æʃliŋ, purrepurrocessor @aescling@cat.family

the latter part of that, phrased as a “crisis of freedom”, might accurately describe how hustle culture works, but how on EARTH can you SERIOUSLY CLAIM that the dialectic is ENTIRELY internal when people ABSOLUTELY still have to sell their fucking labour-power to make a living???

anyway remembering how the first chapter of Byung-Chol Han’s Psychopolitics makes the utterly preposterous claim that neoliberism has developed to a point where class conflict does not exist at all but instead has entirely shifted into a dialectic within the self, manifesting as depression and such

it literally brings up the Sokal affair lol

it’s frustrating because postmodern academia IS a thing (there is a “graphic novel” summary of Marxism that spends much of its last pages arguing that there are too many identities for class conflict between proletarians and bourgeoisie to be Real) but like… it’s literally even presented very readably lol…

the most sus stuff in this book is the author’s contempt for what they call “Anything But Class” academics; what he has to say about them feels really uncomfortably close to the incurious, especially given that they say the same shit about the supposed unreadability and dismissal of logic that people throw at like, Butler

can’t say that quite as confidently now given recent developments but

lmao literally the next paragraph after i stopped to post that: “While the Chinese government continues under a nominally communist leadership, the process of private capital penetration goes on more or less unhindered”

what i understand is that (until recently) China has had a considerably more peaceful relationship to capitalism after opening up to foreign investment and adopting markets internally (leading to the understandable analysis that its Communist party was/is a misnomer, which frankly i don’t think i know well enough to comment on), and given in 2020 that its trajectory is toward that of a global power, i do wonder if that complicates Parenti’s point a bit

then again the US wants war now so

reading Michael Parenti’s Blackshirts & Reds; it makes the pretty straightforward but evergreen point i’ve definitely seen elsewhere, that socialist countries always face non-peaceful relationships with global capitalism and the US in particular; i do note the book does not discuss the (at the time (1997), contemporary!) political strategies of China after Mao

https://twitter.com/FrYonni/status/1466220520794435586 lmao

reading books is slow going, i just keep thinkimh about completely unrelated shit instead

at least it will have Appealing Production Design

but like
why

why is Spielberg remaking West Side Story

any of ny’all ever just https://twitter.com/CatChangelog/status/1466048476505120771

https://twitter.com/CatWorkers/status/1466101468541378574

every now and then we remember there’s a short book that we remembered being good about how bill clinton absolutely fucking sucked and well. then we remember who wrote it lol

🎵 it’s less fun with NJR! 🎵

remember the ​ timing of Riot’s branding change to Element

annoying that element still doesn’t allow searching encrypted rooms on mobile

https://twitter.com/IgnaizeSSBU/status/1465670465339285504