one under discussed part of the mamdani campaign was the usage of the video filters. every video used the same soft, humanizing tone consistently.
it crafted a world around him. an aesthetic, almost utopian one. close shots, warm tones, delicate pacing. it framed him as the delivery vehicle for a better feeling reality. beautifully cinematic.
no surprise, his mom is a well known filmmaker. this was vibe warfare. & he won. you have to understand how modern culture works in order to partake in it no matter what your underlying mission is.
Brian Eno is donating his royalties from the Window 95 chime to Gaza victims: “If a sound can signal a real change then let it be this one” → https://t.co/w4YLB51ijm
All the focus on tariffs being a haphazardly implemented policy that are failing at their stated goals while making life worse for everyone has distracted from DOGE being a haphazardly implemented policy that is failing at the stated goals while making life worse for everyone.
Basically some people got really mad about wokeness in video games and now tens of thousands of children will develop asthma and their parents will be booted from the Medicaid rolls while billionaires get a tax cut.
anora discourse making me more depressed than any discourse of the last like 5 years. deep sense that anti-art, reactionary and conservative thinking has infected society far beyond electoral politics in a way i’ve not seen ever in my life.
I still can't believe they didn't exempt Canadian oil. They literally built a "higher gas prices" button and pushed it. They acknowledged it was a bad idea to put tariffs on it but decided to do 10% instead of 0. They *literally* built a "higher gas prices" button and pushed it!
Whatever *happens* this does seem to be the idea. It's perfectly coherent, and it is a project that takes the future seriously and is responding in kind, which liberalism can no longer do. That's important to understand I think! https://t.co/bz5zgvSI7I
Ta-Nehisi Coates in Seattle about the Democratic Party in this moment:
“If you can’t stand up against genocide, why should I believe you can stand up for democracy?”
"great books" is having a moment of being right-wing-coded but i promise you, reading your greek and latin classics (as well as your french, german, italian, spanish, arabic, chinese, russian, hebrew, and sanskrit classics) is good for you no matter your politics
Roland Barthes: "Anti-intellectualism is a historical myth, linked no doubt to the rise of the petite-bourgeoisie... yet its *political* danger must not be overlooked: it is quite simply fascism, whose first objective always and everywhere is to liquidate the intellectual class."
Let It Be is such a strange album. There’s not actually a definitive version of it. Phil Spector’s 1970 album is basically a mix, with added instrumentation, and the original album sleeve even stops short of calling him the producer and it’s not like he sat in the studio with the four of them and worked on it. Glyn Johns mix that was released as Get Back on the Let It Be boxset is excellent, though it’s easy to see why it wasn’t released at the time. Too ragged, too rough sounding, and there are some odd song choices on there. For me, this is the one I reach for when I want to hear these songs. Song selections, spot on. Sequencing, perfect. Mixes, sublime. Hearing these versions of Long And Winding Road and Let It Be it becomes obvious which Macca pushed for this project to happen. The intros and ad libs are missing, but the more polished sound brings it in line with the rest of the catalogue. And it’s got Don’t Let Me Down on it, a song that’s just too good to be a B-Side.
One of my wackiest views is that consciousness isn’t a given but something we have to cultivate through the habit of thinking for ourselves so I do think there’s a non-zero chance that AI dependence turns a lot of people into the equivalent of zombies.
I’ve always thought that framing fascism as weakness is the way forward when it comes to messaging
Especially when trying to deradicalize or disinterest young men from it