Just discovered Barstool’s “Grading the Newest Sex Scandal Teacher” where every few days since like 2009 they put up the hottest photos they can find and a few hundred-word lascivious “review” of female teachers caught fucking their students (they’re pro-)

Barstool actually reminds me of the turn-of-the-20th-century “sporting press”. Focused around sports, with an eye on reports of use to sports bettors, these publications were really a men’s press, circulated through masculine outlets like saloons and barbershops, offering up tittilation and sex industry advertising on the side, playing to a rough tits-n-beer (-n-fisticuffs) single men’s culture. Y’know, punters. The guys on the barstools.

Some vestiges remained in America - racing forms, Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue, the way “alt-weekly” urban tabloid newspapers took a gritty tone and sustained themselves on prostitution ads. But Europe’s stronger sports betting and prostitution culture (arguably both downstream from a stronger urban working class culture absent the US’s midcentury “mass middle class” suburbanization) and national publication markets means the tradition carried on more intact.

And now we’ve got the internet, and a return to the cities, and moves to open up sports betting, and a new sex work culture and a growing men’s culture that doesn’t even aim at bourgeois respectability (both downstream from the end of the mass middle class) so no surprise Barstool’s a thing RN

kontextmaschine:

“Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don’t want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women’s strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman.”

“Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world”

William Moulton Marston - reputed psychologist, polyamorist, inventor of the polygraph, creator of Wonder Woman. Y'know, wielder of the Magic Rope of Domination +3. (Though in the early stuff she sure does spend a lot of time tied up herself.)

Strong Female Characters, 1940s edition.

Honestly, I love genre fiction for the way that even the really good, well written stuff will be spiced with completely unreflective takes on the author’s kinks.

Like, Kim Stanley Robinson will write these great epic sagas about politics and ecology and postcapitalism and the role of scientists in society, all sorts of settings, and good money says there’s gonna be intergenerational sex in a public bath.

And my, Joss Whedon sure does love stories about psychologically vulnerable teenage girls who beat men up.

(Also pioneer of the “redhead geek girl” thing. Said once it was his explicit goal to make Alyson Hannigan a sex symbol. Plus Christina Hendricks, Felicia Day, Kitty Pryde, Kaylee hired ‘cause she can fix engines on her back with dudes she just met)

And well okay, that’s men. Except that the genre fiction by and for women is like pure kink. Before the internet, grocery and drug stores used to have, just hanging out there, a section full of rape/submission fantasies for women. Now it’s relegated to fanfiction. Or, y'know, the bestseller lists, like Twilight. Or bestselling Twilight fanfiction.

rationalists-out-of-context:

this is just the natural way of things, a new space opens up, strange and creative things happen for a while, but eventually it falls into the attractor of drooling idiots getting milked by sociopaths

As a reminder this was one of the big arguments for aristocracy coming out of pre-WWI conservative traditions, that it reserved Culture as a playing field for the strange and creative avant-garde and kept the drooling idiots (and thus their sociopath predators) out

(This does require a worldview where “aristocrats” and “sociopaths organizing the world to draw power by feeding on the masses” are conceived as distinct categories)

((You know what’s a good exploration of that tension? Vampire fiction.)

cumman467:

twiststreet:

Predicting the Future of Comic Book-Related Entertainment Dept.: I think if you pinned down any legitimate comic critic, they’d predict for you that (a) at some point in the near future, a lady comic fan will inevitably write horny erotic fiction inspired by the Marvel Cinematic Universe that is so commercially successful that it spawns its own multi-million dollar movie franchise, the way 50 Shades of Grey was inspired by Pixar’s Finding Nemo, and (b) when that happens, trad comic fans (the “Wednesday crowd”, the classical Marvel Zombies, whatever you want to call them) will handle it badly, become huffy and dismissive, react the way fans reacted when Twilight showed up at Comicon, etc., even though they’ve essentially been reading material little better than fan fiction for decades, and it’ll all be really hilarious and alienating to watch and laugh at in a sad way, and that’s just something we horribly have to look forward to with glee and depression, and so on and so on and so forth.  

But thinking about it tonight, I think where I disagree with most comic critics (and I’m sure there are exceptions) is this:  I think they’re all expecting that because of X-Men comics, because of the trappings of the genre, the skin-tight suits, Wonder Woman’s lasso, the fight scenes, et cetera et cetera and so forth… They’re expecting that inevitable movie franchise to be about BDSM, rope-fetishes, spanking, weird pain shit, and so on and so on and so forth.    

I disagree.  What I posit to you is this:  I think that franchise will be about encouraging women to fantasize of being in a MMF relationship.  

Now, look: MMF stuff’s not really what I go to when I go looking for cinematic entertainment– it’s actually something I avoid, I’d even say– it all seems very messy. I’m more into Netflix movies where Noah Centineo teaches a girl that it’s okay to be all fucked up, he’ll like her anyways and buy her warm socks. That or stuff where Japanese people get weird at their classmates. So I’m not predicting this as a MMF fan, but as America’s (former, now tragically retired) most beloved comic critic engaged in serious analysis, futurism, Iron-Man-as-written-by-Ellis-or-Bendis-style futurism. 

I just know when I go online, I pick up on the fact that a lot of people are into what they’re into– it’s the subtext of a lot of tweets out there, you know who I’m talking about.  Except it hasn’t really bubbled up into the mainstream cinema yet, not the way other stuff has. Matt Taibbi quoted Ambrose Bierce the other day– radicalism is “the conservatism of tomorrow injected into the affairs of today.” Taibbi wasn’t talking about mainstreaming MMF porn and combining it with x-rated Avengers fan fiction.  But he could have been, and I think that’s what makes all the difference here.

Sure, yes, I see what you’re going to say: “on paper it makes no sense.  Iron Man and Thor teaming up on a girl?  That’d be crossing a billionaire fantasy and a mountain man fantasy.  Billionaires and mountain men are natural enemies, like the squid and the whale.  It’s ludicrous.  You fool!”  

Hey, I know; I know, and I hear you.  It all doesn’t make sense to me, either– but American Pie was about a teen having sex with a foodstuff and it spawned a franchise of about 6 or 7 movies.  Things make less and less sense to me, generally, just because of getting old. I have no idea what a Snapchat is. But I think it’s that very unlikeliness that will be the big draw for this hypothetical franchise– people will want to know, “Aren’t mountain men and billionaires natural enemies?  How would a woman ever be able to get them to not attack each other on sight, the way it is with a squid and a whale?  And who will Noah Centineo play in this future franchise, the billionaire or the mountain man? Can he play both characters, like Michael Keaton in Multiplicity??  Do we still have that kind of technology?”  

And they’ll pay good money to have those questions answered.  

Heck, I sure don’t know how to answer them– I’d be a rich man if I did.  I’d get to go sign up for Secret Tumblr, that only rich people get to be on– the tumblr that functions properly, and you’re allowed to look at nipples.  I just know I won’t be the one to solve it. But call me a dreamer– I think that person’s out there.  And if they’re reading this– get that money.  Get that money! And so on and so on and so forth.

Brokeback Mountain was made as this big solemn Oscarbait thing (why else would Michelle Williams show her titties)

To make up for post-Puppy Episode Ellen being crap maybe

But underneath you could see the bones of a decent drugstore gay cowboy romance to schlick to

stumpyjoepete:

oligopsalter:

The disparity between the abundance of cultural influences on which the Phoenicians could have drawn and the small number of motifs and themes actually presented suggests that there was some sort of selection process. If correct, this perhaps indicates that the bowls were specifically designed with the export market in mind, a hypothesis supported by the fact that many of the motifs had no underlying meaning (e.g., the hieroglyphic writing on these bowls is nonsensical.)

it was ever thus

Bro, check out my sweet Egyptian tattoo!

John Wilkes Booth crying “sic semper tyrannis” (the Virginia state motto) was making the same kind of reference as “subscribe to PewDiePie”

paxamericana:

can’t wait for the mueller report

antoine-roquentin:

Hovering outside was a habit of Bush’s. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who had been Carter’s national security adviser, told me that he had been invited to brief the president early in his first term on the Soviet threat. When he had finished his summary, he said, he asked Reagan if he had any questions. Reagan responded: ‘Do you know the one about the newly elected black judge in Mississippi?’ Brzezinski said no. Reagan explained that the judge, after being told by his clerk that the case involved a charge of rape, said: ‘Well then, bring in the fuckee and the fucker.’ That was it. Brzezinski was ushered out of the Oval Office and found Bush waiting outside, eager to learn of Reagan’s response to the briefing. ‘I said he told me a joke,’ Brzezinski recalled. The vice president replied: ‘Oh no. Not the one about the Mississippi judge.’

Bush was petrified that the president would say the wrong thing to outsiders about what was going on, and he was hanging around the Oval Office,’ the officer said. ‘You never knew whether the president might start talking about an operation in China or into Vietnam.’​  Reagan was kept out of trouble at important national security meetings by being given a script. ‘My colleagues and I would write a talking paper for the president before meetings that resembled movie scripts, because the Old Man knew scripts as a reference. We were constantly updating the script, because if we made a dumb mistake, he would read it. We’d talk among ourselves about where to put the emphasis for certain words and phrases.’ In Deadly Gambits, his 1984 study of arms control, Strobe Talbott showed what happened when Reagan didn’t have a script. During a conversation about arms control with a group of congressmen, the president suddenly proclaimed: ‘Land-based missiles have nuclear warheads, while bombers and submarines don’t.’ ‘Even as he said these words,’ Talbott wrote, ‘his voice dropped and wavered, as though he had forgotten his lines and knew there was something not quite right about his attempt to improvise.’

in case you thought trump was the first moron in the oval office

also vice president george hw bush helped build jsoc from the ground up as his personal wetworks squad and conducted dozens of off the books operations including assassinations until, in an attempt to gain the advantage in a turf war with cia director bill casey, his underlings made the initial iran-contra leak to a lebanese newspaper and ended up almost putting bush and themselves in jail.

It’s like, 2:40 AM in America rn

Empty Realm

This is an interesting article presenting the (rightist-marked) “NPC” meme as the natural heir to the Frankfurt School critical theory critique of mass culture as a dehumanizing force of control

One more point in favor of “current dynamics are not aberrant but rather return to the norm after the aberrant postwar Golden Age” – go back before WWII and America was ABSOLUTELY a country of overcrowded cities full of hobo jungles and pompous elites and henpecking scolds and hordes of ethnicized poor and nervous young college graduates scrambling to hold on and taking their nervous energy out on sex with a demimonde of lipstick and dresses and testicles and dicks, all surrounded by a sea of rural tedium and despair.

So maybe all that was just a Boomer bubble. One that started before The Sixties, though. The postwar right realized that kinda society was a breeding ground of communism though and the first step was throwing off the Popular Front culture.

“Stifling mass culture of the 50s” gets coded right these days, but remember that Ayn Rand (who’d lived through a national culture going commie and stifling before) had big counterculture (yes!) hits in the 40s and 50s with books where a pompous, clucking clique of “progressive” mediocrities dripping syrupy moralism dominated popular media and used it to suppress the liberatory potential of superior individuals and their ideas.

The scene in Atlas Shrugged where the protagonists blow up a bridge and send a trainful of them plunging to their firey comeuppance was the Day of the Rope of its day; in reality the payoff was the McCarthyite Second Red Scare cleansing them from positions of cultural influence, clearing the way for the Counterculture

Which rose, struggled, got overconfident, got knocked back, but returned in the 90s to devour Square Culture for once and all, and dissipated as people no longer realized it needed investment in maintaining

Or were devoured by, “selling out” was really a much higher-profile concept before say 2005. Why’s Gavin McInnes scrambling to build an apparatus of cultural influence? He already built one, with VICE! And sold it out. (For like a billion dollars split a few ways, and it’s not like “magazine from 2008 with a website and publishing arm and events w/ party photographers” is a powerful form rn)

Also, recent revelations are implying that many major figures stopped pushing boundaries in public too hard in return for a lifetime supply of 19±5 year olds soooo

But ANYWAY, does show that the theoretical energy is more on the upstart right these days. Maybe that’s ‘cause theory is what you do out of power – at the same time last decade’s efflorescence of left theory, Jacobin to n+1 to Rhizzome, is being increasingly discarded by a renascent left infatuated with its own dynamic action.

todaysdocument:

“Wishing You A Happier New Year!…”

Untitled, 1/1/1952
Series: Jim Berryman Political Cartoons, 1928 - 1963. Record Group 46: Records of the U.S. Senate, 1789 - 2015

internet-sentences:

the progression from like 2007 “aha finally we have tossed off the weight of mysticism and religion and emotion (and lowkey care for the weak)” to reinventing it all ass-backward and doubly fucktarded has been enlightening

You know it’s kind of old-school and Good and Correct that we have farms exclusively dedicated to the specific species of tree we sacrifice each year for our winter festival

gayasscommie:

So a friend of mine made this based off a fb status I made and now it’s *everywhere*

femmenietzsche:

Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. There was a Levite, a native of Cyprus, Joseph, to whom the apostles gave the name Barnabas (which means “son of encouragement”). He sold a field that belonged to him, then brought the money, and laid it at the apostles’ feet.

But a man named Ananias, with the consent of his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property; with his wife’s knowledge, he kept back some of the proceeds, and brought only a part and laid it at the apostles’ feet. “Ananias,” Peter asked, “why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, were not the proceeds at your disposal? How is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You did not lie to us but to God!” Now when Ananias heard these words, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard of it. The young men came and wrapped up his body, then carried him out and buried him.

After an interval of about three hours his wife came in, not knowing what had happened.  Peter said to her, “Tell me whether you and your husband sold the land for such and such a price.” And she said, “Yes, that was the price.”  Then Peter said to her, “How is it that you have agreed together to put the Spirit of the Lord to the test? Look, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out.” Immediately she fell down at his feet and died. When the young men came in they found her dead, so they carried her out and buried her beside her husband.  And great fear seized the whole church and all who heard of these things.

In the Old Testament, God strikes you down for picking up sticks on the Sabbath. In the New Testament, God strikes you down for being insufficiently communist. It’s always something with this guy.

yesterdaysprint:

Clifford McBride in The Herald-Press, St. Joseph, Michigan, January 29, 1931

When Mental-Health Experts, Not Police, Are the First Responders

Reminder that America used to have dedicated professionals with mental health training as frontline “first responders”. Those were the “men in white coats” (the ones coming to take you away, haha).

And I’ve seen this play before, next thing supporters will say “oh, for this program to really work we need the field agents backed by dedicated facilities adequately funded to have open beds for crisis admissions”

And we used to have those, too, that’s what sanitariums and insane asylums were!

(You can read the full article from clicking through at this tweet. idk)