Nothing To Marvel At

Cleaning out some old boxes and found a story/essay I'd written in elementary school. I was maybe nine years old at the time. The story's arc is pretty simple: space aliens are invading and only specific knowledge of American military hardware can be counted on to save the world (read: America) from whatever thing(s) the invading aliens did different.

The point of this horrific narrative was I thought it would impress my forebears, in this case not only my immediate father but his paternal power figure as well, aka my Grandfather.

So I did my best to imagine - at 7 to nine years of age - what story would appeal to both generations of parentage, the final desired outcome being the opening of the elder family's proverbial purse-strings and elevating me (and by proxy my family) from rural poverty to....well, whatever was better than that.

Which was pretty much everything.

But I digress. My larger point is this:

To me, this is what the Marvel franchise films feel like; someone tried to write a story that was meant to impress their elder family for whatever selfish reasons and what ended up on screen was a perfectly predictable outcome of that.

What does Facebook do with your nude photos?

Quick: before you let your brain trick you into the safety of "probably nothing" please take into consideration these facts:

• software that identifies nude photos has been functioning "in the wild" for over a decade, i.e., it's not new,
• software that takes said photos and automatically archives them is hilariously easy to deploy,
• why wouldn't a team of misogynists dude-bros create their own unique wank-bank of constantly-updating porn courtesy of blissfully unaware women?
• The US political system has a long history of using intimate/private communications to unseat unfavorable actors

Now I'm not saying this is happening - that's silly - I'm saying the probability of this being the case is high enough to warrant a "this is probably happening." I'll leave the implications up to you.

Facebook is a New Thing, insofar as it doesn't really have an analog in history, which means what we learn from it's eventual demise will be new, too.

I don't know what Facebook really is, and neither do you. I have this gnawing sensation that it ultimately serves - somehow - a tiny percentage of powerful people in a way that undermines the rest of our ability to enjoy a functioning society. I'm not sure even deleting Facebook is enough to get away from this thing.

Trump has won.

From Slate:

In October, a three-judge panel intervened in a different case challenging a separate set of Louisiana abortion limitations. The panel declared that abortion providers lacked standing to challenge much or all of the state’s abortion regime, a ploy that can insulate anti-abortion laws from judicial review altogether.

Republican appointees to the 5^th Circuit make little effort to conceal their disgust with abortion. Ho accused women who terminate their pregnancies of furthering eugenics in a December concurrence. (His slander of these women is not only offensive but factually inaccurate.) Ho also praised the “the millions of Americans who believe in the sanctity of life,” insisting that Roe has no “basis in constitutional text or original meaning.” He even urged courts to hold hearings on “fetal pain,” writing: “If courts grant convicted murderers the right to discovery to mitigate pain from executions, there’s no reason they shouldn’t be even more solicitous of innocent babies.”

Where justice goes to die.

It's difficult to communicate how bad this is, as most of us are completely unaware of what a circuit court is, much less the 5th circuit, etc. But none of this is relevant anymore, and short of the icy hand of Death claiming the entire bench during a freak golfing accident, these men have immense power in shaping our day-to-day lives in invisible ways and will continue using it as a blunt hammer against all things different than them.

In my view today, Donald Trump was the Right's endgame: the summary of 30+ years of long-play gaming of the political system to favor highly focused outcomes from voter suppression to court-stacking, and of course, the endless war on women and by proxy, matriarchy.

(This may explain the pseudo-feminist fantasy appeal of Ms. Maisel, a character we are led to believe grew up in New York's upscale Jewish culture but also didn't. I digress...)

I also think contemporary analysis of his "appeal to voters" has been a little too forgiving in its reptilian brain simplicity. His message can be distilled to this: "You can fuck whatever you want."

This...freedom - an unchaining if you will - of the pure ego from all the lassos so peskily adorned by civil inconveniences like morality, law, etc is such a powerful suggestion from the top of America's Mt. Olympus that its easy to miss. I, too, am guilty of overthinking this.

Trump's impeachment will most likely plod along well into the next election cycle, cementing the right's hold on critical political infrastructure. This is foregone at this point.

I am out of answers and energy.

All I have left are warnings.

Things are about to get really bad, and then they'll get worse

I keep coming back to this quote by James Howard Kunstler in 2011:

Blood in the streets. #Charlottesville

"The clowns and villains who run America have accomplished something really epic: they have vanquished meaning. Nobody knows what anything means anymore. Anything goes now. All bets are off. It's not reassuring. It leads to bad things happening like blood in the streets. When nothing means anything anymore, some people will actually strive, make an effort, to reestablish meaning in practical economic and political life, because civilized life is impossible without it. So, in those historic moments when civilization is suspended, people will work like hell to restore meaning. Sometimes though, like Germany in the 1930s, you discover that the suspension of civilization is itself intoxicating, and you ride with that for a while.  

...There are heroes as-yet-sung-and-unsung in America, people who prefer reality over reality TV, people with a taste for meaning in life, which often requires the recognition that some things are true and some not so true, and you're better off with what's true."

And again from 2008(!!!)

This process is really out of control now. The bottom line is the comprehensive bankruptcy of the United States. The Republican Party under George Bush will be known as the party that wrecked America (release 2.0). Painful as it is, Americans had better get a new "Dream" and fast. It better be a dream based on the way the universe actually works, which is to say an operating procedure run on earnest effort and truthfulness rather than merely trying to get something for nothing and wishing on stars. We might begin symbolically by evacuating Las Vegas and calling in an air strike on the loathsome place -- to register our new reality-based attitude adjustment.

After that, we've got to get to work re-tooling all the everyday activities of life, including the way we grow our food, the way we raise and deploy capital, the way we do trade and manufacturing, the way we go from point A to point B, the way we educate children, the way we stay healthy, and the way we occupy the landscape. I know, it sounds like a lot, maybe too much. But grok this: we don't have any choice if we want a plausible future on this portion of the North American continent.

Of course, none of that is likely to happen. Instead, and under the worst imaginable economic conditions, we'll probably embark on a campaign to prop up the un-prop-up-able and sustain the unsustainable -- that is, defend every status quo habit and behavior that we're used to, whether it can be salvaged or not. Of course, this would be a fatal squandering of our dwindling resources, but it it tends, historically, to be the last act of the melodrama in any faltering empire.




An American corn-pone Hitler.

The result, pretty soon into that process, will be social breakdown and political upheaval. Every tattoo freak out there who has been prepping for his own starring role in some kind of comic book armageddon will finally get his chance to shine. Lots of people will get hurt and starve. Property will change hands in a disorderly way. And at the end of this process an American corn-pone Hitler may be waiting to set everything and everyone straight.

 And now a nod to Hannah Arendt:

Arendt had a deep insight into something that we are living through now. The very categories of truth vs. falsehood and facts vs. lies are in the process of being obliterated. Consequently, the possibilities for lying become boundless and frequently meet with little resistance. Lies are frequently used to deliberately deceive – to present a falsehood as if it were the truth. This still presupposes a distinction between lies and factual truth. But Arendt emphasises that something new occurs when the deceiver comes to believe his own lies. She points out how difficult it is to lie consistently without coming to believe in the “truth” of one’s own lies. Many liberals are perplexed that when there is “fact-checking” – when it is clearly and definitively shown that a lie is a lie – many people seem unconcerned and indifferent. But Arendt understood how propaganda really works. “What convinces masses are not facts, not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system of which they are presumably a part.” People who feel that they have been neglected and forgotten yearn for a narrative – even an invented fictional story – that will make sense of the anxiety they are experiencing – one that promises some sort of redemption. In such a situation an authoritarian leader has enormous advantages by exploiting anxieties and creating a fiction that people want to believe. Argument and appeal to facts have little effectiveness is the face of such “persuasive” techniques – amplified by social media that penetrate our privacy and are so powerful in shaping opinions and beliefs. A fictional story that promises to solve one’s problems is much more appealing than facts and “reasonable” arguments. Arendt warns us that these dangers helped to smooth the way for the success of totalitarian regimes. These are the dangers that we face today in an alarming fashion.

I want to make a quick - albeit irresponsible - connecting point about modernism / postmodernism. For the purposes of this essay, "modernism" being a shorthand for the idea that "if you work hard enough, you will eventually reach some kind of truth."

This picture of a cat on a stump is entitled
to the same attention as your
medical fundraiser.

Postmodernism, by contrast, holds that ALL MEDIA is inherently equal and ultimately deserves an audience. No single media can be held above another.

The tension this society is feeling is these two diametrically opposed philosophies battling for dominance in our collective cerebral cortex as we try to solute the insoluble.

These cannot co-exist, and no, simply saying so in a Facebook comment won't change this.

Because all media is inherently equal, we cannot make sense of what's true. Even our "news" sites work to distract us from their own work by placing adverts and countless breaks between the paragraphs, annihilating the ability to create context or transfer knowledge.  

Most of us, given the option, will rate our own reading comprehension level at "collegiate" without once questioning what reading level someone who holds an actual degree might select. We tend to overestimate our own intelligence and relevant skillset(s).

Typically, metacognition and comprehension performance are highly related; that is, less skilled comprehenders often fail to adjust their reading in relation to reading goals and they tend to overestimate their own comprehension abilities.

But when tested, most people actually land in the middle-school region of reading and language comprehension. When polled afterwards, most people think the survey/poll/experiment is rigged against them.

Voting matters.
(source: Graphs.net)

Which leads me to practical challenges in voting...

"The problem" with voting lies in how the system places equal value on votes when voters are mostly unequal. A 23-year old bilingual single mother who's holding down two part time jobs has different political needs than an 86 year old retirement-home resident who can no longer distinguish between times of day or understand how door handles work. And the irony of contemporary culture is both these people will spend 4-6 hours a day in the same building/space but operate under different realities.

That we are ok being ignorant about these arrangements is one of the many reasons why we've become comfortable (and complicit) in our feeling of powerlessness.

Working backwards, I believe our feeling(s) of powerlessness are driven by a coterie of intersecting forces: a political voting system that is paralyzed by our larger cultural inability to arrive at a reasonable consensus about the reality in which we inhabit, driven in part by widespread - and fundamental - misunderstandings about how the world functions.

And without these agreements, a functioning, civil society becomes really challenging if not impossible after a certain point, and at a time when global warming is driving human migration to historic levels, we are up against a set of challenges that we might be uniquely incapable of meeting because we don't agree which things are true. And its the shared truths upon which we build meaning.

Photo of New Orleans by TheDailyBeast

And this is why I think (today) "things" (read: the ability for a functioning government to deliver political goods, ala clean water, electricity, emergency services, law enforcement, etc) are going to get worse for a while - not better. Our current structures of governance seem well-tuned to the needs of historic demographics, but terrible at planning for new ones. (See: Hurricane Katrina)

Two closing thoughts: 1) I wish I had a clever quip or philosophical quote to summarize all of this with a simple, memetic hot-take, but I don't, and 2) I want to be wrong about all of this.
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Note to readers: I have most likely misunderstood Modernism/Postmodernism and it's probably not the correct reference, so I'm open to editing ideas💖💖

Suggested Reading:

Naomi Klein - The Shock Doctrine

Hanna Arendt: The Origins of Totalitarianism
  
Effects of reading goals on reading comprehension, reading rate, and allocation of working memory in children and adolescents with spina bifida meningomyelocele

Hello Ladies - A Boilerplate Group Introduction for Enlightened Men That Are Definitely Not Here For Sex

Hello, ladies!

IRONY!

I said that because I know I'm not supposed to say that, but I'm a naughty little boy who's mischievous energy you won't find unappealing or creepy, ladies!

I'm enlightened enough to be both literal and ironic at the same time, ladies!

Did I mention this post is for the ladies?

Thank you for inviting me to your group of many genders, even though this first hello post is for you, ladies!

I'm excited to be here! Look at how many words I'm putting into this post! Did I mention I know you ladies like to read? I know what you ladies need – it's all I think about!

Check out these not-at-all-staged-or-curated photos of me! Don't I look the opposite of old and desperate? See all these activities I'm busy doing, ladies?

Gosh, I'm so active I barely had time to pose for these photos! Lucky for me there just happened to be a tripod with a camera mounted on it at the exact moment I was jetting from one activity to the next, probably meeting some ladies!

I posted this next photo because I feel good in it, and what's the crime in feeling good about yourself, AMIRITE, ladies?

Speaking of feeling good, ladies....

...here's a bunch of words that would be right at home on a FetLife profile but here they're just intended as harmless fun because I'm fun and a little bit of a boundary pusher but also literally I am thinking about doing this incredibly specific act that actually requires tons of upfront conversations about consent, which, incidentally I may or may not have a history of being bad at, so hopefully all these words will serve as a way for me to segue to “Consent is sexy, AMIRITE, ladies?!”

Oh man, and speaking of sexy, I'll go right ahead and just volunteer some deeply personal preferences and needs in hopes of attracting all of you while offending none of you. Because I also believe in equality, I'm attracted to all ladies, especially in the bedroom, ladies!

Are there men in this group, ladies? Don't worry, they are invisible to me as they should be to you. Have any of them typed this many words for you to read? Of course not, they're not thinking about your needs the way I am, ladies...

Oh, did you bring up needs? Because if you have any needs, ladies, you should feel safe and free to express them to me so that I alone may meet them on my terms, which will also be your terms because I will have sensed them beforehand with my superior male-enlightenment skills. One more note on consent – it's soooo sexy, right ladies?

I'll be DM'ing you soon, ladies!

New Song - "I Don't Dream (That Its Over)"

I've got a new song out that's currently in video-only form. It's become the #1 post of all time on our official Facebook page.

Enjoy and we hope to sing for you soon!

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Spotify | Soundcloud | Facebook | Instagram

Buy The512EP online

Everything You Need To Know About The Dakota Pipeline Protests In One Photo

Everything is right here.

Assumption #1: You  have an opinion about this.


Assumption #2: You are mostly misinformed.

Assumption #3: This is by your own choice.

Hats off to NBC photographer Jim Seida who captured this perfect image. A man chopping wood (hydrocarbons) framed by a pair of woodpiles (hydrocarbons) in front of a teepee (cultural appropriation?) while automobiles (hydrocarbons) and other tents (oil byproducts) sit in the background.

Working backwards: the people at this protest have nothing better (employment) to do, so they'll need to survive on the cheap. Thankfully, petroleum byproducts have flooded markets with inexpensive survival products ala tents, campstoves, bottled water, porta-potties, Dodge motor vehicles, and of course, coffee. (Ask any one of these people to give up their cheap coffee and they'll be the first to start welding this fucker together. But that's just an obvious digression...)

... the teepee is there for marketing. Because comfortable RV's would send the wrong signal. So they'll have a teepee with all the comforts of an RV...

..the wood is there for irony and cognitive dissonance. The protectors of the earth haven't bothered to read about how bad burning wood is for the environment and people who inhale the smoke, but this isn't about global warming: this is narcissism dialed to eleven, or as those in the marketing trades call it, "YouTube."

At the top of the hill that overlooked the main camp, a woman took a photo of her young daughter standing against the edge of the scene

Below, the muted echo of ax blows could be heard. The drumbeat pulsed on, a horsed whinnied. Everything smelled like fire.

 A stronger indictment couldn't be made more cleverly. A woman documents (for social media) her identity (via her daughter) while burning every form of energy in their grasp.

They will lose.

Casino

Imagine walking into a casino – with the usual poor lighting and hypnotic sounds of other people winning – and as you're walking through you see person after person hitting their jackpot, some small, some large. Their machines blink and sing and drop shiny coins. People smile.

You put a couple coins into a nearby machine and play a few spins, but nothing quite plays out and your return is minimal at best.

Not quite discouraged, you move to a different machine (maybe one with a different strategy) and try a few spins. Once again, the payoff is almost nothing.

Down to your last few coins, you try a third machine, one that somehow sticks out now that you're down to your last chance.

You put in your last coins and pull the lever. The spinners whirl around, their symbols a blur of colors. Suddenly, the first one clicks in “Lucky 7.” Then the next, Lucky 7 again. And again.

One by one the little cylinders stop on the Lucky 7, all across the line.

Jackpot.

…...Jackpot!

…...Jackpot??

The machine remains silent. No celebratory revelry. No lights. No payout.

You stand there in shock.

Then, Kubler Ross sets in: Denial (this is not happening!), Anger (WHAT THE ACTUAL GODDAMN FUCK!!), Bargaining (“Can someone get over here and fix this?”), Depression (“I'll never be lucky again!”), Acceptance (“Maybe casinos aren't for me.”) and in some cases, Resolution (Burn down the casino.)

There are no factories in Eden.

For children of the suburbs, this metaphor rings deep and true.

Here are the reasons why:

Suburban children have strong social incentives as most of the suburban world is comprised of social interaction. This is because everything is already built in the burbs – there's no community barnraising, so to speak.

By design, the means of production are squirreled away nearer the poorer communities, who's members survive on utilitarian skills: recreational drug production, vehicle maintenance, and sex. The result is a disconnect: those raised in the suburbs may have magical ideas about how the world they live in is actually put together/functions, and may reasonably assume its a result of “who you know” rather than what you've produced for who you know. That's “The Secret” as understood by electrical contractor Benjamin Franklin.

Ask most suburbanites about their life goals and the word “Successful!” crashes forth with all the energy of “Totally gonna do it!” Their success formula goes like this: (Right Connections) + (Right Parties) + (Aspirational Sex Partners) x Positivity = Leisure Income.

They want to walk into that casino, hit a jackpot on the first machine, then retire to what they've always aspired to in the first place: pornography producers.

This is a porn magazine.

And if by “pornography” your brain thinks “sex” you should rethink how you've been marketed to market yourself. Ask anyone what they're going to do with their success money and there's only one response: “Travel.”

In the Facebook Age, this means selfies in other countries, a powerful social totem of class aspiration and imagined income potential. The porn you will produce is for yourself in that it will feature you as the subject doing things you will only do once but represent yourself has “having done.”

You will need to read those sentences ten times to let them sink in.

But what if you miss out on the jackpots and porn? What then? How does the ego cope with steady elimination of possible identities?

The Answer: by eliminating the need for multiple identities in the first place.

How? Learn to build or fix something.

That's all there is to it.

And stay out of the casinos.

Stream THE512EP on Soundcloud

My EP "THE512EP" is now available for free streaming on Soundcloud. Five *fantastic* songs that you've probably not heard.

Thank you for giving this music a chance.