transbionic-shieldmaiden

[transbionic-shieldmaiden]

[transbionic-shieldmaiden]

[transbionic-shieldmaiden]

I mean, I agree, broadly, with what you're saying here. The current situation is very much the War on Terror "brought home", as it were. But, like, it is factually possible to protest / organize / insert-other-activism against one without protesting against the other. Like, that's just factually true. You might object (and I would more-or-less agree) that by "merely" opposing the usage of the military against the populace, our hypothetical pro-imperialism anti-domestic-authoritarianism person is, ultimately, still believing in something that will eventually lead to the oppression of the populace, but the immediate effect is that they're counted on the other side of things.

I'm gonna let you in on a little secret here: most of the time, politics doesn't care about your motivation. Motivation only matters when it comes to predicting your next activity. But whatever you already did? It happened, and it doesn't really matter why you did it. To follow your car analogy, a car-lover who hates engines who signs my petition to ban engines still signed my petition, even if they are unaware of the broader implications. Maybe this is a fundamental difference of concerns -- my goal here is to promote political action, not ensure ideological purity. And it's not that I don't care about motivation. I certainly prefer people that are opposed to imperialism and domestic authoritarianism.

The thing is, motivations and ideologies change much more slowly than policies. To take our pro-imperialism anti-domestic-authoritarian -- if we allow them to stand alongside and work with the broader coalition fighting domestic authoritarian, they will be exposed to more radical (and, in this case, correct) ideas regarding the true role of the military. Will they become an ACAB anti-imperialist overnight? Probably not, but they odds are a lot better than if we mock them for having unlearned only part of the hierarchy.

Like, what exactly do you think a coalition is? If a group of people all agree on what the problem is and how to solve it, that's not really much of a coalition, at least not the way I'm talking about it here. That's just an ideological bloc. And if I lived in a country where anti-imperialist leftist types were a sufficiently large, coherent, and organized ideological bloc to enact change, I would be singing quite a different tune. But that's just not the world we live in. Politics is the art of the possible, and sometimes that means making compromises between two bad options.

And, like, I get why leftists are so often resistant to that idea. There's so many issues where a bolder and more radical solution might circumvent the need for a compromise between bad options at all -- if our theories are correct, anyway, but that's a whole 'nother discussion. On top of that, people are constantly using the vague idea of compromise and imperfect solutions as a cudgel to prevent any real change. I get why that leads so many leftists to react with knee-jerk suspicion at the mere idea of working with people who we think/know to be wrong. Unfortunately, the fact that some people disingenuously use compromise to quiet calls for real change doesn't change the fact that sometimes you really are stuck between choosing to work towards an imperfect solution or fade into irrelevancy while cultivating a perfect set of ideologically-pure beliefs.

I have some news for members of the united states armed forces who feel like they are pawns in a political game and their assignments being unnecessary.

[transbionic-shieldmaiden]

(Responding mostly to OP here, who came off as rather dismissive even if this wasn't the intention)

Aside from the fact that the military tends to recruit from communities that are either a) impoverished to the point that the military seems like the only way out, regardless of how they feel about the value of service in the American military, b) ideologically isolated such that they have likely not heard criticisms of US imperialism and US wars in any remotely accessible way, or c) both -- I think it should be obvious that there's a gulf of difference between being willing to be a pawn for the US's foreign affairs and being willing to be a pawn in an internal coup.

Now, as it happens, I tend to oppose both. Still, I can understand why someone with more military-friendly politics than I might object to one and not the other. Politics is the art of coalition-building; you have to be willing to work with people you disagree with or even dislike on the issues you have in common. This is a good time for a left-leaning coalition to reach out to people with more military-friendly politics who despite being a bit more pro-US-imperialism still oppose the usage of the military against the populace.

A lot of leftists need to seriously grapple with the fact that Americans as a whole hold some deeply conservative values, even among relatively liberal Americans. Most Americans love cops and soldiers and frankly I don't see that changing any time soon. I'm not saying we need to give up on fighting against the police state or the military-industrial complex, but we need to understand that sometimes it is tactically more effective to work with those sorts of people to accomplish what we can now and hope that a shifting culture and overton window convinces them on the broader issues eventually. Yes, it would be better if these people realized that their reverence for the military and police plays into the hands of the oligarchs and the hierarchical system which ultimately oppresses all of us, but in the short-term it's more important to accomplish the much more modest goal of ending ICE and the military's reign of terror.

I have some news for members of the united states armed forces who feel like they are pawns in a political game and their assignments being unnecessary.

[transbionic-shieldmaiden]

another victory for the third amendment

Lol. Lmao

[transbionic-shieldmaiden]

It's basically complete bullshit. Basically, what happened is that Roman authors loved complaining about how Romans were too decadent and not as martially virtuous as their ancestors. They were doing this during the Republic, before Rome was even done with the rise of its rise and fall. It's a literary trope with approximately no bearing in reality.

But it makes for a nice cute story if you're on the more conservative side and want to complain about whatever "degeneracy" is bothering you this week, and you can cite all of those Roman authors to make it look legit. And most people have a vague grasp of the timeline at best, so the fact that you're citing Roman authors who lived generations before the fall of Rome will escape the notice of most people.

Exactly why the Roman Empire fell can and will be debated, and I don't think the debate will end until all knowledge of Rome is lost. I'd probably point at things like the failure of the empire to ever really set up a stable succession law, leading to a ton of civil wars. Brett Deveraux, who I'm mostly paraphrasing here, makes the case that the decline of the auxilia as an institution got rid of Rome's best tool for integrating newcomers. Many of the "barbarian" groups that eventually conquered a lot of Rome originally came to the Empire and were allowed to settle in return for military service against Rome's enemies, but unlike the auxiliaries they weren't really encouraged to think of themselves as Romans. And the core Roman population certainly didn't think of them as new Romans or even potential Romans. So once Rome inevitably does something to piss them off, why not sack Rome? Everyone's been pretty clear it's not yours anyway.

There's lots of other factors too. But really, when an empire lasts as long as Rome does, it's less of a question of how it fell but rather how it lasted so long. Empires don't last forever, and it takes constant effort to keep them in existence.

Look I'm no big city historian but certainly there's no way "the decadence of the Roman elite led to the fall of Rome" is remotely true right? Like it just doesn't make any goddamn sense. That's not how like...events work, God doesn't send barbarians to punish you when you get too fancy. But I think among the genpop this is the default position? And even among smarter folk this is a respected, literary type take? Am i crazy? Are we stupid?

[transbionic-shieldmaiden]

[transbionic-shieldmaiden]

For some reason I have the urge to make a poll asking what people's favourite cereal grains are. I mean, the best grain is obviously wheat but I'm curious how many rice fans there are being incorrect out there.

[transbionic-shieldmaiden]

sigh

star wars would be so good if it were good...

I need Andor but moreso. Give me a 12-episode season entirely about specifically the logistics and bureaucracy and intrigue around establishing the rebel base and military discipline on Yavin. I want a series whose writing room was clearly forced at gunpoint to become at least casually conversant in the literature on guerrilla warfare and base locations.

[transbionic-shieldmaiden]

my ideal season of a star wars show would be 11 episodes set entirely within various offices in the imperial military bureaucracy and whatever ramshackle counterpart the Alliance has managed to throw together, ending in 1 episode with a space battle whose outcome is the culmination of all the machinations and office politics of the rest of the show. general tagge appears a bunch of times.

I need Andor but moreso. Give me a 12-episode season entirely about specifically the logistics and bureaucracy and intrigue around establishing the rebel base and military discipline on Yavin. I want a series whose writing room was clearly forced at gunpoint to become at least casually conversant in the literature on guerrilla warfare and base locations.

[transbionic-shieldmaiden]

[transbionic-shieldmaiden]

So this is definitely a case of "we did not expect Harvard to fight back and we forgot they have billions of dollars and the best lawyers"

[transbionic-shieldmaiden]

WHALE MOVIE WHALE MOVIE WHALE MOVIE

hey guess what? it's once again time for the WHALE MOVIE YEARLY REWATCH!!!

i made a bad poster :3c

[transbionic-shieldmaiden]

a whistle-stop tour of wizarding history of the british isles

(or, a cleaned-up version of the conspiracy theory corkboard i word-vomited into the groupchat instead of writing umbridge + hinata interactions)

the wizengamot was originally convened sometime in the 600s in a similar mold to the icelandic althing (or the anglo-saxon witenagemot, which is possibly where jkr got the idea from): both a legislative and a judicial body, but governing wizards exclusively. the wizengamot governed the wizarding population of the entire british isles, not only england, because the british isles are pretty small if you have teleportation magic or even just broomsticks and the wizard population is just not that large. pre-statute of secrecy, wizards were governed by both their local muggle government and by Wizengamot Compacts; wizards who did mundane crimes went to muggle court and wizards who broke the wizengamot compacts went before the wizengamot (e.g., in the creepy trial room harry goes to in ootp).

post-statute, this worked... less well. wizarding families did a LOT of regulatory arbitrage by sliding between the wizard and muggle worlds as needed. hence the formation of the ministry of magic, which is a normal-ish UK government ministerial department that bolted itself onto the wizengamot for legitimacy. there are all KINDS of weird edge cases for regions that are within the area governed by the wizengamot but outside the area governed by the UK civil service or vice versa. one of these is...

hogwarts! originally constructed in an unplottable location in the scottish highlands circa 970 as a small defensive keep for protection of wizarding children and families against viking raids. (hence why it has all this nuclear-grade secrecy magic and defensive warding on it.) the families living there self-established schooling/training programs of an informal nature, since they were all living together anyway.

meanwhile, in england, a few wizarding schools were established loosely following the oxbridge model in the 1200s. these were disbanded in 1333ish (when oxford/cambridge petitioned the king to shut down the fledgling university at stamford). some of the teaching staff were absorbed into the magical colleges at oxford and cambridge, but some of them (and their students) went up north to hogwarts, which was then significantly expanded (in the collegiate gothic architectural style) to accommodate. in the oxbridge model, "public" schools like eton were formed as feeders, but given the wizarding world's lower population hogwarts operated as both a secondary and a postsecondary school at this point.

at the same time, the viking threat being more or less dissipated, most of the original families moved out of the keep proper and founded the town of hogsmeade. (many of their descendants still live there, because wizards are nothing if not traditionalists.)

in the 1700s, as formal wizarding education becomes more popular, hogwarts' size could no longer support both secondary and tertiary education. the "colleges" (tertiary education) were split off into a different, formerly abandoned castle in the wizarding town of thursala (a former norse settlement, ironically). the keep at thursala no longer operates as a university on the oxbridge model, but continues to be a small research center focusing on runic and ritual magic until the present day. remaining at hogwarts after the split were the "houses" of 11-17 year olds.

in 1863, the plumbing system was completely rebuilt and modernized. perfidious gaunt took the opportunity to build the chamber of secrets after getting caught in his first three attempts at hatching basilisks in his dorm room. (because hermione memorized all of hogwarts: a history, when she looked for the chamber of secrets she looked in the original 970s keep, not the modern pipes!)

because hogwarts is old as balls (technically speaking), it is technically only answerable to the wizengamot and the board of governors, not the muggle UK government and therefore also not the ministry of magic. (so all hogwarts professors randomly have diplomatic immunity to a bunch of stuff. please do not tell hinata about this.) as well as hogwarts castle and grounds, a few other places (like the original meeting place of the wizengamot) have this Wizarding Neutral Territory legal status, but hogwarts is the only one that actually has a population. (the wizarding world does love its enclaves! e.g., gringotts bank is legally Goblin Country.)

the educational decree thing gets its legitimacy from a wizengamot resolution (pushed, of course, by lucius malfoy's faction) that gives the ministry Very Temporary oversight powers over hogwarts; it expires at the end of 1996. that's why umbridge is in such a rush to maneuver herself into being headmistress -- once you are the headmaster/headmistress of hogwarts, you are LITERALLY king of the castle.

hogwarts is certainly not the only wizarding secondary school in the UK, but it's the only one that has this level of legal independence. also there is for SURE tuition -- most of the rich wizengamot families just pay it, because what are you gonna do, not send your kids to hogwarts?? how embarrassing. some families (like the weasleys) had ancestors who received, as a boon for their significant assistance to hogwarts, the right to send "children of their name" there in perpetuity. there are also some merit and some lottery scholarships; in both cases there is a magical lottery (for merit scholarships instead of a test there's just a divination spell that assesses your Objective Level of Merit, as conceived by the guy who developed the merit spell in 1680 or whatever). the admissions spells are old as fuck and difficult to modify -- usually this is only done when the tuition/scholarship proportions or student population size need to be tweaked. the hogwarts letters are, of course, produced fully formed by a magical stone frog statue which extends its long tongue and spits out the letters.

[transbionic-shieldmaiden]

Not really a character so much as a pair of traits, but I think it would be fun to have a character who is a master manipulator/strategic genius type who is sometimes up for a game of go or chess or whatever against his antagonists. He often gets crushed, though, not as an intentional way of getting anyone to underestimate him or anything, but just because he never put all that much effort into learning a board game.

He’s still good at IRL stuff because the skills involved in real life manipulation and social engineering, or in wartime strategy, logistics, planning, coalition-building,  etc, are fairly loosely related to mastering a board game, but people who beat him in a put-pieces-on-a-square-grid game are still surprised when he pulls out the Grand Admiral Thrawn/Havelock Vetinari/Zhuge Liang stuff.

[transbionic-shieldmaiden]

listen up chucklefucks, i just gotta say. I'm not defending zir, but I'm sad zie deactivated. Like, i get that trauma lasts a long time and the good stuff is maybe easy to forget?? so maybe it's just like that. And my beloved mutual @/pompeyspuppygirl made a post about zir clout chasing behavior, which is pretty shitty behavior if it's true (and if we're canceling someone it had better be pretty severe). anyways now that zie's gone pompeyspuppygirl said it was okay to make this post (again, thanks ppg everyone go follow her --really everyone in this whole drama is worth a follow)

ANYways yeah zie was my mutual and like, reblogged a lot my smaller posts. (that isn't to discredit what my mutual pompeyspuppygirl is saying about zie clout chasing ofc). AND idk zie was always reblogging art from new and undiscovered artists and reblogging donation posts (which if you don't know is really bad if you're trying to clout chase...) (again, though, ppg is my mutual i believe her.) and like, remember on valentines day i tried to blaze zir posts and zie told me to stop because zie didn't want the posts to go viral? (but again ppg is my mutual and has a lot of proof in the Google doc I'm not trying to disprove that I'm just saying what else I know)

Idk, like i feel like a lot of people loved zir's blog a while back, bc like zie DID make some good posts?? So idk why everybody's acting like they aren't even a little bit sad.,. like ngl this feels like maybe all the reasonable people left to Twitter and all the Twitter refugees who love drama came here??? shdfhhdhdhdhdh haha but idk...look idk, i just, julie i do miss you. idk. more thoughts later sorry I'm getting worked up shshs

[transbionic-shieldmaiden]

Look.

As a Californian, I was not a fan of Kamala Harris's presidential candidacy. I really feel like she did not align with me on some pretty fundamental issues and I wish the Democrats had had an actual primary in 2024 so that she could have been soundly trounced by better candidates like she was in 2020.

Kamala Harris was a candidate that I was *at best* lukewarm on.

Okay? Okay.

Now. Democrats.

If you dipshits run Gavin Newsom in 2028 or pull any stupid fucking tricks to give him a better position in the primary (like the stupid fucking trick you lucky assholes pulled by not putting support behind a democratic candidate for the recall as a safety measure), i am going to start committing thematic crimes and/or assembling a killdozer.

I was not particularly fond of Kamala Harris, but I fucking *loathe* Governor Gavin "Homeless Sweeps" Newsom. Kamala was not great, but she was also not "using the destruction/disruption of a homeless encampment with her own two hands as a photo op" bad. She was not "I wouldn't want my daughter playing college sports against a trans woman" bad. She was not "inviting Charlie Goddamned Kirk on the first episode of her new podcast to ask advice about running to get approval from fucking republicans" bad.

If, in three years, I have to listen to a bunch of democrats telling me that there's no better choice and I have to vote blue no matter who and the blue that they are handing me is *this motherfucking ghoul* I am going to end up in a federal prison so if you happen to be a democrat and you happen to be reading my blog I would really like it if your party could run better candidates than this piece of shit so if you hear people starting to mumble about how "Well maybe Gavin Newsom has some good policies, he's going to be better for LGBTQIA folks than Vance and he's got experience running a big state" please let them know what a tremendous piece of shit he is so I don't have to walk away from super tuesday and hear that this greasy fuck is the lesser of two evils.