kontextmaschine

donjuan-auxenfers:

averyterrible:

donjuan-auxenfers replied to your post: could darkest dungeon be improved with the…

this happened in Cornwall, the Cornish man engine thebaffler.com/salvos/…

Cornwall has responded to its own loss of function in a number of ways. The tourism industry, for instance, has expanded (although that inherently seasonal labor regime does not typically bring with it steady, sustainable jobs), and the county has certainly become a popular retirement spot for wealthy Britons (although it is hardly a sign of vibrancy if your area is turning into what is essentially a gilded coffin). Oh, and the Cornish have recently started to worship a big puppet.

now that’s my kind of thinking!

It’s my favourite thing, it’s just amazing.

It is striking to note the ritualistic—religious, really—nature of these “transformation” ceremonies. As video evidence documents, the ceremonies open with what is essentially a sermon, delivered by a man dressed as a miner standing on a platform some distance above the crowd. The content of the sermon reflects on the central importance of the tin mining industry to Cornwall’s history, cut loose by a world that no longer deems that tradition necessary. (The ceremony is thus in the weird position of ostensibly celebrating the mining landscape being named to the list of world heritage sites, while also addressing itself to people who know all too well the crushing costs of said landscape becoming merely “heritage.”)

The man-engine is at this point in the ceremony crouched somewhere behind the miner-priest, still concealed by a sheet. A hymn is sung, a lament honoring the sacrifices of the many men who have died pursuing the dangerous but worthwhile endeavor of mining Cornish tin, before the crowd, under instructions from the priest, begins chanting a mantra in Cornish. (In English it goes: “Copper, Silver, Tin Tin Tin / Can’t you feel ’em ’neath yer skin?”) Then comes the moment of revelation. Upon hearing the mantra, the man-engine “awakes”—he begins steaming like a locomotive and, dragged up by a team of men below him with ropes, comes gradually to stand up to his full height, towering above the people and all the nearby buildings.

Fight deindustrialization by reviving weird pagan rites 2k17.

mapsontheweb:

Map showing the relative size of each of the United States if based on Electrical energy sold for light and power in 1921.

ambermaitrejean:

Portraits of neighborhood cats. Photos by Amber Maitrejean

argumate:

snakecathedral:

you shouldn’t say a thousand dollars anymore, but a kilodollar instead

I prefer kibidollars

you mean a Cleveland

mapsontheweb:

SF Bay Area Airplane Arrival and Departure Routes.

youzicha:

supplyside:

boosters

This looks like a G.I. Joe toy.

How Class in China Became Politically Incorrect - BLARB

stumpyjoepete:

Via SupChina:

“In the past, class was eliminated, but our rulers decreed that people must ‘never forget class struggle.’ Now class has returned, but our rulers demand that class struggle be forgotten.”

“If you want to get rid of class struggle discourse, one way the party has done this is to promote consumption so people get a sense of hope,” Sun says. “An ideology of hope — the neoliberal discourse — has taken root. Neoliberalism doesn’t like class discourse. As long as you find your position in the market, you’ll be fine.” In this way, class has become defined by consumption, and in some cases, conspicuous consumption.

alexgundam:

:

A team of Zeon soldiers head upriver, led by a battered MS-05B Zaku I - Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team (episode 08, 1997)

I was just reading some stuff on Burma in WWII, realizing

1) How much nothing I know about the mainland Asian theater of that war but

2) It’s gotta be Japan’s biggest cultural impression of “modern ground warfare”, and if I can tell that anime riffs (especially pre-90s, still in living memory) on naval and air combat are TRANSPARENTLY about the war, there’s probably some stuff there that thanks to #1 I’m missing

Yo more than the homesteading of federal western lands, we’re gonna eventually need a land reform to redistribute the water rights in the “prior appropriation” jurisdictions west of the Rockies

It’d be a good first step if we could recognize both as “land reform” though. On top of all the homesteadings, the US did “orthodox”, defeudalizing land reform at least once, in Hawaii in the 1960-90s IIRC, that’s a precedent.

California itself was owned by two parafeudal land regimes, the original Spanish land grants and the later robber barons, tbh I’m not sure how that shook out. I don’t think there was ever a single monolithic “land reform”, more chipped away by gradual real estate and tax subtleties and dilution through inheritance. I know if you take the PCH up the coast, you run into a few necklace chains of small state parks, fertile valleys the barons owned to feed San Francisco by coastal shipping and then later gave up in lieu of taxes. I also know part was never reformed away, the master-planned towns of Irvine and Valencia were carved from intact monolithic holdings.

Then there’s reservation land (and the structures for dividing and distributing it, and the parastructures by which speculators reconsolidated it, and the paraparastructures resisting them), what else? Florida! I think that might’ve been under Spanish land grants, I know in the 20th century developers got huge tracts of land to subdivide. I saw a good longform about this recently, started with the author’s parents honeymooning on Miami Beach and getting bussed 4 hours to hear a sales pitch, someone point me. “Worthless Florida swamp lots” was a trope in the mid-20th century, they were the eponymous plot devices of Glengarry Glen Ross and I remember catching a few references on TV back before UPN and the WB, when the un-networked higher-number UHF channels would run old Looney Toons.

me: should I retreat to a farm?
also me: buk bukkawk
me: yeah more of my enemies now, but also less of my friends. like my friends turn pod people or fall to the juggernaut and the new people ARENT EVEN THE CAR COMMERCIAL characters anymore
also me: 
me: they're not even the dancing Old Navy commercials anymore what went wrong
also me: they'll get their comeuppance
me: and me alongside. or worse, they don't.
also me: you could start a cult
me: oh I could get the leftovers of THEM
also me: indie pastors start with lost sheep
me: …
also me: gotta show some rustle
me: but it is the part of the cycle to retreat to the sticks and the Romans knew this
also me: aNd ThE rOmAnS kNeW tHiS
me: man fuck you. but the hell kinda cash crop do you grow in nowhere Montana
also me: you should retreat to a wizard tower
me: what?

cornerof5thandvermouth:

gif87a-com:

Framerate synced with a bird’s wings

this is genuinely upsetting

In honor of George Romero’s passing I’ll NOT run a full review of his 1981 motorcycle jousting renn faire movie, Knightriders.

I’ll just note that it makes you realize that the guy didn’t consider himself “master of zombie horror George Romero” but “master of small group dynamics under pressure George Romero”.

I’ll also say that it’s a better example than Xanadu or Heaven’s Gate of how the ‘70s auteur-personal “New Hollywood” could go off the rails precisely because it’s more intimate and smaller-scale.

The actual “motorcycle jousting” bit is mostly overlooked, with atrocious stuntwork, Romero says he just tossed the idea in there to get the movie funded. To the extent there’s a throughline at all, it’s the king/troupe leader (Ed Harris in INSANE full-on Method scenery-chewing mode) trying to cleave to some sense of countercultural authenticity in the face of pressures to commercialize.

This is transparently about George’s own quest; if no one tells the king that he’s mated his vision to a flatly absurd style of popcorn entertainment, it’s apparently cause that never occurred to him.

I say TO THE EXTENT there’s a throughline, because the film starts to become near an anthology hamhandedly exploring troupe members’ interiority through disjointed and honestly ‘70s-tropaic mini plots. Like, for a while it looks like “trouble with a local sheriff” will be a coherent plot but then it just jags into some weird Billy Jack/First Blood thing with him wailing on some second-tier character while a handcuffed Ed Harris emotes, AND THEN drops that entirely for two new third-tier characters doing a rushed “coming to terms with your sexuality” arc and ONLY LATER, several false endings later, does Harris show up out of nowhere at a fast food restaurant to beat the sheriff up to patrons’ cheers, and then Easy Rider-style drive his motorcycle into a big rig with the mute Native American boy who was possibly also his eagle spirit animal that he’d been seeing in dreams?

And part of this vision quest was aided by the troupe’s doctor, a black voodoo shaman who speaks in Shakespearean jive? (In the commentary Romero is puzzled why Morgan Freeman, fresh off The Electric Company, was insulted to be pitched the role). Or the plot where some local girl latches on to a rider and then it comes out that her dad is abusive and then rather than take her along the rider drops her off at home crying at night because…??? He’s a rebel, he can’t be tied down, it’s never really made clear? And that’s just the end of that plot

Oh also the opening scene fixes on Steven King as a hotdog-eating yokel, that never goes ANYWHERE

kaaramel:

extremely dumb concept: xenocarcinisation. we discover independently evolved life on an alien planet and most of their lifeforms are bizarre and mostly unfamiliar but there’s one or two ocean-dwelling species that look like pretty good facsimiles of regular ol’ earth crabs. every time. every time we find some uniquely developed source of multicellular life we keep findin crabs. they’re just such a good shape to evolve into. imagine crabs scattered across the universe.

It’s funnier if you imagine the Jungle Boogie doodely-doos between lines

Quarterworld
Hawthorne Blvd.
Portland, OR

becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys:

mrbroadway:

THE👏WOODS👏ARE👏JUST👏TREES👏THE 👏TREES👏 ARE 👏JUST 👏WOOD👏

This is very literally not true and I will not stand for this gross unscientific misinformation

A woodland is an entire ecosystem of which trees are a keystone species, but a long, long way from the whole picture. Above ground you’ve got the whole understory of ground flora, bryophytes, fungi, lichens, ferns, bacteria, invertebrates, mammals, birds and reptiles; below ground, it has a secondary ecosystem all of its own of soil organisms, invertebrates and micro invertebrates and bacteria and fungi and sometimes mammals. 

And, something that is legit called the Wood Wide Web. 

Basically, it’s a network of mycorrhizal fungi (essentially, every tree has a symbiotic fungus that works like our digestive enzymes, and helps it take water and nutrients in from soil) that grow long tendrils and so link all the plants together. But this network lets the trees do two things!

Firstly, it lets them share resources. Trees are very charitable creatures. If a tree in a wood is struggling, through disease or infestation or being in a shitty patch of  soil or what have you, the other trees nearby will send it sugars and nutrients to help it along. If a tree is cut down, its surrounding neighbours will send sugars to the stump for years, helping it regenerate. Sociable things.

Secondly, it lets them communicate, I fucking shit you not. Trees have some resistances to fungal diseases or infestations, for example, especially if given time to get their defensive enzymes flowing before the problem hits. And if a tree at the edge of the Wood Wide Web is struck with such a disease, it will alert all the other trees in the network so that they can start producing the enzymes AND THEN THEY ALL SURVIVE. And when that first tree succumbs? See point one. The others do their best to revive it. 

And trees are not just wood, in the same way that humans are not just flesh. Trees have heart wood, but also sap, xylem, phloem, cambium, leaves, bark, rooting material, and a shit-ton of enzymes including things like lignin, which is incredibly cool for several reasons; firstly because it was one of the biggest weapons in the evolutionary arms race (beetles and that couldn’t digest it, which allowed dead stuff to become, among other things, coal), and secondly because its chemical structure is almost identical to vanillin, so when you open an old book and get Old Book Smell it’s the lignin breaking down.

Coal and Old Book Smell. Thanks to lignin.

So in conclusion the woods are not just trees and the trees are not just wood. Please fact check before you reblog. This is blatant tree erasure.