Yeah, I think movies could really be used to great effect in sci fi and fantasy where setting is a major character, but it’s rarely done. I understand why, it’s a more artsy thing to do, but one that demands large budgets. However I do think it’s something Avatar should have leaned more into and it’s something I really liked in the Dune movies.

They want knowledge presented efficiently, yes, and presenting knowledge efficiently means speaking to people in language that doesn’t get in the way of the ideas to those who are new to them. Academic language is a skill. That skill shouldn’t be presented as a barrier to learning about how the working class deserves more. Hell you can recommend people read theory that does speak to them in more common language. The Black Panthers were really good at speaking to people where they were. David Graeber also was excellent at it.

But why do people read any given text? Because they’ve been given a reason to want to. A podcaster got me started on my recent Graeber binge, and I excited by and enjoying the books convinced some friends to add one to their lists, as well as me talking about what I liked about and found fascinating in these books here on lemmy. Now I’m in the middle of some fiction unrelated to all of it because those friends recommended it to me.

“Go read theory” is brushing people off and cannot be expected to produce the result of them actually reading anything. “Hey, I’m not really doing my position justice in this discussion, if you’d like a much better argument read X by Y, it’s where I got a lot of these ideas, I found it really illuminating” is a much more effective means of getting someone to read.

There are plenty of challenging books to read. I don’t know many people who read books because they know they’ll be challenging, especially as throughout this discussion challenging has both meant “ideas that challenge one’s views and reshape them” and “ideas presented in a way that is challenging”.

The former is generally positive. Many people can enjoy such things whether it’s in a book (ideal as it can go into a level of depth other media struggle with, but also is the least easy to get people on board with because of the time investment), a discussion with someone they’re comfortable listening to, a zine, a podcast, or whatever else. Hell LeGuinn was great at using fiction for it.

The latter meaning of challenging however has upsides and downsides. It may add precision and complexity at the cost of legibility. When legibility is lost many walk away. It takes more effort to get to the dang ideas in the first place. This is especially the case with academic language, which many aren’t familiar and comfortable with.

Presenting old ideas in a newer and easier to access way is good. It’s a role that on the left spent far too long as the domain of zines and not much else.

When people feel they’re supposed to read a book because it’s important they put it off indefinitely. Reading it can feel like homework. If you want people to understand theory you need to help get everything but the ideas out of the way of the ideas and get them interested in knowing more. When they want more then you can spring a book with a painfully 19th century academic title on them, then they may actually read it.

Yeah I’ve been sexually violated in ways like posts like this are usually about (coerced and pressured past my "no"s into situations I didn’t want) and while I respect the effort, I feel like they’re often in a weird position of overzealous and only really applicable in hookup type situations, they also often ignore more manipulative styles of pressuring a yes.

Hesitation is fine, but it may be good practice to double check if the following yes isn’t enthusiastic. The yes is often less important than the enthusiasm in early stages. I’ve had wonderful nights of tongue wrestling where we never asked, we flirted until it was clearly mutual, and in one case we were hesitating at first because we were both not super comfortable with the age gap (we talked about it after). And we were both drunk, because there’s a difference between consensual actions while in an altered state and taking advantage of a drunk person, and that difference largely comes down to enthusiasm and being in a similar state. If I’m one beer in and generally feeling fine I ought to turn down a shitfaced woman who’s hitting on me hard, but if I’m right there with her that’s fine.

And in long term relationship6s I think the need for enthusiasm reduces. Sometimes you put out when you aren’t really in tar5he mood because you love your partner and value the intimacy. That’s not being sexually violated unless you were pressured or coerced.

Consent is a discussion that requires genuine nuance, and checklists will always come off as far more clunky than most people’s lived experiences with it.

Do you want to feel superior or do you want to increase access to your ideas? Most people won’t read a dense tome or even a particularly difficult book of something they’re mildly interested in. It goes even more for something other people tell them to read in ways very reminiscent of people saying to read the bible.

Meet people where they are, and as you convince them that there’s some merit to your ideas you can challenge them with challenging ideas. Some of those people will move on to difficult books, others however won’t because they prefer other types of challenges. In order to get what we want we need a lot more people on our side and that means addressing how bad we are at spreading our ideas to the general masses.

If communism means reading books that are long, difficult, and boring to ordinary people, most people don’t want it. They don’t read their bibles when they’re Christian and they won’t read their Marx if they’re communists.

You must read the originator to practice something. You aren’t a real capitalist if you haven’t read Adam Smith and you aren’t a real sadist if you haven’t read the 120 days of Sodom. /s

Fr though, theory is great and more people should read it, but also we must burn our bookshelves to be free as it were. Theory is just ideas, both vital to our ability to imagine and build a better world, but ultimately something that should be willing to build on, challenge, and eventually make even the most important thinkers academic.

So yeah read Marx, Proudhon, Kropotkin, Stirner, Goldman, Lenin, Mao, Huey Newton, Angela Davis, Graeber… but not like how a Christian would read the Bible. Read them as one reads philosophers (and a biologist and anthropologist who also did philosophy). Read them critically and see what they got right, ask what they might have gotten wrong and why. Ask what you can learn from their ideas and the effects of different people’s approaches to building on their ideas. When we treat them as secular prophets we do a disservice to them, ourselves, and those who will come after us.

Also like, do more than just read them. You actually have to try to meet people where they are. Talk about the ideas in ways that people are receptive to then eventually drop in where you got them. Convince ordinary people about this stuff as you organize to make more of it happen. Not through smugness but by sympathizing with their actual problems and building a dialog. Practice what you preach, both because it enhances credibility and is the right thing to do, but also because what we on the left preach is difficult to do and we need the practice.

What the fuck‽ Until '78‽

Trans people want to steal your dewormer!!! They want all the appley goodness to themselves!

Stop when you feel better

Unless you’re allergic, in which case remind them.

I’ve been prescribed meds I’m allergic to way too often.

Then tag every fighting game with sadomasochism

My university had extremely biased teachings. Never once did they present me with alternative physics. And in the humanities they made me stay on topic and provide well reasoned evidence for whatever position I took.

Wait is cobalt a nutrient?

Looks like the bone weakness comes from the calcium being pulled from the bones into the bloodstream. I would suspect that ODing on Ca wouldn’t cause that symptom

It’s an old timey word, not brain rot

This is why you get a pill organizer. That and so you can check if you took your meds that day.

Also prevents the “accidentally took amphetamines with my night time meds” which while rare is worse than the “took them twice this morning”

Damn china really isn’t beating the “less cool than Vietnam” accusations

Test your drugs. Both a fent test and a test for what you think you bought.

Back in the day nobody was slipping oxy into led. Hell, barely anyone was slipping lsd into lsd.

Comparatively though…

I think 14 year old me would be most disappointed that I’m no longer catholic. She’d probably be a mix of angry and excited that I’m trans. Shocked and confused when I explain to her that her parents’ marriage is really really bad and she’s going to need therapy for the way her dad treats her. Then she’s going to be kinda pissed when I tell her that her dad is right about her needing to do better in school, it’s just that he shouldn’t be yelling at her until she self harms about it. She’ll be proud I’m still friends with her friends and that I got out of Ohio to somewhere cool.

Oh then she’s going to be incredibly disappointed I married someone with tattoos, especially since I’ll call her a classist little shit about it.

Yeah a lot of bi people feel that way. I lose all horniness when I smell “man smell”. And I can say it’s absolutely about that because the incident was with someone who had just stopped testosterone and after a few weeks we were sleeping together a few times a week for months.

Personality is nice for me, but it’s body shape and feel and smell that do it for me, and it all points to women for me.