adam_y

adam_y , 3 months ago

What a strange and wonderful beast Vice was.

The very idea of calling a middle class millenial hipster a journalist and sending them off to a war torn country so they could do drugs with a cartel and report back on the underground scene there is pure 2010s.

And when it happened across real journalism, it took it in its stride. This was the competition to main stream media. It was aware and smart.

It was also shockingly platform literate. The video content was just as vital as the written stuff.

The fact it didn’t endure is pretty sad. It’s fairly indicative of where we are going.

I saw this article the same day that I saw Google announce the removal of the news tab from its search results.

Not good times.

adam_y , 3 months ago

It could just be me, but the quality of Google news absolutely tanked a couple of years ago.

Trying to manage news sources became increasingly difficult as clickbait infested results and suggestions.

It felt like they had lost their ability to separate “new content” from “news”.

adam_y , 3 months ago

Verified British experience.

Over-tip on the way out, even though we don’t really tip for anything else. Nah mate, keep the change.

Scuttle off whilst still putting your coat on.

adam_y , 3 months ago

I don’t know if you are meant too, but at that point it’s all too awkward to know.

Also +1 for the self cut. I’m always good to shave mine with some clippers.

adam_y , 4 months ago

“This shit doesn’t even happen in the US”

Ok, Trump aside, do you remember the US response to the 9-11 attacks?

Israel is bang out of order, but it doesn’t help that the groundwork for dealing with “terrorists” on a global scale was laid by the US.

Remember renaming French fries to “Freedom Fries” because the French dared to oppose the invasion of Iraq, a country that had very little to do with the terrorist act?

adam_y , 4 months ago

Ok, maybe not that blunt, but it was there. The blueprint and the absurd patriotism that wandered into hostile.

France was a US ally too. And the rhetoric coming out wasn’t from some young men that make pop music but from grown men politicians.

US exceptionalism is one of the factors that has led us here, is what I’m saying.

adam_y , 4 months ago

Do you really think there weren’t people in the US, prominent people, people in politics and in the media, calling for the death of innocent Muslims?

There were tons of public calls for some of the most brutal forms of reprisal. There were mass burnings of the Koran.

Did you miss the bit where the US invaded an entire country that had, it turns out, nothing to do with the terrorist attack at all?

I’m not saying any of what is happening in Israel is right. Far from it. But the idea that the US is somehow in a position of moral superiority here is wild.

You seem to be adopting a revisionist past where actually all they did was rename some fries in the cafeteria of their actual government.

The absolute torrent of global hatred that spewed out through the mainstream US media dwarfed what we are currently seeing from Israel, in terms of both soft insinuation and outright calls for death.

adam_y , 3 months ago

I think this is a fair point.

adam_y , 3 months ago

Ah, The international defence of “bygones”.

20 years is a lot of time for a 20 year old, right?

The bigger picture is that 20 years is still very recent history.

That’s like saying that people can’t be upset at other countries for discriminating against LGBTQ+ people because American TV in the early 2000’s had jokes at their expense

Yeah. It is. The fact the US still has TV shows that make those jokes, the very fact that morality is relative to the US is sort of the problem here. At best it is imperialism. At worst it is rank hypocrisy.

adam_y , 4 months ago

Meanwhile the rich people that are responsible for the majority of climate damage stand in their own private collections completely undisturbed.

Sure this grabs headlines, but momentarily and often preaching to the converted or the disenfranchised.

I’m not saying I have any good answers, and I’m sure we’ll all burn and starve thinking of ways to change the minds of people that have power… But there has to be some way to take the protest to them in ways that actually inconveniences them, as opposed to the people that already broadly support this cause.

And yeah, it grabs headlines, briefly, but look at how the media is complicit with the companies and individuals and governments causing the destruction. If they were really bothered about this sort of protest, the chances are you wouldn’t see it. The fact we are seeing it probably means that they’ve evaluated it to cause more contention among the voters, which works in their favour.

I realise I’m starting to sound like a conspiracy nut. Too many references to shady power and control… But sanctioned protest isn’t protest at all. It’s a sideshow that makes people think they are helpless or that work is being done when it isn’t.

And before the “acshurly this wasn’t sanctioned” reply… No, you’re right, not explicitly, but we still allow people to walk into public buildings without the sort of security you find at airports. I do wonder if that will start changing. I already know a few that won’t let you walk around with bags of any kind, and next up comes a frisk and an interview.

adam_y , 4 months ago

Also, it’s good to mention that no damage is being done here. The way some media reports it, you’d swear they were destroying valuable public art. They really aren’t, but it gets spun that way.

adam_y , 4 months ago

“learning that their kids’ art is showing up online, seemingly for a profit.”

Seemingly for a profit?! Nah mate, that’s $100 of pure Crayola on locally sourced printer paper.

adam_y , 4 months ago

Influencers are just fleshy advertising boards.

Let’s not worry about them throwing their toys out of the pram.

adam_y , 4 months ago

Does your dad work at Nintendo too?

(I don’t doubt that this might happen, but you know, going to need some actual evidence, or at least more than random dude twitter stuff)

adam_y , 4 months ago

Doing anything excessively leads to that.

What you are describing is addiction in the broadest terms and really is nothing specific to video games.

adam_y , 4 months ago

I just want to add some context as a person that’s going grey.

You are still incredibly young in your 20s. There’s still so much time left for you.

It’s the ideal time to drop out. Think things over and find some purpose or direction.

Or not.

So much is made about knowing your course in life, when often learning to drift the right way can be far more enjoyable.

So yeah, not exactly a call to hedonism, but try to find what you enjoy and where your ambition lies then make positive steps to get there.

adam_y , 4 months ago

Chap looks like he’s been to sports direct.

adam_y , 4 months ago

knocked over my sports direct mug of tea

adam_y , 4 months ago

I love a good protest … But this isn’t a good protest.

What’s the most important thing?” they shouted. “Art, or right to a healthy and sustainable food?”

Yeah, no. I think in a civilised world we should be able to have both and that sort of argument is weak as fuck.

Destroy all art because it is more important that we conduct research into cot death. Oxygen is more important than art and yet look at you, with your galleries.

It’s infantile posturing of probably well off middle class kids who want their Rosa Parks moment for Instagram clout.

Further to that, attempting to destroy something that essentially belongs to everyone is just going to bring negative press. How about going after something owned by the head of Nestle? No? Is that too difficult and requires too much work?

adam_y , 4 months ago

I get that. And I broadly supported the stop oil protests that took a similar form. But I do take objection to the weird value judgement they are making.

What’s worth more, art or sustainable food…

If I wanted to get complex about it I’d highlight the numerous ways in which art and sustainable agriculture have traditionally interwoven through folk practices, but I’m going to keep it simple and say that the sort of false equivalence they just used is the rhetoric of fascism.

In the UK it is frequently used to defy art that may be oppositional to political and corporate interests.

And that’s it, art is, more than anything, a vector for public discussion and protest in its own right.

Their protest and the reason behind it is fine. The daft shit they said during it undermines everything else and could do easily have been avoided with a small amount of thought.

adam_y , 4 months ago

We are talking about the protest, not the subject of the protest.

That’s one of the problem with protest stunts. They get attention but often the attention drowns out the intent.

adam_y , 4 months ago

Fair question.

I haven’t protested about this specific issue, but I have done about others. Specifically, the erosion of human rights in the UK.

Here’s a video of a performance protest we made last year:

Au

It’s pretty blunt, it’s about how wealth is used to distort rights and the meanings of language. The full thing took over four hours to read out. We held a talk and a symposium as well as educational visits with schools. I’m a big believer in education as social justice.

Hypothetically then, in their case, I would make art that engaged with the subject. Just like picasso did with Guernica, an image that still resonates the horror of war.

adam_y , 4 months ago

I like the Palestinian underpants in the picture, but they look a little too large.

adam_y , 4 months ago

It isn’t genocide, it’s just sparkling human atrocity.

adam_y , 4 months ago

Me: Me: Me: Me: Me: Me:

adam_y , 4 months ago

I was at one for the end. Here’s how we saw it go down.

Hyperbole increased on the upper floor. Lots of "big talk " about the future and less chat about the job at hand.

There was a round of death rattle hiring where a whole bunch of people were added to the team.

Then last in first out.

Some of those new hires were there for less than 3 months before they were let go.

Then bloodletting. One or two redundancies a month. Their work being shared between the remaining staff. Told each round would be the last as the company restructured.

The worst bit, the people being fired knew they were going when they came to work in the morning to find they had been locked out of all the IT systems. They then spent the rest of the day sat around waiting to be summoned to be let go.

Meanwhile, the upper floor seem to be driving new cars and spending a lot of time outside the building. You also notice some new management faces and overhear chat about another business.

This massively increased workload and killed morale. Going to work felt like putting on your dead best buddy’s coat and doing an impression of them to yourself in the mirror whilst you had to hold down your own job, which had gone from pressured with purpose to pointless slog.

But in return you are promised a raise in the future.

And then one day… You turn up. Your team are all stood outside. The doors are locked and the paperwork is on the post. Most of us got paid most of our last paycheck.

adam_y , 4 months ago

Yeah, I don’t mind. Everyone has a survivor story.

Although it is interesting isn’t it… That Linux usage is still seen in opposition to the horrors of windows. I mean, few come here talking about adopting in spite of having a great time with windows, or even without mentioning it at all.

I hope that one day it isn’t seen as an alternative to but as a thing in its own right.

adam_y , 4 months ago

Windoes!

I just meant that Linux, even in these communities is posited as something you try after windows rather than go to first.

Look, I know there’s a certain romantic notion that Linux is “the rebel choice”, but the truth is that it is the normcore backbone of the internet and the go to OS of a ton of academic ecologies.

So yeah, kinda obvious, when you think about it.

adam_y , 5 months ago

Maybe because we don’t want to actively encourage a dystopian hellscape where people deliberately destroy themselves for entertainment.

I know it already happens, but the increased financial incentive will just mean the poor are even more likely to sell their health.

Pretty sure there was a short side mission about that in Phantom Liberty.

adam_y , 5 months ago

No moderation without representation. IOW: mods should be democratically elected.

Yeah, no.

Don’t turn this into a popularity contest. One that can be bought and cheesed.

Who has time for oversight on that? Why not voter id too.

Is this first past the post or proportional representation?

Term limits, right? Does that include a hand over? How much of their term will be spent getting up to speed?

Where is the incentive to someone starting their own community if it is going to be taken from them when they’ve put in hard work for no money. Should they not be rewarded for their labour?

Will the inherent democratisation of communities alter the content posted on them? Should we place bans in meta-political posts that support only the incumbent mod?

What if they choose not to leave? Insurrection? Send in the troops?

My friend, I say this genuinely, you are trying to police the internet. Don’t. It’s a folly.

You have the power to walk away. You have the power to start your own community.

Do it and run it better.

And back to the democracy thing… Democracy is a wonderful thing in the governance of human civilization… It’s not a fix for every situation you encounter that you don’t like. It often means instead of having one asshole to deal with you’ll get a carousel of different assholes on a regular basis.

adam_y , 5 months ago

Just thought, fuck it. Why no add a second elected chamber where each other community can elect a representative to have oversight on everything the mod does?

Let’s democracy the hell out of this.

adam_y , 5 months ago

Hey, the idea might have been a bit dodgy, but you are made of better stuff.

Credit to you.

adam_y , 5 months ago

Pretty sure he’s not in the vacuum of space, but on some sort of vessel that probably has air con.

adam_y , 5 months ago

Good but fake, right?

https://dataconomy.com/2023/12/29/microsoft-edge-deleted-tweet-real-fake/

adam_y , 5 months ago

I don’t have one at all. Spent ages thinking that it was just a figure of speech, but when I found out I became fascinated by it.

The current theory is that at some early point in our evolution we literally had a voice in our head, not unlike how some forms of schizophrenia present.

It’s called the bicameral mind.

https://gizmodo.com/did-everyone-3-000-years-ago-have-a-voice-in-their-head-510063135

In my day to day life it makes little difference however, despite being an avid reader and writer I struggle tremendously to read aloud.

I don’t know for sure but I suspect it is connected.

adam_y , 5 months ago

I worked as a typesetter for years. I have a rather speedy reading pace (it isn’t inate, rather through practice)… but I do wonder if not having to ‘hear’ words changes the rhythm of reading.

I’m also fascinated if other folk perform accents in their head whilst reading? Do different characters sound different or is there one ‘voice’ that acts as a narrator?

adam_y , 5 months ago

I won’t pretend in not a little jealous of that. I can only imagine the texture that adds to a novel. Plus, it’s like a form of creative collaboration… You are present in the text… How cool is that?

adam_y , 5 months ago

Absolutely. I’m no expert, and since there weren’t any studies performed on people from that era, I’d expect it to be taken as a theory rather than a fact.

adam_y , 5 months ago

Interesting you brought up Service… Grew up reading him as he’s from my home town.

I do like poetry, but I’m much more inclined to concrete work, or something closer to what William Burroughs was after.

The shape rather than the rhythm.

Never thought of it that way. Though I still adore Service for the narrative.

I like that your internal monologue is an idealised voice.

adam_y , 5 months ago

Absolutely. My day job is as a conceptual artist (seriously, the hours are good and I get to travel). Visualising objects is a large part of that. I’ve also worked in video game level design and found thinking in terms of 3D space pretty easy too. Just no words in there, or specifically, no voice.

adam_y , 5 months ago

We’re very similar, I think. That externalisation as a way of understanding in particular.

adam_y , 5 months ago

And there’s something else I’m interested in. When you think, do you think in a mixture of those languages? Or do you actively translate? Is it a conscious thing?

adam_y , 5 months ago

You’ve missed off the sausage roll, you absolute savage.

adam_y , 5 months ago

Damn, you’re good.

adam_y , 5 months ago

Imagine a world where billionaires having petty arguments result in…

Yeah, we don’t have to imagine. It’s happening all the time. Shit service from streaming platforms, awful social media services. The very politics of our democracy. The media.

It’s all dick measuring, all the time.

adam_y , 5 months ago

He should have been sacked when he described Stockton – a place ravaged by 13 years of Tory austerity – as a ‘shithole’ during a televised parliamentary session.

Not for calling Stockton a shithole (I love the place but it really is a bit rough), but for being the sort of politician that is so poor at their job that they say stuff like this in front of the public.

adam_y , 6 months ago

Strong hints of Black and White mixed with Spore.

adam_y , 6 months ago

Gun heaven, where they can run around and frolic in the fields and enjoy the rest of their well deserved life.