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fiercynn · 4 months

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okay, if you have ever made or reblogged a “hold your nose and vote for biden” post, this is for you.

here’s the fucking thing about these kinds of posts. i've been seeing them since i first returned to tumblr in, I think, late 2022? they've certainly increased in frequency since october 7, but they were there before too, ready to counter any kind of opposition to biden that has cropped up. many of them are not just trying to educate people about what positive things biden has done, which, like, at least I can understand the motivation behind those ones? but so many of them are directly in response to people criticizing biden, and their only real point is “sure you’re upset at this thing biden did, but have you considered the election?” starting YEARS before the next presidential election, mind you.

and october 7 only made that clearer. i don’t think it had been a week before i saw these posts cropping up. can you not see how fucking ghoulish that is? to look at the rightful pain and anger of those whose relatives and communities are being slaughtered with active american support, to respond to one of the few pieces of agency most americans have in influencing what their governments do – their vote – by saying “yes but trump would be worse.” as if the primary people you’re lecturing – palestinians, muslims, arabs, black people, indigenous people, disabled people, other marginalized people – don’t remember exactly how bad it was under trump!

and even if you think not voting is an empty gesture – something i, who studied political science at a mainstream american lib college, who has worked as a field organizer on a previous democratic presidential campaign and for several policy campaigns, who currently works in public policy in america, used to believe, but have absolutely changed my mind on – what is in no way an empty gesture is saying publicly that you will not vote for someone. the arguments people usually have about why simply not voting is bad are that you can’t tell why someone is not voting, so it is as likely to be apathy or disenfranchisement as it is a political statement. but saying publicly that you will not vote for someone, and why you will not vote for them, absolutely is a political statement, and potentially a powerful one! but you choose to negate and/or ignore that by trotting out the “lesser of two evils” bullshit.

and then there’s the whole “yes but people will DIE under trump”. PEOPLE ARE DYING NOW. even if you’re fucking racist and have decided that palestinian lives don’t count, have you forgotten biden’s ongoing covid minimalism and dismantling of the CDC’s covid research and prevention infrastructure? have you forgotten his increase in spending for law enforcement scant years after the murder of george floyd and his administration's surveillance of protesters, including cop city protesters? have you forgotten his recent ramp-up in deportations of undocumented immigrants, including the active continuation of many trump-era policies?

maybe you have forgotten all those things and do purport to care about palestinians, but you just think that biden is doing his best to influence netanyahu and is getting nowhere! but then you must have forgotten all of the things that biden and his administration themselves have done to further this fucking genocide, including:

continuing to send arms to israel

putting together a military task force within days of yemen’s red sea blockade and attacking yemeni ships

bombing yemen

bombing syria

bombing iraq

vetoing three ceasefire resolutions at the united nations

testifying to defend israel and its genocide and occupation at the international court of justice

refusing to rescue palestinian-americans stuck in gaza

halting funding to the united nations relief and works agency for palestinian refugees (UNRWA) based on israeli claims that 12 of UNRWA’s over 30,000 staff were hamas agents, even though u.s. intelligence has not been able to independently verify this

lying that he’s personally seen photos of babies beheaded by hamas when he hadn’t because they didn’t exist (and even when his own staff cautioned him that reports of beheaded babies may not be credible)

questioning the number of palestinian deaths reported by the gaza ministry of health (when even israel has not questioned them, since they are in fact proud of those numbers)

perpetuating lies about hamas having committed the attack on al-aqsa hospital

questioning united nations reports of adults and children raped by israeli soldiers while claiming to have proof (that no one else has seen) of hamas doing the same

honestly so many more things that i can’t remember them all but others feel free to add

or maybe you haven’t forgotten any of that, and think that you’re still justified in lecturing people about why they should vote for biden, because you genuinely believe trump would still be worse. if that is the case, you have still failed to see that by saying you will vote for biden no matter what, you are part of the problem of biden continuing to act like this. because biden is counting on fear of trump to win him this next election no matter what else he does. despite his appalling polling numbers, despite the knowledge that he is losing the palestinian-american vote, the arab-american vote, the muslim-american vote, the black american vote, the youth vote – despite all of that, he is secure in the idea that he will still win because he is better than trump. can you not see how that allows him to act without impunity? how it becomes increasingly impossible for his base to influence what he’s doing if he thinks that they will be with him no matter what? this is how you make yourself complicit to biden’s actions, by not affording anyone even the slightest power to hold him accountable for anything.

and in most cases, the “hold your nose and vote for biden” thing is the response of people who aren’t even being instructed by others not to vote for biden. it is their response to people saying they themselves are choosing not to vote for biden. fucking ghoulish.

#fuck biden #u.s. politics #free palestine #genocide #covid #immigrant justice #prison abolition #police abolition #ableism #from the river to the sea palestine will be free

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suiyoubis · 1 year

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sunset rollercoaster — levia feat. rhydian vaughan

#黑的教育 #bad education (2022)#落日飛車 #luo ri fe che #sunset rollercoaster #鳳小岳 #rhydian vaughan #9m88 #(she's credited as 'chorus')#taiwanese pop #mandopop #music

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prozach27 · 1 year

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#I feel like I’m starting this quarter off strong #got super organized + was proactive about making a meeting with my advisor to see how I can catch up #and have been good about substances which like I haven’t bad about for a little while but I like to monitor #I’ve been proactive with making meetings and organizing my calendar / making a routine #plus bought a daily planner so I can map out my weeks and check in each morning briefly #it almost feels repetitive given my virtual task list BUT with this specifically I can visually see my free time #and after my schedule settles down week 2 I can use that to set aside daily skill development time #I get too hyper fixated on something and then it falls apart #so I think I’m gonna devote one to two hours each day to a different activity #make up / painting / writing / coding / guitar #one activity for each weekday #and then weekends are a free for all #ALSO #I was reading up on my postdoc opportunity in Germany and it got me REALLY REALLY MOTIVATED #to the point I ended up scouting 2022’s top deutsch pop and found a bunch of songs I love #so now I have a new German playlist to get me in the zone #I’ve been taking daily pimsleur lessons and the new Duolingo revamp has been highly motivating too #and like 10x more educational #the goal is for me to get through 30 lessons of pimsleur by the end of the quarter which means like one lesson every 2-3 days #idk I just am reaching a point where it’s time to begin living life and growing #I may not be who I want yet but this skill development is part of putting in the work #and along with weight loss is going to make me such a better more well rounded person #I’m feeling REALLY motivated about all this!!! AND talked to my doc and we made a lil med adjustment to help with focus #so I’m feeling like the sky’s the limit #add that to my new daily skincare routine and I’m feeling really well put together #I think this quarter’s gonna end up being amazing. 2023 is 100% gonna be my year

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whatermelown · 4 months

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♪ Make me thrill as only you know how

Sway me smooth, sway me now ♪

I FINALLY FINISHED IT! HAVE MY 'TOOK ME LONGER THAN IT SHOULD' REDRAW TWIYOR VDAY ILLUS! HAPPY VALENTINES DAY GUYS ;W; 💌🤍🎀🍫💐

GOSH THE STORY BEHIND THIS FANART ISTG

so this is a redraw of my shipebrero back in 2022 for loiyorrr and it got a lot of notes so I promised to myself to redraw it! BUT THEN ART BLOCK AND COUNTLESS RESPONSIBILITIES LEADING ME TO RUIN GRRR- So I tried to redraw... THEN MY LAPTOP LOST ALL ITS FILES!?!??!?!?! FROM ACADS, PERSONAL FILES......AND W I Ps

i cried so much y'all have no idea HJDSKFHJKDSHFJK

BUT I HAD A SLIVER OF HOPE! I ACTUALLY INCLUDED THE WIP IN MY PORTFOLIO FOR COLLEGE ADMISSION! (yes i included a very intense ship work in progress fanart to apply for my education what of it hsjfhds) SO IT WAS STILL IN CANVA, the bad news tho I only used the screenshot because the file was too big so the pic was bad quality huhu... so I went to "make ur png more hd" websites so that's probably why the 2nd pic would look kinda ai generated (vomits)

so it all started from there! I repainted the whole thing with the foundation I've redrawn and I hope the lessons I got from being a Fine Arts freshman rn paid off HAHAHA

ANYWAY HERE THEY ARE SIDE BY SIDE AND THANK YOU FOR GETTING THIS FAR IN READING?!??!!?!??! UMMM HERES A CHOCOLATE BAR (。・∀・)ノ*★,°*:.☆🍫:*.°★* 。

HAPPY HEARTS DAY EVERYONE!!! MWAH!

#spy x family #my art #loiyor #twiyor #loid forger #yor forger #loid x yor #loid forger x yor forger #yor briar forger #gotta complete the maiden name yall hehe #spy x fam #GURL I LOVE THEM SO MUCH I LITERALLY DRAW EM AS DEFAULT AT THIS POINT HUHU #MY UNI ROOMATES GAVE ME AN ANYA PLUSHIE FOR A BELATED BDAY GIFT IT'S SO CUTE ;W;#IM SO EXCITED TO WATCH THE MOVIE IN THEATERS HEHE #HAPPY VALENTINES DAY GUYS!#ALSO ENDO SENSEI I STILL NEED MORE TWIYOR CONTENT NOW PLS IM BEGGING YOU ON MY KNEES RN AHHHHHHHHHHHHH

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genderkoolaid · 1 month

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holy shit i just found out about the Otherness Archive. its a collection of films by/about transmascs/transmasculinity, with a lot of them free to stream on the site itself. a lot of the videos don't work or aren't available anymore, but some that I've watched:

A Place in Middle (2014): "Eleven-year-old Ho'onani dreams of leading the hula troupe at her inner-city Honolulu school. The only trouble is that the group is just for boys. She's fortunate that her teacher understands first-hand what it's like to be 'in the middle' - the ancient Hawaiian tradition of embracing both male and female spirit. Together they set out to prove that what matters most is to be true to yourself.. This 25 minute film is adapted from the PBS Independent lens feature documentary "Kumu Hina"." (25min, captioned)

Adam (1996): "In this tender clay animation, a little girl is mistaken for a boy and relishes the opportunity. Illuminating the innocence of ﬁrst sexual experiences and the ﬂuidity of gender identity, ADAM is a delightful reminiscence of childhood. (4min, auto-captioned)

The Misadventures of Pussy Boy Trilogy (2022): "[A] trilogy of short videos subtitled First Love, Sick and First Period, each video's running time is approximately 6 minutes, all videos are animated in a fashion that is very much "do-it-yourself" aesthetic, as told from the point of view of a transgender youth in rural Cape Breton." (5min / 6min (the second video is unavailable), auto-captioned)

Brace (2015): "After coming out and leaving his girlfriend, Adam dreams of ﬁnding acceptance within London's gay scene. His burgeoning freedom is soon challenged when he meets Rocky, a handsome stranger who is harboring a secret that he desperately wants to share with Adam. As their bond strengthens and Rocky prepares to reveal his secret to Adam, their ﬂedgling romance is ruptured by a cataclysmic event that forces the truth to come out in the most explosive manner." (24min, no captions)

A Day In The Life of A Bull-Dyke (1995): "A Day In The Life of A Bull-Dyke follows a big boned butcher into skirmishes, drag, and the arms of a beautiful recruit. The public and private lives of this "strange animal" are explored with the reverence and glee found in the educational exposés like Reefer Madness and bad-boy films like Rebel without a Cause. However, because this fictionalized lesbian history is a first-person narrative, it is filled with all the joy, pain, and ambivalence each of us experiences while negotiating a marginalized identity." (10min, no captions although the audio is quite clear)

#m.

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csuitebitches · 6 months

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2024 reading list

The $100 StartUp

The E-Myth Revisited

The Four Steps to the Epiphany

Hooked

The Checklist Manifesto

The Lean Startup

Creativity Inc.

Who - smart and street

Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters by Steven Pinker

The School of Life: An Emotional Education by Alain de Botton

Rapport: The Four Ways to Read People by Emily and Laurence Alison

Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me) Third Edition: Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris

Upstream: How to Solve Problems Before They Happen by Dan Heath

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

The Revenge of Geography by Robert D. Kaplan

The World: A Brief Introduction by Richard

The Quest by Daniel Yergin

Who Rules the World? by Noam Chomsky

Day of Empire by Amy Chua

India’s China Challenge by Ananth Krishnan

How to Stage a Coup – Rory Cormac – 2022

Secret History of the Five Eyes (2022) – Richard Kerbaj

Xi: A Study in Power (2022) – Kerry Brown

The India Way by S. Jaishankar

Michael Lewis: Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon

David Rubenstein: How to Invest: Masters on the Craft

Elon Musk by Isaacson, Walter

The Man Who Knew - Sebastian Mallaby

Blood and Oil - Bradley Hope, Justin Scheck

Brazillionaires - Alex Cuadros

Empire Of Pain- Patrick Radden Keefe

The Match King - Frank Partnoy

McMafia - Misha Glenny

#Reading list 2024 #Books #c suite #personal growth #that girl #strong women #powerful woman #ceo aesthetic #productivity #getting your life together #balance

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literary-illuminati · 6 months

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Book Review 68 - Babel by R. F. Kuang

Overview

I came to Babel with extremely little knowledge about the actual contents of the book but a deep sense of all the vibes swirling around its reception – that it was robbed of a Hugo nomination (if the author didn’t outright refuse it), that it’s probably the single buzziest and most Important sf/f release of 2022, that it was stridently political, and plenty more besides. I also went in having mostly enjoyed The Poppy War series and being absolutely enamoured by the elevator pitch of an alternate history Industrial Revolution where translation is literally magic. And, well-

It is wrong to say I hated this book, but only because keeping track of my complaints and starting organize this review in my head was entertaining enough to keep me invested in the reading experience.

The story is set in an alternate 1830s, where the rise of the British Empire relies upon the dominance of its translators, as it is the mixture of translation and silverworking, the inscription of match-pairs in different languages on bars of worked silver and the leveraging of the ambiguity and loss of meaning between them that fuels the world’s magic. The protagonist is pluckted from his childhood home in Canton after his family dies in a cholera outbreak and whisked away to the estate of Professor Lowell, an Oxford translator he quickly realized is his unacknowledged father. He’s made to choose an English name (Robin Swift) and raised and tutored as a future translator in service to the Empire.

The meat of the story is focused on Robin’s education in Oxford, his relationship with the rest of his cohort, and his growing radicalization and entanglement with the revolutionary Hermes Society. Things come to a head when in his fourth year the cohort is sent back to Canton to, well, help provoke the first Opium War, though none of them aware of that. The final act follows the fallout of that, by which I mean it lives up to the full title of “Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution”.

To be clear, this was technically a very accomplished book. The writing never dragged and the prose was, if not exactly lyrical, always clear and often evocative. Despite the breadth of space and time the story covers, I never had any complaints about the pacing – and honestly, the ending was, dramatically speaking, one of the more natural and well-executed ones I’ve read recently. It’s very well-constructed.

All that being said – allow me to apologize for how the rest of this is mostly just going to be a litany of complaints. But the book clearly believes itself to be an important and meaningful work of political art, which means I don’t feel particularly bad about holding it to high standards.

Narrative Voice

To start with, just, dear god the tone. This is a book with absolutely zero faith in its audience’s ability to reach their own conclusions, or even follow the symbolism and implication it lays down. Every important point is stated outright, repeated, and all but bolded and underlined. In this book set in 1830s England there are footnotes fact-checking the imperialists talking heads to, I guess, make sure we don’t accidentally become convinced by their apologia for the slave trade? Everything is just relentlessly didactic, in a way that ended up feeling rather insulting even when I agreed with the points Kuang was making.

More than that, and this is perhaps a more subjective complaint but – for an ostensible period piece, the narrative voice and perspective just felt intensely modern? This was theoretically an omniscient third person book, with the narrative voice being pretty distinct from any of the actual characters – with the result that the implicit narrator was instead the sort of person of spends six hours a day getting into arguments on twitter and for this effort calls themselves a progressive activist. The identities of all the characters – as delivered by the objective narration – were all very neat and legible from the perspective of someone at a 2022 HR department listing how diverse their team was, which was somewhere between a tragic lost opportunity to show how messy and historical racial/ethnic/national identities are and outright anachronistic, depending. (This was honestly one of the bigger disappointments, coming from Kuang’s earlier work. Say what you will of The Poppy War series, the narration is with Rin all the way down, and it trusts the reader enough not to blink.) More than that it was just distracting – the narration ended up feeling like an annoying obstacle between me and the story, and not in any fun postmodern way either.

Characters

Speaking of the cast – they simply do not sound or feel like they actually grew up in the 19th century. Now, some modernization of speech patterns and vocabulary and moral commensense is just the price of doing business with mass market period pieces, granted, but still – no 19th century Anglo-Indian revolutionary is going use the phrase ‘Narco-military state’ (if for no other reason than we’re something like a century early for ‘narco-state’ to be coined as a term at all). An even beyond feeling out of time most of the characters feel kind of thinly sketched?

Or no, it’s not that the characters are thinly sketched so much as their relationships are. We’re repeatedly, insistently told that these four students are fast friends and closer than family and would happily die for each other, but we’re very rarely actually shown it. This is partly just a causality of trying to skim over a four-year university education in the middle third of one book, I think, but still – the good times and happy moments are almost always sort of skimmed over, summarized in the course of a paragraph or two that usually talk in terms of memories and consequences more than the relationships themselves. The points of friction and the arguments, meanwhile, are usually played out entirely on the page, or at least described in much more detail. In the end you kind of have to just take it as read that any of these people actually love each other, given that at least two of them seem to be feuding at any given point for the entire time they know each other.

Letty deserves some special attention. She’s the only white member of Robin’s cohort at Babel and she honestly feels like less of acharacter and more a collection of tropes about white women in progressive spaces? Even more than the rest, it’s hard to believe the rest of the class views her as beloved ride-or-die found family when essentially every time she’s on screen it’s so she can do a microagression or a white fragility or something. Also, just – you know how relatively common it is to see just, blatantly misogynistic memes repackaged as anti-racist because it specifies ‘white women’? There’s a line in this that almost literally says ‘Letty wasn’t doing anything to disprove the stereotype of woman as uselessly emotional and hysteric’.

Also, she’s the one who ends up betraying the other three and trying to turn them in when they turn revolutionary. Which is probably inevitable given the book’s politics, but as it happened felt like less of the shocking betrayal that it was supposed to be and more just, checking off a box for a dramatic reverse. Of course she turned on them, none of them ever really seemed to even like each other.

As a Period Piece

So, the book is set in the 1830s, in the midst of the industrial revolution and its social fallout, and the leadup to the First Opium War (which is, through the magic of, well, magic ,but also mercantilist economics, make into a synecdoche for British global dominion more broadly). On the one hand, the setting is impeccably researched, recent and relevant historical events are referenced whenever they would come up, and the footnotes are full to bursting with quotes and explanations of texts or cultural ephemera that’s brought up in the narration.

On the other, the setting doesn’t feel authentic in the slightest, the portrayal of the British Empire is bizarrely inconsistent, and all that richly researched historical grounding ends up feeling less like a living world and more like a particularly well-down set for a Doctor Who episode.

The story is incredibly focused around Oxford as a city and a university. There’s a whole author’s note about the research and slight changes made into its geography and I absolutely believe its portrayal as a physical location and the laws about how women were treated and how the different colleges were organized and all that is exactly as accurate as Kuang wanted them to be. The issue is really the people. With the exception of a few cartoonish villains who barely get more than a couple pages apiece, no one feels, sounds like, or acts like they actually belong in the 19th century. The racism the protagonists struggle with all feels much more 21st century than Victorian, and the frame of mind everyone inhabits still comes across more as ‘unusually blatantly racist Englishman’ than 19th century scholars and polymaths.

This is especially blatant as far as religion goes. It’s occasionally mentioned, sure enough, but to the extent anyone actually believes in Christianity it’s of a very modern and disenchanted sort – this is a society that sends out missionaries as a conscious tool of colonial expansion, not because of anything as silly or absurd as actually wanting to spread their gospel. Also like, it’s Oxford, in the nineteenth century. For all the racism the protagonists have to deal with, they should be getting so much more shit from ‘well-meaning’ locals and students trying to save their (one Muslim, one atheist, one probably Christian but black and protective of Haitian Vodou on a cultural level which would be more than enough) souls.

Or, and this is more minor, it is a central conceit of the whole finale that if a few (like, two) determined revolutionaries can infiltrate Babel they’ll be able to take the entire place hostage with barely any trouble. This is because the students and professors there are, basically, whimpy bookworms who’ll faint at the sight of blood and have no stomach for the sort of violence their work actually supports and drives. Which – look, I really don’t want to defend the ruling class of Victorian Britain here, but I’m not sure physical cowardice is really one of their failings, as a group? I mean, there’s an entire system of institutionalized child abuse in the boarding schools they went to to get them used to taking and dealing out violence and abuse. Basically every upper-class sport is thinly disguised military drill or ritual combat (okay, or rowing). Half of them would graduate to immediately running off and invading places for the glory of the queen. I’m not sure two sleep-deprived nerds with knives would actually have been able to cow the crowd here, is what I’m saying. (This would stick out less if the text wasn’t so dripping with contempt for them on precisely these grounds.)

Much less minor are our heroic revolutionaries themselves. And okay, this is more a matter of taste than anything but like – the Hermes Society is an illegal conspiracy of renegade current and former Babel scholars dedicated to using their knowledge of magic and access to university resources to oppose and undermine the British Empire in general and the work of the school in particular. Think Metternich’s worse nightmare, but in Oxford instead of Paris and focused on colonial liberation (continental Europe barely exists for the purposes of the book, Britain is Empire.) So! A secret society of professional revolutionaries in the heydey of just that, with a name that just has to be Hermetic symbolism, who concern themselves with both high politics and metaphysics.

They are just so very, very boring. This is the age of the Conspiracy of the Equals, the Carbonari, the Seasons! The literal Illumanti are still within living memory! Where’s the pageantry, the ritual, the grandiosity? The elaborate initiation rituals and oaths of undying loyalty? They’re so pragmatic, so humble, so (and I know I keep coming back to this) modern. It’s just such an utter wasted opportunity. Even beyond the level of aesthetics, these are revolutionaries with remarkably little positive ideology – the oppose colonialism and racism for reasons they take as self-evident and so don’t feel the need to theorize about it (and talk about them with the vocabulary of a modern activist, because of course they do), but they’re pretty much consciously agnostic as to what world should look like instead. They vaguely end up supporting a sort of petty-bourgeois socialism (in the Marxist sense), but the alliance with Luddites is essentially political convenience – they really don’t seem to have any vision of the future at all, either in England or the various places they claim as homelands.

On Empire and Industrialization

The story is set during the early nineteenth century, so of course the Industrial Revolution is a pretty core part of the background. The Silver Industrial Revolution, technically, since the Babellers translation magic is in this world a key and load-bearing part of it. Despite the addition of miracle-working enhancers and supports to its fundamental technology, the industrial revolution plays out pretty identically to history – right down to the same cities becoming hubs of industry, despite steam engines using enchanted silver instead of coal and thus, presumably, the entire economic and logistical system that brought this particular cities to prominence being totally unrecognizable. This is not a book that’s in any way actually about tracing how something would change history – which isn��t a complaint, to be clear, that’s a perfectly valid creative choice.

It does, however, make it rather galling that the single actually significant difference to history is that the introduction of magic turns the industrial revolution into a Legend of Zelda boss with a giant glowing weak point you can hit to destroy the whole enterprise.

On a narrative level, I get it – it simplifies things and allows for a far happier and more dramatic ending if destroying Babel is not just a symbolic act but also literally sends London Bridge falling down and scuttles the entire royal navy and every mill and factory in Britain. It’s just that I think that by doing so it trades away any chance for actually making interesting commentary on anti-colonial and -capitalist resistance. A world where a single act of spectacular terrorism really can destroy a modern empire is frankly so detached from our world that it ceases to be able to really materially comment upon it.

Like, the principle reason to not take the Luddites as your role models is not that they were morally vicious but that they were doomed – capitalism’s ability to repair damage to infrastructure and fixed goods is legitimately very impressive! Trying to force an entire ruling class not to adopt a technology that makes whoever commits to it tremendous amounts of money (thus, power) is a herculean task even when you have a state apparatus and standing army – adding an ‘off’ button to the lot of it just trades all sense of relevance for a satisfyingly cathartic ending.

(This is leaving untouched how the book just takes it as a given that the industrial revolution was a strictly immiserating force that did nothing but redistribute money from artisans to capitalists. Which certainly tracks as something people at the time would have thought but given how resolutely modern all the other politics in the work are rings really weirdly.)

All of which is only my second biggest issue with how the book presents its successful resistance movement. It all pales in comparison to making the Empire a squeamish paper tiger.

Like, the book hates colonialism in general and the British Empire in particular, the narrative and footnotes are filled with little asides about various atrocities and injustices and just ways it was racist or complicit in some particular atrocity. But more than that it is contemptuous of it, it views the empire as (as the cliche goes) a perpetually rotting edifice that just needs one good kick; that it persists only through the myth of its own invincibility, and has no stomach for violent resistance from within. Which is absolutely absurd, and the book does seem to know it on occasion when it off-handedly mentions e.g. the Peterloo Massacre – but a character whose supposed to be the grizzled cynical pragmatic revolutionary still spouts off about how slave rebellions succeed because their masters aren’t willing to massacre their own property. Which is just so spectacularly wrong on every axis its actually almost offensive.

More importantly, the entire final act of the story relies upon the fact that the British Empire would allow a handful of foreign students seize control of a vital piece of infrastructure for weeks on end and do nothing but try to wait them out as the national physically falls apart around them. Like, c’mon, there would be siege artillery set up and taking shots by the end of week two. As with the Oxford students, the Victorian elite had all manner of flaws – take your pick, really – but squeamishness wasn’t really one of them.

On Magic

So the magical system underlying the whole story is – you know how Machinaries of Empire makes imperial ideology and metaphysics literally magical, giving expert technicians the ability to create superweapons and destroy worlds provided that the Hexarchate’s subjects observe the imperial calendar of rites and celebrate its triumphs/participate in rituals glorying in the torture of its ‘heretics’? It’s not exactly a subtle metaphor, but it works.

Babel does something similar, except the foundational atrocity fueling the engine of empire on a metaphysical level is, like, cultural appropriation. As an organizing metaphor, I find this less compelling.

Leaving that aside, the story makes translation literally capable of miracle-working – which of necessity requires making ‘languages’ distinct natural categories with observable metaphysical boundaries. It then sets the story in the 19th century – the era of newborn nation states and education systems and national literatures, where the concept of the national-linguistic community was the obsession of the entire European intelligentsia. Now this is not a book concerned with how the presence of magic would actually have changed history, in the slightest, but like – given how fascinated it is by translation and linguistics you’d think the whole ‘a language is a dialect with a navy’ cliché would at least get a light mention (but then the book doesn’t really treat language as any more inherent or natural than it does any other modern identity category, I suppose.)

As an Allegory

Okay, so having now spent an embarrassing number of words establishing to my own satisfaction that the book really doesn’t work at all as a period piece, let us consider; what if it wasn’t trying to be?

A great many things about the book just fit much better if you take it as a commentary on the modern university with Victorian window-dressing. Certainly the driving resentment of Oxford as an institution that sustains itself and grows rich off the exploitation of international students it considers second-class seems far more apt applied to contemporary elite western schools than 19th century ones. Likewise the racism the heroes face all seems like the kind you’d expect in a modern English town rather than a Victorian one. I’m not well-versed enough on the economics of the city to know for sure, but I would wager that the gleeful characterization of Oxford as a city that literally starts falling to ruin without the university to support it was also less accurate in the 1830s than it is today.

Read like this, everything coheres much better – but the most striking thing becomes the incredible vanity of the book. This is a morality tale where the natural revolutionary vanguard with the power to bring global hegemony to its knees through nothing but witholding their labour are..students at elite western universities (not, I must say, a class I’d consider in dire need of having their egos boosted). The emotions underlying everything make much more sense, but the plot itself becomes positively myopic.

Beyond that – if this is a story about international students at elite universities, it does a terrible job of actually portraying them. Or, properly, it only shows a certain type; just about every foreign-born student or professor we meet is some level of revolutionary, deeply opposed in principle to the empire they work within. No one is actually convinced by the carrot of a life as an exploited but exceedingly comfortable and well-compensated technician in the imperial core, and there’s not really acknowledgement at all of just how much of the apparatus of international institutions and governments in the global south – including positions with quite a bit of real power – end up being staffed by exactly that demographic who just sincerely agree with the various ideological projects employing them. Kuang makes it far too easy on herself by making just about every person of colour in the books one of the good guys, and totally undersells how convincing hegemonic ideology can be, basically.

The Necessity of Violence

This is a pet peeve and it’s a very minor thing that I really wouldn’t bring it up if that wasn’t literally part of the title. But it is, so – it’s a plot point that’s given a decent amount of attention that Griffin (Robin’s secret older brother, grizzled professional revolutionary, his introduction to anti-colonialism) is blamed for murdering one of his classmates who had the bad luck to be studying while he was sneaking in to steal some silver – a student that was quite well-loved by the faculty and her very successful classmates, who have never forgiven him. Later on, it’s revealed that this is an utter rewriting of history, and she’d been a double agent pretending to let herself be recruited into the Hermes Society who’d been luring Griffin into an ambush when he killed her and escaped.

This is – well, the most predictable not-even-a-twist imaginable, for one, but also – just rank cowardice. You titled the book ‘the necessity of violence’, the least you can do is actually own it and show that violent resistance means people (with faces, and names, not just abstractions only ever talked about in general terms) who are essentially personally innocent are going to end up collateral damage, and people are going to hold grudges about it. Have some courage in your convictions!

Translation

Okay, all of that said, this isn’t a book that’s wholly bad, or anything. In particular, you can really tell how much of a passion Kuang has for the art and science of translation. The depth of knowledge and eagerness to share just about overflows from the page whenever the book finds an excuse to talk about it at length, and it’s really very endearing. The philosophizing about translation was also as a rule much more interesting and nuanced then whenever the book tried to opine about high politics or revolutionary tactics.

Anyways, I really can’t recommend the book in any real way, but it did stick in my head for long enough that I’ve now written 4,000 words about it. So at the very least it’s the interesting sort of bad book, y’know?

#book review #babel #r. f. kuang #sff #lesbian space atrocities #-ish #hatermode

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gothicknightz · 1 year

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family ties | ethan landry

notes: oh boy you guys are gonna like this one. VERY MAJOR SCREAM SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT!!!!!!!!!! I cannot get any more specific than that.

part 2 out now!

When she moved to New York with her best friend, they both had planned on getting an average college education, having fun, and graduating.

That was it.

Why couldn’t it have been that simple?

The four of them were stranded in the abandoned lobby of the theatre when Sam had gotten a call from the Detective, claiming that he had done some digging into Kirby and that she was let go from the FBI a couple of months ago for being mentally unstable, and he believes she is the killer.

She quickly turned her attention towards Sam, “What?” She snapped, her arm still wrapped up from her paired attack alongside Mindy on the subway.

Putting a foot down, she crossed her arms, “There’s no way we can stay here.” Attempted to try the entrance in which they came in, to find out it was locked, “Shit.” She turned around quickly to face the, “It’s locked.”

The group frantically looked for a way out of the theatre, as they weren’t going to be trapped with the possible killers. Tara had noticed some sort of fire escape, but that wasn’t until Ghostface appeared and attacked the group, which they fought back.

Chad decided it was a good time to be a hero, as he fought against Ghostface so that the girls could run. This proved to be a bad decision for him, as a second Ghostface came up and started stabbing alongside the other before ushering the trio back into the theatre.

As the five of them make their way back into the theatre, Kirby suddenly reappears out of nowhere and claims that she was knocked out by two Ghostfaces, but the trio can’t trust her after the Detective’s claims, who arrives subsequently after Kirby.

After what seemed to be a battle for trust, the Detective shoots Kirby, revealing himself as the third killer.

(y/n) screams as she was the closest, her heart racing in anticipation, afraid of what was going to happen next when the other two Ghostfaces de-mask themselves. Subsequently, after the Detective reveals himself to be the third killer, the Ghostface wearing Nancy Loomis’ mask revealed himself.

It was Ethan, (y/n)’s best friend. The friend she had planned on getting a college education and graduating with. The friend she had known for years, the friend who was responsible for their firsts.

Somebody she had trusted.

It was then revealed that Quinn was the final Ghostface, much to everyone’s shock, as they had seen and heard of the brutal murder Quinn had endowed.

The trio was cornered at each end by the three killers, with Sam slowly connecting the pieces that all three of the killers were related to none other than Richie Kirsch, one of the killers of the Woodboro Massacre in 2022.

As the trio was attacked and coerced back to the center of the theatre by the killers, the Detective sighed, “It wasn’t until I saw that photograph of what you had actually done to him, that I knew.”

“That I knew you had to fucking die- that you had to be punished, along with anyone else who stands in our way.”

Pushed and insulted by Quinn, Sam, and Tara were forced to stand in front of the Detective, with Ethan taking hold of (y/n), and holding a knife to her throat.

As the Detective went on about how he indulged in his son’s love for the Stab movies, and how they were a bit dark for him, he explained that there was no deeper bond than of a father and his firstborn.

“Despite the loss of Richie, I couldn’t have been happier after learning of a new addition to our family.”

The look on both the sisters’ faces was beyond puzzled as they watched the detective make grandiose gestures as he waved the gun in (y/n)’s direction.

“I knew it was a bit young for those two to get hitched, but,” the Detective paused, taking a breath for a brief smile, “She made it a lot easier to get us in here, and I’ve never been more proud of a future daughter in law, right (y/n)?”

The Carpenter sisters had another round of fear and shock as they turned their heads to one of the closest friends the gang had had, with even Mindy trusting them.

(y/n) was breaking away from a kiss with Ethan as Tara and Sam watched them in awe, the girl breaking into a fit of giggles and a content sigh.

“You know, Sam,” She said, turning towards the illegitimate daughter of the original Ghostface with her boyfriend slash fiance’s knife in hand, “You should really save the date.” She took a swing at the eldest Carpenter sister and laughed.

“Because it does fucking run in the family.”

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justinspoliticalcorner · 23 days

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Erum Salam at The Guardian:

The wave of book bans sweeping the US, typically reserved for works of fiction deemed controversial, has hit textbooks used in public schools, marking the next step in Republicans’ war on education. The board of trustees for the Cypress Fairbanks independent school district in Houston voted 6-1 earlier this month to redact certain chapters in science textbooks, including those about vaccines, human growth, diversity and climate change. The motion to remove the chapters was made by the board’s vice-president, Natalie Blasingame, and almost unanimously supported. Blasingame, who has served on the board since 2021, did not give a specific explanation for the decision, but said the subjects go beyond what the state requires to teach and creates “a perception that humans are bad”. Last year, the Republican-controlled state board approved textbooks for the schools’ science curriculums, rejecting several books on climate, so the local school district’s censorship of these textbooks is even more restrictive.

Education experts say the move could have far-reaching consequences, prompting similar decisions to omit information in other subjects, and by public school districts across the country. The board’s decision drew the ire of local parents and education groups. Bryan Henry, a local parent and founder of the non-partisan group Cypress Families for Public Schools, said he was concerned about the precedent this decision sets. “Will trustees at the local school board level be able to just delete chapters about civil rights because they just mentioned the history of same-sex marriage?” Henry, 37, said. “It’s really kind of alarming what this could mean for ideological influence and control over what is taught in schools.” Henry describes Cypress, a sprawling suburb of Houston with a population of nearly 200,000, as an increasingly diverse community with a loud minority of political extremists.

“A lot of Republicans in the Cy-Fair area, who are very conservative but are pro-public education, are having to now grapple with the fact that [the] governor, state representatives – they’re really not pro-public education,” he said. “And so people are struggling with how to reconcile that, because they don’t want to vote for Democrats.” Henry added this “level of oversight, micromanagement and interference” was “scary.” The Texas Freedom to Read Project, an organization that fights book bans, swiftly condemned the decision. “To ban entire chapters of textbooks and withhold that information from students is not only unconstitutional, but it is taking away their access to real-life ideas that exist in this world,” said Laney Hawes, co-founder of the group. “Access to a diverse and wide range of information is what prepares students to navigate this world successfully. When we ban books and limit students’ ability to access ideas, we are closing doors to their futures.”

[...] PEN America found 3,362 instances of individual books banned in public K–12 schools for the 2022-23 academic year – a 33% increase from last year, with Florida and Texas leading the way. These books mostly include novels with themes of race or sexuality, not core academic material.

Meehan said the censorships of textbooks is “a further escalation of this movement”. “Texas is no stranger to book bans or censoring other educational content areas or materials. The idea that we’re redacting chapters from state-approved textbooks is almost unheard of. It’s so outlandish,” Meehan said. Book bans have become a core element of platforms of well funded far-right politicians, who have tried to win a larger presence on school boards across the US. “I’m almost worried about a concerning trend where far-right Republican candidates are replacing moderate Republicans on school boards, not because citizens believe they are better suited for the job, but because rightwing billionaires and Pacs [political action committees] are starting to pour money into these local elections,” said David DeMatthews, an education professor at the University of Texas at Austin, who previously worked as a public school teacher and district administrator.

Public school textbooks are the next battleground item in the right-wing’s dangerous and censorious book-banning crusade in schools.

#Textbooks #Censorship #Book Banning #Schools #School Boards #Education #Texas Textbooks #Texas #Public Schools

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lw6-woso · 11 months

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Struggles (Barca Femeni x reader)

(gif is not mine)

Y/N L/N.

everyone knows your name.

the unstoppable 18 year old striker for both barcelona and England who was able to make young girls believe they can achieve anything at a young age. from winning the euros in 2022 including winning the young player of the tournament and the golden boot with scoring in every game you played in with England. and even more unbelievable when playing for Barcelona.

everyone knew and loved you it was hard not to, however you was a very private individual nobody anything about you really not even your team mates new much about her even though you have been playing along side them since the age of 16.

you had your little perks about yourself that make people think with how you played, your reactions to certain things and finally your habits of getting destracted when doing media fidgeting with your hair or fingers. they easily picked up on if people really anaysed your behaviour and the more that they looked and observe it all came together like a little puzzle piece,

you struggled massively deep down and the barca girls finally figured it out.

it was a normal day for the barca squad with it being a match day the only thing was that they were laying Real Madrid the teams rival everyone knew that whether you are in the academy, womens or men's team real madris were the biggest rivals. the team had made it to camp nou and they were sat in the changing rooms dancing and singing to music except one person you.

she was sat in her cub that was next to Alexias looking at the floor zoned out completely, the only people who noticed was Jenni and Alexia. they looked at each other from across the room confused, you never acted this way except when you had become ill with the flu but that had happened once you never get sick like EVER.

Alexia took it upon her self to drag you by the hand out of the changing room and into a deserted physio room that hadn't been used in year and was now a storage room. she moved you so you were sat on a seat and she asked

"hey are you okay you dont seem yourself"

"yeah i mean i havent been sleeping much must be coming down with something" i said quietly, after you had said that Jenni had walked in slamming the door louder than she had expected to making you jump out of your skin.

"hey chica"she said sitting next to me.

"im fine you guys dont have to worry" i said.

"no we are not doing this not today so your going to tell us what is wrong or ill bench you" Alexia said sternly.

Ale and jenni where your team mums ever since you arrive in barca they took you under they wings and protected you like there own, so they new everything and that included your little secret that you were hiding from the world, the fact that you had ADHD and had a long history of battling depression.

this came with a lot of issues with not just your career and education but everything in your life especially when it gets bad, and today you had a bad day, everyone has bad days and today was a bad day.

"im having a bad day i forgot that i had ran out of my ADHD medication and i have renewed it yet and my mind wont stop i just want to sleep" you said tears coming to your eyes clearing overwhelmed.

"hey hey its okay im going to go talk to jonaton okay see do youv feel up to playing today" jenni said.

"yes and no i dont know" you said confused and annoyed and jenni nodded and left to go see jonaton.

"come on lets get changed get some water and get warmed up see how you feel you might be a super sub today" Ale said hugging you.

"Ale," you asked.

"yeah" she asked.

"i want to tell everyone" you said.

"what the girls" she asked.

"yeah and the rest of the world i think it'll be good you know to tell my story my battle," you said.

"you never fail to amaze me you know that i think it's a great idea," she said and we walked into the changing rooms.

In that game it was decided for you not to play for your own well-being and you understood, you watched from the sideline watching your idles and your family thrash Real Madrid beating them 6-0.

everyone was on a high celebrating and you decided to do it then and there.

"guys," you said and the girls instantly stopped to listen.

"I thought you all deserved to know this I wanted to share that well I don't know how to say this but I have ADHD and I have suffered from depression it likes to creep back up in my life a lot and I want your help to raise awareness and help tell stories about mental health within the game I want to tell my story," they said and they all gave me small smiles, not smiles of sympathy but smiles of proudness and inspiration.

they all clapped and hugged me having a large group hug. and this is only the start of the long way to sharing everyone's stories within the wonderful game of football and the dark side that comes with it.

*3 months later*

i was sitting in a studio on my own cameras recording ready to tell me story one story out of the many stories that were going to be said, i had reached out to many big names in the footballing community and they were happy and ready to tell their story and help.

"Hi, I am Y/N and this is my story," you said.

"hi I am Alexia Putellas and this is my story"

"hi I am Leah Williamson and this is my story"

"hi im Viviane Miedema and this is my story"

"hi im Alex morgan and this is my story"

"hi my name is Ellen White and this is my story"

"hello im mason mount and this is my story"

"I'm Ian Wright and this is my story"

"everyone in the entire world has a voice no matter who you are or how you are struggling never be afraid to reach out you are not alone you will never be alone reach out, help others, and get help for yourself. your story matters just like all of ours we are no different from you everyone struggles some different from others you all have your story and that story and how you overcame your dark times could save someone else," you said.

the camera turned off and the screen turned black.

A/N-this was my first fic so please feedback would be appreciated the good and the bad :)

#woso community #alexia putellas #alexia putellas x reader #woso imagine #barca femeni #mapi león #barca femini #leah williamson #jenni hermoso #woso fanfics #engwnt #espwnt #vivianne miedema #ingrid engen #women football #awfc

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