* Chromatic Delirium *

anyway, apparently no one told the side of this conflict that considers themselves "speed readers" that "speed reading" refers to a specific technique of skimming a lot of text quickly for basic comprehension, and they are under the impression that "speed reading" means "reading normally, just faster than regular people." then someone got mad at me for pointing out that reading a 137k late 20th century novel in "2 days" wasnt "speed reading", just a respectable--but normal--reading pace. that book (The Vampire Lestat) will take someone reading at 250wpm a smidge over 9 hours to finish, which is like. nothing if youre hitting it on the toilet, before bed, and on the bus to and from work (in my direct experience). 250wpm is how fast someone reads who is mentally sounding out every single word, which fast readers generally do not.

Real - the double standards are so blatant. So many countries on earth with current and historic human rights abuses and atrocities on record, including my own, who at one point colonised and enslaved half of the planet in the name of empire. And yet, people understand the concept of not assigning collective responsibility to citizens because of their government's actions.

happy new year -------------_--------------------

Her mom and dad return and give her iPad on first request. She plays with it peacefully while adults talk. Mom moves to take it away for bedtime and it’s immediate tantrum. Screaming and crying tears. The screaming continues all the way to bathtime and bed. Mom and Dad have to cajole her with a snack and lots of attention for about twenty minutes before her crying stops.

Now, I want to be fair to these parents: toddler is overwhelmed by Mom and Dad returning from a, by her standards, “long” time away. It’s getting late, toddler is tired and maybe actually did need that snack. Toddlers also just act different around babysitters than they do mom and dad.

But for a toddler who was a pleasant and attentive kid for three days to dissolve into tantrum of that length as soon as she is reunited with and then separated from her iPad freaks me out. She is not a teen upset she can’t communicate with her friend. She’s not even a grade-schooler who didn’t save their Minecraft world. She’s a toddler who is distressed by being separated from an overstimulation machine.

Her parents have convinced themselves it’s a tool and a convenience by handing it to her and gaining silence at mealtimes and car rides and every request when she’s a bright kid who can spend just as much time with a book as with a screen, with much less distress at separation.

That’s how we lose and we all get killed. YOU need to be social if you consider yourself a revolutionary and not merely a sympathizer. How are you going to organize the masses without leaving your house and encouraging others to do the same, because it’s discomforting, potentially risky and won’t be easy? Revolution is risk. If you wanted to avoid risky social interactions, you wouldn’t go down the path of being a black sheep by calling yourself a communist revolutionary.

There’s risk in socializing, there’s also risk in organizing and you can’t organize if you can’t socialize! Socializing with your coworkers and neighbors, building connections past alienation, and discussing shared conditions and grievances as workers and tenants is the practice and your homework for organizing a union, a vanguard party or a people’s army.

I’ve had to overcome social anxiety in order to achieve goals greater than myself. This is a skill, not an inborn talent. Challenge yourself because ultimately what we need is to build the conditions to meet the moment, those final series of crises, and that includes at a very basic level that doesn’t exist in places like the United States is community.

You as a communist should be someone who (if able) can be relied upon by your peers. You should be concerned and investigative. You should genuinely care about the lives and the conditions of those around you, because people can smell a salesman.

As a communist you’re not trying to sell somebody on an advertisement for your lifestyle brand, you’re trying to organize people to realize their own capacity for creating social change and leadership. You need to at least attempt to be charming, charismatic, educated, humble and selfless.

Combat your own anti-social tendencies. The ruling class wants you isolated, alone and alienated not only from labor but from humanity itself.

We are trying to win a new future for global humanity in the face of our ongoing climate change induced mass extinction event and the resurgence in fascist and far right politics globally. Take it seriously. Engage with what the masses around you are experiencing, immerse yourself amongst their ranks.

You already are a proletarian and a tenant likely, you’re around workers and tenants all the time, but you haven’t broken the capitalist programming that has told you to resent other people for wasting your valuable time and peace which is money lost, to fear social risk and failure so much you avoid socializing altogether, and prevents you from gathering in too large a mass of your class comrades in the explicit interest of the bourgeoisie’s counterinsurgency efforts.