Mezentine
@mezentine.bsky.social
I feel like someone could really make mercury happen again. It attracts excess iron in the bloodstream or some shit, idk
My application wasn't for printing though so I don't know if the end product works for that, I just know you can carve into a silicone surface
I did something like this with silicone a few years ago, sharp linocut tools will *work* but the material is going to be much harder to work with than linocut linoleum. Its going to shift on you, but if you go slow and steady I think it works
Every time I learn something new about British TV I become distressed
in this week's newsletter i wrote about A.I. as a magic trick and entertainment product maxread.substack.com/p/the-point-...
I run into this a lot with sexualization in media but, as a straight guy, I am insulted. This is what you think I want? This is how little you think of me, that you think I'm excited for a fake sycophant girlfriend who pretends to be just smart enough to laugh at how much smarter I am then her?
I just actually watched a video of the GPT4o real time voice conversation in action. The degree to which they are clearly trying to build a manic pixie dream girlfriend and the way that it "Sounds like what we think a woman should sound like" gave me this immediate visceral negative reaction
I just actually watched a video of the GPT4o real time voice conversation in action. The degree to which they are clearly trying to build a manic pixie dream girlfriend and the way that it "Sounds like what we think a woman should sound like" gave me this immediate visceral negative reaction
Anyway I think The Wounded World: W. E. B. Du Bois and the First World War is very good
I find something almost magical in reading a good history book with 70 pages of citations and endnotes. The amount of sheer work that goes into synthesizing hundreds of sources into a coherent picture of some small throughline of history
I find something almost magical in reading a good history book with 70 pages of citations and endnotes. The amount of sheer work that goes into synthesizing hundreds of sources into a coherent picture of some small throughline of history
That's a lot of money but it gives you direct transparency into *how much the thing you want will cost you*, which I genuinely believe is why Magic doesn't really have many "I flushed my kid's college fund down the drain opening boosters stories"
On the other hand, I think the secondary market in Magic also keeps prices *down*, something that I think is really stark when you look at the rise of things like lootboxes and gacha games. You can't accidentally flush $1000 trying to pull one specific card, its for sale for $180
I'm really of two minds about this. On the one hand I think that the healthiest option for everyone, finances aside, is the LCG model where its relatively inexpensive for any one person to acquire any cards they need because there's no real rarity system or booster pack ecosystem outside of Draft
The fact that its almost entirely about Jewish terrorism aimed at Palestinians and it mentions Hamas once and Palestinian terrorism like twice is not something I ever thought I'd read in the NYT. Israel's domination of the narrative is cracking.
While I wish the piece broke from this frame more explicitly, I think it does do a pretty thorough job at articulating that, wherever these people came from, they're in charge now and the justice system is hopelessly, violently corrupt. It pulls less punches than a lot of other coverage I've read
I agree with all of this, but also public and transparent documentation of right wing extremism in Israel, even if it has to be couched in the frame of "How did this 'Democracy' get eroded?" is still really good, insomuch as perception of Very Serious People is starting to shift
Can we now start having some conversations explicitly about fascism and historical antecedents in Israel?
Its hard to imagine that this story exists with this framing and this treatment in a paper like the New York Times without the constant agitation people have been engaged in to raise the salience of Israeli extremism. Things are changing.
The Unpunished: How Extremists Took Over Israel
After 50 years of failure to stop violence and terrorism against Palestinians by Jewish ultranationalists, lawlessness has become the law.
www.nytimes.comIts hard to imagine that this story exists with this framing and this treatment in a paper like the New York Times without the constant agitation people have been engaged in to raise the salience of Israeli extremism. Things are changing.
The Unpunished: How Extremists Took Over Israel
After 50 years of failure to stop violence and terrorism against Palestinians by Jewish ultranationalists, lawlessness has become the law.
www.nytimes.comSitting back going "Well look at all the protests, surely people are so mad those in power have no choice to listen" is how the left keeps getting our asses kicked! Aren't you sick of losing? We need to credibly threaten them
I think what the student protestors are doing is incredibly brave and important, but I don't think it's going to swing the election, any more than it did in 68. I think it's important to understand what protests do and what they do not, because we need to do other things!
No I think the uncommitted campaign was actually really good, I voted that way. Same with the union actions. It would be great if people read what I'm actually saying. I am railing specifically against people who frame the individual decision around voting as meaningful and sufficient activism
They have to be very directly linked to actual electoral risk or nobody is going to care about a few thousand college students. America has a long proud history of successfully ignoring protest. You need POWER.
I cannot believe I am this deep into an argument where I am apparently irrational for arguing that people need to do more than just make voting decisions if they want to impact politics. Yeah democracy doesn't work. Sorry. What are you going to DO about it?
They invent their own narratives or get them from the fucking New York Times, they have to be confronted with direct evidence that people are withholding support around specific issues. They are not going to interpret a loss as a consequence of any one specific issue, not even Gaza, on their own.
It doesn't send any message! Not even implicit support. Its not *interpreted* in that manner by the people in charge. They build their narratives around why they are or aren't winning on a different plane, because they can't pull meaning from the data alone.
A lot of what I'm focused on is decarceration and prison abolition which, at the political level, tends to really focus on the state level. The CPD councils are so new I'm not sure who's specifically working in that sphere yet, but I'm asking around about that and City Council
Chicago Parks have a lot of advocacy councils depending on your local park. I have a relative who works for the parks department and they speak pretty positively about the impact of the councils www.chicagoparkdistrict.com/get-involved...
For the People is doing great work around libraries. Their big program organizing people to run for library boards doesn't really apply to Cook county but I still think they're worth following, they highlight a lot of ongoing stuff people can do around the country, Chicago included
General strikes require a TREMENDOUS amount of organization! To be clear, I think organized campaigns of strategic vote withholding can be super effective. This is part of why I think increasing unionization matters beyond just pure labor rights, unions are incredible agents for this
They can make or break legislation and happen several times a year. I know Restore Justice (www.restorejustice.org) has some upcoming advocacy trainings this summer, other orgs should also
At the vet so I'll post more Illinois/Cook specific stuff later, but in any state if you can find a 501(c3) on an issue you care about they are enthusiastically looking for volunteers for what are usually called Advocacy Days that involve actually travelling to the state capital and talking to reps
I am inherently suspicious of anything that claims to be activism but calls on you to engage in inaction. Even boycotts are ineffective without organization. Strikes certainly require it. But activism through inaction is very appealing to people who don't actually want to do anything
That is a fairly narrow category. It does not include your father. It does include a lot of people I interact with regularly. I admit that that's kind of petty of me but as someone who does actually try to get involved, show up, support the people trying to change thing I get REALLY annoyed at them
Okay let me narrow my focus: I am crapping very specifically on people who post constantly about how politicians don't listen to them and how they plan to withhold their vote to send a message who also appear to do nothing to get politicians to listen to them aside from post a lot
If someone can't vote for moral reasons I can't really argue with them, even if I think Trump will do significantly more harm than Biden. But I take specific disagreement with the framing of withholding a vote to send a message. I do not think it is effective at communicating what you care about
I see a lot of people who seem to view it as accelerationism, and I think that's super dangerous. That only works if the state is experiencing a legitimacy crisis or a breakdown in ability to deploy force. Does anyone really think the cops and the military in the US are losing repressive capacity?
I have zero problem with activists who refuse to vote for Biden or for anyone else. I know a lot of activists who only focus on the state level because that's where they know they can have meaningful impact. But I encounter a lot of people who don't vote and don't seem to do anything else either.
I deleted some posts because I wasn't really proud of how I conducted myself, and I agree with you pretty substantially. I can't really argue with, nor do I want to, anyone who can't support Biden for moral reasons. I just think people overstate the potential impact that action has, on its own
If someone can't vote for Biden because of their conscience, I can't really argue with them. I don't really want to. But the specific rationale of "I'm withholding my vote to send a message" really bugs me because I think its inaccurate and its self serving. It sounds like activism but isn't.
That's the bit that feels like moral absolution. Absent another step, or another layer, merely withholding a vote doesn't seem to actually accomplish anything. It can be powerful! But so many people don't seem interested in doing the work and the organizing to make it powerful
I think the "Undecided" thing in the primary campaign was also really good. But if we're talking about being strategic, simply withholding an individual vote is tactical, it has to be paired with some mechanism for contextualizing it or presenting it as an organized threat
If they lose support and lose elections, how will it be communicated to them why and who is responsible? That's the missing piece. As some others elsewhere in the comments have said, I think some big unions starting to get on the ceasefire train is moving the needle.
I don't know how I'm voting in November but I can't in good faith act like everything has gotten worse under Biden or that there is nothing meaningful we stand to lose based on the election results.
That's fine. What I'll say is this: Under Biden the NLRB has significantly empowered both existing and new union movements and as a result organized labor is in a better position with more power than it has had in 60+ years. As a leftist I can't not ALSO care about that.
I want to set aside the genocide in Gaza for a moment because its truly morally abhorrent and if Biden loses because of it it will be his own damn fault (but also I don't actually think that it will matter come November, I don't think enough Americans care and that's a bad thing)
I think this is broadly true, but where does that leave us? This is what I keep coming back to: the left doesn't have money, and its never going to have money. Are there other realistic paths to power and influence or aren't there?
No I'm in the same boat with the same reps. I've argued elsewhere that phone calls do matter, esp. at the state level, but at the fed level individual actions matter a lot less. What we're really missing are organizations that can credibly threaten "We're going to make you lose your next primary"
(I think the "Undecided" strategy in the primaries was actually really smart. It wasn't simple low turnout that could be explained for a dozen different reasons, it was a very specific signal of "participation with dissatisfaction" indicating a bunch of people who are reachable but are unhappy)
I've never been against vote abstention as a way to produce change *in principle* but I think its really ineffective as a method of communication on its own. We're missing a lot of infrastructure to organize and deliver the messaging of why its happening and why they should care