Thursday, February 28, 2019
Max Blumenthal in Venezuela
A message from Playa el Yete, Estado de Vargas, Venezuela, 2/25/19:
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) February 28, 2019
Americans have the responsibility to protect (R2P) Venezuela from Washington’s sadistic permanent war state.
Be in DC on March 16 for the national rally to declare #HandsOffVenezuela https://t.co/3MQEw7cE77 pic.twitter.com/yCk5Sd66Tc
MSNBC's Highest-Rated Day Ever
https://www.forbes.com/sites/markjoyella/2019/02/28/maddow-wins-wednesday-night-ratings-as-msnbc-has-its-highest-rated-day-ever/#4a1cf3b15ee5
Electronic Literature Organization
Official website. (I first learned it of this afternoon, the 28th, while reading an old issue of the WSU alumni magazine.
Sometimes you are on the money @RealPeerReview but this time you are way off I am afraid. This paper maps onto a rich body of ethnographic and social research into reading practices that goes back to the groundbreaking work done by Hoggart (see pic) pic.twitter.com/QGRbZbgTMf
— Dr Jonathan Tummons (@JonathanTummons) February 21, 2019
Yuppies
(Pronounced YOO-peez)
I found this by chance late Tuesday morning.
Released in early 1986, Yuppies had a sequel by the end of the year.
I found this by chance late Tuesday morning.
Released in early 1986, Yuppies had a sequel by the end of the year.
Wednesday, February 27, 2019
Monday, February 25, 2019
Monday, February 11, 2019
Kunstler: Mistaken Futures
Kunstler: Mistaken Futures
And so the Democratic Party has gone and hoisted the flag of “socialism” on the mizzenmast of its foundering hulk as it sets sail for the edge of the world. Bad call by a ship without a captain, and I’ll tell you why. Socialism was the response to a particular set of circumstances in time that drove the rise of industrial societies. Those circumstances are going, going, gone.
The suspicion of industry’s dreadful effects on the human condition first sparked in the public imagination with William Blake’s poem “Jerusalem” in 1804 and its reference to England’s newly-built “dark satanic mills.” Industry at the grand scale overturned everyday life in the Euro-American “West” by the mid-19th century, and introduced a new kind of squalor for the masses, arguably worse than their former status as peasants.
And thus it was to be, through Karl Marx, Vlad Lenin, and the rest of the gang, ever-strategizing to somehow mitigate all that suffering. Their Big Idea was that if government owned the industry (the means of production), then the riches would be distributed equally among the laboring masses and the squalor eliminated. You can’t blame them for trying, though you can blame them for killing scores of millions of people who somehow got in the way of their plans.
Nobody had ever seen anything like this industry before, or had to figure out some way to deal with it, and it was such an enormous force in everyday life thereafter that it shattered human relationships with nature and the planet nature rode in on. Of course, the history of everything has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and we’re closer to the end of the industrial story than we are to the middle.
Which opens the door to a great quandary. If industrial society is disintegrating (literally), then what takes its place? Many suppose that it is a robotic utopia powered by some as-yet-unharnessed cosmic juice, a nirvana of algorithms, culminating in orgasm-without-end (Ray Kurzweil’s transhumanism). Personally, I would check the “no” box on that outcome as a likely scenario.
The self-proclaimed socialists are actually seeing the world through a rear-view mirror. What they are really talking about is divvying up the previously-accumulated wealth, soon to be bygone. Entropy is having its wicked way with that wealth, first by transmogrifying it into ever more abstract forms, and then by dissipating it as waste all over the planet. In short, the next time socialism is enlisted as a tool for redistributing wealth, we will make the unhappy discovery that most of that wealth is gone.
The process will be uncomfortably sharp and disorientating. The West especially will not know what hit it as it emergently self-reorganizes back into something that resembles the old-time feudalism. We have a new kind of mass squalor in America: a great many people who have nothing to do, no means of support, and the flimsiest notions of purpose in life. The socialists have no answers for them. They will not be “retrained” in some imagined federal crusade to turn meth freaks into code-writers for Google.
Something the analysts are calling “recession” is ploughing across the landscape like one of those darkly majestic dust-storms of the 1930s, only this time we won’t be able to re-fight anything like World War Two to get all the machines running again in the aftermath. Nor, of course, will the Make America Great Again fantasy work out for those waiting in the squalid ruins of the post-industrial rust-belt or the strip-mall wastelands of the Sunbelt.
Most of the beliefs and attitudes of the present day will be overturned with the demise of the industrial orgy, like the idea that humanity follows an unerring arc of progress, that men and women are interchangeable and can do exactly the same work, that society should not be hierarchical, that technology will rescue us, and that we can organize some political work-arounds to avoid the pain of universal contraction.
There are no coherent ideas in the political arena just now. Our prospects are really too alarming. So, jump on-board the socialism ship and see if it makes you feel better to sail to the end of the earth. But mind the gap at the very edge. It’s a doozie.
And so the Democratic Party has gone and hoisted the flag of “socialism” on the mizzenmast of its foundering hulk as it sets sail for the edge of the world. Bad call by a ship without a captain, and I’ll tell you why. Socialism was the response to a particular set of circumstances in time that drove the rise of industrial societies. Those circumstances are going, going, gone.
The suspicion of industry’s dreadful effects on the human condition first sparked in the public imagination with William Blake’s poem “Jerusalem” in 1804 and its reference to England’s newly-built “dark satanic mills.” Industry at the grand scale overturned everyday life in the Euro-American “West” by the mid-19th century, and introduced a new kind of squalor for the masses, arguably worse than their former status as peasants.
And thus it was to be, through Karl Marx, Vlad Lenin, and the rest of the gang, ever-strategizing to somehow mitigate all that suffering. Their Big Idea was that if government owned the industry (the means of production), then the riches would be distributed equally among the laboring masses and the squalor eliminated. You can’t blame them for trying, though you can blame them for killing scores of millions of people who somehow got in the way of their plans.
Nobody had ever seen anything like this industry before, or had to figure out some way to deal with it, and it was such an enormous force in everyday life thereafter that it shattered human relationships with nature and the planet nature rode in on. Of course, the history of everything has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and we’re closer to the end of the industrial story than we are to the middle.
Which opens the door to a great quandary. If industrial society is disintegrating (literally), then what takes its place? Many suppose that it is a robotic utopia powered by some as-yet-unharnessed cosmic juice, a nirvana of algorithms, culminating in orgasm-without-end (Ray Kurzweil’s transhumanism). Personally, I would check the “no” box on that outcome as a likely scenario.
The self-proclaimed socialists are actually seeing the world through a rear-view mirror. What they are really talking about is divvying up the previously-accumulated wealth, soon to be bygone. Entropy is having its wicked way with that wealth, first by transmogrifying it into ever more abstract forms, and then by dissipating it as waste all over the planet. In short, the next time socialism is enlisted as a tool for redistributing wealth, we will make the unhappy discovery that most of that wealth is gone.
The process will be uncomfortably sharp and disorientating. The West especially will not know what hit it as it emergently self-reorganizes back into something that resembles the old-time feudalism. We have a new kind of mass squalor in America: a great many people who have nothing to do, no means of support, and the flimsiest notions of purpose in life. The socialists have no answers for them. They will not be “retrained” in some imagined federal crusade to turn meth freaks into code-writers for Google.
Something the analysts are calling “recession” is ploughing across the landscape like one of those darkly majestic dust-storms of the 1930s, only this time we won’t be able to re-fight anything like World War Two to get all the machines running again in the aftermath. Nor, of course, will the Make America Great Again fantasy work out for those waiting in the squalid ruins of the post-industrial rust-belt or the strip-mall wastelands of the Sunbelt.
Most of the beliefs and attitudes of the present day will be overturned with the demise of the industrial orgy, like the idea that humanity follows an unerring arc of progress, that men and women are interchangeable and can do exactly the same work, that society should not be hierarchical, that technology will rescue us, and that we can organize some political work-arounds to avoid the pain of universal contraction.
There are no coherent ideas in the political arena just now. Our prospects are really too alarming. So, jump on-board the socialism ship and see if it makes you feel better to sail to the end of the earth. But mind the gap at the very edge. It’s a doozie.
Saturday, February 09, 2019
William Weld Rejoins GOP
The Laurel and Hardy of a clown show masquerading as a political movement https://t.co/y9w1SuIDMw
— Justin Raimondo (@JustinRaimondo) February 8, 2019
CommonWealth Magazine: "Weld Rejoins Republican Ranks: If Former Governor Takes the Presidential Plunge, Will Be as Primary Foe to Trump."
---
He seems nice, but has no grounding.
Luckily very few people question nuclear power because it’s “icky.” Instead they raise concerns about reactor safety and waste disposal. I’m not sure who’s right about those, but maybe you’re the one who shouldn’t be taken seriously. https://t.co/hNDux0bBom
— Prof. Garrett Epps (@Profepps) February 9, 2019
Tuesday, February 05, 2019
"Don't be mad, UPS is hiring."
Ha ha ha this place sucks https://t.co/EyFgTc1dF3
— Roy Edroso (@edroso) February 5, 2019
Monday, February 04, 2019
More Coozledad vs. Nancy
If I haven't said it already, nobody administers verbal backslaps like Coozledad. 
Rurritable: "Whoa there, Ofay!"
Whoa there, Ofay!
February 4, 2019 in Uncategorized
Nancy Nall no longer has an “inner racist”. She’s on full display.
My patience snapped during the (again, overlong) scene of the KKK initiation, intercut with Harry Belafonte telling the story of a lynching. The former event is happening in a hotel ballroom, with full robes and all**, and there’s a line of waiters in the back, white, black and brown. He pans down the line of their faces — the black men are angry, the brown men stone-faced and two white women are beaming and nodding along. I’m like, fuck you, asshole.
Do you remember, years ago, Barbara Grizzuti Harrison wrote a profile of Lee for Esquire or GQ or one of those, and the headline was “Spike Lee hates your cracker ass”? He was incandescent with anger over that, but I’d say she (or whoever wrote the headline) got that one right on the nose.
** This event is going on in, yes, a semi-public space, even though earlier in the film they didn’t even say “Klan” to one another, but insisted everyone call it “the organization.” Also, we’re asked to believe that David Duke flew across the country to behold the swearing-in of a single KKK member. OK, whatever.
------
Rurritable: "More Rest Home Follies."
More rest home follies.
February 4, 2019 in Uncategorized
Nancy: I wartched a Spike Lee movie and it was too many black people saying stuff. It hit me on the head so much. People were acting like they know what’s going on in the future. I would rather wartch Mad Men and Game of Thrones. More white people.
Rurritable: "Whoa there, Ofay!"
Whoa there, Ofay!
February 4, 2019 in Uncategorized
Nancy Nall no longer has an “inner racist”. She’s on full display.
My patience snapped during the (again, overlong) scene of the KKK initiation, intercut with Harry Belafonte telling the story of a lynching. The former event is happening in a hotel ballroom, with full robes and all**, and there’s a line of waiters in the back, white, black and brown. He pans down the line of their faces — the black men are angry, the brown men stone-faced and two white women are beaming and nodding along. I’m like, fuck you, asshole.
Do you remember, years ago, Barbara Grizzuti Harrison wrote a profile of Lee for Esquire or GQ or one of those, and the headline was “Spike Lee hates your cracker ass”? He was incandescent with anger over that, but I’d say she (or whoever wrote the headline) got that one right on the nose.
** This event is going on in, yes, a semi-public space, even though earlier in the film they didn’t even say “Klan” to one another, but insisted everyone call it “the organization.” Also, we’re asked to believe that David Duke flew across the country to behold the swearing-in of a single KKK member. OK, whatever.
------
Rurritable: "More Rest Home Follies."
More rest home follies.
February 4, 2019 in Uncategorized
Nancy: I wartched a Spike Lee movie and it was too many black people saying stuff. It hit me on the head so much. People were acting like they know what’s going on in the future. I would rather wartch Mad Men and Game of Thrones. More white people.
Saturday, February 02, 2019
NOW: The Monster Mash: Analyzing Our Sliced-And-Diced Politics | Guest: @Jhkunstler Jim Kunstler - Author, Public Speaker, and Social Critic | #FaultLines https://t.co/aq0Ffp3HII
— 𝙻𝚎𝚎 𝚂𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚊𝚑𝚊𝚗 ⏳ (@stranahan) October 30, 2018
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