Echoes

"To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats"

I never really realised how much difference it makes until I went to England and realised that here the change of seasons is an obvious, visible, physical change in the world. Like, everything REALLY IS orange and foggy in autumn! In spring there are flowers EVERYWHERE, so much more than any other season, and the trees really do have all blossom and no leaves. Even if it doesn't snow, in winter there's frost all the time and the trees are bare and the sky is visibly greyer all the time. You don't need to be told "this date is the first day of spring", you can SEE IT (although this is getting way messier and less precise due to climate change).

By contrast, most places in Australia the seasons we're taught feel like arbitrary categories - and is it any surprise considering they're colonial constructs? Orange-leaved autumn and blossom-covered spring is a cartoon stereotype with no relevance on a continent where ALL NATIVE TREES ARE EVERGREEN!! Snowy winters are a joke in the desert, and even sunny summers don't ring particularly true considering that much of the country is in the tropics, where summer means monsoons - not that I've ever seen the concept that WE HAVE A MONSOON SEASON taught at an Australian school.

the 4 season model as you and i know it is a european invention, though 4 season models aren't unique to europe! most notably china has the same type of season subdivision.

The clams are just better at measuring the water quality than any man-made sensors.

Junji Ito:

it’s the hackneyed “we’re not so different, you and I” villain speech shit. it is a lie, and he knows it’s a lie.

think about it: why would a Nazi, who sees Jews (and thus any state with Jews in its government) as inherently evil & inferior, compare himself to us? he clearly doesn’t believe the comparison, and he knows no one who genuinely thinks Jews, other BIPoC, and queer people deserve safety will agree Nazism is good. so why would he say it? because he knows, by telling that lie, he can get people who already think he is bad to treat any organized structure intended to ensure safety & self-governance for minorities in the same light.

don’t prove him right. don’t do Richard Spencer’s dirty work for him. if you cannot do that for the sake of Jews, then do it for no other reason than this:

it will not end with Israel.

the same tortured logic Spencer used to play upon your ignorance to equate Israel with his vision for a White ethnostate is the same tortured logic he used to compare his White ethnostate to safe spaces for queer people & PoC, in literally the very same breath. by carrying forward his claims about Israel, you are establishing precedence that will be used—is already being used—to destroy DEI, safe spaces, etc. for other marginalized people.

Rent-seeking is the act of growing one's existing wealth by manipulating the social or political environment without creating new wealth.[1] Rent-seeking activities have negative effects on the rest of society. They result in reduced economic efficiency through misallocation of resources, reduced wealth creation, lost government revenue, heightened income inequality,[2][3] risk of growing political bribery, and potential national decline.