#anyways I hate corporate America and I hate capitalism

[qqueenofhades]

Re: the post you reblogged about Bush. I'm 21 and tbh feel like I can only vote for Bernie, can you explain if/why I shouldn't? Thanks and sorry if this is dumb or anything.

Oh boy. Okay, I’ll do my best here. Note that a) this will get long, and b) I’m old, Tired, and I‘m pretty sure my brain tried to kill me last night. Since by nature I am sure I will say something Controversial ™, if anyone reads this and feels a deep urge to inform me that I am Wrong, just… mark it down as me being Wrong and move on with your life. But also, really, you should read this and hopefully think about it. Because while I’m glad you asked this question, it feels like there’s a lot in your cohort who won’t, and that worries me. A lot.

First, not to sound utterly old-woman-in-a-rocking-chair ancient, people who came of age/are only old enough to have Obama be the first president that they really remember have no idea how good they had it. The world was falling the fuck apart in 2008 (not coincidentally, after 8 years of Bush). We came within a flicker of the permanent collapse of the global economy. The War on Terror was in full roar, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were at their height, we had Dick Cheney as the cartoon supervillain before we had any of Trump’s cohort, and this was before Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden had exposed the extent of NSA/CIA intelligence-gathering/American excesses or there was any kind of public debate around the fact that we were all surveilled all the time. And the fact that a brown guy named Barack Hussein Obama was elected in this climate seems, and still seems tbh, kind of amazing. And Obama was certainly not a Perfect President ™. He had to scale back a lot of planned initiatives, he is notorious for expanding the drone strike/extrajudicial assassination program, he still subscribed to the overall principles of neoliberalism and American exceptionalism, etc etc. There is valid criticism to be made as to how the hopey-changey optimistic rhetoric stacked up against the hard realities of political office. And yet…. at this point, given what we’re seeing from the White House on a daily basis, the depth of the parallel universe/double standards is absurd.

Because here’s the thing. Obama, his entire family, and his entire administration had to be personally/ethically flawless the whole time (and they managed that – not one scandal or arrest in eight years, against the legions of Trumpistas now being convicted) because of the absolute frothing depths of Republican hatred, racial conspiracy theories, and obstruction against him. (Remember Merrick Garland and how Mitch McConnell got away with that, and now we have Gorsuch and Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court? Because I remember that). If Obama had pulled one-tenth of the shit, one-twentieth of the shit that the Trump administration does every day, he would be gone. It also meant that people who only remember Obama think he was typical for an American president, and he wasn’t. Since about… Jimmy Carter, and definitely since Ronald Reagan, the American people have gone for the Trump model a lot more than the Obama model. Whatever your opinion on his politics or character, Obama was a constitutional law professor, a community activist, a neighborhood organizer and brilliant Ivy League intellectual who used to randomly lie awake at night thinking about income inequality. Americans don’t value intellectualism in their politicians; they just don’t. They don’t like thinking that “the elites” are smarter than them. They like the folksy populist who seems fun to have a beer with, and Reagan/Bush Senior/Clinton/Bush Junior sold this persona as hard as they possibly could. As noted in said post, Bush Junior (or Shrub as the late, great Molly Ivins memorably dubbed him) was Trump Lite but from a long-established political family who could operate like an outwardly civilized human.

The point is: when you think Obama was relatively normal (which, again, he wasn’t, for any number of reasons) and not the outlier in a much larger pattern of catastrophic damage that has been accelerated since, again, the 1980s (oh Ronnie Raygun, how you lastingly fucked us!), you miss the overall context in which this, and which Trump, happened. Like most left-wingers, I don’t agree with Obama’s recent and baffling decision to insert himself into the 2020 race and warn the Democratic candidates against being too progressive or whatever he was on about. I think he was giving into the same fear that appears to be motivating the remaining chunk of Joe Biden’s support: that middle/working-class white America won’t go for anything too wild or that might sniff of Socialism, and that Uncle Joe, recalled fondly as said folksy populist and the internet’s favorite meme grandfather from his time as VP, could pick up the votes that went to Trump last time. And that by nature, no one else can.

The underlying belief is that these white voters just can’t support anything too “un-American,” and that by pushing too hard left, Democratic candidates risk handing Trump a second term. Again: I don’t agree and I think he was mistaken in saying it. But I also can’t say that Obama of all people doesn’t know exactly the strength of the political machine operating against the Democratic Party and the progressive agenda as a whole, because he ran headfirst into it for eight years. The fact that he managed to pass any of his legislative agenda, usually before the Tea Party became a thing in 2010, is because Democrats controlled the House and Senate for the first two years of his first term. He was not perfect, but it was clear that he really did care (just look up the pictures of him with kids). He installed smart, efficient, and scandal-free people to do jobs they were qualified for. He gave us Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor to join RBG on the Supreme Court. All of this seems… like a dream.

That said: here we are in a place where Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren are the front-runners for the Democratic nomination (and apparently Pete Buttigieg is getting some airplay as a dark horse candidate, which… whatever). The appeal of Biden is discussed above, and he sure as hell is not my favored candidate (frankly, I wish he’d just quit). But Sanders and Warren are 85% - 95% similar in their policy platforms. The fact that Michael “50 Billion Dollar Fortune” Bloomberg started rattling his chains about running for president is because either a Sanders or Warren presidency terrifies the outrageously exploitative billionaire capitalist oligarchy that runs this country and has been allowed to proceed essentially however the fuck they like since… you guessed it, the 1980s, the era of voodoo economics, deregulation, and the free market above all. Warren just happens to be ten years younger than Sanders and female, and Sanders’ age is not insignificant. He’s 80 years old and just had a heart attack, and there’s still a year to go to the election. It’s also more than a little eye-rolling to describe him as the only progressive candidate in the race, when he’s an old white man (however much we like and approve of his policy positions). And here’s the thing, which I think is a big part of the reason why this polarized ideological purity internet leftist culture mistrusts Warren:

She may have changed her mind on things in the past.

Scary, right? I sound like I’m being facetious, but I’m not. An argument I had to read with my own two eyes on this godforsaken hellsite was that since Warren became a Democrat around the time Clinton signed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, she sekritly hated gay people and might still be a corporate sellout, so on and etcetera. (And don’t even get me STARTED on the fact that DADT, coming a few years after the height of the AIDS crisis which was considered God’s Judgment of the Icky Gays, was the best Clinton could realistically hope to achieve, but this smacks of White Gay Syndrome anyway and that is a whole other kettle of fish.) Bernie has always demonstrably been a democratic socialist, and: good for him. I’m serious. But because there’s the chance that Warren might not have thought exactly as she does now at any point in her life, the hysterical and paranoid left-wing elements don’t trust that she might not still secretly do so. (Zomgz!) It’s the same element that’s feeding cancel culture and “wokeness.” Nobody can be allowed to have shifted or grown in their opinions or, like a functional, thoughtful, non-insane adult, changed their beliefs when presented with compelling evidence to the contrary. To the ideological hordes, any hint of uncertainty or past failure to completely toe the line is tantamount to heresy. Any evidence of any other belief except The Correct One means that this person is functionally as bad as Trump. And frankly, it’s only the Sanders supporters who, just as in 2016, are threatening to withhold their vote in the general election if their preferred candidate doesn’t win the primary, and indeed seem weirdly proud about it.

OK, boomer Bernie or Buster.

Here’s the thing, the thing, the thing: there is never going to be an American president free of the deeply toxic elements of American ideology. There just won’t be. This country has been built how it has for 250 years, and it’s not gonna change. You are never going to have, at least not in the current system, some dream candidate who gets up there and parrots the left-wing talking points and attacks American imperialism, exceptionalism, ravaging global capitalism, military and oil addiction, etc. They want to be elected as leader of a country that has deeply internalized and taken these things to heart for its entire existence, and most of them believe it to some degree themselves. So this groupthink white liberal mentality where the only acceptable candidate is this Perfect Non-Problematic robot who has only ever had one belief their entire lives and has never ever wavered in their devotion to doctrine has really gotten bad. The Democratic Party would be considered… maybe center/mild left in most other developed countries. It’s not even really left-wing by general standards, and Sanders and Warren are the only two candidates for the nomination who are even willing to go there and explicitly put out policy proposals that challenge the systematic structure of power, oppression, and exploitation of the late-stage capitalist 21st century. Warren has the billionaires fussed, and instead of backing down, she’s doubling down. That’s part of why they’re so scared of her. (And also misogyny, because the world is depressing like that.) She is going head-on after picking a fight with some of the worst people on the planet, who are actively killing the rest of us, and I don’t know about you, but I like that.

Of course: none of this will mean squat if she (or the eventual Democratic winner, who I will vote for regardless of who it is, but as you can probably tell, she’s my ride or die) don’t a) win the White House and then do as they promised on the campaign trail, and b) don’t have a Democratic House and Senate willing to have a backbone and pass the laws. Even Nancy Pelosi, much as she’s otherwise a badass, held off on opening a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump for months out of fear it would benefit him, until the Ukraine thing fell into everyone’s laps. The Democrats are really horrible at sticking together and voting the party line the way Republicans do consistently, because Democrats are big-tent people who like to think of themselves as accepting and tolerant of other views and unwilling to force their members’ hands. The Republicans have no such qualms (and indeed, judging by their enabling of Trump, have no qualms at all). 

The modern American Republican party has become a vehicle for no-holds-barred power for rich white men at the expense of absolutely everything and everyone else, and if your rationale is that you can’t vote for the person opposing Donald Goddamn Trump is that you’re just not vibing with them on the language of that one policy proposal… well, I’m glad that you, White Middle Class Liberal, feel relatively safe that the consequences of that decision won’t affect you personally. Even if we’re due to be out of the Paris Climate Accords one day after the 2020 election, and the issue of climate change now has the most visibility it’s ever had after years of big-business, Republican-led efforts to deny and discredit the science, hey, Secret Corporate Shill, am I right? Can’t trust ‘er. Let’s go have a craft beer.

As has been said before: vote as far left as you want in the primary. Vote your ideology, vote whatever candidate you want, because the only way to make actual, real-world change is to do that. The huge, embedded, all-consuming and horrible system in which we operate is not just going to suddenly be run by fairy dust and happy thoughts overnight. Select candidates that reflect your values exactly, be as picky and ideologically militant as you want. That’s the time to do that! Then when it comes to the general election:

America is a two-party system. It sucks, but that’s the case. Third-party votes, or refraining from voting because “it doesn’t matter” are functionally useless at best and actively harmful at worst.

Either the Democratic candidate or Donald Trump will win the 2020 election.

There is absolutely no length that the Republican/GOP machine, and its malevolent allies elsewhere, will not go to in order to secure a Trump victory. None.

Any talk whatsoever about “progressive values” or any kind of liberal activism, coupled with a course of action that increases the possibility of a Trump victory, is hypocritical at best and actively malicious at worst.

This is why I found the Democratic response to Obama’s “don’t go too wild” comments interesting. Bernie doubled down on the fact that his plans have widespread public support, and he’s right. (Frankly, the fact that Sanders and Warren are polling at the top, and the fact that they’re politicians and would not be crafting these campaign messages if they didn’t know that they were being positively received, says plenty on its own). Warren cleverly highlighted and praised Obama’s accomplishments in office (i.e. the Affordable Care Act) and didn’t say squat about whether she agreed or disagreed with him, then went right back to campaigning about why billionaires suck. And some guy named Julian Castro basically blew Obama off and claimed that “any Democrat” could beat Trump in 2020, just by nature of existing and being non-insane.

This is very dangerous! Do not be Julian Castro!

As I said in my tags on the Bush post: everyone assumed that sensible people would vote for Kerry in 2004. Guess what happened? Yeah, he got Swift Boated. The race between Obama and McCain in 2008, even after those said nightmare years of Bush, was very close until the global crash broke it open in Obama’s favor, and Sarah Palin was an actual disqualifier for a politician being brazenly incompetent and unprepared. (Then again, she was a woman from a remote backwater state, not a billionaire businessman.) In 2012, we thought Corporate MormonBot Mitt Fuggin’ Romney was somehow the worst and most dangerous candidate the Republicans could offer. In 2016, up until Election Day itself, everyone assumed that HRC was a badly flawed candidate but would win anyway. And… we saw how that worked out. Complacency is literally deadly.

I was born when Reagan was still president. I’m just old enough to remember the efforts to impeach Clinton over forcing an intern to give him a BJ in the Oval Office (This led by the same Republicans making Donald Trump into a darling of the evangelical Christian right wing.) I’m definitely old enough to remember 9/11 and how America lost its mind after that, and I remember the Bush years. And, obviously, the contrast with Obama, the swing back toward Trump, and everything that has happened since. We can’t afford to do this again. We’re hanging by a thread as it is, and not just America, but the entire planet.

So yes. By all means, vote for Sanders in the primary. Then when November 3, 2020 rolls around, if you care about literally any of this at all, hold your nose if necessary and vote straight-ticket Democrat, from the president, to the House and Senate, to the state and local offices. I cannot put it more strongly than that.

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

so this morning, while scrolling through my fb feed, i came across an nyt opinion/advice piece from a 27yo (ie basically me lmao) who is obviously lucky, in a sense, to finally land their “dream job using my (their) skills” etc. like obvs i can’t read it bc of the stupid “you get one free article a month if you either don’t have an account or subscription” (my one free article was used up reading an article about adult adhd like last week)….. thing that nyt does.

but anyway. back on topic lol. the crux of the article in both the headline and the quote snippet was that the advice asker was really dissatisfied with the 40 hour work week that came with her “dream job”. with how having this 40hr workweek gave her no time to do her busy chores like house cleaning or laundry or didn’t even give her time to let her have her hobbies/creative pursuits (whatever they were/are).

however, in the comments on the article (and apparently from those who read the article on the comments, the advice/opinion column writer) a good bunch of like gen Xer’s and baby boomers (im assuming) were ganging up on the asker like “suck it up princess, it’s what life is!!! i work 70+ hours a week and LOVE IT and have just resigned myself to the fact that i have NO time left over to do my “chores”! learn to O U T S O U R C E these life admin tasks to someone else!!! everyone MUST LEARN this in america!!! it makes life so much easier ☺️” and such.

of course, there were plenty of the same bs comments that you see on anything about careers or home ownership towards millennials/gen Z’ers about “learn to go WITHOUT and save save save and squander your time so that you NEVER live and HAVE FUN or TIME FOR HOBBIES! my bet is that your parents did that and they survived just fine while also raising your ungrateful spiteful ass (not including any type of health issues they might have picked up from such long hours/shitty working conditions) so why can’t you just L E A R N to do the same you precious spoilt brat!!! because the reality of Real Life™️ is that you can’t have it both ways!!! then you’ll have early retirement guaranteed, hopefully!!! and know that hobbies really are time wasters most of the time ☺️ or at least they were for me!!! and your precious so-called “creative pursuits” most definitely are time wasters. no one needs THOSE.” and so on so forth.

they also had jibes for her bc the asker wanted to start a family at some point apparently… and apparently it’s “much worse” once you have kids. like. thanks geraldine and henry. you’ve just told us how much you’ve resented having your kids/family in one fell swoop. your opinion which you’ve framed as unhelpful, condescending advice is now voided.

like. i don’t know how rhonda or paul or deandra or philip could miss the point so fucking entirely. why the fuck should anyone- nay everyone (bc that’s what they make it sound like)- learn to outsource their busy chores like laundry/house cleaning/grocery shopping or god knows what else- to someone else???? why is that apparently a standard expected to be learnt in the US???

like why the fuck are you so desperate for people not to have free time to do these things (unless of course they live in some of those shitty nyc or other big city apartment blocks that don’t come with individual private laundries in the self-contained flats or a communal laundry on like the bottom floor or w/e for example) frank????

deidre why the hell are you so bitterly hankering about “be grateful that you have it easier than most and learn that hobbies mean jackshit and just sell your soul and time to your boss!!! when will the generation stopping being “me me me!!!” and “work life balance!” and think about the company’s bottom line!! learn that “work life balance” is never important! work like a slave for 50 years and see if your valuable experience is needed then! that’s when you’ll learn that those hours where you were never being lazy, instead of just expecting life to be handed to you, will have paid off!” or whatever other ridiculously toxic capitalist bullshit they were spitting out.

obviously there were FAR MORE people actually supporting the question asker and echoing the idea that the 40hr workweek is now redundant. they were also putting down the opinion/advice piece writer’s advice to the asker….. that was apparently similar to the all the bitter people on the comments saying that the 27yo was just “asking for too much” and had to “learn to suck it up instead of being a petulant and overly selfish dick!!” etc etc etc. we all know the spiel as thoroughly as the macarena now.

because whats so fucking wrong with wanting time to yourself and wanting time to do your busy chores??? why the fuck should i be outsourcing these to other people (unless of course you’re still living at home and your parents are still like “hey what clothes do you need washed i’m doing a load rn” or you have a partner that works from home or has some type of parental leave etc)???? i want to do my own laundry. i want to do my own gardening (ok lawn mowing or tree lopping (if needed) i’d actually outsource bc i can’t lift or push lawn mowers bc they’re heavy af for me or and i obvs can’t use a chainsaw)… but i want to do my own grocery shopping. i want to do my own cooking (although i would consider the meal kit services once i had job that allowed me to afford like $50 a month for one of those meal kits sub services) i want to do my own cleaning.

why, if i lived in the US and not australia, am i just expected to learn to outsource all of these tasks even if i don’t have the money for it??? like why the actual fuck are so many of you so fucking weirdly proud of being absolutely worked into the fucking ground for your “great country” (although this is actually bleeding through to australia too and i hate it); working like literally close to 100 hours a week???

because i wasn’t aware you had to be whatever the fuck his name is from 127 hours and cut your fucking limbs off just to fucking survive a job in either corporate america or just let alone any goddamned job in america….. all so they can supposedly “learn to like working for free and devaluing your worth even more to your employer through overworking yourself and always being available!!! mental health is for those who aren’t built for the Real Adult World™️!!! this person is a prime example of the younger generations being weak and dissatisfied with life so often because of their “oh poor little me!!! care for me!!” act. NO ONE CARES FOR YOU today. stop being so over-expectant/demanding and juvenile!!! only YOU care yourself and you should NEVER expect someone else to pick you up from YOUR bootstraps!!! you’re fucking whiny and conceited babies. the lot of you!!!”

because i honestly don’t know who the fuck would enjoy working 70+ hours week with no time to themselves to do what they enjoy doing…. or enjoy having zilch time to catch up on errands and life admin duties or just general house chores; especially if you’ve moved cities or an entire fucking state/s away from your family and support network. let alone doing the same thing on 40 hours a week.

and on top of everything, let’s not even get started on the time spent commuting to and from work or even commuting for life errands/tasks etc etc- especially if you’re like me and you’re nowhere near the capital city’s centre (ie sydney australia for me) for there to be reliable enough public transport and longer commute times to certain places in those cities (that i’ve bitched about plenty before on other posts on here about work/jobs).

get your head out of your asses warren and viola et al and realise that work life balance is literally NOT ASKING FOR MUCH and is asking employers to just have basic respect for their employees time if they work fulltime. it’s literally detrimental to ones health if they have to sacrifice what feels like (or what is literally like) their entire fucking existence to their employer just for meagre pay and just to fucking survive.

because i read a heart-breaking article last night from huffpost (posted by buzzfeed on fb) about a woman in the US who literally hid her having a second baby from her employer for an entire fucking year (literally the entire pregnancy and birth of the baby and the first 6 months post pushing the baby out) during the pandemic all because she was scared she would get demoted or lose her leading of a project and lose her bs “temp” job which had really turned into full time work although the employer never said anything about it being actually full time hours or whatever…. and plus the lady herself was apparently to scared to ask to be put on the books fulltime too for some weird reason.

like honestly. fuck capitalism. fuck thinking that “work life balance is just too hard for employers to add and regulate. it’s an excuse and ploy for workers to be unprofessional, unproductive and lazy!” or whatever the fuck. everyone deserves time to themselves to pursue their interests/hobbies and busy chores/life admin. no one deserves to waste their entire life working 70+ work weeks for those employers who literally have no respect for their employees personal lives and time.

and particularly during the time that is the pandemic as we’ve seen so many companies having to learn to wholeheartedly embrace working from home and more flexible schedules for their workers. worklife balance is absolutely fucking beneficial for everyone involved.

america fix your bullshit work ethic right now lmao.

[ericdeggans]

My Top 12 TV shows of 2021 with a Bonus: A Great Year for TV Which Went Beyond Entertaining Us

Some critics really hate the end of the year.

That is because there is so much pressure to condense 12 months of often incredible media experiences into clickable, online-friendly top-10, top 20 or top 100 lists that so often fail to communicate the depth and breadth of what we have seen.

How do you find a list that sums up how the media industry keeps turning toward streaming – often at the expense of theatrical releases? Especially when the streaming stuff so often corrects the weaknesses of theatrical stuff – more diversity, better parts for older female performers, more adventurous storytelling, friendlier atmosphere for production from other countries, etc.?

How do you sum up a year that saw one of the most incisive comedic voices on race and society release one of the most damaging and divisive screeds on gay and transgender people? Or a year that saw the country’s most popular cable TV news personality release a “documentary” on the Jan. 6 insurrection that was so filled with misinformation two contributors on the same channel quit?

Yeah, it’s impossible to contain all the craziness from 2021 in TV on one list. But that won’t stop me from trying. Because I kinda love this stuff.

NPR has an amazing best of list that encompasses both TV and film featuring my analyses, along with Linda Holmes, Aisha Harris, Glen Weldon and Bob Mondello. But there’s nowhere you can see my full-on, top 12 list anywhere but here.

You’ll note that two high-profile releases, HBO’s Mare of Easttown and The White Lotus didn’t make my cut. Easttown, I felt wasn’t that remarkable outside of Kate Winslet’s amazing performance and the environment felt more like a parody of a working class Pennsylvania town than authentic reality.

I always hated the ultimate message of Lotus -- which seemed, to me, to say that rich white people are gonna be terrible and the best the rest of us can do is learn to live with it. Which I didn’t need eight episodes of bizarrely contrived storylines to absorb. Feel free to argue with me on social media about either, but I don’t think I’ll be changing my mind.

Anyways, here’s my Top 12 of the year – with a bonus at the end -- based mostly on my estimation of what moved me and had the most impact in the world.    

1. Dopesick (hulu) – Ambitious, compelling story depicting how corporate greed and family agita helped bamboozle doctors into over prescribing OxyContin, kicking off an addiction crisis which decimated small, rural towns across America. Review here.  2. Ted Lasso (Apple TV+) – Impressive second season which deepened the stories of several supporting characters and suggested a dark original to Ted Lasso’s relentless optimism. Review here.  3. WandaVision (Disney+) – The first and best Marvel series done for streaming; explores the grief that led Wanda Maximoff to turn a small town into a fantasy world where her romantic partner was still alive, developing a character underused in the movies into one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s most compelling antiheroes. Review here. 4. Summer of Soul (Hulu) – First-time director Questlove turned largely unseen footage of a landmark 1969 cultural festival in Harlem into a potent treatise on a pivotal time for Black people, Black music and America itself. Review here. 

5. Squid Game (Netflix) – The international hit, centered on a statement about inequality and the bruising victims of capitalism, married to a visually stylish and often jarring narrative. Proof that TV which captivates the world can now come from anywhere.

6. Succession (HBO) – A dark comedy about a family at the head of a sprawling entertainment company that serves as a distillation of the forces inside any typically dysfunctional American family and a searing indictment of powerful clans like the Trumps and the Murdochs, all at once. 7. NYTimes Britney Spears docs (Framing Britney Spears and Controlling Britney Spears, on FX) – Among a surge of documentaries urging us to see old pop culture scandals with fresh eyes, this one was the most impactful – pushing media outlets to reconsider how Spears was treated by journalists in her heyday and helping fuel public outrage which led to the dissolution of her conservancy earlier this year. 8. The Underground Railroad (Amazon) – Berry Jenkins’ visually stunning, yet often brutal realization of Colson Whitehead’s award-winning novel, which wraps the horrific journey of an enslaved woman toward freedom in a potent dose of magical realism that often resonated with Black people’s experience in contemporary America. 9. Maid (Netflix) – Real life daughter and mom Margaret Qualley and Andie MacDowell shine in this drama, which shows the struggle a young single mom with no money faces in trying to leave an emotionally abusive partner while caring for an unpredictable, mentally unstable mother. Ultimately, a horrific picture of how easy it is to tumble into poverty in America and how unforgiving everyone is for those who take a fall. 10. The Beatles: Get Back (Disney+) – Peter Jackson distills 60 hours of footage and 150 hours of audio – which was first enhanced and cleaned up by digital processes – into a near-eight-hour docu-series that redefines the end of rock ‘n’ roll’s most impactful and successful band. 11. Loki (Disney+) - The next best Marvel series on streaming, which explains the multiverse concept sure to fuel the next generation of blockbuster movie storylines, sets up the MCU’s next Big Bad, Kang the Conqueror, and provides an alluring new life to a character we thought was killed off two Avengers movies ago. 12. Hacks (HBO Max) – The best vehicle for the Jean Smart-issance, giving Smart loads of juicy moments as a fading superstar standup comic who hires a fumbling new writer to help boost her act. I’m hoping the next season finds a way to make Smart’s character funnier onstage; in this first season, the zingers she tosses offstage are where the comedy gold lies.

BONUS: Insecure (HBO) – Star/co-creator Issa Rae often said that she felt producing a comedy about “basic” Black millennials trying to find their way in life was a revolutionary act. In the show’s final season this year, she made good on her word, allowing lead character Issa Dee to find growth, rebuild her relationship with her best friend and develop a romantic relationship worthy of her awesomeness. Besides capping a groundbreaking series with an excellent finale, Rae embodies the achievement possible when a talented person of color gets the agency to tell her story her way.

[pureheroin]

idk 12/24

today was my dogs birthday, and i tried to do my best to give him a great first birthday because my parents did such a horrible job doing so for almost any of my birthdays, but then i remembered he is just a dog and this is probably just like any other day for him. i have been feeling so incredibly horrible about my body, even more so though normal recently. i feel like i cannot take a single full breath in because i have been binge eating so excessively recently that my stomach gets in the way just when i am trying to inhale. continues to deep sigh. i ate two family size bag of potato chips and two chocolate bars within the past 36 hours. i literally dont know what the fuck is wrong with me. i need this to pass, but then i think about how i go through such intense phases of eating healthy or somewhat healthy before falling back into a binging phase where all of my ‘progress’ goes down the drain. sigh. i feel like i have tried to explain this to my boyfriend, who i love so dearly, but it just feels so wrong to try and explain stuff like this to my partner (even though i want him to know me, this just feels extremely private and a bit like i am also facing some kind of imposter syndrome, are any of my problems real (rhetorical question), am i actually facing these issues lmao). idk i wish my hobbies were something i could do something with but then once i try and do something i enjoy it feels like i am succumbing to the terrorizing capitalistic society we live in america today that wants me oh so badly to be a fucking part of (fuck u capitalism) and that is a whole other (and primary reason for me being so fucking overwhelmed constantly). anyways i refuse to take antidepressants because one of my biggest fears is gaining weight which is really fucking sad that i cant love my body enough (again, no response needed to this part, im not a fucking dumbass) and that i am have become such an easy pawn in this game of society the government and corporations have created for me. theres this horrifying path of hating my body that has been painted for me and it is the biggest reason i am constantly battling these same goddamn thoughts every fucking day of my life. anyways, happy bday roman, hopefully ill finish this dress i need to sew before i get bombarded with dumb shit i have to do and people i need to ‘see’. (i wish i could be left the fuck alone for like 3 months before anyone try and talk to me again). also one last thing, if u see me or a random person in public literally leave me the FUCK alone like holy fucking shit i dont want to talk to you just because i am at a dog park with my dog like dont fucking give me ur life fucking story at least if u are a fucking r*p*bl*c*n like i do not want to fucking hear it and u can get the fuck away from me. anyways again idk what this was but tbh it kinda felt ggod to type out xoxo love u sza ty for the new song bye

[echidna-auxiliatrix]

So, you want to start collecting CDs?

I won’t write out a witty introduction. Instead, I’ll cut to the chase: I’ve been collecting CDs for the past six months, and I want to share what I’ve learned.

1. The case for physical media.

       Physical media in all forms is being phased out. The idea of buying a CD or DVD is laughable now. Everyone’s streaming. Why is this an issue? Well, in the era where everyone with two brain cells to rub together is invested in critiquing companies, corporations, and capitalism, the music streaming services seem to be exempt. The yearly buzz around posting your Spotify Wrapped comes every December like clockwork. But the problem with any type of streaming service is that you don’t own the content. You’re not even renting it. It’s more fucked up than renting a house, in a way. We fucking hate landlords, so why doesn’t the same ire apply to streaming services? I can’t say for sure, I’m not a Spotify historian by any means. But the thing is that Spotify can remove your favorite artist’s work in the blink of an eye. If you’re only into the big names then you probably don’t give a rat’s ass about this, but one day if you grow up and develop your own music taste that will inevitably involve some obscure foreign shit, you will genuinely begin to worry about this. You should worry about it now. With physical media, you own the thing. Nobody can take it away from you. You cough up some money one time and it’s yours forever.

The vinyl renaissance, all things considered, is a mere blip on the radar. Despite this, most brick and mortar record stores and stores that sell physical music in general (Target, Walmart, etc.) are starting to carry vinyl records, often in capacities that surpass CDs. Personally, to be very blunt, I think the vinyl renaissance is fucking goofy as hell considering the many flaws of the format. Additionally, the best selling vinyl titles are new releases which were all recorded digitally in the first place. Anyway, CDs are much older than you might assume. Most of us, myself included, associate them with Y2K, but they’ve been around in North America since the early 80s. Point being, if you find vinyl records nostalgic despite not growing up with them, then there is no reason for you to not find CDs nostalgic as well. The goofy vinyl renaissance is actually a blessing for CD collectors, because vinyl’s prices and popularity keep going up, causing it to become the preferred format, which in turn causes the CD’s popularity and price to keep going down. This is good, because CDs are, more often than not, dirt cheap. Which brings me to my next point:

2. CDs are cheap, but CD collecting isn’t.

       Prices for CDs vary based on a number of factors. How many copies were made, what country the artist is from, how popular the artist is, how old the CD is, the condition of the CD, etc. Predictably, more obscure artist’s CDs cost more due to how few copies were made, used CDs cost less, and CDs that are shipping from another country will cost more due to shipping. A brand new sealed copy of an obscure europop album from the 90s is going to cost a whole lot more than a Mitski CD. To save yourself money, please only buy a CD if you like or can at least tolerate every song on it. This simple rule has saved me probably a hundred dollars. Money adds up, especially when you factor in shipping, and CDs generally cost more depending on where you buy them from.

3. Where should you buy CDs?

       If you like the modern big name artists, then Walmart and Target are probably all you’ll need. But if you have music taste beyond that, then you’ll inevitably be looking at a number of websites to purchase CDs from. I’m going to list the three websites that I’ve purchased from, and talk about the pros and cons of each.

A.) Amazon.

       My favorite option from the three. They usually have new copies available for a reasonable price, and shipping is usually fast. However, CDs that were never released in America, or only received a limited release, will likely ship from their country of origin, meaning longer shipping times and higher shipping prices. Also, sometimes I’ve found that when a CD ships from certain European countries, Amazon will not provide tracking information, only an estimated delivery time frame. I generally don’t purchase used CDs, so I can’t comment on what buying used CDs from Amazon is like. New CDs are generally affordable enough that I can afford a new copy.

B.) eBay.

       My second favorite option. Only buy from listings that include actual pictures of the CD, not just the album art. Otherwise, you’re liable to get scammed. New CDs are generally affordable. Shipping from foreign countries is typically less expensive than Amazon, but shipping times are about the same.

C.) Discogs.

       My least favorite option, and last resort. If you’re into music, you’ve probably heard of this website. I have no idea why it’s so popular and I don’t recommend it at all. Use it only as a last resort for CDs; I can’t speak for vinyl or other formats. The payment process is convoluted and takes some getting used to. Committing to buy and actually paying are different things on Discogs. Also, although Discogs is comprehensive in its listing of every version of a given release, there are no pictures of the CDs themselves in a listing. This is very disconcerting, considering that fact that the vast majority of CD listings are used. Sellers also don’t typically describe the condition of the CD, the booklet, the insert, the case, etc. They typically only go by the grading system of Mint, Near Mint, Very Good Plus, Very Good, and so on. If you’re looking for super obscure stuff, then sadly, Discogs is your best bet. The site is also just difficult to navigate.

4. CDs vs. CD-Rs

       CDs and CD-Rs are not the same thing. CDs are actually pressed just like vinyl records. There’s a thin layer of metal (aluminum, silver, or gold) that is pressed just like a vinyl record. On many CDs you can actually see diving lines between the different songs if you look closely enough. CD-Rs are burned at home, though sometimes they are released officially. CD-Rs typically have a purple or hot pink tint to the read side of the disc. This is because instead of a layer of metal, CD-Rs have a layer of dye that the data is burned into. Because of this, CD-Rs are known to degrade very fast (read: a few years), especially when stored improperly. The great thing about CDs as a format is if music you love hasn’t been released on CD or has been released but is too damn expensive, then CD-Rs are a great option. I have CD-Rs that were burned two years ago and still play perfectly. With proper storage and care, you can prolong the lifespan of a CD-R.

5. How to care for CDs

       CDs, like all physical media, can degrade over time and with use. When CDs are played, the read side is never physically touched by the CD player. The data is read with a laser. So when CDs degrade, it’s not from being played too much. CDs becoming unreadable is typically, though not always, the owner’s fault.

       Scratching can render a CD unreadable. Most scratches occur on the read side of the disc, but those do not usually interfere with the laser reading the data. Scratches on the label side of the disc are much more dangerous, because the data layer sits very close to the label side. Thankfully, most CDs come with a thick label that protects the data layer further.

       Never touch the read side of the disc. Although one fingerprint won’t do much harm, over time they can and will build up. Always handle a CD with your index finger in the center hole and your thumb on the outer edge. Dust on the read side can be easily blown off or brushed off with a soft paintbrush. Never use water or any liquid to clean a CD. CDs are unsealed on the edges, so liquid can seep in and destroy the data layer.

        CDs must be stored at room temperature. Extreme heat and cold are known to degrade CDs and render them unplayable. To be clear, I’m talking about long-term storage. Leaving a CD in your car while you’re in Walmart for 40 minutes is fine. But they must be kept in a climate controlled environment by default. They must also be stored away from direct contact with UV light, since UV light is known to degrade CDs. In addition to rendering them unreadable, UV light can also suck the color from the booklet and insert, as well as yellow the jewel case. Cigarette smoke can also yellow the plastic on a jewel case, discolor paper inserts, and build up on the read side of the disc, eventually rendering it unreadable without extensive, tedious cleaning. Some people have reported that even ambient light can degrade a CD-R faster. The plastic inside CD booklets/binders/etc. can also degrade CDs. Storing CDs in treated wood can degrade them as well. Yet another culprit of CD degradation are paper sleeves. In conclusion, store your CDs in a spot where they will receive air-conditioning and heating when needed, way from smoke, not in treated wood, and away from direct sunlight.

6. CD Rot.

       You might’ve heard about CD rot. CD rot is a broad term used to describe a certain type of degradation that renders the disc unreadable. CD rot happens from the inside out, meaning that it’s not the owner’s fault. However, improper storage can hasten the process. It’s very real thing, but concern about it is very much blown out of proportion, especially by the vinyl-only crowd. People with collections in the thousands have reported no CD rot whereas people with only a few dozen CDs have reported that half their collection has rotted away. Personally, I think it just comes down to bad luck and bad storage. A few manufacturers are known to have made discs throughout the 80s and early 90s that are prone to rot, such as PDO UK. Never buy a PDO UK disc. It’s simply not worth it.

7. CD Packaging.

       Jewel cases are the default CD packaging. They were the first package for CDs and the vast majority of CDs come in them. They protect the disc and the paper inserts, and are preferred by most collectors for that reason and because of how easily they stack. Jewel cases have two main variants: clear trays and black trays. Do yourself a favor and buy some of both, because you’ll need some spares if you collect for long enough. One con of jewel cases is that they are easily scuffed and cracked, but they are just as easily disassembled and parts can be replaced easily.

       Digipaks and cardboard sleeves are less common but still available. CDs that were released or re-issued in the mid 2000s are especially vulnerable to these styles of packaging. Personally, I think both are garbage. Cardboard sleeves are the least durable of the three main packaging styles, and they can also scratch up the CD. Digipaks have the same plastic tray as a jewel case, but a cardboard cover and back. As you may expect, neither of these options are particularly durable, neither of them protect the CD, and neither of them can be replaced. If you get a CD in this packaging, do yourself a favor and throw away the original packaging or put it in storage, then put it in a jewel case as soon as possible. You can print out the cover artwork and create your own inlay on a paint program. The proper dimensions for printing are 4.78″ x 4.78″ and 4.69″ x 5.78″ respectively. 

[stillwinterair]

I'm sorry and I hate to be a downer but I cannot stop thinking about this. Do you see how long it's taken people to wear masks? As recently as this week there are STILL videos going viral of people -- recording their own stupidity and thinking they're justified in it -- going places without a mask on and harassing retail workers and ultimately getting arrested. Two Canadian grocery shoppers and "REI Karen" all in the last week or two, and probably countless more. Corporations and politicians the world over have been pushing since the pandemic began to reopen, to put countless employees at serious risk in order to turn a quick profit, long term be damned. And this tricks people into thinking that things are okay, and that they're justified in returning to the status quo.

But this pandemic is so concrete. The preventative measures are proven, the consequences are blatant. People have died in droves, and more people than my brain is comfortable with admitting into reality have seen loved ones die of covid and shrugged and said "they were old anyway" or "it was probably a pre-existing condition that did it" or "it's just the flu; the flu does that sometimes." Loved ones. Parents, partners, siblings. All the while, corporations and politicians pushing to reopen reinforces the narrative that it can't be that bad, because the people in charge are ready to return to normal, and if stuff is open again, then it's over, right?

And that's a concrete threat.

Climate change will not be so concrete. It is not the difference of one year's death toll to another; it is not the difference between healthy one month and dead the next. Climate change is a difference in decades. In centuries. It is gradual. Some may say exponential. It is only going to get worse. Parts of the world are already becoming uninhabitable. The first waves of climate migration is happening -- right now, it is happening. Some subtly, as Californians filter out as they realize yearly megafires are the norm now. Some blatantly, as Central America is at this moment experiencing record floods that are destroying entire communities. Once-in-a-century weather events became yearly, and now happen half a dozen times per year.

But we're being boiled in the pot, so people can easily say "oh, this one specific element isn't as bad as last year, so it's fine." Capitalism has a vested interest in ignoring the problem. The priority is profits, now, and then more profits tomorrow. Anything beyond that is a problem for the day after.

We will not know the tipping point for our climate when it comes. It is not a concrete thing. There is no wall on the horizon that says "harmful energy emissions must end here." Or, rather, there was a wall that said that, it popped up when science originally proved the existence of climate change, but we already barreled through it. Hell, it was Big Oil who really managed to prove it in the first place, and used it as a weapon in order to melt sea ice in order to operate more profitably, then spent decades and untold amounts of money to downplay and bury their own findings.

This is not a future problem; it is a now problem, and it is being callously ignored at the detriment of every human life. The move toward change, a big, species-wide shift toward environmentalism and zero emissions and so on needed to happen 30 years ago. It needed to happen 20 years ago. It needed to happen 10 years ago. It needs to happen now, and it is not.

Capitalism has actively profited off of a global pandemic, and although we have had the technology and wherewithal to deal with it effectively since the very beginning, capitalists actively fought back at every step of the way, prioritizing profit at the cost of human lives.

This is a microcosm of what's coming. Capitalism actively profits off of the total decline and eventual of Earth's biosphere, and although we have had the technology and wherewithal to stop it -- or at the very least slow it down -- since it was originally identified almost half a century ago, capitalists have been fighting back at every step of the way, prioritizing profit at the cost of the human race.

Insects and marine life are beginning to experience veritable apocalypses. The effects are tangible, but are easy to ignore -- memories of a more stable environment are so far back, they can be safely ignored. And it's only profitable to ignore them.

Remember how many bugs would squish against the windshield of your parents' car, driving down the highway? Remember needing to use wiper fluid to get them off in the middle of a drive? And... when's the last time you saw a bug hit your windshield?

This has been weighing on me so heavily lately. It's making sleep difficult. I can't work up an appetite. I find it so hard to focus. Climate change and capitalism are so intrinsically entwined and we're not going to solve the former without completely dismantling the latter.

Look. All I'm saying is, we'll all be vaccinated this summer. I don't know how to organize anything, but I think it's time for me to do some sort of direct action. And it is long past time for large scale, global climate protests. Something needs to be done. I am so constantly terrified for the future of everything, and I used to be comforted by this sense of... overall cosmic indifference, I guess, that the universe would go on without us. But this fear and this anger that I've had has really begun to shape into something motivating for me. And I really, desperately do not want to just sit back and do nothing anymore. I have too much faith and hope and love inside of me for that.

[catsnuggler]

What didn't help my whole subconsciously-missionary-minded, silent-echoes-of-Mormonism socialism illusion, which made me think it would be selfish and wrong to demand my own liberation, was the misapplication of standpoint epistemology - put simply, when "identity politics" goes bad.

Putting the rest under a cut, because this is a long post.

While it's crude and ultimately incorrect to only say, for example, "Listen to Black voices", without emphasizing the critical thinking skills and empathy necessary to listen to Cornel West, and dismiss Candace Owens for the right-wing corporate hack that she is, what is for certain is that someone like me, a 100% white American settler of Mormon pioneer stock (on one side of my family, anyway), and with no formal education on the subject matter, doesn't have authority to speak on the experience of Black people in America. I have no argument against that, because it's true.

Continuing further, just because, in spite of the fact neither racism nor colonialism oppresses me, capitalism still does, this doesn't mean I have as much authority to speak on it as a Black member of the working class does, as anti-Black racism and capitalism compound on and depend on each other, making the lives of Black working class people more difficult than the lives of white working class people. Doesn't mean I can't speak on capitalism, just means I'm not the leading voice.

That being said - I'm going to talk as if I'm still a believing Mormon, let alone Christian, in this and the next paragraph, to better explain the subconscious workings of my mind, due to their brainwashing - the difference in our positions can be wrongly perceived, especially by someone raised in the illusory colonial missionary mindset, similar to the position of those with "the gospel" and those "of the world", where those with "the truth" have more, but are, like all, oppressed by "sin", yet at least believe themselves to have the knowledge and wherewithal to resist, while those "worldly" people aren't blessed with the wealth of God's Word, nor the solidarity of the church, and are thus further deprived of the perfection God desires for his children than those of His Flock already are, and must be ministered to, brought into the Fold, and Saved from On High.

Yet there must ever be a humility to such actions, there must ever be self-denial, for all are imperfect, even those in the church, as, just as Christ shed His blood, and allowed His flesh to be pierced, even to His death, in limitless sacrifice for the sins of all of the Children of Men, that they may be redeemed, so have countless socialist, communist, and anarchist revolutionaries died for the cause, and yet all who live, who do not seclude themselves from the world and its markets, facilitate the continued exploitation and robbery of each other by the capitalist class. All are imperfect, and all would deserve bondage and bloodshed, were it not for the bleeding hearts of the martyrs.

So, you see, even someone who consciously attempts to reject Christianity can still fall victim to its logic, even after abandoning the official doctrine of it, if proper safeguards against the general thought processes of it are not taken. Returning to the original point I've tried to raise, I've fallen for a long time to a Christian-esque stance of personal martyrdom for the sake of "saving others" to the point I believed pursuing my own liberation would be selfish.

I'm mentally ill and neurodivergent to the point that getting myself to even get into the habit of seeking jobs is difficult, much more so landing myself an interview; and getting an offer of employment? Only happened once, at the end of my first interview. As you predicted, the job sucked, they were desperate to hire me because it sucks, and it wasn't 3 months before I quit. I quit in late September of 2018. It's been almost 3 years of me not having a job.

I got my driver's license in mid 2019, but got into a minor parking accident that only broke a headlight on the car I drove, and didn't damage the other car, in September of that year. It was over a year before I drove again, because of the depth of my depression and anxiety over one accident, which cost about $150. Since January of this year, I've driven somewhat regularly, and have some measure of confidence, but am still anxious every time I'm behind the wheel. I could drive to and from a job, if needed, but it would be a while before that would be comfortable.

I still live with my dad, at the age of 23, and barely have any friends where I live anymore; those local friends I still have, I haven't seen face-to-face for a long time. My dad... my dad could die any day, and I would be royally fucked. Something happened earlier this month, and he wasn't healthy before, but this was really serious. He amazingly got away with few symptoms, and can make a full recovery with the right effort, except... it could still happen again, it would just be less likely. If it does, he could die. Again, I would be royally fucked. I don't know how much his treatment cost, but I know it must be a pretty penny. There's only so long I can continue like this.

Due to my dependence and general impotent state, I can't do a goddamn thing for what I believe in right now. I have to fight self-hatred with the argument that if I die, I'll have died useless and unhelpful, when I could potentially have kept living til I got my act together and finally done something helpful before passing.

I have a college degree. Not a "real" degree, in the sense of it mattering, but I have an Associate degree, DTA. No major; I never could figure out what I wanted to do. It would have been a close call between anything in political science, which would have led toward a government job, which would be unacceptable as an anarchist, or perhaps a professorial job, teaching would-be politicians and bureaucrats, hardly educating anyone of revolutionary intent; or something in chemistry, perhaps biochemistry, leading to some kind of colonial agrichem shit, or making expensive medicines nobody would be able to afford for private entities' profits, possibly having research appropriated by Uncle Sam for weapons purposes - I don't know, but none of that was appealing. I graduated community college with Honors, as a member of the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society. I could have had promise as some or other kind of technocrat or bureaucrat - but I wouldn't be able to live with myself. It seems the less one is exploited, the more they exploit others. I don't know what job I can take that would exploit me enough that I wouldn't hurt others so much, while leaving me alone enough that I wouldn't kill myself, which... which has been a temptation, at times. Not too strong, but it is fucking there. I have promise; at short-term memorization and obedience, at least, like a mongrel dog who can read; but no conviction, no confidence, and a surplus of fear.

There are more woes I can recollect, I can continue this pity party in a book, but enough of that. Suffice it to say, all this time, I should have wanted my own liberation. Colonized people (in an American context, Turtle Island Indigenous and Black) have it worse, LGBT* people have it worse, women have it worse, physically disabled people have it worse, people with greater mental disabilities than my own have it worse, and I can't lead any of their struggles. But I do have the right to demand my own liberation, and I shouldn't convince myself otherwise.

*I don't oppose the use of the other word, except people of my demographic have abused that word so goddamn much, I don't want to type it, myself, let alone say it. It's always tainted when it comes from those who aren't of that community. Please don't think I'm either a radfem or a libfem just because I didn't use that word. I support people identifying with that label in using it.

This post became increasingly personal toward the end. However, I hope my flawed perspective, perhaps unique (read: unrelatable) in some aspects, perhaps explaining, at least in part, some of the fucked-up mental hurdles of white socialist "allies" that we need to get our asses over yesterday, might help - whatever I might have illuminated, and whatever I surely missed. I can understand why someone might want to share and add, share and criticize, or leave this alone with a like, nothing at all, or an unfollow.

Not that I can prevent this from being shared in any way, except by not posting in the first place, but I'm okay with it being shared by other socialists, for whatever it's worth... although I understand the more traction it gets, the more likely I'll get anon hate about being full of myself (deserved, to an extent at least), for being some dumb socialist cuck (not exactly wrong, but rude, and likely from a Nazi, so fuck you), or perhaps from non-Mormon Christians accusing me, someone they'd call a Mormon (which is arguably almost a new ethnicity (not race though) as much as it is a religion) of daring to throw the Christian god and Christianity, in general, under the bus, accusing me of being in league with the devil. So be it.

If you're not a reactionary, nor a liberal, nor somewhere in-between, and you want to share this for some reason or another, you may do so.

[kilodalton]

So I see a post from TikTok making its way around Tumblr about how prior authorizations are awful and corporatist and stand in the way of mom, America, apple pie, unsuspecting patients, and their earnest and well-meaning doctors. Bring out the guillotines etc etc.

I made it through the first 5 seconds of that video before rolling my eyes because frankly, dude doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

For the purposes of this diatribe informational post, PA means “prior authorization” NOT physicians assistant. So if I say “PAs suck” please do take that into consideration before reaming me out.

Ok so what are my credentials to spout off on this?

1) You can call me Dr. Kilodalton. I’m a double-board certified clinical pharmacist with a doctorate in my field on top of 2 years of post-doc residencies.

2) I work for one of the largest single-payer government systems in the world. I have ZILCH to do with corporations, capitalism, or guillotines. (I’ll let you guess .. cannot confirm nor deny my employer lol) ... which leads to:

3) I evaluate prior authorization requests as part of my job every single day. I approve them! I deny them! I sometimes say “get a load of this boneheaded request!!” and make fun of them to my colleagues! YES SINGLE-PAYER SYSTEM USE PAS JUST AS MUCH IF NOT MORE THAN CORPORATIONS DO! Hell, I even submit some PAs myself if I think one of my patients can benefit.

All of this EMINENTLY qualifies me to say, much more so than some dude on TikTok whose voice hasn’t even cracked yet: PAs are (usually) a necessary evil.

Why do I speak this BLASPHEMY?! This SACRILEGE?!? Am I a corporate shill (who doesn’t work for a corporation) who hates patients (even though I devote my career to their care) and wants poor people to die (even though I work for a single-payer system that treats people regardless of ability to pay?)

The answer is easy: I actually ... kinda know what I’m talking about. Here are some facts:

PAs can save your life: PAs are usually required for risky drugs. Just because a drug is risky does not mean the underlying disease state it is treating always balances the risk. A lot of times, safer drugs are available.

PAs are almost universally required for shiny new drugs that Big Pharma is trying to line their pockets with: New drugs get advertised all the time. Patients ask their prescribers for the drugs. The prescribers often don’t know any better and put in PA requests for them. Stunningly often, there is no reason given for the request other than “patient saw the ad on TV and asked me about it.” Yes. Seriously. If you guys support that ... you must own a LOT of pharma stock.  

PAs make things less expensive (usually). Because PA drugs are usually brand new, brand name only, and expensive AF, requiring a PA brings down costs for the system as a whole. This matters a lot -- even in a single payer organization like mine. By giving everyone -- regardless if they need it or not -- expensive drugs, less money is available to help other people. Money doesn’t grow on trees, even in single payer systems.

Your docs -- especially your primary care docs -- usually know jack squat about drugs: You would (probably) be appalled to learn that your average MD takes 2 pharmaceutical modules in med school. That’s it. Usually (but not always), specialists are much better about knowing their stuff ... but your average first-line doc does not have the training to determine what meds should be used when, how to assess their efficacy, how to monitor them, and when to triage to a specialist.

PAs make sure your doc is monitoring you the way they should: This falls through the cracks A LOT. If you are on a fancy drug that requires a PA, you probably assume your doc is regularly checking to make sure that, among other things, your kidneys can cope with the dose. Shockingly few docs do this (well it’s not shocking to ME that they don’t check, but I see it every damn day). PAs help us make sure that requested doses are safe -- often, they are not.

PAs make sure you actually have the condition your doctor says you have: I cannot stress this enough. It seems crazy, but it’s true. If you tell your doctor “I have ABC condition” they will likely add it to your medical record, even without testing you for it or looking at previous medical records you have. The problem is, sometimes you really don’t have ABC condition ... so if they try to prescribe you a drug for ABC condition when they have not independently confirmed you have it, problems can (and do) arise.

Here are just a few examples off the top of my head of boneheaded PAs I’ve happily denied. Trust me, there are LOADS more where this comes from. My former office mate and I used to half-joke we should write a freaking book. Anyway, on to the dumb PAs that TikTok dude would have me rubberstamp because TheyComeFromADoctor:

The one that would have given a patient a stroke. One MD wrote a PA for short-acting nifedipine -- a blood pressure drug that is only given inpatient because, unless closely monitored, it basically causes your blood pressure to ping-pong, ischemia to develop, and voila a stroke. I denied it because I wanted the patient to ... uh, ya know, live.

The one for dementia in a patient who did not have dementia. Some drugs are basically one-trick ponies. Rivastigmine is used for a few things -- mainly dementia, but very specific kinds. It can actually WORSEN cognition in some kinds of dementia. Which is why docs are supposed to get an actual diagnosis before prescribing such things. If I had a dime for every time they don’t check ... I would have a crap ton of dimes.

The high-intensity blood thinner for a patient whose blood ... was thinning just fine on its own. For whatever reason, a patient thought they might have a clotting condition and told their doctor. Their doctor, who didn’t double check this, and ordered them a mega blood thinner that requires a PA. We asked for test results, and lucky we did -- the patient was clotting just fine on their own, and use of this drug in that population can lead to hemorrhage.

The one that was causing an autoimmune reaction in a patient. Some drugs cause the body to attack itself, and you need to check for antibodies before you prescribe it. One doc ordered the antibody test but apparently didn’t check the results before ordering the drug for the patient ... uh. Yeah. Hard nope on that one.

The one that would have caused an overdose. Some narcotics require PAs. One doc apparently can’t math very well, and ordered a huge narcotic dose for an opioid-naive patient. Luckily a PA was required: obviously, I quashed it.

The one that would have harmed a pregnant patient. Some drugs can’t be used in pregnancy. Some docs don’t think to ask if a patient is pregnant before trying to prescribe drugs linked to fetal malformations. Luckily, I picked up the phone to double-check with the patient when I saw no recent pregnancy test in her chart. Guess what?! 

Anyway. This post is not sexy. This post is not fun. This post is not pro-pharma, and this post is not pro-corporate (again -- hello!! I work for a single payer here!!) 

What this post IS -- is chock full of inconvenient information from a person who actually is in student loan debt to her eyeballs because she kinda knows what she’s talking about.

And hopefully - HOPEFULLY -- this post is also helpful to someone.

Much love -- Dr. Kilodalton

[littlehouseofkarlacade]

k so since i’ve been hiding the fact that i’ve been depressed and frustrated af lately, i’m just gonna slam it all here under a read more. ignore if you want, actually please do, it’s just me bitching again--

so holy shit the way america is rn frustrates the absolute hell out of me. covid has only made it worse; it feels like we’re never gonna get out of this fuckin’ pandemic because of people screaming that their rights are being violated bc they’re being asked to wear masks (?????? you’d fuckin’ hate it in asia then, ya goddamn snowflakes) and having parties all over the place, plus there’s all the politics shit that i’m not even going to get into, and just... it’s so damn hard to actually live here because everything costs a motherfuckin’ fortune. for fuck’s sake, i am a woman making $15 an hour at a part time job that gives me only 12-15 hours a week, how the fuck am i gonna succeed in anything with that?!

holy fuck. i want so many things that are just out of reach, it feels like. i want to help sylvie start HRT so she can finally start kicking gender dysphoria’s ass and actually start being happy with herself and her body, but considering she has practically 0 health insurance, she makes even less than i do, and it’s fuckin god-tier expensive, i have no idea where to even start with that. a friend of mine told me about planned parenthood (which would probably be a really good idea for both of us, considering i’ve never had my, uh, inner workings checked out), but i have no idea if there’s even one in our area or anything, or how we’d go about starting anything regarding that. it’s so goddamn frustrating, because i hate seeing her hate herself and her body so much because she’s got the wrong goddamn one, and i feel like she’s just got this general feeling of hopelessness around the entire thing, and i want to show her that it is reachable for her, but... how am i supposed to do that if i don’t even know where to begin?!

ALSO, not even relating to that

i want a house. not an apartment, not to keep living with people i barely know, but my own actual goddamn house. my credit score is lookin’ pretty damn good right now -- it’s almost in the 700s, but... i have no idea where to start with that either. and like... i’m afraid, as well. because if we go buy a house, and then something happens where we can’t afford things with the house anymore, then we’re fuckin’ homeless. and like. i’ve been homeless before -- not out on the streets, but i was couchsurfing for a good year and a half, and that sucked -- and i never want that to happen again. rent is expensive as fuck, more than both of us put together can afford, especially with all of sylvia’s bills. our roommate kicked us out of our old place, so we had to quickly scramble to find a place, so we’re living with a couple of sylvia’s friends, and i personally cannot stand it. it’s nothing against them, really, i just. i hate being almost 29 and still having to rely on others for a place to fucking live. it’s fucking godawful. and considering i don’t have any family members or anything that will help me, it’s so... alskdjflkdsal;afd

plus we’re not even in our original city anymore, we’re stuck on a goddamn island that we have to pay a toll to drive back onto every time we go home from work, so that fuckin’ sucks. and i miss our old city so much and it hurts so bad that we don’t live there anymore; i was really at home there, it was the first place where i really felt i could be myself and just... leaving there fucking sucked. i want to go back, and i fully intend to. someday. when i can actually afford things like a goddamn house. why are houses so goddamn expensive anyway; it’s like fuckin’ robbery. idk.

PLUS, since i graduated from community college this past semester, i’m currently on a break, and i fully intend to go back to university, hopefully in fall semester. BUT, idk, it looks like i’m gonna have to push that back to spring 2022, considering we don’t have a place of our own, i can’t drive (was going to get my permit this past summer but covid fucked that in the ass), and while we don’t want to live here, i have no idea where we will be living, and location matters a lot for me since i can’t fuckin’ drive!! i can’t even start applying to universities until we figure that out, and it’s just... god. i feel like i’m spinning my goddamn wheels again, and i fucking hate that feeling.

this is all over the goddamn place and i’m so sorry for that, but i’m just so frustrated and thinking on all of it makes me so fucking depressed that most days lately i just feel like giving up. stop having goals, try to be content working at fuckin target for the rest of my life (even though it makes me wanna die). but goddammit, i’m too fuckin’ ambitious for that (before jkr turned into a fuckin’ bitch, i always got slytherin house because that’s me, kids), and i apparently can’t be satisfied with what i already have because i’m a spoiled-ass bitch, i guess. i always want better. like. i feel like i have to make something of myself before i’m allowed to feel happy and content with my life, and that’s frustrating too. it’s like... i dunno. things aren’t happening the way i want them to, and i just get pissed off at myself for allowing things to happen as they are.

just... god. fuck off. eat the rich. fuck capitalism. i don’t want to be a millionaire or anything. i just want to make enough to not have to live paycheck to paycheck and be able to actually afford things i want without feeling fuckin’ guilty about it. i mean jfc i spent almost $50 on tea shit on this past paycheck bc i got a bonus from target corporate so i had some extra money, but i still feel guilty about it!! and. jesus christ. i don’t know where i went wrong. probably being born to poor, abusive people is where i went wrong.

fuck off.

having mental illness and being poor is. fucking awful. i don’t wish it on anyone.

i just want things to be betterrrrrrr for fuck’s sake.

the end

[qqueenofhades]

so i’ve been following the presidential race closely, and i’ve been a fan of bernie since the start. however, my mom says that he wouldn’t make any big changes, as he’s hard to work with, can’t make the necessary compromises. the example she used was that throughout his senate term, he’s only passed 3 bills, 2 of which were insignificant. i didn’t think of this, as this is my first time closely following an election. what are your thoughts? would a sanders presidency make any real changes?

Oh dear. You really want to get me into trouble this morning, don’t you. Which is 100% not your fault, you are smart to be thinking about all this and asking questions, and by no means do I want you to stop doing that. So I’ll try to explain this as clearly and straightforwardly as I can, and if I get hate for it, alas.

The thing about Bernie is, which certain subsets of his supporters don’t seem to quite appreciate, is that he’s a great candidate, he’s been useful in pushing the public dialogue and political climate of the Democrats further to the left, he obviously inspires a devoted following, and I agree completely with all of his policies. But there’s still a gulf – a very wide gulf – between all that, and actually putting good ideas into political practice in the (very) flawed American system of government as it currently exists. Yes, the system sucks, we know that, and it can feel outrageously frustrating when moderate candidates are offering milquetoast proposals that don’t really get at the underlying structural causes of massive, entrenched inequality, oppression, racism, sexism, etc that these bright young people have rightly identified in the world. That’s why Bernie is appealing as a candidate, and while my primary already happened on Super Tuesday, I would vote for him over Biden if that was my choice right now. But the seeming expectation that we could pick Bernie, he’d win, he’d instantly remake the entire American political system and implement all his changes, and everything would be fine again – and that if we can’t have that option, just not voting is somehow better – is, to say the least, deeply problematic.

I supported Elizabeth Warren for a number of reasons, but one of them was that while she had many progressive policies similar to or almost identical to Bernie’s, she had tangible evidence of being able to get them done (see: the CFPB), to network and form functional relationships with the Democratic establishment, to work within the existing framework of party politics, and to actually do everything she had written her plans for. To certain Bernie supporters, this made her a corporate shill, a heartless witch who wanted to personally kill poor children, an establishment hack, so on and so forth. They attacked her for running in the first place, they attacked her for challenging Bernie in debates, they attacked her for not dropping out before Super Tuesday, they attacked her for dropping out and then not immediately endorsing Sanders, they attacked her supporters, so on and so forth. I’d still vote for Sanders in a heartbeat over Biden, and I will be happy to vote for him if he gets the nomination. But when you’re treating people that way who fundamentally agree with you on all your policies, there’s something wrong. 

And no, it’s not a touchy-feely “we need to hold hands and be nice and listen to each other!” respectabillity politics issue, which also gets used as a straw man. Warren was committed to Medicare for All, but she also recognized there needed to be a transition period and that a public option was a good first step (something which Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the other progressive superstar, has also said). Because she accepted any limitations, because she wanted to work in the system, because she didn’t say she’d burn down global capitalism on day 1, this made her a Very Bad Candidate, and people who otherwise agreed with her didn’t think she’d win, so they didn’t vote for her and turned it into a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’m not saying Warren didn’t have flaws. She did. She’s a politician. There were other reasons people might not have been personally drawn to her. But the flack she got for daring to run as a progressive, while also acknowledging the power of the system and that you cannot uproot these structures immediately (she also planned to use executive power to implement some of her proposals on her first day in office), while challenging Bernie… wow.

Because the thing is, Bernie isn’t going to deliver absolutely everything he promises, and that’s not necessarily his fault. No politician in the history of time ever has. If Bernie somehow does get elected, with a Democratic-controlled House and Senate: great! Then yes, he does have a decent chance of passing some planks of his legislative policy. But there are several things you have to keep in mind here, and this is not “Bernie bashing”:

1. Bernie is not, strictly speaking, a Democrat. He’s an independent, he caucuses and votes often with the Democratic party, and he’s obviously running for their presidential nomination. But he’s not part of the party apparatus, he’s proud of that fact, and this is also a selling point for his supporters: look, he’s not part of the Corrupt Establishment! The DNC obviously has deep and systematic problems and is more committed to the bureaucratic status quo than uprooting inequality in America. That’s not up for debate. But as a candidate and as a nominee for the Democratic Party, Bernie would still need to have the backing of that system. If he doesn’t have it, that makes it harder.

2. “What does that matter?” a certain kind of Bernie supporter might cry. “They’re corrupt and rigging the election for Biden! Voter suppression!”

3. Pause for a deep sigh. Yes. There were long lines in many precincts on Super Tuesday. But voters for all candidates had to stand in them anyway. We’ve already discussed how some Sanders supporters treated Warren and her supporters, the ideologically closest candidate to them in the race. If your entire political ethos involves yelling at people and calling them names on the internet, that’s… not really sustainable as an outreach program and getting them into the hard work of day-to-day coalition building. I say this because I WANT to see progressive politics succeed and actually get put into practice, not just narrowly refined tighter and tighter into a certain tiny subset of Pure Beliefs that never amount to a hill of beans in anyone’s lives. You can have the greatest policies possible, but if you never acknowledge or accept any way to DO SOMETHING about them… really, is that a political ethos based on action and compassion or not? I’m voting for Sanders if he gets the nomination, and I’d vote for him if my primary was still upcoming and my first choice (Warren) was out. But I’m pretty fed up at how some camps on that side have been acting, and I am already a progressive. This… isn’t going to help build support beyond people who are already all in for Bernie. People who you will need to win an election.

4. The usual response here is often to blow off moderates and undecided voters and other people who are apparently just too dumb to see what’s going on. Yes! It is frustrating that half of America still wants to vote for Donald Goddamn Trump! But you’re still not winning an election and getting rid of him that way!

5. Bernie does, in fact, have a thin legislative track record, which may or may not matter if he actually becomes president. America has forgotten that the president is not SUPPOSED to make policy like a king, even though the function of the executive branch has been wildly expanded and bloated since W’s (and honestly, Reagan’s) day. The LEGISLATIVE branch, i.e. the House and Senate, is supposed to make policies, and the president EXECUTES them. That is his/her (ha, if only) JOB. But Bernie doesn’t have the kind of connections in the House/Senate that would help him efficiently mobilize policies, at least on his own initiative. Bills and amendments are slow, boring work. They require committee meetings, drafts, multiple readings, changes, deletions, hearings, final passage, etc. Ironically, the person Bernie could probably most count on in the Senate would be… Elizabeth Warren. And she’d obviously help him out, no matter what the rabid Bernie bros think, but it shows that party establishment politics, no matter how distasteful, are part of getting anything done.

6. Bernie’s plans to pay for some of his big policy proposals, such as student loan debt relief (which I am obviously very into) and Medicare for All, involve, according to him, levying a big new tax on Wall Street and the one percent. Passing a major new tax platform that RAISES taxes is always like pulling teeth. That would require passage in the House and Senate. Cool, let’s say the Democrats control both. Are all of them, especially the moderate ones or senators from red-leaning states, going to vote for it? Probably. But it’s not guaranteed. If you’re funding public policy by raising taxes (the one thing the American public has notably hated since 1773) it’s going to be HARD WORK. Let’s say that takes a year to pass. Let’s also guess that a President Sanders would lose either the House or the Senate in the 2022 midterm elections, because sitting presidents almost invariably do. Obama had two years to enact some of his policy proposals. Then came 2010 and the Tea Party, and it was, as a deliberate and ongoing GOP choice, gridlock central.

7. You think the Republicans obstructed OBAMA? Centrist corporate Democrat Obama, whose policies were solidly in line with the American establishment, but who happened to have brown skin and a funny name? You ain’t seen NOTHING compared to what they would do to a President Sanders. And as we said, even if the Democrats take Congressional control in 2020, they would invariably lose at least one branch in 2022. We are already figuring in at least a year for Bernie to somehow get his tax plan through. The billionaires are mad. They pour money like crazy into GOP candidates. Welp.

8. So this leaves us… maybe 12-16 months for Bernie to try to enact all his policy reforms, while being deliberately outside of the Democratic party establishment, while having to work with the House and Senate in a way he hasn’t really done before, and accepting limitations on his policies and his political ability, also not something he has really shown an aptitude for. 

9. So what? Bernie supporters demand. Are you saying don’t vote for Bernie, it’s hopeless! CORPORATE SHILL!

10. No. Not what I am saying at all. Obviously a Sanders presidency would be light years, LIGHT FUCKING YEARS, better than what we’ve got in there right now. But Sanders (and also Biden) are in their late 70s and have underlying health problems. The likelihood that either of them would serve two full terms is… slim. Obama is two decades younger and we saw how much the presidency aged him. I feel like they’re both flawed candidates in different ways, and my deepest fear is that neither of them can beat Trump, that the Democrats by trying to go for Biden, an Establishment Centrist Old White Man, think they’re playing to a “middle” that doesn’t really exist, and that either progressives or moderates will feel left out in the cold if Biden or Sanders win the nomination. The candidate will have to do the post-convention “pivot,” i.e. trying to appeal to those of their party’s voters who didn’t choose them in the primary, but is Sanders going to do that? His whole platform and the reason his supporters love him is that he doesn’t compromise. Which again, great for ideology, but runs into problems with consistent and actual implementation.

At the end of all this, the takeaway is this: yes, vote for Bernie if you believe in him! But also have a realistic idea of what he will be up against! There is simply no way that he’s going to sweep into office, even if he does get elected, and magically whisk away all the parts of America that we hate. He would have maybe two years to ram through most of his policies, it requires a legislative skill set he hasn’t honed, it rests on passing a major tax package that would be deeply unpopular and cause him to get pummelled in the 2022 midterms, and he has made a career out of operating as the lone wolf. Once again, it’s not a question of whether the current system sucks. We know that it does. But it still exists, and one candidate, no matter how much we agree with him, is not going to change that. He would hopefully manage to pass some of his major policy initiatives. But pretending that there would be no opposition, that it would all be magically fine, and that everyone who DOES raise a note of caution is a cowardly defeatist, a secret capitalist pig, a fake progressive, a secret Trumper (and we’re not the ones threatening to vote for Trump or not at all if our fave doesn’t get the nomination) or whatever else is… not helpful.

Ultimately, if we do get stuck with Biden, we have to hold our noses and vote for him anyway. If we can hold the House and flip the Senate, they can make progressive legislation and Biden is very likely to sign it anyway. The presidential system is not SUPPOSED to rest purely on the personal beliefs of the president, like an absolutist monarch – there was a pretty famous war about it back in the eighteenth century. Biden has displayed no initiative to act like Trump and be a megalomaniacal fascist overlord. We need to take a step AWAY from the insanity that is the current administration, we need to get back to NORMAL, before we can keep going left. Which is what we want! But it happens in stages, if it happens at all, and pretending that it doesn’t, that the only options are the Whole Revolution Now or Nothing, is never, NEVER going to work. And yes, Biden’s positions are generally pretty eye-rolling and I’ll be annoyed if I have to vote for him. But I’ll still do it, because he is NOT equivalent to Trump. Biden got the Violence Against Women Act (which the GOP-controlled Senate notably just failed to reauthorize) funded and passed. Trump has been accused of sexual assault by… what, 22 women? RBG isn’t likely to last another four years. The circuit courts have already been stacked with young, wildly unqualified, hard-right John Birch Society-type judges who will hold their posts for at least 40 years, and this has a direct impact on the kind of cases that are reviewed, confirmed, or struck down even before they get to the Supreme Court. Climate change, the end. There is too much at stake to fuck this up for the sake of Not Getting Everything Now.

As a final note, the Russian propaganda/troll machine has made it clear that they’re posing as Bernie supporters who insist that if Bernie doesn’t win, you shouldn’t vote. They know Bernie supporters are already voicing and disseminating that argument themselves, and they’re going to inflame it as much as possible. So that’s something to keep in mind.

[theculturedmarxist]

Essay quam videri

hey, so this election is the first time I’ve been old enough to vote. im not a Democrat; I was doing work for bernies campaign and was pretty heartbroken when he suspended his campaign cause I know that biden is a rapist piece of shit and kamala is a fucking cop. but when the time came to vote in the election I voted for biden anyway cause I was told it would do more to protect people who were harmed by trumps campaign I don’t expect any sort of real change with biden and I worry that electing him will pacify civil unrest and provide people with a false sense of security,, but I felt like I wouldn’t have any right to be upset about trump being re-elected if I didn’t vote but do you think that voting for biden was fundamentally wrong? I’m trying to figure out how to navigate living in an evil system and sometimes I don’t know if it’s better to opt out or to participate and support an evil that is nominally better than another evil just wanted your opinion cause most ppl I know are on that “vote blue no matter who” shit

Hey,

I do understand how you feel. It can be really confusing, and it is a difficult question to come to grips with, trying to navigate an evil system and to minimize the damage your participation in it brings. This isn't an indictment of you personally, but an indictment of the world in which we live. One of the most horrid aspects of Capitalism is the barbarity that it makes us all ineluctably complicit in. Most people participate in the evils of this system through no real desire of their own, but because Capitalism has developed over the centuries a number of means to coerce participation. You can't have slavery without slaves, and there were always slaves because they created the profits that shackled them. That doesn't make picking master's cotton a fundamentally wrong act. You're a captive, and the captive's first duty is to survive, and secondly, to escape.

This ubiquitous coercion naturally makes any mechanism which we are invited to participate in suspicious. This recent election is a prime example: do you vote for this senile, racist, war-mongering, pedophile rapist, or that senile, racist, war-mongering, pedophile rapist? Do you vote for the man who put the people into camps, or vote for the man that built the camps? Do we bear the ills we have, or fly to others we know not of? You're right to be wary of participation. Part of its purpose is to instill a feeling of complicity in the crimes that result, either in yourself, or cast over some other party. The Democrats took advantage of this over the last four years to berate Trump for doing everything that Obama and Biden also did. They did and said the same things during Bush II's presidency. Now they exchange gifts with him and have brunch. It's theater, and they're all in the same troupe.

Do you know what constitutes bourgeois moralism? That it is pointless, epitomized in the phrase "thoughts and prayers!" It's wishing for good rather than doing good, hoping to be passed over by evil instead of working to destroy evil. Why do the bourgeoisie love philanthropy? Because it does nothing to lessen human misery. That is the essence of bourgeois moralism: seeming rather than being. The proletarian has no use for something so impractical, and you should not let yourself be fettered in this way. It will do you no good, nor anyone else. You will merely appear to be doing good, which is far worse than being nakedly evil.

Whether you decide to vote or not, and who you cast it for is entirely your prerogative. Haranguing the voter for participating or not, in a system they do not control, have no voice in, nor any real method of shaping, for people they had no hand in choosing, is nothing but vapid bourgeois moralism. It's a sleight of hand, transferring the guilt for Trump's crimes from the people that perpetrated them—Trump himself, the bourgeois that supports him, the thugs that carry out his orders, and so on, the willful perpetrators—onto you, the individual that had no part in any of it. This tactic is used to assuage the guilt of those who are willfully either complicit in a real sense or complicit in spirit. The same charlatans that try to shame you into voting want you to ignore that they've spent the last four years casually participating in the society that Trump runs, and dutifully supporting his regime with their taxes and commerce, and facilitating it with their compliance. They have nothing to offer you for your vote, because they are bankrupt themselves, bereft of the moral fortitude they fault others for not having. All they want is absolution, and the onus does not lie on you to give it.

That not casting a vote gives you no right to be upset about the outcome of that vote is another facet of this, a fallacious tactic on the part of the bourgeoisie. Not casting a vote is a vote in itself. Your assent and support is something that should be earned, not demanded, or expected, or brow-beaten out of you. If there is no candidate that you believe deserves your vote, then the only responsible choice is to not cast it. To say otherwise is to disembowel the very meaning of democracy. The compulsion of assent renders it meaningless.

With that said, is it fundamentally wrong to vote for Biden?

I think that isn't as useful a question as, what do you hope to accomplish by it? Biden as an alternative to Trump is a false choice—we have Trump _because_ of Biden. He didn't spring from nothingness, after all. Biden, and the rest of the political class at the behest of their corporate donors, have for decades shaped policy, enacted legislation, and brick by brick built the road that brought us to Trump. That is in addition to the Democrats' faux opposition to Trump, and their total collaboration in acting with him and the rest of the Republican party. The danger you want to mitigate is as much the legacy of the Democrats as it is the Republicans. They work in tandem in order to hold the people you wish to shield hostage against you. To put it simply, there is no Trump without Biden.

Yet neither is one exactly like the other. While they are both bourgeois politicians representing bourgeois cliques, they represent different factions of the plutocracy and their interests. Does the US go to war with Iran, or with Russia? Does the US continue to spread fascism in South America or in Southeast Asia? You can choose not to choose, and there is nothing fundamentally wrong with that. You can choose the person that supports bombing country A or the one wanting to sanction country B, and there is nothing fundamentally wrong with that, either. In the grand scheme, your personal, individual vote amounts to very little. You'd might as well fret over which brand of soap you buy at the store, which brand of cereal, or your search engine. If there is no ethical consumption under Capitalism, then it would seem to follow that the only ethical choice is to not consume—to commit suicide. Even if you make your own rope from your own home grown organic hemp, you are still injuring the working class by doing the work of the bourgeoisie for it. Capitalism robs us even of escape in death.

What is fundamentally wrong is casting a vote based on nothing but wishful thinking and delusion, of which "Blue No Matter Who" is a byword. The bourgeois voting for Biden at least has the virtue of voting for their own interest. "Blue No Matter Who" is an affirmation of nihilism, that not only can they do nothing, but they also expect nothing. It isn't a political strategy. It's naked resignation. The consumer society that Capitalism has shaped has induced people to believe that their desires can be bought. Buy this soap and 5% of the sale goes to preserving the rain forest. Donate 30 cents to end starvation in Africa. That is the mindset at work here. The removal of Trump is just another item to add to the cart. Vote, and all the discomfort and ugliness that Trump has made them aware of will go away. Things will go back "to normal." They are deluding themselves that think this is not normal.

Mao himself says that nothing is wholly good or wholly evil. Good may come from evil actions, and evil may result from good actions. Gavrilo Princip had no idea that when he killed two aristocrats that he was setting in motion events that would not only lead to the deaths of millions of people, but also the death of the empires he hated. Your vote is just another small piece of an ongoing, dialectical process of events and actions and decisions leading into and influencing one another, most of which is largely outside of your control. Years from now you might have reason to regret it, or to celebrate it, or maybe even both. Actively making that decision, however the outcome, at least means that you chose to be rather than to seem, and that’s the first step to doing good.

[feifiefofum]

capitalism: we’re not living in it no more

i know we all love to shit on capitalism endlessly, but guys, i hate to break it to you, but we’re not living in that no more. especially in america.

like, have you guys tried switching to a different ISP? it’s next to impossible to find one. if you do find one, look carefully, chances are it’s the same shitty ISP masquerading as a different one.

we have three (3) cell phone service providers.

i get more choices than that on a SAT test.

operating systems for your computers? unless you’re a nerd with linux, you’ve got microsoft or whatever’s on a mac.

capitalism, if my high school econ knowledge hasn’t failed me, is supposed to be capital (them corporations) competing for my dollar. i ain’t see no competition. no competition for my buck, no capitalism.

republicans are all about ‘fear the commie scum’ when in reality they’re all about sending us back to the days of lords and kings and shit.

don’t believe me?

look at a corporation and tell me they’re not basically lords and dukedoms. their dominion may be over nebulous things like products instead of land, but they ain’t got no competition. shit, amazon workers are all but slaves in name with ai overlords anyway. publishing houses have pretty routinely executed sued fanfic authors for daring to play in their sandboxes.

microsoft bought up competing os publishers and just quietly killed them.

we all bow to the house of mouse. if it’s entertainment and doesn’t belong to disney? well, it’s days are numbered.

we’ve passed capitalism’s rotting corpse a while back, it’s just not as star trek like as we hoped. more oligarchy and whatever mr marx said. we’re just in denial.

[jyndor]

Cop-thing-anon here again (yeah I check the hashtag quite a lot..perks of covid homeschooling I guess)

Wow, I don't even know what to say

I knew what/who inspired the nations from atla but I had no idea that everything was deeper than that. I guess I thought atla's message was bad guy = ozai & sozin I guess and taking over the nations = bad. I also had no idea that azula ever said that

Makes sense the way you put it, I didn't think the creators would put in this much thought, like having the message run deeper than it usually is and taking real life events and shaping them kid friendly

You got me there.. actually convinced me. I'm still bummed, sorry

hey anon, I don’t want you to feel bad about not knowing some shit especially if you are a minor (which I am assuming because homeschooling). like I’m 29 and I didn’t know all of that when I was first watching avatar. at all. no one starts fully educated, that’s kind of the point of unlearning and growth.

also like, atla’s message is many messages - whether intended by the creators or unintended. and I don’t even agree with all of them. that’s the thing about media. there’s no such thing as ideologically pure content - there’s always going to be progress to make. and if you’re talking about atla’s creators (like bryke etc) then yeah they put a ton of thought into atla. I have issues with bryke but no one can say they didn’t do an amazing job researching for this world they wanted to build. and I just scratched the surface - there are so many other cultural influences on atla, from the sun warriors (pulling from aztec/incan/mayan cultures) to the foggy swamp tribe (probably related to people of the mississippi delta, or like the bayou) to the dai li being named for general dai li who was a top chinese government official and a fascist leader, etc. now it’s not perfect, like I said these peoples are not a 1 to 1 match for their real life influences.

I do believe that kids are smart and capable of digesting a lot. I was 14 or 15 when I first saw atla, and even though I was super anti-war (now I would categorize myself as anti-imperialism) avatar still taught me a lot. and when I rewatch the show I get so much more out of now that I understand more about these themes that they were pushing in the show.

like for instance, the episode where katara becomes the painted lady to save the fire nation town that is being poisoned. I was so mad at those townspeople for not accepting her because of her waterbending. like, how dare they? now... I still find it abhorrent but I understand why the writers made that choice. first off, those towns people were so poor and exploited I’d be shocked if they’d ever seen a waterbender before. so they probably didn’t know what waterbenders look like. and also, it’s a real thing that happens. poor communities can be bigoted and also exploited by corporations and business interests. that episode is not just about katara having empathy for poor people (even if they are people who have benefited in some small way from her people’s oppression) it is also about the toll that imperialism and the war machine have on the people who are supposed to benefit from those systems.

if you look at the united states, people like to say fuck america it should all drown etc, and yeah fuck the united states I agree, but the us is full of people who are dying from poverty and hunger and cancer from industry, and I’m not even talking about black americans who do not benefit from imperialism at all, but like... west virginia. skid row in california.

I read this un report on poverty in the us that fucked me up for a while:

“The evidence is  everywhere. On Skid Row in Los Angeles, 14,000 homeless persons were arrested  in 2016,         including for urinating in public and other "quality of life" offenses, while overall arrests in the city were  declining. For those wondering what the problem is, the answer is not hard to  find.  In 2016 there were only nine public toilets available for some  1,800 homeless individuals on Skid Row. The resulting ratio of one public  toilet per 200 individuals would not even meet the minimum standards the UN  sets for Syrian refugee camps.”

so like, not to bum you out further anon, but that is why critically engaging with media is so important. because if you just watch that episode and say “well fuck those poor fire nation people for probably being at least xenophobic if not racist” um I mean I get it I am sympathetic to that point. but it also brings up the lie of american exceptionalism that people around the world did actually believe. like that coming here would be better for people. idk maybe it is. but that episode was also saying that being a poor person, even a poor citizen who has privileges in their imperialist country, is at risk because of imperialism and capitalism lbr.

you can argue that that episode makes the case against there being a clear race factor in the show, but I’d argue that most people are willing to deal with someone’s differences until those differences are explicit. they’re totally cool with katara until they see the proof of her foreignness, and then they hate her. even when she put her neck at risk for them.

as far as the fanart goes, I’d be shocked if they were like “haha I’m fucking over indigenous people and supporting cops and police brutality” but it is a matter of not unlearning harmful things. like I know that the artist said they wanted to make sokka the cop first, but that is also a common thing in cop propaganda in shows. so like, have you ever seen the cool black cop or the gay cop or the woman cop? or the gay black cop with a cool corgi? that is making cops look progressive. that is a common ploy. it’s used by countries and companies to seem progressive (pinkwashing - israel does this, pretends to be gay friendly and woman friendly but they’re still harming palestinians so they’re not gay or woman friendly) and it works. people love brooklyn 99. but it’s still doing heavy lifting to present police departments in the united states as decent when they just are all complicit by nature.

so chances are that artist was not thinking about the messages they sent. and that art had over a thousand notes, so clearly people didn’t really think about it either. I saw a couple of comments saying it was gross but... shrug idk.

anyway, I don’t want you to be bummed out because of this. you didn’t do anything wrong, you just didn’t understand why I was mad about it. <3

[thelostnymphaeum]

I'm with you 'til the end of the line.

Entry: 004

// Cinema //

Marvel Cinematic Universe

MARVEL MANIA

Superhero movies were not my thing. The only superhero movie I have watched as a kid was Spiderman. I am not into sci-fi or superhero movies albeit being a huge fan of cinema. But during this quarantine, I decided to experiment with my taste and try to indulge in a new set of genre – the Marvel Cinematic Universe. These movies were a far cry from films that are to my liking, such as “Brooklyn” and “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape”. I used to find superhero movies corny or cheesy, because they were not based on real people and I fancy movies that tackle the inner spectrum of humanity. Additionally, I used to think that actors who choose to be in these movies are not “real actors” because portraying a superhero does not really seem to me as a role where you have to internalize the character. I was probably the only person in my class who did not cry when someone said “I love you, 3000” after the Endgame came out, and the only one who did not get the “Wakanda forever” reference. That changed because yester night, I finally finished the entire MCU. I came in with a viewing guide from my friends and I came out feeling like I just had a whole cultural experience.

THE AVENGERS

I like all of them. Except maybe the Captains. I don’t like Captain America. I understand that he’s supposed to be the poster boy of “superheroes” where he’s all righteous, courageous, virtuous and kind to everyone – but that does not seem realistic at all. His character just seemed predictable and bland for me. Maybe that’s why I prefer Tony Stark, he is more dimensional. He is someone who is unapologetic, makes mistakes, smart, arrogant; but his heart will always come from a good place. During battles, it’s always Tony Stark who is thinking of ways to end them (like how to diffuse Ultron at Sokovia) so I feel as if it’s him that should be leading them. Captain America only lead them because he was born in 1918 (just kidding, don’t eat me Steve Rogers stans).  He also looks way too good. It’s unreal. What a knucklehead (Loki will agree with me on this). Jk. Anyways, he earned plus points from me when he returned the infinity stones successfully. As for Captain Marvel, I don’t think I need to explain why I find her insufferable. 

A little piece about Spiderman. I like this reboot of Spiderman, and Tom Holland deserves all the hype he got because he worked so hard for his movies. No one can beat Tobey Maguire of course, but we are all just glad that Tom did not ruin Spiderman for us. The only thing I did not like about his reboot was that he relied too much on Mr. Stark. Tobey’s Spiderman never relied on anyone, he was just his own superhero. But for the sake of integrating him into the MCU, I guess that they have make this fun and fresh Peter Parker juvenile in order to be able to develop his character more. So I think I’ll give it a pass.

I personally like the Thor films the best. Because it was based on Norse mythology. Because of Loki. Because Anthony Hopkins is in it. I dislike the Captain Marvel movie the most.

ENDGAME THOUGHTS. We did not need Captain Marvel. Thor did not deserve to become a drunkard and a greasehead – he’s a freaking Norse God! Why was Pepper Potts at the final battle against Thanos? Thank you, Doctor Strange. Tony was genuinely and undeniably- the heart of the Avengers.

SCORSESE, COPPOLA & PEWDIEPIE

Along with its colossal popularity, the MCU movies have also acquired prominent detractors. Prior to watching the entire MCU, I would have probably agreed with Scorsese, Coppola and Felix (here is his “controversial” video on “I don’t like Marvel movies”).

“Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.” – Martin Scorsese

"Martin was kind when he said it's not cinema. He didn't say it's despicable, which I just say it is." – Francis Ford Coppola

Parts of it are true, on the basis where the entire plot lines are predictable and it’s not the kind of cinema I learned to love as well. Marvel movies usually follow the same backbone. This is a huge reason why some cinephiles don’t like them, because the mystery is gone and it’s all obvious. After watching all of them in a 3-week streak, I could pretty much sum up the Marvel movie plot line into this:

The protagonist is in a helpless or vulnerable position.

The protagonist meets someone who can help them.

The protagonist works hard to get to his pre-final form and along with it, learns to fight in the name of eradicating the bad guys. 

The protagonist finds out that her/his master is not all-good.

Chaos but then they forgive and understand the master.

2-3 battle fights, the last one is usually the peak battle where we see the protagonist in final form.

I like movies that tackle more about realism. I like seeing actors play roles that depict humanity as humans. I’m not a huge fan of special effects or super powers either. When Scorsese said that they are “not cinema”,  I understood it because there are no intricacies or space for a different form of expression when you’re doing mega franchise films that are meant to sell to the general public. Which brings me to another point, that MCU is largely a business profit. These movies are made by mega corporations in the film industry, and it might also hinder other smaller filmmakers from showing their films if a titanic franchise is showing on the same week as theirs. Comic book fans are enormous in numbers which is why there is such a huge following for these movies even if they use the same plot lines all throughout. Humans are slaves for nostalgia, and people like to see the characters they have read and admired during their childhood come to life. Because of that, these corporations will try to capitalize on that and make more movies for as long as they can, and in a sense, you can see that they might be doing it only for the sake of money and not of art any longer. This is what the disparagers would say; that there is very little artistic values to these films because they are made to be sold, not appreciated for its artistry. 

“Many of our grandfathers thought all gangster movies were the same, often calling them “despicable”. Some of our great grandfathers thought the same of westerns, and believed the films of John Ford, Sam Peckinpah, and Sergio Leone were all exactly the same. I remember a great uncle to whom I was raving about Star Wars. He responded by saying, “I saw that when it was called 2001, and, boy, was it boring!” Superheroes are simply today’s gangsters/cowboys/outer space adventurers. Some superhero films are awful, some are beautiful. Like westerns and gangster movies (and before that, just MOVIES), not everyone will be able to appreciate them, even some geniuses. And that’s okay.” – James Gunn, Guardians of the Galaxy Director

Here’s my two cents on this whole hullabaloo. Art is expressed in different ways. Just because something is popular does not mean that you should hate it or feel as if it lacks creative value. For one, I think that if the Norsemen would see the Thor films, their jaws would drop. Art in these movies is seen through the elaborate special effects and costumes. A lot of people work behind the scenes to make this kind of art form. They are not any less of an artist. The effects are wonderful, amazing and beautiful. Sure, they don’t have meandering plot lines or mysteries that are meant to make you think. But they are able to show art in a way that is along with the times, showing the capabilities of what computer generated imagery could be. It gives us the fantasy that otherwise would not be achievable in real life (for all I care, my favorite scenes are seeing Spiderman glide across the buildings of New York).

These movies are intended for children and teenagers (adults are there for the sake of nostalgia or lighthearted entertainment, I guess?). For kids, it inspires them that they can be anything they want to be. For teenagers, it might be a good footing for their moral compasses. For me, it just inspired me to get fit (hehe). My point is, these movies are made to cater to a particular type of audience, and the others are there just for the spectacle. If all the movies were Scorsese or Coppola, what would the kids watch in the theaters? Kids would not understand “Taxi Driver” nor would be a good foundation for their morals. It was a classic and it deserves the reputation it has, but after only a certain age will you be able to appreciate it, and only if you had a particular knack for appreciating films. MCU movies are made for people who just want to have a good time; you don’t have to like high-brow or art-house movies to understand it, and that’s all there is to it. It’s made for entertainment, what’s so wrong with that?

And the actors – a lot of them played the characters so well which made me realize that taking on a superhero role does not lessen your credibility as an actor. My particular favorites are Tom Hiddleston, Benedict Cumberbatch, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Holland, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr. (bonus points for Anthony Hopkins, his range, man, his range). They were able to bring their roles to life in such a distinct way that it would be hard to never associate them as superheroes, which of course, is a double-edged sword. As a starting actor, that could be a bubble that is hard to get out of. For example, Tom Holland as Spiderman; people will always associate him as that, and how many of you has actually seen the movies he has done aside from MCU? It might be hard for him to bridge his career from being a huge franchise film protagonist into doing films to his own preference. MCU movies make the popularity and the money; indie films – not as much. 

I don’t think that the existence of MCU is throwing away the spotlight from smaller filmmakers. Because back then, I simply chose not to see MCU movies because I was not interested. People will find ways to support art that they like, and just because MCU existed, it did not hinder me from looking for movies that I like. The cinema is made by individuals who like to create movies. There are different ways to express them. There are different subscribers to different genres. To each their own. But then again, I am not working in the film industry, so I can’t speak for them, I can only say what it’s like for a movie buff like me.

These are the movies that make up people’s childhood. These are characters that gives reason for people to bond together. When Tony died, the entire world felt like they lost a father. If it’s able to touch lives as much as any other film, why should we discriminate against it? Love is love, after all.

[youzicha]

High Quality Take Compilation

American Ninja Warrior is cultural appropriation.

That the word "home office" has replaced "study" shows that crass commercialism has replaced the love of wisdom, the φιλομάθεια, of the ancient age...

Liberals hate Donald Trump because he undermines the crucial myth that America is a meritocracy.

We can see that China is still communist because of their strict capital controls.

"You think you know when you can learn, are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program" (Perlis). This is why the only good work in political philosophy is done by Facebook.

Successful people who complain about the word "talented". They already get the credit for doing good work; now they additionally want to be considered hard-working instead of just genetically lucky?

The only western work to successfully capture the true spirit of anime is Luc Besson's Léon: The Professional, which had both gun-fetishism and lolicon-baiting.

Twitter has finally realized the vision of Xanadu, with links, back-links (notification when someone @s you), transclusion (quote tweets), and micropayments (that took off... anyway here's my patreon).

In the technologically optimistic 1950s, we'd just replace the coal with nuclear power and maybe add some wacky climate engineering schemes. Global warming is caused by environmentalism.

The master's tools did dismantle the master's house. In this analysis of antebellum American building demolition practices I will show

Supposedly autistic children with autistic parents are happy and untraumatised, but would neurotypical children in autistic households be happier too? "Social skills" are evolved strategies to win political conflicts, and neurotypical humans spend 90% of their energy on interpersonal cold war.

Technology gives us air conditioners, even hair conditioners... when what we really need is human conditioners...

The Fitzpatrick-scale emoji skin tone modifiers (which take a medical criterion for skin cancer propensity and blithely repurpose it as a faux-objective and machine-legible "racial essence") are racist.

VN romance games are the most insidious and corrupting vidya, they perpetuate the nice-guy "puzzle box" model.

In Praise of Woke and Funny Corporate Twitter Accounts. (Written from a u/acc perspective.)

[sweetiecenter]

Fallout, Borderlands, and how a Medium Compliments a Theme.

Fallout, Borderlands, and how the Theme can serve the Medium well, and vice versa. A small essay by me about two of my favorite game series.

2K Games and Bethesda are industry giants. Both of these studios have built their companies on the backs of extremely successful game franchises.

In the case of 2K, they built their franchise around sports, as well as Sid Meier’s RTS, Civilization, as well as delving into many other genres. It wasn’t until 2K started to delve into RPGs like Bioshock, from the creators of System Shock 2, that they started to develop their formula.

For Bethesda, they got their massive start a bit earlier with id software with games like Doom and Wolfenstein, which almost singlehandedly popularized the FPS genre.

Both of these industry giants are responsible for thousands of hours of love and enjoyment, and Bioshock 2 is singlehandedly responsible for growing my love of video games, and their writing.

There are two franchises from these respective companies that are both known for being notable open-world, first person RPGs: Borderlands and Fallout, and both series were published by their respective companies around the same time, with Borderlands 1 entering development in 2005, and Bethesda being commissioned to work on Fallout 3 in 2007, which later turned into Bethesda buying the rights and absorbing Interplay. Fallout 3 was released in 2008 on October 28, with Borderlands coming out almost exactly a year later.

As time has gone on, both companies have paid mutual respect to each other, particularly in regards to these FPSRPG games; Borderlands 2 even has a gun called thre dog in reference to the infamous Three Dog from Fallout 3. The similarities between the themes and playstyle of these games has led to many comparisons, but I would just like to take the time to talk about how each respective game does justice to the themes of their stories and the medium they use.

So what are the themes of these games, really?

The more unique taglines and themes of these games would be “war never changes” and “everyone is the hero of their own story” for Fallout and Borderlands, respectively. The underlying themes that go unspoken (mostly), seem to be anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism.

The anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism arguments are where it gets interesting.

First, let’s look at how both games use American culture and atmosphere to their advantage and to get their point across.

We can all agree that governments are, at their core, made to protect folks, right? That is their stated job. It is in their job description. Especially in America, the idea is that you should never, ever have your rights taken from you. We are surrounded by people who believe in the government, and if not in the government, then in your country itself. Patriotism has its own dedicated holiday! This is why Fallout has such a huge focus on how the government of their universe shifted away from protecting people, and how they have become imperialistic, jingoistic, and xenophobic. Even if you hate the military, the world of Fallout is intended to make you go “shit, at least we aren’t THAT bad”.

And this tone helps to set the theme for the Fallout games. Everywhere you turn, you are completely let down by the people you rely on. Looks are deceptive, and yet they aren’t. The dark and gritty atmosphere of the games are constantly screaming at you that the world has already ended, even as Ron Perlman tells you it is only the beginning. Happy endings are nonexistent in almost every case, with the sole exception of perhaps the Courier... but then, the Courier is the only one with no ties to a Vault. No delusions of grandeur, no expectations.

It should be noted that in the dialogue choices as the Courier, you are the most aware of everything that has happened. Instead of being shocked that someone shot you in the head, you are apathetic at best and mostly want the package back; even if you roleplay your courier as a revenge-driven mailman, they are never surprised. Disappointed? Oh, almost certainly.

The first time I booted up the original Fallout and saw the Overseer start talking, my first thought was:

“This is it. Humanity has degenerated into ridiculous blue cavemen.”

I think the design of the Overseer was very intentionally made to be odd, and to showcase that the people have changed. Then you step out into the wasteland. You see the disconnect between the Vaults, the only remnants of pre-war society in the first game, and the rest of the world.

The discovery that the government willingly let all these experiments happen only adds to our disgust as we piece things together, piece by piece. You become jaded and cynical, and in your quest to save everyone, you truly have changed. Sure, the Overseer exiling you because “you’re different” may seem weird and a flimsy excuse to keep the experiment going, but it has a hint of truth to it. You’ve changed. You’re knowledgeable. You can no longer be controlled by the propaganda you had taken as the truth, that all Vault residents had taken as the truth. This disconnect between reality and the Vaults is further explored whenever you reach a new Vault.

Finding out the horrifying truth about what the Vaults were, what they were made for, never gets any easier. The game’s sound design is always made to harken back to something behind you, in some way. The base game’s sound design usually invokes paranoia and fear, while the radios that constantly play music from a bygone era invoke a general feeling of “nothing will ever be the same”.

All in all, Fallout does a fantastic job of setting the basis of its universe. Worldbuilding is a massive part, and their is little to nothing left unknown for a savvy player, should you be willing to listen to exposition. The overall tone is tragic and bleak, in order to juxtapose itself with the pre-war propaganda.

Which brings us to Borderlands.

Borderlands does not ask you as a player to think. It does not ask you to feel. The main focus has never been the story, and yet it is still a beautiful aspect of it, in the way of all the things that go left unsaid. How did the sirens come to be? Who knows. How did all the Eridians die out? Who knows. Why is it so much god damn fun to shoot a vertically challenged man in a gas mask and watch his head explode? Who knows.

Borderlands never gives you enough time to reflect on the overarching theme of the series. Compared to Fallout the game is much more fast-paced and linear, but if you take the time, you can see everything fall apart as the story progresses. You have no choice. Nothing you do ever matters, especially in the face of corporate overlords. All these bandits you’ve been fighting? They were normal people once. Convicts, sure, but they were also taken advantage of, brought to this strange alien planet and used as slave labor. Fresh off of the heels of Fallout, you could ask yourself, “what sick government would do this?” The answer is it isn’t a government. It is a corporation that styles itself as a government.

There lies the sick joke of the Borderlands series. This isn’t some far fetched, awful alternate reality. This is the future, where corporations continue down the same path they are on now - unchecked, allowed to ruin the worlds, contracted by governments - and nobody did a god damn thing. These guns you buy? Produced by Atlas. The clothes you’re wearing? Probably Hyperion fashion. The planets you come from? Owned almost completely by corporations. Atlas has an iron grip on Promethea, and Mister Torgue literally blew up an entire PLANET, even if it is played for laughs.

Just like in Fallout, nobody is on your side - and yet you know this. You embrace futility anyway; you buy Atlas, you buy Hyperion, and you buy Maliwan because at the end of the day, they are more powerful than any Vault Monster you could hope to kill. The bright tones and dark humor of the Borderlands are a direct result of embracing futility. The fun does not lie within facing your oppressors, it lies within killing them over and over. The thing that makes Borderlands so celebrated is its replayability; in Fallout, everything you do is permanent. Borderlands has next to no permanence. No matter how many Hyperion soldiers you kill, you won’t put a dent in them. These corporations span six whole galaxies.

Borderlands doesn’t need to set an atmosphere to make you immerse yourself in the story. We already know corporations are horrible. Jeff Bezos spends his money on space while Amazon employees die of exhaustion.

The horror of these two games directly correspond with each other. Fallout is horrifying because of past deeds, because of what could have come to pass. Borderlands is horrifying because of what still could happen.

Both of these game series have, in many’s opinion, fallen off in recent years, but I personally will always have a special place in my heart for these wonderful games and their storytelling.

Thank you for reading.