@RobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social avatar

RobertoArchimboldi

@RobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social

Born following the unholy union of a duck and a cardboard box, Roberto von Archimboldi entered the world as a broken, diseased disaster. He has been searching for joy ever since

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nilsskirnir, (edited ) to Women
@nilsskirnir@kolektiva.social avatar

Here's a good article regarding the real intent of the Repuke's attack on abortion. It is what some really insightful folks and I have been saying all along, that the attack is really a step towards rolling women's rights back to 1900. In effect, recriminalizing womanhood.
Also touches on how Dems have been fighting too narrow a battle and should state the obvious, i.e. Repukes believe in barefoot, ignorant, and pregnant as the desired state for women.





https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/03/lynn-paltrow-repro-rights-advocates-focused-on-aboriot-and-not-pregnancy-that-was-a-mistake/

RobertoArchimboldi,
@RobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social avatar

@nilsskirnir what a great article. Thank you

RobertoArchimboldi, to books
@RobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social avatar

I read Bob Mortimer's 'Satsuma Complex'. It is a cute book, silly, funny and very readable. It is also a book about loneliness and the need for imagination to create connection. I liked it. It reminded me a little of , though kinder

, , , @booksodon

RobertoArchimboldi, to mauritius
@RobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social avatar

#HelpNeeded: can anyone point me to some academic articles talking about inter communal marriage in #Mauritius and/or #GenderBasedViolence?

It is for an asylum appeal.

#Migration, #Refugees, #Immigration @immigration

aral, to ireland
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

Ireland votes that a woman’s place is in the home. A sad day for social progress. The whole way the government handled this referendum was a shambles.

#ireland #socialJustice #womensRights #marriage #civilPartnerships https://chaos.social/@antiaall3s/112070455326810487

RobertoArchimboldi,
@RobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social avatar

@aral I am not in Ireland but I think that is quite a bad take, at l least wrt Article 41.2, the support of women. As Selma James and the Global Women's Strike have taught us, capitalism relies on domestic labour. It needs a healthy, fed, educated workforce. That labour is done by women because it can use a patriarchal division of labour to refuse to pay for it, externalising a major cost, hence the demand for wages for housework.

Although Article 41.2 does not enshrine a wage for domestic work, it comes close. 'The state shall endeavour...' The proposed change seriously weakened that commitment.

It is true that the focus on women as the providers of domestic labour is patriarchal and the proposed change would have recognised any carer, but at the cost of reducing their current protection. Existing equalities legislation can be used to achieve the same effect. Any scheme guaranteeing income support to mothers would have to be extended to all primary carers or be in breach of nondiscrimination legislation.

In the end what has been rejected is a change that would reduce the rights of mothers and increase the patriarchal protection exploitation of women (its still overwhelming women doing domestic labour) for the purely symbolic recognition that there is nothing essential about care and womanhood. I don't see that as a set back in the struggle for women's liberation

RobertoArchimboldi, to random
@RobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social avatar

I don't ever want to think April cruelest for breeding lilacs

RobertoArchimboldi,
@RobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social avatar

Which is in fact because I have just finished #AliSmith's 'Spring'. It is a beautiful novel. Part 1 is particularly brilliant. I'm not sure about its flirtation with magical realism in part 2. We need a writer who can find hope without recourse to magic.

On the other hand, it is more mythological realism than magical. We can believe in myth making and story telling. What is real is not the mundane, but the eternal or, better, the eternal in the mundane. Smith is on the side of the angels because she believes in art, in myth in story telling. Spring, with its promise of life, is contrasted with winter which is dark and unenchanted. It is also art and the mundane. Smith is with Chaucer not Elliott. So am I.

What I particularly like is the motif that none of this is about you. It serves to cut the privileged down to size, but the moral extends. The story isn't Florence's or the Machines. It is a shared world and 'world' here is truely all that is, was, will be or even could have been the case.

#Books, #Fiction, #Migration, #Refugees @bookstodon

RobertoArchimboldi, to uk
@RobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social avatar

The Home Office spent £5.4 billion on asylum accommodation last year. They have 215,500 people on their books.

My simple proposal for halving the bill: give each individual £12,500 and a residence permit.

It is not about the resources is it?

, , , , @immigration

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn01403/

https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/asylum-seekers-hotel-overspend-treasury-2931907

RobertoArchimboldi, to 13thFloor
@RobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social avatar

Just finished 'I was an elephant salesman' by Pap Khouma. I read it because the author is a friend's uncle. It is a reasonable worm's eye view of a Senegalese migrant's experience in mid 80s Italy. The narrative voice of the first few chapters is excellent, but having set up an interesting character who is looking back on the travails of his younger self and full of things to say about Senegal, Italy, France and Germany we get a rather breathless account of a few years of selling. This is a shame. There is a bravura moment in which the sudden death of a friend is recounted. It is readable, full of insight but ultimately a failure of a novel (or translation).

#fiction, #books, #novel, #bildungsroman, #Senegal, #Italy, #Migration @bookstodon

RobertoArchimboldi, to 13thFloor
@RobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social avatar

Just finished reading #Bolaño's 'the secret of evil'. I had the strange feeling that I'd read it before despite not being able to remember any of the stories, or maybe, and this seems more likely despite being impossible or at least highly improbable, that I had remembered the stories but somehow the stories had changed so that I was once again reading a new book.

It is so good. What can you say about Bolaño? He is so good. He is the only writer who is never pornographic. The secret of evil is also about love and friendship. Belano's children and Ulises Lima are always with us as is the abyss.

#Fiction, #Books, #Bookstoden, @bookstodon

RobertoArchimboldi,
@RobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social avatar

@kimlockhartga @bookstodon I highly recommend. Some of the stories are fragments, although perhaps not. It is a collection of material found on his computer after his death. If I was going to start on his short stories, I'd probably start with 'The Insufferable Gaucho' or 'Last Evenings on Earth' ('Llamadas Telefónicas'). There is something disturbing about him, like you say, but he is also so committed to literature that I find hope there somewhere.

RobertoArchimboldi,
@RobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social avatar

@kimlockhartga @bookstodon yes, this. So well put

dgar, to random
@dgar@aus.social avatar

I found a chocolate in my pocket after laundry.

It was Lindt.

Hang on… They just discovered an Egyptian tomb filled with hazelnuts and chocolate.

They believe it's the tomb of Pharaoh Rocher!

No, wait… I got myself a hazelnut and chocolate sports car.

It's a Ferrari Rocher!

Okay, okay, one more… I bought a Mars, a MilkyWay, and a Galaxy, and the prices were astronomical!

Did I get any snickers?

RobertoArchimboldi,
@RobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social avatar

@dgar I thought that I'd found some niche pronouns. Turns out it was just a chocolate bar. It was her-she's

nilsskirnir, (edited ) to random
@nilsskirnir@kolektiva.social avatar

Doncha love folks who leave stupid or hateful replies and then mute/block you right away?
Usually a sign of Mossadbots or other ultra-right wing trolls such as @MaggyWells

RobertoArchimboldi,
@RobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social avatar

@nilsskirnir I think more a sign of a terrible internet culture, but very irritating nonetheless

RobertoArchimboldi, to random
@RobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social avatar

I can understand #RishiSunak and other rich people effectively or explicitly being climate change deniers. What they really deny is not global heating but that it will effect them. No doubt Sunak figures that even if there isn't enough food and water for everyone, he will be rich enough to secure what he needs. I think that is a reasonable bet.

What I don't understand is why they are so horrified by green tech. I'm pretty certain that green capitalism won't save us. We need revolutionary economic and political change, but backing wind power and electric vehicles and so on is both politically expedient and likely to increase their own wealth. So why the dash for gas?

There is obviously some connection with a hard right, supremacist agenda but what? The world is ours (white men's) to dominate and despoil? There can be no limit on the power and appetite of the white man? It something like that

RobertoArchimboldi,
@RobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social avatar

@philippsteinkrueger that is interesting. I suppose there is still the question of why the right hated the Green movement so hard. Historically of course the ecology movement was much more anticapitalist so it could be as simple as that.

I still think that making the Greens the enemy works because of something deeper about the connections between nationalist, supremacist politics, capitalism and the need for ecological destruction

RobertoArchimboldi, to til
@RobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social avatar

#TIL I learnt that the #SouthSeaBubble was caused by speculation in a company, the South Sea Company, that had brought Great Britain's 'concession' to traffic slaves, you know actual flesh and blood human beings, to Spanish America. Why did no one bother to tell me the crucial trafficking in human beings part of the story afore now?

I also learnt that the Royal Maritime's Museum's only comment on the world historical crime aspect of the sordid tale is the trade was not as lucrative as expected. #Priorties

https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/south-sea-bubble

RobertoArchimboldi, to books
@RobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social avatar

Just finished rereading #ToveJannson's 'The Summer Book'. What an extraordinary piece of writing. A profound take on love, death, immortality, family, loss and intimacy.

The story about Sophia's two cats is funny and profound as is the chapter on Angleworms.

#Books, #Fiction, @bookstodon

RobertoArchimboldi, to books
@RobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social avatar

Just finished #IbrahimAbdel's 'No one sleeps in Alexandria'. It has some really bravura episodes. There is an odd (and irritating) magical realist current that doesn't really go anywhere. The protagonist is wonderfully passive which gives the book its beautifully disjointed tone. Major world events, largely the second world war, are juxtaposed with the mundane and the trivial, because to the inhabitants of Alexandria it really it is a war for someone else's empire. It captures something profound about the little person's importance and importance. It is also on the side of love and friendship.

Not quite sure what to make of it, but I enjoyed it very much.

#books, #fiction, #Egypt, #Alexandria @bookstodon

julieofthespirits, to bookstodon Spanish
@julieofthespirits@kolektiva.social avatar

Doppelganger - Naomi Wolf (jkjkjkjkjk)

Naomi Klein is really one of my favorite nonfiction writers, with every new book she comes up with she manages to capture the zeitgeist of the moment. From No Logo to This Changes Everything, it felt that she was tracing out how contemporary social movements were getting more radical, and I remember at the time wondering what the coming years would bring us, and what her next book would be like. Little did I expect us to be shadowboxing with our doppelgangers as the far right came back with a vengeance

But here we are. Lots of people have already analyzed the book, so I'll just limit myself to one thing I loved about it and one criticism:

I find the idea that right-wing movements to be parodies or funhouse mirror versions of progressive movements to be immensely productive and helpful for my own work tracking anti-gender movements, which she mentions but doesn't directly analyze. The "gender critical" idea of the abolition of gender, for example, takes up transfeminist ideas of the abolition of gender, but twisted against what the idea once meant, and once the idea has been recuperated by the Mirror World, it's hard for us to use it for good again, it's been tainted. And this is just one example of how the concepts she develops here are useful beyond the issues she directly analyzes

My criticism is that Klein seems to want to blame the trauma of the pandemic for breaking so many people's brains, but it happened earlier. She counterposes the Mirror World that people like Wolf etc. live in with a world of collective action, but I would say the Mirror World really began in the collapse of the 2011-and-after wave, with the repression of the Arab Spring and the collapse of Occupy, 15M, and all of the movements of the time. That was when we started to see InfoWars-style conspiracy theories used to deny massacres in the name of a twisted anti-imperialism, "tankies" before the word got reappropriated by liberals to describe anyone not satisfied with their moribund gerontocracy (the lesson is to never teach new words to liberals). I remember years before the pandemic reading articles in allegedly leftist newspapers about how certain massacres in Syria were actually false flags perpetrated by the Jews, for example, and you could trace a similar story to Naomi Wolf in Max Blumenthal as a rebellious son of the elite defending Palestine to shady operator promoting pro-Assad conspiracy theories and attending the same Moscow gala as Michael Flynn to the weird antivaxxer he is now.

@bookstodon

RobertoArchimboldi,
@RobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social avatar

@julieofthespirits @bookstodon thanks, that makes me want to read the book

RobertoArchimboldi, to books
@RobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social avatar

Just finished re-reading 'Austerlitz' by #Sebald. What an astonishing book. I have no idea what you can say about it. The absolute horror that is Europe that it captures is so perfectly realised. Its ability to conjure the dislocation and homelessness that is particular to Austerlitz but universal to us all, or at least to all Europeans, is heart wrenching. Austerlitz's own unconsciously willed ignorance of his own ever present past also mirrors the reader's own state. I think that I will weep gently for the rest of the afternoon.

#books, #fiction @bookstodon

ZekuZelalem, to Turkey
@ZekuZelalem@dair-community.social avatar

Journalism kept me away from the fediverse, but I'm back with my final story of 2023 for Al Jazeera:

#Ethiopia's acquiring of cheap drones from the likes of the #UAE & #Turkey has led to an uptick of drone strike massacres of civilians in Ethiopia's Amhara region, where rebel militia & government troops have been engaged in fierce fighting since August.

Spoke to eyewitnesses of a Nov 30 strike, where an ambulance was obliterated, killing 5 including medical staff.

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/12/29/collective-punishment-ethiopia-drone-strikes-target-civilians-in-amhara

RobertoArchimboldi,
@RobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social avatar

@ZekuZelalem parts for those drones are built in #Brighton at the #L3Harris factory in Mouslecombe. (Yes, their murderous machinery is also being used to sow death in #Gaza).

This war is everywhere.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/nov/27/revealed-uk-technology-turkey-rise-global-drone-power

RobertoArchimboldi, to books
@RobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social avatar

I love #MurielSpark.
'I am a descendant, do not forget, of Willie Brodie, a man of substance, a cabinet maker and designer of gibbets, a member of the Town Council of Edinburgh and a keeper of two mistresses who bore him five children between them.'

She is so cruel to her characters. What a brilliant thing to have Miss Jean Brodie say. It has to be one of the funniest lines in literature.

#books, #fiction, @bookstodon

RobertoArchimboldi,
@RobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social avatar

@Wen @bookstodon I'll check it out. I have never in fact read any Banks. Thanks

RobertoArchimboldi,
@RobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social avatar

@Wen @bookstodon oh I did read 'wasp factory' as a kid. I remember nothing about it except that it was dark. I've stuck him on my list

RobertoArchimboldi,
@RobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social avatar

@noodlemaz @Wen @bookstodon which fiction one? I'm scared to read sci-fi in case I get sucked in and never read anything but genre fiction again (a bit like biography and books about the original Nazis)

RobertoArchimboldi,
@RobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social avatar

@noodlemaz @Wen @bookstodon thank you

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