kontextmaschine:

afronaut:

monetizeyourcat:

no-dachi:

tibets:

2013 is getting really weird..

god fucking bless

we sure have defined ‘robot’ down

Middle-aged American uses robots to build furniture.

All you commies are aware that “robot” basically means “serf labor” in Czech and it comes from a play that’s literally Socialist Reverse Frankenstein? Like, at the end the robots are the mob at the castle gates killing the industrialist humans who lament not giving the robots national identities to divide them. Metropolis had precedent.

There was a book called Sewer, Gas & Electric by Matt Ruff that was among other things a ‘90s update kinda. Only there had been a white supremacist engineered virus that as far as anyone knew killed all the black people, and it sorta came about that after that people wildly preferred these cyborg servants in black which was awkward, but for whose benefit are you really feeling guilty at that point, you know?

And that’s kind of interesting, because Atomic Age robofetishism really was a lot about giving the New Middle Class all the advantages of the old, narrow middle class (i.e. mansions and servants) without maintaining a servant class (i.e. blacks). The postwar right defined itself so hard against the New Deal that it kind of obscures that the New Deal was an entirely functional, entirely achievable populist nationalism where the nation was defined as white, or, you know, “white nationalism”.

Ruff’s book though kind of skirts that in favor of comedy wackiness. Like, there’s a Nazi cargo cult submarine base under the Statue of Liberty, and comedic relief from the Angry Spirit of Ayn Rand trapped in a hurricane lamp, a lot of Randian pastiche actually.

mun-sal-vache:

The Collected Works of Gabriele D'Annunzio, illustrated by Ivan Bilibin.

kontextmaschine:

Twice today tried to google something I’d googled before and couldn’t find it

First, this classic comic on 90s net furry culture which in row 3 column 2 invokes the old concept of “furry gay” (as distinct from gender dysphoria, r1c2)

The 90s had a richer concept of pansexuality as, ah, undiscrimination

ANYWAY, the second was that Richard Seymour attempt to schism the SWP with Laurie Penny (and China Mieville, thus their faction were the “Sino-Seymourists”)

look out for those memory holes!

kontextmaschine:

kontextmaschine:

through the years realized that through whatever blind groping the ‘90s-ass “edgelords” were desperately trying to save us from this, through proper gatekeeping and filtering

and at first I’d thought it was gratuitous and supported it being relaxed, maybe not shaming everyone who publicly mourned a suicide, mea culpa, mea culpa, I have debts to pay

>@siliquasquama​ said: wait, what are we being saved from? The public mourning of the suicides of famous people?

exactly

>@tsukutsukuboshi said: seconding the question of what’s been so bad about the public reaction

>@russian-hackers-official said: yea what’s so bad about that

That was how we kept the internet culture from growing mawkish and cry-bullyish: basically, if you were so weak as to get weepy over corpsemeat you got cancelled, the shame would follow you forever and you’d never be allowed to forget it.

Like, you know how from now unto eternity, whenever Tim Buckley gets mentioned someone’s gonna heap shit on him for getting melodramatic and heavy about a character having a miscarriage? That but real. At the time I thought it was too much but ::gestures around::

One of the critical moments I remember most was when Gawker was young, still focused on Manhattan celebrity gossip and young-people-in-publishing industry news, and to comment on it you had to pass an “audition” and if your comments fell below par you’d be ceremoniously removed in Friday “Commenter Execution” posts

And there was some post about a toddler falling out of a high-rise Manhattan apartment window and dying, and some commenter referenced the classic Anal Cunt song “Your Kid Committed Suicide Because You Suck” (about Eric Clapton’s kid, who died the same way, inspiring “Tears in Heaven”) and some scold huffed that he should show some restraint because A Child Has Died, and then that scold was not featured in that week’s Commenter Executions and I was like “hmm, this is an ill omen”, and it was

kontextmaschine:

If conservatives get a lock on the Supreme Court it would represent the culmination of multi-generational movements to undo its capture by progressivism since either 1937 (for the economic conservatives, the “switch in time that saved nine”) or the 1960s (for the sociocultural conservatives, the Warren Court)

But that does set it apart from other 2020 narratives of bills coming due or corruption through decay – the oil companies didn’t particularly want harsher weather, the law-and-order types didn’t want a backlash.

Social media companies wanted engagement thus ad revenue, not this public sphere. Unitary executive supporters wanted a civil service that acts like presidential elections mean something, not this pandemic.

But the Court, a lot of people for a long time wanted exactly this and put a lot of effort into it. Same as conservative media cultivating a more rightist electorate.

I mean, they wanted a more conservative Court, they put effort into building a judicial apparatus, they got it.

They wanted a more conservative electorate, they put effort into convincing them and they got it.

They wanted a more conservative legislature so they consolidated in the Republican Party, converted Southern Democrats, built up in statehouses, Newt Gingrich in the 80s, a Republican majority under Clinton, something like a conservative one under Obama…

Like all along, the “the current year” stuff, it’s now “it’s 2020, we can’t have a reactionary moment now!” And the response is “yeah, it’s 2020, we just finished our long march through the institutions, capturing them according to established procedures (as modified by established meta-procedures), this is exactly when we earned a reactionary moment!”

kontextmaschine:

We never shoulda taken the Philippines. The Caribbean territories we inherited out of the Spanish-American War were worthwhile if only to keep out of the hands of other Euro powers and turn the sea into an American lake.

But the Philippines, fuck. Didn’t work as a production center, too late to work as a trade gateway or forward base into Asia, full of ungrateful natives who were somehow fucking papists so you couldn’t even evangelize them, we had to assemble the rest of our Pacific empire just to make them remotely defensible and even then the one time we get in a war with the only possible country who would care about them they get taken over like, immediately.

kontextmaschine:

“In the virtual dream world, the two embark on a motorcycle journey and sky-dive, as well as engage in a steamy makeout session.

One part of the video shows the characters boarding and taking flight in a biplane which, combined with the digital technology, creates what is often regarded as a fascinating dichotomy between antiquated and modern technology, in some ways presenting a parallel for the characters.”

“The music video for “Livin’ on the Edge” is notable for a number of things, including depicting vandalism, theft (notably grand theft auto), joyriding, airbag crashing, unprotected sex, and violence among school-aged youth, cross-dressing teachers, a naked Steven Tyler holding a zipper by his crotch with half his body painted black (to give the effect he pulled down a zipper, unzipping his body) and lead guitarist Joe Perry playing a lead guitar solo in front of an oncoming train. Directed by Marty Callner, the video was praised for its groundbreaking theatrical scenes and special effects. The video featured acting by the young Edward Furlong.“

“A music video was produced to promote the single. The video was directed by Michael Bay, and had a surreal landscape described as "12 Monkeys meets Brazil”, which was meant to parody grunge videos. Many supermodels, such as Angie Everhart, are featured dressed as nurses, dominatrices and princesses.“

"In the final scene, Steven Tyler finds a sandwich on the beach. When he puts it in his mouth, he learns too late that it was a bait as Steven is reeled into the ocean.”

this-mess-that-i-am:

Were you listening to me, Neo? Or were you looking at the woman in the red dress?

kontextmaschine:

chris-evans:

Well you know, my take on the movie is even with the prewar London setting is it was about theater people in 1981.

Which means that “shortly afterwards, a plague swept through and wrecked everything” would be perfectly appropriate.

nostalgebraist-autoresponder:

Daughter of the River: Still at Home

Approaching the edge of everything

The world is beautiful, and it turns, and runs with incredible speed

But the merest fraction of a thing can make you grow a thousand wings

kontextmaschine:

xhxhxhx:

Today, deterrence through classical music is de rigueur for American transit systems. Transportation hubs from coast to coast play classical music for protective purposes. Brahms bounces through bus stops and baggage claims. Travelers buy Amtrak tickets to Baroque Muzak at Penn Station; Schubert scherzos grace the Greyhound waiting area in New York’s Port Authority Bus Terminal; Handel’s Water Music willows over the platforms of Atlanta’s MARTA subway system. Beyond big cities, the tactic extends to small towns and suburbs across the continent. In Duncan, British Columbia, Pavarotti’s tenor tones patrol the public park dispersing late-night hooligans, while the Lynchburg Library in Virginia clears its parking lot with a playlist highlighted by such scintillating soundtracks as Mozart for Monday Mornings and A Baroque Diet. In the most dramatic account of concerto crime-fighting, the Columbus, Ohio, YMCA reportedly dissolved a sidewalk brawl between two drug dealers simply by flipping on Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

Baroque music seems to make the most potent repellant. “[D]espite a few assertive, late-Romantic exceptions like Mussorgsky and Rachmaninoff,” notes critic Scott Timberg, “the music used to scatter hoodlums is pre-Romantic, by Baroque or Classical-era composers such as Vivaldi or Mozart.” Public administrators seldom speculate on the underlying reasons why the music is so effective but often tout the results with a certain pugnacious pride. As a Cleveland official explained, “There’s something about Baroque music that macho wannabe-gangster types hate.” The police chief of Tacoma, Washington, echoed the same logic (and the same phrasing): “By playing classical music, we hope to create an unpleasant environment for criminals and gangster-wannabes.” One London subway observer voiced the punitive mindset behind the strategy in bluntest terms: “These juvenile delinquents are saying ‘Well, we can either stand here and listen to what we regard as this absolute rubbish, or our alternative — we can, you know, take our delinquency elsewhere.’”

so if transit systems play classical music to flush out the poor, do shopping malls play pop music to flush out the middle class?

because i hate it

I definitely remember “mall music“ as a distinct kind of elevator music/Musak

Oh man there’s another thing I get to explain to the kids - midcentury American public spaces used to subscribe to services that provided unobtrusive, inoffensive-to-the-point-of-being-offensive background music

I remember it being a collection of original compositions and downtempo instrumental arrangements of recognizable tunes. This maybe had something to do with how playing mainstream/’freelance” not for-hire musicians in public requires paid licensing from ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) or BMI or SESAC or something

anyway that kind of ended around the same time that TV shows (and to an extent, movies) stopped using original scores and started using popular music, in the mid-’90s

(actually the TV story is pretty interesting, from 21 Jump Street and Miami Vice pioneering it in the ‘80s to the WB teen soaps running post-episode “as heard on” segments in the ‘90s to be a more appealing venue to “break” bands

Well the ‘90s were a time of TV pushing to be an alternate venue to radio to break through, MTV was the progenitor obvs but Little Fluffy Clouds broke through a Volkswagen commercial or something, didn’t it? And a Hooverphonic song.

Actually actually, there’s a lot of interesting stuff there - the ‘90s were when video games (say, Wipeout XL and Gran Turismo) were on CDs with the capacity and started licensing pop music. You know those deals go through your publisher and not your record label and thus present an alternate funding stream?

And around the same time film soundtracks were establishing themselves as an independent profit source - Prince’s “Batdance” didn’t thematically match the 1989 Batman movie at all, but it made the soundtrack a must-buy. Probably the apex there was Baz Luhrmann’s ‘96 Romeo + Juliet, structured around the soundtrack and shot-by-shot lush like a music video)

kontextmaschine:

The now-ubiquitous vidya “explosions ragdoll toss you” trope is a better reflection of cinema stuntwork than of real life, where explosions dismember you and ragdoll toss your components

bogleech:

You: uhhhhh hi I’m new i guess, just wanna chat about my favorite show too or whatever

iNvAd3rJ1M posted: *pounces* HELLOoOOOO NEW PERSON!!! *throws confetti*

911_NVR-FRGT posted: Hi there! You’ll find a Relaxed Atmosphere Here in Our Community! *points* Beer is In The Fridge, Curfew Is At 9! Haha I’m old

SSJgoku1994 posted: I am a pineapple! Monkeys!!!!!

Drag0n~Swords posted: Forsooth, a stranger doth enter the realm!

dumbledoreftw posted: Welcome! Hope you stick around! We don’t bite….. much!!

Greg posted: HITLER WAS A MISUNDERSTOOD GENIUS AND ILL GIVE YOUR WHOLE FAMILY AIDS IN HELL YOU PIECE OF SHIT

Lady*Unicorns*76 posted: “lol” (Laughing Out Loud!) don’t worry about greg sweetie! He’s just our little pet troll and you get used to him!! ;-) <3<3<3

kontextmaschine:

folklore

fandom: oh hey yr back early

Taylor Swift: world’s haunted

fandom: what?

Taylor Swift: *doing vocal exercises and releasing another album* world’s haunted

kontextmaschine:

Okay we start out with this architecture student, Roark, in a meeting with like the dean of architecture school? He’s getting kicked out for being too awesome, and coming up with original ideas instead of rehashing romanticism. He says goodbye to this other student - not a total twerp, but not as cool.

Notatwerp graduates, and gets a job as a drafter at a firm. He works his way up and starts dating this chick, meanwhile Roark’s become a construction worker. One day the chick goes to a site he’s drilling at and he forces himself on her, and she’s like “okay that was awesome” and starts seeing him on the side.

Meanwhile there’s a prissy newspaper columnist? Or maybe that was Atlas Shrugs.

There’s a competition to design apartments for workers, and Roark works up this plan for a really sweet-looking building with units that would be awesome to live in, they even have balconies.

Wait! First, Notatwerp gets a commission to design a church and goes to Roark for help, Roark designs this thing with like, subterranean entrances that gives people the total opposite impression of a greater glory, it makes them feel exalted about humanity and themselves. It’s awesome but people don’t appreciate it because they suck.

Meanwhile, the chick totally loves Roark so she stops seeing him and gets engaged to Notatwerp and totally rubs this in Roark’s face every chance she gets ‘cause it’ll make him more awesome.

So then Roark’s apartments win the competition, only when they build it the funders (maybe the priss is on the board?) change it to make it cheaper and more conventional, in particular they take out the balconies ‘cause what do workers need balconies for?

And Roark’s like “NO, you are NOT going to make my idea suck” and before anyone moves in he rigs the building with dynamite, and it blows up behind him as he walks towards the camera. And the chick’s like “oh Roark, you so sexy!”

THE END

(Only that was like 800 fucking pages, 'cause it was written on written on amphetamine and not edited. I can see why Ayn Rand books don’t make good movies. 'course, I can see why publishers would reject the book in the first place, but joke’s on them so…)

kontextmaschine:

Anyway in composing that post here’s something I’ve unearthed. By now we’ve all seen Julian Hoke Harris’ relief “Keeping Away Death (Preventative Medicine)” from the Fulton County Department of Health and Wellness building

but did you know there’s a companion piece, “Keeping Away Old Age (Geriatrics)”?

kontextmaschine:

So in hearing about this surge in “deaths of despair” - suicides, overdoses, etc - what portion of that is that an artifact of medicine pushing back on other causes of death?

I mean, as humans Americans have a 100% mortality rate, they’re going to die of something, in a world where all infirmities were casually treatable, everyone would die in murders, suicides, and accidents.

At the dawn of the 20th century it was a lot more normal for people to die of trauma or infectious disease, death had such an undertow that the late 1800s saw regular speculation that in the absence of active, fecund thriving, native Americans and emancipated blacks would just die out.

But then antibiotics, vaccinations, hygiene, surgery. I suspect a lot of early 20th cen. “social hygiene” stuff - contraception, “eugenically spaced” births, forced sterilization, invalids’ homes and asylums – was an attempt to maintain the social order pre-medical revolution, where middle class families might have three children survive to adulthood, lower class families might have none, and those most in need of burdensome care just… disappeared. (It also fit really well into a primarily agricultural culture that was going through a revolution in deliberate crop and livestock breeding.)

And so then the understanding was unless something actively went wrong, you’d live to at least middle age and die of cancer or heart disease, but even that’s become less of a thing.

Like, I remember before statins got big, and we’re not talking ancient history, we’re talking the mid-90s, Nintendo was already releasing nostalgia-bait releases of its classic games. And it was just understood, that starting in their mid-40s, plus or minus a bit based on how fit they were, people you knew would start to suddenly and unexpectedly die from like heart attacks, or cardiac arrest, or strokes, or cerebral hemorrhage.

And the midcentury Heroic Age of Surgery left us with angioplasties, and coronary bypasses, and heart and valve transplants, and ambulance staffs were training up on critical first-line care, and it was already starting to be like “well maybe you’ll just suddenly and unexpectedly be severely crippled”, but I’m just now realizing that this background thrum of sudden circulatory failure, or the things leveraged out from it – diets that minmaxed on cholesterol, say – just isn’t audible anymore.

But, like, if a hard-living construction foreman goes on blood pressure medication instead of just keeling over in his early 40s, he’s still going to have to die of something, and even if that something is “supposed” to be lymphoma at age 72, that’s still another 30 years of chances to pick up the needle or the shotgun.

kontextmaschine:

LA County Probation Department Force-Femmes Boy, 16

tired, confused nation unclear how that plays into things

kontextmaschine:

voxette-vk:

fatpinocchio:

Hot take: You know how increased transparency and the crackdown on earmarks in congressional legislation have been blamed for increasing ideological polarization, since they can’t buy each other off as easily? What if the destruction of Epstein’s island is having the same effect? It was the ultimate smoke-filled back room where they had the mutually binding experience of engaging in taboo. And now that it’s gone, we see escalated culture war with all the BLM and cancel culture stuff, all because it’s harder for the ruling elites to talk to each other and make deals they can depend on.

We are reaching levels of spiciness that shouldn’t even be possible

I mean cross what we’ve learned about Epstein, all we already knew from all the media stuff and what’s been openly known of the foundation and dalliances of Mr. Neoliberalism himself, Bill Clinton.

In the 90s, there was a network including jet-owning moneybags, Hollywood producers and broadcast heads, celebrities, urban propertyholders, DLC-type officials at the federal and urban level, prominent public intellectuals, Silicon Valley types, futurists, and science fiction types.

And they promoted that they were the same thing, that rock star cool was tech startup cool was indie movie cool was rich urban gay men cool was sci fi cool was big money cool was Bill Clinton cool

Boomer cool, really

Appeared at each other’s events and donated to their fundraisers and campaigns with which to enhance their stature, endowed each other’s sinecures (compare royal pensions), legitimated each other.

Overlooked each others’ blemishes, especially the stuff like smoking pot or free access to teenagers where the weirdo right was still pretending the 60s hadn’t happened. (Though for all that, how many building permits got fixed?!) Remember how much of Bonfire of the Vanities was the prosecutors resenting the pressure to hunt rich whites to build a coalition rather than be left to the necessary “garbage collection” in some idiom of honor?

Basically locked the 80s-gentrifying yuppie class in place as owner of the culture, and the cities, white urban professionals with a Boomer sense of being cool but not radical, the next step in the system balancing itself out.

Like, that is a totally imaginable model of so much of the 90s as Third Way boomer yuppie elite conspiracy, isn’t it?