Achaemenid
@achaemenid.bsky.social
Well, I do ultimately think that there is something kind of particular about the south, even though the whole country is embedded in the same racist structure, so I don't totally agree with OP. I'm trying to lay out my reasoning
November 18, 2025 at 12:06 AM
Well, I do ultimately think that there is something kind of particular about the south, even though the whole country is embedded in the same racist structure, so I don't totally agree with OP. I'm trying to lay out my reasoning
Yeah I think the south can be understood like a caribbean colony like Haiti that couldn't be jettisoned when the metropole couldn't deal with the political/psychic consequences of running it, so the brutality/degredation involved in maintaining it just got soaked into the broader social fabric
November 18, 2025 at 12:03 AM
Yeah I think the south can be understood like a caribbean colony like Haiti that couldn't be jettisoned when the metropole couldn't deal with the political/psychic consequences of running it, so the brutality/degredation involved in maintaining it just got soaked into the broader social fabric
The way I think of it is that like because the south was where the dirtiest of the dirty work was done to power the whole machine it sort of has the most extreme lingering psychic damage
November 17, 2025 at 11:53 PM
The way I think of it is that like because the south was where the dirtiest of the dirty work was done to power the whole machine it sort of has the most extreme lingering psychic damage
And this sort of racism comes directly from having to administer slavery in a direct physical way where you have to be constantly surveilling and harassing people all the time or they may rise up and kill you at any moment 2/2
November 17, 2025 at 11:35 PM
And this sort of racism comes directly from having to administer slavery in a direct physical way where you have to be constantly surveilling and harassing people all the time or they may rise up and kill you at any moment 2/2
It’s true but I think it’s also true that there is a special sort of racism that the antebellum south incubated which basically is like “it would be better to burn the world down rather than let any black person have anything nice” and that explains the South’s political trajectory in many ways 1/2
November 17, 2025 at 11:33 PM
It’s true but I think it’s also true that there is a special sort of racism that the antebellum south incubated which basically is like “it would be better to burn the world down rather than let any black person have anything nice” and that explains the South’s political trajectory in many ways 1/2
It’s about distribution, yes the national income grows and so the national consumption grows, and in that sense people always have more (even the poor), but people want to feel like they consistently get a fair share of growth
November 17, 2025 at 7:25 PM
It’s about distribution, yes the national income grows and so the national consumption grows, and in that sense people always have more (even the poor), but people want to feel like they consistently get a fair share of growth
Yes I do consider a balkanized US where one of the successor states does meaningful prison reform to be more plausible than abolition tbh
November 17, 2025 at 2:58 PM
Yes I do consider a balkanized US where one of the successor states does meaningful prison reform to be more plausible than abolition tbh
I’m sorry I can’t lay out a full policy white paper in 300 characters on bluesky but I don’t know how to convince you that legislative reform of prisons, a thing that has happened many times in history, is less mythical than abolishing them, something that has never happened
November 17, 2025 at 2:20 PM
I’m sorry I can’t lay out a full policy white paper in 300 characters on bluesky but I don’t know how to convince you that legislative reform of prisons, a thing that has happened many times in history, is less mythical than abolishing them, something that has never happened
Most prisons are run by state governments, so any reform would probably happen in the legislatures of blue states, and it would look like bills changing how prisons are managed and also funding to remodel and rebuild them in many cases to have better facilities
November 17, 2025 at 2:14 PM
Most prisons are run by state governments, so any reform would probably happen in the legislatures of blue states, and it would look like bills changing how prisons are managed and also funding to remodel and rebuild them in many cases to have better facilities
Politicians get in power and pass laws, which happens all the time. I’m not sure why you are treating this like some mysterious mystical thing.
November 17, 2025 at 2:08 PM
Politicians get in power and pass laws, which happens all the time. I’m not sure why you are treating this like some mysterious mystical thing.
America has like 60 different separate simultaneous governments and has been through like 6 different constitutional orders, it’s not an all or nothing thing. It’s very reasonable to say “hey this different system with really existing precedent in another country could happen here in some form”
November 17, 2025 at 1:59 PM
America has like 60 different separate simultaneous governments and has been through like 6 different constitutional orders, it’s not an all or nothing thing. It’s very reasonable to say “hey this different system with really existing precedent in another country could happen here in some form”
Beyond the Rishi Maze
November 17, 2025 at 1:21 PM
Beyond the Rishi Maze
I am not an expert on this but I’ve read that it is the case at least in California that marriage supersedes age of consent - this article backs that up but it could be wrong:
www.latimes.com/california/s...
www.latimes.com/california/s...
Why child marriage is legal in California — and the unexpected groups fighting to keep it that way
Some advocates want California to prohibit marriage for people under age 18. But groups including the ACLU and Planned Parenthood have opposed such bans, saying they could undermine minors' rights to ...
www.latimes.com
November 17, 2025 at 12:08 PM
I am not an expert on this but I’ve read that it is the case at least in California that marriage supersedes age of consent - this article backs that up but it could be wrong:
www.latimes.com/california/s...
www.latimes.com/california/s...
Also it's really insane but my understanding is that child marriage generally trumps laws around age of consent, so you can be married to an adult, it be legal for them to have sex with you because you're married, and no way to divorce them.
November 17, 2025 at 1:51 AM
Also it's really insane but my understanding is that child marriage generally trumps laws around age of consent, so you can be married to an adult, it be legal for them to have sex with you because you're married, and no way to divorce them.
Yeah a lot of people are ignorant of how intelligence agencies work in this regard - agencies generally will have lots of sort of ad hoc arrangements with various figures to do xyz thing but that doesn’t mean that the figure is loyal to the agency let alone a “member”
November 16, 2025 at 10:46 PM
Yeah a lot of people are ignorant of how intelligence agencies work in this regard - agencies generally will have lots of sort of ad hoc arrangements with various figures to do xyz thing but that doesn’t mean that the figure is loyal to the agency let alone a “member”
ok this one goes very hard actually
November 16, 2025 at 8:41 PM
ok this one goes very hard actually
I think it's a normal but not always acknowledged part of traditional beauty standards to see the highest beauty as mixing in a bit of the "opposite" gender's traits, like men with well kept long hair. It's just another way that the binary can be a useful abstraction but doesn't capture the totality
November 16, 2025 at 7:41 PM
I think it's a normal but not always acknowledged part of traditional beauty standards to see the highest beauty as mixing in a bit of the "opposite" gender's traits, like men with well kept long hair. It's just another way that the binary can be a useful abstraction but doesn't capture the totality
the Lorax is a bad children's book because it merely depicts environmental destruction as something that's simplistically bad and not part of the self-overcoming of spirit through the negation of the negation, which is what I would put in my book for 7 year olds
November 16, 2025 at 7:25 PM
the Lorax is a bad children's book because it merely depicts environmental destruction as something that's simplistically bad and not part of the self-overcoming of spirit through the negation of the negation, which is what I would put in my book for 7 year olds
This is true but it’s kind of an historical accident - modern solidarity confinement is pretty far from what the original reformers envisioned (e.g. they didn’t want it to be fully solitary). The original idea was closer to like a Norway prison and we can still strive for that (still a prison tho)
November 16, 2025 at 5:42 PM
This is true but it’s kind of an historical accident - modern solidarity confinement is pretty far from what the original reformers envisioned (e.g. they didn’t want it to be fully solitary). The original idea was closer to like a Norway prison and we can still strive for that (still a prison tho)
The good news is that there’s a million flavors of Celsius now and many of them are on the gas station chemical side of things so you can find the right one for you
November 16, 2025 at 4:27 PM
The good news is that there’s a million flavors of Celsius now and many of them are on the gas station chemical side of things so you can find the right one for you
Aha I unfortunately mistook the serpent for a coiled rope, in the endless play of Maya
November 15, 2025 at 7:41 PM
Aha I unfortunately mistook the serpent for a coiled rope, in the endless play of Maya
Reposted by Achaemenid
Not to lay my cards on the table but I think this narrow focus in online discourse on who deserves to be rewarded really elides the actual societal value of the education system (teaching members of society important stuff that it's valuable for them to know)
November 15, 2025 at 5:57 PM
Not to lay my cards on the table but I think this narrow focus in online discourse on who deserves to be rewarded really elides the actual societal value of the education system (teaching members of society important stuff that it's valuable for them to know)
I'm not like a big Hegelian but if leftists read Hegel like Marx this is kind of the main point - the thing (community) in-itself vs the thing in-and-for-itself i.e. community ordered according to an abstract self-understanding of its own good and nature.
November 15, 2025 at 3:01 PM
I'm not like a big Hegelian but if leftists read Hegel like Marx this is kind of the main point - the thing (community) in-itself vs the thing in-and-for-itself i.e. community ordered according to an abstract self-understanding of its own good and nature.