truffle swine

[ib @Indian_Bronson]

Today, a mixture of politics, college attendance, and career-pretense class distance would keep them very far apart - and the child would not exist.

[Mr. S.T.A.R. @favelaoverlord]

Lovecraft’s entire corpus is built around two themes that foretold most modern sociological phenomenon:

The first one is the theme of globalization-as-cultural-alienation. This is about how increasing interface between cultures ultimately results in the creation of hybridized, alienating cultures with symbology and values that are increasingly indecipherable. For the greatest example of this see @kunley_drukpa concept of the “Yookay” - Lovecraft understood what ‘modern cultural products’ inherently evolve into from the early 1900s! See the corporate memphis style or modern architecture for further examples.

The second one is the theme of modern technosocial arrangements as a *regressive* force. Lovecraft understood implicitly that the high minded culture of the Anglos of the Victorian era was the peak of the human condition (almost everyone agrees with this implicitly even if they verbally disagree) - and that everything since then has been downhill. That the then-evolving modern condition actually represented a return to prehistoric paganism. That the “Anglo rationalism” of the time was a candle in the dark of the normal irrational, violence of humanity. Recent conversations about declining literacy is the perfect example of this! Lovecraft understood that increasing technological progress had already begun to result in regression to base states - he was probably the first man to perceive this and to lay it out in metaphor the way he did.

In other words: Lovecraft’s stories are grand commentaries on the ultimate destructive and alienating nature of globalization and the modern technology that facilitates it.

‘Liberal culture commentators’ reduce all of this commentary down to “racism” because they’re incapable of seriously engaging with his work. Instead people like Kafka (who’s a 2-bit in terms of metaphor compared to Lovecraft) get heaps of praise and get taught in high schools.

So much of Lovecraft’s horror is aquatic in nature because the sea represented the frontier of globalization. The denizens of Innsmouth are traders who bring corruption back from Polynesia, the uncle-killer in Call of Cthulhu is a “nautical looking negro”, etc. etc.

Tl;dr: Lovecraft’s entire corpus is metacommentary on globalization and he’s a radically underappreciated genius.

[Visegrád 24 @visegrad24]

Homeschooling is legal in Brazil but a judge has just sentenced two parents to 50 days in prison for “intellectual neglect” because their 11- and 15-year-old daughters, accomplished pianists and polyglots, received no classes on gender theory, sex education, tolerance, diversity and Afro-Brazilian culture.

The court argued that they would suffer in their personal lives and interactions with people of their own age from not knowing the Brazilian funk music style, which romantizes crime, life in favelas and is hyper-sexualized.

Apart from being accomplished pianists, the two girls speak Portuguese,
English and Latin. They also read 30+ classic books per year.

The judge was particularly worried when he heard that one of the daughters is particularly fond of Christian music and doesn’t know what funk music is. The judge accused the parents of using their daughters as tools in an “ideological war”

[Kevin Vuong 🇨🇦 @KevinVuongxMP]

This is insane.

[ArtNouveauDeco @NouveauDeco]

Jugendstil hydroelectric power station, built in 1905 in Heimbach, Germany. Designed by architect Georg Frentzen (1854–1923), the power station is still in operation.

Pics: Andreas Lechtape

[O.W. Root @owroot]

We are leaving modernity and its mass literacy and moving into something else and something older. We are returning to tradition! The tradition of illiterate peasants, to games, to bread and circus!

[Flemish Masters @vlaamsemeesters]

The Alchemist
David Teniers de Jonge, ca 1650

[Flemish Masters @vlaamsemeesters]

Feast of Our Lady of the Woods
Denis van Alsloot, 1616

[truffle swine @TruffleSwine]

@TheReclamare Talk to people who’ve come here and they’ll regale you with stories and photos of their family back home building walled compounds and receiving fuckloads of gold as wedding presents. The unending aid being sent over is such a ridiculous arrangement.

[Sólionath @Anarseldain]

As of 2024, Microsoft was the 6th largest H-1B sponsor, and the 4th largest user of H-1Bs among American companies. They have tens of thousands of H-1B applications, in process. No company who initiates mass layoffs, for any reason, should be allowed to retain H-1B employees. Total failure of legislation and policy to allow this.

[Ozymandias𓆏 @0zmnds]

Guilherme Pontes

[MB @paxangloceltae]

Some crackdown. There are two social housing properties in the ‘mixed development’ I have the misfortune of living in which are actively being illegally sublet (that I know of - there could well be more).

One has been illegally subletting for over two years (the registered tenant is a Ghanaian woman who is a *social worker* by trade though in recent years unemployed - you couldn’t make it up - a lot of the social housing properties were originally designated as ‘key-worker accommodation’ which is really just code for more social housing, and that’s probably how she got the flat in the first place) and the other (the registered tenants are a Turkish family who speak reasonable English) has been illegally sublet for three months now.

Both reported - the former three times, by several tenants (private renting and shared ownership). Zero action taken. The scam continues and these social tenants, who themselves pay no rent at all thanks to the housing element of UC (what we used to call Housing Benefit), now make even more money from the rent they’re charging their sub-tenants, all whilst their functioning neighbours (dare I say, including the few social tenants who do work, don’t qualify for Housing Benefit, and do pay rent albeit below the market rate - which is another conversation altogether) pay taxes to subsidise their Housing Benefit.

The last time I saw and spoke to the Ghanaian woman, she was boasting about the stunning 4-bed she and her drug dealing husband had just bought in leafy Surrey. Taxpayers and her sub-tenants are literally paying her mortgage for her. Nick, 30 ans could never dream of such a scenario (Je suis Nick).

It’s all so farcical. No matter what His Majesty’s Government says, this state of affairs will continue unabated. Even if Ministers somehow successfully tackle Airbnb lets, they are a drop in the ocean.

[Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi]

Any American who wants to be patriotic can stay on their kids to read - illiteracy is ruining us.

[eternal classic @eternalclassic_]

enshittification is undefeated

[Tom Rowsell @Tom_Rowsell]

At history museum in Swedish and overheard a tour guide telling the tourists, “there was no such thing as Sweden, no one thought of themselves as a Swede. There were no Vikings. It was a part time job maybe. Warriors were very rare as well”

Absolutely determined to make everything rubbish

[Miss Jo @therealmissjo]

Simply appalling. There are no other words to describe this.

We are told that the UK should bring in qualified people from Africa and India to work in care homes. Not sure that this is going to work out well for our elderly.

Bilikesu Olagunju arrived in the UK in late 2022 from Nigeria, on a Health and Care Worker visa. Nobody knows what she did for 2 whole years but she did not start work until late 2024.

Her first job started in December 2024, when she was employed as an agency carer for John Attard, an 88 year old dementia patient from Bexley, Kent.

6 days into this first job, on Christmas Eve, this video was captured on CCTV installed by John’s son.

The video shows her dragging the frail elderly man across the floor, roughly stripping him in front of the window, shouting at him that she will “flog” him. He cries repeatedly that he is being hurt but she ignores him.

John was diabetic but she deliberately put marmalade into his coffee, she refused to let him eat food, spilled a hot drink on him.

After her visit, John was found unresponsive and rushed to hospital.

He did not wake up again and died 10 days later.

So what happened to Olagunju?

She pleaded guilty to neglecting a person lacking mental capacity.

Judge Charlotte Welsh sentenced her to 6 weeks in prison (suspended for 18 months) and 50 hours of unpaid work.

That is it.

Judge Welsh said that the sentence was appropriate because Olagunju had “recently arrived from abroad”.

But at least Olagunju was deported…

No. She did not lose her carer’s work visa, she was not deported and she did not spend a day in prison.

Where is she today?

In the UK, last known to be working in a hospital with stroke patients. Yes, you read that right.

[truffle swine @TruffleSwine]

@feelsdesperate He’s right but also sort of perpetuating his own critique; addressing these journos earnestly when they’re in fact larpers cretins cads etc. It gets increasingly tricky to sincerely engage with this stuff that’s built on a foundation of dishonesty, a Gordian knot

[Archaeology & Art @archaeologyart]

Four Fates of the Soul: Polychrome wood sculptures depicting Death, Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell (Ecuador, 18th century)

[truffle swine @TruffleSwine]

@Babygravy9 I’d been looking forward to that film for a few years prior to its release. Started watching it a couple of times but I don’t think I ever got the entire way through

[Coddled Affluent Professional @feelsdesperate]

Not working class, not a small-town chungus.

Platner is a schizo from an affluent family who has struggled his entire life to keep things from going off the rails.

That ‘very smart moderates’ like Noah lack this basic social and psychological recognition tells you everything you need to know about them.