I Cant Get Over The King Charles Portrait. They Made That Thing To Age In His Place. That Painting Hangs

they did not call me any particular nickname in college because I did not have any characteristics or traits

not only would he wear the "I <3 DILFS" shirt, he would also get like +1 electrochemistry and +1 interfacing from it

i think the appeal of harry du bois is that he’s a character you can draw wearing those funny t shirts we all like to draw our favorite characters in, except he would definitely actually wear them. i can easily imagine harry du bois in a “I <3 DILFS” shirt and booty shorts. it’s harry du bois, of course he’s wearing that

What’s a food from your culture that u HATE #hatersonly

reblog this to let a curious kitten explore your dash

"does a story need to mean something" i think i know what people are trying to get at here but it is also worth reiterating that 1) stories or narratives always convey meaning, question of 'need' irrelevant 2) that meaning is not necessarily or solely determined by authorial intent and it's not a property that the story in itself possesses transcendentally but comes about also as the result of an interpretive act occurring within a given set of social relations and circumstances. the iliad probably did not mean to homer exactly what it does to me. a generative language model can't imbue its output with its own 'intent' and yet if i read that output and interpret it, i'm engaging with it in a way that creates meaning, structured by the particular narratological frameworks or schemata i've learned. a story might 'mean' something internally, and 'mean' something quite different when that internal meaning is contextualised in its social and historical circumstances. etc.

wretchedly perish then said cicero wednesday

[“In his extended study, Viet Cong, published in 1966, Pike went to some length to show that the success of the Viet Cong came not so much from their use of violence and terror (as many Americans assumed) but from their organizational methods. By 1970 he had given the subject a new emphasis. “Terror,” he said, “is an essential ingredient of nearly all [the Viet Cong's] programs.” And he went ahead to show his own colors:

A frank word is required here about “terror” on the other side, by the Government and Allied forces fighting in Viet-Nam. No one with any experience in Vietnam denies that troops, police and others commanding physical power, have committed excesses that are, by our working definition, acts of terror.… But there is an essential difference in such acts between the two sides, one of outcome or result. To the communist, terror has a utility and is beneficial to his cause, while to the other side the identical act is self-defeating. This is not because one side is made up of heroes and the other of villains. It is because, as noted above, terror is integral in all the communist tactics and programs and communists could not rid themselves of it even if they wanted to. Meanwhile, the other side firmly believes, even though its members do not always behave accordingly, that there is a vested interest in abstaining from such acts.

Interestingly, Pike's “working definition” of terror was the “systematic use of death, pain, fear and anxiety among the population (either civilian or military) for the deliberate purpose of coercing, manipulating, intimidating, punishing or simply frightening the helpless into submission.” And by that definition the entire American bombing policy in Vietnam, North and South, was a strategy of terror. Even within the narrower definition of “terror” as an unconventional, clandestine act of violence — an assassination or a satchel-charge bombing — the Allies had been using terror deliberately for a number of years through professionally trained paramilitary units such as the Special Forces and the Provincial Reconnaissance Units.

As head of the Psychological Warfare section, Pike knew this as well as anyone in Vietnam. Only he, like many Americans who backed the Vietnam War, ascribed the best of motives to the Americans and their allies, while laying all the evil at the door of the enemy. It was the same kind of bad faith and bad conscience that in 1967 inspired all the American rhetoric about “revolutionary development” and “building democracy” in Vietnam. It was the same kind of rhetoric that inspired the unrestricted use of violence upon the Vietnamese.”]

frances fitzgerald, from fire in the lake: the vietnamese and the americans in vietnam, 1972

hilarious that the south korean soldiers seem to be getting absolutely clowned considering they’re supposed to be an all-elite super fighting force or whatever

lol. lmao, even

i love those blinking red lights they put on top of radio towers and windmills and skyscrapers etc, theyre like electronic flowers or something to me