personally I am of the opinion that vegans who are like “the way our food system currently works under capitalism on a large scale is exceptionally cruel to all animals including humans and is not sustainable, so I’m doing what I can to make the most ethical choices available to me about what I eat and encourage others to do the same” are generally very reasonable people who I agree with in spades. but vegans who seem to think human beings are not themselves animals who are ultimately also part of the food chain but instead some kind of other paternalistic higher entity that can never engage in ethical and sustainable hunting practices (and especially the fringe I’ve seen who think other carnivorous animal predators are also evil and need to be eliminated) are people I regard as foolish at best if not actively anti-indigenous and racist
That’s actually a really popular analogy. Howard Kunstler wrote about Disneyland as a “capital of unreality,” where “the public realm is packaged for sale as a commodity.”
“Through the postwar decades Americans happily allowed their towns to be destroyed. They’d flock to Disneyland at Anaheim, or later to Disney World in Florida, and walk down Main Street, and think, gee, it feels good here. Then they’d go back home and tear down half the old buildings downtown and pave them over for parking lots, throw a parade to celebrate a new K Mart opening—even when it put ten local merchants out of business—turn Elm Street into a six-lane crosstown expressway, pass zoning laws that forbade corner grocery stores in residential neighborhoods and setback rules that required every new business to locate on a one-acre lot until things became so spread out you had to drive everywhere. They’d build the new central school four miles out of town on a busy highway so that kids couldn’t walk there. They’d do every fool thing possible to destroy good existing relationships between things in their towns, and put their local economies at the mercy of distant corporations whose officers didn’t give a damn whether these towns lived or died. And then, when vacation time rolled around, they’d flock back to Disney World to feel good about America.”
If anyone’s interested, The Geography of Nowhere is unrivaled as a crash course on and scathing critique of American postwar urban planning.
Sooner or later leftists will have to deal with the issue that capitalism has made many people used to wanton excess and sooner or later we'll have to legit tell everyone we can't have plastic treats and luxury produce or cruises instantly available year round and it's gonna make so many people mad and call you a big meanie worse than stalin over it. It will not be popular at all but someone's gotta hold a firm no or the planet will never stop collapsing. We can't save the planet by living exactly how we do now just with a communist banner over it we have to take a loss sorry, shein product cycles shouldn't have been normalized to begin with.
The banana discourse really separated the wheat from the chaff of which "lefties" actually want a global workers revolution and which ones just want more stuff to be free
#ok but like bananas are a terrible example cause like#yeah its fruit you have to grow in a specific part of the world during a particular season and you need to ship it everywhere else#but. its food. you eat the food and then the food is in your tummy and it brings value to humanity through that#the truth is that the vast majority of the “excess” is stuff that literally nobody has ever cared about#there are so many millions of tons of cheap plastic toys made for nobody that are rotting in landfill#untold heaps of disposable workplace computers#unimaginable volumes of plastic being made and shipped away to build mountains of bootleg earbuds that last 3 months maximum#bananas aren't the problem#the problem is the cheap novelty landline phones made to look like bananas
Bananas were the PERFECT example. "It's food, you eat the food and then the food is in your tummy and it brings value to humanity" is exactly the abstraction that makes it the perfect example. It does not bring value to "humanity" it brings value to the person living in the imperial core that eats it. These countries are not selling their excess food for ice cream money, US-owned corporations within them are using the soil nutrients, sunlight, and human life of these regions and then extracting the profits, leaving nothing but bullet casings and dead earth.
Do you know how many millions of kilograms of beef were exported FROM Ireland TO England during the great potato famine? You are focusing on the leather scraps that were thrown out by english tailors. The shipping is not the problem, the capitalist death squads murdering thousands over "communist organizing" are the problem.
If we got rid of money, we'd obviously stop producing vast amounts of garbage. But would we stop holding the global south hostage for the things we DO consume? Would we be willing to let everyday food become rare so that other people may eat the products of their own labor before sharing it with us? Would we be willing to adapt to a new lifestyle based off what can grow in our own regions? That is the true leftism, not Consumerism But For Free.
There will be no Fully Automated Luxury Space Communism in your lifetime, but we CAN put an end to genocide and ecocide.
The moral argument for allowing transition is trivially simple: Bodily autonomy is one of the most important human rights. No ifs, no buts.
On the social side, preventing transition is an enormous overreach with regard to freedom of expression. Legal gender change is a necessity to protect privacy.
This is all downstream of the simple idea that you should treat trans people like a type of people, an idea that a lot of people get really offended by, as they do with women, racialized people, disabled people, gay people, pretty much any marginalized group in history.
Because the moral argument is trivially against them, bigots will try to frame themselves as a rational, scientifically-minded group trying to rein in the naive optimism of their opponents. They will insist that the science is on their side, and by doing so handwave the moral argument because their point of view is "true".
It is not.
The playbook of these groups is old, reliant on a few rhetorical tricks that play on confirmation bias, and generally tries to do one thing: Engineer talking points that are wrong in ways that take scientific competence to debunk, so that a fully accurate debunking loses general audiences.
That's why it's important to get ahead of them and attack the foundations they're building their rhetoric on.
It's tempting to just fall back on the moral argument, it really is, because these shitheels are arguing positions that are pretty fucking heinous. That should be enough. Unfortunately, it gets you liberal "allies" who seem genuinely embarrassed to be on your side, because they're not confident that their position is empirically correct in addition to being morally correct.
That's why stuff like debunking "concerning" scientific results about trans youth in Finland matters.
"Legal gender change is a necessity to protect privacy"—this rings true to me but I'm having trouble articulating the argument, would you mind expanding on this a little?
I don't know if this is exactly how Op would put it but the simple answer is: because transition being illegal necessitates enforcement, and everyone has a body and medical history the privacy of which must then be violated to investigate and enforce that ban. Presto - nobody has meaningful privacy because it's trivial to accuse anyone of something illegal [transitioning] and force violation of their privacy to prove they *haven't* transitioned. So if transition is illegal, you have a ready-made accusation to justify violating literally anyone's privacy.
Oh nah I meant in the sense that changing your legal gender marker is a necessary thing to protect a trans person's privacy, because if the marker is very noticeably different from how you present yourself, anyone who sees your ID will know you're trans.
The general consensus of the "queer community" has essentially become a gated community that allows only specific liberal ideologies, american values, and only surface level tolerance of trans women at best. In practice it essentially filters out the majority of brown people, trans women, global southerners, and so on. The queer community is more like a brand, and anyone who doesn't fit the American, white brand of queerness either gets rejected outright or we get filtered due to our politics and values.
By them declaring themselves the "queer community" they make it sound as though they are representative of queerness itself, rather than representative of just their own beliefs. So an attack on the "queer community" (the brand of queerness) is likened to genuine homophobia/transphobia. While they are allowed to engage in racism and transmisogyny as much as they like.
One thing I think is very funny is encountering a Very Obvious Mumsnet User trying to pretend to be a normal middle-of-the-road moderate on trans issues like ma'am. Nobody normal says "peaked" like that.
Also when they run into a post like this they'll respond all like "well TIMs pretend to be WOMEN" like ma'am literally only the people who've studied your echo chamber know what you mean by "TIM".
By the way, a common strategy for cults to reinforce ingroup-outgroup divisions is to encourage their members to seek out members of the outgroup and behave in ways that predictably incite backlash.
I don't get genuinely mad often but I'm genuinely seething at "preference will go to AFAB performers" in the transfem owned dyke bar. in the transfem owned dyke bar. in the transfem owned dyke bar. find me a fucking queer space where these people WON'T discriminate against trans women cause at this point I don't think that sort of thing fucking exists
for the last one i don’t just mean oh the author inadvertently wrote in gay subtext or whatever i’m talking about media as a cultural artifact which can reveal a ton about societal norms, biases, ideals, etc. it’s all about positionality and an unexamined positionality is often the most revealing of all
My co-teacher came up with an idea. She said to me: “I’m going to project a Shakespearean sonnet on the board that you have never seen before. They are going to watch you struggle through it, and they are going to see what it takes to authentically annotate something to attempt to understand it”.
This was a good idea because it targeted a pitfall of my teaching: that I already know the answer— a predetermined answer I want my students to come to. Therefore, when I ask the class a question, they are aware that there is an answer in my head I want them to arrive at. This method can stifle students’ voice.
So, I stood at the front of the classroom that day, feeling exposed, sight-reading Shakespearean sonnets. With most of the sonnets, I, with the help of the class, could only get to about 75% understanding and accuracy at best. But my confusion — my apparent struggle and frustration in understanding each new sonnet— was key for my students. They felt free to posit their interpretations and even to disagree with me.
In each session, a student shared a thought or possibility that not only I had failed to see but was also ultimately accurate. One student couldn’t wipe the smile off her face when she figured out a metaphor that stumped both me and my co-teacher. “This was fun”, she and her classmate said to each other when the bell rang.
"Sewing is a gateway drug to thinking through complex problems. It seems really simple; culturally, we make it women's work. Let me tell you: real sewing at any kind of level of proficiency is a bloody magic trick. Sewing, like mold making, involves mental frames that require one to think inside out and backwards. It requires one to work on an order of operations that is often taking into account the reverse. It's a really, really important skill, and if you learn how to sew, you're mostly on your way to carpentry and welding and sheet metal work. I'm not kidding: these are planar forms meeting under rules and conditions. And if you can make a sleeve work, I swear to God, you could build a house."
did you know literally *everyone* is raised racist. like by society at minumum, if not specifically by their parents. if you aren't constantly questioning the prejucides around and inside of YOU, yes even you, then you aren't taking enough action in your daily life to be a traitor to the state of white supremacy.
Revolution requires years of hard work by lots of people dedicated to organising systems that enact the kind of world we want to live in. Yknow, the kind of thing you could help with if you have an enormous public platform and are listened to and respected by hundreds of thousands of people
Im kinda annoyed at the "punk/goth is inherently leftist" take, it erases the history of right wing influences, the nuanced of scense and bands, the nazi/ fascist history in both scenes, and the work that's been put in to make them better.
Now these scenes SHOULD be progressive, cuz it allows diversity, inclusively, radical organising and the subcultures to expand but saying they already are, is a thought terminating cliché, it makes us forget the work we have to do to make these spaces better, erases the hate and hurt these spaces has caused.
This consistant rewriting of goth and punk history (not actually understanding the complex and nuanced contect of these subcultures) falls under a grand narrative, that we've always been perfect, when songs like "nazi die" had to be made because of how maluable punk is, and because we want its family definition to not let nazis in.
The calling of goth "specifically leftist" is increasingly strange too, as arguably goth was a pulling away from the harsher more radical sides of punk. Obviously there is progressive politics involved such as gender qeering, sexual autonomy and individual liberation, but these things are arguably still kinda liberal and individualist (definitely are the bases for more radical action tho)
These subcultures origins may not be the most revolutionary (arguably they are most in line with Sitiationalism which i have my own gripes with) but they definitely have the potential for more radical ends as they have proven to be in certain contexts
TLDR, punk and goth have never been overall radical movements in context to politics like anacrhism (there are definitely cointer examples like chumbawamba), but they can be radical if we make it
I love lying to my landlord. “We’re currently looking at a comparable unit in the area at $[a hundred dollars less than our current rent]/month, so if your offer has any flexibility to come down on the rent, that would help us reach a decision about whether or not to renew our lease here” and the comparable unit exists only in my own beautiful mind
Actually, no! And since several people have replied asked for my script for negotiating lower rent, I’m gonna share that below, as well as the philosophy behind it. Full disclosure that I’m not a leasing office person or a realtor or god forbid, a landlord—I’m just someone who has been a renter for 10+ years across different states, and I know for a fact that I have saved myself thousands of dollars by successfully negotiating a lower monthly rent on almost every lease I’ve ever signed. (Also, I’ve only ever rented in the U.S., so this advice may not be as applicable elsewhere.)
Step 0: Know Thy Enemy
The key thing to understand about all residential landlords, whether they’re corporate conglomerates or Just Some Asshole, is that their asset—the property—is a Cinderella carriage that magically turns back into an expensive ass pumpkin of a liability any time it’s sitting empty. The property taxes, insurance, mortgage, HOA fees, and maintenance costs all still come due every month/quarter/year whether they have a tenant to cover it all and then some, or not.
Because of this, at the end of the day, their ultimate goal is to fill every unit at all times with someone who will reliably pay the rent on time and in full. And because everything else is secondary to that goal—and because with the exception of Just Some Asshole landlords, the person responding to your emails and writing up your lease paperwork is several degrees of separation removed from the shareholders who profit off your rent money—they’re almost always willing to negotiate with you. As long as it gets the liability converted into an asset faster or keeps the carriage from turning back into a pumpkin for longer, then in the long run, it’s actually in their best interest to give you a better price.
Step 1: Identify Your Leverage
If you understand how supply and demand works, you can figure out how much leverage you have pretty easily. High supply and low demand = you have more leverage, and vice versa. Do they have an “AVAILABLE NOW - MOVE IN TODAY” sandwich board on the sidewalk or a web banner that says “First month free”? Does their website and/or Apartments.com show a bunch of currently open listings? Do you already live there and know at least two families on your floor have moved out in the last several months with no one new moving in to replace them? These are all indications that they have more than one unit currently sitting empty, meaning higher supply and lower demand. No sandwich board and a website that just says “call for availability”? They might just suck at marketing, but more likely, supply is lower and demand is higher.
You have the least leverage if you’re a prospective tenant looking to move in somewhere that has a waitlist. They have no reason to offer you a discount if six other people are already in line to pay full price for apartments that aren’t even vacant yet (but you can still ask!). You also have no leverage to negotiate if you’ve already signed a lease and you’re in the middle of the lease period; you legally agreed to pay $X/month for Y months, so you’re stuck with that until the lease is up.
At the other end of the spectrum, you have the most leverage if you’re a current tenant who has always paid your rent on time and you’re being offered a renewal on your existing lease with higher rent than you're currently paying, especially if they already have some units that have been empty for a while. If you move out, not only is your unit going to sit vacant for at least part of a month, they’re also probably going to have to put in some work to “turn” the unit (repainting, professional cleaning, etc) to get it in move-in condition for the next tenant.
All of this means that if you move out, even if they can fleece you out of your security deposit and find a new tenant the very next month, it’s still gonna cost them at least a few thousand dollars to turn that pumpkin back into a carriage again. They’re probably willing to come down by $100-$200/month or so on the renewal offer rent if you ask, because they know it’ll actually save them money in the long run. Similar situation if you’re a prospective new tenant—if they can’t get you or anyone else to sign a lease and move in this month, that’s $[whatever the monthly rent is] down the drain, and they’ll never get it back. It’s a perishable item about to spoil.
Step 2: Get Their Opening Offer
This is the first number they’ll quote you for the rent—the sticker price that you’ve always just accepted as set in stone. The truth is, they’ve built some buffer into that number. There’s almost always some room for them to come down, and depending on your leverage, they will if you ask nicely. But for reasons that baffle me, most people don’t!
Step 3: Wait, Research, & Counter
Don’t reply to their initial offer right away—unless there’s a waitlist (in which case, you have little haggling power anyway), wait a few days. It makes them sweat a bit, and it shows you aren’t desperate. The person who is rushing to reply is not the one who has more leverage in the negotiation, and making them wait reminds them of that. In the meantime, use Apartments.com or Zillow to get an idea of what similar units in the same area are currently going for. Then you come up with your counteroffer.
As a general rule, anything more than about 20-25% below their opening offer (or below market rates) will probably just piss them off or make them take you less seriously. But when we’re talking about your monthly rent over the course of a year or two, even a 10% discount adds up to a lot of money!
When I negotiated our original lease for my current place, I also asked for and got a two year lease term instead of the standard one year. But whatever automated calendar event system they use to remind their leasing office staff when it’s time to send out renewal offers didn’t get the memo about that, so they mistakenly sent me a renewal offer the following year, meaning I got to see how much they would have jacked up the rent if they could’ve. For that second year of the lease alone, my negotiating saved us $3,000!
Step 4: BDE (Big Dick Emailing)
Here’s the tricky part. You need to write an email—always negotiate over email if you can, it’s too easy for a salesperson to bowl you over on the phone and anything they say that isn’t in writing means nothing—which simultaneously makes it sound like you would sign a lease with them in a heartbeat and like you are actively flirting with five other apartment complexes right now who all want you so bad it makes them look stupid, because you are just so sexy and fun and your credit score is eight inches flaccid. You need to make them believe you are both highly motivated and ready to sign on the dotted line and willing to just walk away from the table at any second, but if they could just come down a little bit on that number, you’d delete those other hoes’ numbers forever! Here’s the rough script I use every time:
“ Thank you for [your email/the tour/sending over the offer letter/etc]. I have had a chance to review and consider it. I think [name of apartment complex] would be the perfect fit for me, but I am also exploring and touring other options in the area, including a comparable unit nearby at $[a little below your counteroffer number]/month.
If we could come down to $[your counteroffer number]/month on the rent, I would be prepared to sign the lease today. Let me know your thoughts. Thanks! "
Step 6: You Win Either Way
Sometimes they really do just accept your counteroffer without question and send you over a revised lease to sign. (When this happens, I make a note for next time that my counteroffer was probably too high and I should’ve asked for more!) More often, they get approval from The Powers That Be and come back with a number that’s higher than your counteroffer but lower than their initial offer. Assuming I can afford it, I always accept this offer; you’ve achieved your goal of saving yourself money from sticker price, and they’re likely to lose patience if they have to keep going around and around with you. And sometimes (though only very rarely), they may come back and say the price is firm—in which case, guess what? You still didn’t lose anything by asking!
THIS!!! Exactly this. I didn’t mention it above because I just couldn’t fit it neatly anywhere, but once while negotiating a lease renewal, I got as far as receiving their counteroffer, which was basically “price firm :(”, but then life happened, so I forgot to respond and accept. The email sat in my inbox for a week. And then, completely unprompted, they magically replied again saying, “actually, nvm, how’s $[number that is lower than our opening offer] sound?”
To them, it looked like I was staring them down cold as ice like
I was literally just busy with other stuff! and they were sweating!!! BULLETS!!!
