#police are the tools of that ruling class

[starblaster]

"but if you're pro-union, why are you anti-cop-union?" because cops are not laborers. what cops do is not labor. they are enforcers of the laws that oppress laborers and exist solely to protect capital. don't bother me with stupid questions.

🛑 STOP asking me to make the post rebloggable. i refuse to let a bunch of anticommunists, libertarian anarchists, neoliberal spooks, and other pro-cop fascists pass around their bad-faith additions on a post if i can help it (which i can, by disabling reblogs) while others of you are saying some really misguided, off-topic shit, and it’s pissing me off.

please get your facts straight before embarrassing yourselves on the internet. for fucking ONCE in your lives.

i am not “redefining labor” i SAID that cops are not LABORERS (EXPLOITED WORKERS) unionizing to receive better working conditions for the betterment of their fellow workers. they actually DO participate in collective bargaining, and OTHER, ACTUAL LABOR UNIONS also use collective bargaining power to protect their members! if you argue otherwise, i’m sorry but that is a lie. and also NOT what i was FUCKING SAYING! that's not the point of this!! the derailing and misunderstandings of what a LABOR UNION IS that occurred in the short time this post was rebloggable was too insane not to shut off reblogs!

COP unions, LIKE I SAID IN THE ORIGINAL/ABOVE POST, ARE UNIFIED IN DIAMETRIC OPPOSITION TO THE LIBERATION OF WORKERS, AS IN PEOPLE WHO DO LABOR (WHICH DOES NOT INCLUDE THE LITERAL ARMED PROTECTORS OF CAPITAL)

NO OTHER UNION BASHES, KILLS, OR ARRESTS STRIKING WORKERS LIKE COP (OR PRISON GUARD) UNIONS DO.

if you agree with the post so much that you NEED it on your blog or whatever, post a screenshot of the original post with this part cropped out and leave me the fuck alone! THANK YOUUU!!!!!!!

and to the wiseasses saying screenwriters and actors "aren't laborers, either," are you just fucking stupid actually?

[queen-mabs-revenge]

having increasing amounts of conversations with nd comrades about the concept of mental health and mental illness under capitalism, so i went looking for texts on a marxist approach to mental health.

currently a bit into 'psychiatric hegemony' by bruce cohen, and oh man oh man oh man

WOOF.

[yourtongzhihazel]

sorry I’ve seen people on fucking polar opposites of the ideological spectrum call themselves liberal - you mind if I ask what it means when you use it?

Liberalism is an ideology born from the "enlightenment" thinkers, during the birth and rise of capitalism. It is an ideology which markets itself as not an ideology (despite very much being one) and as universal. Hence is why you see "western world" as a short hand for "liberalism" and "democracy" as a shorthand for "liberal democracy". Its founding thinkers include figures like Hobbes, Mills, Locke, among others. Liberals believe in universal rights or freedoms such as the right to life and property, liberty and justice for all, etc. etc.. However a key aspect of liberalism is that its practice often requires making exceptions to these "universal" rules. Even its founding thinkers did so. Locke though indigenous peoples were "savages" unfit for democracy and that slaves were rightful property. Mills thought "barbarous races" were unfit to rule entirely and must be taught to rule. The key point to liberalism is thay the exceptions made to their "universal" rules are always determined by those in power, largely, white people like mills and locke, and the bourgeoisie.

Every ideology, works as so: certain facts are more prevalent than others which justify certain actions against/for it, most often, violence. For liberalism, an example of such is it placing property rights above all else and therefore, violence in preservation of private property is justified (e.g. increased policing of vandalism, theft, etc.). Alternatively, people who are not citizens of a liberal country do not get access to the "universal" rights they proclaim, which justifies putting migrants in cages extra-judicially.

The liberal analysis of the world is (a) immaterial, meaning its basis of analysis is based on "universal" values (life, justice, property, etc.) and abstract ideas (freedom, liberty, etc.) rather than tangible, material causes, conditions, and effects, and (b) analyzes society with individuals as the basic social unit. This has the effect of breaking down problems into too atomized of a model to effectively be useful to society as a whole. Marxism, on the other hand, analyzes the world based on material conditions with classes of people as the basic social unit.

The liberal ideology suposed that, because it believes in "universal" rights (as defined by white european thinkers and boirgeoisie), liberalism must be applied everywhere. This is the ideological justification for its actions to bring liberalism to other countries as a cover for imperialist infiltration and superexploitation of the global south.

Finally, there are many different flavors of liberals. Classical liberals, conservatives, whigs, tories, progressives, many populists, neocons, social democrats, neoliberals, and many more. So long as you: believe in "universal" rights which can and should be applied everywhere, uphold property rights as one such universal right in some capacity, analyze the world using immaterial and abstract analytical tools, and/or view society through the lens of individuals and their actions, you are a liberal.

[miachangedblogs]

TWST Become Human

Warning!!! This contains: Spoilers for Detroit Become Human + twisted wonderland. Later on would have NSFW, fem reader, noncon/dubcon etc!!

Heartslabyul

Riddle Rosehearts

Status: Human

As the only child of the two most astound doctors of Twisted Wonderland, it’s no wonder his parents are so protective over him. Raised to know more than five languages, always the top of his class and even managing to remember all 810 of the Queen of Hearts rule by the age of 10, he’s sure to to become something great. Imagine the surprise and horror of everyone when he got in an freak accident and was almost pronounced dead on the spot?? It’s a miracle he survived such a horrible fate. Ever since the incident, the Rosehearts family became very private, even more than before. They invested in multiple androids to guard Riddle as they made sure not even a scratch were to adorn his features. But.. it’s so strange…

But why can’t he remember what happened before the accident?

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Trey Clover

Status: Human

One of Riddle’s only friends in this world and the only friend his parents allow Riddle to have; The Clover family is known worldwide for their delectable pastries and equally sweet hospitality to anyone and anything, even androids. Everyone is welcome in the Clover bakery! Trey’s big brother like personality makes him so hard to hate! And so hard to notice his weirdly observant and weirdly… obsessive nature? There’s no way someone as humble and kind as him could be someone so malicious. But as the taste of poison is hidden by the sugary batter, his ‘flaws’ are quickly overlooked. If not, his unique magic can always help him out.

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Cater Diamond

Status: Android

Bought as a playmate for Riddle, Cater immediately Fails as he’s deemed “obnoxious” and “rude” by Riddle. Trey seems to hold sympathy for him though, the two becoming quite close as a human and an android without emotions could get. Though, even as an android, Cater’s programming makes him seem so real. Perhaps the expressive and seemingly real emotions creeped Riddle off.

Some speculate he’s a deviant, but no need to worry! Cay-Kun is soooo harmless! Just ask his siste- wait what? Sisters? Since when did he have those?? You must be hearing things. Come on, hold still and give a big smile to the camera, yeah?

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Ace Trappola

Status: Human

No one knows how or why Ace managed to snag a job at the Rosehearts estate. His rebellious nature and constant rule breaking always ends up with him collared by the Riddle, and yet he’s never fired. His favorite pastime by far would have to be screwing up Deuce’s work, sabotaging his coworkers hard work to put himself above him. Deuce is just too gullible, there’s no way people would actually choose him over the clear winner of the Ace Trappola! His eyes filled with clear distain and disgust whenever Cater calls the two “besties”, even making a nickname for the two, “adeuce”. Gross. Don’t fucking group him with that idiot. He’s clearly way better. Don’t you think?

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Deuce Spade

Status: Human

Wanting to be a police officer when he grows up, Deuce eagerly jumped at the opportunity to work within the walls of the Rosehearts Manor. After all, it would look great on his resume. He always seemed to have a clear distain for androids. Perhaps it’s his mind already conditioning him to be prepared to fight against deviants when he ultimately joins the forces. Even with this clear bias, he remains respectful towards any androids that reside amongst the manor. Although not the sharpest tool in the shed, he tries his very best!

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Savanaclaw

Leona Kingscholar

Status: Beastmen

Being the second born prince of the Afterglow Savannah, Leona was constantly watched by eyes from all around the world, yet never truly basking in the spotlight. Even within the shadows his every move was constantly criticized. He would be forgotten if not for the constant ‘tantrums’ he used to throw. Refusing to go to his lessons, family dinners, important meetings and so on. One day, it all stopped. No one knows how or why until Leona emerged after months with a scar adorning his left eye. Rather than sympathy, his people cheered at the seemingly calm Prince. How cruel. He should be feeling enraged, betrayed at his own people’s lack of empathy, but right now he’s just so tired. He doesn’t know why but he just doesn’t have the energy to feel anymore.

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Ruggie Bucchi

Status: Android

A lowly hyena android who’s desperation led to him snatching the scorned Prince’s wallet. Of course he was caught immediately, his fate to be destroyed publicly for his audacious actions. Leona however, had different plans for him. To put it simply, he was amused. Perhaps it was his audacity that let the Prince show mercy, or maybe it was the droplets of blue smudged all over Ruggie hands. Either way, Ruggie managed to secure the role as Leona’s informant amongst the villagers of the Afterglow Savannah as well as his personal servant. At least it pays well I suppose.

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Jack howl

Status: Beastmen

He cannot stand injustice towards anything, especially the ones androids face in the hands of humans. The deviants at first creeped him out but he learned to respect them to a degree. He wouldn’t necessarily go out of his way to help them escape to Canada, nor would he befriend them, after all they were deviants. Who knows if they’re the violent type? He will however protect them if he saw some kids throwing rocks at it or adults being unreasonably physical with them.

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Octavinelle

Azul Ashengrotto

Status: Human

The heir of his mother’s multi million restaurant business housing many android servers, Azul Ashengrotto isn’t a stranger nor is opposed to androids. His two “bodyguards” (and regrettably best friends) are androids after all. Besides, androids are very profitable! He also runs a benevolent business where he can grant any of your wildest dreams and wishes. Want to be thinner? Or perhaps after the heart of a young woman? Indeed he’ll be able to help! Just sign your name riighhhht here. Oh, and make sure you do abide by the contract. People who don’t have a tendency to… disappear. We certainly wouldn’t want that, would we?

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

The leech twins

Status: Android

After the grief of none of their eggs surviving, Mr. And Mrs. Leech desperately contacted every android company for a custom Androids that would resemble what would be their children. After years of prototypes and programming, one unnamed company managed to come up with two twins for the new parents.

Unfortunately, the robotic nature of their ‘children’ were not enough for the two, leading to some tweaking in their code.

The Leech family announced their twins as mermen to the public, hiding the true nature of their children. The only ones who know are the Ashengrotto family who swore to secrecy to keep their mouth shut about the whole situation. It is common knowledge in the sea that those who oppose the Leech family meet a gruesome fate. It’s not like they have a choice really.

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Scarabia

Kalim Al-Asim

Status: Human

As the eldest son of the Asim family, the heir of all the wealth, Kalim has been spoiled rotten since birth. It’s no wonder his perception of money and people are distorted. The public views him as spoiled, entitled, overly bubbly and dumb. He may be naive, yes, but he’s not dumb.

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Jamil Viper

Status: Human

A servant of Kalim Al-Asim from birth to his destined death. Kalim’s “best friend”, “playmate”, “right hand man”, “advisor”. He’s heard it all. He could only grit his teeth and smile politely. As always, Jamil was tasked to taste test Kalim’s food, only to find himself at death door. He watched in anguish and rage at the amount of people swarming the young heir instead of him. The one about to die.

After the hospitalization, Jamil has become more quiet. More alert. At first his parents grew concerned, though Kalim’s father kept trying to reassure that nothings wrong. Overtime Jamil learned to put on a mask for his parents to ease their concern. It’s nothing new to him anyways.

Sometimes he wishes it was Kalim instead…

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Pomfiore

Rook Hunt

Status: Human

Rook Hunt is most popular for being Vil’s unofficial manager and best friend. One of the most loyal people in Vil’s life allowed Rook to be able to house every single secret of Vil. Paparazzi have tried numerous times to get him to fess up, even offering him millions. Rook would always just smile with his fox-like grin and brushed them off with a swift change of topic. It is also to be known that Rook is known to have a “morbid” curiosity regarding anything that isn’t human. His curiosity doesn’t have any bad intentions, no underlining malice whatsoever. He just sees beauty in everything. It’s more fascination than anything. This does cause him to come off as creepy and overly eccentric, his mere presence causing unease to those around him.

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Epel felmier

Status: Human

A country boy who came to the big city for education but more so excitement. His small town, Harveston was known to be one of the only places that didn’t house androids. It wasn’t a matter of the people despising androids, Harveston was just a traditional town. A small town that barely even used modern day farming equipment. They simply just wanted to keep tradition. You could imagine his surprise when he saw just how realistic and smart androids were. He doesn’t have an opinion on them, not yet. All he cares about is working hard for the blast-cycle he’s so desperate to buy.

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Ignihyde

Idia shroud

Status: half human, half android: Cyborg

An unnamed incident had caused the death of Ortho Shroud and severe injuries to Idia Shroud. Idia’s parents could only save the eldest via trading off his damaged human parts with android scraps, successfully producing the first recorded cyborg Twisted Wonderland has ever known. He’s still human, just some of his limbs and bone structure being held up by metal. As soon as he recovered he began working day and night to make a replica of his deceased brother. His grief made him spiral into a deep denial as even though he was the one to build Ortho, he fully believed he was the same old Ortho from back then. He began insisting that everyone treat Ortho as human, snapping at anyone who dares to call his little brother an “android Assistant”. Can’t you all see he’s alive?? How audacious.

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Ortho Shroud

Status: Android

A bright young boy who cares deeply for his brother. Much is unknown.

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Diasomnia

Lilia Vanrouge

Status: Fae

An Ex general and now the right hand man to the prince of Briar Valley, Malleus Draconia. Not much is known about this Fae, not much is known about anyone from Briar Valley in general. People do say he’s incredibly friendly, much more approachable than the Prince. Even with his bubbly exterior, people tend to be on edge in his presence. Perhaps it’s the sharp fangs, the hint of mischief in his eye, or maybe it’s the knowledge of his past as the most feared general. Nowadays multiple rumours circulate him such as him being a rockstar, a vampire, even an android. How amusing. Perhaps all are true, perhaps none. Who knows, really?

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Sebek Zigvolt

Status: Android

Loud and boisterous, an overly protective and aggressive android brought in by Lilia to be Malleus’s body guard. He has a clear disdain towards deviants and humans, constantly belittling both. I’m his mind, the hierarchy seems to be Fae first, then android, then everyone else. You can be sure that he will never become a deviant with his strict nature. Although Sebek does seem to be alarmed at the threat of becoming a deviant. He can’t help but feel scared… Scared? No, that’s not right. Androids can’t feel... Can they?

*. ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Warning!!! This contains: perv Idia, noncon thoughts, masturbation, gross Idia, fem reader.

You just can’t believe your luck.

You’ve rubbed your eyes again to make sure it was functioning correctly, re reading the huge words “accepted” printed dark blue on the letter.

“Welcome to STYX mechanic number 0962! How’s your day been?” An android radiating with enthusiasm greeted you immediately, hovering towards you. A little peeved at your label you couldn’t help but frown just a bit. Behind him stood a tall, pale man; you could only assume it was Idia Shroud, the heir of STYX. You tried to push down your panic and unease, every ounce of confidence immediately evaporating. Ortho ushered you inside the huge building, talking endlessly about his brother, STYX, your role in STYX and just how happy he is to meet you.

Ortho is a clear deviant. That much is very clear when you first met him. Though nice and friendly, you ought to keep your guard up. You make a mental note; be cautious around Ortho.

“-re you listing Ms. 0962?” Ortho stops in his tracks as he tilts your head towards you.

“Hm? Oh yeah, sorry Ortho.” He giggled as he continued to hover around.

“You’re so silly Ms. 0962. I can see you and my brother becoming great friends!” You could only awkwardly smile and nod as you continued your walk with him, not noticing the constant glances from Idia directed right at you.

It’s been a month since your employment in STYX. You’ve tried making attempts to socialise with coworkers but they always give you such short answers, talking to you only when it’s absolutely necessary. It didn’t help that your boss was such a pain. Always giving you short responses, constantly glaring at you as if your very existence threatened him in some way. At least the pays good and your boss’s android assistant keeps you good company? You don’t even know anymore.

You were working on some papers when the door to your office opened.

It was your boss.

Mentally groaning, you got up to bow and gave him a nervous smile.

“Hello Mr. Shroud. What can I do for you?” Idia only glared at you as he swiftly turned around, beckoning you to follow him. Hastily you put down your belongings to catch up, jogging towards him.

“You’ll work on an “important client”. Try not to mess up.” Your boss went on about what it is and what is expected but all you could focus on was the speck of blue staining his jaw. You reached into your pocket and pulled out your handkerchief with a smile.

“You got some thirium on you Mr. Shroud. Here, lemme wipe it o-” just as you were about to wipe it off with your handkerchief, Idia snatched the cloth out of your hand.

“I’ll do it myself later.” Sneering, he puts it in his back pocket and continues to walk you to your office. You shrink at the cold attitude, awkwardly playing with the hem of your shirt.

Idia suddenly stopped in his tracks as he got his key card out to open a room filled with thirium bags and thousands of tools you never even knew nor heard of before. Walking inside you notice a huge box of what you assume to be the container of the android. Your boss rudely shoves a crumpled paper in your hands.

“The code to the box.” He explains as he swiftly heads out of the room, not even sparing you a second glance.

“G-goodbye Mr. Shroud!” You bow one last time as the door closes in front of you without a response. Sighing at the lack of response, you stare at the crumpled up paper and back at the box containing your new project.

Idia panted heavily as his hands pumped his dick desperately, chasing after his release. The other hand pressed the handkerchief into his nose.

God you were cute.

To be completely honest, hiring you was an honest mistake, a product of his carelessness and lack of sleep finally catching up to him. Your resume wasn’t anything noteworthy, if anything, you were severely under qualified for this job. Alas idia was too tired to notice his mistake when he accidentally pressed hire on his computer. He wanted nothing more than to smash his keyboard just thinking about the scolding he’d get from his parents.

Truly a blessing in disguise.

With a shaky moan Idia came all over his desk, gasping for air as he stayed slumped on his seat. After a few minutes Idia sat upright, groaning as he shoved the handkerchief into his pocket for future use. Grabbing handfuls of tissue he lazily cleaned himself up, mind hazy still thinking of you.

He wonders if you’d like pomegranates.

*. ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

I love the idea of android twst and wanted to put my two cents on it! Shout out to the lovely @cvlutos for the amazing concept and fleshing out go check them out lovelies! Currently unfinished so sorry! To be honest I probably won’t make new parts for this but we’ll see. If you have any thoughts, requests or questions please send them my way!!

That’s all for today!! Tune in for more sweethearts!

Bitter dreams<33

[alicearmageddon]

If an anarchist society is to function without law, or, at least without the Instituionalised state violence we know today as law, we must collectively rid ourselves of the notions of punishment and retribution. These are the moral justifications that both the prison and police systems rely upon entirely, and the prison and police systems are tools of which the state uses not for defense of the people, but for the defense and enforcement of the power of the ruling class through violence. The idea that there are irredeemable people who must be locked away for years, for life, or simply executed. Nobody is born awful, and therfore people become awful, and if someone can become awful, they can stop being awful.

[despondentnuzzy]

Alright fuck it I want to ramble analyze characters more. I've been stuck on who so I opened to a random page. Saw Marasi first and now I am going to see what things my brain will inform me about her as I write this post.

Spoils for Era 1 and 2 of Mistborn

I've seen Marasi compared to Vin, both in the text and in some posts online, but let's take another angle.

In Mistborn if I asked you which character

Is the socially inconvenient child to an upper class house

Has a half-sibling that gets romantically involved with the main protagonist

First bonds with our earring wearing protagonist at a high society function

Has an education that leads them to believe they can fix the whole world if you just let them do it

Oh my gosh it's Elend Venture in a wig!

But now that I think about it, there is a lot of similarities between Elend and Marasi beyond surface level plot.

Marasi and Elend of course share the traits mentioned above but also share a similar problem. Theory works in theory, practice doesn't always work in practice.

Both of these characters would achieve far greater success if they just didn't play by the rules they said everyone should agree to on the basis they know better.

However while Elend relents at the end of his era, becoming a mostly benevolent tyrant.

Marasi gives up her opportunity to circumnavigate her rules. She rejects the offer to join the Ghostbloods. An organization she could likely do far more with than any regular position within The Basins policing system would ever afford her.

Now in Wax's epilogue we find out she's running for Governor, which would give her greater ability to enact her reforms but she is still working within the system, which realistically will greatly limit her ability to solve problems. (Although I'm sure come Era 3 we'll find out she did plenty of good for the people of Scadriel.)

I mentioned previously that Wayne is toxic preservation while Wax is literally stated to be a force of ruin.

In this view I would see Marasi as Harmony. Unlike Sazed, who is Harmony due to his duplicitous (but not decietful) nature, Marasi is a true balance.

Rusts I feel like I said very little with too much in this post? OH FUCK HER ALLOMANCY!

Umm fuck, Marasi probably has symbolic traits tied to her Allomancy let's see.

You could argue that it plays into how slowly she feels like she grows, that everything can happen so fast around her and that if she was only given the right tools (allomantic grenades) her skills would become invaluable?? Idk I probably should make another post about her sometime. Feels like I didn't do her justice here haha

[fatehbaz]

When Sarah Norris joined a “community art build,” a protest that invited community members to work on art projects in a public park in December 2021, she had no idea she would soon face felony charges stemming from her action. Norris was part of a mutual aid group called the Asheville Survival Program, which supported a houseless community that regularly converged in Aston Park, a centerpiece of downtown Asheville, North Carolina. Like many American cities, Asheville faces skyrocketing housing costs, which is why local activists began supporting the encampments of those pushed out of indoor housing by rising rents. [...]

“Mutual aid is showing up for each other from a stance that we all deserve care, that we all have the same inherent dignity, that there is space for all of us,” says Norris, who explains that her collective provides weekly deliveries of food and camping gear to the people in the park. The encampments faced daily sweeps, where police clear the people out of the park [...].

In December 2021, activists from Asheville Survival Program and others in the city organized a multiday protest in the park demanding the city provide a sanctioned location for unhoused folks to camp, and include sanitation services. Then, police descended, arresting activists and journalists alike. From December through April 2022, a total of 16 people were arrested on warrants for their work in the park, facing charges like “felony littering” and “conspiracy to commit felony littering,” and local politicians, as text messages obtained by The Asheville Free Press showed, cheered on the arrests.

While the Asheville defendants may face uniquely severe consequences for their efforts, their experience is not uncommon, as police increase attention on groups supporting communities that lack resources. [...]

---

As cities experience a deepening housing crisis, mutual aid projects have become essential for supporting houseless encampments, refugee communities, and others who are met not only with neglect from government and social service organizations, but also harassment from and criminalization of their activities by law enforcement. “The state recognizes the power of people who are networked, capable, and ready to take action,” says Kelly Hayes, a Chicago-based mutual aid organizer and co-author of an upcoming book on the subject [...]. “When such people are more invested in each other’s well-being than the edicts of the ruling class, they can quickly become a threat to the order of things.”

---

The repression these groups report is often tied directly to the communities they support. This is how the police zeroed in on South Bay Mutual Aid and Care Club in Los Angeles, which has been supporting a houseless encampment for the past two years by coordinating various resources, such as food distribution; providing harm-reduction tools, such as clean injection kits; and providing intermediaries to support those seeking public assistance. Los Angeles’ unhoused population is only growing as the city becomes unrealistically expensive, and with the 2028 Olympics looming, the city has been cracking down on encampments, sweeping the encampment dozens of times and as often as once a week. South Bay Mutual Aid’s goal is to support one particular encampment of about 70 residents near the Port of Los Angeles, coordinating with a network of similar groups across the city and country to share resources. This has, subsequently, allowed the community in this encampment to stabilize, rather than to dissipate whenever a police sweep disrupted their living arrangements. This allows those living there to stay connected to each other [...].

This gets to the heart of what mutual aid organizer and scholar Sean Parson says is the driving force in the repression [...]. He added that escalation in the targeting of mutual aid groups almost always comes alongside efforts to “sanitize” a city for commercial interests. [...]

The answer to repression, Parson says, is more mutual aid, not less [...]. “Build alliances with other homeless support groups if you can,” says Parson.

---

Text by: Shane Burley. “Where Mutual Aid Comes to Its Own Assistance.” Yes! Magazine. 20 March 2023. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[unifiedinsolidarity]

American Christian Fundamentalism is Ruling Class Propaganda

Today is March 31st, 2024, which has marked the Day of Transgender Visibility for the past fifteen years. As an act of lip service, President Biden has decided to commemorate this important day for the transgender community, provoking a predictable eruption of transphobia from American Christian fundamentalists who seem to act as if the only thing anyone should be doing right now is celebrating Easter. With these morons babbling so viciously at the mere prospect of transgender individuals existing in public, you'd think they would be a leading cause of climate change because of all of the oxygen that they've converted into carbon dioxide through their endless noise. I'm starting to think that they actually are.

But the reality is even more twisted and backwards than it appears at first glance. Recently, it was revealed that the U.S. Empire—under the authority of Joe Biden—quietly bypassed Congress to supply Israel with billions of dollars worth of bombs and war planes to fuel their genocidal rampage through Palestine. We are witnessing a bloodthirsty binge of destruction that has claimed 30,000 lives, including 12,000 innocent children, all financed by the American working class. But American Christian fundamentalists don't seem to give an ounce of shit about their taxpayer dollars bankrolling bombs that are being dropped on the literal birthplace of their Jesus since they're too bothered by their futile quest to "defeat transgenderism."

So why is it that American Christian fundamentalism always seems to punch down on the marginalized and vulnerable while ignoring the evils being perpetrated by those in power? It's almost as if this brainwashing cult is just a convenient tool that is being used to seduce the masses into policing their own morality—whether that be by bashing the gays, slut-shaming women and girls, or bullying the transgender community—to serve as a distraction from the festering corruption of the U.S. ruling class as they seek to amass wealth and power through exploitative means.

If only more eyes could see this reality. If only more ears could hear this truth. Then the world would be an infinitely better place.

[neopronouns-in-action]

Neopronouns in Action #069: First Day of School

Neopronouns: zo/zol/zov/zolself which follow the same rules as he/him/his/himself

Replace he with zo

Replace him with zol

Replace his with zov

Replace himself with zolself

EX:

"He is going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as he gets a fence set up around his yard so the puppy can go outside without him having to walk it. His uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he’s letting him use, since he lost his. He's going to buy toys and train the puppy himself.”

Becomes:

"Zo is going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as zo gets a fence set up around zov yard so the puppy can go outside without zol having to walk it. Zov uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he’s letting zol use, since zo lost zov. Zo's going to buy toys and train the puppy zolself.”

= = =

Another Flatland short story, which will make a lot more sense if you go read Flatland.

Trigger warning for child abuse and police brutality.

= = =

069: First Day of School

“Alright, students, when I call your name, you will come north one at a time, and feel the angle on this specimen. Then you will return to your seats and write south what you think the answer is. You all remember your lessons from before your break, I hope? Eating lunch hasn’t erased your memories?”

“Yes.” Finley said, along with a simultaneous chorus of other yeses, nos and confused, “uhhs...” from the rest of zov classmates.

Zo had started out confidant with zov answer, but now zo was confused. Was zo answering yes that zo remembered zov lessons, or yes that lunch had made zol forget? This was zov first day at school, zov first day somewhere without zov mother there to supervise. It was frightening and exciting and fun. Right at this moment it was mostly confusing.

But Teacher Benami didn’t seem to care how confused the class was, because he started calling names. And because no one in the class had a byname that started with A, “Finley Brytye.” was the first name to be called.

Finley obediently moved to the front of the classroom, carefully maneuvering around the angles of zov classmates, and approached the blurry, almost imperceptible point of brightness that zo recognized only as Teacher Benami’s eye through sheer habit, and the brighter point that zo could only assume was the eye of the specimen. Since Finley sat at the back of the classroom, zo could only see the dim lines that were the backs of the rest of zov classmates.

Only because zo’d navigated this route dozens of times now did zo manage to avoid bumping into any of zov classmates as zo made zov way to the front of the large classroom where zov teacher was waiting. Everyone else made it look so easy, zo was constantly ashamed of zov clumsiness and did zov best to hide it.

This would be the first time Finley actually tested out zov educated Feeling skill. North until now, it had been nothing but theory, with Teacher Benami explaining the different kinds of angles, the scale from .5 to 59 degrees that indicated a wretched Isosceles--

(Any time zov parents talked about Isosceles, they always referred to them as ‘wretched’, so Finley now automatically placed the word ‘wretched’ in front of ‘Isosceles’ without even thinking about it)

--and how the students were to carefully feel along the angle of the specimen with their cillia, making sure not to press their side against it, or they might hurt themselves.

The specimen was, of course, a wretched Isosceles, which wasn’t a person, but it would give them practice for Feeling real people to tell their angles.

Finley’s mother had taught zol how to feel to recognize certain people, like zov siblings, father, and herself, but zo’d never thought about the measurements of their angles before in numbers, or anything besides a personal marker.

Finley approached cautiously, not wanting to bump into the specimen or zov teacher now that zo was closer. Finley’s angle was 60°, which was less dangerous than the angle of a wretched Isosceles (or Nature forbid, a Woman), but still much sharper and dangerous than that of a Square, or Pentagon, or any of the more elevated classes.

Zo was very close to the specimen and Teacher Benami now, and Finley paused for a moment, suddenly nervous. Did zo really have to touch the wretched Isosceles? What if its acute angle was contagious? Finley’s parents sometimes worried about zol and zov brothers being “infected” by too much contact with wretched Isosceles, it was why zo and his brothers always had to walk the long way to school, to avoid passing the work sector where the wretched Isosceles lived.

“Go on, son,” Teacher Benami said, chuckling a little, as though reading Finley’s mind, “It’s chained so securely, it couldn’t bite even if it wanted to.”

Finley still hesitated. North until this moment, zo’d never been this close to a wretched Isosceles before, let alone been preparing to touch one. “Can I wash my cillia afterward?” Zo asked, afraid of the infection zov parents were always whispering about.

Teacher Benami’s eye brightened in a smile, his laugh was louder this time, and Finley felt a ripple through the air as Teacher Benami waved his cillia in a gesture of mirth as he laughed, “Yes, yes, you may, Finley, and good on you for asking! That’s the spirit! But hurry on now, everyone needs to have their turn. Feel the angle right there where the eye is, figure out what degree you think it is, then you can go wash your cillia.”

With Teacher Benami’s urging, Finley gave in and scooted close to the brightly glowing eye, reaching out with zov foremost cillia, stretching it so much it started to hurt.

Zov cillia connected with the smooth line of one of the specimen’s sides, and zo almost felt zov heart stop with fear, expecting pain, or for some terrible mutating disease to sweep over zol, changing zol into an unrecognizable monster--

But nothing happened, except that Teacher Benami told zol to hurry north.

So Finley hurriedly brushed zov cillia forward, towards the now hidden glow of the specimen’s eye, wanting to get the experience over as quickly as possible--

And on the way of zov cillia’s slide south the other side of the point covering the specimen’s now hidden eye, zo felt his heart leap again, but this time not out of fear, but of surprised recognition.

“Felix?!” Zo cried automatically, instinctively shoving forward with zov other cillia to feel the familiar spot again to make sure zo wasn’t wrong. Zo wasn’t. Right there, to the left of Felix’s eye, was her birthmark, the small dent in her otherwise smooth side that had allowed Finley to recognize her for as long as zo could remember.

Finley’s mind was whirling with bewilderment and sudden anger. Why was zov cousin tied north and being called a specimen? Felix wasn’t a wretched Isosceles, she was a respectable Equilateral!

Not thinking about anything except the injustice of it, Finley began tugging violently at one of the chains constricting zov cousin to the wall, thinking to zolself, because zo couldn’t speak when zov mouth was latched onto the bitter metal of the chain, ‘I’ll get you out, Felix!’

The loud clacking of the heavy chain and Finley’s sudden, overwhelming rage made zol immune to the reprimands of zov teacher and the confused laughter of zov class, until zo felt the sudden, sharp jolt of the lance in zov side, before Teacher Benami shoved zol with one of his flat sides, so that Finley went crashing backwards away from zov enchained cousin, reeling from the shock.

Teacher Benami’s enraged voice roared so loudly Finley could feel the ripples of air against zov bruised skin; “What in Nature’s sight has gotten into you, young man?!” His eye was suddenly all that Finley could see, right in front of zov face.

Zo jerked backwards, and shouted back, “That’s not a specimen, that’s my cousin, Felix! Let her out! She’s not a wretched Isosceles! She’s an equilateral just like me!”

The room fell dead silent for a few heartbeats, then Teacher Benami jumped to the alarm button and snapped out, “Guards! Room 17! Get in here!”

Then Finley was being shoved again, this time until zo was squashed back against Felix, the large chains bruising zov side, pressing the two of them together until Finley thought zo would burst from the pressure.

Zo didn’t even know how long this lasted before the pressure was suddenly released, and for a few precious moments, zo could breathe again – then there were spikes of pain in all three of zov sides – the sharp stab of the guards’ lances, pinning zol in place.

Finley was dizzy, terrified, and felt sick. The lunch zo’d just eaten was threatening to come back north, hurting zov eye, which had clamped shut instinctively in self-preservation.

Teacher Benami whispered something to one of the guards that Finley couldn’t understand past the terror suffocating zol.

So zo didn’t see anything as zo was forced out of the room at lancepoint, shoved roughly and lanced any time zo stumbled or faltered, with the guards snarling and swearing each time.

Finley was forced backwards into a cell so small zo could literally feel zov back corners being crushed and bent out of shape. Zo still couldn’t convince zolself to open zov eye, so all zo could do was tremble in pain and fear as the sharp stench of distress pheromones filled the tiny room.

Hours passed where Finley had nothing to do but wallow in zov own misery, trying to understand what had happened. The temperature began to drop, signaling the fall of night. Zo began to shiver, feeling claws of ice wrap around zov insides.

Everything had turned into a disaster so quickly, zo still couldn’t process it or understand why these horrible things had happened.

Felix had been chained up in zov room like a wretched Isosceles, even though she was a respectable Equilateral. Equilaterals weren’t specimens, they were respectable tradesmen. They were supposed to grow up to be artisans.

This was Finley’s first day of school.

It wasn’t supposed to end like this.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Workplace surveillance is coming for you

If you want to do something terrible with technology, you can’t just roll it out on people with money and social capital. They’ll complain and your idea will tank. Successful shitty tech rollouts start with people you can abuse with impunity (prisoners, kids, migrants, etc) and then work their way up the privilege gradient. I call it the Shitty Technology Adoption Curve.

The point of the Shitty Technology Adoption Curve is to normalize technological oppression, one group at a time. 20 years ago, if you were eating your dinner under the unblinking eye of a video-camera, it was because you were in a supermax prison. Now, thanks to “luxury surveillance,” you can get the same experience in your middle-class home with your Google, Apple or Amazon “smart” camera. Those cameras climbed the curve, going from prisons to schools to workplaces to homes.

The pandemic was a great accellerant for late-stage capitalism, converting our homes to rent-free annexes of our employers’ facilities, and turning “work from home” into “live at work.” Bossware, a fringe technological category, experienced a massive boom, rocketing up the privilege gradient.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

For most of its history, bossware was used to police the most marginalized, oppressed workers, like the mostly Black, mostly female workforce at Arise, a company that charges workers for their own training and then fines them if they quit.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/22/paperback-writer/#toothless

But when lockdown turned high-status white collar workers into home-workers, their bosses rolled out incredibly invasive spyware, including tools that watched them through their cameras, listened to their microphones, logged their keystrokes, scoured their hard-drives and read their text messages.

This was the second coming of Taylorism, AKA “scientific management,” an early 20th Century pseudoscience practiced by high-priced, unaccountable consultants who would fan out on factory floors in literal science cosplay, including lab-coats and clipboards, and loom over workers, watching their every movement, often going so far as to film them.

hen the consultants would go back to their workplace, soup the negatives, and produce completely arbitrary workplace rules about how workers must stand, hold their limbs and heads, and move — it was a kind of corporate anti-yoga whose asanas were designed to make workers look productive to their bosses, who often had no idea how to perform or evaluate their jobs.

The pandemic’s new Taylorists do not confine themselves to the factory floor. Thanks to digital tools, they can come right into your home, and they can take high-frequency measurements of unimportant things in great detail, and then produce scores that your boss can use to decide whether and how much to pay you.

Bossware is the subject of an excellent New York Times feature by Jodi Kantor, Arya Sundaram, Aliza Aufrichtig and Rumsey Taylor, which documents the ways that “Worker Productivity Scores” undermine the workers’ ability to perform their jobs, while also allowing their bosses to steal their wages:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/08/14/business/worker-productivity-tracking.html

Their case-studies are a trip up the Shitty Tech Adoption Curve, and includes $200/hour finance exec Carol Kraemer, who discovered that her boss was tracking her time in 10-minute increments and docking her pay for stretches where she took her fingers off her keyboard — to think, say, or make notes with pen and paper.

Kraemer discovered that the only way to avoid wage-theft was to do “mindless busywork” that produced the clicks that her bossware demanded, even if it got in the way of her work. This is yet more proof that “you treasure what you measure,” or, more formally, “any target becomes a measurement” (AKA Goodhart’s Law).

The decline of worker productivity in pursuit of metrics is an inescapable failure mode of bossware. In 2020, I reported on a reader’s experience working in an engineering shop where her boss evaluated her performance based on the number of trouble-tickets she closed, turning her into “a ticket-closing machine.”

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/08/absolutely-remarkable-thing/#goodhartism

Being an engineer, this worker applied herself to the problem in a methodical fashion, and realized that she could juke her stats by closing tickets prematurely by marking them “did not respond” — and also that she could close and re-open the same tickets over and over, racking up points.

She closed by saying, “Your execs should fucking well know this: how would THEY like to be evaluated based on, like, how many emails they send in a day? Do they believe that would be good for the business? Or would they object that they are tasked with the holistic success of the org, and that their roles are too complex to reduce to a set of metrics without context?”

The irony, of course, is that bossware is now coming for execs, and, what’s more, they lack the engineering skills to optimize their work so they can get a high score and do the job, so they have to settle for just getting the score — and hang the job itself.

In the NYT story, the authors profile a wide range of people who are deliberately doing a worse job in order to get higher scores, including a group of hospice chaplains who are given points based on their work with dying patients and their families, scored in a way that is utterly disconnected from providing compassionate care.

Activities are scored based on their priority to management, without regard to the comfort they provide: 0.25 points for a phone call with a grieving relation; one point for a visit with a dying patient, 1.75 points for presiding over a funeral.

Chaplains’ ability to accumulate points was undermined by patients — who would take longer than anticipated to draw their final breaths, or break down in tears, or cancel appointments as they made their peace with their impending deaths. To maintain their wages, chaplains resorted to “spirtual care drive-bys” — like sticking their head in a room where a patient was unconscious, exchanging a brief word with a nurse, and marking it down as a “patient visit.”

Healthcare offers a fascinating window into the Shitty Technology Adoption Curve, as doctors’ and nurses’ work has been transformed by the electronic health record and its relationship to billing — so that now these high-paid, high-demand, high-skill professionals have to organize their work around data-entry on a system designed without their input and without regard to their priorities.

The Times reporters dig into the social workers, therapists and addiction counselors at Unitedhealth, a private-equity-backed healthcare monopoly. They get marked as “idle” if they stop typing to talk with their patients. If those conversations go on too long, they are marked as “derelict” and risk employment sanctions.

Social workers with masters’ degrees are compensated based on the number of keystrokes they generate on the job. For Unitedhealth admin workers who work from home, glitches in the system can imperil their jobs, for example, if the system hangs when you log out for the day, it can mark you as “idle” all night, killing your average score. Workers facing these problems are advised by their managers to jiggle their mouses periodically to keep the division’s score from falling.

One of the most interesting part of the Times feature is the work it does profiling the pseudoscientists who created and marketed this junk software. There’s Federico Mazzoli, co-creator of Worksmart, who explained the benefits of his product: “Once you see those metrics, those insights, something changes: You realize how much you waste doing nothing, or just multitasking and not accomplishing stuff.”

Mazzoli seems to have either not used his product, or, if he did, did so under conditions where he was in charge of it — using it the way an athlete might use a stopwatch to time their own sprints, and not the way a boss might: to decide whether to dock your pay or fire you.

This inability to understand the difference between using a technology and having the same technology used against you is endemic to the industry. Take Crossover, which bills itself as “the Fitbit of productivity,” but whose customers rhapsodize about the producing giving them “powers of near X-ray vision.” The point of a Fitbit is to help you improve something that matters to you — but Crossover’s customers want to use it to punish other people for failing to follow orders. It’s the difference between a Fitbit and a prisoner-tracking cuff — which make crossover “the ankle-braclet of productivity.”

Ironically, the Times reports that Crossover’s own employees so resented the company’s intrusive monitoring of them (as they created and sold intrusive monitoring tools) that Crossover hemorrhaged employees and struggled to hire replacements. Eventually, Crossover had to turn off its most intrusive features so that it could keep the employees needed to make and sell its bossware product.

One major focus of “productivity trackers” is measuring bathroom breaks and punishing workers for pissing. Piss-tracking tools are another shitty technology that has been racing up the privilege gradient, making the leap to white-collar workers after being imposed on blue-collar workers, like the Amazon warehouse workers and drivers who have to piss in bottles to satisfy their bossware:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/19/the-shakedown/#weird-flex

The next step on the gradient was students — children have slightly more privilege than nonunion blue-collar workers, it seems — with 1,000+ US handing public money to E-hallpass, a company that tracks children’s urination:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy73n7/ehallpass-1000-thousand-schools-monitor-bathroom

As the metaphor of corporate personhood has become more and more concrete (for example, through the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision, which ruled that limits on corporate political spending violated their corporate persons’ free speech rights) many have pondered the question, “What sort of person is a corporation?”

The 2003 documentary “The Corporation” investigated this, declaring the if corporations are people, they are psychopaths — remorseless and totally lacking in empathy. Science fiction writers have claimed that corporations are “slow AIs” (Charlie Stross), or Skynet (Ted Chiang) or immortal colony organisms that use humans as gut flora (me):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/12/no-criminals-no-crimes/#get-out-of-jail-free-card

But the rise and rise of bossware implies another personality archetype for the corporation: the abusive alcoholic dad, whose own life is spinning out of control and who finds comfort by seeking to control the lives of others in humiliating ways that ultimately leads to his own destruction.

Because bossware doesn’t just radically reduce productivity by shifting the point of work from getting the job done to getting the boxes ticked — it also exposes the businesses who use it to existential risks. Take Office 365, the cloud-based word processing/spreadsheet/email system from convicted monopolist Microsoft.

Office 365 went from being an online version of Microsoft Office to being a bossware delivery-system. The Office 365 sales-pitch focuses on fine-grained employee tracking and comparison, so bosses can rank their workers’ performance against each other. But beyond this automated gladitorial keystroke combat, Offce 365’s analytics will tell you how your company performs against other companies.

That’s right — Microsoft will spy on your competitors and sell you access to their metrics. It’s wild, but purchasing managers who hear this pitch seem completely oblivious to the implication of this: that Microsoft will also spy on you and deliver your metrics to your competitors.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/25/the-peoples-amazon/#clippys-revenge

Even wilder is the further implication: that Microsoft might use the data its product gathers on your business — every keystroke made by every worker in the entire company! — to compete with you.

A century ago, “scientific management experts” tricked bosses out of fat consulting fees by promising to turn managers’ preference for “a smartly turned out workforce” into a scientific best-practice. This is pure empiricism-washing, where an irrational bias is encoded in mathematics and declared to be scientific truth.

Bossware companies target employers’ insecurity about their workers’ power to actually undermine the employers’ businesses, transforming productive workers into efficient metric-satisfiers, while raiding the company for valuable market-intelligence.

The bossware problem is a boss problem, in other words. It follows that fixing the bossware problem is the workers’ job, and indeed, the Times feature notes that Amazon has been dismantling its bossware surveillance in a bid to reduce its workers’ support for unionization, which promises to ban bossware from Amazon workplaces.

Bosses deride unions as reducing “freedom” — but just the threat of unions delivers more freedom to workers than any right-to-work law ever could. Bossware-infected jobsites are Stalinist dystopias, where workers are punished for looking in the wrong direction or failing to hit the keys fast enough, irrespective of whether they’re getting the job done.

Back in 2019, I wrote about this in “Affordances,” a short story for Slate Future Tense, which set out to explore how the Shitty Technology Adoption Curve may start with the most downtrodden and immiserated among us — but how, left unchecked, it will come for each and every one of us:

https://slate.com/technology/2019/10/affordances-cory-doctorow-sf-story-algorithmic-bias-facial-recognition.html

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

Scottish Government (modified): https://www.flickr.com/photos/scottishgovernment/3829002585

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[katchwreck]

Hi comrades, itʼs been a minute. Sorry for being inactive on here over the past months, but I thought I would share something here that I wrote two years ago on this day.

🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹

The ever so misanthropic and cynical arrogance of the petty-bourgeoisie is a universal class trait spun from the intensified monopolizing tendency of capitalism.

*Why did not the lousy serf chose to become a noble? The sub-human deserves no dignity nor affection in their own miserableness. It is not I who have made it the way society functions; it is their own faults for not being capable to determine her own desire.*

... Such is the rotten and mischievous mindset of the dissonantly deflecting oppressor, who steadily is on the hunt to advance in itʼs own economic, and thus hierarchical societal ranks of sorts.

Fear and trickery is constantly used as inducement by the oppressing part (again)st the oppressed part.

Capitalism is, by no (but also every) means, different than feudalism in this regard. It is only the material circumstances and structures that has developed, mainly due to the variousness of technological advancements throughout, and mainly so in the imperialist cores by the extraction and transfer of resources and labour power, which produces both value and, moreover; abundance and scarcity.

As Karl Marx described it when he so eloquently detailed the result of the increased antagonism between two conflicted, yet inbound, poles:

“Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital.”

Let me be perfectly clear to you who may read this: the ongoing treats and attacks against the proletariat across the bourgeois states by the capitalist class – behaviorally and rhetorically as individuals, or from the state power itself, whether it comes to austerity-packed reforms or state police and military brutality and repression — is ONLY going to intensify (grow worse and, with that, more obvious) unless the working class study to become class-conscious (awareness means vigilance) of the systematic dependency and thereafter organize, and fight back to put an end to the perpetual spiral of exploitation that is both in- and out of control.

The ruling class perpetualizes the status quo, and they hold on to it by every and any tool possible; from mass media to manufacturing consent through education and various of everyday material and holding of means of communications to productions, to mass-surveillance, to commercially glamorous nothingness, to parlamentarism to manufacturing and determining monetary value and societal laws, norms and abnorms, thus what “is” and what feels right and “is” and what feels wrong, passionate passivity, social alienation, division, wars, meaningless conflicts, better versus worse, competitions, appropriations, corruption, controlled linguistics, receptions, meaning... our very existences.

[soulmuppet]

Esoteric Enterprises

by Emmy Allen / Dying Stylishly

Imagine the typical adventuring party of most old-school games, but in a modern-day setting. A world with police, the internet, chain stores... The familiar band of mercenaries, occultists, criminals, weirdos and outcasts drift into the underworld. This is the premise of Esoteric Enterprises: the occult exists in a dangerous black market, where organised criminals traffic in magical grimoires and relics alongside narcotics and weapons. Hidden from the public eye, various gangs, cults and covens struggle for influence and resources in the dark tunnels beneath every city. Beneath that, stranger things lurk; inhuman creatures turn their cold gaze on the mortals who intrude on their subterranean realm.

The book contains both player-facing rules and extensive GM tools.

On the player side, there are eight classes, covering various career criminals, mad doctors, occultists and mystic cultists, as well as a customisable ‘Spook’ class for non-human PCs.

The game rules will be familiar to fans of old-school roleplaying, providing a spin on traditional mechanics fitting for the modern setting. Combat is brutal, fast and can result in serious injury.

The GM’s section is designed to assist running a campaign straight out of the book. Included are guidelines to create an extensive undercity megadungeon and the complex network of factions within. The book is dense with sample content and random tables to generate your own setting.

The book is a full cover, A4 248 page hardback. Emmy Allen is responsible for Ennie Award winning The Garden's of Ynn, as well as the Stygian Library and Wolf-Packs and Winter Snow.

[giveamadeuschohisownmovie]

Pitch for the upcoming Earth Avatar TV show:

(note: this is really an expansion of an older post of mine about a 1980s-themed Avatar show)

1) The title:

Avatar: The Legend of Kazuya

2) The plot:

It’s been 60/70 years since Legend of Korra. The world is now in their version of the 1980s. Since Korra’s death, this is how the international community currently looks:

1) The Fire Nation is a mess of class inequality, riots, and a stagnant government. The Fire Nation parliament (which was installed at some point thanks to Korra’s push for more democracy in the world) struggles to pass any sort of meaningful legislation due to political infighting. Meanwhile, the Fire Nation royalty are now the jokes of the world due to several high-profile scandals/affairs and power being shifted to the Fire Nation Prime Minister.

2) The Earth Kingdom is also going through similar societal problems. In addition to the above, crime is skyrocketing in Ba Sing Se, with many people claiming that the capital city is now run by the crime families. Meanwhile, the Earth President was voted in as a result of backlash to the previous president, who the public saw as too globalist, anti-Earth Kingdom, and pro-Avatar. So, the current Earth President is an anti-globalist, anti-Avatar conservative who wants to put the “Earth Kingdom first”.

3) The Water Tribes are in stark contrast to each other. The Northern state resembles the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom when it comes to societal advancements and problems. Meanwhile, the Southern state has become the equivalent of a struggling third-world nation, mostly thanks to corrupted leadership and exploitation from the other nations. Despite achieving independence, there is now a movement to reconnect with the Northern Water Tribe as a way to solve the Southern state’s issues.

4) The Air Republic went through the most change. Despite a peaceful start to the new Air Republic, the nation was taken over by extremists who were eager to prevent another Air genocide. This meant focusing on building a formidable military and indoctrinating the public with “pro-Air/anti-world/anti-Avatar” propaganda. Thus, the Air Republic was turned into a police state that is ruled by Airbending nationalists/extremists, and is widely considered to be the most dangerous nation in the world. Our real world equivalent would be something along the lines of North Korea or Iran.

With the way the world is, the public sentiment has shifted against the Avatar. Due to the rise of democracy and nationalism, people now see the Avatar as a dictator due to their ability to intervene in other nations’ affairs in the name of “balancing the world”. So, despite all the good that Aang and Korra did, Earth Avatar Kazuya was born into a world that despised him from the start.

Because of this extreme resentment, Kazuya grew up to be a bitter, angsty man filled with guilt and shame. Since the world views the Avatar as this unrestrained Superman who could do whatever they want, Kazuya decides to live life by a strict code in the hopes of setting a precedent for future Avatars. Kazuya’s code is:

1) The Avatar can intervene if it involves the Spirit World.

2) The Avatar will only intervene in world affairs if it will lead to another world war or some other international catastrophe.

3) The Avatar will no longer be a tool used for political purposes. They must always be neutral and act without emotion.

Kazuya’s code is met with mixed reactions. Some people praised it as a sign that the Avatar was willing to adapt to this new, modern world. Some people criticized it since they saw Kazuya as a coward for letting violent disputes/clashes between nations to occur. Despite the criticism, Kazuya embraces his code as a way to keep the Avatar relevant in a world that seemingly no longer wants him around.

So, Kazuya is an angsty, guilt-ridden man who sticks by his incredibly strict moral code, even though it pains him to do so. Basically, if you know your Marvel, he’s the Avatar version of Matt Murdock (Daredevil).

And that’s basically where the show begins. Kazuya, who is a fully-established Avatar at the start, declares to the world that he will only do his Avatar duties under certain circumstances. Problems then start, leading to Kazuya struggling in deciding whether or not he should intervene.

3) The Kazuya Gang (our main quartet)

* Earth Avatar Kazuya. For voice actor, I was thinking Steve Blum (who previously voiced Amon).

* Haerang: A world-famous pop singer from the Earth Kingdom who joins Kazuya since she views him as a “celebrity” like herself. She is Kazuya’s love interest and the only non-bender in the quartet. For a real world comparison, Haerang is like Madonna in the 1980s.

* Shyam: Haerang’s manager and an exile from the Air Republic. Shyam is a skilled Airbender, but hides his ability due to anti-Air discrimination (based on the state of world politics).

* Miko: A firebending assassin/bounty hunter who was initially hired to kill Haerang (this was the first story arc). Miko later drops the mission after learning that her employer betrayed her, leading to her joining Kazuya to get revenge.

(so compared to the Gaang, Kazuya is Aang, Haerang is Katara, Shyam is Sokka, and Miko is Toph)

4) Some story arcs that I came up with for the show

* The Haerang assassination arc (see above)

* Exiles from the Air Republic attempt to start a world war in the hopes of getting the Earth, Water, and Fire states to invade the Air Republic and overthrow the current government. So, here’s the moral quandary for the Avatar; let a world war happen to overthrow a dictatorship or keep the peace to spare lives?

* The Earth Kingdom begins research into “Avatar-level” weaponry, which pisses off the Spirit World.

* The return of Vaatu and the rise of a Dark Avatar.

* The Earth Kingdom presidential campaign, in which the leading candidate is from the most powerful crime family in Ba Sing Se.

5) Miscellaneous

* Technology advancements are in the 1980s. This means we have (primitive) computers, video games, more modern cars, movies, a music industry, and so on.

* Oh, and guns. There’s guns now, which were probably invented by non-benders so they can keep up with the benders.

* Due to the state of things, the “mystique” of the Avatar world is gone. Kyoshi Island has been reduced to a vacation spot for tourists (because it’s an “exotic” location according to the media). Aang and Korra’s stories have been turned into tacky movies that take numerous liberties with what actually happened (example: in their movies, Aang is a one-dimensional action movie hero who says cheesy one-liners while Korra’s portrayal skips over all her trauma and growth to present her as a squeaky clean superhero). The monument to Zuko has been vandalized by anti-government protestors.

* While avoiding the TV-MA rating, I did picture this show to be much darker and more serious than Aang and Korra’s show. The world is grimmer and Kazuya is not as fun and happy as his predecessors. So, TV-14, maybe?

* This is just a personal preference but I’d love it if the soundtrack was mainly 1980s-themed synthbeats/vaporwave. It’d be incredibly different from the previous shows, but it would fit the setting.

[haggishlyhagging]

As Foucault points out, under imperialist-class labor exploitation, and Christian doctrines of innate human corruption, the whole idea of work had changed. Work was man's just punishment for being born sinful. Daily work was no longer seen as seasonal-cyclic-ritual participation in the life of earth (because it was no longer that), or as sheer productiveness of wealth, but as a moral exercise or expiation of mortal guilt. "Since the Fall, man had accepted labor as a penance for its power to work redemption. It was not a law of nature which forced men to work, but the effect of a curse." At least, this is how the religious and courtly elites interpreted human work, for such a definition worked to their advantage. People had to bend their backs in endless unrewarding labor—not to provide the few in power with unearned luxury and idleness—but to pay back their debt of guilt to God. Therefore the poor, seen as refusing to work, were also refusing to be moral, refusing to be righteous, refusing to pay their debt of sin to God. This concept of human labor has ruled the Western world for centuries. The religious ideology of work as divine punishment adjusts people's minds to accept the idea of work as an exploitation of one's life energies.

The definition of the female body and female energy under patriarchal systems corresponds to the definition of the body/energy of the poor and workers under Capitalist economics. The bodily capacities and energies of some people are exploited, used as tools by others; and this is the development of all true classes, which can be simply categorized as "the users" and "the used." Foucault writes that the body's "constitution as a labour power is possible only if it is caught up in a system of subjection (in which need is also a political instrument meticulously prepared, calculated and used); the body becomes a useful force only if it is both a productive body and a subjected body." Thus the political use of the body: the female body, or the body of the working class. The body cannot be used or exploited unless it is both oppressed and still functioning. This "useful tool" conditioning of females and workers is achieved by repressing the body's vital sexual energy, forcing it to sublimate in piety and drudgery. And this conditioning, as Reich clearly saw, is always achieved through religion and religious indoctrination; because, in fact, the spiritual and sexual energies are always subliminally linked.

The church-state ruling elite needs obedient workers to keep the economic and military organizations which service its power running. It also needs obedient (or at least powerless) female bodies to mass produce the workers, the armies, the police, and so forth. Foucault, again, writes that “a population will be precious in proportion to its numbers, since it will afford industry a cheap labor force, which, by lowering the cost price, will permit a development of products and commerce.” By doctrinally controlling the reproductive processes of women—forbidding contraception and abortion, making the multiplying of bodies an act by which the male simultaneously serves his God while subjugating his woman, etc.—the church upholds and furthers the state's power and its busyness, by assuring a continuous large and exploitable population, guaranteeing (1) overspill of numbers to make armies, i.e., "cannon fodder"; (2) a cheap labor force which is divided against itself via endemic competition of its numbers; and (3) a disorganized and malnourished mass which is more vulnerable to political manipulation from the top.

-Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor. The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering The Religion of the Earth.

[connorthemaoist]

Marco Valbuena | Chief Information Officer | Communist Party of the Philippines

August 01, 2023

The Marcos regime and its military and police forces must be roundly condemned for the increasingly malevolent use of the deceitfully named Anti-Terrorism Law (ATL) in their heightened campaign of suppression against various democratic forces, critics, and political opponents.

Over the past few weeks, human rights defenders and members of cause-oriented organizations have been “designated” as “terrorists” by the Anti-Terrorism Council or charged in court for “terrorism” in a patently arbitrary manner, without due process and in utter violation of broadly accepted standards of judicial processes.

The ATL is now being used as a tool for suppression with impunity. The most recent victim of the draconian ATL is Hailey Pecayo, a 19-year old human rights worker, who earned the ire of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) for having actively exposed the role of the military for the killing of a nine-year old child in Batangas last year. She is now being charged by the AFP under the ATL, together with other members of their human rights group.

Before Pecayo, at least six others, including Windel Bolinget and three other members of the Cordillera People’s Alliance (CPA), were tagged as “terrorists” by the ATC. In a much earlier resolution, Dr. Natividad Castro, a medical doctor working for the Karapatan Alliance in Mindanao, was similarly tagged by the ATC. It is particularly noteworthy that the ATC resolutions against Bolinget and Castro both came after courts dismissed false charges filed by the AFP linking them to armed actions of the NPA.

The use of the ATL as a tool of suppression has now reached absurd and brazen levels with the ATC “designating” Congressman Arnolfo Teves and 12 others accused of perpetrating the March 4 killing of former Negros Oriental Governor Noel Degamo. Marcos officials have resorted to using the ATL against Teves after failing to build up a court case him. Aiming the ATL against Teves also serves as warning of the extent that Marcos will use the law for his purposes.

The CPP denounces the use of the ATL as a weapon of political suppression. The Party also expresses its continuing protest against the “terrorist designation” of the CPP, the New People’s Army and the National Democratic Front, of its leaders and representatives, and others being linked to the revolutionary cause.

Despite the September 21, 2022 ruling of the Manila Trial Court dismissing the petition filed by the government to declare the CPP and NPA as “terrorists” under the Human Security Act (the former name of the ATL), the Marcos regime and its agents insist on pinning the “terrorist” tag as part of its systematic campaign against all patriotic and democratic forces.

In light of the heightened attacks against the broad democratic sectors using the ATL, the Filipino people’s demand for the abrogation of the draconian law has become even more urgent. All democracy-loving people must make a stand and lend their voice to the struggle to defend the people’s rights and freedoms against state repression.

The Party supports the Filipino people’s clamor to end the so-called “war on terror” which, in fact, is a camouflage for unbounded state terrorism. This fascist framework has long been abused by the Philippine ruling class state, in order to justify the systematic erosion of the people’s civil and political rights.

The military and security establishment has used the “war on terror” to claim extraordinary powers to assert domination over society, take control of the functions of civilian agencies of government and carry out any and all acts of state suppression with gross impunity.