@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

HeavenlyPossum

@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social

Anarchist, communist, opossum. But then, I repeat myself.

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HeavenlyPossum, to random
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

One of every 21 adults in the UK is a landlord.

Britons who privately rent spend just under a third of their income supporting these landlords each year. Nearly a hundred billion pounds a year.

So a Briton who privately rents spends just under four months laboring each year just to support these landlords.

All that work, all that time, all that commuting…just to generate revenue to pay rent.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/19/end-of-landlords-surprisingly-simple-solution-to-uk-housing-crisis

josh, to random
@josh@josh.tel avatar

deleted_by_author

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    HeavenlyPossum,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @violetmadder @josh

    A bunch of those are no longer working, fortunately. I’m always on the lookout for more. Here’s my current tally of the accounts I’m 99% sure are or were all run by the same person:

    https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/111917531964575035

    gwynnion, to random
    @gwynnion@mastodon.social avatar

    One failure of modern liberalism is the disavowal of the coercive power of the state versus the rich and powerful in favor of toothless "incentives."

    Another is the widespread antipathy toward protest and criticism in favor of a "daddy knows best" paternalism.

    These encourage a system where the powerful are never held accountable or force to comply but where state violence is constantly directed downwards.

    And it has everything to do with whiteness and wealth, obviously.

    HeavenlyPossum,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @gwynnion

    The primary division in American politics is between the party that thinks capital should be free to exploit labor to extinction and the party that thinks capital should leave labor just enough to reproduce itself but no more.

    ocean, to random
    @ocean@raru.re avatar

    POV: You made the mistake of trying to track a package in 2024

    HeavenlyPossum,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @ocean

    It’s somehow even more horrible to see it laid out here, like a butterfly pinned in a naturalist’s display, than it is when you’re in the middle of it. Just clicking furiously to get through it as quickly as possible.

    blogdiva, to random
    @blogdiva@mastodon.social avatar

    Liz Cheney exists because her father was part of the petromafia who with the Saudis and Iran, destabilized the world with the OPEC oil crisis & IranContragate to get rid of Carter & Democrats in 1980.

    when the Brooks Brothers & hanging chads gambit of 2000 was a successful coup by SCOTUS, Dick Cheney was still CEO of Halliburton, a blood for oil company. Cheney wasnt just Dubya’s puppet master. he acted as CEO while VPOTUS.

    Liz Cheney voted for Trump’s MAGA & SCOTUS. she is still the enemy

    HeavenlyPossum,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @blogdiva

    We’re under no obligation to pick sides in intra-elite power struggles.

    simon_brooke, (edited ) to random
    @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

    "The vast majority of the demands for productivity made within the economy are intended to reduce the level of labour input into the production of goods and services, whilst at the same time increasing the return to the rentier who has exploited the natural resources of the world to deliver the material component" -- @RichardJMurphy

    https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/03/28/the-stories-we-tell-each-other-about-the-economy-in-which-we-live-are-more-important-than-the-data-we-collect-about-it/

    HeavenlyPossum,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @simon_brooke @RichardJMurphy

    The problem for the rentiers is that returns to the rentier are pretty meaningless except as labour input: money doesn’t mean a lot unless you can use it to induce other people to labour for you in ways you find useful.

    So even as some rentiers are seeking to reduce the level of labour input, others are constantly concocting new and useless ways for us to labour on their behalf.

    urlyman, to random
    @urlyman@mastodon.social avatar

    Over recent months a mutual and I agree on a lot.

    I just reread a thread in which he gets accused of having “an anti-urbanist agenda”. Given the context, that accusation is effectively being levelled at me too. But here’s the thing.

    I’ve lived in 1 large conurbation and 2 cities for 40 years. I like living in the city I’m in now.

    I also recognise that the probability is very very high that cities like the ones I live in and have lived in are utterly unsustainable…

    HeavenlyPossum,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @urlyman

    It might have had more to do with the drumbeat accusation that urbanites are parasites who contribute nothing of value, living in ignorant privilege off expropriated rural resources, who will inevitably die fiery violent deaths due to the inexorable mechanical processes that previously privileged them.

    HeavenlyPossum,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @urlyman

    Except that Jack explicitly and repeatedly referred not just to cities, but also to urbanites and “the problem with urbanites,” whom he explicitly identified as a global elite living extractively (but ignorantly) off the product of rural labor.

    HeavenlyPossum,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @urlyman

    Yes, we are divided over whether to read what he actually wrote or what we wish he had written instead, and this is indeed probably insurmountable.

    HeavenlyPossum,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @urlyman @afterconnery

    “Oh come on he didn’t say that!”

    Except he did. He literally did!

    HeavenlyPossum, to random
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    I remember being pretty young and asking my parents—is this it? We go to school every day and then we get a job and go to work every day and this is our lives, forever? Just living each day according to someone else’s schedule, at someone else’s command? This is life?

    And they were pretty flummoxed. Yeah, they said, this is life. What did you expect? This is what you do and then you die.

    These are the same people who showed my Koyaanisqatsi when I was like six and encouraged me to internalize its message that capitalist modernity is catastrophically, irrevocably broken and unsustainable.

    And I just think…a lot of people hold pretty good beliefs in the abstract but it doesn’t occur to them to live as if they were actually true.

    HeavenlyPossum,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @LanguageMan1

    Food stamps are not socialism, but you are racist.

    HeavenlyPossum,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @LanguageMan1

    Food stamps are not socialism.

    You’re not racist because you used food stamps. You’re racist because you just repeatedly vomited racism in my mentions.

    HeavenlyPossum,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @LanguageMan1

    Now I’m super curious: what’s the “same old racist BS” that I repeated?

    HeavenlyPossum,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @LanguageMan1

    If you had spouted any facts, this might be apt, but you didn’t, so it’s not.

    HeavenlyPossum,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @LanguageMan1 @RD4Anarchy

    RD, I expect you’ll have as much luck with languageman as you would a brick wall, but kudos anyway

    HeavenlyPossum, to random
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    I take such immense satisfaction from composting.

    From the earth, to the earth.

    HeavenlyPossum,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @sleepfreeparent

    It sounds like you’ve got too much leaf matter and not enough moisture/nitrogen to get the grass clippings to decompose. Try stirring in some kitchen scraps (potato peels, carrot trimmings, edamame pods, etc) to get those up and see if it starts to break down into humus. It can take a while so be patient!

    If you want to grow potatoes, I’d say start growing potatoes and figure out the compost as you go. All of this is more art than science and I’ve gone through A LOT of trial and error to become…partially adequate at a few gardening-related projects. Treat everything you do as a learning experience. Let the plants and bacteria and all that jazz teach you as you go.

    urlyman, to random
    @urlyman@mastodon.social avatar

    @jackofalltrades just to say thank you for trying so hard in this thread https://mas.to/@jackofalltrades/112133626258185236

    The number of people imputing things they wanted to hear, seemingly so they could accuse you, but which you didn’t say, and/or not investing any curiosity in what you did actually point them at… was quite something.

    It kind of brings home just how much is functionally invisible

    HeavenlyPossum,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @urlyman @RD4Anarchy @jackofalltrades

    Hi Jack!

    In the interest of not disrespecting any more of your time than I already did in a conversation you initiated in my mentions, I’d like you to know that sneering, dishonest, malign condescension like this:

    “or we can close our eyes, dream of our hunter-gatherer past and let the collapse wreck havoc on society, giving rise to unspeakable suffering”

    is why I’m blocking you. Considering that you said this whilst simultaneously whining about other people deliberately misinterpreting you, I’ll hazard a guess that you will leave this conversation imagining yourself a victim, without the ability or willingness to consider what role you played in creating this dynamic. I wish you lots of luck with your lack of introspection! Everyone is wrong and dumb but you; everyone is a jerk but you.

    I just don’t have the time or energy to entertain assholes.

    HeavenlyPossum,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @jackofalltrades @RD4Anarchy @Loukas @urlyman

    “People will inevitably fight because there are too many of them because of vaccines” is just ecofascism.

    HeavenlyPossum,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @RD4Anarchy @urlyman @thesquirrelfish @jackofalltrades

    I want to be clear that in this specific example, I was not asking about his absurd claim that cities are colonial parasites, but his separate claim that rural areas were somehow more insulated from the systemic effects of overshoot.

    Jack himself specifically acknowledged that overshoot is a function of systems, but couldn’t seem to connect this insight to his claims throughout the conversation. He was frequently sloppy like this about his own positions, which contributed significantly to the tone of the conversation.

    HeavenlyPossum,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @jackofalltrades @urlyman @Loukas @RD4Anarchy

    Jack is really struggling with the idea that you can critique the idea of conflict as a mechanical product of biophysical limits without denying the existence of those biophysical limits.

    HeavenlyPossum,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @urlyman @Loukas @RD4Anarchy @jackofalltrades

    Ah, this old canard:

    If people get something from a system, even at a net loss, we can pretend that they’re “benefiting” from that system, and therefore the system must be good or those people must desire that system.

    See also: wages as a “benefit” of capitalism as if they come as a gift from the capitalist, rather than representing the net product of the worker’s labor minus the capitalist’s rents.

    HeavenlyPossum,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @neonsnake @RD4Anarchy @urlyman @Loukas @jackofalltrades

    Jack hasn’t read Wengrow and Graeber and is only holding up the critiques so he doesn’t have to consider any of their arguments. This is pure evidence-as-totem, holding up one evidence to shield himself from the power of rival evidence.

    HeavenlyPossum,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @neonsnake @RD4Anarchy @Loukas

    I don’t think their work is perfect and without fault, but it feels like a cottage industry of critiques leapt up in the wake of its publication as if refuting it was somehow critically important…

    HeavenlyPossum,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @neonsnake @RD4Anarchy @urlyman @jackofalltrades @Loukas

    I don’t think Jack is a crypto-ecofascist, but he definitely leans in that direction in an incipient sense, and I’m surprised by myself for letting him spend so much time in the fringes of my awareness without recognizing him for what he’s doing.

    HeavenlyPossum,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @RD4Anarchy @Loukas @neonsnake

    I’d add to that good summary: a faith in the effectiveness of violent centralization and in the inevitability of violent conflict between those corporate groups, and a sense of the unquenchable greed of people (except for the speaker).

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