#also stop denying historical reality

[sysmedsaresexist]

Genuine question, from someone who doesn't deny endo existence

Why do some of you motherfuckers feel the need to lie to defend your positions?

You dont need to, and it doesn't point to a lot of confidence in your claims...

[nakedbibi333]

Consciousness Is the Only Reality - Neville Goddard

I have heard time and time again that people find Neville's teachings to be too complicated to understand. I wanted to share some of my notes on his lectures and books as I re-read them. The point of this is to make it as easy to understand and accessible as possible. I linked the lecture above in case you want to read the actual lecture and you can use my notes as a guide if anything seems too convoluted or confusing.

All quotes are taken directly from the lecture.

Introduction

Before we begin, it’s important to mention that Neville bases his teachings on the Bible, which he says is meant to be interpreted as a metaphorical/allegorical text, rather than a historical text. 

The Name of God

This lecture begins with Neville explaining the meaning of God’s name. 

In short, it contains references to your I AM-ness (awareness), your imagination, your ability to feel as you desire to be and to take your desire out of the imaginary and reflect it onto the physical. 

When you break down the name of God, it explains the foundation of reality, your consciousness. 

“As you assume that you are that which you want to be, you have completed the name of God” 

You have the power of creation within you. 

“The question arises: What is God? God is man’s consciousness, his awareness, his I AM-ness”

You Become What You Are Conscious of Being and Dying to the Old State

Since your consciousness is the cause or the foundation of reality, then what you are conscious of being must be impressed upon the physical reality.

You have the power to leave behind your current state/undesired reality.

Your current reality has been created through consciousness, and you can leave it behind and recreate a new reality with anything that you desire.

You can die to the old state and create a new one. (You no longer become conscious of the old state--redirect your attention)

Story of Isaac and His Sons Esau and Jacob

The story of Isaac and his sons Esau and Jacob expresses the idea that your brain cannot tell the difference between what you experience in imagination and what you experience in the physical world. 

For example, your brain expresses the same physiological and psychological reaction to you imagining a hug and hugging someone in real life. 

If you place reality upon your imaginal acts and feel as though you are truly experiencing that which is taking place solely in your mind, then your brain believes that you are truly experiencing that. 

Leave the physical alone, do not take action, and do not reason.

You leave the physical world alone and simply use your imagination to change your life

You do not have to worry about the physical manifestation of your desire, that is not your job. Your only job is to imagine that you have what you desire. 

“In other words, you remain faithful to this subjective reality [that which you desire to manifest] and you do not take back from it the power of birth. You gave it the right of birth and it is going to become objective within this world of yours. There is no room in this limited space of yours for two things to occupy the same space at the same time. By making the subjective real, it resurrects itself within your world.” 

You cannot occupy two opposing states -- you cannot believe one thing and also believe the opposite at the same time (ex. You can’t simultaneously believe the statement “I am rich” while also believing the statement “I am poor.”)

The only way you can stop a manifestation from being reflected in the physical is by not being faithful to your new reality (failing to die to the old state/continuing to be double-minded). 

You will die to the old state simply by remaining faithful to the new one. 

“Do not ask yourself how this thing is going to be. It does not matter if your reason denies it. It does not matter if all the world around you denies it.” 

You never have to worry about how it will come to be, because that is not your responsibility. It will happen without any effort on your part. Your only job is to believe in the fulfillment of your desire. Everything else will be taken care of for you. You do not need to reason with it, you cannot let external circumstances get in the way of it, and you don’t need to think about what actions you need to take to “make it happen.” You do not need to do anything but remain in that fulfilled state.

SATS and Lullaby

State akin to sleep - the creative act. 

A sensory experience that implies the fulfillment of your desire. 

Remove your attention from the physical world, go into your imagination fully, and grant your imaginal act reality.

Don’t let the mind wander, make the imaginal act short and sweet, at the point of the fulfillment of your desire. 

Minimal effort is the key, it should not cost you too much energy to fully experience your desire fulfilled.

Lullaby method

When you are nearing sleep, repeat a short phrase that implies fulfillment of your desire. 

2-3 words that can easily be repeated without too much focus. 

The point is to fall asleep while saying it over and over in your mind.

You No Longer Hunger For It When It Is Fulfilled

“When satisfaction is yours, you no longer hunger for it” 

If you have successfully fulfilled the desire in imagination and you believe that it is yours, you no longer feel want of it, because you already have it. 

You no longer think of it as separate from you. 

You have granted it to yourself in imagination, then it is already yours, and there is nothing else to do but persist in that state.

Your Imagination Is The Cause

“Know that your consciousness is the only reality. Then know what you want to be. Then assume the feeling of being that which you want to be, and remain faithful to your assumption, living and acting on your conviction.”

Consciousness is the only reality -- it is the source of everything in the physical

“You draw from within yourself that which you now want to express as something objective to yourself” 

All your manifestations come from you. You are drawing the fulfillment of your desires from within yourself, from consciousness.

If you can imagine it, then it is possible.

“Your consciousness is the mother-father, there is no other cause in the world” 

Everything that happens in the physical world is caused and created by your consciousness. 

There is no other cause than your I AM-ness/your imagination. 

Since your imagination is the only cause, then the only way to change the outer world is through imagination itself.

“As I stand here, having discovered that my consciousness is God, and that I can by simply feeling that I AM what I want to be transform myself into the likeness of that which I am assuming I am; I know now that I am all that it takes to scale this mountain” 

Neville says that you don’t need anything other than your consciousness/imagination to achieve anything you want. You don’t need money, luck, power, etc. You only need imagination.

How to Manifest

“Take the idea you want to embody, and assume that you are already it. Lose yourself in feeling this assumption is solidly real. As you give it this sense of reality, you have given it the blessing which belongs to the objective world, and you do not have to aid its birth any more than you have to aid the birth of a child or a seed you plant in the ground” 

Define your objective (your desire), create an imaginal act that suggests the fulfillment of that objective, grant it reality, and persist in that new state.

You do not have to take any kind of physical action for it to manifest, you trust in your imaginal act and allow it to come to be on its own.

Do not wait to die to the old state and embody the state that you desire. If you desire something now, change your state now. Fulfill it within imagination the moment you feel it. 

“When my world conforms to my assumption the prophecy is fulfilled”

You were always meant to use your consciousness to manifest your life. In this lecture, Neville is basically saying that the entire point of the Bible is to teach you how to manifest through allegory and metaphor.

[devotioncrater]

"i'm not gonna say anything. i'm just gonna walk into her office and i'm gonna kiss her"

now why tf did house look down at his desk and start stammering and blushing after wilson said that 🤨 "cuddy likes bold" but he does too ??? arguably more than her ???

wait no pause. actually. that entire conversation he's soooooo hyperfocused on what wilson would do. almost as if he's envisioning himself in cuddy's shoes. he also like. keeps looking at the table, looking at wilson, looking at the table, looking at wilson with an expression that's expectant. he thinks wilson will connect the dots. holy shit.

he wants wilson to connect the dots. but he can't...he can't admit it to himself. so he role plays as cuddy. he hides behind this made-up, fabricated version of reality where wilson's got a crush on cuddy. it's perfect because the only other likely person wilson would go see that play with is cuddy.

after the play, house asks for the dirty details yet 1) gets frustrated at wilson for not sticking to house's own script of Going On A Date To A Play = Sex. and then 2) gets jealous at the thought of wilson having sex after the play with the real cuddy instead of him.

there's mixed, complex feelings written all over the wall here. on one hand, house wants wilson to fall into bed with cuddy because that means that by extension from fabricating this entire thing, wilson is actually falling into bed with house who is merely role-playing as cuddy. fantasy gaga. "i'll miss you. you were a good friend." = the nature of our relationship has changed.

HOWEVER on the other hand, house can't stand the thought of wilson falling into bed with cuddy because it'd be Too Real, Too Literal. it'd be wilson having real sex with the real cuddy and — because this is wilson here — it'd be wilson having a real romantic relationship with the real cuddy. notably not with house. it'd completely fuck the fantasy up.

but house is too far gone and also likes to fuck around and find out. he knows wilson's a hopeless romantic, so he sends wilson flowers in cuddy's name. wilson interprets this as cuddy being sexually interested, which pleases house because he is sexually interested in his boy best friend.

house is overly invested in hearing what wilson's plan is to ask cuddy out after wilson says he doesn't know what "being straight" is. they're on two different wavelengths where house thinks wilson's read between the lines to figure out it was house, not cuddy, this whole time. ergo to him, wilson's "i don't know what that [being straight] is" = i'm interested in you too and i recognize that cuddy is a metaphor; i'm now knowingly playing into it.

meanwhile wilson is literally talking about the real cuddy.

house becomes clearly aroused flustered at the thought of wilson barging into cuddy's office to wordlessly kiss her. house enjoys the way wilson approaches sex & romance differently than him. i think a part of him wants a grand romantic gesture like what wilson described. "i can't stop thinking about her" / "maybe she's right. maybe...maybe this is worth exploring."

and the funny thing is, is that the office wilson does barge right into is house's office.

"you sent those flowers to me!" "yes, because you took her to a play. because actually you do want to march down there and kiss her." "no! i don't!" "yes, you do."

it's just a prank, right? it's just a retaliation, right? calling it a prank or retaliation is a rationalization to deny away how house's attraction is boiling over. he wants to explore things with wilson, wants to get rid of the "good friend" label, but he's way! too! repressed! at least to initiate it outright. so he concocts this convoluted thing just to get wilson to make the first move because, historically, wilson holds the reins in their relationship. they also, historically, work their boundaries out through pranks. why should this situation be any different?

and wilson has this look of slow, frustrated realization before he says, "you're right" because he knows house. wilson is now in on the metaphor, so he admits that he does want to kiss metaphor cuddy.

but when house's face falls, "seriously?" wilson goes right back into The Status Quo "no" because as soon as the metaphor became Too Real, Too Literal, it shook house out of it thanks to his jealousy. that, and maybe wilson — Dr. Comphet himself — got cold feet, too.

they're ships in the night. when one of them is in on the metaphor, the other isn't. house knows how to woo wilson, wilson knows how to woo house. and yet they can't!!! ever!!!! admit it at the same time!!!! house pulls on a push door; wilson pushes on a pull door; the door doesn't open

[sophie-frm-mars]

Hi Sophie! In light of the genocide in Palestine and the conspiracies around it, do you have any thoughts on how to avoid conspiracy thought?

You pointed out in Conspiracy on the Left that conspiracists will often switch from using language that recognizes incentives and structures, to language that indicates direct malice and intent. I've seen this in real time with Zionism where people will stop using it as a term to describe the ideology and actions of Israel and America (economic and military interests, the historical inertia of the british empire, the interest of capital and western nations using Israel as a base in the Middle East), to using it as a placeholder for jews (people accusing individual people (usually american) of attempting to silence voices with media platforms)

I was gonna say I find this one really straightforward, but at the same time I myself have actually rushed into condemnations of Israel that gave too much leniency to antisemitic ideas, so there probably is a bit more to it. I'll get to it

Firstly, the straightforward part of it is that there are jews all around the world who absolutely fucking despise israel and its genocidal project, so even saying "Israel doesn't represent jews" is too mild. Israel actively denies citizenship to ethiopian jews for instance. I think the main thing is to recognise it for what it is - an outpost of imperialist white supremacy in the Middle East - and to recognise Zionism as a primarily American and imperial core phenomenon rather than a jewish one.

Once you have those ideas down it's pretty easy to separate it out because assuming that any jewish person or org supports Israel just because they're jewish is clearly antisemitic. But here's the rub, Israel uses jewish identity as a shield to justify its actions. At the same time that there are illegal settlers literally giving interviews saying "I describe myself as a fascist" the Israeli state claims that Hamas reads Mein Kampf and that Palestinians are literal Nazis. Not only that but Israeli statesmen use references to things like Amalek to signal their genocidal intentions, basically using the cultural references of Judaism to simultaneously hide behind and also attack.

Where I fell into something antisemitic was when I found out about the IDF cumjacker squad, the guys who go out to get the semen of Israel's fallen dead. the Jizzrael Defence Force if you will. Someone who was talking about it said that the justification had some kind of origin in the hebrew bible and I parroted this without thinking until a jewish friend pulled me up on it. There was no source and there was frankly no reason to repeat it even if it had been true, right? but I got carried away. The reality is that the cumjacker battalion exists for the same reason as sterilisation & organ harvesting programs, because Israel is a Starship-Troopers-Ass fascist nightmare state that sees the bodies of the pure and good as essential to the domination of the future and the bodies of the impure and wrong as wretched at worse and resources at best.

How I think we can avoid the trap of sharing these rhetorical points is by remembering what Israel's relationship to judaism is, which is primarily as a shield. "Shoot and Cry" is the phrase to remember. Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir said "We can forgive them for killing our children but we can never forgive them for making us kill theirs". This bogus remorse over their genocide of palestinians (because they understand genocide because of the holocaust, see?) and constant preemptive counterattack (Amalek attacked Israel first, see) is the place where Israel touches base with jewish identity, but if you can't see any benefit to Israel's strategy in association with jewish identity, it's likely someone is just trying to say The Jews instead of Israel or repeating the talking point of someone who is.

[leftistfeminista]

Performance “Stop sexual torture!”: The body as a political weapon and territory of resistance

As part of the commemoration of September 11, we, along with comrades from the Colectiva Qispiy Wayra, carried out a street performance aimed at shedding light on the sexual political violence that women who organized politically suffered during the civic-military dictatorship in Chile. Bodies on which practices of violence, torture and discipline were exercised with the ultimate aim of preventing their agency; their capacity to question and challenge a fascist, capitalist and patriarchal social order.

Many women have bravely decided to share their testimonies to raise awareness and publicly denounce the sexual torture inflicted during the Chilean dictatorship. However, there remains a significant social resistance to recognizing that all torture directed at women is, in fact, sexual torture. Furthermore, there is a strong reluctance to acknowledge the continuity between the torture practices used during the dictatorship and those still inflicted on bodies read as "woman" today.

In this sense, this performance is both an act of historical memory and a strategy of social denunciation. It highlights the many forms of violence and torture that the State continues to exercise over women. Testimonies from comrades who have been detained, insulted, beaten, forced to undress, denied water, and more, show that the Chilean state remains at war with the bodies that organize and confront its misogyny.

Additionally, the criminalization of abortion, which denies women the right to make decisions about our own bodies, and the experiences of comrades who have been persecuted and imprisoned for aborting, further demonstrate the deeply misogynistic and sexist nature of the State.

In the face of this heteropatriarchal and capitalist context, women continue to develop and articulate strategies of resistance and political action. The performance "Stop Sexual Torture!" makes clear that the body has been used as a tool for social regulation and control, but it is also a means of denunciation, confrontation, reclamation, transgression, and resistance. For this reason, the body is, above all, agency—both an individual and collective praxis for social transformation and our own emancipation. This performance attempts to center the body in resistance, a body that redefines its way of being in the world. This means that in its challenge to a dominant social order, it reveals alternative ways of understanding the person, gender, social relationships, relationships with the land, and more—offering pathways to resist, question, and transform reality.

Lastly, I believe it's important to recognize that each body resists in its own way, with its contradictions and breaks, with the experiential, relational, and autobiographical knowledge that comes with inhabiting that body. From the rage that injustice, violence, discrimination, and torture provoke, we weave together our resistance.

—Bárbara

[thatpodcastkid]

Magnus Archives Relisten 3, MAG 3 Across The Street

Part 3 of my Magnus Archives Relisten, featuring the world's worst dining room table and creepiest next door neighbor! Spoilers ahead

When I said creepiest neighbor, did you think of Amy or Graham?

Facts: Statement of Amy Patel, regarding the "alleged" disappearance of Graham Folger. Statement given July 1, 2007.

Statement Notes: First thing I noticed was how Amy and Graham are not actually "college age." I see a lot of art and people portray them as 20-somethings, but Amy's at least 30 and Graham is ten years older than her. Just kind of interesting how that happens sometimes with characters we can't see.

I also forgot from my first listen that Amy wasn't the one who revealed "keep watching," but Jon. Given that Amy never sees it and Graham fully denies writing in notebooks at all (and doesn't seem conscious of the fact that he eats one at least once), I've started theorizing that he doesn't actually know he's writing. It's a compulsion inspired by whatever entity or force is plaguing him.

Three episodes in the row, substance use is emphasized. Amy says her choices were to take night classes or become an alcoholic, and Graham does essentially nothing but chain smoke all day. I don't really know how this ties to the broader ideas of the show except for the fact that Annabelle Cane/ The Web have been manipulating things from the start, and they historically use chemical dependency to encourage that.

Character Notes: I keep wondering how Sasha found Graham's notebook. Was it in Artifact Storage? Did she go dumpster diving? Were she and Martin trekking through the local dump?

I also never realized that Jon was the first person to use the term "Not!Graham." I always thought it was a fan made term for Not!Sasha, but it's pretty cool how Jonny could think of such an effective term.

Entity Alignment: Such an incredible balance between the Eye and Stranger in this ep. Amy's "people watching hobby" definitely makes her Eye aligned, and I wouldn't be surprised if she became an Eye entity during the apocalypse. But what's really interesting is Graham's paranoia. It's such classic Eye manipulation. He's terrified, he can't stop looking out windows and locking doors and checking around corners because he has the irrational fear that he's being watched. But the tragedy is, even if his fear is irrational, he's right. Something and someone are watching him, something is trying to hurt him. There's such a season two Jon parallel; his fear is irrational and harmful, even though he technically has every reason to be afraid.

Jonny also really works in the uncanny valley vein of the Stranger here. Amy can't tell what part of the thing she sees is the hand, in terms of color she can only say that it's some kind of gray, unsure what parts are the thing and what are the piping. Classic horror stuff, but very difficult to pull off using description only.

The truly genius thing the Stranger does is, when allowing someone to know they've replaced a victim, they only ever choose acquaintances. Not friends, not strangers, just acquaintances. This is because, if the chose a friend, it would be obvious every time they see the replacement that they were freaking out. If they chose a stranger, they might just confuse the person. By choosing an acquaintance, like Amy or Melanie, they make it so they can know something's wrong, but other people can brush them off as misremembering. There's a bit of Spiral in that, making someone doubt their reality, which is why the Table comes in to play in this episode.

[beautifulpersonpeach]

namjoon only reworked on face-off and like crazy. the subs for both the commentary and the live show were pretty atrocious and korean is extremely nuanced. plus jimin is probably one of the most humble members who has historically played off his own merit of work before. no one denies that namjoon helped or reworked lyrics, he's there in the credits for a reason. it's just astounding that ppl think he wrote everything when jimin released at least 4 different contents showing his own lyrics.

*

Ask 2: NAMJOON DID NOT WRITE LIKE CRAZY. What is so hard for you to get??? Fuck you armys acting like he wrote the whole album are you so desperate for clout because your fav is flopping???? Did he even write any lines? Jimin is too humble. He probably just credited Namjoon to be generous. Maybe he wrote one word or two but Jimin showed us his writing process FOUR TIMES you stupid bitch!!! You hagmys keep trying to discredit Jimin. You steal every credit from him and give it to that flopmonster who has to BEG armys to stream his flop music! Jimin did that ogre a favor and instead of you to be grateful you discredit him and give it to RfloppingM like he has any influence on Jimin’s work. You’re worse than shit. With fans like you Jimin doesn’t need enemies. Leave Jimin ALONE.

***

I’ll be getting back to fun asks soon but the volume of asks like this (and worse) that I’ve received since Jimin’s documentary is astounding lmao. It’s as though there’s an epidemic of lack of critical thought that just begs me to clear up. Especially because in this case, the source of confusion: Jimin’s live and the takeaway, is very clear cut and the fact people are struggling with what should be basic, is a damning indication of where too many are headed in this fandom.

Hi Anon in ask 1,

Lol it’s clear you can’t be someone who reads my blog, because if you were you’d know how ironic it is to tell me “Korean is extremely nuanced” given who I am and where I am this very minute lmao. Also, the second posted ask is here for your benefit, given your comment of “no one denies Namjoon helped…”

That said, your ask is a very good mild example of how some people struggle with processing information that contradicts their own views, and care more about signals/actions/words of other akgaes than the reality right in front of them. It’s like that ask I got right after the contract renewals were announced when someone claimed that ‘BTS only renewed group contracts, solo contracts renewals will come later’ despite all of us being privy to the same press release where HYBE announced the renewals… just because that person could not accept that BTS (specifically Jimin) had renewed both group and solo contracts with BigHit.

For some people, unless every single thing is spelled out for them, and even when the piece of referenced media is extremely clear cut, they fill in the gaps with their insecurities to arrive at a conclusion that’s more palatable to their own views. And that’s what you’re showing in this case. I’ll explain what I mean.

The context for your ask is Jimin’s Wlive commentary mentioning how Namjoon stopped by, how Jimin and the pd-nims played the tracklist for him expecting a clap on the back, and instead what they got is Namjoon telling them to go back to the drawing board. Yes the subtitles on Wlive can sometimes be overly simplified, but what both Jimin and Namjoon said, in the Wlive and documentary itself respectively, was itself pretty simple too. Like, what you’ve read is what they actually said. Various ARMYs pointed out Jimin’s reaction to that scene, how he laughed at the shocked and flustered reaction from the production team to Namjoon’s advice to revise it all. That’s the context.

Here’s how akgaes responded:

Pre-emptively claiming it was a mistranslation (it’s not).

Then when faced with the reality that they’d overreacted, claimed ARMYs were saying Namjoon wrote the whole album. Which of course is bonkers and saying this simply because ARMYs mention Jimin and Joon’s words is more an expression of their own insecurity. The only people who could (even in theory) reach that conclusion, are akgaes. Either akgaes for Jimin and Namjoon.

Played up tropes many PJMs are already insecure about which include Jimin being “too humble”, so that Jimin’s comments about Namjoon’s contribution to the album (which we now all know is not a mistranslation), is in part due to Jimin underselling himself.

All three things is what you’ve shown in your ask, despite it being divorced from the reality we all saw.

What Joon actually talked about is how the basis for writing lyrics is the narrative you want to build, which is something that should flow through the whole song and album, and that they’d need to rework it to show this.

Like, again, there is literally no reason this very simple, accessible piece of media should be causing so much grief lmao.

The only reason there’s so much uproar over it is because some very insecure people have hinged their egos on the idea that their chosen idol is infallible and cannot possibly need significant support from members they consider to be below him and his competition. So naturally, they absolutely cannot accept when the members they’ve pitted against Jimin as competition, offer him critical and helpful advise that revamped and improved on the work he did; it pisses them off when ARMYs note it and draw attention to it; and now, given Jimin’s added insight of Namjoon’s critical assessment of the first draft, now they know that when they praise Like Crazy, they are also essentially praising Namjoon’s work, and so they actively look to diminish it.

When the sane response to all this is that it can both be true that Jimin primarily wrote his album, Namjoon contributed not just in writing (based on the credits he has for Like Crazy and Face-off), but also in refining the lyrical message for the project (which he’s not credited for but is now clear after watching the documentary), and that nothing about these facts removed from the quality of work either member put into Jimin’s debut album. FACE is ultimately a culmination of Jimin’s vision, Jimin’s efforts, and Jimin’s talent.

My god, all of this would be obvious if the toxic, mind-rotting disease of intra-fandom competition hadn’t fully infected so many people in Chapter 2. Like, see all I wrote, way too many words, to state yet again something that should be painfully, almost tragically, obvious. All akgae rhetoric has succeeded in doing is dumbing down the quality of conversations we have in fandom spaces, and given how that already was something of a problem within some ARMY pockets, the state of affairs now since the akgae disease caught on presents a pretty grim prognosis.

Anon in ask 1, you might not think you’re an akgae and perhaps you’d struggle to identify yourself with the anon in ask 2, but the underlying assumptions in your ask are identical. And my unsolicited comment is that really should give you pause more than anything else.

Stream Like Crazy for healthy cuticles.

[darklinaforever]

Yes of course... You clearly need to get the shit out of your eyes cleaned. If while Daemon is having sex with Rhaenyra you see him making a quick deal even though it's explicitly quite slow and gentle (makes sense since she gave birth not long ago) I don't know what to say other than that shit in your eyes must be powerful once again. And like I said before... As if he hadn't squeezed her thigh in his hands ? As if he didn't caress her face again before resting his forehead on hers ? Oh and if you watch from 1 minute and 14 seconds to 1 minute and 17 seconds Daemon actually puts his arm under Rhaenyra to hug her too. So he's also hugging her as much as she's hugging him. Then as if the sex itself hadn't been slow and tender ? Saying that he's done with sex with her as soon as possible is the biggest bad joke I've seen. 😂

So... Rhaenyra was 19 years old. An adult then. But the information is clearly having trouble getting to the brain... Laena was 16 years old, marriageable for the time of Westeros. You don't understand what a feudal / historical context entails do you ? The fact that a man of Daemon's age would marry a young woman of 16 years old is not shocking in context. It's inspired by fucking feudal times. If you want to accuse Daemon of being a predator for marrying a 16 year old woman, complain about how society worked at the time. No Daemon. Otherwise you can also complain about almost all the men of the time! And it had nothing to do with predation! Idiot... But given your level of understanding I imagine that for you all men of that time were predators... Also Laena was 22 years old in the book. Not 16 years old. In the series and book Mysaria is a fully adult woman. Rhaenyra may be younger in the book than in the series when Daemon asks for her hand, but depending on the era, Rhaenyra was also of marriageable age. Whether it's the series or the book, the women in Daemon's life therefore have varying and different ages, they are not all located in the same youth age group that you promote to try to make him pass for a predator attracted specifically to young girls. You really look ridiculous at this point. Honestly, thanks for proving that you know nothing about the book Fire and Blood and basic feudal society. Oh and at the risk of annoying you... Nettles has never been proven. And never will be in Fire and Blood.

I've seen both versions of The Borgia series, and Cesare & Lucrezia don't have any toxicity ? Lol. They do, just in a different way than Daemyra from the series. Also I repeat Daemyra is not grooming, book and series. On the other hand, the only thing I can say with certainty about Cesare and Lucrezia's love is that compared to all the crap that goes on in this series and their family, they are definitely pure in comparison. And what do you do with Hades and Persephone ? Literally one of the healthiest relationships in Greek mythology ? 😭😂

For the thousandth time, I obviously know the definition of grooming and historical context and you don't. Dameyra is not a grooming book and series.

Oh and Daemon didn't kill Rhea Royce in the book.

And since we're staying on the series... it's hard to understand that Rhaenyra is 19 years old in this fucking episode 4 and 5 ? An adult and not a child !

You must really have a shitty life to come and repeat the same shit over and over again anonymously as if it's going to change anything in reality.

You don't need a doctor ?

You almost never talk about Criston Cole and the other men. Stop pretending to care about Rhaenyra. You're literally the type of person who says you can't wait to watch her get abused over and over again. Daemyra is not grooming, I literally for the thousandth time wrote a huge article about this but YOU ARE DEAF ! You don't understand the definition of the word and what a historical context implies. You are a bunch of idiot butchers. I never denied the toxicity of Daemyra in the series, non-existent in the book because again HISTORICAL CONTEXT ! Once again, go read @horizon-verizon it might educate you. And I NEVER claimed Daemon was Prince Charming. What do you not understand about a gray and complex character ?! Unless for you a gray and complex character is in fact incapable of loving a woman and having a healthy relationship with her ?!

Oh, and I have already said I don't know how many times that I recognized that Daemyra had toxic aspects in the series version, except that, so what ? This will prevent me from shipping the Daemyra version of the series maybe ?! No. Love is not necessarily something pure, we have to stop the bullshit, especially in fiction. On the other hand, I maintain that there is nothing toxic in the book version. There is no such thing as a brothel. It's an invention of Mushroom. There is no voluntary abandonment of Daemon for 10 years. In reality he was banished under penalty of death. There is no Daemon leaving Rhaenyra to deal with childbirth alone. He was by his side in the books. There is no strangulation either. And once again, the age difference and or the incest aspect are not real arguments as to a possible toxicity in their relationship, due to placing the relationship in its fictional and historical context from which GRRM draws inspiration, namely the feudal era, where age differences and incest were included in the customs of the time for specific reasons. Especially if we are in a family where incest has no impact due to their MAGIC BLOOD ! These elements are not evidence of toxicity. Open a history book. An age difference and incestuous marriage in a historical context does not necessarily result in toxic abusive relationships. This is bullshit.

So basically, I'm right when I say that you don't read my responses and just repeat the same shit over and over again ! “Acknowledge that Daemyra is toxic” I've said I don't know how many times that they were toxic in the show's version. Honestly, go get treatment for stalking my account like a crazy person. Are you interested in me at this point ? Sorry, you're not my type.

See when I say they repeat the same shit over and over again without wanting to hear it ?! Real parrots. Clearly I must really be a bridge to have so many trolls coming to see me. The antis have small brains. What do you think Daemon ?

Yeah, that's what I thought...

@aleksanderscult

[electronicdelusionstarlight]

As of now, only four people in the Marvel Universe know about One More Day.

One's Mephisto, Obviously.

One's Hulk. During a special Hulk and Spider-Man talk about shit and Hulk reveals he remembers everything from before he "made people forget Peter Parker was Spider-Man with magic," meaning he knows he used to be married and now he isn't. He doesn't know about the deal with the devil, and probably never pried further cause he probably think it's none of the Hulk's business. Banner doesn't know this mind you, just Hulk.

One's Deadpool, in an issue he actively stops Peter from finding out about the marriage being erased, probably in the top 10 of most fucked up evil shit Deadpool ever did between "Helped the Confederacy win the Civil War" and "Kidnapped a blind old woman to physically and emotionally torture for months."

One's Gwenpool. Unconfirmed, but she is a Omega Level Mutant that went mad with her reality warping powers/a normal Girl from our world who is now trapped in a comic, so she would know about OMD by virtue of reading about it in the real world/her delusions.

Mephisto and Deadpool are definitely not going to help out there, this leaves Gwenpool and Hulk. Hulk likes Spider-Man well enough, that's a recurring thing between them, and would probably help out if asked, and Gwenpool wants to stay relevant and get herself a new solo series, which she can do if she gets historically remembered as the character who ended OMD.

Also, Gwenpool has a retconned in history with Mephisto kidnapping her brother, and has defeated him once before, so she has tenure.

We can work this two ways:

First way, the easy way, we get Squirrel Girl and she and Gwenpool do the team up they did the first time to defeat Mephisto. However, then that would be Squirrel Girl ending OMD, not Gwenpool, so we can't have that.

Second way, the hard way, filled with continuity shit. Gwenpool needs to set up a Machiavellian series of events that lead to Peter getting his marriage back.

First, she needs to go to a Gay Bar during Pride Month, this is relevant, where incidentally Loki and Felicia Hardy also are. Loki owes Peter a favour for that one time he helped him save one of his daughters, so he can be convinced to help out since Peter just lost the daughter he and MJ would have had had they been married, and Felicia, dating Peter at the time, would put his happiness over hers in this specific situation, which brings that emotional conflict we need to ramp up sales.

It's a heist movie to steal Peter's Marriage from Mephisto's.

But it's not that easy, we need bigger guns, and even if we get the Hulk's help, we need someone to open them a way into hell, someone who has a grudge against Mephisto...

Victor Von Doom, ruler of Latveria, was once asked if he was able to heal an old woman's gunshot wound. He was told Reed Richards had admitted he was unable to do so, he was told Doctor Strange, his esteemed colleague, was the one asking for his help, he was told a superhero, one close to the FF, was going to be indebted to him over this...

And for some strange trick of fate, Victor Von Doom had admitted to be unable to heal a single gunshot wound.

That's preposterous is it not? Now, imagine if, say, the Trickster God of Lies, with which Doom has had a working relationship with for decades and knows not to trust, showed up to him and told him this.

Showed him an illusion of a previous reality, courtesy of one Gwenpool's reality warping powers, and told him that was what happened.

He'd deny it wouldn't he? He's Doom, that's be preposterous to think, him, unable to save a single old woman from dying, accomplish what Reed Richards couldn't.

He'd look into it at the very least. Because if that's something someone believes to have happened, then he must rectify it at once.

Now, let's say everyone during OMD and beyond was being obtuse about saving May because Mephisto was fucking with their minds. That's plausible, since Mephisto, by virtue of this being a Gwenpool story, also happens to be Joe Quesada no?

How would Doom react, when shown proof of such deceptions, at the prospect of the Demon who stole his mother from him bargaining with someone for the life of their own mother (figure)? Fucking with his mind to stop him from outclassing Reed Richards?

Doom would tear reality apart just to rectify that.

So they get in Hell to steal the Marriage, Doom back in Latveria keeping the portal open, ready to undo OMD once they're back.

This is where we find out the Mary Jane currently in the main continuity Is a demon that was swapped when she ended up in the Mayan Apocalypse Dimension with Paul, and that she and the kids are actually demons Mephisto commissioned to fuck with Peter's life. Paul is still just some boring dude brainwashed into this.

So, Felicia saves MJ from hell, they have a heart to heart, it's awkward, it's tense, Felicia says she'll move aside for her happiness, Mary Jane doesn't want that of her, then demon hordes start swarming them, everything seems lost...

"WE AM SMASH FOR VENGEANCE!"

The Hulk, who was indeed contacted by Gwenpool for a last second cavalry charge, erupts from a wall in Hell. He's being possessed by the Spirit of Vengeance, who really hates Mephisto for good reasons, and the second he heard shit going on in Hell he possessed the closest possible host.

Also Venom is bonded to him. Because Venom might hate Peter Parker and Spider-Man, but they loved him once, much like they love Flash Thompson, much like Flash loves Peter Parker, much like he loves Mary Jane and Felicia.

They aren't doing it for any of them, for Peter or MJ or Felicia, the people Venom brutalized while he was bonded to Eddie Brock.

They are doing it for Flash.

Titanic Battle between the Venom Hulk Raider and Mephisto, who restructures reality with his power as Marvel Editorial, forcing Gwenpool to also restructure reality alongside him to stop him from retconning this story out of existence. Demon Hordes are still there.

All seems lost, until Gwenpool realizes that this is still happening during Pride Month, so she turns toward Felicia and reminds her that both she, Peter and Mary Jane have two hands.

Dramatic kiss between Mary Jane and Felicia Hardy, light explodes off them, obliterating the demon hordes, Mephisto doesn't understand what the fuck is going on.

Mary Jane Watson is now fueled, via the power of gay love, by the souls of every comic book character that was fridged or mistreated in the history of the Marvel Universe. She becomes the Avatar of their Power, their fury, directed at the personification of what lead them to their Fates.

Mephisto is Obliterated, the gang comes out of hell, the Marriage with them, here exemplified by the issue where Mary Jane and Peter got married, intact.

Doom is about ready to end this farce and undo OMD, Much to Gwenpool delight, and Felicia is kinda bummed out by this, so she's trying to leave without being noticed, but MJ does and she kisses her again, telling her she had realised that despite how much she loves Peter, she also loves her too, and she knows Peter feels the same. And it might not be conventional, but they can make it work if they try, together.

So Doom doesn't Undo OMD (which he kinda prefers since he wouldn't know the repercussions to the timeline that would have), but apparently Gay Marriage has been legal in Latveria for his entire tenure as dictator, which means he can just marry them with Peter as a Throuple, since his word is law and shit.

In all of this Peter is being depressed in New York under an awful art style. Gwenpool teleports in, screams because "Holy shit people aren't allowed to complain about Calarts anymore what is this shit???" And kidnaps him to Latveria, where he's presented with his girlfriend and his ex girlfriend who is, like, actually his ex wife unlike the impostor with the weird demon kids, and is presented with the fact they have now decided to date.

This leads to a whirlwind of emotions since, you know, fair, ranging from despair at the prospect of Mary Jane being trapped in Hell to elation at her being safe not to depression at being dumped but also joy at the prospect of those two women finding happiness even without him and then the Throuple subject is broached and he faints.

Wedding happens, Doom officiates, he now has "saved the marriage of one of your closest friends before you even knew what was happening" to the number of shit he can hold over Reed Richards, Loki gets first dibs as Evil Godmother at a potential new SpiderCat-MJ kid down the line, Gwenpool gets renewed for a solo series, and that's the end of the story.

[deqdyke]

Cw: race, genocide denial, antiblackness

Just working through some thoughts after seeing the millionth annoying "Are x group white? Discuss" tweets.

Honestly I think like 90% of discourse around race and whiteness in leftist spaces could be solved by people saying "I don't know that history well enough". Like, people when they discuss race, have these competing internal desires to treat race as solely defined by current social standings, and also point to historical oppression as evidence. Neither works. If you go purely by current social standings, then we have absolutely nothing to build off of besides personal lived experiences. I've met Italians who have had old white people call them wops. Does that mean Italians aren't white? Are Polish people not white because of the existence of anti-polish sentiments? Are Russians not white because of how often they're portrayed as villains? Are Armenians white universally bc of the Kardashians?

But then if you base it entirely off history, then you have to accept that no Jewish person has ever attained whiteness. That race is a permanent and immutable aspect of someone's character - something that just... That's just racial ideology, same as it ever was.

The reality is whiteness is nebulous and difficult to pin down because it serves a social function. It needs to be fluid, but it needs to justify itself by appearing as if it's immutable. It also props up European nation-building myths. Like, if the question is "Are Italians white" the question should be "Well, who's an Italian?". Who's a Russian? I know Black Russians, and Black Ashkenazim. Is the understanding they're somehow less part of those groups due to their Blackness? Because I know they would take serious issue with that. Romans (as in, Italians from Rome) are a core part of the Western nation-building myth. You can't exclude them from whiteness without whiteness collapsing. But Sicilians were ruled by North African Muslims for hundreds of years - they're noticeably darker, and their culture is distinct. So Sicilians were denied whiteness, and they were used as a scapegoat for xenophobic sentiments during waves of Italian immigration. When they had sufficiently assimilated, then suddenly Sicilians were "Italians" and Italians are white, so Sicilians are white. So you've now managed to redefine whiteness across an era of immigration to build white unity and maintain a white supremacist majority.

White Fascism is self-destructive and suicidal because it maintains rigid immutable boundaries and requires constant expansion, which means eventually whiteness WILL be a minority. Liberalism upholds whiteness by redefining whiteness over time to maintain a White social majority. When whiteness needs to be mutable, there needs to be a population that can be used as the scapegoat. (Which is also why anti-Blackness is a core component of White supremacist racial ideology - it functions as a permanent fixed class to pivot other groups' whiteness around).

That's how it functions in America. But the rules of whiteness ARE mutable, and they change based on time and region. So the question of "Is x person white" really depends on time AND location, and how their identities exist in relation to nation-building myths. And it reaches a point where asking a question like "Are Armenians white?" or "Are Balkan Muslims white?" or "Are Jews white?" stops being useful, because the point shouldn't be to reify race, it should be to point out that people who fail to fit neatly within these national racial narratives are the best possible example to show how Whiteness contradicts itself. Is an Arab white? Is a Jew white? Is a North African white? It depends, when, where, and who are we talking about?

[wack-ashimself]

Is it hope if it's based in ignorance?

Torchwood, s2, e11.

Woman's son disappears. Turns out, he went thru a time rift, for 40 years, and got horrible facial scars. Also, lost his mind and screams for hours.

Gwen takes the mom to see her 14 now 40 yr old son. At first, she's horrified. Then, relived (cuz she accepts that it is her son). Then...he screams. Non stop. Freaks everyone out. Mom is shaken.

Back at the mom's house, she says, straight up, do NOT tell anyone else if that happened to their kid. Gwen asks why. And the mom says along the line of 'I used to at least have hope (now I have nothing).'

But...if the knowledge of your missing loved one is out there, you don't want it, even if it's bad news? That's...ignorance. Not hope. That is openly lying to yourself.

I mean, if a loved one of mine went missing, and it turns out they were kidnapped, tortured, raped and killed, I would want to know!

HOWEVER, I would hope whoever told me would say it more 'Your loved was kidnapped and, eventually, killed.' Then just tell me if you found the person who did this or not. You DO NOT have to give graphic details, just the beginning and the end.

I swear, this is why the human race is stuck: you DON'T want to know the truth. I mean, realistically, if every world government revealed their deepest, darkest, most evil things they did, I genuinely think the human race in large part would lose their god damn minds. Cuz they're afraid. Cowards. The human race is mostly cowards. Cowards kill, not talk truth. And it seems, historically, we kill the truth tellers more than hear them out...

<And even beyond that, if they told you the truths about REALITY and existence as a whole that they can prove, and revealed what they were lying about in that area....OOhhh boy. I think suicides would skyrocket. I have seen the other side, people, and it's equal parts the best things you could imagine, and everything lacking thereof. It's all...based on will. What you wanna see, or you're denying to see, you get.>

[galacticnova3]

No. No. Stop that. Dont say things like that. You cant just drop that information all nonchalantly

Gonna assume this is about the Lor museum phobia thing but like. In my defense I grew up with things like The Brave Little Toaster and Robots(2005) and my brain is wired to make connections like that as a result. And like, think about it.

There are many museum ships that aren’t exactly what they were in their time, sitting on a spectrum between original and replica. Aging metal from less advanced times corrodes, exterior paint needs touch-ups, etc. Over time a lot of the more fragile materials and internal things prone to degradation may be replaced with similar things that will last, since the goal is to preserve aesthetics more than functionality, meaning the latter can be sacrificed for the former. At the very least, replicas using the same material will be used in favor of something falling apart. Does that not align with the goals of taxidermy? To display a creature in a way that is as similar to the living thing as possible, just changing the insides for the sake of maintaining outer aesthetics? Few museum ships are still seaworthy, kept around solely for observation and out of public attachment rather than to perform a service, just as taxidermy animals are maintained so we know what they looked like in the past even though the individual is long dead.

We know Lor is old. Like, really really REALLY old. She, or rather her model, was also a very important and recognizable piece of technology to the point that knowledge of her existence persisted into the present day. It was implied there are multiple Lors out there in an official Miiverse post, which leaves the potential for other Starcutters in general but regardless means she definitely isn’t the only space boat of her kind with her exact appearance to exist. This means that, between her historical importance and memorability, she’s exactly the sort of individual that would be found in a theoretical museum of the Ancients. In fact there is very much the possibility that another Starcutter of her model could have ended up with that fate, outmoded by those with newer technology and more efficient builds, too inefficient to justify keeping in service, but holding too much value to simply be scrapped and have their materials repurposed for newer projects.

Imagine waking up long after you were supposed to be gone, thousands of years having passed since your last conscious moment. Though you know you must be the last of your kind, or at least the last member of a specific group within your kind, there is little to remind you of that in day to day life. The reality is rarely at the forefront of your mind; your focus is on the present, the time you came from long having fell from relevance even for you. The others are all gone, you will never see them again, that is a simple fact of your existence that is easy to accept when there are no faces attached. And then, one day, you learn you are not the only one still around! The others, or maybe just one other perhaps, they lasted with you in a sense. They just aren’t alive like you are; they’re on display to be gawked at by the masses, a little card listing fun facts and other information beneath them, things all too familiar to you. You know they aren’t all there; they would have been decommissioned long ago, gutted of everything that would not be shown or needed, the less stable bits taken out for safety and to maintain appearances. In just about every sense it’s like looking in a mirror only to see your own corpse, propped up and posed to look alive and well, forever denied the freedom and dignity to rest and rot.

Would you not be deeply unsettled in that situation? Would the realization that it could have been you in that exhibit not be frightening?

[lancecharleson]

So about the Vincent Van Gogh Sunflower Painting stunt...

I don’t know if any of you, still caught up in the outrage over the actions of two particular climate activists, worried to death that the sunflower painting is ruined beyond repair, are ready to hear this piping hot take, but...

TL;DR: Vincent would absolutely be in favor of this kind of behavior if it meant more people would care about the environment than his work.

For the longer version of this take, it is important to note that the painting itself was not damaged, as it was protected by a layer of glass. These two women are not idiots. If they knew it didn’t have a protective layer, they wouldn’t have risked their reputations in the first place.

You’re right to be angry about a centuries old painting being potentially ruined, I understand that completely. The problem I have though isn’t so much the upset about a priceless artifact being “destroyed”, instead it’s this intensely dehumanising narrative being spun both by the media and those on social sites like here and twitter, I’m seeing more and more of, that these two are an example of how environmental activists are counter-productive to the greater struggle of saving the planet from the fossil fuel industry. That they are an example that not only do they help nothing, but that they also don’t deserve to be listened to. In fact, they don’t deserve to be seen as people. They don’t matter.

I implore you not to buy into this classic scapegoating of activism.

I’ve already seen words being levied at the activists themselves like “wokies” and “teenagers with stupid colourful/edgy haircuts” and other stereotypical insults that have been historically used by Anti-SJWs types. For fucksake, I even saw art on twitter earlier depicting the activists as incoherent monkeys! This also an indictment of how normalised climate denial/ignorance has become. All of that focus on surface level bullshit, and not on the words they said, which tbh only further proves their point. 

“Is art worth more than life? More than food? More than justice?“

They are challenging you to direct that anger, not at them, but at the fossil fuel industry that continues to be an existential threat to our planet. Because that tossing of soup at a priceless artifact, represents accurately what the oil companies will do to your world, if it means they’ll get that serotonin fix they get from watching line go up. The two women have, through this stunt, ended up giving a new meaning to the classical piece of art they “defaced.”  

---

Now what would Vincent Van Gogh think of this “defacing” if he was alive and well today?

Would he care more about his work being ruined by some “meddling kids” trying to bring attention to a high priority crisis facing us?

Is he the type of man who cares more about fame than the world he once lived in and took inspiration from?

If any of you know intimately who Vincent was, and what he stood for in life, you would know the answer is a resounding...

No.

Vincent would 10,000% be behind these girls every step of the way, because he cares more about the environment than he does about his art. One only needs to read this quote to know that he does not give one iota of a fuck about fame or the material worth of his own.

“It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality is more important than the feeling for pictures.” 

He has always been a lover of natural world at heart. He did not want fame or fortune, (he would’ve gone deeper into a depressive state if he knew he was made famous right after his passing), he wanted everyone to pay close attention to the environment around us, and look after it well.

He is not a petty asshole who would’ve sided with the media narrative that has spent the past 40 years painting climate activism as an ill defined boogey man, while denying the impact of fossil fuel extraction since the 80s.

This is what Vincent Van Gogh would’ve wanted. I’m not asking you to stop being angry.

I’m asking you to sit with your anger for a few minutes, maybe more, breath slowly, then do a bit of further research, before making kneejerk condemnations.

Thank you for reading and enjoy your weekend.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"These institutions that, from the proclamation of the French State, rallied all those who had stood for the defense of the birthrate and of the family since the beginning of the 1930s imposed a consensual view of the family and natalist policy in opposition to the former divergent, sometimes opposing views of family order and demographic order. This process of ideological conciliation played no small part in the extreme simplification of the dominant agendas regarding the family, and therefore regarding women, under the National Revolution. The “neutral sites” where “commonplaces” are developed are always sites where violence becomes commonplace. While constructing the family, for example, as a political question, such institutions advance the apolitical nature of their concerns, related “from the very beginning” to “natural” and “eternal” realities of the human order: the family group and the equilibrium of parental roles. In this way, they cause the family issue to be seen as a neutral issue, thereby naturalizing the arbitrary.

The widespread thesis of the continuity of family policy between the end of the Third Republic, with its culmination in the Family Code of July 29, 1939, the National Revolution, and the postwar period —a thesis that has a real affinity with the idea that the family is apolitical—always risks making us forget the specific effects of unanimity, which represses controversies and arguments in favor of a single point of view. It also causes us to forget the specific violence of the regime’s policy with respect to women, due, in large part, to their collective designation as a key element of the national decline and regeneration in these domains.” Like ordinary racism, the identification of feminine responsibility for the defeat works on a subconscious level. “Sexual racism,” in its brutal version produced by a period of crisis, can draw on an entire available cultural stock of images of feminine “destiny” always ready for action: the fact that the argument preexists makes it possible to deny (in the Freudian sense), at the time and afterward, the specific violence of condemnation in a historical moment at which the counterpowers and the guardrails have given way. In this sense, the thesis of the ahistorical continuity of family policy contributed to reinforcing this denial, just as it has most likely made it impossible for quite some time to see any interest in conducting research on women during the period.

To approach this phenomenon of unanimity from another perspective, we can also posit that prompt participation in the debates begun in 1940 concerning the causes of the defeat allowed movements to mark their place—and to increase their share of audience and influence—in this market of symbolic goods. The more the declining birthrate and the weakness of the family institution occupied an important place in the representations of the causes of the defeat, the more pronatalist and family proponents would have an important role to play and the more they could carve out a space of intervention and important action in what could be called the market of revival: Conseil National, ministries, commissions, reviews, and collections. And they never stopped condemning the selfishness of couples and the decline in family values, reserving for women, in their turn and in their manner, alongside philosophers, novelists, and spiritual advisors, a leading role among those responsible for the defeat, confining them at the same time to a reserved practical and symbolic space, that of reproduction.

…

An apparently apolitical, consensual, and integrative theme, the defense of the family, which can mobilize both the most learned guarantees and notions of common sense, imposes representations of the social order, naturalizes socially and historically constructed differences (here, of the sexes), organizes symbolic domination (here, masculine domination), reactivates symbolic violence, and imposes legal measures that have concrete effects on the lives and deaths of individuals. The analyses of Rémi Lenoir concerning the social construction of the notion of the “normal family” and the notion of demography as a “natural and political science” through its break with the social sciences and its institutionalization as state science, and the analyses of Hervé Le Bras concerning the archaeology of demographic constructions clearly show that this “apoliticism” has very political effects.

Vichy’s legal arsenal regarding the family, inseparably including women (we will return to this later), mobilized certain conservative and Catholic factions of the Bar alongside familialists and natalists. All these “clairvoyant patriots,” to borrow the expression of General Lafont, these natalist crusaders, massively contributed their skills, their social capital, and their labor force to the work undertaken by the Commissariat General for the Family, that “superior service of the interests of the family,” according to Gustave Bonvoisin. The novelty compared to the interwar period was that by constructing the family politically as the foundation of society and stamping it onto city hall pediments in place of the Republican motto’s Equality, the new French State launched a gigantic call for proposals with regard to family, demographic, and natalist issues. And technocrats concerned with defending and expanding their intellectual, ethical, and institutional contribution and who had long been devoted to these areas were impelled to respond. It was not a time for controversies. The crisis situation required that one be present at the front, alongside others, with a unanimous momentum fueled by the feeling of finally being fully recognized and irreplaceable. This form of immediate and collective adherence, over and above the internal contradictions of the familiast and natalist movement itself, won out over existing discourses and imposed a simplification of the analyses that ultimately reconstructed the family and the natalist order on the basis of the “eternal” opposition, founded in “nature,” between feminine and masculine “vocations.”

The crisis situation and the prophetic discourse that it engendered had the primary effect of negating the very possibility of a debate, of a clash of ideas concerning the mythic foundations of the new social—and sexual—order that would both take over and provide relief. Conflicts between the Alliance nationale contre la dépopulation, with its natalist and demographic aims, and the family associations that recommended a program of moral recovery based on religious inspiration, conflicts into which debates concerning the roles and functions of both sexes could creep, all disappeared in favor of a total vision of demography as a moral and religious science and of the family as the only legitimate female space. Demography itself, at least during international conferences, had nevertheless been a site of adversarial confrontations: at the World Conference on Population held in 1927 in Geneva and chaired by a neo-Malthusian American feminist, participants had in particular discussed the relationships between population growth and growth in resources. The French journalist Renée Duc, who viewed the demographic alignment as consistent with her own desires in 1937, clearly showed, by pointing out the French enemy of the family to German readers, the existence of these spaces of contradictory thought that could no longer express themselves after 1940:

Only women belonging to organizations and to leftist parties in France and to organizations ‘that, on the pretext of helping woman in her fight and with her rights, seek to destroy feminine characteristics and the most precious virtues of the race, reject marriage and children. There are not a lot of children because people want to enjoy life. Only a change in regime can improve the demographic situation of France.

The National Revolution thus presented itself as life against death, redemption against sin, renewal against degeneracy:

In France there ate presently 25,000 divorces per year, one out of twelve marriages; 400,000 to 600,000 abortions—some have recently said a million — that is as many, almost as many as or more than births. Social scourges are undermining homes. There are some who conclude from this tableau: the family is dead, familial sentiment is dead. Of those we ask: why don’t you follow your reasoning to the end, which is: France dead? The body does not survive the cell. But there are forces of renewal. The work will be long and exacting, but it can be undertaken with confidence. An entire education must be repeated.

- Francine Muel-Dreyfus, Vichy and the Eternal Feminine: A Contribution to a Political Sociology of Gender. Translated by Kathleen A. Johnson. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001. p. 75-76, 80-82.

[ghostjelliess]

This has been on my mind a lot lately, so I'm just going to say it as succinctly as possible:

No matter how well trained your pet is, if, for some reason, they are off-leash in an on-leash area (i.e. not a designated dog park), and they run up to me and they get kick/punched, that's on you.

I'm not saying I'm out here kicking puppies okay? I like dogs. But we don't all have the same experiences. I grew up in a neighborhood that had active dog fights. Avoiding strays with rabies, being taught about locked jaws and not letting the dog bite at all costs, little kids with amputated arms, watching dogs for scared muzzles and flanks, and seeing them be poor victims but also vicious predators, that experience doesn't magically go away because the ring got shut down and I grew up, and my first instinct to your lunging dog is defense.

On a leash, I can often reach out my hand, get to know the dog, let it sniff, and do all the right things because I'm not irrationally scared of them (but also cus my fiance is a golden retriever and he's already bff's with the dog by the time I'm there usually). Off-leash in a public space, your Rottweiler running at me is gonna get tossed, no matter how much you tell "she's friendly!" Bish, so is a 22 if you're tryna die.

It's not subjective, it's just facts. I don't know your pet, I don't know how "well trained" it is, but if its running at me despite you yelling for it to stop, it's a predator in that moment. This isn't anti-dog. I love dogs. It's pro-responsibility. Training is important for the safety of others but also for your beloved pet. You have no idea what world people are coming from. I've seen well trained dogs off leash and not felt threatened, it's the "trained enough" that bothers me. It's the uncontrolled, barely restrained, and blaming others for feeling uncomfortable that bothers me.

I saw someone else bring up a point about traumatized animals as well, about poorly trained dogs running up on shelter pets who get scared and might bite out of fear. We see dogs so often, and are around so many different kinds, that I think we forget to respect the diverse reality. If you've never seen a dog with rabies, you might not know that ancestral fear, if you've never seen a dog lock jaws, you might only think of it as a mythical ability. You might think of cats as undomesticated but dogs as obedient, and there's probably entire research papers of discourse on the strange social dichotomy of dog vs. cat, though historically they fill very important but different roles in human survival, but dogs can be feral, rural areas can and do (from personal experience in the high desert and UP) have wild dog packs.

Again, I don't hate dogs. I don't seize up at the sight of a pitbull, and I know tons of people are just trying their best, I've simply had it with the naivety I keep encountering on the bike path where leashed dogs lunge and couples who can't hold them get offended when I yell at their dog to back off while it's chasing me with an open mouth. Laugh all you want at people's fears, think it's dumb that you need a leash, train your pup well, call out that he's friendly as he races after a stranger, but please also protect your dog by understanding that if that stranger in a public on-leash property, pops your doggo with a foot, a fist, or a rolled magazine, it's not right, it's not fair but it is your fault, your responsibility, and your job to protect your pet.

Okay, I'm done. I just... People really don't respect their dogs it seems lately. They get cute puppies bred for generations to be really good at a job, and then are denied the space or resources to enact that action. Then they get brought to a park to "run around" or be free or whatever, and end up covered in ticks and running up on someone about to knock their lights out if they get any closer, with good cause!

It's the same additude of people who cross the road without looking or push their buggies without looking. You've endangered your baby because you are entitled to crossing. It's true you have the right of way, it's not true that everyone saw you and stopped, you have to look both ways, and I'm really annoyed with the amount of people thinking they're entitled to their dog's innocence, meanwhile their dog is actively in attack positioning and lunging at strangers. Ha-ha he likes to nip ankles, it's playful and he doesn't bite usually....and you, apparently, like to play American courthouse roulette, the way that stranger could sue if and when something does happen.

Protect your dogs, educate yourself, look both ways before crossing the street.

[josdimension]

The intersection of climate change and a just transition

This week was what I would describe as a major moment of unity across the U.S., besides sporting events like the Super Bowl, holidays like Christmas and milestones like New Year's Eve there are few moments when the whole country has a common focus or goal. Well maybe elections but that can often be polarizing. The solar eclipse this week was a natural phenomena, a mix of science and wonder, even attributable to a higher power if you believe, and it got everyone to stop what they were doing and marvel at the moon passing in front of the sun for a short while. That being said, no one denied it was happening regardless of whether they had a scientific background or not, and everyone had access to it, but just needed to put on the protective glasses which people were able to get from everywhere, either for free or at a low cost. This experience made me think of what a just transition could look like.

Developing resilience amid increasing climate challenges is something we should all be unifying around, not just in the US but globally. In this week's class the speakers did a great job of demonstrating how a community-driven model for equitable resilience, including indigenous perspectives, community involvement in decisions, and sustainable approaches for a resilient future could make both climate action and a just transition a more attainable reality. The first speaker stressed the importance of indigenous insights in climate resilience, advocating for collaborative partnerships and equitable compensation. The second speaker discussed community-led solutions that illustrated how community engagement promotes sustainability and fairness in climate action.

Recently I was discussing with a colleague the IFC Performance Standards, which have a specific section on Indigenous Peoples as a consideration in Environmental and Social Impact Assessments for project finance. She was telling me about how the Dakota access pipeline conflict really opened her eyes to the general disregard of indigenous knowledge and voices in the present day (and historically) when it comes to avoiding destruction of nature and sacred sites. Subsequently, the discussion in class highlighted how integrating indigenous knowledge and community feedback into climate adaptation (and mitigation) plans can strengthen our collective capacity to endure and rebound from environmental risks. It is possible to safeguard livelihoods, while preserving ecosystems, and promoting solidarity and empowerment.

Circumventing the risks of exceeding planetary boundaries hinges on a sense of urgency, scientific insights and values, global collaboration, and a commitment to sustainable development. Climate action requires transitioning to renewable energy sources in a just way that does overburden any one group. It also requires adopting sustainable practices across sectors including nature-based solutions and broader biodiversity positive actions. Moreover countries need to recognize historical responsibilities and inequities between the global north and south. Above all, supporting vulnerable communities and countries disproportionately affected by climate change, is pivotal to a truly just transition.