simulation theory guys are so funny because like who cares. if im in a simulation then everything around me is still just as real as i am so who cares im going to go eat some simulated ice cream and then have a simulated nap who give a shit
The theory appeals to all the guys who think they’d be Neo
Civilization was not developed to produce food for people. It is specifically the organizational processes of limiting access to abundance as a means of social and ecological hegemonic dominance. Hope this helps :)
This serves fairly well as an example with the errors common in discussion of more modern technology, by showing them at their root, where they are the most clearly wrong. It is an idealist error, one which almost directly reverses cause and effect.
In reality, of course, the development of agriculture *did* facilitate social control - precisely *because* it produced food for people better than the previous mode of production did. The specific fact that agriculture produced food more reliably than hunter-gathering is why it afforded a measure of social control. If it did not, then it would not afford any social control, as it could simply be ignored - if there really *was* abundant food, then a new method of producing food would not be socially relevant. Social power does not spring out of thin air, it is not simply the result of Greedy People. It can only be brought about by material imbalance. New modes of production, new technologies, can create social power - but only insofar as they are materially useful enough to grant those who control them social power.
This is the key point that been a consistent issue with opponents of historical materialism - the material basis of specific social systems is in the fact that, despite resigning their oppressed classes to worse *relative* lives, they do improve their *objective* lives. The conflation of relative social standing with objective prosperity leads to absurd positions, like the idea that hunter-gatherer production was relaxed and abundant, or that subsistence farming was some cottagecore fantasy, or a hundred misunderstandings of what ‘progressive’ implies in a historical sense. It also leads to luddism; to attempts to fight against new technologies themselves due to their facilitation of deepening exploitation, while ignoring the ways they objectively improve standards of living. Fundamentally: any political program that *explicitly aims to reduce the objective standards of living of the people* is working against the people’s interests, and will not receive their support. This is as true of luddism as it is primitivism, accelerationism, or any other 'some of you may die, but that’s a risk that I am willing to take’ tendency.
Fundamentally, historical materialism is the analytical framework that corresponds to real-world practice - it is the only one that actually *works*. And historical materialism is clear - it is methods of production that principally lead to the development of social systems, not the reverse. I’d say it’s putting the cart before the horse, but maybe that’s too high-tech.
Don’t buy the Bourgeoisie narrative of Cain and Abel. What Cain did was revolutionary praxis against the Sheep-Owning class.
Honestly, did Cain know that hitting his brother that hard was gonna kill him? Like, in the story there are only four people and none of them have ever died so I feel like it would be a reasonable assumption on Cain’s part to think that a lil bonk couldn’t kill a human
There’s a good one-act play about this, “Husk” by Erin Proctor.
I’ve never had a reheading go this horribly before. I’d say I’m pretty good at beheading- I may have broken a neck once or twice, but never any parts I actually liked or intended on keeping, and usually a reheading is the easiest thing, right? Just a little squish and a pop and done, a complete person. But this time it just- it just won’t go back on the body?? Which is incredibly frustrating but also, like, why??
And the funniest thing is, I’m not even swapping a head!! This is a curvy dancer head going onto a curvy dancer body!! They match!! This should have been so simple!! But no, this head’s just flopping around like a limp flaccid idiot and my hands are all red and sore now but the head just isn’t attaching all the way!!
Today I did six beheadings and two other reheadings, and I wanted to get this one attached so I could take a picture, but somehow it just isn’t working!! The head is just getting squished around but isn’t stretching over the neck right!! And I’m way too lazy to go and boil the head just to make the slip easier!! And I don’t wanna keep forcing it cuz I might break something but this is!! So frustrating!!
Like, what could I possibly be doing wrong!! Fuck!!
I boiled the head and it popped right onto the neck in like two seconds.
I’m an idiot. Always do things the proper way from the get-go. Saves a lot of wasted time and struggle and ouchy hands.
BARBIES. I’M TALKING ABOUT BARBIES. I AM CUSTOMIZING TOYS RIGHT NOW I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER AND I HAVE NEVER BEHEADED AN ACTUAL REAL LIFE HUMAN BEING OR TRIED TO REATTACH A PERSON’S HEAD BY BOILING IT
there should be food courts for drinks. “drinks court”. your buddy can get a hot chocolate, you can get a nice glass of white wine. some kid can get a pepsi. girls can get bubble tea. drinks court.
#i like to think data took him all the way to the brig tossed him in and left#and then came back 60 seconds later and was like ‘i believe i have successfully played a ‘practical joke’ on you :)’#riker loses it & claps him on the back like ‘wow. good job u rly had me going. dont ever fucking do that again’
Perfect.
Actually it’s 73 seconds. Data, knowing something of how human minds work, estimates that Riker will give him 60 seconds to come back (because humans prefer “round numbers”, however arbitrary the units). After 60 seconds it will take 4 seconds for Riker to fully process the conclusion that Data is, in fact, not coming back after all, and an additional 9 seconds to build to the optimum level of anxiety.
“THE MACHINERY—THE ACTUAL FORM AND FUNCTION—of twenty-first-century capitalism is an extractive circuit which quite literally crisscrosses the world. Its global value chains stretch through physical infrastructure and “frictionless” financial flows at the speed allowed by fossil fuels; telecommunications; and geophysical, technological, psychosocial, and bodily limits and “optimizations.” It connects economically and ecologically dispossessed agricultural communities in the Global South with regimes of hyperwork in the Global North; rare earth “sacrifice zones” with refugees; migrant labor with social reproduction; ocean acidification and atmospheric carbon with profitable opportunity. It has required the transformation of states; it has ripped through biomes and through flesh. Capital often appears and is treated as a historical abstraction; this is doubly true of globalized, financialized capital. The extractive circuit is the leaden reality of a global human ecological niche organized for maximal profitability—no matter how difficult or costly to maintain. Its realities underscore the generalization of a colonial social relation in socioecological terms, even as older modes of imperialism and neocolonialism are hardly swept aside. Its speed, frenzy, coercion, and brutality reach into the very heart of the imperial metropole, far beyond where such relations were already present. Feelings of exhaustion—depression, desperation, fatigue, exasperation—course through its wirings, neurons, biochemicals, and sinews. At every “node” along such a circuit, “inputs”—ecological, political, social, individual—are extracted and “exhausted.” The circuit, like capital, crosses boundaries without entirely obliterating them, and, similarly, connects a vast potential political subject across disparate lines—Global North and South, gender, class, race, nationality, religion, and sexuality. The extractive circuit is the socioecological portrait of capitalism historically and its transformations to maintain profitability in the face of immanent headwinds, like the long economic downturn and ecological limits themselves. Just as Marx once invited us to look behind the factory door—above which was inscribed “No admittance except on business”—to understand the way in which a nascent industrial capitalism was creating value, we need to “unbox” the extractive circuit, catalog its parts, and pry past a few bezels if we want to see Actually Existing Capitalism today.”
Personal site of Nick Douglas, TV character Twitterer, co-creator of Jaywalk Cop, and 1/3 of the podcast Let's Get Into It.
