#monse mumbles

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Noticing there sure is a lot of understanding and nuance for Cuno but not Cunoesse..wonder why that might be.

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I don't know how many people actually care and maybe I shouldn't care, but it feels genuinely liberating to have found a new job with my degree. I actually feel happy to be alive. In a long time now.

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What are some traditional foods in your country or country of your parents you can't fucking stand?

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It's about surveillance and suppressing dissent. Especially Palestine. Not everything is about your and anyone else's ability to create and consume art/media. These age verification laws will DO THAT but that's not their only or even primary goal. I don't personally much stock in what is verbally stated but what materially is going to be the primary consequence of this. Age verification is to provide a direct face or identity marker for personal online activity, especially political dissent.

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I still feel the need to complain. Today a customer sneakily tried to take a photo of me so he can feed it into an AI video. He wanted to make me a burglar. I can only imagine his motivation of me as a burglar since he is a racist white man.

To my knowledge he did not succeed in making an AI video of me. I hope. But fuck man, I hope he fucking [____]

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There really should be a wider movement in tech or whatever that whenever you download a software, use a service, etc, everything must be explained to the user as to what they're agreeing with <5 pages of text 12 Times New Roman 1-in margins.

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Did we ever actually get a meaningful resolution on Seliph dealing with the legacy and idealized image of his father imposed onto him and his Crusader-hood?

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I think art as a tool or strategy for political action needs to be de-emphasized. I think everyone has been largely been so fixated on art as activism they have largely lost the plot.

Seeing people look at age verification laws, having your ID, Social Security, or debit cards tied to your Blusky or Discord, having these social media companies have a name and a face to tie social media activity to online political action/dissent, is more important than like your personal ability or anyone's personal ability to make and consume art.

Another thing. Art is something human beings do. A social or recreational activity. It is essential to give us meaning and texture to our lives sure, but art by itself is not "revolutionary." Your political enemies, the ones who hate and want to murder you, are just as capable of making art, sometimes they're just as good in making it as you are. I love Dostoevsky but he was a religious conservative. Mario Vargas Llosa is one of the most important authors in Latin America, and he was a right leaning liberal who was almost President of Peru & very comfy with the Peruvian business class. George Orwell was snitching on people to British intelligence for being Jewish.

Authors are normal people like you and me. They're not prophets. They're not morally better than any of us. They might have observations about the world that might prove to be true, but they're just as biased and fallible to be dead ass wrong about anything. In the aforementioned example, I don't think Dostoevsky has a good grasp of what nihilism is. They are just as capable of being wrong and just because they wrote a story in which there themes and characters are consistent, is not a reflection of the world as it is. What you're reading your reflection of their reflection of the world.

How many more movies or tv shows do you still need to tell you that capitalism is bad, brown people are humans beings, women are not property? How many of you can imagine or create a fictional world where these things were accomplished? How many of you are going to take those ideas and attempt them in the real world?

I don't discount art's importance to be a political tool. Whether that be "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and its influence or "What Is To Be Done?" in the Russian Nihilist movement. But those works are at best deserving to be footnote in the long history of Black resistance or the assassination of Czar Alexander II of Russia. Even if you or anyone else is the next Shakespeare, the next Tolstoy, Hemmingway, Gabriel Marquez-Garcia, there is absolutely no guarentee you will have the audience who is both receptive and willing to put forth your ideas into action and reflection.

To be clear. I think you should make art. I think its important to have a means to relieve stress and maybe transform the jumbled thoughts in your brain into something more structured, but not for a minute do I think whatever I produce is anything more than my personal observations of the world, colored by whatever biases I have or unconsciously have. Your personal media engagement, what gives color to your life and inspires you, is important, but it's not inherently political activism if it doesn't cross the threshold into action. And whatever action does happen as a consequence is materially more important and worth examining than the art that preceded it.

No amount of "Shadow loves immigrants" "Make it bad but MAKE IT" text posts, and such does anything to console me when I see Palestinians discovering murdered children in the rubble or ICE agents carrying off a Latin American mother away from her children. It just doesn't I'm sorry. I know your heart is in the right place but is this the most effective use of your time and energy? If it's the best you can do right now, I understand but please be honest about art's limitations and scope to influence real world politics.