left_adjoint

PallasRiot , 1 day ago to random

The Lord of the Rings trilogy is an anarcho-nihilist text, in which the righteousness of resistance is not measured by the success of that resistance but rather by how exhaustively those resisting do so. Frodo fails; he falls to the ring's influence and at the last moment of his journey he succumbs to the forces of authoritarianism. But he is none the less a hero, because he did all that he could: we know that he failed not because he balked, but because he had no more to give. Tolkien's ultimate answer is that in some cases only divine providence might carry the day, but the heroes of his story do not carry out resistance with the knowledge that divine providence will come or with the knowledge that there is certain hope for the future, they can only struggle even in the face of doom.

left_adjoint , 1 day ago to random

To be clear being an anarchist means you're always expecting the state to fuck you over but you can still be angry when it does

left_adjoint , 2 days ago to random

"you just hate him because he's rich"

yes wealth is a good proxy variable for iniquity thank you for noticing

PallasRiot , 3 days ago to random

TIL that JK Rowling thinks "Lolita" is a tragic romance

left_adjoint , 19 days ago to random

There's a weird thing where people attempt "gotcha" reasoning about cars and car culture where if you're talking about wanting to improve public transit, sidewalks, and the like they'll try and jump in with "but disabled people need cars! why don't you care about disability?"

and

okay

two things

literally no one who isn't trolling has said "we are going to ban cars forever and you'll never be allowed a personal motorized vehicle again even if you live out in the middle of nowhere in unincorporated Ass-Shit County in west texas"

and a lot of people point that out

but what I always want to say instead is "you know that there are a lot of disabilities that mean you can't drive, right?"

"you know that not everyone can buy a car, right?"

"you know that stores being close by on even well-maintained sidewalk is still really helpful for people who use mobility assistance, right?"

like it's the silliest objection and I see it every time someone dares to be like "wouldn't it be cool if we drove less?"

left_adjoint , 1 month ago to random

Look I'm just saying that if you're an american you should be rrreeal sympathetic to the idea that a population doesn't deserve to be warcrimed just because their government is full of monsters

left_adjoint , 1 month ago to random

A lot of peers have had a lot to say about the Cass report but I think I said basically everything I have to say about it back in February before it even dropped:

https://tilde.zone/@left_adjoint/111891281167513775

https://tilde.zone/@left_adjoint/111891565635005455

misapplied empiricism cannot answer the question "should someone be allowed to transition", even in the positive

think about how absurd it would be if we demanded that there needed to be studies before you were allowed to be gay, get married, pick a college major, &c.

that's the kind of naive thinking that leads to the worst kind of "rationalism"

left_adjoint , 2 months ago to random

While trying to wake up I was watching a critique of the company BetterHelp which, y'know, is absolutely great

fuck those guys

but I also wish more people would critique the growing narrative of "everyone needs therapy"

I've found that whenever you try to push back on that you'll get a lot of "well you need to find the right therapist" and if you push back on that you'll get more outsized "why don't you want people to be healthy??" reactions or be called anti-healing or the like

because the assumption is so ingrained in folks that therapy just is good

that it, inherently, will fix broken things in you

that when you try to say "no sometimes it does more harm than good and people get to make that judgment for themselves" what they hear is the psychic equivalent of "vaccines are a scam"

vampiress , 4 months ago to random

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vampiress , 5 months ago to random

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