NY Conversation
“Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.”
—It’s hard not to like Edward Snowden. From his Q&A with the Guardian.
June 2013
24 posts
NYZD: WHO WILL SURVIVE IN AMERICA? WHO WILL SURVIVE IN AMERICA? WHO WILL SURVIVE IN AMERICA? →
zachdionne.tumblr.com
A lot of critics of “New Slaves” seem perturbed by the fact that Kanye is not the first to espouse or rap about racism and political ideals. I feel like “…and?” is a sufficient response, but to elaborate: this criticism suggests not only that it is not worthy to revisit…
Just came across this, and it’s well worth a read
JAKE CLELAND: A funny thing is the kinda-adage about folks thinking the best bands... →
jakec.tumblr.com
A funny thing is the kinda-adage about folks thinking the best bands of all time coincided with the final stages of their formative years and yet if you listen to like 90% of the new music I’ve heard lately it seems they really think the best bands of all time were those behind the 80s pop hits we heard on the radio and saw on TV growing up in the early 90s.
Another thing is how growing up, 60s and 70s rock just seemed like the sound of music but listening to it now it all takes on an almost cinematic quality, I guess because it used to be the records your parents listened to whereas now it’s the records made cool by the nostalgic swamp of mid-late 20th century romanticism we’ve (I’ve) been bathing in since our (my) aforementioned formative years. I don’t think we’re stupid enough to really want to live then but it’s fun to pretend.
“This dream is drugging us all. Spiced-up, quick-cut docu-dramas like 24 Hour Party People and The Filth and the Fury reduce years—decades—of Friday nights at home, missed trains, bad drugs, breakups, bullshit bands, “State of the Nation”, the Professionals, Chequered Past, Revenge, Yes Please!, and eight-hundred thousand other hideous, embarrassing, myth-busting fuck-ups into one grand story, replete with an aching, dolorous sigh when it’s all over.”
- Chris Ott, “On Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette”
Not that any of this music is really about nostalgia, but I think about this passage a lot.
This is an interesting idea. I think nostalgia is aspirational — the music people love involves evoking the memories they wish they had, not necessarily the ones they do have. This is why music tends to move in 20- to 25-year cycles - people rediscover sounds from a time before they can remember.
(Radiohead captured this pretty well in “The Bends,” actually: “I wish it was the ’60s/ I wish we could be happy/ I wish, I wish, I wish that something would happen”)
“The distinction between journalists and writers put in those terms does not distinguish anything at all: one cannot say a priori that a writer just because he is a writer is more capable of handling ideas and of seeing what is essential than a journalist when we are dealing with a good journalist.”
—
Wisdom from Italo Calvino culled from 44 years of his letters. (via explore-blog)
Correct.
“Wavves’ Nathan Williams got high for the first time off a bong in middle school. ‘I got too high – really paranoid. I was like ‘Oh shit,” he says. But [both he and Wiz Khalifa] have gotten used to it. ‘I wake up and smoke weed,’ Williams admits. Adds Khalifa, ‘On a regular day I can probably smoke a whole ounce to myself.’ For Rolling Stone’s weed issue, the duo faced off in a battle of the strongest space cakes we could find, from cake pops to Melt in Your Mind Pecan Pies.”
—Lololololol maybe this is Wenner Jr’s oh-so-edgy millennial influence showing? Whatever the case, Rolling Stone’s “Weed Issue” promises to be comedy gold. Keep at it, boomers!
Clam Bistro: marxisforbros: clambistro replied to your link: Twitter vs Female... →
clambistro.tumblr.com
clambistro replied to your link:Twitter vs Female Protagonists in Video Games
I can never find the exact stats, but don’t women make up like 51% of gamers these days? i.e. fuck those dudes with a rusty fence post?
What haunts me at night is the thought of how these men view real women in their day to day lives. Because the only conclusion you can draw when men make the argument that women have no place in a form of storytelling is that they are either a) not relatable, or b) not important enough to be featured in a story. So we know how women have been wiped off the face of history, but what about day to day interactions? All of those women you speak to, deal with, work with, see doing things… Are they all less important than the men you see? The man and the woman you talk to in an office, he’s relevant, she’s not? When you think of the events of your life, triumphs, hard times, how do you view the women as opposed to the men? When something scary happens, the men rise to action while the women cower? Blood, the men rush in and the women faint? Is this how you paint your memories so that the fiction you inhale seems realistic (or is this how fiction helps you to paint your memories)?
Men not wanting women to play video games or have video games that are made with them in mind is one thing entirely of its own, but men that think that women are so irrelevant that the representations they see in video games seem not only fair, but enjoyable?
Because I mean if that third element wasn’t there, that total disregard for women as they appear in reality, then even the men that don’t want women to play video games or want video games to be made for women might still want more strong females in video games for purely selfish reasons. Because I do! As well as wanting equality and all of that jazz, I’m also just a selfish gamer that wants good video games and I recognize that women make characters that are just as interesting as men and they have worlds of stories that I would enjoy playing through. So when I see a guy that doesn’t want to share in these stories and see these characters, I see a guy that doesn’t realize that women are capable of being interesting or relevant. Not just some guy that wants to guard his hobby as a boys club, some boy that doesn’t want to share; A boy that actually thinks girls aren’t worth considering at all.
I was on 4chan the other day and I was pushing shit up hill with a pointed stick (aka trying to talk some sense in an anti-feminism thread on the gaming board) and I said something like women arguably want more decent female characters in games and to participate, and asked what do you men want instead? After ten minutes somebody replied to my comment and said that he was genuinely trying to think of an answer and he actually couldn’t. I know I can’t.
This reply got long.
Reblogging with an attendant deep, deep sigh.
Fortune Favors The Bold: nyconversation: Because if you personally don’t “lose” anything, it’s... →
brianvan.tumblr.com
Because if you personally don’t “lose” anything, it’s not important? OOOOOOOOOOOOKKKKKKKKKKKKKK
1. You misinterpreted what I said. Willingly.
2. What’s your point? This doesn’t address my statement that the controversy is “overblown” in the least. It’s just your attempt…
1. I interpreted what you said in the context of it being reblogged, as is, on a friend’s wall. If you’d like to clarify it further, do go ahead.
2. Your statement was “Ask yourself what you personally lost in all of this before you write a long article or blog post suggesting that President Obama should not finish his term.” This is the only reason you offer as to why you think “this whole thing with the NSA is starting to get really, really overblown,” and thus I took it as the basis for your statement. My point is that “what you personally [lose]” has absolutely no bearing on whether an issue is important, especially one as wide-ranging and fundamentally troubling as this.
3. This seems to be something you also agree with — “A matter can still be of concern to a person even if it doesn’t affect them personally or directly at the moment — so I’m kinda mystified as to what your argument actually is, beyond a sort of ill-defined “Ooooh, people are making such a fuss about this!” OOOOOOOOOOOKKKKKKKKK?
“This is how the surveillance state works, and it’s also how patriarchy works. The message is: don’t tell. Don’t ever tell. The people who have power, whether that’s the state or the boys on the football team, are allowed to know what you’re up to, constantly, intimately, and they can and will punish you for it, but if you turn the tables and show the world how power is abused, you can expect to be fucked with, and fast. I’ve been trying for a while now to convince the geek activists and hackers in my life that the fight for the principles of free speech, the fight against surveillance and the fight for a society where whistleblowers are protected, is a feminist fight. Steuvenville isn’t the only case where the internet has pursued justice for rape victims where the state was unwilling to do so. There is a growing awareness that commitment to openness and transparency as organising principles necessarily involves a commitment to a new kind of sexual politics. Patriarchy doesn’t like it when you tell its secrets, and neither does the government.”
—
I have mixed feelings about this article in the New Statesman. I don’t disagree with the premise or with anything the writer says, but I also think that arguing the surveillance state is a fundamentally feminist issue rather misses the wider point. It’s certainly an example of how patriarchy fucks over everyone, but this is only as much a feminist issue as it is of race, class and every other power dynamic in our society. The problem is ultimately about how a privileged few oppress the majority who enable their position, and gender-based oppression is only one manifestation of that. You could construct a completely similar and equally valid argument that it’s an issue of a privileged white minority shutting out the rest of the world (and thus arguing that it’s an issue of race), or a privileged rich minority (this making a Marxist argument), or etc. They’re all aspects of a wider picture, and focusing on one such aspect alone thus misses the entirety of that picture.
(Also, h/t Marley for sharing the article)
Unpopular Opinion:
While we should be concerned about government surveillance of data & communications on public networks, this whole thing with the NSA is starting to get really, really overblown.
Ask yourself what you personally lost in all of this before you write a long article or blog post suggesting that President Obama should not finish his term.
Because if you personally don’t “lose” anything, it’s not important? OOOOOOOOOOOOKKKKKKKKKKKKKK
“
BR: Kuwait is a crazy mix: a super-affluent country, yet basically a welfare state, though with a super neo-liberal consumer economy.
FQ: We consume vast amounts of everything. Instagram businesses are a big thing in Kuwait.
BR: What’s an Instagram business?
FQ: If you have an Instagram account, you can slap a price tag on anything, take a picture of it, and sell it. For instance, you could take this can of San Pellegrino, paint it pink, put a heart on it, call it yours, and declare it for sale. Even my grandmother has an Instagram business! She sells dried fruit. A friend’s cousin is selling weird potted plants that use Astroturf. People are creating, you know, hacked products.
” —magazine / issue / Fatima Al Qadiri & Lauren Boyle | MOUSSE CONTEMPORARY ART MAGAZINE (via new-aesthetic)
“The way things are supposed to work is that we’re supposed to know virtually everything about what they do: that’s why they’re called public servants. They’re supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that’s why we’re called private individuals. This dynamic - the hallmark of a healthy and free society - has been radically reversed. Now, they know everything about what we do, and are constantly building systems to know more. Meanwhile, we know less and less about what they do, as they build walls of secrecy behind which they function. That’s the imbalance that needs to come to an end. No democracy can be healthy and functional if the most consequential acts of those who wield political power are completely unknown to those to whom they are supposed to be accountable.”
—Round of applause for Glenn Greenwald
Flavorwire comment of the day
“I am grateful that I was an adolescent in the 1960’s and was just switching from piano and clarinet to guitar when Hendrix and Clapton hit. Music began to really suck in the early to mid 80’s and has sucked (hard) ever since. Grunge was derivative and cannot hold a candle to to the groundbreaking music of the 60’s. Blues and jazz and roots music endure, and even Elvis Costello is reaching back to his roots.”
COOL STORY GRANDPA
