I looked at my source again and it seems I misremembered - it wasn’t that the progress for the disabled was all reversed, it was that one of the pioneers in the field of special education (I. A. Sokolyansky) was arrested in the Great Purge and his school was shut down, but when he was released in 1940 he was able to go to Moscow and get a new job doing the same thing at a different university so clearly it wasn’t a universal thing.

It’s a topic I should do more reading on, but the feeling I get is that it was a backlash to the highly progressive currents of the 20s. It affected nearly everything - the Soviet Union had some of the first schools for the blind and deaf, then some of them got shut down. There were women’s work programs, then they got replaced with “traditional family” propaganda. Stalin is undoubtedly the source for some of it, but he was also the head of a huge and popular movement so he can’t be solely blamed.

It tracks for me, the 30s saw more than a little bit of reactionary social politics. This is the period when abortion and homosexuality would get re-criminalized.

It’s funny because it’s set up almost like the book is going to prove to the reader that it isn’t true. Hagrid and a few others all say it as a thought-terminating cliche - but the one house elf Harry knows personally actually hates being enslaved and greatly treasures freedom when he gets it. A better writer would have used this setup to show how wizarding society justifies its own bigotry to itself, but Rowling didn’t want to imply that anyone she considered to be on the “good” team might have internal contradictions or be implicit in bad systems.

BOTW pulls out the good bits from Souls’ design and matches it with the good bits from Zelda. 10/10 game a da yeaaaaaaaaa.

then pay attention so you know about it before it kills you. there are very few true surprises, mostly its stuff that you blunder into if you’re not watching out.

Very often what I’m talking about is a combo attack that stun locks you until death while fighting a boss. Your only chance to dodge it is after you know it exists, and unless the AI bugs out and it whiffs the attack you’re not going to know about it until after it’s killed you with it at least once.

Yeah, surprisingly when they spent 5 years making 4 other games in the genre in between Dark Souls and Sekiro, they learned a few things about making games in that genre. surprising

If they learned about the genre, why do they keep doing the same shit in DS 2, 3, Bloodborne and Elden Ring? Why is Sekiro the only one where they seem to have done something different?

It is possible that I’m just surrounded by wierdos who don’t like Sekiro.

okay I liked this part too

Now I’m imagining a show called Workplace Nightmares, where the hosts are a couple IWW representatives.

Some spicy left unity quotes in this video.

“Certainly! If we anarchists could achieve the revolution on our own, or if the socialists could on their own, we could enjoy the luxury of each acting independently and of perhaps quarreling. But the revolution will be made by all the proletariat, all the people, whereas the socialists and anarchists are a numerical minority, though they appear to enjoy the sympathy of the people as a whole. For us to be divided even where there are grounds for unity, would mean dividing the workers, or rather, cooling off their sympathies, as well as making them less likely to follow the socialistic line common to both socialists and anarchists and which is at the heart of the revolution. It is up to the revolutionaries, especially the anarchists and socialists, to see to this by not exaggerating the differences and paying attention above all to the realities and objectives which can unite us and assist us to draw the greatest possible revolutionary advantage from the situation.”

-Errico Malatesta

While little has changed of my opinion on :funny-clown-hammer: (NSFW), I can say that this video has made me more excited to read the book Luna has been translating.