It shifted to the curvilinear, at which point science stopped being celebrated for its function, its efficiency, its universality, and became a thing of elegance, individuality. Zaha Hadid, Goldie's snaking drum edits, the iMac, bestselling books on string theory. The point where technology/science started to replace vodka as the opiate of the masses.

Zaha Hadid's yacht (an opiate, but obviously not for the masses):

that's brilliant. i probably see a lot less of this elegance than the rest of you since i live surrounded by bumpkins who think electricity is witchcraft.

the more you guys ask me to talk, the more stupid i feel

In a way that's my point. Not that you live around bumpkins but that the curvilinear, for me the defining 'shape' of a postmodern/neoliberal aesthetic, just as the square defined modernism's, remystified technology, in a way turning electricity back into witchcraft. Postmodern theory did this to the point where we were encouraged to admire the elegance of its argument more than its practical use, going from theory as tool to theory as art. Everything has become aestheticised, including protest. The Libertines lyric, "did you see the stylish kids in the riot?" Nails it. Death by elegance.

2014 is so old man like we. we've all had our dicks sucked by our fav porn star by now so who really gives a doo doo. pop music is a over-exaggeration of the past, so i let the government handle my shit now because i don't care about nothing outside my immediate thoughts and cares.

the further i get from any decade is favorable on my part. don't want no anger or apocalypse. just lack of shallowness.

More Beatriz Preciado
 

As a contraceptive method, feminism could have made masturbation obligatory, promulgated a sexual strike among heterosexual and fertile women, and advocated lesbianism en masse; made it obligatory to tie the fallopian tubes at adolescence - and legalized abortion and made it free - if not permitting infanticide when necessary. And there is a political fiction scenario that could have been even more promising, it was possible from a biotechnological point of view, to require all women who are of child bearing age to take a monthly microdose of testosterone, as both a contraceptive method and a political method of regulating gender. Such a method would have ended once and for all sexual differentiation and the hegemony of heterosexuality. This doesn't mean that cis-females (on testosterone) would stop having sex with cis-males, but the act would not continue to be interpreted as purely heterosexual. It would have no reproductive goal; in addition, it would no longer be a question of an encounter between two people of opposite sexual orientations, but rather, with two people of gay orientation with the added possibility of vaginal penetration. Post war feminism could have concerned itself with the management of the cis-male body and declared it to be of national interest: castration, male homosexuality, the obligatory use of condoms, the sealing of the seminal channel, mass administration of Androcur (to lower the production of testosterone in cis-males) and so on. Yes, there were other possibilities, but liberal feminism made a pact with the pharamcopornographic regime. - Beatriz Preciado - Testo Junkie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFuIB...=share&index=3

youtube is "featuring" videos about the "cancer conspiracy" to me. fuck off and die you pieces of shit.

I think that is the defining aspect of the 2000s era (not just musically, politics, economics, culture, everything is too damned 'whatever').. the last time people of any genre of music made a record that was even remotely pissed the fuck off was 1999.. We fear lost the Battle For Los Angeles

http://piercepenniless.wordpress.com...02/07/justice/

This reduction of political activity to a system of lobbying via moral shame is more widespread – many also talk about strike action or more targeted protest action in the same way. But it’s a rare case where mere moral embarrassment can avert economic policy or force a capitalist employer to behave better – were it otherwise, we’d already be living post-capitalism.

Relevant to your discussion of the decline of anger in culture.

Got to say though, nothing quite gets you going than the likes of THIS

Maybe if we can't have the kind of anger RATM had, we could still have a kind of disgusted anger that was aware of its own futility. Even that would be better than the sunshiney indie crap we've been barraged with ever since bands like RATM went into decline.

i think that's pretty astute suchfriends - the defining characteristic of 00's culture was the loss of anger.

i dont think people became more conformist, just too disgusted and exhausted and disempowered and confused to even WANT to do something.

im amazed at how testify by RATM can be read as a literal prophecy of what would happen in the years after it was released.

The entire problem with RATM is after 1992 they weren't angry either! They gave into themselves, they collapsed under the fame like Nirvana did, but in a different way. You're right, its not just bands like Rage, in rap the Fugees became an early version of the Black Eyed Peas (i.e. a commercial piece of cultural shit), dead prez dropped off the radar and Killah Priest was so discouraged he went into a kind of monastic approach to underground rap scene.


It seems that the entirety of the 2000s has been one big, cosmic, fucking shoulder shrug. People were "pissed off" during the Bush era, but did it end the wars? Reduce the growing corruption? Empower the people? Obama is a symptom of our collective sigh of complacency. People have sincerely
adopted the, "Hey it could be worse, love it or leave it" cynical optimism.

yeah, and also the biggest problem of all the fact that from the 00's on the only kind of understanding we had of ourselves was as individuals, and so our rage cant connect to a wider project in any other way but consumerism. so you end up with people medicating themselves in lonely depression. everything becomes a personal problem.

I'm glad you picked up on the less than subtle rage reference.. I really liked that band, lyrically. If folks read the lyrics sheet and had no idea who that band was or have any of the MTV baggage, I think they'd be impressed. Self/Titled is still a masterpiece of intellectualized angst, and not just of the teenage variety. It was pissed off for a good fucking reason, it so poetically encapsulated ALL the post-Vietnam, fuck Reagan rage that defined that era..

1992 was a watershed year, we had the LA Uprising that year for a reason. It was a conclusion of the previous 25 years.. The corporations had finally sunk their teeth back into America, dominating LA real estate. Schools had collapsed under their own weight as a kind of racist retaliation to LBJ's efforts at a great society. In 1876 the US Federal troops withdrew from Southern occupation and ALL of the black institutions were destroyed, Jim Crow was retaliation for those uppity Negros. Well, 1980 "its morning in America" era is THE SAME FUCKING THING. White, redneck, rich America said, "FUCK LBJ AND HIS SOCIETY." They took back. Jim Crow returned in different ways, under corporate guises. Why are over half of Americans working in shit service jobs for minimum wage or slightly more? Oh right, corporate America took over and put everybody "in their place."

Rage Against The Machine Self Titled reflected what everybody in LA felt like before 1992. The Uprising was the final turning of the tide.. After that LA felt like we could take it back. To live in post-Uprising LA from 1993-2000 was a beautiful thing, to watch what was realistically a Third World nation suddenly shake off all its shit and start inching towards becoming Finland...

But like I said, I fear we lost the Battle For Los Angeles....

We got greedy, we started to think it was easy, and that became our complacency. We gave LA back to the assholes. We gave the country back to the assholes. We traded our reality for Starbucks and Samsung.

"What do you want a Lexus or justice, a Beamer or substance?" Dead Prez

must spread rep

when these arrive in the post i'll do reviews or something





kroker is one of the best theorists writing today.

small victories are still important.

what you have, even though you feel defeated, looks like utopia compared to the place i live. and where i live almost IS utopia compared to some other places in the world

rome wasn't built in a day. likewise a technologically advanced post capitalist society free from militarism and poverty won't spring up over night.

Oh, we don't feel defeated quite yet, just some of the teeth of our attack have worn down.. In 1992 Los Angeles was a frightening place. In 1993 it seemed like we just came out of the bottom of the deep side of the pool. By the last 1990s so much was improving and changing so fast. I'm talking substantive improvements in housing, employment, and education along with significant reduction in crime that was at war-zone capacity. Yet much like the high water mark Hunter Thompson spoke about, it seems like 2000 was the point when this collective cultural wave crested and began to recede back towards what it had been replacing. You can even document across Rage albums the progress. Where Self-Titled was fierce, Evil Empire was more optimistic and reflected this cultural shift towards awareness in Los Angeles (a rise in culture centers, the arts, community projects, street music, food, activism in local politics, significant curricula shift).. Battle For Los Angeles then reflected the progress by 2000. It was a bit more mature, toned down. Almost like a victory lap. Perhaps we celebrated too soon yo..

On the plus side, we didn't totally lose all that we had gained, rather the problem is we kind of just stopped midway and settled for that. We still got work to do.

CUPCAKE FASCISM

If a fascist reich was to be established anywhere today, I believe it would necessarily have to exchange iron eagles for fluffy kittens, swap jackboots for Converse, and the epic drama of Wagnerian horns for mumbled ditties on ukuleles.

i've been talking about this (in far less coherent terms) on syg for years now

html giant explains what a literary career means in 2014 and how you can (never) get one:

20) Laconically lose your virginity, partially peruse Nietzsche, go and graduate from college, and move into a cheap apartment at the cheap side of town; now start a Tumblr, using one of their free minimalist themes, and begin liking the posts of whom you perceive to be your ideal peers, the ostensible “in crowd” to which you wish to gain entry; begin liking, favoriting, reblogging, and retweeting the respective content of these people, all of these people, all of the time, consistently for 2-3 months until you garner reactionary clicks to your own Tumblr, whose most recent post (at this point) should be a 0:46 second clip of you eating a mango alone in your room, with contemporary rap in the background. Click on the avatar of the first person to like your video, who may be on the masthead of a new literary journal. Do not open Microsoft Word, or Google docs; simply compose a new Gmail and begin writing down any erratic thoughts or feelings you may be having, using a line break every time a particular thought or feeling has ended. If you are on any drugs, please list them. If you have just binged on calorically dense food, or if you are starving yourself, please include those details. At the end of 16-18 of these thoughts or feelings, title the poem—call these sets of thoughts or feelings “poetry” from now on—by the most evocative or oblique line therein, and email the poem to the editor who liked the clip of you eating a mango; when, five days later, your poem is published, take a screenshot of the poem and post it to your Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, whose subsequent journey of likes, favorites, reblogs, and retweets will legitimize, perhaps even historicize, the publishing of the poem as some kind of formidable event. You will shortly be invited to read at a reading in New York City, reasonably located within a three hour radius of your current residence. Take a train to the reading, live-tweeting sardonic remarks about your fellow riders, and optimally arrive some four hours earlier so that you can indiscreetly have upwards to seven Pabst Blue Ribbons at the host’s apartment, gleeful footage eventually captured into a 6:13 min Vimeo whose main conceit is the pre- and post-reading fun times that everyone had, shot, edited, and posted by the host, who wanted you there because you are beautiful.

the unknown known

10/10

-

the definitive masterpiece of post modernity. american experimental arthouse film.

a lying war criminal plays donald rumsfeld, former bush admin defense sectary, who in this documentary interview questions the possibility that truth is knowable while interspersed footage of his press conferences disprove the truth of the very things he previously says.

the film cost the lives of over half a million iraqis to make and is definitive proof of the unknowability of all knowledge and the nihilistic chaos of existence, the failure of morality and the essence of human thought being opportunistic, biased, and unafraid of hypocrisy.

heavily influenced by zen philosophy, illustrating such truisms as "the more delusions are recognized, the more deluded a man is".

No matter how we feel, we abide in the nature of mind;
No matter how we live, we stay in the nature of mind;
No matter how we move, we move in the nature of mind.
In luminous spaciousness, coming and going are impossible –
No movement in the victors’ dimension!
Whatever we say reverberates as mind's nature;
Whatever is expressed is articulated as mind's nature:
In luminous mind no verbal expression manifests,
For the speech of the victors is ineffable.
Whatever ideas emerge are thought as the nature of mind;
Whatever concepts emerge are conceived as the nature of mind:
In luminous mind ideas and concepts never truly exist
For the mind of the victors is a thoughtless mind.

im done reviewing stuff. like putting good adjectives in front of it.

so just take this thread as my directions of what you should do. follow the commands without judging them or questioning them. it will work if you are prepared to let it.

krokers exits to the post human future is worth buying. drones, tech and possibly the only serious analysis of the obama era war state that ive seen.

baudrillard books i now own:

system of objects
ecstacy of communication
screened out
paroxysm
radical alterity
the perfect crime
impossible exchange
passwords
exiles from dialogue
spirit of terrorism
telemorphosis
cool memories 4
agony of power
carnival or cannibal

i will have them all and they will sit on a shelf. because noone is smarter than an object.

this badass abandoned the subject back in the 60's. yall aint even catched up yet except for scott bakker.

OOO think they have but they jus wanna enter totally into simulation. fools.

^ he's very good at dissecting the vortex of signs, but my problem with him is that he seems to believe that all that's out there is just signs

it's berkeley's idealism all over again

sorry, no. reality cackles at language, at culture, at human understanding, etc.

this is an 18th century fable that i don't care to translate but here's the copypaste of it

Por entre unas matas,
seguido de perros,
no diré corría,
volaba un conejo.

De su madriguera
salió un compañero
y le dijo: «Tente
amigo, ¿qué es esto?».

«¿Qué ha de ser?», responde;
«sin aliento llego...;
dos pícaros galgos
me vienen siguiendo».

«Sí», replica el otro,
«por allí los veo,
pero no son galgos».
«¿Pues qué son?» «Podencos».

«¿Qué? ¿podencos dices?
Sí, como mi abuelo.
Galgos y muy galgos;
bien vistos los tengo».

«Son podencos, vaya,
que no entiendes de eso».
«Son galgos, te digo».
«Digo que podencos».

En esta disputa
llegando los perros,
pillan descuidados
a mis dos conejos.

Los que por cuestiones
de poco momento
dejan lo que importa,
llévense este ejemplo.

he thinks the world is an illusion.

he isn't saying that it's "just signs". he's saying that we don't have access to the "real" beneath the signs either.

right-- but the real has access to us-- all the time.

he really lost me when in the post-mortem condition when he tries to talk about science.

i dont think idealism is quite right. there was a time in structuralism/post structuralism when some of those guys literally thought everything was made out of language. baudrillard was beyond that.

in that fable, two rabbits are arguing about what kind of dogs are chasing one of them.

while they're at it, the dogs eat them.

post mortem condition lol

yeah some of the things he says are just - you know - not true or whatever. made up stuff.

i recommend reading agony of power.

you still gonna get got even if you cling to your (illusiory) grasp of the real.

noone reads him anymore.

they all HATE him. all those crit theory uni upper class marxist douches.

they bitch about his nihilism, or they ignore him. they really really dont like him.

which is a good endorsement as far as im concerned.

they think the sneering that comes out of their little clique constitutes some sort of radical political engagement so fuck 'em.

its interesting how he has been (mis)interpreted. accused of saying the gulf war didn't actually happen (nope), accused of being some sort of solipsist that claimed we cant know whats real because of tv. the fact he was accused of this says a lot about the secret desires of the accusers.

he's actually more rational and level headed than those people are.

well, yes, he could be entertaining. he was a great bullshitter!

i came across an old leninist blog from the UK - from like 2004 or something. and it has this little aside dissing baudrillard for going 'too far' and then it says we're gonna get together and bring george bush to trail for war crimes. like it literally said it would do this.

vindicated.

oh, the gauche caviars! well… sure. anyone compares positively to those charlatans.

he did a lot less bullshitting than people want to credit him for.

makes some pretty direct statements about the future of humanity in the agony of power.

a serious thinker who people wanted to bring down to the level of exactly the kind of nonsensical media bs that only he seemed to TRULY see through.

he's saying the opposite of what people think he is. they are really the ones being fooled.