#inter-community aggression

[distant-screaming]

I need to elaborate. oikawa and kaiser have twitter beef because one time kaiser posts a selfie around the same time oikawa does and he gets more likes. makki (who only really follows kaiser bc he's hot) immediately shares this information with everyone he knows, oikawa included. oikawa laughs and says it's a fluke, and to prove it he posts a gym selfie immediately after he sees kaiser post one. his ass does not get more likes.

literally.

still, whatever. oikawa is a mature adult. he's fine. then, by some funny alignment of the stars, one of kaiser's many interviews comes out. this one's about inter-sport relationships, or something. he's asked 'who do you think has the best social media presence in the volleyball athletes community?' and kaiser says. fucking. kageyama tobio.

and. well. that's that.

oikawa starts praying on kaiser's downfall. he starts vagueposting. he's suddenly following like, everyone on the u20 team Except Kaiser Specifically. he, with his public verified account, starts commenting snide things under kaiser's posts. which is like, it's oikawa, he always does that, it's fine, except one time he brings up kaiser's shitty haircut and oh it is ON. well, to ness. kaiser doesn't even really register oikawa. so now ness is replying to the official volleyball team twts and it's honestly a pr nightmare, from all ends, but it's also good publicity in a sense? so no one really does anything about it? and kaiser himself is mostly chill, he thinks it's funny and oikawa isn't all that important until.

until.

now, some important context: isagi and mattsun are mutuals. granted, isagi might not entirely even know what that means, but they follow each other and are vaguely familiar.

one morning, mattsun is on twitter and sees a passive aggressive comment left by oikawa being rt'ed by ness and has a mind blowing idea. so he sits up in bed and dms isagi.

three hours later, he gets a response. an additional fifteen minutes later, a post is up on isagi yoichi's official account for the whole world to see:

@/setter-oikawa could definitely beat @/kaiser_ if he got into football lol

fucking mattsun.

at first, nothing happens. well, football-twitter does implode a little bit, but nothing new. and then oikawa responds with a passive aggressive version of 'yeah, I've seen his matches you're totally right lol!!!'

okay.

let it never be said kaiser is not a petty, petty bitch. all of a sudden, he's best friends with half the social media volleyball players. he's ratio-ing the fuck out of oikawa's posts. he tracks down kageyama, sets up a photoshoot with both of them involved and pays extra to make sure it's plastered all around the argentina team's practice spaces. every single post oikawa makes, he's There. not to be outdone, oikawa doubles his haterism efforts. their follower counts double.

and really this is all makki's fault. and mattsun.

[dreadfulman]

I still think about the end of that original "Tumblr simulator" post, where the straw-transmasc specifically harps on about doxxing the hypothetical trans woman and hoping she gets sexually assaulted because it really is a good example of how much inter-community lateral aggression stems from unchecked paranoia. It's really easy to shun the notion of community if you let yourself fixate on the fear that anyone who disagrees with you even slightly definately wants the worst things imaginable to happen to you. It's really easy for vitriolic meanness to feel cathartic if you've convinced yourself that the person you're saying it about definitely secretly wants you to suffer and be miserable.

[psychotrenny]

Now I've received a few comments about the mass migration of Mizrahi Jews to Israel during the mid 20th century, specifically about Israel's lack of culpability towards it. And there's a few things I've said in response to this that I'd like to reiterate

For one, a number of commenters have attributed the time period of these migrations to the "30s and 40s" which I don't understand. Even Zionists usually consider the "Mizrahi Exodus" to date from the 50s onwards; a big part of how the process is portrayed by pro-Zionist sources is the framing as Israel as this land of opportunity and safety for Jews fleeing the violence and intolerance of the Arab world, something that couldn't exactly happen until Israel was actually established as a state in 1948.

Secondly as I've already stated multiple times the displacement, marginalisation and violent attack on Palestinians by Zionist European Settlers was already underway in Mandatory Palestine by the 1920s, as embodied by the existence of groups like Haganah and Irgun. So like even if we for whatever reason backdate the supposed mass exile of the Mizrahi to the "30s and 40s" it's still very easy to see the correlation between violence perpetrated by European settlers in the name of "Jewishness" and the development of conflict between previously peacefully co-existing communities of Jews and Gentiles in North Africa and West Asia.

And finally, the idea that the mass migration of Mizrahi Jews to Palestine was the result of intolerance from Muslim neighbors is essentially a Zionist distortion of a much more complicated situation. Soon after the establishment of Israel, the new government actively encouraged Jews from the surrounding region to migrate and worked with many of the surrounding governments (usually the European colonial governments that still controlled extensive tracts of the region) to facilitate this. Some Jews (such as those of Yemen or Morocco) were even essentially deported against their will by the wishes of the Israeli government. While there was an increase in inter-communal conflict between Jewish and Gentile populations in the region, this was both due to the general aftermath of Israeli's brutal establishment and in response to specific actions such as the Mossad terrorist attacks in Egypt in 1954 with some actions even being specifically undertaken in order to cause conflict (or even just the appearance of conflict) and induce migration such as Mossad's activities in Iraq through the 1950s. And while there was certainly a significant level of violence and maltreatment (both legal and extra-legal) directed towards Jewish people in various West Asian and North African countries in response to Israeli's invasion, the sheer degree that direct violence and persecution played in such migrations has also been greatly exaggerated by Zionists in order to justify their continued aggression against the people of Palestine and their Allies. The idea that you can draw any real equivalence between the population movements of the Mizrahi Aliyah and that of the Palestinian Nakba is a ghoulish distortion of history that only serves to justify Zionist atrocities both past and present. One was a more or less voluntary* migration that was only partially induced by fears (both hypothetical and actually realised) of conflict while the other was an incidence of direct and unambiguous ethnic cleansing. The factors that led to the Mizrahi migration has plenty of "pull" in addition to "push" and a great deal of said "push" was deliberately engineered by the Israeli government rather than being purely the result of some natural Islamic cruelty or antagonism

*while not an entirely fair thing to say, and its accuracy will vary a lot on a case by case basis, the Mizrahi migrants on the whole had a lot more freedom than the Palestinians in both the decision to leave and their choice of destination (as several of those linked articles mentioned, some Mizrahi migrated to Europe or the Americas rather than Israel)

[livelaughghoul]

Oscar Piastri Personality and Career Tarot Reading

Disclaimer: This is for entertainment purposes only, nothing observed or taken away from this should be considered fact. As a reminder, I know fuck all about Formula 1, I just like fast cars and have a dumb amount of knowledge of astrology and tarot. 

Since I am just recently getting in F1, the first race I actually watched was the Hungary GP. Which like, what an introduction to the sport. Since then I have watched a lot of the replays from prior races, but my knowledge outside of the track is nonexistent. Having this be my first introduction to Oscar was interesting, and I think that there is a lot to unpack there between the team dynamic and the way they approach and relay information to both Oscar and Lando. I may end up doing a reading on two of them at some point, but we will see how I am feeling. 

This spread is actually amazing to me, because we have one of the better Swords followed with a slew of Cups. I love that we are mixing Swords and Cups (even if we are Cup dominated), because Swords are very self focused, almost interalized, whereas Cups are incredibly emotional. I think that it specifically being the Two of Swords really telling, especially with the specific correlation of the Cups we pulled. 

I really love this spread, like a lot. I usually don’t care much for wanting to learn more about the people on the grid, but I actually am interested in getting to know more about him because this is just so interesting to me. I might actually look into someone other than Jenson Button, Sebastian Vettel, and Kimi Raikkonen (honestly I owe that anon SO MUCH, because you truly have made my life so much better with these men). 

Outward personality - Two of Swords

This card has a soft spot in my heart because it absolutely is the introvert card. It’s protective in nature, and more reserved. While I don’t think it’s a full avoidance of feeling or expressing things, but it definitely is a more thought out or silent approach to emotions and expressing them. Since things are more reserved, there is going to be a lot to go through to develop a friendship or relationship with Oscar. I see a lot of people referring to him as a cat (which is hilarious, I love this), and I think that is really seen in this card positioning. Cats take time to develop trust in people, but when they do, it’s lifelong and so rewarding. Cats are also really good at masking how they really feel, I think that there is a lot of masking and hiding of things in terms of how he is feeling or what is being experienced. 

Inward personality - Ten of Cups

Interally, once you break past the resting bitch face and flat affect, you feel nothing but valued, delight, and at home. The Ten of Cups is like, coming home to your family after a long day at work and just getting to feel valued and at home. It’s a happiness, feeling fulfilled and loved. I love the switch up of the outward personality being this like professional brickwall, and then on the inside there is this soft gooey center filled with love and affection.

Current career - Queen of Cups, reversed

I’m not a huge fan of this one when it comes to the career, because I think that this has the possibility of being too willing to take everything lying down, allowing others to essentially make the decisions for you, and almost put yourself in a secondary or lower positioning. There is a lot of tenderness in this card, and I think that while yes, Oscar absolutely can be aggressive and challenge things, I think that there is alot of hesitancy in this. There is going to be this patience and accepting of whatever he is told to do. It absolutely tells me that he is a team player, but I think that there may be too much of prioritizing of others instead of himself. 

Future career - Three of Cups, reversed

No matter where he goes in his career, who is on a team with, or what his support team looks like, this man is making friends and building a community wherever he goes. Oscar is going to be able to foster a community wherever he ends up, and this is going to make work so much smoother, especially when there is a transitional period that happens. 

[dballzposting]

There's really no plainer way to put it but that Goku's love language is fighting.

As in, that's how he communicates, that's how he expresses himself, that's how he comes to understand, that's how he bonds; the pattern of empassioned push-into and push-back. The resistance and deflection, the purposeful direction, the pinpoint strikes.

It's really not a tug-and-pull yin-and-yang dance between two people, as much as it is that each party is BOTH yin and yang. They enter with their own completed prerogatives, and they have a physical argument to test their stance. Each party has their choice of tactic, their own rhythm of when to roll aside and when to spin and strike back and when to dig their heels in and block.

It's because he's a Saiyan and also because of his upbringing. He grew up with the rhythm of the wilderness, where everything is self-defending and self-righteous; and where everything communicates through subtle fights, those inter-organismic interactions, all utilizing the basic moves of offense, defense, or avoidance.

Different animals utilize different techniques, habits, forces of nature; they fall in different niches in the environment. The rabbit does not want to be preyed on, but if he is caught, he is able to accept this inevitability of present reality with grace; the tiger does not want to be caught, and if he is, he'll size you up and make sure you're worth it before rolling over.

It's driven by instinct and biology, but from Goku's budding perspective, it was no different from how warriors learn and adapt and have the volition to utilize different techniques.

The only other person he knew was his Grandfather, who was one of the best martial artists on Earth at the time, and thus: Goku's early bonding behaviors were ruled by the training he did with his grandpa. This also informed his general understanding of the world at large.

Once Goku started on his epic swag adventure and met new people, he had the capacity to love them all, and he continues to fight for them. But the way he loves his friends is maybe not what people have in their head when they think of deep bonding. He loves them, in a sturdy and firm way, in a "of course I do" way, as upfront and practical as any other observation of the natural world.

It's not deep, raw, or passionate; it's not vulnerable, it's not sustaining, it's not supporting; it's not messy or emotional, it's not blood-red or heart-pink ... Goku just stands with a perfectly straight spine, perfectly secure, and he loves his friends, that's all there is to it! He has fun with them, he enjoys their company, he worries for their well-being ... And he will easily go years and years without ever seeing them. When he does see them, he just picks up where they left off like no time had passed at all.

My point is that Goku doesn't NEED his friends, he does not need to see them or to be with them or to feel their support. You know how humans are social animals and need to interact with others in order to stay healthy and functioning; and you know how Goku isn't a human!

He's a Saiyan, so it's by nature, but it also very much has to do with his lived isolation during his formative years. His roots of stability are in boundless nature, the art of fighting, and confidence in his own body; not in the presence of a community.

When he DOES bond deep with people, as in connect on an intimate level, it's in the context of fighting. That's how he understands them and makes himself understood! Through the language of technique, through the specific combinations of offense, defense, and avoidance.

He routinely makes friends with people whom he originally fights as an opposing party, such as the case with Yamucha, Tenshinhan, Yajirobe, Vegeta ... And he makes a habit out of mercy and requesting teamwork with everyone he fights.

He doesn't take fight to be only an aggressive thing, and he takes to friendly sparring or methodical training really well - thinking very fondly of Master Roshi, Master Korin, Popo, King Kai - and having a DELIGHTFUL time with Krillin when they trained close in their younger days.

Of course, fighting CAN be a purely angry, aggressive thing. But he's always ready to let it Not Be, too. Except in the cases of righteous, seething anger (his battles with the biggest bads who have done much to hurt his friends, planet, and order of the universe), Goku loves it when an opponent wants to hang around and fight again.

It's like how predator animals play with each other by tussling for fun. It's not just when in the pursuit of food do those animals utilize predator behaviors, but it's ALL the time, because they have been endowed by nature to be Of A Certain Make & Model because it helps them to survive, and it's just who they are always. They notice certain things, make certain things out to be important, they are intrigued by certain things, they like to move in certain ways - it's everything about all of them that puts them in their ecological niche.

EXAMPLE: Think about how cats are wired to recognize the visual pattern of a snake and to respond quickly, and that's why they sometimes swat at bananas. Or how they hiss, a behavior that emulates the sound of a snake, but they don't know that, they just get angry and hiss. Or how their eyes and brain are designed to notice and follow Movement, and they find this A.) Important and B.) Intriguing; they often orient toward it. This intrigue is selected for because the movement could be food, but, to the lived experience of the animal, it's also just fun. Cats will play with inanimate objects and rodents all the same.

For comparison, non-predatory birds are wired to find importance in things like color and size and shape when it comes to finding food - and they AVOID movement, taking flight away from rather than orienting toward it like the cat.

Another detail about predatory animals: when hunting, they require the element of resistance to stimulate their predatory instincts. This has the advantage of steering the animal away from already-dead-and-possibly-contaminated prey, and toward still-alive-and-delicious prey. This is why the freeze response works in deterring predators; because when the prey isn't moving and fighting back, the predator doesn't feel stimulated enough to hunt. Who knows what animals feel, but the lived experience may be a sort of disgust or repulsion; a definitive avoidance.

At any rate, cats find a lack of movement and a lack of resistance Boring, which is why your cat loves to chase the string toy you just yanked away from her, and why she gets bored when you stop.

My ultimate point is that that's what Goku is like, as a Saiyan, as a mountain boy, as himself.

It's no surprise that his ONLY goal in life is fight. So it's not bizarre to think that through this is how he comprehends and connects with others.

Since this is the case: I honestly think, that on some level, he has loved every opponent he has ever faced. Even Freeza, who introduced him to the purest and most earnest form of righteous rage - Goku hated him more than he had ever hated anybody; but I think that he still loved him as the living, fighting being he was. It's an undercurrent of love that comes with the territory whenever Goku fights, whenever his body gets to move and express himself in that way; and that LOVE I think is the source of his strength. Fighting for anger or other corrosive emotions dirty your soul in the long-term. Goku loves to fight, and has loved deeply every opponent, even if only at the most basic and required level - but he loved, and he loves, and that's why he's the greatest. It's an expansive, nurturing, positive force that he brings into the world.

He loved his grandfather. He loves Roshi and Krillin and all the rest. He loves his sons, and he bonds with them when he trains them, because it's through this that he comes to understand their deepest ways; and he's honored to do so, and he's proud of them beyond measure.

Chichi has long since been out of the ring, but I think that the most vivid memories that Goku has of her are when she is yanking on his ear or slapping him for his ignorance. Like how the cat attaches importance to patterns of movement, Goku attaches importance to such physical engagement; and he retains those impressions for longer.

What he has with Vegeta is the realest shit right down to their bones and shared Saiyan physiology, and it's imperative that they continue to fight each other for forever.

So I guess my point is that if you want to bond with Goku: you'll have to come at him a bit, and offer meaningful contact, and when he comes at you, never roll over like a possum - actively resist, dodge, and strike back.

[maghamoon]

Reading a Birth Chart 101: The Complete Guide

(Part I): Intro to Intrigue

Glossary: Astrology websites, explanation of sun in all zodiac signs, moon in all zodiac signs, rising in all zodiac signs and also takeaways section. (LONG POST)

hey, this post is for any beginner who has gotten into astrology and reading their natal/birth chart. if you are reading this, you probably discovered astrology through tumblr, instagram, tiktok, youtube or any other platform (or maybe your friend told you about it) and have no idea where to begin. you go onto an astrology website, type in your birth info and you are met with something that looks like this:

(Natalie Portman’s Birth Chart)

as a beginner, you don’t know how to make sense of this. there’s lines everywhere and a bunch of symbols that you don’t understand. don’t worry, you don’t have to deal with this right now. right now, we will be focusing on the basics.

Astrology websites and their descriptions:

what we are going to do is go on every single astrology website that gives you a birth chart. i will link a few below. you will make a birth chart on every single one of these websites and throughly read the descriptions. some things will make sense, some won’t. i advice you to take everything these websites say with a grain of salt since these are auto-generated descriptions for one placement and don’t consider inter-planet relationships.

some websites i used to go to during my beginner stages:

cafeastrology (astro.cafeastrology.com)

astroseek (horoscopes.astro-seek.com)

astrodienst (astro.com)

……

you may wonder, why are we doing this?

one simple reason: intrigue. you won’t be able to master astrology if it doesn’t intrigue you. when you go through these descriptions, the aim is to achieve “oh my god, this is so me!” moments. by doing so you solidify your belief in the stars and acquire a hunger for knowing how to read people.

you go through these descriptions and feel very heard and understood, then we start building the foundations of a birth chart: the big 3.

The Sun, Moon and Rising:

also known as the big 3, the sun, moon and the rising. these are the most basic placements to learn during your reader journey.

1) the sun: the sun is probably the only sign you are familiar with. it is what you say when someone asks you: “what’s your zodiac sign?”

“oh, i was born on jan 1st. i’m a capricorn.”

it signifies your ego, self, identity and is solely just, you. the reason why mainstream astrology gets this wrong is because it stereotypes the sun and disregards any aspects* to it or the house* which it’s in.

(these will be explained in later lessons*)

the sun will be in either of the 12 zodiac signs. the zodiac signs go from aries-pisces. i urge you to remember the order of them whenever you can. it will prove to be helpful later on.

aries sun: your identity can be affiliated with your physical appearance and you place your ego around how you come across to other people. putting yourself first will be a theme in your life when you decide to go through self discovery, since you are a fire sign passion, aggression and drive will be key.

tarus sun: your identity is around your possessions, wealth, etc. self esteem will be a theme when it comes to self discovery, all things beautiful like art, music, any sort of leisure activity helps you feel more connected to you. you are an earth sign, so staying grounded, consistent and stable are key.

gemini sun: your identity is accordance to your wit, communication. siblings (or lack of) can play a role in why you are the way you are. thinking on your feet and quickly strengthens your relationship w/ your individuality. you are an air sign, so intellect and duality are key.

cancer sun: your identity is centered around your home, mother (or any other maternal figure in your life), connecting deeply with your inner psyche and emotions will help you realize your true self. you are a water sign, so familiarity and deep connection are key.

leo sun: your identity is centered around you, literally! being creative, working with kids or regaining your childlike self, understanding paternal figures, etc. help you connect with yourself. you are a fire sign, so confidence and feeling acknowledged/ appreciated are key.

virgo sun: your identity is centered around routine and details. some natives may find that staying chaste/ losing it changed their self identity. performance in work and quality of it changes relationship with self as well. you are an earth sign, so friendships and formalities are key.

libra sun: your identity is centered around fairness and beauty. relationships with others serve crucial ways to discover yourself. you are an air sign, so art and equality are key.

scorpio sun: your identity may be ever-transforming through lessons. having an overly-comical or strategically closed-off persona to hide your complexity is common. you are a water sign, revealing secrets and interest in the occult are key.

sagittarius sun: your identity may feel like it’s something that is distant, natives feel like they need to “know” (philosophies, religion, etc.) to feel closer to themselves. you are a fire sign, so desire and passion are key.

capricorn sun: natives will attain self-realization at a later age. curating / having control over their public image, or their work is a consistent theme. you are an earth sign, so taking initiative and loyalty are key.

aquarius sun: going through some sort of intellectual debacle to understand oneself, friends are a common theme. wanting change and community. you are an air sign, so revolutionary ideas and technology are key.

pisces sun: feeling like your basing your self around how other people perceive you/ feeding to their ideals. going through a period of disillusionment will help you understand your ego. you are a water sign, so spirituality and empathy are key.

2) the moon: the moon signifies your emotions and how you deal with them. it can also show how your childhood was + represents your mother/ any other maternal figure growing up.

aries moon: emotional changes can be seen at face value, they are also a source of motivation and drive. mother/home life is passionate and challenging.

taurus moon: beauty and food are used to regulate oneself from negative emotions. mother/home life is stubborn, affects your self-esteem and relationship with money.

gemini moon: emotions are seen from dual perspective, thereby being prone to intellectualizing. siblings can be a significant part of home life. short-distance travel, changing homes is common.

cancer moon: emotions are bottled up and kept deep within the crevices of the native. the emotional intensity of mother/home causes native to keep their own feelings to theirselves.

leo moon: creativity and humor is a common way to express emotions. the child was the star of the home. mother is popular amongst family.

virgo moon: emotions are better expressed written. mother was involved in her work. routine keeps emotions regulated.

libra moon: when close relationships are in turmoil, native’s mood is affected. needing fairness and balance.

scorpio moon: relationship with mother transformed which caused secrecy in the native regarding emotions. intense home life.

sagittarius moon: weird relationship with emotions, as if they are foreign or in a distant land. expressing emotions through “bigger” ideas like philosophy or theology, but failing to express them through simple writing.

capricorn moon: mother/home life made the native disciplined. emotions are strained, vulnerability comes with a later age.

aquarius moon: native feels safer expressing emotions on the internet or through any forms of technology. sudden changes in emotions, political ideas or change fuel emotions.

pisces moon: native is able to understand everyone’s emotions except it’s own. prone to running after any sort of esoteric, escapist experience.

the rising: also known as the ascendant or the first house, it shows how we like to present ourselves, the course/ journey of your life. some astrologers like to discuss superficial self vs shadow self with the ascendant (1st house) and descendant (7th house). we will get into that in later chapters.

aries rising: people are surprised by their understanding and willingness to compromise. have a taste for aesthetics and things that look good.

taurus rising: these people have a certain knack of art and pleasantries. the neck is always highlighted. very troubled once you get to know them, relationships transform their sense of self.

gemini rising: small-looking individuals with bright eyes. interested in meeting new people to discuss new ideas. interested in travel, siblings can be discussed a lot when they first meet u.

cancer rising: moon-like faces that are on the bigger side. looks more like the mother. people are surprised by their discipline.

leo rising: these people always have distinct hair! can look more like the father, or have that same loud laughter. creative individuals.

virgo rising: intelligent energy but in a careful manner rather than a chaotic one. secret need for the spotlight/ being admired for their hard work.

libra rising: pleasant smiles, cordial faces. perfectionists when it comes to appearances.

scorpio rising: intense when it comes to first impressions, longing for balance and cooperation but being a little awkward, prone to self-rejection.

sagittarius rising: witty jokes and philosophical questions, powered by the darkness of their psyche and revolutions of their mind.

capricorn rising: they have a weird relationship with their self esteem, feeling detached. prone to getting moody and emotional once you get to know them. may look more like the father.

aquarius rising: friendly energy with eccentric ideas. need to be admired in their relationships, they have this creative and generous side to them that isn’t seen at first.

pisces rising: ever-changing personality when meeting new people, but don’t think of it like a transformation- it’s more like waves of water that fit into any vessel. passion for understanding human psyche, prone to anger or getting defensive when it comes to being fully intimate / authentic.

Takeaways + To-do’s:

okay, we have gone over websites and chart-making, we went over the 12 zodiac signs and the big 3- the sun, moon and rising in all the signs.

while you were reading your chart, you must have seen way more things- houses, aspects, etc. these things help you have a clearer understanding of the birth chart.

when the explanation of a planet doesn’t apply, don’t worry. today we only described the energies of the sun, moon and rising. the house it is in, the degree and also aspects to the placement channel the energy of your big 3 or cancel it out.

nevertheless, you now have an understanding of some basic principles of birth charts, so congrats!

—> using intrigue to further your understanding:

reader, it’s not feasible to memorize the meanings behind all these placements. instead, try to involve them in your daily life. ask a friend their birth time, look up their chart, then tell them the explanations of their big 3. you can even look up celebrity charts to see how their big 3 plays a role in their lives. this will help you gain an understanding of the signs (and memorize them) without feeling like you’re forced to “study.”

i will meet you again soon, where you will be able to understand elements, inner and outer planets, how each zodiac sign’s energy affects a planet and you will be introduced to the 12 houses!

good luck on your astrologer journey, i hope this makes things a little less complicated. 🤍

[jamiesfootball]

one thing about me is i EXCEL at stupid ideas so! here is a Stupid Ask for your daily dopamine dosage.

post-s3, roy attempts to be A Good Coach and implements team bonding activities such as sunday board game nights. this has the unforeseen consequence of walking into the locker room monday morning to find moe and colin arguing over whether monopoly is True Capitalist Propaganda while sam sneaks jamie $200 from the bank to get out of jail next week.

This. This actually matches up well with a thing I introduce at the end of my post-season fic.

This bit is not from the post-season fic, but there are definitely some plot points I'm cribbing from it. Here have some nonsense:

There were pros and cons to the new wellness initiative in the locker room.

And 'Wellness Initiative' was the phrase they were using. Not 'show-and-tell', no matter how many times Trent suggested it. Although with how many goddamn talent shows Roy had been forced to sit through in the past weeks, the former-journo might have been onto something. For a team full of professional footballers, a lot of them had found the time to sharpen other talents.

The idea had been simple: at least once a week, they were going to sit around as a team, and they'd take turns picking a topic that had nothing to do with football.

'Share-and-tell' Beard had called it, and Roy had growled until Higgins erased the name from the whiteboard.

Books, movies, whatever song they had bleeding through their headphones in the weight room, Roy didn't care. For one hour a week, they were going to...God help him...bond as a team. Share. Communicate. Maintain the resplendent inter-team hivemind bullshit that got them so close to winning the whole damn thing the year before.

Even if Moe's lockpicking demonstration was a disturbing hour of his life that he'd never get back.

But keeping the team functioning as a team was only half of it. Truth of the matter was, it helped the little idiots to have an outlet, something to get them out of their heads for a bit so that Roy didn't end up hugging a crying player in the boot room every other week. Four times had been enough, thanks.

Colin, the second-time boot room offender, had cocked his head like a Welsh corgi and asked, "Would it be all right if I brought my piano?"

"The one that weighs 800 kilos and broke your mother's floorboards?"

The next week Colin showed up with a new electronic keyboard that did not weigh as much as a baby rhino. He spent his hour taking pop song requests.

"Do I have to do a book report?" Jamie asked defensively when his turn came around. The three weeks before his turn had gone to fucking book reports. Even Roy was desperate for a change up. When he reassured Jamie that he only had to talk about books if he'd actually read a book he fucking liked, the relief on the number-one little idiot's face had been immense.

Jamie showed up for his turn with playing cards, a case of poker chips, and a bouquet of roses. The lads spent the hour shouting about cheating, and after a surprisingly aggressive run of bluffs and flushes, Dani Rojas walked away with all the flowers.

While Roy was distracted by Dani, who lamented that now he would need to buy a florero for his flowers, and Jamie, who thought Roy's water bottle would make an excellent vase in the meantime, he completely missed the gleam in Sam's eye as the unassuming player shuffled the card decks back in order.

---

Sam Obisanya was a fucking menace. One day Roy would retain this information.

Most days it was easy to forget. He had a calming effect on Jamie, who was less prone to biting when Sam was around. This made Jamie quieter, which made Isaac and Colin and Dani quieter, which gave the overall impression that things were peaceful in the locker room.

What Roy always forgot to add to the equation was that Jamie had the opposite effect on Sam, who on a normal day would never be found smiling like a post-canary cat while monopoly cards flew around the locker room like projectile weapons.

"I'm not paying you rent again, Cockburn!" Colin shouted.

"You keep landing on my square. It's not my fault you're bad at dice!"

"Bruv, quit throwing shit. It's my turn and I almost got all the railroads."

"The railroads are statistically the worst spaces to own; you know this, yes?"

"War is inevitable in a system where capitalism is dominant," Moe pointed out from where he sat lotus-style on the bench, abstaining from participating in the 'game of the exploiters.'

"Oi, Sam," Jamie whispered, sitting up a bit to tug at the edge of the other player's jumper. "While they're fightin', can you get me out of jail?"

Sam nodded at Dani, who flicked his hand in a way that spoke volumes on how he'd thrashed the team at poker. Two beige notes appeared in Sam's hand, and just as quickly disappeared into the collar of Jamie's shirt.

"Cheers," Jamie thanked him. He settled his head back down into Sam's lap, making himself cozy like a spoiled, cheating cat. "Never was any good at Monopoly."

Sam's smile was angelic, but his eyes glinted in a way that boded horribly for Roy's heart pressure. "Next time I can bring Settlers of Catan. Or Risk."

"Ooh. Risk. Should we team-up?"

Who knew Sam's talent would be putting Roy Kent in an early grave?

[silenthillmutual]

i hate getting mad about shit but i'm tired of this trend. think of this as a vent or think of this as me clearing out my list of followers, whatever.

really need my fellow trans mascs to cut the bullshit. i see constant posts about how it's sooooooo dire out here for us and "lateral aggression" but it is always always always because a trans fem said something snarky, or didn't phrase something perfectly, or made a generalization, and never is that comment about lateral aggression pointed inward.

i should not have to see multiple tme queers bitching about how awful it is to have inter-community fighting only to turn around and make googly heart eyes at transmisogynist caricatures, telling other people to "grow up" because they're not ~ real queers ~ if they don't want to watch non-trans fems "reclaim" effigies that were never made of us in the first place.

it's so pathetic how many want to be creatives but cannot handle the most milquetoast criticism of rhps or sotl. sure, everyone can point out the "this may be harsh, but i believe everyone involved should die" meme is in poor taste. that was about a trans man! how horrible! but if you dare to have an opinion that isn't kissing a transmisogynist's ass over frank n furter or buffalo bill then you are destroying! the trans community! you are making a big stink over nothing! we should be making out instead of fighting!

and this isn't even getting into how much of a discourse fandom makes over the gender of characters whose entire arcs are blatant transmisogyny, like chihiro or gwyndolin. you're all too chickenshit to for that, no, it has to be "up in the air." it's so fucking dire, yeah, but not for us.

[mariacallous]

In early February, a coalition of 37 countries made an important step forward on promises to hold Russian leaders accountable for the invasion of Ukraine. This coalition, which includes every member state of the European Union, announced “significant progress” toward the establishment of a special tribunal for the international crime of aggression against Ukraine.

In a statement, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stressed the historical significance of the moment. “When Russia chose to roll its tanks over Ukraine’s borders, breaking the UN Charter, it committed one of the gravest violations: The Crime of Aggression. Now, justice is coming,” she commented.

Russia stands accused of committing a vast array of crimes in Ukraine. Russians have allegedly engaged in the systematic targeting of Ukrainian civilians with the bombardment of civilian homes, infrastructure, churches, and schools. Alleged Russian crimes also include rape, torture, mass trafficking of adults and children, forcible disappearances, and the execution of surrendering Ukrainian soldiers.

The perpetrators who committed and abetted each of these individual crimes must face legal accountability. However, this month’s progress in the quest to establish an international tribunal is aimed at filling another glaring gap in legal accountability. Presently, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague is authorized to prosecute Russian nationals for the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, but it is unable to hold Russia’s leaders accountable for the decision to launch the invasion.

This inability to prosecute Russian leaders for the crime of aggression is a significant problem. After all, the attempt by Vladimir Putin and other Russian leaders to subjugate Ukraine is a test case with profound consequences for the future of international security. The outcome of Russia’s war in Ukraine will reveal whether citizens of all countries can expect to live securely within their recognized borders without threat of invasion, occupation, and annexation.

Enshrined in the United Nations Charter as “territorial integrity” and “state sovereignty,” the principles challenged by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have stood the test of time since World War II. In the past, even when allegations were levied that a country was violating these principles, there was never any serious question that such rules protecting a country’s borders existed.

These basic rules serve as the cornerstone of today’s international security architecture. They quietly uphold every existing diplomatic, economic, and military arrangement in the world, shaping the environment around us in ways that few notice and almost everybody takes for granted. If Russia is allowed to claim victory or even succeed in holding any of Ukraine’s recognized territory, the entire world will face a shift toward a dark new period in international relations governed by the principle of “might makes right.” A global arms race will likely follow.

Russia’s invasion and attempted illegal annexation of five Ukrainian provinces in a war of conquest is widely recognized by the international community as a crime of aggression. In March 2022, for example, a United Nations General Assembly resolution supported by an overwhelming 141-5 majority condemned Russia’s “aggression against Ukraine in violation of the Charter of the United Nations.”

Critically, the crime of aggression is a leadership crime. Those prosecuted must be military or political leaders. This has fueled speculation that figures like Russian President Vladimir Putin and other senior officials in the Russian Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Foreign Affairs could potentially be charged. It remains unlikely that any high-ranking Russians could be forced to stand trial in person, but even prosecutions in absentia could have serious repercussions for Russia itself and for the future framework of international security.

Significant questions remain about the legal format of a possible tribunal, as different options including a fully international tribunal or a so-called hybrid tribunal established under Ukrainian law would face different limitations. The United States has not yet prioritized support for an international tribunal. Instead, Europe is currently playing a leading role in the push for justice. The proposed legal framework will now be scrutinized closely to see if it precludes the prosecution of key leaders while they remain in office, including Russia’s head of state and other senior Kremlin officials.

Additional issues include the financing of any future tribunal and its location. Presently, The Hague appears to be the most likely option as it hosts the ICC, the International Court of Justice, and the International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression, which was established by Eurojust (the European Union’s judicial cooperation agency) in 2023.

This month’s agreement on the framework for a potential tribunal was welcomed in Kyiv. The Ukrainian authorities have proven adept at leveraging international legal mechanisms to pursue justice and accountability for Russian crimes ever since Moscow first invaded Ukraine in 2014. Legal scholars have extolled Ukrainian legal efforts as exemplars of post-colonial nations securing their due rights through such institutions and “countering imperialism through international law.”

Beyond the real legal importance of this progress toward a tribunal for Russian crimes against Ukraine, an accompanying narrative corrective is no less significant. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not a faraway “border issue,” but rather a direct assault on the US-led system of international rules. It is therefore a direct referendum of US credibility on the world stage. Senior officials in the Trump administration have recently framed Russia’s invasion as an issue in which “both sides” must make concessions. Recognizing the one-sided nature of Russian criminal aggression reminds of the many sacrifices Ukraine and Ukrainians have already made in the fight to uphold the core principles underpinning international relations.

Recent announcements regarding a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression should serve as a reminder to US leaders that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine remains the world’s most documented war. Too much evidence exists in the public record to deny the reality of Russian crimes. Legal battles to hold Russia accountable will result in multiple highly detailed timelines of crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine. Failure to bring Russia to justice for these crimes could pose serious challenges to the future of international security and to US President Donald Trump’s own historical legacy.

[gold-for-xp]

Defined Space: New Damascus

The colony ships of Earth were immense habitats that carried thousands of people through the void of space to distant stars. These were the last ditch efforts of the Old Earth governments, and so almost all of their remaining resources went into these vessels. They bore the names of some of the oldest settlements of humanity;  The Babylon, The Uruk, and The Chatalhoyuk, to name several.

Over the course of their long journey, having no contact with Earth and limited contact with their sister vessels, many of the people on the ships began to form extremely tight-knit communities. After all, only the first and last generations aboard would ever set foot on a planet, would ever know anything beyond the boundaries of the bulkheads, and the world inside the ship was far more real than the distant past of Earth, and a future world most would never live to see.

One one ship, the Damascus, the power of the envoys and representatives of Earth governments began to dwindle with each new generation of ship life, being slowly overtaken by the bridge crew. Slowly (though not so slowly that there weren't several micro-wars fought in deep space), the crew became the true government of the Damascus, with society taking on a state akin to meritocratic feudalism, where captains were kings of the ship. Eventually, as the successive King-Captains of the Damascus solidified their rule, an issue began to emerge: the Damascus was falling apart. Since the colony ships had never truly been tested, a few key flaws were left unnoticed by their creators. Now, generations later, those flaws threatened to destroy the Damascus and its way of life.

Desperate to find a solution, Captain Salieri III reached out to sister ships whose comms had long been silent. The first to answer was the Persepolis, which had adopted a similar system of government to the Damascus. After some tense negotiation, the two ships sealed their alliance with the marriage of Salieri's son and heir Battiste and Helmswoman Beatrix the Bold. The two ships then began the struggle to seek out the other colony ships and unite them under a common banner. Some joined willingly, others were persuaded by means both diplomatic and aggressive.

Eventually, six more ships joined the Fleet-Kingdom of Damascus, and the realm was securely under the control of the line of Salieri by the time they reached their destination, an Earth-like world in the Perseus Arm of the galaxy. By that time, the Damascus as a ship was long past its prime, and was scuttled on the surface of the planet, where it became the first and capital city on the world which was named New Damascus in its honor. While some of the other ships were grounded as well, others remained in orbit, and once the planet's surface was secure, they set off to locate and colonize the other nearby worlds that had been theorized to be habitable, flying the banner of New Damascus. While there were various uprisings and inter-ship wars in the many long years that followed, no outside force ever came into contact with New Damascus, until one fateful year brought new arrivals-and new conflict- to the realm's doorstep...

[seven-snails]

ave mujica thoughts under the cut. my god.

i want to preface this by saying i did see a tweet before watching the episode mentioning mutsumi having DID, so that was on my mind the entire time i watched the episode lol. i don't have DID myself, so anything i have to say about mutsumi in that regard is better discussed by the thread itself, which was written by someone who does, and is incredibly thorough and absolutely worth the read. i have known people with DID, so some of the things they bring up jumped out at me immediately and i think i would have clocked even if i hadn't seen the tweet beforehand, namely mortis being mutsumi's protector.

i do actually really enjoy the way mortis is presented here, as someone slightly menacing but still very clearly an ally to mutsumi - somewhat similarly to how alluka and nanika are initially portrayed in hunter x hunter. i really liked the imagery of mortis morphing into something monstrous and swallowing mutsumi near the end of the episode; bandori has never played with that kind of imagery before, so it was a bit of a shock to see them jump into it so enthusiastically, but i think it came off really well. honestly, all the work they did to communicate mutsumi's mental state in both this and the last episode was really lovingly done and works out phenomenally.

something i'm interested in seeing is what kind of a protector mortis ends up being. i know that protectors can be aggressive to the people around the system's host as a defense mechanism, and things we've seen in moments when mortis is ostensibly fronting during trailers and the intro believably support that as the next natural step of her character, so it'll be interesting to see how she develops from here on out and how the rest of the band react to this "new side", so to speak, of mutsumi.

on that note, i'm also curious about the implications of mutsumi being swallowed near the end of ep 3. the thread mentions that this is a good way to visualize how visceral switching out between alters can feel, but i also know that alters (and this might be something that happens more with larger systems, so i could be off-base saying this about mutsumi) sometimes go dormant for periods of time, and with the line at the end asking whether this is "sleep or death" makes me wonder if this is what has just happened to mutsumi.

i do also want to note that i figured naming her mortis/"i do not fear death" had something to do with a loss of her sense of self, though up til now i assumed it would have something to do with getting lost in her parents' shadows, but i think this is a far more interesting way to play on those themes, and i'm hoping they'll continuing handling mutsumi and mortis with the care they have been til now.

separate from DID thoughts, i do really like the way mutsumi finds herself stranded in the middle of all the band's issues - she's dissociating as a defense mechanism and is too stressed to even really want to present in the band's discussions; her mistake during the first show of their tour was a result of the fear and exhaustion she's been working through, but rather than finding relief it only thrust her further into the spotlight, and now, like with the photoshoot where the photographer praises her blank expression, she's being asked to put it on display again for the sake of her fans, and can't make up her mind what she wants to do from the way she's paralyzed between her loyalty to sakiko and her desire to just give in and numb herself to the pain; sakiko's line, "you used to talk more, you used to laugh more. now you're leaving it all up to me," fucking broke me, like mutsumi has always been quiet and anxious but there *was* a time when even she could connect with her friends like anyone else, and now that she's struggling so hard she just can't anymore, and the way the subs phrase it, as if the joy of interpersonal connection becomes a burden to carry when you're the only one left to facilitate it, is a really interesting way to put more pressure on the guilt mutsumi already feels over crychic breaking up.

i also really like that we don't see what happens with ave mujica's first show, after mutsumi checks out. it's logical to assume that they would come back on stage and resume playing after a few minutes, but i really like that it's left ambiguous and we're just left to guess at how sakiko ultimately handles it and when exactly mutsumi recovers.

as for other thoughts, the show is starting to make textual what i discussed last week about nyamu being in the band to round out her career while the others are ostensibly there for more emotional reasons, and now that those opposing views are starting to butt heads more frequently and more materially i'm really excited to see how they start affecting each other, and specifically the ways nyamu is going to change because of it.

also watase yuzuki's voice work in this episode was just unbelievable, god she's so talented.

anyway. youkoso watashi position zero e

okay. i have to go draw little beepo now. phenomenal episode.

[sasheneskywalker]

am i the only person who has never struggled with their queer identity?

i was thinking about it recently and i don't remember ever being ashamed, scared, angry or sad about being bisexual, nonbinary, grayaromantic, grayasexual and polyamorous. (yes, i use that many labels. it makes sense in my head.) i had unrestricted access to the interent from a pretty young age (11) and i discovered what a sexual orientation was after entering more english/american spaces and reading fanfiction when i was around 13 years old. i've just read the definitions and went, "yeah, i'm bisexual. why would anyone limit themselves to loving only one gender?" and that was it. my only frame of reference about queer people was fanfics and cool people i've seen online. my parents never talked about lgbtq+ issues (neither in a positive nor in negative light) and i didn't know anyone who was queer in real life, so you could say i was a blank slate when it came to any preconceived notions or biases (of course we live in cisheteronormative society which probably influenced my views on a subconscious level but i'm just taking about being consciously aware about something here.)

it was similar with realizing i was nonbinary, grayaromantic, grayasexual and polyamorous. i've read the definitions, comments made by people identifying that way, some research papers and books and came to the conclusion that these labels fit me. no angst anywhere.

i came out to my family pretty much immediately when my brother asked me if i was interested in any boys in middle school and i replied with full indignation that if he had to ask about it, he should also ask about any girls i might be interested in. my mother was there too. i don't think any of them took me seriously considering my age (i was 14) and the fact that i had to have many more conversations with my mother about being bisexual (and later nonbinary, grayaromantic, grayasexual and polyamorous) before she believed me in some way and even now she still thinks it's just a "phase" and that i'm "confused" or "just looking for attention" and that my girlfriends are only my good friends (but she still supports my relationship and tries very hard not to be outright homophobic/transphobic). my brother realized like 6 years later and asked me if i really was queer and seemed surprised when i told him i was. i still don't know what my father thinks. i told him i had a boyfriend when i was 15 and i told him i had two girlfriends when i was 20 and his reaction was exactly the same: nodding his head and saying "okay". he sometimes uses slurs but also supported me during a project i was doing on being nonbinary and bought me a book written by a trans scholar on christmas.

and i've never done any official coming outs either. in most friend groups, it comes out naturally that i'm queer when we're getting to know each other and it has never been a problem. i've never been met with a negative reaction. (it's worth noting that most of my irl friends are from middle class families, live in big cities and went to very good schools).

and it's not that i'm not aware about queerphobia existing in our society. i read books written by queer people and i read histories of lgbtq+ communities (and it's often pretty bleak). our country is one of the most homophobic countries in europe. the previous government of our country said that "lgbt ideology" and "gender ideology" are a threat to our nation and should be eliminated. i had close queer friends whom i supported when their families and friends didn't accept them. but it all feels one step removed from me.

i can walk alone at 3am around my city (the capital of poland) as a female presenting person with a rainbow handbag and flag pins in a party outfit and nobody ever bothers me. i went to a pride parade this year and there weren't any counter protests, the police were chill and nothing horrible happened. and despite talking with people who used some passive aggressive remarks and weren't completely accepting, i've basically never experienced violent or threatening queerphobia in my life.

i guess it's just interesting to me how much my experiences differ from common queer narratives i observe in media and in real life around me and how my upbringing shaped who i am today.

[starakex]

Here's Boba! My Son the Pooltoy with a Future Space Job. Pretty proud on the shading on this one 'cause I was not confident on whether or not I could render shiny rubber whoops

More info under cut!

Boba is an Autonomous Inter-Dimensional Rescue Unit (AIRU), a type of synthetic creature primarily produced to find missing persons in remote locations, most often to retrieve those lost in wormholes. AIRUs have begun branching out to other job types since, like basic gruntwork in dangerous locations, but their original purpose remains rescue.

AIRUs are usually assigned to small crews (whether in large corporations or small businesses working with investigators) for maintenance and other communications support during missions, and given artificial sentience in order to be self-sufficient on the field; as a result, most AIRUs end up quickly becoming fully-fledged individuals within their team as they gather living experience. Highly modular, Boba is adapted to harsh environments with a tough, rubber skin, a light endoskeleton, and a multi-purpose slime generator within the unit that congeals into large, sticky orbs that can be used to slow down aggressive creatures or provide traction in slippery terrain. Like most AIRUs, he is also equipped with a rudimentary voice module.

Boba's team named him since Unit B-084 was a bit of a mouthful. Since they're independent contractors and don't have as many standards to follow, they also ended up customizing him quite a bit to make him look a little less intimidating to the missing people he is sent out to find. Boba cares deeply about his support team in return, but he prefers to spend most of his free time exploring the universe in solitude and experiencing as many new things as possible. His favorite location is the vast expanses of the poolrooms, though he likes floating in deep space almost just as much. Thanks to his work, Boba has also developed a strong sense of compassion, and will happily do smalls tasks to help anyone he meets (for free, much to his team's chagrin)

[dailyanarchistposts]

Chapter 3. Economy

How will cities work?

Many people believe that an anarchist society might work in theory, but the modern world contains too many obstacles that prevent such a total liberation. Large cities are chief among these putative stumbling blocks. Industrial capitalist cities are a tangled mess of bureaucracies supposedly only kept running by the authorities. But the maintenance of a large city is not as mystifying as we are led to believe. Some of the biggest cities in the world are largely composed of self-organizing slums stretching for miles. Their quality of life leaves much to be desired, but they do show that cities do not simply collapse in the absence of experts.

Anarchists have some experience maintaining large cities; the solution seems to lie in maintenance workers taking over the organization of the infrastructure for which they are responsible, and neighborhoods forming assemblies so that nearly all other decisions can be made at a local level, where everyone can participate. It is probable that an anarchist revolution will be accompanied by a process of deurbanization as cities shrink to more manageable sizes. Many people will probably return to the land as industrial agriculture decreases or ceases, to be replaced by sustainable agriculture — or “permaculture” — which can support a higher population density in rural areas.

In such a period, it might be necessary to make new social arrangements in a hurry, but it won’t be the first time anarchists have made a town or city from scratch. In May 2003, as envoys of the eight leading world governments prepared for the “G8” summit in Evian, France, the anti-capitalist movement set up a series of connected villages to serve as a foundation for protest and an example of collective, anti-capitalist living; these took the name VAAAG (Village Alternatif, Anticapitalist et AntiGuerres). For the duration of the mobilization, thousands of people lived in these villages, organizing food, housing, childcare, debate forums, media, and legal services, and making decisions communally. The project was widely regarded as a success. The VAAAG also exhibited the dual form of organization suggested above. Specific “neighborhoods,” each with fewer than 200 people, organized around a community kitchen, while village-wide services — “inter-neighborhood collective spaces” such as the legal and medical space — were organized by those involved in providing those services. This experience was replicated during the 2005 mobilizations against the G8 in Scotland, and the 2007 mobilizations in northern Germany, when nearly six thousand people lived together in Camp Reddelich.

These protest villages had precedents in the German anti-nuclear movement of the previous generation. When the state wanted to build a massive nuclear waste storage complex at Gorleben in 1977, local farmers began to protest. In May 1980, five thousand people set up an encampment on the site, building a small city from trees cut for construction and naming their new home The Free Republic of Wendland. They issued their own passports, set up illegal radio shows and printed newspapers, and held common debates to decide how to run the camp and respond to police aggression. People shared food and did away with money in their daily lives. One month later, eight thousand police assaulted the protestors, who had decided to resist nonviolently. They were brutally beaten and cleared out. Subsequent manifestations of the antinuclear movement were less inclined to pacifism.[53]

In England, a yearly festival of travellers and hippies that converged at Stonehenge to mark the summer solstice became a major counter-cultural autonomous zone and an experiment in “collective anarchy.” Beginning in 1972, the Stonehenge Free Festival was a gathering that lasted for the month of June until the solstice. More than a music festival, it was a non-hierarchical space for the creation of music, art, and new relationships, as well as spiritual and psychedelic exploration. It became an essential ritual and social event in England’s growing traveller culture. By 1984, it drew 30,000 participants who created a self-organized village for the month. In the words of one participant, it was “Anarchy. And it worked.”[54] The Thatcher regime saw it as a threat; in 1985 they banned the 14th annual Stonehenge Free Festival, brutally attacking the several hundred people who came to set it up in an assault known as the Battle of the Beanfield.

These examples of impromptu camps are not as marginal as they might seem at first. Hundreds of millions of people throughout the world live in informally organized cities, sometimes called shantytowns or favelas, which are self-organizing, self-created, and self-sustaining. The social issues posed by these shantytowns are very complex. Millions of farmers are forced off their land yearly and have to move to the cities, where the peripheral shantytowns are the only place they can afford to settle; but a great many people also move to the city voluntarily to escape the more culturally rigid rural areas and build a new life. Many shantytowns are plagued by health problems caused by poor access to clean water, healthcare, and nutrition. However, many of these problems are peculiar to capitalism rather than the structure of the shantytowns, as the inhabitants are often ingenious in providing for themselves in spite of artificially limited resources.

Privatized electricity and water are generally too expensive, and even where these utilities are public the authorities often refuse to provide access to informal settlements. Shanty dwellers get around this problem by constructing their own wells and pirating electricity. Medical care is highly professionalized in capitalist societies and distributed in exchange for money rather than on the basis of need; consequently, there are rarely fully trained doctors in the shantytowns. But the folk medicine and healers that are present are often available on a basis of mutual aid. Access to food is also artificially limited, because small-scale horticulture for local consumption has been replaced by large-scale production of cash crops, depriving people throughout the Global South of diverse and affordable sources of local food. This problem is exacerbated in famine areas, because food aid from the US, in line with military and economic strategies, consists of imports rather than subsidies for local production. But within the settlements, available food is frequently shared rather than traded. An anthropologist estimated that in one informal settlement in Ghana people gave away almost one third of all their resources. This makes perfect sense. Police rarely have control of shantytowns, and some armed force is required to uphold an unequal distribution of resources. In other words, those who hoard resources are likely to be robbed. With few resources, little security, and no guarantees of property rights, people can live better by giving away a large portion of whatever resources they come across. Gift-giving increases their social wealth: friendships and other relationships that create a safety network which cannot be stolen.

In addition to mutual aid, the anarchist objectives of decentralization, voluntary association, hands-on production rather than professionalization of skills and services, and direct democracy are guiding principles in many shantytowns. It is also important to note that, in an era of growing environmental devastation, shantytown dwellers subside on just a fraction of a percent of the resources consumed by suburbanites and formal city dwellers. Some may even have a negative ecological footprint, in that they recycle more waste than they generate.[55] In a world without capitalism, informal settlements would have the potential to be much healthier places. Even today, they disprove the capitalist myths that cities can only be held together by experts and central organization, and that people can only live at today’s population levels by continuing to surrender our lives to the control of authorities.

One inspiring example of an informal city is El Alto, Bolivia. El Alto sits on the Altiplano, the plateau overlooking La Paz, the capital. A few decades ago El Alto was just a small town, but as global economic changes caused the shutting down of mines and small farms, huge numbers of people came here. Unable to reside in La Paz, they built settlements up on the plateau, changing the town into a major urban area with 850,000 residents. Seventy percent of the people who have jobs here make their living through family businesses in an informal economy. Land use is unregulated, and the state provides little or no infrastructure: most neighborhoods do not have paved roads, garbage removal services, or indoor plumbing, 75% of the population lacks basic health care, and 40% are illiterate.[56] Faced with this situation, the residents of the informal city took their self-organization to the next step, by creating neighborhood councils, or juntas. The first juntas in El Alto go back to the ‘50s. In 1979 these juntas started to coordinate through a new organization, the Federation of Neighborhood Councils, FEJUVE. Now there are nearly 600 juntas in El Alto. The juntas allow neighbors to pool resources to create and maintain necessary infrastructure, like schools, parks, and basic utilities. They also mediate disputes and levy sanctions in cases of conflict and social harm. The federation, FEJUVE, pools the resources of the juntas to coordinate protests and blockades and constitute the slum dwellers as a social force. In just the first five years of the new millennium, FEJUVE took a lead role in establishing a public university in El Alto, blocking new municipal taxes, and deprivatizing the water services. FEJUVE also was instrumental in the popular movement that forced the government to nationalize the natural gas resources.

Each junta typically contains at least 200 people and meets every month, making general decisions through public discussion and consensus. They also elect a committee which meets more frequently and has an administrative role. Political party leaders, merchants, real estate speculators, and those who collaborated with the dictatorship are not allowed to be committee delegates. More men than women sit on these committees; however a greater percentage of women take on leadership roles in FEJUVE than in other Bolivian popular organizations.

Parallel to the organization in neighborhood councils is the organization of infrastructure and economic activity in unions or syndicates. The street vendors and transportation workers, for example, self-organize in their own base unions.

Both the neighborhood councils and their counterparts in the informal economy are patterned after the traditional communitarian organization of rural indigenous communities (ayllu) in terms of territoriality, structure and organizational principles. They also reflect the traditions of radical miners’ unions, which for decades led Bolivia’s militant labor movement. Fusing these experiences, El Alto’s migrants have reproduced, transplanted and adapted their communities of origin to facilitate survival in a hostile urban environment. [...]Through the neighborhood juntas, El Alto has developed as a self-constructed city run by a network of micro-governments [57] independent of the state. In Raúl Zibechi’s view, the autonomous organization of labor in the informal sector, based on productivity and family ties instead of the hierarchical boss-worker relationship, reinforces this sense of empowerment: Citizens can self-manage and control their own environment [58]

Horizontal networks “without traditional leadership” also play a major role complementary to these formal structures in both the organization of daily life and the coordination of protest, blockades, and struggle against the state.

Now that Bolivia has an indigenous president and progressive government led by MAS, the Movement Towards Socialism, FEJUVE faces the danger of incorporation and recuperation that typically neutralizes horizontal movements without explicitly anti-state goals and means. However, while supporting Evo Morales’ reversals of neoliberal policy, as of this writing FEJUVE remains critical of MAS and the government, and it remains to be seen to what extent they will be recuperated.

In South Africa, there are many other examples of informal urban settlements that organizes themselves to create a better life and struggle against capitalism. Specific movements of shack dwellers in South Africa are often born out of moments of violent resistance that take on an extended life as people who met in the streets to stop an eviction or a water shut-off continue to meet in order to create structures for home care for the sick, fire watch, security patrols, burial services, education, gardens, sewing collectives, and food distribution. This was the case with the movement Abahlali base Mjondolo, which arose in 2005 out of a road blockade to stop the eviction of the settlement to make way for development in preparation for the 2010 World Cup.

The Symphony Way settlement of Capetown is a squatted community of 127 families who had been forcibly evicted from their previous home by the government, which is trying to meet its 2020 target under the Millennium Development Goals to eradicate all slums. The government relocated some of the evictees in a tent camp surrounded by armed guards and razor wire, and the rest in the Transit Relocation Areas, described by one resident as “a lost place in hell” with high crime and frequent rape of children.[59]

Refusing to negotiate with the highly distrusted political parties or to live in either of the officially provided hell holes, the Symphony Way families decided to illegally occupy an area along a road to set up their community. They organize their community with mass assemblies in which everyone participates, as well as a high degree of individual initiative. For example, Raise, a nurse who lives in Symphony Way, volunteers as a teacher within the community center, helps organize a girl’s netball team, a boy’s soccer team, a drum band, a children’s daycamp during holidays, and assists in childbirth. Children are very important within the settlement, and they have their own committee to discuss the problems they are confronted with. “In the committee we solve our everyday problems, when children fight or something. We come together and talk. There are children from other settlements, not only from this road,” explains one member of the committee. The community is multiracial and multireligious, including Rastafarians, Muslims, and Christians, who work together to foster a culture of respect among the different groups. The settlement has a night-watch to discourage antisocial crime and put out unattended fires. The residents told a visiting Russian anarchist that they felt much safer in their community than they would in one of the camps offered by the government, where crime is rampant, because at Symphony Way the community worked together to protect itself. “When someone is in trouble everyone is here,” explained Raise. The sense of community is one reason why the squatters do not want to move to a government camp, despite the threat of police violence, and even though in the tent camp the government provides food and water for free. “The community is strong and we made it strong, living and working together, but we didn’t know each other when we first came here. This year and a half made us all a big family.”

There are thousands of examples of people creating cities, living at high population density, and meeting their basic needs with scant resources, with mutual aid and direct action. But what about the bigger picture? How would densely populated cities feed themselves without subjugating or exploiting the surrounding countryside? It may be that the subjugation of rural areas by cities played a role in the emergence of the state thousands of years ago. But cities do not have to be as unsustainable as they are now. The 19th century anarchist Peter Kropotkin wrote about a phenomenon that suggested interesting possibilities for anarchist cities. Urban gardeners in and immediately around Paris supplied most of the city’s vegetables via intensive agriculture supported by plentiful manure from the city, as well as industrial products, such as glass for greenhouses, that was too costly for farmers in rural areas. These suburban gardeners lived close enough to the city that they could come in every week to sell their produce at market. The spontaneous development of this system of gardening was one of Kropotkin’s inspirations in writing about anarchist cities.

In Cuba, centralized industrial agriculture collapsed after the fall of the Soviet Bloc, which had been Cuba’s main supplier of petroleum and machinery. The subsequent tightening of the US embargo only exacerbated the situation. The average Cuban lost 20 pounds. Quickly, much of the country shifted to small-scale intensive urban agriculture. As of 2005, half of the fresh produce consumed by the 2 million residents of Havana was produced by about 22,000 urban gardeners within the city itself.[60] The Parisian example chronicled by Kropotkin shows that such shifts can also occur without state guidance.

[psychotrenny]

mizrahi jews did not migrate because of the actions of ashkenazi jews, they were exiled from their homelands in the 30s and 40s (iraq, yemen, afghanistan, etc.)

For one, I don't know where you're getting the time period "30s and 40s" from? Even Zionists usually consider the "Mizrahi Exodus" to date from the 50s onwards; a big part of how the process is portrayed by pro-Zionist sources is the framing as Israel as this land of opportunity and safety for Jews fleeing the violence and intolerance of the Arab world, something that couldn't exactly happen until Israel was actually established as a state in 1948.

Secondly as I've already stated multiple times the displacement, marginalisation and violent attack on Palestinians by Zionist European Settlers was already underway in Mandatory Palestine by the 1920s, as embodied by the existence of groups like Haganah and Irgun. So like even if we for whatever reason backdate the supposed mass exile of the Mizrahi to the "30s and 40s" it's still very easy to see the correlation between violence perpetrated by European settlers in the name of "Jewishness" and the development of conflict between previously peacefully co-existing communities of Jews and Gentiles in North Africa and West Asia.

And finally, the idea that the mass migration of Mizrahi Jews to Palestine was the result of intolerance from Muslim neighbors is essentially a Zionist distortion of a much more complicated situation. Soon after the establishment of Israel, the new government actively encouraged Jews from the surrounding region to migrate and worked with many of the surrounding governments (usually the European colonial governments that still controlled extensive tracts of the region) to facilitate this. Some Jews (such as those of Yemen or Morocco) were even essentially deported against their will by the wishes of the Israeli government. While there was an increase in inter-communal conflict between Jewish and Gentile populations in the region, this was both due to the general aftermath of Israeli's brutal establishment and in response to specific actions such as the Mossad terrorist attacks in Egypt in 1954 with some actions even being specifically undertaken in order to cause conflict (or even just the appearance of conflict) and induce migration such as Mossad's activities in Iraq through the 1950s. The sheer degree that direct violence and persecution played in such migrations has also been greatly exaggerated by Zionists in order to justify their continued aggression against the people of Palestine and their Allies; the idea that you can draw any real equivalence between the population movements of the Mizrahi Aliyah and that of the Palestinian Nakba is a ghoulish distortion of history that only serves to justify Zionist atrocities both past and present. One was a more or less voluntary* migration that was only partially induced by fears (both hypothetical and actually realised) of conflict while the other was an incidence of direct and unambiguous ethnic cleansing. The factors that led to the Mizrahi migration has plenty of "pull" in addition to "push" and a great deal of said "push" was deliberately engineered by the Israeli government rather than being purely the result of some natural Islamic cruelty or antagonism

*while not an entirely fair thing to say, and its accuracy will vary a lot on a case by case basis, the Mizrahi migrants on the whole had a lot more freedom than the Palestinians in both the decision to leave and their choice of destination (as several of those linked articles mentioned, some Mizrahi migrated to Europe or the Americas rather than Israel)

[beardedmrbean]

Oh yes the hoteps, how the fuck they got together? And why their main base is in Chicago?! Is there a certain kool aid I don’t know about

Also about my ancestry, the thing is I may visit Nigeria if a close friend from they want to come or like for research.

I mean in my black oriented stories, I was slams a hammer so hard in the audience head pointing out the black Americans would see the native Africans as foreigners

Also make passive aggressive comments on the Dahomey.

Actually…I wonder if I could like every talk to a African and expose how bad our education system is telling the us the whole story about the Africa slave kingdoms

I imagine they would have downright shocked that black Americans of all people never learn about the Dahomey until the first women king trailer

Like to me, sorry not taking away the Jewish people struggles, just showing how bad my community knowledge is to our ancestry. Is like a Jewish person never taught what Emperor Hadrian did to ancient Israel.

Then how just about how people like you reveal we did the genetic history of black Americans ancestors with enslaved ancestry and parts we’re from

Why isn’t taught, a huge identity crisis among my community id that we were taught that our pre American ancestors were only slaves.

Of course we aren’t part of those tribes but give us better state of mind…ish

But one thing

Me: So you bitch about the war on drugs and militarization of police the elites did?

Black activists: yep

Me: Had it ever occurred to you that we are taughted a sanitized version of the African slave trade all the way to college while we get hit with the native atrocities and Japanese interment camps stuff in middle school. And how antagonistic we are on average towards African immigrants because we act like toddlers?

BA: nope

Good why am I doing research about our main ancestors more than you

Oh yeah the root thing

https://x.com/copicsquiddo/status/1392364456127221761?s=46

You know with the whole decolonization talks, I notice that the left intentionally leave out black Americans because at the end of the day we are the irreversible result of colonization…unless the left have this dumbass option that modern Yoruba culture is the same as my ancestors were part of-oh my god

So yeah we’re rootless, to where we only have middle upper class people povs of Africa until the 60’s

Also this idea that black people cant cruel as our white slave owners? Oh yeah that never-

*Phone call from the afterlife*

Hello? Oh it Maya Angelou, pointing out that she was RAPED by her mom’s boyfriend as a child and why she was muted for a few years. OW! Oh it Micheal Jackson hitting that high note point out how much of a pos his father was to him and his siblings

Remember that Jackson 5 mini series where they point out the dad was abusive as hell

Got a feel mj and the others did “uncredited” consultants on that series

I heard that mj dad didn’t even GRIEVE or act sad his fucking son was dead. My god, actually I was checking Paris Jackson, she was on an Amazon show called the Swarm where she said her was culturally black. Swarm centered around a serial killer obsessed with a beyonce stand in.

So have the daughter of a man who finger twitch at concert made people faint. Is a good reference

But I read up that MJ mom tried to funraise a documentary after her son death…holy fuck is the MJ we know is a least terrible result of the household he was in?

Um oh yeah, *phone rings* oh Tyler Perry, orphan (wait she was and tp were basically Judas for their higher ups), children of the welfare queens and abusive inner cities parents pointing out the hell they went through

Okay I’m talking about child abuse, but I notice when white, Asian, and Latinos point out their parents and elders shitty actions they are supported

But when black Americans points out that a lot of our parents beat us harder than overseers did to other field ancestors. We need to treat them with kids gloves

Of course not all and we do point out this shit. We need to treat these abusive tactics with kids gloves

“Slavery, racism, and systematic oppression is why!”

Hmmm, why I don’t see Mexicans, Indians, Argentinians, Chinese, Vietnamese, Native Americans, giving their elders who often went through hell too. The same execuses?

Oh yes the hoteps, how the fuck they got together? And why their main base is in Chicago?! Is there a certain kool aid I don’t know about

Splinter from nation of islam, or something like that is my guess. Nailed it

I mean in my black oriented stories, I was slams a hammer so hard in the audience head pointing out the black Americans would see the native Africans as foreigners Also make passive aggressive comments on the Dahomey.

To them here they would be, just like the other way around would work the same, and far more than passive aggressive, but they earned it.

Prev bit and Like to me, sorry not taking away the Jewish people struggles, just showing how bad my community knowledge is to our ancestry. Is like a Jewish person never taught what Emperor Hadrian did to ancient Israel.

I wonder where "ancient" stops applying, that one happened well after Jesus

an·cient ADJECTIVE

belonging to the very distant past and no longer in existence: "the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean"

Suppose that works, nice and vague too. Granted that one doesn't turn up in Christianity so it's not too well known outside of Jewish circles, but they do their own schooling too, pretty much no matter where they are they have 'Jewish School' identity is important to them and all their holy days are confusing to a outsider.

There's a handy chart for us gentiles

Admittedly black Americans were not given the chance to do the same, there was "africatown" technically Plateau, Alabama where former slaves that still remembered home could go to escape Americans, not just white people.

Prev bit+ Of course we aren’t part of those tribes but give us better state of mind…ish

Absolutly be good to learn, sadly the nature of how so many got here y'all are likely to be in the same boat as so many of the rest of us are there, we're all mutts, I'm a european one they'd be african. Might explain some of the pan african stuff honestly, with DNA tests now you can pinpoint though just make sure the company isn't one that will sell your info to the cops or anyone else.

Me: So you bitch about the war on drugs and militarization of police the elites did? Black activists: yep Cont:

It's gonna start sinking in soon enough I think, the information is there and people know where to look now so there will be some folks that are not in the mood to be berated anymore that will begin the education process.

My guess at least.

This sounds familiar, can't just blame white people for that tho, also lots of the kingdoms and what not that did the selling and being sold don't exist anymore, makes it even harder.

Prev and I heard that mj dad didn’t even GRIEVE or act sad his fucking son was dead. My god, actually I was checking Paris Jackson, she was on an Amazon show called the Swarm where she said her was culturally black. Swarm centered around a serial killer obsessed with a beyonce stand in.

joe jackson that was bad ya, same with mya angelou, Tina Turner, and several other people through history, folks need to give up on the race dynamic parts of abuse and just focus on how to help people heal,

Blaming the actual abuser instead of some nebulous concept would be good too. Nice to give the bad guy a name, even if it's Joseph.

Okay I’m talking about child abuse, but I notice when white, Asian, and Latinos point out their parents and elders shitty actions they are supported But when black Americans points out that a lot of our parents beat us harder than overseers did to other field ancestors. We need to treat them with kids gloves

Overseers knew better than to beat the tractor with a baseball bat, one of those things that changed with slavery being abolished is working conditions could actually get worse.

Coal miner talking about the boss telling him to be sure and get the mule out if there's a cave in,

'what about me and the men boss'

'I can hire more men, gotta buy the mule'

“Slavery, racism, and systematic oppression is why!” Hmmm, why I don’t see Mexicans, Indians, Argentinians, Chinese, Vietnamese, Native Americans, giving their elders who often went through hell too. The same execuses?

there's a reason it changed to bipoc from just poc while the lgbt alphabet soup keeps getting longer and more inclusive.