Tuml Ate My First Blog So Time To Start Again

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“Cower” is likewise unrelated, even though it seems like the tree words should all be derived from the same root given their similarity in sound and meaning.

Very long, very good essay. Recommended.

Small excerpt:

The Para-State Tech companies had, and used, the power to close the Internet, but they could not and would not have done it alone. The 20th century totalitarian party-states, like Nazi Germany, the USSR, or the PRC, with their tendencies to formalize and unify authority, had official government censorship departments with lists of ideas and topics that could not be mentioned, and a party line on what narratives are publicly acceptable. Western states today, and especially the US, do not. Instead, these functions are outsourced to an opaque web of nominally-private NGOs, media organizations, and academics. Jacob Siegel, pointing to the close links between these organizations, tech companies, and US intelligence, calls this network The Information State, and I prefer the term “para-state” for those organizations that are neither for-profit tech platforms nor officially part of the government.

Spin the wheel to find out your weakness!

No. I object. That one is dumb. Dracula is repelled by a crucifix in the original because Dracula is demonic. He studied at the Scholomance. A bunch of his powers and weaknesses are Antichrist tropes. Jesus walked on water, Dracula can't cross water, etc.

The 1977 Monster Manual (1E D&D) says a vampire is repelled by "a cross or several other holy symbols of lawful good" and from there it got watered down to generic "holy symbols" over time, including evil ones. I figure this was partly as a setting constraint of D&D not having Christianity nor consistent alignment mechanics, and partly edition drift which inevitably loses details of earlier editions while the new hires add their own twist.

This is too blatantly a game abstraction, like eating a wheel of cheese to fix a gunshot wound in seconds. I deny it. I'm still Christian, I'm going to church, and God isn't going to repel me.

*spins again*

"You cannot enter a building without first being invited"

That was over a decade ago, then she disappeared and came back rebranded as a conservative and has since then managed to navigate the waters into a narrower and narrower corner which tucker carlson is also occupying at this point.

which you might have been talking about social autopsy, not sure but I figured if nothing else I would include it, unless you have something earlier than that.

also

It's on for Friday, folks are picking their corners Wilson's fans seem to be behaving less childishly than Owens's are, which is weird considering how childish both of them are.

A kind of a weird claim, and the follow-up was what Owens claimed turned her to a conservative as the progressives that she thought her 'Social Autopsy' would be helping by revealing the identity of Trolls.

Then she went "Wait, half the harassing E-mails I'm getting are coming to the address that I never associated with Social Autopsy, but I did use to talk to Zoe Quinn."

She posted this on Twitter and the harassing E-mails instantly stopped. New Yorker magazine reported on this by leaving out the "the harassment stopped" part and then calling her an idiot for thinking those evil misogynist gamers could never guess her other E-mail, as if that was a thing that made sense.

I’m pretty sure this very subject about chemically mutated frogs and toads (treated as if the evidence was self-evident and the conclusion business was the culprit was a foregone conclusion) ended up on Bill Nye, the Science Guy.

Then it was discovered the frogs were suffering lots of deforming mutations because of viruses and bacteria causing birth defects. It wasn’t because DuPont or Mom Co. was putting Chemical X in the watertable. No Blinky the Three Eyed Fish caused by Mr. Burns’ nuclear power plant.

The overwhelming majority of them never seem to listen to Ukrainian voices. Or, if they do, it's always: "We understand you're at war and going through a lot, but that's not what this is about".

I've noticed that these trends always become especially active whenever Ukraine is not only defending itself but also fighting back. Russia suddenly needs to restore cultural empathy towards "uwu poor ordinary Russians" — who, in most cases, were perfectly fine with what their fellow citizens were doing or simply didn't care. Now they're crying over the packages they lost from Wildberries while we've been burying our people for years.

But every single time I still can't get used to this level of indifference and hypocrisy. These same people would defend their favorite artist even if they walked out wearing an "I love Russia" t-shirt, insisting that it somehow wasn't support for Russia and that Ukrainians were just overreacting. Or they'll passionately defend a fictional Russian character while bullying real Ukrainians.

Since 2022, I've only become more disappointed in much of the Western left. We simply don't fit into their understanding of war, genocide, discrimination, or the victims of centuries of imperialism and colonialism. So, to them, we're just annoying people from an uninteresting country.

Their feminists don't care about Ukrainian women.

Their LGBT activists don't care about Ukrainian LGBT people.

And I don't even want to start talking about the Crimean Tatars. They're an Indigenous Muslim people who were forcibly deported from their homeland by the Soviet Union and have now, once again, almost completely lost their home in Crimea, where Russians are being settled instead. Many of those who remain are abducted or sentenced to impossibly long prison terms under horrific conditions. You would think this is exactly the kind of story this political camp always claims to stand for — but you almost never hear them mention the Crimean Tatars at all.

I used to believe that Ukraine's history and struggle naturally aligned with the values many on the Western left claim to defend. But with every passing year, I believe that less and less. At this point, I'm starting to doubt that even with enough time, our story will ever become something they genuinely care about.

I'm trying to see the good in people. I really am.

But I don't know.

These horrible takes of theirs, the dismissive way they act like Russian-on-Ukrainian violence is just, "white imperialist vs. white imperialist," and due to white privilege, completely irrelevant to talks of genocide, since it isn't Europe invading a non-European country or people. More or less, seeing their true face. And seeing the ugly, unvarnished reality of their beliefs. The minutia of their broad-brush takes, and what they really mean when applied.

What you're seeing isn't just a regional misunderstanding of the values. Those are their values. It's not a radical misreading, that is the true measure of those beliefs. It's how they apply them in practice and interpret them, and that's probably the most disheartening thing of all.

These are things critics of them have felt and learned by their own nuanced, native experience with them. Things that before would be disregarded as butthurt crybabying and disregarded as "self-pitying right wingism." The same as Ukrainians are being called, now. To be called Nazis because YOU'RE under invasion. To be called monsters, because someone else is attacking you. And the quiet horror of realizing people that aren't privy to the truth by firsthand experience but passably familiar with, "the right side of history," may just disregard you as Nazis on a whim, because, "better safe than sorry." No matter how absurd the accusation.

I deeply regret you had to learn the realities of this, this way. But I can relate to your hurt upon learning it.

Supposed "feminists," that do not care about women. Only ideological principles and things generously labeled, "theory." Supposed anti-racists that take both those words and turn them into something extremely ugly that is not anti-racist in the slightest, and just demands people affirm classes and class struggle theory. Supposed "antifascists," that have nothing to say about Russia, but much to protest about Ukrainian government over, for some reason.

The Ukrainian story is only one they care about if it can be used as a canvas for their principles and beliefs, and only if it harmonizes with them. To them, Ukraine is too white, too European, too straight, and too rich (yes, I know. I know) to be anything but, "privileged, white supremacist and hostile to anything queer."

They will only start to care about the Crimean Tatars after Ukraine retakes Crimea. After that, they'll certainly get behind any native Crimean Tatars that will denounce, "western, white, christian colonialism of indigenous lands of religious minorities," and only in the context of indigenous independence movements. To coincidentally remove Crimea from Ukrainian rule to its own sovereignty. Where it can coincidentally be co-opted by Russia, again.

The same as their environmentalists will only care about the consequences of things the Ukrainian government might inflict in the name of industry and jobs, but have virtually nothing to say, not even snide remarks about Russia specifically blowing up dams and draining bodies of water. Deafening silence where they could make snide comments about certain politicians, but prolific noise about specific ones that are coincidentally impediments for other parties.

We see them too. We've seen them. We're intimately familiar with how they operate. But because the alternative to them being the good guys is so harrowing, because people want to believe western leftists are morally correct with some unfortunate shitters, people hold their nose and try to ignore it. So they agree in principle, and in theory, and ignore the realities of the beliefs of the living population and what they are pushing for in favor of how things should theoretically be on paper.

It's a tragedy to learn the harsh realities, this way. Like learning your local police or constabulary are corrupt and not serving their function or purpose, but their own interests, with the badge. But all the same.. I'm glad you guys are learning the nuance.

That schooling would be mandatory and obligatory public and the schools would be shit by priorities and policy, no matter how much money was invested in them..