Tolkein’s idyllic structure for a society, the shire, is frequently analyzed through a lens of “is this anarchism?” and it’s not all that uncommon to conclude “yes”

all these fuckers read Tolkien and adopted the imagery of the villains. none of them realize that the message is that all the top level people are addicted to power. the people who actually get shit done, the hobbits, they are tempted by power because it’s tempting, but ultimately value singing songs, making tea, and eating potatoes too much to want to possess the ultimate power in the universe. almost everyone who comes into contact with the one ring wants to possess it forever. Bilbo’s first desire for it is to use it to help him escape a dangerous situation. Frodo is indifferent to it at first. Sam immediately hates it, feels guilt for letting Frodo carry it alone, and commits himself to destroying it.

You’re not supposed to read Tolkien and implement fascism. you’re supposed to read Tolkien and learn to value pacifism

Once you become dogmatic to orthodoxy, it becomes rigid and stale, fragile to breaking by either an outside force or an internal force manipulating the systems to create a new form of hierarchy. Massive respect to the Zapatistas for finding ways to avoid replicating past mistakes. I’m particular interested in the notion that their revolutionary society is structured as it is as a response to its responsibility to land management and community defense being a little different from what early theorists assumed were the material conditions for a communist utopia as the world has always had both urban population centers and open/rural land that supports the people living in close, and these people must be in coordination and help with each other. I hope other people take inspiration from them, but most of all, realize that the things the Zapatista do are responses to their needs, and that leftism will always be different based on their local needs.

Appalachian utopia will look different from Chiapas utopia will look different from German utopia. But all of us will have solidarity and help each other. We might even look at what each other do and say “hey that looks like that might help us address this problem.” Listening is so important!

it’s incredible how many people just need to hold onto the ball and run out the clock and they still can’t fucking do it. I guess on the bright side it shines a light on that no one should be a billionaire. But from their perspective the thing to do once hitting a billion is to sit on your fucking hands, avoid interacting with normal people so they can’t realize how fuckin’ weird you are, and await death

MLs. they brandish “read theory” against anarchists who have often read more, not less theory than they

i describe the issues with the January 6 insurrectionists and the peaceful transfer of power within the republican (government structure, not party) state in similar terms to the paradox of tolerance. it’s a paradox of pacifism, or more accurately, a paradox of anti-violence. in a society that values non-violence, violent threats to pacifism cannot be allowed to stand. the reason this is is that pacifism is a social contract, not a virtue. we can have a long conversation somewhere else about that ashlii babbit and her friends did get one thing right: that the american system of structural violence will only ever be ended with a violent uprising that opposes it.

the problem lies in what ashlii babbitt and her friends were using violence to establish. they wanted to end the tradition of the american non-violent transfer of power in order to give more authority to a central autocracy to strengthen the police state. this central autocracy and strengthened police state would later go on to kill Renee Nicole Good via the hands of jonathan ross.

i can empathize with being saddened at the loss of life of a deluded human being. however i cannot sympathize with being saddened at a man defending the non-violent transfer of power killing a woman who wanted to intensify the structural violence of the system she lived under. ashlii babbit was not the victim of police violence. he death was the result of a desperate effort to keep a violent status quo from getting more violent.

i don’t think the cop that shot her understood that the status quo is violence, but i think he understood that ashlii babbitt represented more violence than a non-violent society can be allowed to tolerate.

okay. there’s been research out about the disorienting nature of of grocery stores since the 1970s when piggly wiggly was first normalizing a certain sales area experience.

and yes. i am talking about the sales area. i wae never trying to claim otherwise. the context this entire time was the experience of being a customer inside a building whose only purpose is to extract value from you as you try to acquire basic living necessities.

and impulse buys in that context are a desired outcome of the overwhelming experience.

is your objection just my use of the word bombard? i can use a different word. overstimulate you. better?

like i can find more articles this was just literally the first thing i found and i hoped it would point you in the right direction and help you understand. but reading your comment here it almost feels like you’ve taken such great offense to how i’ve worded this that you can’t be bothered to engage with what i’ve been saying since the start

did you design the store layout?

https://uxdesign.cc/how-grocery-store-layouts-manipulate-your-shopping-behavior-aa3cd59e8fc0

Funny how “theory” means “a specific set of theoretic texts written between 1850 and 1940” and never “And also stuff written by other people in other parts of the world or even in the same parts of the world with more practical evidence of what did and didn’t work when attempting to put that specific set of theoretic texts written between 1850 and 1940”

Just existing in space. Trying to take herself from one location to another. The continued promotion of her existence as a protestor is actually harmful to trying to get people to understand the true nature of American policing and particularly ICE. If you exist in space in America, you can be killed.

That’s it.

That’s all it takes.

Centrism, Dumb, what’s the difference? As far as I can tell centrism is just the political position of saying “I don’t know what the difference between any of you are, and I refuse to learn and develop an opinion”

it’s the who does the telling who creates the hostile design. the other things you’re describing, the dehumanization of the employees, are part of that design

people lack spacial awareness in the grocery store because a supermarket is an example of hostile design. it is intentionally disorienting and overloads you with information

bigger threats to her community’s safety. she is willing to send aid to people who tolerate the insidious presence of bigotry if it means the people who loath bigotry are still alive tomorrow to fight bigotry

To piggy back onto what @ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net has said, it may be worthwhile for you (depending on your threat model) to also add the Molly repo to your f-droid client of choice and install Molly as your Signal client. It’s wholly compatible with signal with some additional security features. However, the more repo sources you add the more risk you’re at for a bad actor taking control of one of those repos. It’s not a question I can answer for you directly, it’s just what I’m doing.

(and I realize now after writing all this that @acockworkorange@mander.xyz already said this)

What I am about to say is effectively a power upvote, but this is in direct alignment with what my Ukrainian friend who fought in Ukraine’s civil was has to say about these things. She hates Azov’s integration but in this current moment still finds herself sending money to United24 because even though she once sat on a rooftop with a rifle, she feels that the best way to keep her sister alive is to support the national army that once tried to de-legitimize her resistance and integrated her enemies.

The way she’s put it is that her objection to the far right militia’s was that they were fundamentally bigots and she cannot abide racists. The russian army presents in her home a foreign occupying imperial military which in many ways is bigots, racists, and then more insidiousness on top of all that. I haven’t really talked about her here on lemmy for a long time because it gets exhausting being told she was a CIA asset

WELL FUCK ME!

“National Security” is the new lebensraum

oh is it? the style didn’t read AI to me… too poetic

guess maybe i’m cooked then…

edit: also my school sat on it all day. i didn’t know anything had happened until around 2pm when the principal told our teachers to talk to us however they felt was most appropriate before we went home. that would have been 7th period

I’ve stopped eating red meat entirely and only have white meat on rare occasions (working on cutting that out entirely). The thing about grass fed beef instead of feed lot beef hasn’t anything to do with the environment, and it never has. It has to do with the quality of life of the animals and how much they enjoy the days of their life as they navigate the world. I hadn’t really realized until this moment that anyone thought this was about the environment, though I reckon I shouldn’t be surprised. People tend to think any certification or more expensive process is better for the environment regardless of why the farmer is doing it.

So… I guess what I’m getting at is if you currently eat red meat, please cut back. Ideally cut it out entirely. That’s personally what I think is best. But if you keep eating red meat, please select lower cruelty options like grass fed beef because you are not the center of the universe and the animal lives that we take from granted matter, too.