Liffguard

Apropos of nothing, a quote from a recent Cory Doctorow blog post:

Re: the ennui of certain late-90s movies, and how that ennui hasn't aged well and now comes across as whiny, I recommend this video on Daria by Ian Danskin that touches on similar themes. In particular, this quote: I think it's easy to look on those late 90s movies about affluent white men in spiritual crisis, especially from the post-war-on-terror, post-great-recession, post-covid position and dismiss it by noting that that was as good as things were going to get, and these people had nothing to complain about. But I do think that these movies had a real point to make in spite of the various ways they've aged poorly. If you look at the protagonists of Office Space and American Beauty and Fight Club and your reaction is, "hey, at least you have a job, and it's a much better job than anyone in an equivalent position in 2024 can get," then I think the response of those movies would be, "a job isn't enough." Or perhaps, to put it more broadly, if you construct an entire society on market logic and the acquisition of status and stuff, then even if you "win" in that society you'll still be miserable. There has to be something more.

I finally got around to watching RRR Five stars, no notes, dudes rock.

Yeah exactly. Arguably things took a noticeable turn for the worse in 2016, but it's not like things were just chugging along swimingly beforehand and millions of people decided to lob some political molotov cocktails at the establishment for no reason at all. There was already a very deep rot. It's impossible to put an exact date on it. If I had to, I'd say that 2008 was the turning point, along with the subsequent refusal among the political mainstream to acknowledge that 2008 had in fact occurred. But then, 2008 itself was just the culmination of processes that had begun long before.

Is it true that onlinbe social networks are disappearing? If it is true, I'd hypothesize it has less to do with people choosing to inhabit their private cocoons and more to do with every social website becoming more and more shit over time and as their owners run them into the ground desperately trying to squeeze ever more marginal revenue streams out of their frustrated users.

My main concern is the extent to which it's going to be integrated into things like filtering job applications, loan and finance approvals, parole decisions, police resource distribution etc. Taking a whole bunch of already deeply flawed, very important processes and hiding them inside an AI black box - trained on flawed and biased data sets - and then passing them off as ostensibly objective and outside human oversight. And that's assuming the models work "as intended." A major problem with machine learning systems is that if you don't know how or why the model gives you a certain output, you don't know to what extent it's being deliberately interfered with.

One of my favourite games of all time, absolute mindfuck.

I always find these little cultural variations fascinating. To me, first and fourth fingers means devil horns, and is generally used positively within the context of metal music, and indicates approval and enthusiasm. I assumed two-finger salute meant index and middle finger, which in the UK would be more or less equivalent to just middle finger.

Just finished two books that honestly stunned me, one fiction and one non-fiction. The fiction is Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford. I saw it recommended on Cory Doctorow's blog. An alternate history, classic noir murder mystery with hard-bitten detectives, roaring 20s industrialists and smokey jazz parlours. The pacing moves along at a good clip without ever feeling rushed, and the atmosphere and sense of place is deeply immersive. The non-fiction was Instrumental by James Rhodes. This was a random charity shop find. Rhodes wrote an article once that still haunts me; Find What You Love and Let it Kill You. This is a memoir of brutal childhood abuse and the attempts of living with the long-term trauma of it. It's also a memoir about music and the power of music. Raw, frequently "problematic," anguished. Rhodes almost seems to go out of his way to paint an unsympathetic picture of himself that isn't warrented. At times I felt uncomfortably voyeuristic when reading. It also contains several passages of staggering beauty and insight. Major trigger warnings for graphic depictions of child rape, self-harm and suicide attempts. Nevertheless, definitely recommended.

Tesla blamed drivers for failures of parts it long knew were defective A good long-from article about Tesla's extremely sub-standard design, manufacturing and customer service practices. In short, Tesla seems to operate as if it must "innovate" everything from first principles, ignoring established best-practice. And then, when things inevitably go wrong, it tries to blame its own customers and then offload the costs on to them.

I'm sure there is plenty of apologia for Russia, but it's mostly not what I'm seeing. I'm personally seeing a lot more of throwing hands in the air and basically declaring that Russia and "the West" are all as bad as each other. Which...isn't exactly accurate, but also isn't entirely baseless either. The US invasion of Iraq (and other interventions) is not directly equivalent to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, either in goals or execution, but it still nevertheless seriously damaged US diplomatic and moral credibility, and also damaged global perceptions of the so-called "rules-based order." Quibbling over the US not looking to annex territory is entirely beside the point.

I'm not going to wade in on MMT one way or another. But there is nevertheless still a key difference between local governments, which can't issue their own currency, and national governments, which can. National governments with a sovereign currency can't ever run out of money (unless they choose to for political reasons). That doesn't mean their spending is unconstrained, just that tax revenue isn't the constraint.

I'll put my cards on the table, I'm explicitly a global open borders guy (hell, if you want to get right down to it, I'm a no borders guy). I'm anti-patriotism and anti-nationalist. I think drawing lines over the world and manning these lines with armed guards and checkpoints and saying that only people born on this side of the line have a right to live here, and putting hard limits on how many get to cross it (and stay only on sufferance) is fundamentally unjust. I have zero problem with immigration, is what I'm saying. However I'm deeply uncomfrotable with the argument that immigration is good because it's a source of cheap foreign labour. A lot of essential labour that's primarily being done by immigrants is deeply exploitative, and those sectors need to be reformed rather than continue to rely on people who are easy to exploit. On the other hand, I'm also somewhat suspicious about the argument that there's a pool of local workers able to step up and take those jobs themselves. Labour isn't fungible, different people have different abilities and needs and you can't just compare numbers of jobs against number of people without jobs. Take fruit picking for example, I'm sceptical that you'd get many local workers even if you drastically increased pay and improved conditions, because most people need a steady paycheck and want to live in population centres where there are things to do. On the other other hand, that still leaves the basic conundrum that certain sectors are only economically viable at all because poorer people from poorer areas of the world are willing to do work here that we ourselves aren't willing (or, to be fair, possibly able) to do. Even if you improve pay and conditions, that's still ultimately an exploitative relationship (albeit less so). I suppose my preferred solution would be to address both. Improve pay and conditions - drastically increase minimum wage, improve labour laws, publically invest in training and development - and also keep an open immigration policy. If local people are able but unwilling to do the work under current conditions, then improving those conditions such that they're willing to do the work means that there's more labour competition, and therefore less incentive for other people to move here*. Alternatively, if local people simply aren't willing to do that work at any price, then we need other people to move here one way or another. And if we're going to rely on their labour, it's only just that they're paid and treated better. * Not that I necessarily want less people to move here, but it does address the argument of "wouldn't unsustainable numbers of people move here to take advantage of the extra pay?"

Not a bad shout. It's definitely possible to combine narrative and meta-narrative like that and make it work. That was a major focus of the first Avengers movie after all.

Why aren't there any painkillers in the jungle? Because the parrots eat em' all.

Just watched How to Blow Up a pipeline Not gonna comment on the politics right now. As a movie, it was very tight, very lean and spare. It was successful at keeping the tension on a slowly but steadily rising simmer throughout. The characterisation was pretty minimalistic, and the characters somewhat one-note, but then it isn't really supposed to be a character study. It was more looking at what sort of situations could lead to certain motivations, rather than granular personality details. If you want a smart, restrained thriller, definitely recommended.

What's "clean" about it? You can live your own life however you want, but be careful about conceptualising other people's life choices with language that evokes moralistic disgust. Living in a way that doesn't optimise health (itself a somewhat nebulous concept) isn't "dirty."

There's already been an amazing Fantastic Four movie, it was called The Incredibles and it's one of the best superhero movies ever made. Okay sure, I'm being flippant, but there is a point there. To make a good F4 movie, make it a compelling family drama with warmth and heart, that also happens to include superpowers. Probably wouldn't hurt to embrace a 60s retrofuture aesthetic either.

I don't think he got sucked into Iraq. To a large extent he was the source of the suction (horrible image there). Blair got "sucked into" Iraq like Cameron and Osborne got "sucked into" austerity. Sure, there were external global factors that made it possible, but it was an ideological project he pursued enthusiastically. The entire rhetorical strategy of "will you condemn?" and its variants is almost always bad faith and almost never enhances any discussion. I think more people should blanket refuse to engage with it.

Unfortunately, I think the West Bank settlements probably render that solution non-viable (which, to be blunt, is a large part of the reason for the continued expansion of settlements). At the very least, for it to be viable it would probably have to be premised on the removal of the settlers being the responsibility of the Israeli government, not the new Palestinian government. Otherwise you just end up with a new sectarian violence problem. But, again to be blunt, I don't think there's any way of removing them that doesn't cause as many or more problems than it solves (not to mention the inherent injustice and opportunity for abuse and atrocity in the forcible removal of so many people). I think, for better or worse, the actions of the Israeli state itself have rendered a two-state solution mostly impossible. Which means a single state composed of free and equal people is the only viable solution consistent with justice. Which of course doesn't mean that state of being will come about. It's entirely possible for an unjust scenario to continue.

Nothing odd about that

Currently listening to Green Lung's new album Maxine (Witch Queen)

Did a pumpkin pie for a halloween party this year. Normally for that sort of thing I'd use canned pumpkin and a pre-made pie base, but for some reason this time I decided to do everything from scratch. Turned out pretty well though. And more recently some classic chocolate chip cookies

I'm honestly surprised every time I'm reminded that some people still watch live TV with adverts.

"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"