Journal of Other Forum Analysis (Volume II, Issue 2)

[Shecky Fragbaum]

oh clicky...

https://www.resetera.com/threads/november-21-2025-ap-japan%E2%80%99s-first-female-leader-faces-a-taboo-over-entering-the-male-only-sumo-ring.1362325/

That's awesome! Rooting for her to win and prove all the men wrong.

Edit- misread, but women should be allowed. It sucks so much that their first woman PM is so conservative.

They’re really keen on seeing women get beaten up aren’t they?

Ya gotta wonder - where's the outcry for FtM trans representation in sports? Since there's basically no difference between the sexes once the sacred elixir of hormones have been administered? Sumo would be the perfect stage imo.

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

Also, FtM trans are never, ever brought up in the broader gender discussion other than an asterisk here and there...what's that all about? Kinda 

[Orange Juice Box]

oh clicky...

https://www.resetera.com/threads/november-21-2025-ap-japan%E2%80%99s-first-female-leader-faces-a-taboo-over-entering-the-male-only-sumo-ring.1362325/

They’re really keen on seeing women get beaten up aren’t they?

Ya gotta wonder - where's the outcry for FtM trans representation in sports? Since there's basically no difference between the sexes once the sacred elixir of hormones have been administered? Sumo would be the perfect stage imo.

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

Also, FtM trans are never, ever brought up in the broader gender discussion other than an asterisk here and there...what's that all about? Kinda 

There was Schuyler Bailar.  When he transitioned they told him if he swims with men he's going to never place again, which was they were doing when they swam was a women.  He was like, fuck it, I'm a man I swim with men.  

 https://slate.com/human-interest/2016/04/harvards-evolved-response-to-a-trans-male-swimmer-is-a-joy-to-watch.html

[benji]

Hundreds of thousands of deaths now, millions of deaths down the line thanks to DOGE cuts to places like USAID and the CDC. That's their legacy and everyone who worked for DOGE needs to be brought up on charges and imprisoned, up to and including Elon Musk. And that's the bare minimum.

The problem with this isn't the claim, we can accept the claim as true and see why this is insane:
1. He completely ignores those who empowered DOGE and signed off on what they did, focusing on demanding prison time for people who did what they were apparently hired to do and everyone was fine with them doing.
2. This is essentially the same as charging people with stochastic terrorism, with an even more unlimited scope, the idea that people can be imprisoned for making policy and budgetary choices that will result in hypothetical deaths compared to some alternative fantasy policy. Which is always the case. It wouldn't be a defense if you changed a policy that hypothetically killed "millions" in one place by hypothetically saving "tens of millions" in another place because "I was saving more lives" isn't a defense against a mass murder charge. And this is the situation with every single decision involved, USAID had to pick and choose what it funded, it didn't fund everything everywhere.
3. Taking 2 as true then this would mean anyone who has ever worked for the government including all current two million employees at minimum should face these same charges, but again, go back to 1, his anger is only at one group of people. Not even at Trump or Congress for not budgeting infinite resources to these things now and forever no matter what DOGE did. Or at the criminals at USAID for the millions, possibly trillions, of deaths it had hypothetically caused with its funding choices before being shut down.

This is why these people aren't the "justice advocates" they claim to be. It's always about a bloodlust "vengeance" against whatever acceptable target enters their view that they think they can get away with saying should suffer violence. "Damn the consequences, I'm angry so I need someone to suffer!" And always demanding somebody else, hopefully some depersonalized entity so nobody feels any guilt, do it for them. Constantly publicly fantasizing about "when" they'll be in power (by proxy) and "they" can order someone else to do the violence in their name in hopes they'll feel less status and control anxiety. No different from MAGA on Twitter or Trump himself on Truth Social. "And that's the bare minimum."

[Propagandhim]

I also want to say: socialism is not necessarily the "government doing stuff for the masses." The fundamental property of socialism is that the workers own their workplaces. You can still theoretically have public utilities under any economic system (feudalism, communalism, communism, etc.), but the manner in which these utilities are paid for, distributed, and accessed depends upon the onwership of the land and the ways in which we derive value from that land.

You'd still have roads, trash collection, healthcare, etc. under pure capitalism. Just be prepared to directly pay for it somehow.

The state acting as the proxy for the workers, injecting itself in the affairs of people and enforcing itself as the owner and planner of the economy is the fundamental property of socialism, not the workers owning the workplaces .  Socialization of workplaces means the assets belong to society in perpetuity, but workers owning their own workplace means they are just temporary shareholders, not guardians of a social good.   You can collectively own an entity with equal shares in a capitalist society, nobody is stopping you - Go message your friend Cerium about that one. 

You can still theoretically have public utilities under any economic system (feudalism)

  What?!   Feudalism was DEFINED by a lack of a central public state - power was decentralized among lords. Infrastructure like roads or bridges were not "public utilities" they were the private property of a lord who charged tolls for their use and they were maintained by local peasant labor as a duty to that lord, not as a service provided to the masses.  Maybe one major road was under royal protection, but that's nothing like today's public roads and utilities.     In feudalism the 'public' did not exist as a political entity entitled to services, the subjects existed to serve the landholder.  No wonder she thinks capitalism is a hellscape, she has no idea how bad things used to be.

Recognizing that the Democratic Party are not the good guys is an inevitable step in actually moving this country towards not being a colonial, capitalist hellscape.

*Trump threatens Democratic members of Congress with death*
"Better denounce the evils of Socialism."
-86 House Dems, apparently

The tree of capitalism must be watered with blood...constantly. All the time. Every second. Like this thing is vampiric. And who are those 86 Dems to not offer themselves as sacrifices to the cause? Truly, a most noble breed of citizen.

[benji]

I also want to say: socialism is not necessarily the "government doing stuff for the masses." The fundamental property of socialism is that the workers own their workplaces. You can still theoretically have public utilities under any economic system (feudalism, communalism, communism, etc.), but the manner in which these utilities are paid for, distributed, and accessed depends upon the onwership of the land and the ways in which we derive value from that land.

You'd still have roads, trash collection, healthcare, etc. under pure capitalism. Just be prepared to directly pay for it somehow.

The state acting as the proxy for the workers, injecting itself in the affairs of people and enforcing itself as the owner and planner of the economy is the fundamental property of socialism, not the workers owning the workplaces .  Socialization of workplaces means the assets belong to society in perpetuity, but workers owning their own workplace means they are just temporary shareholders, not guardians of a social good.   You can collectively own an entity with equal shares in a capitalist society, nobody is stopping you - Go message your friend Cerium about that one. 

It's yet another instance where something already is the case and she's not even aware of it so is bitching about how we need it.

She also doesn't understand the language, "the workers" as a class. A single class, the only class. She's thinking like the artists own their workplace and the techbros can't say anything about it but that's not what it means, it means the techbros can tell the artists what to do in their workplace if the techbros have the ostensible majority within the class. And this is functionally always the state because there's no other monopoly entity that plays the role.

The last statement in that post is perhaps the most accurate thing she's said. Socialism just hides the costs from you that you still have to pay while taking away your choice of provider. That's the whole reason it sucks. This is also why she'd never accept it* and so has to pretend there's other alternatives like taking and leaving carrots.

I suppose you could have a public utility in feudalism in terms of the owner not charging for its use or even upkeep. But that's something you truly could have in every system. You have it now in the hellworld, Twitter and YouTube and Google and many other things are all effectively free for example. Nobody would ever use this as a defense of a system because it's not a function of a system. (Although one could make the argument that capitalism enables it by providing so much alternative abundance, such as how those companies make money in other ways from the services they provide for free.)

*
The reason Nepenthe allows space for socialism despite not really supporting anything regarding socialism is because she views it as a useful ally against her enemy capitalism. She pictures a time when capitalism is destroyed and there will be great peace as everyone figures out what to do better this time, probably imagining she can convince everyone to do taking and leaving carrots instead of socialism. This thread is always my go to example of Nepenthe's theory of liberation: https://www.resetera.com/threads/your-apocalypse-is-bad-and-wrong-and-i-would-know-a-jamaicans-critique-of-western-post-apocalyptic-game-settings.575245/

In it she argues that an apocalypse would be a good thing because it would wipe the slate clean of everything and we could refashion society and everything else completely from scratch without the historical weight of what exists now, which is why we don't abandon society currently despite it being so objectively terrible in every single way. Basically the same as what she imagines will happen after capitalism is destroyed, everybody will just sit around in peace and abundance as they decide what to do now that they're free of the systemic constraints we have now. With a clear vision not to implement anything that would be bad this time around.

That's why she's a furry Pol Pot, it's literally the Year Zero concept but stupider because it envisions the entire world as little more than a handful of people. It's how a massive societal change would be depicted in a cartoon like, say, Bluey.

[benji]

Look at all the fucking nerds posting on this page.

[filler]

where's that one discord mod meme?

[Uncle]

2. This is essentially the same as charging people with stochastic terrorism, with an even more unlimited scope, the idea that people can be imprisoned for making policy and budgetary choices that will result in hypothetical deaths compared to some alternative fantasy policy. Which is always the case. It wouldn't be a defense if you changed a policy that hypothetically killed "millions" in one place by hypothetically saving "tens of millions" in another place because "I was saving more lives" isn't a defense against a mass murder charge. And this is the situation with every single decision involved, USAID had to pick and choose what it funded, it didn't fund everything everywhere.

theoretically, all of us have made decisions that led to countless preventable deaths by posting on the bire instead of spending that time studying the blade and patrolling the streets to protect vulnerable women

[HaughtyFrank]

The fundamental property of socialism is that the workers own their workplaces

Isn't she just describing a coop? Just found one with your furry friends. Just seems like a pain in the ass to organize

[Uncle]

It wouldn't be a defense if you changed a policy that hypothetically killed "millions" in one place by hypothetically saving "tens of millions" in another place because "I was saving more lives" isn't a defense against a mass murder charge. And this is the situation with every single decision involved, USAID had to pick and choose what it funded, it didn't fund everything everywhere.
3. Taking 2 as true then this would mean anyone who has ever worked for the government including all current two million employees at minimum should face these same charges, but again, go back to 1, his anger is only at one group of people. Not even at Trump or Congress for not budgeting infinite resources to these things now and forever no matter what DOGE did. Or at the criminals at USAID for the millions, possibly trillions, of deaths it had hypothetically caused with its funding choices before being shut down.
This is why these people aren't the "justice advocates" they claim to be. It's always about a bloodlust "vengeance" against whatever acceptable target enters their view that they think they can get away with saying should suffer violence. "Damn the consequences, I'm angry so I need someone to suffer!" And always demanding somebody else, hopefully some depersonalized entity so nobody feels any guilt, do it for them. Constantly publicly fantasizing about "when" they'll be in power (by proxy) and "they" can order someone else to do the violence in their name in hopes they'll feel less status and control anxiety. No different from MAGA on Twitter or Trump himself on Truth Social. "And that's the bare minimum."

honestly it feels like a breakfast question moment

"imagine I made a policy decision that was guaranteed to kill one specific person and saved the lives of 10,000 others, should I be prosecuted for the murder of that one person?"

"but...but you didn't make any policy decisions, you don't work for DOGE, who actively made those harmful evil decisions!"

[Jansen]

My wife and I are super happy she Is pregnant, but we do not have a doctors apt till 2 weeks from now. In the meantime we are googling everything possible. The skin care stuff has been especially confusing. She wants to make sure that her body care routine is safe and healthy for the baby. Anyone know any good pregnancy safe products for the following: Eye cream for puffy eyes, concealer for blemishes, eyeshadow?



Bonus question: what are the best pregnancy books as well as baby books?

[Uncle]

The fundamental property of socialism is that the workers own their workplaces

Isn't she just describing a coop? Just found one with your furry friends. Just seems like a pain in the ass to organize

you wouldn't start a coop with your furry friends, you would need to be avians for that

[benji]

The fundamental property of socialism is that the workers own their workplaces

Isn't she just describing a coop? Just found one with your furry friends. Just seems like a pain in the ass to organize

As the spaghetti guy noted, she's describing ResetEra LLC before Cerium bought out the other owners.

[Uncle]

for real though, as stated by haughtyfrank, what she's describing is literally possible under capitalism and thriving in some cases

the state doesn't mandate that ALL businesses must be co-ops, because that would be insane, let me organize what I do any way I like

nor does it mandate that all businesses must have a CEO who owns everything

she's literally just mad that when you give people freedom to organize the way they want, these kinds of organizational structures occur naturally and plenty of people enjoy the benefits of such systems

some people don't want to shoulder the burden of a business's success or failure and don't want a stake in it, preferring to be more mobile and feeling free to leave the job for another without guilt

if you don't want one guy to be able to start something and reap the benefits of his own hard work and investment with underlings he hires, then you need to collectively as a society decide that no one is going to offer themselves for hire as his underling, and it sure doesn't seem like you're going to be able to stop that from happening

[clockwork5]

Why live in a system that gives you access to partial ownership of NVDA and 10x your investment over the last five years when you can be forced into partial ownership of Wallgreens because that’s where you work and watch the value of your stake diminish 65% over the last five years.

[Boredfrom]

Without revealing too much about myself, a coop can be very successful.

But Nep (and socialists like minded) are kidding themselves if they think these are companies/communities are beyond the grasp of “Capitalism and power”.

If anything, the very successful ones operate like a small government or aren’t that different from a corpo.

[Boredfrom]

The fundamental property of socialism is that the workers own their workplaces

Isn't she just describing a coop? Just found one with your furry friends. Just seems like a pain in the ass to organize

Is a pain in the ass to maintain.

[Uncle]

Without revealing too much about myself, a coop can be very successful.

would've been less revealing if you hadn't said this  

we must train you

what you say is, there was a co-op in the last town I lived in where I was friends with a handful of the employees, and they all loved it, it was really successful

there was this one chick I was drilling every night and she would moan out "oh yes papi, yes, your dick is almost as good as my job at the co-op where I earn so many pesos, ay dios mio"

[benji]

if you don't want one guy to be able to start something and reap the benefits of his own hard work and investment with underlings he hires, then you need to collectively as a society decide that no one is going to offer themselves for hire as his underling, and it sure doesn't seem like you're going to be able to stop that from happening

For someone who rails so much about white supremacy she's very ignorant about how it was enforced historically, especially in the area where she lives:
1. Slavery insulated the South against capitalist forces by establishing norms that circumvented the profit motive for "proper morals" aka some work was not for whites only Blacks should do it, which when carried out across the entire South created a backwater with depressed economics that was becoming irrelevant.
2. This was the great fear of the white supremacists and slaveholders and why they needed to act and enshrine slavery permanently, their "honor" culture was going to be overrun by the "materialistic" North that sought "only" profit.
3. Free Blacks, post-slavery, would work for lower wages than whites so it had to be enforced that only whites would be hired. 
4. All the extralegal violence and then state violence used against anyone willing to both hire and serve Blacks because their money spent as well as whites.

Ultimately the affront of capitalism to her and the rest of Era is that it doesn't impose the order they want on the world. And they can only view things through this lens that someone is using power to impose what they want on the world. So Joanne is doing something wrong by giving millions of people what they want, it's nefarious and evil, especially because if there was a proper order, the one in their fantasies, all of that would be going to Concord. It's the same old reactionary moral conservatism that despises the democracy of capitalism because it lets others not ask you for permission first, hence the constant need to impose morality on it and take nothing else into consideration.

If you need hierarchies to explain the world, you will create them. For Nepenthe it's race. For TransEra it's gender/sex. For all of Era it's "billionaires" even though the global masses control more than billionaires do. They can't conceive of it that way because they think of only the relative status, billionaires must be all-powerful because they're on top of the hierarchy they've constructed. This kind of argument just doesn't compute:

Big business depends on mass consumption. There is, in present-day America, not a single branch of big business that would not cater to the needs of the masses. The very principle of capitalist entrepreneurship is to provide for the common man. . . . There is in the market economy no other means of acquiring and preserving wealth than by supplying the masses in the best and cheapest way with all the goods they ask for.

[filler]

co-opunism 

[HaughtyFrank]

Without revealing too much about myself, a coop can be very successful.

But Nep (and socialists like minded) are kidding themselves if they think these are companies/communities are beyond the grasp of “Capitalism and power”.

If anything, the very successful ones operate like a small government or aren’t that different from a corpo.

It really makes you wonder how she imagines it. Like imagine she founds a Coop with three friends. They all chipped and now own a pharmacy. Business is good, in fact it's so good they need more hands on deck so let's hire two extra people. Should those two people then have the exact same say about the way the pharmacy evolves as Nepenthe? Those two guys didn't even chip anything in to buy the store in the first place! Hm, I guess if they give Nepenthe some extra money she could give them ownership over a small part of the company, that would be fair...

Not saying that company structures are perfect but it's not hard to see how they develop even when you start on an equal footing

[benji]

She doesn't imagine anything starting, her entire premise is that resources just exist freely for everyone to have but some people have hoarded them. It's all just a distribution problem.

In her "sketch" she didn't deal at all with where the community's warehouse of tools even comes from. Or how anyone could be responsible for supplying and maintaining any of it despite her stating that you have to or you get punished for not doing your part. The "tools" just randomly showed up one day and if you need more I guess you just make them, even though you'd have to get the specific resources and skills and capabilities from somewhere. It's all just handwaved as typical in proposed alternatives to capitalism. Even though this is literally the first problem you'd have with launching any enterprise let alone planning all of life.

I don't think she grasps at all that socialism gets around this fundamental problem because it's based on central planning, there's a plan that tells everyone what to do and that's what everyone does. The problem with that is that a central plan can't use resources it doesn't have. Corporations get around this by buying stuff from others, a socialist economy can't unless it controls everything which is why the communist movement was to be international in scope.

You just have to read her two utopia sketches to see how incredibly confused it is about everything, there's still private property including land ownership, there's still people exchanging money for goods/services, yet it's supposedly not "capitalism" because everyone is on their porches enjoying street music.

[filler]

bluball pls 

[benji]

Just look at this:

You don't have a menial job to go to at a certain time anymore, working for a boss, although you are expected to reasonably pitch in towards the maintenance of the utilities and resources you want to access within your community. Ex. You take from a public garden then you better make sure you're putting back what you took for the next person who comes along somehow, either through time spent cultivating it or providing resources for its maintenance. Libraries of the commons would also be a more fundamental public service where you can have access to the tools and items you may need without having to necessarily go and buy them; people donate usable but unwanted "things" (cookware, furniture, lawn equipment, clothing, etc.) and you rent this like you would a book at a library, and bring it back when you're done. Art and culture would still be valuable pursuits too, and indeed, freer expressions of self and culture would be encouraged: city and park demonstrations, more volunteer upkeep of buildings, more public paintings and graffiti, street music, etc. People should be encouraged to be creative and have fun with others. Housing would be more mixed; closer quarters where most amenities (bars and restaurants, clubs, pharmacies, grocery stores, etc.) are within walking or biking distance. And so long as a spot or joint is free and fits your living needs, you can claim it as your home so long as you promise to abide by whatever community and/or local ordinances exist there. Political organization would be expressed through a consensus based form of representation. Everyone is encouraged to participate in local meetings to address grievances, and goals and demands are reached through discussion and consensus and delivered to a higher presiding body by a representative who is voted on by the chosen body. This representative would ideally not always be the same person to temper the inclination of power-tripping. Also, we're fucking off of fossil fuels permanently and our public transporation is robust and strong. Solarpunk reality baby.

I didn't write much more than that, but that was my starting idea for a little fantasy world. You wake up, get yourself together, and essentially go about your day however you choose without the threat of coercive labor forcing you to do shit you don't really want to do. You wanna hang at the local bar with your friends, take a trip into the wilderness, etc. then go for it. Be merry. If you wish to use a public service in society, get groceries and supplies, or anything else, it is simply mandated that you maintain and use it responsibly and return it back for the rest of the community to use too. It's not too horrible, is it?

How can anyone write this without realizing it immediately falls apart the instant anyone actually does anything at all?

[Boredfrom]

Should those two people then have the exact same say about the way the pharmacy evolves as Nepenthe?

Ideally, it should… but this will become infeasible as the company grows and grows.

[Uncle]

1. Slavery insulated the South against capitalist forces by establishing norms that circumvented the profit motive for "proper morals" aka some work was not for whites only Blacks should do it, which when carried out across the entire South created a backwater with depressed economics that was becoming irrelevant.

https://imgur.com/gallery/why-not-just-hire-americans-PEaZC5d

[filler]

imgur stopped working for me some time back and I still haven't figured out why 

[Uncle]

Just look at this:

I didn't write much more than that, but that was my starting idea for a little fantasy world. You wake up, get yourself together, and essentially go about your day however you choose without the threat of coercive labor forcing you to do shit you don't really want to do. You wanna hang at the local bar with your friends, take a trip into the wilderness, etc. then go for it. Be merry. If you wish to use a public service in society, get groceries and supplies, or anything else, it is simply mandated that you maintain and use it responsibly and return it back for the rest of the community to use too. It's not too horrible, is it?

How can anyone write this without realizing it immediately falls apart the instant anyone actually does anything at all?

ok so I'm using a public service, I'm borrowing a canoe from the public canoe shack to go canoeing

but I don't feel like giving it back, that sounds awfully like coercive labor forcing me to give the canoe back which I don't really want to do

who is going to recognize that I've broken the social contract and punish me for this? what if they don't really feel like taking the canoe from my garage and hauling it all the way back to the canoe shack, are you going to coerce the enforcers into doing shit they don't really want to do?

Should those two people then have the exact same say about the way the pharmacy evolves as Nepenthe?

Ideally, it should… but this will become infeasible as the company grows and grows.

I'm picturing Nepenthe starts her co-op with two other friends, they hire two more people to help who are friends with each other, then later hire two more

the two friends pull the two newbies aside and tell them about their scheme to take over the co-op, and with four votes of a seven person group they can now do whatever they want

they immediately kick out the three who started it and liquidate the business for cash for themselves

[HeavenIsAPlaceOnEarth]

2. This is essentially the same as charging people with stochastic terrorism, with an even more unlimited scope, the idea that people can be imprisoned for making policy and budgetary choices that will result in hypothetical deaths compared to some alternative fantasy policy. Which is always the case. It wouldn't be a defense if you changed a policy that hypothetically killed "millions" in one place by hypothetically saving "tens of millions" in another place because "I was saving more lives" isn't a defense against a mass murder charge. And this is the situation with every single decision involved, USAID had to pick and choose what it funded, it didn't fund everything everywhere.

theoretically, all of us have made decisions that led to countless preventable deaths by posting on the bire instead of spending that time studying the blade and patrolling the streets to protect vulnerable women

I post on the bire to ensure those deaths occur.

[BIONIC]

imgur stopped working for me some time back and I still haven't figured out why 

filler is British?