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Hearing a Youth pronounce it out loud as “ . . . eye-three-three-seven speak?” made my soul immediately leave my body from old age.
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[B]ig business and the state have never had a clear dividing line; large firms are always chartered by the government for quasi-public purposes. We’ve just chosen since the 1980s to make that public purpose the enrichment of a few finance-oriented managers and technologies, and lied about it. But before that, we had a decentralized business apparatus, though big business was heavily regulated by the state through forms of public utility rule-making. As FDR put it in 1938, “The power of a few to manage the economic life of the nation must be diffused among the many or be transferred to the public and its democratically responsible government.” He wasn’t saying that to be nice. It was 1938, the alternative was fascism.
Matt Stoller on .
Only tangentially related to the above, I think one of the things the Trump era has made abundantly clear about the whole “run the government like a business” shtick is just how fucking awfully run most businesses are. Even the profitable ones. Hell, especially the profitable ones.
Like, there’s definitely a temptation, because of who Trump is, to pretend that he’s an especially egregious example of Johnny C. Businessman but, uh. Not really? He’s more blatant about it — feels less of a need to trot out the usual apologetics and stories corporations tell about themselves — but that’s really about all. The underlying dysfunctions are the same. The mass hiring of unqualified lickspittles, the deranged and impractical top-down edicts, the failing up, the cults of personality, the blatant lying about basically everything . . . like, if you have worked in a business, you’ve seen all of these things in action, to one degree or another. They’re also, if you’ll note, exactly the same problems you get in, for example, absolute monarchies, the military,1 failed states of all persuasions, and certain forms of community and religious organisations, which kinda of gives a clue to the real culprit here, i.e., authoritarianism, at least in its “small-a,” generic sense (and, also, the “big-a,” political science sense, since Authoritarianism is by definition authoritarian).
Like, don’t get me wrong. Modern forms of liberal democracy aren’t perfect. But they have been developed over centuries in specific opposition to authoritarian forms of social organisation, in their case absolute monarchies. The fact that the locus of authoritarianism in the modern world has mostly shifted from monarchs to capitalists, and that the theory has been lagging a bit behind the practice? Well. So it goes.
- One of the things I don’t think gets enough play is that the modern military does a lot to try and temper the effects of authoritarianism in an organisation that pretty much has to be extremely hierarchical. If you’ve never really dealt with the military I think it’s easy to overlook this, but it’s something the modern professional officer class angsts about constantly; this is what all the stuff about honour and duty and service and whatever is actually supposed to be a counter to. And even then it still frequently goes wrong! ↩
tags:
Name: Kia (They/Them)
Age group: 20s
Country: Australia
Subscription/Access Policy: Don't give out access to people unless we've been mutuals for awhile or already know each other.
Fannish Interests: Fic writing, editing, icons, reccing, meta
I like to post about: Just whatever I get up to in the week (mostly shorter posts). I'm also trying to make a habit of journaling any media I get into, but that's definitely a skill I need to work on.
About Me: Been on dreamwidth for about five months now. For a while I've mostly used my journal as a personal diary, but recently I've wanted to make more public posts about the various things I enjoy. I've kind of distanced myself from being online everywhere else, but I'm still up for meeting new people here. I'm ideally looking for other active journals to read and maybe become mutuals with. Don't have to be in the same fandoms, but as long as we have some common interests then that's good enough for me.
Age group: 20s
Country: Australia
Subscription/Access Policy: Don't give out access to people unless we've been mutuals for awhile or already know each other.
Fannish Interests: Fic writing, editing, icons, reccing, meta
I like to post about: Just whatever I get up to in the week (mostly shorter posts). I'm also trying to make a habit of journaling any media I get into, but that's definitely a skill I need to work on.
About Me: Been on dreamwidth for about five months now. For a while I've mostly used my journal as a personal diary, but recently I've wanted to make more public posts about the various things I enjoy. I've kind of distanced myself from being online everywhere else, but I'm still up for meeting new people here. I'm ideally looking for other active journals to read and maybe become mutuals with. Don't have to be in the same fandoms, but as long as we have some common interests then that's good enough for me.
- Other hobbies: Music, language learning, reading, gaming
- I'm looking for people who are: Neurodivergent and/or queer people, nerds who post about fandom/media often (especially meta stuff but that's just personal preference), people interested in languages, people who post about cooking or just anyone who wants to see me scream into the void about things that vaguely matter to me
- Minors DNI
- Occasional nsfw+vent posts (read intro post for more info)
Updated my 2019 MacBook Pro to Tahoe and, ah. There goes the battery . . .
The title is because every time there's a Rapture predicted, I listen to Astro Zombies. It seems appropriate.
---
As some of you may have noticed from my shrieking on social media yesterday, My Chemical Romance announced tour dates for 2026. The closest they're coming to me is San Diego or L.A., and yes, discussions are being had about which show I should try to purchase tickets for. EXCEPT that I'll have to purchase those tickets later, because they go on sale on Friday, right when I'll be in the office for an all-day meeting.
:: wails ::
The Stroppy One pointed out that more tickets always become available closer to the concert dates, and while I know he's right, that doesn't sooth the wailing fangirl part of my brain. Stupid work calibration meetings.
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Yesterday I discovered the clothing company Market of Stars, and specifically this duster. I flailed a lot about in on Bluesky and Tumblr, because my god that is pretty and I already thought of two different outfits I could use it with. To my complete shock, someone who's followed me for years and years sent me the money for it, saying they wanted to spread some kindness. I am shocked but grateful.
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IG has started showing me a lot of witchy content. Not just the aesthetic IG witches, but people who's approaches are similar to mine. I don't know why the algorithm started doing that, but I prefer it to the hordes of "alt" makeup tutorials done by baby faced, dripping with collagen youngsters. (I found all of them adorable, but found myself muttering "Okay, now show me how to do that with permanent eye bags" a lot.)
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As many of you know, my company hosts the all-hands Company Kick-Off event at the beginning of every year in Phoenix AZ, and there's always a costume theme for the first day. The 2026 theme is ... teams. Any way someone wants to interpret that, but of course all the examples were sports-related. But! I came up with a brilliant idea and presented it to my team: we all carry notepads and oversized pencils, and ta-da! We're the writing team. My peeps liked it, so that's what we're doing.
---
As some of you may have noticed from my shrieking on social media yesterday, My Chemical Romance announced tour dates for 2026. The closest they're coming to me is San Diego or L.A., and yes, discussions are being had about which show I should try to purchase tickets for. EXCEPT that I'll have to purchase those tickets later, because they go on sale on Friday, right when I'll be in the office for an all-day meeting.
:: wails ::
The Stroppy One pointed out that more tickets always become available closer to the concert dates, and while I know he's right, that doesn't sooth the wailing fangirl part of my brain. Stupid work calibration meetings.
---
Yesterday I discovered the clothing company Market of Stars, and specifically this duster. I flailed a lot about in on Bluesky and Tumblr, because my god that is pretty and I already thought of two different outfits I could use it with. To my complete shock, someone who's followed me for years and years sent me the money for it, saying they wanted to spread some kindness. I am shocked but grateful.
---
IG has started showing me a lot of witchy content. Not just the aesthetic IG witches, but people who's approaches are similar to mine. I don't know why the algorithm started doing that, but I prefer it to the hordes of "alt" makeup tutorials done by baby faced, dripping with collagen youngsters. (I found all of them adorable, but found myself muttering "Okay, now show me how to do that with permanent eye bags" a lot.)
---
As many of you know, my company hosts the all-hands Company Kick-Off event at the beginning of every year in Phoenix AZ, and there's always a costume theme for the first day. The 2026 theme is ... teams. Any way someone wants to interpret that, but of course all the examples were sports-related. But! I came up with a brilliant idea and presented it to my team: we all carry notepads and oversized pencils, and ta-da! We're the writing team. My peeps liked it, so that's what we're doing.
