Month: October 2024

McClue

Chill Gutter Philosophy

In important ways, “reality” TV is more artificial than the scripted alternative. That is because the act of having a camera pointed at you and microphones gathering your every utterance alters your behavior and very thoughts in a way that having a script to guide your words and actions constrains.

Thus, the reality yearned for by viewers is far more illusive than it first appears. Nothing observed remains unaltered, and nothing is revealed by an examination under the condition of surveillance. The artificiality of this simulacrum of reality is assured because the camera itself causes those exposed to it to act like they believe versions of themselves would act in such a situation.

It becomes a simulation all the way down — and up, right on to the viewer, whose reactions also become those of the ones they imagine a viewer like them should have, and would have if the contestants on screen could but observe them too.

Powering

Chill Books, Rant

There’s been a spate of “empowering” novels recently about older women having affairs and dalliances with younger men. And I have no problem with this. I put “empowering” in quotes because why is it empowerment when a woman does it, but not when a man does?

It should be equally empowering if you assume that adult women are not children. Mainly I am just tired of prudery and the relationship police. Equality means exactly that. Let’s have women above the age of majority be treated as adults at all times, not exclusively only when it benefits them. That’ll make for a better world for all.

Chill Links

Freakonomics does it again (not in a good way). Jeez, these guys are credulous.

How Gothic Architecture Became Spooky.

The billionaires hedge their bets.

Musk’s reported contacts with Putin trigger anxiety in Washington.

The double standard for Harris and Trump has reached a breaking point. One candidate can rant about gibberish while the other has to be perfect.

Trump Is Not Preparing to Challenge the Election Results if He Loses but Mount Another Coup.

Boeing Launches $22 Billion Share Offering to Get Breathing Room, Dodge Junk Credit Rating, after Having Wasted $64 Billion on Share Buybacks.

Donald Trump’s Racist NYC Rally Was Vile. It Was Also Political Suicide.

Listen to Trump’s former aides: He’d be far more dangerous in a second term.

How a Mumbai Drugmaker Is Helping Putin Get Nvidia AI Chips.

Comcast, Charter Sue FTC Over Efforts To Make Canceling Services Easier. I need that fucking space laser.

How The Cowardice Of The LA Times And Washington Post Highlights The Danger Of The Link Taxes They Demand, And Their Hypocrisy.

Meet America’s secret team of nuclear first responders.

‘Carved on bodies and souls’: Ukrainian men face ‘systemic’ sexual torture in Russian detention centres.

How China Defeated Poverty.

‘We are essentially in a new Gilded Age’: As workers get laid off, CEOs and shareholders gobble up hundreds of billions in profits.

Butchery

Chill War

Russia is resorting to even more meat waves now as they’ve started to run out of mothballed equipment to press back into service. That’s why you see more insane things like motorcycle assaults in daylight against fortified positions and singletons running around on the battlefield.

Russia still might win but the loss of life is going to be beyond belief. But apparently they are ok with it.

Tumpestuous

Chill Regular-ass Post

AITA for telling my vegan friend I don’t want to come over for Thanksgiving Dinner?

Because of a girl I was dating, I did a vegetarian (not vegan) Thanksgiving one year. The crucial point was we didn’t try to make anything that mimicked another food. And it helped that she was (like me) a good cook. She asked me if I’d be willing to try it and I think was surprised I said yes. (She would’ve been ok if I’d said no.) But shit, I’ll try anything that won’t wind up with me in prison, a buncha people dead or Putin serving me a polonium pie.

I don’t remember what all we made but every bit of it was great. I didn’t miss the meat at all, though I’d not want to do a veggie Thanksgiving every year. I do recall we made some sort of nutty stuffing that was quite delectable.

You can do a lot with mushrooms and nuts, for sure.

Chill Links

The web is losing. Badly. But a comeback is possible.

Cheap light transformed civilization.

Calling Trump a Fascist Is Well Overdue. Why Did It Take So Long?

Chatbots remind us that natural conversation is artificial too. Indeed. In the sense that most would mean it, nearly all my conversations are artificial (as compared to a baseline human).

Lack of political or legal accountability for the rich and powerful certainly isn’t new information. But Musk has taken it to a genuinely new level and elevated it to the level of a kind of performance art.

Learning to trust Trump’s generals: There’s a reason why his military men now call him a fascist.

We’re Gonna be Okay.

Democrats must finally reckon with the political danger of concentrations of wealth and power.

Bezos, Trump, and the Failure of Democracy. We are witnessing a watershed moment. Democracy is failing because the rule of law has been broken. And everyone is about to realize it. All at once.

On immigration, what Americans want is democratic control.

The precision of Israel’s weekend attacks against the S-300 systems and critical parts of Tehran’s missile-production facilities once again demonstrated Israel’s deep intelligence penetration of Iran.

Hospitals adopt error-prone AI transcription tools despite warnings.