kontextmaschine

Been watching eyewitness footage of the 2011 Tohoku tsunami, a few interesting things there.

First, I guess in my mind a tsunami was like a slap from one really big wave but this all just seemed to be the water level just steadily rising until it spilled over seawalls and became a molasses slurry of lumber and cars and burning houses, buildings collapsed not when the water hit but when the flow pushed another building through them.

A few videos had bits where as the water continued to rise the people observing and filming from the safety of higher ground suddenly realized they had to get to even higher ground and set off in a scramble. All made it, of course, seeing we have their footage.

Several shots of someone clearly doomed that all cut away before the moment. It’s not like the Japanese have some monopoly on squeamishness about death, but just the regularity of this, the videographer making a focus of the elderly couple doddering down the street before the woodslide or the family scrambling up the hill, but then consistently drifting off before they’re overtaken and aiming at nothing in particular until they find another plot thread - it’s different from other things I’ve seen.

You hear about “face” and saving and presenting it, the ubiquitous “いや、見ないで!“, but there’s something really striking about watching people in crisis situations scrupulously exercising a duty not to witness others’ misfortune.

Also, Japanese women are totally capable of shrieking and wailing in a normal tone of voice. Who knew?

spacetwinks:

tonight i disappeared down a hole of looking up 80s/90s sex comedy movies and it really is such a stark illustration of the time before mass internet porn in america because there are about a thousand different movies that are all “party dudes/average dudes/nerds go to college/ski lodge/beach resort/other beach resort/the old west/the army and see some titty, in bikini, and then out of bikini”. it never fucking stops. there is a “hollywood hot tubs” and a “hollywood hot tubs 2″. “the bikini carwash company” has a sequel. “bikini summer” has a sequel. there’s one just called “hot t-shirts”. before you could even imagine the idea of being able to google “cadbury commerical rabbit with the sex voice ASMR” or what that would even mean, america’s horny was channeled entirely through playboy and knockoffs thereof, sex comedies with nerds with spinning bowties, and the concept of titty itself

modernism-in-metroland:

Nestle Factory, Hayes (1932) by Wallis, Gilbert and Partners.

This Wallis, Gilbert and Partners factory was built on the site of the original Georgian house used to create Hayes Cocoa in 1912, and is now part of the Nestle corporation.

Image from Nestle

Following “the uniquely amazing” with “a cat like yours” is kinda shit copywriting

kontextmaschine:

4chan accidentally the discourse, didn’t it?

'Cuckservative' Is a Conservative Who Isn't Quite Racist Enough For Donald Trump Fans - The Daily Banter

kontextmaschine:

oh fuck

this election’s going down with the safety off

6/24/15

marimbamaestoso:

idk what they were going for but this sounds like a dril-tier shitpost

kontextmaschine:

Tubman on the $20 is the Susan B. Anthony Dollar

‘70s parallels are my thing, how did I not get that?

La Croix is Perrier

too easy

A STUBBORN COMPANY TOWN WINS DELAY IN ITS DEATH SENTENCE

35 years past

Yo, whatever anon wrote in to defend tank club’s honor against my “self-righteousness”… yeah, okay, you’re on to something, looking back that “is hilarious” does sound pretty condescending. Maybe “is interesting” would be better but that’d still sound condescending in a “oh, look at ~this~” way. I think the way that people align around totalizing, universal ideologies in response to the specifics of early 20th century Eastern Europe really is interesting and important though.

Which is to say I didn’t want that to come off as rooting for a side and hooting the other, sorry. So what position do I want to come off with?

The “Wilsonian” solution to the “nationalities problem”, widely applied post-WWI - form states around ethnolinguistic blocs where they stand, even though it’s all just gradients, maybe cheat a bit because the result makes no economic, military, or geopolitical sense, then firmly remind everyone to be tolerant and war is illegal - was a clear failure.

And the Yalta approach, widely applied post-WWII - drawing lines in a way that made sense and comported with the relative strength of power players and then shifting homogenized populations to fit - well, it worked, didn’t it?

Not like that resolves anything.

Following WWI, Armenia formed along the “Yalta” model in a catastrophically traumatic process, I’m sympathetic to anyone who cares for Armenian people having an aversion to this.

Following WWI, Poland formed along the “Wilsonian” model with catastrophically traumatic results, I’m sympathetic to anyone who cares for Polish people having an aversion to this.

For people committed to socialism to come down on either side of this in alignment with those sympathies isn’t… wrong, but the way that shatters unity is pretty interesting. (And on occasion hilarious, when people talk at each other in the same voice of totalizing universalism.)

(And the dream of non-programmatic spirit of socialism that understands, aligns, and improves the people and land incidentally wherever they are now while rejecting the false promise of nationalism? Which I think is being deployed as a way to transcend all of this?

I’ve said in private message to quoms but I’ll repeat here since you’re curious - even assuming the can opener, reject all you want, but if the totalizing ideologies of great power blocs could still get experienced as various nationalisms, the chance that this wouldn’t strikes me as nil.  At best a wiping of the slate, a reset to day zero, a new Golden Age that will itself get invoked in future palingenetic promises and irredentist claims.)

Finally, if you’re telling me I’ve got some weird followers, God, I know. Try to be a good influence. If there’s anywhere I’ve got cause for self-righteousness it’s sure as fuck not maintaining the purest cordon sanitaire. You know this account only really got active under influence of the great witch Monetizeyourcat?

monetizeyourcat:

miricham:

the plural of anecdote is not “data”

the plural of anecdote is “lore”

argumate:

Those who do not learn from history are condemned to have no helpful analogies to use against their ideological opponents, much like the fall of the holy city of Constantinople to the Sultan’s cannons in 1453.

jakke:

Mikayla Emily Devin Caesy Kasydi Cataleyn

Just got gas. The attendant (mandated in OR and NJ, tho if you’ve got a motorcycle they just hand you the pump) and I talked about (that fact), morale was high cuz they just got terminals that didn’t make him manually dispense receipts

He said a Louisiana car pulled in the other month, he went around (in his hi-visibility vest) to open the gas cap and the old lady passenger pulled mace on him

gameraboy:

Live Free

Peanuts, September 26, 1954

raggedjackscarlet:

Reflexively defending smartphones against Banksyesque anti-consumerism has gone mainstream, so to maintain your spot on the bleeding edge of contrarian douchebaggery, next time you see one of those positivity posts heaping praise on the wonders of social media, reply “HURR DURR SELF-CONTROL IS SCARY MARCUS AURELIUS WAS A WITCH”