Calcination for Everyone

The ramblings, opinions and appreciations of a Robot Monster forced to destroy humanity for slave wages. For the art and writings of the same check out:

[titleknown]

I will say, thinking about the American Century of Humiliation, I feel like there's one thing we should all remember: At the end of the day this is all the Republican base's fault.

Oh sure, their politicians and corpoverlords were greedy scheming monsters and the sniveling center-dems ultimately helped them along, but none of that could have happened if it weren't for that fanatical base who hated black people more than they liked having a functional social safety net and hated them so much they were willing to do anything to make their vision real.

I do not think we should mince words about what these people are: Filth.

They are temporarily-embarassed plantation masters who yearn for a world forever in a tradwife’s preserve jar, where Christ’s love is a warm gun and the pyramid of smoking bodies is one they are forever second-highest on, their god is the dreams of a slumbering fascism who they send their futures in sacrifice to in the hopes one day they will awaken from the sea like Hobbes’ Leviathan and that they will be really fucking racist,

The people trapped with them do not deserve to suffer, any consequences should target the ones causing these problems, but in their consequences these moral fucking maggots deserve not just suffering the one thing they fear worse than pain: Irrelevance alone in their lightless hate.

These people are why we're falling behind China, and while they deserve to be supported by a robust state that cares for them (as all human beings do), they also deserve to have nobody give a shit about the way they want society to be ever again, and they deserve to die mad about it.

[calcinator]

Here's the thing.

It's the churches.

They pushed for every horrifying thing the Republicans have done.

They told their flocks to vote for Republicans.

They bolstered and supported every witch hunt and campaign of hate.

And while they are wrong about the facts of it, they believe themselves to be 5th columnists loyal to an unaccountable foreign king. They are only not traitors because their sovereign is a fiction, but they're all guilty of attempted treason against mankind in general and the United States in particular.

So when they come to you and pretend that they're ashamed and sorry you should take note who who they apologize to. It won't be the trans community or immigrants or the disabled or minorities that they ask for forgiveness. They'll "pray for forgiveness" from the God that supposedly told them to do it all in the first place, accept that apology for themselves on God's behalf, and go right back to their attempts to overthrow democracy and establish a theocracy.

It is important to remember this and not buy into their self-applied absolution.

Remember, the people who did this are the same people who taught you that you should forgive your enemies and that holding grudges and longing for revenge are corrosive. They only taught universal forgiveness as a virtue because they knew that they might one day need that forgiveness from you because of what they were doing to you.

They told you to love your enemies because they know that they are your enemy.

There's no trace of that grace when it's you, the pleeb heathen, that steps out of line.

[calcinator]

If you try to block right click, block ad blockers, require a sign-in when the flow of information is only site-to-user, fail to link the site name on the header to the front page, or make it an app when it should be a website, then I really hope there's a heaven, because mine will be running your hell.

[are-we-art-yet]

Like genuinely when you act like art is something that can or should be automated it makes no sense to me. Its like saying we should automate eating ice cream, playing video games or petting puppies. Like.... why would you ever want to do that?

Art is already for many an extremely automated process divorced from its original labor context, you only get to choose just how automated you want it to get. The pencils you draw with are produced in a factory, as is the paper and canvas you draw on. If you are a digital artist, the entire digital art workstation automates huge swathes of the process for you. Portrait artists who worked with oil on vellum did not get the luxury of lines that corrected themselves, easy gradients, or color grading. Automation is a significant portion of the electronic music & hip hop scene - it's literally called "Automation" in our DAWs. Because it's automated. Some might ask "why would you want to automate playing an arpeggio?", but I have a button to do just that on my synthesizer (which synthesizes sounds instead of relying on actual noise-making to do so a la an instrument - more automation).

Why would you use Python when you could go a layer of abstraction down and write in Assembly instead? "I don't want to perform that step of the task" is a complete answer. "I can't perform that step of the task" (as in my case) is also a complete answer. A significant amount of people find art in the end result rather than the process. This is not even unique to AI Art/image synthesis - again, many installation pieces are not what I would call things that have "involved processes", and may be entirely divorced from the labor-power of their artisan in question (see: banana taped to wall, The Fountain, etc.).

You must kill the capitalist in your head that demands you only be allowed art once you have proven you are worthy of it by inputting the desired quantity of blood, sweat, and tears. The effort is not the point. We're not protestants. Well, most of us aren't.

[korrasera]

This is a fundamentally misleading way to talk about this topic because it equates using gen AI to create art to using a particularly complex tool.

The correct metaphor is that using gen AI art is like using artists to create art, taking it from them without paying them for it, and then claiming that you've created the art yourself. All of the tools described above, whether you're talking DAWs, the various tools that people use to craft woodwork art or fiber art or paint, they all facilitate the artist making art themselves with their own labor.

Gen AI only does one thing. It facilitates you stealing art from someone else's labor to pass it off as your own. Not only is it stealing from people who should be your comrades by way of roleplaying as a faux capitalist, it's unethical because taking credit for work that you had no hand in creating is dishonest and exploitative.

It's got nothing to do with proving you are allowed art by shedding blood and everything to do with proving you won't side with capital as soon as someone makes a tool that lets you do it without having to look your fellow workers in the eye.

[are-we-art-yet]

Intellectual property is a fake tool of capitalists to enclose the commons of creativity around particular ideas, styles, etc., and at AWAY we strongly oppose it. "Stealing" art in the context of how AI systems use it only makes sense if you assume that "using" someone's work in a non-destructive manner is depriving them of something that you would otherwise owe them - this is nonsense, and does not follow in a materialist + deductive logic sense from A to B.

Someone using a creative commons dataset on local code on their computer (as many people in AWAY, and in general, do) is not stealing from their fellow worker. Someone using AI in general is not stealing from their fellow worker, because all things in technology and in life are built off people that came before us. The assertion that AI being trained off imagery is in any sense "stealing" is nonsensical both in terms of how the thing actually functions and in the legal or moral sense of the term "stealing". The only thing you would lose is potential profits, or credit (to which the objection is generally that you are losing potential profit by not receiving credit), neither of which are things that you are in a legal or in a human rights based sense "owed" from a materialist basis (particularly not potential profit: "lost sales" = "theft" is literally Nintendo/Disney/RIAA talking points).

Something that facilitates me stealing art from other people are things like "glass cutters" to break into a museum, or maybe "trojan viruses" to get into their computer and deprive them access to their master files. And if you consider "not giving credit" to be a form of theft then you are on the side of the RIAA and related organizations in the war on musical sampling, which naturally makes you the enemy of art in an institutional sense as well.

If you don't want people to chop up and transform your works, stop releasing them into the public. That is your only solution (literally in an ontological sense, due to the analog gap - if it can be perceived, it can be recorded). This has been true for the existence of recording mediums and only gets truer as more robust ways of recording things exist.

Also snuck in is the assumption that somehow using a keyboard is not labor. While it certainly is less labor-intensive than drawing a full piece, you try to say that "DAWs facilitate the artist making the art themselves with their own labor" - but many DAWs, most of them, really, can be used entirely with a keyboard and mouse, and zero actual instrument playing involved, including the very popular genre known as "trackers". Most of the 'labor' involved in composing electronic music is intellectual labor - understanding the audio engineering involved, combined with understanding the construction of the notes and timbres and how they interrelate with each other. This is a similar sort of intellectual labor as the process behind editing prompts and workflows. Not identical, no. But similar.

Very little of this involves anything as physically strenuous as the visual arts. I would say creating a functional workflow in ComfyUI is extremely, exceedingly similar to creating synthesizers in node-based/modular synths, something I also have experience in (because they were designed to be similar, natch). Or procedural geometry in Blender. And sure, some electronic artists credit their sample kits. But many, many more do not. They'll tell you if you ask, sometimes, but very few people are demanding the exact providence of who hit this crash cymbal.

P. S. Zionists get stuffed. Anyone else is free to continue this conversation, but not you.

[tamamita]

Calling Chuck Schumer Palestinian is unironically hilarious

[calcinator]

[saywhat-politics]

Got splashed with holy water?

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

Please PLEASE let this nazi cunt die as a result of this allergic reaction :D

[monroejigsaw]

what in the fucking Stepford Wives happened to her face?! 0_0

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

Before or after the allergic reaction? XD

[therobotmonster]

Dollars to donuts there's an unscrupulous plastic surgeon in Florida that makes his living giving women who want a shot at the administration the Mar-A-Lago special.

[thehumanarkle]

There's a degree of truth in that.

[calcinator]

I mean, that's all very well thought out, but the video to me seems a bit too psychological for dealing with the right. It takes to 20 minutes in to point out the real factor in place. Everything else before is just projecting the essayist's own complex understanding of the world onto them.

She makes the mistake of Victorian zoologists. She's over anthropomorphizing the subject of her study when they are emotionally indistinguishable from mandrills.

[calcinator]

"The Wizard Of Oz is about The Gold Standard" is old news.

[lesbianchemicalplant]

For decades, Ireland's mother and baby homes were shrouded in secrecy. Some say the veil still hasn't lifted

The day after Michael O'Flaherty was born, his mother tried to see him. But, she told him, she was stopped by a nun who told her, "Go mind your own business, your baby is gone."

Bound together by being born into one of Ireland’s most notorious mother and baby homes – church-run institutions where unmarried women were sent to deliver their children under a veil of secrecy, silence and shame for decades – the Tuam Mother and Baby Home Alliance believe that their stories are at risk of being wiped from history.

In February, a commission set up to investigate what happened in those homes will release its final report. The Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes and Certain Related Matters has heard testimony from survivors for more than four years. But activists say while it has operated under the pretext of transparency, it follows a pattern of the state muzzling the victims. And as the state edges closer to passing a bill that could prevent other survivors’ testimony from being made public, those activists say the time for survivors’ voices to be heard is paramount.

The commission would not answer any of CNN’s questions but said that “the Commission’s final report is scheduled for completion in February 2020. Your questions will be answered in that report.”

Life for children like O'Flaherty, born at the Tuam home which operated from 1925 to 1961 and was run by the Sisters of Bon Secours, was plagued by malnutrition, neglect and trauma.

Mortality rates for children were far higher than national averages, with 802 child deaths recorded during the 36 years it was in operation.

The picture was similar in other homes around the country. In County Cork’s Bessborough Mother and Baby Home, infant mortality rates peaked in 1944 at 82%, according to records from the Department of Local Government and Public Health which were unearthed by Irish journalist Conall Ó Fátharta – who has extensively reported on the mother and baby homes.

Children who survived were either adopted, fostered, or sent to industrial schools – workhouse-style, church-run institutions where abuse was rampant.

[…]

The last mother and baby home shut its doors in 1998, but it wasn’t until 2014 the secrets of Tuam started to be unearthed.

Galway historian Catherine Corless filed extensive freedom of information requests and found death records for 796 children – many of them infants – who had died at Tuam, but for whom there were no burial records.

Her work found that children had been buried in what is now thought to have been a series of chambers located inside a decommissioned sewage tank near the home. The revelation was the catalyst for the 2015 commission that was launched to “provide a full account of what happened to women and children” across 14 mother and baby homes and four “county homes” from 1922 to 1998.

Since then, the commission has released five interim reports, with grim details in each.

In March 2017, an interim report said that “significant quantities of human remains,” had been found in Tuam.

[…]

The most recent report in April also found that the bodies of more than 950 children who died in some of Dublin’s mother and baby homes between 1920 and 1977 were sent to university medical schools for “anatomical studies.”

[…]

But the way in which the commission has carried out its work has led survivors and human rights defenders to believe that the state is still doing its best to perpetuate secrecy around institutional abuse, as it has been accused of doing in other cases, like the Magdalene Laundries – Ireland’s mainly Catholic-run workhouses where generations of women were forced to work without pay from 1922 until 1996.

The government’s 2013 McAleese report, which drew on testimony from survivors of the laundries, found that there was “direct state involvement” in compulsory labor and servitude of the women, and said that “for too long, they have been and have felt forgotten.”

The survivors were issued an apology by then-prime minister Enda Kenny, who said at the time: “On behalf of the State, the government and our citizens deeply regret and apologise unreservedly to all those women for the hurt that was done to them, and for any stigma they suffered, as a result of the time they spent in a Magdalene Laundry.”

But key to the report’s findings, was the omission of some survivors’ testimony, which had detailed physical abuse and torture as a feature of the laundries, according to advocacy groups.

Today, the McAleese report’s archives remain sealed off from the public. The government said last year that there were “no plans” to reopen them.

Now, activists worry the Mother and Baby Homes Commission could follow a similar pattern.

The Commission has refused to give survivors a transcript of their own evidence and has also rejected survivor requests for their testimonies to be publicly available, referencing that the commission is operating under the terms of the Commissions of Investigation Act 2004.

That Act, states that in general, evidence is to be given in private, “unless a witness requests that all or part of his or her evidence be heard in public and the commission grants the request.

“The commission has told at least one survivor that if they wish to see their testimony they can return to the commission where they can view it “in the presence” of a staff member.

Survivors have also been denied access to any personal information that the commission might hold on them, which could aid them, as it did O'Flaherty, in discovering what happened in their past.

In one letter to a survivor who had asked for information, the commission responded that it was necessary and proportional to withhold her personal records in order “to safeguard the effective operation of the Commission and the future cooperate of witnesses.”

[…]

[calcinator]

As public services are slashed, the ruling powers will make a great deal about how the churches will step up to fill the gap, this is what you need to remember.

This is what their "charity" looks like.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Catholic Church broke its promise to publish a list of "credibly accused" abuser priests, so Propublica did it for them

In 2019 the Pennsylvania Attorney General published a 900-page grand jury report on sexual predators in the Catholic Church and the coverups the church and its official had undertaken; at the time, the church promised to end the coverup and engage in truth and reconciliation with the parishoners who’d been preyed upon by clergy.

Today, 178 Archdioceses have published lists of the priests they consider “credibly accused,” according to criteria that vary widely from diocese to diocese – the US Conference of Catholic Bishops says it has no authorities to dictate standards for these lists.

41 dioceses have not published lists. These dioceses serve more than 9,000,000 Catholics, and include the dioceses of Rockville Centre, NY (1.5m parishoners); Fresno, CA (1.2m parishoners); Miami, FL (790,000 parishoners), and San Francisco, CA (445,000 parishoners).

The quality of the cooperating dioceses’ lists is highly variable: some exclude members of religious orders (like the Jesuits), who constitute 30% of the priests in America. Other lists don’t include the names of priests whose survivors have received settlements from the church, but who are not themselves considered “credibly accused” apparently. Names appear and disappear from the list all the time.

Propublica has produced a searchable database of known accused priests, searchable by name/cit/diocese (they explain their methodology here), and they’ve made the data available for download.

The database is accompanied by an excellent, deeply reported story by Lexi Churchill, Ellis Simani and Topher Sanders.

https://boingboing.net/2020/01/28/credibly-accused.html

[escuerzoresucitado]

[therobotmonster]

Okay, so let me get this straight.

You've got RFK going after medicine in general and vaccinations in specific. The FDA has been defunded to the point they can't do inspections. FEMA is being defunded. SNAP is being cut to the bone, Medicaid is on the chopping block...

And yet every conspiracy theorist obsessed with depopulation absolutely voted for this guy.

[calcinator]

If another Covid hits, either a different virus or a new strain that's resistant to current vaccines, in the next four years, you know that this time there won't be any restrictions put on gatherings, and if there are, the churches will get their demanded exemptions.

Because the anti-covid lockdown furor was pushed mainly by preachers who were annoyed they couldn't pass the plate around during a zoom call. Make no mistake.

Every agency and system built up for decades was designed to protect these imbeciles from themselves and they were so offended by it that they rushed to people who actually are moving to devastate their populace, not out of sinister luciferian evil, but out of raw, naked greed.

The irony being that if their 'oppressors' had given into their demands early they might not have had the demographic power to doom everyone else now.

[sprinkledsalt]

(Bluesky's nuclear block function means the original post isn't visible here, but the context is yet another leftist doing the "Dems bad, don't us for refusing to support Dems, etc., etc." song and dance)

You know, the second to last post is true for a lot of these Very Online leftists, I think. They actually do know the parties aren't the same, deep down, but they can't possibly risk being seen as Cringe and a bootlicker by saying so, leaving them to hope everyone else acts like an adult and does the work for them

[saltedweather]

[ID: A Bluesky thread from Dana Simpson @danacorn.bsky.social responding to a post on Bluesky that the person screencapping had blocked:

(1) Sure it can. Let me help you.

Leftists are a tiny and unreliable sliver of the population. Dems would like your votes, but you've spent the last decade angrily calling them names and refusing to give them credit when they do the things you say you want.

You've declared your votes ungettable.

(2) Dems therefore HAVE to win without leftist votes. They can! It's just harder.

And we still get to be mad you made it harder. We think you should be a bit more willing to take yes for an answer, to be part of a coalition even if that means compromise, and a bit more concerned with stopping fascism.

(3) Also, democrats don't "eat shot constantly". They win about half the time.

The fact that they do this in elections where you loudly announced you were going to make them lose if your ever-shifting demands weren't met makes you seem pathetic.

(4) However, sometimes you say that and they DO lose, and yes, it's reasonable to think you contributed to that by yelling loudly for the entire campaign that they suck and should lose.

You don't get to then go "uwu I'm a smol bean with no power".

(5) "I am going to do everything in my power to make the Democrats lose."

Dems: lose

"Hey, why are you mad at ME?"

(6) Why aren't you happy that you openly got what you said you wanted? If a Democrat says you're partly responsible, why isn't your reaction "damn straight, that was my goal"?

(7) Kinda makes it seem like you DO want Democrats to win, you just don't want to be SEEN wanting them to win. You want to make it hard for them to win, but for them to then win anyway.

(8) In which case: stop playing. This is serious.

/end ID]

[lovethebluebox]

Sorry but I have to jump in as an Internet leftist. How long are you going to let the Democrats string you along like this? It's not just the past 4 years, or 8, we've seen this fucking pattern happening since at least the 80s. Every time the Right swings farther into extremism, the Democrats move right along with them.

Regan cut social services and argued for fiscal responsibility? Clinton followed the same line and also cut social services and pushed for fiscal responsibility.

Bush pushed for a War on Terror and then made up excuses to bomb and destabilize foreign countries that weren't even at odds with us? Obama carried on that same legacy if you want to take a look at Libya and all those drone strikes. Or maybe we should look at something more domestic, like how he bailed out companies like Goldman Sachs during the financial crisis of 2008. Or if you care about immigration, he deported more people than Trump and set up those camps and ICE facilities. I thought he promised change.

We can also look at Trump and Biden, or even Kamala's platform if you really want. Remember that in 2016 and 2020 and 2024 the Democrats didn't allow Bernie Sanders a seat at the dnc and how much he had to fight to even debate his fellow Democratic candidates before being rigged out, even though his platform was quite popular. Has Biden deported less people than Trump? Have the Democrats delivered on socialized health care like they've promised since the 70s? Did you notice that healthcare reform wasn't even a talking point this year? Did Kamala promise to end fracking? Why didn't the Dems enshrine abortion rights into the constitution when they had full control of the House and Senate? Why haven't the Dems even bothered to try shutting down the government since Trump's been in office? Remember when Roe v Wade was overturned under Biden? Finally, and most importantly, genocide in Gaza was still going to carry on regardless of who won the presidency. Look at how much money both Kamala and Trump received from AIPAC. Kamala completely disregarded Gaza on her platform and didn't say anything about the brutal crackdowns on college campuses. Bisan herself also said that the situation for Palestinians wouldn't change either way when it came to the US elections.

If queer rights is your line, remember when Kamala was asked point blank in an interview about her position on trans rights and she said 'she believed whatever the law said'. Wow. Very reassuring from a person who may potentially have the power to change the laws in this country.

Or let's talk about police brutality. What did the Democrats actually do about it? They put up a shitty plaque for Emmett Till and kneeled wearing African garb. Still poured billions of dollars into policing in the US and building cop cities and didn't do anything to break up Police Unions.

People in the US were and are desperate for change from the status quo. That's what Trump offered, even though his change is significantly for the worse. But his line was always clear, and he did tap into that cry for change. The Democrats... Well they wanted Liz Cheney and to reach across the aisle, watering down their message for Republicans instead of taking a stand on just about any topic. It's the same play they did in 2016. Is it really a surprise that she lost? You can't run on not being Trump.

You know what the Democrats are arguing about now and why they said they lost their campaign? That they didn't move far enough right and they should have dropped trans issues. They don't care about you, they care about corporate profits and PAC money. They would rather lose to Trump than do anything that would hurt their corporate donors.

I don't particularly care if the Next War Criminal in Chief is a Black/Indian woman. I don't want our presidents to be war criminals.

As a socialist, I don't think I'm being nitpicky and am obsessed with purity culture in politics to want the democrats to do more than just continue carrying Republican platforms in diet form. Frankly, I'm disillusioned and a lot of other people are too. Over 1/3 of eligible voters didn't even bother to show up this election cycle. And that's not just leftists. People are tired of the Democratic/Republican show and we need to be fighting to find another way through organizing and pushing for better options.

[calcinator]

The country didn't need the "leftists" to tell the US population to be disappointed in and mistrusting of the Democratic party. The Democrats are fully capable of doing that themselves.

The lefties that are yelling at the Democratic party are, intentionally or not, also yelling about strategy.

We would not have been in this position if Obama had done his duty and held Bush II and Cheney responsible for lying us into a war. We wouldn't have been in this position if he'd actually rolled back all the fascist creep from post 9-11 rather than going ham on drone-assisted extrajudicial murder. We'd be less likely to be in this position if he hadn't torched his own organizing system to keep it from being used against him after he swung to the right post-election.

We would be far less likely to be in this situation if we had better outcomes from the ACA, but I was there, and Obama surrendered the public option before negotiations were even started. They watered it down to get "bipartisan support" and none was given. This is a pattern that has dominated democratic action for the four and a half decades of my life.

We wouldn't have been in this mess if the Democratic engine had recognized that the energy was with Bernie (or at the very least Elizabeth Warren) rather than Hillary.

Even if one takes out all the dirty tricks done out in the open to tank Bernie's campaign, which did, in fact, alienate a growing base of support and generally tarnish the Democratic party in the public's eye. Because it's hard to present yourself as the people's party when you have 'superdelegates' openly putting their thumb on the scale. True or not, it came across as a backdoor screwing, and gave the right's faux-populism a big boost as the Democrats did everything they could to stomp out their own, actual grass-roots populist movement.

The entirety of right-wing media had been working since the 90s to frame Hillary as a villain. It didn't take a genius to see that fielding a candidate that your own base was 'meh' on and that the rest of the country had been told from the pulpit was the literal Whore of Babylon of the End Times for twenty goddamn years was a bad idea. Combine that with the perception that she was put there by backroom deals and her shitty campaign strategy and failure was all but guaranteed.

Fast forward to Biden, we wouldn't be in this position if he'd had the courage to actually pursue Trump as a criminal rather than slow walking it to avoid appearing retributive. We wouldn't be in this position if Merrick Garland hadn't been put in power.

Expansions to the ACA promised in the campaign? Memory holed. Pressure put in Sinema and Manchin to get the fuck in line? Zero. Promise to run for one term? Renegged and then surrendered to when the situation was obvious. Time spent bragging about the accomplishments they made? Insufficient.

And that's without the full throated support of an ongoing genocide.

Then we come to the Harris campaign, where every successful aspect, like calling the 'pubs "Weird" and fighting them in the press, were dropped in favor of linking hands with the Cheneys, all on the advice of ex-Clinton campaign staff.

And speaking of Clinton, we can't use the Epstein thing against Trump, because that would implicate Bill.

You don't get a sub-30% approval rating because the mean old lefties are complaining. You get that approval rating by not delivering for your constituency and by demoralizing your base. You get that by not fighting.

And the thing is, everyone knows what Democrats fighting looks like. They are vicious, dirty, and extremely effective... against opposition from the left. Someone in their own party starts gaining momentum and public support and it's all 'I've got those signs in my garage from 30 years ago' and 'green new dream or whatever'.

But when it's opposition from the right it's 'compromise' and 'bipartisan' and 'my friends across the aisle'.

When people hear "I will have a republican in my administration" they don't think "wow, how magnanimous and open to input they are"

The average Joe hears "Republican ideas are good enough even their opponents want to do them." The base hears "I, too, will be feckless and disappointing, and Sinemas and Manchins will just keep coming."

And where is the energy now? Whose rallies are getting massive turnouts? Why, it's Bernie and AOC, the rogue element of the party that actually pushes to the left!

TL:DR: the OP is correct in one way, the Democrats wouldn't be losing if the lefties weren't complaining... because the stuff that makes the lefties happy wins elections.

[calcinator]

In times like these its important to ask yourself "who taught me revenge was hollow and ineffective?"

Was it someone who had reason to worry about being revenged upon?

[carbonatedeverclear]

being neutral about other peoples kinks is necessary by the way. when consenting adults are doing things between consenting adults, and you prioritize your discomfort over their autonomy and right to exist safely in a space without having their private interests excavated and recontextualized to make them out to be predators, that says way more about your willingness to place yourself in the position of moral authority than it does about them and you deputizing yourself on the basis of nothing but vibes and your personal traumas makes you very dangerous politically.

[mileypercocet]

Okay….lmao…..no……

The proliferation of “kink” surrounding violence towards women or pedophilia are not divorced from the context of rampant violence towards women and pedophilia. I’m not even going to say much more, as I don’t care about tumblr obviously. But everything should be examined and questioned. Including people’s “preference” to “consentually” engage in sexual fetishes that clearly stem from and serve division and oppression. Girl bye. Oh your “autonomous”deeply personal beliefs and interests happen to follow exactly along with what corporations and western imperialism have sold you and which has no history or basis before the 20th century? Crazy. I’m so politically dangerous to call into question when we think we are consenting but are actually manipulated. Sorry for criticizing others’ autonomy, but like yeah overtly some people are more autonomous than others. Some people are less informed than others. Clearly we need to move away from the notion that all opinions are of equal weight. The opinion of a climatologist on the issue of climate are more relevant than a member of the GOP. Etc. So yeah people have no idea what they are doing and not everything people do should just be not judged simply because they cum to it. So politically dangerous. Or maybe we should .*politically,* have extremely intelligent people with extremely high levels of empathy and high levels of education have a political voice for the first fucking time after we have been listening to people yammering about both things like completely legal prostitution and no kink shaming for decades. If there is a problem with something I do sexually, I want to hear about it. Just like if there is something wrong with something else I do routinely. I want to examine my own behaviors and don’t say just cuz it has to do with mine or someone else’s pussy, no one can ever call it into question.

[babyboyortega]

if you are able to separate the concept of causing harm from deciding if a behavior is acceptable or not you do not understand consent.

People have a right to consent to things even if those things are dangerous or unhealthy or disgusting.

It’s an extension of bodily autonomy.

you do not respect women if you do not respect their choice to do what they wish with their body, and that includes in the context of sex and kink.

you cannot compare consensual acts to actual sexual violence because sexual violence is violence because of the fact that it is non-consensual and causes harm and denies the victim, their humanity and ability to choose what happens to them and their body.

get the fuck over yourself.

i’m sure most of the kinksters that you convince yourself are evil have had more in depth and constructive conversations about consent with even their most of vanilla sexual partners then you will ever have in your entire life 

I am currently locked out of my discourse account where I posted the OP so I am replying from my age play account. I hope it makes you vomit in your mouth. 

[calcinator]

And you really don't want to establish that it is acceptable for authority to control private behavior, art, and speech in an effort to control thought and public behavior. Because long, long, LONG before we get to smut or even fiction-presented-as-fiction, a whole lot else is going down under that justification.

Because if 'it might influence people to misogyny, incest, and pedophilia" is the standard, I've got a stack of holy books and a red marker and I'm ready to get to work.

[teaboot]

Okay but can anyone articulate the mindset that leads older people to feel like they NEED to know people's gender identity all the time? Like what's going on there

[teaboot]

Cause it feels like I've had a hundred xonversations with cis straight people around 40-60 years old that goes like

Person: Did you see that?

Me: See what?

Person: That. It, him, whatever they're called

Me: (Sees a femme with masculine features)

Me: What about them

Person: Well what is that? He's dressed in women's clothes, so is he-it, they- What does that mean?

Me: I mean. If you're concerned about pronouns you can probably ask

Person: But do I call it a Mister or a miss?

Me: Well uh. That depends on what they tell you but "them" is usually safe.... but based on their makeup, hair, and heels I don't think they'd be mad if you assumed thry were a lady

Me: So like. I'd say she's probably just. Here for the event

Person: That's fine, I get that, I don't have a problem with trans people, I just don't get how you're supposed to know

Person: Like how do you know if someone is transsexual or just cross dressing?

Me: Uhhhhhhhh

Me: I mean

Me: I don't know. Any cross dressers. Who would be offended by being pronoun'd by their outfit. But like.

Me: I guess if you choose wrong. And they correct you. Then you just.... apologize and use what they tell you?

Me: .... Do you plan on talking to them?

Person: No

Me: Then why d. Why does it matter

Person: I'm just trying to understand

Me: And that's great! But like. You don't need to

Person: What

Me: You don't need to. Necessarily. Understand. You know?

Person: Huh

Me: They're here for the event. You don't have to interact with them. In two hours they'll go home and you'll never see them again

Person: I'm just confused

Me: You're allowed to be confused

Me: You can stay confused

Me: It's not illegal

[teaboot]

Like

I don't know how applied statistics works

Thats fine

I'm probably gonna die confused about that one

I don't need romance know the gender and physiology and medical history of a random stranger I'm never gonna talk to

Why do you need to know

Do you think they're gonna quiz you before they leave

Are you worried you're gonna get a bad grade

[redskyeatnight]

For my parents, who are more 70-80, it's because they grew up with gendered rules for social interactions, and it's an anxiety thing. (I also suspect they're both autistic, which might explain the panic about following social rules.) To them, interactions with men allow x,y,z and don't allow a,b,c. And the same for women. And if they don't know what someone's gender is, or if they know someone is nonbinary, they don't know which rules apply. And it panics them.

There is some of the usual pearl-clutching about "dangers" and such, but I'm not sure they really believe that under all the nonsense they've internalised. The more I've talked to them about these things and seen them interact with people, it really does seem to be about anxiety and not embarrassing themselves. They were taught to put people into boxes, and interact with them based on that. And that works well for them in 95% of conversations, and you can see the code switching, especially in my mum, when she's talking to a man vs a woman. But if she doesn't know which code to use? Pure panic. I've seen her basically have a meltdown once we get home about whether she handled the interaction properly. Whether she slighted the other person by doing something wrong. Whether they're off muttering about how terrible she is for something she said.

There's a lot of comments on this post about discrimination and such, and people like that definitely exist. Just wanted to point out that it isn't always that. Some people just got taught such strict gendered social rules, and nothing about just treating people like people, that they don't know how to navigate social interactions when those rules don't apply, and it stresses them out.

[kyraneko]

In addition, societies often run on a level of "knowing" that's used, oil-like, to smooth out social interactions---that you can look at someone and know a number of things about them: their gender, their class, their profession and/or the general nature of their immediate purpose (you dress differently to go to a funeral than you do to go to the grocery store), something about their relationships, and their general willingness to share a set of standards about how people should convey themselves.

A medieval Londoner could look at any stranger and tell if they were a servant or an apprentice or a storekeeper or an unmarried woman or a housewife (and how prosperous her husband was) or a lord or a nun or a priest or whatever; if two strangers came upon each other they knew at a glance who was to bow to whom (and life was a succession of giving and receiving small bows by way of passing acknowledgment) and whether they were of sufficiently compatable status to have a conversation or seek a friendship.

People's entire constructions of social interactions RAN on this shit for thousands of years. The intricacy and the importance of it has largely dropped, but when parents freaked out in the eighties over their son's long hair or housewives in the fifties refused to step out of doors without gloves, hat, and handbag, they were running on the social programs they grew up into and being protective of a type of status and respectability that had had real consequence in their lives.

And that consequence depended on the understanding that they didn't just have those things, they were those things. A lady was someone who had the personal skill and poise and attention to detail to pull off ladylike behavior (and the money to buy the necessary quality clothing and the leisure time to put herself together); faking it would have been no more expected than that an amateur would present herself as a prima ballerina by dancing across the stage; ladies, as well as other sorts of people, were self-proven by success.

A child who's grown to teenage years learning the concepts of freedom and truth and applying them to self-expression has largely inverted the order of operations their parents have used; instead of "I am a good, respectable high-status lady and therefore I wear the proper clothing and accessories with good grooming and good poise, and express my personal aesthetic preferences within that context" they get "I feel most myself and most comfortable with long hair and T-shirts and jewelry, this is WHO I AM, Dad, why are you persecuting me?" and the rigid standards that allowed Dad or Mom to access the securities of high social status according to the mores of their generation are subordinated or dismissed entirely, to the embarrassment and terror of their parents who viewed that respectability of dress and behavior as both security and privilege were aghast that their children would so willingly reject it, when it arguably was barely REAL to their children in the way it was to them, and functions more as prison than social status buff.

The idea of dressing purely for one's own aesthetic pleasure, let alone being a whole new gender, comes across as part neglect of a very important social function, and part pure dishonesty, to someone who depends on the structure granted by standards and assigned places in the standards. A paradigm shift in which rights replace responsibilities and in which gender is understood as a social construct rather than a force of nature, is not something they're well equipped to handle, and the translations and explanations have not been as useful as they could be.

Social mores and their use are a technology, in the widest sense of the word, and a lot of old people are in their "you met your fiance OVER THE INTERNET?!!! They could be anyone, you'll be murdered!" stage regarding the ability to choose to become something other than your family status and birth assigned you.

We're saying "assigned" as in "assigned gender at birth" should be a suggestion, and they're trying to wrap their heads around it not being a rule, and what it means when an island they've stood on since birth reveals itself to instead be a really big whale.

[calcinator]

This is your daily reminder that tradition is peer pressure from the dead, and culture is a bag of tools, not a master.

And as with any set of tools, they can and should be replaced as they wear out, prove themselves defective, or become obsolete.

[fipindustries]

i think sometimes people take a little too far the idea of "everyone is the hero of their own story" or "everythone thinks what they are doing is good".

i dont think everyone is acting out of good intentions and they are just trying to bring what they think is their version of a better world, i dont think everyone has a noble self narrative of their own actions.

i also dont think most people are sadists who do bad things because they enjoy making people suffer (although i do believe some people are like that)

personally i think most evil comes from selfishness and indifference. they do what they do because it benefits them and they dont care that it hurts others. they dont do it out of some belief that is the right thing to do, they just want to get their own and that is the long and short of it. wther its "good" or "bad" doesnt really come into consideration

but what do you think?

what is the biggest factor in people acting evil?

bullies: spiteful, mean, petty thrill of making people suffer for its own sake

misers: selfish drive for self enrichment, indifference to harm on others

misguided: noble pursuit of justice but misinformed or with incompatible values

stupid: no understanding or reflection upon the consequences of their actions

coherced: just following orders, maybe even under threat

Voting ended onFeb 21, 2025

[calcinator]

It's the idea that there is a status above 'just a person'.

Sacred people. Royalty. Nobles. Aristocrats. Chosen people. Superior people. Superior beings.

Anything can be justified if your in-group is special and your out-group isn't. Anything can be justified if carried out on the orders of a perfect being. Once you have established that the sacred exists, then the profane is created by contrast, and anything profane can and should be destroyed.

Everything above is just motivation, it's character flaws. Nearly everyone has all of those impulses to some degree at some point in their life. But evil happens when you can justify what you're doing to yourself and to others.

"Yes, I'm lying to people about being able to talk to their dead relatives for money, but aren't I bringing them peace?"

"Yes, I'm keeping my fellow persons as slaves, but they're the cursed descendants of Ham. This is actually my burden."

"Yes, the people live in squalor and support me with backbreaking labor, but they belong to the land and I own the land because my family was chosen by god to lead."

"Better dead than red."

"Yes, we're conquering and slaughtering, but this is our land by divine right."

"We don't need to give these people trials, they're terrorists, they don't deserve rights."

"Sure I'm robbing my congregation blind, but their reward will be in heaven."

"They're poor, I'll be much more responsible than they would be with the money."

"My job is to care about the company's bottom line, it's not my problem."

"Yes, I'm voting in a fascist, but there are people who don't have the right paperwork in this country."

"I'm a higher caste/social class than them. That's their role."

"No amount of finite suffering on earth matches infinite suffering in hell, thus any means of converting the infidel is justified."

"If they fell for it they had it coming."

"They'd do it to me."

"Gott Mit Uns"

And all of it because some people matter more than others.

[sarkos]

“The group, described as a fringe group of radical Berkeley pseudo-intellectuals, is believed to be behind the double homicide of a wealthy Pennsylvania couple, two knife attacks on a landlord in California and the shootout in Vermont that left one member dead.Four alleged members of the group are already in custody on murder charges while three are on the run, including Jack Amadeus “Ziz” LaSota, 34, who goes by she/her pronouns and is the group’s apparent leader. Some of the members have worked at the tech giant Google, and many have advocated for veganism and identify as transgender. Along the way, the group is believed to have bought a tugboat in Alaska under a plan to live on it to avoid high rents in northern California. The tugboat, part of the group’s “Rationalist Fleet”, now sits half-submerged near Pillar Point Harbor near San Jose. Much of what is known about the Zizians’ philosophy is gleaned from online postings in which LaSota wondered what would happen to society if it were stripped of morality through “evil people ganging up to kill off good people” or if the group’s goals “ultimately required sociopathy”. In one instance, according to an article in SFGate published earlier in February, LaSota faked her death. An obituary posted online mentioned a boating accident and spoke of LaSota “loving adventure, friends and family, music, blueberries, biking, computer games and animals”. But an analysis of interviews and online postings published by the Associated Press on Friday revealed how the group of young computer scientists appeared to have become increasingly violent.”

— Killings across three states shine spotlight on cultlike ‘Zizian’ group | US crime | The Guardian

[calcinator]

Man, journalism has tumbled down a fucking well.

I clicked on the story to find out what went on, because the list of this group's victims: the wealthy, landlords, and border patrol agents, suggests a highly political group.

No coherent attempt to explain even the vague ethos of the group was even made. After some digging I was able to piece together that they're maybe literally militant vegans and have a "your brain has two wolves hemispheres" pseudoscience obsession, but the lengths every article goes to avoid communicating concrete tells me that whatever they're into, it's a bandwagon the authorities are terrified people will jump onto.

That, and there's a lot of such-and-such was arrested for "disorderly and resisting" which is cop-speak for "they tried to protect their civil rights" or "needs to learn their place." At least one of the murder charges seems to be because there was a shootout, the cops killed one of the group members, and the other groups members there are being charged for it.

They talk about a scary protest in 2019 with "Black robes and masks" but most of the articles don't bother mentioning those were Guy Fawkes masks, which is contextually important.

In an article about the murder of the wealthy couple in Vermont, it's revealed that the wealthy couple forced their vegan daughter to eat meat and wanted to institutionalize her. You'd think that kind of clear motive would be, forgive the term, raw meat for the press.

Oh, and one of those mentioned as charged with Disorderly-and-Resisting was that same daughter. All very odd.

It does sound culty, quite possibly they are very dangerous people. But the reporting feels off in a way that I can't really nail down except that it seems like one of those situations where the authorities are inflating the danger and competence of the group to cover their own investigatory buffoonery.*

A sort of Waluigi Mangione situation, if you will.

*and the press being able to call this a 'trans vegan cult' to push right-wing reactionism is also a factor.

[hillbillyoracle]

I am finding out that a lot of things I thought were common knowledge about Christian Fundamentalism are not in fact common knowledge.

Like with the aid freeze, people were like why would they do this? And I was like cause they want churches to be the only option for aid.

And people were shocked. And I was also shocked that this wasn't like...more well known. I grew up with people who were anti-aid because they felt that belonged to the church and made people behave more worldly if they could get it elsewhere. It was so well known it was a debate topic in my Philosophy of Religion course in high school.

I'm just...I'm concerned at how little some groups seem to know about Christian Fundamentalism. I wish I could help translate more.

[hillbillyoracle]

Yes! I've heard this as well!

One of my friends asked if they wanted people to die and I was so confused because yes, of course they do. That's a feature not a bug.

People in my church would talk about people who needed aid but didn't or couldn't work as parasites who represented an active threat to able bodied and working people. It's a zero sum game to them.

[upthewitchypunx]

It's the coming eugenics that is in those thoughts processes that is really upsetting to me.

I grew up non-mormon in Utah and studied religion and I didn't not no until a few years ago that Fundamentalists don't think Catholics are Christian, it blew my mind.

Also, this article was helpful in understanding why they seem to think empathy is a sin. It's so bonkers and backwards!

Have you heard the one about empathy being a sin?

Empathy is in the news, and not in a good way. With recent controversial statements by John Piper and resignations of multiple staff at the

[godblessthesickos]

[calcinator]

I thought there was well established US policy on what's to happen to governments that threaten the banana industry.

What, pray tell, are all those $50,000 hammers paying for?