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☖ Forums → Discussion Forum → Inauguration Day, Inauguration Hooooooraaay!
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Inauguration Day, Inauguration Hooooooraaay!
2017-02-27, 4:43 PM #1001
Quote:
Mulholland Dr. was upsetting, yeah, less directly than the Elephant Man was; watching it was like that pre-flu feeling you have in your stomach. I still feel that diner scene is one of the best terror/scary scene ever filmed and it's not even a scary movie. And the scenes with the cowboy are perfectly dreamlike and surreal. Of course the key is, after getting the basic underlying "story" of film, to treat it as an anti-cerebral emotional trip rather than a cohesive narrative


You're certainly right about that last part, seeing how "effective" the film was on me. I came in with all the "wrong" expectations about the significance of plot, etc., (and I even liked Eraserhead), so that the "twist" worked a little too well on me.

In fact, I felt betrayed long enough after watching it that I sort of stopped watching film altogether there for a while.
2017-02-27, 4:43 PM #1002
Dune is underrated.
2017-02-27, 4:54 PM #1003
Haven't seen it, but on Charlie Rose DFW said that the thing was drastically cut down from what Lynch had intended, to the point where it didn't make sense anymore.
2017-02-27, 5:01 PM #1004
I'd believe it. Dino De Laurentiis was notorious for that kind of thing.

Lynch is the perfect director for Dune, which perhaps isn't obvious unless you've read the later parts of the series. It's a thoroughly strange and unsettling take on humanity's future, and it deserves better than the straight take it got from Syfy original miniseries.
2017-02-27, 5:55 PM #1005
My ick is mostly referring to how much control Lynch lacked on Dune because of the studio. Jodorowsky's Dune would have been an ultimate piece of cultural wtf. We can only hope that the new Villeneuve will be sufficiently weird.
Epstein didn't kill himself.
2017-02-27, 6:03 PM #1006
Originally posted by Jon`C:
I'd believe it. Dino De Laurentiis was notorious for that kind of thing.

Lynch is the perfect director for Dune, which perhaps isn't obvious unless you've read the later parts of the series. It's a thoroughly strange and unsettling take on humanity's future, and it deserves better than the straight take it got from Syfy original miniseries.


Hmm. Looks like I have some more reading to do, thanks.

I said it in this thread before and I'll say it again: the sole redeeming quality of the textual medium is that it is sufficient to make some jokes that sustain interest long enough to ultimately lead the discussion to culminate in a relevant book recommendation.

Beyond that I see the more recently built up layers of the web that now exist today as just a giant hearsay / joke slot machine for propagating simply expressed news of events and sometimes facts (more generally though, factoids), gaming your psychology the same way ordinary slot machines do (whether for ad revenue purposes or because of emergent adaptivity).
2017-02-27, 6:13 PM #1007
tinder is like this too, except instead of books,
2017-02-27, 7:06 PM #1008
I used to pretend to be Jim Morrison on Tinder before I got rid of my smartphone.

The services people think of as the internet are actually the infernal successor to AOL, whose sole redeeming quality was providing coasters.
Epstein didn't kill himself.
2017-02-27, 7:21 PM #1009
I used to save those as they came in the mail, for the day in which I'd finally become the proud owner of a CD 'burner', and have accumulated all those disks, ready to be overwritten.

Turns out they don't work that way. :P

(They also make good hockey pucks on hardwood floor, at least if you're a bad kid and don't care about scratching the hell out the place.)
2017-02-27, 7:23 PM #1010
I was going to cover my entire room in them, or do some sort of art installation commenting on the internet that would bring me fame and fortune and sex.

it didnt
Epstein didn't kill himself.
2017-02-27, 7:24 PM #1011
Originally posted by Spook:
I used to pretend to be Jim Morrison on Tinder before I got rid of my smartphone.


I'm curious, is this because you're on my side in my revolt against the internet slot machine, or does this have more to do with your paranoia about an impending civilizational collapse? Going back to rotary dial phones to make sure you can rebuild in a apocalyptic world? Or just hiding from the NSA?
2017-02-27, 7:28 PM #1012
Quote:
infernal successor to AOL,


and you missed a chance to complete the metaphor with the appropriate neologism there.
2017-02-27, 7:30 PM #1013
In all seriousness, yes, the internet is becoming more 'human', like in the Eternal September unleashed by AOhell the first time around.

Which would normally be good and honestly much needed, if normies didn't suck ass compared to your average introverted gamer.
2017-02-27, 7:30 PM #1014
It seemed entertaining. I named the profile James and put a bunch of pictures of him. Then when people would match with me I would just send them Doors lyrics. Most people didnt seem to know who he was, though men did much more often than women? Some people would interact with me and I've had more sex from using that app than anyone I know who uses it. But I live in Utah soooo. But my infatuation with Jim Morrison is certainly related to my feelings about the coming collapse.

But also I'm on your side for now. it would be nice if we could transition to decentralized internets in the post apocalyptic world but rotary phones would be pretty sick too.
Epstein didn't kill himself.
2017-02-27, 7:35 PM #1015
I was talking about the part about getting rid of your smartphone. But it's nice to know that Jim Morrison is a spiritual symbol of the apocalypse.
2017-02-27, 7:37 PM #1016
Originally posted by Spook:
I was going to cover my entire room in them, or do some sort of art installation commenting on the internet that would bring me fame and fortune and sex.

it didnt


You were supposed to install AOL and use the chat room feature

(holy hell i just remembered there was this thing called AIM. Never thought of using it as a Tinder, but I guess I was naive in Jr. high, which is probably a good thing)
2017-02-27, 7:51 PM #1017
Originally posted by Reverend Jones:
I was talking about the part about getting rid of your smartphone. But it's nice to know that Jim Morrison is a spiritual symbol of the apocalypse.


Oh, right. Well, partially it was cheaper to buy a flip phone at the time, I had been using people's second hand ones for a while to avoid buying new products for no reason. But I am also very critical of the ****ty mobile technology is out there. Smartphones offer very little real value to me, because I have many other computers, and don't want my phone to be dead from using them in case of emergency.

Also has he not always been a symbol of the apocalypse? I think even in the more literal sense of the word, though because of some sort of forseen lsd spiritual awakening rather than a semetic zombie based one?
Epstein didn't kill himself.
2017-02-27, 7:55 PM #1018
Originally posted by Spook:
Oh, right. Well, partially it was cheaper to buy a flip phone at the time, I had been using people's second hand ones for a while to avoid buying new products for no reason. But I am also very critical of the ****ty mobile technology is out there. Smartphones offer very little real value to me, because I have many other computers, and don't want my phone to be dead from using them in case of emergency.


Makes sense. Android def. is a POS in a lot of ways but I put up with it. My N900 seemed pretty brilliant at the time, esp. seeing that I could do things like apt-get pretty much out of the box, or script X11 to control the UI. I am sure I'd call it super slow now, but then again websites have gotten super bloated, so it sounds more like cancer than progress to me.

Quote:
Also has he not always been a symbol of the apocalypse? I think even in the more literal sense of the word, though because of some sort of forseen lsd spiritual awakening rather than a semetic zombie based one?


That sounds totally right, I was sloppy to imply he wasn't already.
2017-02-27, 8:06 PM #1019
I will probably acquire a used smartphone soon though because I do play with RPis and stuff (via SSH) and was controlling some LEDs too, and it's an easy solution when I can get a device free or cheap. Little desire to put a sim card in one though.
Epstein didn't kill himself.
2017-02-27, 8:15 PM #1020
Well whatever you do, don't get a cheap Chinese smartphone. If you thought NSA-bugged American phones were bad....
2017-02-27, 8:22 PM #1021
I am looking forward to Richard Stallman's phone release, or as he has taken to calling it, emacs plus phone.
Epstein didn't kill himself.
2017-02-27, 8:41 PM #1022
ahahahahahaha

good luck finding foot pedals compatible with a 6 inch form factor

or maybe they can rig up some kind of head twitching language that binds to alt, meta, super, & co.

(would be hell to use for those with Tourette's, though)
2017-02-28, 4:22 PM #1023
i am building pedals into my high heels
Epstein didn't kill himself.
2017-02-28, 4:37 PM #1024
I recommend tap dancing shoes rigged with Bluetooth.
2017-02-28, 8:49 PM #1025
Originally posted by Jon`C:
I find it very interesting that the debate isn't over whether we're living in a dystopia, it's over which one.


This is true and rather interesting, because I think it's a tragedy that people's imaginations of dystopia are limited to people like Huxley and Orwell. We probably got better visions from Marcuse, Foucault or Baudrillard. I guess Americans (probably rightly so) have a bias against reading Europeans, or reading anything that isn't a short, simply worded novel.
2017-02-28, 9:16 PM #1026
Don't be silly. Postman didn't make the comparison because his attention span was too short. The comparison between the two popular dystopian visions of Orwell and Huxley has to do with media and technology. Neil Postman was greatly influenced by Marshall McLuhan, who was in turn was greatly influenced by Harold Innis, who was in turn greatly influenced by Thorstein Veblen, who was:

Quote:
an iconoclastic thinker who drew on his deep knowledge of philosophy and economics to write scathing critiques of contemporary thought and culture. Veblen had left Chicago years before, but his ideas were still strongly felt there. Years later, in an essay on Veblen, Innis praised him for waging war against "standardized static economics".


Not to mention a long line of American philosophers , psychologists, and educational theorists, like George Herbert Mead, John Dewey, Jerome Bruner, and William James.

So clearly the pedigree of the man drawing the comparison between Huxley and Orwell is impeccable, insofar as it serves as a vehicle for his analysis of media and society.
2017-02-28, 9:18 PM #1027
That aside, generally speaking, Americans don't like to read Marx (let alone all those other continental philosophers you mentioned), which would have been a good start.

But, you know, Red Scare, etc.
2017-02-28, 10:39 PM #1028
Originally posted by Reverend Jones:
Don't be silly. Postman didn't make the comparison because his attention span was too short. The comparison between the two popular dystopian visions of Orwell and Huxley has to do with media and technology. Neil Postman was greatly influenced by Marshall McLuhan, who was in turn was greatly influenced by Harold Innis, who was in turn greatly influenced by Thorstein Veblen, who was:



Not to mention a long line of American philosophers , psychologists, and educational theorists, like George Herbert Mead, John Dewey, Jerome Bruner, and William James.

So clearly the pedigree of the man drawing the comparison between Huxley and Orwell is impeccable, insofar as it serves as a vehicle for his analysis of media and society.


I wasn't making a jab at the comic so much as the fact that they're the only texts you can make a comic about. I think I read part of a Veblen book once but I don't really remember, though not sure how American pragmatist philosophers is a topic at hand.
2017-02-28, 11:07 PM #1029
Originally posted by Reid:
I wasn't making a jab at the comic so much as the fact that they're the only texts you can make a comic about. I think I read part of a Veblen book once but I don't really remember, though not sure how American pragmatist philosophers is a topic at hand.


Postman didn't draw a comic, he wrote a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death , which applies ideas dealt with by Huxley in Brave New World , and some guy took a passage from the closing chapter of the book verbatim and drew some pictures.

The philosophers I listed were just the people who influenced the line if thinking that led to Marshall McLuhan's theories on media, which is the lens through which Postman interpreted Huxley. My point was no more than to say that the comparison being made by Postman was not so naive as simply deciding between which of two popular dystopian novels might be used to describe modern America, but to advance the thesis in his book.
2017-02-28, 11:09 PM #1030
Originally posted by Reverend Jones:
Postman didn't draw a comic, he wrote a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death , which applies ideas dealt with by Huxley in Brave New World , and some guy took a passage from the closing chapter of the book verbatim and drew some pictures.

The philosophers I listed were just the people who influenced the line if thinking that led to Marshall McLuhan's theories on media, which is the lens through which Postman interpreted Huxley. My point was no more than to say that the comparison being made by Postman was not so naive as simply deciding between which of two popular dystopian novels might be used to describe modern America, but to advance the thesis in his book.

Oh, my mistake. He sounds like a cool person.
2017-03-01, 12:13 AM #1031
Originally posted by Reid:
He sounds like a cool person.


He might have even gotten along with this gang of neo-Luddites (although he wouldn't have been capable of physically doing so, on account of his suspicious rejection of technology such as the web :) ).
2017-03-01, 3:29 PM #1032
Originally posted by Reverend Jones:
He might have even gotten along with this gang of neo-Luddites (although he wouldn't have been capable of physically doing so, on account of his suspicious rejection of technology such as the web :) ).


Luddism is sounding more tempting day by day. I should live in a cave with some books.
2017-03-01, 3:58 PM #1033
Personally, I've have stopped reading the news (even the Times for the most part, apart from skimming an evening telegraphic summary), and simply shelled out cash for a subscription to the New Yorker.



Not in a cave yet but there are lots of books here. But it's nice to sit alone listening to the fruits of Western civilization (Brahms etc.) while waiting for writers to explain the progression of its disease in long form articles, as a break from the grip that the The Attention Merchants have got on our culture.

I mean if you live in an unfolding dystopian reality, wouldn't reading about it in the most literary form be most fitting? (Just in case we aren't around to read about in book form?)
2017-03-01, 4:10 PM #1034
Going for walks outdoors is also nice, and it also presents an opportunity to listen to a daily podcast about the various shenanigans the crazy right wingers are up to in the Oval Office, and doing so hasn't even been too psychologically damaging (well, at least not because of the medium).

If I really break down and want to know for sure if the apocalypse is in fact nigh (or simply observe KellyAnne stabbing her high heels into the White House upholstery so that she can snap iPhone photos of Herr Drumpf), I check into David Frum's Twitter feed, or even turn on the nightly PBS news-hour (certainly not last night, though).
2017-03-01, 4:27 PM #1035
Actually, [URL="nytimes.com/2017/03/01/world/europe/after-trump-win-anti-soros-forces-are-emboldened-in-eastern-europe.html"]this article [/URL] was very much worth the read.
2017-03-01, 8:03 PM #1036
Originally posted by Reid:
Luddism is sounding more tempting day by day. I should live in a cave with some books.
You'd get shot for vagrancy... or tax evasion, or something. Modern society is not optional.
2017-03-02, 3:45 AM #1037
So, I hear your AG committed perjury.
nope.
2017-03-02, 8:25 AM #1038
Don't worry. He'll investigate himself and find nothing wrong.
SnailIracing:n(500tpostshpereline)pants
-----------------------------@%
2017-03-02, 9:16 AM #1039
It's doubtful that he did anything wrong and silly to claim this is perjury. Sorry, I've been sick for awhile.
"I would rather claim to be an uneducated man than be mal-educated and claim to be otherwise." - Wookie 03:16

2017-03-02, 11:11 AM #1040
Originally posted by Wookie06:
It's doubtful that he did anything wrong and silly to claim this is perjury. Sorry, I've been sick for awhile.


It depends on whether he discussed the Trump campaign during those meetings. It's perjury if he did.
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