Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

@Phorm @anthracite How cat be flat when cat am so fat?

@Thaminga This is all actually pretty comforting, and I really did kinda need someone to commiserate with who understands. yanno? *hug* But I mean, I turn 45 in a few weeks. It's hard not to feel like I've missed my chance for a lot of those better things. And that's also OK, because I can still focus on trying to make sure OTHER people get them, and I did have my fun... it was just over so fast, you know?

@JulieSqveakaroo (Oh and in case there's the faintest doubt: "weird" is ALWAYS a compliment from me of course. n.n )

@JulieSqveakaroo Oh goodness yes, I dunno what I'd do without any of you folks. But what I had in Seattle was INTIMATE. It was like losing a sister. You're more like a weird bouncy cousin that I'm always delighted to see. <3 <3 <3 Those Two were more like flesh and blood. They were part of my daily life for like eight years. That sorta thing cuts deep. But it doesn't mean I treasure having y'all around any less. ​❤️​

And I didn't get the Best Friend Squad, and I never even got a proper goodbye or chance to say I'm sorry. But I did get three cats, a lizard, a good job, all of you, and very pretty town that only sporadically tries to kill me. And that's OK. I'm going to be OK. Even if I get washed right into the sea tomorrow, it's OK.

Unless I completely fail... and boy do I think I will... Parallax is gonna be something very, very different. Nobody's gonna get their true love. The world won't stop doing what the world does. Flowers won't grow where there's supposed to be stone, plagues won't be cured by crying, and the power of friendship will be about as enduring as it is in the real world, i.e., like a hunk of prettily painted plaster.

And... I say this through tears... it's going to be OK. Everyone's still gonna be OK. The world's gonna be OK. It'll be a happy ending, if you can deal with the fact good things end for good and the bad stuff never actually goes away. But it's gonna be OK.

Yeah. I love these crazy kids and I'm very grateful to Noelle for the huge blow she just struck for queer love and hope. And a contented purr from Catra is worth five quadrillion in small unmarked bills. But I also feel like I just drank a gallon of pink sugar water that was labeled as a health potion.

I sure don't feel any different.

I finished the show.

I loved it but I feel like I've been lied to yet again.

We were the Best Friend Squad too. We used to tell each other we loved each other and our friendship was the most important thing and it would save us all.

It doesn't happen. We don't say it anymore. Not even the ones who will still talk to me. Nobody but Peggy, really. (OK. give or take a couple, especially that weird frost lizard. <3 )

But still. It doesn't work. Things decay in the real world and that's OK. Why can't we have a show that'll tell us that's OK?

@Soreth It's still a lot of fun! Just... don't expect in-depth film analysis or anything remotely approaching it. They're still fairly witty... they're just kinda clueless.

The unique agony of finding a podcast starring several of your favorite actors only to realize several episodes in that they're all ROCK STUPID.

How Did This Get Made, incidentally. It's a bad cinema podcast, and I'm actually enjoying it, snark aside. It's Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael and Jason Mantzoukas -- who are all funny as hell on TV, and are actually pretty charming and fun on HDTGM.

But good lord, they're just... thick. Anything that's remotely abstract in any film seems to confuse the hell out of them. They have no knowledge of anything outside pop culture. One of them just tried to pronounce "cloaca" something like "colacular." I just wanna put 'em in a cage and feed 'em peanuts.

@kelseyhusky This all warms my heart. :D Glad to hear the traditions survived me...

@kelseyhusky "WORK IT, BABY! NO GRAPES, NO NUTS! WHAT'S THE DEAL?" #cwru ❤️​❤️​❤️​

(I have no idea if y'all were still doing that chant at Sackstrok... I mean Strosacker Auditorium -- I *hope* it survived!)

@Balina

Ahem. Looks like this dimension might be about to hit the Balina Threshold. Prepare accordingly.

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/04/wearable-robotic-third-arm.html

@arilin That's EERIE, I was just thinking the exact same thing.

After some rocky relationship territory... and months in separate packing boxes... reunited at last.

#LoveConquersAll
#LadyMythtiqueMarmalade (he/him)
#BEAR! (he/him)

@Leucrotta Also I would point out to your debate partner that PLENTY of *nations* don't do any of them. You don't hear about this stuff happening in, say, modern Denmark, Canada, or Costa Rica. But they usually don't apply the epithet "regime" to those places. -___-

@Leucrotta Oh, that I agree with you completely. If the subtext is "nah, you're totally off the wall to imply there's ANY reason to fear fascistic tendencies from this administration," I not only think the obvious "well, fuck 'em," I think they have a pretty weak historical argument. Like I said, Eco's 14 Points is my gold standard for authoritarian movements, and Trump does NOT have a good score on that scale.

I personally prefer to avoid comparing the GOP at large to Nazis, but only because I think it's walking into a rhetorical trap, and gives our political opponents the opportunity to point to horrible things they *don't* do and accuse us of hyperbole -- even though the comparisons are still IMHO totally valid.

I think there are definitely fascist tendencies in the modern alt-right, Trump has been perfectly happen to encourage them, and I personally think one must have their head pretty far up their ass -- and be unconcerned with how many "nice, normal" Germans just put Nazi atrocities out of their minds -- in order to not see Trump as at least proto-fascist. I prefer to compare him to Mussolini or Franco, simply because Hitler is pretty much our culture's 10/10 for violently oppressive right-wing statism. It's hyperbole... but *only* because they don't have the power or cultural will for mass lethal violence that they can't at least couch as Fake News (e.g. dismissing the treatment of detained migrants as leftist hype). "They don't generally machine gun civilians for dissent" isn't a very strong endorsement.

@Leucrotta Oh, I accidentally skipped a step in my argument. n.n; I was going to point out that in the 1940s, direct force was much more effective and people were both much more inured to privation and much more insulated from events outside their immediate lives. That was a rich breeding ground for fascism, which is a very *directly* forceful sort of ideology that was totally unashamed about committing its brutality right out in the open.

In the information age, right-wing populism has had to a much less *directly* violent form. The will for massive state force is still there... as we're seeing with Trump and Sen. Tom Cotton this week... but you can also see the massive backlash which would never have been possible under Fascism.

Instead, Trump has a regime where that kind of backlash isn't devoured... it's DILUTED until it's lost harmlessly in the media backwash and spun out of existence. Trump's brand of plutocratic oligarchy is, again, much more reminiscent of the KGB playbook. Why shoot someone when you can just peacefully neutralize their reputation and poison the public debate? It sure saves money on bullets...

And if anything, I'd argue it might be MORE dangerous in the grand scheme... for the same reason COVID-19 is more dangerous than Ebola. Fascism burns itself out, trying to annex neighbors and set the world on fire. Whatever Trump and Putin have inflicted on the world can just sit there in its tower like Sauron and quietly poison the countryside for years.

@Leucrotta I don't have the time to have it out in great detail, but... I did do some reading about the rise of Hitler, and right now my position is it's *not* quite accurate to call the modern GOP Nazi, but it is accurate to call it proto-fascist.

For instance, I'd argue we really *don't* have the level of utter totalitarianism, with an effective death penalty for criticism. Also, the right is currently forced to at least play lip service to not being openly, virulently racist -- which doesn't make them any better or less covertly racist, but it *does* make it a different species with different tactics.

Trump doesn't have the same absurd level of popular suppor that Hitler did. Also, fascism was really more of a late industrial-era ideology. I don't see the Republicans being nearly so focused on direct militarist conquest as the Nazis. Never mind a martial tradition that demands valor and sacrifice -- we can't even get most Republicans to endure two months of stay-at-home.

Ultimately, I feel like what we've got now is more taxonomically like Russian under Putin: it's a criminal oligarchy that excels in propaganda, subversion, and reality-manipulation but is pretty inept at domestic policy. It's definitely got fascist elements and I think at last count I gave it something like a 10/14 on Umberto Eco's famous Fourteen Points, so you're not wrong; it's a matter of precision, not accuracy.

And I would definitely agree there are fascist *elements* in the modern alt-right. But Trump honestly reminds me of nobody so much as the string of inept reality-averse old men who rules Russia between Brezhnev and Gorbachev...

On the other hand, I will always love Blondie's "Rapture" for not only being the only pop song whose lyrics include the word "sacroiliac" but ALSO being about Martians running around eating things that rhyme with "Mars." 🐯​

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