Failing my studies as I am simultaneously naked.

People use AI for making “art” not because of their lack of ability to create art per se, but they use it rather as a way to cut costs in their commercial projects and skip contracting real artists. This is why it’s malicious. I wouldn’t care if somoeone uses it for pure, private leisure.

I am reading Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. Progress isn’t as smooth as with M&D but there is enough time for me to get used to the style and prose.

Real socialism, it is argued, would be controlled by the workers themselves through direct participation instead of being run by Leninists, Stalinists, Castroites, or other ill-willed, power-hungry, bureaucratic, cabals of evil men who betray revolutions. Unfortunately, this ‘pure socialism’ view is ahistorical and nonfalsifiable; it cannot be tested against the actualities of history. It compares an ideal against an imperfect reality, and the reality comes off a poor second. It imagines what socialism would be like in a world far better than this one, where no strong state structure or security force is required, where none of the value produced by workers needs to be expropriated to rebuild society and defend it from invasion and internal sabotage.

– Michael Parenti, “Blackshirts and Reds”

I didn’t know this, I will look into it. Thanks!

I’d like to add that the PPP was originally the Communist Party but was rebranded as a socdem party after the USSR was dissolved.

BTW, I wrote a few months ago an essay on the Palestinian left if anyone wants to check it out.

Thank you!

I would rather read his scholarly work except everything he wrote would fly over my head, meaning I would probably need to read multiple books like an intro to Coptic Christianity, an intro to Islamic philosophy, the Quran, and so on before I can even engage with his scholarly work, which would then provide me the context in which to consume his fictional work.

I like your reasoning lol. And thank you for your input, very enlightening.

I think I’m grasping slightly more the other person’s perspective, thank you for your comment. I personally don’t recall dealing with such a situation because I simply decline on the spot if I was recommended something that doesn’t fall within my niche. I guess it’ssomewhat rude? But it does avoid eventual misunderstandings.

Yes! I even learned to play the Watashi no theme on piano.

Hezbollah was effectively paralyzed by the recurring airstrikes on its depots and tunnels, followed by an unfavourable ceasefire agreement which the US sanctioned (and which unsurprisingly Israel itself has violated countless of times). Israeli hegemony onthe borders and beyond has been normalized, and Hezbollah is currently laying low to avoid further damage, be it from the IDF attacking its locations or the Lebanese army dismantling its weapons.

For all its often noted defects and problems, the American university—and mine, Columbia, in particular—is still one of the few remaining places in the United States where reflection and study can take place in an almost-utopian fashion.

This is what Edward Said wrote in the 70’s. Aged like milk

The admins are principled Marxists so they wouldn’t sell out or concede without a fight.

What client do you use?

Oh, didn’t know that. Thanks.

Thank you for your input! I read your review and I appreciate the fact that you mentioned History, that “great disorderly Tangle of Lines.” I refrained from tackling it mainly because of a quote that I am still struggling to wrap my head around:

As Savages commemorate their great Hunts with Dancing, so History is the Dance of our Hunt for Christ, and how we have far’d. If it is undeniably so that he rose from the Dead, then the Event is taken into History, and History is redeem’d from the service of Darkness,— with all the secular Consequences, flowing from that one Event, design’d and will’d to occur. (Ch. 7, p. 75)

Also, I can’t get past how relatable M. is:

Mason gapes in despair. He’ll be days late thinking up any reply to speech as sophisticated as this.

In the hidden Journal that he gets to so seldom it should be styl’d a “Monthly”

The original Mononoke series and the 2024 movie.

I read your text, comprehended it, and asked a follow-up accordingly. I am not pressuring you to answer anything.

What would then be the preferable position, in your opinion?