RandyLahey [he/him]

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Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: August 21st, 2020

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  • spoiler for disco elysium (the reading group bit) but i found this really profound :lt-dbyf-dubois:

    Rhetoric: The question you mean to ask is both very complicated and incredibly simple…

    Endurance: Take a deep breath. Best to go one piece at a time.

    You: If communism keeps failing every time we try it…

    Steban: (he waits patiently for you to finish)

    You: …And the rest of the world keep killing us for our beliefs…

    Steban: Yes?

    Volition: Say it.

    You: …What’s the point?

    Steban: (he considers your words for a minute)

    Composure: You’re witnessing his ironic armour melt before you. This is his true self you’re seeing now.

    Empathy: He’s thinking about someone…

    You: Wait, who is he thinking about?

    Empathy: Hard to say. Someone dear to him.

    Visual Calculus: Track his gaze. He’s looking out past the broken wall, toward the opposite side of the Bay…

    You: Toward the skyscrapers of La Delta.

    Visual Calculus: They rise like electric obelisks in the night.

    Steban: The theorists Puncher and Wattmann — not infra-materialists, but theorists nonetheless — say that communism is a secular version of Perikarnassian theology, that it replaces faith in the divine with faith in humanity’s future… I have to say, I’ve never entirely understood what they mean, but I think maybe the answer is in there, somewhere.

    You: Wait, you’re saying communism is some kind of religion?

    Steban: Only in this very specific sense. Communism doesn’t dangle any promises of eternal bliss or reward. The only promise it offers is that the future can be better than the past, if we’re willing to work and fight and die for it.

    You: But what if humanity keeps letting us down?

    Steban: Nobody said fulfilling the proletariat’s historic role would be easy. (he smiles a tight smile) It demands great faith with no promise of tangible reward. But that doesn’t mean we can simply give up.

    You: Even when they ignore us?

    Steban: Even then.

    Ulixes: Mazov says it’s the arrogance of capital that will be its ultimate undoing. It does not believe it can fail, which is why it must fail.

    Volition: So young. So unbearably young…

    Half Light: Why do you see the two of them with their backs against a bullet-pocked wall, all of a sudden?

    Inland Empire: Their faces, blurred yet frozen as though in ambrotype. You were never that young, were you?

    Steban: I guess you could say we believe it because it’s impossible. (he looks at the scattered matchboxes on the ground) It’s our way of saying we refuse to accept that the world has to remain… like this…



  • nah earthling ed is dope, hes very lib but hes earnest as hell and his heart is very much in the right place so i would doubt there would be substantive cuts that frame the debate in a different light

    hes also the most phenomenal debater ive ever seen in a way thats like the anti-v*ush, and i feel like hes a great example for leftists to look to for how to “debate” someone when your goal is to actually convince them to your point of view rather than EPICLY DESTROY them. knows his shit of course, but its mostly hes unbelievably patient and calm and understanding, doesnt die on pointless hills, doesnt try and make people feel stupid but rather just “oh yeah i hadnt considered that perspective”, and generally really tries to avoid things becoming combative and adversarial while still pushing hard. this girl is incredibly defensive and hostile and seems like a lost cause (i couldnt make it more than a few minutes in), but ive watched quite a few of his “debates” and half of them end with the other person halfway or more towards veganism


  • I hate to say it but similarities between broken, desolate cities in most zombie apocalypse movies just can’t be dismissed

    on a picture of a cityscape that would look completely normal in most of the world

    You are looking across into South Korea. This open space is the Joint Security Area which straddles the political border within the Demilitarized Zone. The physical border is where the light gravel turns dark denoted by the raised concrete line. Cross that line and you’ll be shot. The blue buildings are halfway in each Korea and by entering them, one can theoretically cross to the South. The large building ahead is the ‘Freedom House’, ironically housing a dozen surveillance cameras.

    whoops when you forget that the scary orwellian building youre talking about is actually on the south korean side



  • fuck me, my subconscious definitely picked up on some kind of extra racial weirdness when i was going through all this shit arguing with people on r*ddit, but yeah it didnt quite click until you mentioned it that this is exactly what it was

    and yeah im just realising as well that there was lots of talk about religious persecution etc, but very little talk about islam - rarely called “islamophobia”, and i have a strong feeling that if you looked at all the articles with this in mind youd find that as much as they focused on religious buildings that they really downplayed “mosques” in favour of other terms or generic “houses of worship” etc (this last bit might actually be legit though, it does seem from my very limited knowledge that their version of islam is a bit different in its religious buildings from “mainstream” islam)

    this shit probably should have been immediately obvious but there was so much other bullshit to wade through that i guess i didnt really notice