The Soft Monolith

A vague shape. Things form, but where are the limits??
"It wasn’t a business plan."

[The Soft Monolith @TheSoftMonolith]

This will always be my idea of the ideal art. Paul is the best!!

[Soviet Visuals @sovietvisuals]

"The Voyage". Excerpt from 1970 Polish animated film.

[Dr Shrimp Puerto Rico ☘️🇧🇷🇲🇽🔻 @LadPsycho]

The most badass thing about Parasyte's manga is how the mangaka drops this banger quote about US presidency

[The Soft Monolith @TheSoftMonolith]

I keep getting lost (feeling bad) "forgetting" you should make art for you, like the way you like it. Especially now. And art is especially important now, with the way the world is. All art is important. Do art!

[femiiiiii. @femiiiszn]

unlearn shame. all forms of shame: unemployment, illness, vulnerability, longing, desire, errors, failures. you do not need to feel ashamed of what you are experiencing or living. freedom and shame cannot coexist.

[The Sting @TheStingisBack]

"Ninety years ago, I was a freak. Today, I'm an amateur."
Jack the Ripper, telling H.G. Wells he belongs in the 20th century in Time After Time (1979), gets more terrifying every year because it’s dead-on. If he were killing in 2026, it wouldn’t even make the front page.

[The Soft Monolith @TheSoftMonolith]

The simple things you miss in life. The way nobody else will ever get it. They have their things.

[Finn McKenty @thefinnmckenty]

The masculine urge to create RPGs with impossibly complex battle systems with such a steep learning curve that they feel like a second job

[The Soft Monolith @TheSoftMonolith]

a dove. yesterday.

[Rory Blank @BoneJail]

Peter Thiel has James Bond strapped to a table, some sort of lethal contraption getting to mangle Bond

Thiel: well Bond I… i uh i uhhhgh well uhhh i you see i uh uhh uhh the thing is well i uh but but but but but well i i i i i i but uhhhh

Peter Thiel begins sweating profusely

[borkedsys @borkedsys]

Post-scarcity politics would stop asking “how do we grow the economy?” and start asking “what forms of suffering are now technically unnecessary?” That is the question power avoids because the answer points straight at its business model.

[octopus/caveman @octopuscaveman]

The smartphone really revolutionized the waiting room. Oh I get 20 minutes to look at my phone? Don’t mind if I do. The only problem is sometimes when I’m looking at my phone at home my home starts to feel like a waiting room and I realize it is and I’m just waiting to die

[C. P. Serret @LeProjetSerret]

This is actually what worked for STAR WARS (1977), and it fell apart as soon as they demystified everything.

[Arnold Schwarzenegger @Schwarzenegger]

Nope! I always say there is no such thing as self-made. It’s a myth.

It took millions of people - from my parents to mentors to friends to competitors to fans and voters - to write my success story. I did not write it alone.

That’s the American Dream - not a lie about going it alone - but the truth that none of us do, and there is always someone with their hand out to lift us up.

[borkedsys @borkedsys]

Post-scarcity is not a utopia where nothing has limits. It is a society mature enough to know which limits are ecological and which limits are artificially imposed to preserve profit.

[The Soft Monolith @TheSoftMonolith]

This photo is exactly 10 years old today.

[Boze Herrington, Library Owl 😴🧙‍♀️ @SketchesbyBoze]

In a world where the majority of people still read myth, poetry, classic literature, chatbots would never have found purchase. No one can convince you AI can write like Shakespeare if you’re familiar with Shakespeare. The collective rejection of literacy has left us easy prey.

[ᑎEOᑎ @neonarcadegrant]

I'm seeing many people having a hard time understanding why Sony would make a number of unpopular "anti-consumer" moves in rapid sequence. You need to realize it's because you are no longer the consumer.

If you are one of the few who doesn't have a completely fried attention span, I can explain a bit of what's actually going on and why technology feels like shit now.

Many of us living through this shift grew up during a time when new tech felt exciting. Gaming consoles, arcade games, computers, and other devices were targeted directly at us, and evolution was rapid. Consumerism was always present, but so was abundant creativity, and companies’ stated goal was to generate profit by providing ways to make life more entertaining and enriching; marketing creative, innovative technology to own, maintain, and use.

With the rise of the Internet, this focus began to shift. Attention became the new commodity, as did the control of information. Engineering machines became less important than social engineering, and we became the product rather than the market. Aesthetic design, reparability, and functionality became pointless; none of that is required to extract information from you on an industrial scale.

The result of this shift is what we're beginning to see openly now: centralization via AI, mass surveillance, and ownership of absolutely nothing. This new model is built on profiling the most efficient ways to lock you into a maze of subscription services and endless debt, while giving you the means to distract yourself just enough to never become a threat to these objectives.

Understand that Sony is not doing anything here other than following the blueprint that many other tech companies and governments have drafted. They know it’s wildly unpopular, which is why the gaslighting is required. It’s why Sony’s short announcement of ending physical media uses the term, "As consumer preferences change..." four times. It’s to convince you that you have no choice, and that all of this is just technological determinism at work.

Technological determinism is a scam. You still have a free will choice. All you need to do is stop investing your time and money into a system that has zero benefit to you, and instead start enjoying older technology and tools that you can use and maintain; or even more importantly, support new stuff built like the old stuff was. Once enough “product” (i.e. you) is removed from the marketplace, it will cease to be useful to the people who built it. The machine will seize, and we can start making a lot of really cool things again. That’s all that is required.

In the words of Ferris Bueller, "The question isn't, 'What are we going to do?' The question is 'What aren't we going to do?'”

So, what aren't you going to do?

[derek guy @dieworkwear]

The women in this video are engaging in a process known as waulking, which was historically done by soaking tweed in stale urine, then beating it until it softened and shrank. As urine ferments, it breaks down into ammonia, which cuts through the lanolin (grease) inherent in wool

[Dead Wrong History @deadwronghist]

David Foster Wallace on Charlie Rose, 1996, twelve years before he killed himself: "Compulsory viewing of television is evil. One of the last refuges in which we can read are these interstitial zones, waiting for planes, check-out lines. Now airports have televisions."

[august @regularaugust]

They did it. By god, they did it