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@italishcommie
October 15, 1966: Black Panther Party founded in Oakland, California.
Bros really out here reblogging in favor of hamas
yeah
When Palestine is free there'll be time to talk about the politics to come. For now I'm following the lead of the PFLP and supporting the Palestinian resistance in all its forms.
Heartwarming: This Israeli tourist is being treated like shit
when talking about AI remember the different versions:
Analytical AI, is the one that can detect cancer and save lives
Generative AI is the one that steals art to make it worse, and gives you a wrong answer every time you google something
Weird Al is the one who got his ponysona to canonically have children with a pony from my little pony
analytical AI is also the one that the police and insurance companies use to profile people against arbritary data to justify mistreatment
generative AI is also used in drug discovery technologies that can also save lives
complex technologies cannot simply be decried as good or evil
Weird Al does in fact have the only ponysona who has canoninically fucked
also: art theft is not real. training on images is not stealing in any way. stop worshipping IP law, you'll never be Walt Disney.
Duplicating something is not stealing, no one has a right to an idea, to a concept; it's funny that the position of the internet left (as far as I've experienced it) shifted from right clicking and downloading NFTs (not literally cause they're ugly as fuck, just as a way to not recognize them being property and whatnot) to being against AI learning from copyrighted material (imo it's alike to human learning, therefore opposing it is twice as dumb)
They labeled Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, I'd say they're not even trying to hide their intentions.
very ehhh of you to support Hamas, which are theocrats who aren't that supported in Gaza
that being said pflp are pretty based
No I wouldn't say it's very "ehhh" of me to support Hamas, I think it is an absolute necessity to support all Palestinian resistance, regardless of ideological difference. To exclude and condemn one movement but idolize another one is blind idealism. It just so happens that Hamas has been better at organizing and constructing a resistance movement than any other faction, and that has subsequently placed them at the forefront of armed resistance against israel.
We must remember Hamas are not these spooky islamist extremists akin to the Islamic State, Hamas allows Palestinians to follow other religions like Christianity in Gaza, it has destroyed no churches in Gaza unlike israel and isis. Hamas is also allied with Hezbollah and Iran, both Shia, despite being largely Sunni. Hamas fights along side both the PFLP and DFLP under the Joint Operations Room, if Hamas was so bad than why would the Marxist-Leninist groups be allied with them? Because they are all united in a common struggle against one enemy and cannot afford to be divided. Theocrat often rings out like a snarl word, Islam is an integral part of Palestinian culture and identity.
Supporting the Palestinian resistance without Hamas, is not supporting the Palestinian resistance at all. We are in the midst of a genocide and we can't just cherry pick which groups to support. When we condemn Hamas we are dangerously aligning with both israel and anti-Palestinian groups because that is exactly what they want, sowing division and shattering unity. I highly recommend reading The Thorn And The Carnation by Yahya Sinwar because it helps explain the rise of the Islamist current in Palestine at a time when the secular/nationalist current was negotiating with israel and selling out, meanwhile the leftist current had isolated itself because it was far too busy engaging in intellectual debate rather than reality.
So yes, I support Hamas and stand with them, because I can look beyond ideological lenses and see that they are at the center of the resistance. They continue to fight heroically in defense of their people, and their contributions to the armed struggle cannot be overstated. Like it or not Hamas is not going anywhere and we cannot fully support Palestine without them.
Total offense but many people dont respect October 7th as the true militant uprising it is and refuse to learn from it. Palestinians brought a military and technological superpower that is backed by the US imperial government to heel with a lot less manpower. It was obvious that it took years to plan. I blame this all on the humanitarian lens in which people have been looking through at Gaza. Direct action is one thing but militant action is another
I remember when it happened and we were celebrating because
1) they broke through the fence using a bulldozer, a symbol of the occupation's destruction of Palestinian homes
2) Qassam fighters were coming down from the sky with nothing but assault rifles using makeshift gliders. They rained down from the sky to complete their mission.
3) They took out the zionist terrorist troops from entire military bases and accomplished military goals that hadn't been reached in decades, that hadn't been previously thought possible. Hundreds of zionist soldiers taken down, while in their military bases.
4) They had managed to reach Jerusalem according to some accounts from locals on that day (or it was a coordinated gesture by a local defense group). Still notable to me because for 2 decades Ghazzawi people have been under total siege, unable to go somewhere like Jerusalem to see our beloved Al-Aqsa, or the Holy Sepulchre Church.
This was all cause for celebration, an enormous military victory.
And then the Hannibal directive was issued and the occupation bombed its own 'citizens' and wiped out an entire suburb with its own tanks and helicopters and started churning out propaganda about rapes that it has continuously refused any investigation of (1, 2), and that there is no forensic evidence for.
October 7 was a largely successful military incursion against majoritarily military targets. The only failing on the Palestinian resistance came from them not realizing how willing the occupation was to massacre its own soldiers and 'civilians' (non-combattants) alike to keep them out of reach. And I don't blame them for making the mistake of humanizing the enemy in their perspective, more than they deserved.
Also, as one of my teachers at uni pointed out
"Everyone who died at Jim Jones's cult compound was highly educated or the beloved child of someone who was. The Manson family had long, cultured debates on love and reason. David Koresh was a skilled debater who insisted his followers join him in hours long discussions. Every singe one of the 9/11 hijackers was well educational and debated thier beliefs at length. Smart people who are good at debate can justify almost any insanity to themselves in a way someone bad at debate never could.
Rational debate got these people into this mess, its not whats going to get them out."
Considering how Mel's larger political agenda through the majority of S1 was essentially, "I'll make Piltover great and rich and a force to be reckoned with and prove to my mother how you can expand and conquer without war," she contributed significantly to the culture and identity of Piltover's scientific and technological progress, escalating and leveraging their sense of entitlement and superiority with her policies because it aligns Piltover’s resources and advancements with Noxus's and the Medarda family’s interests.
When Ambessa sweeps in in S2, arguing for martial law over the undercity, she harnesses this entitlement and superiority Mel fostered over the 7+ years she dominated Piltover's politics and its global development.
Descending into fascism doesn't happen overnight, and it is never the work of isolated decisions of isolated individuals like Caitlyn or Ambessa.
The "I need to find something that puts Piltover on the map," aka "I'll make Piltover great," is the foundation for this manifestation.
Arcane fans hate to hear it, and I bet Mel would, too, but she and Ambessa make a formidable duo of expansion politics. Mel's initial push for greatness laid the groundwork for Ambessa's aggressive and militaristic strategies. I call it the 'natural progression of oppression' and 'continuities of power and privilege.'
Mother and daughter are not opposites; they complement each other. They are both "Let's make the Medardas great (again)."
The local conflict and tensions between Piltover and Zaun are just useful playgrounds for them to exploit. For me, that is one of the greatest misses of season 2's narrative: positioning them as opposites, instead of leaning into the combination that would probably get closest to how imperialism operates. Additionally, it's also one of my greatest annoyances with the Arcane critical side of the fandom for failing to recognize Mel and Ambessa as two sides of the same coin in their alignment in the direction of global political developments. This oversimplification (while emotionally and cognitively easier to digest) reduces the narrative to a 'good versus bad' dynamic, overlooking how both Mel and Ambessa exploit the conflict for their own ends.
I had never seen it this way, but it's a great analysis
My least favorite things about anti- UBI discourse is always the techbros whining that "nobody is going to work anymore! People will just watch Netflix all day!" and I have 2 responses:
1) Who the fuck cares. Who the fuck cares what people do with their time! That's kind of the fucking point!
2) People aren't going to stop laboring. Housework (look, it's right there in the word!) will still need to be done. So will maintenance on our homes and personal spaces. Children will still need carers, as will the elderly and disabled. There are millions of examples of ~work~ that we do all the time, uncompensated, that won't suddenly stop because we aren't forced to sell our labor to provide corporation's profits.
I'm not surprised that what is traditionally women's work is invisible to these dipshits, but it never fails to anger me.
Anyway. Join the IWW.
Field studies have been conducted in several countries now, and the result is always the same - people will just flop about for a couple of months to recover from the burnout most people who have a job live with, and then they look for something to do. Some get a job with reduced hours, and some start doing charitable stuff like volunteering in soup kitchens and teaching others to do whatever their particular skill is. They socialize more, they are happier, and on average, people will work more, not less.
But the thing is, employers suddenly have to think about how to make their jobs appealing enough for someone to come and do them! It's hard to find someone to work for you for long hours under horrible conditions, if they can just choose not to; which shows you how voluntary our current system actually is.
I see many on the left criticizing UBI as a bandaid, everything that isn't revolution just fucking sucks I guess, even considering how crucial UBI could be for leftists circles. Imagine how game changing actually being able to afford a space to periodically meet up and discuss politics / form community is, especially now with the death of third places and the atomization of the individual, cars and work-from-home (the latter I do support tho) dividing people, how crucial it is to have a physical place where to meet up. But leftists are not exactly the richest folks out there, proletariat and all that, so an UBI would be revolutionary in that regard, and further the revolutionary cause immeasurably
Man, I really wish people would stop bringing up that Mel is black to sideline the way she treats Viktor as a Zaunite just because Viktor is white, because it's clear that within the society the show presents, the color of her skin is in no way something their society looks down on. In fact I dare say we see more people of color in Piltover than in Zaun, if my memory serves me. At the very least, there is an equal distribution. There is less of a schism between the color of your skin than if you come from above or below the city, and it seems like people keep using that as a gotcha to excuse the way she clearly speaks over him and frequently ignores him if he is in the room. I even saw someone say she should have treated him worse.
Of all things I feel like the ones who treat her worse due to her skin color are actually the writers themselves, who notably seem to shove aside any dark skinned character, like Mel, Ekko, and Sevika, if they can give control of the narrative to a light skinned character instead. Mel and Ekko especially seemed to be shoved aside until the last minute that they could, and were then given a cool power to hopefully make everyone forget how long they were absent with no impact on the plot (which sadly seems to have worked). I just wish people would stop blaming fans for engaging with what the show actually presented, and instead ask why the writers presented it that way at all.
"You want everything spoonfed" sir, the plate is empty. We're starving
"It's about subtext!" sir, the microsoft word file is blank
"The microexpressions!" sir, that was a micro-microexpression
"Show don't tell!" sir, the theater is closing, there is no show
May I also add :
"You just didn't like the story!" Yes, this tends to happen when the story is a complete mess
"You're just a hater!" How dare I have standards for my entertainment
"It's called Arcane ! It's in the title !" S1 was also called Arcane and yet it didn't use cheap pseudo-magic tricks to resolve its conflicts
About the last one, was arcane back in S1 called "good writing"?
It is interesting how shimmer came to be as an effort to bridge the gap in literal bodily strength/power against piltover especially seeing how so much of the population of the undercity is disabled and shimmer is used as a psychical enhancer by them (eg. sevika, silco, viktor) to close that gap. The negative association of shimmer as being a way to "unnaturally" overcome disabilities is also worth looking at, for example, Silco using it on his eye is one of the first actions we see of him and it is meant to create a negative/villainous association to shimmer, later on that same negative view is passed down onto Viktor as his use of it marks the beginning of his "downfall".
Silco's push to produce and use shimmer is based on the idea of Zaun finally having enough power to defend from the oppression of piltover, however just like Viktor's use of the hextech on himself, this is is seen as a negative because he is striving to destroy the status quo and therefore it is bad.
Despite the fact that shimmer is also shown to be literally life saving, in the case of both Jinx and Viktor, even then it has a negative portrayal as it is heavily emphasized that it permanently alters the person, in the case of Viktor he "loses his humanity" while for Jinx her mental state deteriorates heavily and she becomes even more paranoid. Even with Salo's more limited use of shimmer for medical/soothing purposes it is shown as something he has to hide and be ashamed of, as did Viktor when he began using it.
We can also see the difference in characterization when it comes to Sevika vs. Vi, there is this almost animalistic reaction in Sevika when she uses shimmer, her eyes glow, she growls, her whole body shakes, her body is being altered. By contrast Vi's hextech gloves, despite also being an enhancer are not portrayed as damaging to her because she is not disabled. In hand with this goes the fact that Vi's enhanced power comes from piltover and it is being put in service of defending it/the status quo. So in the same way that hextech is good as long as it only benefits piltover; enhancers are also good as long as they don't permanently alter the "natural" body and it is not disabled people using them to "unnaturally" overcome that disability and/or threaten said status. Sevika's "bad unnatural strength" losing against Vi's "natural good strength".
Much of the writing, in S2 particularly, has this heavy emphasis against anything that is "unnatural" no matter how beneficial it may be and how many people it may help. This negative association with the "unnatural" overcoming of disabilities is perfectly exemplified by Viktor becoming an "inhuman" being as a result of it alongside with the portrayal of the commune being unnerving because everyone is "unnaturally perfect". Meanwhile Mel's magic is never questioned as bad, because hers is natural, so there are no negative consequences to her using it unlike Viktor who literally "loses himself and his humanity".
This very reactionary writing culminates when the plot insist that "Viktor needs to accept himself" = not heal himself through "unnatural" means = accepting he has to die due to his lower social status either as a disabled person or as a person of the under city, however you read that, the plot leads to the conclusion that the "noble and moral" thing for Viktor to have done was just accept that the status quo can't be altered and he was wrong for trying to go against it.
s2 intro was so fire. and I thought like s1 it showed/hinted at the things that would happen during this season. but most stuff didn't happen or it didn't live up to the imagery used in the intro
Vi smudging the VI tattoo. it implies that she would struggle with her identity and the name connected with it and the legacy connected with it, like Jinx did in s1. maybe this could even be her going so far as to reject the name itself, like denying that she's The Vi to keep a low profile. like how Jinx would insist that she's not Powder in s1. but none of that ever happened. Vi never struggles with 'being Vi' or what it means to her or with being Vander's prodigy even tho he's brought back from the dead.
this shot implying that this was gonna be a story about the sisters, but also that Jinx is Vi's burden or her shadow or a demon on her shoulder. but to explore Vi's feelings on her sister and what she's become they'd have to try to explore Vi at all
this shot which implies to me 'Jinx being Jinx' cos it's a callback to when she does the finger gun in s1, but even more so to when she does it as a kid in the Enemy MV. in the scene she, when she still went by Powder, aims a finger gun at enforcers and as she pretend fires at them it flashes to Jinx standing there. so a 'Jinx was always Jinx' message. but it also alludes to her having a target like the firelight in s1 or the enforcers in the MV, who she always hated.
the two times we see Ekko he reverses time, which ig he technically does but the meat of his story is him going to a parallel universe, not going back in time. idk ig I thought that time travel would be more relevant to Ekko's story than parallel universe travel. in the end time travel is only meaningfully used for the timebomb angst scene even tho it's not really necessary there. ig I thought the powers would be more relevant to Ekko's whole character and arc. in an Ekko lol short he reverses time to defeat the bad guy and when he finally succeeds it's at the cost of the destruction of the mural for dead kids, and so he goes back in time again. that's more meaningful than anything they did with firelights in s2 (and arguably more meaningful than the timebomb scene). why did they drop the sick tree plotline? the firelights? his past with Jinx? his involvement in the revolution? the past vs present and saving the things we love? I swear they were teasing me with an epic time travel episode but delivered a parallel universe (derogatory) episode.
this type of shots made me think that Cait would actually struggle internally to an extreme degree with her actions and how the power corrupts her etc. that she'd become horrified of what she's become. and how she'd hate and struggle with maintaining her appearances to the public.
the first shot made it seem like, just like Cait, Jayce would struggle with public attention and maybe scrutiny, considering he was the head of the council in s1. but then the first thing he does this season is resign and that's that for him being a public persona and struggling with his reputation even tho s1 and his lol lore focus on that. like that stuff's so juicy don't get rid of that.
the second shot hints to me at him discovering smth grand/important connected to the arcane, which ig kinda happened but what it ended up being is that Jayce got transported to a bad universe and learned that arcane bad. meanwhile this shot evokes to me smth more awe-inspiring, idk like smth mystical and magical, arcane, you could say. with white bright light often being used in media to communicate divinity. wild runes mumbo jumbo and Jayce being transported to a bad arcane universe seem so pedestrian compared to like, heavenly lights ig.
both concepts for Jayce's story that were introduced in the intro and the eps delivered on neither.
I don't remember the french revolution ending with the ppl teaming up with the royalty. I also don't get the impression that there are any french revolution stories out there with the hero thinking the revolution is an irritating nuisance. this parallel is so extremely unwarranted and borderline offensive.
Viktor did turn out to be evil and he did get a cult as this shot implied but the mask obvs references his lol mech suit that he never gets. there was no reason for him to be designed the way he was, as an arcane deity with specifically a mask, outside of for the purpose of having the faintest similarity to his lol design. the mask, the cult, all that third arm imagery in s1? it all references his lol lore, for nothing, cos they took his character in a drastically different direction. talk about blue balls. and same thing with the light as with Jayce, the light coming from the mask implies Revelations connected to the mask but also loss of identity/being consumed by it. maybe a glorious evolution? idk it again just feels like someone knew what the fans wanted but it wasn't the writers. but someone still put all this in the intro. teasing a better story that we'll never get to see.
there's also all the Black Rose imagery that seemed important even tho they weren't in the end. it being connected to Mel (politician) and Ambessa (politician/warrior) made me think that they would focus on the Black Rose being a political organization that wants smth connected to Piltover and the PnZ conflict, with all the imagery of holding the rose/squishing the rose/being the rose/picking up the rose alluding to the political scheming between Ambessa/Mel/the Black Rose. but they went the route of out of nowhere making Mel magic. imagine if in a random ep of s1 they made Silco magic.
why? why why why why why?
the intro did more for all the character arcs than the episodes themselves
When they can't get you to side with the oppressor
When they can't get you to despise the oppressed
When they can't get you to look away from the oppression
When they can't get you to despair and fall into apathy
Then they'll tell you it's more noble to suffer and die for a cause rather than to fight and kill for it.
Kwame Ture
(the big three I had in mind when making this post)
When they can't get you to side with the oppressor
When they can't get you to despise the oppressed
When they can't get you to look away from the oppression
When they can't get you to despair and fall into apathy
Then they'll tell you it's more noble to suffer and die for a cause rather than to fight and kill for it.