June 2012
Being on the Left doesn’t make a person better or more virtuous 12:02 am / 30 June 2012 by John Madziarczyk, at Lost Highway Times...Paths in Oblivion
It's just a political position like many. Taken me a long time to realize this. You can draw a parallel between this and the sex positive community: Wilhelm Reich, the famous psychiatrist and advocate of sexual freedom, believed that in a sexually liberated community everyone would be more virtuous, everyone would be more enlightened in how they treated each other, and all living would be harmonious. In point of fact, there are plenty of people who are very sexually liberated who, comparatively speaking, have very little to offer the world except their horniness and willingness to explore things.
When I got into the Left I did so from square one. Although I came from a liberal background, and my family was also pro-environment, there was nothing really left wing there in the normal sense of the term. I grew up on the fringes of the country in Michigan, and lived there until mid way through high school. For me, finding the Left was something that was done in stages through extended effort. First finding some magazines that were more progressive, then finding more and different magazines, looking up a liberal author, than a more liberal one, tracking down ideas. I date my real start in interest in the Left as early '97, and it took me until late spring of '98 to actually buy a book by Marx, the reason being that before then I would have just assumed that Marx was a crazy ideologue.
There were no people around me who were into this stuff. There wasn't anyone else who was interested in these ideas, that I knew about at least. The notion that a person could just go down to their local Barnes and Noble and buy a book that gave a popular introduction to all these things because a punk rock band recommended it, because it was trendy, and not really know what was going on never crossed my mind.
Since then, I've often been disappointed by folks on the Left. Not all the time, but significantly enough for it to stand out. The reason has nothing to do with the ideas themselves, but the fact that to get to these ideas these folks didn't have to do much, and so they treat them as something superficial to their lives. I don't.
Some people say that I'm over serious about these things, but, to me, that's what it's all about: people living and dying, being killed, being oppressed, having the scope of their lives cut short. It's not about fun, and it's not about trends.
When I got into the Left I did so from square one. Although I came from a liberal background, and my family was also pro-environment, there was nothing really left wing there in the normal sense of the term. I grew up on the fringes of the country in Michigan, and lived there until mid way through high school. For me, finding the Left was something that was done in stages through extended effort. First finding some magazines that were more progressive, then finding more and different magazines, looking up a liberal author, than a more liberal one, tracking down ideas. I date my real start in interest in the Left as early '97, and it took me until late spring of '98 to actually buy a book by Marx, the reason being that before then I would have just assumed that Marx was a crazy ideologue.
There were no people around me who were into this stuff. There wasn't anyone else who was interested in these ideas, that I knew about at least. The notion that a person could just go down to their local Barnes and Noble and buy a book that gave a popular introduction to all these things because a punk rock band recommended it, because it was trendy, and not really know what was going on never crossed my mind.
Since then, I've often been disappointed by folks on the Left. Not all the time, but significantly enough for it to stand out. The reason has nothing to do with the ideas themselves, but the fact that to get to these ideas these folks didn't have to do much, and so they treat them as something superficial to their lives. I don't.
Some people say that I'm over serious about these things, but, to me, that's what it's all about: people living and dying, being killed, being oppressed, having the scope of their lives cut short. It's not about fun, and it's not about trends.
Cthulhu didn’t save the world 4:52 pm / 29 June 2012 by Db0, at A Division by Zer0
Just finished the third installment of the Rain-slick Precipice of Darkness and it was good. Even though I’m not particularly impressed in the faux 16 bit graphics, the mechanics were solid and the game was enjoying to play. With that experience in mind, I tried playing Cthulhu saves the world, which comes from the same developers and I got disappointed. The game is missing all the improvements that made the RSPoD game enjoyable and just turned into an annoying grind. I tried playing in hard to have a challenge (because in RSPoD normal was too easy for me) and quickly found out that hard in this game doesn’t mean more challenging encounters, it merely means one needs to grind more to proceed. I just spent 1 hour sitting in one spot in the map and doing random encounters until I realized that the game is just not interesting enough to worth doing that. The battle is not even as interesting as RSPoD. Half the time I didn’t know why I lost, and that, combined with the fact that you can actually lose the game and thus from minutes up to hours of play as well (if you forgot to save and didn’t have “continues”.) Combine that with the fact that mana points carry over from one battle to the next and first town was so designed that I needed to travel one minute to refill my MP, and it was just an exercise in frustration.
Perhaps the game would be not so annoying had I not played in hard, but if your only difference between the modes is how much grind you need to do, then that’s bad design right there. I hope they reuse the engine of RSPoD to more games because the ones they had before just don’t grab me in the slightest. Not in gameplay, nor graphics not even story.
Meh.
Insightful? Funny? Informative? Convincing? Helpful?
Other similar posts you might also enjoy: How I spent my afternoon yesterday. | Starting adventuring again. | So I decided to play TES:Oblivion
The Health Care mandate stands! A great day for the U.S. and for the future of socialized programs 1:01 pm / 28 June 2012 by John Madziarczyk, at Lost Highway Times...Paths in Oblivion
I'm overjoyed at this. The court has provided a rationale for universal programs through seeing them as taxes as opposed to regulations on interstate commerce. We will hopefully regain membership in the "civilized world", so called, a club that includes countries like Pakistan and others from the former Third World, where health care is a right.
Spanish Miners Strike Back Against Austerity 11:58 am / 28 June 2012 by Adam Ford, at Infantile Disorder
Two sets of miners have now been occupying their workplace for a month Spanish miners are now a month into action against the Popular Party government, and behind them the international banking aristocracy, as they demonstrate against 60% cuts in subsidies, which are expected to result in the loss of 40,000 jobs. Spain is a social and political powder keg, with record 24% unemployment being
Die Iran-Krise − zwischen Bombe und Revolution 9:01 am / 27 June 2012 by libertäre gruppe karlsruhe
Vortrag und Diskussion mit Jonathan Weckerle
Mo, 2. Juli ‘12 19 Uhr
Planwirtschaft, Werderstraße 28, Karlsruhe
33 Jahre nach der Gründung der „Islamischen Republik“ steht der Iran
anhaltend im Fokus der internationalen Aufmerksamkeit.
Nach den gefälschten und unfreien Präsidentschaftswahlen ist im Sommer
2009 der Widerspruch zwischen islamistischer Diktatur und dem
Freiheitsbestreben der Mehrheit der Bevölkerung eskaliert. Nur durch
äußerste Repression konnte sich die Elite vorerst an der Macht halten.
Außenpolitisch verfolgt das Regime ungebrochen die Vernichtung Israels
und versucht, die Umbrüche des „Arabischen Frühlings“ für den Export der
„islamischen Revolution“ zu nutzen. Diplomatie und Sanktionen sind
bislang nicht in der Lage, die Islamische Republik auf ihrem Weg zum
Atomwaffenstaat zu stoppen – eine militärische Intervention wird immer
wahrscheinlicher.
An diesem Abend sollen die Iran-Krise und die Rolle Deutschlands
dargestellt und diskutiert werden.
Jonathan Weckerle ist Politikwissenschaftler (Berlin), Sprecher der
Kampagne STOP THE BOMB und Autor für Konkret, Jungle World, Tagesspiegel,
Iz3W und Phase 2
veranstaltet vom Infoladen Karlsruhe
Anti-Workfare Activists Blockade A4e Liverpool Communications 5:00 am / 26 June 2012 by Adam Ford, at Infantile Disorder
At the time of writing, anti-workfare activists on Merseyside and around the UK are mounting a communications blockade on A4e Liverpool. A4e (Action for Employment) are notorious private sector enablers of the government's plans to force the growing numbers of unemployed into unpaid work, on pain of losing their barely subsistence-level benefits. This is an attack on the entire working class,
Arizona immigration law ruling: an example of how opinion echo chambers sometimes miss the facts 3:56 pm / 25 June 2012 by John Madziarczyk, at Lost Highway Times...Paths in Oblivion
Because Rawstory.com is trumpeting the overturning of three of the four provisions of the law as a great success, and mocking Jan Brewer for saying she won. The problem? The one part of the law that stood is the "Papers, please" provision that Rawstory and many other opinion websites made the focus of their opposition. That is not mentioned in the story linked above. If you only read Rawstory, and didn't read the actual reporting on what happened, you would have an impression of the situation that is 180 degrees away from what's actually the case.
Blame it on the opinion blogosphere, and read some news for yourself instead of depending on it being processed for you by others.
Blame it on the opinion blogosphere, and read some news for yourself instead of depending on it being processed for you by others.
