dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja: 10/10/13

Thursday, October 10, 2013

so, this sort of reads off like somebody sourcing my anti-work rants. i should park this somewhere for future use...

i should point out that these are not at all the sources i'd actually cite.

http://jacobinmag.com/2012/04/the-politics-of-getting-a-life/

maybe a theme, actually. this provides a better argument against work than for it. i think it realizes that, too.

http://libcom.org/blog/meaningful-work-appeal-young-08102013

"progress"

not really, though

Re: shower again, and check

From: Jessica Murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
To: the initial landlord

just an update on this...

i think i've been able to determine it *is* the drain and it *isn't* the pipe. the experiment that i did was that i dumped pot after pot after pot of water into the drain. this reproduced the problem of water under the platform (i could tell by pushing on it and hearing it squish). i stopped before i created a leak, but that was enough to convince me of the nature of the problem.

i've also observed water draining into the crack around the drain. in fact, the crack seems to fill up and then spill over into the drain. i don't think it should be doing that, so i'm going to seal it tomorrow. i don't want to seal in moisture. i'll let you know if that works.

i have a good feeling about this working. if it doesn't work, i'm going to have to agree that ripping it apart would be necessary. that would really reduce the problem to a drain issue under the platform.

but i'm confident i've ruled out pipes. that's good news.

j

enjoying the new night birds record

this is something else i probably would have written a review of back in july if i was living on this planet at the time.

the reason night birds are so refreshing is indeed nostalgic. this was one of my favourite sounds growing up. it basically doesn't exist anymore. finding these guys sorting through reviews a few years ago was like coming face to face with a leprechaun.

i just need to point out again that 'dry' and 'boring' are relative terms. i find most mainstream media to be boring - it's just all about twisted perceptions of sex and money. i find competition to be boring, yet others make it the central focal point of their existence. people could try and be a little less normative in their analysis.

well, ok. 'boring' does have an objective meaning. i'll use it in music reviews to talk about things that are uneventful, repetitive, meandering...

it's not used that way very often, though. it's usually just a close-minded insult that equates differences in interest with inferiority. it's a very arrogant term to throw around.

rather than say "you're boring", why not say "we have differing interests"? i'll tell you why - it's some kind of disdain. it's usually not fair to direct that at other people...

just realize that, most of the time, the feeling is mutual.

just to clarify: it used to be that there were proxy wars happening in libya and syria, and a revolution happening in egypt, and an uprising happening on the peninsula, and that these things weren't actually related. with all the manipulation behind the scenes, egypt has been reduced to another proxy conflict.

(well, libya and syria were related, and the uprising on the peninsula took inspiration from egypt. but they're three separate things.)

so, i'm still trying to unravel this, and it's constantly shifting.

if the coup was backed by the ksa, and there's this struggle going on between the ksa and qatar, this suggests the whitehouse taking the side of qatar in preparation for....

...for what. fuck. LEAVE EGYPT ALONE.

we'll have to see how syria lines up. the thing is that playing them off against each other isn't incoherent.....

there's always the left-field possibility that the policy is actually transparent. but, the idea of the united states coercing a foreign power into democracy is sort of hard to take at face value.

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/10/10/3_months_after_morsi_coup_hundreds

this is worth reading, as a case study. i've perceived a lot of similar things, and heard a lot of push back, but this is one of the more clear examples i've seen somebody articulate. the intentions may have been just (if scientifically unsound), and it's not abused by everybody that talks in these terms, but when you hear the language of critical race theory coming from white people, it's often being used as a way to mask racist beliefs and racist actions. it's a type of crypto-racism, or socially acceptable racism, put through this hyper-orwellian filter.

well, read the article.

my comments...

"Too often, the IFs assume the inferiority of those who are PoC/female/gay etc which is in itself racist/sexist and homophobic. More so, by making assumptions prior to knowing someone, they ignore the complexities of humans and human relationships."

this is the crux of my issue. she's describing something she's experienced, but it's not really fair to assign those characteristics to other people with the same views. there's no logic there. this, on the other hand, is a good point, and a scary one.

more concerning to me is that it seems as though it often functions as a mask for actual racism. all of a sudden, it's ok to argue for racial purity or for segregation (albeit using different jargon) - from the left. sometimes, i think this follows from a level of naivete or a level of emotional repression. but i've met people who i think are actually deeply racist and just hide behind the language to justify that racism.

if people are curious, the internet is saturated with essays like this by supposedly "unprivileged" people. the unpeople. i've read quite a few. the commonality is a feeling that the boundaries being placed around them are artificial, and a sort of desire to push back against it.

http://melissa-fix.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/privileged-problems.html

installation file:
MIDIGuitar32.exe

installation file:
MIDIGuitar32.dll

installation file:
JamOrigin_KeyGen.exe

this seems to suggest the plausible hypothesis that the united states is selling egypt to saudi arabia. to speak crudely.

is that 'decolonization'? well, 'decolonization' was always somewhat of a misleading term. 'consolidation' maybe captures what actually happened better.

it fits the narrative of obama fulfilling the ww1 era promise of helping construct a united arab state, anyways. which is what al qaeda was really all about. i think there's a lot of truth to that narrative.

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10857

i like pam's politics. she has a sense of sincerity that is rare. but, unfortunately, she's sputtering underneath the evidence in front of her. but i think she's equipped to come to terms with it, eventually.

i think there's something to be said about the co-modification of dissent and i think it's a necessary consequence of the tactics being used. there's been much said about the use of social media or media in general. i think there's been less analysis regarding how people interact with media.

i think everybody understands the whole deconstruction of advertising, how it works on a subconscious level....and more importantly how easily it's co-opted.

activists have been jumping from one cause to the next, driven by the media that was supposed to be to their great advantage. it seems like it's less that activists have raised awareness using twitter and more that political dissent has been reduced to a type of fashion as a result of it taking over twitter. some kind of systemic analysis here is worthwhile.

idle no more? that went out of style a few months ago.

that speech could have been produced, verbatim, at an occupy (insert city) movement about a year ago. same issues. same approaches.

so, it is now the responsibility of social theorists to sit down and study the data regarding these movements and try and figure out some patterns. to me, it's obvious: viral marketing has a high initial return driven by the way it converts ideas into trends (and that kind of support is dependent upon it being a trend), followed by a slow slide into obscurity defined by the trend going out of fashion.

conclusion: this isn't a smart approach. it just leads to movements getting burnt out, exploited and co-opted.

as soon as it got to twitter, it became fashion.

as soon as it became fashion, it became temporary.

it's a systemic problem, one so profound it's enough to throw your arms up in the air and give up. you can't get their attention *unless* you use viral marketing techniques. yet, doing so *necessitates* that they'll abandon you by the next marketing strategy.

so, the bastards win.

well, maybe there's two hopes.

the first is deprogramming people. i've read very little foucault. the guy was a fascist, he just pisses me off. but, if you can capture them with a viral technique and then turn them off...

the biggest problem would be keeping them turned off. i've barely watched any tv over the last 15 years. i'm fully cognizant of the reality that my entire perception of existence would change dramatically if i opened myself back up to that kind of suggestive mind control.

the second is to somehow keep spitting out more and more effective viral hooks. but this is hard to contemplate, given that the competition is endless.