dipperdesperado

[dipperdesperado]

the great thing about the wuxia genre is you can start a sect called the Evil Blood Cult in a place called Demon Mountain that’s a volcano full of poison and you all wear crazy gothic black and red hanfu and practice Sinister Backstabber Style kung fu and like. that’s not a deterrent to prospective disciples. do all that and a fuckton of bright eyed youngsters will still show up at your door and say hello i would like to join the demon mountain evil blood cult where do i sign up?

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"the best way to screw jkr over is by making her characters queer!" actually. The best way to screw jkr over is to stop engaging with the property she still profits off of and read a different fucking book

[dipperdesperado]

No Mercy for the Developers of No Mercy

Content warning: discussions of sexual assault, nudity in itch.io link

We got a lot of shit to figure out as it pertains to cultural depictions of sex, and what qualifies as kinks and fetishes. I just came across this game called No Mercy, and it shook me to my core--I can't believe (or, better yet, I don't want to believe) that anyone would want this. While it may not be mainstream, it represents issues in our culture and cultural production that we need to uproot.

As of April 10th, No Mercy, a 3d pornographic visual novel created by Zerat Games, is no longer buyable on Steam, following backlash from UK official Peter Kyle and Collective Shout, a sex exploitation advocacy group.

No Mercy is a game that features incest and sexual assault among other acts the developers label as "kinks"/"fetishes". This is problematic for a multitude of reasons. However, the main one to highlight for our purposes is that there is nothing redeemable about uplifting ideations that support unequal/hierarchical power dynamics.

There is nothing to be gained by simulating one of the most violent things that can be done to someone. If our cultural products act as mirrors for our ideas of the world, what are we reflecting by uplifting things like this?

To change the landscape and create safe spaces for marginalized gender folks, we need to create a culture of accountability. Part of this is not allowing this shit to slide anymore. that means that we have to learn to center targets and victims of these abusive dynamics and cultures.

We can see that we're a long ways off from this. The game is still up on itch.io and SubscribeStar, and we can look at the comments on itch to see just how upstanding this game's fans are. Many commenters claim a fight against censorship (just ctrl+F the word on that page). Sigh.

There needs to be structures created by communities of creators and "consumers" to prevent this kind of shit from happening. There's no reason that this kind of game should exist.

This is not a call for authoritarian crackdowns on freedom of expression, or to say that we should have full restrictions on depicting certain deplorable acts (though I've never encountered a text where sexual assault did something more for the story than any other harmful act).

The fact is that we live under patriarchy, and as such, have to attend to power dynamics with a (trans)feminist lens. This means that our ideas (and the cultural products that we make based on them) are not "neutral"-- they are shaped by and shape society. Backing into narratives around "personal choice" conveniently forget that we exist within relation to the world around us, and that relation comes with dependencies and impacts.

Accountability is needed in these situations. We have to build communities of care that prevent people who, through isolation and individualism, create these reactionary projects in their little enclaves of the internet. I have a sneaking suspicion that, were Zerat Games in an abolitionist community of care, this game wouldn't exist.

Those communities of care and accountability could start with transformative justice pods that federate to encompass more people, along with the ability to respond to harm in ways that center victims. People should be able to choose restorative or retributive responses based on the needs and desires of those who are harmed.

I was horrified to see the fact that this game exists. I have such high hopes for the medium that I love, but as long as people are even able to think that they can get away with this shit, we will continue to be unbelievably cooked as a space. We have to do better, divest from the games industry, and take anti-(trans)feminist abuses seriously.

[dipperdesperado]

"Let ICE melt at the door"

Sticker spotted in Ventura, California

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"Remember Kids, refugees aren't stealing Ireland's resources. Real estate investment companies are!"

Sticker spotted in Rathmines, Ireland

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Stars I made for the farmers market 🥹⭐️

[dipperdesperado]

"Fight Back"

Mural in Munich, Germany

[dipperdesperado]

Notes on "Eurocentrism and Modernity" by Enrique Dussel

Thought I'd publish my notes-in-essay-form from the eponymous article. I thought it was pretty interesting! My biggest gripe is that it was very... metahistorical. As such (when taking the like 12 page length into account), it didn't leave a lot of space to highlight colonized thinkers/or folks in an embodied way (as in, it mentioned folks like Hegel and Kant, but what about people from the peripheries of places like Germany or Europe more broadly? Can the Subaltern speak?) or what a positive program, away from eurocentrism and modernity could look like (what does it mean to synthesize the best from enlightenment thought and indigenous & peripheral thought, in a way that doesn't treat them as abstract equals but contingent sense-making tools for the world?). Those feel like worthwhile things to explore. But in the meantime, the notes are below! PS... lmk if y'all like this format... trying to figure out how to keep this page active while my writing stuff becomes more and more ambitious/wide-spanning. hmmmm

The basic idea is this: If we can chart out an understanding of how the Eurocentric self-perception of Being was/is constructed, we will be able to chart out a new way of Being.

Eurocentricity places itself as the one true inheritor of the world. This contradiction sows the seeds of its own negation. We see the contradiction in how modernity promises "emancipation" while being constructed as a "justification for genocidal violence"¹. If our desire for emancipation is genuine, we have to be able to weed out non-productive modes of thought, especially when they are extremely anti-life.

Europeans positioned themselves as master through two concentric and recursive acts: idea-crafting/history-making/philosophizing on one side, and marginalization of non-Europeans through force on the other. This started with the Iberian Reconquest, where they took the peninsula back from the Islamic powers that had controlled it. This created "the model for the colonization of the New World"², and led to Europe being able to move from seeing itself as a periphery (to the Islamic world)³ towards putting itself into the spotlight, as the road that leads to the "end of history"⁴ and that other places, (namely LatAm and Africa) are outside of history, and by proxy, notions of progress, and development, which acts as a justification for colonialization.

Colonialism then acts as a way for Europe to establish its particular subjectivity, as "master-of-the-world"⁵, where it's ability to set the tempo of what it means for non-European parts of the world, the periphery to become modern, while never allowing for that to happen, as the periphery feeds the center. The uplift of the European condition is at the direct expense of its peripheries, where those who are seen to "need civilizing" are used as sacrifices. This move is simultaneously framed as inevitable, just, and moral, as the colonial tempo is a measurement by which the non-European world is evaluated.

Rather than take for granted the push towards modernity (living and relating like Europeans), we would be better off pushing towards something similar to what the article refers to as trans-modernity. This is a dialectical sublation of modernity and its peripheries, where the emancipatory potential of modernity surpasses the "irrationality" apparent within the justification philosophies, where "anything goes" for the sake of development/progress.

Notes

Modernity And Eurocentrism, Page 4

Modernity And Eurocentrism, Page 4

Modernity And Eurocentrism, Page 4

Modernity And Eurocentrism, Page 11

Modernity And Eurocentrism, Page 11

[dipperdesperado]

If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...

Start helping with citizen science projects

What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!

You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases

Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.

Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.

Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.

Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.

Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.

Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.

--

I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.

Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help

Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.

[dipperdesperado]

URGENT HELP🚨🚨🚨🍉🇵🇸

Hello,

How do you do ? I hope to be in a good condition.

This is my special campaign

We hope to help us by donating or sharing to others.

Every donation makes a different even if it a small.

As you know, the war began on October 7 and lasted ten months. During this period, we were unable to obtain food, drink, or treatment because we did not have money.

There is no source of income for the family at the present time, so we are unable to buy food, clean water, and medicine, especially after we are afflicted with the ongoing infectious diseases spread in the north like Hepatitis C disease.

Our house has been damaged a lot since the beginning of the war. We are from the north of Gaza and we are still in the north and have not displaced to the south. We displaced 10 times from place to another seeking to safety .

We hope for your help and support, even if only a little.

Vetted By Femme intifada on telegram.

This is the link if you would to read our story well 👇👇

https://gofund.me/4e896ac1

Thank you all

friends, please donate to this if you are able!

[dipperdesperado]

"Don't die wondering... Transgenderism could be for you"

Sticker spotted in Dublin, Ireland

[dipperdesperado]

[dipperdesperado]

we need to bring materalism back into politics bc bruh...

genuinely best thing to come out of american politics in a while is this whole earnestly calling republicans "weird". never underestimate the power of cringe to turn the tide of a political campaign.

[dipperdesperado]

old gods are waking

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God I love this painting

“the sun” by edvard munch (1909)

[dipperdesperado]

realpolitik strikes again ☠️☠️☠️

throwing a grenade and then immediately throwing myself on top of it to save everyone