lorblet reblogged
lorblet reblogged
lorblet reblogged
Yeah i have a dark past (being 13). Just an absolutely horrible backstory (being 13). It would keep you up at night if i told you about it (i was 13 one time)
lorblet reblogged
Sorry for being incapable of answering a question without like 900 "It dependssss" prefaces. Unfortunately too many things depend on too many things
lorblet reblogged
the sandwich price to minimum wage ratio is getting so fucked up
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Interviewer: What most troubles you about the Internet?
William T. Vollmann: Well, first of all, I think the notion that there are virtual communities of interest is a fruitful one in some ways, but it’s also very dangerous, because it means that you are even more removed from your immediate surroundings; your physical center becomes less important, you have less invested in it, and—it’s like your mobile phone—you’re less likely to become friends with your neighbors, and I think that is contributing to the decay and loneliness of American society. The second thing that I hate about the Internet and mobile phones as well—and one of the reasons that the paths to individuality we potentially have are being abused—is that suddenly everyone becomes infinitely interruptible. And I think that you can’t, really, get anywhere: you can’t think about who you are, and what you’re doing and where you should be going, if you can be interrupted every second. That’s why I don’t have email, I don’t have a mobile phone, I don’t have a fax; I don’t watch television for the same reason: I hate the interruptions, the commercials. On the Internet you get exposed to all kinds of ads and, in the meantime, people who mean you no good are tracking your movements, your buying patterns, your interests, and making it all the more likely that the interruptions in your life will be more and more seductive, therefore more and more effective, and keep you from being yourself.
[.... ] And of course we always do have a choice. We have the choice to say no, we don’t have the choice to say yes, sometimes. If you’re in a relationship with another person, let’s say, (and) both of you are decent people, if one says “no,” let’s say to having sex, or one says “no” to continuing the relationship, that’s it. No is stronger than yes. It takes two to say yes, but only one to say no. And I think that’s true really of any social contract: when you get to the point where you want to say no to the Internet and you’re not allowed to say no to it, that’s going to be really, really sinister and horrible, but fortunately we’re not quite there yet. My publishers are always saying, “What do you mean you don’t have email?” And they get upset, but what can they do?
lorblet reblogged
lorblet reblogged
speechless. the pose. the expression. this should be a painting.
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Similarly, it is more than coincidence that the 1980s and 1990s saw the rise of self-help culture and the turn of psychological and counselling professionals towards "positive psychology" and "positive thinking". Laid thick with the values of neoliberalism, the discourse of "positive mental health" no longer focuses primarily on bringing the "insane" back to some state of normality but rather on the self-improvement of the individual. It is no longer enough to be "sane" or "normal"; one has to be constantly striving to be more positive and happier in life. This is a therapeutic quest which perfectly aligns with the neoliberal philosophy of personal responsibility and the need to constantly improve the self. It is a hegemonic discourse, thinly veiled as a therapeutic and medical expertise on the mind which promotes the values and goals of neoliberal capital. As Ehrenreich has stated of the "positive thinking" revolution in late capitalism, it promotes a model of deficit focused entirely on the individual:
"If optimism is the key to material success, and if you can achieve an optimistic outlook through the discipline of positive thinking, then there is no excuse for failure. The flip side of positivity is thus a harsh insistence on personal responsibility: if your business fails or your job is eliminated, it must [be] because you didn't try hard enough, didn't believe firmly enough in the inevitability of your success. As the economy has brought more layoffs and financial turbulence to the middle class, the promoters of positive thinking have increasingly emphasized this negative judgment: to be disappointed, resentful, or downcast is to be a 'victim' and a 'whiner.'"
In the same way, psychiatric labels have come to focus on deficits and failings in character which threaten the productivity and consumption activities of the individual in many social and economic arenas of life. Thus, the psychiatric discourse seeks to both depoliticise the fundamental inequalities and structural failings of capitalism as individual coping problems while reinforcing the values of competition and self-improvement as common sense and taken for granted. Speaking similarly of psychotherapy, Parker states that the individual's "'adaptation' to capitalism requires psychotherapists not merely to ameliorate the worst excesses of the system, but to ensure that this adaptation is geared to inciting and channelling the critical reflexive energy of citizens so that the very critique that they make of the economy serves to fine-tune it . . . Thus psychotherapy becomes crucial to the state health apparatus as a practice devoted to the balance of dissatisfaction and yearning requisite for consumption and production."
Bruce M.Z. Cohen, Psychiatric Hegemony: A Marxist Theory of Mental Illness
lorblet reblogged
lorblet reblogged
omnidudes-deactivated20240202
I Kissed a Girl being knocked off #1 on the Hot 100 by Disturbia which was knocked off by Live Your Life which was knocked off by So What which was knocked off by Womanizer which was knocked off by Single Ladies which was knocked off by Just Dance which was knocked off by My Life Would Suck Without You which was knocked off by Right Round which was knocked off by Poker Face is an insane run of HITS. We really said the Global Recession needs the cuntiest soundtrack.
lorblet reblogged
concretestate
““To say that ‘socialism doesn’t work’ is to overlook the fact that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history. “State socialism transformed desperately poor countries into modernized societies in which everyone had enough food, clothing, and shelter; where elderly people had secure pensions; and where all children (and many adults) went to school and no one was denied medical attention. Some of us from poor families who carry around the hidden injuries of class are much impressed by these achievements and are unwilling to dismiss them as merely ‘economistic’.””
— Michael Parenti (via fuckyeahmarxismleninism)
lorblet reblogged
Cretaceous Characters - Quetzalcoatlus meets a sub-adult triceratops. Just a silly paleoart cartoon thing of mine.
u ever see someone with extremely fucked up views (or actions) and think wowww if a couple of things in my life went the tiniest bit differently that would have been me
I think most people would benefit from reflecting on how this might be true for them
Sometimes people bitch about media, both fiction and nonfiction, that they think "humanizes" bad people, especially bigots fascists Nazis et cetera. And I'm just like. Hey. Hey. The problem is. They ARE human. HUMANS did that. Your next door neighbor could do that. Your grandma could do that. You could do that.
"No I'm a good person" why? Because you've gotten lucky and not seen propaganda yet that perfectly hit your buttons? Because you had people to correct you when you fucked up? Idk man I don't think we're all so different from the bad people. We're all just people.
Reminding ourselves of our shared humanity with terrible people does NOT serve to justify their actions. It serves to remind us that the seeds of what happened to them could get into us as well, or might already have. It reminds us to be vigilant and interrogate the hatred inside us.
If you convince yourself that you're just an Inherently Good Person who would never believe hateful things well. Now any little hateful thing that makes its way inside you undetected is never going to be interrogated. It will be left to grow undisturbed.
If you remember that those things can get into anyone, you know to look out for them, and weed them out when they appear, and take the criticism when others point them out in you. So remember, that could have been you. If you forget, maybe it will be.
lorblet reblogged
Uncle, how to get to the beautiful country by Xiaoyu Wang