Geeking out over faulty reasoning.
I encourage comments and discussions.
– The Vidja to which I doth REEact –
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According to the Romanian EU MP Traian Ungureano Brussels has a rather dim view of Eastern Europeans. I can’t say I’m shocked.
So…
Eastern Europeans are lazy says the organization headed by the nation that started two World Wars. The second having the express intention of enslaving the whole world so that krautloving groupthinkers had more time for their shit fetishes.
Isn’t Belgium also famous for crazy ass antics in the Congo via King Leopold where they cut off hands of locals for not working hard enough?
I hate to ruin a cutting joke by tempering it with: Germans are lovely people generally. But it is the current year and autism is at an all time high.
Not sure about the cutting off hands but there was some fucked up shit that went on and if a bunch tiny dickless Western nations (that were nothing before Rome) that couldn’t achieve anything without subduing weaker peoples are gonna fling shit. I’m gonna fling it right back. Let’s have a chimpout! Come on EU! Flinga da poo poo!
Why so triggered?
I’m American first but I did imigrate from Russia when I was very young. So just like an Englishman or German would recoil at the constant berating of British-ness or German-ness (well ok the Germans are masochists). I guess my point is that a bunch of WASPS that aren’t even Anglo or Protestant are calling Russians and ethnically similar folks Dagos. It’s like 1930’s New York up in this bitch.
This sort of rhetoric. That is dehumanizing rhetoric is often a precursor of war. Is the thousand year reich finally going to come in the robes of its opposition?
Try this on for size:
I’m serious about these savages. If you study the west you find Neanderthal DNA. Their civilization is contingent on Rome. A land to the south and east with refined acquiline facial structures. Not disgusting nordic lantern jaws.
So…was that paragraph pleasant?
Neither is calling an entire country a nation of thieves.
Romanians have little love for Russians. And I have no particular affinity for the kingdom of Tepes.
But speaking of Tepes. It was always the eastern lands that acted as buffers for the lanky, tribalistic, warring untermensch to the West. Holding the Mongol hordes at bay, the caliphate at bay, and crushing those yellow haired Swedish rats calling themselves Vikings. Can a more disgusting animal be conceived than one who slaughters children under the cover of night. Arriving silently from the sea while singing songs of bravery.
You like that? Is it pleasant. No. But one can take something with a dollop of truth and color it in rabbelrousing opiate. This is dehumanization and as I said it is an essential tool of war.
I am merely playing. It’s evident in my theatrics. But when institutions that want continent spanning armies engage in similar rhetoric it becomes a touch alarming. Especially when its a sneaky policy influencing rhetoric manifesting as an inside joke and metstasizing into nation ruining dictates.
The EU could have worked. If it was at trade Union. But it is incresingly becoming the pet project of milk bar Clauserwitzes.
Again, since it’s the current year I have to drive home the point that many of my best friends are German. That I am entirely western. That I often criticize the East and defend the West from the wiles of my Russophile friends.
I’m optimistic about the future but that doesn’t mean it’s not important to highlight dangerous mindsets. To tease them and show their madness through the lens of their opposite.
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There’s a difference between production and creativity.
The tactile inspiration of a rotary phone, the subtle suggestions of mechanical motion, are these the origins of creativity.
Was creativity easier for Blixa Bargeld in the 80’s?
Or is creativity easier for all of us today?
Blixa Bargeld
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Zoologists and climatologists have challenged the narrative portrayed by the new Netflix documentary ‘Our Planet.’
This documentary tied walruses jumping to their deaths to global warming without giving due consideration to alternative explanations. This very much seems to be a case of sensationalism.
A sensationalism that is holding back environmental progress in the name of environmentalism. These sorts of things hog the spotlight and bury other real pressing issues.
Tim’s Video
The Jimmy Dore Show
Alex Prud’ Homme’s Book
Music Credit (Free Domain) https://archive.org/details/free-music-for-commercial-use
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The modern day certainly isn’t romantic. You need time for romance. And the modern day is all about instant access. So, it’s no surprise that sepia hued conceptions of lone desks in sparse rooms reeking of whiskey jar with reality. And this jarring leads some would be writers to whiskey without the licence of having written like Bukowski.
You may not dig Bukoswski. You may think my depression era vision of artistic struggle is cheesy (Confession: It is but cheese is yummy). But the fact that many feel that today’s over saturated market, desensitized readers, and short attention spans spell doom for spelling out literary vistas is undeniable.
The aforementioned factors are certainly there. Even though some may question the degree to which they’re present. They are there.
What does oversaturation imply? It implies a flooded market. What’s so bad about a flooded market? Well, aside from the obvious increased difficulty in getting traditionally published there’s the accompanying lack of funds due to a lethal combination of stiff competition and sheer static.
But, was it any better for Bukowski or Poe? I don’t think so. There’s probably a good reason both men were notorious alcoholics. A bohemian paradise isn’t one. Poe was writing at a time when literacy still played second fiddle to operating a plow. His market was small.
What’s worse a big market with lots of noise and asskickers or a small market full of aristocrats? I really don’t know.
I know that in Bukowskis day even though literacy had improved it still played second fiddle to assembling widgets at GM. Also, no one had time for reading.
That’s my first set of reasons for the firm belief that today might be the best time to be a writer. Because, despite all the hot air about overstuffed schedules readers have more time than ever. As do writers.
So, we have unprecedented levels of literacy and people who have time to watch the Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead while checking in on the Packers game.
Yes, but all these things are numerical…qunatative. It doesn’t matter if there’s more potential readers if there’s no engagement. People who are distracted by Game of Thrones and top ten lists won’t be reading very deeply if reading at all.
This may well be the lament of those who wish to view the past in roseate hues. But, the truth as far as I can see it is that these shallow consumers have a shadowside. Lots of folks, many of whom are in places like WordPress, are fed up with reboots. They make the exact sort of complaints that writers make. They’re hungry for deep engaging content. And seeing as they’ve had the whole worlds literary cannon at their fingertips are well equipped to engaged with said content.
Traditional publication and revenue may be difficult and it was always difficult. In fact I think that better informed folks might be able to argue that making money as a writer was even more difficult in Bukowskis day.
Yes, it may have been more difficult and it may still be difficult but there are many more tools. And one big difficulty is easily taken out of the equation. Writers as far as I can tell – want to be read. Due to technology and sites like WordPress this has never been easier.
This is a wonderful tool because it provides the invaluable insight of feedback. And there are many tools at the writers disposal. There are instant translators, internet dictionaries, just insane amounts of information about any given topic. Not only that but there are countless tools for organizing that information, for formatting, spell-checking, and editing your work.
I still flirt with the idea of the sparse room with the weathered keyboard. I flirt with it cause it’s sexy and it’s fun. But this little idealization of where real work and real writers happen is like most idealisations mere whimsy.
I’d conclude with something more concrete but I have to make my second cup of coffee before my shift starts.
Thanks for reading and don’t let the idea of being a ‘blogger’ keep you from writing.
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In any case the TL; DR version of this is every time you sit down to write or learn; you’re not only doing it one more time but also one less. Cause the Grim Reaper is standing right there, playing Yo-Yo, and sometimes he gets real impatient and chokes you with the string.
Recently. Just today in fact. I’ve had to process mortality.
Again.
Fun stuff.
I’m not really emotional about anything. I honestly feel rather clinical. So clinical as to be a bit perturbed. Which is why I mentioned to a friend that some people may find my nonreactivness to be cold and off putting. Or maybe the fact that I don’t really grieve long enough. Whatever long enough is.
I guess what I imagine bothers people is I take death in stride. A fact I attribute to having lost my father at five years of age. I guess I’m bothered by it too since I feel that I should feel something. I do sometimes. But not enough apparently. Maybe.
Anyhow, that’s not what the story is about but rather a framing device or maybe somewhat more precisely – something that helps me take disparate thoughts and tie them up with a bow thus rendering it intelligible as a gift.
Currently, I’m studying the Web Stack (JS, PHP included) as well as Java it’s something I’m doing in a roundabout way. Very roundabout. I started poking at Java in 2008.
My dog has cancer. He didn’t show any behavioral signs at all. At least none that would suggest a grapefruit sized tumor. He did have some weird-looking growths that I didn’t really take note of because they were round his nethers. I thought they were just a skin irritation. And due to the location and my schedule I’d often forget about them. Until they started to bleed. It’s not necessarily unsalvagable but it’s not especially promising since Brownie is old.
So as I’m sitting here looking at arrays, pointers, objects, etc I’m thinking what if I have cancer? How long have I been putzing around with these basic bitch concepts. And why?
Well, if I do have or get cancer or get hit my a car, or assaulted by a gang of enraged hipsters for dissing Ruby…meh so what…whatver will be will be…serah serah…etc.
As to why? Cause it’s fun and I’m doing it primarily to sharpen my attention and logic faculties and most career aspirations are somewhat on the back-burner. Except using my skills to make TFJ less shit.
In any case the TL; DR version of this is every time you sit down to write or learn you’re not only doing one more time but also one less. Cause the grim reapers standing right there playing Yo-Yo and sometimes he gets real impatient and chokes you with the string.
So pet it while it’s alive and code it before the arthritis sets in.
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The pines creaked and swayed. Cold settled like a chill blanket as the sun slowly sank.
If I followed the advice I’ve found in some writers guides I’d have never arranged words in that particular order. Those sentences wouldn’t exist.
Description is gauche you see. Everyone has talked about sunsets and the advent of evening so no one will ever enjoy reading about them again.
Don’t set up background for your stories. Especially if you use pesky polysyllabic words in those backgrounds. What are you some kind of writer?
I bet you used a thesaurus to look up those community college words. Nobody uses those words.
You gotta be conversational.
You’re distracting from the pacing.
Jesus Christ. Given the prevalence of these Formica table board room strategies at Wanker Startup Ltd. it’s a wonder anyone bothers to write anything at all.
You think the last sentence was wobbly. Good. That’s the point. Not everything has to be tailored to the ear of an idiot. In ancient Greece idiot meant a person who was not involved in city politics i.e. someone who was unaware of things that affected him.
I’m not saying that if you didn’t understand that by ‘Wanker Startup Ltd.’ I was referring to the trendy ‘everything is business and we’re all savvy entrepreneurs’ culture that’s sprung up in every facet of life in recent years – that this means you’re an idiot. What I’m saying is that the risk of being misunderstood is no cause for weird minimalistic corporate gibberish focusing on core competency of making everything a sitcom.
You see, it’s fine to miss the point that ‘Formica table’ is actually a modifier for ‘strategies,’ calling them cheap. It might mean nothing to you on a first reading. Later on it might mean a lot. Or not. There are other readers who may enjoy it. Or not. The point is the sentence has a right to exist in all its wobbly glory.
I often hear everyone and their dog complaining about the lack of original content and constant reruns. Well, what do you expect when writers and actors are all designed at corporate?
* AFAIK – Dudebro Sixfigs may have been coined by Aaron Clarey of ‘Asshole Consulting’
* Using the random image I found on my search for shitty startup/boardroom isn’t meant to poke fun at the guy in the photo. It was just too perfect of an amalgamation of certain trendy philosophies and styles that are in vogue.
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By viewing this discussion via the lens of individualism vs collectivism Sargon has missed some key points. It, i.e ideological lenses and pathos are perennial problems with being a pundit. I’m not here to berate Karl but rather point out some misconceptions he’s allowed to seep in to his argument.
Sargon’s Video
Info I Used
https://sciencing.com/co2-deplete-ozone-layer-4828.html
Music I Used (Public Domain)
https://archive.org/details/WhiteMarket20170101Session320
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So, I was practicing violin (poorly) from a Mel Bay book I picked up. One of the songs is Gavotte by some fop named Praetorius. Being that I’m about as naturally musical as a coked up bobcat trapped in well full of nettles I needed to hear the bloody thing.
Lo! What wonderfully snooty shit this be.
Here’s what comes to mind from the thumbnail:
Behold wench! Yonder peasant falling!
Ho!
What luck to have witnessed his falstaff frame thusly collapse!
Yay tis good to be rich!
Soothe, thou may grab me by the feline!
Say what you will about these fops but at least they had style. If my grandmother is to be believed I have some kind of count in my lineage. But he would have been Polish or Ukrainian or something. So it doesn’t count. =) I’m so fucking clever.
Nonetheless, I’m bringing back feudalism! With the current disparity between rich and poor we’re already there! Why not add some style to the mix.
So what is your choice?! Will you ride forth as part of my Noble Order of Asshole Knights? Or be oppressed most elegantly!
I know you yups pay to pick strawberries but won’t actually have your kids do it as a job. Well, I’m here to help.
Being a lettered man and a patron of the symphonies it is my sacred duty to tie you back to the land!
No longer will you wish for agrarian bliss. No longer will you pine!
Your toil will sustain high culture, institutions of learning that will once more take more than a pulse to enter, and wars we won’t lie about.
As Noble Asshole Knights we don’t spread freedom to gain oil. We just take land cause it’s there and we’re probably better stewards than those hippies anyway. Plus its great fun to smack your neighbor!
Yes! Under the Noble Order of Asshole Knights the stars will shine brighter, and your beer will taste better, for you will have worked inordinately hard to sustain douchebags as is the lot of man!
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The closing paragraphs of ‘The New Yorker article, ‘Machine Hands’ (John Seabrook), contain this little nugget:
“It’s also possible that this second wave of A.I.-based mechanization will automate the farmer’s job long before it removes the need for hired labor. In the indoor farms I visited, the brain work of farming-when to plant, irrigate, fertilize, and harvest-has been automated, but not the grunt work.”
This is something I’ve long suspected and have recently blogged about:
“I dunno how well versed these journalists and talking heads are in robotics but the level of sophistication required for a machine to load a UPS truck or do road work is insane. Fine motor function is a tricky business.” (Everyone should Code?)
While I hate to play Freud I think this all has to do with libido. The folks proposing a labor apocalypse delivered on the chrome horse of automation might know a bit of Java. They’re ‘men of letters’, socially savvy (read manipulative), and pathologically concerned about abstract futures.
It’s sexy to worry about the peasants not being able to keep up with your ability to write a Vox article.
But perhaps the effete should be worried about themselves.
Not about being accidentally racist, or sexist, or spilling their lattes on the latest issue of Entrepreneur.
They should be worried about their jobs.
Honestly, it should have been obvious from the start. Which tasks lend themselves to mechanization?
“The repetitive ones that those sweaty truckers and stockers do! You know the kinds done by people who make boner jokes. O shit is that the HR lady…I was using boner to describe how the lower classes talk…”
No, my precious orchid.
The sorts of jobs that lend themselves to automation are computational. They’re things with decision trees that don’t require the trees to sprout hands. In a nutshell: brain work.
Stuff that requires the fast and accurate scanning of vast reams of data, the analysis of that data, and a decision. Sure, QuickBooks hasn’t made accountants obsolete. It has however necessitated a bit of scurrying:
“Technology is rapidly reshaping the accounting industry, making certain skills and knowledge obsolete but at the same time creating opportunities for accountants to offer new services in the marketplace. For future accounting leaders, perhaps the biggest determinant of success is staying ahead of the technology curve so new innovations enhance one’s business, not replace it.” (https://quickbooks.intuit.com/ca/resources/pro-taxes/new-skill-sets-future-accounting-leaders/)
This suggests that it’s not truckers that will be thinner on the ground but research assistants, HR people, and stockbrokers.
Basically people who have to repetitively dig through data and perform basic logic. Things that a robot (computer) can do much better faster and cheaper than it can pick a strawberry.
This article isn’t here to gloat about folks losing their jobs. It’s here to point out that we need to think more deeply about what we value as a society. About what brings purpose to people’s lives.
Why haven’t we seen Glenn Gould in decades?
The answer is people define themselves through their jobs. Their self-worth is wrapped up in the ability to do work that’s more sophisticated and important than the schmuck in the truck (hence student loan crisis). Society values an insane mechanized orgy of buying and selling where Universities serve as bargaining chips rather than bastions of cultivation.
All the while engaging in self-congratulatory pity for the class of people who can actually change the oil.
Whoda thunk that the finesse of picking a strawberry just right is akin to the finesse of sawing a violin bow on a string? Whoda thunk that boolean operators handled statistics better than a hungover analyst?
Automation is inevitable. Let’s not let class pretensions blind us to where it’s most likely to happen. Now that we are getting a grasp on how to feed, clothe, sanitize, and house our teeming billions maybe we can start getting pre-industrial.
No, I don’t mean going Amish. I mean a return to craftsman culture. The sort of attention to detail, originality, and quality that flourished in Benjamin Franklin’s day. The sorts of activities that enrich lives and communities while being fulfilling in a specifically human way.
This isn’t writing code, or optimizing SEO, it’s the manipulation of matter. Manipulation – manus – doing it by hand. Hands honed by experience and guided by well-trained human minds and well trained human hearts.
The future is ‘The Goldberg Variations.’
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The Fractal Journal 