quarrk

You literally can just long press the normal hyphen on the iOS keyboard, probably similar in Android

So, you saw an em dash in a sentence and immediately screamed “AI!”? Hold up. That long, dramatic line — yeah, that one — has been around way before ChatGPT slid into your DMs. Writers have been using em dashes for centuries to spice things up, create vibes, and break the rules in the coolest way possible.

Here’s the tea: the em dash is a tool, not a tell. Just because an AI uses it doesn’t mean it’s some secret signature. You know who else uses em dashes? Literally every author who’s ever wanted to sound clever, casual, or just a little chaotic.

So next time you spot an em dash, don’t panic. It’s punctuation, not a personality test.

Socialist YouTube channel “India & Global Left” is offering 3 months of paid work if you live in one of the South Asian countries listed below.

Post

Dear all, We’ve just received a small grant from one of our generous patrons, earmarked specifically for podcast-related work. With it, we’re considering two options:

• Producing more in-person podcast episodes, or
• Creating a short documentary focused on working-class lives in South Asia — which is our top priority.

We want to begin in South Asia for three reasons:

• It’s where we have the strongest connections and contextual understanding
• It remains one of the most under-documented and underdeveloped regions
• And with limited resources, working locally is more feasible than launching similar efforts in wealthier countries.

That said:

1. If you’re based in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, or Afghanistan, and are interested in joining a 3-month paid assignment to help video-document working-class lives in your area, please email us a proposal + CV at iglmedia04@gmail.com. If your idea resonates, we’ll get in touch. Full creative credit will be given.

2. If others would like to support this project financially, your help could allow us to fund two or three such assignments, making the documentary richer and more expansive. Every small or large contribution counts.

Warmly, Ayushman & Jyotishman India & Global Left

This is somewhat long, and somewhat cringe. The short version is that I think Marx had really interesting things to say about religion, and I think materialist theory of religion should form a part of any socialist project, because it's the reality from which we are working with. Even if most of us are atheists, we have to have a working theory of religion and an understanding of religious people, because they will necessarily be part of any revolution that occurs.

...

Marx's views on religion are expressed throughout his work, most eloquently in the introduction where he wrote his famous opium of the people line. This resonates with me, not as some epic takedown of religion, but for its refutation of the mechanical-materialist atheism of Feuerbach, which in some sense echoes in modern New Atheism. Marx, despite his atheism and materialist philosophy, found humanistic compassion for the followers of religion, by applying his materialism to religion. From this he identifies an indispensable function of religion: it soothes the pain of alienation and exploitation inherent in class society. So, his proposal for abolishing religion is not to ban religion, but to abolish the material conditions which require religion; i.e., abolish class society, which today is predicated on private property and wage labor.

This is as good an expression of my feeling toward religion as I have found. Yet, it still feels... incomplete? It feels like there is more to say on this topic, but for Marx it seems that he is content to believe that, like the state, religion will wither away with class society.

There are two questions that I return to:

1. Could religion really disappear with the abolition of class society?
2. Could a secular institution replace organized religion (the church, e.g.)?

Here is where some speculative, maybe half-baked thinking begins…

I wish Marx took what he said above just a step further. I would modify it to say that the abolition of class society would not abolish religion as such, but only the form of religion required by class society.

The basis of religion is suffering. This is why it has to act as opium. Class society has been the most terrible source of suffering, exploitation, and alienation for the past several millennia, as class society in various forms has expanded with the growth of civilization. Yet humans have practiced religion for as long as humankind has existed, even in those primitive communal societies analyzed by Marx and Engels.

In chapter 7 of Capital Volume I, Marx connects production and abstract thought:

A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement.

In other words, (1) abstract thought is a prerequisite for human labor, (2) as part of the labor process, the mind conjures up an ideal, perfected versions of concrete objects. This acts not only on external things, but is directed at ourselves too: we produce things in order to perfect our appearance, health, education, or innumerable other attributes. So as a prerequisite, in order to produce as humans, as a practical fact we already imagine ideal versions of ourselves which we want to bring to reality. And if there are barriers to the realization of this ideal, that elicits suffering.

When humans feel they lack the power to shape reality to their ideal, this can happen for one of two reasons. Either it is controlled by nature, such as the weather, in which case religious practice is oriented toward nature; or it is actually controlled by humans, but they are not aware or capable of using that control. This second reason is alienation, and it is the type of religion seen in most of the capitalist world today. Just as we alienate our political power from ourselves and place it in secular institutions of government, so also we (or at least, the religious) alienate themselves from moral power and place it onto an idealized version of themselves (god, jesus, whichever) which has the ability to judge and forgive. But this alienated spiritual existence only mirrors the actual alienation experienced in our social existence.

If it is the case that class society produces a form of religion, not religion as such, then the answer to (1) is: no, the disappearance of class society will not end religion. Religion will only change form, in a way that addresses the forms of suffering experienced by people in a post-class world. Therefore the answer to (2) is straightforwardly: maybe, if a socialist society can come up with a rational institution which is capable of really addressing the suffering experienced by all the individuals in society. But I would bet against the idea that we will actually achieve utopia.

Blue Note Records has signed the acclaimed trumpeter and composer Brandon Woody, a talented young Baltimore-born and based jazz artist who has been turning heads in the jazz world and beyond in recent years. Woody has just finished recording his debut album featuring his longtime band Upendo, which will be released in Spring 2025.

https://www.bluenote.com/blue-note-signs-trumpeter-brandon-woody/

Implicit “if communism happens”

Love to see the Finns Party (nationalists) eat shit even in this minor election

”Of course this is a failure,” said [Finns] party leader Riikka Purra, who is also the Finance Minister. ”The numbers are terrible, and there's no explaining them away.”

is a bad movie. I watched it for the first time, and it didn’t age well.

Movie starts out with RW blatantly objectifying the first Vietnamese woman he sees… then thinking he sees her again, because haha every Asian looks the same right guys? cue theater audience wheezing

He ends up stalking her across town and bribes her teacher $20 to teach her class. Again, they’ve never spoken to each other, she was literally just walking along the street and he’s convinced that they will fall in love.

It doesn’t get better. I’m not trying to write a plot summary but it’s a couple hours of boomer humor mixed with orientalism, war propaganda, anti-communism, racism (you’re supposed to laugh when RW attempts to speak Spanish to communicate with the locals), and homophobia (there is one gay character and he is portrayed as a sexual deviant who likes taking creep photos of GI’s ankles)

The portrayal of the Vietnamese people was in general, fake and unbelievable. Unless you believe it’s realistic that a girl would fall in love with her stalker when they can barely even communicate to each other.

3/10 there were a couple funny lines, and the general structure, pacing etc of the film was ok