Random Thought of the Day

[Nyctophilia]

Went on twitter and there was a tweet from someone inquiring about how there were almost 2000 trans people in the town I live in and they were wondering why they don't know any. That was weird. Someone I follow had responded to it so their tweet ended up on my timeline.

Someone else requested to use some of my videos in their YouTube video recently and I went to look at their video when uploaded and someone had commented on the video who obviously knew them in real life mentioning they were x from y as well. It was kind of weird because the topic of the video was such a niche in the first place. I don't know if they still live here and perhaps never did and just met them while visiting.

Anyway, I'm trying to be a hermit here. (That's also why you've never met me.)

[Nyctophilia]

I finished watching Schitt's Creek. It's pretty entertaining. The casting is mostly great. I want to watch this film now because it looks like the horror version of The Room:



I wouldn't say it's a very deep story considering the themes and obviously it's a sitcom so that impacts things too. The town doesn't feel very real or lived in like in say Parks and Rec and it's usually suffering from 'everyone's lives are centred around the main character's' syndrome. Lol:



There's some attempt at class analysis but not really and it's definitely utopian. The second half of the show was mostly focussed on a couple of relationships, and a business venture involving some other characters.

There's a pretty prominent character on the show who it was hinted at was a lesbian but there were only two mentions of that on the show in the last season. One I didn't actually even notice but read about online, and the other in the last episode where it references that she had a relationship with someone. That's all off screen though.

So as I said it's not that 'deep' (I want to say it's not a comedy drama, but it is (I didn't really feel that in the tone.) So I'll say it's not Scrubs I guess,) so there aren't a lot of emotional scenes imo, but this one made me tear up a bit (spoilery I guess):



I've since started watching Abbott Elementary because that was another high rated comedy when I was looking for new shows to watch recently and everything Michael Schur has worked on lately has gotten cancelled. (Often he wasn't both directing and writing just one or the other and his best shows are when he does both like Parks and Rec, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and The Good Place. Also some stuff where he just worked as the executive producer.) Single Parents was decent but got cancelled after the 2nd season, same with Rutherford Falls which I thought had a lot of potential but sadly didn't entirely live up to it. It was cool to see Native American characters on a TV show.

He also worked as executive producer on Q-Force which I vaguely remember hearing about and thought that seemed cheesy and had potential to be terrible (seemed like they just chucked stuff together they thought sounded relevant on paper.)

So Abbot's Elementary is another mockumentary show and seems pretty good so far. Found this review video. This isn't related but at one point there's a clip from one of the actor's who plays a minor character talking about Runescape beats:

https://youtu.be/QPJ2DPRnDAg?t=223

I want a beat that sounds like 'Runescape mixed with Jodeci, mixed with Almond milk mixed with domestic violence. Make me a pro-lifer beat.'

That's the only time anyone has said that sentence ever. Lol Runescape beat. It's like when they sampled the Lavender Town theme lol.

I wanted to do something with Runescape musically unironically (well a little ironically. Obviously.) Not hiphop though trying something experimental. But I'm too unmotivated.

I really like the low/high pitch thing a lot of artists do these days in many genres and by these days I mean the last decade or so. I like stuff like this a lot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S40KVjsdCCM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMMK228n7nU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ_e4CZ4OYk

I can't post the music video because it's really graphically violent but I think it's much better quality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc02o3ouAqE

edit: lmfao I can't post the music video because it's graphically violent (again) this is way more subtle but still cool:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk1qjjU9jQc

But it's mostly because his vocals always sound a bit unhinged:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivZpxczQzvI

Brassica Prime the cabbage God in Runescape (as you do,) kind of has a voice like this just a hilarious character so wanted to do something with him.

This is great too because it combines classical music with chiptune and then it's also electronic and sort of industrial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiCEzJIDpwU

There is some Runescape rap though lol:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mgfuYp9ow0

^ this is very funny because this guy's flow is borderline professional and can sing pretty well too lol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QkawW3DXfQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgMM2E7mFuw

For me I actually play Runescape but this isn't just completely random for people lol. Runescape music is actually copyright free which is rare.

[Nyctophilia]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FlwN_Wea...jpg&name=small

Obviously this tweet is really dumb for the obvious reasons (very few Humans are lacking a fear response,) but I think what they're getting at is that they have a particularly strong threat response to men where they worry a lot about violence (an inherent part of their ideology depends on this,) which I don't really have (to the same degree.) I see no particular gender difference in fear response about that in my family either. And I can't help find listening to terfs do this irritating. I could probably work on that but they're always weaponising it so I'm not overly inclined to...

I have generalised and social anxiety so especially since that got worse a year or so ago (but it's always been a thing to some degree.) I tend to neurotically worry about just about anything but I don't have much of a fear of direct physical violence which they seem to have. My biggest fears are nuclear war and health related stuff. I also have a fear of gas/fire.

I don't think it's entirely innate either. I notice that my own fear response is environmentally influenced. Also my response time can be really [BEEP] lol. I remember one particularly strange time my mum made me jump by coming into my room, but my startle response was so delayed that I sat and stared at her for multiple seconds before it happened. Was so weird/funny. I think it made her jump because my behaviour was so weird. And I can be a bit mentally slow.

There's research that shows autistic toddlers experience less of a fear response to scary stimuli (and as we know autistic people are less likely to pick up on social expectations/rules/scripts etc):

Toddlers with autism show less fear when confronted with something scary than do typical children or those with developmental delay. This lack of fear may explain why toddlers with autism often run into traffic or deep bodies of water.

I don't have diagnosed autism but I have a lot of symptoms and just before my mum went into labour with my brother she said she was trying to stop me from running out into the road (and it's a very busy road,) my dad also said I was always trying to run into the sea at the beach. I don't remember this but he's brought it up a bunch of times because it was difficult going to the beach with me (my brother just lazily sat around eating sand lol.) Eventually I learnt to be a much more anxious and risk averse person. Not so much about the sea though. I was obsessed with mermaids for a while. I really wanted there to be a way to get a tail while I was in water.

The children also confronted a social fear: A stranger enters the room and stands too close. Again, the children with autism showed less fear than typical children and had little physiological reaction

Studies involving parent reports show that children with autism tend to have either a neutral or negative response to emotional situations. Based on these results, toddlers on the spectrum would be expected to show either little reaction to any of the stimuli, or more fear and less joy than controls.

?We really didn?t expect this. We know children with autism are more anxious and fearful later on in life, and we expected them to be more fearful in these probes,? says Suzanne Macari, co-director of the Yale Early Social Cognition Program, who presented part of the research

And this is particularly relevant here because this same group of people always talk about how neurodiverse and autistic afab trans people are while insisting they should live as non-conforming women, but then in an effort to exclude trans women they resort to essentialising the experiences of all women.

I'm cis and I don't feel afraid or vulnerable. What up lads I guess.

Her bio:

𝕲𝖔𝖙𝖍 🕷 𝖂𝖎𝖙𝖈𝖍 🦇

I'm really surprised that bat emoji is showing up lol. Most don't seem to. Never mind I edited the post and it's all gone. Oh I see now you can only keep the formatting if you edit in advanced mode interesting.

the best accessories include a sparkling dagger, a raven on your shoulder, the blood of your enemies

Their ideology is also racist to goths yeah (lol no but-) I mean it gives you a different lens for viewing the world because you're often seen as a monster/Satan Worshipper/horror movie villain and so on (*insert many news articles about the goths are being accused of x again/goth woman in China is told she can't board train without removing makeup which might distress people and so on.*) And part of that is because at a certain point - and I think you could probably credit Anne Rice in part for this - the focus of gothic fiction (which has impacted alternative subcultures a lot,) shifted to empathising more with monsters and subverting the stereotype. One take on early gothic fiction is that it was a reaction to changing cultural and economic norms:

The Gothic tradition originated in response to a period of rapid and far-reaching societal, cultural, and theological change in eighteenth-century Europe. Works written in this tradition are inherently linked to the social context in which they were created, and a great deal of critical commentary focuses on the representation of societal and cultural fear in the face of the dissolution of tradition, gender roles, oppression, and race in Gothic literature.

And this cultural process continued until you eventually get Twilight where the vampires are essentially fairies (elves/angels,) who sparkle in the sunlight and the whole thing is a bit Christian (Do Christians acknowledge this? No they think it's Satanic. I believe an episode of Parks and Rec kind of addressed that when the townsfolk are arguing about Twilight. 'So too Christian and not Christian enough? Do you see the irony here? No?') This had further reaching influence too which is why you see so many anti-villains now and redemption arcs in fiction. And The Sun writes articles about how 'snowflake' students feel increasing sympathy today for Frankenstein's monster.

'It's interesting when I teach the book now, students are very sentimental towards the being,' Professor Groom wrote.

'There's been a gradual shift... for years Victor Frankenstein's creation was known as the Monster, then critics seemed to identify him as a victim and called him the Creature. That fits more with students' sensibilities today.'

Fear and empathy are kind of opposites. 'I am Human and deserve to be loved' (For some reason Smiths song/album titles keep trending lately and everytime I click I think it's about some news story or something like 'The Queen is Dead' and 'Girlfriend in a Coma'

I remember distinctly reading a post from someone back when the gender critical subreddit was still around who was questioning this tendency in film to Humanise villains and also criticising the trans writer Billy Martin (pen name Poppy Z Brite.) Who has written a bunch of gothic horror novels with gay male characters. The poster there was writing about the 'types of trans men' based on their experience talking to people online and often posing as trans to get people to open up to them. Something that even the people on that subreddit were a little uncomfortable with. So they concluded there were three types and one was essentially 'psychopathic' people who she felt were socialised partly as male so ended up very antisocial and with violent tendencies and thoughts etc. She seemed to conclude that author was part of that category maybe crossed with the second (kind of fantastical schizotypal imaginative people with colourful presentation who like fairies/elves etc who are attention seeking.) The first category was just the stereotype they usually use with like a lost/traumatised GNC/butch lesbian. And they have no strange sexual quirks or atypical interests of course. 😏 (unlike their 2nd and 3rd group,) Because they are the chosen 'pure ones.' Who must be 'saved.'

In gothic fiction women are also often villains and predators. There's the lesbian vampire trope but also some degree of role reversal in general. You have like Lucy from Dracula. This tends to be academically viewed through the lens of a misogynistic projection on the part of male writers. It does however break the traditional norm of women as prey or victims.

Patrick Wolf is not a goth musician (in the sense of the music genre,) but does explore gothic themes in some of his music. There's this song about Lucy from Dracula There's a werewolf metaphor about gender identity, and I think because I discovered his music through a Sims 2 writer I followed as a teenager who was into a lot of goth and darkwave music (she was like in her 30s at the time,) and listened to him that contributed to my association here too.

She had a character based on him called Jacob (because he has a song called Jacob's ladder, this song was always too short because it had great vibes,) and before that she'd created a character called Tristan who was a vampire (two of her main characters were loosely based on The Cure and another was based on Spike from Buffy.) This was actually a really great series about vampires and stuff lol. Anyway Tristan was also based on the myth of Tristan and Isolde which he'd written a song about (she wasn't influenced by him here though, they'd independently created stuff inspired by the myth. He also has a bunch of lyrics mentioning mythology and mythological figures. Eg: Selene and Fenrir here)

The lyrics of Tristan kind of play with contrasting these dichotomies too like "I am the tragedy. And the heroine." "I am lost. And I am rescuing." "I am trouble. And I am troubled too." "I am the victim. And the murderer." "I am fucked. And I am fucking too." During this period he was questioning whether he was bisexual or gay so there are songs that talk about his relationships with women and they tend to break gender norms again. "You were my husband, my wife, my heroine." Yes I had a huge crush on him back then obviously. He has another song Vulture where he's playing both the submissive and dominant in the music video. His dominant persona kind of looks like Sephiroth or maybe Thranduil lol.

While this kind of works towards my overall point it's an incredibly unnecessarily detailed tangent. Thranduil is hot too though ftr. Do that to me. What did I say about this video. It's always relevant

But ThE GoTh SuBcULtUre is a MuSiC BaSeD SuBcUlTuRe yes I know that's why it's endured for 40 years long past all the other music subcultures never really disappearing the entire time, and has a global following and the original bands weren't ever inspired by- oh no. There;s nothing historically and culturally important/interesting going on here at all it's just goth and death rock are great. They are great but no.

So there's an obvious cultural tendency here 'girls watch out for those weirdos. We are the weirdos mister.' and then people end up embodying those themes/archetypes to some extent and it all impacts your identity in terms of that dichotomy. Then alternative cultures also often encourage transgression to varying degrees so long as you're not harming anyone.

More cultural relativity which isn't necessarily innate.

Defining womanhood by constant fear and anguish sounds like something you'd need a therapist for. Not the defining characteristic of your identity.

I completely agree.

[Otherside]

So someone asked an AI to turn countries into villians. Am in love with some of them.

[Nyctophilia]

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@<u><a href="https://anxietyspace.com/forums/member.php?u=729" target="_blank">Otherside</a></u>
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Love The Netherlands and South Africa.



----

So in response to Scotland's gender recognition reform the UK government are saying that this will be invalid outside Scotland while meanwhile acknowledging the gender certification of Icelandic people (among many other countries,) who have legal non-binary recognition too (something the recent changes in Scotland didn't include they decided to remove this due to the general conservatism on this matter in the UK.)

It's hard not to interpret this as an attempt at controlling Scotland to bring it in line with Westminster.

Also that government page has to be misleading though to some extent. There's no way if a non-binary Icelandic person comes over to this hellscape they're going to have legal recognition even though it implies that. I assume they'll refuse any cases but it probably hasn't come up due to non-binary people being a minority and then the number of people from Iceland who would want to move to an objectively worse country with less per capita good bands/musicians (hah) has to be slim.



Tr? m?n er a? allt fari ej vel



Lol. Uploaded it as an image but the background colour is slightly off and I could have changed that but cba now.

It's very necessary how Plumbella will just do this (the title of the video) Though I need a short or something too lazy to dig up reaction clips. Not that labour are better on this or many topics. So. It's all shit.

Oh I see they let Graham Linehan back on twitter (he already was he was just posting under an alt account lol,) so he can go back to insisting bisexual people aren't bisexual





among ...

other....





Lol.

I have no idea what letter this is. His particular whiteknight rhetorical style is really cringe and common here. I don't know how to put it. It's just particularly irritating.

The UK is so weird/broken these days. Anyway I looked and Bill Bailey's twitter account is still around so either he came back or I'm confused about that too.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FlpoMVoa...jpg&name=small

^ A very annoying contemptible man. He's also tweeting about how someone's dad was 'driven to alcoholism' because their child went on testosterone and 'they can see them disappearing before their eyes.' Please tell us more about how you want to control genetic female bodies.

Someone posted this screenshot below as an illustration of the 'terf to alt-right' pipeline but he's a bog standard transphobe who attacked Anita Sarkeesian saying 'why did I defend you years ago if you're just going to hand everything to another group of men' I wouldn't ideologically consider a terf. He's very entitled and reminds me of this blog post I read like the sexist repressed 'progressive' males. (Cause I'm sure he considers himself broadly left wing.) Another thing is it's actually better illustrating what research has found about conspiracy theories where the biggest predictor that someone will believe one is if they believe another. They tend to just adopt them all if they're susceptible.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fl9gbSYX...jpg&name=small

It's a great article/blog post (whatever it is,) actually called 'I see trad people.'

https://status451.com/2017/11/05/i-see-trad-people/

A big sign that we are onto something is that this stereotype has already found its millennial counterpart: that of the vocal male feminist who is discovered to have creeped on or sexually assaulted women, aka the Whedon Effect. It?s a trope that has appeared in the ultra-liberal scene of Hollywood, as well as with opponents of the loudly-claimed-to-be-misogynist GamerGate. Note that I?m not implying that conservative tendencies imply misogyny. Rather, I?m suggesting that a man who is predisposed to acting in a dominating or paternal role towards women but represses it, will likely turn into an abuser when their urges boil over, as their protective stance turns possessive.

(The UK is very repressed I think culturally so this tracks imo.)

glinner going after bi people is revealing. he lacks the (little) discipline the other transphobes have, he's already starting on the next letter. he's a glimpse of how they'd all act if they felt they could

He's doing 'the thing' a lot:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FlZWxjqX...jpg&name=large

You know the 'protect our symbol of Christian purity like the butch lesbians who are not like these creepy sexually ambiguous fujoshi etc types. ewww paraphiles with their non-standard sexual interests and neurodivergence.' (One variant of good LGBT+ victims vs bad.) They hate bisexuals and they hate trans people. And the less gender conforming in their transitioned to sex/straight the trans person the more they hate them too because someone always has to be the predator vs prey in the Christian moral system and the people who are just lost GNC homosexuals just 'need to be saved.' "Everything in its right place. There are two colors in my head"



I'm OK with reclaiming straight fetishist though. Just like fujoshi. And autoandrophile. Actually my biggest fetish is mind control which I know they hate due to it's relationship with other gendery/sexuality distorting interests, but they haven't come up with a slur for it yet so chop chop. I'm not a homosexual and have never identified as a homosexual. You have gravely underestimated some of us. If you believe it then it's true and we're coming for you (not Homosexuals. Glinner a straight man.)


I don't know why but this cracked me up (I think they mean re-tweeted) like why did he do it?:

He retreated my profile picture the other day at like 3am Dublin time and I still have no fucking idea why.

Matt Walsh decided to insist that trans women don't date other trans women and now some trans women are posting makeout videos in his replies. Matt might be a genius after all. I'm still mad he didn't actually watch the anime he promised to though by finding a loophole. So close to him being forced to watch Princess Jellyfish or something even more entertaining.

[Otherside]

I feel this should be obvious, but if you apply for a US visa and that requires you to tick a box saying you've never done drugs, you probably then shouldn't write in your memoirs, "I did drugs".

I wonder if we'll see yet more royal drama in the months to come of "I was told to leave the US because I practically admitted to lying on my visa application in my memoir."

[Otherside]

So, are we ever not going to have Meghan and Harry drama?

Like, the tabloids are brutal here. I totally get not wanting anything to do with them. Most people sympathise with that. Lord knows, I completely get deciding that you would be a lot saner if you were in a completely different country to the Daily Mail when you're being featured in it regularly.

But honestly, it's getting absurd. So I will put to you the situation in the UK right now.

Energy costs are sky high. We have people striking left, right and centre over the fact that they aren't being paid enough to cover the increase in cost of living. Inflation is at 10%, so food costs have shot up. But the biggest problem right now is that it is the middle of winter and the electric bill is now 3x what it was 2 years ago. Waitlists for medical procedures are at an all time high, for some things, you will be lucky to be seen within a year. Staff are leaving the NHS because they are not being paid enough. The nearest GP appointment is 2 months away in some areas, just so you can get on the waitlist. NHS Dentistry...lol. Good luck getting one.

Seriously, it's so tone deaf some of the stuff coming out of them, at times. "We are not getting our taxpayer funded security because we live abroad". "We had our funding cut off by the royal families so now we only have a few million from a trust fund to live off of", and yet again moaning about there lives from a multi-million mansion in California, during a brutal cost of living crisis. Things would have been different a few years back, probably would have had a lot more sympathy. Lord knows, people could have done with the royal gossip during the lockdowns.

Plot-twist: They're actually in on a government conspiracy to distract us all from failings here.

Also, telling us all in a book about your brothers genitals is just bloody weird. And did we really need an in depth description about how you lost your virginity?

[Nyctophilia]

*Trans women exist on lesbian subreddits.*

le twitter terf:

Sappho is rolling her ancient [BEEP] grave,

But is Sappho specifically rolling in her grave?

She seemed to have some association with Adonis. Considering he was a Western bishounen figure, and since this ticks all my interest/pattern matching boxes (and I'm insane,) I will go digging. I don't expect to find much though.

Cytherea, thy dainty Adonis is dying!
Ah, what shall we do?
O Nymphs, let it echo, the voice of your crying,
The greenwood through!

He is an annually-renewed, ever-youthful vegetation god, a life-death-rebirth deity whose nature is tied to the calendar. His cult belonged to women: the cult of dying Adonis was fully-developed in the circle of young girls around Sappho on Lesbos, about 600 BC, as a fragment of Sappho reveals.

Adonis was also said to have been loved by other gods such as Apollo, Heracles and Dionysus. He was described as androgynous for he acted like a man in his affections for Aphrodite but as a woman for Apollo. "Androgynous" here means that Adonis took on the passive feminine role in his love with Apollo.

I started reading this:

https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpress...&brand=ucpress

Sappho's Gaze: Fantasies of a Goddess and Young Man - Eva Stehle

In the fragments of Sappho's poetry and notices about its contents, references to four myths which belong to a common pattern can be detected. These are the stories oleos and Tithonos, Selene and Endymion, Aphrodite and Adonis, and Aphrodite and Phaon. The last is complicated by "biographical" descriptions of Sappho's own thwarted love for Phaon.

it keeps a space open for fantasies of sexual encounter not controlled by the location of the phallus. So long as the contradiction is unresolved, the phallus is a symbol of domination; the Freudian/Lacanian phallus that imposes definition on the relationship is an indeterminate presence in the envisioned union. [...] It can be staged in the imagination according to the script of male dominance, but also from the position of a woman's desire to "possess" the man, from a position of narcissism, voyeurism, or fetishism, of refusal of the Oedipus resolution, of a woman's refusal of compulsory heterosexuality.

The academia of it all. #soundslikeapaperaboutfujoshi tbh.

And then it gets more like that:

Sappho would have reinstated the operation of the male/female hierarchy by analogy had she used the gaze to objectify the one desired. Instead she constructs poetry in and through which the gaze opens the self to disintegration, shifting position, identification with the other, or mirroring of the viewer's desiring self.[91] Through her use of the gaze to dissolve hierarchy, Sappho creates the same kind of open space for imagining unscripted sexual relations that the mythic pattern of goddess with young man makes possible. By this means Sappho can represent an alternative for women to the cultural norms

Because basically it's a feminist 'gaze' analysis.

Something like this:

Drawing on Bourdieu?s concept of habitus and Deleuze?s idea of desire, this paper notes that expressions and alterations regarding sexual desire by Chinese female spectators are reflected in their imagined projections and consumption of BL media as part of their identity construction.

Or uh I can't find anything quickly and I cba to search but I've definitely read papers like this before. Alongside Freudian analysis like Mari Mori being a 'Japanese electra' it gets very theoretical and abstract.

I've just been kind of distracted by this Chinese subculture I'm just learning about now lol:

https://www.researchgate.net/publica...021_Case_Study

After the online series Word of Honor aired in 2021, ?nisu (泥塑)?, which refers to fans giving male characters traditional feminine traits in their second creations, became more frequent in Chinese fan culture. This ?idiosyncrasy?, once marginalized by mainstream fans, seems to be going mainstream.

Word of Honor is a web series adapted from a Chinese boys' love novel Tian Ya Ke

Second, nisu fans recreate pictures of the male celebrity to highlight his femininity. They usually use software such as Photoshop to soften the facial lines, lighten the skin tone, and add makeup and stickers to hint the femininity. Below shows that a fan added the princess's crown to Zhehan Zhang.

In addition, nisu fans also use AI face-changing software to feminize male celebrities more intuitively.

Hah yeah, same. Here's one I made earlier. Already genderfluid though so it's cannon. It was basically the first thing I tried to do with the tech years ago. Since 2015/2016~ I don't ever bother to create digital art unless I have the sudden urge to build a waifu apparently.

I think I've seen that photoshopped crown image before though actually lol. Just didn't know about the subculture name.

A growing number of female fans are calling male celebrities "laopo" on public platforms or places. "Laopo (老婆)" is a word commonly used by husbands to address their wives in spoken Chinese. It can not only reflect the identity of "wife" but also express the intimacy and love of men for women in a romantic relationship. Similarly, women often call their husbands or lovers "laogong (老公)". Therefore, calling a male celebrity "laopo" has always been a kind of "nisu (泥塑)" behavior.

Lol. 'Nisu behaviour.' I don't know that it's a great idea to label this 'transgender' in the paper lol. (And I mean they don't in the text of the paper but they've put it in the keywords so people stumble on it more easily.) Inb4 cancelled as chasers (can guarantee this is already happening.) You can't win because if cis straight men think they're the target they'll be pissed off and same with trans women and so on. Actually they do refer to 'gender identity disorder person' at one point so this might be translated awkwardly or something.

For example, the nisu fan fiction Xiazhui, which is the trigger of the 227 incident, sets its main character as a gender identity disorder person.

The 227 incident?

The Boycott against Xiao Zhan Incident, also known as the 227 Incident, is a 2020 online controversy that originated between the fans of Chinese actor Xiao Zhan and Archive of Our Own users in Mainland China.[1][2] The incident started when the internet censorship system known as the Great Firewall of China blocked the fan fiction publishing platform Archive of Our Own in the country, due to concerns about the actor's fanbase regarding vulgar and explicit content on the website.[3]

On February 24, links of the chapters 12 and 13 of the novel Falling (下坠) were posted by the author on the Chinese social networking site Weibo.[5] On February 26, 2020, some of Xiao Zhan's fans claimed that the work contains explicit pornographic content and the feminization of Xiao Zhan, as sketched by users "一只汐哥哥" and "一个执白".[6] Many fans took it as an insult to the actor, denouncing it on Weibo. Author "迪迪出逃记" and the graphic artists were the main targets of criticism. Users "来碗甜粥吗" and "巴南区小兔赞比", the "opinion leaders" among Xiao Zhan's fanbase, are recognized as the leaders of the reporting incident against the author and the graphic artists. In a Weibo post on February 26, user "巴南区小兔赞比" said that "actors and their fans" do not need to "accept vulgar underage prostitution literature based on artists" and "such behavior not only infringes on the artist's reputation, but also pollutes the online environment and brings down a large number of underaged fans who lack judgement".[7] On February 29, 2020, Archive of Our Own was officially blocked in mainland China.[8]

Yeah they do this sort of thing a lot. They imprisoned someone for writing + selling yaoi (well danmei?) for 10 years. I'm impressed people still try to find ways around this constant censorship. This sounds pretty insane (why were people even blaming him for porn other people made of him?):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycot..._Zhan_Incident

So I found this hilarious article about this on twitter after searching or podcast transcript? I don't get what it is (it's called Chaoyang Trap house which I guess is a reference to Chapo Trap House which is a political podcast,):

S01 Episode 2: Advanced Lesbianism / Luo Xiang Detective Club

My first question was: is this an advanced form of lesbianism?

To investigate, I asked my other friend and official lesbian correspondent R. She didn't recognize it as such, but said that it might be because it?s too advanced. I assured her that she was a very advanced lesbian. She said she wasn?t worried about her own advanced-ness, then informed me that lesbians have their own cultural icons and don't bother with male celebrities.

So, female heterosexual desire is still at the core of this. Under a nisu interpretation, the idol doesn't necessarily swap genders'male pronouns are still used' he just takes on a female character. But why? Where some Weibo users talk about 'the beauty of gender fluidity,' others put it more bluntly: 'There's nothing to like about masculinity.'

omg. This is hilarious. And they're never going to stop being confused.

Ting: When I first stumbled into the world of nisu, my first thought was: Judith Butler would have a field day with this.

Yan: I introduced nisu to my 'advanced?' bi friend. She replied, 'I just realized that my love for men had always been filled with a touch of nisu. My gratitude to whoever invented this concept. It's a moment of self discovery.'

Why do they do they keep saying 'advanced' I'm dying. 🤣 I fall down such ridiculous rabbit holes all the time.

There's also a lot of feminist post rationalisations in this (which is also common in research papers,) and attempts to desexualise it. perhaps sometimes it's true, but yeah. They sound like post rationalisations to make it sound better and more feminist 'I'm not sadistic it's just that society did this to me so' I dunno. I also don't enjoy when people try to turn my sexual/romantic interests into political ideology and force it into a political lens. 'This seems borderline problematic let's desexualise it to make it less so.' meh.

You could call it 'political advanced lesbianism' lmao.

Also in the paper there's this great part where they're basically shaming people for it being 'male gaze' and because 'such desires need to be realized through male power.' Then they also sort of blame them for being insecure about it lmfao:

However, nisu also has its limitation in terms of gender politics. First, nisu replicates male supremacy. As a way of empowering women under the pressure of patriarchal power, the nisu reflects a kind of reverse gaze of females towards males. However, the essence of this kind of gaze is the same as that of the male gaze, which is a reproduction of gender hegemonism.

Finally, slut-shame still exists. First, some of the interviewees involved in this study were too shy to express their desires and were reluctant to admit that they were nisu fans in interviews. However, the fact that they post erotic statements on their social media accounts confirms the existence of their desires. Second, although nisu provide a secret space for women to relieve their desires, such desires need to be realized through male power. Nisu fans legitimize their desires by emphasizing their male identity in a virtual relationship.

In conclusion, this paper took Word of Honor as a case study to explain the phenomenon and meanings of nisu culture in Chinese fandom from the perspective of the female gaze, and evaluated its positive impact and limitations on female empowerment and gender consciousness. However, nisu is a minority cultural circle and has been rejected by the mainstream fan culture for a long time due to its special erotic attributes. As a result, it is difficult for the researcher to get in touch with the core members and contributors in a short period of time and gain the full trust of all the respondents. Therefore, this study is more exposed to the part of nisu culture that has been or is being recognized and accepted by mainstream culture. The parts that are hard to be revealed still need to be explored further.

Anyway back to the West (tm)

Anchises' statement in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite that men who sleep with goddesses do not flourish and Hermes' fear that Kirke might unman Odysseus fit in here. In these cases the goddess's control of the phallus is taken literally; it is lost to the man.

However, what most forcibly strikes one about the fragments and notices is that the young man is portrayed at the point of impotence. Endymion is sleeping, Adonis dying.[97] By portraying the man's "strengthlessness," Sappho reinstates hierarchy: the young man is demoted to passivity, and the goddess prevails. The goddess can gaze at the young man with a possessive look. [..] But the goddess and youth cannot be a couple because he is succumbing or has succumbed to the fate that destroys him in the canonical narrative. Sappho invokes narrative closure as it enervates the mortal, assimilates him to a non-man, in order to preserve the male/female hierarchy.

"Even in the meme it's on fire" this video pops into my head all the time now lol. Perfectly normal. It feels like they're doing a lot with very little here actually but I get that. But this isn't specifically what I'm looking for....

Other examples of the story pattern exist?Kybele and Attis, for instance, Eos and Kleitos, Hylas and the nymphs, the story of Hermaphroditus found in Ovid.

Quotes from other stuff:

Two different accounts of the death of Attis were current. According to the one he was killed by a boar, like Adonis.

Hmm

They're actually very similar in a lot of ways both being vegetation gods, and then they die young and flowers are spawned from their blood.

Cybele herself may have begun as an entity known as Agdistis, a being of great power who was both male and female and bore the most beautiful man in the world, Attis. Agdistis, or Cybele, then fell in love with him

The Greek mythology (incest) of it all. (Also that makes sense Aphrodite is also kind of castrated Inanna from Mesopotamia. And Dumuzid eventually became Adonis.)

Agdistis is a hermaphrodite or androgynous being; having both the male and female sexual organs. This dual nature of Agdistis made them symbolic of the wild and uncontrollable nature. This is an aspect that was seen as so threatening to the other gods that they sought to destroy Agdistis. The one explanation found or given is that with Agdistis being a hermaphrodite, they held a huge sexual appetite and the gods were unable to handle it. They felt that this being could and should only be one gender or the other and for the gods, it was easier to remove the male sexual organs.

When the marriage song commenced, Agdistis appeared in full glory, and all the wedding guests were instantly driven mad, causing both Attis and the king of Pessinus to castrate themselves and the bride to cut off her breasts. Agdistis then repented her deed and obtained from Zeus the promise that the body of Attis would not decompose.

Well that sounds like a fun party... Anyway Cybele had a number of followers/priests:

Because the galli castrated themselves and wore women's clothing, accessories and makeup, some modern scholars have interpreted them as transgender.[23][24] Firmicus Maternus said "they say they are not men... they want to pass as women."

Despite this, non-citizens continued to join the galli through the traditional method of self-castration and led processions through the streets of Rome, right up until the end of religious tolerance after the state adopted Christianity as the official faith. The galli are even thought to have spread across the empire, getting as far as Catterick in the north of England.

So Cybele is Anatolian like Sappho and there were statues of Cybele found around there, but I'm not aware if her cult was around at the same time.

OK I'm just going round in circles.



Evidence inconclusive but I'm sceptical that the woman who helped invent the 'female gaze (tm)' would be particularly against lesbian trans women if alive today. It's difficult to track with the terrible/confusing way time works 'before Christ' in the first place, and history is patchy, so I don't know if she was around trans people.

Casually performing necromancy to try and own the terfs.

According to Ovid's Metamorphoses, Attis transformed himself into a pine tree.[5]

#Based tbh.

[Nyctophilia]

Generally speaking I think it's best not to make accounts for the sake of trolling people on twitter or satirising them out of contempt but I have to say I genuinely don't care with Glinner at this point. (I noticed him complaining about someone doing that.) He's already in the past made a fake dating profile on a lesbian dating website to pose as a trans woman and now spends his entire time creepily posting screenshots of trans women who don't pass or who look androgynous on his profile.

One person he posted was quite androgynous and had short hair and frankly I'm sure at some point he's just going to post someone afab (genetically female) without even realising it as many butch cis lesbians have androgynous features/body language that makes people read them as male. Assuming he even bothers checking bios most likely he'll see some non-binary lesbian who is actually afab (as there are absolutely people like this,) and he'll just post them. So not only is he a giant transphobe who [redacted] and is engaging in lookism it doesn't just apply to trans women in the first place. I see them [BEEP] up all the time online when trying to guess someone's birth sex.

edit: apparently he went so far as to get locked out of his account even though it was reinstated under Elon's new rules.

He posted something really idiotic about non-binary people:

THIS! No art, no film, no music. The only trace left by this movement will be the destroyed bodies and minds of their peers, of the kids they should have been looking out for.

It's a stereotype that non-binary/genderfluid people are especially creative lol. It's certainly not always true, but it is the stereotype. Jordan Peterson won't shut up about it everytime the topic is brought up (that and dyed hair.)

https://youtu.be/tnYr12hB5kU?t=441

Non-binary people lol (this first song is particularly appropriate for him):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vLFaV0-_GU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip6Suz5wHXs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uovntV3ZMDc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIWyzETibLE[

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtOn3UOcxqQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLdVZ9rR448

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84ZUhRYe28M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvvRNPOJPH0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLnVLo6uxqo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMCBrIOV1pk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiSZGR4ZByo

Genesis P-Orridge from Throbbing Gristle. (The only actually scary music. And as a band they invented industrial music lol. That's a huge legacy actually.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZAIrbonUcA

I'm not even finished. (I'm not posting Demi Lovato or Sam Smith specifically either because I've never really ended up listening to their music.)

[Otherside]

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CmPTk...d=MDJmNzVkMjY=

Aha ha

I can't be the only one who has been seduced by ?5 flight ticket to Portugal, endured the two and half hour journey, then sworn you will never fly with them again upon arrival back at Stanstead...only to realize that every other airline is a lot more expensive and so you're stuck once again booking Ryanair and travelling over to bloody Stanstead.

Though the funniest ones have been "I'm never flying Ryanair again, always flying Emirates first class for all the little extras you dont get on budget airlines".

[Nyctophilia]

It’s 2023 and Tommy Robinson is more leftwing than the leader of the Labour Party.

The world really is ending, because Tommy isn’t entirely wrong here.

It's not that he's more left wing it's that the further right you go the less likely people are to share the neo-con foreign policy worldview. That's why that part of the right spend most of their time ranting about 'globalists' (or Jewish people depending on specific subtype of ideology.) Some of the most nationalistic people you'll meet are from working class towns. They require this mentality in this group so they can make them die for their country. However you'll also find people with the exact opposite view especially with gen x and below.

Tommy Robinson is an older millennial so his life was greatly influenced by the transparency of how stupid the Iraq war was (most millennials have this opinion,) the war in Afghanistan, the idiocy of the Blair/Bush administrations in the US and UK, numerous terrorist attacks and the idiotic reactions to them. Because the system preys on working class boys/men. They're so transparent about it in British Army ad campaigns too. They tried to mix it up in recent years by including other groups they see as dispensable like gamers lol.



While you make pretty speeches
I'm being cut to shreds
You feed me to the lions
A delicate balance
And this just feels like spinning plates
I'm living in cloud cuckoo land
And this just feels like spinning plates
My body is floating down the muddy river

Talk Talk by A Perfect Circle feels somewhat similar in sentiment.

You're waiting
On miracles
We're bleeding out
Thoughts
And prayers
Adorable (Crisis)
Like cake in a crisis
We're bleeding out

Especially this song (and really lots of System of a Down's songs. Very political band):



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1OqtIqzScI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Tkm_sXA7EA

The cultural backlash and attempt to process all this stuff was enormous. When people point to subcultures for my generation they point to emo (they can't stop criticising non-binary people who they view as a youth subculture by comparing them to the 'millennial emos' newsflash for them. It's actually kind of funny because I barely knew any other alternative people when I was young but anyway.) The largest band people point to is probably My Chemical Romance the band literally formed because of 9/11. Like the singer was in NYC, saw it, and decided to form a band immediately.

And it didn't really start there with 9/11 it did for the Americans. In the 90s you had the British government vs the IRA. You know they were fighting in the capital on the day I was born. And then that also had a huge impact on the culture:



(I like the documentary Hypernormalisation for framing this since the 1970s. That wasn't exactly the central focus of the documentary though. Kind of a breakdown here)

So yeah he has some stupid opinions on a myriad of cultural issues but he's not part of the elite and he's a millennial so. Shouldn't be surprising lol.

Also this:

Very dangerous for the left to claim that Tommy Robinson in this video is left wing as a way to gotcha Labour. Fascism is syncretic, so yes it tries to appropriate where it can to redirect towards racialised targets, but there is nothing left wing about this video.

[Otherside]

It's not that he's more left wing it's that the further right you go the less likely people are to share the neo-con foreign policy worldview. That's why that part of the right spend most of their time ranting about 'globalists' (or Jewish people depending on specific subtype of ideology.) Some of the most nationalistic people you'll meet are from working class towns. They require this mentality in this group so they can make them die for their country. However you'll also find people with the exact opposite view especially with gen x and below.

Tommy Robinson is an older millennial so his life was greatly influenced by the transparency of how stupid the Iraq war was (most millennials have this opinion,) the war in Afghanistan, the idiocy of the Blair/Bush administrations in the US and UK, numerous terrorist attacks and the idiotic reactions to them. Because the system preys on working class boys/men. They're so transparent about it in British Army ad campaigns too. They tried to mix it up in recent years by including other groups they see as dispensable like gamers lol.



While you make pretty speeches
I'm being cut to shreds
You feed me to the lions
A delicate balance
And this just feels like spinning plates
I'm living in cloud cuckoo land
And this just feels like spinning plates
My body is floating down the muddy river

Talk Talk by A Perfect Circle feels somewhat similar in sentiment.

You're waiting
On miracles
We're bleeding out
Thoughts
And prayers
Adorable (Crisis)
Like cake in a crisis
We're bleeding out

Especially this song (and really lots of System of a Down's songs. Very political band):



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1OqtIqzScI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Tkm_sXA7EA

The cultural backlash and attempt to process all this stuff was enormous. When people point to subcultures for my generation they point to emo (they can't stop criticising non-binary people who they view as a youth subculture by comparing them to the 'millennial emos' newsflash for them. It's actually kind of funny because I barely knew any other alternative people when I was young but anyway.) The largest band people point to is probably My Chemical Romance the band literally formed because of 9/11. Like the singer was in NYC, saw it, and decided to form a band immediately.

And it didn't really start there with 9/11 it did for the Americans. In the 90s you had the British government vs the IRA. You know they were fighting in the capital on the day I was born. And then that also had a huge impact on the culture:



(I like the documentary Hypernormalisation for framing this since the 1970s. That wasn't exactly the central focus of the documentary though. Kind of a breakdown here)

So yeah he has some stupid opinions on a myriad of cultural issues but he's not part of the elite and he's a millennial so. Shouldn't be surprising lol.

Also this:

OMG I genuinely hate this attitude from some people on the Internet, the "So and so is more leftwing than Keir Starmer" or "Labour is Tory Lite or Red Labour". Like your preferred candidate was unelectable. Look at how things are in the polls for Labour right now, and how they were back in 2019.

Sure, Iraq was a shitshow that we should never have gone into, [BEEP] Blair for that but like...do these people not realize who Corbyn (and that part of the Labour party) are tied in with? The fact that they support "Stop The War", which seems to constantly be posting Russian apologism. A group that has told us all that in a conflict between Russia and Ukraine we should back Russia, denied the Yazidi genocide was happening and dismissed it as a NATO plot (now suspiciously back-tracked on that and deleted thay article), and that doesn't seem to get that one of the biggest warmongers in Syria right now is Assad, backed by the Russians who have taken to levelling the country.

Sorry, I hijacked that, but honestly, I don't get those people, it's 2023 now and exactly how can you look at the state of things right now and think that the worst thing possible is Keir Starmer as prime minister, so you endorse the far right? But then again, the far right and the far left seem to be very, very similar at times, so perhaps it isn't surprising.

[Nyctophilia]

@Otherside

I'd agree that Keir Starmer isn't really significantly left wing. And I'm not really a fan of him tbh, but I thought it was silly to say Tommy Robinson is left wing or to make that general comparison as he is definitely on the right ideologically speaking lol.

I don't necessarily agree with any group/person on everything and think some people are naively one sided in terms of "West bad. Everyone else good." Assuming other countries have no ambition/desire for power and everything can be framed this way. I also don't agree with the pro-Russia left (like Caleb Maupin and Peter Coffin,) on this.

Then, most media outlets, organisations, political groups etc lie about different things or become victim to misinformation/conspiracy theories and engage in smear campaigns, omit certain information for convenience towards a certain narrative, and certain individuals will have specific opinions that might differ from the stated group stance etc (eg: The Guardian platforms anti-trans rhetoric and voices, had removed part of an interview with Judith Butler discussing how anti-trans activists ally with the far right. They gave an explanation about this involving something about the question not meeting editorial standards that I felt was unsatisfactory in explaining why their entire answer was removed, but The Guardian is broadly supportive towards other minority groups, and also posts pro-trans or more neutral articles. There's also huge disagreement between the US vs UK branch with the US being more pro trans to the point where they wrote about that lol,) so you often just kind of have to go along with your values and hope for the best. The internet makes the whole matter of misinfo/propaganda so much worse and it's impossible to navigate really.

Personally I'm not a fan of Russia or NATO. I see them both as imperialist organisations that often involve smaller nations (such as Ukraine,) in their proxy war aggression. As with all imperialists there's always a focus on expansion, legacy, self image clouding judgment.

I think Stop the War are probably more critical of the West for the reasons mentioned below (essentially opposing nationalist/jingoistic sentiment is an important thing for them):

we can make a difference to what Britain does, we can make a difference to what our allies do to a certain extent and we have done. "But, if we have a protest outside the Russian embassy, it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference as to what Putin does because we are in Britain and we are in the West [and] a protest outside the Russian embassy would actually contribute to increasing the hysteria and the jingoism that is being whipped up at the moment against Russia... anyone who has a responsibility for peace or the future of the planet quite frankly needs to mobilise against that, and that means opposing the west."

Homepage seems pretty clear on their stance on the Ukraine war:

STOP THE WAR IN UKRAINE - RUSSIAN TROOPS OUT NO NATO EXPANSION - NO NUCLEAR WAR

I don't think this viewpoint from Corbyn is radical:

https://jacobin.com/2022/03/jeremy-c...peace-stop-war

We have to apply political pressure on Russia and support the public pressure that’s there in Russia to end this war and to withdraw the Russian forces. And we should go back to the original agreements relating to Ukraine that were made in the Budapest and the later Minsk agreement, which was designed to bring about a long-term ceasefire. All wars end with a political solution. All wars end with dialogue. Why don’t we cut out the fighting zone and go straight into the talking zone?

It’s very easy for a politician in any parliament in the West to get up and say, “Go to war, go to war, go to war.” It’s always easy to vote for somebody else’s children to go to war and die. When a war takes place, there’s always a desire by the opposing sides to make sure it’s only their line and their story that gets out. And so, it’s truth that’s the first casualty in the fog of war.

Often, those that dissent at a time of a perception of complete unity sometimes seem to be the prescient voices for the future. So being a bit unpopular once or twice is no bad thing. I’ve often asked this question about whether anybody wins a war or not. A war is fought, land is gained and land is lost. A war ends. The media caravan moves on to somewhere else. But as for the person that’s lost a son or a daughter in that war forever more — they’re going to be thinking on their birthdays what they could have done, what they would have achieved, where they would have been, what they’d be doing now. The hurt goes on and on through their lives.

Nobody actually ever wins a war. Even having a war is a defeat for all of us. And so the question is how to halt the wars as quickly as possible and move on to a process of peace, understanding, and recognition. The worst-case scenario in the current conflict in Ukraine is a complete occupation, huge loss of life, and then the outbreak of resistance of a civil war, which could go on for a very long time.

I would expect Corbyn to make suggestions that lean more towards neutrality in regards to the UK's actions just based on his history regarding this topic. He pretty much only endorses military response as a last resort. Also mostly focussed on de-escalation. To use a fictional comparison it's a lot like this (which people often view negatively as a weak stance):



Only there are no dragons only Humans and so that means you can hypothetically reason/use psychology.

But yeah if people go against that or use lies to argue their point/agenda, it wouldn't surprise me for the reasons I mentioned. Especially true now - political groups are heterogenous and more concerned with tribalist labels than the content of their beliefs and often very polarised on any particular issue. That's why right/left have become largely incoherent labels at least outside general economic policy.

I voted labour in 2019 and doubt I will do so in the next general election. Previously I had voted for the Green Party. I doubt there's a group I would agree with entirely tbh.

In cases of ongoing civil war one tactic that seems potentially useful in stopping war/violence is what happened in the Liberian civil war. However I think it is much easier to do this in a chaotic environment (or on a localised scale,) then in an imperialist regime. Within imperialist regimes women more likely conform to the rules of conduct which are hypermasculine so you get figures like Margaret Thatcher or Katie Hopkins, and the sex or gender identity of people is irrelevant when it comes to this. I say this because many people look at this and think 'yes we'll get women' but no that's not the important part/message:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_...tion_for_Peace

Two hundred women surrounded the room, dressed in white, dominating the conversation. Any time the negotiators tried to leave, the women threatened to take off all of their clothes. Enclosed in the room with the women, the men would try to jump out of the windows to escape their talk. But the women persisted, staging a sit in outside of the Presidential Palace. They blocked all the doors and windows and prevented anyone from leaving the peace talks without a resolution.

The women of Liberia became a political force against violence and against their government. Their actions brought about an agreement during the stalled peace talks. As a result, the women were able to achieve peace in Liberia after a 14-year civil war and later helped bring to power the country's first female head of state, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.[7] When President Ellen Sirleaf first came into office, she made women's rights one of her priorities. Her administration focused on the condition of women in Liberia and their needs.[8]

Perhaps this also touches on Adam Curtis' criticism of Stop the War and similar groups slogans here:

When you have an alternative you can see suddenly something, it puts it in perspective. You've got an alternative. You see things truly for what they are, and you can pull back, detach and go, "I don't like that - this is better," or you don't. At the moment there isn't, and I think one of the great faults lies with the left, who say they do want change.

I mean, the real change at the moment is coming from a strange, weird mixture of right-wing nationalism and racism, as far as I can see. Whereas the left are failing to offer any alternative. It feels more and more like rhetoric. I mean, I point out in the film how strange it is, that in the recent years, all the attempts to change the world radically which had a great deal of force behind them - the Occupy movement, the Arab Spring, and Tahir Square in particular in Egypt, Syriza in Europe all have stalled.

They had great power behind them, they had great good will behind them, and they stalled. And I argue in the film it's because they confused process with content. They assembled, they were very powerful, they had a great slogan behind them in the Occupy movement, great deal of emotional good from people who would not normally support revolutionary movements, and they just stopped!

Do you remember the march against the war in Iraq, in London in 2003? Probably the biggest protest march since the Suez thing in 1956, or even bigger. And everyone thought, "that's going to change everything," and they had a slogan which was "not in my name." I thought it was an interesting slogan of it's time. 3 million people marched and they were totally sincere about it "not in my name" and they then went home. You go back and the war is "not in my name."

Whereas real change, real political change, would have happened if those 3 million people had again, and again, and again, marched, and again, and worked and given themselves to that, they might well have had a chance of stopping the horror that has now happened in Iraq. Protest becomes feeling.

[Nyctophilia]

I find it a little difficult to listen to Linkin Park now (at least some of their music,) which is interesting because I don't have the same thoughts about Nirvana (though both lead singers committed suicide.) I do find Kurt Cobain to be quite a relatable (it's the anger mostly,) and interesting figure in many ways too, and was never really interested in Chester Bennington as an individual I just liked his/Linkin Park's music. Like he as an individual he wasn't an idol for me or someone I had a strong parasocial bond with.

So why has that impacted things? Maybe it's reflecting some bleakness that I don't get from Nirvana, Something about the culture post 2000 and something about my own emotions regarding the past/that period too. And I listened to both at the same time but Linkin Park was 'of my generation' as a 2000s band, and Nirvana weren't. Also obviously Kurt Cobain was already dead when I discovered Nirvana's music. There are some bands I can listen to nostalgically and others I've moved on from or have different emotional reactions to even if I liked them at the time. Some of their music was pretty good though.



I feel like the topic of sexual and physical violence deeply effected both of them (either for personal reasons, or witnessing stuff,) but their response/reaction to that was actually very different. Like Kurt Cobain wore his emotions/opinions on his sleeves more and was very aggressive about his dislike of this and hegemonic masculinity in general:

Bennington was a victim of sexual abuse from an older male friend when he was seven years old. He was afraid to ask for help because he did not want people to think he was gay or lying, and the abuse continued until he was 13 years old.

There's a lot of pain and vulnerability that comes through Linkin Park's music. Radiohead is also difficult to listen to for emotional reasons (even moreso really.)

[Otherside]

@Nyctophilia Yeah, he's slightly left of centre, I'd say. Which is electable, which is what is needed.

I think at this point, we can say "pressure to end war" or "pressure for peace deal", but the realty is, that this war isn't going to end. Its alarming to see "push for peace", in a way that generally is a suggestion that Ukraine should cede land to Russia (Crimea and the Donbas). The Ukrainians have decided they are not willing to do that. I always think, imagine that was here, and there was the suggestions that the UK was the one being invaded, and it was then suggested we should cede Cornwall and Kent, against the wishes of the Cornish and the Kentish.

I don't think Ukraine is a NATO proxy war. This is Russia being unable to cope with the fact that its empire ended. Since 1991 they've been doing this, and now here we are. I think there is a very good reason why Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova have issues, but NATO Estonia, Latvia and Lithuanaia have managed to avoid it. Its right to criticise NATO at times, but it does work well as a deterrent.

I think when it comes to NATO expansion - countries join it willingly. Its a military alliance, not an Empire. And there is a very good reason why Eastern Europeans has decide to join, that countries in Western Europe don't have to worry about (like the Swiss, Austrians and Irish who stay neutral). I think had Ukraine been granted NATO membership back in 2008, we wouldn't have a war in Europe, it would have been like Estonia.