theresponseblog

[theresponseblog]

I had a girl invite me into her dorm room and talk about how she preferred to sleep completely naked and it was not until after I graduated that I realized what I was supposed to be getting from that conversation.

[theresponseblog]

It will always be amazing to me that Trump made nothing from COVID. He didn't set family members on the boards of companies which then got emergency FDA approval for their N95 masks or ventilators, he didn't lean on states to allow Trump-branded properties to reopen early, his only attempt at using the crisis to increase Executive Branch authority was a half-assed travel ban that was quickly rescinded. The only thing he could slap his name on was the vaccine, developed and funded during his administration--and his voting base hates it, so he has to pretend he had nothing to do with it!

So many times I think "Man, this Trump guy sucks at being a fascist dictator!"

I don't think I'd want him to be a better fascist dictator, but I think I could do a much better job. So many people could do a better job!

[theresponseblog]

Yeah that's right, you naughty little girl, show me those archegonia...we both know you want to engage in cross-species genetic transfer, so how about you quit playing around and we get down to business?

[theresponseblog]

Nasim Aghdan wasn't a monster; she was simply...ahead of the curve.

Let's not nuke Iran. Let's nuke Mountain View.

[theresponseblog]

If Joe Doakes with 75,000 followers screenshot-reposts some dude's tweet eith the original name cut off and gets 1.2 million likes on that, is he "a faceless corporation" or "an individual"?

[theresponseblog]

Seen last week: lower-back tattoo of a six-speed gearshift layout

A little "...huh" moment here at the fair seeing a mid-20s couple where the woman had an AirTag padlocked to her belt loop.

[theresponseblog]

i think maybe there was another reason she didn't get nominated in 2008

If there's one legacy of the War in Iraq that Democrats should have internalized, it's the fact that those who lined up behind the war drums all came to regret that decision while those who wisely refused to go along were soon vindicated.

Hahahaha no

[theresponseblog]

toger toger borning brote

[theresponseblog]

also DEC 25 = OCT 31 which is why Christianity is so obsessed with destroying witches

[theresponseblog]

I think it's less "superheroes would be bad" and more "superheroes would be irrelevant". Like, as soon as Dr Manhattan shows up, nobody else means shit -- sort of like how after mules were invented everyone assumed that the next World War would be the last one (and saw Korea and Vietnam as pointless bloodfests that resolved to stalemate) so anyone who still pointed at soldiers--IRL America's equivalent of costumed heroes--as role models who could meaningfully affect events was kidding themselves.

One thing that's important to understand about my take on Watchmen is that while I'm receptive to the idea that it was overloaded, fraught and insensitive to have the first superhero be doing it for KKK reasons and for sex reasons at the same time, I maintain that the book's recognition that actually-existing American Costumed Vigilantism is just the KKK, would likely be continuous with the KKK had it come to exist in real life, and that the same pack of bastards would be the in-universe apologists for both, is one of the greatest called shots in the entire project.

[theresponseblog]

reinventing Bonsai Kittens, huh?

[theresponseblog]

Although the problem with Banksy trying to adapt and do something new is that he'll need to compete with all the guys working now who're the result of forty years of developing the ideas that Banksy introduced. He made a new world but we aren't in that world now. And he can trade on Being Banksy but that's the same problem that classic bands have, in that audiences are there to see The Old Shit so that's what he has to keep doing, because if they wanted to see something other than The Old Favorites they wouldn't need Banksy for that...

Asking I'm genuine interest: does anyone who follows me have anything to praise banksy over? Because I'd like to at least have checked my opinion of "hack"

[theresponseblog]

I remember being surprised when I read Ehrlich's fantasy of The Future and it included a border wall across the American Southwest and this wasn't some ironic suggestion about how the USA would use a minor environmental crisis as an excuse to go turbo-fascist, it was just what Ehrlich thought made sense, that he figured "those countries" would never understand the need for Sensible Population-Control Measures and would need to be bottled up lest they spread and consume the world's resources.

It's a small thing, but watching the vague idea that nature is perfect and beautiful the way it is and humans only ruin and destroy it go from "anodyne Saturday morning cartoon shit" to "One step removed from genocide apologia" over, like, twenty-five years, is ultimately what convinced me that basically nobody has principles, 'movements' and 'zeitgeists' especially don't have principles, and everything is based on vibes and social pressure.

[theresponseblog]

Not many people cite it today but Brunner's "Stand On Zanzibar" turned out to be one of the most prescient works I've ever read. (He's describing the information-overload style of news shows with flashy graphics and quick cuts and music themes, and I'm like "oh yeah that's just CNN...")

I wasn't alive in 1992. But I sometimes think about what someone from 1992 might think about the state of the world in 2025.

90s media is always about how the hippies and radicals and counter-culturalists might have a little bit of a point, but only in a vague spiritual or philosophical way, and back down in the real world then-hegemonic norms were the best we could hope for. I look back at what the hippies and radicals and counter-culturalists were saying in the 90s and think they mostly didn't have a point at all, precisely because their ideas were only fit for the spiritual or philosophical, but that the same could be said for much of hegemonic society. Look at the way opposition to homosexuality was, in retrospect, wholly (forgive me for using this term in the vulgar-Marxist fashion) "idealist", it was a product of ideology with no practical material function at all, and now we have gay marriage and plenty of places where acceptance of homosexuality is the local hegemonic norm and all the other parts of society trudge on totally unaffected. The CEO of Apple is openly gay and it turns out this is not the most socially interesting thing about Apple by a very wide margin.

The end of history is over and communism is making a comeback on the world stage! Except this is a new communism, less utopian vision and more hard-nosed and pragmatic. The party cadre sitting side-by-side with the board of directors at every company on the Shanghai stock exchange. The IMF: technocratic triumph of a rules-based international order, or sledgehammer of imperialism? Doesn't matter, China can offer you a better deal.

And, this is my favorite part. In the 80s and 90s people were obsessed with the idea of voyeurism. I guess MTV was the new hot thing, and internet pornography was just being invented, and there was this fear that society would collapse as people were pulled deeper and deeper into the hedonic thrall of ever more extreme sexual and violent media (cf. Videodrome). And, it turns out, in much of the world people have been pulled en masse into the thrall of voyeuristic media. But it's not sex and violence, it's politics. The 24 hour news cycle? That's a new development in the 90s. I bet they didn't realize it was gonna do... all this. Fox News, QAnon, doomscrolling. It turns out if you bombard people with unlimited stimulation from every direction, what wins out in the attention marketplace isn't sex and violence, it's "everyone is out to get you". Kind of a vindication of the view of man as a social animal first and foremost, to be honest.

Oh, but Terminator looks like it might have been on the right track.

[theresponseblog]

Selfharm caused by TV, huh?

What on earth is Marginal Revolutions doing linking this tweet about LLM mental health safety:

No one has any numbers on this, there is no dataset of "self harm incidents caused by TV" because that isn't a coherent concept. He just fucking says it too downstream:

Literally this lmao

Any MR I am worried for you buddy please, talk to your friends, you can come back into the light! It doesn't have to be this way!

[theresponseblog]

think that everyone has their own personal theme in life

[theresponseblog]

EGGS? IN MY FRONT DOOR WREATH?!