Michael Smerconish you’re such a piece of shit.
The etymology map of the word ‘day ‘.
i saw the trailer for the new feel-good “anti-racist” US war movie about the carpet bombing of North Korea and started writing up something for this blog, partially inspired by the absolute shit storm i got for sharing that post i made with pictures of everyday life outside pyongyang
and then i gave up, because what’s the point? westerners can’t even handle a single picture of a north korean not looking miserable without screaming propaganda
meanwhile, there are no stories about the horrors of life in the ‘hermit kingdom’ that are deemed too outlandish to be believable. i can’t remember who said it, but it’s like the entire country has taken up permanent residence in the western imaginary as some silly little cartoon villain, where the leaders of the country does evil things for no discernible reason. they’re just silly and evil like that, and the citizens, of course, are silly, too. silly and brainwashed.
i watched a video recently of a tourists visiting an auto dealership in pyongyang, and the entire time he was just gawking at the employees and costumers, shoving his phone in their face, and confidently explaining to his youtube audience that everyone he’s interacting with are actually actors.
what level of dehumanization do you have to reach for that thought to even cross your mind? to think that the people you see before you are actors? that entire cities and shops are erected with to sole purpose that you, a western, will see them and be impressed?
what frustrates me the most is the casual cruelty that seeps into any mention of north korea, no matter how small. if north koreans are not being evil, they’re being silly.
a north korean newspaper reports that a group of archeologists in pyongyang have discovered an old rock carving with the words ‘unicorn lair’ (mistranslated), and the western press reports that north koreans now believe in unicorns.
a tourist at a hotel in hamhung is told by the receptionist to be careful at the beach: the waves can get high. that day the tourists goes to the beach, and there are no waves. she retells the story to her instagram followers, explaining that the poor woman at the hotel could never have seen real waves before because north koreans are probably never allowed to travel.
she adds a little teary-eyed emoji.
one of the cities i included in the post was sariwon, a densely populated city to the south of pyongyang. below are some pictures from its “folk customs street”, which was built to showcase old korean traditions and customs
here’s all wikipedia has to say about it
Built to display an ideal picture of ancient Korea, it includes buildings in the “historical style” and a collection of ancient Korean cannons. Although it is considered an inaccurate romanticized recreation of an ancient Korean street, it is frequently used as a destination for foreigners on official government tours. Many older style Korean buildings exist in the city.
it’s just north koreans being silly again. there’s no mention of what might motivate them to build a street like that
— why the preservation of old customs, culture and architecture might somehow be important for the city
could it perhaps have something to do with how the U.S. air force dropped
635,000 tons
of bombs, including
32,557 tons of napalm, over the korean peninsula during the war? the carpet bombings, which are now the topic of an upcoming hollywood movie about overcoming racism through warcrimes, destroyed an estimate of 85% of all buildings in north korea. some cities were entirely wiped off the map.
in sariwon they missed a few buildings, but not many — after an intense firebombing campaign the U.S. military estimated the destruction of sariwon to be at 95%.
none of this is mentioned on the wikipedia page for sariwon.
we destroyed entire cities. memory-holed the entire thing,
called it the forgotten war. and now, 70 years later, we’re convincing ourselves that the people living in the ruins are actors.
and somehow the north koreans are the brainwashed ones
The current state of the media landscape is starting to make me develop a visceral hatred for the mere concept of crossovers.
Like idk I feel since the Ready Player One movie came out we've increasingly freauently been getting a lot of massive crossover media that's nothing but Disney/Warner flexing how many different properties they own. Like Ralph Breaks the Internet and the new Space Jam and the new Chip and Dale and now that Multiversus Game and I'm just getting tired of it. They just throw property after property in your face going "look how much shit we own so we can put in the same piece of media, isn't that cool!!?!?!?" like they're trying to put a positive spin on the way they're gobbling up the entire entertainment market.
Also I just think it's absolutely horrifying that it's possible for a single company to own so much stuff that they can just like. Decide to put Finn the Human and Superman and Shaggy and Bugs Bunny and Arya Stark in the same game and do it just like that.
For the record I’m a copyright abolitionist so I think any of us should have the right to put Finn the Human and Superman and Shaggy and Bugs Bunny and Arya Stark in the same game if we want to. I just think it’s horrifying that Warner has the EXCLUSIVE right to do it because they own like half the entertainment market.
Mugen? Cool.
Multiversus? Fuck off.
On this day, 5 August 1981, after just two days on strike, 11,345 federal air traffic controllers were sacked by US president Ronald Reagan for refusing his order to return to work (content note: suicide).
The workers in the extremely stressful industry had gone on strike demanding a pay increase and a reduction in working hours from 40 per week over five days to 32 per week over four days. Despite the threat of firing, only 1,300 workers crossed picket lines and returned to work. And Reagan, himself a former union leader, then fired all of the remaining strikers.
The workers were then banned from federal service for life (lifted over a decade later), their union, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, was legally dissolved later in October, and military air traffic controllers were used as scab replacements until new hires could be trained. Some workers and their partners died by suicide. One striker’s wife was found hanged in her kitchen by a pile of unpaid bills.
The dispute was a landmark event in the relationship between workers and employers in the US, similar to the great miners’ strike in the UK in 1984-5 which was defeated by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government. In both countries, much of the ability of workers to organise and win improved pay and conditions was destroyed, in a legacy which remains to this day.
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if you think things are bad at least you dont have gandalf the grey and gandalf the white and monty python and the holy grail's black knight and benito mussolini and the blue meanie and cowboy curtis and jambi the genie robocop the terminator captain kirk and darth vader lo pan superman every single power ranger bill s preston and theodore logan spock the rock doc ock and hulk hogan on your ass
ALT
ALTURGENT UPDATE 08/04/2022
My friend is a homeless trans woman with cancer. Today she was attacked by a group of men who beat her up and stole her food stamps card, tent, and $80 cash. She is fleeing the city for the time being on her moped, but she has no shelter, no money for food, and no cash that she needed to repair her moped. Please please share and donate if you can! Even $5-$10 helps a lot, and if you live in the UK, small donations have a big impact bc of the GBP-USD exchange rate!
-VENM0 @ ruby_arnone
http://paypal.me/ruby11a
-$charlotterose86
8.2.22. Los Angeles
LA City Council voted to criminalize sitting in public on 20% of LA’s land in an effort to strengthen police power and funnel more unhoused and Black and brown people into jails. Council members used police to clear the chamber of protesters, and nearly all people in the chamber, in order to pass the measure without protest.
[Image 1 shows a line of police officers with their backs turned to the city council bench, facing an empty council chamber minus one person sitting in a bench, possibly a journalist.]
What’s worse is that LA spent nearly 2/3 of COVID response funds on police and fire. $0 went to housing or shelter. Police create homelessness in so many ways, here is yet another example of limited funds being spent on more police instead of actual recovery efforts.
Remember to vote bluh—
[sweats in Democrat]
I will say it's kinda hysterical that the Japanese response to Abe's assassination is shaping into "y'know, the gunman had a point"
The grandfather of Shinzo Abe, Nobusuke Kishi, forged sharp alliances with the group. Kishi was arrested as a war criminal in 1945, but later released and put on the CIA payroll. He and notorious political fixer and yakuza associate Yoshio Kodama created the Liberal Democratic Party which has ruled Japan almost uninterrupted since the 1950s. Kishi later became prime minister. He was instrumental in the formation of the church’s political arm, the International Federation for Victory Over Communism, in the 1960s. Kishi and Moon became so close that when Moon was jailed for tax evasion in the United States, Kishi wrote to President Ronald Reagan asking for him to be released early.
Well, isn’t that interesting.
When you just wanted to support people’s creativity and aspirations, but ended up as a vehicle for their healthcare and living expenses.
Dan Spoon finally decided to get political about it
“Are you doing all right?”
“I run a website that hosts popularity contests where if you lose, you die. Would you be doing all right?”
I got a message this morning from the power company threatening to cut off the power.
I checked the state’s “assistance” programs and it’s just a page that says “get a job, asshole.”