Journal

I'm trying to write an article. I have a bunch of articles where I think the core thesis is worth looking at and fleshing out, but the way I wrote my articles is terrible. Most of them are essentially written on the fly, in one sitting, with no sourcing or citation. They are extremely sloppy from any sort of authentic, academic standpoint. If I am writing polemicals or condemnations, sure that's fine. But if I'm trying to describe some social issue, going completely citation-less is bad practice. Occasionally I cite a passage from a Marxist text or the Bible, but never in any sort of strong manner. Other writers, such as Lenin and Bordiga, had plenty of statistics and data to inform their positions. Mine is a bunch of hearsay.

Besides being essentially unfounded and unqualified, they're presented in such an aggressively correct way, it's embarrassing. I have no credentials and only a cursory understanding. Moreover, I hardly ever present things in the manner of "this is a possibility" but rather "this is how it is". It is less investigative and more agitprop, and nobody is reading agitprop on neocities let's be real here. And I also start a piece with a totally incorrect mindset. I wanted to rewrite my AI and Labor article, I think I came off very vague and misinformed and so on. I go in with an idea, rather than investigating an issue. Instead of "Here is how AI will affect Labor", I should argue "How will AI affect Labor" which is a totally different manner of writing. Instead of coming up with a conclusion, finding data for my specific points, and then proclaiming it as truth, a more scientific approach is needed. Start with a broad topic. Find specific points to narrow in on. Find sources, find citations. Take notes on each source and article, put in the actual work. Then, flesh out those notes into a proper piece.

The piece I am most proud of is my COINTELPRO. While it does present an incorrect idea of a conscious conspiracy, it is well documented and sourced, from primary sources and documents. I had a list of the programs, and I had a whole chart about how they connected. I didn't just write it on the fly and research as I went along. I researched, then I wrote. I formed the idea properly in my head. The argumentation of it was founded on actual research and facts, not just vague notions with no citations.

For my rewrite, I also ran into an issue of evolving my writing as I went. For example, I wanted to see the number of layoffs over time, to show a pattern of tech layoffs. But the data didn't say much. Without a comparison to the total computer sector, it was pointless. So I brought up the BLS statistics, and found a bit more support for the idea there. But again, there was not much to actually extract from this. So I paralleled it with the AI spending, and found a correlation. But then I had to append the data again, because I felt it was important to also take a more specific look at the AI-heavy Silicon Valley firms, which may get lost in the data. In a broader macroeconomic sense it is irrelevant, but Silicon Valley tends to be ahead of trends, and so it could be a useful predictive region. So I started with an idea, and had to change my approach three times. Moreover, the mass-layoffs in tech didn't actually seem to be in any significant number, and many firms actually ballooned recently. This is the issue with going in with a preconceived notion, with trying to find evidence for claims. Often, these claims are simply incorrect. The easy route would be to simply pick data from other sources. But the more honest and the correct way is changing your approach to your work. If it gets taken seriously, it won't be easily blown over by light criticism or the actual statistics. If it isn't taken seriously, you at least have experience in then critically analyzing work. If you can critically analyze your own work, you can critically analyze the work of others.

Eventually I want to rewrite all of my articles, or cut out the ones I don't think are particularly important. But doing it properly isn't going to be an overnight project. Some of my articles were written on the same day as others, I wrote five articles on November 29th, and three of them were so bad I privated them. If I want to do them right, it's going to be actual research, actual scholarship, actual sources. That's another difficult part, finding real sources. Some sources are openly biased, which is fine if the bias can be identified and worked through. For example, an article by the West Virginia Coal Association, talking about 'Anti-Coal Extremists like Obama' and 'Non-Consensus "Global Warming"'. Obviously they can't be trusted politically or scientifically. But they were one of the only sources I found to state the number of West Virginians working in coal mines. Now, I was trying to show the decline of the coal industry. So the WVCA's bias would likely take that number and maybe inflate it slightly. Being able to identify biases is an extremely vital skill. There are no unbiased sources. The best sources are openly biased.

Other times sources can be totally made up. AI generated articles are sometimes easy to spot, other times they are quite hard. Sometimes the best bet is to go with your gut. I've found that whenever a site has an author and a "reviewed by", these people are not real. Other times, searching up the author can be helpful to see if they're a real person. Doing the AI and Labor rewrite has made me crawl through so many sites that I'm certain are AI generated which is quite fitting for the topic. I've found it best to just stick with the big-names (Deloitte, Stanford, Business Insider, etc.). For all their biases, they are at least credible, and many of their articles contain in-work citations that can be followed up on and investigated. It isn't bad to use small-name sources, layoffs.fyi as a good example, if it is demonstrably credible. Usually the bar for credibility is just if sources are cited. Other than this, the best place for information is government bureaus like the Bureau of Labor Statistics, FRED, or the Census Bureau, simply because they have the scale and history to provide useful sorts of statistics. Data aggregators like Statista and MacroTrends are far more suspect, but can be treated like Wikipedia in that they are a place to find sources to read yourself. But again, these can run into the issue of themselves cherry-picking isolated voices rather than other trends.

Overall, writing proper articles with proper research is hard. I haven't really done it since school. But I think I really will focus in on it, if I want to take myself seriously in terms of my writings.

Welcome to my first journal entry. We'll see how motivated I stay on this. There's a lot I want to talk about, stuff I'm excited about or want to get done. Ambition and all. I guess. There's a few big topics I want to talk about. For one, I want to cover the big one. Christian Communism. That's kind of my big master-work I want to make this site around. I want to connect the Marxian idea of a revolution, how it would realistically play out, and the apocalyptic literature like Daniel and Revelation. For example, the Millenial Reign of Christ and the Saints judging with Christ, connected to the Socialist transition-phase/low-phase communism and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Judgement day being the revolutionary terror. Armageddon being the death of reaction. Also the idea of the church essentially being recuperated by Constantine. The Roman state could not destroy the church forcefully, so instead it was absorbed, managed, and adulterated into being an instrument of class rule. Tracing the evolution and structure of the church paralleling the economic base of society (Feudalism and Catholicism, slave-economy and primitive Christianity, capitalism and Protestantism, and then possible Socialist and Communist church structures). Talking about authority, like the Bible says to obey authority, but it does not say what proper authorities are. Are all governments legitimate? What about in case of invasion or civil war? Who has true authority? Disobedience to save life is fine according to the story of Abigail and Nabal of Carmel. Then some more surface-level ideas, like linking the golden calf to the bull on wall street, 666 being linked to Solomon's 666 talents, the community of goods, etc. I do want to lean into the Marxian characterization of Capital and the money-capital circuit of reproduction as an abstract force, possessing those (businessmen and statesmen) to do its bidding, similar to demonic posseession with specific regard to Mammon.

I also want to write about the USSR and China, how they're not socialist etc. I am decently knowledgeable about the USSR, but with regard to China I know little. Only surface-level history and modern analysis. Still, it is enough to bring up commodity circuits, capital accumulation, and the clear Imperialism a la Lenin as embodied in the Belt-And-Road Initiative, China becoming a net exporter of capital and this leading to conflict with the USA especially over LatAm. Linking the current issues (Iran war, Ukraine, Cuba, Taiwan, Panama Canal, Maduro) etc to a broader political strategy of isolating Chinese allies. Maybe separating China and the USSR into separate articles would be good.

Also a look into the Origin of Family, Private Property, and State by Engels, I want to analyze any confirmation of the theory present in the Old Testament. Initially, I was reminded of it by the passage in OFPPS about Blood Avengers. Looking more into how Genesis-era family structures worked, and then Israelite structures, could be interesting.

Besides this, I'm doing well. It's about 10:20PM. I'm a bit tired! I did do quite a lot today. Got my weeks meals planned, got groceries, folded my laundry. Set up a 1x6x4 plank of wood as a shelf under the windowsill, got it with pocket screws. The middle screws felt loose, just spinning in place, didn't properly suck down. So maybe the studs aren't 16" spaced, but the stud finder said they were. Who knows! I do wanna put a potted plant on the shelf, add some life to the room. Maybe something aromatic. I also did a bit of cooking. Cut up part of a loin into chops, cut up a chicken, made some broth. Made brownies from scratch for the first time, I definitely undercooked them a little but oh well.

There's a few habits I wanna get into. I wanna read before bed, I recently got a little $70 ereader, electric ink, so that should be nice. Got Epubs loaded on there of most of my bookshelf. Thank you LibGen. I also wanna get M/W/F as my days for exercise. Either dumbbell stuff like shoulder press, curls, etc., or calisthenics like planks and pushups. Something to keep me a little fit. Then on those days do some skincare stuff, moisturize and exfoliate and so on. Now that I'm not single I gotta actually care about this stuff!

There's a few things I want to show off too! Such as this!

I found an old record player at an estate shop, for about 100 dollars. It was a real beautiful one, made probably in the 1930s or 40s. It came with about a dozen shellac records, some from the 20s and some from the 40s according to Discogs. I reckon the guy bought the player, and some cheap 20s old shellac records, seeing how it was, before buying some new releases. That's my theory, putting it around the 1940s. It has no electricity, instead it was a hand-crank that would wind up the turntable, with a speed adjuster dial. The tonearm was one of those heavy metal ones, just a hollow tube going to the output. Turns out a towel was shoved in the horn behind that screen, so it must've been loud. I took out the internals and replaced it with modern technology (bought a record player on Amazon and stripped it for parts) as well as a sheet of stained and varnished plywood cut out for the modern turntable, so there isn't just an awful cutout. There were some troubles but I got it up and running well. The old components were beautifully put together, made with real velvet. I didn't throw it out. It'll be turned into a gramophone. But the record cabinet was so cool. The doors open to slots for albums to sit in, and there's a small panel for a placard to list what's in each numbered slot. I had to modify it to fit modern records instead of the old shellacs. Overall I probably spent $350 or so. I had to learn soldering and fiddle with 28awg wire crimps which was a total pain. But I guess that's the learning process! Overall it's cool, and the player I put in has bluetooth on it so I can play other music too. I do maybe want to upgrade the speakers, put in ones with bass that aren't just the ones wired to the circuit. Ones with more power, for when I use Bluetooth especially. That's about it for that, I'm just happy with how it turned out.

Anyways I'm not sure what else I want to put in here. Maybe I'll end it here. I do wanna list my favorite novels so I'll do that real quick. Novels so no political stuff!

• The Stranger - Camus
• Notes from Underground - Dostoevsky
• Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky
• The Road - McCarthy
• No Country for Old Men - McCarthy
• If This Isn't Nice, What Is? - Vonnegut
• Breakfast of Champions - Vonnegut
• Slaughterhouse Five - Vonnegut
• Brave New World - Huxley
• Johnny Got His Gun - Trumbo

Okay I'm out of ideas! I'd put a photo of me and of my boyfriend on here but I'm not sure if that's a good idea quite yet! Either way it's ten past eleven now. Goodnight!