i-am-made-out-of-bees - Tumblr blog

[i-am-made-out-of-bees]

Happy Autumn 🍂🎃🍁

full set

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remember to leave out a cup of crude oil and plate of unprocessed lithium in the most SWAT-accessible corner of your house for Donald Rumsfeld for 9/11 Eve

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god people on this website really are often as tedious as i had feared

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What do you think of this excerpt?

https://www.tumblr.com/beguines/755310368521355264/what-the-theory-of-labour-aristocracy-tells-us

What [the theory of labour aristocracy] tells us is that there is not a monolithic working class and that achieving working-class unity is not merely a matter of getting beyond ruling-class maneuvers of "splitting" workers. Workers are not split because of an ideological conspiracy; they are split according to numerous structures that are built into the operations of global capitalism. Workers who experience a higher standard of living because of imperialist exploitation are materially invested in keeping this higher standard of living, just as a faction of workers who experience better working conditions because of race or gender or ability are materially invested in keeping these working conditions at the expense of those workers whose marginalization prevent them from getting the same jobs. Hence, if we follow the line of reasoning behind this theory, we will arrive at a notion of class that resists class essentialism. That is, to assert that there is a labour aristocracy, and that some workers who benefit from the exploitation of other workers are embourgeoisified, is to also assert that simply being a member of the working class is not enough to be, at root, akin to the proletariat of classical Marxist literature. Some members of the working class do not have "nothing left to lose but their changes," [sic] which means that being a worker does not mean having an inner revolutionary essence.

J. Moufawad-Paul, Politics in Command: A Taxonomy of Economism

While the reasoning is very agreeable and pretty uncontroversial among the people who find value in the concept of labor aristocracy (although the I think the mention of class essentialism is unnecessary), I find the conclusion a little bit exaggerated. It is true that workers of the imperial core benefit, (almost always indirectly), from the looting of imperialism. It is therefore in their immediate material interests to support imperialism. But regardless of how relevant the divide between workers on both sides of the imperialist system is, the relations that define it don't operate in a dissimilar way to other axes of privilege/oppression, such as misogyny or racism, and the author also shares this perspective, he uses the same in this excerpt. So I think it is a misstep to claim that «being a worker does not mean having an inner revolutionary essence», on two counts:

First, the set of privileges afforded to certain categories of workers does not make them less revolutionary, but rather tends to place the workers who suffer from more axes of oppression at the forefront of revolutionary struggle, exhorted by their generally worse material conditions and greater sensibility towards all kinds of oppression, such as class. Russian women were at the frontlines of both the February and October revolution, often among the very first to stress the necessity of a second revolution after the February bourgeois government revealed their inability to meet the workers' demands. In India, it was the workers at the lowest castes who often set an example in revolutionary consciousness, and it was the analysis of the caste system that developed the CPI in the years of stagnation following the intervention in Hungary.

Second, I think the author has misunderstood two elements of «classical Marxist literature». First, there is not a concept of «revolutionary essence» to be found in Marx's writings. If he has ever written such words, it's most probable he uses it more as a rethorical device or flourish rather than an actual argument of the existence of an «essence». The revolutionary potential of the working class springs from its objective relationship to the property of the means of production. There is no proletarian, platonic essence to speak of. Then, I think the author should also brush up on the two kinds of consciousness Lenin describes in What Is to be Done: economic-spontaneous consciousness and political-revolutionary consciousness. The first kind arises naturally from the worker's own experience with class antagonism, the kind manifested with non-revolutionary trade unions. The second arises from both a political education and an active participation in the class struggle within a revolutionary Communist Party.

Only that first kind of spontaneous consciousness is very vulnerable to the material benefits afforded by imperialism, and a proper education and construction of political-revolutionary consciousness will place any imperial core worker in anti-imperialist positions. The problem the author describes is real, don't get me wrong, but it's a problem that has been thoroughly described and solved more than a hundred years ago. We can debate about the degree to which imperialism makes this education difficult nowadays, but this main thesis the author expresses is wrong, or at least founded in opposition to a problem that is not relevant.

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to people paying attention to Israel and Palestine, sound familiar?

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site that you can type in the definition of a word and get the word

site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition 

site that gives you words that rhyme with a word

site that gives you synonyms and antonyms

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every time a transition timeline has the person getting skinnier an angel loses its wings

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PSA:

As it becomes increasingly clear that Kamala Harris will be the Democratic candidate for President, we will no doubt be deluged with a new type of psyop known as information. Examples of information may include:

Her policy positions

Quotations she said and the context in which she said them

The impact of her decisions on other people's lives

Stay vigilant! Remember that if the information has not been properly vetted by the Harris campaign, it is not Official Propaganda and is not to be trusted!

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it's cool that we've reached a point where any post that asks people to broaden their artistic horizons even a little bit is inevitably met with accusations of 'gatekeeping'. buddy, you're the one with the key. I am begging you to turn it in the lock and step out of the cage. I'm asking you to explore outside it for just a moment and get some perspective on your situation. you can go right back in again if you really want to. I cannot stress enough that you are the person in control of your captivity.

but that's not actually the issue here, is it. you're not mad at me for keeping you locked up in a bubble of comfortable ignorance (I'm not (nobody is (except you))). you're mad at me for saying out loud that there's sunlight and grass out here and space to run around in big circles and do high kicks. you're pissed off that I'm not affording you the identity of a person who lives outside the cage.

when you say I'm 'gatekeeping art' what you actually mean is I'm not affording you the informed, discerning, tastemaster status that you covet. you are much, much more concerned, in fact, with being able to access that social identity than you are with being able to access the material things that form that identity. and that feels like a problem that stretches significantly further than making marvel movies the limit of your interest in cinema.

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I'm a big enough man to admit when I'm wrong. I'd like to thank the very patient tumblrites who took the time to break things down gently and carefully for me, and helped me to understand the principles of harm reduction. For the sake of democracy and all those less fortunate than myself, I am finally ready to commit to voting Biden this november.

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transfem covered in blood: i swear this isn’t a fetish thing. ok last time it was but this is different.

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god i hope so

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REBLOG IF YOU HAVE STRETCHMARKS

This way people can see they’re not alone. I have them and this would help me see that.

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the suggestion for Spanish to incorporate x as a marker of neutral gramatical gender really does only come from monolingual English speakers or people who don't know a lot of Spanish becaude anyone who has ever spoken it knows how unusable words like "lantix" are in practice. The actual letter spanish speakers use for neutral gramatical gender is e btw

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every single day I think about how american black vultures are known for engaging in allopreening (preening between different species)

and they have a specific relationship with crested caracaras, in which the black vultures assist them by not only preening them after meals but also leading them to food in the first place— due to their superior sense of smell— while the caracaras assist the black vultures by acting as a warning signal in case of danger

and while this is more typical of black vultures, this is not common at all for any member of the falconidae family— it’s a special bond!

yet another post in favor of vultures everyone , hope you enjoy:) and I implore you to do some more research on these incredible birds !!

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hello dear follower. I would like you to know that I will not be voting for the democratic candidate in this election.

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I don't want to harp on about the ai art thing but it's absolutely deranged how calcified the kneejerk and regressive critique of the 'nature' of ai art has become just because its what the worst people with 0 class consciousness who work for nintendo and blizzard spew while the actual issues with how ai art is employed in actual work settings are a side note (unless its pretending that the technology is Literally Alive and not a tool being used by your bosses and managers...who are the Actual issue here). there is someone with a piece of rei ayanami fan art that has been edited so she has darker skin trying to wax about not promoting stolen work in my notes. people doing back and forth about permission while their blogs are literally filled with art book scans, club/rave/concert photos of strangers skimmed from probably myspace/deviantart/photobucket, stim/mood boards full of uncredited images and clipped videos, transparent .pngs with no source, cropped/edited manga panels (smaller publishers sometimes outright discourage this lol but you'd never know since youre reading it illegally to begin with), fanart of fan fiction (bro thats twice the derivative) littering their blogs. someone straight up saying that feeling inspired to draw because of a piece of ai generated artwork is bad because your connection to the source is "severed" like making art is inherently some religious activity. I tend to think of a lot of ai art as slop that bloats search results but the overton window has been skewed so painfully in some bizarrely un-self aware direction that the neutral option is reminding people how they literally interact with the internet.