Someone can call me crazy here. But I don't think blockading the Strait of Hormuz helps with your problem of the Strait of Hormuz being blockaded. They don't "cancel each other out". I don't think that is a trait of blockades.
A lot of people don't realize just how much space car infrastructure takes up. So I've decided to provide everyone a visual aid!
I've presented two maps at the exact same zoom level, as indicated by the big red arrow. They also each have a red area circled, of approximately the same area.
In the first image, I've circled one of eightish parking lots at a US mall. A normal amount of distance for even Americans who drive everywhere to walk through.
In the second image, I've circled:
a subway station
a park
like twenty apartment buildings
like twenty restaurants
three convenience stores (which, being Japanese, can also handle banking, copying/printing, and a variety of governmental paperwork)
one grocery store (another two right outside the circle)
seven medical clinics, two pharmacies
a fire station
a post office
two preschools and three cram schools
a Shintō shrine
a Buddhist temple
multiple parking lots
This wasn't even a particularly cherry-picked part of Tokyo! I just picked the area around my house.
In case anyone thinks by "a park" I'm talking about the green area not circled, I'm not, I'm talking at this area at the southeast end of the circle:
Here's another angle on the area I circled, with a lot of the things I mentioned in view.
The shrine, just because I have a soft spot for Tokyo neighborhood shrines:
Anyway, I suppose I'll end on what the mall parking lot looks like.
Remember, this is one of eightish parking lots at this mall.
I feel confident enough to post these now. A collection of all the existing posters after some edits from the other post that got 13k notes! These are full size/quality. Go nuts.
You may use them for wallpapers, tabletop campaigns, whatever. Consider tipping me or buying a print or sticker on ko-fi here! If you do use them, let me know what for, or send pictures!
HBO's Rome had a very ambitious plot, portraying the final years of the Roman Republic from the start of Caesar's war against Pompey and running until Augustus' ascension as first emperor. It ended after 2 seasons, so it was inevitable that story would be a bit compressed. Characters are cut and combined. Entire wars are cut. Understandable. They only had so much screentime.
This post isn't about the areas they had to compress. This post is about the strange things they decided to add.
First of all, just to get it out of the way, throughout the entire show the characters insist on referring to Gaius Octavius as "Octavian." This despite the fact that "Octavian" isn't even a real name and people only started calling him that after he died. Either this was a research failure, or HBO was pandering to the demographic of people who know who Octavian is but don't know that wasn't actually his name.
Moving on.
In HBO's Rome, when Caesar unexpectedly marches south with a legion and threatens Rome, Pompey Magnus packs up the gold in the treasury to take it with him. The gold is lost in a fight, found again, buried, dug up, and eventually handed over to Julius Caesar in an improbable and time-consuming sequence of events.
In real life, it's not clear exactly why Pompey chose to leave most of the treasury behind. Whatever the reason, he took only some money from the treasury (with the legal permission of the Senate) and left the rest. When Caesar arrived in the city, one of the first things he did was take everything that was left under the flimsiest of pretenses. When officials tried to stop him he threatened to have them killed.
The effect of HBO's version is to remove Caesar's agency. He ended up with the gold without having to actually steal it from the treasury. Pompey looted the treasury, and then Caesar won it fair and square. It's weird that they created this entire plot point in order to shy away from portraying Caesar's tyranny.
This reassignment of agency happens more than once in HBO's Rome. To give another example, let's look at the truce that is negotiated after Caesar's assassination.
In HBO's Rome, Brutus decides that the conspiracy should only kill Caesar, no one else. They do that, and then they return to their mansions and take no further action. Meanwhile, in Mark Antony's house, Caesar's will is read. It is revealed that Caesar left his entire fortune to Octavian. Octavian (of all people) suggests a truce between the Assassins and the Caesarians, in which all of Caesar's acts and appointments (and his will) will be ratified, but the assassins won't be punished for his death.
In real life, Gaius Octavius wasn't there. He wasn't even in Rome. It was Brutus who initiated the negotiations, and the truce itself was Mark Antony's idea. Except, wait, a truce between who and whom? Why do they even need a truce? Because...
Actually, HBO's Rome omits a pretty important factor here, which is that both sides had armies inside the city when this truce was agreed to. I don't know why they didn't mention that.
After Caesar was assassinated, Brutus and his allies fortified themselves on the Capitoline Hill with a small army of gladiators (read: mercenaries). In response, Lepidus, who is not present in the show at this point, marched an entire goddamn legion into Rome and occupied the city.
Lepidus wanted to kill Brutus. Mark Antony (of all people) had to talk him down. That's the context in which Brutus and Antony negotiated their truce. Even considering the need to cut Lepidus for time, they could have just given the legion to Antony.
Giving credit for the truce to Octavius is just such an odd choice. He was in Illyricum. The truce was agreed to before Octavius even found out that Caesar was dead.
And speaking of Octavius...
In HBO's Rome, many people around Octavian are portrayed as not taking him seriously. Mark Antony, his sister Octavia, and his mother Atia, are all shown essentially rolling their eyes at Octavian's pretensions at grandeur.
Incidentally, we can now properly call him Octavian because at this point he has changed his name to Gaius Julius Caesar. We call him Octavian because it's the past-tense of Octavius. He is now the psychotic warlord formerly known as Octavius, known to historians as Octavianus or Octavian, but his friends all call him Gaius Julius Caesar.
HBO's Octavian is a soft little boy who nobody takes seriously. After the will is read, he whines at Mark Antony to pretty please release his inheritance, which Antony brushes off. This culminates in Octavian secretly (?) borrowing a vast sum of money to partially pay out the money (approximately 3 months' pay for a laborer) that Caesar promised in his will to every adult male Roman citizen. After this Mark Antony beats Octavian up, and then Octavian promptly flees the city. Simultaneously, Cicero also flees the city and starts criticizing Antony and praising Octavian. I do not believe the narrative ever specifies that Mark Antony releases Octavian's inheritance to him.
This is, uh, an interesting portrayal of Octavian, to put it mildly. It's interesting how first Julius Caesar and now Octavian are portrayed as softer and more sympathetic than they really were.
First of all, the notion that there was anyone in Rome who didn't take Octavian seriously is a joke. From the second the will was read Octavian was a political force unto himself. In the show Octavian doesn't even start calling himself Caesar until quite far along, and few other people ever humor him. In real life, when he returned to Rome, Caesar's legions flocked to greet Octavian and hail him as Caesar.
When people say that the most valuable thing Caesar gave Octavian was his name, they are not exaggerating for effect. For the rest of the civil war, a recurring theme will be Caesar's legions flat-out refusing to oppose Octavian. Or, as they called him, Caesar.
It is true that Mark Antony refused to hand over Caesar's fortune to Octavian at first, and it is true that Octavian borrowed heavily to fulfill the obligations in Caesar's will. But Octavian didn't flee the city in fear for his safety after that. There was no need. First of all, his donations made him massively popular with the public. If Antony had laid a hand on Octavian at that point, after dragging his feet on Caesar's donations, the mob would have ripped him to shreds. Secondly, one of the things Octavian bought with the money he borrowed was a bodyguard of loyal Caesarian veterans. If Mark Antony had actually tried to personally manhandle him at this point as he does in the show, he would never have made it past Octavian's new heavily-armed posse of veteran legionaries.
Antony eventually had no choice but to release Octavian's inheritance. Now the richest man in Rome, possibly the world, Octavian's personal bodyguard ballooned into a private army.
One day, Mark Antony left the city to inspect some legions. Suddenly, taking everyone by surprise, Octavian's private army put Rome under occupation.
This is the third time Rome has been occupied in, what, two years? First Caesar, then Lepidus, now Octavian.
Mark Antony returned to Rome with his 6 legions, outnumbering Octavian 20 to 1, and this is when Octavian had to flee. But 2 of those 6 legions refused to march against the son of Caesar and immediately went over to Octavian, making the odds much more even. Antony tried to have Octavian declared an enemy of the state, but with Cicero supporting Octavian and opposing Antony that was a difficult prospect.
Antony appealed to Decimus, the governor of Cisalpine Gaul, for assistance. Decimus also immediately went over to Octavian. Decimus was actually one of the people who killed Caesar, so he didn't care about the "son of Caesar," but Antony had very recently started a personal beef with him by trying to steal Decimus's province so there wasn't much of a contest.
It's odd that the show tries to show Octavian as a brilliant schemer with all these things he didn't do, while omitting the things he actually did. Octavian masterfully backed Antony into a corner by forming a unified anti-Antony alliance out of the pro-Caesar and anti-Caesar factions.
And then he stabbed them all in the back!
Antony marched north to confront Decimus. The second he left the city, he lost control of it to Cicero. An army led by newly-elected consuls loyal to Cicero joined up with Octavian and marched against Antony in support of Decimus.
The consular army won over Antony, but both consuls died in the fighting. In the absence of leadership, all the legions under their control ... went over to the son of Caesar. Of course. This was so convenient that a longstanding conspiracy theory holds that Octavian was behind the consuls' deaths.
As an aside, it must have been incredibly frustrating to fight against Octavian. There seems to have been about a 50/50 chance that any army sent against him would defect at first opportunity.
Octavian informed Cicero and the Senate that since both consuls had died, they desperately needed new leadership. Like, right now. Before any new elections could be held. And he had just the person in mind - himself!
Cicero said no, so Octavian marched on Rome. Again. Cicero called on four legions from Africa to defend Rome (remember that Antony just marched off with the legions that were supposed to be defending Rome). All four legions ... went over to the son of Caesar. Because of course they did.
A famous exchange took place between a Caesarian centurion and a Senatorial delegation.
When the senate demurred, a centurion, named Cornelius, who was at the head of the chief deputation, throwing back his cloak, and showing the hilt of his sword, had the presumption to say in the senate-house, "This will make him consul, if ye will not."
And that's how Octavian became consul of Rome at age 20. The minimum age to legally run for consul was 43.
Now ruling Rome as sole consul, Octavian made peace with Antony. In the words of Youtuber Historia Civilis:
In doing so, he stabbed Cicero, Decimus, Cassius, Brutus, and the entire Roman Senate in the back.
You can see why I find HBO's portrayal of Octavian as a soft boy that nobody takes seriously to be a bit weird. Octavian was a lying, scheming, backstabbing force of nature who entered the political scene by occupying Rome at the head of a private army. HBO's portrayal dramatically undersells how much support Octavian had within the army, especially after the stunt he pulled giving away free money to every citizen.
I understand condensing the story in the name of screentime, but they seem to have deliberately softened the two Caesars. The way they show it, you would think that poor widdle Octavian had no choice but to take up arms to protect himself and his inheritance from that mean bully Mark Antony.
In real life, Octavian was the original Machiavellian backstabber. He started a five-sided civil war and then masterfully orchestrated it so that he'd come out on top. He also must have been pretty persuasive to get so many armies to defect to him. This is not the end of the defections, either. Later on Octavian will walk into Lepidus' legionary camp with just a few bodyguards and talk his entire army into defecting, ending Lepidus' political career with a whimper. Then even later on, the last of the civil wars will effectively end when Mark Antony's remaining army of 40,000 refuses orders to regroup in Egypt and instead defect en masse to the son of Caesar.
It's telling that in the show, Octavian arranges the truce between the assassins and the Caesarians while Mark Antony breaks it by inciting a mob. In real life, it was Mark Antony who arranged the truce and then Antony and Octavian sort of took turns trampling all over it.
Honestly, if I was inclined to be evil for the hell of it, I could easily convince the reactionary brain trust on tumblr to accept literally any level of religious brutality and oppression, so long as I couched it in the right jargon.
Thinking of the response to the Rushdie stabbing a couple of years ago — so many cowards yipping that he’d brought it on himself, what did he expect, it was his own fault for committing blasphemy, getting stabbed half to death was the reasonable consequence of writing fiction — I was shocked by the cringing spinelessness of it all, but maybe I shouldn’t have been. You need core principles to have a spine.
Anyway, let me make it easy: blasphemy is not a real crime. Blasphemy is merely disobedience against some religious custom or belief; it just means you refuse to play by their rules, because they are not entitled to your obedience.
The right to blasphemous speech / expression is a fundamental freedom, and it took centuries to establish. If you do not have the right to blaspheme, you do not have freedom of religion. If you are constricted to avoid offending some religious doctrine or other; if you are not protected from retaliation for refusing to bend over for zealots’ demands; if you are compelled to appease religious authorities and offended believers against your own inclination and conscience, you are not free.
#everyone is a blasphemer to someone else#the right to flaunt doctrine & custom is NECESSARY#for peaceful multi-faith co-existence#some of you want a blasphemy carve-out for free speech#partly because you are very stupid#and partly because you fall back on authoritarianism#whenever actually articulating or defending your own viewpoint seems too hard#no believer in any faith has the unilateral right to be coddled & flattered in that faith#no believer has the right to impose a single doctrine or faith-based restriction on unbelievers#my right as an unbeliever to be completely unbothered & unrestricted by religious doctrine#is a fundamental aspect of religious freedom#nobody is entitled to my religious obedience. ever.#the offended faithful are just going to have to deal with it
i thought my laptop was on its last leg because it was running at six billion degrees and using 100% disk space at all times and then i turned off shadows and some other windows effects and it was immediately cured. i just did the same to my roommate's computer and its performance issues were also immediately cured. okay. i guess.
so i guess if you have creaky freezy windows 10/11 try searching "advanced system settings", go to performance settings, and uncheck "show shadows under windows" and anything else you don't want. hope that helps someone else.
hey this is apparently helping a lot of people! adding that on top of this you can also go to settings > personalization > colors and turn off transparency to also boost performance. this wasn't the Big Fix for me but might as well do that too if you're trying to optimize.
Ok I know we joke about this but I just went to the settings and first clicked "adjust for best performance" and then re-checked only 1 box:
"Smooth edges of screen fonts"
My computer was running hot before I turned everything off; the office I'm in is very warm, I could feel the heat of my CPU through the keyboard. The fans were going, not as loud as they usually get, but they were still blasting.
Y'all.
I can barely feel the warmth through the keyboard now. It's been like 2 minutes. The fan is nearly silent.
Click the Windows key and start typing "System settings", and "View Advanced system settings" will pop up. Then click "Settings" under Performance:
Then you'll see this:
TURN IT ALL OFF.
I turned "Show window contents while dragging" and then turned that off again. It's up to you.
The second best thing you can do for a Win10 computer is turn off whatever unnecessary services it's decided it needs to run in the background always. Some services it does need, but others are useless. Here's an article that goes into step by steps.
10AppsManager lets you uninstall bloatware. Winaero Tweaker lets you disable crap like Cortana/Copilot, ads, telemetry, internet search results when you search from the taskbar, and all kinds of other stuff, plus it gives you lots of other little options that are just nice to have (like, it can restore the old MS Paint program in place of Paint 3D). Both are totally free.
Oh, and check your startup programs in the Task Manager tab to make sure your computer isn't automatically starting eight million programs every time it boots. But I think people mostly know about that. (Unless this is me going "they only know one or two feldspars... and quartz of course.")
The first best thing you can do for a Windows computer is install Linux Mint. But some of us do need a few pesky Windows-specific programs. Bleh. Still, if you're up for a project, you can have both (and it's awesome). Here's an article about setting up a dual boot Windows/Mint system.
Antimemetics division story about The Spider That Kills You When You Think About It and how they keep re-starting the division because the spider gets them.
Humanity is two disjoint social groups that live directly alongside each other. You might walk by somebody in the second group every day, but nobody you know (or anybody they know and so on) knows that person.
Evil IKEA (of course).
Breakfast isn't real, when you think you're eating breakfast you actually get teleported to The Breakfast Zone which is dark and goopy and then you come back with no memory of The Breakfast Zone
In the span of article 2000 to article 3000, the foundation went from benevolent protectors of humanity to feeding prisoners to a sea snake to get memory drugs
Tower that keeps going up which needs to be explored, but the Tower is Evil and contains Evil Furries (very much not furries but they're in suits or something)
Number that is equal to Bear. Using it Invokes A Bear.
The shadow monster they've been feeding live chickens for a decade is actually quite nice, they teach it cooking and how to play piano
Some of these are not well-known but I don't know which anymore.
Does anyone have any guesses on the evil tower not-furries?
If it helps, I largely remember it because it had a monologue about how people associate going up as good, so thought the top of the tower was a mystery to uncover.
If when you say the internet you mean the devil's tweets, the javascript scourge, the bloated monster, that defiles the user, dethrones reason, destroys the discourse, creates misery and brainrot, yea, literally takes the space from the screens of the layman that knows no better; if you mean the slop that topples the Posting man and woman from the pinnacle of wise, gracious living into the bottomless pit of conspiracy theory, and infographics, and scams and humaaans, and googlezonbookrosoft, then certainly I am against it.
But, if when you say the internet you mean the gem of information, the World Wide Web, the content that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a Post in their hearts and laughter on their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean greentexts; if you mean the stimulating discord argument that puts the spring in the old gentleman's hands as he types at his desk; if you mean the technology which enables a man to expand his friend list, and his happiness, and to forget, if only for a little while, life's great tragedies, and heartaches, and sorrows; if you mean that internet, the consumption of which pours into our computers untold millions of forums and wikis and websites and mp3s, which are used to provide tender care for our freakish little hearts, our faggots, our autists, our rejects, our pitiful aged and infirm; to build archives and software and communities, then certainly I am for it.
This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.
academia perfec t size to put human in to learn! inside very good and learn human get smart put human in academia. put human in academia. no problems ever in academia because no stress and support for human mind in big human head. academia yes a place for human put human in academia can trust college for giveing good brain to human. friend college.
i had a dream that time travel was invented and too many people choose to travel back in time to save the titanic from sinking (the question of whether unsinking of the titanic deserved so much attention in the face of human history was the subject of both heavy academic and online discourse), which caused a rift in the space-time-continuum that led to the titanic showing up indiscriminately all over the world’s oceans and sea in various states of sinking.
this caused a lot of issues both in terms of fixing said space-time-continuum and in terms of nautical navigation, and after a long and heavy battle in the international maritime organization it was decided that the bureaucratic burden of dealing with this was to be upon Ireland, much to their dismay. the Irish Government then released an app for all sailors and seafarers so they could report titanic sightings during their journeys, even though they heavily dissuaded you from reporting them given the paperwork it caused.
anyway i woke up with a clear image of the app in my head and needed to recreate it for all of you:
So this is a thing that me and @penelopetheverytrans collaborated on, I did the doodles for the sprites and she put the video together. I hope y’all like it, makes me laugh :)
In 1989, China was at a crossroads. The Cultural Revolution had destroyed China’s economy and culture, and only recently ended with Mao’s death. There was real uncertainty over what would come next. Deng Xiaoping, who replaced him, slowly rebuilt China, transitioning its economy to capitalism (pronounced “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”).
While Socialism with Chinese Characteristics was definitely an improvement over the mass murder and the dismantling of social institutions during the Cultural Revolution, it also brought with it more corruption and nepotism. All the old problems came back, and workers and students couldn’t help but notice that the West seemed to have fewer of these problems and also had this interesting social technology called democracy which was maybe related.
So started the 1989 Democracy Movement, a series of protests that sprang up across all of China, asking the government for democracy. The biggest and longest-lasting protest was in Tiananmen Square, which if you don’t know where that is, you can think of it like protesting in front of the White House.
And at Tiananmen, they built the Goddess of Democracy out of papier-mâché and a metal frame.
The students who created it said:
At this grim moment, what we need most is to remain calm and united in a single purpose. We need a powerful cementing force to strengthen our resolve: That is the Goddess of Democracy. Democracy…You are the symbol of every student in the Square, of the hearts of millions of people. …Today, here in the People’s Square, the people’s Goddess stands tall and announces to the whole world: A consciousness of democracy has awakened among the Chinese people! The new era has begun! …The statue of the Goddess of Democracy is made of plaster, and of course cannot stand here forever. But as the symbol of the people’s hearts, she is divine and inviolate. Let those who would sully her beware: the people will not permit this! …On the day when real democracy and freedom come to China, we must erect another Goddess of Democracy here in the Square, monumental, towering, and permanent. We have strong faith that that day will come at last. We have still another hope: Chinese people, arise! Erect the statue of the Goddess of Democracy in your millions of hearts! Long live the people! Long live freedom! Long live democracy!“
Less than a week later, the protests and the sculpture were destroyed by the People’s Liberation Army.
These words speak to me a lot, and I hope they are never forgotten. Especially this line:
On the day when real democracy and freedom come to China, we must erect another Goddess of Democracy here in the Square, monumental, towering, and permanent.
I have faith that one day, this really will happen. It’s such a powerful symbol. Until then, I think the best thing we can do is help keep this hope alive and known.
There’s a replica in San Francisco Chinatown:
And another in Washington, DC, twoish blocks north of the Capitol.
And a few others around the world.
If you live near one of these, please visit, and take your friends with you. And tell them the story of the students and workers who dreamed of a democratic China.
The People’s Liberation Army rolled into the Tiananmen Square on this day 32 years ago: June 4th, 1989. In China, it’s called the 6-4 Incident. Today is a good day to tell this story.
(While I have you here: Some people on the internet get annoyed when Chinese people don’t realize you’re talking about the 6-4 Incident when you mention Tiananmen. This is kind of like getting annoyed that if you mention Kent State to someone in Ohio, they don’t immediately think of the 1970 shootings. Please don’t be that kind of person.)
Cannot reblog original post but: taboo "feminism"?
Less laconically it looks like you and your interlocutors are talking about different things. They understand "feminism" as the movement that is pushing for/has made strides towards at least formally and legally treating women the same as men (which seems straightforwardly laudable and needn't be zero sum) whereas when you talk about feminism yours is...a new concept for me, which I'd like to understand better.
okay, to do that, I need to "taboo" a different word, and before I do THAT, I need to remind you of something important: useful information is information that lets us make accurate predictions.
Okay so. "Sexism" is the word we need to do first. Let's say simply that "sexism" is whatever means or mechanism or system in the world that results in an observed difference between outcomes between men and women. There are different theories as to what causes this observed difference, and two are relevant:
Misogyny Theory is the idea that "sexism" is a unidirectional oppression created by men, to inflict on women, out of hatred of women. Misogyny is a desire to harm women for being women. Power is a thing held by men and denied to women. Misogyny theory says sexism is, intentionally or unintentionally, made to benefit men at the expense of women, against the will of women. Gender history is defined by men hating women and seeking to harm women, who were not powerful enough to make it stop.
Gender Bias Theory is the idea that "sexism" is a system of biases and perceptions that are participated in by both men and women whose aim is to maximize women's safety at the cost of their agency and maximize men's agency at the cost of their safety. Gender bias casts women as precious and incapable victims and men as threatening and disposable agents. Men and women both participate in and reinforce this bias and gender history is defined by punishing people who don't fit into this model and rewarding people who do.
These are not equally valid competing theories. Misogyny theory is wrong, because the predictions it makes about women's safety are very important and do not match reality at all. Misogyny theory predicts that women would be less safe than men, that they would have more crimes committed against them and the criminal justice system would be harsher towards them, that their victimization would be more acceptable and that the law would refuse to recognize their victimization. All of these things are the opposite of what happens. There is no category of crime that happens more often to women than men; rape and domestic abuse, the crimes that misogyny theory claims are the defining experience of women and are particular to the experience of women, are 50/50 and every other bad thing a human being can do to another human happens way more to men than to women. Crimes against women are more likely to be prosecuted than against men, more likely to result in conviction, and the sentences are greater; the same for male criminals vs female criminals. Misogyny theory is incorrect.
Not only does gender bias theory accurately predict outcomes (it predicts that sexism would result in women being protected heavily and denied opportunities to succeed or excel), gender bias theory perfectly predicts the existence of misogyny theory. Biases are not precision instruments. They are directions to err toward, they are inaccuracies in people's perceptions that overall bend people's beliefs in a certain way. The way you have a bias that ensures women are safe and non-agentic, is when people are extremely concerned with the well-being of women and extremely callous to the well-being of men. Someone who had powdered up gender bias and snorted it like a line of coke would be unable to see anything other than "women are not safe enough, men are imperiling women, men have to do more to keep women safe." That's the only belief gender bias allows, because if you ever concluded "women are safe," you wouldn't be doing things to make women safer.
This is why misogyny theory is sexism. It has the unexamined perceptions of gender bias and is by majority concerned with enforcing the central belief of gender bias: women are victimized by the power of men, men are threatening to women, men have it better than women, men must do more to enlist their agency to protect women. Every single example of historical sexism fits this pattern: women have to be kept safe, and to do this, women are treated as children who cannot be responsible for their own safety. If they were responsible for their own safety, then not enough people would be looking out for them. Women need men's supervision because if they make their own decisions they might make the wrong ones. Women can't dress provocatively because men are so dangerous and threatening it might provoke one to attack her. Rape is a uniquely harmful and destructive crime to women, because women are so non-agentic that they can't do meaningful things and the only thing they bring to the table is their sexual purity; a woman who has had that sexual purity taken has been effectively ruined, she obviously has no agency so she can't recover from it, and so we can't let that happen to her, and she should know to be very afraid of it all the time.
The Movement is a large and powerful group of people who claim to be the only way to fight sexism. They are misogyny theorists. The history of the Movement is the history of misogyny theory. The actions taken by the Movement are actions taken in line with misogyny theory. The power held by the Movement is power held by misogyny theorists. The theoretical structures and intellectual viewpoints of the Movement are those of misogyny theory. Within a rounding error, all of them are misogyny theorists, and the ones who aren't, are decried and excommunicated from the Movement when it is discovered they aren't misogyny theorists.
Some members of the Movement have a ravening hatred of men and seek to harm men more than anything in the world. Other members of the Movement are genuinely seeking to end sexism and are "for real equality." The relative proportions of each do not matter, because misogyny theory is incorrect. People who believe in misogyny theory believe in a worldview that despises men, sees men as threatening and hateful, views men as uniquely responsible for harm, and puts all responsibility to fix things on the shoulders of men. A misogyny theorist's view of how to be charitable to men is to believe "it is not your fault you are brainwashed to hate women, you did not choose to be complicit in a system that hates and imperils women, and you imperil women only because you have not been taught not to imperil women. But you need to recognize that you hate women and it is your responsibility to make the world stop hating women, you have to do work to stop being so threatening to women."
This is wrong. This is not an accurate assessment of the world. Anyone who believed this about any other group of people would be correctly described as a hateful bigot even if, to them, they are the only ones who see their opponents as humans with potential to act like humans. There are white supremacists who feel like they're the only ones who recognize black people have the potential to NOT be rapists and murderers, and it is progressivism that says they all are innately criminals so we have to all pretend not to notice. This perception is more accurate than misogyny theory and we correctly decry it as a racist perception we shouldn't respect.
The Movement is synonymous with belief in misogyny theory, and belief in misogyny theory is belief in sexist perceptions. It is turbo-sexism. If you believe in misogyny theory you are wrong. When the Movement acts in accordance with misogyny theory to make the world a better place, they fuck up, because they're trying to abolish sexism while demanding people believe the things sexism believes as hard as they can. The Movement is obsessed with women's safety when all of the problems sexism gives them come from obsession with women's safety. When the Movement identifies any problem women face, it cannot address it in a non-sexist way and cannot gain anything for women without punishing men. The Movement can make shelters for battered women, but only because domestic abuse was not a gendered problem and it can only do so by ensuring battered men are erased and left without support. It can't see the world any other way. Women are victims and men are victimizers, women have to be protected from victimization. The Movement can support reproductive rights, but only because support or opposition to abortion is not a gendered issue (as many women are against abortion as men), and it can only do so while doing everything in their power to make sure men have no reproductive rights. Because they can't conceive of a situation where men need them when it isn't for the purpose of victimizing women. Men have to use their agency to make the world comfortable for women, it is hateful to women to let them escape this!
The Movement will always be filled with people who virulently hate men, because its conception of men is hateful and the way it is nice to men is thinking "it's not your fault you have these despicable attributes, having these despicable attributes also hurts you, I am sorry that sexism made you so threatening and cruel to women." The Movement can't kick people out for hating men, because the Movement thinks that there is a correct amount of hatred for men. The Movement can't kick people out for hating men too much, just regard them with pity and say they take a good idea too far. The Movement can and does kick people out for not hating men enough, because not hating men means allowing men to be threatening to women.
The Movement claims to be synonymous with the concept of fighting sexism, but it is not. It is misogyny theory, which is wrong.
If we take the word "feminism" as meaning "misogyny theory" and "feminist" as "misogyny theorist," we can accurately predict outcomes. If we ask for a feminist perspective we know we will get a perspective from misogyny theory. If we know that feminists are doing something, we know they are doing something in line with misogyny theory. If we know someone tries to call themselves a feminist but is ostracized by the feminist movement at large, that person is not a misogyny theorist. If someone who is a feminist in good standing claims that the virulent man-haters "aren't real feminists," that they only can see the man-haters are wrong in that they hate men too much for being in a system that makes them evil and threatening, and without the ability to reject that entire worldview they will be making excuses for and be bad at resisting the man-haters. If someone is going to research the ideas of feminism, we know they are going to be reading things written from the viewpoint of misogyny theory. When feminists do or believe something, we know it's going to be wrong and we know how it's going to be wrong and we know why it's going to be wrong.
If we take the word "feminism" as "any form of opposition to and desire to end sexism," then we can't make accurate predictions. We have to pretend we don't know a feminist is a misogyny theorist yet when they turn out to be every single time. We are given the obligation to assign power and credence to a floating signifier, the word "feminism," as if it did not mean "misogyny theory" and then make the shocked pikachu face when every single time the power we give them is used to advance misogyny theory. We have to pretend there is a war inside of feminism and not notice that no there isn't, one "side" has absolute definitive control of everything and the other "side" has no access whatsoever to the institutional or social power of the thing that is named "feminism." We have to run at the football every single time even though we know that Lucy is going to pull it back every single time, because there's so many different feminisms and we're not allowed to see they are all wrong in the same way.
Saying we have the obligation to call ourselves "feminists" and support "feminism" because it could mean "any worldview that seeks equality" and not "misogyny theory" is like saying everyone should call themselves "pro-life" and support "pro-life" movement because they don't think murder is a good thing in general and don't have to be against abortion. That's not what it means, that's never been what it meant, and pretending otherwise only benefits people you are opposed to.
So this is from 30,000 Miles From Chang’an, which is a 2 hours 47 minutes(!!?) long Chinese animated film that is basically an actually legitimate historical epic and historical biopic (think Gladiator & Amadeus) made into animation, and also passionate tribute to classical art and culture, similar to something like Miss Hokusai or Millennium Actress.
I heard it was decent before, but was not expecting it to be This Ambitious. The Criminally Underrated Champ of 2023 Animation
what's point of generically asking whether the ends justify the means? it depends on the ends and the means. like for every mean there's an end that justifies it and for every end there's a mean which it doesn't justify. this should be obvious. pointless ass question...
In the 18th and 19th century, many modern european philosophers decided that there should be a single principle from which all morality was derived, so they each thought really hard and made something up. This was a grave error that has only recently begun to be addressed, as it turns out none of these ideas work very well for much of anything other than trying to justify some reallly immoral shit that everyone agrees sucks real bad, like organ harvesting or firebombing children.
John Stuart Mill could step through a time portal today and, without receiving any briefing, immediately be relied upon to make better ethical choices in concrete situations than the average Tumblr user.
yousharknotpass
izzy806
germansingergirl
tangentwithtanner
gummygunk
