#'its had some problems' its exploiting workers

[the-vampire-squid-from-hell]

.

[avaisdramatic]

Putting this comment on here because I feel like I’m actually going insane…

It seems like nobody in the comments even watched the video, complaining about how paying for content is difficult in this economy, like, that's why they are doing this! They cannot continue to make the content they want for free based on ads and sponsors alone. If you have paid attention to the "Making Watcher"s of recent years, their company is not, and has not been profitable. They are so dependent on advertisers for funding that it is becoming a restriction to the content they want to make (y'a know, like Buzzfeed was), so they had to find a solution. I don't know why you all seem to think you are entitled to free content, I understand not everyone can afford it but Watcher doesn't owe you content personally. Frankly, I doubt they wanted to put their content behind a paywall, but if it's that or not make content at all, of course they are going to try to find a solution. So no, they aren't "turning into Buzzfeed” because the massive problem with Buzzfeed was its restrictions on creative freedom and exploitation of its workers. If Watcher wants to produce fulfilling content that gives their editors, designers, producers, etc full creative freedom and a livable wage, this is the best option. If you want them to pay their workers the bare minimum and tailor their content to advertiser interests just so you can watch it for free, that's fine. Just don't pretend that they are some evil media mega-corporation and you are the anti-capitalist shining hero for saying it. You don't have to like it, and you don't have to continue to support them, but don't try to shame and demonize them for making an already difficult decision.

Many of you DO have an understanding of the difficult position our current economic system puts people in because you have experienced it, but you are so unable to extend that understanding beyond your own point of view. Look past yourself for a moment and think critically, and maybe you will understand their perspective. Much love for all of the talented people within Watcher who are doing their best.

And just to add, their format going forward is almost IDENTICAL to CollegeHumor-Dropout's streaming service format (even down to the free premieres and advocating for sharing accounts with friends), which most people praise to high heaven as "the only ethical streaming service." As a huge fan of both companies the stark difference in response here is actually astounding...

[edwad]

a few weeks ago i saw a video on twitter thats of some guy talking about how amazing it is that all these people make a pencil and then you can buy it etc. is this the type of stuff you/cordelia mean when youre talking about how some people actually take domination to be a great thing (not only consciously but as an actual articulated value, i mean)

i assume the video was friedman's "i, pencil" riff, which does get at some of those points (and which other socialists have responded to on similar terrain, doing the thing i talk about of merely describing the same processes but with different moralizations), but also at a more general level in the sense that the impersonal mechanisms of capitalism are seen as nondiscriminatory, which for liberal theorists is a major advance over the more direct forms of coercion found in pre-capitalist societies. the benefit here is that markets don't really care about your background, your money is as good as anyone else's, and there's a certain universalizing tendency which comes out of the formal equality which is baked into this logic.

this is echoed in the writings of plenty of classical liberal thinkers like walter e williams that argued segregation would've dissolved on its own if free market forces had been left to run their course, unhindered by racist laws upholding the forced separation of people. eventually, certain business owners would've put their profits before their potential racism, and other firms would've been forced to similarly accommodate in order to stay competitive. williams (who was black) actually criticized some of his friends at the time for spending their money in white businesses that they'd been previously barred from, because in their attempt to stick it to the shop owners that the day before had refused to service them, they were unintentionally enriching racists instead of giving their business to firms that would've taken their money all along, had it been legal and easy to do so. this particular problem (and its market solution) are sometimes dealt with in the context of things like the sears catalog during the jim crow era, which was a big talking point a few years ago as an instance of this market anonymity/impersonality delivering a certain form of economic fairness.

for a lot of marxists, this nondiscriminatory element isn't acknowledged for the merits of not caring about your background, but in some sense for not caring about you at all. everything is reduced to the merely economic. marx pretty famously says as much in the manifesto when he writes:

"The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation."

this is also what's at stake in the formal equality of the worker in marx's capital, who, as a newly emerged legal subject with all the rights that entails, discovers their double freedom -- free to work or free to starve. and as he says there in v1, "between equal rights force decides".

what i think is significant here is that these aren't really two different accounts of how the system works. for people like smith and hayek, this impersonal mechanism (the invisible hand, etc) is understood as a kind of coercive force which pushes firms toward particular ends which are independent of the wills of any singular capitalist (and in fact express the whole of human economic activity in the aggregate) and which result in the universal generalization of particular principles throughout society, increasingly undermining lingering prejudices (eg smiths capitalist arguments against slavery). marx's analysis is pretty much identical (and this is the point), except in its normative angling. the totalizing character of capitalist production which recreates the world in its own bourgeois image and strives to constantly overcome its own self-imposed limits is similarly impersonal and indiscriminate, but this is presented as a problem to be overcome. hayek, even moreso than smith, recognizes this aspect of the price system which gets at the exact issue which marx is trying to highlight with his analysis of value.

both are aware of the historical uniqueness of the social formation and have no illusions about it via cliche appeals to "human nature" etc, and as i've mentioned above, its not really a difference in analysis, or even really in results (as cordelia has said, the strong form of the marxian complaint isn't that capitalism is doing something poorly, but that these are the effects when it is working well/asserting itself fully). so the point im making and have made repeatedly is that what's at stake here is a set of underlying normative commitments which marx and marxists have basically left unjustified. the usual claim is that marx was too scientific for that sort of thing, but i don't think that's really a possible reading (and if it is, it's not a good/internally defensible one).

if anything, the immanence of his analysis to the liberal theory which constitutes his object sets the limit on his ability to express himself fully, but it also provides the only adequate place to ground his normative account. his notion of contradiction is supposed to do a lot of the heavy lifting here, but to the extent that these contradictions are located in liberal theory itself, they *necessarily* don't go unaccounted for by liberals. he's not saying or demonstrating anything which hasn't also been posed as a liberal political problem. if you don't like crises, then very well, you can be a keynesian (maybe even a radical one). you don't think that works? well, your argument probably sounds a lot like hayek's. what is marx able to contribute here that isn't already understood as a careful balancing act -- if not a definite limit -- in liberal theory? the potential salvation of communism, which is supposed to overcome the problems (whatever they are taken to be) of capitalism, necessarily stems from some set of normative commitments that can't be written off. if his critique is tightly immanent, as it arguably was, then what marxists need to justify isn't really the account of the system (you don't even have to be a marxist for that!) but the case for its abolition.

if your problem with it is "domination", you need to be able to demonstrate what's wrong with the mechanisms that word is intended to describe, and it can't just be that they're impersonal or coercive. liberals feel the same way about these things and all of us experience gravity that way. you have to be able to say something more than that, but contemporary marxist accounts tend to only go as far as calling it "domination" and getting away with it because the marxists nod along, knowing that domination is naughty, otherwise why would we call it domination?

so, although cordelia can surely speak for herself, this is part of the project that i think she and i have sorta been picking away at in different ways for a while, with me catching on a bit later (maybe too late tbh). when i expressed my frustrations on this point, directed at chambers, i was in some sense admitting that she'd won me over on this style (if not the specific line) of questioning.

all of this aside, this is of course not a defense of liberalism in the liberal sense, but it is a kind of "defense" of liberalism as a project which has to be taken seriously and can't be written off or dreamed away. in this sense, i am merely following in marx's footsteps, who i think felt very strongly about the need to grapple with liberalism on exactly this kind of terrain, but i am turning the ruthless criticism on the ruthless critic, because i don't think he or his contemporary disciples in the value-as-domination literature have done a good job of navigating this problem. probably though, like nearly everyone else, i'm simply left waiting for cordelia's book.

[theresattrpgforthat]

Hello! Do you have any suggestions for ttrpg that are like Control (video game)? I enjoy number crunching, and playbooks are a plus :D

THEME: Games inspired by CONTROL

Hello! I’m going to first reference to you one of the first posts I ever made, about Paranormal Agents. If you like playbooks, you’ll probably want to take a look at Against the Dark Conspiracy, but don’t sleep on External Containment Bureau! Not much of what’s in that post is big on math, but I don’t want to leave out any possible options. Now, on to some more recommendations.

In Case of An Emergency, by boyproblems.

You work at foundation., a global corporation known for its cutting edge inventions and morally dubious treatment of its labour force. It stays at the top of its field by exploiting the paranormal and the metaphysical. Due to an "incident", you are now trapped inside. The glitch causes you and a group of your co-workers to be tasked by a group known as THE SHAREHOLDERS to fix what has broken, and solve THE EMERGENCY.

The Head Office is an ever-shifting office complex that threatens to trap your intrepid group within its labyrinthine walls. Fable and superstition come alive and threaten your very life. Gain new abilities (ABSTRACTIONS) through exposure to the powers that lie beyond, investigate the truth behind foundation., traverse a place where new science is discovered daily, and cut through bureaucratic and literal binding red tape to escape and survive.

This is a one-shot game, but that doesn’t mean that your character can’t gain new powers throughout the course of play. In Case of Emergency is directly inspired by CONTROL, so theme-wise we’re definitely in the right territory. It doesn’t look like it has playbooks though, which is a bummer - in almost every other aspect I think it’s what you’re looking for!

Agents of the O.D.D., by Jason Tocci.

Agents of the O.D.D. is a tabletop roleplaying game of conscripted cryptids, shaky psychics, burned spies, and other investigators of the paranormal. Based on the rules from Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland, and inspired by series like Hellboy, Planetary, and The Laundry Files.

Agents of the O.D.D. doesn’t necessarily have playbooks, but it does have player archetypes. During character creation, you roll a d100 and take the result from a hefty list of archetypes. These will give you one or more special moves, companions, and/or pieces of equipment. And equipment is a really big thing in this game - there’a at least 6 pages in this 24-page game dedicated to equipment alone. This might be because Agents of the O.D.D. is built off of Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland, which are both minimalist and focus on dungeon-delving.

Now that I think of it, exploring a place that is abnormal and haunted is likely very similar to engaging in a dungeon-crawl, so expect a game like this to point you to your inventory when it comes to solving problems - like talking to extraterrestrials, or fighting against hostile cryptids. You’re also going to be tracking your gear, so if you like inventory-keeping this game is for you.

Making Change, by Beth and Angel Make Games.

Researchers at The Observatory study all sorts of objects that seem ordinary but are gifted with a special power. One of these objects is a coin. However, when the senior researcher went to start testing it, it… convinced them to "liberate" it. Surveillance shows the researcher was speaking to something or someone —presumably, the coin— and the researcher quickly went from arguing to utterly submitting to the coin.

This is an adventure made for the CoinSides Jam of 2023, which had the stipulation that the adventure have a coin as a central theme. This adventure invokes the coin with some kind of intelligence, as it has the ability to affect the desires and emotions of people around it. Because the adventure is system-agnostic, it’s meant to work with a number of different systems, but I would recommend using games that are good for detective stories or modern horror, or even something like External Containment Bureau.

You Can Check Out Anytime You Like, But You Can Never Leave, by Marn S.

You Can Check Out Any Time You Like, But You Can Never Leave is a game for 3+ people, and a surreal horror-flavored hack of Mobile Frame Zero: Firebrands by Meguey & Vincent Baker. It is also a loving homage to The Shining, NanQuest, and the songs of the 70s and 80. 

Play as a Guest, Staff member, or living Anomaly at the Hotel California, the first and only hotel to exist outside of time and space! Create messy entanglements — ally with monsters, or backstab your friends! Inject the surreal and horrific into everyday life! Solve mysteries! Have strange dreams! Chase someone with a knife! Burn it all to the ground!

The setting for this game takes place in a hotel rather than The Oldest House (or something like it) but what makes it interesting is that it’s a hack of Firebrands. This means that rather than following an adventure seed like a traditional RPG, you’ll be setting up and playing through various scenes in the form of mini-games. The creator has also published Such A Lovely Place, a supplement with five extra mini-games to incorporate into your eerie stay at Hotel California. There might be math here but if there is it’s probably only in a mini-game or two.

FIST, by CLAYMORE.

FIST: Ultra Edition is a tabletop roleplaying game about paranormal mercenaries doing the tough jobs no one else can. In the game, you belong to a legendary rogue mercenary unit called FIST. You are a soldier of fortune who doesn’t fit into modern society. You are a disposable gun for hire, caught up in the death and destruction of pointless proxy wars and oppressive establishments. You may also be someone who can turn into a ghost or control bees with your mind. 

FIST focuses on action and combat, but specifically against the paranormal. You aren’t regular soldiers, not by a long-shot. The time period is during the Cold War: there are tensions that will affect your missions outside of simply what you’re hunting. The combat is meant to be brutal, the missions highly tactical, and the character builds are modular (so there might be some number crunching). No playbooks here, I’m afraid, but if you want the gritty action that keeps you on your toes in CONTROL, you might want to check out FIST, especially since it’s on Kickstarter right now! (Ending soon!)

THE COMPANY, by Mega_Corp.

The Company is a survival horror game centered around corporate emergency response teams and the aftermath of the situations they are assigned to deal with. Players take on the roles of Employees assigned to response teams that quickly find themselves in over their heads with one player facilitating play as the Game Manager.

Now this looks like a game with playbooks. At the beginning, your character chooses one of five Careers, each of which come with special Perks, pre-selected skills, a personal item random table, and some jobs and goals to focus your character. The game itself ins’t terribly long, but there’s enough lore to establish how the game borrows from CONTROL without copying it completely, and the designers have crated an Employee Handbook for players as well as a Management Manual for GM’s. You get both when you pick up this game on Itch. There’s definitely a lot of pieces to keep track in this one - I don’t know if that translates to number crunching but it might get you close!

[racefortheironthrone]

So! I was planning on writing a Batman fan fic and had a question about the urban facing side I was wondering if you could help on. I suppose this can intersect with other super hero / billionaire figures. Interested in exploring urban development in the setting but trying to avoid pitfalls , but ofc no worries if this isn’t something in your purview or interest

I feel like Gotham, so deeply realized as a fictional setting and riddled with its issues as a city, would be a great template to explore these urbanist issues. And while Batman treats symptoms - protecting people from acts of violence, and also pursuing those who are responsible for the corrupt systems who have put themselves above conventional pursuit. But Bruce Wayne I feel like by a lot of fans can he overlooked as an agent of improvement in Gotham - he can use his political and economic clout to both publically and privately improve the systemic conditions of the city, like his famous hiring program for ex cons. And I would like to explore this side a lot deeper, however I’m wary of showing a billionaire as the only solution , or even the best solution to a city’s issues and basically recreating public policies privately.

Since showing a privatized solution to be the answer to all these problems isn’t the sentiment I want to give, as often private corporations are the ones exploiting / building up this cult of personality around millionaires is already troublesome. But ofc, Bruce Wayne is fictional and can be an example of how a CEO ought to act, but would like to show these solutions are achievable and to be sought after in the public sphere - we shouldn’t expect CEO to hire ex cons, build free transit, eliminate all these zoning issues by buying half the city because 1) unrealistic and 2) can institute a dangerous mindset where it’s like “just give everything to billionaires and they’ll fix things!” (See, the cult of musk)

So my question is, do you have any recomendations on how to achieve this balance of using Wayne as a championing workers rights, urban development , reform etc. without just shilling for billionaires? Because, after all, billionaires have been opponents and don’t want to diminish that. Perhaps using his influence to give away his infouence to others , if that makes sense. or even better - historical examples of figures of privilege utilizing their position to advocate for the public sector and go all in as earnest urban Allies as a roadmap to model this after?

This is a really interesting question, and I think points to some of the limitations of what can be done with the Bruce Wayne archetype.

As I've said before, I think what can be done to make Wayne an enlightened person without falling prey to the mentality that "the billionaires will save us!" (looking at you, RALPH) is to really explore the limitations of top-down reform.

Because if there is one genuine weaknesses both to the Batman and Bruce Wayne, it's that he has a well, "heroic" mindset in which he thinks that if he's just smart enough, prepared enough, tough enough, that he can win a one-man-war on crime and other social evils - but you don't really see him engaging in movement-building in either his vigilante or civilian sides.

In the former, even if we leave aside his more "lone wolf" depictions, Batman has issues with trust and working well in groups. At best, he cultivates a small number of people (the Robins, the JLA), and he tends to keep people at arm's length. In the latter, even when Bruce is trying to make systemic, social interventions in transportation or housing or health care or social welfare, it's usually done through a top-down approach - build this project here, support this politician there - rather than sitting down and doing an analysis of how he could build a sustainable majority coalition with the muscle to change Gotham on its own.

Realistically, an honest, militant, and strategic Waynetech union (albeit assisted from the shadows to keep the mob and the supervillain gangs at bay) could do more to change Gotham for good than any Foundation that has ever or could ever exist.

[feckcops]

Mental health diagnoses are capitalist constructs

“Mental and physical diagnoses aren’t objective facts that exist in nature, even though we usually think of them this way. While the experiences and phenomena that fall under different diagnostic categories are, of course, real, the way that we choose to categorise them is often influenced by systems of power. The difference between ‘health’ and ‘illness’, ‘order’ and ‘disorder’ is shaped by which kinds of bodies and minds are conducive to capitalism and the state. For example, the difference between ‘ordinary distress’ and ‘mental illness’ is often defined by its impact on your ability to work. The recent edition of the DSM, psychiatry’s comprehensive manual of ‘mental disorders’, mentions work almost 400 times – work is the central metric for diagnosis.

“When we look across history, it becomes even more obvious that diagnosis is tied to capitalist metrics of productivity: certain categories of illness have come in and out of existence as the conditions of production have changed. In the 19th century, the physician Samuel A. Cartwright proposed the diagnosis of ‘drapetomania’, which would describe enslaved Black people who fled from plantations. While we might think of drapetomania as a historical outlier among ‘true’ and ‘objective’ diagnoses, it is underpinned by the same logic as other diagnoses: it describes mental or physical attributes that make us less exploitable and profitable. In the 1920s, medical and psychological researchers became interested in a pathology called ‘accident-proneness’, which was applied to workers who were repeatedly injured in the brutal and dangerous factory conditions of the industrial revolution. Dyslexia, a diagnosis I have been given, also didn’t emerge until the market began to shift from manual labour towards jobs that relied on reading and writing, when all children were expected to be literate. Despite having problems with reading, I understand that in a world where reading and writing weren’t so central to our daily life, there would be no need to name my dyslexia, no need to diagnose it.

“As a system of state power, many of us rely on diagnosis to get the material things that we need to survive in the world. When illness or disability interferes with our ability to work, we often need a diagnosis to justify our lack of productivity – and for some, diagnosis is the necessary pathway to getting state benefits. If we want to get access to medication, treatment or other healing practices provided by the state, diagnosis is also the token that we need to get there. This is made all the more complicated by the fact that doctors have the power to dispense and withhold diagnoses, regardless of our personal desires. When it comes to psychiatric diagnosis, most of us know someone who has had to fight or wait for years for a diagnosis that would improve their quality of life – particularly in the realm of autism, ADHD and eating disorders. The internalised racism, sexism, classism or ableism of doctors often gets in the way of our ability to access the diagnoses that we want and need. Then there are those of us that are given diagnoses that we reject, a process that we also have no say in ...

“When we understand that psychiatric diagnoses are constructed, contested, and aren’t grounded in biological measures, the idea of ‘self-diagnosis’ starts to feel less dangerous or controversial. Self-diagnosis is grounded in the idea that, while the institution of medicine may hold useful technologies and expertise, we also hold valuable knowledge about our bodies and minds. I know many people who have found solace and respite in communities for various diagnoses, even if they don’t have an official diagnosis from a doctor. These spaces, which respect the wisdom offered by lived experience, can be valuable forums of knowledge-sharing and solidarity. Self-diagnosis also pushes against an oppressive diagnostic system that is so centred around notions of productivity.”

[kyeterna]

I am starting to think that being a tourist visiting Greek islands is completely unethical.

In a similar way as buying fast fashion is unethical.

This problem is very prevalent in the islands which is why I am specifically talking about them and not tourism throughout the country (though in specific areas that are tourism heavy the problem still stands).

Very coincidentally, along with Greece's economic protections of the working class collapsing, the new lucrative industry of tourism arose, after the economic crisis. With labour laws becoming more lax to "help the economy" we've seen the rise of seasonal work. What's that you might ask. Young adults with no working experience working in tourist heavy areas in service at restaurants and cafés and what not. Sometimes for 12 hours a day if not more, no benefits, sometimes they don't even provide you with housing, barely any days off. I've had cousins and friends who worked the summer season, it is hell and dehumanising. Especially with how many tourists there just are. Just earlier this month there was a story about how a sea side cafe bar owner had his waiters serve their patrons *in the sea*. THE WAITERS HAD TO WALK INTO THE SEA WITH THE DRINKS TO SERVE THE CUSTOMERS WHO WERE SWIMMING. "But tourists give good tips" AND THAT FIXES THINGS???? YOU THINK THIS MAKES THINGS BETTER??

But it's not just worker exploitation. It's how tourism becomes hostile to the locals themselves. How tourism is actively destroying the local environment. A friend of mine who comes from an island talks about how because of AirBnB locals are outpriced out of their rented homes. How students are kicked out of their apartments as soon as May enters because that's when thr tourism season starts. We gotta rent those apartments to our lovely tourists! How in islands even as big as Crete, every summer the locals have no access to water because it is all used up by hotels and tourists. All greek islands have limited access to drinking water and this is made worse through tourism. But you see you can't have the tourists not use water in abundance! How over the years I have seen my local beach become commercialised. How the public umbrellas crumbled and were replaced by privately owned by a sea side cafe bar umbrellas and sunbeds, making it so you have to pay to have access to that beach. How tourists have no beach etiquette, which ends up littering the area. How businesses' desire to get more tourist customers leaves to natural landmarks just altered beyond recognition, local fauna driven out.

Our government has over relied on tourism to rebuild its economy. When covid happened this showed how vulnerable an economy is if it relies on tourism alone. It feels like even our government treats us more like a tourist attraction than an actual nation. Obviously the issue is capitalism. Some might say it's unregulated capitalism. Whatever. The whole tourism industry was set up so that its vulnerable workers cannot even organise nor fight back. They are only contracted to work 3-4 months a year after all.

If you ever decide to visit Greece for vacation, I don't know, maybe think about all this.

[sapphichymns]

I’ll admit, I’ve been thinking about Kerblam a lot due to the rise of AI and how it’s used as a gotcha about the politics of 13′s era being actually conservative and not ‘woke’. So basically, Kerblam is a really annoying fungi in the fandom wank.

Here’s the thing, I know what the problem with the episode. It’s the word System. System is only ever used to describe the AI. Never was used to describe the way Kerblam uses the capitalist system to operate in Kandoka. Of course, it wouldn’t really raise eyebrows for a script editor, it really isn’t contradicting anything that came before. But when the Doctor says:

DOCTOR: The systems aren't the problem. How people use and exploit the system, that's the problem. People like you.

It somehow automatically became about the capitalist system Kerblam operates on. If it had been:

DOCTOR: The AI isn’t the problem. How people use and exploit the AI, that's the problem. People like you.

the fandom wank about it wouldn’t have ever reached this level of political jerk off (I swear I didn’t want to reach this level of the metaphor but I did).

The episode is not about capitalism in space(!), it’s about automation anxiety. How Kerblam is using an AI to replace jobs from people to maximize profit and it does cause an issue to the people of Kandoka.

KIRA: I was terrible too, my first week. I'm amazed the System kept me on. But now I just take a deep breath at the beginning of every shift and tell myself, Kira Arlo, you can do this. Sometimes I almost believe myself. DOCTOR: What I don't understand is, why does Kerblam need people as a workforce? These are automated and repetitive tasks. Why not get the robots to do it? KIRA: Do you not watch the news? DOCTOR: We travel a lot. RYAN: A lot. KIRA: Kandokan labour laws. Ever since the People Power protests, companies have to make sure a minimum ten percent of the workforce are actual people, at all levels. Like the slogan says, real people need real jobs. Work gives us purpose, right?

The people of Kandoka were indeed holding Kerblam accountable for the push of automation, even the way the episode ends is a continuation of that.

SLADE: We're suspending all operations for a month, pending review and while the TeamMates are rebuilding Dispatch. JUDY: All our workers have been given two weeks' paid leave, free return shuttle transport. And I'm going to propose that Kerblam becomes a People-Led Company in future. Majority organics. People, I mean. We're always looking for good workers to join our management team. DOCTOR: Er, thanks. We're strictly freelance.

(Note: Charlie did not  care about the people who worked at Kerblam. He only cared about Kira and only because, it affected him directly.)

I understand Oxygen is more popular because the Doctor says capitalism sucks and it’s basically abolished by the end of it but not every story needs the Doctor to just show up and somehow solve a systematic issue. Some times, talking about the importance of fighting little by little to make things better is just as important. It’s a recurring theme in 13′s era.

I don’t even think Kerblam needs a medal for effort or its issue is somehow some big moral failure. It just happened. It’s common for this show (or many others) to have its moment where it trips on itself. It’s just the conversation around it is so fucking dumb.

[dailyanarchistposts]

France, 1968

This has undoubtedly been the greatest revolutionary upheaval in Western Europe since the days of the Paris Commune. Hundreds of thousands of students have fought pitched battles with the police. Nine million workers have been on strike. The red flag of revolt has flown over occupied factories, universities, building sites, shipyards, primary and secondary schools, pit heads, railway stations, department stores, docked transatlantic liners, theatres, hotels. The Paris Opera, the Folies Bergères and the building of the National Council for Scientific Research were taken over, as were the headquarters of the French Football Federation — whose aim was clearly perceived as being “to prevent ordinary footballers enjoying football’.

Virtually every layer of French society has been involved to some extent or other. Hundreds of thousands of people of all ages have discussed every aspect of life in packed-out, non-stop meetings in every available schoolroom and lecture hall, Boys of 14 have invaded a primary school for girls shouting “Liberté pour les filles”. Even such traditionally reactionary enclaves as the Faculties of Medicine and Law have been shaken from top to bottom, their hallowed procedures and institutions challenged and found wanting. Millions have taken a hand in making history. This is the stuff of revolution.

Under the influence of the revolutionary students, thousands began to query the whole principle of hierarchy. The students had questioned it where it seemed the most ‘natural’: in the realms of teaching and knowledge. They proclaimed that democratic self-management was possible — and to prove it began to practice it themselves. They denounced the monopoly of information and produced millions of leaflets to break it. They attacked some of the main pillars of contemporary ‘civilisation’: the barriers between manual workers and intellectuals; the consumer society, the ‘sanctity’ of the university and of other founts of capitalist culture and wisdom. Within a matter of days the tremendous creative potentialities of the people suddenly erupted. The boldest and most realistic ideas — and they are usually the same — were advocated, argued, applied. Language, rendered stale by decades of bureaucratic mumbo- jumbo, eviscerated by those who manipulate it for advertising purposes, suddenly reappeared as something new and fresh. People re-appropriated it in all its fullness. Magnificently apposite and poetic slogans emerged from the anonymous crowd, Children explained to their elders what the function of education should be. The educators were educated, Within a few days, young people of 20 attained a level of understanding and a political and tactical sense which many who had been in the revolutionary movement for 30 years or more were still sadly lacking.

The tumultuous development of the students struggle triggered off the first factory occupations. It transformed both the relation of forces in society and the image, in people’s minds of established leaders. It compelled the State to institutions and of established reveal both its oppressive nature and its fundamental incoherence. It exposed the utter emptiness of Government, Parliament, Administration — and of ALL the political parties. Unarmed students had forced the Establishment to drop its mask, to sweat with fear, to resort to the police club and to the gas grenade. Students finally compelled the bureaucratic leaderships of the ‘working class organisations to reveal themselves as the ultimate custodians of the established order.

But the revolutionary movement did still more. It fought its battles in Paris, not in some under-developed country, exploited by imperialism. In a glorious few weeks the actions of students and young workers dispelled the myth of the well-organised, well-oiled modern capitalist society, from which radical conflict had been eliminated and in which only marginal problems remained to be solved. Administrators who had been administering everything were suddenly shown to have had a grasp of nothing. Planners who had planned everything showed themselves incapable of ensuring the endorsement of their plans by those to whom they applied. This most modern movement should allow real revolutionaries to shed a number of the ideological encumbrances which in the past had hampered revolutionary activity. It wasn’t hunger which drove the students to revolt. There wasn’t an ‘economic crisis’ even in the loosest sense of the term. The revolt had nothing to do with ‘under-consumption’ or with ‘over-production’, The ‘falling rate of profit’ just didn’t come into the picture. Moreover, the student movement wasn’t based on economic demands. On the contrary, the movement only found its real stature, and only evoked its tremendous response, when it went beyond the economic demands within which official student unionism had for so long sought to contain it (incidentally with the blessing of all the political parties and ‘revolutionary’ groups of the ‘Left’). And conversely it was by confining the workers’ struggle to purely economic objectives that the trade union bureaucrats have so far succeeded in coming to the assistance of the regime.

The present movement has shown that the fundamental contradiction of modern bureaucratic capitalism isn’t the ‘anarchy of the market’. It isn’t the ‘contradiction between the forces of production and the property relations’. The central conflict to which all others are related is the conflict between order-givers (dirigeants) and order-takers (éxécutants). The insoluble contradiction which tears the guts out of modern capitalist society is the one which compels it to exclude people from the management of their own activities and Which at the same time compels it to solicit their participation, without which it would collapse. These tendencies find expression on the one hand in the attempt of the bureaucrats to convert men into objects (by violence, mystification, new manipulation techniques — or ‘economic’ carrots’ and, on the other hand, in mankind’s refusal to allow itself to be treated in this way.

The French events show clearly something that all revolutions have shown, but which apparently has again and again to be learned anew. There is no ‘inbuilt revolutionary perspective’, no ‘gradual increase of contradictions’, no ‘progressive development of a revolutionary mass consciousness’. What are given are the contradictions and the conflicts we have described and the fact that modern bureaucratic society more of less inevitably produces periodic ‘accidents’ which disrupt its fuctioning These both provoke popular intervention and provide the people with opportunities for asserting themselves and for changing the social order. The functioning of bureaucratic capitalism creates the conditions within which revolutionary consciousness may appear. These conditions are an integral part of the whole alienating hierarchical and oppressive social structure. Whenever people struggle, sooner or later they are compelled to question the whole of that social structure. These are ideas which many of us in Solidarity have long subscribed to. They were developed at length in some of Paul Cardan’s pamphlets. Writing in Le Monde (20 May 1968) E Morin admits that what is happening today in France is “a blinding resurrection: the resurrection of that libertarian strand which seeks concilation with marxism, in a formula of which Socialisme ou Barbarie had provided a first synthesis a few years ago...”. As after every verification of basic concepts in the crucible of real events, many will proclaim that these had always been their views. This, of course isn’t true.’ The point however isn’t to lay claims to a kind of copyright in the realm of correct revolutionary ideas. We welcome converts, from whatever sources and however belated. We can’t deal here at length with what is now an important problem in France, namely the creation of a new kind of revolutionary movement, Things would indeed have been different if such a movement had existed, strong enough to outwit the bureaucratic manoeuvred, alert enough day by day to expose the duplicity of the ‘left’ leaderships, deeply enough implanted to explain to the workers the real meaning of the students’ struggle, to propagate the idea of autonomous strike committees (linking up union and non-union members); of workers’ management of production and of workers’ councils. Many things which could have been done weren’t done because there wasn’t such a movement. The way the students’ own struggle was unleashed shows that such an organization could have played a most impotent catalytic role without automatically becoming a bureaucratic ‘leadership’. But such regrets are futile. The non-existence of such a movement is no accident, If it had been formed during the previous period it certainly wouldn’t have been the kind of movement of which we are speaking, Even taking the ‘best’ of the small organizations — and multiplying its numbers a hundredfold — wouldn’t have met the requirements of the current situation. When confronted with the test of events all the ‘left’ groups just continued playing their old gramophone records, Whatever their merits as depositories of the cold ashes of the revolution — a task they have now carried out for several decades — they proved incapable of snapping out of their old ideas and routines, incapable of learning or of forgetting anything.

The new revolutionary movement will have to be built from the new elements (students and workers) who have understood the real significance of current events. The revolution must step into the great political void revealed by the crisis of the old society. It must develop a voice, a face, a paper — and it must do it soon. We can understand the reluctance of some students to form such an organization. They feel there is a contradiction between action and thought, between spontaneity and organization. Their hesitation is fed by the whole of their previous experience, They have seen how thought could become sterilizing dogma, organization become bureaucracy or lifeless ritual, speech become a means of mystification, a revolutionary idea become a rigid and stereotyped programme. Through their actions, their boldness, their reluctance to consider long-term aims, they had broken out of this straight-jacket. But this isn’t enough.

Moreover many of them had sampled the traditional ‘left’ groups. In all their fundamental aspects these groups remain trapped within the ideological and organizational frameworks of bureaucratic capitalism. They have programmes fixed once and for all, leaders who utter fixed speeches, whatever the changing reality around them, organizational forms which mirror those of existing society. Such groups reproduce within their own ranks the division between order-takers and order-givers, between those who ‘know’ and those who don’t, the separation between scholastic pseudo-theory and real life. They would even like to impose this division into the working class, whom they all aspire to lead, because (and I was told this again and again) “the workers are only capable of developing a trade union consciousness”.

But these students are wrong. One doesn’t get beyond bureaucratic organization by denying all organization. One doesn’t challenge the sterile rigidity of finished programmes by refusing to define oneself in terms of aims and methods. One doesn’t refute dead dogma by the condemnation of all theoretical reflection. The students and young workers can’t just stay where they are. To accept these ‘contradictions’ as valid and as something which cannot be transcended is to accept the essence of bureaucratic capitalist ideology. It is to accept the prevailing philosophy and the prevailing reality. It is to integrate the revolution into an established historical order. if the revolution is only an explosion lasting a few days (or weeks), the established order — whether it knows it or not — will be able to cope. What is more — at a deep level class society even needs such jolts. This kind of ‘revolution’ permits class society to survive by compelling it to transform and adapt itself. This is the real danger today. Explosions which disrupt the imaginary world in which alienated societies tend to live — and bring them momentarily down to earth help them eliminate outmoded methods of domination and evolve new and more flexible ones. Action or thought? For revolutionary socialists the problem is not to make a synthesis of these two preoccupations of the revolutionary students. It is to destroy the social context in which such false alternatives find root.

[wizard-archivist-official]

What’s your favourite piece of forgotten lore?

We raised this question in our biweekly Head Archivists' Meeting to make sure the whole team got to have their input. Once the fires had died down and the various demons had been banished back to their planes of origin, we decided that rather than trying to settle on a single piece we would produce a shortlist based on the most popular answers across the team. The original list of 37 items was then cut down to a "top 3" with the highest degree of consensus between the archivists, and then extended to a "top 4" when Ainsworth threatened to release a Greater Hypercurse of Enpigening in the lobby if his favourite wasn't included.

So, without further ado,

Our sort-of top 34 consensus list of some of our favourite pieces of forgotten lore

Iacobus Stultus (James the Fool)'s Four Prime model of alchemy. Proposed some time after 1613 in the (possibly pseudographical) De Arte Divina Transmutationis et Anates, Iacobus argues against previous Paracelcian tripartite Salt-Sulfur-Mercury theories, as well as later bipartite Sulfur-Mercury and Mercury-alone models, of prime materials in favour of a quadripartite model consisting of salt, sulfur, mercury and ducks as the four fundamental elements of reality. Iacobus's argument hinges on the claim that ducks are such essentially peculiar and transcendental beings that it is inconceivable that they may be constituted of more discrete parts, and must instead be understood as foundational elements and principles of reality. This theory was widely panned by other alchemists on the grounds that ducks are clearly composed of constituent parts and can be subdivided, although a number of later texts attributed to Iacobus continued to defend the salt-sulfur-mercury-ducks theory with a gradually increasing role for elemental ducks in the theory, with the last text, De Divinis Anatibus, going so far as to defend a duck-only theory of prime materials.

The Second Banned Spell. Now, all wizards know the story of the first banned spell, so we won't bore you by repeating it. What is often left out of these stories, however, is that, at the time, the wizard council only created the requisite ordinances and regulations to ban exactly that spell, and did not provide any appropriate institutions for the generalised banning of spells that would follow. In fact, there was significant pushback against the banning of that first spell for fear that this would lead to the council exerting tyrannical control over the wizarding community, and so various clauses and provisions were put in place to prevent the council banning any other spells. So what changed? Throughout the 16th century, wizarding bosses had sought for ways of increasing the effeciency of their apprentices and workers. In 1536, Alfonso of Piccolamerda developed the Lesser Wage Theft spell which, alongside Efficacious Torture and Shatter Will, was widely used by wizarding bosses to force workers to produce more in ever harsher conditions. The result of these harsh and exploitative conditions was the great Apprentice Revolt of 1593, which led to the passing of the Rights of the Apprentice Act 1595 (an early predecessor to the 1707 Wizard Apprentices' Right to Live [WARL] Act) and the addition of Lesser Wage Theft to the list of bannded spells.

Why installers are called "wizards". When computers were first developed, there was some difficulty in developing hardware and software solutions to replacing information within a storage system with other information, or transfering information between storage systems. The original solution for this problem was to shrink a wizard down small enough that they could stand on the computer chip with a little screen that told them when a new file had been called for. When required, the wizard would then summon that file from its original source and use a magical transmutation ritual to imbue it directly into its new storage device. While this was a very quick method of data transfer, it was also expensive, and so it was eventually phased out in favour of the software installers that you know today, although they were referred to as "wizards" for a long time to recall the original information transfer system. Interestingly, the last computer to still use the wizard-based data transfer system was Horatio of Slough's WizBook 7, released in 2011, was discontinued in 2012 following the council establishing the Use of Wizards and Other Sapient Magical Beings in Technological Devices Act.

The invention of blue. Now, you may be familiar with Homer's "wine-dark sea", which some people use to argue that the Ancient Greeks couldn't see blue, and others say is just a metaphor because the idea that the Ancient Greeks couldn't see blue is obviously stupid. As it turns out, neither of these answers is correct - Ancient Greek eye-sight was just as good as anyone's today, but the colour blue hadn't been invented yet. Back then, the visual colour spectrum just went straight from teal to purple. The colour blue was added by the revered Archwizard Wolfgang Sauerkraut, as part of his performance in the 32nd Annual Wizarding Polylympics. While historically notable, the invention of the colour blue and expansion of the visible light spectrum was largely overshadowed for viewers by the second half of the archwizard's act, in which he summoned a seamonster from the plane of water and attempted to have sexual intercourse with it, and as a result, Archwizard Sauerkraut was remembered not for his light-bending creation but as "Archwizard Serpentshagger".

[secretmellowblog]

Anyone who thinks AI is going to “revolutionize/democratize copyright law” is a fucking idiot and just as stupid as all those people who thought NFTs would revolutionize copyright. Because no, it will not? It won’t? That’s now how any of this works? You are just lying? It’s the same argument people always made about Nfts— “currently it looks like it’s just a scummy way for Silicon Valley types and big companies to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else, but in our distant libertarian cyber future it will somehow revolutionize/democratize the concept of ownership in some nebulous poorly defined way we haven’t figured out the logistics of yet!”

The thing is. In my opinion the biggest problem with current copyright law isn’t that it allows people to have any kind of rights over the work, or that people having some kind of rights over their work is inherently always bad. The much greater problem with current copyright law is that it is massively skewed in favor of corporations, and benefits them to an insane degree while giving very little to the people who actually create the work. The people who actually make your favorite movies and comics and games usually don’t have any rights whatsoever over their creations, and instead massive companies have complete control over them.

And that’s the whole problem with the unevenness of current copyright law. if I as an individual violate Disney’s copyright by stealing a single image owned by them, or create derivative work/fanfic based on their stuff, they can sue me. But if a big corporation steals my entire life’s work and everything I’ve ever made to shove in a algorithm and create infinite derivative copies, I can do nothing. Theft on a small scale is a crime— but theft on a massive scale is business.

OpenAI is not some leftist project about taking power away from corporations by revolutionizing ownership. it is itself a giant corporation determined to get as much value for its investors as possible. It needs to be regulated. And laws protecting individual working class artists from a massive corporation determined to use their stolen labor to make them obsolete are necessary, actually!

This is not creating a world free of copyright; it’s creating a world where only individuals are bound by whatever rules exists, and whatever pretense used to exist that we had any rights over our work whatsoever is gone, because now only corporations can own things. AI can generate an image but it cannot generate a movie, which is one of the only “products” that can’t be “generated”, so only big companies with the budgets to make larger projects will be able to generate things that can be owned.

I thought we all agreed that the idea that a libertarian world where “~we don’t need laws and regulations let the free market decide and somehow everything will work itself out-“ was utterly stupid, and there needed to be limits on corporate power?

I find it literally insane that people think it’s somehow progressive to cheer on a massive corporation attempting to get infinite power, and that working class artists who are already overworked and underpaid are ~not real leftists- for pointing out it’s wrong to cheer on corporations getting to play by their own separate rules (rules that WE are bound to but they are not), even when their technology relies on the exploited labor of the people they’re going to drive deeper into poverty.

The leftism leaves people’s bodies when you tell them that they don’t actually need a machine whose data was trained by underpaid impoverished workers in Kenya making less than $2 an hour to write free shitty fanfic for them… and that the machine doesn’t create things “withojt labor,” it creates things by finding corporates loopholes to current laws that allows them to avoid paying the people for their labor. Everything you generate with image/text generators is things that are generated by the all the free labor of the artists they didn’t pay, and all the poor people in developing countries that they exploited. It doesn’t create things without labor, it creates things by obfuscating where the labor came from.

[clickbliss]

Loddlenaut: a cozy clean up that leaves the bigger questions behind

by Amr (@siegarettes)

Loddlenaut

Developers - Moon Lagoon

Publisher - Secret Mode

PC,

With a chill, and I daresay--cozy--atmosphere, Loddlenaut offers exactly the kind of laid back routine that’s easy to dip into for small moments of satisfaction. Taking the role of an ocean sanitation worker, there’s an immediate satisfaction to clearing the junk and gunk in the area, which builds towards the long term goal of creating a clear, inhabitable biome. Loddles, the native lifeform of the planet, provide a light pet raising element, not unlike Sonic Adventure’s Chao Gardens.

Alongside the cute, slightly aliased aesthetic, and some light survival game elements, Loddlenaut kept me plenty engaged and doesn’t overstay its welcome, with plenty smaller goals for those looking for more. Yet it's those same cozy elements, and the vague gestures toward an environmental message that Loddlenaut struggles to square away. 

Loddlenaut follows a familiar structure, starting you out with limited capabilities, clearing areas to reveal the next, and in the process gaining access to new materials and faster, more efficient abilities. Intentional or not, this turns the world into a “frontier”, where wildlife and environmental resources become stepping stones to greater control over the space.

Loddlenaut attempts to sidestep these issues by focusing on restoring an environment that was already previously inhabited, cleaning up the mess left by a careless corporation that exploited the planet’s resources. Materials are simply reclaimed from debris left behind, and it’s restoring the habitats of the plant and animal life that provides resources, not harvesting them. But it’s difficult to throw off the underlying motivations that drive its progression. 

Systems like fast travel emphasize this struggle, only allowing you to quickly travel between areas after you’ve cleared them, and consequently, reclaimed all their materials. The framing is slightly different, but functionally it feels no different to clearing all the objectives in an open world game. The feeling is exasperated in the late game, where the amount of trash increases, and the limited inventory pushes against your ability to make steady progress. The goal quickly became gathering materials to ease the tedium, and more than a few times I considered jettisoning trash back into the area instead of lugging it back to base, so I could clear more of an area before making a return trip. (Dropped trash doesn’t count against an area’s completion). I ultimately didn’t, but looking at the forums it seems that I wasn’t the only one with that idea. 

The story gestures towards larger environmental concerns, but never resolves. Your operator makes repeated comments about the massive damage done by the corporation that’s hired you for cleanup, but reassures you that it’s not your job to question your actions, only clean up after them. The delivery had me almost sure that there’d be a turn somewhere near the end, but Loddlenaut concludes with a simple “nature is healing”, creating an unintentional downer ending as I left knowing the underlying problem creating the pollution hadn’t been dealt with.

The team’s intentions seem more to imply that the work is not yet done, to avoid a simple easy solution, and inspire further action, but it leaves so many underlying assumptions unchallenged in an attempt for a feel good ending. I walked away feeling less like my character had made a meaningful contribution, but instead was doomed to be a janitor for the messes of a corporation who would continue to move to new worlds and leave the same problems behind. 

I ended up returning to Loddlenaut after the ending, wanting to clear up the areas that had become polluted again in my absence, and to check up and name the Loddles that I hadn’t had time for as I barrelled through the last areas. The little creatures remained cute as ever, but I couldn’t help notice the eerie stillness of the planet. Without the pollution cluttering up the landscape, it had the vibe of an aquarium. An isolated space to raise pets, with sunken structures to add visual variety. 

The thing is, as an aquarium, it’s easy to find joy in. At the end of the day I do love to feed and raise my pets, and clean the gunk out of their tank. Loddlenaut is just that, a playground for your pets that I enjoyed, that gestures at the bigger questions without any answers for them.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Republicans clueless as to why they don't have the youth vote . . .

climate protection reproductive health student debt gun safety affordable healthcare LGBTQ+ rights interracial marriage contraception voting rights marijuana money in politics police standards workers’ rights teaching accurate history, science and biology strong public schools support of teachers immigration issues

* * * *

The Summer of Climate Collapse

[That's Another Fine Mess :: TCinLA]

Fifty years ago, I decided that a Master of Public Administration degree would be useful in my expected career in government. In 1975, I obtained on of the first MPA degrees in the field of “Environmental Management.”

One of the books we read was “The Limits to Growth,” published by the Club of Rome, which detailed current enviornmental problems and forecast where they would be in 30 years of no action was taken, some action was taken, or effective action was taken. I rediscovered that book in a box in my garage 25 years ago and re-read it with the benefit of hindsight, since their 30 year period had just ended. In every case, no action had been taken, and in every case the current situation had been accurately forecast by the contributors to the book.

In 1967, historian Lynn White Jr.'s prescient "The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis" was published in "Science" magazine. His thesis was:

"In Antiquity every tree, every spring, every stream, every hill had its own genius loci, its guardian spirit. These spirits were accessible to men, but were very unlike men; centaurs, fauns, and mermaids show their ambivalence. Before one cut a tree, mined a mountain, or dammed a brook, it was important to placate the spirit in charge of that particular situation, and to keep it placated. By destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects."

Perhaps it’s fitting that during this summer of climate collapse - and if you think it’s something other than that, consider that June was Earth’s hottest month on record since the Permian Collapse - the event that brought on the Age of Dinosaurs after killing off 70% ofr species in the ocean and 80% of those on land - until the end of this month when the record will be broken by July, a record that will likely last another 31 days to the end of August. The atmosphere is warmer now than it’s been in 125,000 years, when our species was a few thousand individuals living a precarious existence on the edge of extinction in what is now South Africa .

That we are all transfixed not by this news but rather by the prospect of the United States falling to the machinations of a tenth-rate failed circus clown demonstrates the problem.

The initial success of Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” suggests Hollywood is finally ready to portray the American development and use of atomic weapons during World War II as something other than an absolute necessity. Unlike past movies, Nolan’s film points out that J. Robert Oppenheimer and many of his contemporaries knew they were ushering in an era where eradicating civilization had never been so easy

The parallels to climate change may not be obvious to people who don’t sit around pondering the end of the world, but I see them. Both climate change and ever-looming nuclear catastrophe are willful human creations driven by “progress” - one by scientific theory and research turbocharged by limitless wartime government resources, the other by oil-fueled industrialization. Both rationalized as necessary evils; climate change as a consequence of endless convenience for the human species, and nukes as guarantor of fragile world peace via “mutual assured destruction.”

It only took nearly 80 years to get to the point that National Mythology can be questioned in a commercially-successful film In all the time scientists have tried to focus our attention on climate change, they’ve had nothing as visually arresting as a single bomb instantly wiping out a city.

That has changed this summer.

We now have a global heat wave few could have envisioned even ten years ago, while the fossil fuel companies driving this destruction are coming off a year of record profits.

I wonder how this will be portrayed on screen 80 years from now.

The World Meteorological Organization expects temperatures in North America, Asia, North Africa and the Mediterranean to be above 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) "for a prolonged number of days this summer." It also expects more frequent heatwaves, spread across the seasons.

The ocean around Florida hit a record temperature of 101 degrees this week. Warm water like that will produce a hurricane that could wipe Miami off the map, the equivalent of a nuclear bomb.

While the Southwest swelters under a heat dome, Vermont saw its second 100-year rainstorm in roughly a decade. Early July brought the hottest day globally since records began, a milestone surpassed the following day. Yesterday there was flooding across the northeast from Wisconsin to Maine.

As these temperature and weather records fall, Earth may be nearing so-called tipping points. A “tipping point” is where incremental steps along the same trajectory could push Earth’s systems into abrupt or irreversible change, leading to transformations that cannot be stopped even if emissions were suddenly halted.

If these tipping points are passed, some effects such as permafrost thawing or the world’s coral reefs dying - both are already happening in Siberia and the Central Pacific - will happen more quickly than expected. We don’t really know when or how fast things will fall apart.

Some natural systems, if upended, could herald a restructuring of the world. Take the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica: It’s about the size of Florida, with a protruding ice shelf impeding the glacier’s flow into the ocean. Although the overall melt is slower than originally predicted, warm water is eating away at it from below, causing deep cracks. At a certain point, that melt may progress to become self-sustaining, which would guarantee the glacier’s eventual collapse. That will affect how much sea levels will rise; 80% of humans live near the ocean.

When melt from Greenland’s glaciers enters the ocean, it alters an important system of currents called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. The AMOC is a conveyor belt, drawing warm water from the tropics north. The water’s salinity increases as it evaporates, which, among other factors, makes it sink and return south along the ocean floor. As more glacial fresh water enters the system, that conveyor belt will weaken. Right now it’s the weakest it’s been in more than 1,000 years.

The Atlantic Ocean’s sensitive circulation system has become slower and less resilient, according to a new analysis of 150 years of temperature data — raising the possibility that this crucial element of the climate system could collapse within the next few decades.

Consider that: Paris and London are at the same latitude as Hudson’s Bay, yet Europe has the climate it does because of the AMOC - we commonly call it the Gulf Stream - which brings warm water in contact with cold air, resulting in the clouds and rain that provide for all living things there. If that collapses, life in Europe could soon resemble that of northern Canada. Right now, Europe can grow enough food to feed its 740+ million people; if the AMOC was to die, the continent could be plunged into famine in a matter of years.

The study published this last Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications suggests that continued warming will push the AMOC over its “tipping point” around 2050-2080. The shift would be as abrupt and irreversible as turning off a light switch, and it could lead to dramatic changes in weather on both sides of the Atlantic, leading to a drop in temperatures in northern Europe and elevated warming in the tropics, as well as stronger storms on the east coast of North America.

If the temperature of the sea surface changes, precipitation over the Amazon might too, contributing to deforestation, which in turn is linked to snowfall on the Tibetan plateau.

A new study published in Nature Communications last week titled “Warning of a Forthcoming Collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation” reports global warming forced by all the CO2 and methane in our atmosphere - if we action is not taken immediately - could shut down the AMOC as early as 2025 and almost certainly before 2095.

We may not even realize when we start passing points of no return—or if we already have.

James Hansen, one of the early voices on climate and the founder of 350.org, says measures to mitigate the crisis may ironically now contribute to it. A working paper he published this spring suggests that reduction in sulfate aerosol particles—the air pollution associated with burning coal and the global shipping industry—has contributed to warmer temperatures because these particles cause water droplets to multiply, brightening clouds and reflecting solar heat away from the planet’s surface. Hansen predicts that environmentally minded policies to reduce these pollutants will likely cause temperatures to rise 2 degrees Celsius by 2050.

This adds to a growing body of alarming climate science, like the one published last year in the Journal of Climate titled “Sixfold Increase in Historical Northern Hemisphere Concurrent Large Heatwaves Driven by Warming and Changing Atmospheric Circulations,” which indicates we’re much farther down the path of dangerous climate change than even most scientists realized.

That study essentially predicted this year’s shocking Northern Hemisphere heat waves. The lead researcher’s first name is Cassandra.

Perhaps most alarming was a paper published eleven months ago in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) titled “Evidence for Massive Methane Hydrate Destabilization During the Penultimate Interglacial Warming.”

It brings up the topic of the “Clathrate Gun Hypothesis,”which is the absolute worst case scenario for humanity’s future.

Across the planet there are an estimated 1.4 trillion tons of methane gas frozen into a snowcone-like slurry called clathrates or methane hydrates laying on the sea floor off the various continents. When they suddenly melt, that’s the “firing of the gun.” An explosion - in the context of geologic time - of atmospheric gas that’s over 70 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2. The Clathrate Gun.

The PNAS paper mentioned above concludes that 126,000 years ago there was an event that caused a small amount of these clathrates to warm enough to turn to gas and bubble up out of the seas. The resulting spike in methane gas led to a major warming event worldwide:

“Our results identify an exceptionally large warming of the equatorial Atlantic intermediate waters and strong evidence of methane release and oxidation almost certainly due to massive methane hydrate destabilization during the early part of the penultimate warm episode (126,000 to 125,000 y ago). This major warming was caused by … a brief episode of meltwater-induced weakening of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) and amplified by a warm mean climate.”

The researchers warn we may be looking at a similar event in our time:

“This week, sea surface temperatures along the coasts of Southern Spain and North Africa were 2-4C (3.6-7.2F) higher than they would normally be at this time of year, with some spots 5C (9F) above the long-term average.”

This has never happened before while humans have existed.

The least likely but most dangerous outcome scenario is that the warming ocean might begin a massive melting of those methane hydrate slurries into gas, producing a “burp” of that greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, further adding to global warming, which would then melt even more of the clathrates.

At the end of the Permian, 250 million years ago, this runaway process led to such a violent warming of the planet that it killed over 90 percent of all life in the oceans and 70 percent of all life on land, paving the way for the rise of the dinosaurs, as cold-blooded lizards were among the few survivors. That period is referred to as the Permian Mass Extinction, or, simply, “The Great Dying.” It was the most destructive mass extinction event in Earth’s history.

As the scientists writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences noted:

“The key findings of our study add to a growing body of observational findings strongly supporting the ‘clathrate gun hypothesis.’ … Importantly, the interval we have studied is marked by a mean climate state comparable to future projections of transient global climate warming of 1.3 °C to 3.0 °C.”

We just this year passed 1.3 degrees Celsius of planetary warming: we are now in the territory of the Clathrate Gun Hypothesis if these researchers are right

The last time our planet saw CO2 levels at their current 422 parts-per-million, sea levels were 60 feet higher and forests grew in Antarctica.

Meanwhile, we’re pouring more CO2 into the atmosphere right now than at any time in human history.

[mariacallous]

On March 4, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva sent an ambitious bill to the National Congress, aiming to regulate work carried out via ride-hailing apps. Among other provisions, the bill contains stipulations on minimum pay and working hours as well as unionization for drivers and compulsory pension contributions. While announcing the bill, Labor Minister Luiz Marinho—who declared that he had worn a pink shirt “in honor of” Women’s History Month—stated that drivers had so far been suffering from a “false sense of freedom,” since “workers were being enslaved by long working hours and low pay.”

But the public response to the proposed law portrays a more complicated reality. Drivers have staged protests throughout the country, and the bill faces an uphill battle in Congress. The new measures, protesters claim, are unhelpful and potentially damaging. As one driver pointed out quite simply, she makes her money based on the kilometers driven, not the hours worked. While certainly not denying that they face tough working conditions, drivers are highly skeptical of what they feel are government-imposed regulations that may affect their earnings.

Beyond mere antiquated and condescending paternalism, the ride-hailing app bill reflects the deep-rooted convictions of the—mostly older and male—leaders of Lula’s Workers’ Party (PT). The PT was forged in the crucible of the massive metalworkers’ strikes in the late 1970s, as the country’s military regime was loosening restrictions on popular mobilization and factory workers in São Paulo began to flex their muscles. Those successful experiences also firmly established one of the key forms of mediation between PT leaders and supporters, even as the party grew far beyond the São Paulo metropolitan area: the traditional factory union.

The problem is that neither the PT nor its allies on the left seem to have fully understood the momentous demographic shifts that have been taking place over the past two decades. As former President Jair Bolsonaro picked up on some years ago, in addition to its strong conservative vein, Brazil is an increasingly lower-middle-class country, disillusioned with corruption, the state of public services, and the overall business environment. If it is to prevail—both now and in the long run—then political messaging from the left will have to be adjusted to appeal to the almost 100 million people who fall in that bracket. Unlike Bolsonaro and other leaders on the right who increasingly thrive in gaining support from that group, Lula has struggled to shore up its support.

To some degree, Lula’s victory in 2022 was a result of voters rejecting Bolsonaro more than actually embracing Lula. It was an incredibly marginal win. With a slightly less confrontational and seemingly more managerially competent candidate, such as São Paulo Gov. (and ex-Bolsonaro minister) Tarcísio de Freitas, the far right could very well defeat the progressive left again. The PT is well aware of this: The poorly devised app-hailing bill was in fact meant to entice the country’s 1.5 million “platform workers”—people whose income comes primarily from services facilitated by digital platforms. The problem is that the PT—and its associated unions—are unable to see these workers as anything other than exploited labor, even though they prize their autonomy, earning 5.4 percent more on average than the national average for other types of workers. One may even wonder who the bill was truly designed to benefit: the drivers or PT-friendly unions.

Ironically, it was Lula himself, during his first two terms as president, who can largely be credited with creating this new, electorally vital lower-middle class. The success of Lula’s economic and social policies resulted in extraordinary growth rates and a reduction of economic inequality between 2003 and 2010.

The right says that Lula was merely lucky: He happened to lead the country at a time when emerging markets produced a global commodities boom that Brazil was ready to exploit, selling goods such as grain and iron ore to a fast-growing Asia. When the boom subsided, Brazil’s economy crashed. Lula’s hand-picked successor—President Dilma Rousseff, also of the PT—was unable to revert the downward spiral, providing proof, allegedly, of the PT’s economic incompetence.

But if his detractors are right and all Lula did was ride a wave of global demand—without establishing the foundations of sustained growth—then at least he rode it spectacularly well. Lula and his PT administration elevated 20 million people out of destitution. The administration brought electricity to remote locations for the first time, built millions of homes, and put cash into people’s hands so they could buy household appliances that were previously unthinkable. It became easier to access public health services, go to school, and earn a university degree. Health outcomes improved dramatically. Internet access became widespread. Many people traveled abroad for the first time.

The hallmark of that success, in fact, was Bolsa Família, a much-lauded conditional cash-transfer program that was founded essentially on the premise that poor people needed support, and that they—and not party bigwigs—knew best what to do with it.

But far beyond poverty reduction, the result of these policies was the expansion of a middle class of go-getting small entrepreneurs and young professionals. Previously relegated to the informal economy, small businesses have now had a taste of prosperity. It took a Colombian entrepreneur, David Vélez, to recognize the unmet demand for financial products, and his branchless, tech-centered, and Generation Z-focused Nubank, established in 2013, is now worth $44 billion, having completely upended Brazil’s heavily concentrated and unimaginative banking system. Among the financially savvy youth, trading on the stock market has become so popular that YouTube investment influencers now have millions of followers. These are people who now want a better business environment, lower taxes, and improved public security.

But the left, having created this budding middle class, has largely abandoned it. The PT has been unable to address the conundrum that many former beneficiaries of progressive social policies are people with relatively conservative values. They attend church, work two to three shifts each day, and often study for a degree in the evening. They see themselves as strivers who don’t need a leg up so much as they need the path in front of them to be cleared. They do not feel represented by the PT’s long-standing dual strategy of strong social policies for the poorest segments combined with lavish subsidies and interventions in sacred cow industries. They also feel personally attacked and patronized when left-wing intellectuals berate right-wing politicians and church leaders for their conservative worldviews. Somewhere along the way, the middle ground was lost.

It does not have to be this way. It is not that the left should abandon its necessary condemnation of populist hate speech. Neither should the left quit supporting those who need help the most. The Bolsonaro years were atrocious for Indigenous people, especially in Yanomami territory, where thousands of children became malnourished and deaths of children under the age of 5 jumped 29 percent. Violence against the LGBTQ community remains chronically and alarmingly elevated, and Brazil has the highest incidence of transgender and queer murders globally. Not only has the right failed to halt this, they have emboldened the perpetrators. Freitas, the aforementioned governor of São Paulo, has overseen an explosion in killings carried out by police officers, a chilling presage of what could happen should he win the next presidential election, in 2026.

However, if it is to remain electorally dominant, the left should also come up with a program for the new middle class. What will the PT do for small businesses owners who are depleted by urban violence and protection rackets? Will it manage to improve access to credit, allowing small businesses to keep borrowing and growing? Will red tape be cut, or will Lula maintain his bloated, overpaid, and often inefficient public sector? Will the PT address corruption seriously, or merely sweep it under the rug?

So far, beyond a promising but still unproven tax reform plan passed by Congress in December, Lula has provided few answers to these questions. Though Bolsonaro, for his part, also failed to deliver on these demands, the right has at least made consistent reference to them in recent years.

The PT is skillful at courting Faria Lima—São Paulo’s Wall Street. Top bankers and pro-market economists declared support for Lula in the second round of the 2022 elections. But these elite figures, while important, do not carry sufficient electoral weight. It is the millions of disenfranchised, lower-middle-class voters that Lula needs to win back.

Otherwise, they will fall into a far-right opponent’s arms. Smart economic measures would go a long way toward healing the country’s growing polarization.

[gatheringbones]

[“It is worth remembering that there is an intrinsic class tension in all workplaces – between the interests of managers or owners, and the interests of workers. The structural role of managers and owners is to extract as much profit as possible from the labour of employees. In theory, decriminalisation brought sex workers’ workplaces in New Zealand up to the legal level of other workplaces in terms of workers’ access to rights and safety.

This is not to say, however, that decriminalisation has eliminated exploitation, any more than other workplaces (for example, restaurants or construction companies) are free of exploitation simply because they are not criminalised. Decriminalisation cannot wash away class conflict between the interests of management and employees; instead, it aims to mitigate the intense workplace exploitation that is propped up and fuelled by criminalisation.

To be able to work indoors with friends without fearing arrest adds to a worker’s power in their relationship with their manager. Ultimately, if they need to, the worker can leave and work with friends. This power is reflected in the data: since New Zealand implemented decriminalisation, fewer people are working for managers; more are working in shared flats with friends. (Managers even complain about this!) When working together is criminalised, predators can use the threat of arrest against workers, as we’ve seen throughout this book. In contrast, workers in New Zealand’s small co-op workplaces are not vulnerable to violent men using the law against them in this way. As a worker in this set-up told the Prostitution Law Reform Committee, ‘I feel more confident now I know I’ve got rights … there’s no fear now of being caught by police. It was difficult when I was younger. I felt like a criminal, and was less assertive.’ Petal, another private worker, says,

I just think the biggest thing with the law change is … emotional support for the girls to say, ‘Yeah, you’re not doing anything wrong … you’re only doing a job.’ I think that’s the biggest thing … saying it’s not illegal … that’s what I like about the law. It’s supportive.

New Zealand implemented some additional forms of regulation which – unlike German or Dutch laws – are designed with the benefit of sex workers in mind, rather than profiteering, control, or punishment. For example, one provision of the Prostitution Reform Act stipulates that if a sex worker wishes to leave the sex industry, they can access Social Security immediately, without facing the temporary penalty to which they would have been subject had they ‘voluntarily’ left another job. How did this come to be?

In 1988, the New Zealand government started funding a newly formed sex worker led group: the New Zealand Collective of Prostitutes. The NZPC was funded as a health-promotion group; its founding basis was that sex workers should be able to ‘take control of their own health programmes as much as possible in order to determine the direction those programmes should take’. The NZPC immediately identified the criminalisation of prostitution as a serious problem in the lives of sex workers and pressured the government to set up a committee to investigate decriminalisation. Throughout the 1990s, the NZPC worked on bringing their bill to Parliament; in 2000, MP Tim Barnett brought forward a proposal to decriminalise sex work. It passed in 2003, significantly helped by the intervention of MP Georgina Beyer, a Māori trans woman and former street-based sex worker. Beyer told Parliament, ‘It would have been nice to know that … I might have been able to approach the authorities and say: “I was raped, and, yes, I’m a prostitute, and, no, it was not right that I should have been raped.”’

The law was shaped by sex workers themselves. Beyond any one specific regulation, this was crucial – the extensive involvement of sex workers in putting together the law and the focus on the safety of people who sell sex are what distinguish decriminalisation from other legal models. Indeed, the text of the PRA describes its first priority as being to ‘safeguard the human rights of sex workers’. It is extremely unusual for legislation that deals with the sex industry to explicitly conceive of people who sell sex as having rights at all, other than the right to be rescued from being ‘sold’.]

molly smith, juno mac, from revolting prostitutes: the fight for sex workers’ rights, 2018

[rollercoasterwords]

porn anon again (a sentence I never thought i’d write). I see now that I worded that question badly, I was really just referring to pornhub / other porn streaming platforms. I agree with you for the most part, but for a lot of women it feels like our business too, not just that of sex workers. I will never shame sex workers, but being sexually active with a generation of boys who have grown up watching videos involving beating / assaulting women and being led to believe that those are normal things to be getting off to is incredibly scary. Yes, those things will always be available on the internet, I think the problem is that it’s being celebrated as sexual liberation for women when a lot of the time it is quite literally the opposite. When I think about the damage of porn as a whole, while I do care for the safety of sex workers, I’m mostly thinking about the overall normalization of abusing women during sex and wrapping it up in a pretty little package labeled ‘kinky’. With that all being said, my reading on the opposing argument is much more limited and my opinions might change after looking further into it.

lol hello again sorry it took me a bit to get back to this i wanted to make sure i was giving a response proper time! i understand where ur coming from + honestly i used to think pretty similarly to what ur describing here, so i'm gonna go through what ur saying line by line + try to ask some questions that shifted my own perspective on this subject [v long post + potential tws so putting a cut]

i was really just referring to pornhub / other porn streaming platforms

i figured this was probably what you had in mind, but i want to reiterate that it's important to be specific about what we're criticizing if we want to make a critique. even here, grouping together "pornhub/other porn streaming platforms" is a very broad category that is not necessarily going to be best served by a uniform approach to critique. in terms of my personal feelings about pornhub, i'm not a fan for the same reason that i'm not a fan of any large corporation that can only exist + profit through exploitative labor practices. in terms of other porn streaming platforms, i simply don't know enough to give you a specific answer about my personal feelings, and i'm not sure that every platform operates in a similar enough way that i'd have the same critique for each one.

I agree with you for the most part, but for a lot of women it feels like our business too, not just that of sex workers.

nobody is saying sex work isn't your business--in fact, i think that everyone should support sex workers' rights and activism. however, if what you're getting at here is the idea that everyone, and not just sex workers, should be given equal voice on these issues, then i disagree. i think that sex workers themselves are best equipped to speak about what will make their lives safer and more equitable, and we should prioritize listening to them if our goal is to make sex work safer.

I will never shame sex workers, but being sexually active with a generation of boys who have grown up watching videos involving beating / assaulting women and being led to believe that those are normal things to be getting off to is incredibly scary.

there's a lot to unpack here! first, to your point that "i will never shame sex workers"--i would really, really encourage you to read that book i recommended in my previous response. i understand that this is a well-intended sentiment, but the idea that you can be vocally anti-porn without shaming sex workers simply doesn't ring true to me. if you believe that porn, as a whole (even if you're qualifying it as "the porn industry" or telling yourself that maybe there are some kinds of porn that might be okay, but most of it is bad), is so exploitative that our political goal must be its elimination or increased policing of its production (the typical goals of anti-porn lobbying), then that leaves sex workers in one of two categories: either they are abject, voiceless victims with no agency in their own exploitation whom we should pity, or they are willfully complicit in their own exploitation and harming themselves + others by participating in a corrupt line of work. even if this is not explicitly stated, it is the effect that comes through, and it contributes to the shame + stigma surrounding sex work. melissa gira grant summarizes it thus: "They [sex workers] are at once blamed for contributing to the objectification of women through being objectified themselves and, through their occupation, for sexualizing all women, and for profit."

and then, to the second part of what you're saying here--the idea that porn normalizes sexual violence against women. this is the crux of many anti-porn campaigners' arguments, and i understand how it can feel like a very intuitive conclusion. but i want to challenge what you're saying here a bit, so bear with me.

first off--sexual violence does not stem from porn. it has always existed, regardless of what kind of porn is available or being produced + disseminated. there's really no way to try and 'objectively' measure whether sexual violence has increased in correlation to the proliferation of easily-accesible hardcore porn, and even if there was it would be even more difficult to move past simple correlation and somehow prove direct causation.

personally, i don't find it compelling to argue that getting off to violent porn can directly cause people to become sexually violent, for a few reasons. one is that i think there is an important difference in representation and fantasy versus real life--many people get off to things that they would not actually want to participate in or do, so to argue that violent porn has some sweeping power of mythic proportions to turn young boys and men into sexually violent predators seems reactionary to me. i also don't think sexual violence is about getting off; sexual violence is a means of establishing power. this is a pretty central tenet of addressing rape culture--for example, the idea that it doesn't matter what someone looks like or what they're wearing because people don't commit sexual violence just because they're overcome with lust.

porn also isn't created in a vaccuum; if we're concerned with what sort of depictions appear in porn, it doesn't make sense to me that the response to that is a crackdown trying to eliminate pornography (which almost always has the material impact of making life more unsafe for sex workers)--i think it makes more sense to turn our activism to other sites of cultural production where the attitudes underlying potentially concerning depictions grow from. like; if we're concerned that easy access to violent porn will make young boys think this is the standard (not a fan of 'normal' as a qualifier) way to have sex + base their expectations around such depictions, then it seems to me that rather than trying to ban violent porn it would be more effective and useful to advocate for increased sex education and more portrayals of varying types of sex + sexuality, to encourage the idea that there are many ways to have sex and the most important thing is to make sure you're communicating with your partner(s) + respecting their boundaries.

Yes, those things will always be available on the internet, I think the problem is that it’s being celebrated as sexual liberation for women when a lot of the time it is quite literally the opposite.

i'm assuming that the "it" you're referring to here is violent sex/s&m, but it could also be sex work/making porn, so i'm going to respond to both.

first - regarding the idea that becoming a sex worker is celebrated as sexual liberation. i think this is perhaps a skewed view of what's actually happening in broader culture, and i would encourage you to think about why you hold this view--what sources is it coming from? what specifically has given you that impression? because broadly speaking, sex work is still very much stigmatized, and many sex workers are completely realistic about this stigmatization and the fact that sex work is work, and deciding whether it's something you want to/have to do isn't a simple decision. i know there's this idea that a handful of sex workers talking about how much money they make online is like...influencing young girls to think that sex work is 'empowering,' but in reality that is only a handful of people--many of them young women themselves, who i don't think should be villified for wanting to portray their jobs as glamorous when they are heavily stigmatized by wider society. if there actually are large numbers of young people being coercively persuaded to become sex workers when they otherwise wouldn't, then the primary conditions of coercion there are economic and would be best addressed with anticapitalist politics, not antiporn politics (which, again, will likely only serve to further stigmatize + endanger sex workers!).

regarding the idea that s&m is celebrated as sexual liberation--again, i don't know how broadly this applies. there are still certainly many voices that decry sex + especially kinky sex as shameful and degrading, even if there are also voices claiming that it is unilaterally empowering. and even to the extent that someone claims getting choked during sex is feminist or whatever, the issue i'd take there is not the actual act itself--i think rough/violent/kinky sex is morally neutral, and there's nothing wrong with enjoying it--but rather the terms in which we are framing 'empowerment.' any argument that feeling personally good translates to broader 'empowerment' under patriarchy is a flawed premise to me, as i'm more concerned with focusing on 'empowerment' in terms of material conditions. it's the same issue i take with people who call wearing makeup 'empowering' or seeing a depiction of 'female rage' in movies 'empowering'--which is that simply feeling good is not a feminist action. when it comes to rough sex/s&m, i don't think it's helpful either to act as though such acts are inherently degrading or inherently liberatory. instead, i think we should just encourage people to explore whatever kinds of sex they want to explore without assigning moral weight to specific sex acts.

When I think about the damage of porn as a whole, while I do care for the safety of sex workers, I’m mostly thinking about the overall normalization of abusing women during sex and wrapping it up in a pretty little package labeled ‘kinky’.

gonna just point back to/echo a lot of the stuff i've already said--first off, "porn as a whole" is doing a lot of work here and sort of saying the quiet part out loud; despite clarifying at the beginning of your message that you mean pornhub + streaming sites, we've now come back to the idea that all porn is bad. i would really challenge you to ask yourself whether this is something you actually believe, and if it's not, why you're defaulting to this position. if you care for the safety of sex workers, then you must understand that the history of antiporn activism is one of increased policing + danger for sex workers, not making them safer. the idea that porn is responsible for normalizing sexual violence against women is something i already talked about, so i won't repeat myself at length--but again, i'd emphasize here that i don't think just getting rid of porn is a feasible or even useful political response to sexual violence. and i am wary of the conflation here between abuse and kink; people who participate in consenual s&m are not inherently abusive, and plenty of 'vanilla' sex acts can be abusive or part of sexual violence.

With that all being said, my reading on the opposing argument is much more limited and my opinions might change after looking further into it.

i would really, really encourage you to read melissa gira grant's 'playing the whore' and try to branch out a bit in terms of your thinking on this subject! again, i used to think similarly to you and i understand that a lot of antiporn arguments feel very intuitive, but it's important when developing a politics to focus not on whether that politics feels like it makes sense, but the actual, material impact that it has. and the material impact of antiporn politics has been, by and large, not the prevention of sexual violence, but increased danger + stigma for sex workers.