It seems fine as it's own work, just sorta comes off like a separate work of fiction that had to be stapled onto the Watchmen IP instead of being its own thing.

Like the whole Hooded Justice thing isn't bad, but I think it kind of fails to exploit what Moore was going for by making the "first" costumed superhero in his universe a nazi-sympathizing sadist dressed up in thinly veiled lynching iconography and a dark klan hood.

I've essentially never seen anything from the sphere of "parapolitics" that actually appears to impart any useful practical knowledge for understanding the past or predicting the future, at best it appears to be a masturbatory hobby that lets you be smug about JFK for 50+ years straight, at worst it makes you some annoying asshole who goes around saying shit like "denying the existence of snuff films is leftist flat earth" for attention.

Also Programmed To Kill is a very stupid book.

Within the context of himself, not the worst look he's ever had.

But it definitely helps that he's taken off that dumbass ugly cap.

I think the AI tools used for the last song was primarily to separate Lennons voice and piano from the artifacts of the poor quality demo, including a persistent hiss.

Bad sensationalist headline, should really be more clear about what uses are being discussed. He's clearly not against the audio tools that helped on the song, but against generative AI exploitation. There's no reversal going on.

Granted I haven't read it, but I really don't think a Grover Furr book about the historical debate around the secret speech is intermediate.

I'm not sure I would include a work like that at all on a general reading list but at the very least it seems like something you'd get into on an advanced focus level.

I'm also not sure Mark Fisher actually needs to be there, but I see possible arguments at least.

Yes, most critically he later admitted in an article(after being laid off) that he was personally witness to Helen Hindpere receiving verbal abuse on a company call that was so loud that he could hear it from her headphones.

Helen mentions this in the documentary, Tuulik did not, and while he was not the primary figure questioning Hindperes work and leadership, he took a centrist stance between owners and the fired creatives.

Obviously not that any of this makes him deserve being subjected to the crap thats going on, though I do think it makes the goofy radical shit from his studio take on kind of a hollow tone.

If you're gonna be the gamer maoist studio dropping manifestos with "creatives hold up half the sky" type slogans, I think a gamer self crit is warranted too.

Reminds me of one of the main FOIA guys who runs "The Black Vault" for UFO shit being like.

"I trust the government and appreciate all their good works, I just firmly believe in the civic value of government transparency and disclosure."

Probably my favourite kind of brainworms within the sphere of parapolitics, just a fundamentally endearing viewpoint to have.

I think a big part is that if you accept for arguments sake the fundamental legal premises and rules of a court trial in the Rittenhouse case, you can arrive at a conclusion that within that premise and those laws the acquittal makes sense. Basically that the injustice is enshrined in the bones of the system rather than a malicious and arbitrary dismissal of what's supposed to happen.

Meanwhile there just is not a reasonable argument that a trained soldier would not be aware that extended application of a chokehold past unconsciousness would certainly be lethal, and that he continued past the point where average bystanders could tell that he was murdering Jordan Neely.

Theres no legal argument that makes sense in this scenario, anyone who accepts it are accepting it outside of the law.

Support for Daniel Penny is all but overtly just simple support for lynching, while Rittenhouse you can very torturously make a case involving other American brainworms like the right to self defense and the idea that a dumb fascist toddler like Rittenhouse earnestly feared for his life.

I think a lot of people around the site right now are being genuinely embarrassing in how much good faith they are using to interpret the CEO shooter suspects various weird chud posts and opinions, including one where he suggests among other things that conveyor belt sushi restaurants in japan are part of causing infertility issues due to a loss of customer-waitor interactions.

Edit: as to your edit, my main point is I think people are going out of their way to interpret his weirdo beliefs that in any other context would be read as being an online chud as instead being fundamentally grounded in theoryless critique of capitalism. And that the embarrassing part of this is that literally none of it is necessary when the core thing people support is just him shooting the CEO, there's no need to steelman his personal beliefs if all anyone cares about is the assassination.

If he wasnt the guy who shot a CEO I think literally any of the tweets getting posted would be read as bog standard weirdo reactionary-by-osmosis white guy. And ultimately if you're going to be good faithing guys with opinions on Japanese birth rates, I would use that good faith on guys who aren't going to prison and being locked away from all effective organizing.

Sorry but I feel like I've entered a parallel lib version of Hexbear right now.

People just suddenly completely willing to take "white american guy weirdly fixated on japanese birth rate issues while only being capable of referencing pop culture staples like Don Quixote and conveyor belt sushi in his arguments" at total face value.

Like I'm sorry I think people taking this guys maid cafe critique as fundamentally being about capitalism are being kind of fucking stupid for no reason, literally no reason to be not normal about this stuff.

Predictably avoiding mentioning the severe reactionary cultural throughline of the manifesto.

Actually avoiding mentioning any politics at all, impressive. Perhaps this shooter is actually a liberal after all.

I really feel like even in this example tweet you really have to reach to argue this. Yes, all his complaints boil down to a core causation by capitalism, but that goes for at least half of any reactionarys political beliefs.

Several of the bullet points are just actually repeating dumb stereotypes, he probably only knows about Don Quixote because of Yakuza. He dedicates a whole bullet point to the societal consequences of conveyor belt sushi.

Genuinely just a reactionary fascist in his social views, it's really easy to tell if someone has not read the manifesto past the opening if they try and argue that he's either a leftist or outside of standard politics, cause basically his first complaint is he's not allowed to use insensitive terms for women, black people, and asians.

Because of woke.

I remember watching a documentary on him and they had a montage of interviews where there was one environmental activist being like "He was right about all the stuff but he shouldn't have bombed people."

Which stuck with me for being very funny given that the manifesto is in service of justifying bombing people.

He just EDC's a suppressed pistol and fake IDs for unrelated brainworm reasons.

The cops are amazed they only have to plant the manifesto and get to side hustle all the other incriminating evidence.

Judging by all the other stuff this guy is into I bet his reasoning is that he's completely brainwormed on pickup artist redpill shit and thinks that the waiter interaction will give men chances to apply that bullshit and get laid.

Or a funnier alternative is he's brainwormed on like trad romance media with like relationships starting out of being a regular at a diner or whatever.

This is the kind of environmental storytelling indie devs put in a game specifically made for a Jacob Geller essay.

It's extremely funny to compare this to the menswear guy doing threads about how the modern Japanese(or at least Tokyo) urban environment is the only place small scale organic fashion culture can thrive anymore.

Also conveyor belt sushi is a societal plague worthy of one of 5 bullet points on your stupid little list? And the reason its bad is you aren't chatting directly to a food service employee? Not just a weirdo but a really fucking stupid and annoying weirdo.

The NYPD truly is tutored in all the ways of the IDF.

What I meant was that it makes it very easy to just manually eject into a designated bucket or something if you're going to be just straight up shooting animals in the head in some horrid room.

Compared to using just a suppressed automatic handgun where it ejects automatically.