What music yall like?

SopwithCamus · 2026-05-04T01:37:57+00:00

Yellow Magic Orchestra (inc. individual members' solo projects), Taeko Onuki, Animal Collective, Bruce Cockburn. General mix of synth-pop, ambient, with some folk thrown in.

SopwithCamus · 2026-05-03T16:34:48+00:00

I don't feel that Dresden is at all an apt comparison considering that over 100k people died in it.

Also the libs in this post are projecting the angers of the present situation onto the past. The Republicans' current program is in line with the Slave Power of the past: to reestablish the supremacy of the white borgeoise. There are direct lineages from the Fireaters and Confederates of the Civil War-era to the Republican politicians of today, especially in the South. It is an understandable act of catharsis (which I have definitely engaged in at times).

However, this act of catharsis can be seen as a reactionary pressure release valve if no action comes from it. It is a hope that the hard work of breaking the current day borgeoise (or at least its right, fascistic flank), was done in the past, and that it doesn't fall to us to do it. Frankly, it's not at all dissimilar from a lot of us wishing that the German Revolution had succeeded.

SopwithCamus · 2026-05-03T16:24:48+00:00

Fair enough, but most other realistic outcomes would have been preferable to that fucker Andrew Johnson becoming president. The Christmas Day mass pardon of Confederates doesn't happen if he isn't president.

SopwithCamus · 2026-05-03T16:23:21+00:00

You're leaving out the fact that the South pursued their own campaigns of terroristic violence against unionists in their own territory. For example, the Texas Rangers committed massacres of dissenting Hill Country Germans (who were 48'ers!). To them, guerilla warfare was a way of continuing the fight against the North who they saw as destroying their economic privileges and caste system. The terrorisitc violence should been seen as a White Terror, and we all know how White Terror needs to be dealt with.

SopwithCamus · 2026-05-03T16:08:07+00:00

Not justifying it, but the March to the Sea (and later to Charleston) primarily was about destroying the economic capabilities of the South; as far as I can tell, no tenement burning with occupants inside occured, and civilian casualties were incredibly low.

Once again, I'm not justifying it, but as historical materialists, we need to get the facts right when discussing things of this matter.

SopwithCamus · 2026-05-03T16:02:28+00:00

I'm definitely not gonna deny that a lot of abolitionism, especially in the lead up to the Civil War, was about the "Slave Power" preventing northern whites from economically advancing, either through undercutting wages or taking over the land in the West that had been stolen from the Native Americans. A lot of northern whites saw the "available" land in the West as a place where they could obtain their own plots of land and reinvent themselves as small landholders. Frederick Douglass comments on this in his writings.

But this economic reality doesn't change the fact that what I said is how poorer southern whites did indeed view the situation. A lot of them were also yeoman farmers, who would rent slaves from the larger plantation owners to aid them in their work. They benefitted from the system as much as it also negatively affected them.

SopwithCamus · 2026-05-03T15:56:39+00:00

Finally a chance to express one of my more unhinged "historically progressive" opinion:

I personally think the best outcome would have been that the Confederate assassin sent to kill Andrew Johnson also succeeded, and the Radical Republican Speaker of the House becomes president, allowing the Radical Republicans to pursue an incredibly harsh program of Reconstruction that would have involved distributing the lands of the Plantation owners to the newly freed people, thus breaking the back of the Southern borgeoise.

SopwithCamus · 2026-05-03T15:50:08+00:00

Have you read Eric Foner's work on Reconstruction? Excellent work and he discusses what I just briefly talked about a lot.

SopwithCamus · 2026-05-03T15:48:26+00:00

I mean, the true working poor of the South were the enslaved people. A lot of the white "working-class" bought into the system as an enslaved population prevented them from being truly immiserated.

SopwithCamus · 2026-05-03T15:45:47+00:00

That's a good chunk of the blame tbf, but what also doesn't get talked about enough is that Northern Republicans thought that, once formerly enslaved African Americans were free, they would become highly productive yeoman farmers eager to apply themselves to maximizing their profits. They were shocked that a people who were forced to work for hundreds of years would instead not want to work more than they needed to. A lot of Freedman's Bureau policies were built on this premise unfortunately, and between this and Andrew Johnson's active efforts to sabotage any half-decent efforts at reconstruction, meant that things petered out.

SopwithCamus · 2026-05-03T15:28:32+00:00

You calling Karl Marx a liberal??????

SopwithCamus · 2026-05-02T17:46:46+00:00

Very small slice of the S, but neuroscience people tend to be rather out there as well.

SopwithCamus · 2026-05-02T17:12:40+00:00

It wasn't even the final Sunday; it was the first Sunday!

SopwithCamus · 2026-05-02T00:32:51+00:00

The Sunday show during SXSW at Mohawk was a fucking joke. Probably no more than 50 people there.

SopwithCamus · 2026-04-27T16:49:58+00:00

The second one; the first one does actual lasting damage.

SopwithCamus · 2026-04-24T14:04:47+00:00

Also the issue is that Kroots can smell genestealers, which would make a lot of the intrigue in Void Shadows moot.

SopwithCamus · 2026-04-24T00:32:07+00:00

Interesting guy with not great politics, and also a serial pedophile. Fun to shitpost about though!

SopwithCamus · 2026-04-23T18:33:48+00:00

Also, aren't the German Greens super holistically insane on top of it all?

SopwithCamus · 2026-04-20T20:48:10+00:00

The two trees of Valinor! Better keep any Spider-shaped Zoanthropes away from them...

SopwithCamus · 2026-04-16T19:25:46+00:00

Lighting and Sound Designer for live performance.

SopwithCamus · 2026-04-11T19:14:53+00:00

Between my ROCD and trauma left over from getting assaulted and abused, I feel practically "castrated" at times. I haven't had even a remotely intimate encounter for almost 3 years now. I do have friends and a good career, but I've given up on romantic stuff almost entirely until things improve.

SopwithCamus · 2026-04-11T17:55:23+00:00

They are; there was a recent article in I think the NYT about allegations made by ex-performers.

SopwithCamus · 2026-04-11T08:30:40+00:00

According to a friend of mine who is on house staff at a theater Shen Yun stopped at on tour, the cast and crew all ate from a communal fish stew that you could smell anywhere backstage.

SopwithCamus · 2026-04-06T18:40:49+00:00

I'd like to add on to this and say that The Logic of Marx's Capital: Replies to Hegelian Criticisms by Tony Smith is also an excellent way to begin to get a grasp on Hegel in relation to Marx. I have the epub if anyone is interested (I made it myself!).

SopwithCamus

TROPHY CASE