#also ayn rand sucks

[hogcranker1984]

only good thing i got out of the username change is that i got rid of our old "devloid" handle and named ourselves "hogcranker1984" after my love of motorcycles and dystopian novels

[cainshitincorporated]

in a lot of ways i'm like if zack snyder wasn’t a complete hack

[comradecowplant]

smh another crime against humanity as a result of the hiroshima/nagasaki bombings

[rose-of-red-lake]

Unreliable Narrator in the Sith Show

I have seen a few arguments that the Acolyte is a case of total unreliable narration, that it's a new Star Wars era of storytelling, a "sophisticated" show from the "Sith's POV," which is why the Stranger/Qimir seems so calm, balanced, and sure of himself. But don't worry - according to these opinions, the modern audience will be able to see through his lies, being astute enough to know that he's evil, without having to tell us directly. Because telling us directly is too much of a mustache-twirling villain trope, or something.

So is everyone on the same page? Did we all get this?

Naur, I don think so... because I have also seen a lot of odd defenses of the character, that he's not really as bad as the Jedi make him out to be, that he's not a Sith, and that he wants to be left alone as a rogue, without any allegiances, just doing whatever he wants, whenever he wants. I have seen people agree with his perspective, that the Jedi are the oppressors because they won't let him live how he wants. Someone even compared him to Mando with Osha as his Grogu. Man just wants a family without the government telling him how to live his lyfe. 😥

So if audiences are indeed smart enough to see through the unreliable narrator, why are they agreeing with him? Why are people sucked into his own perspective, which is Ayn Rand on steroids to my mind. Running through the galaxy, doing whatever you want? Okay, but look where that led. Once he wanted an acolyte to go out into the world and assassinate some Jedi, he isn't like Brendock or Dathomir witches anymore. That should have been a line, drawn, clear to the audience. But then the narrative goes back to extreme moral relativism. "Well, maybe the Jedi shouldn't have interfered..." or, "Maybe they were right to." So we have morally grey situations with a baddie POV mixed in, in a television show where we can't get inside people's heads? Okaaaay...Leysle with a Y. Good luck with that.

If this is all just unreliable narration, why is Sol so unsympathetic, unwilling to ask for forgiveness, even right up to the end? This just makes Osha look justified for killing him. The Dark Side doesn't even need to be "seductive" if Sol's actions were so bad. And I'm taking his actions that way because of what the showrunner said about him: Sol has a darkness in him that he can't control. And what was the content of this darkness, you might wonder? Well, he was being more like a "father" than a "Jedi" again according to Headland. Alright, why are those two roles mutually exclusive, at all? Doesn't her own mentor Feloni criticize Obi-Wan for not being enough of a father to Anakin?

But maybe the unreliable narration could come through with how the Order is portrayed in their scenes without Qimir. But nope, they're like the freaking police department in the Wire: cold, calculating, trying to cover things up. If it was an unreliable narrator, wouldn't we have a break in all of the bleakness that shows us, hey "Qimir is kinda wrong here." I don't think we do.

Beyond any of this, I don't trust this writer to write something as complex as a "Sith POV," or use unreliable narration effectively. I don't think she's experienced enough.

Not to mention, I don't think the showrunner gets the emotional turmoil of what its like to be a Dark Side user. They should be lost in their emotions, letting their emotions rule them, subject to constant turmoil, constant fear of losing what they have, and wanting more and more because of their greed. The unreliable narration should break at some point to show that, and it shouldn't be so subtle that it goes over people's heads. Moreover, a Jedi like Sol should be more sympathetic because they are at least struggling to suppress their inner Dark Side. Sol did nothing like what Anakin did. If he is truly acting like a overly-compassionate father, then he shouldn't refuse to ask for her forgiveness either. He shouldn't be dead in the mud, choked by his own daughter.

Goddamn this show is fucking bleak.

[noonaishere]

Music of the Heart [J.YH] - seventy-two | she’s a me

You walked into the studio.

“Sorry I’m late. My bus had a thing, and I had to wait for another one, and then there was traffic… What are you two doing?”

Hongjoong and Maddox were surrounded on all sides of the desk by papers.

“We got song submissions and we’re getting ready to listen. Put your stuff down.” Hongjoong said as he got the first cd ready.

You did as he said and pulled out a notebook, maybe you’d have something to make notes about.  Hongjoong put the cd in the computer and pressed Start.

“My name is Yujin. I’m sixteen. Um---”

She sounded so young. Hongjoong frowned and looked at the pile CDs. 

“How’d this get in here?” He asked as he flipped over the case it was in and looked at the back.

“What?” You asked.

“This is supposed to be song submissions from the producers we normally work with. This is from a bunch of kids in a band.”

“Maybe it was an accident?” Maddox offered.

Hongjoong shut it off.

“Wait--” You said.

He turned to you.

“Can we listen to it at least?”

He nodded and started it again.

“My name is Yujin. I’m sixteen. Um… I play bass… okay.” She laughed awkwardly. “Okay, I mean… I just started. But I’ve been practicing really hard and I’ve written a few songs with some friends of mine, and… if Wonderland is looking for a group of teenagers who want to speak their minds and make the world a better place through music… look no further. Are you ready guys?”

“Yeah!” Three other voices joined her.

“One! Two! One, two, three, four!” 

The drummer counted and they all started playing… reasonably well. It wasn’t stellar, you wouldn’t even call it great, but for a bunch of teenagers who hadn’t been playing that long, it was better than okay. The fact that they submitted an original song was what really wowed you; they seemed to understand how to structure a song already and the lyrics weren’t half bad. At the very least they weren’t hackneyed or cliché.

“What is this?” You asked.

“Let me check if they sent any notes or anything…” Hongjoong sorted through the papers on the desk as he looked for it. Maddox also looked and eventually found them, handing them to Hongjoong.

“It says… they’re a band of four called ONIIX? Two boys and two girls.” He read the notes for a moment before handing it to you. “Holy shit, read what she wrote.”

There was a huge paragraph about their concept: how the members were aliens and looking for galactic peace, but that they had been stranded on earth and there was something they had to fight which - really - was just a thinly veiled metaphor for capitalism.

You chuckled.“I get the distinct feeling one of them had to read Ayn Rand during English class at some point and hated it.”

“Why?”

You smiled. “Because who actually likes Ayn Rand?”

He tilted his head in agreement. “You’re not wrong.”

“I’m very right.” 

He chuckled.

You went back to reading the notes. You were pleasantly surprised at how creative someone as young as these kids could be. How creative any kid could be if they were allowed. Something in you was almost jealous; you wished you had the opportunity to make your own decisions about the world at their age. All you had really got as far at that time was, ‘Everything sucks and nothing matters’ but that was just because you were being ground down under your mother’s boot and were under parental house arrest for almost half a year until graduation. Even after that, you had a hard start to your adulthood because all you had was the money in your pocket, a suitcase half-filled with clothes, and your bass. You definitely empathized with their hatred of capitalism because of that.

And who wouldn’t want to make the world a better place?

“They listed a bunch of influences, look at the American bands they picked.” You handed it back to him.

He read: “Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Rage Against the Machine…”

“Oh, you like them,” Maddox pointed out.

He nodded. “The Cramps, Nirvana, Lunachicks, L7, Bikini Kill…”

“Quite the punk rock appetite.” You said.

He nodded.

“What they’ve submitted doesn’t sound explicitly punk though.”

He nodded again. “Much more rock, but not particularly indie or pop.”

You nodded. “I wonder if that’s a stylistic choice or just their lack of ability.”

He nodded as he looked at you.

You didn’t know what to do, so you nodded again.

Maddox laughed. “Are you two communicating?”

Hongjoong continued to look at you.

You looked at Maddox, who shrugged, and back to Hongjoong, who now had an eyebrow raised.

“What?”

“...Would you want to train a bassist?”

You laughed. He couldn’t be serious.

He continued to look at you passively. He was serious.

 “Would that mean a new job title as well?” You raised an eyebrow.

He smiled. “I think I can finagle another pay line.”

“Ha… You trying to make me indispensable or something?”

He smiled. “I think… if we have a bunch of ‘Fuck the System’ kids who want to make music because they love it… you should be the one to teach the one who plays the same instrument as you.”

“Oh… I’ve never taken classes. I don’t know if I could teach it.”

“I’ve never taken production classes and yet I’m teaching you music production.”

“...Oh.”

Hongjoong smiled.

You looked at all the papers all over the desk as you thought. Could you teach someone to play bass? You’d have to look up lessons online or something to see how other people did it. But also: ‘Should you teach someone?’ was maybe the better question.

“You don’t have to decide now,” Hongjoong said, your eyes snapping to him. “We have to listen to all of the song submissions anyway, but we’ll hold onto this on the side.”

You nodded as he put the CD and its paper in his drawer.

“I’ll ask you again in a week or so.”

You nodded again.

He nodded back at you.

Maddox looked between the two of you and narrowed his eyes. “Are you two sure you aren’t communicating?”

Both of you laughed. 

Hongjoong clapped his hands together. “Okay, let’s listen to the actual song submissions.”

*ᴵ’ᵛᵉ ʰᵉᵃʳᵈ ᵐᵒⁿᵏˢ ᶜᵒⁿˢᶦᵈᵉʳ ᶦᵗ ᵗʰᵉ “ᵐᵉᵈᶦᵗᵃᵗᶦᵒⁿ ˢᵗᵃᵗᶦᵒⁿ”

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@luvvvx • @iamthehotdemon • @hrts4hanniehae • @rachs-words • @stayatinykatsy •

[i-am-made-of-stupid]

Something I like to think about sometimes is what dystopias are truly the worst or best places to live in.

So a few examples are the world of 1984, Panem in Hunger Games, and Rapture and Columbia in the Bioshock games. Each are dystopias with vastly different environments and mentalities.

1984 has societies dominated by the upper class perpetually keeping the lower class stupid, while big brother controls the truth about the world and the society themselves.

Hunger games has the United States separated into districts that all serve to give away children or young adults to fight and die in battle royals to entertain the rich masses in the capital.

Rapture is a world dominated by the extreme capitalistic ideals of Ayn Rand where the government didn’t interfere at all in the works and lives of their citizens. As well as the biological substance of Adam giving people superpowers that helped contribute to the complete collapse of the city.

And finally, Columbia is dominated by religious zealotry, worship of the founding fathers, extreme racism and ideals of racial purity, and basically dominated by a doomsday cult where the leader says that in order to save his followers they need to go to a flying city in order to save them from the Sodom below, and if the seed of the prophet took the throne Columbia would destroy the world below.

Like these all suck, and I think Columbia is probably one of the worst alongside 1984 purely because of how the worlds are.

Rapture is also bad for the same reason, but take out the ideology of Rapture and it could be better. Furthermore, ADAM would be an invaluable substance in helping the medical field, only downside is the splicing.

Finally Panem seems like the best out of the four I provided. But it still sucks, a lot of the districts live in poverty and the idea of the Hunger games is a very horrifying concept.

In conclusion, idk I just wanted to talk about something I find interesting.

[misscammiedawn]

Would you like to share any opinions on RUSH? You get extra points if they’re hot takes.

*HIGH PITCHED SQUEEEEEEEEEEE*!!!

Penny? I love you! Thank you for unleashing my thoughts!

VERY WELL! Let us begin!

I'm gonna list them in random order

- Time Stand Still is best music video and anyone who disagrees is being a grinch!

- Our favorite album is Roll the Bones and our favorite Live CD is A Show of Hands! I think Rush in Rio and Permanent Waves are the *best* though!

- They should just release the Different Stages live recording. It's pretty much out there as extra features on the other DVDs!

- The Clockwork Angels book and graphic novel are pretty average but are worth it for making Seven Cities of Gold not suck. The worst song is the best chapter of the novel

- I would buy a Blu-Ray that is just the backing videos for the live videos and I hate that the only backing vid that exists in full form is By-Tor from Rush in Rio (as an Easter Egg)

- Emotion Detector is the most underrated Rush song and I would have preferred Tom Sawyer or YYZ not get played in one of the tours to accommodate it in a concert! Only 44 songs have never been played live before and of them the only one that I think deserved to be played more is Vapor Trail because it is the ONLY title song of an album never played live (after Presto was pulled out for Time Machine)

- It is pronounced Why-Why-Zed. It is spelt Vapor Trails. The American spelling of Vapor is essential to the song's message

- Analog Kid is Alex's best song, Ghost of a Chance and Between The Wheels are second and third-- though live versions of Working Man are up there

- Geddy's solo at the end of Leave That Thing Alone (Time Machine Tour) is the exact peak of Rush, that was their highest point as a band!

- SARS Fest concert kinda sucked? Spirit of Radio with Paint It Black intro was amazing but the equipment was shot and they gave Alex a hot microphone. They also cut off the "encore" which just sucked. I am also a little salty that Rush were an opening band for the Stones *in Canada*.

- Tom Sawyer is overrated and they're not even Peart lyrics. Limelight and YYZ off of the same album are better.

- Neil's Ayn Rand period is a valid part of Rush history and provides so much extra context to The Garden. The same pen that wrote "begging hands and bleeding hearts will only cry out for more" ended his life with "the measure of a life is a measure of love and respect, the way you live and the gifts that you give, in the fullness of time it's the only return you can expect" - a man with a storied life as Neil with as much tragedy as he endured ended with him completely giving and loving in his heart when 35-40 years prior he wrote empathetically that "you don't get something for nothing"

- La Villa Strangiato is in my opinion not just the best instrumental but it is in contention for best Rush song period. I would never give it that title because it lacks Peart's lyrics and I find that people who say that have an irrational dislike of Geddy's voice... but it's still a valid take. Natural Science would get my all around best song badge. But best and favorite are not the same in my world and even still I mean *technically proficient* mixed with lyrics. I'll change my mind, likely. But that's my feeling right now.

- Geddy didn't get vocal training until before My Favorite Headache (2000) and Neil didn't get jazz drumming instruction until Burning For Buddy (1994). Both artists were just fine as they were but they perfected their arts and I prefer late era Rush because of that. The band never stopped evolving.

- I would have liked to have heard one of the solo album songs live (I Am The Spirit, Promise or My Favorite Headache) or have Bob and Doug do Take Off for a charity event like the South Park or Hawkings concerts last year. I *still* want that. Neil wasn't involved in the solo albums. It could still happen.

- I want a Jukebox Musical of Rush music so that The Body Electric isn't the only piece of fiction scored to Rush.

- Alex Lifeson could have been a comedian. He's one of the funniest humans on the planet.

- Peaceable Kingdom is better for having been the only song where lyrics were written after the music. Vapor Trail has amazing lyrics in general but I feel the limitation had positive impact and I wish Neil and the band did this practice more than once.

- Rush's improvised and last minute songs when they are running out of studio time are the best. Malignant Narcissism was the result of the album director seeing Geddy warming up with a vintage fretless bass and said "put that on the album" so they composed around the improvised riff, Force Ten was literally a last minute addition to Hold Your Fire. La Villa is said to have been recorded in a single take (I do not believe that legend as it wasn't in any of the biographies I have read). Rush just work best with limitations. They're a bunch of goofs and giving them a time limit makes them go into a Saitama style serious mode.

---

I could write tons more. But I'll call it there.

I like Rush.

A lot.

More than you think I do.

[ghostsontelevision]

ok like everyone else with too much time on their hands, i did watch the james somerton utena video. there's been plenty of threads and posts abt why it's bad, i don't need to tell you it sucks, of course it does. but there's a bizarre moment i haven't seen anyone bring up that i can't stop thinking abt??

he's explaining postmodernism (as in, reading the wikipedia page for postmodernism), and then talks abt how it's deeply intertwined with second wave feminism. i have not done enough research to verify if that's actually accurate or not (though even then, by the time utena came out american feminism was in its third wave, and also i don't know what american feminist waves have to do with this japanese anime). however, that's not the point i'm making. after talking abt how much overlap postmodernism and second wave feminism have, he then just... includes a sentence about ayn rand and how she's bad? like, i rewatched it three times because i could not parse how the fuck he got on ayn rand. and it's not like the miley cyrus or lotr portions of the video, where he's clearly stalling for time because he doesn't have an hour of thoughts about utena - this is a sentence. it adds five seconds max. it really comes off like he was talking about feminism for too long and got sick so he had to bring up an evil woman to be well again. it's just absolutely bizarre and i would love to know if 1. it struck anyone else as weird or 2. if i'm a dumbass and actually ayn rand was super relevant to the points he was making about how utenas a top or akio has chaotic bi energy

[bisexualamy]

also obviously ayn rand's politics suck, her books are poorly written, and her success has less to do with her merit as an author and more to do with preaching directly to wealthy capitalists with fame and influence who promote her work.

that being said though, it's very telling to me that in this novella her dystopia is literally just a farming commune with free social services. i really believe she understood how absurd it is to call that a dystopia, because she had to graft "and also it's illegal to be an individual and everyone needs to speak in collective first person so they don't form individual identity" to make the dystopia work. at no point is it entertained that we could simply have the former without the latter. it's like when blockbusters accidentally make their villains have a point so they have to also make them kill babies so the audience will root against them.

[vidreview]

VIDEO ESSAY ROUNDUP #6 [PART 2]

[originally posted august 1st 2024 NOTE: while migrating the archive from cohost i've discovered that tumblr has a 10 link-block limit, which means i have to split some of these roundups up in order to maintain the embeds. we love websites don't we folks]

"New Zelda isn't Zelda" by Eroymak.

it's novel to see one of these shot in the mountains! vibes like a younger, ganglier nakeyjakey. i like to imagine that there's an escalating war of spectacle happening between white outdoorsy middle-class nerds all trying to one-up each other by casually filming an otherwise anodyne video essay in increasingly precarious locales. how long until a 22 year old DJ from Wisconsin dies on the slopes of Everest trying to film an essay about Mario 1-1? who's going to be the first human being to levy a citation-heavy critique of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead while skydiving? how long until Shiey accidentally loses Jacob Geller down an abandoned mine shaft? anyway, Eroymak is extremely correct here about what makes modern Zelda games a drag, namely that their "go anywhere do anything" attitude ruins the sense of progression that once defined the franchise. i worry about this with the upcoming Echoes of Wisdom, which seems to be applying the Of The games' open toolset philosophy to the 2D Zelda template, but i digress. for being only 7 minutes and 20 seconds, this is a pretty succinct and broadly comprehensive summation of why the open world Zeldas lack a certain magic that was once so easily flaunted by their forebears.

"so that's why they cut all her scenes from the movie" by CinemaStix.

i've seen CinemaStix videos in my recommended feed multiple times and avoided them like the plague. i mean, come on. "CinemaStix"? at a glance this conjures a monstrous Third-Way chimera betwixt CinemaSins and CinemaWins, and i would sooner stave my own head in with a rock than give such a thing the time of day. EXCEPT… Constantine 2005 is one of my favorite comic book movies. i saw it in theaters and it changed me. in the years since, i've defended Constantine's honor from the haters to little avail (thankfully the tides have turned in recent years and people are realizing that they totally missed the second-best John Wick movie), and it's top of my list of fun movies to show guests when we're bored. this special interest overrode my kneejerk book-cover judgment survival mechanism, and i'm so mad that i don't regret it. this video is about the editing of Constantine 2005, and how many of the film's iconic moments were constructed in post. as the title suggests, a substantial amount of time is spent trying to understand why an entire character was ultimately cut, a question that's also plagued me ever since watching the deleted scenes on the DVD in 10th grade. whether you've seen Constantine 2005 or not, this is an excellent portrait of editing as a substantive authorial process. i've since gone and watched multiple CinemaStix videos, and god damn it, these are some quality essays. sometimes popular things are good, she said grumpily.

"Conservative Comedy Ruined My Life" by Big Joel.

oops, can you tell this vidrev roundup has been sitting in my drafts for a long time? this video came out on April 2nd of 2024 and has nearly 2.5 million views, so i won't belabor the point. this is a great deconstruction of conservative comedy that looks hard into why so much of it sucks beyond the empty platitudes endemic to smarmy liberals. it's some of Big Joel's best work in my opinion.

"On Online Entitlement" by CJ The X.

an excellent autopsy of the rhetorical implications of an overly familiar instagram comment-- a description that i know probably sounds obnoxious, but genuinely is not the case. Mx. The X goes to great lengths to assure us that this is not about the person who left the comment, but the various attitudes and assumptions that are implied in its construction. gen z essayists in particular seem to specialize in this sort of editorial post-game breakdown of the things people say when they think they're saying something else, and i think they're always worth paying attention to. consider this something of a downstream epilogue to Shannon Strucci's seminal Fake Friends series. even as i don't always agree with the totality of their conclusions, i do always come away from CJ The X videos feeling like i've learned something about how i and other internet-dwelling social animals think.

"How Uber Is Destroying Food Delivery" by More Perfect Union.

More Perfect Union is not typically in the business of video essays, focusing more on feature stories that heavily rely on interviews and on-the-ground reporting. this one's a unique development in that it is just straight up a video essay, using the business model of Uber as an avenue for understanding Corey Doctorow's theory of platform decay (except he calls it Enshittification because god forbid 21st century materialist philosophy grow out of its twee blogosphere adolescence). if you know the theory then there's probably not gonna be much here that surprises you, but i felt it a notable inclusion nevertheless.

do you have recommendations for video essays i might not have seen, new or old? well my askbox is open and i'm always looking for ways to penetrate my experiential-algorithmic youtube bubble. hope you found something enjoyable in this collection, see you in the next one!

<- ROUNDUP #5

[euphraisette]

Les Mis characters and how badly they would misinterpret Star Wars:

Jean Valjean: Thinks the prequel trilogy is mediocre

Cosette: Understands Star Wars perfectly but doesn’t get into discourse (liberally uses the block button)

Marius: Knows all the lore but doesn’t examine the orientalism and other questionable elements

Javert: Doesn’t know anything about Star Wars but accidentally plagiarized several elements for the Ayn Rand-esque sci-fi novel in his head he’ll never write

Èponine: Not interested in the franchise outside of Rebels (valid tbh)

Gavroche: Too young to understand the themes, mostly just likes the action

Enjolras: Understands Star Wars perfectly, prefers Star Trek

Grantaire: Runs a Jedi-critical blog

Combeferre: Gives more credit for its political themes than it deserves

Courfeyrac: Thinks the sequel trilogy isn’t that bad

Bossuet: Watched the series out of order, extremely confused about the chronology of new projects

Joly: Can’t stop picking apart the scientific liberties

Bahorel: Legends fanboy who thinks new canon sucks

Prouvaire: Likes everything, even the bad stuff

Feuilly: Thinks Saw Gerrera was right (he understands Star Wars perfectly)

bossuet my sweet bb boy I’ll show you the right order :((( also feuilly is always right about everything ever so that’s redundant (lovingly♥️)

[qqueenofhades]

About Ayn Rand philosophy: you are right and you should say it: it is ME ME ME. It’s soooo weird to just discuss things with a person and then suddenly you are met with “ah but you see everything that I’ve done is FAIR and I’ve DESERVED IT, but everything that I don’t have is NOT FAIR and I NEED it”. I’m not shitting you, the other day I had to listen to a girl tell me (a person in academia) that people in academia deserve small salaries because they don’t bring money to universities. I shit you not. This is what she said. I had to stop and explain to her, that a) this is not how universities make money, b) there would be no universities without the academia, and it felt like talking to a brick wall UNTIL she remembered that her dad was in the academia and was like oh ok.. my dad deserves money. Took her an embarrassing amount of time too.

And I was participating in this bonkers conversation and suddenly it fucking hit me that she was being Like That TM because in my estimation of what kind of salary a dean should have I named a number that is higher then her own salary and of her husband and she found it unfair. UNFAIR. Like the idea that someone who has a different lifestyle from a frankly unimpressive young coder for a minor firm might get the same amount of money as her, or, gasp, more, seemed unfair to her. Because when she was deciding what to do with her life, she chose the most profitable option for her and god forbid if someone makes another choice and is happy too

But still I do think that a lot of people are straight up misinformed about the far right, or think that when they vote for a racist it won’t have a lot of consequences. At least where I am from it is very easy to see that most people don’t care or are very neutral, but don’t like “icky” stuff. And you can paint for example LGBTQ+ as something that is other and scary, but it’s hard because they are just people. Abortions are also very trivial and you have to work hard to print it as something scary.

But violence? Violence makes people uncomfortable, even those who don’t know much beside violence.

So I do believe is that people are stupid and not rational at all, yeah, but violence scares them a lot. And maybe this is why they sway towards the most violent movement, to give it what it wants just so that it would shut up.

Indeed. As a fellow person in academia who has often heard the "LMAO HUMANITIES DEGREES ARE WORTHLESS OF COURSE YOU SHOULDN'T EXPECT TO GET PAID" and other such nonsense, it's truly amazing how much people feel that everyone else is definitely out to scheme and steal from them and take what is Rightfully Theirs (and yet, somehow never seem to say this about the billionaires and other resource hogs who actually ARE sucking up everything that belongs to everyone else). It is also part of the "only people who Deserve It should access social services" or "of course I want there to be money for/programs for social services, but they need to be used only in the Right Way." Which, of course, doesn't make sense at all, but is often how they explain it away. Then suddenly whoops, they need those services too, and yet they've consistently voted to take them away from other people who didn't "deserve" them. So now they aren't there anymore. Womp womp.

I do think you have a point about the violence, unfortunately. As we have seen re: the war in Ukraine and many times before, when someone is acting in a violent and threatening way, the response seems to be just "give them what they want and hope they go away." If people still resist the violence and try to make it stop in other ways (such as, you know, fighting back) they often get blamed for not just rolling over and giving the aggressor what they want, as if the situation is their fault for continuing to resist. So yeah, the appeasement mentality still runs DEEP, even if it has never once actually worked, and only leads to an even worse situation than before.

[bimboficationblues]

why is lenin so popular? he sucks

rhetorically compelling writer and orator (not the same thing as being right or good at making logical/original arguments. I do not think he is either.)

decently good at dunking on his opponents even if the dunks are often inaccurate or misrepresentative

played a huge role in a revolution and polity that changed the global political paradigm in major ways, for good and ill. but regardless of how things shook out the end of the Russian monarchy and creation of the Soviet Union is still pretty impressive

related to 3, a longstanding cult of personality that frequently shades into actual pseudo-theistic reverence (propaganda posters that say shit like "Lenin will live forever!" or Langston Hughes' poems about Lenin), which is an environment that discourages criticism

related to Hughes, Lenin's image and ideas (or at least localized versions of them) inspired a lot of people for a long time around the world, as a viable and realistic worldview for ending colonial rule, or a promise of universal human liberation. Of course most of those polities ended up either voting or couping to become capitalists or religious/ethnic nationalists eventually, so...

friend to cats

tboy swag (I leave it to you, dear reader, to decide whether I mean this as praise)

communist spaces often encourage the contrarian defense of people who the US govt, NATO, Ayn Rand, The Economist, etc., label as "evil." This impulse has the positive value of encouraging you to think hardheadedly about hegemonic narratives, but also means you define yourself by opposition rather than any original values and principles

[gerogerigaogaigar]

Tame Impala - Currents

They're tame alright! This band is so toothless they can only drink music through a straw. Apparently in the 2010s psychedelic is when you put vocal filters over a really extremely boring song. This album sounds like it's made up out of tracks that Gorillaz threw away.

Lynyrd Skynyrd - Pronounced ‘Lĕh-‘nérd ‘Skin-‘nérd

I don't know if this is an unexpected opinion for a transgender anarcho communist, but I like Lynyrd Skynyrd. Pre plane crash Lynyrd Skynyrd at least. Ronnie Van Zandt had great songwriting chops and was a solid lyricist. Going from the rollicking bar brawling Gimme Three Steps to the wistful Free Bird to the ripping solos of the second half of Free Bird. The variety here is something that a lot of southern rock albums lack. So yeah I'm recommending Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Charles Mingus - Mingus Ah Um

Mingus Ah Um is a collection of creative homages. Goodbye Pork Pie Hat eulogises recently departed band member Lester Young, Open Letter To The Duke refers to Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll to one of Jazz's originators Jelly Roll Morton. Rather than imitate the styles of his predecessors Mingus mixes a little bit of their essence into his style. Said style was ever evolving and this album, while still distinctly in the post bop era of Mingus' career, shows some signs of what would come later. The sense of orchestral arrangement within the confines of a smaller jazz band are present and this was the best that Mingus would record until he finally went full third stream.

Rush - Moving Pictures

I must not cringe. Cringe is the mind killer. Cringe is the little death that brings total obliAAAHHFUCK! Nope I can't do it. Rush is cringe. Sorry I can't do anything about it. You can't suck Ayn Rand's dick that hard and come back from it. On the other hand these motherfucker are really, really good at playing their instruments. This is also one of their least lyrically embarrassing albums for sure. If you want to listen to Rush but don't want to feel any secondhand embarrassment then you're shit outta luck, but if you want to hear some drums go absolutely fucking wild then you could do worse than Moving Pictures.

Run-D.M.C. - s/t

Believe it or not this was considered hard shit for the time. I guess. Whether or not you will like Run-D.M.C. is very dependent on how much you enjoy cornball shit. By modern standards this album is very corny. But if you let go of you preconceived notions about hip hop then you might find a really fun album with beats that hammer in an intense staccato that would go on to greatly influence future artists. Corny or not this album paved the way for hip hop's golden age so best pay it some respect.

[algernon97]

Ayn Rand Sucks Eggs, and I’m Reading her Novels Out of Boredom

 Some time ago I picked up copies of Ayn Rand’s novels (Anthem, The Fountainhead) for free in undergrad. They’re old 1964 paperbacks, and I liked the covers. I also bought a copy of Atlas Shrugged (from a charity organization just because that spits in the face of Rand’s philosophy) along with a copy of Marx’s Capital so I could have a funny bookshelf. Anyway, I have a lot of time on my hands so I decided to read through these three books. I’ve read Anthem, which is actually a pretty good story save for the last two chapters where Rand spews out her screeds, but today I’m writing about The Fountainhead. 

For you see, I read the first chapter of The Fountainhead last night and HOO BOY does this thing seem like it’ll be a funny time.

Anyway, sometimes I’ll write down thoughts on this book here. Here’s my thoughts on chapter one:

-- Howard Roark is autistic. 

-- No, seriously. Howard Roark is one of the only characters I’ve read that instantly feels like he’s not only on the spectrum, but is just t u r b o autistic. Like, do you remember Maud Pie from Friendship is Magic? That’s how Roark acts almost all the time. The guy hyperfixates on one specific thing constantly and at one point in this chapter he almost misses a meeting with the dean of his college because he was too busy hyperfocusing on a drawing he was trying to fix. He’s so hyperfocused that the chapter ends with him not caring that he’s been expelled and just imaging a glorious building made out of granite standing tall against a sunset, because this man loves him his buildings. His voice is described as rather monotone, he doesn’t really understand or care to understand social cues, has zero interest in learning anything that doesn’t relate to his special interest, etc. -- this guy is on the spectrum.

-- I just think that’s neat, speaking as someone on the spectrum myself.

-- Howard Roark also apparently just oozes menace to everyone who isn’t the narrator so far. What makes this funny is that the narration doesn’t give a single reason and, if anything, actually says everyone feels scared of Roark for no reason at all. Utterly strange choice.

-- This is pretty funny because Rorak just draws modernist buildings and does literally nothing else outside of swimming in a lake sometimes, at least in this chapter. Roark is just vibing and this scares everyone around him for no discernable reason, and the book ACKNOWLEDGES that there’s no reason for people to be scared of him.

-- Howard Roark is the living embodiment of that “WOMEN FEAR ME FISH FEAR ME MEN TURN THEIR EYES AWAY FROM ME” hat.

So, this means that so far this is a book about an autistic little guy vibing and hyperfocusing so hard it gets him kicked out of school. It’s a strange opening but I want to see what this little guy gets up to next, because this chapter feels like a gloriously unintentional cringe comedy.

This is the cover for my paperback edition, by the way. I had to look for it for a while since the actual copy doesn’t have a copyright or printing date in it(!). 

[kissingwookiees]

even tho i hated lord of the flies i would've preferred reading that in 9th grade over what we actually read which was some ayn rand short story that sucked tremendously and was so stupid but also my school library then insisted i never returned my copy of it and held me hostage from dropping out until i returned it or paid off a hefty fine my senior year