Not All Self-care Is Alike

I see a lot of memes about self-care these days. It's a valid concept, but I get the feeling that some of these messages are dangerously one-sided and open to harmful interpretations. Under a cultic influence, which isn't necessarily formally organized let alone recognized as such, a person may cut off someone he deems "negative" or "toxic" merely because they challenge a belief he's become emotionally attached to and dependent upon -- a kind of self-milieu control. This sort of "self-care" is actually self-limiting and potentially self-destructive.

Vivid Dreams

It's been a few years now since I first encountered a reference to "vivid dreams" as a medical symptom or side effect. This still seems weird to me. Since I first started having dreams that I remembered on waking (probably when I was seven) a certain percentage of them have been vivid. I never saw this as a problem, and find it hard to fathom that anyone would.

The New Library and the Old Baseball Diamond

Someone linked to this poem with a point in the chat during last night's celebration of the Forward Party's first birthday.

One day some folks in the town of Julyberry

Went to commission a neighborhood library.

Books in the town were too simple and few, 

And they’d run out of stories exciting and new.

They convened at Town Hall and presented their plan.  

The town council considered, and said, “Yes, we can!”

“There’s a perfect location–just give us some time and

We’ll put it on top of the old baseball diamond!”

The book-reading folks were content with this choice, 

But the athletes and sports fans cried out with one voice,

“You can’t put a library on our sports field!

We will not allow it, and we will not yield!”

They put their foot down and continued to shout, 

“We will form our own party and we’ll vote you out!”

They selected their leaders with singular aim, 

To protect their old ballfield and keep things the same.

The councilors whispered, their speech tinged with greed, 

“The athletes and sports fans don’t want you to read!

We need more campaign funds to keep them from power!

They oppose your library?  We’ll make it a tower!”

The book-lovers turned out their pockets with glee.

“We’ll show the sports-lovers!  Yes, we’ll make them see!

They resent us for all our creative pursuits.

They don’t care about baseball; they’re just being brutes!”

But meanwhile the sports-lovers turned out the vote–

They replaced half the council, and how they did gloat.

They stopped not just the library, but any measure

They thought might give book-lovers any small pleasure.  

The members of council were thus in deadlock–

Each group would draft measures the other would block.

Most had clauses that tweaked someone’s nose, as expected,

But those that did not, even so, were rejected.  

And Julyberry leaders kept serving the town

Writing spiteful proposals and shouting them down

And continued to meet all their fundraising goals

While the old pipes and roads became riddled with holes.  

Now you can’t drive through town and you can’t drink the water, 

And you won’t see repairs on the town meeting blotter.  

But the voters sing praise of each allied official, 

Their neighbors, now enemies, just sacrificial.  

And who is to blame for the town’s ceaseless fight?

If one says that they all are at fault, is that trite?

For next door to Town Hall, under overcast skies,

Lies an old vacant lot, roughly library-size.

https://ginnungagapfoundation.wordpress.com/2022/12/11/your-party-is-not-your-friend-or-the-new-library-and-the-old-baseball-diamond/

Stop Capitalist State/Corporate Censorship

 Former ACLU president Nadine Strossen discusses Big Tech censorship with Sam Husseini:

"Even private sector actors are directly bound by constitutional norms, including the First Amendment free speech guarantee ... if they are essentially conspiring with the government doing the government's bidding."

Even when Big Tech isn't actually colluding with government, the state is involved in two ways: 1) if the platform is owned by a corporation, it has the privilege of operating only because the government has issued it a charter, which could be revoked on the grounds that it isn't serving the public interest; and 2) even if it's not incorporated, it can only exercise this power of censorship because the state is enforcing its private ownership of the means of public communication. It's this ultimate backing by state violence that makes Capital itself tyrannical, even where government isn't directly involved. Democratic values can best be enforced by nationalizing these platforms so that the First Amendment applies to them automatically.

https://husseini.substack.com/p/interview-with-nadine-stroessen-on

https://fstube.net/w/c1ewtuyPyGwnaBerhjuB6r

A Case of Zionist Censorship

In a new segment of his podcast System Update, Glenn Greenwald talks with David Miller, a British professor who was fired for anti-Zionist views in an example of the "safetyism" (as Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff have dubbed it) that we more often associate with the Left.

When Miller mentions that no one has refuted the factual statements for which he's being criticized, I'm reminded of something I saw in the East Jerusalem hostel where I stayed while volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement in 2002. It was a booklet analyzing the curriculum of Palestinian Authority schools from a Zionist standpoint. Various statements about the region's history that were part of this curriculum were criticized as being "anti-peace," yet not once was any evidence adduced that they were untrue. The fact that they were inconvenient for Zionism was seen as sufficient grounds for condemning them.

https://fstube.net/w/tXe3wpSCabVuSBwonRLk7o

Happy Moon Day, Everyone!

There's no place humanity can't go if we get our act together.

Election Interference by Big Tech

In a video posted on YouTube today, Glenn Greenwald discusses the latest instance of capitalist interference with scientific and political freedom.

Some self-described radicals cite Herbert Marcuse's essay "Repressive Tolerance" as justification for their support of censorship that's supposedly on behalf of the oppressed. The irony is that at the end of that essay, Marcuse negates his own argument, or at least makes it appear practically irrelevant, by saying that this sort of censorship could never actually be implemented because it wouldn't be in the interest of those with the power to do so -- exactly the argument Greenwald makes here. So those who cite him as an influence, insisting the establishment censorship they support really helps the oppressed, ought to explain why he was right about everything else but wrong about the very last thing in the essay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdE_3VdGPFI