#thats generally nostalgic to me in an odd sense

[madame-mongoose]

Horror story concept where the general theme is how nostalgia can hide the truth/warp our perception

[amoveablejake]

Album Of The Week: ‘Peak Internet’By XWaves

Stand out song: ‘Artificial Colouring’ featuring Runners Club 95.

There is no escaping that the central pillar of culture and advertising over the past few years has been nostalgia. After periods of looking to the future with the films of the nineties and the early two thousands it makes sense that once we reached that future with the technological advancements that were being prophsised  that Hollywood and in turn other forms of media would instead look at what has come before. And ofcourse, one of the main examples of this is the take off hit television series ‘Stranger Things’ that for a lot of its viewers is making them feel nostalgic for a time that they didn’t experience at all. So, for those viewers who didn’t live through the eighties what is their nostalgia. Well, its for a few things as nostalgia always is. Certain films, types of music, atmospheres in places and general feelings with the zeitgeist which does include for some, the beginning of the internet. Now yes, computers have been around for decades and the internet has been growing up for quite some time however, it feels like it has only really come into its own in line with those who were born in the nineties and tale end of the eighties. Like those who grew up with Harry Potter being the same age, the internet sort of feels like that, its out of its awkward teenage years and is now, I’m not really sure. The point is, is that at one point the internet wasn’t this great big behemoth that eclipses in all its path. It felt, a little smaller and containable (even if it was anything but). To have nostalgia for the early days of this thing that has gone on to reshape humankind is perhaps a little odd but its a feeling that does exist and whatsmore is that it is a feeling that XWaves has perfectly encapsulated within ‘Peak Internet’. 

When I go to work I take my Walkman with me and often in doing so I forget to change the tape. This means that I sit with the same album for quite a while and for me, thats the best thing about it. The whole point of me listening to records, tapes and even CDs is that you can engage with an album to a greater extent than with the streaming platforms. I have been listening to ‘Peak Internet’ again and again now for a couple of weeks and everytime I get to its end I go right back to the beginning and think how this album continues to be better with every listen. It wasn’t love at first sight with ‘Peak Internet’ as it was for an album such as ‘Alluring Grace’ lets say (I had to mention it somewhere) but thats okay. Its not that I didn’t like the album at first, absolutely did, I just needed more time to really click with it and once I reached that state where I could see it all line up, I could fall into its nostalgic view of the early days of the internet and let it sweep me up in my own memories of that. This is a concept album at its heart and one that executes that concept perfectly. Sometimes with concept albums you do need a couple of listens through to really get to grips with the subject matter because they do tend to be that much personal but the pay off is, is that once you do get to that level of understanding the album reveals itself in a whole new way on that more personal level and it feels all the more special. 

Personally, I think XWaves has surpassed themselves with ‘Peak Internet’. Tracks like ‘The Orient’ perfectly demonstrate their skill and progression as an artist and act as quite the calling card when stacked against the other main names of the genre. As I touched on a moment ago, ‘Peak Internet’ achieves its goal, inspires a certain air around it and will transport you to memories that are hidden in the databanks. Technically, it is masterfully worked but I feel to talk about that side of the album isn’t what it really needs. It would be like me talking about the paint used by Van Gogh or the film stock used by Tarantino. And yes, whilst those aspects are integral and hugely beneficial (we could talk about Tarantino film stock choices all day), its not really what we’ve come for. What we have come for isn’t the numbers behind the scenes, not the computers whirring away but instead the feeling of this intangible thing that sits within our minds and our hearts. One word for that could be nostalgia and in a world that has revolved around this idea, of selling the idea of nostalgia, an album like ‘Peak Internet’ feels like its taking the idea back.

-Jake, a man wearing a ring that he made and feeling rather smug, 28/11/2022

[blueberrypancakepotbellygirl]

gucci: notes on the gala

@gloomlives

here are all the gucci looks from the carpet:

(trust me i too am v annoyed i couldn’t get them all into two rows urgh. but look how many of them ! i think the brand dominated the carpet this year in terms of the number of gucci looks !)

this year’s met ball theme was camp: notes on fashion, and oh boy was there... some camp at this ball ! there are always people who just want to put on a cute dress, and there are always maNY men who just wear a black suit with maybe a floral pattern because they think thats Edgy (? has no one told them that if they are invited to the met ball they have enough social capital to experiment with idk colours?????), and there are also a few shining stars who take the theme and fucking RUN with it.

the exhibit this year features previews from moschino AND gucci, which makes the theme all the more suitable - moschino and gucci can be classed as historically and currently ‘camp’ brands, however, you want to define the term. oftentimes, both brands are garish, they take up space, they attempt to clash in colour and pattern and not in the endearing miu miu way, but in the more mature, ‘i-am-making-a-statement-with-my-clashing-florals-and-graphic-designs’ with an odd slant of childish consumerism thrown in (just look at.... anything moschino has ever put out there since jeremy scott took over -there is always a hint to the nostalgic soaked in capitalistic ventures, which you could potentially read as a contemporary critique of the fashion industry, but it doesn’t feel nearly as nuanced as, say, alexander mcqueen’s work. but i am biased. i’m not a fan of moschino. every line gives me a headache).

I would argue that gucci often fails to be ‘camp’ however, in the sense that i feel like it is an insincere brand. if you want to pull of ‘campness’ you have to have confidence in the risky decisions you make. gucci doesn’t have that confidence because it simply doesn’t make those risky decisions. maybe twenty years ago men’s RTW line of clashing floral suits would have made some kind of ripple within the industry. but today, i think it just uninspiring. it seems camp because of how feminine (? tbh the more i use gender to describe fashion the more it makes me cringe, but i can’t think of a better word right now... will update) their mens lines have been over the last five/ten years. but ‘camp’ is not really about gender as it is about a particular aesthetic (IMO anyways)

ANYWAY. back to Gucci x Met.

so, not only is gucci within the exhibit of this years gala, but alessandro michele (the creative director of gucci since 2015 - so all the gucci clout shit has happened under his rule) co-chaired the gala, alongside harry styles, soft boi and all around Big Supporter of Gucci Suits. already it’s gucci, gucci, gucci.

it doesn’t stop then, though ! the after party is ALSO held by gucci ! in a high school gym ! i have no idea ! i genuinely don’t know but i think i’m into it?

my history with gucci is one shrouded in themes of boredom and predictability - i find the brand to generally be garish without any point to it, lacking in statement or claim, simply attempting to fit in with the rest of the high fashion crowd, attempting to be a ‘cooler, more popular’ brand than, say, versace, valentino, prada or fendi. i’d say their efforts are transparent and they have failed. 

despite the fact that gucci has been around for a while longer than most of the above brands, there is a general sense that i get from their collections in the past decade or so that screams unoriginality, copying, superficial fashion in the most sincere way that can be taken. essentially, i don’t like gucci because i think they are a rather lazy brand. i don’t think they bring anything new to the table, they know how to cater to their market and play safe and that is what they have been doing for a whileeeeeeee.

camp, for me, is about wearing audacity and drama with genuine seriousness. and if not seriousness, it is about laughing at the frivolity of campness through outlandishness. for an outfit to be camp, within the met gala setting of CRAZY RICH PEOPLE, it has to be i n s a n e but still beautiful. it has to nod to great design and tailoring. a great example of this in practice would be lupita nyong'o’s versace dress:

the stars, the jewels, the feather-and-tulle ruffles, the what i can only imagine is insanely expensive jewellery, her hair and the EYE MAKE UP. this look isn’t subtle at all - it screams colour and celebration, it takes up space, contains myraid patterns and colours and fits her fucking perfectly. there is so much going on, definitely too much, but altogether the outfit feels contained - it looks intentional, and she wears it with confidence because of that.

let’s look at some of the gucci looks now, and see how despite how badly gucci may want to portray sellable camp, they fall short.

dakota johnsons dress is a great example of this. it’s a gorgeous dress. i would get married in that dress. the detailing is wonderful, the colours are beautiful on her. all in all, a great dress. a camp dress though? does it portray the same drama as lupita’s dress? does it inspire any kind of artistic chaos? am i making any sense anymore? the answer to all these is no! it’s a fine dress but it’s boring in the sense that it doesn’t attempt to be any more camp than the brand ‘gucci’ is already accepted to be by the fashion industry. another example of harry styles, who wears like... a nice blouse and an earring? again, a good blouse. he looks great ! love the nails ! the heels are great ! i think the high waisted trousers could have been tailored just a littttle bit better but all in all a great look ! a ‘camp’ look though? for harry styles? in 2019 at the met gala? no. this look doesn’t push any boundaries, it doesn’t require much confidence because it doesn’t take any risks, it doesn’t take up any space. it is carefully curated to be acceptable, sellable, palatable for a millennial generation. but it fails to impress.

so, the gucci vibe of this years gala comes from the myraid looks on the carpet that do just as gucci has done and did last night - attempt to be camp, but in a safe and boring way. the chanel, the prada, the erdem, the saint laurent, the louis vuitton. they all miss the mark by playing it safe and if there was ever a time to not play it safe, it’s when the theme is fucking camp.

[ixiomdraws]

I was considering getting a furby sometime soon but I haven’t had one since I was a kid. What’s it like? Are there any bad sides?

whats it  like? depends entirely on the person. some ppl like to take their furby with them everywhere ect, some ppl prefer mostly keeping them on a shelf, id be the latter. i sometimes take one off the shelf and interact with it for a bit, but tbh theyre kinda limited in what they can do, so it can get repetitive and i only do it really if im feeling nostalgic or wanna be distracted. the main fun thing for me about having furbies is customizing them. its a great distraction and makes me feel better to have somethin to work on that i can look at and be like ‘i didnt completely fuck this up’. 

  if u mean whats it like as in the furby like, talkin and shit, theres tons of vids in the furby tag of ppl playing with them, so just go search furby in the video section and u should find plenty of examples(also a ton on youtube and even comparisons of the dif models)are there any bad sides? uhhhhhhh i guess some of what i said could be considered bad, like the repetitive thing. theres not much else i can think of thatd be bad about it, unless you end up thinking theyre creepy. i personally think theyre cute af, but thats me.

 i guess another downside is them not working properly, being a 20? year old toy, but from what i understand, the 1998-2005s are fairly easy to fix. out of the.. idk 20+ furbies of 1998 models i have, i think only a couple dont work, and i havnt yet attempted to fix them, but from what ive seen, it shouldnt be too hard(@ furbytech is a great resource for fixes)

 the 2012/booms and connects? not so much. i gutted a boom recently to see if i could make it work and lemme tell ya, its nothin like a 1998 in there. im pretty sure(and i seen other ppl say its a common issue with booms) that the motor died and would need to be replaced. i have zero idea how much a motor costs or where to find one bcuz at that point i decided it wasnt worth it. another bad thing is finding any resources on how to fix the booms, bcuz i couldnt find much of anything useful.the dif types of furby are the original, 1998-2001(?) (typically only called 1998s though), the 2005, the 2012, furby boom, and furby connect. they all have pros/cons, the 1998s pro is they have a ton of varying colors, the eyechips can be removed and customized, and easy to fix. cons..repetitive? though that can be said for all of them.

the 2005s have voice recognition, they can hear their name(hey furby) and be asked several dif phrases that they can respond to, including ‘tell a knock knock joke’. con is they dont seem to talk or do much otherwise(though that could just be the one i have) i also have a harder time understanding what theyre saying compared to the other models.i cant comment on 2012s as i have none, but the booms pro is the different personalities they have! its cool that they have dif personalities, but the con is they can change, sometimes without reason, to a dif one. another con is their fur patterns make them less customizable, as are their digital eyes. the connects pros: super fucking cute, very interactive, moves a lot, and you can actually pick their furby name with the app and theyll remember it. cons(imo) they make a ton of fart noises and fart jokes. it honestly seems like the only thing they talk about other than yelling about loving cats, but it was marketed at kids so i guess i understand. another con is that, while like all furbys, they can sense sound, they dont seem to know what youre saying(they reply with random and repetitive responses) and there are no phrases they react to(as far as i know), which is odd considering theyre the newest version.  they do however, react and dance to music, so thats pretty cool. 

those are all i can think of pro/con-wise off the top of my head, im sure im leavin out a bunch.also as a tip, for a regular furby from the first generations(id say 1-3 and some of 4), i wouldnt pay over 10$ for it. some of the limited ones are also pretty easy to find, that ive seen, so i wouldnt pay a ton for those either(for example, the graduation furby)  the connect i guess since theyre newer go for about 20 and up, but u can find them for 10-15 too sometimes.  the most expensive(in general) are the 2005s, typically around 40-50 bucks. you can find them cheaper sometimes, but they get bought pretty quick from what ive seen.obvs the more special and higher gen furbies are worth more, but another thing i personally like to keep in mind is: how different is it really? for example, the graduation furby is pretty much just a tuxedo furby from gen 1 with a hat on. ones like the juicy grape are also just tuxedos with the white colored different, and can be easily replicated(though i believe both examples do have a tail instead of a mane like the tux has).sorry for rambling about so much shit, and good luck whatever u decide

[themoneybuff-blog]

The Road to the Fortress of Solitude

A few years ago, a movie called The Gambler came out, starring Mark Wahlberg. It was a decent movie Im not here to do movie reviews but there was one portion in the middle where a minor character played by John Goodman gives a monologue about what a person should do if they find themselves up a couple of million dollars. Heres that speech, but be aware its full of adult language. The point of Goodmans monologue in the movie is that if a person ever finds themselves with a couple of million dollars, that person should build their fortress of solitude. In his terms, that consists of a decent house with a good roof, a reliable car, and the rest of the money put away in investments that will very reliably return a few percent per year. Lets say you have $2 million. You buy a $300,000 house with a good roof on it, buy a reliable $40,000 car, and put the other $1.66 million away in an investment and withdraw 3% a year, which is basically $50,000 a year, for the rest of your life. At that point, you basically dont have to work for a living any more. You dont have to put up with being treated poorly by an employer you can just walk and youll be fine. You can try new things and see if they work out. Furthermore, if you do manage to earn some more money beyond that, you can take some risks with it. You can invest in your brothers dream of running a restaurant. You can help your computer whiz nephew to start a dot-com business that hes been tossing around. You can invest deeply in a particular collectibles market that youve always enjoyed because it scratches some nostalgic itch. I wrote about the actual ins and outs of this plan a couple years ago, because Sarah and I are basically aiming to have our own fortress of solitude at roughly the exact moment our youngest child leaves the nest. However, rather than talking about the goal, I want to talk about the road to the fortress of solitude. Work, Luck, and Risk In my experience, there are basically three elements that play into what your financial journey will look like. The first element is work. Are you willing to work hard in order to earn money? Are you willing to make hard choices to preserve the money you earn, meaning you choose not to spend it on frivolous things? Are you willing to work evenings and weekends to do a little more than the next person? Are you investing your time into skills that you can use directly to earn more? The second element is luck. Luck indeed has a lot to do with the hand youre dealt the situation into which you were born, the genetics handed to you by your parents, and so on. The trick is to ignore that luck and focus instead on the unexpected events in your life going forward from here. What are you doing to ensure that bad events are less likely and have less impact? What are you doing to ensure that good events are more likely and have greater impact? You cant force bad events not to happen or good events to happen, but you certainly can take action to alter the odds a little, reduce the impact of bad events, and improve the impact of good events. The third element is risk. Are you willing to take a chance at a bad result in order to improve the typical result or have a chance at an incredible result? Are you willing to take on a job thats incredibly challenging where you might utterly fail, but it gives you a chance to succeed spectacularly (like, say, joining a startup)? In general, the lower the risk, the lower your income is, but the more stable it is. A really stable job might give you a very high chance of reaching your fortress of solitude in 20 years, but very little chance of getting there in ten. A risky job might give you some chance of getting there in ten years, some chance of getting there in twenty, and some chance of basically never getting there. Those three elements work together and play off of each other in determining your long term financial success. If you dont work hard, take risks, and cultivate luck, its going to be very challenging to build up a fortress of solitude. You need to do all of those things to some degree to build a strong financial path. Here are some thought on each of those areas and what Ive done to use those elements in building my own fortress of solitude. The Elements of Work For me, work refers to any situation youre doing something other than what youd otherwise want to be doing for the sake of earning money or other resources that you can turn into greater opportunities later. If Im doing something I wouldnt otherwise be doing if I werent being compensated, Im working. Sometimes, people do get paid for doing things theyd otherwise be doing. I look at people who sleep on the job and get paid or people who have work tasks they should be doing but are otherwise looking at social media or doing online shopping as examples of this. Those people would likely be sleeping or web browsing if they werent at work, to be quite honest. The thing is, during those times, theyre not contributing any value to their workplace and that path is likely not leading to any future opportunities of note. Theres also a wide range of work difficulty. Some work is very physically or mentally demanding, leaving you exhausted at the end of the day. Some work is simple and you dont feel drained after spending several hours working. Ive worked at all kinds jobs that didnt really deplete me at all, jobs that were physically demanding, jobs that were mentally demanding, and a few things that were both. My experience has been that in general (with some impact from luck and risk), the harder you work, the better your financial rewards are most of the time, in both the short term and the long term. If you go to work and bust your rear end, people notice and that ends up benefiting your career most of the time. If you start a business and work hard to make it successful, youre much more likely to find some degree of success with that business most of the time. For example, the hardest Ive ever worked in a traditional job occurred in the early to mid 2000s, where I singlehandedly built a rather large software project used by a lot of people. This resulted in a very stable job, a lot of offshoot consulting gigs, and a strong professional reputation. The hardest Ive ever worked on a side gig was The Simple Dollar, which ended up more successful than I could have ever dreamed. I worked hard at other things and didnt work particularly hard at others, but I almost entirely found that the level of success was strongly linked (though not absolutely linked) to my genuine hard work. Work smart. Work hard. If you do that, youre very likely to reliably earn money and have plenty of opportunity to earn more. Remember, at any given moment, youre competing with others. Some of those people work harder than you, while others work a lot less than you. Which of those groups is more likely to get a raise or a promotion? Which of those groups is more likely to get a pink slip? So, what can you do? When you go into work, work hard. If your tasks are complete, put in effort to improve your skill set or take on another task. If you dont know what to do, sit down with your boss and talk about a plan that will take you toward a raise or promotion, and then when you dont have an obvious task to do, work on that plan. If you have a big project coming up, get as much as you can done early in the project cycle so that crunch time isnt devastating. If youre not willing to do this, you shouldnt expect the rewards that will come to those who do. The Elements of Luck Luck, in my terms, simply refers to events outside of your control that can affect your life in some respect. Good luck includes events outside of your control that have a positive effect, while bad luck includes events outside of your control that have a negative effect. A key thing to remember is that luck is an element of life thats partially under your control and partially out of your control. While you cant control the actions of others or the impact of unexpected events, you can certainly shape and guide those actions and the impacts that they have on you. For example, if you build a strong, positive professional network and social network, youre introducing not only a lot of possible opportunities for good luck in your life, youre also providing some protection against bad luck. A professional network and social network will often advocate positively for you when youre not around, point you toward opportunities, and provide help when you encounter a difficult period. Ive written extensively in the past about things you can do to improve your luck, both in terms of minimizing chances of bad luck and maximizing chances of good luck (as well as your ability to take advantage of good luck). The Elements of Risk Risk, in my terms, simply means the amount of exposure to danger that some aspect of your life has. I often see it as the exposure of some of the fruits of your hard work to the vagaries of luck. Life itself has some risk we always have a chance to lose things we care about but we have a ton of choices in front of us to increase or decrease risk in our lives. For example, if you go through life without an emergency fund, you expose a lot of your life to a higher level of risk. If you build an emergency fund, you reduce the exposure of a lot of your life to risk. You can choose to put your money in risky investments or in not-so-risky investments. If youre relying on having that money going forward, then youre putting other elements of your life at risk as well; if you can manage in life without that money, then youre actually contributing less overall risk to that investment. There are times when it makes sense to lower our level of risk, such as when the bad effects of an outcome we dont want are way more painful than the good effects of an outcome we do want. There are other times when taking a risk can pay off, such as when the good effects of the outcome we want are far more beneficial than the bad effects of the outcome we dont want. For example, Im not interested in risking my childrens safety, no matter what the price, so Im going to do things that will likely cost me time and money to minimize risks to them. On the other hand, if Im spending my spare time writing a piece of fiction that I hope to sell or submit to awards contests, theres much less downside to taking a huge risk with that writing. What do I have to lose? The Overlaps of Work, Luck, and Risk Its the overlap of those three elements that ends up defining a lot of what we have in life. A hard worker is likely to have better outcomes than the person who doesnt work much at all. A person who has cultivated good luck is likely to have better outcomes than the person who hasnt cultivated good luck. A person who decreases the risk on things that are important and increases risk only on things that arent a big deal to them is likely to have better outcomes than the person who is risky with everything or risk-averse with everything. None of those things are a guarantee, of course, but if you line them all up side by side, you end up with a pretty clear recipe for building a path to your fortress of solitude and beyond. Work hard. Dont sit around idling unless its leisure time or youre genuinely preparing yourself for meaningful action. When you dont have an immediate task on your plate, take on a task to improve yourself or improve your situation. Have a plan in place that takes you to where you want to go next in life and put genuine, consistent effort toward successfully completing that plan. Do things that create good luck in your life. Build strong, positive relationships with people that last and put in effort to sustain them over time by touching base frequently. When you have a good idea, stop and write it down and actually take action on it later. Find mentors. Be a mentor to others. Treat other people as you would like to be treated at all times, regardless of whether you know them or not. Avoid things that create bad luck in your life. Dont talk negatively about others, particularly behind their back. Dont burn bridges when a situation changes. Dont sabotage others. Dont treat the world as though it only has one winner in reality, the pie grows over time, so your slice will, too. Dont put things that are really important at risk. Have an emergency fund. Make sure that you and the people you rely on always have the fundamentals for a good life available to them. Dont engage in unethical behavior. Dont do things that could damage your reputation if they were found out. Take risks with things that are less essential. Write that novel with that surprising element. Step up to that hard task at work you wont get fired if you work hard at it but it doesnt quite turn out. Ask that girl or that guy out on that date the worst thing that happens is she says no, and then youre basically back where you started anyway. Haggle on the price of that item. The Synergy If youre doing all of those things together, youre building your fortress of solitude, even if you dont have a lot of money in the bank just yet. You are on a path to a point in your life where the key things you need are secure and youre able to say no to a lot more things than you were in the past because you dont need that money thats dangling in front of you. It starts with working hard, building good luck, downsizing bad luck, minimizing risk to the important things, and amping up risk to the less important things. Those are the core elements on the road to success, whatever that success might be. You can do this. You have the tools. You just need to make the choices every day. You need to work hard. You need to build good luck and minimize bad luck. You need to manage risk smartly. Do that, and youll have your dreams. Do that, and youll have your fortress of solitude. https://www.thesimpledollar.com/the-road-to-the-fortress-of-solitude/