I Get Such A Kick Out Of The Prefix 'cis'

so i hear tumblr's dying and this moby dick meme idea has lived in my head for literal years...

#childrensrights

I think one of the most damaging ideologies towards children is the conviction that having children isn’t a calling but a moral obligation.

…psychiatry assumes that society does not cause distress in biologically normal people, who are considered biologically normal at least in part because they are economically productive. This assumption permits the conclusion that if a person is distressed to the point of unproductivity, it is because that person—not society—is abnormal. Thus, psychiatry’s commitment to biological essentialism not only masks the role of the constructed sociopolitical environment in creating distress but depoliticizes it by characterizing that allegedly irrational distress as induced by biological abnormality.

– Kiera Lyons, “The Neurodiversity Paradigm and Abolition of Psychiatric Incarceration” (2023)

What do you think happens first: the last human dies, or the last machine gives out?

meanwhile on Twitter

you could make the argument that it’s foolish that everyone in the world should know what the Odyssey is but if you’re from a western country that literally has Greek history stolen away in your museum then well, really a child left behind.

Wojtek was a Syrian brown bear adopted by the Polish II Corps during World War II. He was officially enlisted as a soldier to ensure he could travel with the unit and was given the rank of private. He became famous for helping carry artillery shells during the Battle of Monte Cassino. Wojtek was also known for drinking beer, eating cigarettes, and wrestling with soldiers.

After the war, he was taken to Scotland, where he lived at the Edinburgh Zoo until his passing in 1963.

Rome in its Republican period was undoubtedly the predominant military force of its time. Something about its religious and military practices, combined with its republican form of government, made the Romans do war unlike anyone else. For this post, the most important point I want to make is that Rome conquered most of its territory as a republic. In its imperial period, Roman territory did grow some, but ultimately the Empire was unstable and fractured into multiple autocratic states.

In 1789 the Estates General met in France. Called by the king and then elected by the people of France, this body rejected their monarchical mandate to address the state deficit and instead wrote a new constitution for France, establishing a democratic order on the European continent. The kingdoms around France reacted to this affront to monarchical power by bringing troops to French borders. Fired by nationalism and democratic enfranchisement, the new French state mustered an army exponentially larger than any of its neighbors. The wars that dominated the next twenty(ish) years of European history would see the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte and a large expansion of French territory.

During World War II the United States mobilized to an enormous degree to fight European fascist states and the empire of Japan. Huge numbers of young men were conscripted to fight, entire industries were devoted to military production, and all over the nation families rationed food in order to support the war effort. This just twenty years after women were granted the right to vote. At this point the United States was the oldest democratically elected national government in the world, invoking its national fervor for the cause of mass violence. In the half century after and then some, the United States dominated the world economically and militarily.

All this to say that for a very long time democracy and military power have been bound together. The most democratic nations have been the ones able to muster the largest armies, engage the most industrial production, demand the most sacrifice from their populations. On a geopolitical scale, democracy has meant power.

But here's the twist, and what terrifies me about the current moment: with the rise of machines and machine learning, and the consolidation of server ownership into the hands of just a few oligarchs, it's unclear whether that power dynamic still holds. Drones and other remote, even autonomous, technology have made both factories and battlefields less human. The human crowds that filled Roman or Parisian plazas can be atomized and identified by automated surveillance networks. Mao says that political power flows from the barrel of a gun. What happens when the guns aren't in human hands?

"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

What does does it mean to be a citizen of a nation built on genocide? America is made of conquerors and refugees, killers and survivors. Can the US absolve itself? I can't say we were ever great, don't know if I can say we were ever good. But I think the best we've ever been is when we've held a welcoming hand to the world's refugees. At this point it feels like the least we can do.

The US government, hollowed out, has all but collapsed. The east coast states down to Georgia have mostly held together and still recognize the authority of Washington DC. California, Oregon, and Washington have formed an independent coalition on the west coast. Texas' influence captures the whole coast of the Gulf of Mexico, now called the Gulf of Texas by several hundred million people. The Great Lakes states have merged with Canada. And the Great Plains in the middle of the continent are overrun by feral hogs, and war.

Some time around World War I, maybe earlier, and definitely by World War II, humans stopped being the scariest thing in the world. For thousands of years, the most terrifying thing to see coming towards you was a group of men, always with metal, often with horses. With the advent of the machine gun, chemical warfare, heavy artillery, airplanes, a mass of people no longer seems so frightening. The scariest thing now is a machine. Victims of modern war often never see the operators, only the plane, the barrel of the tank, the drone that just dropped a grenade on them. Sometimes death takes them totally unawares.

'Military' itself means something different now. No longer a reference to mass human violence, now it means networks of mechanical violence.