bloodandhedonism:

so how much longer can coachella remain cool and all that now that everyone knows about it

Man coachella hasn’t been cool for years. Since maybe… 2006? When Daft Punk kicked off the Alive tour there.

That was probably one of the most important live performances in American music history, up there with the Beatles on Ed Sullivan or… probably the best parallel is Bob Dylan going electric at the ‘65 Newport Folk Festival.

I was in LA at the time, capital of the music industry, going to shows at Spaceland, where the hipster bands got their break. And everyone who saw it, like the man said, sold their guitars/and bought turntables.

I knew some electro DJs and they’d go every year, only by 2008 or so they wouldn’t go to the show, they’d just rent a house - on the most expensive weekend of the year to rent down there - and do coke around the pool and go to other house parties.

I never went, that sounds fucking retarded.

iamforstudy:

sixpenceee:

How surface texture affects bloodstain patterns. (Video)

tinysquids

i think you’ll like this

sinbadism:

the reason “looney tunes” is called what it is the same reason “merrie melodies” is called what it is. cartoons were the first music videos! i’m not kidding!

I don’t think the question of what really actually truly happened in Ferguson - at any stage - is really even all that important, the whole thing was just a pretext anyway.

- = - = -

Benghazi. I swear this loops back in in three paragraphs in a productive way, stick with me. The official Republican complaint about Benghazi - what even was it? Something about not sending backup, or a coverup? Whatever.

But fundamentally it’s a pretext. I mean some people sincerely, unkshakeably care about the pretext. But the actual issue is about the Arab Spring, the actual issue is “Who Lost The Maghreb?”. With the implied answer “the Democrats, by doing that dumb Carter thing where you only support foreign allies who are nice and polite and democratic and don’t repress and torture and massacre their citizens, and then when the ones you abandon fall and the people who replace them - the people who had been being repressed and tortured and massacred - come to power and start doing shit that you hate, that is completely incompatible with the things you most emphatically and sincerely want, go ‘Oh shit, right, that’s why we were supporting that guy in the first place’”.

But the awkward thing, the reason they run with this pretext instead of saying it explicitly (like they did with the original “Who Lost China”), is that going Carter in the Ummah didn’t start with Obama, this started with Bush the Younger and the neoconservatives, and a lot of it that happened under Obama’s watch was under the influence of holdovers from the Bush era - Robert Gates and all that. And in any case unlike Carter, Obama had a second term in which to reverse course himself, and now the military is back running Egypt and Mubarak was just released scot-free.

- = - = -

Ferguson, Mike Brown, all that’s a pretext. And a lot of people sincerely, unkshakeably care about the pretext, but the actual issue is that even as the civil rights movement of the 1950s-70s has been institutionalized as a sacred part of our national history, the actual gains made - “let’s flip the national switch away from repressing black people, and towards helping them” - have been allowed to gradually erode. Because white people found that completely incompatible with the things they most emphatically and sincerely wanted, and remembered why they had the switch on repress in the first place.

And the awkward thing, that makes this difficult to address head-on, is that it was “First Black President” Bill Clinton that blessed the erosion. The Democrats had, since LBJ, been the party of “let’s keep the switch in the helping position”. And between LBJ and Clinton, 1968 to 1992, 8 whole terms, the Democrats only won one term as President. Carter. With the whole Vietnam, Watergate, Nixon tailwind at his back.

And Clinton got elected, and more significantly got re-elected! By taking the Democrats’ hand off the switch. Federal funding for 100,000 more cops. Welfare reform. (Subtextually, federal funding for how many fewer black babies?) School uniforms, which was rinkydink but was the idea was “yes, we are willing to walk back ‘60s-style freedoms in order to further discipline urban black kids - you know, the gangbangers, the crack babies, the superpredators.”

Sister Souljah - I used to wonder what that was even about, I’m no rap genius but I at least recognize big names and I’ve never even heard of her in any other context. Does anyone cite Sister Souljah as a musical influence? But I’ve come to realize that was the point - deliberately picking a fight with someone who didn’t actually matter (and thus bore no cost) - just to make a point, a branding point.

“The Democratic Party: Once Again Willing To Tell Uppity Blacks To Stuff It”

“First Black President” Bill Clinton took the Democrats’ hand off the switch and at least let other hands pull it back to “repress”. And under actual first black President Barack Obama, of the Democratic Party, who owes two elections to being black, and at least one to black votes entirely, putting it back hasn’t even been on the agenda.

And I can see how you’d get upset.

-=-=-

“What we really need is for everyone - black, white, whatever - to respect each other.”

Okay, that’s correct, and that’s impossible, because here’s the thing. When people say they want “respect”, what they mean is they want other people to acknowledge their own conception of the world, where they’re the protagonist, and their story is the main plotline, and everyone else is, I guess, NPCs? Or at least, at least for those other people to not explicitly challenge that conception, to allow them to maintain that fiction to themselves.

Which doesn’t necessarily set you at odds, a good share of NPCs are allies, or questgivers, or shopkeepers, or background characters, and most people prefer the paragon path, and in the normal course of things you get along fine.

But only as long as there’s nothing important at stake that can only be resolved by conflict. If that NPC is the only source for a good drop, and you’re sure they’re not going to be critical to any of your future quests…

“He was murdered for jaywalking!” Even accepting that framing, here’s the thing. Physically being in the street is important. The inciting incident of the Hamburg Massacre, back during Reconstruction, was white guys angry about black guys standing in the road blocking traffic.

Because two objects can’t occupy the same space at the same time. The fundamental example of something that can only be resolved by conflict.

You know, if you look in the right parts of the web, where white people complain about black people in complete, properly spelled, passive-aggressive sentences, one of the most commonly recurring stories is black guys walking, or having a conversation, in the middle of the road, and they can see I’m waiting, and they don’t get out of the way, don’t even make an effort to let me through.

(There’s a tumblr post with half a million notes on it. Right here.

i know i give white people a lot of shit but u guys are really nice. like when the light turns green and there’s a white pedestrian that’s almost across the street u guys always do that jog thing. i know it’s kind of insignificant but i appreciate it white people. u and ur half jog thing.

)

The flip side of that story of course is “what the fuck this is a public road and I’m as much the public as you are so why the hell would you think it’s my duty to stop using it how I want so you can use it how you want, Mr. King Shit of the World?”

(“Mr. King Shit of the World” is the hostile way of saying “protagonist”.)

And you know how much you fucking hate it, how much of a personal affront you take it when NPC pathfinding is so fucked up that they block a door and you can’t get through? (Alternately, when collision detection is set up so that random NPCs can force you out of the way, maybe knock you out of a dialogue tree or screw up a quest?)

Gives you the unshakeable sense that this world was not properly designed for you, for the purpose of furthering your plotline.

And if these issues came up in the last update, you’d want a patch to revert them. You’d go on the devs’ forums and bitch forever, it’s like the devs don’t even care about the players, and you’d threaten to never support anything they did again, take your money and give it to some other devs, and devs, WHERE’S THE FUCKING PATCH.

And the patch, of course, is white supremacy. (It also buffs your class so you’re not grinding for fucking ever just to spend your loot on repairs and potions, and reduces your random encounter rate in safe zones.)

“But this isn’t a game, this is REAL LIFE!”

If you ever end a sentence with “REAL LIFE” in all caps you are being an idiot, I guarantee it. Yeah, the fact that the stakes of this game are real, that’s gonna make you more willing to let things slide? That’s not how people work. Not enough of them to hold a coalition together.

- = - = -

The activists are worked up! There’s a new civil rights movement coming! We! Will! Fight!

The veneration of the civil rights movement of the 1950s-60s, that makes people think that’s the only and inevitable way this can play out. Let’s set aside the way those gains eroded with time (same as the movement of the 1860s-70s, as Reconstruction gave way to Redemption). You know what I’m reminded of? The civil rights movement of the 1910s-20s.

You didn’t hear about that one? The founding of the NAACP, Garveyism, W.E.B. DuBois, black troops returning from European service in WWI, sharecroppers moving north to work the factories, pumped up to reclaim the promise of Reconstruction. Meanwhile, a countrywide surge in leftist radicalism, and new wave of immigrants asserting their claim on America. You don’t hear about it, because it didn’t win. The Palmer Raids, the First Red Scare, the Red Summer of 1919, the Tulsa Riot, the founding of the Second KKK.

Well, let them try, it won’t matter because trends suggest the, aah, “Coalition of the Ascendant” will gain overwhelming dominance in the intermediate future, right? Yeah, white Americans noticed that back then, too. That’s why they cut off immigration and started pushing eugenics.

Not convinced things’ll turn out like that this time around, but they could. Learn your history, kids, it keeps you from looking the fool.

- = - = -

I grew up in the Huxtable ‘80s and the End of History ‘90s, I kind of expected the two classic nations of America to merge, black into white, just as the white ethnics had the generations before.

Who knows what we’d call the amalgam, maybe still “white” just to play up the ridiculousness of it all, maybe some hyphenated neologism to bridge the gap, like we played up “Anglo-Saxon” to meld the English and German populations that originally formed the white American nation, or coined “Judeo-Christian” later on.

But I’m less and less certain of that. You look at the people saying interesting things about race these days, they’re pushing other possibilities, each with their three-letter acronyms. The left-racebloggers pushing “PoC”, “Persons of Color”, the idea that there’ll be white on one side and on the other this black-hispanic-asian-amerindian coalitional nation. The right-racebloggers “NAM”, “Non-Asian Minorities”, suggesting a white/asian against black/brown split.

And then there’s always the possibility that things’ll go the classic American route, where there’s black on one side and everybody else eventually joins “white”, earns a spot specifically defining themselves against “black”. Given a choice between the two, it’s an awfully appealing option.

- = - = -

Race is the fundamental tragedy of American history. A tragedy being where everyone’s understandably, sympathetically human, even (especially) in their failings and shortcomings and trespasses, and the inevitable consequence is suffering.

demonfucker2:

Degeneration | 2014 | Digital

drethelin:

you tried

nevver:

Rokeby Venus by Valezquez, Audrey Wollen

mapsontheweb:

Common Suffixes for Populated Places in India, and some simple etymology thereof

rikerist:

“Diversion.—When I have occasionally set myself to consider the different distractions of men, the pains and perils to which they expose themselves at court or in war, whence arise so many quarrels, passions, bold and often bad ventures, etc., I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber. A man who has enough to live on, if he knew how to stay with pleasure at home, would not leave it to go to sea or to besiege a town. A commission in the army would not be bought so dearly, but that it is found insufferable not to budge from the town; and men only seek conversation and entering games, because they cannot remain with pleasure at home.

But on further consideration, when, after finding the cause of all our ills, I have sought to discover the reason of it, I have found that there is one very real reason, namely, the natural poverty of our feeble and mortal condition, so miserable that nothing can comfort us when we think of it closely.

Whatever condition we picture to ourselves, if we muster all the good things which it is possible to possess, royalty is the finest position in the world. Yet, when we imagine a king attended with every pleasure he can feel, if he be without diversion, and be left to consider and reflect on what he is, this feeble happiness will not sustain him; he will necessarily fall into forebodings of dangers, of revolutions which may happen, and, finally, of death and inevitable disease; so that if he be without what is called diversion, he is unhappy, and more unhappy than the least of his subjects who plays and diverts himself.

Hence it comes that play and the society of women, war, and high posts, are so sought after. Not that there is in fact any happiness in them, or that men imagine true bliss to consist in money won at play, or in the hare which they hunt; we would not take these as a gift. We do not seek that easy and peaceful[Pg 40] lot which permits us to think of our unhappy condition, nor the dangers of war, nor the labour of office, but the bustle which averts these thoughts of ours, and amuses us.

Reasons why we like the chase better than the quarry.

Hence it comes that men so much love noise and stir; hence it comes that the prison is so horrible a punishment; hence it comes that the pleasure of solitude is a thing incomprehensible. And it is in fact the greatest source of happiness in the condition of kings, that men try incessantly to divert them, and to procure for them all kinds of pleasures.

The king is surrounded by persons whose only thought is to divert the king, and to prevent his thinking of self. For he is unhappy, king though he be, if he think of himself.

This is all that men have been able to discover to make themselves happy. And those who philosophise on the matter, and who think men unreasonable for spending a whole day in chasing a hare which they would not have bought, scarce know our nature. The hare in itself would not screen us from the sight of death and calamities; but the chase which turns away our attention from these, does screen us.

The advice given to Pyrrhus to take the rest which he was about to seek with so much labour, was full of difficulties.[69]

[To bid a man live quietly is to bid him live happily. It is to advise him to be in a state perfectly happy, in which he can think at leisure without finding therein a cause of distress. This is to misunderstand nature.

As men who naturally understand their own condition avoid nothing so much as rest, so there is nothing they leave undone in seeking turmoil. Not that they have an instinctive knowledge of true happiness …

So we are wrong in blaming them. Their error does not lie in seeking excitement, if they seek it only as a diversion; the evil is that they seek it as if the possession of the objects of their quest would make them really happy. In this respect it is right to call their quest a vain one. Hence in all this both the censurers and the censured do not understand man’s true nature.]

And thus, when we take the exception against them, that what they seek with such fervour cannot satisfy them, if they replied—as they should do if they considered the matter thoroughly—that they sought in it only a violent and impetuous occupation which turned their thoughts from self, and that they therefore chose an attractive object to charm and ardently[Pg 41] attract them, they would leave their opponents without a reply. But they do not make this reply, because they do not know themselves.[70] They do not know that it is the chase, and not the quarry, which they seek.

Dancing: we must consider rightly where to place our feet.—A gentleman sincerely believes that hunting is great and royal sport; but a beater is not of this opinion.

They imagine that if they obtained such a post, they would then rest with pleasure, and are insensible of the insatiable nature of their desire. They think they are truly seeking quiet, and they are only seeking excitement.

They have a secret instinct which impels them to seek amusement and occupation abroad, and which arises from the sense of their constant unhappiness. They have another secret instinct, a remnant of the greatness of our original nature, which teaches them that happiness in reality consists only in rest, and not in stir. And of these two contrary instincts they form within themselves a confused idea, which hides itself from their view in the depths of their soul, inciting them to aim at rest through excitement, and always to fancy that the satisfaction which they have not will come to them, if, by surmounting whatever difficulties confront them, they can thereby open the door to rest.

Thus passes away all man’s life. Men seek rest in a struggle against difficulties; and when they have conquered these, rest becomes insufferable. For we think either of the misfortunes we have or of those which threaten us. And even if we should see ourselves sufficiently sheltered on all sides, weariness of its own accord would not fail to arise from the depths of the heart wherein it has its natural roots, and to fill the mind with its poison.

Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness from the peculiar state of his disposition; and so frivolous is he, that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient to amuse him.

But will you say what object has he in all this? The pleasure of bragging to-morrow among his friends that he has played better than another. So others sweat in their own rooms to show to the learned that they have solved a problem in algebra, which no one had hitherto been able to solve. Many more expose themselves to extreme perils, in my opinion as foolishly, in order to boast afterwards that they have captured a town.[Pg 42] Lastly, others wear themselves out in studying all these things, not in order to become wiser, but only in order to prove that they know them; and these are the most senseless of the band, since they are so knowingly, whereas one may suppose of the others, that if they knew it, they would no longer be foolish.

This man spends his life without weariness in playing every day for a small stake. Give him each morning the money he can win each day, on condition he does not play; you make him miserable. It will perhaps be said that he seeks the amusement of play and not the winnings. Make him then play for nothing; he will not become excited over it, and will feel bored. It is then not the amusement alone that he seeks; a languid and passionless amusement will weary him. He must get excited over it, and deceive himself by the fancy that he will be happy to win what he would not have as a gift on condition of not playing; and he must make for himself an object of passion, and excite over it his desire, his anger, his fear, to obtain his imagined end, as children are frightened at the face they have blackened.

Whence comes it that this man, who lost his only son a few months ago, or who this morning was in such trouble through being distressed by lawsuits and quarrels, now no longer thinks of them? Do not wonder; he is quite taken up in looking out for the boar which his dogs have been hunting so hotly for the last six hours. He requires nothing more. However full of sadness a man may be, he is happy for the time, if you can prevail upon him to enter into some amusement; and however happy a man may be, he will soon be discontented and wretched, if he be not diverted and occupied by some passion or pursuit which prevents weariness from overcoming him. Without amusement there is no joy; with amusement there is no sadness. And this also constitutes the happiness of persons in high position, that they have a number of people to amuse them, and have the power to keep themselves in this state.

Consider this. What is it to be superintendent, chancellor, first president, but to be in a condition wherein from early morning a large number of people come from all quarters to see them, so as not to leave them an hour in the day in which they can think of themselves? And when they are in disgrace and sent back to their country houses, where they lack neither wealth nor servants to help them on occasion, they do not fail to be wretched and desolate, because no one prevents them from thinking of themselves.” -pascal, pensée 139

concepthuman:

imagine if the whole world worked like pro wrestling. politicians cutting promos against each other. changes in political alignments being referred to as heel or face turns. conspiracy theorists calling 9/11 a “worked shoot.”

So the next yearly Assassin’s Creed is going to be in Victorian London. That’s cool, and I hear people being “ooh, Jack the Ripper!”

The important question though: will Karl Marx be an Assassin or a Templar?

TV commercials be like “is *your* domestic cleaning robot doing all it can to realize your postracial mid century-agriretrodomestic dream?!”

And they say ‘50s scifi is dead.

I remember once going out with friends to a Perkins kinda diner, I forget if this was my high school or college friends, maybe somewhere between 2004 and 2008. One out of five of us middle- to upper-middle class types had a cell phone with rudimentary internet functionality if that helps place it.

And in the parking lot was this guy with a bumper sticker, simple black on white block letters, coulda been printed off a home PC. A bible verse, but just the citation, Book Chapter:Verse.

It was New Testament but not one of the gospels. Acts, maybe? Anyway us smartass atheists were kinda amused so we looked it up on the one phone, only we couldn’t figure out why he would have this of all things on a bumper sticker. It didn’t seem to be a sort of general life guidance thing, and we went around in circles trying to apply it to whatever Current Issue but couldn’t make it cleanly fit to anything.

We were settled on blowing it off like LOL, Christians, when I had a revelation and said “You know, laugh all you want, that guy just tricked us into 15 minutes of Bible study.”

Some kind of lesson there.

bloodandhedonism:

This post is even better when you consider what actually happened in real life between these two.

Nickelodeon shows have always been 22-year-old actors playing 18-year-old characters dealing with 14-year-olds’ issues for an audience of 10-year-olds.