Put it this way: can you not know you have a headache? And if not, then what is 'know' doing when you affirm that you do know it? What does 'I know I have a headache' do that 'I have a headache' does not? After all the usual grammar of 'knowing' implies that we can in principle not know a thing (or maybe know it only vaguely). And when we model 'knowing' on 'I know I have a headache', are we mistaking a dummy expression (like the 'it' in 'it is raining') for legitimate instance of knowing? (like the person, who, without a grasp of grammar asks: "but what is 'it'?"). Wittgenstein would suggest yes. You can of course say, "I know I have a headache" - but are you saying something about knowing? Wittgenstein would suggest not (it might be a rebuke: "I know I have a headache! You don't need to remind me!" - but this speaks to one's, call it, annoyed comportment with respect to someone else at that point in time, who probably said something to provoke it - and it probably wasn't "are you sure you have a headache?"; that's the point of the rebuke; it's not an affirmation of my cognitive understanding of my state of being).

On Certainty, §467: "I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again "I know that tree", pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this; and I tell him: 'This fellow isn't insane. We are only doing philosophy.'"

The idea of the family used as excuse for implementing market discipline kind-of thing? — Manuel

Kind of. It's how 'the family' became the last bastion of non-market socaility, and how much this absolutely has ruined people. Also explains how neoliberalism and social conservatism basically dovetail into one another on this basis. She kind uses the family unit as a prism through which to view the neoliberalism's social effects. It's devastating.

Melinda Cooper's Family Values - this book more than any other made me realize the depravity of neoliberalism. It's one of my all time favourite social studies. Wendy Brown's work is usually one of the standard references (Undoing the Demos and In the Ruins of Neoliberalism), but Coopers book really shows you how it works at a 'on the ground', social level. US focused, but exemplary of its world-wide creep. Can't recommend it highly enough.

That's really cool! I have a one-shot coming up, I'll probably have fun with the breeder and see if I can some up with something fun. I only have a basic idea of a character for it: someone who thinks they are really wise, but is in fact thick as bricks. I swear when I create characters I base it mostly around whatever stupid voice I think is appropriate at the time. Especially for one shots lol.

I've used dndbeyond for guides and stuff, but I didn't realize they had a online board as well.

:up: Cool and based.

Nice list!

The US in currently in the process of trying to throw Julian Assange in prision forever, for exposing wonton American murder overseas.

The human rights lawyer Steven Donzinger was just thrown into jail by Chevron - literally by Chevron, the private company, and not the government - as punishment for winning a case against them for poisoning the environment, and securing an $18billion judgement against them.

Edward Snowden is still in exile because he exposed illegal government surveillance.

Academics lose jobs over critiquing Israel's protracted genocide against Palestinians.

The idea that we need less, rather than more free speech, is the height of lunacy.

It is of course, a classic liberal idea. Rather than have anything at all to say about the corporate control of the media - because liberals are effectively capitalist stooges who will go to bat for money wherever it is and whose politics is based on how comfortable they personally feel - and which has left (official) media a barren wasteland of corporate propaganda, they'd prefer to accelerate the problem by handing the keys of speech over to further control.

Oh wait people here think Manchin and Sinema are the 'bad guys' and are not doing exactly as the Democratic party apparatus is telling them to do? Lol. Guess there are idiots everywhere.

"Wreck the democratic party from the inside". My God, the fact that anyone has bought into the idea that things are not going exactly to plan is even more depressing than the manufactured drama itself. You are the very guarantors of this kind of thing perpetuating over and over again, till infinity.

"Manchin is owned by the fossil fuel industry" - yeah Manchin is owned by the fossil fuel industry, uh huh, the rest of them are green eco-warriors held back by the forces of Manchin darkness. Frankly Manchin is the only honest one among them all - along with Sinema of course.

Is it as bad your country? — ssu

What do you mean?

You underestimate how successful the two parties have been in establishing a partisan divide between them. — ssu

Yeah gee it's not like I talk about it all the time yeah real underestimating.

Right now I think the most lovely thing to watch is liberals get mad about Sinema and Manchin. As if they are not playing the roles dictated to them by the democratic party apparatus to a tee. Biden probably couldn't be happier. Meanwhile liberal rags will churn out article after article about their 'obstructionism'. The democratics will likely be utterly relieved when they get wiped out in the mid-terms. They can go back to blaming Republicans for things and not their own totally-in-agreement agenda.

It's funny 'cause Nietzsche was a notorious loser. Probably the original incel.

The annoying thing about having a thread for Trump and a thread for Biden is that the two are barely distinguishable except for how comfortable one of them makes liberals. A nice merged one on conservative American Imperial leaders would be cool. Doesn't help that one of them is simply a caretaker president for the other.

teaching [insert name of American reality tv celebrity] — baker

Oh God no American celebrities are beyond the pale.

Actually probably most Americans in general tbh.

I don't love "my" country — baker

Cool.

Yes, we learn how to feel about something, — baker

Excellent. Now go read about how everything you love about your country is probably the fruit of genocide or colonialism or continuing exploitation which remains unaddressed.

Can you sketch out your idea of how a person under capitalism can feel shame? — baker

Do... do you need someone to teach you how to emote?

When did you land on Earth and can you tell me about your galaxy and what it's like over there?

Ah yes I also remember the bit in armchair fabricated psychology 101 where every response to shame is exactly the same and it is consumerism yes mhmm.

To capitalism's end.

It's not. It comes in behind China, Russia, Germany, and the British. — frank

Sure, if you guzzle US propaganda.

https://www.amazon.com.au/Killing-Hope-Military-Interventions-Since/dp/1567512526

https://www.amazon.com.au/Washington-Bullets-History-Coups-Assassinations/dp/1583679065

https://www.amazon.com.au/Jakarta-Method-Washingtons-Anticommunist-Crusade/dp/1541742400

Or maybe learn how the US is in fact the most destructive piece of shit country on Earth that has consistently ended democratic movements and consistently crushed the freedoms of billions around the world. And continues to.

Wow cool meaningless fluff.

Yeah gee I wonder why anyone would complain about the US being complicit in worldwide genocide what losers lol

Ok bootlicker.

What a stupid thing to say.

Love to see all the bootlickers come out. It's great.

Yes?

Then you haven't listened.

Name another country with 750 military bases in 80 countries around the world.

But who is going to hold the US accountable anyhow? — Wheatley

It would be a good start to undermine any legitimacy it has and for it to be universally ackowledged as the most destructive country on the planet.

You enjoy its fruits. But then, the answer is to laugh in the face of patriots.

Is Biden well enough to change his mind? — Wheatley

Why would he change his mind? Biden is the head of American Empire. It's literally his job to ensure the US can get away with murders it commits.

And on the international front the Biden regime continues to press its case to persecute journalists who expose American warcrimes:

"They say: we guarantee that he won’t be held in a maximum security facility and he will not be subjected to Special Administrative Measures and he will get healthcare. But if he does something that we don’t like, we reserve the right to not guarantee him, we reserve the right to put him in a maximum security facility, we reserve the right to offer him Special Administrative Measures. Those are not assurances at all. It is not that difficult to look at those assurances and say: these are inherently unreliable, it promises to do something and then reserves the right to break the promise."

So the prosecution's legal argument here is essentially "We promise we won't treat Assange as cruelly as we treat our other prisoners, unless we decide we really want to."

This is not just a reflection on the weakness of the extradition appeal, it's a reflection on the savagery of all the so-called free democracies that have involved themselves in this case."

https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-assange-persecution-is-western

In other, absolutely glorious news:

No wonder they want to water down voting.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/28/cant-find-workers-why-not-pay-more-instead-of-exploiting-children-and-migrants

How sweet, the capital strike has turned into an excuse to reintroduce child labour in the US. Biden's America, going along swimmingly.

I guess going after children was the next logical step after going after women's uteruses.

The only appropriate patriotic attitude under capitalism is extreme and unabiding shame.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/oct/26/voter-identification-to-be-compulsory-under-morrison-government-proposal?

This is like my worst fears coming through - Morrison aping American anti-democratic bullshit. The last thing we need to to become anything close to the shitfuckery that is the American asylum. What a malignant fucking cancer on the world. Fuck the US, and fuck Scott Morrison.

And of course it's inspired by our resident racist piece of shit MP, Hanson:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/oct/28/i-understand-the-need-centre-alliance-could-offer-crucial-support-for-coalitions-controversial-voter-id-laws

The only problem was Jan 6 was that it was carried out by elements of the right.

So could be just a little reminder to insiders, with a mischievous wink, that he's not doing that anymore. In certain quarters at the time, the word "description" alone carried a whole theory along with it. — Srap Tasmaner

Ha. Entirely possible. Although Witty mischievously winking is a very weird image.

The endless fight for the gun will just be that, an endless fight for the gun and in the process millions get shot and die. — Tobias

Not if we win :blush:

When did Benjamin write, the 1920s the 1930s? — Tobias

1940 - the same year he took his life while running from the Nazis. You can read the whole thing here. As for the rest, one only has to look at just where the attempts to 'channel class warfare and encapsulate it in discourse and consensus politics' have gotten us. Here. That to me is more utopian than any revolutionary aspiration. To look at everything burning down and say that we just need a bit more of this. Power always wins. The arc of history bends to the barrel of a gun. Only question is who has it.