Category Archives: New Utopia

10 October 2019, 16:12

By Nicky Idika

Bella linked up with some good pals, including ex-girlfriend Tana Mongeau, to celebrate her 22nd birthday.

Fans of both Bella Thorne and Tana Mongeau will know that the former couple have always been fairly open about their relationship even after deciding to move on from their romantic coupling earlier this year. Although their post-breakup interactions on social media haven't always been the most cordial, there is definitely no bad blood between them, as evidenced by the revelation that the exes spent time together on Bella's birthday.

READ MORE: Bella Thorne shares topless photo with new girlfriend Alex Martini on Instagram

Tana Mongeau shared a Twitter shout out for Bella's birthday on 9 October. The sweet message for Bella's 22nd highlighted the fact that they've now celebrated three of her birthdays together.

"happy birthday @bellathorne grateful to be spending a third birthday of yours with u. as always, thank u for changing my life u fucking mogul " Tana tweeted.

Bella documented parts of her celebration which included her two ex-girlfriends and two current partners all sitting down for a meal together with a larger group.

"I can't two ex's and my two boos," Bella wrote on Instagram Stories.

Tana also shared her own Instagram Story, documenting the get together.

To be honest with you, we need Bella to drop some pointers on staying friends with our exes because all of this seems like a utopia.

Meanwhile, earlier this week, Bella shared an adorable photo of herself cuddling up with her new girlfriend Alex. It definitely looks like Bella is having one hell of a birthday week.

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Bella Thorne reunited with her ex Tana Mongeau for her 22nd birthday - PopBuzz

[ To me, a proper dictionary is a book of spells, Winterson said in her recent By the Book interview. ]

Ry is also falling for a version of Marys creation: Dr. Victor Stein, a TED-talking tech disrupter with a God complex and a keen fashion sense. Thanks to cryonics, in which Ry once dabbled, the grisly horror of reanimating a body is now entirely feasible, but Stein wants to go further into the realms of transhumanism and beyond: The world I imagine, the world A.I. will make possible, will not be a world of labels and that includes binaries like male and female, black and white, rich and poor. It sounds like a utopia, but anyone who has even a passing acquaintance with Westworld, HAL 9000 and Philip K. Dick will know that this is dangerous territory. Ry has serious concerns about these visionary goals, even while empathizing with them: I am part of a small group of transgender medical professionals. Some of us are transhuman enthusiasts too. That isnt surprising; we feel or have felt that were in the wrong body. We can understand the feeling that anybody is the wrong body.

This understanding aside, at times, its difficult to figure out why self-aware Ry falls so hard for Stein (although, admittedly, they have great sex). For someone whose eventual goal is to be free of the meat that makes up the body, he has an initial, almost prurient fascination with Rys choice to identify as hybrid, and is repeatedly at pains to assure Ry hes not gay (another sly nod to the contemporary discourse around gender and sexual identity). Occasionally, he comes across as little more than a TED Talk himself, spouting chunks of research and philosophical meanderings that, while fascinating, stall the novel. Its as if Winterson is at pains to remind us that issues around gender, notions of the self and fears of automatons supplanting human agency are not new concerns theyre as old as Ovids Metamorphoses. But these forays into didacticism are balanced with gleeful, highly imaginative set pieces rich with black humor: Dr. Steins lab lurks, Young Frankenstein-style, in decommissioned tunnels under Manchester, complete with its own pub. Severed, reanimated hands skitter, Addams Family-like, through the bowels of the lab, where Ron has been invited to create a Christian Companion sex doll for the evangelical market.

[ Peek inside Wintersons writing studio. ]

Weaving through all of this is the heart of the novel the primary love story promised on the cover, an uneasy, love-hate relationship between the author and her creation. As the Inventor of Dreams, Mary Shelley looses her novel into the world and mourns the loss of her lover and her children, were invited to consider what happens when a creation outlives and surpasses its creator (Yet, suppose my story has a life of its own?). The original novel has achieved immortality, and Wintersons Mary can never shake off the specter of her creation and the inventions it inspires. In parallel, and against their better judgment, Ry provides Stein with body parts snaffled from the hospital, laying them at his feet like a cat. They include a cryogenically frozen head in a flask that Polly D. hilariously dubs the iHead and that Stein hopes will be his key to the Singularity the moment A.I. changes the way we live, forever. Rys gifts will possibly give birth to another form of immortality the queasy notion of the consciousness living forever, disembodied, in the cloud and who knows where that will lead the human race?

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A Novel That Riffs on Sex Dolls, Mary Shelley and Brexit - The New York Times

Here are three ideas Ive come across recently. Lets break them down.

1. Should we ban billionaires?

Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders says we should ban billionaires. Its all part of the growing trend in the idea of wealth taxes that have become popular with some Democrats.

It sounds like an OK-ish idea if youre into progressive taxation, but its also an impractical idea that is predicated on misunderstandings. For instance, the majority of extremely wealthy people dont actually have billions of dollars sitting in their bank accounts. They are paper billionaires who mostly own illiquid assets (like corporations or real assets).

If they actually liquidated their assets they might quickly find out that theyre not worth what they think theyre worth.

But its also impractical because theres no reasonable way to value many of those assets. For instance, I might be worth millions of dollars. I have no idea what Orcam Financial Group, my company, is actually worth. But lets be crazy and assume that the IRS says my firm is worth $50 million (which would be a very inaccurate assessment, by the way).

That means I would have to come up with $500,000 to pay Bernies wealth tax. I dont have $500,000 of liquid Orcam Financial Group stock sitting around. So how am I even supposed to pay this tax? Its ridiculous.

The idea is completely impractical. A better idea if youre into this sort of thing is to raise the capital-gains tax since that operates like a wealth tax and is predicated on people actually having liquidated the assets applied to the tax. There are practical ways to deal with this issue, and while wealth taxes are a good campaign slogan, theyre impractical.

Anyhow, Nick Maggiulli had a pretty good assessment of this idea, so take a peak at his post.

2. Does anyone work for a billion dollars?

Heres another Bernie Sanders supporter making an interesting point about the ultra-rich:

Theres so much wrong here I dont even know where to start.

The reason Amazons AMZN, +0.68% Jeff Bezos is ultra-wealthy is because he worked to make capital investments that contributed to the value of other peoples lives and financial assets.

Investment is the element of the economy that makes the entire financial system work. Without people investing and spending for future production, wed all just be borrowing more and more money to consume finite resources and inevitably inflating the value of the money away.

People who spend for future production create value and thereby create demand for money. That demand for money helps maintain the value of money. It creates a virtuous cycle, whereby investment creates demand for money, and demand for more goods and services creates demand for more investment.

If all we had was consumption and people getting paid $5,000 to sit on their rumps, there would be no incentive for investment, and the whole system would inflate away.

If, on the other hand, you took that $5,000 and invested it in something innovative, youd have the opportunity not only to earn that hypothetical $5,000, but your savings would grow thanks to future investment and compounding.

For instance, at just 2% per year, your investment of just one $5,000 investment grows to $170 million over 527 years. Of course, you need investment to generate the real return and, without it, your $5,000 just withers away.

So, no, this socialist utopia where no one invests and the government just hands out thousands of dollars is not a real thing. Its a fiction based on misunderstandings of how the value of money is created.

Now, there are perfectly good arguments for higher taxes on the ultra-wealthy. But this idea that they didnt earn it or didnt work for it is just wrong on its face. The whole reason theyre worth billions of dollars is because they worked to make capital investments that other people then placed a market value on.

And then their capital investment compounded its face off. Its not just earned and worked for, its entirely validated by the way other people vote on the value of the financial assets they created from nothing.

3. Biblically responsible investing. WHAT. IN. THE. HOLY. HELL? I got this email this morning:

And last week there was a new SEC filing for a biblically themed ETF that would cost 1.9% for any investment under $1 million (thanks to Jeff Ptak).

What is this trash? Look, I was raised a good Catholic boy. I went to Jesuit schools. But those Jesuits also stressed the importance of understanding science and being able to decipher the Bible as a library of guiding narratives and not necessarily a book that was to be read literally.

So I get very concerned when I see high-fee funds that sell a deeply emotional narrative that takes advantage of people trying to do good because the empirical evidence clearly shows that paying high fees and doing good does not necessarily lead to a better return on investment.

In fact, we know pretty definitively that higher fees are the dominant determinant of lower performance, and the higher those fees are, the more likely you are to perform worse. And 2% is an egregious fee structure for any investment product, let alone one that claims to be able to predict which firms will perform well based on the subjective idea of how good they are.

Anyhow, Ill step off this soapbox now. But, please, dont buy into this nonsense. Investing is mostly about controlling your emotions, and any strategy predicated on capturing high-fee assets because it sells an emotional narrative is likely to perform worse.

Im not sure what Jesus would think about this, but my guess is that hed want his biblically themed ETF to be free. Just guessing, though.

Cullen Roche is the author of the Pragmatic Capitalism blog, where this column first appeared. Follow him on Twitter @cullenroche.

Read more:

Ban billionaires? What progressive Democrats dont understand about the economy - MarketWatch

Photo by Sandrachile . on Unsplash

The Twitter-sphere erupted in outrage last week, after images of Ellen DeGeneres sitting next to George W. Bush at a Dallas football game circulated the social media platform. Despite the numbers demonstrating that Twitter isnt the premier social media platform and therefore, the collective outrage on Twitter shouldnt be used as a reflection of societal views; Ellen was compelled to give a statement on the matter. After ruminating on the scandalous event over the weekend, she addressed the outrage on her show.

What followed her explanation was a plethora of narrow-minded commentary. And I have to say, I am baffled by the rejection of such remarks. What alternate universe am I now living in that we reject forgiveness and we reject grace within the span of a week, collectively and publicly?

As if anything Mark Ruffalo has to say means anything at all to me, his tweet in response to her and others supporting her, was astounding. Not only that, but Vanity Fairs proclamations that unconditional kindness is a brand that is incompatible with reality reveal a shockingly stark optimism of society, overall. Vanity Fair asks: What are the parameters of such kindness?

From what I have been forced to deduce, based on the general social media consensus, which I guess suggests how society operates; its that Amber Guyger does not deserve forgiveness and now Ellen doesnt deserve the right to see the good in others and offer grace. There is a limit to how much unconditional kindness you can extend, apparently. And social media and the mainstream media are the authoritative messengers that compel us to embrace this new alternate reality of truth.

Vanity Fair claims that Ellens brand of kindness is an imagined utopia that is seemingly out of touch with reality. I now really feel as if I have been transported into an alternate universe. Is kindness an imagined utopia? If that is the case, what is the point of fighting any good fight at all?

Interestingly enough, the party that believes in other imagined utopiassay for instance, socialism as a functional economic system for a country as large as the United States, finds Ellens stance contemptible at best, and elitist, privileged, racist, and homophobic at its worst. Which imagined utopias should we cling to, and which ones shall we disregard?

If we limit or put parameters around unconditional kindness, that means first and foremost that we are complacent with the practice of holding two contradictory ideas in opposition. I mean, I am all for holding the tension of opposites, but prescribing to the idea that unconditional kindness requires parameters is just idiotic. Its u-n-c-o-n-d-i-t-i-o-n-a-l. Which means limitless. Which means you dont put expectations around forgiveness. Similarly, we dont do that with love, either.

Society has been forced to confront reality almost too blatantly. Brandt Jean offered up forgiveness without checking to see if he had permission from the rest of society. Ellen DeGeneres offered grace and kindness before she checked with her PR staff. How dare people act on their own convictions without checking to see if the social media stratosphere would approve of such messaging!

What is evil? Most of us have never experienced actual evil. Evil doesnt exist outside the reality in which we perceive it. We only know what evil is so long as someone defines it for us. And though our minds perceive many things considered evil; evil is, just as morality can be in many cases, relative.

And because morality is relativesometimes; words can be subjectivesometimes, ambiguous even, in other instances. When this happens, confusion can ensue. Confusion leaves us conflicted. We are distracted so much by a new presentation of evil that we dont stop to consider that which we are identifying as evil is actually evil.

Evil once represented an act that was so cruel, so grotesque, so undignified that speaking about it out loud was just too much. Now, well, youre evil if you use a plastic straw. Youre evil if you dont support abortion. Evil can be as simple as an ex showing up with a new flavor at the bar that you frequent. Evil can mean anything. And when it can mean anything, it means absolutely nothing. When evil can be anything to anybody, that means that not all people know how you are defining the word. Context matters, obviously, but how often do we get context in a tweet?

I think that Derrida warned us about this possibility: the potentiality for words to become so subjective and fluid that their definitions could not stand the test of time. More so, words could not hold up against the necessity of iteration, the possibility of repetition. Is a word that is repeatedly used recognized as the same word for everyone, or does it lose its value?

Forgiveness has lost its value. The word has been confounded by societal impressions that aim to diminish symbolism and meaning altogether. What some would consider to be powers and principalities.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (Ephesians 6:12)

Apparently, evil now looks like sitting with a former President of the United States at a football game. Is watching a basketball game with Obama evil as well, or does that just apply to some people? How consistent will we be with these standards we set?

Is George W. Bush evil? I cannot confirm or deny such a charge. I dont know him. I only know what was revealed to me thanks to the media. Thats all I really must go on. And as far as I can tell, there is a lot of reason to disregard much of what media tells me is truth as they report on it.

What I do know is that there is a cautionary verse in the Good Book that warns about making judgments of others without first removing the plank from my own eye. If we are sinners, then none are good?

But then, Isaiah comes to mind when I consider whether I want to judge another, or not:

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. (Isaiah 5:20)

I know that the policies under the Bush administration resulted in the deaths of innocents. But, do I really want to compare the death tolls of the wars our country has participated in, and then order them from greatest to least and point my self-righteous finger at one former President over the other? I mean, we could bring up the concentration camps that the Obama administration employed, but why keep record of wrongs?

What good would that do? Are any of us good?

Why do you call me good? Jesus answered. No one is goodexcept God alone. (Mark 10:18)

So long as words lose their definitive meanings, we will remain a divided society. The reason for this is because words that hold sacred meaning for billions of people are being reduced to defining the antipodes of what it represents.

Have we lost sight of what kind of weight that word carries? Have we forgotten that forgiveness is a demonstration of loving the enemy?

Forgiveness does not mean acceptance. Forgiveness is not an excuse for the transgression. Forgiveness does not mean condonement. Forgiveness does not erase the pain or the past. Forgiveness is a step in the process of healing.

Forgiveness, for Christians especially, is about canceling the debt of the trespass. Social and Main-stream media would have you convinced that forgiveness as we know it comes with a price. Dues must be paid. The debt cannot just be erased, according to the social dogma that pervades Twitter-sphere.

The influence of this new dogmatic approach to forgiveness is obvious. I have been baffled by the amount of self-proclaiming Christians that condemn Ellen for her acts of unconditional kindness.

The dogmatic approach that cancel culture takes is one that resembles that old eye for an eye analogy that I was informed was contrary to the teachings of Christ. We are not under the Law, for the Law has been fulfilled. We are under a new covenant; one that says, love your enemy, and pray for those who persecute you. Praying for those who persecute you, as Marianne Williamson says, its much easier than holding contempt for them. Above all, forgive.

Confusion has been the overreaching influence as to why forgiveness is so hard to embrace. The term forgiveness has been conflated with the term acceptance. But for me, just as I see Gods justice as a different kind of justice than how society defines justice; I tend to consider that Gods forgiveness is much different than what we know it to look like in practice.

Take for instance a husband that forgives his wife after she cheats on him. Yes, he forgives her. He remains married to her. But there are times that he brings up the feelings from that incident. He doesnt forget it just because he forgave the act.

He doesnt hold the infidelity against his wife when he is upset. He doesnt use her past transgressions as a weaponized attack he can launch at her whenever he is having a rough day. But he has the potential to. He can use it to shame her and guilt her into performing menial tasks that he sees as a form of repayment. So long as he still claims to have forgiven her, he can wield power over her and manipulate her to his advantage.

Or, does Gods forgiveness look so radically different, that as soon as you have trespassed, God forgives. Before you sin, God forgives. If forgiveness precedes confession and repentance as Luther and Calvin once declared, then that would mean that forgiveness precedes belief, as William Paul Young was declared. Which would mean, at least from my line of thinking, that if I am called to live a Christ-like life, as I believe I have been, that means that I must freely give forgiveness, without any expectation that my forgiveness will transform another.

Giving forgiveness so freely is meant to transform me, first. It is about disconnecting from the signal of pain, anger, and contempt that a trespass has caused. Those emotional connections to the past transgression have already initiated a metamorphosis. A trespass takes us from a space of trust, certainty, and comfort into a space of anger and discomfort, even uncertainty. Is that not a change from our previous homeostasis?

Which means, the emotional reaction to the situation is meant to be a motivator for changefrom within. It begins the process. That anger is a tool, certainly. But it is not a continuous stream of fuel. Its just a spark. It needs oxygen to grow into something fiercer.

The problem is, we get warm from that first spark and we convince ourselves that the temporary warmth is good enough and requires minimal work. We know we could transform that small spark into a burning fire, but our misperceptions convince us that its too much work. It also requires that we move out from our small, sheltered space of comfort out into the openness of potentiality. That anger needs oxygen, otherwise, it chokes out all possibility for the remainder of the transformation. It leaves us with a deformed, incomplete transformation.

Anger is merely a step of many steps toward such an incredible and magical metamorphosis. We hinder ourselves from growth when we cling to our emotions. Its no wonder giving forgiveness so freely is difficult for us; we struggle to freely give up our anger. We dont want to freely give anything, but we damn well expect others to hand out forgiveness when we mess up.

Ellen DeGeneres cancelled the debt, but social commentary demands Bush #paythedebt.

Theres a paper trail, for Gods sake. Theres a record to be kept. We must keep people accountable for their evil acts. There is blood on Bushs hands. How dare Ellen! She does not hold him individually responsible and condemn him.

Im famous enough to sit with a President and I like it. If youre fed up with whining about Ellen and George bush, its probably because youre white. Privilege is Ellen DeGeneres explaining her friendship with George Bush by saying just because I dont agree with someone on everything doesnt mean Im not gonna be friends with them, as if what they disagree about is who was best dressed at the Emmys #BoycottEllen

And so, the debt must be paid, in full, with interest; including a public apology, following a public humiliation, and after reparations and a bequeathing of dividends for generations to come. An apology wont be good enough. Any form of reparations or repayment would never be enough.

Forgiveness isnt about what society finds agreeable, anyway. Forgiveness is for the individual, not the collective. Its only that the individual is meant to influence the collective by demonstrating acts of unconditional kindness and forgiveness. The individual doesnt owe a reason to Twitter, society, or the world, for why she doesnt hold every sin, every mark, every misguided choice against a person she befriends.

Furthermore, did anyone consider the possibility that Bush, like Obama, changed his stance on gay marriage? Is it not possible that he connected with Ellen, or any other gay person and changed his mind? You know, repentance: to change ones mind. Is it not possible that he had a life-changing interaction that made him realize his stance in the past was wrong? Or have we abandoned the optimism that we once held that change is possible that people can change their minds? Do we no longer believe that people can be transformed?

If that is the case, if we are so quick to abandon hope for change, then protesting is irrelevant, advocating for any cause is meaningless, and the idea that anyone can change their mind is altogether hopeless.

I cannot help but wonder; why does society think so little of humanity? Why do you have such little faith in others?

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Ellen and Unconditional Kindness: Incompatible with Our Society? | Ellen and Unconditional Kindness: Incompatible with Our Society? - Patheos

I had just walked past my first apartment the fourth floor walk-up in the East Village, where I lived with my husband, before I got divorced and came out as gay when I found the book that taught me the true meaning of the word queer. I was in the middle of consoling the ghost of my former self, when I saw it in a store window on St. Marks: a glitter unicorn braying up behind the pink, purple, and blue pastel of a paperback titled Feminism and Queer in Art Education.

I got a copy of the book, even though I didnt totally understand the title. The authors are Finnish academics so I chalked it up to a cultural glitch, and the glitter unicorn compensated for the apparent grammatical error. Except their use of queer as a noun wasnt a mistake. Throughout the text, queer appears as a noun, verb, and adjective. In this text, I use the term queer to refer to LGBT peoples identities that incorporate a dimension of the indescribable, one of the authors explains. In this shape-shifting linguistic form, queer emerges as an exquisitely expansive concept. Functioning as a thing and an action, rather than just a descriptor, it becomes an invitation to a dynamic realm of possibility, beyond the various binaries that imprison our minds, beyond that which is knowable.

This breathless sense of possibility is the biggest way coming out as gay has changed me. I am what once was unknowable. In this transformation, the impossible has been rendered null and void, replaced by the expanse of as-yet unimaginable potential. Or, in less abstract terms, when you used to be a caterpillar, it is endlessly miraculous to have finally gotten through with the business of becoming a butterfly.

See, it just never really occurred to me that I might be gay. I used to think I may be bi, though I didnt feel I had any claim to the label. I made out with a few women in college, but according to punchlines sprinkled throughout various sitcoms, thats just a thing some women do in college. Growing up, I was convinced that being closeted meant hiding in shame, and I had a massive Pride flag hanging in my bedroom during the fight for marriage equality. As it turns out, Roman-Catholic-authorianian programming rendered me hopelessly repressed. I had no idea that I had no idea what love and sex really were.

It was junior year when I met the man who would become my ex-husband. He was handsome and kind. That was part of the problem. By the time I graduated and we moved to the East Village, I was convinced I had assembled my personalized Barbie dream house. I was living in New York City, like Id always hoped, and working as an entertainment reporter at the Huffington Post, so it seemed like the whole writer thing would be more than aspirational. I allegedly had the perfect job, the perfect apartment, and the perfect husband, and I wanted to fucking die.

Whenever I walk through my old apartment in the East Village, Im overwhelmed with compassion for the scared little girl I used to be. Its hard to describe the visceral horror of my former state of being. My blood was made of worms. My brain felt like a garbage disposal. This was especially true when my perfect life was going perfectly.

Anxiety is often worst when the parasite has nothing to attach itself to. Anxiety about anxiety equals black hole, and such were the excruciating physics of the void roaring inside of me. I could quiet it by pouring myself into my work or drinking more than half of a 1.5 liter bottle of red wine. When sleep came, on its own sporadic schedule, it was often wracked with gruesome nightmares. I was alternately sprinting on the hamster wheel of a toxic need to succeed or sedating that drive with merlot and/or Benadryl. The only explanation was that I was rotten.

That thought occurred to me explicitly one fall weekend, when my husband and I drove to upstate New York to visit friends hosting a Shakespeare dinner. Our hosts prepared a traditional Roman meal, served in between acts, as we read the play Coriolanus aloud. I couldnt have asked for a sweeter weekend together, and yet in the car on the way home, I wanted to crawl out of my skin. I started breaking down, unable to shake the feeling that I would never be happy, even in this moment, when reality couldnt have appeared more pleasant. I feel like I have this black hole inside of me, I said to my husband. He turned away from the road, and looked at me, eyes filled with sadness. And then he said, I know.

A lot of life happened after that. My journey of self-exploration began with a political awakening, which was followed by a spiritual awakening, and finally a queer one. It started when I developed a crush on an unavailable woman. She was beautiful and brilliant, and she knew it. I was overwhelmed with what I would later call romantic respect. At the time, all I knew for sure was that I was feeling feelings I had never felt before, and I needed to explore them. I told my husband, and after a few months of discussion, we decided to open up our marriage. I still thought I might be bi, and I dated men and women. The first time I slept with a woman, it was more of a sexy sleepover than anything else. The experimentation turned earth-shattering when I finally fell in love.

Im humbled by the fact that the most magnificent epiphany of my life began with a message on a dating app. She was smart, funny, and willing to be mutually vulnerable in a way I thought must be limited to slumber parties. After a handful of dates, I was telling anyone who would listen that I found my future wife. Im sure shes amazing, one of my friends said, but, um, it kind of sounds like you might just be gay.

I have since been able to find, and lose, that kind of connection several times. Lesbian dating occurs in hyperspeed and often includes emotional telepathy. I will never forget my first experience of that intensity. I found physical and romantic intimacy after my husband and I opened up our marriage, but never both at once. When I seriously dated a woman for the first time, those two experiences merged into something else entirely. My first gay hookup was fun, but my first night with a woman I was in love with was intergalactic. My head exploded into galaxy-brain glory, as I forgot about erotic logistics, and found my body knew exactly what to do, as if it always had always known, as if it had been waiting for the right moment to tell me.

Labels are an exercise in limitation, so I choose to identify as a pothead dyke. I think of myself as gay but will sometimes specify that I am queer and a lesbian, because I date women and nonbinary people. No one is more fascinated than me by the fact that I used to be attracted to cis men. It occurs to me, in the clarity of hindsight, that was I going through stage directions in a play I never thought to direct. Im normatively hot, so it seemed as if there was always a guy in the picture and then you know the rest: fumble around until he finishes and maybe get off being eaten out, if youre lucky. The way I feel about cis men now is the same way I feel about Triscuits. If I was starving on an airplane, I suppose I could eat some Triscuits, but do you have freshly baked bread? Is there butter?

I came out to myself, and later publicly, this past January. I was on a date with a woman who had also been married to a man. Were both pretty femme and immediately bonded over the way our gender performance had been used to discount our sexuality. She suggested I do something about it. I had been keeping my awakening to myself, feeling a sense of imposter syndrome over my lesbianism. She snapped me out of it. I reached for my phone and tweeted to over 400,000 followers, Not that its anyones fucking business, but Im getting divorced and Im queer. Update my Wikipedia. Then I looked up, and said, Oh my God, I just came out. She gave me a hug and ordered us two glasses of champagne. (Lesbian culture is going on a Tinder date and then ending up with a lifelong friend who you text every single day.)

Being a queer baby makes for an endless series of mind-blowing moments, in which I am regularly experiencing that which was once beyond my wildest dreams. New mental pathways spring up all the time. At the Dyke March, the day before Pride in June, I was surrounded by so many thrilling possibilities, I felt like I was rolling. In the sea of meticulous undercuts and ineffably erotic carabiners, I developed countless crushes and aesthetic aspirations, just barely distinguishing between the sort of person I wanted to be and the sort of person I wanted to sleep with. If only our brains could swim in queer energy all of the time.

Thats more than a glimpse of what the American academic Jos Esteban Muoz calls queer futurity. The future is queernesss domain, he writes in Cruising Utopia. Queerness is a structuring and educated mode of desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present. We must strive, in the face of the here and nows totalizing rendering of reality, to think and feel a then and there. I believe this is what we must strive for in chartering our mental pathways as a collective: We must trust that we are working toward a future beyond our wildest dreams.

I suppose I should mention that much of my process of self-discovery was the result of writing a book about the future of American politics. When I work on shorter pieces, I am compelled to clean my kitchen and my bathroom before I can start to write. In the case of a years-long project, it became necessary to sort out the various rooms of my soul. These processes are not unrelated. I started researching how the post-Trump political awakening inspires self-determination all while finding my own sense of agency in every sense of the word.

In my book, How to Start a Revolution, I study young people and the future of politics, looking at the way the post-Trump political awakening has moved us from passively navigating a broken system to actively seeking to change it. We are questioning who makes the rules, demanding a seat at the table, and no longer accepting widespread inequality and a lack of policy solutions as just the way things are. This was inspired, in no small way, by the negative inverse of considering what is possible.

All of our political and media gatekeepers told us that Donald Trumps win was not going to happen. This administration was impossible until the moment it wasnt, and worse than we could have ever imagined. In order to break free from the system of oppression this presidency has exposed, we must fight for a future beyond the possibilities we can currently think up. In this caterpillar-to-butterfly transformation, we are in that excruciating part before the then and there. Trapped in the cocoon phase of our shared glow up, we have no choice but to keep pumping the things that will become our wings toward a system that expands beyond what we can even imagine to be possible.

Before I came out, I thought about killing myself all the time because I could not conceive of a future in which things could be different. Now life often feels like pure magic. Im glad I stuck around and survived long enough to get to this place where I'm thrilled to be alive. The concept of the unknowable has shown me that we can shoot for transformative possibility as a collective. We are trapped in the old patterns of the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, and we must insist on writing the script for ourselves. Im not sure what our then and there will look like yet, but I could not be more certain that the future is queer.

RELATED |Both Sides of an Argument Doesnt Include Hate Speech

Original post:

The Future Is Queer And So Am I - Out Magazine

The Canary is proud to publish this guest post from Internationalist currently volunteering in North East Syria (Rojava).

As of Wednesday 9 October, the fascist Turkish state along with their mercenary Jihadist gangs began their offensive against the free peoples of North East Syria. There have already been civilian casualties, injuries and displacement as a result of these attacks.

As Internationalist volunteers in North East Syria, we came here to be a part of the revolution, to share what we can and to learn everything possible. We came with our own struggles carried like treasures in our pockets. Our backgrounds are in many ways different. Some of us rolled bruised or exhausted out of relentless direct action. Others stood up from behind a desk, or left a comfortable job. Some of us arent even sure what path we were on. But none of that is important. What is important here is what we have in common looking, searching, that certainty that something is wrong. Love, and rage.

We came to learn and weve learnt more than we could have imagined, and never in the ways we expected. And while weve been learning, weve also been living. Weve sat with the people of North and East Syria, many passionate about the movement and others less active, just living their lives. Weve drunk more tea than you might think possible, played volleyball, been ill, been sad, been happy, and danced. Weve danced in groups of three or four, stepping around sleeping babies in small living rooms, and in lines of hundreds of people, hands linked in front of the border wall the Turkish state built to divide Kurdistan.

While Erdoan and the turkish state claim that these attacks are needed in order to establish a safe zone, we are well aware of their true intentions which is nothing more than to displace the Kurdish population through genocidal warfare and further expand their imperialist grasp on the Middle East. We condemn in the strongest way this attempt by the Turkish state to threaten everything that has been accomplished here.

For the last seven years, the people of North East Syria have undertaken a new a struggle in order to achieve a new society based on communalism, secularism and direct democracy with womens liberation at its core. The Turkish State which uses fascism and imperialism as a means to control society sees this revolution as a threat to their power. Although the United States has been providing support to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) since 2015, Donald Trump decided through one of his many unilateral Twitter policy U-turns to pull the military support from the Syria-Turkey border regions. As of now, several cities along the border of Northern Syria from Kobane to Derik have been struck by Turkish air strikes and artillery. There have been skirmishes between our comrades in the SDF and the Turkish armed forces and their Jihadist allies. We have also seen an increase in sleeper cell attacks from the Islamic State, who are using this as an opportunity to assist the Turkish state in their objective to destroy the society here.

We will continue to work alongside our friends and comrades here in North Eastern Syria. We will resist any and all attempts by the fascist Turkish state and their Jihadist allies from destroying everything that has been achieved here through resistance, sacrifice and bravery.

Of course the revolution is a work in progress. Its not a utopia. Its built on the daily sweat and effort of thousands of women and comrades, giving time and energy towards developing a better world, even when its hard, even when its dangerous, even when its boring or uncomfortable or incredibly complicated. The revolution is constant work, and theres enough of that work to do without one of the largest armies in the world trying to annihilate what has been built.

This work of building a better world, slowly but surely, starting from wherever we are, is the work we came to learn about and the work we want to do. But lets be realistic any project that offers a real alternative is threatening to the status quo, and will always risk attack. Self defence has to be a part of what we do. Theres a hundred ways to defend Rojava, both here and from outside.

We will be here, doing whatever we can and whatever we must, and almost definitely still drinking tea and dancing. And because were fighting for the same things, theres no difference being here or being halfway across the world. We hope to see you all in the struggle, side by side, even when were far apart.

Featured image via Rojava Information Center with permission

Read more:

Theres a hundred ways to defend Rojava: a statement from Internationalists in North East Syria - The Canary

PHOTO: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images

Stop everything you're doing right now: Taylor Swift just dropped her new single, and it's friggin' amazing.

It's called "Look What You Made Me Do," and it's by far Swift's darkest song yet. Listen to it, below:

The track is certainly a departure from Swift's 1989 sound ( and aesthetic ). She swaps anthemic choruses and sun-drenched hooks for a grimy, electro-tinged bass line. Lyrically, she's never been this director angry. " I don't like your little games. Don't like your tilted stage. The role you made me play of the fool. No, I don't like you," Swift snarls in the beginning of the track before crashing into the cool, techno chorus. "Oooh, look what you made me do," she repeats over and over with breathy intensity.

The climax of the song happens at the 2:50 mark, when Speak literally speaks, "I'm sorry, the old Taylor can't come to the phone right now. Why? Oh, 'cause she's dead!" If this doesn't signify the beginning of her new era, nothing does.

This new song is the culmination of six days of mysterious promo. Swift hinted new music was coming on Friday (August 18) when she blacked out her Instagram and Twitter pages . However, things really kicked into overdrive on Monday (August 21) when she dropped a video of a snake's tail on social media. Fans immediately took this as a reference to the snake emoji people started using to describe her after the Kim Kardashian-Snapchat debacle. (Remember that nonsense from 2016 ?) Swift followed this up with another snake video on Tuesdayand then a third one Wednesday morning.

And that's when it happened: At 12:30 P.M. EST Wednesday, Swift revealed the name of her album ( Reputation ), the cover art (see below), and its release date (November 10). She also included a message that her first single would drop Thursday night, and now here we are: in pop-music utopia.

So what can we expect from this new album? This single suggests Swift's new direction is darker and grittier than 1989, which took home the 2016 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Fans should still expect a pop aesthetic, but one grounded in harder beats and sonics than, say, "Blank Space." We're definitely on board with that.

This new music is coming off the heels of Swift winning her countersuit against former radio DJ David Mueller. (If you're unfamiliar with that story, Swift claimed Mueller reached under her skirt and grabbed her bare bottom during a meet-and-greet in 2013. Mueller said the claims were false and sued Swift for $3 million in damages. Swift countersued for just $1and the court sided with her.)

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More:

Taylor Swift Just Dropped Her New Song, and It's Her Darkest Yet - Glamour

Attacking the government is rather like attacking Donald Trump: there's never any shortage of material and there's always a ready constituency of folks who will applaud you for doing it.

One wonders, however, at the artistic merits of going after such an obvious target. Is this preaching to the converted? Is it possible to come up with something that has not already been said?

Those questions are not answered by Utopia, a satirical look at the operation of government bureaucracy from Australia's Working Dog team. Commissioned by the ABC, Utopia takes a fly-on-the-wall look at life within the fictional Nation Building Authority as it oversees some of the nation's largest infrastructure projects.

Utopiasettles into a familiar pattern. Episodes usually begin with senior NBA bureaucrats Tony Woodford (Rob Sitch) and Nat Russell (Celia Pacquola) absorbed in the detail of a major infrastructure project. They are supported by a team of young staffers, who are invariably too preoccupied with the latest office fad a team dinner, a charity fun run, a new office couch to competently discharge their duties.

More trouble arrives in the form of government liaison officer Jim Gibson (Anthony Lehmann), aided by media manager Rhonda Stewart (Kitty Flanagan). Gibson is there on behalf of the Minister, who is anxious to proceed with the next shiny new "announceable". Woodford and Russell give frank and fearless advice. They point out major flaws with the policy. They suggest cheaper, more meritorious alternatives. Gibson and Stewart counter, in terms which make it clear that they and their political masters have no capacity to absorb policy detail and are entirely focused on buzzwords and political outcomes.

"The Minister doesn't care about your picky clauses he cares about nation building!" scolds Stewart.

The episode usually concludes with the revelation that the NBA's advice has been ignored and the Minister has implemented the policy anyway. Occasionally, the Minister himself makes a cameo appearance. He adds little to the narrative, other than to confirm that the government's priorities are those conveyed by buzzwords.

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Utopia's premise, that government policy is driven by spin and short-term political considerations, resonates in the current cynical climate.

However, the writers of Utopia make their point by reducing pivotal players in the policy formation process to idiots. The Minister, Gibson and Stewart are straw men, delivering obviously untenable arguments, which guide the viewer to thinkno one in government knows what they are talking about.

It's a lazy critique, but the writers get away with it because the viewers are entirely sympathetic.Lampooning "those clowns in Canberra" is hardly a controversial undertaking. Utopia strikes a chord with anyone who has had an experience with government inertia or organisational incompetence. It resonates with those who are concerned about the use of slogans and buzzwords as a substitute for real policy discussion.

Unfortunately, however, there is no depth in the analysis. The minister's a dope. His liaison officer is a used car salesman. The media manager is all spin. These characters are presented with as much human complexity as the Cookie Monster, which explains why Utopia falls flat. There is no dramatic tension because nothing is really at stake.

Utopia's writers have not made a serious attempt to explore the machinations of government and infrastructure delivery. Instead, they resort to the well-worn narrative of bungling bureaucracy and government incompetence, albeit updated for the 21st century with satirical attacks on Millennials and institutional political correctness.

This represents Utopia's best material. The staff themselves are a case study in misapprehension and wilful stupidity, which would not be out of place in the dining room of Fawlty Towers.

Once again, a swathe of the cast has been reduced to caricature, this time so that the writers can demonstrate the follies of faddishness and modern political correctness. Unfortunately youcan't orchestrate tension with a cast of one-dimensional characters. The greatest missed opportunity, however, is on the topic of infrastructure. Australian infrastructure delivery has had a notoriously tortured history. Every project is open to criticism: process, execution and strategic benefit. A project can be meritorious but poorly delivered and vice versa; the nuances are often lost in the heat of public debate. Even with the best of intentions and the best minds, infrastructure is rarely a clear-cut topic.

Utopia is redeemed however because it has delivered exactly what the audience was expecting to see. "The government" is everyone's favourite standing joke. It is therefore not surprising that Utopia has proved to be popular with its constituency.

RenuPrasad is a comedian and blogger. Twitter: @Renu_OZ

More:

Utopia: why making fun of government is our favourite joke - The Sydney Morning Herald

Hercules & Love Affair's new album, Omnion is out Sep. 1. Courtesy of the artist hide caption

Anyone who's engaged disco with the same depth and seriousness that Hercules & Love Affair ringmaster Andrew Butler has, knows that by its nature and at its finest, this is a music of balances made in the spirit of losing one's balance. And among disco's glories is how these contrasting fundamentals play out: the celebratory and the elegiac, the social politics and personal emotions, pop songwriting and club functionality, the traditionally soulful and the technologically modern.

Since the beginning, Hercules & Love Affair records have not simply acknowledged these contradictory elements but aspired to find meaning in them. Where so much contemporary disco is an exercise in genre or affectation or worse, nostalgia for a utopia that never was Butler permeates his with more broadly accepted currency. Though it unabashedly began as a classicist's pop-house take on the contemporary dance-floor, and is still rooted in this world, H&LA music navigates the pathos of today's life through a panoply of voices and ideas representative of the gender-nonconforming diversity of Butler's community, tweaking and updating the norms throughout.

Omnion, H&LA's fourth album, continues tipping the scales in modernity's favor and disorienting the script. You actually have to take a step back from a track like "Rejoice," voiced by longtime collaborator Rouge Mary, to recognize it as a sibling of great gospel-disco numbers of yore. That's because the industrialized dirt of the mix percolating, sequenced keyboards, the synthetic chafe of the vocal filter, the screeching stabs of background voices is a new touch on sanctified old-school uplift. In more clichd hands, "Epilogue" would be a familiar type of album-closer, beatless and doleful, with Gustaph, another longtime H&LA vocalist, fronting a children's choir while offering broadly stroked social empathy. But here it sounds like the punctuation of a classic synthesizer sci-fi soundtrack and a love letter to The Resistance at the same time. Both speak to the production presence of New York techno engineer, Phil "The Butcha" Moffa, who is part of Omnion's secret sauce.

Contrast these progressive notes with Butler's ongoing desire to communicate through beat-wise pop songs, interpreted by nuanced, boldface voices. Sharon Van Etten's thoughtful confession floats through the synths and brass of the aspirational title track, damning gender pronouns and ascending a sugar-sweet, cloudy chorus. The Horrors lead singer Faris Badwan rides a thick bassline as he updates classic freestyle vibes on the sexually-charged and distant "Controller." Later on the album he recreates Pet Shop Boys synth-pop vibes with EDM production touches on the song "Through Your Atmosphere." Then there's "Are You Still Certain?," a collaboration with the Lebanese rock band Mashrou' Leila and its singer Hamed Sinno, which bumps pleasantly on a spine of soft keyboards, funk guitar and bonus percussion. The Arabic vocals, in the midst of all this extreme Western-centricity, is a wonderful surprise as well as a reminder that Beirut's disco scene was once the stuff of legends.

The clearest example of Butler's use of disco's paradoxes lies in a trio of songs at the album's center, all of which seemingly look beyond the rhythm of the night for their purpose. On "Fools Wear Crowns," the only Omnion track that Butler sings himself, and which, he confessed to Pitchfork, documents his escape from substance abuse, and "Lies," wherein Gustaph addresses something like a truth-telling conscience, the backbeats don't kick in until the tracks are a third of the way through, punctuating the ornamental role these beats serve with more explicitly diaristic purposes.

At first, the beat also seems secondary to "Running," a tour de force featuring the vocal trio Ss Ey and the Kirke String Quartet. Yet the sonics that stitch together this Butler lament are motley tribal electronics, swooping strings, the torch-soul incantations of Icelandic sisters and experiencing this counter intuitive fit is otherworldly.

What's contextually understandable about "Running" on Omnion dissolves when heard outside of the album which, in today's listening experience, all songs must, especially those by club-oriented artists. And while one imagines only the most adventurous DJ will find room in their set for "Running" maybe deep into a sunrise its balanced address of matters at once literal and metaphysical is a perfect modern expression of disco's timelessness.

Here is the original post:

First Listen: Hercules & Love Affair, 'Omnion' - NPR

The reference for this short story came across when I was reading about Zamaytin's novel "We" on Wikipedia. According to it, this short story seems to be the inspiration for "We". So I searched for it and found it online.

In this story, the narrator dreams of the world of twenty ninth century after meeting a few socialist friends who have been in favor of equality in the society. What he dreams of is a kind of society where all the differences have been abolished and all people are equal. There i

In this story, the narrator dreams of the world of twenty ninth century after meeting a few socialist friends who have been in favor of equality in the society. What he dreams of is a kind of society where all the differences have been abolished and all people are equal. There is no difference between men and women, all of them wear same uniform and have same length of black hair. The system of marriage has been abolished and they live as one large family where they are provided for everything by the State. There is no form of entertainment and no stores for shopping. Even the people are "washed up" twice a day by the State only. The whole process of bearing of children takes place under medical supervision and after their birth, the children are kept in special nurseries till the age of fourteen.

This story was first published in 1891 way before "We", "Brave New World" or "1984" and it's glimpses can be found in these latter works too though the story is written in a much lighter manner.

Some quotes:

I looked at the faces of the men and women that were passing. There was a patient, almost pathetic, expression upon them all. I wondered where I had seen that look before; it seemed familiar to me. All at once I remembered. It was just the quiet, troubled, wondering expression that I had always noticed upon the faces of the horses and oxen that we used to breed and keep in the world.

And after he woke up from the dream:

Through the open window I hear the rush and roar of old lifes battle. Men are fighting, striving, carving out each man his own life with the sword of strength and will. Men are laughing, grieving, loving, doing wrong deeds, doing great deeds, falling, struggling, helping one another living!

From the quotes it is clear that Jerome was wary of the whole idea of Utopia and imagined such a society to be devoid of life itself. Interestingly, H.G.Wells is considered to be the inspiration for this story by Jerome.

It is a very short and very good read.

Originally posted here:

The New Utopia by Jerome K. Jerome Reviews, Discussion ...