - literal or imagined - did the father have?

Uuuuuuh, the man that raised him, he kind of despises. However he did end up having a large influence in his life.

2. Their mother? How do they think of her? What do they hate? Love? What influence - literal or imagined - did the mother have?

He also isn’t too fond of his mother, however he was more fond of her at the time.  3. Brothers, sisters? Who do they like? Why? What do they despise about their siblings?

He loves three of his sisters, Kleo, Koris, and Elaine. He really doesn’t get along with his other sisters

4. What type of discipline was your character subjected to at home? Strict? Lenient?

Very strict

5. Were they overprotected as a child? Sheltered?

Kind of, as they really weren’t allowed to leave their estate much

6. Did they feel rejection or affection as a child?

Mostly affection-ish. But also a fair amount of rejection

7. What was the economic status of their family?

They grew up pretty rich. Azvel grew up on a private Estate owned by his parents

8. How does your character feel about religion?

Mostly indifferent, but if he were to worship any deity, it’d probably be Mara

9. What about political beliefs?

He’s mostly involved in politics, however he is becoming increasingly involved and is mostly just against Tyrannical rules

10. Is your character street-smart, book-smart, intelligent, intellectual, slow-witted?

He’s more street smart than his sister probably, but also fairly intellectual

11. How do they see themselves: as smart, as intelligent, uneducated?

He mostly just thinks of himself as moderately smart, but nothing special

12. How does their education and intelligence – or lack thereof - reflect in their speech pattern, vocabulary, and pronunciations?

He normally seems pretty educated by his language, but not too much

13. Did they like school? Teachers? Schoolmates?

He didn’t mind school, but it wasn’t his favorite, and he normally just gets along with everyone

14. Were they involved at school? Sports? Clubs? Debate? Were they unconnected?

He really didn’t have much extra stuff to do at school.

15. Did they graduate? High-School? College? Do they have a PHD? A GED?

He pretty much has a bachelor’s equivalent 

16. What does your character do for a living? How do they see their profession?

He was a Thalmor soldier, however always hated it. He’s now a pseudo-soldier in the Skyrim army i guess, and is happy to be a help in the war

 What do they like about it? Dislike?

He likes helping people and making a difference, but hates having to hurt people

17. Did they travel? Where? Why? When?

Alot when he was part of the Thalmor, he would mostly be sent to places like Elsweyr and other parts of the Isles

18. What did they find abroad, and what did they remember?

He vastly remembered the poor and struggling members of the other societies and the poor way they were treated by the Thalmor

19. What were your character’s deepest disillusions? In life? What are they now?

He was able to convince himself that he and his sister were doing the right thing by helping the Thalmor. 

20. What were the most deeply impressive political or social, national or international, events that they experienced?

I want to say the Skyrim civil war, as he fought in the war for the Stormcloaks while looking for his sister

21. What are your character’s manners like? What is their type of hero? Whom do they hate?

He is extremely polite, due to his upbringing and his kind nature. He idolizes those who sacrifice something great for those they love. They hate selfish people and Malicious people.

22. Who are their friends? Lovers? ‘Type’ or ‘ideal’ partner?

His best friend is his sister, hes also close to pip. He’s also dating Darya, his “ideal” partner would probably be someone who is just kind, selfless, and strong-willed

23. What do they want from a partner? What do they think and feel of sex?

He wants just love and support, not much else. Sex is also a very intimate and special thing to him. 

24. What social groups and activities does your character attend? What role do they like to play? What role do they actually play, usually?

He’s normally hesitant in social situations, and tries to be the guy that just floats by, but he normally ends up being the goofy guy people are just attracted to because of how fun he is

25. What are their hobbies and interests?

He actually really likes writing

26. What does your character’s home look like? Personal taste? Clothing? Hair? Appearance?

His home is the Colle of Winterhold so, kinda grey and cold. But his personal style is much more aligned with the typical Altmer-style with lots of golds and warmer colors. He has short curly dirty blonde hair, and normally wears pretty nice clothes when he can

27. How do they relate to their appearance? How do they wear their clothing? Style? Quality?

He’s pretty comfortable in his appearance and typically looks a little more jock-ish than he acts, his clothing is also normally pretty tight-fitting

28. Who is your character’s mate? How do they relate to him or her? How did they make their choice?

Well Darya is his current girlfriend. They both bonded over the pain of having lost a sibling. And Azvel was there to comfort her after her brother’s death. He really started having feelings for her when he saw how much she cared for her family.

29. What is your character’s weaknesses? Hubris? Pride? Controlling?

He’s very defensive of his loved ones, particularly his sisters Kleo and Elaine

30. Are they holding on to something in the past? Can he or she forgive?

Not really, if anything, he’s still upset about what their mother did to him and his sister. He would never forgive her for this

31. Does your character have children? How do they feel about their parental role? About the children? How do the children relate?

He doesn’t have kids but would love to have them some day!!!

32. How does your character react to stress situations? Defensively? Aggressively? Evasively?He’s pretty level headed and calm

33. Do they drink? Take drugs? What about their health? 

He’s pretty healthy, if anything, he could cut back on sweets

34. Does your character feel self-righteous? Revengeful? Contemptuous?

He’s kind of Revengeful mostly because of his family, but thats about it

35. Do they always rationalize errors? How do they accept disasters and failures?

He’s pretty hard on himself when he fails, but also just kind of shrugs it off

36. Do they like to suffer? Like to see other people suffering?

NO NO NO NO. HE DOESNT WANT ANYONE TO SUFFER

37. How is your character’s imagination? Daydreaming a lot? Worried most of the time? Living in memories?

He’s worried alot, and kind of overthinks things alot.

38. Are they basically negative when facing new things? Suspicious? Hostile? Scared? Enthusiastic?

He’s really enthusiastic but has become very skeptical

39. What do they like to ridicule? What do they find stupid?

They find negativity and rudeness extremely stupid and unnecessary 

40. How is their sense of humor? Do they have one?

He doesn’t make a to of jokes, but loves hearing them

41. Is your character aware of who they are? Strengths? Weaknesses? Idiosyncrasies? Capable of self-irony?

He’s not very aware of a lot of things with himself, He often underestimates himself a ton. Especially with his looks and charm.

42. What does your character want most? What do they need really badly, compulsively? What are they willing to do, to sacrifice, to obtain?

He wants his three sisters to be safe and happy. He would do anything to make that happen. 

43. Does your character have any secrets? If so, are they holding them back?

He kind of thinks he doesn’t deserve his girlfriend

44. How badly do they want to obtain their life objectives? How do they pursue them?

He wants nothing more than to avenge his sister

45. Is your character pragmatic? Think first? Responsible? All action? A visionary? Passionate? Quixotic?

He’s very responsible but can be kind of a worry-wort at times

46. Is your character tall? Short? What about size? Weight? Posture? How do they feel about their physical body? 

He’s tall- 6′4″ pretty buff, but not like bodybuilder kind, more lean. He likes his body

47. Do they want to project an image of a younger, older, more important person? Does they want to be visible or invisible? 

He kind of wishes he presented himself as older, but kind of still seems like he’s in his young 20′s. He normally wishes he would just blend in

48. How are your character’s gestures? Vigorous? Weak? Controlled? Compulsive? Energetic? Sluggish?

Kind of nervous and energetic

49. What about voice? Pitch? Strength? Tempo and rhythm of speech? Pronunciation? Accent?

His voice is pretty strong , but kinda higher. Not too high though. 

50. What are the prevailing facial expressions? Sour? Cheerful? Dominating?

When being serious, he’s mastered the stone cold expression, but when relaxed he always kinda has a big goofy grin.

Thanks to @middy399   for having me do this whole thing for my husband.

[clubofinfo]

Expert: I’ve often wondered about the limits of activist’s reach and the lack of coherent, organized progressive social movements in the US. Does it come down to the precarious nature of our jobs, the stress, strain, and exhaustion caused by the realization of being a paycheck away from penury? Or is it all the fault of our monopolistic media, with the puppet strings controlled by their advertisers, the corporate giants and multinationals? Is it geographic distance from Europe where socialism advanced far broader and deeper into society? Could it be the anti-communist Red Scare that dominated the binary and delusional cold war mindset? Was it the very real threat and use of violence via COINTELPRO, and overseas with Operations Gladio, Condor, etc? Is it deeper psychological issues stemming from the trauma of having to grow up in a cold capitalist world which leads to false consciousness? It would seem to be a mixture of all of the above. Yet millions of citizens still are able to see through the mendacities inherent in our empire, in our collective cultural death-wish, and many millions more would be able to if provided the education, tools, and resources to see through the lies of our global system of capital. Activists and educators must reconsider their approaches in light of the repeated failures of international progressive organizations. In short, part of the failure lies with the leadership of non-profits, NGOs, community leaders, and the type of worldview they adhere to. For one, unstable vertical hierarchies are reproduced, with not enough feedback from concerned citizens and community-based, small-scale pressure groups. Also, technocrats and lawyers are relied far too heavily upon to perform band-aid, stopgap procedures in the social and environmental justice fields. Endless petitions and protests are planned which do not lead to fundamental change. Organization in the majority of so-called progressive movements mimics the neoliberal order. Pedestals and soapboxes are lined up for the official learned classes, who are offered cushy positions to run vote campaigns, to lobby (beg) a corrupt Congress or Parliament to do the right thing. This is turn creates a new split between the middle-class non-profit lawyers, campaigners, and managers; and the working class constituencies, which only fuels social division and alienation. These maladies contribute to the false consciousness of the mostly liberal, white, middle-class, urbane, college-educated non-profit and social justice managerial class, as well as progressive activists. All of the racist, sexist, and classist baggage is carried alongside these organizations, as we can see so clearly in the faux “progressive” areas like Silicon Valley. Let us take this line of thought further. I believe the lack of rigor and effectiveness also shows up with so-called radical activists and intellectuals who believe they are sincerely committed to revolution. It works in a few ways: radicals take on the feelings of others in unhealthy ways, bottling up anger and sadness that legitimately occurs and is expressed in subaltern groups. Another point involves the expectation of success, the attachment to pet projects and the personal rage that spills out when failure occurs. US progressive and radicals are, for the most part, not versed in modern scientific advancements, ecology, or Eastern traditions. There is no tolerance for balance, paradox, and contradiction. Most are stuck on treadmills and attached to their egos and personas. Then there is the problem of speed: trying to catch up with every travesty the establishment and corporations impose on us (playing defense), as if one could bail out a sinking Titanic with a bucket. There is the notion of taking on social justice burdens as a very Christian-like type of “work”, instead of blending work and play into a post-modern, post-coercive labor environment that could put humankind on a type of threshold, a liminal state, towards a saner society of free association and mutual aid which could end much unnecessary suffering. Running in Circles There is most likely an inverse relationship between how seriously one takes oneself and one’s wisdom. The most serious among us are almost undoubtedly the least wise. The vast majority of the endless running around from protests or events or conferences or speaking engagements are just a series of distractions. There are appropriate times for all those things, to be sure. Yet it must be noted that the predominant mode of liberals, leftists, and progressives is predicated on constantly reacting to and diagnosing mainstream culture, rather than arriving at any original prescriptions for changing society. Many people in the US of all political persuasions are quite aware of the near terminal nature of politics: and many are looking for a model that works. The diagnosis has been made countless times. People are ready for an alternative to our broken system.  Obviously, with no capital this is nearly impossible for poor and marginalized communities.  An international network of direct action, worker co-ops, and communal agriculture must begin as soon as possible to fight neoliberal economics and the looming challenges of climate change. Brecht’s Stance A few years ago, I stumbled across Bertolt Brecht’s Stories of Mr. Keuner. The first passage is entitled “What’s wise about the wise man is his stance.” Here is the full passage: A philosophy professor came to see Mr. K and told him about his wisdom. After a while Mr. K said to him: ‘You sit uncomfortably, you talk uncomfortably, you think uncomfortably.’ The philosophy professor became angry and said: ‘I didn’t want to hear anything about myself but about the substance of what I was talking about.’ ‘It has no substance,’ said Mr. K. ‘I see you walking clumsily and, as far as I can see, you’re not getting anywhere. You talk obscurely, and you create no light with your talking. Seeing your stance, I’m not interested in what you’re getting at.’ Now we’re getting somewhere! As Sean Carney explains in Brecht and Critical Theory: Dialectics and Contemporary Aesthetics: The most important thing to draw from Brecht’s play, then, is the attitude it displays, which Brecht also calls a kind of wisdom that is performed or staged for us. It seems important here to distinguish between the form of wisdom, and the content of wisdom. Brecht, for his part, is concerned only with the former, the posture of wisdom, wisdom as an action. The form of this wisdom is dialectical and historical. There is no space to flesh out all the implications here. A few thoughts will have to suffice. When Western activists scream, “Rise up!” they should be reminded: “Sit down.” Always consider the antithesis. Slowing down, sitting: calling for nationwide wildcat general strikes would do much greater good than marching around with placards along predetermined protest routes. When others shout “Speak out,” we can remind them: be silent (just imagine kids in school refusing to speak the pledge of allegiance or taking a knee in high school sports in solidarity with Kaepernick). When protestors implore: “Wake up,” they can also be chided and reminded: “Keep dreaming!” (of a genuine revolution, not stopping the imagination at some milquetoast progressive reforms led by the DSA or other pseudo-leftists, which, while helpful, do not go nearly far enough). I am not advocating not speaking truth to power here, or any escapism, only that in certain cases we should ignore the constant dramas and tragedies engendered by the corporate ruling-class and focus on building parallel structures and intentional communities to bust an escape hatch from global tyranny. Non-striving It should be recognized that many so-called “radicals” mimic the striving, combative, and authoritarian nature of the neoliberal order. Raised in an ultra-competitive society, some proponents of revolution refuse the inner work necessary while clinging to whatever social capital or insignificant platform one can muster up. We live in a culture of constant striving, clinging, petty jealousness and egomaniacal childishness. It is no wonder that it shows up on many outlets of progressive outlets as well as on social media, and in activist circles. Instead, we should begin the work of instilling a radical patience. Not because we have a lot to time left to act (we assuredly don’t), but because attaching oneself to unobtainable goals in the very short term only has the effect of tiring out and disillusioning many sincere people. Western activists could learn something by practicing non-attachment. Only by giving up hope can we become present in the moment. This has continually been best expressed among Buddhists. As Pema Chodron writes: As long as we’re addicted to hope, we feel that we can tone our experience down or liven it up or change it somehow, and we continue to suffer a lot. In a non-theistic state of mind, abandoning hope is an affirmation, the beginning of the beginning. You could even put ‘Abandon Hope’ on your refrigerator door instead of more conventional aspirations like ‘Everyday in everyway, I’m getting better and better.’ We hold onto hope and it robs us of the present moment. If hope and fear are two different sides of the same coin, so are hopelessness and confidence. If we’re willing to give up hope that insecurity and pain can be exterminated, then we can have the courage to relax with the groundlessness of our situation. Thus, this brutally honest reflection (on our individual lives, but also on the fate of our civilization as we hurtle into the Anthropocene) leads to self-love, joy, and to vulnerability. This is a baseline for giving our collective culture what Rollo May called The Courage to Create. May contrasts happiness (in this sense a cessation of wants, a sense of security) with basic joy (quoted here): Happiness is related to security, to being reassured, to doing things as one is used to and as our fathers did them. Joy is a revelation of what was unknown before. Happiness often ends up in a placidity on the edge of boredom. Happiness is success. But joy is stimulating, it is the discovery of new continents emerging within oneself…Happiness is the absence of discord; joy is the welcoming of discord as the basis of higher harmonies. Happiness is finding a system of rules which solves our problems; joy is taking the risk that is necessary to break new frontiers. One cannot understand joy without noting the sense of timelessness: the past, present, and future all converging into the present moment. Athletes, artists, scientists, and others call this “flow” or “being in the zone.” Time moves more slowly, certainly everyone has experienced this phenomenon at one point or another. Relativity has proven that this is possible, as well as studies in consciousness, meditation, and psychedelics. Is any of this useful as a guide towards activism today? I will leave it to you to decide. Is it possible to “create light” when you speak, or be in tune with “higher harmonies?” Time Regarding time, we can turn to Brecht’s friend, Walter Benjamin, and his notion of the Jetztzeit. In order to break free from “homogenous, empty time,” which, notably, Francis Fukuyama unintentionally expressed so well as the ever-looming backdrop to the neoliberal era in The End of History, Benjamin writes that society must struggle towards “the messianic zero-hour of events, or put differently, a revolutionary chance in the struggle for a suppressed past.” That is to say, only by looking backwards in time can we assess the damages of the present age, even as the storm of progress pushes us further away from mending the wreckage, as Benjamin explains Klee’s Angelus Novus. Only in the zero-hour, the ever-present moment, can we blast open a historic event. This explains Benjamin’s concept of the monad, a “constellation overflowing with tensions.” On the Horizon Does any modern science conform to these ideas of reality as a constellation of energy and matter, something like Benjamin’s monad, influenced by Leibniz, overflowing with possibilities, tensions, and constant flux? Put another way, are there are empirical/scientific fields which show a healthy stance or posture of wisdom? Here we turn to some of the modern science that corroborates what people like Benjamin, the German Idealists, process philosophy, Leibniz, and before him, Spinoza, Heraclitus, Lao Tzu, and various Eastern traditions have contributed to: a systems view of life and the universe that explains phenomena holistically. In a nurturing system such as this, cross-discipline studies would expand, converge, and enrich social life and ecosystem health. In many ways, modern science shows a return to the old ways of knowing: concepts in relativity and quantum mechanics were foreseen millennia ago, such as in Buddhism’s principle of dependent co-arising, for example. Chaos Theory Some of the greatest 20th century scientists were: Einstein, Watson and Crick, Margulis and Lovelock. Yet the most influential of all may turn out to be the little known meteorologist, Edward Lorenz, pioneer of chaos theory, the butterfly effect, and the strange attractor. For a thorough introduction, James Gleick’s Chaos is a great start. For those mathematically inclined, I recommend Manfred Schroeder’s Fractals, Chaos, Power Laws. It is this system-view approach that can explain, even, the formation of life on this planet: self-organizing proto-nucleotides and amino acids along with fatty membranes and mitochondria/chloroplasts which gave rise to the first unicellular organisms. It is these non-linear dynamics which do, in fact, create higher harmonies- Poincare’s three body problem being the first modern example. In non-linear systems based on power laws, when the variable in the function passes a certain limit (dependent upon the initial conditions), the function starts to behave chaotically. The next figure cannot be predicted from previous answers. Eventually, a bifurcation will occur: this simply means that further on in the progression, the function bounces back between two figures, back and forth. If the parameter is pushed higher, period-doubling occurs: this simply means that instead of bouncing between two numbers, the function doubles to bounce between four, then eight, 16, etc. This applies to many dynamic systems and can start with any integer, so depending upon the function, you could have period doubling of 3, 6, twelve; four, eight, 16, etc. Period halving is possible, too. The scientist Robert May was the first to prove this in population biology, and many fields have found it a useful tool for studying dynamic systems since. The point I want to make clear is in regard to climate and weather: all climate scientists and meteorologists accept weather cannot be predicted after 3 weeks, weather is inherently chaotic, yet climate, for now, is stable. Without significant changes, the positive feedback loops currently warming the planet will eventually push the relatively stable, homeostatic climate model into the “Hot house Earth” model. Wild changes in weather are more likely to occur. Not only that, but much higher-level droughts and flooding will occur more frequently; i.e., climatic normality may switch into an non-linear, chaotic state. In the US, the Southwest in particular will be hit hard. Consider central Arizona, where the ancient Hokoham population could have reached 80,000 around 1300 CE. The area around Phoenix could have provided for 10,000 people. You make think, well, that was before modern irrigation and food transportation. You would be wrong. The Hokoham were masterful farmers with over 500 miles of canals and estimates of over 100,000 acres of cultivated, irrigated land. Today, metro Phoenix has approximately 4.7 million people. This won’t end well. By 2050, much of Arizona and the wider region could be ghost towns. The second point: self-similarity is inherent in nature at many scales, as observed in fractals. How does this apply to culture? Direct democracy can be implemented at all scales (local, from worker councils to communal town meetings; to international, with a trans-national body such as a re-imagined UN.) Chaos theory applies to the brain as well: there is evidence that psychedelics reform and rearrange new connections of neurons, changing the “criticality” of its structural firings. This is what is able to cure patients of depression, anxiety, PTSD, etc., by changing the flow of thoughts and giving a wider expression, to get your mind out of a rut or a bad habit of harmful/fearful thinking. There is plenty of sociological and anthropological evidence that mimetic theory (pioneered by Rene Girard) has some merit. Mostly, this is studied cross-culturally (horizontally), but we should consider the vertical dimension of hierarchies: at levels of coercion and exploitation are imitated at all scales of the socio-economic pyramid. The ruthless hierarchy was not that different between the mind-numbing conformity and bureaucratic chicanery of state-capitalist countries, contrasted with the crushing alienation and faux-competitive crony capitalism of neoliberal nations. If the structure is rotten at the top, most state and local governments mimic and take their cue from the power relations above them. This played out very clearly on the international level after 9/11 and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Once the Patriot Act, NDAA, and AUMF were passed, once NATO and ISAF forces invaded Afghanistan, with troops and spooks using “rendition”, “enhanced interrogation techniques”, with nighttime raids on civilians, and outright drone murder was rolled out by the US, other nations followed suit, with a rash of authoritarian copycat legislation, as well as police and military brutality playing out around the globe. For instance, the uptick in violence by Israel in 2002-2003 during the second Intifada is telling. Without the September 11 attacks and the relentless anti-Muslim propaganda coming from the US, there is little doubt that the IDF would have been so emboldened. On a positive note, it’s quite telling, and appropriate, that the self-similar snail shell (caracol) became the emblem of the Zapatistas, and the model for their communities. Rebecca Solnit explains this well, and quotes a wonderful passage from Marcos, who draws from his folk hero, “Old Antonio”: The wise ones of olden times say that the hearts of men and women are in the shape of a caracol, and that those who have good in their hearts and thoughts walk from one place to the other, awakening gods and men for them to check that the world remains right. They say that they say that they said that the caracol represents entering into the heart, that this is what the very first ones called knowledge. They say that they say that they said that the caracol also represents exiting from the heart to walk the world…. The caracoles��will be like doors to enter into the communities and for the communities to come out; like windows to see us inside and also for us to see outside; like loudspeakers in order to send far and wide our word and also to hear the words from the one who is far away. Contradiction, Paradox, Nuance There is a great passage in an old Marcos communiqué, “The retreat is making us almost scratch at the sky.” As the echo chambers, petty infighting, and silos build up on the Left, I thought it’d be appropriate to share his thoughts on how to respond to those fearful of heterodox-postmodern-non-ideological-anarchic stances: After these confessions, he of the voice was exhorted to spontaneously declare himself innocent or guilty of the following series of accusations. To each accusation, he of the voice responded: The whites accuse him of being dark. Guilty The dark ones accuse him of being white. Guilty The authentics accuse him of being indigenous. Guilty The treasonous indigenous accuse him of being mestizo. Guilty The machos accuse him of being feminine. Guilty The feminists accuse him of being macho. Guilty The communists accuse him of being anarchist. Guilty The anarchists accuse him of being orthodox. Guilty The Anglos accuse him of being Chicano. Guilty The antisemitics accuse him of being in favor of the Jews. Guilty The Jews accuse him of being pro-Arab. Guilty The Europeans accuse him of being Asiatic. Guilty The government officials accuse him of being oppositionist. Guilty The reformists accuse him of being ultra. Guilty The ultras accuse him of being reformist. Guilty The “historical vanguard” accuses him of calling to the civic society and not to the proletariat. Guilty The civic society accuses him of disturbing their tranquility. Guilty The Stock Exchange accuses him of ruining their breakfast. Guilty The government accuses him of increasing the consumption of antiacids in the government’s Departments. Guilty The serious ones accuse of being a jokester. Guilty The adults accuse him of being a child. Guilty The children accuse him of being an adult. Guilty The orthodox leftists accuse him of not condemning the homosexuals and lesbians. Guilty The theoreticians accuse of being a practitioner. Guilty The practicioners accuse of being a theorist. Guilty Everyone accuses him of everything bad that has happened. Guilty” I take inspiration from this; I see a sort of playfulness, a glimpse of his “inner child”. Today, we could also say: to those who, without nuance, accuse others of being heretics or dogmatic; to those who would accuse us of rather having a messy, non-violent, and imperfect revolution on the streets rather than continue to perpetuate a self-congratulatory, alienating, bloviating, insular, suffocating, and self-defeating movement in substance and style, we must reply: we are Guilty. Quantum Theory Our understanding of reality and consciousness has grown by leaps and bounds with advances in quantum physics. The parallels between Eastern thought and quantum mechanics are uncanny, and no one has explained this better than Fritjof Capra in his bestseller The Tao of Physics. Exploring connections between the sub-atomic world and Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist philosophy, Capra takes the reader on a tour-de-force. Of course, it was the early physicists who worked on the uncertainty principle, double-slit experiment (wave-particle duality), complementarity, and quantum superpositioning who originally noted the connections between Eastern philosophies. Thus, consciousness and the observer effect somehow influences these experimental designs in ways science currently has no answer for. Capra synthesizes this and builds upon these models: he insists on the interrelationship operating at certain scales of reality, and calls it a holistic/ecological worldview in his afterword to the 3rd edition. There has been lots of push-back from other physicists since 1975 when the first edition appeared. The science is not in debate at the sub-atomic scale, rather, how it applies to the macroscopic world is what is at stake. There are plenty of scientists that dismiss Capra completely without acknowledging the very qualified, modest theory he put forward. The new revelations about quantum entanglement push this line of thought further. The basic idea is: two electrons become “entangled” where the spin of one is connected with the other regardless of distance. When one electron’s spin is measured, the second spin correlates instantaneously, faster than the speed of light. This is what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance.” Non-locality is another name. This flies in the face of the fundamentals laws of physics. So what does this mean? The best analogy I can come up with (paraphrasing from someone, somewhere) is that when measuring (observing) the first particle, you are pushing through the fabric of space-time with your finger to “touch” the second particle at the same time, bypassing the physical distance between the two. What are the implications here? Physicists insist this phenomenon doesn’t “scale up” to the macroscopic level. If we look at today’s level of scientific knowledge in physics, they’re right. There is little evidence to suggest this. Yet, the simple fact that this can occur on sub-atomic levels is staggering. No one knows where these new teachings will take us.  Certainly, though, there are parallels with shamanic/animistic ways of thinking, or, to put it in the words of Stephen Hawking: “every particle and every force in the universe contains information, an implicit answer to a yes-no question.” However, this interpenetration of levels/worlds in the social and mental realms, is quite pronounced, say, in medical facts. The higher rates of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, in poor and working class communities as well as for minorities is tied to the mental strain and stress of living in substandard housing without proper nutrition, lack of access to education, etc. African American women are 3-4 times more likely to lose children in childbirth compared to white women, due to lack of pre-natal care, and sometimes because their doctors won’t listen to them. Women who’ve suffered a heart attack are more likely to survive if their doctor is a woman, rather than a man. Again, because women doctors are generally: more competent, listen to patients’ symptoms better, and show higher emotional intelligence and compassion. Gaia Theory Turning to Earth systems, it was the pioneering work of Lynn Margulis and James Lovelock who together formulated Gaia theory. Thinking of the Earth as a self-regulating super-organism is helpful in many fields, from geology to climate science to evolutionary biology. From the simple-programming of Lovelock’s Daisyworld, today we can model ecosystem resiliency, albedo effects in the Arctic Sea, and deforestation in tropical rain forests, the lungs of the Earth, all in terms of feedback loops which can tie into trends such as global warming, species extinction, desertification, and declining biodiversity. Scientists are now willing to combine the shocking implications of chaos theory within Gaia: in the journal Nature Barnosky et al. write of “Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere.” The authors write that “the plausibility of a future planetary state shift seems high” and they acknowledge the uncertainty about when it may happen. They also point out: “it is extremely unlikely or impossible for the system to return to its previous state.” Thus, if a hothouse Earth scenario becomes a reality, there will be no going back. Real estate speculation on Antarctica could be a thing in 100 years. There are reasons to be hopeful. One line of thought was taken up recently by Bruno Latour, who along with a co-author, postulate what they call Gaia 2.0. Simply put, they are referring to a global system where: …deliberate self-regulation—from personal action to global geoengineering schemes—is either happening or imminently possible. Making such conscious choices to operate within Gaia constitutes a fundamental new state of Gaia, which we call Gaia 2.0. By emphasizing the agency of life-forms and their ability to set goals, Gaia 2.0 may be an effective framework for fostering global sustainability. While they posit this self-conscious biomimetic planning of bioregions as new, because they see it as the first chance to endeavor to perform this on a global scale, the novelty only really applies to a certain brand of Eurocentric/anthropocentric materialists, anti-intellectual monotheists, and other deniers of common sense and basic ecology. Indigenous groups have used bioregional eco-friendly practices for millennia, with First Nations sustainably caretaking land from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic Circle. Consider terra preta in Amazonia, the miraculous change from teosinte to maize which many estimate domestication circa 9000 years ago, mountain terracing in the Andes, super-high productivity with Central American milpas, multiyear field rotation for fallow lands to rejuvenate nutrients, seasonal burns throughout North America which increased deer and upland game bird populations, with agroforestry “forest farming” of chestnut (Chestnut Trees could produce over a ton per acre in vast portions of America before the die-off occurred), hickory, butternut, oak (acorns are used as a food source removing tannins with water) and more. Not to mention the thousands of uses of native plants and fungi for herbal/traditional medicine, preventive/holistic care, and shamanic/spiritual uses. I would say one of the most interesting debates about what Gaia 2.0 could look like is mostly ignored, because it is occurring on the far side of the globe: Aotearoa, aka New Zealand. Their government has already launched a “Predator Free” program for 2050, where all mammalian predators are hoping to be eliminated with a variety of programs forming in the near future. Intense debate surrounds the gene drive approach, some techniques using CRISPR and some using other gene editing technology, to in effect, using genetic manipulation, create all male future generations of predators and thus, lead to localized extinction of these mammals in Aotearoa and its small outlying islands. The bioethics are being debated by UN and national groups and many conservation groups are totally against the idea. Some Maori are open to the possibilities of gene-drive technology, yet they understandably critique the bad faith of the scientists involved, citing: [An] increasing lack of cultural accountability in academic journals who seem happy to publish anything without thought, consideration, or commentary from the communities those papers have extracted from, taken swipe at, or made promises to… The second issue is what I deem bad research-dating behaviour, or rather how to build respectful relationships with indigenous peoples/communities… Relatively few, however, are actually committed to investing their time into building long-term relationships, despite being continually told that that is what is required… However, some researchers by-and-large continue to push an extractive model whereby they attempt to take intellectual property from communities in return for ‘the greater research good’. This model is naïve to the political situations that indigenous communities are operating in, and often places those communities in culturally unsafe positions. Fritjof Capra notably calls the first step in transitioning to such a state of ecological awareness and cultural sensitivity “eco-literacy” and the next step eco-design. He’s on point. The funny, sad, and tragic thing (to me at least) is that exposes the orthodox technophile Western Left (seemingly the majority) as supporters of what many like to call Industrialism, the over-arching system, including capitalism and state socialism, of fossil fuel exploitation which is killing the planet. According to the technophile proponents of unrestrained instrumental reason, many of us, well, sane and sensible people, who, in advocating for appropriate-scale technology, have the basic common sense to understand that Small is Beautiful, are a bunch of Luddites, crazy hippies, anti-civ, lifestylists, primitivists, nihilists, and/or misanthropes. This type of thinking exposes the narrowness and superficiality of many “Leftists” who espouse all the right mantras, yet never bothered to take Marx’s example and actually study and stay abreast with key scientific and ecological advances. I try my best to remain calm, patient, and equanimous, yet it is difficult with unabashed technophiles- again, possibly the majority of what qualifies as what’s left of the Left. There is a discomfort from listening to the droning on of progressives, and also many banal Leftist economists and historians who pay lip service to sustainability, while not even giving token acknowledgment of the nature of spiritual transformation required. Many of these people, even on “progressive” alternative media, are unaware of their own immiseration via lack of engagement with the natural world, which I take no pleasure in pointing out, so my queasiness doesn’t qualify as schadenfraude, but apparently, there is another German word for what I’ve been feeling: Fremdschämen: “‘exterior shame’, for those of you who cringe in phantom pain when others make a fool of themselves, this is your word. It describes the feeling of shame when seeing someone else in an uncomfortable or embarrassing situation.” Perhaps Mr. Keuner was feeling this, as well. Planting Seeds Well, there is no high note to end this on. Most of activism goes towards wasting time attempting to change the minds of adults whose conditioning and social infantilization have already reached epic proportions. There is no systemic, global plan for engaging the youth in ecological-cultural restorative practices. This is absolutely ridiculous and a severe oversight of academia, including lackadaisical teachers and administrators, as well as conservatives and liberal-progressives who insist on vote-campaigns and the wonders of traditional higher education which indoctrinates and obfuscates class issues: yet the idea of revolutionizing public education never crosses their minds. Revolutionary artists have always understood this, as well as indigenous tribal societies and many poor and working class communities. Yet today, the hungry ghosts of global capitalism are here to consume the sustenance and life force of future generations in an era where information is at our fingertips as never before. The current education model effectively imprisons children in unsafe and unhealthy schools, with psychotropic drugs, authoritarian teachers, mind-numbing boredom and ennui functioning as social conditioning for a future hellscape with billions in poverty worldwide, no decent jobs, benefits, or forms of belonging; alongside a crushing tyranny of corporate rule, oligarchy, global war, climate chaos, and a culture ruled by a principle of “repressive tolerance.” Thus, it is inevitable that the most important thing to do is raise our children in a healthy way. This will require social engagement on a spiritual, intellectual, communal, emotional and material basis (i.e., sharing extra housing for homeless and low-income families, paying child-rearing adults a living wage for their time and labor, equal pay for women, ending oppression against the LGBTQ community, serious environmental education, etc.). Patriarchy and racism will not be solved, until youth are gifted the freedom and opportunity to pursue their passions unencumbered by structurally racist and sexist policies which enforce hierarchy, capitalism, and war, until pathetic guidelines advocating rote memorization in school are abandoned, and crippling conformity fueled by vapid pop culture and the psychically numbing effect of social media is no longer glorified. Poverty, war, and disease cannot be significantly lowered or eliminated without a fundamentally redistributive model. Furthermore, some sort of restorative healing measures, including some sort of reparations for minorities, including but not limited to redistributing money, property, land, and the means of production, via a process truth and reconciliation in the public sphere, is absolutely crucial. This would necessarily coincide with the dissolving of corporate and state power. Public and private land must be given back to citizens: we are only free when given the ability to use the means of production to transform corporate agriculture into communal, appropriately-scaled endeavors where communities can directly and deliberatively interact, and transform as need be, to the world-historical changes (climatically, ecologically, and socially) on the immediate horizon. This would seem to entail relaxing the grip of the Apollonian style of “emotionless” pure logic (techne/episteme), and instrumental reason; and coming to terms with the obverse: the Dionysian, where the shamanic/animistic, nomadic, and anarchic ways of being are accepted. This shift, with the science to back it up, is seen in a many counter-culture belief systems: the push for radical intersubjectivity, expanding studies of the realms of consciousness, a hylozoic belief system, and formulating a new model of recognition (see Taylor, Fraser, Honneth, Butler, among others) which does not re-invigorate the power of capital. There is no hope of this happening in today’s 24/7 mainstream media, driven by fear and sensationalism. Only a world-historical process, a paradigm shift, can overturn this momentum, which would require inner work to be done on a mass scale in the Western world alongside collective general strikes, debt jubilees, a bit of carnivalesque (Bakhtin)/festival/regional cultural appreciation/in the spirit of a Communitas, and a counter-cultural force which does not overly privilege the economic at the expense of other social struggles. This critical way of teaching is a sort of “stance”: a tendency towards what Aristotle called eudaimonia, “the good life,” informed by virtue, areté. Another way of phrasing it would be “human flourishing,” and here this referred to a moral sensibility, but also an aesthetic, a form of posture or “stance” if you will, an art of living, a way of (Hölderlin-esque) dwelling poetically upon the Earth. From another angle, we could consider this a search for The Ethics of Authenticity. As Charles Taylor describes, what is structurally called for is: …a many leveled struggle, intellectual, spiritual, and political, in which the debates in the public arena interlink with those in a host of institutional settings, like hospitals and schools, where the issues of enframing technology are being lived through in concrete form; and where these disputes in turn both feed and are fed by the various attempts to define in theoretical terms the place of technology and the demands of authenticity, and beyond that, the shape of human life and its relation to the cosmos. Yet, again, this type of work should get started by educating children, because under the current conditions of liberal democracy, there is no acknowledgment of “interlinking”. There is only the autonomous individual: at least understood by most adults, whose notion of civic duty is voting, or volunteer work, or donating to charity. Rather, youth could be asked to inquire, as Rudy Rucker wondered: One might also ask whether a person is best thought of as a distinct individual or as a nexus in the web of social interaction. No person exists wholly distinct from human society, so it might seem best to say that the space of society is fundamental. On the other hand, each person can feel like an isolated individual, so maybe the number-like individuals are fundamental. Complementarity says that a person is both individual and social component, and that there is no need to try to separate the two. Reality is one, and language introduces impossible distinctions that need not be made. We can imagine a single cell in our body asking itself the same question: am I an individual or just part of a wider integrated whole? We can shift the scale but the self-similarity always follows: it’s turtles all the way down. This famous saying, of course, echoes what we know about fractals, and the possibility that we’re in a multiverse. There are also the First Nation stories about Spider Woman, or Grandmother Spider, who created the world. Again, we find the notion of the web- the basis of our bio/psycho/social being, and also a connection to string theory: spider-woman’s creation song; i.e. vibrations held by interconnected threads. My preferred analogy to the individual/social false binary is mycological (or rhizomatic, though I’ll save D+G for another day): our conception of ourselves (ego) is the mushroom, the fruiting body which rises above the soil, while the unconscious mycelium sustains us below the surface. Although we stand above the detritus (wreckage, as Benjamin says) we are deeply enmeshed in it, history “is not even past” and it feeds, and thus can warp, our consciousness and sensibilities. Thus we must tend to the soil, nurture the sprouts and green shoots of this new culture. The meager results of our efforts can be depressing (April really can be the cruelest month) yet we must move on, without clinging to hope. As for the problem of language which Rucker mentioned, it’s worth reminding our sisters and brothers that propaganda is all around us today. As Malcolm X said: “If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” Now is the time for the “revaluation of all values.” The struggle continues. http://clubof.info/

[chaosunmasked-blog]

Here Come the Elephants

Annnnd I'm back. I am currently in the middle somewheresville at the Super Amazing Specialists Hospital. My trip has just started with a series of tests, which left me feeling conflicted. I have not seen any doctors yet, but my dip into the world where real people live has left me feeling angry and impatient.  

Yes, I will admit I have been mostly secluded since my last post. I have not talked to anyone besides my mom, the therapists and the imaginary people in my head. The sitting around unable to do anything remotely constructive or fun really wore down on me so much that I bought the SIMS 4 game and all the expansion packs. Yes, I did. Annnnd I also started reading some books that I bought. I started to fill fulfilled. I guess mostly because I felt like a real person again achieving my dreams via a simulation game. I lived like a normal person with normal personnish problems that was in control of my destiny. (SIMS can get a little weird.) But, it felt good. So, good I spent sleepless nights playing my game. The waiting game for a manageable solution to my chronic illness was no longer a problem.  

Now, it's a problem. I left the game behind, and now I'm slapped in the face with reality. In my first outing with my mom to a place where people actually lived on the beach, it was sobering. I realized that at this point, I should be out there living amongst these people. I should be ogling over my friends' children. I should be shopping for dream homes. I should be traveling, and I should be working. I should not become the next gen grown adult who still lives with their mother until she dies trope. But, I am. I truly am.  

Honestly, where do I stand in my medical care? Where do I stand in my progress towards a normal, independent adult life? The reality hit me like a brick. It was like a cold-back hand of a nor'easter after experiencing dreamlike 70 degree weather. I'm not even close. Like not even a year or so close. Some things are getting better such as my respiratory issues and joint pain. However, to maintain my respiratory gains, a large amount of time and energy is spent on respiratory therapy which makes it impossible to go back to school or hold a job. My muscles are becoming increasingly non-compliant. I can barely walk because my muscles hve gotten weaker and apparently less responsive. I also am developing some sort of peripheral vision loss on my left side (unofficially). Maybe, I might bring this up with my doctor? I don’t know.  

The truth is that in my younger days, it took me 1 ½ years to get back to somewhat normal. (After seeing a sneaky vid by my bro, my running needed some serious work.) But, I made it to the point where no one suspected I had any medical issues. However, I was in recovery mode at that point. Now, I feel like an old jalopy. You fix one part, but another part breaks apart. The lights are working but the transmission is still a mess. It sucks.  

This is not how I imagined my life. I thought I would be working, going out with my boyfriend, travelling the world, living on my own, reconnecting with old friends. But no, I'm the recluse with an addiction to playing SIMS because that is the only way I can truly live. Now, I finally get why paralyzed football players play MADDEN all day. It's because that is the closest thing to living that they will get. SIMS is like that for me, but I'm hoping I can still make progress.  

Another setback is due to how in the dark I am about my medical care. I don't know who's doing what, what my treatment plan looks like, what my trajectory in life would be like, how to become functional. I mean, I don't even have a disability parking pass. What the fuck to do now, is the question that has remained unanswered. I ask and ask, and all I get is, well don't worry about it. Just try to breathe. It'll work out. But the problem is that I have been breathing for five years not trying to worry about it. So, do I keep breathing or do I wake up from a yogi induced slumber and do something with what I've got?  

It's like. Life is passing me by. Unfortunately, I cannot get a do-over. (Even if I did, it probably wouldn't help due to the possibly genetic origins of my illness.) It's not like SIMS. I can't choose a new life, a new body on a whim and try something else. Why do people talk like that? I mean, shit. No matter who you are, you won't be 21 forever. The bills will come due, you age out of your parent's healthcare plan and the US completes its transformation into a dictatorial democracy. In time I'll be screwed, but no one is waking up yet. It's like the ridiculous solution to my dyspnea given to me by a doctor. Here's the exchange:

Doc: So, I've gone over the results, and it appears you have restrictive lung disease.

Me: What's causing it?

Doc: I don't know.

Me: Okay, so what do I do about it.  

Doc: Breathe deeper.

Me: I can't breathe deeper.  

Doc: Well, you've got to just breathe deeper. Let me know when you come up with something else that can help.

Me: *Staring dumbfounded as doctor walks out the door.* To myself: So am I going to die?

This is essentially the interaction I get, or it's essentially silence. Like when I asked one of the doctors at this Super Amazing Specialist Hospital, so what’s next? What can I do to improve? Still nothing much has come back. But, I am getting more tests done and more referrals from this doctor, so I guess it's something, but it is going too slow for me. By the time this doctor finishes the evaluation, I hope that I won't be stuck with a 6mths left to live death sentence.  

The question I would like to know is, will I die in the next year, or can I count on living for several decades. I need to know. Yes, nothing is certain, I could even die in the next second. But I need to know my odds to plan for the future. I want to go back to school, but should I go to the uber-expensive but totally worth it school, rack up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt that could be paid off over decades or pay off my remaining debt and try again in a couple of years for a school that I could pay off immediately. These are serious questions with serious consequences. The difference between leaving my parents destitute or leaving them with fuller wallets.  

Anyways, at least I don’t hear what I brave soul I am. I have to live at this point. Death is not an option because I don't want to leave debts that my parents or family have to pay for on my behalf. Co-signed loans can be a bitch when one party dies. I don't want that. I don’t want my parents last memory of me is being the one who forced them to sell all their belongings to pay for my debts. I am no warrior. I am but a cynical soul who no longer believes in the platitudes. They are useless in the face of bone-crushing, life-ending reality.  

Anyways, let us hope that tomorrow will lift my spirits. I have to remember to ask the tough questions like what is my prognosis like? What do you think this is? Should I even go to the doctors anymore since all they seem to do lately is fuck me up or collectively agree I am going to die and offer useless solutions like breathe deeper? What the fuck do I even have? Do I have other problems I should be aware of? (Seriously, according to my abnormal lab results it looks like kidney and liver failure are in my future. But, no one has discussed them with me, so I'm just making assumptions.)  What the hell do my local doctors do? What do I do?  

Likely will be met with pseudo-intellectual silence full of intense thought that will go on for centuries or most likely dissipate in a few hours. Or, possible given the useless label medically unexplained symptoms(MUS). Congrats! You have a diagnosis which will not get you any services that you need or guarantee appropriate treatment. It’s as good as nothing. Nothing. Nothing will be done unless you find the one human out of 1000 soulless doctors to take you on and try to figure out something. Otherwise, you're fucked.  

P.S. To all the future doctors out there labeling someone with MUS and sending them back to their clueless local doctors does not work. Give them a referral to someone else who might know an ounce more than their existing doctor. I did get sent back with MUS, but also treatment suggestions which were made to me privately, which undermined every relationship I had with my doctors in the middle of bumfuck somewhere. The only doctors who gave me a sympathetic ear so far. It's been great almost dying and not getting my medications filled on time. Just what you guys ordered!  

Anyways, here's to a better tomorrow. Hopefully, I'll be able to relay better news. Yeah, right. I know better. Peace.  

[clubofinfo]

Expert: Human Evolution of the Mind Is Like a Hind Teat on a Texas Bull… Here we are witnessing The Great Collective Amnesia of the Western World…. The great Forgetting, from the political crass class (total), intellectual wanderers (not all, but mostly all) and the general public (most, and these huge blocks against intelligence follow from generation to next generation with a fluidity equal to the amount of information – mostly junk – exponentially increasing on the world wide web and the number eye gazes at the weekly sales worldwide a la eBay, Amazon.dot.steal and any other number of aggregators and on-line scams) is like bubonic clouds in our industrial and post-industrial nations’ cortexes. The lack of intelligence is deep, to include all those drone makers, the data collectors, the A.I. freaks, the robotics innovators (AKA, people killers), the war makers, the profiteers of toxicity, and any other shill in the giant Facebook-Mass Suicide (intellect) Media Kingdom with their legions of grovelers in their armies of financial and investment classes. Forget History and Forego Other Peoples. This lack of humanness, which is defined by forced and accepted agnotology – large portions of the human fabric and the positive human condition propagandized into complete lies or chopped into meaningless vestiges, remnants of a complete whole – makes daily the thrust of thinking and saying in this country almost like peering into the looking glass. Confusion and anti-thought, anti-knowing. Thus, the deadening of intellect, atrophying of those so-called smarts, that is, as we hear and see from those Hollywood and Wall Street scum deeming what is and is not smart which includes anyone displaying electronic-coding-algorithmic skills or tinkering or hedge funding acumen, whatever modern business groper brings to the table. They are vapid, lacking true intellect which has always been tied to understanding history and knowing what is right and how to wrest control from the wrong-doers, and, of course, understanding the world, from sea to shining seabed, to lost tribe of Ecuador, to every beetle yet cataloged by science and shaman kind. The depth of stupidity and genuflecting to all-encompassing consumption (suicide) is astounding in its coverage and voracity. It’s a total great collective forgetting that is both serendipitous and planned, and our dementia has created untenable damage to the rest of the globe. Call it Stockholm Syndrome tied to our murderers’ well-being, their own sustainability while we frog-march into oblivion death marches. We just cannot keep from fawning and vaunting corporations and chemical eaters, war mongers, money cachetting freaks, living off the flesh of humanity. This is US, us-ay, USA, this overvalued by every measure exceptionalist country of the so-called tuned-in, wired-up, and dialed-in leaders of the Western World. Our collective raping and then impregnating the rest of the world with Disneyfication stupidity, and then riding that ol’ train a slow time comin’, but rest assuredly comin’ to all corners of the globe with the splash-splash of glaciers Humpty-Dumpty-ing into their own march to catastrophe, oblivion –this DEFINES us, USA! You Shit Here, Piss Here, Dump Your Dump Your Carcinogenic Offal Here . . . And We Get to the Now Generations! The gut reaction and media devolution around probably one of the most coalescing written pieces in the past few years on climate change-global catastrophe caused by humans polluting the planet with cooked up fossil fuels and the various feedback loops of methane releases and the reflectivity (albedo effect) of the earth’s surface going negative (our land masses and oceans sponges for heat, now) are in real time despicable. The flinging shit and mud against the writer and his written facts and projections are now embedded in the very nature of how humanity in this western dystopian paradise of constant growth (with entropy quickly back-filling that sickness) puts the he and the her and the they smack in the middle of creation, which is the middle of destruction. The amount of ire, hate, and condemnation tied to his thinking and pseudo marketing-psychology-rhetoric vilifying the piece by David Wallace-Wells (“The Uninhabitable Earth,” New York Magazine, 7/9/2017) is reflective of the insipid quality of thinking that has come to define the consumer-capitalist-predator investing/divesting society we have shaped and embraced for more than 60 years. This piece by Wallace-Wells has garnered absurd critiques in the so-called liberal-left greenie press, and the mainstream disastrous press, the pseudo journalism of the big great and digital kings on the east Coast vying for a new Zion in every nook and cranny of the bankster world. The usual libertarian and conservative suspects are trying to burn Wallace-Wells at the stake, for sure, since his article compiles thousands upon thousands of researchers’ work – that is, evidence and prognostications based on those many webs of writing about the research on climate change (which is a catch-all phrase for global warming, weather destabilization, climate uncertainty, geo-engineering, greenhouse gas expulsion through fossil fuel burning and the various parallel defamation of the earth mostly through deforestation and hyper urbanization/ consumption/over-population of Homo Erectus/ Sapiens/ Consumopithecus). Do we need a list of those thinkers and doers years ago who predicted the outcome of the despoiled commons and over-impregnating Homo Sapiens eating the edges and now the center of all the other species, who, in a quick nod, have so-so much to give than a billion “I Wanna Be A Star” cretins who can’t wait for the next and the next bloody mess viewable in the next Netflix world of lies. The subtitle of the piece, “Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak — sooner than you think,” has bristled the hackles of the me-myself-and-I bros and sisters, all from the various stripes of the political quagmire. Imagine, truth to power, truth to stupidity, truth against the prevailing Cellophane-wrapped essence of nano-particle humanity. Then the greenies start shedding their thin epidermis of green-o-atic colors to show the real flavor of their existence – eating cool, living cooler and propping up everything that is American. I’ve heard crap from Grist and so many other naysayers splaying (attempting, though) David Wallace-Wells’ thinking; many parts of the many numbers of NGO-like, non-profit “looking” environmental concerns (most are money-making harbors of war-loving, capitalism S & M driving nuts who love Hillary or even think Bernie is twenty-two degrees removed from the party he ran under) think going truthful and objective with the reality of the many dynamics tied to climate disruption which Wallace-Wells does, is worse than being a denier, than a Pence or Trump or any color of them ruling DC and the palaces of the stupids. I’ve been listening to our local Pacifica Station, KBOO-Portland, and today (7/19/17), on one show, Robert Hunziker, who wrote a piece, “Unhabitable Earth?” over at Dissident Voice talked about Wallace-Wells’ piece with Paul Roland, and, Hunziker is more or less right on, spot on, agreeing (to a degree, though) with the predictions and creative thought experiment David Wallace-Wells unfolds in a very prescient piece. Hunziker still has qualifiers, as is the style of the day – you know, us digital kings and writers having so much more with it and together than the real hard researchers and satirists. You have to give it to the ameliorating masses in the liberal class, the so-called environmentalists, and the shills that play this marketing/narrative framing/meme-ing game, saying that “too harsh a picture on the global negative implications of climate disaster can cause people to turn off and do nothing . . . scare them into paralysis . . . push them back to the all-you-can-eat/buy/consume/burn/immolate /dump/throw-away ways.” Yep, the so-called environmental b.s.-pushers, the majority of which are happy campers in their Subaru-tooling, Prius-loving, eco-capitalist REI lovefest, go on hyper-drive attack of this man’s well-reasoned and fabulously important piece of climate change writing. Hunziker and Roland on KBOO talked it out, about the Wallace-Wells piece, and the fallout. The call-in folk, well, they have so-so much mixed-up hope, and some cited Bill Gates as savior (those corporate Nazi saviors, don’t you know), or others talking geoengineering, you know, iron shavings by the millions of metric tons, dumped into the oceans, to, as most readers know, human engineer the planet to absorb CO2 – **“Iron fertilization is the intentional introduction of iron fines to iron-poor areas of the ocean surface to stimulate phytoplankton production. This is intended to enhance biological productivity and/or accelerate carbon dioxide (CO2) sequestration from the atmosphere.” ** The absurdity of this human ecocide on the oceans is telling, very telling. How we are living in our own shit and waste, tailings from the crimes of resource theft, the burning and slag piles smoking and curing our unborn, the stripped soils and exploded mountains beautiful images of earth gas chamber, diverted rivers to bred desertification, chemicalized water systems to cause death and migration, the entire mess of genetic engineering ready to latch onto the gene codes of the earth eaters, so perfectly captured in macrocosm with the example of salmon crossed at the DNA level with fat ass bass, and penned by the hundreds of thousands forced to eat soy and chicken entrails tablets. One good fishy example of humanity’s human shit and total species hate makes for emblematic ways to really show how warped a species we are. The ever-increasing Franken-fish/Franken-food/Franken-people experiments funded by tax monies, pushed by the controllers, yet average Joe and Jane Blow think this is the new normal. Then we have confused Rachel Maddows and Al Gores and the lot of them on their Van Jones high horses, empty of intelligence, blasphemers of the precautionary principle, small-minded and closed-headed people who look at a climate change article (which should be a triple-clarion call out) with real mettle, real predictions, not only poo-pooing it, but downright eviscerating the facts in order to play some full-of-shit narrative framing, shit, a la Freud and Bernays and Madison Avenue Zionist slave to consumerism shit. How much shit makes hubris and delusion capitalism? Imagine, the pencil necks at Grist (“Stop Scaring People About Climate Change: It Doesn’t Work”) attacking the reality, calling this man to task, for his look inside and outside at the real and unfolding possibilities of this that’s world a comin’, like a fast freight train a thousand miles long with every species ready for the Mother of All Dachaus — every species but that lying, raping, murdering, polluting, insane, blubbery, superstitious, vapid, inelegant Hominoid of modern atrocities. These people, advertising-seeking, for sure, and vetted by that political and non-profit enviro class so easily despised for their hypocrisy, they are grandstanding saying scaring doesn’t work? What sort of Wallace-Wells work is this writer leaning on, or wanting? It’s not his job to get people to revolt, overthrow, throw down, end the entire shooting match. “Quit scaring people” is so-so telling of the liberal class who gives shit about the illegal wars, the massive murders of millions by this empire, the massive deportations, massive destabilizations, massive inequities within their own shores. Almost anything coming out of their people’s cloud-digital-print asses is worth less than that one political orifice’s total value. Sanity Found Not Between the Lines, but in the Alarms and Emergency Sirens Apparent in the Words To give us a bit more to chew on without replicating the piece, here, the sectional titles of Wallace-Wells’ article: I. ‘Doomsday’ — Peering beyond scientific reticence. II. Heat Death — The bahraining of New York. III. The End of Food — Praying for cornfields in the tundra. IV. Climate Plagues –What happens when the bubonic ice melts? V. Unbreathable Air — A rolling death smog that suffocates millions. VI. Perpetual War  — The violence baked into heat. VII. Permanent Economic Collapse  — Dismal capitalism in a half-poorer world. VIII. Poisoned Oceans — Sulfide burps off the skeleton coast. IX. The Great Filter — Our present eeriness cannot last. Even the climate change piece looks at the rotten form that is capitalism, and the great day trading of the commons, the willingness of man to barter for more money with the future commons of ancestral havens. We’re talking war, too, rarely mentioned by greenies. War is the power, the engine, of greed, destabilization, the end of food, the lack of preparedness for everyone to adapt and adjust to the impending collapsed societies. Wallace-Wells nails it. Then, look at these opposing points of view, sick, really, spewing liberal elites with their pedigrees, whatever that means in this sell-out science landscape: “Doomsday Scenarios Are as Harmful as Climate Change Denial” By Michael E. Mann, Susan Joy Hassol and Tom Toles Analysis of “The Uninhabitable Earth” Published in New York Magazine, by David Wallace-Wells on 9 July 2017: Sixteen scientists (all male, all White/Christian/Jewish) analyzed (attacked) the article and estimated its overall scientific (what is this, really, in a sell-out world of science for their own profits) credibility to be ‘low’. (yet more mumbo-jumbo from the science arena). A majority of reviewers tagged the article as: Alarmist, Imprecise/Unclear, Misleading. This grouping of puke scientists, who we all must bow to, don’t you know, with their Ivy-League and powerhouse Stanford and Big 20 university laurels, well, they are vapid, untenable when you think about their own contexts – first world, elite, white, privileged, ivory towered, and never grasping the reality of an uneven world for not only their fellow billions, but for the entirety of the wild world. Hmm, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has been reporting a huge loss of population in thousands of vertebrate species. Researchers have studied 27,600 species of birds, amphibians, mammals and reptiles, finding huge losses in over 8,000 species. The animal species are not yet technically extinct, but the loss of numbers is severe enough to collapse breeding, viability, and their own roles in their eco-webs, let alone their own rights to exist on this planet. The findings mean that billions of animal populations that once roamed the Earth are now gone. This is the great Sixth Great Extinction of animal species caused by climate change and loss of habitat – all perpetrated by Man and Woman and “they”. “The sixth mass extinction is already here and the window for effective action is very short.” Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, continues: “If we continue the trend we’re on, we’re going to be looking at 50 to 75 percent of our species lost over the next hundred years.” Here’s what the capitalism-adoring Atlantic magazine says of the work of Wallace-Wells: It’s into that morass that this week’s New York magazine walks. In a widely shared article, David Wallace-Wells sketches the bleakest possible scenario for global warming. He warns of a planet so awash in greenhouse gas that Brooklyn’s heat waves will rival Bahrain’s. The breadbaskets of China and the United States will enter a debilitating and everlasting drought, he says. And millions of brains will so lack oxygen that they’ll slip into a carbon-induced confusion. Unless we take aggressive action, “parts of the Earth will likely become close to uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable, as soon as the end of this century,” he writes. “No matter how well-informed you are, you are surely not alarmed enough.” It’s a scary vision—which is okay, because climate change is scary. It is also an unusually specific and severe depiction of what global warming will do to the planet. And though Wallace-Wells makes it clear that he’s not predicting the future, only trying to spin out the consequences of the best available science today, it’s fair to ask: Is it realistic? Will this heat-wracked doomsday come to pass? Many climate scientists and professional science communicators say no. Wallace-Wells’s article, they say, often flies beyond the realm of what researchers think is likely. I have to agree with them. This is the tribe of elites, the publishing mainliners, the gatekeepers, controllers, the myopics and the critics of anything outside their own narrative frames – America good, or inherently good and all-knowing, all-solving, leaders of the world and technology and in ideas. Words like scary and vision and morass, oh, those wordsmiths, oh those literary kingpins of the big East Coast tribe. Humanity’s chosen people, these publishers and writers and editors and pundits and cultural icons. Here, from Wallace-Wells in an updated and annotated version of his piece: Since the article was published, we have made four corrections and adjustments, which are noted in the annotations (as well as at the end of the original version). They are all minor, and none affects the central project of the story: to apply the best science we have today to the median and high-end ‘business-as-usual’ warming projections produced by the U.N.’s ‘gold standard’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But the debate this article has kicked up is less about specific facts than the article’s overarching conceit. Is it helpful, or journalistically ethical, to explore the worst-case scenarios of climate change, however unlikely they are? How much should a writer contextualize scary possibilities with information about how probable those outcomes are, however speculative those probabilities may be? What are the risks of terrifying or depressing readers so much they disengage from the issue, and what should a journalist make of those risks? The End Game is Capitalism-Delusional Thinking-Soylent Green is People! Now, let’s get really real. How many minds were talking about no-growth, steady-state economics, the three e’s of sustainability (environment, equity, economy, in that fucking order!), small is better, de-industrializing, eco-socialism, and on and bloody on? Forget Muir, or Pinchot or Stegner or Rachel Carson or Mumford or Kunslter or Jane Jacobs or any number of proponents of fair and environmentally gauged communities. One part Wallace-Wells, another part, hmm, Derrick Jensen? While we face ‘hard choices’ about which species and ecosystems to conserve, it’s odd how we face no such quandaries over which of our frivolous luxuries to refrain from, or what murderous weapons system not to build, writes Derrick Jensen. This look at the hard choices of species and ecosystems, over pornography, sweat-shop clothes, next generation iPhones, animal-shit coffee, Ikea lasting six months, endless cruises and buffets, disposable internal combustion vehicles, jets and satellites and drones and backyard pools and chemical trails circling the globe and, well, you know what humanity is not willing to sacrifice! Sure, we’re supposed to choose whether to extirpate or save Bulmer’s fruit bats or Sumatran Rhinos, wild yams or hula painted frogs (with the default always being extirpate, of course); and we’re supposed to make careful delineations of how we choose who is exterminated, and who lives (at least until tomorrow, when we all know there’ll be another round of exterminations, complete with another round of wringing our hands over how difficult these decisions are, and another round of heartbreak; and then another round, and another, until there is nothing and no one left). But just as after Fukushima a Japanese energy minister said that nuclear energy must continue to be produced because no one “could imagine life without electricity”, so, too, entirely disallowed is any discussion of what technologies should be kept and what should be caused to go extinct. There’s no discussion of extirpating iPads, iPhones, computer technologies, retractable stadium roofs, insecticides, GMOs, the Internet (hell, Internet pornography), off-road vehicles, nuclear weapons, predator drones, industrial agriculture, industrial electricity, industrial production, the benefits of imperialism (human, American, or otherwise). That’s the rub, every single SOV day (single occupancy vehicle). I can’t even help my homeless and beaten-down young foster kids without being forced to drive miles upon miles and meet them at the quintessential rot gut everything that is bad about society Starbucks, because that’s company policy. I drive in a rural area near Oregon City, Estacada, and daily, the number of sacrifices on the road, AKA road kill, is in the dozens. Daily. We cut and maul and pave over and build over and divert and seed with invasives, and daily, hourly, each minute, on this planet, not one shit product or idea or lifestyle is sacrificed, but each and every square inch of soil and cubic meter of river and 2000 foot of altitude is raped and re-raped. By us, the supremacists. The dunces. The ones sitting, lying and sleeping in our own shit, using the cadavers of the real world – ecology, environment – as our rationale for putting us at the top of the dung heap. The murder of the planet is not some tragedy ordained by fate because we’re too damn smart. It is the result of a series of extremely bad social choices. We could choose differently. But we don’t. And we won’t. Not so long as the same unquestioned beliefs run the culture. Don’t get me wrong. Anyone who is working to protect wild places or wild beings from this omnicidal culture is in that sense a hero. We need to use every tool possible to save whomever and wherever we can from this culture. But it’s ridiculous and all-too-expected that while there’s always plenty of money to destroy the Tongass and every other forest, and there’s always plenty of money for various weapons of mass destruction (such as cluster bombs or dams or corporations) somehow when it comes to saving wild places and wild beings, we have to pinch pennies and ‘make difficult decisions’. Also, I need to say that the whole Ark metaphor doesn’t work. In the original story, God saved two of every species (as He, like the humans who created Him, destroyed the planet). Here, modern humans are going where even God didn’t tread, and explicitly not saving every species, but instead deciding which species to save, and which species to kill off. This is, of course, both pleasing and flattering to human supremacists: they’re making decisions on questions even God punted. How cool is that? http://clubof.info/