LDNester90

Larry ● SW US ● 400+ Months Old

[asamatterofcourse]

hey remember when the left still thought agreeing with nazis was a bad sign

[moroniccats]

If you ever find yourself unironically saying “the Jews are weaponizing the holocaust” I think you have some self reflection to do. To put it mildly.

[untatlak]

hm. how about the government of israel weaponizing the anti-semitism accusation

is there any problem with that too? asking for a friend.

[rosszulorzott]

menetrendszerűen

[rosszulorzott]

az antiszemitizmussal foglalkozó posztok alatt menetrendszerűen megjelennek a kommentek, ami azt jelzik, hogy a kommentelőt nem érdekli az antiszemitizmus. nem érdekli annak az embernek a mondanivalója, tapasztalata és érzései, akivel beszél. nem érdekli a közvetlen szenvedés, amit az antiszemitizmus okoz, a gyilkosságok és veszteségek, a fenyegetettség és kirekesztettség. nem érdekli a morális és kognitív zavarodottság, ami az antiszemitizmus velejárója a teljes társadalomban, akkora mértékig, amilyen mértékeben a társadalom elmulasztja a szembenállást az antiszemitizmussal

[palmsandsunglasses]

Minden poszt alatt kiderül, hogy a zsidók miatt van antiszemitizmus. Ha nem akarnának életben maradni minden jobb lenne

[somethingfangirly]

Hope y'all don't mind me sharing with the English translation.

[sighinastorm]

Our guy here straight-up asked if he can swap one term for the other and have it be a solid alibi. They say zionists, they mean Jews. Court's evidence exhibit six million.

[pumpkinpatchproductions]

Something something queer events

[mariacallous]

[kittydealer]

u/Fine-Dog-9874

[myjetpack]

My latest cartoon for New Scientist

[voroxpete]

To be clear, this isn't a bit. This is what they actually did. "Its too late" is the new "Climate change isn't real"... And its still a lie!

Every serious climate scientist agrees that there is no such as thing as too late, just as there is no such thing as too early. We should have done a lot more than we have to fight climate change, and the world will suffer for our inaction, but there is no point of no return. We can always work to reduce the amount of suffering that occurs, and eventually turn things around to the point where our planet is healing once again. Do not believe anyone who says it's "too late".

[xerserise]

Stop asking 'but without police, how will we address crime?'

Crime is a social construct. We could eliminate all crime right now, simply by making everything legal. And cops don't stop crime (typically). They don't protect people (typically). They show up, after the fact, and put people into the prison system, where, if found guilty (or coerced into taking a plea bargain, even if innocent), they can be legally enslaved (in the US, at least).

So, um, maybe don't ask the equivalent of 'how will we enforce the laws that the state enacts, if we don't have armed thugs threatening people with death and enslavement?' It kind of makes you look like a bootlicker.

[top-lil]

"Crime is a social construct" is a good example of something that is true by definition, yet entirely useless by all other metrics. Yeah, "fruits" are also a social construct, but there are many good reasons as to why apples or peaches make for good pie filling, while rock salt and metal filings don't.

Predicting crimes is hard, generally, even with the modern panopticon in consideration. That's why criminal justice, instead of trying to physically preclude crime, leverages long-term personal consequences. Such a tactic obviously doesn't work perfectly; many people may consider the risk still worth it, or just don't consider the long-term in the first place. But it's a third barrier to some specific crimes most people agree are typically bad (murder and rape, mainly), reinforcing the existing social and psychological barriers. There's also the calculus that keeping people who are guilty of particularly heinous acts separate from civil society prevents them from committing more of those same acts... except against each other, I guess. But then it doesn't strongly affect anyone else, so the calculus still works.

There are crimes on some books that defy these purposes, and exist as either extensions of more coherent crimes into contexts that make much less sense, or means of social control. "Digital piracy" is a good example of the former, "hate speech" is a good example of the latter. And this sort of belief makes some sense when considering victimless crimes such as these. But consider...

Rape and murder. What's the fucking answer for those?

Undue mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

[xerserise]

Hate speech is not a victimless 'crime', it's a reinforcement of societal biases that maintains unjust hierarchies.

Also, you eliminate a lot of 'crime' by eliminating unjust hierarchies.

Also, you eliminate a lot of 'crime' by having a society where everyone's needs are met,

Also, studies show that punitive justice systems don't work.

Also, cops don't stop murders or arrest rapist, in the vast majority of cases.

Whatever the answer is, it isn't what we have now.

[top-lil]

"Hate speech" is a farcical, and intentionally vague, concept, created to artificially inflate the supply of "crime" and to use state violence to coerce political conformity. Policing speech is a tool of "unjust hierarchies", you complete rube.

"Also, you eliminate a lot of 'crime' by having a society where everyone's needs are met" Not "a lot", just some. Shoplifting food isn't a particularly large slice of the pie...

Also, studies show that 99% of statements prefaced with "studies show" are bullshit.

"Also, cops don't stop murders" Neither do hugs and kisses. Again, the idea is that long-term personal consequences will preclude a lot of people from committing particularly heinous acts. It doesn't work perfectly, because many people just don't care about long-term consequences, if they consider them at all.

"arrest rapist[s]" This is sometimes true (see: the grooming gangs scandal in the UK), but any appearances to this effect are mostly an illusion of statistics being portrayed in a dishonest manner.

"Whatever the answer is, it isn't what we have now."

And it's not having no system at all, either. You dodged my question last time, so I'll make it easier: what the fuck is your plan for any heinous act? Or is it the typical "prison abolitionist" bullshit where there is no plan, and you're driven entirely by bellyfeel?

[fierceawakening]

“Crime is a social construct. We could eliminate all crime right now, simply by making everything legal. “

But I don’t want to make lynching legal. Sorry about that.

The leftism leaving people’s bodies, again.

(I do not agree with everything @top-lil is saying here, but ‘we could simply make everything legal’ nearly made me spit out my drink. Sure, we could do that. We could do a lot of very dumb things. Doesn’t mean we should.)

[self-winding]

"We could eliminate all crime by making everything legal" feels like The Onion-style satire. I guess it shouldn't surprise me, though, that there are people who use this argument seriously.

It's the old "if we just smash the existing system, once the dust settles, everything will magically be better. Don't think too hard about how it will all work because that will just distract us from trying to smash the old system."

Just take a really mundane example like speeding. I find it hard to imagine that "abolish all speed limits" would not result in some level of increased fatalities. Like, I am willing to hear arguments for and against abolishing speed limits, as there are unintended consequence to every law and cases where the negatives outweigh the positives in ways that you might not have predicted. And from this standpoint I am sympathetic to the anarchist impulse. Laws need continual reevaluating to make sure those specific laws are not doing more harm than good. But like...many laws do exist in order to address actual problems that cause actual harm and death. And you don't eliminate speeding (or the resulting fatalities) by getting rid of speed limits.

Or like...OSHA regulations. Safety regulations in general. If there is no law and no consequence to disregarding those regulations, far fewer people will follow them. "Well that's easy we just won't have these big companies that exploit people," okay how you are going to make medications and distribute them on a large scale. "Well, the government will..." Wow it sounds like you're gonna need to collect a lot of tax revenue. Supposing people decide not to pay their taxes. What consequence will they face if they refuse?

"People existed for most of human history without laws!! Let's just go back to doing whatever we did before!" We cannot go back to a hunter-gatherer existence. We cannot go back to subsistence farming. That ship has sailed.

[tzikeh]

Maryland to Become First US State to Ban Surveillance Pricing That Charges More After Mining Personal Data

Maryland will become the first US state to ban surveillance pricing in retail stores, after passing Protection from Predatory Pricing Act.

Jesus fucking christ that this exists in the first place

[boyslit]

I WAS FUCKING WONDERING WHAT THOSE DIGITAL PRICE TAGS WERE ABOUT SUDDENLY i had hoped they were so the workers didn't have to finagle those little papers into the slider part anymore 😭

[eclipticasolaris]

Hi, yes, that is the OFFICIAL excuse made to me by the guy replacing the paper tags with digital ones at my local Walmart, but the end goal is to remove the numbers off the shelf entirely, replacing them with QR codes that you have to scan with the app…. Which requires your login information….. and also stores your card information so even if you didn’t use your Walmart account at the physical checkout, if you used a card they recognize, they assign that purchase to your Walmart account purchase history.

I explained very clearly to the manager my issue with the meat section not having the price tags listed, and they claimed it was only going to be for the meat, since meat is by weight, and the price of each item is printed on the packs of each item.

Sure. That’s how they get their foot in the door. Fast forward not even two weeks, and here we are:

Bar codes. No prices, no item descriptions. No price stickers on the individual items. Heck, not even the name of the item that is SUPPOSED to be there.

No. The only way to see the price is to scan it on your phone app, which is also recording what you looked at recently, as a way of gauging what you might be looking for in the future.

So here’s what we’re gonna do gang:

Every time you go into a store that has implemented these price-less tags:

Take 1-3 items up to the cash register. Ask the cashier for the price, or hit the price check item on the self checkout, which will likely call over the attendant.

Express that you didn’t actually want it, you just couldn’t see on the shelf how much it was.

POLITELY, AND WITH A THANK YOU FOR THE PRICE CONFIRMATION, Give the items to the cashier or attendant to put back.

When they inevitably try to push the app, politely decline. If pressed for why not, say you don’t want to have to carry your phone in-hand the whole time you are shopping in order to see how much things cost. (Not having cell service or data to use the app is NOT a valid excuse, as stores already often have complimentary WiFi AND more stores will provide WiFi rather than give up on this push for surveillance pricing)

If it’s a shelf-stable item, the cashier will have to set it aside, taking up room in their limited operating space, and eventually pass it off to someone to put in a holding area to put back later. If it’s a fridge/freezer item, it might have to get tossed due to food product sale regulations.

In either case, you are making it a pain in the ass for them to have these digital bar codes. Tie up the checkouts. Give the employees more busywork that the company has to pay them to do. Hurt their bottom line having to toss the pint of ice cream you carried around in your cart for 20 minutes before giving it back to the cashier.

Yes, call your reps. Yes, push for more legislation like this in more places. But also take an extra minute out of your shopping trip to MAKE IT HURT for companies to pull this shit.

[antisocialxconstruct]

I've seen some people in the notes express (very fair) concern that this is only going to inconvenience already under-paid laborers, and not have any impact on corporate. While I can't speak for every company or every store, I do work in a grocery store and I can tell you this is precisely the kind of thing that would have an impact, especially if people are doing it en masse. Stores absolutely track their shrink numbers, and they do draw distinctions between what gets stolen, damaged, or wasted for other reasons. If people are making it clear that the reason they're bringing things to the cashier is that the prices are not adequately represented on the displays, and rather than improving business it's wasting product, slowing down transactions, and causing confusion and mistrust in customers, that is a language that shareholders speak.

[calciumcryptid]

I feel like a lot of people get "All Art is Political" confused with "All Art is made with Political Intentions" which is not the same.

[earlgraytay]

The trouble is that there is a very easily exploitable ambiguity there and so the phrase winds up being a motte and bailey for assholes.

The word "political" has connotations, and one of those connotations is a degree of intention. A political cartoon is a cartoon that exists to convince you of something or blast someone the cartoonist doesn't like, not "a cartoon that happens to be about an election". A political essay is an essay that exists to convince you of something, not an abstract meditation on power, and so on.

So when someone says "all art is political", whether they mean to or not, they are dragging in that connotation. They are implying intent, because it's part of most of the common usages of that word. Unless you immediately clarify, and/or are writing for an audience of humanities scholars, people are going to see the connotation and take that as part of your meaning.

... And assholes, particularly in queer and/or radical communities, love to exploit this ambiguity. They can tell you "your art is regressive/bougie/-phobic trash" without ever directly saying so, in a way that looks plausibly nice and neutral to people who aren't familiar with these dynamics.

A pretty common example: "young transmasc artist, shouldn't you stop writing about your experiences and center women instead? Writing about men is a political choice, after all." (And its evil twin, "young transfem artist, shouldn't you stop writing about your experience and center cis butches/cis femmes instead? Writing stereotypical femme women/trans butches is a political choice, after all.")

... It sounds neutral enough, unless you are running in these circles regularly and hearing the things these people say about the "wrong" political choice on the regular. I'm not going to repeat it; suffice it to say it's not nice. If you're spending time with people like this, you eventually learn to read "all art is political" as a threat. And there's a depressing number of these clowns. I think most artists on Tumblr have been on the receiving end of this bullshit; the ones that aren't currently in a cult aren't going to take it kindly.

..... The concept is a valuable one, and we shouldn't throw it out just because shitty little bullies like to misuse leftist language. But if we're going to have productive conversations, you've gotta remove that ambiguity. "All art exists in a political context" is a much better way to convey the same idea, because it's harder to suggest that the artist is somehow being maliciously political at you.

[self-winding]

This is exactly it. "All art is political" implies that all art is inherently about taking sides. It's an insistence on viewing any and every piece of art through the lens of, "Is this for my team or against it? Does this further my cause or does it further the enemy's cause?" Which to me feels like a very unrewarding and limiting way to experience art.

[fairycosmos]

good morning to the beaten and the damned only

[beansfrombeans]

[jadwigaspeaks]

The fact that antisemites are using the word "noticing" and "noticing patterns" as dogwhistles is annoying because I do actually notice a lot of stuff, patterns included, and one of the most obvious patterns I've noticed to date is that all antisemitic rhetoric makes no sense if you think critically about it for 5 seconds. Often less

[jadwigaspeaks]

A TERF liked this post so I just want to clarify that another pattern I've noticed is the massive overlap between anti-trans rhetoric and antisemitic rhetoric

[biglawbear]

Actually yes I do think that countries that aren't liberal democracies, countries that oppress women and LGBTQ people and religious minorities, and countries that restrict freedom of speech are worse than Western liberal democracies, including the United States

"nooo colonization and imperialism and white supremacy—" stfu I'm not saying we should invade other countries, bomb them, or force them to liberalize, but I am saying that liberal democracies are better than they are

And they and their people and the world would be better off if they did sustainably liberalize

[some-israeli-guy]

More than that, they'll say these countries having medieval mindsets is Europe's fault for colonizing them in the past. It's been decades, a century even. A country murdering LGBT people now has nothing to do with the laws that were imposed on them a century ago.

Israel also inherited fucked up laws from Britain, like "sodomy" being illegal. But Israel, having progressed since the stone age, officially instructed the police and courts to ignore that law back in the 50s and later cancelled it.

[stupidjewishwhiteboy]

I remember watching a YouTube video (produced by the BBC, I think) years ago about countries that supposedly had been tolerant of homosexuality before British colonization and installing of buggery laws, and thinking “it’s been 60 years since decolonization, if that stuff is still on the books and being enforced it’s ultimately on you guys at some point.”

[distinguishedenthusiastcatt]

In Pride month, I think it's important to remind you of this iconic dialogue. You don't have to talk about who you are if you don't want to❤️

[wizardarchetypes]

at my local thrift warehouse where nothing’s priced and you make an offer on all the stuff you find. well i told the person at the register i’m on a budget and didn’t know if i could afford a rug i wanted and asked what they’d take for it and without missing even half a beat they said “how about a cup of blood?” then they started hopping up and down like a cheerleader and said “cup! of! blood!”

[wizardarchetypes]

we settled on seventeen dollars cash.

[wizardarchetypes]

the problem is i love to riff with people so it got deeply deeply weird for about 3 and a half minutes before we finally agreed on the price.

[heir-of-the-chair]

Op I want you to know I had to look to make sure this wasn’t one-time-I-dreamt

[apolladay]

Have you ever spent a full week or more as a patient in a hospital?

Yes | No | Results

(been a week and a half for me as of sending this, but hopefully I will be home by the time this is posted at least 😅... 😭)

(ps thanks for running this blog Mod H!)

Have you ever spent a full week or more as a patient in a hospital?

yes

no

results

Remaining time: 4 days 11 hours

I hope you're ok!!! - H :)

[homunculus-argument]

I will not elaborate.

[weedsandwishes]

@sergle is correct

[stackslip]

we're moving to an internet where children would be banned from reaching out for help and friendship online but abusive parents can post their children's every second online to humiliate and expose them for money with no pushback