I personally think astrology is destructive to the people who take part in it. I see a lot of arguments along the lines of, “people have fun with it and it gives them comfort” etc. and if that’s all it was, that would be fine, but anyone who’s met someone really into astrology can see that it primes people to apply a totally illogical and incoherent framework to problems in their lives. The problem with that is that you’re never going to grow and learn as a person if you continually grab for this totally illogical tool in your emotional toolbelt every time one of life’s challenges arises. You’ll never reflect on the emotional genesis of a lot of your feelings or responses to the world if you just think, “I did that because I’m a Leo” or whatever. You’ll never get to, “I realize now that I responded to x situation negatively because y factor happens to be a trigger for me and I need to be conscious of that in the future” if you never get past “I responded to x situation negatively because mercury is in retrograde.” Overall I think it’s a toxic trend in our society that prevents people from being able to grow in a healthy way.
There are times where people walk away from a piece of media with a weird interpretation and are accused of “no media literacy” and it’s a bit harsh because the piece of media might be more subtle in its politics or message or whatever, but bioshock literally opens by delivering a libertarian screed and then IMMEDIATELY showing you the havoc and ruin that resulted. There’s not more than two dots to connect. It’s so on the nose. How could you walk away with a different interpretation?
Marx failed to consider pussy in bio.
I just listened to it. Save yourself. I’ve been so thoroughly owned with facts and knowledge - almost all of which did not care for my feelings - that there’s no coming back. It’s over for me.
I did not have a raging political discussion, however I did have my sister, who considers herself a leftist but probably doesn’t know who Marx was, attempt to express her extremely vibes-based politics in entertaining ways. She showed up to our dinner late and extremely high. A family friend of ours came for dinner who is from South America and is extremely cool, often regaling us with stories of El Salvador and Chile in the 60s. She’d fit in on the site. She brought up Allende and my sister rolled her eyes and said that he was just like “every other mediocre white man who is overconfident”. I asked her why she felt that way and she said she was “just kidding”. I later brought up the book the Jakarta Method and my sister said that “what is happening in Jakarta and the other places in Africa is terrible on both sides”. She then said she’s in favor of the rest of the world adopting the American dollar because it would be “more socialist”.
The subject of the CIA came up in the context of intervention in South America, and my sister related it to the CIA distributing crack in American inner cities in the 80s. This stood out to me simply because I was surprised she knew about it. She then talked about the healing power of psychedelic medicine for about forty five minutes.
Later on, we watched Its A Wonderful Life, which she said was “a good argument for why we need to replace capitalism with Bitcoin” during the scene when Uncle Billy loses the money. I didn’t even ask. I love her and I actually do think her heart is basically in the right place but she’s like a random number generator and seems to invent her completely incoherent world view as she goes along. I’ve thought about recommending at least some theory but I kind of think she’s happier and pretty much harmless in her mind castle.
The backlash to the backlash to the thing that’s just begun
Something as important as housing shouldn’t be in the hands of private citizens. This whole business of private citizens having “investment properties” that lets them control the most important element of people’s lives outside of their health is only going to lead to situations like these, or SA, or any number of coercive situations.
My older Cuban relatives were staying with us in NY the month of September 2001 from Havana. We actually took them to the World Trade Center a few days prior to the attacks. My principle memory of 9/11 was them laughing and celebrating and my dad getting mad at them.
Yes, it is true - if you look at the numbers as a whole, China does emit more carbon than America. But what constantly goes artfully elided in these statements is that their carbon emissions PER CAPITA is WAY lower than America’s. Of course they emit more carbon, like four times as many people live there. But what China doesn’t have are single individuals driving military grade gas guzzling SUVs two blocks to buy groceries twice a week. Also, most of their emissions come from industrial plants that produce all of the goods whose production WE OUTSOURCE TO THEM. The only reason their carbon emissions are so high is because western capitalists realized it’d be cheaper to move production there than keep them in the first world. Also, Bernie, who is making a massive investment in green energy? I’ll give you a hint, it’s only one of these countries. So it should be less about “America and China need to put aside their differences and work together”, a statement that tacitly implies that there’s something China isn’t doing that they need to start, and more about “America needs to catch the fuck up to China’s massive pivot toward green energy”.
“Now let’s burn down the observatory so that this never happens again!”