unspeakablehorror | Recent Entries

It's a lot better to argue against opposing positions by steelmanning them than by strawmanning them. This can enable you to not only more effectively argue against an opposing position, but to better understand your own position, as it will call to mind many nuances that are often overlooked for the sake of simplicity. It is however also easy to think an argument isn't being strawmanned if you're using a real argument.

But the truth of the matter is, most of us make bad arguments all the time. I don't think most of the arguments that I or anyone else make on an average day would stand up to scrutiny if properly and rigorously analyzed. I think the truth is that we (many times quite understandably) simply choose to devote our brainpower to other matters. Making a good argument is hard--making a good argument compelling doubly so. Making bad but compelling arguments can often be more effective than making good ones, which further undercuts the motivation for people to make good arguments.

My point is that even arguments people are legitimately making can be selected in a way so as to strawman that position, and in fact this is the easiest way to select arguments to refute. Don't mistake sincerity for quality.

One thing to understand about me is that I spent over half a decade on Tumblr. More I guess if you count the time I've just more passively been there while minimizing my participation.

I also read through the notes of popular posts to obtain the forbidden knowledge of the world. A steep price to pay, but no worthy endeavor is without sacrifice.

The thing about Palpatine's return in TROS is it was just badly executed. I'm a huge fan of Palpatine as a character, especially in the prequels. While I have many issues with the prequels, they did an excellent job on Palpatine's backstory.

But the sequels just did...so little with him. I chuckled a little when he chucked Kylo Ren down that pit. That's about it. But his return just comes out of left field. And was so tacky. It didn't have to be this way.

Palestinian freedom cannot rest on the oppression of others

Some now claim that Palestine’s cause is weakened by the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, that our struggle for liberation somehow relied on his iron grip over Syria. They speak of “axes of resistance” and geopolitical necessity. But they fundamentally misunderstand the nature of our struggle.

The Palestinian cause has never depended on dictators who oppress their own people. Our resistance has never needed those who murdered Palestinian refugees, who imprisoned our fighters, and who maintained decades of cold peace with our occupiers.

We know the al-Assad family – like other regional tyrants – used the Palestinian cause as a source of national and regional legitimacy while seeking to control and even suppress the Palestinian liberation drive.

The truth of the Yarmouk camp stands as a testament to this bitter reality. What was once the vibrant heart of Palestinian life in Syria – a place where refugees rebuilt some semblance of the homes stolen from them – became a death trap. When Syrians rose up demanding freedom in 2011, regime forces laid siege to the camp, bombing and starving Palestinian refugees alongside Syrians. Thousands were killed, detained, and disappeared into prisons. More than 100,000 Palestinians were forced to flee, becoming refugees twice over. This was the true face of al-Assad’s “support” for Palestine.

Now, as his prisons are opened, we learn more dark truths. More than 3,000 Palestinians had been forcibly disappeared into Syrian prisons since 2011; only 630 of them survived and were released over the past two weeks. Among the survivors is Sabri Daraghma from the West Bank village of al-Lubban al-Sharqiya, who used to be a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization. He disappeared in 1982 and spent the following 42 years imprisoned in Syria.

I often see the sentiment expressed that a person cannot afford to worry about others if they have their own problems. And I have to say, that in my experience the opposite is true: when I focused the most on myself, that worry spiralled larger and larger, interfering even with my ability to address those personal issues that were so important to me. And even small failures might loom large in my mind, making a mountain from a molehill.

But now that I do occupy myself much more with doing what I can in the face of the enormity of the problems our world faces, I have also been able to better address my own personal problems before they overrun me.

It turns out that that the more practice you have solving problems, the better you become at it. And that caring for others can also help you better care for yourself.

A number of rebel groups, foremost among them HTS, has seized control of Syria, bringing Assad's bloody regime to an end. Unfortunately, there is reason to believe that the US and Israel have no interest in relenting in their attacks against Syrians (including crushing sanctions, occupation, and bombings). After all, the US considers HTS a terrorist organization.

It's also been intentionally aiding HTS against Assad. [1]

But why aid a group they are hostile to and have no intention of working with? And why not take the credit in helping to depose a despot?

Because they are 'choosing their enemy', not helping a friend. Because it's a tactical calculation, not about helping the Syrian people.

Because what they have done in Syria is not all that dissimilar to what they did in Iran to bring the present regime into power [2]. And is the US today friends with Iran? No. They are very much not. In both cases the US has covertly aided an Islamic religious fundamentalist group (HTS is just a rebrand of the Al Qaeda affiliated Al Nusra Front). And in both cases this was motivated entirely by serving their own interests rather than the interests of the people in that region.

HTS has promised to end the policy of torture perpetuated by the Assad regime, but in the end this promise may be nothing more than smoke and mirrors [3] in a whitewashing covertly aided by the US and other external interests. And even if it's not, it may not matter to a bloodthirsty US intent on supporting Israel no matter what.

[1] What we know so far about the new offensive in Syria from Electronic Intifada

While I would typically avoid Electronic Intifada's videos if they discuss Syria, in this case the sources are relevant even if I take issue with the direction of their analysis of those sources. While I can understand their focus on the Palestinian struggle, I think this was also a case of an unfortunate resistance alliance with a despot who saw it in his best interests to try to placate multiple competing powers (not unlike Qatar, actually, which tries to placate both the US and Iran). Also to their credit they don't attempt to say that Assad is a good guy here. But considering how quickly and easily his government collapsed, it's easy to see his brutal regime has been artificially propped up for years and that he was overwhelmingly despised. His overthrow should have happened a long time ago. It's just unclear as of yet whether HTS will be any better for Syrians. Regardless, I think it's exceedingly unlikely they will be accepted by the US any more than Assad was.

[2] Two Weeks in January: America's secret engagement with Khomeini by Kambiz Fattahi from the BBC

[3] Former Hostage of Al Qaeda in Syria Rejects Jolani’s PBS Makeover: “They Are Lunatics with Guns” from BreakThrough News

This interview is from 2021. Theo Padnos was held hostage by the Al Nusra Front, the group that would eventually rebrand itself as HTS.

One often-overlooked thing that I think can help immensely in understanding the basis on which imperialism operates is understanding supply chains. How are things made? Where are they made and where do they go? How are they disposed of and why? Who makes them? And how much are they paid?

Vietnam defeated fascism. So can YOU!
This video discusses the rise and fall of the fascist puppet regime which occupied and brutalized the South of Vietnam from 1954 until 1975. We learn how Vietnamese communists resisted, protested, and struggled against fascism under desperate and dangerous conditions and ultimately overthrew fascism and imperialism once and for all.

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The term 'vegan' is an unfortunately overloaded word definitionally speaking, and so I think it's important to clarify what it means.

Because the word vegan is sometimes used to refer to humans, animals, and food, and different people mean different things when they say or hear this term. While some of the overloading is understandable, and I do use the term 'vegan food' (for me that's just a shorthand for 'plant-based foods'), I think it's useful to clarify this term.

Because veganism is a philosophy, not a diet or a personal preferance. As such, foods are not really vegan in the sense a human is vegan as foods cannot practice philosophy (and wouldn't be vegan if they could).

We also can't say other animals are vegan, herbivore or otherwise, because we cannot communicate with other animals and we must expect that other animals do not have any human sense of ethics. Some may have their own sense of ethics, but as we lack the ability to converse with them, we as humans cannot say what those ethics are. We can say what other animals do, but we simply do not know enough to say what if any actions are motivated by a sense of ethics. Also, being an herbivore does not make one vegan. Rabbits and deer and hippos aren't vegan, they're herbivores. Herbivory isn't a philosophy, it's a body type optimized for plant-based diets. And being an herbivore does not preclude an animal from harming or killing other animals, including unnecessarily.

Veganism isn't a diet or a set of personal choices, but an ethical position that, crucially, isn't tied to one specific diet or set of actions. Because veganism is about avoiding harm to other animals as much as is practicable. And what's practicable varies depending on who you're talking about, what society they're living in, and what resources are available to them. And so yes, that does mean that vegans want other people to also take this position--that is what ethics is fundamentally about. But no, being vegan doesn't entail a specific diet or set of actions because what actions are practicable are different for different people.

When I talk about veganism, I am either directly or indirectly (in the case of food) referencing the philosophy. Since it is practicable for me to eat a plant-based diet, I do so. But that's not what makes me vegan. Because veganism is a philosophy regarding ethics. It's also not exclusively about what I as an individual do, but what I can help others do, about what I can do to help make actions that reduce death and suffering easier for society as a whole.

One of the pillars of anti-veganism is doing free apologism for the animal ag industry. Obvs animals are treated awesome and exploitation and abuse is the exception to the rule of giving them daily massages and clearly the majority aren't killed at a fraction of their lifespan but are instead allowed to live out to old age despite the fact that it would cost farms exorbitant amounts of money and negate any possibility of profit. Ag-gag laws are totally for animal and worker safety. Ignore the fourteen-year- olds with knives. You didn't see that.

One thing I think can be helpful to realize is that negative emotions can be liars as much as positive emotions can. An example: so many people when they feel bad feel like the worst person ever. And yet there can only be one worst person ever out of billions. So most of them are wrong.

I wonder what it does to a person psychologically to be on a small cramped ship for not just days but months at a time and know you are months away from civilization, from a planet, even, barrelling through the cold and empty expanse of space. Because they've done psychological tests where they locked a few people in a small building in the arctic, they've studied the psychological effects of being on a space station or on the moon, but none of that is really the same as every planet being a distant speck, as Earth being nothing more than a pale blue dot and Mars a pale red one. And even if you choose not to look, you still know. Know you are surrounded by void with only the abstract hope (for such a venture could never be certain to be safe) that you will encounter anything beyond your cramped vessel or the impossibly distant motes of light of the void ever again.

I don't know, I just think there's a level of claustrophobia to that experience that we'll never be able to fully simulate.

So as I mentioned in my previous post, I deeply dislike YouTube commentators.

To be clear, my issue with YouTube commentators* isn't that they're ordinary** people expressing their opinions online. I'm an ordinary person expressing my opinion online, for better or worse. And I actually think it's good that it's not just a few people who have wealth or connections who can find a platform to opine on. Most people could use exposure to a wider variety of perspectives, in my opinion.

No, my issue with linking (and thus promoting) YouTube commentators is that I feel it's become part of the cursed celebrity culture that gives weight to certain opinions because of who those opinions come from rather than how well thought out they are or whether they have any basis in reality whatsoever. I take issue with people treating their parasocial relationships with these creators as if they grant those creators some greater legitimacy than the average person on the street who wouldn't know the first thing about how to be charismatic on YouTube or is just too principled to sell out to ghouls like Better Help. To make it worse, there's the rampant astroturfing. Because these people often present themselves as 'just some regular guy'*** they obscure the vast amount of workers who support and are at times exploited by them. Because the truth is that the vast majority of YouTubers with fairly polished videos are supported by considerable $$$ and an impressive production studio that most regular guys do not and will never have. And even when that is not the case (which it often is), they often present their deeply status quo or marginally left-of-far-right opinions as somehow revolutionary. And even when this is not the case, they are often unapologetic edgelords.

So even beyond YouTubers with reprehensible behavior and opinions, I think the culture of promoting YouTubers is a problem in and of itself. That said, I do think some of them say worthwhile things at times, so I'm thinking of sharing more of them occasionally, but I can't help but think of coming up with and adding some sort of copy-paste blurb to each one to express my distaste of the monster that late-stage capitalism has turned the 'YouTube commentator' into.

* that is, some individual expressing their political or philosophical opinions on YouTube. This does NOT describe news outlets or other orgs or people affiliated with said outlets or orgs. This is not to lend special legitimacy to news outlets or other orgs purely by their existence as a group--I can certainly have issues with them, too, of course, but that's a different dynamic.

**with sometimes extraordinary $$$, especially when they have a high tolerance for selling out.

***and many of them are men, though being an exploitive sellout is a choice that certainly cannot be excused by being from an oppressed gender, either.

The War in Ukraine: The Only Correct Opinion
by BadEmpanada

So, first, a short preamble. This is a video expressing staunch support of Ukraine from a leftist perspective. So while I very much agree with the opinion here, I hesitated to link this sort of video because I abhor uplifting random YouTube personalities, which is what this guy is. Few things grate more to me than the edgelord ethos of the average YouTube commentator, even when I agree with what they are saying. Nevertheless, he expresses his support of Ukraine very articulately (with sources!) from a principled anti-imperialist perspective. And though I would prefer to instead articulate my own reasoning, I admit that I lack the time, energy, and skill to do so even remotely as well as has been done here. So, with that out of the way, here's the edgelord summary of this video:

In this video I talk about the Russian invasion in Ukraine and how the only correct opinion is to be a full Z orc/Zelenskite-Banderite hybrid Support

Sources:

[1] https://ukraine.un.org...

[2] https://www.politico.e...

[3] https://www.bbc.com/ne...

[4] https://www.aljazeera....

[5] https://www.cnbc.com/2...

[6] https://www.theguardia...

[7] • Gaza Death Toll Denial...

[8] https://www.universite...

[9] https://www.newsweek.c...

If you wish to contest any of the specific facts he's cited, feel free to do so, but you'll have to cite your own sources if you want me to take your claim seriously.

Recently made granola and popcorn for quick snacks.

I like to buy a big bag of popcorn kernels and cook popcorn in a covered pot. I feel it reduces waste compared to buying single serving popcorn packages for the microwave and since the kernels are usually plain, makes it easier to choose how to flavor the popcorn. There are situations where convenience is the most important factor, but if the extra effort is reasonable I find it well worth doing. Though if convienience is the most important factor, pre-popped popcorn may be a better choice than microwave popcorn.

Granola takes more time and effort than popcorn but is still fairly straightforward to make from scratch and very rewarding to customize. I use a peanut butter and maple syrup base to stick the oats together, but there are many other ways to do that. And of course many choices for what nuts, seeds, dried fruits, and other additions to add.

I think self-directed planning is so important for accomplishing things. And by that I mean whatever it is you may want to accomplish, whether it is personal or political. So taking some time to think about how you approach planning is just in general a good idea.

Any good plan has to account for your own resources or lack thereof, your own particular strengths and weaknesses, your own particular situation. Other people can sometimes give helpful advice, but that advice must be filtered by you to assess its applicability to you. And a person who has good advice for you in one area may not have good advice in another. Explore broadly what others have to say, but make your plans your own by incorporating your own knowledge of yourself, which is an essential component of any plan.

Atole is so simple to make, and so delicious. Right now I'm using a recipe that is 1 cup masa harina, 3 cups soy milk, 2 cups water, 1/2 cup maple syrup, 1 tablespoon cinnamon and a cinnamon stick, and 1 tablespoon vanilla. This makes a thicker atole because I like mine to be more of a pudding consistency when it cools. The original recipe I got this from calls for only half a cup of masa harina, which keeps it more like a thick beverage consistency.

Blogging is basically an activity for spending alone time with others.

I think just as it's important to learn how to work (not just the specifics but the generalities like planning), it's important to learn how to best rest and relax. And I think the latter is treated as something people will naturally be able to do. But it simply isn't. Some indications that someone hasn't learned how to best rest and relax:

* boredom during free time

* treating free time like work and trying to complete as many free time 'tasks' as possible. This may be indicated by lack of enjoyment of recreational activities or feeling drained. What's constitutes overdoing it may differ from person to person, but at some point it's not recreation but self-imposed work.

Of course sometimes the issue is not a lack of knowledge about how to take it easy but some other extenuating factor like extreme stress or anxiety, but these issues can also compound each other if both are present.

I usually have a lot of thoughts and it would be great to write more of them down, but I just don't always have the words for them.

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unspeakablehorror

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Loftwings and Demons

And Sith and Porgs as Well...

Recent Entries

Why It's So Easy To Strawman

Reflections on Tumblr

TROS Gripes

Palestinian freedom cannot rest on the oppression of others

Helping Others Can Also Help You Better Help Yourself

Assad is Out. What Happens Now?

The (Supply) Chains of Imperialism

Vietnam defeated fascism. So can YOU!

What Does It Mean To Be Vegan?

Anti-Veganism Affirmations For Animal Exploitation and Child Labor

Negativity Not More Inherently Correct Than Positivity

The Claustrophobia of the Void

Why I Hate Youtubers

The War in Ukraine: The Only Correct Opinion

Snacks!

Self-Directed Planning

Atole: Delicious As a Beverage or a Pudding

Spending Alone Time Together

Knowing How To Have Fun

A Lack of Words