Alyssa Butler

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on the atlas — 31

highlights — 11

If you’re lucky as a writer, you won’t just bring context to a work or start a conversation with readers. If you’re lucky, you can walk away with some of the most important experiences and pieces of art in your life. None of this is possible if your criticism comes from a place of hatred. Anger, sure. Frustration, yeah. Hatred, no. Which is why criticism is not a violence and it is not the hallmark of stuffy assholes who hate art. It’s an expression of love. Love for the medium, love for the artists, love for the reader, and love for the self. Whatever negative feeling the word stirs by itself…
Games Criticism Is A Kindness
Criticism, applied in good faith, is an act of empathy and kindness. It is a rejection of fanaticism. It rejects the schemes of money-men. It rejects the snobbish suggestion that there is “high art” and “low art.” Criticism is an egalitarian act by which all work is treated as equally valid. There is an exchange. That exchange is more respectful of artists and creators than blind praise. When we apply criticism to art, we enter a conversation. One where we examine why we were swept off our feet to begin with.
Games Criticism Is A Kindness
No one should give in to blackmail based on the notion that criticizing politicians’ authoritarian aspirations is equal to incitement to violence. Aspiring authoritarians do want to control speech; before they have reached power, they cannot do so – unless the fearful or the ignorant become their accomplices.
Trump is an authoritarian who must not win. Saying that is not inciting violence | Jan-Werner Müller | The Guardian
Whether such bad-faith claims succeed depends on professional observers: pundits and journalists. Will they adopt a framing according to which “all sides” have to “lower the political temperature”, and somehow “come together”, as the kitschy communitarian rhetoric of many commentators has it? Or can they accept two things as true at the same time: that political violence is wrong, and that the Republican party, transformed into a Trumpist personality cult (with new narrative elements and iconography after Saturday) poses an existential danger to American democracy.
Trump is an authoritarian who must not win. Saying that is not inciting violence | Jan-Werner Müller | The Guardian
This is not to say put away any disagreements with Biden or Harris as people or candidates. This is not to say ignore their administration’s continued support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, or their increasingly right wing stance on immigration. This is not to say “blue no matter who.” No, this is to say that we are in a uniquely perilous position that, absent a time machine, has very few options to be remedied. It’s to say that if we don’t at least try to put forth someone more vital than the current president, we are likely going to lose. To a fascist.
The case for candidate Kamala Harris
Some may resent being told yet again to fall in line, now behind Harris. But this time the stakes are concrete. Donald Trump has already orchestrated a coup against the United States government; Donald Trump has already tried to overturn a free and fair election; Donald Trump has already been convicted of a felony; Donald Trump has already rigged the Supreme Court in his favor to ensure immunity from criminal prosecution. Add to that his promises of a “blood bath” should he lose this election and the use of the National Guard to illegally expel millions of migrants during his next administrati…
The case for candidate Kamala Harris
i think decisions we make for ourselves are inherently selfish. we have to act in our own best interests, and being "selfish" in this way isn't a bad word. i am not hurting anyone by not having children. to me, it's taking charge of my own life, and removing agency of others' in my life as well as certain societal rules that are imposed on me and that i find no joy partaking in.
Childfree.txt | the library of alexandra
it is a deep deprogramming that must be done, and it even happens with web-builders who are making their own websites and participating in the personal web. because i like to keep up with folks new to this hobby, it is not uncommon to see webgardeners no longer interested in the hobby after consuming themselves with it. instead of thinking your life has to become this hobby, think of how building a website complements your life. how does building a website give you an opportunity to show the things in your life that do matter, the parts of you that you want to share? to me, building a website …
TheSmallWay.txt | the library of alexandra
recently, someone shared the subreddit r/benignexistence with me. i see parts of the small web peeking out of social media in moments like these. there is a desire for humans to want to see how each other lives: the true lives of us, not the shiny, truth-omitted ones that exist on social media. to me, that subreddit is reaching out to grasp at the parts of humanity that are missing from social media these days.
TheSmallWay.txt | the library of alexandra
The longer I have spent attending and looking into private universities, the less convinced I have become that they are anything but a front for tax-free investing, which grants degrees and supports research on the side. They masquerade as places of education, free expression, and learning, but highlight their returns on investment above all else, ever expanding their endowment and real estate holdings. I write about my experiences because universities’ profit-maximizing investment role works best when hidden in the shadows, when no one knows where the money goes or what it does. Critics will …
From the Encampments: Student Reflections on Protests for Palestine - LPE Project
The connections between university administration and finance capital certainly provide ample material for a political economic analysis. We can see how these relationships inform the increasingly violent response of universities against their students who now present tangible, economic demands. The current moment has opened an important discussion into the very role universities play – why should a higher education institution have billions to throw around, and for what good reason is it directed towards building capital and gobbling up private land? To these thoughts we say: it is an importa…
From the Encampments: Student Reflections on Protests for Palestine - LPE Project