skepticalmuppet - Tumblr blog

[skepticalmuppet]

“Normalize being bad at something but doing it anyway” is for art and singing and sports, not, like, parenting or driving a car.

Can we normalize not having kids or getting behind the wheel of a hurtling death machine if those are things you’d be very bad at?

Please?

[skepticalmuppet]

Nothing shuts down a bougie conversation like "well, when I was homeless—" Nothing. It's one and done. They are fucking taken out. The conversation is dead. Done.

[skepticalmuppet]

'you wouldn't pirate a-' i would steal anything from any company. anything in the world. i dont even want it i just hate you

[skepticalmuppet]

If you have a trans/enby kid you might have to pick out the stitches on their personalized Christmas stocking and relabel it with their new name four years in a row because they couldn’t decide, and you need to do that without comment or judgement because the alternative might be that you just have an empty stocking stashed in your attic unused because the kid you made it for is never coming home again.

[skepticalmuppet]

the other day a doctor told me that "the best way to make [something i should do but never want to do] routine is to put it on your calendar!" and i found myself completely buh-- hhuh?-- about how to respond. i was stupefied by the gulf between our worlds. i looked into her kind eyes and i thought "put it on my what?" shoot it into space? i did not know how to explain to this extremely functional woman that an obligation to myself, with no stronger enforcer than my own words on a calendar, is to me a tattered codex from a lost religion. like this text is maybe historically interesting but not useful as a structure around which to build a life. what am i now going to write that will (or indeed should!) have any authority over me later? WALK? i don't know her life! and in what world would i respect directives left to me by a complete stranger (me from two days ago) whomst i have every reason to distrust (ate all the entemann's and put our keys in the laundry)? put it on my calendar. ok, dr goodbrain. but in the moment i nodded like a grinning toy monkey and dutifully thumbed WALK! into my phone at 4 p.m. Repeat: Every Day like that would have any effect on my actual behavior. sometimes it takes an enormous amount of optimism to be a person and frankly i admire us all for trying to do it

[skepticalmuppet]

While I'm writing things that I've been intending to write for a while... one of the things that I think that a lot of people who haven't been involved in like... banking or corporate shenaniganry miss about why our economy is its current flavor of total fuckery is the concept of "fiduciary duty to shareholders."

"Why does every corporation pursue endless growth?" Fiduciary duty to shareholders.

"Why do corporations treat workers the way they do?" Fiduciary duty to shareholders.

"Why do corporations make such bass-ackwards decisions about what's 'good for' the company?" Fiduciary duty to shareholders.

The legal purpose of a corporation with shareholders -- its only true purpose -- is the generation of revenue/returns for shareholders. Period. That's it. Anything else it does is secondary to that. Sustainability of business, treatment of workers, sustainability and quality of product, those things are functionally and legally second to generating revenue for shareholders. Again, period, end of story. There is no other function of a corporation, and all of its extensive legal privileges exist to allow it to do that.

"But Spider," you might say, "that sounds like corporations only exist in current business in order to extract as much money and value as possible from the people actually doing the work and transfer it up to the people who aren't actually doing the work!"

Yes. You are correct. Thank you for coming with me to that realization. You are incredibly smart and also attractive.

You might also say, "but Spider, is this a legal obligation? Could those running a company be held legally responsible for failing their obligations if they prioritize sustainability or quality of product or care of workers above returns for shareholders?"

Yes! They absolutely can! Isn't that terrifying? Also you look great today, you're terribly clever for thinking about these things. The board and officers of a corporation can be held legally responsible to varying degrees for failing to maximize shareholder value.

And that, my friends, is why corporations do things that don't seem to make any fucking sense, and why 'continuous growth' is valued above literally anything else: because it fucking has to be.

If you're thinking that this doesn't sound like a sustainable economic model, you're not alone. People who are much smarter than both of us, and probably nearly as attractive, have written a proposal for how to change corporate law in order to create a more sensible and sustainable economy. This is one of several proposals, and while I don't agree with all of this stuff, I think that reading it will really help people as a springboard to understanding exactly why our economy is as fucked up as it is, and why just saying 'well then don't pursue eternal growth' isn't going to work -- because right now it legally can't. We'd need to change -- and we can change -- the laws around corporate governance.

This concept of 'shareholder primacy' and the fiduciary duty to shareholders is one I had to learn when I was getting my securities licenses, and every time I see people confusedly asking why corporations try to grow grow grow in a way that only makes sense if you're a tumor, I sigh and think, 'yeah, fiduciary duty to shareholders.'

(And this is why Emet and I have refused to seek investors for NK -- we might become beholden to make decisions which maximize investor return, and that would get in the way of being able to fully support our people and our values and say the things we started this company to say.)

Anyway, you should read up on these concepts if you're not familiar. It's pretty eye-opening.

[skepticalmuppet]

has anybody said this yet

crowley & aziraphale's relationship is queer not as in they are both men (neither of them are, in fact) but as in their love threatens oppressive systems of power that have been in place for a very long time!!!

i've always seen their relationship as queer, although i think in the beginning it was because they were two masc-presenting figures on tv and i was glad to have another gay ship to root for, but it's just hitting me that their queerness actually goes much deeper.

in the good omens universe, as we've seen, outward queerness is never questioned. there's no coming out, no homophobia, no questions or stumbling over pronoun usage & gender-neutral language. so, of course, it's no problem for crowley & aziraphale to be together on earth, because they don't face the hardships that queer people in the real world face today.

rather, they face these hardships from heaven and hell (but mostly heaven).

queerness of the earthly kind is so hated by conservatives who want so desperately to cling to the structure of the nuclear, anti-social family (oppressive in its own way, that's for another essay) because it poses a threat to this structure. queerness allows for so many more possibilities, not only romantically but interpersonally in general. it inherently goes against the idea of a romantic couple as a necessarily biologically reproductive unit and expands the definition of family to include a much wider community than the strict blood lineation that has traditionally been defined as "family." this also, of course, has all kinds of consequences for capitalism and the labor force that i won't go into here.

we see that crowley & aziraphale's relationship threatens heaven & hell in the miracle they perform together, barely trying, which sends alarm bells in heaven screaming because a power like that should not be possible. the system that has been in place for millennia is a strict dichotomy: heaven vs. hell, angels vs. demons, "good" vs. "evil." but when the two mix, when morality turns gray and the two sides work together, that whole system is naturally upended.

so naturally the metatron is going to try to pull crowley & aziraphale apart. their power combined is dangerous enough to rival both heaven and hell, but even more than that, they threaten the way things have always been. and metatron, geniusly cast as an old white man, cannot stand to see it.

[skepticalmuppet]

Fox - 20x20 cm - oil and acrylic painting on wood - 2023

Available for purchase

[skepticalmuppet]

Dear holy mary, I love this.

when i'm feeling like i haven't done much that looks pretty, i really do just pull this up - this is from my webcomic, RoraBora - coming out sometime soon

[skepticalmuppet]

Reminder:

Joy in the face of oppression is rebellion. Kindness is rebellion. Community is rebellion. Compassion is rebellion. Looking out for your fellow human beings is rebellion. Self care is rebellion. In this system that encourages individualism and isolates us, love on a platonic, communal, societal level is rebellion. Connection, unity, joy, solidarity, it is radical. So be kind. Be compassionate. Do good things for your fellow working class people. Do good things for yourself. It’s one step further towards a better tomorrow.

[skepticalmuppet]

What "Communism never works" misses

Okay, let me keep up the topic for the week and let me talk about one thing that will undoubtedly be thrown at anyone, who says something along the lines of: "Welp, the system is failing us. Maybe we should try communism." And that is: "Communism never works. It has never worked before!"

As someone, who had that argument thrown at them so many times before, I already know that for the most part it is useless to talk to someone who comes up with that argument. Because, well... here is the thing. The argument basically is a result of what amounts to brainwashing. The person will usually not know what communism is or how and why it has failed before. They will not know anything about communist parties or countries. And they usually do not want to know.

Usually they do not know, that communism was never tried before. Yes, several countries have tried to establish communism, but never got further than socialism. Nor do they know exactly, what the difference between all those different communist ideas are. And of course they do not know anything about the history of the USA (and other western countries) doing their best to suppress communism by any means necessary.

Which is the first thing that everyone, who uses the argument, misses. Basically...

If communism can never work, why does the USA try everything to stop anyone trying to establish it?

If it cannot work and will never work, they would not need to worry about it. It will just develop and then fail. Easy. No need to stage a coup d'etat against a democratically elected government. No need to snuggle up to fascist dictators. Just let the thing run its course and then maybe send some help, once communism has self-destroyed. Something that they say is inevitable.

But obviously they don't. So: Why?

It cannot be about saving some sort of democracy, because otherwise they would not help undemocratic forces to take over the country and allow them to hold it.

But there is another thing that the argument misses. And even bigger thing. Another question:

But does capitalism work?

Which is the thing that kinda gets left out of the discussion. Because even if we assume that communism could not work (doubtable)... There is the fact that capitalism does not work. Otherwise fascism would not again and again be established from capitalism. Otherwise capitalism would not have destroyed the planet. Otherwise capitalism would not kill millions of people per year.

See, people will always go big about the entire "Black book of communism" thing and eat it up, even though the book has so many issues in what it counts as "death from communism" - and that is even without going in the entire "communism was never established" thing. But even if we took the numbers at face-value... According to the book, communism has killed 100 million people.

Well, guess what. That is about the same number of people that capitalism kills in a decade. And while the black book of communism counts all those people killed by politics not necessarily linked to communism... Those 10 million dying of capitalism each year die of capitalism. They die because they have not money for medicine, they need to survive. They die, because they starve, while so much food is thrown away. They die of exposure to the elements, because they cannot afford a home. They die from the fallout of climate change.

So, yeah. First of all: Let's try out communism, before we argue that it cannot work.

But also: Realize, that capitalism does not work. Because it doesn't.

[skepticalmuppet]

i think solarpunk is too much of an aesthetic. that tag is full of pretty photos of flowers. isn't it supposed to be an anarchist movement? the anarchism tag has actual deep conversations about politics and protests. the solarpunk tag is just 🌼🌻🌴☀️. where is the anarchy? you can do more than plant things. thats great and all, but few people seem to remember that its a political movement. put the punk back in solarpunk

[skepticalmuppet]

[skepticalmuppet]

[skepticalmuppet]

In my city you can sign up for a lesson on how to use public transportation. It’s for newcomers and disabled folks and anyone who isn’t familiar with how the buses and trains work.

Public transportation can be confusing and no one should be ashamed for not understanding it.

I live in the middle of nowhere (like my town has under 1k ppl) and I took a vacation to a big city and I didn't know how to use a bus and I embarrassed myself so hard. Sorry if I send this twice my internets spotty because you know. Rural.

Everyone's gotta learn that stuff sometime! Also different cities have different public transport systems and it can take a bit to figure things out. I hope you had a nice vacation apart from that though!

[skepticalmuppet]

Someone replied to one of our recent posts:

“Agree with most of this but would like to point out that a part of the push to make Pride less sexual is to make it a safe space for queer children and to help straights realize being queer isn’t just about fetishes.“

(The person is not tagged because I don’t want to send any hate to them, and the reply isn’t being responded to directly because Tumblr has made that near impossible)

When I came out, my mom told me I couldn’t tell my little sister because it was too sexual.

Later, I moved to the “Big City”, what I hoped to be a haven for queer people. I was with one of the first queer friends my wife and I had made in the city, we had just watched their wrestling debut, and had gone to their apartment afterwards with a group of strangers. Some this group our friend had told us behind the scenes were much more right wing causing our friend to keep parts of their queer identity under wraps.

Our friend suddenly turned to us and began scolding us, telling me and my wife that one of their coworkers at the city Pride Centre had approached them and told them that she had seen me and my wife kiss, and we needed to cut it out with the PDA.

I nodded in front of this group of strangers and when I could no longer hold my tears back I excused myself to the bathroom, cried and waited there until it was no longer obvious I had been crying. We hurried out.

The kiss in question was a goodbye kiss, as my wife went back to campus, and I don’t remember it. I have always been rather shy with PDA and don’t think it could have been much more than a peck. The coworker later told our friend that she was going through a bad breakup and our friend later explained that this was actually the reason for the complaint.

I have never felt safe in queer spaces since. Talking to the same friend later, they asked me and my wife to chaperone the Queer Prom and without thinking I assured them we would make sure not to hold hands or dance while we were there so it would stay “a safe space for children”.

When I was a child, I stumbled into a pride parade and was shocked and upset by the men in gold short shorts. My uncle apologized for letting me see something so sexual and awful.

Every single thing queer people do is “about fetishes” to people who hate queerness. Being less sexual is not going to change that.

I had seen short shorts before. I would see them again, and no one would apologize for that. The thing I was being kept “safe” from was not overly sexual behaviour, and considering there are already laws against indecent exposure, the same is true for children now.

Keeping theoretical children safe has been the justification for the continuing genocide against queer people all around the globe, so this rhetoric is not harmless. It has been used to put queer people in labour camps and slaughter them. 

I have nothing to prove to “straights” and I was the “queer child” who was horrified by the pride parades. As an adult, the discomfort I felt at seeing queer people existing happily and authentically in short shorts, is not something I needed to be kept safe from.

This nonsense is nothing more or less than the same moral panic that has killed queer people throughout history.

[skepticalmuppet]

Whoever needs to hear this. Please know.

"Closed at 6pm" does not mean "The entry door locks up at 6, but if you're already inside you can keep on shopping."

It means, "you should be finished and out of the store at 6pm."

This is not up for debate

This is just how things work