#industry foundation classes

[caddraft1]

What is the IFC model? And what you need to know about how BIM and IFC relate.

The Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) is an information model designed to describe information pertaining to the building and construction industries. It is a system that facilitates collaboration in the AEC (Architecture, Engineering, and Construction) sector and has an independent platform and common file format.

[nando161mando]

We live in a culture where companies are too quick to fulfill police requests for personal data on users–and it’s a situation ripe for abuse.

[artcalledwrap]

Adding on tops of Ups and middle dwellers

Eyebrows grow in larger length

As getting older

Leave bushy distinguished

Or trim down trying to look younger

If one can dreadlock eyebrows of one sided near

Or opposite population opportunity

If I turn my face

Am I seen clear

From a profile

Or head straight up

My mind intact

Let’s carry on

Demo-Blue

In Democracy

[cordeliawhohung]

Core, what about a bit of competition with ps! Gaz? Some new girl who think's she's already the darling of the studio takes a liking to Gaz, but finds out about his ties with reader.

The one time she gets to film with Gaz, she overplays her role and absolutely covers his neck, collar, shoulder, everything with hickeys, hoping it will deter the reader.

So imagine her shock when the next day, she pops into his dressing room and finds the reader in there as well, applying foundation over the marks and littered with dozens from Gaz himself. ❤️

(I realize how dumb this sounds as an ask but it's been rotting my brain for days and I desperately need it gone so I can focus on my college classes 😭)

thanks this has also been rotting my brain because i just love putting people in their place (: more ps!gaz here <3

The crux of your ass sits in perfect place on Kyle's thighs while your legs straddle the expanse of his hips. Warm hands rest on your waist as you manhandle his jaw, tilting his head side to side to get better access to his neck. Thick, round hickeys litter the delicate skin around his throat and down to his shoulders in angry, red pinpoint marks that break the beautiful and even tone of his skin with something revolting. They look like proper bruises rather than the after effects of a... wild video shoot. As if someone had tried to strangle him rather than make love to him.

You remember the video well, along with that new model with her fake blonde hair and even faker tan that they had paired Kyle with to shoot the other day. You had only seen her in person one time, and you vividly recall the way her blue eyes rolled over your body, assessing every inch of you before ultimately deciding you were worth very little time. Confidence was a must when you worked in the porn industry, but her attitude borders on an arrogance you haven't seen since your teenage years in public school.

As you apply yellow color corrector onto the dark marks on his skin, you nearly shiver as the images of her stained lips suckling on Kyle's neck flood your mind. There was little room to feel jealousy about her ravaging your favorite co-star when you were too busy cringing. So childish. Over zealous. You nearly cried tears of laughter when you noticed Kyle's expression, grimacing at the wet tongue and annoying teeth that nipped at him, yet still having to pretend to enjoy it. Even the comments on the video joked about it.

Put him back with the other model.

"If I didn't know any better, I would have thought someone tried to strangle you," you tease.

"She might as well have," Kyle sighs. He adjusts his shoulders against the back of the chair, bare pecs flexing with the movement, bringing your attention to the uncovered marks that line his collarbone. "Haven't been able to go out in public without a goddamn turtleneck 'cause of her."

You chuckle as you finish applying and buffing out the rest of the color corrector along his skin. It leaves him looking sickly and discolored, which oddly enough is an improvement to what it looked like before. Setting the corrector to the side, you grab foundation next, hips swaying as you attempt to get some movement in your aching knees. Holding that position for so long without moving had them burning with fatigue.

"Need a break, doll?" Kyle prompts, hands sliding from your waist to your thighs.

"Don't know if we have time for a break. Got a lot of ground to cover before we start," you humor.

Kyle sits forward, throwing you off balance, yet he doesn't let you sway very far before his arms wrap around you, hands supporting your back. Adoring eyes crease as a grin floods his face. Even without the aid of studio lights he glows like a god as he leans closer and places a kiss on your neck.

"Show can't start without us," he says, teeth grazing your skin as he wanders down to your collarbone. "Could always give you a few hickeys to match, if you want."

He doesn't wait for you to answer before his tongue glides across your clavicles just for his teeth to follow right after. A chuckle rumbles in his chest at the tightening of your legs around his hips, and his hands only pull you closer. It doesn't take much for you to give in. Head rolling back, muscles melting as his lips conquer everything you're willing to give him. It's a delicate softness mixed with a brutal bite, something that leaves you gasping as he pulls the very air from your lungs and feeds on the sounds.

Kyle is more starved for you than usual. Sick of the fake, over dramatic screeching he got last week with that other model, he's hungry for the real thing. Hungry for you.

The unopened foundation falls free from your loose fingers and rolls along the floor into some forgotten corner when his hands wander underneath your shirt. It's a dance he has memorized; unclasping your bra without a second thought and tearing both it and your shirt off in a single, swift motion. He gives you little time to recover before his mouth is on your tits, kissing a sparse trail until he's rolling a perky nipple between his lips.

His bare skin feels like heaven underneath the palm of your hands as you grip his shoulders for stability. He'd take you on the cold, dressing room floors, you knew he would. A part of you wanted him to. Fuck the shoot, they should've learned well enough to put cameras in the dressing rooms by that point with how handsy Kyle Garrick always was with you.

"Can't wait until we get on set to try and undo me?" you ask breathlessly.

"Doll, I'll undo you right here and then again on set if you asked me to," he mumbles into your skin.

A quiet squeak interrupts your moment and the ambiance of the room shifts when the door to Kyle's dressing room opens. His hands grow stiff against your spine as you look over your shoulder at the figure in the doorway. You smell her perfume before you recognize her. Something drowning and floral, like a mall department store. It burns your nose, yet you're too distracted by the slack-mouth surprise etched onto the features of the new blood's face.

It's cute; her confusion. How her eyes flicker over your bare back and Kyle's hands pressed against your skin like he's cradling the only thing he cares for in the world. The dots just can't quite connect in her mind as to why he hasn't completely fallen for her yet, as if the only way she knows how to lure men is by butchering their neck with discolored marks. She can't comprehend why he'd rather have you in his lap than her.

Kyle draws a shocked groan from you when his teeth nip at your shoulder, and your eyes have no choice but to fall away from the woman in the doorway as he pulls you closer to him. His chin gently rests on your shoulder as he stares at the model, hands moving to rest on your hips.

"Need somethin?" he asks, bored.

There is very little you wouldn't have given to see the look on her face, but the small huff followed by the door slamming shut is good enough. Small giggles rattle your body as you lean back to get a better look at Kyle, as if your body would throw a fit if he wasn't within your sight. There's an inexplicable relief that floods his face as he looks up at you, and he mirrors your smile.

"What?" he defends. "Only asked her if she needed somethin."

"I think you broke her heart," you patronize.

"She'll live," he mumbles, lips falling against the crook of your neck again. "Your heart is the only one I care about, anyway."

[deadsetobsessions]

REVERSE TROPE WRITING PROMPT BY @out-of-jams

TOO MANY BEDS

DCXDP, GEN

——

The Wayne foundation was a giant in the corporate world. What made it impressive was that their company was based in Gotham where, despite or perhaps in spite of the frequent rogue attacks and general hostile environment, the Waynes managed to run a tight and efficient ship. Their operations run extremely smoothly.

However, that was not to say there were no mistakes. There were. Wayne Enterprises usually had enough-more than enough- budget to cover such mistakes.

The employees, after all, were humans (though their new CEO, Timothy Drake, might have been a vampire considering how pale he was) and were prone to make mistakes.

Thus, due to the nature of human mistakes, the visiting senior class of Amity Park’s Casper High found themselves in a rather baffling situation.

“Well, we can’t say there’s not enough beds.” Their chaperone-teacher, Mr. Lancer rubbed the back of his bald head.

Before them laid not ten, not twenty, but fifty five twin beds arranged in neat rows in Gotham Academy’s auditorium.

“What is this, the military?” Their other chaperone-teacher, Mr. Falluca, grumbled.

“It’s not like we haven’t slept in worse places.” Sam grimaced. The class collective shuddered as they remembered the junior camping trip from hell.

“Ugh, my hair is going to get frizzy if we sleep here.” Paulina muttered.

“I thought we were getting called here for cheer or something.” Star frowned. Her boyfriend of four years, Kwan, slung an arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer to comfort her.

The doors open as a harried Wayne Industries employee ran in.

“I am so, so sorry! This isn’t where we were supposed to have you stay but WE mistook the donation request and sent in beds instead of paying for hotel rooms!” They blurted out, looking panicked. “Your hosting class - we’ll have you meet them outside, maybe?”

“It’s fine, right guys?” Danny spoke up, arms crossed. Tucker hummed at his side, tapping quickly at his

“Yeah, whatever Fentina says,” Dash grumbled. After the reveal of Danny’s identity as Phantom, his hostility and bullying died a quick death. Though, Dash kept the nicknames as they were a hard habit to kick and there weren’t any malicious intent behind it. In fact, Dash quickly became one of Danny’s biggest supporters, hidden behind scowls and general posturing.

“We could just meet in here. Get rid of the bedframes and just have a giant sleepover while you guys get everything sorted out.” Valerie volunteered.

“That’s a great idea!”

The class, coordinated from years of ghost attacks, quickly assembled the giant floor mattress. Gotham Academy’s senior class filed in ten minutes later, gaping at the giant floor mattress(es) before whooping and joining Casper High’s seniors in tumbling around.

——

Danny threw an empty plastic water bottle at Kwan’s head.

“Hey! No PDA on the giant mattress!”

“Yeah, get that love shit out of here!” Someone else hollered.

“There might technically be only one bed, now, but it’s still multiple mattresses!” Stephanie Brown, one of Gotham Academy’s seniors heckled.

“Hey, Danny, it’s your turn for truth or dare!” Tim said.

“Truth.” Danny returned.

“Lameeee.”

“C’mon Fenturd, too chicken to do dare?”

“Danny, that’s so boring,” Sam smirked.

Danny scowled. “Hey, whose side are you on?”

Sam and Tucker grinned and said in unison, “The winning side, duh.”

Tim cut in. “So, what’s the worst thing that’s happened to you?”

Danny groaned. “Camping trip, no contest.”

“Camping trip?”

——

[txttletale]

niceys positive anon!! i don't agree with you on everything but you are so clearly like well read and well rounded that you've helped me think through a lot of my own inconsistencies and hypocrises in my own political and social thought, even if i do have slightly different conclusions at times then u (mainly because i believe there's more of a place for idealism and 'mind politics' than u do). anyway this is a preamble to ask if you have recommended reading in the past and if not if you had any recommended reading? there's some obvious like Read Marx but beyond that im always a little lost wading through theory and given you seem well read and i always admire your takes, i wondered about your recs

it's been a while since i've done a big reading list post so--bearing in mind that my specific areas of 'expertise' (i say that in huge quotation marks obvsies i'm just a girlblogger) are imperialism and media studies, here are some books and essays/pamphlets i recommend. the bolded ones are ones that i consider foundational to my politics

BASICS OF MARXISM

friedrich engels, principles of commmunism

friedrich engels, socialism: utopian & scientific

karl marx, the german ideology

karl marx, wage labour & capital

mao zedong, on contradiction

nikolai bukharin, anarchy and scientific communism

rosa luxemburg, reform or revolution?

v.i lenin, left-wing communism: an infantile disorder

v.i. lenin, the state & revolution

v.i. lenin, what is to be done?

IMPERIALISM

aijaz ahmed, iraq, afghanistan, and the imperialism of our time

albert memmi, the colonizer and the colonized

che guevara, on socialism and internationalism (ed. aijaz ahmad)

eduardo galeano, the open veins of latin america

edward said, orientalism

fernando cardoso, dependency and development in latin america

frantz fanon, black skin, white masks

frantz fanon, the wretched of the earth

greg grandin, empire's workshop

kwame nkrumah, neocolonialism, the last stage of imperialism

michael parenti, against empire

naomi klein, the shock doctrine

ruy mauro marini, the dialectics of dependency

v.i. lenin, imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism

vijay prashad, red star over the third world

vincent bevins, the jakarta method

walter rodney, how europe underdeveloped africa

william blum, killing hope

zak cope, divided world divided class

zak cope, the wealth of (some) nations

MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES

antonio gramsci, the prison notebooks

ed. mick gidley, representing others: white views of indigenous peoples

ed. stuart hall, representation: cultural representations and signifying pratices

gilles deleuze & felix guattari, capitalism & schizophrenia

jacques derrida, margins of philosophy

jacques derrida, speech and phenomena

michael parenti, inventing reality

michel foucault, disicipline and punish

michel foucault, the archeology of knowledge

natasha schull, addiction by design

nick snricek, platform capitalism

noam chomsky and edward herman, manufacturing consent

regis tove stella, imagining the other

richard sennett and jonathan cobb, the hidden injuries of class

safiya umoja noble, algoriths of oppression

stuart hall, cultural studies 1983: a theoretical history

theodor adorno and max horkheimer, the culture industry

walter benjamin, the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction

OTHER

angela davis, women, race, and class

anna louise strong, cash and violence in laos and vietnam

anna louise strong, the soviets expected it

anna louise strong, when serfs stood up in tibet

carrie hamilton, sexual revolutions in cuba

chris chitty, sexual hegemony

christian fuchs, theorizing and analysing digital labor

eds. jules joanne gleeson and elle o'rourke, transgender marxism

elaine scarry, the body in pain

jules joanne gleeson, this infamous proposal

michael parenti, blackshirts & reds

paulo freire, pedagogy of the oppressed

peter drucker, warped: gay normality and queer anticapitalism

rosemary hennessy, profit and pleasure

sophie lewis, abolish the family

suzy kim, everyday life in the north korean revolution

walter rodney, the russian revolution: a view from the third world

[imfoive]

The Youngest Son - Chapter 1

Minho x Reader (fem.) Genre: non-idol au!, Suspense, Angst, Romance, Mature Warnings: mentions of drugs, cursing, death, physical assault, somewhat proofread WC: 2.8k A/N: A short read, just want to gauge if I should continue. Feedback is always welcome, enjoy! ── MASTERLIST

Synopsis: The youngest son of the Lee family was stubborn, he was arrogant, he was conniving. Hiding it all behind the mask of a calm and collected man, the youngest son was a master at mind games. Playing a dangerous game where trust is a luxury and betrayal lurks around every corner. He had sworn once, to not let family ties or any feelings hold him back. Yet, against all odds, she had him completely wrapped around her fingers, and he had no desire to break free.

CHAPTER 1 ──────────────────── The youngest son of the Lee family was stubborn, he was arrogant, he was conniving. But he did a very good job at keeping it all hidden behind the persona of a perfect son. A calm and cool-headed man. The youngest son of the Lee family was a master at mind games.

At age ten, he learned that the woman he had called “mother” for as long as he could remember, was not his birth mother. Her unnecessary prejudice against him and cold shoulder she gave him out of the public eye, all began to make sense. He was a constant reminder of the unfaithful deeds her husband, his father, had done unbeknownst to her. At age ten he learned why he was treated differently than his older, dimwit brothers. enduring beatings for the slightest mistakes, weren’t for nothing. He learned from a young age that staying besides his grandfather, the patriarch, would keep him safer than he was alone. The old man didn’t pick favorites between his grandchildren, even if one was the product of a master-maid affair, afterall it was Lee blood that ran through the kids’ veins.

At thirteen he was sent to boarding school, abroad to soon learn the ropes of the family business. Though he fell at the bottom of the hierarchy in the Lee family, every member had to play their part, because that’s what it took to run one of the biggest industrial companies.

At fifteen, he met her. A enemies-to-aquaintances in the midst of a school filled with children from affluent families, where donations greased the wheels. Despite everyone trying to curry favor with him, he maintained a facade of a well-behaved young master. He wasn’t sure when this persona took root or how he managed to suppress his true emotions so effectively, but it became ingrained over time.

While others sought his friendship and the girls aimed to get closer, hoping for a future with the Lee family, she was the exception. She saw through his polite smiles and gentlemanly demeanor, refusing to play along with the charade. He found her scrutiny unsettling, as she saw past the facade he worked so hard to maintain. He didn’t like it one bit. 

The young master disliked the smirk on her face and the unreadable look in her gaze when she had him cornered. He felt vulnerable and was painfully aware of her intentions. She was establishing dominance, laying a foundation that challenged his carefully crafted image. And it didn’t help that her family was business friends with his. 

Business friends. 

They smiled for the cameras. Mingled in social gatherings. Shook hands, sent gifts. Their mothers would frequent the parlors together, shop together. But behind closed doors, they hated each other’s guts. Like every other conglomerate dynasty. But still, he couldn’t threaten her, or put it through her head that he was the one in charge. So he only kept tabs on her, letting her push him around, letting her be the boss. He was the class president, number one in the whole school, but bowed down to a brat who read him like an open book.

At twenty five, his heart pounded loudly against his chest, his eyes wide, cheeks feeling terribly hot as he stared into her own shocked gaze. Pressed against one another in a broom closet, his hand still pressed against her lips, he could feel her hot breath against his fingers.

The line between hatred and attraction began to blur.

He still vividly recalled the bitter taste that surged in his mouth when he heard the announcement of her engagement. Anger gripped him tightly, his hand clenching around the champagne glass. For a fleeting moment, his emotions flashed across his face before he regained his composure, masking his feelings as swiftly as they had surfaced. But it was too late—she had already caught that brief flicker of raw emotion.

Their eyes locked amidst the applause from the crowd, celebrating her and her new fiancé on stage. A chill ran down his spine at the intensity of their gaze. He hated the fact that he couldn’t decipher her expression as easily as she seemed to read him. Her father pulled her closer, placing her between himself and her future husband, while his own uncle chuckled, posing for the flashing cameras with his arm around his son's shoulder, nudging him towards her. Nearby, his cousin beamed at her, already envisioning their future together as husband and wife.

She was to marry into the Lee family. Becoming the bride of his older cousin—a union orchestrated for business rather than love.

He was pissed. And he didn’t understand why.

No.

He understood why, but still he smiled, clapping like everyone else in the crowd. Seeing his smile she copies, her fists clenched her dress into balls at her side, tearing away her eyes from him. Turning to the reporters and offering practiced smiles to the cameras. And he hates every bit of it.

After a few more glasses of champagne, several smiles exchanged with other businessmen in the hall, he finds himself lightheaded outside the event room, in some empty corridor of the hotel. Leaning against the wall with one hand, the other pressed to his head, his gaze fixates on the vivid red carpet beneath his feet. The vibrant color stands in stark contrast to the turmoil churning within him.

When did he drink so much?

Normally, he was adept at maintaining control over his alcohol consumption, always maintaining a balance between sobriety and intoxication. But right now, his head was pounding.

    “Hey Lee Minho!”

He recognized her voice instantly, a sound etched into his memory after a decade of hearing it call his name—whether sober, ill, or in any other state. 

Startled, he turned to see her approaching with purpose, her dress billowing around her in the wind stirred up by her hurried steps. Before he could react, she had him pinned against the wall he leaned on for support. He was disoriented, his eyes struggling to fixate on her furious expression while he attempted to stand upright, hand instinctively returning to his forehead. She intercepted his hand, pressing it against the wall alongside his other one, effectively trapping him.

The closeness of her presence, her firm grip on his hands, and the intensity in her eyes broke through his haze. He met her gaze, their faces mere inches apart, and in that moment, the barrier he had been building between them, built on years of tolerance, misunderstanding, and unspoken desires, began to crumble. Minho clung to that small bit of conscious control he had left, determined to remain stoic despite his trapped circumstance.

    “Why did you leave the hall?” Her question pierced through the heavy silence, her fingers tightening around his wrist as she searched his impassive gaze for answers.

    “I felt light headed.” He replied evenly, his voice betraying the turmoil swirling within him.

Her brows furrowed, uncertainty flickering in her eyes as they briefly glanced at his shirt before meeting him again.

    “Did you know about the engagement?” She asked softly, her voice tinged with vulnerability.

Minho opens his mouth, but his gaze flickered towards the distant sounds of people chatting down the hall. In a sudden move, he grasped her arm, surprising her, and swiftly ushered her through the nearest door.

    “What are—”

His hand presses against her lips, her whines could wait. The dark broom-closet was the last place someone would look in search for either of them. He didn’t need another mess of people catching him with his future sister-in-law pressed against each other in the halls of her parents’ hotel.

Except when he finally sighs after the footsteps outside the door fade into the distance, he realizes that was the exact situation they were in, but closer. Much closer. 

    “Minho.” She whispers, fingers pulling away at his hand that covered her mouth. 

Maybe it was the alcohol fully taking over, but her skin felt hot against his, the rise and fall of her chest brushing against him in a way that felt searingly hot. His heart pounded louder with each passing second. Her gaze hardened, a reminder that her anger hadn't dissipated.

    “Are you happy that I’m engaged to your cousin?”

Minho remained silent, swallowing hard to soothe his suddenly dry throat. Leaning his head back, he stared up at the dark ceiling, that bitter taste in his mouth returning. He could feel her eyes on him without needing to glance down at her, acutely aware of their proximity. His arm raised, maybe to pull her even closer or to push her away, he wasn’t sure exactly because his hand faltered in the air before dropping to his side, defeated.

    “Yeah I am.” 

No he wasn’t.

He looks down at her, smiling his fake smiles.

    “Congratulations, sister-in-law.” 

He hated it. 

The tears had welled in her eyes, and he chose to ignore them. He exits the closet, squinting at the bright light that seemed blindingly brighter after coming out of the dark room. He does his best to not look back, trying to walk-straight, away from her. Any longer and he might go back in there and do god knows what.

She remained frozen in the closet’s stillness, staring at the closed door where moments ago, they had shared a fleeting but charged encounter. It took her a moment to collect herself, wiping away the tears that had escaped her control. Then, anger simmered beneath the surface. She’d make him pay, she’d make him take back his words. She was good at doing that. 

Returning to the bustling main hall, she scanned the crowd for Minho, but he was conspicuously absent. Instead, she felt an unwelcome touch at the small of her back, causing her to flinch involuntarily. The fingers belonged to someone else, a reminder of her imminent future tied to the Lee family.

    “I was looking for you Y/N.”

Her fiancé, Jae, offered her a glass of champagne with a smile, his other hand deftly retrieving it from a passing server and passing it to her. She managed a forced smile of gratitude, accepting the drink amidst the constant click of cameras capturing their every move.

    “Thank you, Jae.” She murmured, the formality in her tone belying the lack of intimacy between them.

There was no respite from the public eye, no chance for a private moment. Reporters hovered nearby, snapping photos incessantly, amplifying her frustration. She longed to push him away or unleash her pent-up anger, but she restrained herself. Instead, she stood composed, facing him directly. Her fingers instinctively reached for his tie, straightening it with practiced precision.

    “You reek of alcohol.” She commented casually, her smile unwavering as she rested her hand on his jacket.

Jae smirked, glancing around briefly before leaning in closer to her.

    “Already starting to nag, huh?” His tone was more of annoyance than tease.

    “Better get used to it then.” She retorted, raising an eyebrow and tilting her head subtly, a hint of defiance underlying her compliant demeanor.

Jae had long understood her independence and resilience, attributes shaped by her status as the sole heiress to her family’s wealth. It was clear to him that she didn’t tolerate disrespect from anyone. Yet, Jae possessed his own confidence and a streak of cockiness, and he wasn't about to let her forget his presence.

    “We’ll see, baby.” He chuckled, his tone dropping as he drew her closer, a move intended to assert his control over the situation. Her involuntary shudder in response only fueled his ego, reinforcing his belief that he could handle her strong personality and keep her in check. ─────────────────────── Minho stood in front of the restroom mirror, the icy water splashed on his face offering a jolt that helped clear his mind. The cold sensation contrasted sharply with the heat of his skin, instantly sobering him up from the alcohol-induced haze. As he stared at his reflection, the running water echoed loudly in the otherwise eerie silence of the men's room.

His eyes locked onto his own, but his thoughts raced elsewhere—to the intense moment with Y/N in the dark broom closet. He vividly recalled the heat of her breath against his hand, her eyes fixed on him with a mixture of anticipation and uncertainty. A part of him wished he had kissed her, he had marked kissed bruises down her neck, claimed her as his. But his sane side reminded him of the harsh reality, suppressing his desires. Still, the memory of her pressed against him replayed in his mind, stirring emotions he struggled to reconcile with his usual composure.

    “Fuck.”

He mutters, almost pounding the sink handle shut.

He didn’t realize how long he had been holed away in the restroom, or exactly how long he had been thinking about her afterwards. Returning to the main event hall, he noticed that the crowd had thinned considerably, with guests beginning to depart as the night wore on. His secretary easily found him amidst the lingering attendees, gently pulling him aside to deliver news of an impending family meeting at the Lee estate the following morning. And to head home now that all the important guests have left.

So he does as he’s told. Like always. With a smile.

Minho found himself in a haze as his car pulled into the underground parking lot of his apartment complex. He was awake but disconnected, his mind lost in a whirl of thoughts and emotions from the evening. He mumbled a thank you to his secretary before stumbling out of the car, exhaustion weighing heavily on him.

The elevator ride to the fourteenth floor felt excruciatingly slow, each ding echoing in the eerie silence that seemed to follow him. Fumbling for his keycard as he approached his apartment door, he froze at the sight of a familiar figure crouched beside it. Her head turned at the sound of his footsteps, meeting his gaze with a mixture of relief and distress.

Y/N stood up abruptly as he approached, and before he could react, she ran towards him, her arms enveloping him in a tight embrace. Caught off guard, Minho stumbled backwards, her grip unyielding.

Tears streamed down her face, and Minho felt a surge of anxiety as he struggled to comprehend the suddenness of her presence and emotions. Her crying and shaking embrace were overwhelming, stirring conflicting feelings within him that he wasn’t prepared to confront.

    “What’s wrong—” He begins to say as he pulls her to face him, only to fall silent. 

His words faltered as he noticed the red mark on her cheek and the cut on her lower lip, dried blood marking its edges. Shock widened his eyes as he took in the sight, his mind racing to grasp the situation.

    “Jae-h-he attacked me.” She whispered through a sob.

His expression hardens at her words, she buries her head back into his chest, sniffing back cries loudly again, her cries echoing in the corridor. It was the first time he had ever seen her in such a vulnerable state, and it shook him to the core. His initial confusion and concern quickly turned to a fierce protectiveness, a surge of anger rising within him at the sight of her injuries.

Gently, he pulled her into his apartment, closing the door behind them. Without a word, he guided her to the couch, his movements careful yet urgent. He dressed her wound after finally calming her down. She’s been to his apartment plenty of times, uninvited mostly, bothering him. So seeing her in such a vulnerable state fascinated him, yet his heart clenched painfully. 

Minho knew exactly what it was, and why it was. But he was in denial.

There was no way he could want her.

Was he even allowed to feel that way?

As he studied her, he couldn't ignore the intensity in her gaze, how she watched him with a keen awareness that unsettled him.

But was she aware of the control she had over him?

That she had him completely under her spell? 

Closing the first-aid kit, he looks back at her, blood-red eyes and tear-stricken face.

Minho seethed with anger and frustration. He shouldn’t have let her leave that damn broom closet. He shouldn’t have let her get hurt. The thought of Jae laying hands on her ignited a fury within him he hadn’t felt in a while.

He gently rested his palm against her cheek, his touch surprisingly tender despite the storm of emotions raging inside him. This newfound side of him, fierce and protective, startled even himself. His gaze softened as he caressed her face, leaning in closer.

    “Should I kill him?” ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ to be continued.

[radiofreederry]

happy birthday, Mao Zedong! (December 26, 1893)

One of the 20th century's most influential figures, Mao Zedong was born in Hunan province to a wealthy farmer. Mao's political education began by reading the works of liberal reformer Zheng Guanying and later joined the rebellion against the Qing. Mao began associating with Chinese Marxist Li Dazhao, and soon came to embrace Marxism himself. He became an early member of the Communist Party of China and joined it in taking up arms in the name of revolution and helping to organize the Chinese Red Army. Over the course of the long Chinese Civil War, Mao's theoretical acumen, organizational skill, and tactical intelligence gained him respect and, ultimately, leadership of the party. He would lead the communists to victory against both the invading Japanese and the conservative republicans, proclaiming the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Mao set to work modernizing China and laying the foundations for socialism, instituting land reform and an industrial program while politically transforming Chinese society and suppressing reaction and liberalism. Through his leadership, China was transformed from a still semi-feudal state into a world power. Mao provided a number of contributions to Marxist theory, and his ideas are variously interpreted through such tendencies as Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and Mao Zedong Thought. He died in 1976.

"A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another."

[macrolit]

By Elisabeth Egan May 18, 2024

“You’d be shocked by how many books have women chained in basements,” Reese Witherspoon said. “I know it happens in the world. I don’t want to read a book about it.”

Nor does she want to read an academic treatise, or a 700-page novel about a tree.

Sitting in her office in Nashville, occasionally dipping into a box of takeout nachos, Witherspoon talked about what she does like to read — and what she looks for in a selection for Reese’s Book Club, which she referred to in a crisp third person.

“It needs to be optimistic,” Witherspoon said. “It needs to be shareable. Do you close this book and say, ‘I know exactly who I want to give it to?’”

But, first and foremost, she wants books by women, with women at the center of the action who save themselves. “Because that’s what women do,” she said. “No one’s coming to save us.”

Witherspoon, 48, has now been a presence in the book world for a decade. Her productions of novels like “Big Little Lies,” “Little Fires Everywhere” and “The Last Thing He Told Me” are foundations of the binge-watching canon. Her book club picks reliably land on the best-seller list for weeks, months or, in the case of “Where the Crawdads Sing,” years. In 2023, print sales for the club’s selections outpaced those of Oprah’s Book Club and Read With Jenna, according to Circana Bookscan, adding up to 2.3 million copies sold.

So how did an actor who dropped out of college (fine, Stanford) become one of the most influential people in an industry known for being intractable and slightly tweedy?

It started with Witherspoon’s frustration over the film industry’s skimpy representation of women onscreen — especially seasoned, strong, smart, brave, mysterious, complicated and, yes, dangerous women.

“When I was about 34, I stopped reading interesting scripts,” she said.

Witherspoon had already made a name for herself with “Election,” “Legally Blonde” and “Walk the Line.” But, by 2010, Hollywood was in flux: Streaming services were gaining traction. DVDs were following VHS tapes to the land of forgotten technology.

“When there’s a big economic shift in the media business, it’s not the superhero movies or independent films we lose out on,” Witherspoon said. “It’s the middle, which is usually where women live. The family drama. The romantic comedy. So I decided to fund a company to make those kinds of movies.”

In 2012, she started the production company Pacific Standard with Bruna Papandrea. Its first projects were film adaptations of books: “Gone Girl” and “Wild,” which both opened in theaters in 2014.

Growing up in Nashville, Witherspoon knew the value of a library card. She caught the bug early, she said, from her grandmother, Dorothea Draper Witherspoon, who taught first grade and devoured Danielle Steel novels in a “big cozy lounger” while sipping iced tea from a glass “with a little paper towel wrapped around it.”

This attention to detail is a smoke signal of sorts: Witherspoon is a person of words.

When she was in high school, Witherspoon stayed after class to badger her English teacher — Margaret Renkl, now a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times — about books that weren’t part of the curriculum. When Witherspoon first moved to Los Angeles, books helped prepare her for the “chaos” of filmmaking; “The Making of the African Queen” by Katharine Hepburn was a particular favorite.

So it made sense that, as soon as Witherspoon joined Instagram, she started sharing book recommendations. Authors were tickled and readers shopped accordingly. In 2017, Witherspoon made it official: Reese’s Book Club became a part of her new company, Hello Sunshine.

The timing was fortuitous, according to Pamela Dorman, senior vice president and publisher of Pamela Dorman Books/Viking, who edited the club’s inaugural pick, “Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.” “The book world needed something to help boost sales in a new way,” she said.

Reese’s Book Club was that something: “Eleanor Oliphant” spent 85 weeks on the paperback best-seller list. The club’s second pick, “The Alice Network,” spent nearly four months on the weekly best-seller lists and two months on the audio list. Its third, “The Lying Game,” spent 18 weeks on the weekly lists.

“There’s nothing better than getting that phone call,” added Dorman, who has now edited two more Reese’s Book Club selections.

Kiley Reid’s debut novel, “Such a Fun Age,” got the nod in January 2020. She said, “When I was on book tour, a lot of women would tell me, ‘I haven’t read a book in four years, but I trust Reese.’” Four years later, on tour for her second novel, “Come and Get It,” Reid met women who were reading 100 books a year.

Witherspoon tapped into a sweet spot between literary and commercial fiction, with a few essay collections and memoirs sprinkled in. She turned out to be the literary equivalent of a fit model — a reliable bellwether for readers in search of intelligent, discussion-worthy fare, hold the Proust. She wanted to help narrow down the choices for busy readers, she said, “to bring the book club out of your grandma’s living room and online.”

She added: “The unexpected piece of it all was the economic impact on these authors’ lives.”

One writer became the first person in her family to own a home. “She texted me a picture of the key,” Witherspoon said. “I burst into tears.”

Witherspoon considers a handful of books each month. Submissions from publishers are culled by a small group that includes Sarah Harden, chief executive of Hello Sunshine; Gretchen Schreiber, manager of books (her original title was “bookworm”); and Jon Baker, whose team at Baker Literary Scouting scours the market for promising manuscripts.

Not only is Witherspoon focused on stories by women — “the Bechdel test writ large,” Baker said — but also, “Nothing makes her happier than getting something out in the world that you might not see otherwise.”

When transgender rights were in the headlines in 2018, the club chose “This Is How It Always Is,” Laurie Frankel’s novel about a family grappling with related issues in the petri dish of their own home. “We track the long tail of our book club picks and this one, without fail, continues to sell,” Baker said.

Witherspoon’s early readers look for a balance of voices, backgrounds and experiences. They also pay attention to the calendar. “Everyone knows December and May are the busiest months for women,” Harden said, referring to the mad rush of the holidays and the end of the school year. “You don’t want to read a literary doorstop then. What do you want to read on summer break? What do you want to read in January?”

Occasionally the group chooses a book that isn’t brand-new, as with the club’s April pick, “The Most Fun We Ever Had,” from 2019. When Claire Lombardo learned that her almost-five-year-old novel had been anointed, she thought there had been a mistake; after all, her new book, “Same As it Ever Was,” is coming out next month. “It’s wild,” Lombardo said. “It’s not something that I was expecting.”

Sales of “The Most Fun We Ever Had” increased by 10,000 percent after the announcement, according to Doubleday. Within the first two weeks, 27,000 copies were sold. The book has been optioned by Hello Sunshine.

Witherspoon preferred not to elaborate on a few subjects: competition with other top-shelf book clubs (“We try not to pick the same books”); the lone author who declined to be part of hers (“I have a lot of respect for her clarity”); and the 2025 book she’s already called dibs on (“You can’t imagine that Edith Wharton or Graham Greene didn’t write it”).

But she was eager to set the record straight on two fronts. Her team doesn’t get the rights to every book — “It’s just how the cookie crumbles,” she said — and, Reese’s Book Club doesn’t make money off sales of its picks. Earnings come from brand collaborations and affiliate revenue.

This is true of all celebrity book clubs. An endorsement from one of them is a free shot of publicity, but one might argue that Reese’s Book Club does a bit more for its books and authors than most. Not only does it promote each book from hardcover to paperback, it supports authors in subsequent phases of their careers.

Take Reid, for instance. More than three years after Reese’s Book Club picked her first novel, it hosted a cover reveal for “Come and Get It,” which came out in January. This isn’t the same as a yellow seal on the cover, but it’s still a spotlight with the potential to be seen by the club’s 2.9 million Instagram followers.

“I definitely felt like I was joining a very large community,” Reid said.

“Alum” writers tend to stay connected with one another via social media, swapping woot woots and advice. They’re also invited to participate in Hello Sunshine events and Lit Up, a mentorship program for underrepresented writers. Participants get editing and coaching from Reese’s Book Club authors, plus a marketing commitment from the club when their manuscripts are submitted to agents and editors.

“I describe publishing and where we sit in terms of being on a river,” Schreiber said. “We’re downstream; we’re looking at what they’re picking. Lit Up gave us the ability to look upstream and say, ‘We’d like to make a change here.’”

The first Lit Up-incubated novel, “Time and Time Again” by Chatham Greenfield, is coming out from Bloomsbury YA in July. Five more fellows have announced the sales of their books.

As Reese’s Book Club approaches a milestone — the 100th pick, to be announced in September — it continues to adapt to changes in the market. Print sales for club selections peaked at five million in 2020, and they’ve softened since then, according to Circana Bookscan. In 2021, Candle Media, a Blackstone-backed media company, bought Hello Sunshine for $900 million. Witherspoon is a member of Candle Media’s board. She is currently co-producing a “Legally Blonde” prequel series for Amazon Prime Video.

This month, Reese’s Book Club will unveil an exclusive audio partnership with Apple, allowing readers to find all the picks in one place on the Apple Books app. “I want people to stop saying, ‘I didn’t really read it, I just listened,’” Witherspoon said. “Stop that. If you listened, you read it. There’s no right way to absorb a book.”

She feels that Hollywood has changed over the years: “Consumers are more discerning about wanting to hear stories that are generated by a woman.”

Even as she’s looking forward, Witherspoon remembers her grandmother, the one who set her on this path.

“Somebody came up to me at the gym the other day and he said” — here she put on a gentle Southern drawl — “‘I’m going to tell you something I bet you didn’t hear today.’ And he goes, ‘Your grandma taught me how to read.’”

Another smoke signal, and a reminder of what lives on.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

John Knefel at MMFA:

The Heritage Foundation — lead organizer of Project 2025, a sprawling effort to provide policy and staffing for a second Trump administration — recently promoted an apprenticeship program that opens up workers to increased exploitation. Heritage also criticized President Joe Biden for ensuring that most federal infrastructure contracting projects are covered by collective bargaining agreements.

In an article headlined, “Harris, Walz Policy Records Undermine Pro-Worker Rhetoric,” Heritage argues for a return to Trump-era apprenticeship policies that left new workers vulnerable by creating a two-tier workforce, and it disparages unions as detrimental to the working class. The result is standard-fare for the conservative think tank, which regularly attacks unions and promotes anti-worker policies like so-called right-to-work laws, which starve unions of funds by denying them the ability to collect fees from all the workers they represent.  As head of Project 2025, Heritage has waged an all-out campaign against unions and the entire working class. The effort’s policybook — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise — calls for the dismantling of New Deal-era wins for organized labor by carving out state-level exceptions to the National Labor Relations Act. It would also eviscerate overtime regulations and open the door to increased child labor exploitation.

The new article furthers Heritage’s broadside against organized labor, even while masquerading as being pro-worker. Heritage criticizes what it characterizes as “the Biden-Harris Administration’s multi-front assault against apprenticeship programs,” specifically the administration’s cancellation of “new Industry Recognized Apprenticeship Programs,” or IRAPS, “that were training people in high-demand areas like nursing and technology, which now face significant workforce shortages.” In fact, IRAPs were a Trump-era policy that created a new class of apprenticeship programs that were controlled and overseen by employers — rather than the Department of Labor — and loosened standards meant to protect workers. As the progressive think tank The Roosevelt Institute wrote in response to the Trump-era rule, IRAPs are “likely to lead to a proliferation of programs that are lower-quality,” and could allow employers to exploit “loopholes in minimum wage laws.”

[...] This new salvo from Heritage is just the latest example of right-wing media pretending to endorse a pro-worker agenda, only to advance policies that benefit employers at the expense of labor.

The Heritage Foundation= enemies of workers’ rights.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Social Security is class war, not intergenerational conflict

Today, Tor.com published my latest short story, "The Canadian Miracle," set in the world of my forthcoming (Nov 14) novel, The Lost Cause. I am serializing this one on my podcast! Here's part one.

The very instant the Social Security Act was passed in 1935, American conservatives (in both parties) began lobbying to destroy it. After all, a reserve army of forelock-tugging plebs and family retainers won't voluntarily assemble themselves – they need to be goaded into it by the threat of slowly starving to death in their dotage.

They're at it again (again). The oligarch-thinktank industrial complex has unleashed a torrent of scare stories about Social Security's imminent insolvency, rehearsing the same shopworn doom predictions that they've been repeating since the Nixonite billionaire cabinet member Peter G Peterson created a "foundation" to peddle his disinformation in 2008:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I.O.U.S.A.

Peterson's go-to tactic is convincing young people that all the Social Security money they're paying into the system will be gobbled up by already-wealthy old people, leaving nothing behind for them. Conservatives have been peddling this ditty since the 1930s, and they're still at it – in the pages of the New York Times, no less:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/26/opinion/social-security-medicare-aging.html

The Times has become a veritable mouthpiece for this nonsense, publishing misleading and nonsensical charts and data to support the idea that millennials are losing a generational war to boomers, who will leave the cupboard bare:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/27/opinion/aging-medicare-social-security.html

As Robert Kuttner writes for The American Prospect, this latest rhetorical assault on Social Security is timed to coincide with the ascension of the GOP House's new Speaker, Mike Johnson, who makes no secret of his intention to destroy Social Security:

https://prospect.org/economy/2023-10-31-debunking-latest-attack-social-security/

The GOP says it wants to destroy Social Security for two reasons: first, to promote "choice" by letting us provide for our own retirement by flushing even more of our savings into the rigged casino that is the stock market; and second, because America doesn't have enough dollars to feed and house the elderly.

But for the New York Times' audience, they've figured out how to launder this far-right nonsense through the language of social justice. Rather than condemning the impecunious olds for their moral failing to lay the correct bets in the stock market, Social Security's opponents paint the elderly as a gerontocratic elite, flush with cash that rightfully belongs to the young.

To support this conclusion, they throw around statistics about how house-rich the Boomers are, and how much consumption they can afford. But as Kuttner points out, the Boomers' real-estate wealth comes not from aggressive house-flipping, but from merely owning a place to live. America's housing bubble means that younger people can't afford this basic human necessity, but the answer to that isn't making old people homeless – it's providing a lot more housing, and banning housing speculation:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/

It's true that older people are doing a lot of consumption spending – but the bulk of that spending isn't on cruises to Alaska to see the melting glaciers, it's on health care. Old people aren't luxuriating in their joint replacements and coronary bypasses. Calling this "consumption" is deliberately misleading.

But as Kuttner points out, there's another, more important point to be made about inequality in America – the most significant wealth gap in America is between workers and owners, not young people and old people. The "average" Boomer's net worth factors in the wealth of Warren Buffett and Donald Trump. Older renters are more rent-burdened and precarious than younger renters, and most older Americans have little to no retirement savings:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/teresaghilarducci/2023/10/28/the-new-york-times-greedy-geezer-myth/

Less than one percent of Social Security benefits go to millionaires – that's because the one percent constitute one percent of the population. It's right there in the name. The one percent are politically and economically important, but that's because they are low in numbers. Giving Social Security benefits to everyone over 65 will not result in a significant outlay to the ultra-wealthy, because there aren't many ultra-wealthy people in America. The problem of inequality isn't the expanding pool of rich people, it's the explosion of wealth for a contracting pool of rich people.

If conservatives were serious about limiting the grip of these "undeserving" Social Security recipients on our economy and its politics, they'd advocate for interitance taxes (which effectively don't exist in America), not the abolition of Social Security. The problem of wealth in America is that it is establishing permanent dynasties which are incompatible with social mobility. In other words, we have created a new hereditary aristocracy – and its corollary, a new hereditary peasantry:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/19/dynastic-wealth/#caste

Hereditary aristocracies are poisonous for lots of reasons, but one of the most pressing problems they present is political destabilization. American belief in democracy, the rule of law, and a national identity is q function of Americans' perception of fairness. If you think that your kids can't ever have a better life than you, if you think that the cops will lock you up for a crime for which a rich person would escape justice, then why obey the law? Why vote? Why not cheat and steal? Why not burn it all down?

The wealthy put a lot of energy into distracting us from this question. Just lately, they've cooked up a gigantic panic over a nonexistent wave of retail theft:

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/10/31/the-retail-theft-surge-that-isnt-report-says-crime-is-being-exaggerated-to-cover-up-other-retail-issues/

Meanwhile, the very real, non-imaginary, accelerating, multi-billion-dollar plague of wage theft is conspicuously missing from the public discourse, despite a total that dwarfs all retail theft in America by an order of magnitude:

https://fair.org/home/wage-theft-is-built-into-the-business-models-of-many-industries/

America does have a property crime crisis, but it's a crisis of wage-theft, not shoplifting. Likewise, America does have a retirement crisis: it's a crisis of inequality, not intergenerational conflict.

Social Security has been under sustained assault since its inception, and that's in large part due to a massive blunder on the part of FDR. Roosevelt believed that people would be more protective of Social Security if they thought it was funded by their taxes: "we bought it, it's ours." But – as FDR well knew – that's not how government spending works.

The US government can't run out of US dollars. The US government doesn't get its dollars for spending from your taxes. The US government spends money into existence and taxes it out of existence:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/14/situation-normal/#mmt

A moment's thought will reveal that it has to be this way. The US government (and its fiscal agents, chartered banks) are the only source of dollars. How can the US tax dollars away from earners unless it has first spent those dollars into the economy?

The point of taxation isn't to fund programs, it's to reduce the private sector's spending power so that there are things for sale to the public sector. If we only spent money into the economy but didn't take any out of the economy, the private sector would have so many dollars to spend that any time the government tried to buy something, there'd be a bidding war that would result in massive price spikes.

When a government runs a "balanced budget," that means that it has taxed as much out of the economy as it put into the economy at the start of the year. When a government runs a "surplus," that means it's left less money in the economy at the end of the year than there was at the beginning of the year. This is fine if the economy has contracted overall, but if the economy stayed constant or grew, that means there are fewer dollars chasing more goods and services, which leads to deflation and all kinds of toxic outcomes, like borrowing more bank-created money, which makes the finance sector richer and the real economy poorer.

Of course, most governments run "deficits" – which is another way of saying that they leave more dollars in the economy at the end of the year than there was at the start of the year, or, put another way, a deficit probably means that your economy got bigger, so it needed more dollars.

None of this means that governments can spend without limit. But it does mean that governments can buy anything that's for sale in their own currency. There are a lot of goods for sale in US dollars, both goods that are produced domestically and goods from abroad (this is why it's such a big deal that most of the world's oil is priced in dollars).

Governments do have to worry about getting into bidding wars with the private sector. To do that, governments come up with ways of reducing the private sector's spending power. One way to do that is taxes – just taking money away from us at the end of the year and annihilating it. Another way is to ration goods – think of WWII, or the direct economic interventions during the covid lockdowns. A third way is to sell bonds, which is just a roundabout way of getting us to promise not to spend some of our dollars for a while, in return for a smaller number of dollars in interest payments:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/08/howard-dino/#payfors

FDR knew all of this, but he still told the American people that their taxes were funding Social Security, thinking that this would protect the program. This backfired terribly. Today, Democrats have embraced the myth that taxes fund spending and join with their Republican counterparts in insisting that all spending must be accompanied by either taxes or cuts (AKA "payfors").

These Democrats voluntarily put their own policymaking powers in chains, refusing to take any action on behalf of the American people unless they can sell a tax increase or a budget cut. They insist that we can't have nice things until we make billionaires poor – which is the same as saying that we can't have nice things, period.

There are damned good reasons to make billionaires poor. The legitimacy of the American system is incompatible with the perception that wealth and power are fixed by birth, and that the rich and powerful don't have to play by the rules.

The capture of America's institutions – legislatures, courts, regulators – by the rich and powerful is a ghastly situation, and to reverse it, we'll need all the help we can get. Every hour that Americans spend worrying about their how they'll pay their rent, their medical bills, or their student loans is an hour lost to the fight against oligarchy and corruption.

In other words, it's not true that we can't have nice things until we get rid of billionaires – rather, we can't get rid of billionaires until we have nice things.

This is the premise of my next novel, The Lost Cause, which comes out on November 14; it's set in a world where care and solidarity have unleashed millions of people on the project of maintaining the habitability of our planet amidst the polycrisis:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

It's a fundamentally hopeful book, and it's already won praise from Naomi Klein, Rebecca Solnit, Bill McKibben and Kim Stanley Robinson. I wrote it while thinking through and researching these issues. Conservatives want us to think that we can't do better than this, that – to quote Margaret Thatcher – "there is no alternative." Replacing that narrative is critical to the kinds of mass mobilizations that our very survival depends on.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/intergenerational-warfare/#five-pound-blocks-of-cheese

This Saturday (Nov 4), I'm keynoting the Hackaday Supercon in Pasadena, CA.

[communistkenobi]

Obviously art does not rest on methods, media, or the amount of effort a person exerted in making it, but I think AI art is yet another way that capitalism is changing the form and function of art (separating artworks from their original meaning on a different and even larger scale) and given that it is made by exploiting workers (the original artists and the people they pay pennies to sort through it to remove disturbing images) it makes people feel yet more powerless in the face of corporations so there is a big negative reaction to it. This negative reaction may not be articulated in the way you want but I think it's very understandable that people have reactionary feelings about large scale corporate exploitation.

just for the record before I respond, I am replying to this ask in good faith just as you are asking in good faith, I’m not angry at you and many of these questions I’m asking are rhetorical, for the purposes of reflection. So please no slapfighting in the notes, thank you!

First: I’m not disputing exploitation. in fact privileging AI as uniquely exploitative handwaves away the massive amount of exploitation that artists already endure and have endured for a very long time, as well as the horrific amounts of labour exploitation involved in mass producing the ‘tools of the trade’ so to speak.

But this is, again, a non-sequitur to my argument, which is that art produced under exploitative, destructive, “lazy” or politically repugnant conditions is still art. MCU films are art regardless of the fact that they are 3-hour long informercials for the American empire and require massive labour exploitation from CGI animators, actors, film set workers, and everything else: advertisements are art: AI art is art. Horrifying, trite, unoriginal, bad, socially destructive, maybe all of those things are true and we can talk about the merits of those claims (I certainly have strong opinions about them), but what is politically gained from saying bad, unoriginal, horrifying, or trite art isn’t art? Whose definitions are we using here, and if those definitions should be universalised, what does it mean for artists who are only unoriginal, only bad, only whatever else?

I return to my original example: are children not qualified to be artists if they only make “bad” art? I used to trace movie stills from Harry Potter photo books as a child because I loved the characters - am I a fraud for doing so? Am I given grace for my incompetence and “theft” on the basis of me “still learning how to do real art”? When does this grace period end? If we argue that only struggle can produce art, what level of struggle? Struggle for whom? Drawing isn’t difficult for me because I was taught how to hold a pencil, read, write, and draw by a western industrial publicly-funded primary school by a teacher paid with public tax dollars, supplemented with help every night from my mother and father, two married cishet middle class people in a mostly stable (if miserable and verbally abusive) marriage - all of which is resting atop stolen indigenous land. Under what historical conditions can arguments for artistic struggle be made? When we argue for struggle(/hard work/whatever) as the basis of art we are pre-supposing a universal subject whose struggle is globally standardized and calculable - which in all of these discussions on here is (implicitly, though sometimes explicitly) a white able-bodied settler living in a western state who benefits from universal primary education that teaches them the foundational skills of how to make art. You can probably add university educated to that too, given how many of these arguments seem to be swarmed by undergraduate students.

Arguing that there needs to be some threshold for method, labour, intent, or message for art to ‘actually be art’ is politically reactionary and is what I am responding to. It requires transcendental claims about the Artist as a unique labourer set apart from and superior to all others, one whose skills are universalised and whose intent is always observable and present in their work. So if people want to talk about exploitation they should talk about exploitation, not the definition of art. It’s not my fault people can’t stay on topic!

[cool-fancier]

A Dance of Synergy

Requested by anonymous

Synopsis: Passion for dance ignited at a young age led you to WayB and a close friendship with Bada. A surprise battle ensued at Street Woman Fighter 2, showcasing your hidden connection. The shared synergy while dancing together left fans curious about the unspoken bond between you and Bada

A/N: I did rush this so please don't mind and I'm sorry if like the timeline doesn't make sense

Word count:2.6K

Your passion in movement as a child inspired you to pursue a career in dance. You found comfort in the rhythm of music from the age of five, your body responding easily to every beat. It felt as if the songs themselves were telling stories that could only be expressed through dance.

Your enthusiasm expanded immensely as a result of your unwavering dedication. Hours spent mastering each step, pirouette, and leap became a tribute to your unrelenting dedication. Dance wasn't just a hobby for you; it was your soul.

You caught the attention of local dance communities as you refined your skills, leaving a lasting impression with your mesmerising performances. Acclaim didn't come easily—countless hours of effort, pushing your body to its limits, and battling self-doubt constituted the foundation of your journey.

Then came the key moment when your sister, Noze, entered the competitive dance world for the first time. She saw your brilliance and strong commitment and realised she needed you at her side. WayB, Noze encouraged you to join her crew with her contagious enthusiasm.

Joining WayB wasn't just about dancing; it was a decision that changed the trajectory of your career. Together with your sister, the crew took the dance scene by storm, your synchronized movements leaving audiences in awe. Noze's energy blended seamlessly with your finesse, creating a dynamic duo that captured the essence of every performance.

Your partnership with WayB elevated your profile in the dance industry. Recognition followed as your talent caught the eye of choreographers and artists alike. It was during these collaborations that your expertise as a choreographer flourished, carving a path that eventually led you to the pulsating heart of the K-pop industry.

WayB's reputation paved the way for their entry into Street Woman Fighter, an electrifying dance competition. Your sister, Noze, encouraged the crew to embrace the challenge, sensing the opportunity to showcase your collective talents on a grand stage. The experience not only solidified WayB's position but also propelled you further into the dance industry's spotlight.

— — — — — — —

Your chance meeting with Bada at her dance lesson was a memorable experience. You recall approaching the studio anxiously, the slight fragrance of sweat mingling with the excitement of learning from one of the finest. Bada's enthusiasm filled the room as she effortlessly lead the class through the difficult choreography.

With your exact techniques and contagious excitement, you drew Bada's attention as the class progressed. Her compliments at the end of the lesson seemed like a reinforcement of your commitment to dancing. You had no idea that was just the beginning.

After the class, while you were catching your breath, Bada approached with a warm smile. "Wow the famous Y/N from WayB ,You were amazing in there!. Are you new to my classes?"

You chuckled nervously, grateful for the compliment. "Thank you! And stop I'm not that famous , this was my first time here. I couldn't miss the chance to learn from the legendary Bada Lee."

Bada's laughter was music to your ears. "Legendary, huh? Flattery will get you everywhere! I'm glad you enjoyed it. I hope to see you in more classes."

From that day on, you became a regular at Bada's classes. Each session was an opportunity to learn from her and share a few laughs along the way. Your admiration for her talent grew, but so did your friendship.

Your interactions expanded beyond the dance studio as the weeks evolved into months. Coffee dates, casual lunches, and even spontaneous dance-offs became common. The relationship between you and Bada was undeniable, the shared passion for dance forming the foundation of your bond.

As your friendship with Bada grew, so did the moments of discovery. You found yourselves plunging deeper into each other's worlds amid dancing rehearsals and late-night hangouts.

Bada recounted stories about her experiences in the K-pop world with magnetic passion. Her eyes twinkled as she described the joy of choreographing for some of music's biggest stars. You listened closely, enthralled by her passion for dance and the industry insights she gave.

In turn, you opened up about your experiences with WayB, detailing the high-octane moments on stage as well as the creative process behind some of your most memorable performances. Bada was an attentive listener who asked probing questions about your craft.

You discovered shared interests and variations as your chats progressed beyond dance. Bada's taste in corny romantic flicks mirrored yours, and spontaneous movie nights became a favourite hobby. Every shared laugh and meaningful conversation enhanced your friendship, from arguing the best dancing styles to playfully criticising each other's dress choices.

There were also times when you both confided in one other about the difficulties you faced in the competitive dancing scene. In those moments, your mutual support and understanding established the cornerstone of your new partnership.

There were glimpses of something more in the midst of the growing friendship. The lingering looks, the unintentional touches that sent sparks flying, and the butterflies in your stomach when you were together—it was an emotional dance that neither of you could resist.

It was during a spontaneous outing to a bustling street food market that the unspoken tension between you finally surfaced. Amidst the aroma of sizzling delicacies and the ambient chatter, Bada turned to you with a thoughtful expression.

"You know, spending time with you has been incredible. I feel like I've known you for much longer than we actually have. There's this connection between us that's hard to ignore."

You nodded, feeling the same way but also unsure of where to take the conversation. "I feel it too, Bada. It's like we just... click."

The air between you held a silent question, a mutual acknowledgment of the unspoken feelings that lingered beneath the surface. It was a defining moment—a crossroads where friendship and something deeper converged.

With a soft smile, Bada reached out, gently taking your hand. "How about we explore this further? Take things one step at a time and see where this journey leads us?"

Your heart skipped a beat at her words, relief flooding in as the unspoken tension dissipated. "I'd love that, Bada. Let's see where this dance takes us."

That moment marked the beginning of a new chapter in your relationship. From there, the transition from friends to partners was a natural progression, solidifying the beautiful connection you shared.

Amidst the bustling street food market, the conversation lingered in the air, a silent understanding hanging between you and Bada. The playful banter and shared laughter seemed to create a cocoon around the two of you, shielding you from the outside world.

As the evening sun cast a warm glow, Bada leaned in, her eyes twinkling mischievously. "You know, there's one thing we haven't tried yet."

Your heart raced, anticipation mingling with a hint of nervousness. "And what might that be?"

With a playful grin, Bada teased, "A proper goodbye for the night, perhaps?"

A shared chuckle punctuated the moment, the air thick with unspoken anticipation. Without a word, you leaned in, your lips meeting in a gentle, playful kiss. It was a fleeting moment, but one that spoke volumes—filled with the promise of something beautiful blooming between you.

Pulling away, both of you wore matching sheepish grins, a hint of color dusting your cheeks. "Well, that was unexpected," you chuckled.

Bada, her laughter infectious, replied, "I blame the romantic atmosphere of the street market. It's making me do crazy things!"

The shared laughter dissolved any remaining tension, the ease of the moment reinforcing the comfort you found in each other's company. With a knowing glance and a playful wink, you both continued your stroll through the market, the echoes of your laughter mingling with the vibrant ambiance.

That spontaneous kiss became a cherished memory—a moment that sealed the unspoken feelings and added a touch of whimsy to your budding relationship. From that day forward, the warmth of that shared kiss lingered as a silent promise of the affection and connection between you and Bada.

— — — — —

The Street Woman Fighter 2 concert was a highly anticipated gathering of dance crews, and in a surprising twist, you had managed to secure a spot for an unexpected 1vs1 battle against Bada. It was a sneaky decision, known only to the organisers, because you didn't tell anyone, especially Bada, about your participation.

As the evening progressed, the crews showcased their abilities, and each performance was welcomed with deafening acclaim. The electricity in the air crackled with excitement, as the battles grew, leading up to the final act of the day.

Bada, as Bebe's leader, had captivated the audience with her crew's dazzling performances. She had no idea that an unexpected opponent was waiting in the wings—a challenger who was more to her than just another dancer.

Bada's amazement was obvious as the emcee announced the surprise 1vs1 match. As you went onto the stage, the spotlight illuminating your silhouette, her eyes opened in surprise. The audience murmured in confusion and excitement, unaware of the backstory behind this sudden face-off.

The emcee's voice rang out throughout the venue. "Ladies and gentlemen, a surprise addition to today's battles! Joining us for an impromptu 1vs1 against Bada Lee is none other than Wayb's Y/N!"

Bada's expression was priceless as the music began, signalling the start of the battle. You took a position opposite her, a teasing smile on your lips. The expectation of the crowd contributed to the intensity of the event.

As you began your routine, the first few beats of the song boomed throughout the venue, your motions flowing and precise. Bada, taken aback but never one to back down from a challenge, matched your intensity with her own trademark style, the dance floor serving as a canvas for an unexpected battle of styles.

As the battle progressed, the tension between you and Bada crackled in the air. Each move was a silent retort, a playful challenge to the rumors that had been circulating within the dance community. The audience, caught in the exhilarating showdown, cheered for both of you, unaware of the deeper connection that existed between the two dancers on stage.

In the midst of the battle, a playful wink and a mischievous grin were exchanged between you and Bada. The unspoken understanding added an extra layer of amusement to the competitive atmosphere.

The battle reached its climax, both of you showcasing your best moves. The audience erupted into applause, thoroughly entertained by the unexpected showdown. As the music faded, you and Bada stood facing each other, panting but wearing matching grins, a shared secret concealed beneath the surface.

The atmosphere in the arena erupted with energy after your heated 1vs1 bout with Bada. Sensing the heightened energy, the emcee introduced a surprise segment: a collaborative dance between you and Bada. As the familiar chords of a popular song filled the room, you both exchanged a shocked look, your unspoken connection sparking a spark of anticipation.

As you and Bada took your places on stage, the audience erupted in applause, the spotlight casting an ethereal glow around you. As the music grew louder, you began to move in perfect unison, each stride mirroring the previous one, as if your bodies were speaking a same language.

The chemistry between you and Bada was undeniable, the unspoken bond manifesting in the synergy of your movements. Fans were mesmerised as your diverse dancing styles merged effortlessly, producing a mesmerising tapestry of motion.

The earlier battle's humorous banter and competitive edge had been replaced by an effortless harmony, with each move complementing the other. It was as if you both anticipated each other's movements, a monument to your friendship's unspoken understanding.

With each elegant turn and intricate formation, the audience, entranced by the exhibition of unity and delicacy, shouted louder. Whispers and gasps flooded the room as your and Bada's chemistry transcended the dance floor, creating a lasting mark on everyone in attendance.

As the music reached a climax, you and Bada finished the dance with a magnificent final posture, the audience's cheers echoing throughout the venue. The shared moment between you two lingered in the air, a silent testament to the deeper connection that existed between you.

The emcee, beaming with enthusiasm, approached the center stage amidst the thunderous applause. "Ladies and gentlemen, let's give it up for Y/N Y/LN and Bada Lee! What an incredible performance! The chemistry between these two dancers is simply undeniable."

Fans, who had been speculating about the nature of your relationship, couldn't help but notice the palpable connection between you and Bada. The synergy that had unfolded before their eyes left an impression that was impossible to ignore, sparking a renewed wave of curiosity and excitement among the audience.

The emcee, sensing the electric atmosphere, approached with the mic. "A spectacular showdown! Y/N, Bada, any words for our audience?"

You stepped forward, the smile on your face concealing the deeper sentiment. "Thank you all for the love and support. It's been an incredible experience sharing the stage with such amazing talent."

Bada, her eyes gleaming with excitement, added, "Absolutely! The energy here is electrifying. Thank you for being a part of this journey!"

The crowd cheered, unaware of the hidden dynamics at play between you and Bada. As you left the stage, the playful banter and shared glances remained concealed, adding a layer of intrigue to the rumors that continued to circulate within the dance community.

The crowd cheered, unaware of the hidden dynamic between you and Bada. As you left the stage, the playful banter and shared glances between you remained concealed, adding an intriguing layer to the rumors that continued to swirl within the dance community.

— — — — —

In the hushed aftermath of the concert, the backstage area embraced a serene ambiance. You and Bada found a secluded spot away from the bustling crowd, the shared moments on stage still vivid in your minds.

Bada's smile was soft, filled with the remnants of the exhilaration from the performance. "That dance was something else, wasn't it?"

You nodded, a smile mirroring hers. "Absolutely. The synergy between us was incredible."

A comfortable silence settled between you, the weight of the unspoken emotions adding a layer of depth to the moment.

The shared glance between you held a silent agreement, the bond you shared extending beyond the confines of words. In that quiet space, amidst the fading echoes of the concert, a mutual understanding lingered between you and Bada.

As the quiet lingered, the intimacy of the moment heightened. Bada's gaze softened, her eyes searching yours for a shared truth. Without a word, a gentle yet purposeful movement drew her closer, and in that silent invitation, you felt a warmth envelop both of you.

The world around seemed to fade as Bada's lips met yours in a tender, sweet kiss. It was a moment that felt suspended in time, a silent celebration of the bond that had quietly grown between you.

When the kiss gently parted, the serenity of the moment remained, a shared intimacy that transcended the public eye. Bada's eyes met yours once more, a depth of emotion conveyed in that silent exchange.

"Thank you," Bada whispered softly, her voice carrying a weight of gratitude and affection.

You smiled, a warmth spreading through you. "For what?"

"For being here. For understanding. For this moment," Bada replied, her eyes shining with sincerity.

In the quiet embrace of the backstage, amidst the remnants of the concert, you and Bada stood, hand in hand, the unspoken intimacy of the night weaving a tapestry of shared memories.

It was a moment that etched itself into the story of your relationship, a moment that celebrated the beauty of dance, friendship, and the love that had quietly blossomed within the rhythm of the music and the unspoken language of your movements.

[ghelgheli]

According to Marx, metabolic rift appears in three different levels and forms. First and most fundamentally, metabolic rift is the material disruption of cyclical processes in natural metabolism under the regime of capital. Marx’s favourite example is the exhaustion of the soil by modern agriculture. Modern large-scale, industrial agriculture makes plants absorb soil nutrition as much as and as fast as possible so that they can be sold to customers in large cities even beyond national borders. It was Justus von Liebig’s Agricultural Chemistry (1862) and his theory of metabolism that prompted Marx to integrate an analysis of the ‘robbery’ system of agriculture into Capital. [...]

Liebig harshly criticized modern ‘robbery agriculture’ (Raubbau), which only aims at the maximization of short-term profit and lets plants absorb as many nutrients from the soil as possible without replenishing them. Market competition drives farmers to large-scale agriculture, intensifying land usage without sufficient management and care. As a consequence, modern capitalist agriculture created a dangerous disruption in the metabolic cycle of soil nutrients. [...]

Marx formulated the problem of soil exhaustion as a contradiction created by capitalist production in the metabolism between humans and nature. Insofar as value cannot fully take the metabolism between humans and nature into account and capitalist production prioritizes the infinite accumulation of value, the realization of sustainable production within capitalism faces insurmountable barriers.

This fundamental level of metabolic rift in the form of the disruption of material flow cannot occur without being supplemented and reinforced by two further dimensions. The second dimension of metabolic rift is the spatial rift. Marx highly valued Liebig in Capital because his Agricultural Chemistry provided a scientific foundation for his earlier critical analysis of the social division of labour, which he conceptualized as the ‘contradiction between town and country’ in The German Ideology. Liebig lamented that those crops that are sold in modern large cities do not return to the original soil after they are consumed by the workers. Instead, they flow into the rivers as sewage via water closets, only strengthening the tendency towards soil exhaustion.

This antagonistic spatial relationship between town and country – it can be called ‘spatial rift’ – is founded upon a violent process of so-called primitive accumulation accompanied by depeasantization and massive urban growth of the working-class population concentrated in large cities. This not only necessitates the long-distance transport of products but also significantly increases the demand for agricultural products in large cities, leading to continuous cropping without fallowing under large-scale agriculture, which is intensified even more through market competition. In other words, robbery agriculture does not exist without the social division of labour unique to capitalist production, which is based upon the concentration of the working class in large cities and the corresponding necessity for the constant transport of their food from the countryside. [...]

The third dimension of metabolic rift is the temporal rift. As is obvious from the slow formation of soil nutrients and fossil fuels and the accelerating circulation of capital, there emerges a rift between nature’s time and capital’s time. Capital constantly attempts to shorten its turnover time and maximize valorization in a given time – the shortening of turnover time is an effective way of increasing the quantity of profit in the face of the decreasing rate of profit. This process is accompanied by increasing demands for floating capital in the form of cheap and abundant raw and auxiliary materials. Furthermore, capital constantly revolutionizes the production process, augmenting productive forces with an unprecedented speed compared with precapitalist societies. Productive forces can double or triple with the introduction of new machines, but nature cannot change its formation processes of phosphor or fossil fuel, so ‘it was likely that productivity in the production of raw materials would tend not to increase as rapidly as productivity in general (and, accordingly, the growing requirements for raw materials)’ (Lebowitz 2009: 138). This tendency can never be fully suspended because natural cycles exist independently of capital’s demands. Capital cannot produce without nature, but it also wishes that nature would vanish. [...]

The contradiction of capitalist accumulation is that increases in the social productivity are accompanied by a decrease in natural productivity due to robbery [... i]t is thus essential for capital to secure stable access to cheap resources, energy and food. [...]

The exploration of the earth and the invention of new technologies cannot repair the rift. The rift remains ‘irreparable’ in capitalism. This is because capital attempts to overcome rifts without recognizing its own absolute limits, which it cannot do. Instead, it simply attempts to relativize the absolute. This is what Marx meant when he wrote ‘every limit appears a barrier to overcome’ (Grundrisse: 408). Capital constantly invents new technologies, develops means of transportation, discovers new use-values and expands markets to overcome natural limits. [...]

Corresponding to the three dimensions of metabolic rifts, there are also three ways of shifting them. First, there is technological shift. Although Liebig warned about the collapse of European civilization due to robbery agriculture in the 19th century, his prediction apparently did not come true. This is largely thanks to Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, who invented the so-called Haber-Bosch process in 1906 that enabled the industrial mass production of ammonia (NH3) by fixing nitrogen from the air, and thus of chemical fertilizer to maintain soil fertility. Historically speaking, the problem of soil exhaustion due to a lack of inorganic substances was largely resolved thanks to this invention. Nevertheless, the Haber-Bosch process did not heal the rift but only shifted, generating other problems on a larger scale.

The production of NH3 uses a massive amount of natural gas as a source of hydrogen (H). In other words, it squanders another limited resource in order to produce ammonia as a remedy to soil exhaustion, but it is also quite energy intensive, producing a lot of carbon dioxide (CO2) (responsible for 1 per cent of the total carbon emission in the world). Furthermore, excessive applications of chemical fertilizer leach into the environment, causing eutrophication and red tide, while nitrogen oxide pollutes water. Overdependence on chemical fertilizer disrupts soil ecology, so that it results in soil erosion, low water- and nutrient-holding capacity, and increased vulnerability to diseases and insects. Consequently, more frequent irrigation, a larger amount of fertilizer and more powerful equipment become necessary, together with pesticides. This kind of industrial agriculture consumes not just water but large quantities of oil also, which makes agriculture a serious driver of climate change. [...]

[T]here remains a constant need to shift the rift under capitalism, which continues to bring about new problems. This contradiction becomes more discernible in considering the second type of shifting the metabolic rift – that is, spatial shift, which expands the antagonism of the city and the countryside to a global scale in favour of the Global North. Spatial shift creates externality by a geographic displacement of ecological burdens to another social group living somewhere else. Again, Marx discussed this issue in relation to soil exhaustion in core capitalist countries in the 19th century. On the coast of Peru there were small islands consisting of the excrement of seabirds called guano that had accumulated over many years to form ‘guano islands’. [...]

In the 19th century, guano became ‘necessary’ to sustain soil fertility in Europe. Millions of tons of guano were dug up and continuously exported to Europe, resulting in its rapid exhaustion. Extractivism was accompanied by the brutal oppression of Indigenous people and the severe exploitation of thousands of Chinese ‘c**lies’ working under cruel conditions. Ultimately, the exhaustion of guano reserves provoked the Guano War (1865–6) and the Saltpetre War (1879–84) in the battle for the remaining guano reserves. As John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark (2009) argue, such a solution in favour of the Global North resulted in ‘ecological imperialism’. Although ecological imperialism shifts the rift to the peripheries and makes its imminent violence invisible in the centre, the metabolic rift only deepens on a global scale through long-distance trade, and the nutrient cycle becomes even more severely disrupted.

The third dimension of metabolic shift is the temporal shift. The discrepancy between nature’s time and capital’s time does not immediately bring about an ecological disaster because nature possesses ‘elasticity’. Its limits are not static but modifiable to a great extent. Climate crisis is a representative case of this metabolic shift. Massive CO2 emissions due to the excessive usage of fossil fuels is an apparent cause of climate change, but the emission of greenhouse gas does not immediately crystallize as climate breakdown. Capital exploits the opportunities opened up by this time lag to secure more profits from previous investments in drills and pipelines. Since capital reflects the voice of current shareholders, but not that of future generations, the costs are shifted onto the latter. As a result, future generations suffer from consequences for which they are not responsible. Marx characterized such an attitude inherent to capitalist development with the slogan ‘Après moi le déluge!’ (Capital I: 381).

This time lag generated by a temporal shift also induces a hope that it would be possible to invent new epoch-making technologies to combat against the ecological crisis in the future. In fact, one may think that it is better to continue economic growth which promotes technological development, rather than over-reducing carbon dioxide emissions and adversely affecting the economy. However, even if new negative emission technologies such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) are invented, it will take a long time for them to spread throughout society and replace the old ones. In the meantime, the environmental crisis will continue to worsen due to our current inaction. As a result, the expected effects of the new technology can be cancelled out.

Kohei Saito, Marx in the Anthropocene

[rubyredridinghood]

JJK Characters and Their Piercings/Tattoos

SFW✅ CONTENT!! 18+ blogs please dni ^^ TW: Mentions of needles, some spoilers, not proofread lol

SATORU GOJO

•Standard ear piercing but usually nothing extravagant

•Unironically has the cross dangly because he thought it would be funny but never wears it

•Mostly diamond studs or silver

•100% GOT A NOSE STUD IN HIGH SCHOOL

•He thought it would attract more attention from the ladies (as if he needed anymore) and of course it worked

•Also has his belly button pierced and I stand firm on that belief

•Likes to flaunt it on the beach and often keeps his shirts unbuttoned in unprofessional gatherings

•Often matches the nose stud and belly button ring and has drawers full of them

• Has a tattoo on his hip of a black beta fish (yeah🥲)

•Speaking of which, he has a small one on the back of his neck of a crescent moon

•He got matching ones with Geto right before *the incident* in high school to celebrate Suguru’s 18th, Geto has the sun

•Covers it with foundation all the time when he’s in public

•Has a tattoo on his upper arm of a doodle Megumi drew when he was little

•It was the first thing Megumi ever drew and showed him (It was literally just him and Tsumiki as stick figures) and he cried

•Has a pretty high pain tolerance so he mostly did well with the process, but the hip tattoo hurt like hell for him and they basically had to pin him to the table to keep him still

•Made Shoko come to his appointments for moral support

CHOSO

•Standard ear piercings

•Usually just sticks to silver or black studs because he’s afraid of being judged :< •With a little push he might wear small hoops occasionally

• Vertical labret piercing (middle of lip) only wears hoops

•Does not do well with needles (shockingly), so he cried the first time he got body mods done

•Got his ears pierced at Claire’s and held the teddy bear

•Has only one tattoo along his left forearm with the names of his brothers written out in kanji (including Yuji)

•Also cried during the tattooing process

•He’s just a pretty princess he can’t help it😞

•Has a rotation of like 5 different pairs of earrings and lip rings because he likes to keep things simple

•Really wants to get an eyebrow piercing but chickens out every time

SUGURU GETO

•Gauges (duh)

•Started stretching his ears in early high school after he got tired of normal earrings

•Used to sit in agony in class whenever it was time to move up the taper size

•Got his septum pierced but decided he didn’t like it a few months later

•After high school (betraying everyone lol), he started by getting industrials

•Tongue piercing came next, has all kinds of fun tongue rings for funsies

•Tongue was super puffy after getting it done, Mimiko and Nanako had to speak for him for a couple weeks while he expressed his throughs through grunts of frustration

•Has the universally headcannoned back tattoo of a dragon

•Has the sun tattoo on his nape to match Gojo’s moon

•Covers it with his hair obvi but sometimes looks at it in the mirror when he’s feeling lonely

•Left arm is a complete sleeve filled with various details such as red spider lilies, various geometric patterns, and names of his loved ones hidden throughout

•Simplistic patterns running up his fingers on both hands

•Did not budge during any of the procedures, however the intensity of many of his healing processes usually rendered him unable to do certain things, so he often required assistance afterwards, even while swearing up and down he didn’t (he almost fell down the stairs)

TOJI FUSHIGURO

•Definitely has the standard earlobe

•Used to have a nose stud but stopped wearing it

•Again nothing flashy but his wife and Tsumiki bought him hello kitty earrings and he will wear them proudly

•Has a simple tattoo down his neck of his wedding date in Roman numerals to Megumi’s momma (or you😘)

•Got it there because he tends to rub his neck when he’s stressed, so running his hands over the ink reminds him of his life’s blessings

•Also has Megumi’s and Tsumiki’s names behind both of his ears (screw canon can’t change my mind fr)

•Has one (1) on the knuckle of his wedding ring finger of a heart his wife drew

•Hides it under the ring because it embarrasses him to show other people but loves to look at it when he’s alone

•Pretends to be completely fine during his procedures but is gripping his wife’s hand for dear life and biting his lip until it bleeds

•She def laughs at him for it

•Hates needles with a passion and always dreads getting new ink done but it’s always worth it in the end

RYOMEN SUKUNA

•Canon tattoos lol

•Also canon that he has his ears pieced, but he definitely got everything possible done on both ears

•Has a ton of different earrings and chains that make his appearance more regal and scary

•Has his tongue split 100% •Had a super puffy face after that procedure, and Uraume had to had to hold back laughter while assisting him through his normal daily affairs

•Nobody could take him seriously for weeks

•But when it healed he was scary as all hell

•Bridge piercing 1000%

•Didn’t really react to his procedures, however if you look closely you might see him barely squint his eyes when the needle goes through

•Got permanent bracelets because he thought they looked cool

•Small gauges

•Doesn’t let anyone touch his tattoos or piercings unless he’s being bathed or with someone he loves (you pookie🥰)

•Partly because it’s lowk sensitive for him and he doesn’t like the feeling

•Forgets to take out his earrings when he sleeps and wakes up with weird marks all over the sides of his head

•Constantly losing earring backs

•Also drops earrings all the time because his hands are huge and steps on them with the needle side up

•Poor Sukuna

My first time posting detailed hcs! Hope you like it ^^

[hazeltongzhi]

so obviously a lot of problems in capitalist society are caused by capitalists having outsized amounts of money and power, which allows them to dictate national policy and make it so that all of society is geared towards generating profits for them rather than creating a livable and sustainable environment for everyone. since china is a DOTP, do they avoid this problem? if so, how? thanks, love the blog

A bit pedantic, but this isn't a fully accurate description of the DOTBs a lot of us live under. Yes, bourgeoisie with their large sums of capital do get a lot of power from it but it's also important to remember that the DOTB state is also in their favor. This is why police break strikes and beat protestors. This is why the military goes out over oceans to secure bananas or oil or rubber or anything else. In fact, the DOTBs we live under were constructed by the bourgeoisie as a tool of class conflict against the proletariat. This is what give the bourgeoisie as a class immense power in DOTB nations.

We understand that the DOTP is the state as wielded by the proletariat as a class to serve as a tool of class conflict against the bourgeoisie (note: the DOTP is constructed after the DOTB which came before it is destroyed). In China, the bourgeoisie has little to no control over policy making; they do not control the politburo, nor the NPC, nor the courts, nor the unions and regulatory boards. To get on these positions requires many, many years of dedicated (and effective) public service, something most bourgeoisie simply cannot do. Instead, the state, through mass unionization, the threat of nationalization, and (ultimately) execution, puts pressure on the bourgeoisie. The state uses this pressure to force the bourgeoisie to comply with the regulations of the state and the economic plans of the state. More crucially, the state (and thus the people) control the most important facets of the economy, including energy, heavy industries, banking/finance, transportation, etc.. Having foundational industries under state control strips away the bourgeoisie's power to do meaningful harm by cutting off industries.

This is why you'll see western bourgeois rags and the bourgeoisie in China itself complain, constantly about the ever present state oppression over their class. As an example, when jack ma tried to create a private banking group (ANT), it was shut down as the state maintains a monopoly on banking.