Some people like the challenge. Not her first time on the trail, either.

I’m not condemning them for doing something small, only trying to emphasize that my issue here is not damaging things in general, but damaging, specifically, historical pieces. It’s just seems like throwing soup at paintings is the wrong approach on every level.

This chain literally started with you responding to someone daydreaming about physically assaulting the young protesters with:

The point of that, something that you seem to have still missed, was not “I want to hurt them for being idiots”, though that may have been secondary, but “If the act doesn’t matter, just the cause, by principle that leads to absurd things, like acts with no conceivable serious connection with the cause being touted as a great success for that cause simply for linking the name of the act and the cause.”

not say the regular stuff like blocking traffic or vandalizing (non-priceless) surfaces in places that are visible to a mass audience rather than comfortably protected behind fences and security checkpoints.

I literally cite arson, riots, and general strikes as valid, but go off I guess.

and how pointless the general idea of public protest is.

Me: “All I ask is that you don’t attempt to damage historical artifacts. Other property damage or human damage is fine.”

“WOW YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN PUBLIC PROTEST”

10/10

Pug my guy, all bets are off, every polluting industry is grinding billions to keep this cart on its current track.

But it’s the vandalism of art that’s going to turn the tides against that? A few middle class kids getting a handful of months in prison for tossing soup around at an art gallery?

Fuck, if you’re gonna be serious about taking this as a suffragist level crisis, you need suffragist level tactics. You need to riot. You need to attack the places the rich feel safe. Not toss soup on historical artifacts to ‘raise awareness’.

I’m sure if they could strike at oil execs they would

I’m extremely doubtful of that. That wouldn’t feel ‘monumental’ enough. They want to be part of a world-changing event, the bit that people look back and say “This is it, this is when it started!” without understanding the long and complex fight that led to that point. They want to be part of a notable event, not a mass campaign. But my distrust of their motives is beside the point; even if their motives were unimpugnable, this would remain a terrible way to go about things.

but have you tried to locate these people? Which mansion are they in at this time of year?

Man, the richest people in the world can be tracked with almost hilarious ease. Stunning amounts of information is publicly available. Flight logs, ship entry/exit to ports, publicly announced corpo meetings.

They need to garner mass attention now,

That’s just the thing - it’s not mass attention that the subject needs. The subject HAS mass attention. The issue is that people don’t perceive the seriousness of issue, or believe more is being done about it than actually is, or fall for political rhetoric that promises environmental destruction under the guise of conservation. We HAVE mass attention. People KNOW. But they aren’t on our side, or at least, rather, not on our side in the way that we need.

This is the grueling, ugly, thankless part that no one wants to do, the education, the politiking, the push to reorganize incentives to prioritize climate goals, the miserable prying of fringe supporters to a pro-climate position. And that doesn’t suit people who prefer there to be a single isolated issue they can focus all their attention on and get accolades for - there’s no point where the world collapses onto its knees, tears in its eyes, and cries out “I see now, I see, thank you so much!”

The most ideal realistic scenario is the scenario of women’s rights - in a hundred years, multifaceted efforts may, if we fight for it, render the question of opposing climate change obsolete - but no one is going to admit in a hundred years, save the lunatic fringe, of being pro-oil or the environmental equivalent of the time, just as no one except the lunatic fringe questions women’s suffrage now (I think if we presume that our efforts fighting the issue in the here and now are successful, at the very least the issue then cannot still be oil in 100 years, or we’ve utterly lost in that period of time, but I use oil just as a signifier of that ‘kind’ of position).

The fight will never end. And people get discouraged by that, so they try to hyperfocus to the detriment of actual progress on the matter.

The level of disdain you have for people who are already ideologically aligned with you is insane, especially considering that you believe that this kind of action, in addition, is just what is needed to win them over. Are we running on battered spouse rules or something?

You’ll notice how the only thing they can cite is “worry” by “staff” with no qualification for whether the worry was realistic.

I’m sure the staff whose job it is to caretake these priceless objects have no clue what they’re talking about, sure.

They’re not mentioning “worries” of the people who actual design the protection, because those people either don’t worry or should find a different job. A liquid leaking through to damage the painting is literally the purpose of the protection. Especially after such high profile events starting years ago.

So:

• I find that argument that the onus is not on individuals to not damage paintings, the onus is on the gallery’s security systems to prevent them from doing so, to be uncompelling

• You cannot realistically protect a painting from its frame. If you really want to totally protect it, you could plexiglass the whole exhibit, frame and all, but that’s just another step in the escalation of security measures vs. vandals, and does not address the underlying problem.

• That such high profile events started and have continued despite repeated incidents of damage to artifacts (though thankfully nothing totally destroyed), as well as some near-misses like this one suggest that there is an issue causing these high profile events to continue. As these events have not led to any sort of climate policy change or mass change in climate change opinion, it is difficult to come to any other conclusion than the reason for the continuation of these high profile events is internal reinforcement from these social circles and activist groups. Or, if you will, asspats.

Staff at the gallery were worried the soup may have dripped through the protective glass and destroyed the painting, the court heard.

There was zero potential damage from this act.

Not even close to true.

I don’t give a fuck about bothering people. I give a fuck about the potential damage to pieces of human heritage. Take a sledgehammer, hit the streets, hell, hit the oil execs, I don’t give a fuck. But don’t damage artwork or artifacts that are generations old and widely recognized as important pieces of human culture.

Like, fuck, when anti-colonial activists knifed that painting of some British twat a few months back, I was totally fine with it. Because it was:

• A relevant British twat to colonization
• A painting that wasn’t even that fucking old
• A painting that was not widely recognized as a cultural treasure

I wonder if they got off, come to think of it.

No no, you see, it’s for THEIR cause. The beatings would be happening to raise awareness of climate change, not to support oil companies. Isn’t that the logic, here? There’s no other relevance of attempted vandalism of a painting by a man who died before climate change was even fully understood. The cause is all-important; the act just a detail to catch eyes, apparently.

Heinz, apparently, is the most wholesome choice for these anti-oil protesters. I’m sure they’re a great company.

THAT’S the one I was looking for!

“Verbing words weirds them”

I hope he gets the book thrown at him.

Bernie on the right side of history as usual.

punny: constituting or involving a pun

Mr. Barca is a taller fellow

But that’s less punny

Explanation: Bark Antony sounds like Marc Antony, the anglicized name of a famous Roman general and OH MY GOODNESS LOOK AT HIM HE’S SO CUTE

I know judging people on their appearances isn’t right, and he shouldn’t have been kicked out regardless of what he looked like.

… but it doesn’t even look that bad? Like, “I’ve got one eye and a skin condition”, is that really what the restaurant is willing to kick people out for?

Hope he gets some sort of justice out of this.