Merry Christmas nerds.
Stole the chord progression from here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ljttsu-pKQ
You can download and install Ardour Digital Audio Workstation (pretty much for free) by visiting: https://ardour.org/
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In an interview with The New York Times, Patreon’s Jack Conte and Jacqueline Hart addressed the fallout from their removal of political commentator Sargon of Akkad.
A fallout that took with it the likes of Sam Harris and a sizeable chunk of patrons. A fallout that affected not only political types but the average Patreon creator.
Patrons often support more than one creator. So if an unsavory move like the removal of Karl Benjamin (Sargon of Akkad) prompts patrons to exit there is a ripple effect that damages the livelihoods of many creators.
In this Fractal Brief I give a rundown of my impression of the fairness of the ban and why the issues surrounding Patreon are incredibly important.
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The moon is settling…
Settling down
…behind this town…behind this town…
The chill wind is circling through the trees
Through the trees…
My soul is caught up in the breeze
In the breeze
O evening evening will you please
leave me never again…never again…
I don’t want to see the moon settling
Settling down
….behind….
Behind this town
Social Media | https://www.minds.com/Weirmellow
Email | mellow.mission.productions@gmail.com
Thirty minutes is a long time
What if we don’t get another go around the sun
Thirty minutes is a long time
You had better learn to run
Thirty minutes is a long time
Divide it now by five
Thirty minutes is a long time
And you’ll get just six chances to feel alive
Thirty minutes is a long time
Sometimes the clock explodes
Thirty minutes is a long time
There were never any roads
Thirty minutes is a long time
So do explain and do complain
Thirty minutes is a long time
It is best to watch the rain
Thirty minutes is a long time
Even if you are forever
Thirty minutes is a long time
This kiss returns never
Thirty minutes is a long time
Even if salvation’s done
Thirty minutes is along
Won’t get another go around the sun
Email | mellow.mission.productions@gmail.com
Social Media | https://www.minds.com/Weirmellow
Tipjar (for now) | https://www.patreon.com/TheFractalJournal
Topics
– Technicians are not intellectuals
– Technocrats are not elite (using prebuilt tools isn’t special)
– Using technology to enforce worldviews is douchy
– What is an intellectual
– How credentialism and materialism rot brains and cultures
– You need to repeat good concepts (The Great Conversation)
– Etc.
Note: Was looking for royalty free music but then remembered ‘O yea I play guitar.’ It’s a good feeling. Whether it’s painting, music, photography expanding your range of expression will always make you more independent.
Email | mellow.mission.productions@gmail.com
Social Media | https://www.minds.com/Weirmellow
Tipjar (for now) | https://www.patreon.com/TheFractalJournal
Topics
– Patreon bans Sargon of Akkad
– Loss of patrons ripples outward to unpolitical creators
– Simple pleasures
– The importance of prioritizing spending
– Why creators shouldn’t be ashamed of trying to monetize their work
– Accreditation vs. Education and Creative Confidence
– Publishing paradigms
Links
Social Media | https://www.minds.com/Weirmellow
Email | mellow.mission.productions@gmail.com
Tipjar (for now) | https://www.patreon.com/TheFractalJournal
We continued as if a trail of corpses wasn’t piling in our wake. Thornton’s fatal call never came. Stateside communication was as mundane and technical as ever. Was there some glitch that made ‘Langley’ miss the HAG – I log?
Our minds struggled frantically for answers. Graham reticent as ever would certainly not provide them. Lobo simply replied “Less hassle for us.”
Cook the de facto leader of the expedition couldn’t extract answers from anyone and was at a loss as to the probable identity of the dead. They weren’t tribals. Murmurs rippled through the expedition and yet no one bothered to confront Graham. We were the only ones that even dared to question him.
Everyone just sort of watched from a fearful distance.
It became a sort of grim show. Whenever Hoyt ventured into the wood…we’d gather in the spook tent like a suburban family watching a morbid sitcom.
The more we saw…the more confused we became. Since we never used the aerial drones at night to prevent tree induced collisions; the little robotic witch eyed climber was our awkwardly angled window into a world of silent death.
The first sighting that I mentioned was a mere accident that happened while Cook was playing with our toys. But having become obsessed with figuring out this fresh mystery we took more drastic measures.
We figured Graham’s location by placing a tracker in his boots. Just slipped one in as he slept. To be honest I think he let us.
If it was within range we’d send out the HAG – I. How Hoyt knew where the intruders would be is beyond any of us.
He’d simply appear. As if he were going to an appointment. We’d hear nothing but the tread of the enemy and the barely audible thwoosh of arrows splitting the jungle air. The stricken never cried aloud. The aim was deadly piercing either neck, heart, or lungs, once or twice the mouth.
The most disturbing discoveries occurred when we’d troop out to the kills. Obviously the limitations of High Agility Ground surveillance meant we could see maybe one or two kills. That of course was far from the reapers actual harvest. These were nightly slaughters. How was this martial force deployed? Who kept sending out these wolves to the slaughter?
The dead were invariably turned face down with their throats tidily slit. They were all wearing some sort of uniform. The pattern of the camo wasn’t that of any branch of any nations military that I knew. The fallen were equipped with night vision and some odd-looking assault rifles that resembled an M4 carbine.
Strangest of all each member carried daggers bearing the planetary seal of Saturn on the blade.
Social Media | https://www.minds.com/Weirmellow
Email | mellow.mission.productions@gmail.com
Lucas was even less thrilled about waking earlier than early.
He stumbled to the spook tent with all the enthusiasm of a snail approaching salt.
It took what would otherwise have been a comically epochal span of time to realize the gravity of the situation.
“Wait….what…what the fuck…” He muttered as his eyes narrowed on the bichromal display.
Slowly, ever so slowly, his face turned ashen white. An effect rendered all the more impressive by his deep Amazonian sunshine induced bronzing.
“Pai Nosso que estás no céu Santificado seja o vosso nome…” Cook muttered under his breath.
“I didn’t know you were religious.” I said.
“I am not but sometimes one must…Ai meu Deus!”
“Nah…god damn is more like it.” Lucas interjected.
“Perhaps…” Cook said looking as wistful as the cramped quarters could afford.
Lucas tugged at my shoulder.
I instantly recognized it as a prompt for private conversation.
“Excuse us Doctor Cook.” I said.
The doctor simply waved us away as he played and replayed the grim little video.
Lucas and I stepped into a thicket just outside the camp’s perimeter.
“Ok…what the hell is going on?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“He’s….killing people…?” The statement trailed off into the tonal quality of a question.
“Uh..yea..looks like it…”
“Why….”
“Fucked if I know…”
We both stared at our boots.
“Your theory…might be right…”
“What theory…”
“This is real Alan…”
“Yea…either that or he’s just gone mental…”
“Hoyt…old pussycat Hoyt with the soft gray eyes…the nerdy bent…he’s not even military for Christ’s sake…and since when in all fucks name does he hunt…”
“Since when does he hunt people…” I added.
“No something happened….” Lucas said. “Something far beyond the power of suggestion…”
Again we examined our boots as if they were the most interesting thing in the universe.
“No wonder the natives avoid him. But…the thing that’s got me most bothered is why Lobo allows it.”
“What if he’s commanding it…” Lucas began.
“I dunno…I kinda wanna go back…”
“I don’t think we can…”
“Sure…just call it quits….if Cook and what was once Grahamathy wanna find some abomination in this god forsaken hell they can do it without our help…”
“Yeah…but Baird…if they do…they’ll have ultimate say…over whatever…whatever it is…”
“Is that the way it works?”
“I dunno…but it’s too risky to just let it unfold.”
“Fuck!” I stamped my foot against the ground.
Then as if I’d unwittingly performed some summoning spell Graham Hoyt emerged from the treeline with a pair of wild pigs in tow.
Lucas and I must have stared the oddest stare. Yet he was unflinching as he had been since the Luckadoo incident.
“What?” He asked.
“Where the hell have you been…?”
He was silent for a moment as if considering something.
“The roots were thirsty.”
And with that he made his way past us into the camp.
Social Media | https://www.minds.com/Weirmellow
Email | mellow.mission.productions@gmail.com
The economic landscape has shifted dramatically. That is what we are told. It certainly seems to be true. I have my reservations but that’s beside the point. The validity of that statement isn’t the focus of this here essay.
No. What seems of utmost importance to weed (stoner laugh) out is whether this supposed shift is good. So for the sake of some truly Fractal – ‘integrative analysis’ let’s say that the Amazon cheerleaders are correct – brick and mortar is dead – human labor is soon to be obsolete.
What are the pros…the cons…the ethics…if any?
There are those that say this will usher in a renaissance of creativity where people freed from the bonds of common toil will create Sistine Chapels whilst sat in their living rooms.
Thus far I don’t see much besides cat videos.
But ok…this Utopia is on the way. Maybe cat portraits are how Michelangelo got his start. I’m game.
Suppose that we have a whole phalanx of virtuoso cellists selling their albums via Amazon to fund a perfected chemotherapy for dwarven children with cancerous buttocks.
Such nobility is surely good? Let’s all scurry to the altar of Bezos and use our Gen Z super powers to be a generation of thinkers, movers, and shakers who through the power of affiliate marketing make dwarven butt less tumorsome.
What of those who know nothing but crab fishing in a depleted bay?
Can everyman learn Javascript? (probably) Should he? Probably not. Seriously outlaw beards…now. Right now!)
This to me is the crux of the problem the place where principle and profit diverge. I can’t for the life of me understand how a culture in which a teenager flatulating into a microphone has more economic prowess than a chowder soup cannery.
Don’t get me wrong. I think the post-industrial thing is kind of cool. But are we really there yet…and if we are…how cool is it…how sustainable is it?
There are many pundits masturbating with chafed abandon over the concept of meritocracy. I see the exact opposite of meritocracy. I see opportunism. Albeit one that is more often than not unwitting.
Herr Bezos IMO is someone who was at the right place at the right time. I’m sure he’s as clever a lad as any and don’t care to dwell on his character but he’s not that impressive. He was there when a technology emerged and was operating in a milieu where capitalizing on that technology proved succesful. A bit of code a bit of business savvy and boom…he’s basically richer than God.
And there are now a billion microbezos attending to their affiliate market feudal fiefdoms and shilling their ‘systems.’
What precisely makes these systems possible? Is it merit? Is it genius? Is it meritorious, merit based boostrapping, asskicking 10 simple steps genius?
Or is it this:
Seems to me that people still have to make things. And 3d printing is still quite a ways from conjuring a cozy three bedroom apartment in Seattle with the Iphone that it craves.
So if one has the choice to make something or to position oneself to sell things others make by learning how to weasel with SEO…and he chooses the former…
Is he a buffoon? A dinosaur? Or should the SEO beardo be less easily rewarded by a handholding matrix of taxcuts, backroom deals, and suburbanly available tech so easy my baby cousin could master it in his sleep. And then use it to buy himself Legoland…
I think that something is deeply amiss. And before we pop the champagne we should do some reflecting.
Social Media | https://www.minds.com/Weirmellow
Email | mellow.mission.productions@gmail.com
It’s ok to be a man.
It’s ok to have self respect.
It’s ok to have dignity.
It’s okay to not dress like you shop at GAP kids.
Free Fiction Series, Essays, and more | https://www.fractaljournal.com
Social Media | https://www.minds.com/Weirmellow
Email | mellow.mission.productions@gmail.com
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