Existence is political @anarchonist - Tumblr Blog

I know exactly how you feel.

Every time I talk about how much I enjoy kicking puppies, everyone thinks I'm a monster. I have to hide my desire to kick puppies in order to not be hated everywhere I go. Meanwhile, puppies don't have to hide at all. I see puppies all over the place and people are nice to them. Why should I as a puppy kicker have to hide my existence while puppies get to happily enjoy theirs?

skelotan

I'm still Big Mad from the animation industry AI news, and I had some thoughts I needed to get out. There are lots of more important reasons why artists shouldn't use AI, but here is my philosophical take on it.

PATREON

deadgenerations

Neo-Nazi Thomas Sewell is living in a secret multimillion-dollar compound in Melbourne’s far north-east “gifted” to him by one of the wealth

this is a real shocker of a story, and you can tell that it's just the tip of an iceberg. I strongly encourage any Australian to read this article in full, because these people are far more connected to wealth and power than I think anyone believed. This is becoming a serious danger. you can bypass the paywall on removepaywall if you need to. There is a lot of money flowing into the pockets of avowed Nazis seeking to start a race war in Australia.

tweetingukpolitics

ravioliraz

str-ngeloop

'no one radically changes their personality worldview and politics just because of a brain injury' okay well i can see how it would be comforting to think that but unfortunately thats simply not true. that type of shit happens all the time

str-ngeloop

@clarencechampagne people claim otherwise because it's nice to imagine there's an inviolable inner sanctum of what you truly believe and who you truly are, and the notion that the core of your self can be changed not even from inside but by a bump on the head shakes people who emotionally rely on the notion of mental states being essential and transcendant, even when they're nominally a materialist. we like to think mind is safe from matter.

also coming from the political perspective people get very uncomfortable (understandably so) around the notion of people whose politics and conduct are cruel and harmful being that way because of a brain injury, stroke, illness, etc. some harm to them that they did not will. it breaks the notion of worldview and politics being powered by will and agency, which a lot of people, again, rely on for their moral political frameworks, even when they say they're materialist marxists.

To this view, If someone has harmful politics it means that they're a bad person. And if someone is a bad person, then they will that under their own agency. They chose to be a bad person and they could choose otherwise. The moral causation, under this view, arises solely from within the mind, rather than anything material. The notion that someone could become a harmful presence due to material situations outside of their control is deeply threatening to this sense of self, which is often taken for granted as common sense. The notion that we have ultimate and final control over ourselves, and the notion that we can keep our inner selves safe from the world by enforcing a determination on our own worldview, like, committing ideologically to a stance as protection from the world, is something that a lot of people, especially leftists, rely on, and the notion that you could get very badly hurt and come out of that with a brain that engages in harmful politics, engages in a harmful worldview, due to an injury, due to a disability, is morally threatening to a lot of people.

And I think that's understandable, but I don't think it's correct. I think there's a lot of compassion that's called for, regarding people who push back against the notion that, essentially, an injury, a disability, could make you what they see as a bad person. It's understandable why that would deeply freak you out and it's understandable why you wouldn't want to hear it. But I think the issue here is a deeper one of how people conceptualize ontology and ethics and morality and politics in general.

A lot of people see politics as about material, but they don't really fully grapple with the sense in which one's personal politics appear to arise from within the mind based on agency, but in fact are conditioned by material circumstances one experiences.

anarchopuppy

How to Grow a Community Food Forest - a super extensive guide by the Food Forest Network on twitter

theconcealedweapon

maarvarq

Always bear in mind that there is absolutely no legitimate evidence that Luigi was actually the one who killed the insurance company guy.

theconcealedweapon

Of course he wasn't. He was at a party with me that day.

tiny-space-whale

No but like literally, actually. All bits aside.

He didn't do it.

The cops very clearly planted evidence on him because they had to make an arrest because all eyes were on them and whoever actually did the deed was making them look stupid.

Why would the real killer hero have kept the weapon on his person and traveled two states over while carrying it and a manifesto in his bag, conveniently turning the crime into a federal matter? The same guy whose bag they found in a park, filled with monopoly money? Why did the police turn off their bodycams, take Luigi's stuff, drive a block away, turn their bodycams back on, go back into the restaurant, and then arrest him?

From the moment of his arrest, even left-of-center media has been presuming his guilt without examining anything (e.g. calling him "the killer" instead of "alleged" or "accused") and then when I say he didn't do it, the nearest person chimes in with some quip that tells me they think he did do it but should go free anyway. Don't get me wrong, I would have the same attitude if he had done it. But he didn't. It makes me feel like the only sane person in the world, even among my staunchly leftist friends.

mysharona1987

theconcealedweapon

Let's see how capitalism performs without government.

No patents that destroy competition.

No prisons as a source of cheap labor.

No wars that capitalists can profit from.

No calling the police to evict tenants.

No calling the police on employees who steal.

No corporate lobbyists.

No calling the police to protect capitalists from rioters.

No criminalizing homelessness.

If you're so sure that capitalism is good and that the problem is government interfering with capitalism, then tell capitalists to stop inviting the government to interfere when it's convenient to them. Make them prove how good capitalism is without government.

#capitalism #this is it exactly #the right-wing libertarian fantasy of capitalism without the government is a nonsensical pipe dream since capitalism needs government #not only because of everything the government provides listed in the post but also for the implicit reasons such as the value of money #people with the right-libertarian brainworm take money as such an ontological concept that they fail to see it as a tool #a tool used not only for trade but also to control resources in a more abstract way #the thing is that money is a social construct whose legitimacy relies on the system of violent control that is the state #yes right libertarians are correct in that the state exists as a violent institution to suppress dissent #but their ridiculous belief in some meritocratic form of capitalism free from oppression is bonkers to say the least #capitalism exists to funnel more money to those who already have money not to foster innovation or encourage competition #on the contrary capitalism stifles all legitimate competition since money will always go to those who have money not to new hands #which makes it in fact impossible for a poor person to get out of poverty and ensures the rich stay rich no matter what #the capitalist dystopia right wing libertarians yearn for would in fact still rely on extreme violence #not only for the reasons listed but because the legitimacy of money which the whole system is based on needs an authority #the homo economicus is a bizarre fantasy with no place in the real world #in real life no one would accept the terms that money would dictate who gets to drink and eat but that only the rich will have money #without a system of violence in place to ensure that people don't just take the water and bread they need to live money is worthless #money is just shiny tokens pieces of paper or numbers on screen it has no intrinsic value no biological basis in our nervous system #money in itself is just a promise that you will get something for it later but human beings live in the here and now #a starving person will not care about investments they need food #a thirsty person will not care about value increase later they need water now #right-wing libertarianism is a fantasy espoused by privileged losers who have never experienced actual hardships #they live in a world where their basic needs are met and think 'but the people who haven't got their basic needs met are too well-off'#absolutely no one who understands the real world without being an absolute monster would espouse this fantasy #the state and government are oppressive because that is their purpose but capitalism is just another facet of that oppression #separating capitalism from the state is as nonsensical as saying that humans can live without a body #it is pure and utter idealism (in the philosophical sense at least) and has no function in the real world #all who understand how capitalism works will know it cannot function without the existence of the state #but really what the people who say those kinds of things really want is to remove all protections from workers and marginalized people #that's the government they're railing against not the one ensuring they get to hoard wealth and stomp on others

guerrillatech

#palestine #free palestine #anti semitism #this should be obvious but since it isn't always here's a reminder

creekfiend

ppl use crab bucket metaphor to describe the lateral social violence of oppressed people, but tbh I think it's more like how sometimes when chickens are kept in such abysmal horrific close quarters conditions with no ability to make decisions or control any aspect of their lives, they just start violently attacking each other, to the point where some factory farms where this is a problem simply cut or trim parts of their beaks off so they can't do as much damage. because this is more cost effective than providing them with more space, species specific enrichment, appropriate lighting, etc, and the system we live under prioritizes cost effectiveness over the well-being of alive creatures.

it would be a mistake to think that this represents the natural behavior of chickens.

it would be a mistake to think that the social displacement harms we do to each other as marginalized people under a great deal of stress, under capitalism, represents the natural behavior of people.

human beings, however, possess the ability to learn to identify when we are engaging in this type of lateral social violence, and the ability to prioritize developing alternate coping mechanisms that cause less harm to the other people in our communities, and leave us with more energy to address the actual causes of our suffering.

queeranarchism

The crab bucket behavior also isn't the natural behavior of crabs. The chicken example of hurting others because we are hurting is definitely a thing too, but a different thing. The crab bucket metaphor specifically describes communities that don't hurt each other randomly, but that gang up on anyone who seems to be escaping the misery. Jealousy is a factor, but it's often also connected to the belief that it is morally righteous to suffer, so anyone who seems to be getting to a better place must be a piece of shit.

A third thing you see in marginalized communities is a lot of people with unprocessed trauma, and a common feature of that is an urge to divide the world into abusers on the one hand and perfect saviors on the other. And when the saviors don't turn out to be perfect, the conclusion is that they must be like the abusers, and the result is to either run from them or to hurt them as much as you wish you could hurt your abusers.

#abuse #trauma #i think this is important to note #it's part of the messiness of human interaction and our expectations being partly dictated by experiences #lashing out as a response to trauma triggers is a normal and understandable reaction but it is not justified behavior #not calling it a 'victim complex' because that word has such baggage and it individualizes a complex phenomenon #but particularly the part about identifying with suffering and seeing suffering as almost a moral virtue rings true #the mentality reminds me too much of my religious upbringing to not be recognizable in secular spaces as well #the belief that suffering is an integral part of being a good person also in some ways reflects on the other point #ie someone with trauma dividing people into either perfect saviors or rotten abusers #i still sometimes have a knee-jerk reaction to maybe not deify people but certainly see some of them as unrepentant bullies #trauma does weird things to how you approach social interactions #just last weekend i had the dubious privilege of experiencing both sides of this mentality #i witnessed a couple of friends i trusted go into total mean girls mode towards my girlfriend #and almost immediately it made me reconsider how i see them as my brain insists that such behavior is inherent to a personality #instead of more rationally speaking a psychological blind spot that all of us in the right mindset and the right situation may slip into #later my girlfriend got blind drunk and became super mean and hurtful even abusive towards me #her escalating verbal and physical abuse was in a way indicative of me being a 'safe target' who could be demonized to hell and back #now i did understand that this was a belated reaction to the spiteful words she had been on the receiving end of #but it did hurt #there are so many overlapping aspects of how trauma triggers more traumatizing behavior in others #and in the face of the powerlessness of trauma attacking someone else when attacking your abuser is not an option is human #it is a way to reclaim power and get the triggering feeling under control #the problem is of course that the person you're targeting may have trauma of their own related to being treated like 'safe' to abuse #and in escaping your traumatic state of mind you inadvertently deepen someone else's trauma #i'm 'lucky' enough that my personal problem of finding standing up for myself difficult has made me very aware of my own feelings #in that i have surprisingly good metacognitive skills since lashing out was never an option for me so i had to learn them to stay sane #of course the problem is that having those skills makes one seem more resilient and thus a more likely target to abusive behavior #just one of the reasons why i'm never having kids since being a 'safe adult' is something i was expected to be from an early age #that got a little personal and off topic but that's what the tags are for anyway good post

depsidase

cosleia

Here's the original post (on FB, alas)

treeen

[ID: Screenshots of a Facebook post of user Zed Potts on April 3rd, 2026 at 8:10 PM reading:

The one thing about Al that most people don't seem to get, the really critical thing, is that this whole thing isn't a "tech miracle" it's just the wal-mart scam. When wal-mart moves into town, the first thign they do is they run a bunch of sales, for years and years.

not because they care. Not because they just really wanna help. But because they really want to drive every single store that sells the same things they sell out of business. And because they don't really want to (and can't really compete) on the quality front, they do this by just leveraging deep pockets to offer really, really, really cheap prices. They do two things with this: First, they close every single other business that sells the things they sell. Second, they manage to get everyone used to shittier versions of the stuff they used to have higher standards on - it may not be as good, but hey, it's cheap, and who can complain these days?

Al art costs a LOT to make, and it costs way way way more to build the machine models that make it, and this money all goes straight to creating a bunch of waste power, heat, and pollution. It's the anti-environmentalist effect your mother told you about. But it's virtually free to you to use right now, even for the paid services. Do you know why?

Because they want you to use it. They're trying to kill off every source of news writing, picture painting, song singing, book writing, movie making, library storing, lesson teaching, code writing, information sharing, community building, thought thinking they can POSSIBLY manage to replace with worse (but cheaper) versions that can run through machines they run

and then they can charge you for it, and get BACK some money for the billions and billions and billions of dollars that they keep pouring into this stuff.

The people who build this stuff aren't your friend. This product isn't cool. It's not "no big deal" when you share an Al thought, or project, or message - it's about you willingly hopping on board with the people who want to kill everything you love so they can run a zombie robot version of it that they can rent to you later when it's all you have left. this isn't a "conspiracy". It's not secret. It's just the fucking plan and it's right out there in the open and these people even say it out loud if you'd start listening.

End ID]

queeranarchism

Mostly accurate, but what I'm missing here is that a lot of these AI's don't want to charge YOU for it.

They want to get you hooked in AI as your main search engine and then charge advertisers to determine the results when you ask for the best new smartphone.

They want to get you hooked on putting all your e-mails through AI and then charge companies for your data, your most private thoughts.

And of course they want to get states, military and big coorporations hooked on AI and then charge them a fortune. So your taxes go to an AI that decides which neighborhoods to police, who to accuse of insurance fraud, and who to kill by drone (already all happening now).

Plenty of these services might continue to be free for you because you are the product.

holy-is-fool

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Existence is political