one of the core premises of marxism–in fact, i’ll argue the core premise, if you had to boil it down to just one thing–is that advancements in the means of production will create both a proletarian class and the means by which it can liberate itself. marxism is not about ‘undoing’ capitalism, and if you believe your socialism or anarchism is about ‘returning’ to something, you’re not left-wing, you’re nakedly reactionary. the marxist view on new divisions of labour and extractive technologies should not be ‘how do we destroy or revert this’ but ‘how do we turn this advancement towards our common betterment and liberation’
How do we turn this advancement of fracking towards our common betterment and liberation. How do we turn this advancement of global surveillance towards our common betterment and liberation. How do we turn this advancement of strip-mining towards our common betterment and liberation. How do we turn this advancement of the gig economy towards our common betterment and liberation. We know that everything capitalism develops must have liberatory potential because Papa Marx said the telos goes through capitalism to communism.
“fracking” and “global surveillance” and “the gig economy” are not atomic indivisible concepts. obviously if taken as metaphysical wholenesses unto themselves they have no liberatory potential innit. but each of these concepts actually consists of a huge number of different technologies being combined with a certain set of social relations. “global surveillance” understood as a cohesive whole can obviously not be liberatory, but it should be obvious that when it comes to, for instance, moving past the capitalist market economy, the application of algorithmic analysis to enormous data sets is a technology with enormous potential for good. historical and dialectical materialism means identifying the features within the elements of present society that could transform themselves under different social circumstances, not taking everything as an absolute and imagining a value inversion of it
disco elysium fans: aw man i hate savescumming but i have to ensure that harry prematurely ejaculates on kim’s couch for the couchfucker thought (gives +10 xp on all reaction speed checks)
Some of you might remember a couple of years ago when Scarlett Johansson sued Disney because she was making significantly less money for Black Widow than was guaranteed in her contract because so many more people watched it on streaming than in theaters, how there was a massive misinformation campaign from Disney that a ton of people on this website (and Twitter and other social media) bought into: That she was a greedy bitch who didn’t respect people who needed to stay at home during the pandemic (I believe the word “ableist” was thrown around with aplomb) as opposed to someone who just wanted to be paid what she was owed. What was literally in her contract!!! And where everyone who took more than a couple minutes to actually look into and think about the situation could figure out that her issue wasn’t with streaming itself, but with how little streaming was allowed to get away with paying her and other actors. But of course, a lot of people just saw the chance to dunk on a rich woman, and didn’t think about it beyond readying some snarky tags and hit reblog. And in doing so, threw their support behind a much wealthier, greedier studio head who is already using similar language to describe the current strike.
Anyway we’re going to see a lot of that from studios now, especially now that actors have joined with the WGA and it’s easier to sell them as rich and greedy than writers, because of this cultural stereotype we have of all Hollywood actors as celebrities. Don’t fall for it. SAG-AFTRA represents people like Tom Cruise and ScarJo but it also represents the kind of people who played a Borg in two episodes of Star Trek: Voyager in 1997 or who had one line in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel as an enthusiastic audience member. Most actors are not crazy wealthy, and in fact, if you’re a big TV fan (especially older TV and genre TV) that likely includes some actor names that you know, who played supporting roles in your fav shows, or who were even a star in something but haven’t done anything major since. The AFTRA side also represents people like radio broadcasters. But even beside that, all workers deserve to be fairly compensated for the work they do, and the threat of replacing them with AI, or real actors being required to sign contracts to allow their likenesses to be used by AI forever without paying them, is an existential threat to acting as a profession in general. The actors are in the right. The writers are in the right. The studios are in the wrong. The studios have exploited new technology to get away with horrifying labor practices for years and their feet need to be put to the fire. Circulate the articles about how poorly the Orange is the New Black cast was compensated for making one of the defining shows of the early streaming boom, and of the studios saying they want to force writers to starve and lose their homes. Don’t get distracted by propaganda aping progressive-sounding language about “wealthy celebrities.” Focus on the real enemy, the truly greedy fat cats who care more about money than people and art: the studios.
So my girlfriend’s girlfriend, (an Australian) and I (Murican) were talking about showers, and a bit of culture shock ensued, so now I’m making this poll. If you vote, please reblog with your answer and where you’re from in the tags, I’m really curious if this is a culture thing, or if there’s something else going on.
I just saw perhaps the coolest art installation I have ever heard of.
This is a perfectly normal pin. On the head of it are 2.417 quintillion angels, give or take a few billion.
Joe Davis and Sarah Khan, the artist behind Baitul Ma’mur, (House of Angels) encoded the Arabic phrase “Subhan Allah” onto synthesized DNA, and then used that DNA to coat the head of a pin. According to some traditions, any time Subhan Allah is said or written, it creates an angel. With DNA being as dense an information storage medium as it is, this single pin has more created angels on it than have ever been born from human throats across all of human history.
And then in a fucking genius move, the art installation takes the form of a functional vending machine, loaded with an impossibly large quantity of angels. For $25, which goes right to the artists, you can buy a pin. I’m thinking about taking mine out of the test tube sometime and encasing it in resin to turn it into the highest % angel by volume earring ever worn, but that’s a project for the future.
There isn’t much else I can say that isn’t said by the documentation accompanying the exhibit. The photos aren’t the BEST quality but they should hopefully be mostly legible.
As of right now this installation is located at the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and if you’re ever in the area you should totally check it out
