Under Kilborn the Daily Show satirized the institution of “the news”. For all his sound and fury and reputation - making waves on Crossfire, etc. - Stewart turned it into exactly what it once mocked: a self-important and self-satisfied institution that looks at the size of the audience it cultivated by trading access for attention with the powerful, and sees in it moral authority.

Which to all appearances is what the audience prefers, anyway.

I mean that there is no way to disarm any man,” said Dr. Ferris, “except through guilt. Through that which he himself has accepted as guilt. If a man has ever stolen a dime, you can impose on him the punishment intended for a bank robber and he will take it. He’ll bear any form of misery, he’ll feel that he deserves no better. If there’s not enough guilt in the world, we must create it. If we teach a man that it’s evil to look at spring flowers and he believes us and then does it—we’ll be able to do whatever we please with him. He won’t defend himself. He won’t feel he’s worth it. He won’t fight. But save us from the man who lives up to his own standards. Save us from the man of clean conscience. He’s the man who’ll beat us.

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Obligatory disclaimer that liking a book is not the same as endorsing everything in it.

But damn if this bit right here doesn’t say something profound about manipulation and how it works.

(via fierceawakening)

Guilt turns good people into Fluttershy

(via bgaesop)

americanphoto:

© the Estate of David Wojnarowicz, Courtesy P.P.O.W Gallery, New York

Untitled (Falling Buffalo), 1988-89

From: REVISITING DAVID WOJNAROWICZ IN AN ERA OF CONFLICT AND CHANGE

The leading Republican candidate for President goes to primary debates talking up single-payer healthcare, talking down globalization, while humiliating Fox News and prominent conservatives through charismatic vulgarity with an assist from Howard fucking Stern.

Revenge of the ‘90s.

Friendly reminder to my American followers that if you’re having difficulties dealing with a government agency - not so much “an agency intended to prey on me is preying on me”, but “an agency intended to help me is not helping me and/or preying on me” - you can get a lot done by calling up your state/federal legislator’s office (“constituent service” dept.) and bitching.

Bcuz if you can even be arsed to know not only who your elected official IS, but how to contact them you’re like in the 95th percentile politically and it’s worth spending energy on you.

Bcuz while legislators aren’t still the debater-deciders they’re mythologized as, what they ARE is really effective at lobbying the administrative state.

germanpostwarmodern:

Administration of the company “Unilever” (1961-64) in Hamburg, Germany, by Hentrich Petschnigg & Partner

kontextmaschine:

PinkiePieSwear - Sunshine and Celery Stalks

this is the guy who did Flutterwonder. respect.

spacetwinks:

now i’m just looking up remixes of gameshow tunes

frog-and-toad-are-friends:

I’m reading Don Quixote for my world literature class and apparently when it was first published in 1605 it was world-changingly popular, one of the first “popular novels” as we know it today, and there were all sorts of people who were writing and publishing their own unofficial fan-sequels to Don Quixote which was basically the first fan-fiction, and then in 1615 the original author wrote an official sequel in which Don Quixote reads a piece of fanfic about him and sets out on a quest to beat up the author who mischaracterized him

The name is phallic in origin,^[2] specifically, the column’s original name was “Cock Rock”. The Chinook Jargon word for the rock was iwash, referring to penis.^[3] The name was later modified to Rooster Rock so as not to offend the public.^[3]

Uh. Would you believe I’ve never seen any of the Transformers movies?

Michael Bay made this (check out some pagan SEX rituals facts!) commercial for Victoria’s Secret in 2010. TRY and tell me that’s not exactly how you pictured a Michael Bay take on “sexy”.

If you want some historical angle on things… okay. I’d say the key to understanding Michael Bay is that he’s from the first generation of directors to enter a field in which music videos were an established thing.

Like, do people even bother making jokes anymore about how MTV never plays music videos anymore? I know that was a thing in the late ‘90s/early ‘00s, and it was a thing because the abandonment was so jarring because the music video was THE art form of the 1980s and early ‘90s.

And music videos were known for bringing much quicker, more frequent, and more dynamic cuts than any other form of mass-market moving pictures up to that time, more intense and striking visuals, with extensive integration of visual and sound through-lines. And that spread out into other forms like TV (famously with 21 Jump Street and Miami Vice), commercials, and media, and Michael Bay’s the obvious type specimen.

(I actually think there’s an interesting development from early music videos, which drawing from stage shows (or even recording sessions) sold an *aesthetic*, while what narrative through-line there was was often the band literally performing the song; to mid’‘80s videos that aped short film and tried to set up stories; to the later ‘90s perfection of the form that… pitched… what, a “dynamic aesthetic”, where action sequences served the aesthetic and maybe gestured at a theme while not burdening themselves with narrative baggage like motivation or plot twists)

raggedjackscarlet:

Oh man.

Y’know… there’s something we get wrong about visions of the grimdark cyberpunk future: we think it’ll all be calculatedly fashionable– like the derelicte couture of Shadowrun and The Matrix, like the perfectly sculpted criminal rogue personalities of half of Hollywood hackers (the other half being Sheldon Cooper). And we think it’ll be all Sturm und Drang romantic, a gothic neon cityscape blanketed by a never-ending storm, a world historical event every time a computer is booted up.

But this, this right here is a record of some authentic cyberspace ruins, a virtual abandoned city. and the structures themselves are plain, silly, and inoffensive. This is normcore cyberpunk. This is what happens when futuristic web and VR technologies collide with human mediocrity, and human quirkiness as well.

The future is here, and it’s remarkably silly.

March 12 - The Monster has actually advanced as far as Grenoble

realisenothing:

I’m going through the Old Testament and I’m going to rank all the men according to the PUA spectrum of maleness

God - Alpha, he’s the big cheese, the main man, everyone wants a slice of that pizza pie

Adam - Alpha, hey he’s naming everyone and he gets to sample the first sliz ever. nice

Cain - Alpha, the gardening nearly makes him a beta but he brings it all back by murdering the fuck out of….

Abel - Beta. Sure he’s a shepherd and that’s a rough job but uh, you got killed mate,

Noah - Omega . henpecked. the only guy god chose to keep around because he wasn’t sinning. wow, get a spine noah

Abraham - Beta, was going to kill his only son, uh nice, where do you keep your tampons

Isaac - Omega, the worst of the patriarchs, didn’t even leave canaan, didn’t change his name. 

Jacob - Alpha, tricks his idiot dad into giving him the birthright, fights an angel, changes his name to Israel, still causing a ruckus 3000 years later

Joseph - Beta, although he does have a PUA-approved coat, he gets sold into slavery and then doesn’t even fuck pharoah’s wife. dude what is your problem

Moses - Alpha, kills a slave driver, talks to a bush that’s on fire, delivers plagues, makes everyone drink gold. writes a book about himself where he says he’s the “Humblest man who ever lived”

David - Alpha, kills a giant when he was a boy, sends a man off to die because he gets hard for his wife, gets a little gay with jonathan but he gets a pass

Solomon - Beta, can’t get a woman to convert to his religion, did build a very peacocky temple though.

Job - Omega, literally gets COVERED IN FESTERING BOILS and still doesn’t stand up for himself. Get a new religion when that stuff starts happening pal

Daniel - Alpha, lions, dens, need I go on?

Jonah - Beta, you gotta admire him standing up to god, but swallowed by a fish? uh, paging dr freud!

Jesus - Alpha, he changed the game dog. Changed the fucking game. He died for our sins so that we may join him in the kingdom of heaven. give your life to the son of god today

peashooter85:

The Iron Dobbin,

Invented in Italy in 1933, the Iron Dobbin was a mechanical horse originally developed to train young children how to ride.  Powered by a gasoline engine, the Iron Dobbin was essentially a four legged walker, its legs being made from steel pipes.  The Iron Dobbin was supposed to mimic the movement of a horse, and supposedly was able to traverse rough terrain.  Originally the Iron Dobbin was intended to train children of the Italian Fascist Youth Movement to ride, and the Italian Army considered the machine to replace draft horses and donkeys.  However the Italian Army deemed the design impractical.  The German Army also developed their own version called the “Panzerpferd”, or Iron Horse, but it too was found to be an impractical design.  The Iron Dobbin was featured in the April, 1933 edition of Popular Science.

furtho:

Terraced streets in Kensal Green, London, 1921 (via robnitm)

owls-n-elderberries:

Foggy Morning Trail by Kip Stahl
Via Flickr: