# day lab log daily lab rnd notes / micro quest logs direct from the fictional 'republic of bob' newest entries at the top === # thurs 7th august saw a half dead wood pigeon dying of thirst on the footpath today it was so sad to see it suffering - an immature bird by the look of it i didn't know if it was ill had simply bashed into a tree or had a wing caught by a local cat in any case it just lay there among the leaves panting a hot humid day you could tell it was half dead from lack of water i didn't know what to do i thought about calling the rspb feeling bad i ended up just walking on by another bad decision as usual informed only by laziness and possible inconvenience (certainly an inconvenience for the bird if i do diddly squat) on the way back from the shops i saw it again but this time it lay in the middle of the path i stared at it thinking it dead but then it suddenly half flapped and i was startled it really looked on its way out so i gently picked it up placed it deeper into the bushes down among the soft leaves it just lay there and did not move even now this late in the evening however i still feel bad at not doing more perhaps i could of saved it i don't know i don't think so at least that's what i'm telling myself i feel like josh brolin's character llewelyn in no county for old men when he goes back out with some water for that half dead guy except i'm still slouched here on my fat ass on the couch and the wood pigeon is still out here un-watered i hope the poor bird has expired by now it's awful to think of it just laying there in pain - alone and afraid in the dark just waiting for a cat to tear it to sheds my father used to have a parrot wesley and despite it continually pecking me real painful like i still loved that silly thing no; i should have done more i was just too afraid and lazy - in many ways the story of my pathetic nowhere life === # tue 15th aug recently wrote off to internet archive about setting up an art archive email: info at archive.org title: request for individual artist art-archiving dear internet archive greetings from the uk i'm an internet philosopher and conceptual net artist seeking to use archive.org as the main site for archiving my free (in as libre+cost) art projects. would this be possible? * my main site - https://publish.obsidian.md/republicofbob * my current site for hosting art projects - https://robert-what.itch.io/ my reasons for asking your help and advice: recent censorial policy changes by itch.io are disagreeable to me as someone interested in the arts community and the philosophy of archive.org has long been in line with my own regarding historical archiving public education and the arts in general. (as a data hoarder i've also a keen interest in digital archaeology and deep diving for bits of cultural gold) i'm not even sure if you're the right people to ask as i couldn't find much online about archive.org in the specific context of helping single artists and artistic archiving. i've read about 'archive-it' and 'collaborative art archive' - but as a single unknown artist i neither belong to or are currently affiliated with any art organization or library. also being working class and poor i don't have any money available to pay for long term archiving access most of my art projects take the forms of remixes and carefully curated data sets of image and video and often weigh in at over 1gb (a recent virtual photography exhibit is 8.4gb) i hope you can help! internet archive does brilliant work befitting countless people and it would be an honor to be associated with your excellent organization sincerely robert what update: they replied - but it was just a form letter repeating instructions already on their main site about creating an account uploading files and making sure they're properly labelled - in short very little use common internet archive - do better when it comes to individual artists === on writer's block "writer's block" appears a false problem often invented by the *realer* false problem called 'being a writer' if i don't want writer's block then i first mustn't succumb to the mainstream cultural notion of 'being a writer' - i'll try simply calling it something else entirely; my term is researcher or 'big scientist' i'll regard writing as just another artist's tool; re-regard both writing and writers as nothing special i instantly feel better whenever i write *less* and not as a writer - hashtag antiwork and now some slightly condescending sounding advice from a writer perhaps thrown out from a position of unrecognized privilege and success: > no-one ever got anywhere by blaming other people. it's not the publisher's fault for not seeing the promise in your book. it's not the fault of other writers for not being successful in your genre. it's not the reader's fault for not paying enough attention to you > joanne harris, bluesky um thanks joanne for that unsolicited bit of timeless literary wisdom; doesn't sound remotely ahistorical (systematically failing to take into account unequal power relationships at large in society) in the slightest that's your opening line yet you basically just advise fellow writers and potential writers to shut up and stop whining artists fully aware they're constantly being screwed by the pink-owned publishing system dislike being gaslighted by the rich and successful into not correctly apportioning blame precisely where it needs it mind you at least you correctly hate the hateful rowling === # wed july 30th: 'deindexed' people getting grief on social about *not* instantly feeling sad about poor old itch.io's obvious extended korporate efforts in dealing (good choice of words) with evil payment processors - and thus helping the very artists it benefits from *makes best pseudo_irish pea-pod pixie voice* "ooh pleeese don't hurt me i'm just a humble plucky aaa-indie company just trying to get buy" was surprisingly also at minor ideological loggerheads with cool videogame researcher and critic brendan keogh who - having rightly gone to bat critiquing big evil gaming corporations in his book seemed to have flipped too much the other way in being too uncritical and overly auto-supportive of successful aaa-indie platform itch yet again the real victims of this censorship-via-payment-processing shed storm however are the lgbtq+ / disabled / sex worker community who are 'deindexed' disproportionately from the heart of the conversation - because censorship of progressive minorities by fascist hate groups is the real issue here not the random economic health of just another platform skimming off their profits (for no-doubt reasonable rates and the most noble of /economic intentions natch) what is it with marks who auto-defend simple holy companies (always started in some humble garage) like these platforms are somehow doing the artist community a favor - instead of the other way around see apparently poor old itch.io had 'no choice'(tm) but to instantly comply in advance and bend over to its evil near-future cyberpunk hypercorporate payment-processing lizard overlords - yet oddly without a single sentence of protest or condemnation against those who started it thing is it's the actual artists working *for* itch (and not merely on it) who are suffering and suddenly unable to depend on their pennies-income used for paying bills food and medicare - so who gives a tuppenny fnart if some larger faceless parent organism is having a 'hard time' collecting their dirty profits yet again it seems it's the artists themselves who are mysteriously and conveniently forgotten in mainstream media journo and gaming academic discussions - it's not like the bosses and owners of these well off platforms aren't going to survive and land on their perfumed feet unscathed after shed hits fan (due to straight-up fascist interference) recommended read - "the videogame industry does not exist: why we should think beyond commercial game production" (2023 mit press) https://brkeogh.com/books/ === # monday july 28th > "in practice, the difference between the two [scenes] is relatively minor" -digital foundry (summed up in a single sentence) in which it seems digital foundry's only real job (other than specializing in technical analysis of gaming hardware and software) is to essentially do sweet jiggedy jack but forge a single gleaming photorealistic realtime pathtraced image - of their favourite evil near future dystopian hypercorporation nvidia mainstream industry bootlickers lol === # sunday 27th july the duck spanners who own the airbnb nearby are making improvements to their investment by repeatedly drilling the wall at 9:20am and waking the entire block of flats to say these people are worthy of being despised is an understatement - all renters should silently prey that tentacle faced cult agents of cthulu materialize on their property from the dark dimensions and suck them down screaming through purple teleportals of pain back to where they'll be slowly smeared by giant rancid tongues down into cheap ignorant slurry used to feed the currently sleeping and undying master of humanity's dark purple biocosmic fears === the organic coffee i've just made upon being crudely awakened by ignorant baskets tastes real / good am also seriously considering transferring all art from itch.io where one currently gets zero views and engagement for considerable efforts - to internet archive - where zero views will also result but at least there's the opportunity to feel ethically better due to their historical archiving policies as a public library working for the common good update: oh wait internet archive is willingly working with 'dweb' as a sponsor in the same space as crypto web3 and ai yeesh https://getdweb.net/#partners  bluesky question to internet archive about dweb === # thursday 24th july via deleted bluesky thread > not enough artists talk about the often painfully boring daily grind of artwork - literally art-as-work; like everyone else, they're infected with neoliberal brain worms making them view art as something horribly individualist, isolating, necessarily alienating - rather than collective. hashtag unionize! > circumstances preventing me from enjoying creating art; the fact i'm poor, don't express enough whiteness(tm), that all eyes are on the 1% who steal 99% of the attention - but mostly because i repeatedly misunderstand art as 'my own', rather than a hashtag-social process meant to improve life for *everyone* > what is art if not the joy of life itself? the forced private creation of art for little but individualist profit is like a beautiful painting, stored in a rich arthole's butt-vault. unable to breath or see the common light of day, such art is a sad, self-isolating process - not liberating, social > i've tried hard for fruitless years to get my foot in the door, get any *kind* of interest going - all to no avail. to term a phrase, "i might as well have been whizzing into my own stale electronic wind." only now (!) am i starting to figure out just how wrong my whole approach to art is > the entirely *wrong* approach to art: "thinking you can 'just make art' in a system that hates art and artists." i mean you can, sure - but you won't be *successful*. nobody will give a shed. it's the exact same reason there are infinitely more bs 'how to be a writer' courses than actual, successful writers > to remotely imagine otherwise is delusional. nobody's reading your blog. single absurd 'likes' on that picture you poured time and effort into will never butter any bread on your table. "hmm maybe if i follow those how to be a rich and famous artist tips.." stop it; don't be a schmuck & waste precious time > alas i constantly need to return to critically examine my unchallenged-first-premises about art. i mean at this point i don't even think it's about art; it's only ever really about *people*. (saw tron legacy again; the best, realer bit is the tender father-son relationship; an opportunity to bond again) > the horrible, ugly way 'the everyday making of art' and 'daily capitalist (anti!) existence' are blurred, conflated, confused for one another, is a large part of the neoliberal brain worm which wriggles in the average modern artist's skull. to de-worm, is to necessarily *socialize* - help out! be actively nice to people > nobody but bots is reading this, nobody even 'following' me will comment - and it's not that this doesn't at some (superficial!) level irk the shed outa me.. but i still feel i'm doing some genuine good, simply by airing the art-problem out formally, in long-hand. an artful mind-detox if you will other news; received a new lofree flow lite keyboard today - it's like typing on air with a nice lite thock compared to the old dell low profile - but it's still to small; my arms still feel cramped wish this same keyboard came in a wider alice layout - but that's just it isn't it as long as the negative social conditions exist in which artists have to be chained to their desks and plastic text input devices rsi will remain a viable source of continuing profits for keyboard manufactures 'funny how it all works out' === # friday 16th july two teens approached us today on the street with their phones ready no doubt 'trying to go viral with some brainless bullshed' "um excuse me sir" no doubt trying to make me appear online like the idiot i already am (so right there i already got you foxed ha) one politely but firmly stopped their spanner dumb time wasting spiel whatever it was at the 15-20m mark with a "sorry, *no*" as we passed by one of them turned to sarcastically say 'have a truly *amazing* day' to which without even looking back i immediately responded "that was my plan all along" using at least 15% ray winstone in my voice (you never want to go 'full winstone' unless the situation calls for it but even then caution is needed mostly for the emotional health of other parties involved) luckily this time *maybe* due to such a precisely-aggressive urban tone there was no smart arts answer no elevator-humor back chat after a long slog back through the stifling heat i arrived back at the house and thought there must be the equivalent of the alien predator franchise but for morons - 'yautja but for idiots': "only in the hottest weather do the true wits crawl out of the uk woodwork" as if to prove what i already knew today i saw an aspirationally-dim guy ride his tiny e-scooter right in front of a car turning left into a road - who *just* missed him by about the width of his brain dead skull captain duckhead on the e-bike didn't even notice of course and rode on swerving in and out of traffic without a care - cruising on into the neon tinted night and into infamy / the hospital ward apart from the breeze imagine what goes through that guy's skull; thinking that 'my essential need to be urban-edgy necessarily involves ignoring all other high speed road traffic' like what son were you home schooled by a pigeon a philosophical response to such a brazen refusal of common social rules: "cars > edginess" - in fact when the edge of the car meets the 'edge' of idiot skulls when running over them one hopes whatever pea sized bit of brain matter manages to squeeze out is put to good use other news: another total armpit stinker in the local supermarket didn't wash their vile pits again while one certainly understands a lack of money for deodorant and soap at least make the minimum social effort to use water you filthy sour summer smeller waiting in line behind this stink cloud i swear i heard a buzzard fall hit the roof dead as it attempted to fly past overhead === # wednesday 16th july it's not just that 'ai' means "now & forever as shed as the capitalist morons that pinched it off" but also that "ai's baffling expressions - both aggressively crude & wantonly ugly - are always mere proud *fascistic* symbols of the privilege & power of big tech owners and their fawning willingly blind shed-weasel cultists" === # finally finished editing my 'republic of bob' walkthrough hoo boy six hellish months glacially trawling through grammatically non optimal rnd lab note desert realty pseudocode my right arm is in pain from rsi and my general unheath dire was recently told by the doc to slim down and change my diet for the better or else after a quick flick through gonna try uploading this giant lumbering non thing tonight === # the summertime blues are here again the longest day of the year and also the hottest at least so far - and it also feels the saddest one is again reminded of often being utterly alone as a teenager on one's awful generic mass housing estate sitting on the dusty kerb looking out at dehydrated local realty as the sun sets over endless waves of red tiled nowhere summer has a certain blankness about it and although it's warm out the emotional mood is bizarrely melancholy as though one is warm well fed in good health ok - but is entirely alone as though abandoned on a distant and silently dull alien planet with no hope of rescue this kind of warm solitude and quiet blood warm tb (terminal boredom) is unique to summer yet often its most aggressively insistent feature and while everyone around one is having fun chilling nothing about summer triggers the same feelings of high desert aching loneliness saudade and mournful pensive tedium and dejection please prey for storm clouds and heavy rain to wash away summer's melting plastic cheer === # one word son: "mushrooms" > "attention inequality on twitter is staggering. the vast majority of users do not receive any attention, and the top 1% of users get far more attention than the bottom 99% combined!" > -attention inequality in social media, linhong zhu and kristina lerman, university of southern california > "there is income inequality in america. there always has been and hopefully, and i do say that, there always will be. why? because people rise to different levels of success based on what they contribute to society and to the marketplace, and that's as it should be" > -colossal chodeface dick santorum (amerikan far right wing politician attorney author and political commentator, speech to detroit economic club) rather than some value-neutral space the Internet arrives loaded with the heavy baggage of cultural and social norms to ask then how might small artists possibly compete for attention online if all someone has to do to get over 150k likes is post pictures of mushrooms well the answer is they inherently can't because attention doesn't fall like magic pennies on everyone equally but is rather a resource already pre-hoarded and plundered by those with existing and long standing cultural power they say (whoever they are) one has to find one's niche audience - but then this mushroom shed seems to be taking the whizz - specificity wise veering deep into onion / mushroom territory it's like every damn time just before one logs in there they are again with their mushrooms so common let's talk about the golden rule about winner-take-all let's talk openly about how the rich get richer - about taking the lion's share for oneself the haves and the 'have yachts' - it sure ain't called a power law distribution for nothing that is: he who *already* has all the rapidly mushrooming power automatically and inherently grabs the most attention the internet not only seems to express current social inequalities and exacerbate them but in many ways is their direct expression that it arrives not as a neutral system which can then be put to any social use but rather much like a mushrooming underground rhizome (techno-biology citation needed) it's a colonizing memetic infection of innately unequal sociopolitical ideas i wonder is the network itself per-se an ideological network of innate inequality what often twists one's existential nipples is that all some people have to do to get / grab all the attention is perform the equivalent of squeak-fnarting into an empty beer can and billions of rabid followers instantly wash up on their polished doorstep to uncritically smell their privileged cabbage stink and congratulate them for doing next to nothing some sure have it easy don't they how ironic then that whoever's posting nothing but mushroom content - can't believe i just used that phrase - states in their bio that they're quote 'not here to post their thoughts or share ideas' what on earth does that mean son; to state such a thing is both fascinating and bizarre - an distinctly ideological disclaimer or unnecessary prefix posted before fully committing to 100% mushroom content it smells like when brother zizek discusses elf-mocking bare bones narrative frameworks in pr0n movies - an odd ideological neurotic twitch that the vile industry finds near impossible to outright ignore or bypass it's almost like the creator's admitting at some semi-unconscious level they're somehow aware unfair privilege exists and the immediate social befits which arise from merely posting nothing but (at least conceptually low effort) mushroom content - and feels philosophically guilty about it like such people are on the constant verge of awareness that they're fact clearly expressing clearly political thoughts about their privileged class of hip pink content creation - how they / it sucks all the oxygen out of the room of cultural conversation and nobody else gets a look in that despite what they laughably claim they are in fact clearly 'sharing ideas' - ideas about the kind of social existence the community of mushroom content consumes - thinks somehow perfectly ordinary(tm) ie normalized and championed / champignoned that is - over everyone else who isn't already unfairly privileged and can afford to stroll through dewdrop flecked woods each cheery hip morning with a nice expensive camera and cool hiking equipment casually forest bathing and snapping blooming rhizomic plant material for over 150k subs note while this sounds like simple sour grapes rest assured they're not merely sour in fact skull punching xenomorphs bleed less acidic liquid than the grapes i cultivate you mother and while one doesn't have a horse / mushroom in that particular race and aren't philosophically concerned about the relative success and inherent worth of bizarrely popular 'mcp's mushroom content providers - good luck to 'em and their wild and woody ways - the distinct continuing lack of opportunities for everyone else who isn't coasting automatically by on easy slick single word content makes one puke (also note how they never seem to post 'magic' varieties - telling) ok sure maybe they're earning minimum artistic wage for their probably not-inconsiderable artistic efforts - but that isn't the point rather the real question is why aren't more artists proactively and bitterly dissatisfied with how a vanishingly small amount of people unfairly get all the attention fame and fortune to the detriment of everyone else how some blatantly colonize and steal attention away from fellow artists who aren't from the same class and privileged background in fact the very internet itself often seems the main dominant expression of that power and privilege just how capitalistic greed power and whiteness (all the same ugly thing really) grabs everything that doesn't belong to it is deeply historical and structural; the very fact the internet exists as a structure at all is because it's a *power* structure - a giant structure of power build only to dominate a elf distributing idea virus collecting and exuding socioeconomic power thereby perpetuating an all amerikan supremacy of whiteness - the notion that 'society is the way it is because the pinks are better then everyone else and deserve i.t' honestly most days i truly don't know why i bother continue with this art stuff maybe i'll stand a better chance of getting eyeballs on this kinda work and chances for artistic collaboration via 'imaginary pastime republic of bob' mind you that's five words and 'mushrooms!' is only one - i'm cooked before i even begin; these guys might as well blow their noses - post that and write the following in their bio: don't worry this account and its content aren't remotely woke it's just snot === # was watching a vid about how obsidian sucks for note taking how it instantly forces one into the passive role of an unceasing editor of confusion rather that is than a direct and active writer of plainly ordered knowledge === # once again the crushing pressure of elf imposed perfection threatens the research and development timeline of this project on editing for months with no end in sight: i gaze upon these republic of bob notes and silently weep with the empty virtual weight of the sheer number of words i have to plough through farming for lame bits to improve for the life of me i just can't figure out why i don't release every damn thing now in it's ppa permanent-pre-alpha state; worry about holy 'polish'(tm) later on as zen says in the end who binds one if not oneself === # started following people again on bluesky the 'good' news however is that i've now got over a hundred followers not that i wouldn't prefer a hundred quid in my rough working artist hand over virtual nothing but still it seems a good symbolic start right - anyone update: no it isn't all turns not a single one of the people 'following' me are actually following what i'm doing or saying rather they've merely clicked 'follow' - a marked difference they might as well of trained a dirty pigeon to randomly peck a large seed-flecked 'follow' button i mean you've got to follow *somebody* right - as for actually giving two flying sheds about them or what they're posting well that's for the birds 'following' on social it turns out is infinitely worse then random (which at least seems conceptually 'fair' from a physics-mathematics perspective) - it's entirely arbitrary 'following' is in fact a dark cosmic absurdity - because if you just click 'follow' for no real reason ("just because i felt like doing it at that particular instant" / "the vibes were right") but then don't ever like or comment on anything the person you're following says - then why the heck are either of you doing there they're posting into the void and their dead content is showing up on your feed with not even a glimmer of recognition or interest so what you're really saying and the only thing you're saying with this 'follow' nonsense is.. that you're simply there to scroll mindlessly down an arbitrary pigeon feed of content without any real interest or genuine human engagement - like some stupidity machine running blind on fully automatic elvischrist that's utterly depressing - what on dead virtual earth are we even doing here people talk to me anyone please === # the idea isn't to vainly hope one 'goes viral on social' it's to bypass antisocial media altogether and catalyze true social engagement rather than dead plastic simulations scientists / researchers can interact with the world other than reacting like clapping seals at sea world after being stimulated by rapidly replicating hyper-banalities imaginary alternative (/internet-as) pastime 'republic of bob' is so thin as a concept it doesn't even exist - but even it doesn't stoop so conceptually low as to automatically hope it 'goes viral on social' not that it would but / wood butt === # deff stranding 2 preorder trailer yeesh what time wasting nonsense to quietly consider the sense in which hideous angina's now fully embraced their role as hack gamedev larp clown supreme once again one finds oneself doubting that videographic arcadians are the 'artistic medium of our times able to directly wrestle with the deepest of common human hopes and dreams' indeed isn't funky norman reedus fetus ultimate proof of their absolute human artistic storytelling power to imagine the deff stranding 2 preorder trailer a modem advert for some super special kind of nobody-knows-what product maybe just one giant tesla advert scientifically engineered to evoke all emotions simultaneously hope / pride / fomo / psychosexual arousal and elf loathing an absolute cinematic toilet as marty might say === # currently not following anyone in bsky instead just bookmarking accounts of interesting people a way of simply cleaning up one's internet addictions consider a follow no less devoid of meaning than an upvote or a holy 'like' seems the only way it's remotely supposed to symbolize friendliness is ideologically the 'follow' as automatically meaning or implying 'friendly' is only ever the unchallenged official socially correct way to interpret or use it yet clicking on some stupid virtual button or screen icon has nothing to do with true human relationship or genuine mutuality with honest heartfelt interest relevance personal connection or affinity rather than the sense of sharing and togetherness it's plain dumb algorithmic pseudo-interaction to consider the sense in which all such 'friendly follows' on social are entirely synthetic and arbitrary one might as well undergo a 'hype audit' by elf styled 'professional social media analysts' who 'deliver actual strategic value maximizing campaign roi' bleurrgh talk about a baseless house of digital cards thing is if one doesn't like or follow on social why be there - ah now we're finally getting somewhere === # on forced return-to-office blackmail mandates > "remote work is morally wrong" > -elon 'did naz1 that coming' roman tech oligarch coup organizer muskyboy > "goldman does not want to hire people for whom the most important thing is how many days they have to spend in the office" > -financial times people are overwhelmingly against being forced to come in to offices yet if one doesn't the lizard baskets will sack you but that's precisely the point - 'rto or else' is really newspeak for 'increasing layoffs of enhanced shareholder value' in fact it's really about real estate my poor partner had to get up at five today slog through a drawn out commute and unreliable public transport just to turn up on the corporate factory floor and attend a cosmically unnecessary meeting - missing half the people who couldn't attend because they lived too far away anyway they need to be here safe with me not over a hundred miles away in a miserable office in some dangerous city if as their boss is suggesting they'll end up having to do this bs 'a mere three times a week' that'll be roughly mean over eighteen hours spent commuting every month what a cosmically pointless waste of time - work per se that is one main thing to understand is the very term 'return to office' is a misnomer because nobody never damn well left - rather 'the office' and toxic office culture invaded people's homes and lives 'homes' that most people unironically rent from landlords - gee wonder what the link is with that fact and long term office space leasing both wfh 'work from home' and rtf 'return to office' express a singular poverty - that of the innate misery useless tedium and terminal boredom of work itself it's merely form of blackmail and merely the latest class war attack on the 99%; 'back to normal' only ever means 'because i said so - ie it makes me even more money' awful corporate notions like rto are only ever really about power greed and the insanity of control and nothing whatsoever to do with 'face time' resulting in increased morale productivity 'positive engagement' or whatever bosses just need another excuse to avoid labor costs and 'allow staff to fire themselves' silently and invisibly without compensation - justify the ideological existence of (inherently redundant) management and increase worker surveillance while improving commercial real estate vacancy lease rates of rented offices as empty and devoid of life as the souls of big business owners themselves consider the useful antiwork phrase concerning rto blackmail aka 'rot-hell': return offices to hell note the acute existential absurdity of the situation: if they quit due to the *added* pressures of commuting - because they're already overworking from home as it is - with the fact their already meager salary deliberately not be increased to cover travel costs - than the next bunch of manager holes they try finding a mainly-wfh job with will berate them for 'quitting a previously perfectly fine job' you see it's all perfectly rigged so that the only creatures that win are rich and utterly inhuman the forced return-to-office blackmail mandate is bs because the very notion of work itself is bs as for to 'the irreplaceable value of in-person collaboration for fostering creativity and innovation strengthening team dynamics and company culture' it only makes the exact kind of insane corporate bs-bingo sense spewed from the mouths of dead eyed management lizards and inherently evil bosses / owners see for fellow working wage slaves the office isn't merely a workplace but a destination of innate happiness - of freely complying with 'company culture' - feeling full to bursting with increased productivity camaraderie and opportunities for endless fruitful collaboration remember an open office layout packed with employees busy serving smiles means personal freedom like an soaring eagle === # the 'lord of the land' is sending someone round we're meant to be getting two new radiators fitted today but the cowboy worker they've hired at minimum cost no doubt is already thirty minutes late - no call to say sorry for the delay expecting *anything* from these cheap ass amateur slime clowns is too much when you realize you the renter is on the absolute bottom rung of the housing ladder you know you'll never receive any common courtesies or simple human consideration oh what it would be to have a decent house of one's own - instead of forever having one's time and wallet unceasingly drained by professionally incompetent parasites they're also coming on monday to 'seal the windows' - like smeared lumps of cheap decorator's caulk are going to noticeably improve the overall thermal profile of this inherently heat-leeching shed box useless baskets the lot of 'em === # public domain cc0 images https://parismuseescollections.paris.fr/en === # latest republic productivity news now at 3.5x speed already stinking-rich privileged protestant workaholic ethic booklickers hustle culture grifters and sociopathically toxic 'productivity'(tm) influencer guru biosynths also known in scene as 'abdaals' - greasy dead eyed slangers of empty dreams and padded-out effort challenged hyper generic advice videos - just got freshly baked cream pies in their faces by anonymous heroes of the republic who then flashed up two middle fingers at the camera while shouting "capitalism is terminally boring!" before proudly showing off their hastag antiwork tshirts and moonwalking off camera like a badass yeet incestuous bs productivity affiliate circle jerk 'courses' cults into primordial sized black holes today calling all 'abdaals': you horrible little notification bell ends take your minimal desktop setups and zettlecasten maple wood analog premium starter kit card holders with you back to algorithmic elf systematized time management corporate bingo bs heck === # just watched neurodiversity activist jim sinclair on sally jesse raphael's show in 1989 hold your head in shame in comparison to this fearless samurai spirit with an obvious black belt in intellectual elf defense jim seems legendary and researchers should salute them for their unshakable moral integrity and zen plain speaking > "i did not choose to exist. finding that i exist i determined that it's a good thing that i exist. i like being who i am. why should i try to be anybody else?" > -jim sinclair === # on marathon by bungie takeaway: it's the amazing story stupid it's the community space emerging from and around it not another disposable corporate money extraction scheme as it is right now however it appears a doa live service hero sweat shooter with all too predictably zero future the bungie that made halo is long gone and only empty nostalgia remains shame sony has failed to totally leverage that fact as the mere appearance of the bungie logo ain't cutting it for new cyber punks that only heard about halo yesterday once again the industry chose short term greed over long term worldbuilding and by definition of being an industry cannot have the vision or artistic courage to fully commit to the power of the imagination of researchers committed to marathon as an entire fictional ecosystem of art and play in which the wildly speculative internet /fake drama videos dropping on loltube genuinely seem no less interesting as the overpriced money grabbing generic product currently on offer if only they'd taken the radial 'republic of bob' route and simply released it as an open source artistic community project - then such videos would *themselves* constitute the very living body of the marathon experience do you hear what i'm saying manny holy pastel blocktober puke batman it would've been awesome think of it; an entire freshly painted universe to explore in which beautiful weird community art of all kinds exists and flourishes - videos animated movies tv series and flan merch of all kinds posters clothing yes even hyper generic hero shooter sweat fests one vast non euclidean interactive exhibit of cool pulse quickening graphic design and intense deep strange lore called "marathon" which lives precisely because of community see people you've gotta get me in on the ground floor; i've got the hot strange skillz to tap into great odd ideas think about it for a single extraction round - the marathon 'reveal cinematic short' is infinitely more engaging than the concord copypasta bungie are slanging as the main videographic attraction in fact everything *except* the main playstate consumer product holds more interest - gee if only we could reverse that turn the whole notion inside out; cut out the zombified middleman and simply have the organically mutating constantly expanding muti dimensional paracosm 'marathon' *without* the undead blocky unchewable live service product center so welcome to the republic boys no flashbulbs please we're here all week (yeah alone) for example take the very word 'marathon' rather than just another doa concord clone the term conjurers up something impossibly exciting strange and wonderful that's been calling the whole of humanity forward all our lives running running toward and around some great bio-gravitational alien culture attractor at the end of time now *that* seems more deep strange fun one of marathon's problems is that when compared to the directness and simplicity of bungie's halo it appears bloated and try-hardish halo: "epic scifi alien headclicker" marathon: "trend-chasing squad based pvpve hero extraction mutiplayer sweat shooter with filthy microtransactions set in an distinct fluorescent superclean antiironically hypercorporate dystopian stolen asset roblox qrcode-punk browser lookin' yet entirely non-mysterious generic 'sci-fi world' made by a major studio with one of the strongest fps pedigrees reviving a long dormant ip (destiny 2 lol?)" to consider instead an intense sprawling dynamic offline fps featuring co-op play with optional expansion into online pvp update: what a corporate surprise it's been put on indefinite hold and 17% of the workforce have been shitcanned - bungie you arthats what the heck are you doing over there - apart from copypasta-ing other greedy corporate mistakess all management is mismanagement === # the biggest central lie behind so called generative human ai art is that it's remotely about art - when in fact it's only ever about naked profit control and exploitation the arch morons behind 'ai art' (perhaps the ultimate misnomer) actively despise actual artists - because to even acknowledge them as artists would be to treat them as human beings - rather than disposable objects to suck creativity from as hyper corporate vampiric husks any and all willful idiots actively using and promoting such an awful and depressing technological worldview have a severe 'iron in the soul' deficiency and can collectively get bent lol - and take your big tiddy anime pr0n with you  rando angry ai-cult antiartists hateboner skeeting on bluesky png (32cols) === # been thinking how cyberpunk was never about ordinary people also known as non rich non pale skinned non high end career criminals telling stories about being forced to live in a future not of their own design lorded over by strutting rockstar holes with titanium ceramic mantis blades for arms or other dumb nonsense when did the genre become about proactively living it up as one of the chosen cybernetic rectums of an undead capitalist world imagine merely trying to go for a loaf of bread down at the local store while tech enhanced random nutjobs shoot up 'their' world to terminally bad amerikan nu metal tracks how infinitely boring and tiresome if you already have it all yet still feel the need to pay the big bucks necessary to graft a two foot lab grown duck onto your forehead and confirm the world's suspicions you always were indeed a studly alpha chud then sure you do you but why the heck should everyone else have to read / play about / around it or remotely have live with it to consider cyberpunk always was only ever really about 'winners' and never once about the masses of ordinary victims / citizens of a world overrun by tony stark clones and his endless bootlicking techbro-drone army deckard was a schmuck but imagine bladerunner '82 if they'd been say a black trans polysexual oh how one may easily forget just how many telephone book beatings at the station and off-the-record 'retirements' old ex-filth rick dickhard had lovingly planned & executed over his vile career and don't get me started on johnny 'mnemonic' silverhand probably the single most laughable leather trouser stain in all of play history it's like 'yourdad'(tm) had a private onlyfanz account where he gimp cosplayed a 100% accurate modem cyberpunk (some talentless charmless spinal net-tap 'up to 11' duckhead) yes by all accounts and analysis capitalist cyberpunk has long been nothing but undead with nothing to say except robotically rinse n' repeat the lousy myths of it's own duck-rocking greatness - but that's not to say some writers aren't still cherrypicking small gold sweetcorn nuggets out of it's mutating butt slime cyberpunk has long been mutating and in fact has got so goddam bizarre in it's ultra neon-purple prose and systemic approach to kissing capitalist ass that new strains of literary possibility have arisen out of it's stinking perpetual media ai-dogslop stew 'bad cyberpunk flanfiction' in particular is a potent new source of rnd potential for big scientists one need not even look for post cyberpunk works as cyberpunk was always postmodem always already reaching beyond it's own inherent small-potatoes whiteboi nerd limits - tripping over it's own jumper cables tripping backward into the near future retro 80s a slippery blob of pulsating weirdness a popular term in the 'republic of bob' for such potent post cyberpunk brew is 'neuropink' also known as 'alien fiction'; pro trans queer psychedelic and oddly sentient but not in the old shodan way as the toaster in red dwarf was more sentient so 'think neuropink' - the pink opaque meets tron on dmt lazors (queue intense neon blue urban backstreet video screenshot of city at night via youtube video possibly of taipei) most on this later this is early daze it's not in any finished kind of product or polished literary output but as always actively in the hands of those wider social communities and artistic collectives such imagination based idea-spaces serve hashtag unionize oh yeah cyber city oedo 808: the only kind of cyberpunk researchers respect - amazing hair freaky monsters towering megastructures incredible fight scenes and much swearing the definitive playstate of the animation is yet to be made (and will be when i'm stage managed democracy-voted benevolent dictator of the republic) === # if we can pull anything from corporate media as consumers it's only because *we're* the ones doing the hard unpaid critical intellectual labor to consider how videographical arcadias offer so little are often so shallow and vacuous we take their meager randomly scattered crumbs for deliberately planted solid gold nuggets === # on weak sauce takes on social thumbs up style 'just-try-ya-best-and-it'll-all-work-out' sentiments / sediments quietly boil my whizz hey you cray zee art kidz when you can't pay the rent and see middling soft pink 'artistes' with soft hands and berets grabbing all the spotlight tossing advice like confetti just remember 'the process' or whatever gee thanks soccer mom / hashtag unionize === # the most fascinating study in mass ideological arcadian psychlogy aka starcitizen in which the precise appeal of this charmless enterprise is the hollow power trip afforded to it's ultra privileged pink whale cult supporters and their $48000 (!!) bunches of magic 30fps space pixels utterly baffling yet darkly fascinating bs henry swanson shouts from back of presentation hall: all hail starlarp === # recently blocked on bluesky again this time by famous rich light pink canadian video essayists for a single 'rolls eyes' emoji ascii equivalent of this emoji: @@ shame though - while their work's often enjoyable something about their post (in which they positively highlight the fact they don't follow anyone) makes one reconsider them and their work as often merely smug and elf satisfied oh-so-clever yet ultra-fragile pink male egos baldly wearing masks of quietly sneering condescension cosplaying as intensely informed mass media critique: 'gee am i *the only one* who finds this odd??' urrgh / meh === # rewatching the how to train your dragon series hoo boy the amount of moral elf righteousness in this stage play would choke a level ten leviathan unconscious in under a minute if a friend ever sees you worried and uncertain in your life yet suddenly pipes up with "everything you're searching for is in here" in points to your head (or heart) immediately check if they've sustained a mild skull fracture - or are just about to === # on worldbuilding as marketing swiftly turns out i got nothing to say about this or indeed about anything else although i did get into an interesting exchange on social with a arcadian archaeologist i highlighted the dangers of worldbuilding in the context of archaeology and anthropology as merely intellectual colonialism the violet projection of western(tm) ideological fantasy onto one's objects of study === # a letter to will self an article online today was voting for the best literary villains o'brian and sauron were in the finals which was eye rolling nonsense will self's 'the fat controller' beats both those professionally humorless schmucks researchers have often thought of writing to will smith (they often refer to him as teh movie star as they enjoy playing gisw 'getting it slightly wrong') what would it be to write a letter to will indeed to indulge in the zizekian phantasy of him reading liking and replying in depth to such humble words what if you could discuss literature with a literary hero note and will see researchers as their hero they could discuss will's new novel elaine for their awesome unknown / unknowable rob-blog ask how long this one took if he still uses his yellow note board how difficult was it thinking about his mother then one could shoe horn in geiger's queen from aliens no before researchers should suggest will experience 'republic of bob' and give his first impressions so they could calmly judge his current tastes in experimental european post cyberpunk aka 'neuropink' then talk about donald and elon and the ongoing worldwide fascist-enabled apocalypse of all amerikan stupidity one always gets the bizarre impression that one's literary hero would be a good bloke to hang out with drink quality coffee slowly smoke acapulco gold and play eno in the background but that's probably a myth not eno he's only partially mythological - truly good writers like black jazz artists are badasses pathologically averse to time wasting mutual hand-jobs with 'like minded artistic souls' urgh better to directly collaborate and enjoy one's wildly conflicting views on artistic matters and avoid constant nods in uncritical agreement about how cool the other guy is /then suggest this letter was itself the literary collaboration and will would say hey that's a good idea 'bob' forget cool what about the art-as-work the process the mechanical grind as the mighty rollins might of put it will would then ask to name seven top reads -geoff dyer's the search -henry rollins everything -burrough's the nova trilogy -sleeping in flame by jonathan carroll -the complete short stories by ballard -motel chronicles; hawk moon by sam shepard -that still unknown magical realist novel about the woman and her father with parrots on the back cover will would then pretend to be disappointed one of his own great works hadn't been mentioned and one would reply hee then they'd share a cold premium japanese beer or warm sweet cup of tea delusional bob get back to fantasy === # saving your pennies up oh to take an entire year off afford a well insulated house and an ebook reader and do nothing but immerse oneself in one's secret library === # when bluesky appears stuffed to bursting with smug hipster artistes of whiteness bourgeois middling class peak indie hipsters who just can't keep their traps shut whatever the situation whether it requires their expert shoehorned-in opinion or not but then that's just it isn't it; the net seems overwhelmingly designed for nobody but pinkies to express nothing but the smug ongoing fact of their total dominance via the spectacle of communication aka unceasing white noise read something recently that said the term 'indie' often merely hides and obfuscates much that is unhealthy as much as it expresses the oh-so-humble and charming given their slick privileged status such repeated shrill assumed calls to righteous universal automated solidarity and comradeship with all other indie artists feels as honest and spontaneous as pabst blue ribbon flavor bubblegum made in a winsconsin factory by depressed androids which is why when others talk honestly if naively *cough* about anything perceived to be within the tiny venn diagram of their alleged expertise they instantly pipe up once more take ownership of the entire conversation and context somehow make it all about *their* innate righteous right to reply 'in defense of the indie realm' yeah well maybe if others had the change to be invited in the first place then ok it's just the automatic false assumption they can always take part in conversations that were never really about them - except they often aren't remotely in the same boat as 'their fellow artists' and are living at a level of often largely unwarranted cultural and financial superiority on decks far above everyone else much nearer the lifeboats stop larping that wholesome indie 'together as equal artists we' shede this ain't no heroic soviet wheat field realism poster unequal opportunities insensitivity a cruel sense of smug superiority and the benefit of living in a world that unceasingly bends itself to the pleasure of being pale and forever right (/wing) make such passive-aggressive kvetching about micro so-called injustices apparently perpetuated toward 'your' group a darkly laughable load of old deodorized shed - such a continued symbolic appropriation of marginalized artist experience under the thin pink guise of universal brotherhood and shared suffering is depressing and makes others want to puke // again and again the whole question of the impossibility of communication online rears its head - i have no mouth but i must bad_art 'so much for solidarity among the so called artistic left' some are more intersectionally equal than others eh *sigh* look nvm none of these people even really exist and none of this artless shed even matters it's just.. another sour copper-penny tasting day online sorry a thoughtful article on the subject of indie entitlement: https://ellaguro.blogspot.com/2014/06/indie-entitlement.html === # classic english duckhead a quick study in which every time one travels to the local supermarket after five there's at least one cedrick also known as classic english duckhead one curses themselves for being even more stupid than these guys for wantonly choosing to go within fifteen lightyears of any corner shop frequented by these low watt gargoyles the two in there tonight not only fit the profile of a pair of ceds they positively transformed the whole damn place into a twaddock - ie a hangout for pillocks two skinny men in pink in their late 30s but due to a wasted life of drink rugs and rampant systematic stupidity they looked a combined age of 100 now as a broad shouldered handsome man of vague asian heritage they of course noticed one as soon as they entered the store one immediately said here we go again hating one's own foolishness for coming to a desperate non place like this in the first place they talked about one in low voices making edgy comments guffawing to themselves and there's that damn laugh which died out in the early 60s with actor syd james but no here they were twin racist moranz one with a pink woolen hat on i bet a million billion dollars these two witless wonders think (if indeed that's even possible neurally) the world of clarkson-farage et al perhaps he thought himself the kind of happy go lucky funster that wouldn't look amiss on one of those tv shows where intensely annoying dead eyed mannequins from essex spread their legs for each other at the counter they were waiting two people back in the queue still chuckling and mumbling loudly and no you didn't make eye contact but stare straight ahead like henry rollins was a thick necked 'nam era assassin with special dark unseen forces practicing internal chinese martial arts suddenly one of them walked to the front of the queue and started repeatedly banging on the side of the plexiglass security door separating them from the staff working at the counter 'have you got any cases of beer darlin' said the voice in what must be considered one of the most laughably self-accidentally-parodying 'mockney hard man' accents ever produced by something resembling a human state of being everyone in the store who wasn't these two began to roll their eyes and wait for the inevitable 'kick off' because everyone's a hard man when their permanently drunk and has got their bestest-evar mate with them right once again you imagine one day rolling with a tight crew of stone cold jacked internal martial mothers able to hand out casual beatdowns to existentially repellent flaming jockstraps like they were tickets at charity raffle day down at the local church no we don't sell cases replied the dog-tired staff member on the counter glad of a thick locked door and a dozen security cameras aim at these obnoxious anti-readers and stop banging that door they said loudly or i'll start the alarm to which they immediately went silent yeah what a surprise anyhow one packed and paid as quickly as possible and got the heck out of there preying they didn't follow you - afraid that is of having to lightly mutate both of these lords of the shed pile without significantly raising one's blood pressure - and also afraid of the chore of having to bother scraping one's boots clean afterwards oh if only one were a billion parsecs from this horrible little dislocation and these awful people they make researchers nervous and angry and want to pull random limbs off and beat idiots into common social sense mess with us you horrid pair of bigoted worms and you'll get a instant free simulation of a cool collected grizzly attack that will unpleasantly surprise to an existentially startling degree === # useful for hypertography / digital archaology https://thestacks.ca/posts/2025-02-25-Thoughts-on-Archiving === # leet retro forum chuds against politics they don't like or really understand https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/review-elite-has-never-grown-up-beyond-its-limited-80s-british-vision.111337/ in which videographic arcadians play themselves and others are just along for the ride the cosmically ironic fact they love pretending they're in control is precisely the plastic control afforded them by the corporations that own every moment of their 'free' time hashtag playbor === # the new jurassic zombie franchise trailer a dimensional point in cinematic cgi spacetime so crushingly generic so thoroughly low stakes so utterly devoid of all industry lip service to genuine charm or fun viewers instantly implode into infinite grey swathes of emotionless nothing of course it'll make a gazillion idiot dollars a true psychic zero === # tech news up next yes tech news sucks but this concerns openai's new rebrand which is existentially identical to the last one talk about neckless corporate graphical identity and their lousy logo shalt appear horrible techbro scum the lot of 'em === # today's personal cinema growth mantra 'don't normalize nosferatu' how about championing some black or asian talent for a change 'cos none of these violetly bland scenery chewing plastic nepo-hacks can act for sheeeeet === # in an age of runaway climate disaster why are tech influencers / salesmen and their gleeful hyper consumerism still a thing count the times 'environment' is never mentioned in such corporate sponsored presentations / hard soft-sells just asking for a friend from another far more intelligent planet not currently undergoing near-total climate disaster === # gamedev micro-stories rule they reveal the human scale art behind often unacknowledged industrial scale indie grind patch notes and change logs / strange logs with odd existentially cryptic entries 'dogs no longer float' / 'npcs no longer stick in tractor wheel' / 'mother now sends help' / 'zombies now no longer swear unnecessarily' === # on data poisoning ai mbtd 'more barney the dinosaur' no it's all only ever a minor temporary threat given that llm's are themselves inherently elf toxic to genuine knowledge as the old near future scritti politti says: if llm's are the answer then you're asking the wrong questions === # for those needing something stronger how about the hashtag antiwork realization caffeine is the single most socially accepted and actively pushed drug of western choice as it symbolizes and cognitively promotes automatic uncritical acceptance of inherently unnecessary labor and "bs jobs" === # it was a difficult climb but the old ruined megacity was never hard to find scavengers only need look up to the static lines of captive stars in which to imagine a world where people do nothing all day but delight in shared artistic creativity it's this one - if only we can unite the illusion of separateness dissolved the expansive living mystery of existence calls to us === # hashtags occupy itch / unionize regarding itch.io - trigger warning about indie labor grind exploitation isolation fragmentation depression and burnout itchy itchy itch one may whizz shout moan and b1tch but no one's getting rich the owner may be 'nice' but that don't keep on your lights take back control today or forever be a slave your little garme ain't sh1t if collectively you're split talk about a fractured isolated alienated scene of hyper individualism when one hears the often lamentable terms 'indie playstate' or 'indiedev' one can't help but keep hearing or reading 'the systematic institutional and cultural inability to discuss labor organizing and unionization along overtly communal / socialist lines' what about a playstate jam called '#occupyitch' in which indie (ie 'still socially cut off from socialist collectivism') devs get together make a bunch of cool experimental and politically biting art-as-work about feeling miserable isolated alienated poor and exploited whether generally or on itch specifically so what sayeth you good oppressed artists of the digital world with nothing to loose but the terminal boredom of 5 solid hours spent in unreal engine grinding without success just to get asfc a single stupid cube to render at a decent non fake framearte === # on bad cyberpunk /fan fiction a vast overlooked online literary genre with purple-prosed cybernetic bangers of such kitschy cliche ridden power they warp local spacetime willingly trapped in forever smokey 'bladerunner influenced' 50's jazz noir 3am megacity pi inner monologue gas station dime store pulp === # refunded stalker 2 today mid anachronistic & simplistic played 70mins and sobbed inwardly distinctly indistinctly unimpressive and kept crashing impossible to care for the dropped-into non story atmospheric sure but 'groundbreaking in 2007' equals 'boring in 2025' like c77 you can't patch crappy in fact if it had more / more interesting eurojank it would feel better lighter and less professionally miserable === # on being skeptical about water consumption claims for ai data centers it wouldn't matter if such massive data centers generated a billion buckets of sparkling naturally carbonated mountain spring fresh mineral water every time another damp looser nerd requested a big tiddy anime fap pic it would all still be utterly poisoned by the mere notion of holy artificial intelligence *spits* === # a dark dimensional anti artistic boundary exists beyond which lies only 'immortals of aveum' an undead nonplace of such soulless style such comprehensively derivative corporate committee design such violet unoriginality even 'concord' and 'forspoken' stare at each other in terrible awe === # a lighthearted definitive 'flock david lynch' statement(/s) > flockin' morons everywhere > dead dave the first time i saw lynch's output i genuinely liked every single one - even the one with the rabbits do we need david lynch yeah sure would the world be (/somehow) worse off without his professionally obtuse fn_art almost definitely do most of his flicks and show at least display good cinematography and bizarre flare er yeah and yet this lighthearted definitive 'flock david lynch' statement exists for those who need it a small chance to counter all obsessive pseudo-critical laughably ott fawning obsequious lynchian-apologist bs: * "consider david lynch peak artistic whiteness; lynch is overrated precisely for the same reason whiteness overrates itself; even the gods of popcult tv shows quietly despise the very charity shop shelving units his entire boxed sets of dusty time faded vhs tapes slump upon * lynch as another ultimate rorschach test for easily-pleased schmucks: the discrepancy gap between what dave's films offer (often not a great deal) and what stans falsely interpret and attribute as being there - an apparently endless cornucopia of 'deep meaning'(tm) - often feels so vast one could casually yeet dave's entire art-blob into the chasm and they'd dive in after it screaming all the way with dim joy and overly-serious interpretive appreciation; the phrase one is after to describe this bizarre lynchian apophenic pareidolia is "'symbolism?' symbollocks, more like" * for some people if they ever hear the innately uncritical culture phrase 'david lynch' once more they swear they'll travel by crow to the next lynchcon dressed as 'bob' with a rusty chainsaw stolen from a local lumber mill somewhere in the pacific bs northwest - provide all those fawning stans dressed like other characters from the show exactly what the tv-movie world's been demanding all these desperate wasted years - a basic education in media literacy and a healthy critical appreciation for wider cinematic fare * other than agent cooper's amazing hair and the incredible sheryl lee 'twin peaks' staggers onto the screens of wholly inaccurate collective media memory a drunk student at a prestigious film making college arriving complete - like athena from the split forehead of zeus - with an entire set of stale conveniently self mythologizing cabbage fnarts about it's own alleged greatness and groundbreaking whatever * the more one reads dear dead dave's wiki entry the angrier one gets; shed about him being commonly referred to - citation needed punks - as a dark 'visionary genius' sounds so patently and easily provably wrong; the amount of darkly laughable eye rolling which immediately results can put one right in ocular surgery * the very term 'lynchian' often actually and merely means 'deodorized pink male dog shed'; self appointed 'professionals' able to pick up on the smallest liminal metatextual symbolism in lynch's grand oeuvre - pfft more like oeuf * the key to correctly understanding and contextualizing dave seems self indulgence; historically it's been flans and academics doing all the heavy lifting in the 'pretentious film-school student who corners you at a lynchcon' department and not necessarily lynch himself - but it's still that initial privilege which iks - which allows such artistes to simply throw anything at the media screen and watch it slide down in their own goddamn sweet slow time (and too-often wholly without critical comment; hideous kojima much eh lynchy) * the whole problem with lynch appear not just lynch himself and 'his'(tm) holy art but how the entire drab 'lynchian' culture industry grown up around him - which continually sucks all the cinematic air out of potentially wider and far more interesting conversations; nobody else who needs it gets any views because artists of whiteness unceasingly masturbating their 'art, dahlink' in public horde all the cinematic eyeballs * while it's clearly understood that lynch is a true apex predator of postmodern movie literature 'texts' - at least to those who actually read good books - it's the inherently problematic and contestable (synthetic) nature of the lynchian text-space which results in critical analysis being the bane of smug pretentious artsy-fartsy lynch stans (one doesn't have to 'overly analyze' lynch because his genius is self-apparent; yet such a statement itself is a form of ideological analysis) * a phrase meant to be a critique of dave - 'being weird for the sake of being weird' - doesn't really cut it as what's far more truly weird isn't dave's work which is often exactly the kind of dull pseudo-weirdness someone's conservative dad living without friction in the straight world would consider - heavy handed and skull-smackingly obvious - but this whole (entirely empty) cinematic spectacle around a dead (missing) lynchian center one would write far more here but 'tired apathy' is only ever the outcome of thinking of such stale pale artists who appear to have long believed their own press releases without necessary cultural feedback - eg "enough already" - who it seems never had any close friends on-set to gently take them aside and quietly whisper "dave this stuff you're doing is just.. too shed" * notice how gordan cole's annoying deafness oh-so ironically reflects lynch's systematic failure to listen to good common sense from other artists - about storytelling character development consistency and plot arcs * naturally-unnaturally stans will reply (as they always predictably do) with "but that's the point"; bttp is the standard go-to for people who treat the text as subtext and have undergone permanent irony-gland removal surgery * mentally healthy viewers far wider and more healthy organic cinematic output should do well to remember to occasionally repost the following phase on social: "david lynch is still dead"; whenever the lynchian(tm) is involved its better to err on the side of caution and state "nah - i mean it's ok but too often just a load of old nonsensical time wasting wank; this shit's for the birds"  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut9P2d9ddlE === # timothee chalamet as bob dylan > mr jones: what's the lightbulb for > bob dylan: i thought you would ask me that > -don't look back (1967 documentary dir donn alan pennebaker) > pat garrett: who are you > alias: that's a good question > -pat garrett and billy the kid (1973 american western dir sam peckinpah) while there's plenty to critique about tiresome old dylan fans they've often at least able to articulate what's interesting or controversial about their all time fave /manufactured folk hero bob's one smart mother and sometimes it rubs off on people who actually listen to him to consider however the trailer for 'a complete unknown' (2024 all american biographical drama director james mangold) generates nothing but silent disbelief and slow stark existential horror in which this awful trash pile flick appears the living undead antithesis of anything and everything to do with dylan his life and art it's an instagram version of bob's life overseen and auto sludge-slop generated by corporate ai - all the right elements in roughly the right order except something's a little off - and that's absolutely everything talk about a movie that did not and should not have been made once again timothee 'nepotism baby' chalamet flares up on screen like cinematic syphilis dripping from the end of the camera's duck like so many hyper generic offensively non-offensive actors of his age he's only an actor by virtue of the ability to reflect light back into the lens last night one watched don't look back the 1967 documentary film directed by d.a pennebaker about dylan's 1965 endland concert tour what immediately stands out is the inherent ontological impossibility of dylan's chalamet appearing or being able to recreate the dylan seen in this documentary everything about chalamet's dylan appears to be moving in the exact opposite direction from dylan's version of dylan (thing is there's not even such a thing as 'an actual bob dylan' and dylan himself has been wondering about who that is exactly since the 60s) watching the trailer for 'a complete unknown' again today one is struck by the sanitized hipster coffee shop awfulness of it all - one expects an advert to pop up at the end: 'call east village realty today' or maybe see a new retro 60s styled naz1 tesla parked on the kerb as some super clean hippies walk by and gawp in admiration 'hey that's like cool - man' at one point dylan's girlfriend says 'you never talk about your family your past' to which dylan replies 'people make up their past sylvie they remember what they want and forget the rest' given the standard limitations of the average human brain this isn't exactly a critique of why bob fails to discuss his past since stating 'memory is selective' is information content zero yeah no shed 'bob' ironically what this movie does as a whole simply by existing is precisely what sylvie's talking about to dylan - that 'the real bob dylan's ruthless careerism and naked capitalistic 'gee shucks i don't know how all this fame happened' fame-seeking exactly mirrors chalamet's bs 'please no flashbulbs boys - i'm being professionally humble and shy' single stage persona the whole trailer's like a office 'positive vibes only' affirmation poster - simultaneously faux chummy and violetly devoid of any genuine human soul it's dylan as envisioned by a youtube commenter waiting for a spiced pumpkin latte and hears him sing for the 1st time in a lousy corporate a24 trailer about the 60s and now types "this movie brought me here!!!" agg how amazingly hateful only oliver stoner's the doors (1991) did it better-worse no wait it's cool sounding actor avan jogia as the character 'berkeley' in zombiland ii: double tap singing dylan "like a rolling.. stooooone") yeesh that was awesome it's dylan as roleplayed by capital y capital d your-dad - with not nearly enough rugs [a circle in a spiral: unfulfilled ambitions in inside llewyn davis](https://www.thefreelibrary.com/a+circle+in+a+spiral%3a+unfulfilled+ambitions+in+inside+llewyn+davis.-a0547747461) === # on the near total lack of uk working class solidarity and the buzz of bs busywork in which people only slightly better off than 'the rest of us' (specific citation needed) seem not to care or notice class /warfare which screwing over the non rich and pale skinned their seeming lack of empathy seems to stem from the hyper individualistic me-first 'loadsamoney' ideology component the thatcher era installed in their brains after a solid 45 minutes of largely unnecessary noise pollution a hired strimmer beneath my window heard me shut the bathroom window loudly the old ugly bile rose up again - 'see i knew you had to be smart to work for the council' / 'someone once took a video of a council worker strimming the astroturf on a roundabout' etc that is: deliberately conflating 'people forced to work for the council who just happen to annoy you' with 'the mini-napoleonesque tyranny of innate systemic institutional incompetence malicious pettiness and kafkaesque levels of inflexible bureaucratic dysfunction' he immediately called over his exploited co worker and said loudly 'look mate - some lazy munts don't even get up until 11' putting aside those who live here with kids and those who work from home andor do night shifts - this almost sounded like hatred for renters who live in lousy council blocks i work hard friendo i just don't get paid for it - ok certainly not as hard as a council worker but still where's the solidarity brother he then proceeded to rev his strimmer even louder working on the exact same already-leafless hedge for 25 minutes the basket the lack of uk working class solidarity however was mine not his if i'd not got kneejerk-reactionary angry at his bs council job and roughly pulled the window shut then he'd not begun to 'strim in anger' (old oasis song?) after a while he'd thankfully largely finished his venting ('bare faced cheek how can anyone not love a bit of the old unnecessary council strimming') and went back to regular noise levels - only occasionally getting a spare rev-dig in phew at one point i was ready to go out there and make him wear that strimmer up his arts yeah real smart there bob why not just bang two dull stones together - one of which is your idiot skull once again the first and foremost rule: be cool bob - do not disgrace your ancient most venerable teachers at the wu tang temple - actively engage in the steady conscious realization of the transience of all things the wider sociopolitical realities of strimming perhaps nobody should be forced to unceasingly and uselessly strim borders for a living - or listen to that intensely annoying buzz perhaps the very sound of cosmically pointless sisyphean busywork itself most of which is directly due to the annoying fact nature 'intrudes' on nature-destroying roads for earth destroying cars and therefore must be continually fought with an army of miserable frustrated underpaid strimmers and countless tons of pesticides 'keeping the borders tidy' also signifies 'keeping everything nice and presentable for the lords of the land as they look out over what they imagine they own' no untidy brown andor poor people to remind them they're just a bunch of pathologically greedy psychotic thieves thing is too many politically impotent members of the working class in this miserable backwater country let alone regular neanderthal duckheads the difference between them however is one has the opportunity to explode back in the face of ruling class oppression - but too often don't because they've been trained for years to blame anyone and everyone *except* their holy bosses and owners having said that i was truly glad when they finally left and i could get back to being silent dumb apathetic and estranged from my fellow oppressed (and tough) working class comrades that's right i didn't give a damn for the plight of strimmers before and a large part of me still doesn't - i must be a right arthole - despite the fact we're all being constantly strimmed over / up the arts by the rich and powerful after finishing his strim matey deliberately set up his incredibly loud wood chipper directly beneath my window and stayed there for about four hours - cheers mate all solidarity to you [cambridge university press: slavery and the birth of working-class racism in england 1814–1833](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/transactions-of-the-royal-historical-society/article/slavery-and-the-birth-of-workingclass-racism-in-england-18141833the-alexander-prize-essay/3ee614f0996a6c28f811e272195a42c2) [jacobin: george orwell and the proles](https://jacobin.com/2018/08/hope-lies-proles-john-newsinger-review-george-orwell-working-class-socialism) [ heckler news: pakland bans the use of combustion engine-powered leaf blowers and trimmers](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26359424) === # questioning productivity in literature > rhea: we don't have to think like that any more > -solaris (2002 dir steven soderbergh) watched a great loltube vid today on optimizing code for a minecraft clone it was taking the programmer ages - they'd used every optimization trick possible they were forced to deep dive into the more theoretical maths-for-code pit at some point however they said they realized they didn't just have to write code faster - but simply create less more smarter stuff *writing less*; the phrase hit with the antiwork soul force of a major literary revelation not merely writing faster with hyper seo brevity and bourgeois minimalism but simply writing smarter ie *not* writing - code / words / art whatever it is rather than generating stuff faster simply generate less more smarter stuff less doesn't mean 'less is more' that's mere capitalist brain worms bs rather 'less' as a positively charged biopsychic absence - a beautiful light voidness just-don't-write unless it's smart and smaller === # while loosing weight is difficult > keep on moving don't stop no >-keep on movin' by soul ii soul what's far more difficult is loosing the daily material conditions of physical working class sedentary immobility === # recent unhealthy ceo deaths > here is a society who would not take it anymore > -paraphrasing travis bickle (taxi driver 1976 dir martin scorsese) > and i think that's a harrowing thing > i think that for ceos that was like a terrifying moment > because it was the first time that they saw that we see them the way they see us [..] > this was a wake up call because we don't see them as people either > -comedian josh johnson to consider luigi mangione as a suspect pseudoscientific (pseudo-political) rorschach inkblot test for synthetic 'class consciousness' also known as 'not the instant ideological win for working americans some imagine it is' for those who appear bent on publicly performing the situation as instantly / inherently / universally meaningful or politically 'catalyzing' across all political boundaries - always be wary of wild claims to instant apparent universality in which such systematically vague icons conveniently mean anything (actually a narrow range) for anybody depending on who's asked - but then who gets to ask whom as some opinions are far more equal than others - who get to decide the overall framing in which violet claims-attitude adjusters aren't necessarily themselves class consciousness but merely closer to radial(/ized) lone wolf outsiders viewing their actions less political and more personal or cultural to consider something about the notion of such 'icons (of what exactly)' being 'volk heroes' smells faintly suspect almost as if belonging to loose (spectacular as in debordian) popcorn talk outside the digital colosseum > 'how can you possibly hate the people's front of luigi? splitters! > -paraphrasing [monty python](https://montypython.fandom.com/wiki/The_People%27s_Front_of_Judea) to consider how some specific groups labeling their fave (non-rando) shooter of the month 'fellow volk' often don't seem remotely 'folky' or genuinely social themselves - having solidarity - and may in fact just be as generally greedy privileged amoral and hyper-individualistic as any blandly average cyberpunk ceo hypocrisy much; almost like they never gave two flying hospital bills about 'commie socialist stuff like class consciousness' and everyday working class americans suffering from crippling healthcare debt - not that is until they jumped at the chance to crawl out of the internet woodwork and proudly voice their undying and hyper-genuine 'support' like they're suddenly che the guava roleplaying dr quinn medicine woman arriving on the public healthcare conversation scene complete with politically astute historically informed observations (and fused with lustful schadenfreude natch) to listen to the baying of the mass-minded crowd (/of middling class whiteness) yet be thankful have just enough good sense to stay far away from this afternoon's gladiatorial baldy billionaire chicken taco humping ceo slap fight that is to try repositioning the 'mangioning' of random ceos less of an 'us(/a) vs the 1%' and closer to mere 'hostile *Iinter-corporate* takeover drama' here's criterion on 'the killing of a chinese bookie': > "ben gazzara brilliantly portrays a gentleman’s club owner cosmo vitelli desperately committed to maintaining a facade of suave gentility despite the seediness of his environment and his own unhealthy appetites" also blaming the poor working class schlub slaving at mccancers for turning in the suspect for non existent dollar$ is itself anti-ironically indicative of anti-class unconsciousness some on loltube have basically said 'leaving aside the whole philosophical notion of whether it's wrong to kill for a moment..' - hold up why would someone want to leave aside philosophy (the love of truth) even for a moment - if only to signal to a wide audience of uncritical yes men what a fellow salt-of-the-earth class trooper they are - what like mangione you mean in which to consider popular online 'discussions' - displays of spectacular mass psychology - of the mangione kind as too-often merely in fact making the real conversation about oneself and one's own matchless 'class wokeness' whatever that is where is the realer communal unity missing in such a conversation - are there any that aren't socially mass mediated and echo chambered? (3d printed pun unintentional) [the role of the roman colosseum in representing civic values](https://roman.mythologyworldwide.com/the-role-of-the-roman-colosseum-in-representing-civic-values/) === # last night the duckheads in the airbnb below yapped and laughed obnoxiously until 2:30am they kept people in the flat awake and one felt like flash flooding their entire room cube with a mixture of quick drying cement and untreated uk water company silage shut up you awful yupple tourist arthole; people who actually live here are trying to rest what does it take to buy a half decent house in this miserable backwater country far far away from inconsiderate professional english(tm) loud mouths - with 'yeah mate yeah' as their holy and unceasing brain dead cry of unceasing ideological affirmation try reading a book for a change you quietly contemptible top gear watching morons upon waking with red eyes at eight this morning i decided to purposely stomp around our freezing rented shoebox for ten minutes slam doors rattle the cutlery tray and play the radio at a decent volume - a bit too much like those professionally miserable old sods who puncture your football when it lands in their garden oh the poverty of daily pseudo-existence in endland so utterly meager and petty is it any wonder some prefer to work and play in the republic === # on the violet claims attitude adjustment of a unhealth ceo what immediately springs to mind - always the danger of astoundingly uninformed reactionary /internet bs but here we go: -consider the video of joaquin phoenix's joker character arthur fleck shooting deniro's character murray franklin on his show - yet with the *actual* unstated ideological context being the capitalist evils of healthcare hypercorpoartions -a reactionary memetic image macro about the incident set in the half life universe where instead of the usual "assemble clamp contain" one hears the overwatch voice reciting ddd example links: -[the independent: when a medical insurance ceo was shot dead people celebarted his deff. what does this tell us about american healthcare?](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/brian-thompson-ceo-killed-manhattan-b2659700.html) -[cnn business: the top 1% captured nearly twice as much new wealth as the rest of the world over last two years](https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/15/business/top-1-wealth-oxfam-davos/index.html) -[zizek studies: surplus enjoyment and joker](http://zizekstudies.org/index.php/ijzs/article/viewith1248) === # in which after hearing the term 'digital garden' all one could think of is a bunch of rich pale skinned hipsters enjoying their whiteness and pumpkin spiced decaff soy latte foam drinks saying "my dear chap this isn't a mere 'blog' oh teh no it's a *digital garden* dahlink" well ex-cuse me while i strut around your well tended plot bursting with the living overgrowth of unchecked /digital colonial symbolism other than an ecologically destructive force little online has anything to to with the truly organic-chaotic i mean if i was rich pale and privileged then this shed would be easy there'd be no steep learning curve for terminally boring techno shed like 'obsidian' i'd simply tell my temporary assistant to pay some artistic schumck to ask an human artificial intelligence to stick up a site for me complete with content(tm) i've spent two hours so far trying to find how to set up eg navigation without joy i can already feel my existential hackles rising in anger and useless frustration got virtually zero patience for this rich nerdy bs in fact these endless apps and services seem precisely engineered for rich pink technbro nerds as a means to proactively gatekeep everyone else out of their horrible techno-libertarian web3 utopia forever darkly laughably marketed ideologically as prime examples of 'internet democracy in action' they're all in fact mere mental shackles digital colonialism chaining people to heavy grindset code blocks and the absurdist insanity of productivity / scientific rationalism 'publish dot obsidian dot md/ robertwhat/' what kind of dead backwater site name is that - not exactly going to set 'human ai dog shed google sludge-search' on seo fire guess i'll also have to fork out for a half decent site name as well - only for nobody to perfectly continue not knowing my shed remotely exists ('matthew effect' anyone) "yo bob stop eating digital frownies and develop a positive mental attitude" yeah well fortunately i've other plans impossibly oldskool memetic internet reaction image 'i don't really care if something good happened to you it should have happened to me instead' oddly resonates with many something in it's psychic background appears self consciously self critical - 'i know it's foolish and mean put down the good fortune of others' yet at the same time the evil of capitalism ideologically demands the poor suffer the tortures of envy(tm) so it can sell you itself as the solution to the problem it alone has caused; are you envious if so simply be more capitalistic and earn more than the other baskets / equally poor artist if one wants this phrase to go up a philosophical gear just try the following: 'i really don't care when something else seemingly good happens in the bright overworld of the pink plastic and pleasant - rather let's build a different society so genuine compassion and solidarity happen to everyone else for a damn change' my old best mate k0de blue from the deep southern uk amiga demoscene crew 'azt3k' could program fluently in low level 68000 machine code at the age of 15 he'd probably have a site up by now that would make that net-surfing scene from johnny mnemonic look like some lame 90s aol retro shed (oh wait teh ironies) i however was born with a plastic spoon up my arts and my maths is terrible like many i didn't get into this playstate to become a robotic data drone able to effortlessly process 0/1s for some productivity(tm) app i just want - well i was about to say i just want to make cool art and write bad post cyberpunk sci fi and research my bs projects in peace but really what i want to be is merely rich shameless and stupid - fail upwards via social whiteness without trying effortlessly luxuriate in my own unchecked and utterly unconscious privilege as is my synthetic birthright sit back and demand the world - my world - the one that i own - instantly fall in place in the precise order i set out have noticed recently - ooh for about thirty or so years now - that my delusions (specifically about 'being rich and famous with many cool friends') are so basic mid and heavy handed - so utterly obviously obvious and generic they warp local spacetime realty capitalism got my brain turned all inside out and upside down life often needs a comic strip to express its absurdity but often deserves a shed one like garfield meets doonsbury or a weird online one like ken & andy's rooftop news [botany informal empire and the colonial roots of british gardens](https://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/11532) === # personal knowledge management as bs > i should get one of those signs that says 'one of these days i'm gonna get organizized' > -travis bickle (taxi driver 1976 martin scorsese) > dylan: the songs i don't publish i usually do forget > press: do you take these scraps and- > dylan: -no i've forgotten the scraps - i usually have to start over all the time i can't really keep notes or anything like that > -bob dylan press conference 1965 as shamelessly ripped off via some other website found online which had also copy-pasta'd the entire article from some other poster the article on the 'op's site was missing and when attempting to find it one was met with some ai dogshed personal assistant that was about as useful as an annoying 70's bead curtain hanging in the back door of a video rental store against the ravening blue-grey ash faced flesh eating undead to consider 'personal knowledge management' a largely insane and bs problem similar to 'digital hoarding' and the sick busywork fetish of 'productivity' it ain't called the industrial note taking complex for nothing synthetic market demands for fake solutions systematically and deliberately fail to address the underlying non problem which itself conveniently continues to appear stubbornly intractable yet in fact it's merely an utterly non solvable non problem the wide differences in the effectiveness of 'knowledge management' is often down to rich pale nerds benefiting from systemic-historical wealth and power realize they can flog a valuable imaginary commodity to the less industrious(tm) / 'orderly' - and gullible some random little nerk who just adores organizing all his worthless little notes and minor revelations decides to christen his idiosyncartic routines with a catchy name package it as the *bestest method evar for getting organizized* (read: stinking capitalist rich) and then thousands of apparently 'less organized' marks pay him to learn it in other words get your personal knowledge graph away from me you scurvy capitalist productivity guru snake oil sheister gee talk about a self bureaucratizing circle jerk also known as (in the now classic republic tshirt slogan / antiwork image macro) gfyz 'go hump your zettelkasten' (the image a screenshot from ghostbusters of slime dripping from a set of library index cards) the unique sex appeal of quatsch like 'the knowledge graph' derives directly from the ideological fantasy and privilege of not having to immediately perceive what's most important in the art of life not only will any graph not tell you what's most important the graph provides its own self-justifying composition; it's big and complicated with multiple connections shooting off in all directions and therefore *must* be meaningful or remotely useful right the point of art - and what actual artists always do by default - is to samurai cut through endlessly elf-bloating data sets with bold and forceful lines of beauty and color or at least that's what already rich successful pink art nerds tell us the reason knowledge graphs and other pkm idiocy are so trendy is that by publicizing one's deliberately overwrought knowledge management system some imagine they're signalling the existence of their big pink man brain yet this is heard every time: "i honestly tried using (insert pkm software / service) for about two diligent weeks yet after only two weeks (ha two minutes more like) my notes were an utterly unintelligible and distressing combinatorial tangle of rando nonsense" almost like they always weren't from the very outset you poor sap the placebo belief in a novel revolutionary system may motivate some to art more than they would otherwise or at least review their project notes more often yet any actual method to entirely bypass such non problems entirely would honestly be a non-trivial contribution to general human welfare and global mental health one of the the most important things about art is collectively discovering non-trivial artistic truths - to help meaningful art emerge and then forget about it so we can all move on together to other and hopefully greater acts of positive collective will a perpetually expanding net of hyperlinked notes is not only unimpressive but oppressive a mere form of sophisticated procrastination the obsession with retaining every little bs idea one's ever had is anal digital hoarding and 'train spotting anorak radish' sad some say that in history 'the singular art work rules' but is it bullocks the very notion of 'the singular artwork' as a brute force attack on collective revolution often supported by infinitely tangled organic webs of real social interaction / struggle the myth that software tools and endless courses can 'aid intellectual advancement and productivity' only exists because we don't tell already well off tech gurus with paid personal assistants to stfu enough the current state of 'personal knowledge management' bs is made possible in the short term by the apparent magnitude of the non problem and the widespread artificial need for endless plastic solutions that do less than nothing scribbling little notes is some psychological bulwark kink against the shocking realty of plainly realizing the cosmic uselessness / hyperrealty of capitalist work productivity and protestant business per se [ruben schade: is online stuff worth saving](https://rubenerd.com/is-it-worth-saving/) mostly no === # two idiots in front this afternoon in the local co-op was standing by the coffee machine waiting for my horrible burnt tasting latte which turned out so awful it was like the machine itself used to sell oregano to the spin doctors a woman walking in my direction suddenly stops and says 'excuse me - pleeeeze' real sarcastic like thing is she also seemed to wave her phone in my general direction at the same time almost as if there was an app called 'move psychotic looking jacked cockney weirdos out of the way' she could have simply walked around as there was plenty of room for her fat arts but no apparently having an expensive mobile phone on hire for exorbitant prices automatically grants you some kind of automatic privilege to be a condescending shed i wasn't in the way and she could have simply gone around me i finished shopping and went to the checkout only to discover these two idiots were in front of the line they then proceeded to give the poor person at the checkout the most convoluted and annoying set of instructions and generally waste everyone's time - including their own: > "yeah (*chews bubblegum*) could i get 30 quid cash back and pay for this oh wait my other card oh and a bottle of vodka no wait a bottle of rum hang on i've forgotten my number - babe do you know my pin - ok wait if i transfer some money to your phone can you pay with your card oh that's not working either" around eight minutes of dark biocosmic eons passed while they screwed about with cards and numbers and phone-netic data exchanges / troubled existential changes of heart regarding their specific emotionally requested purchases meanwhile i'm standing there like a spare duck in the whizzing rain waiting for a old man's wee-smelling number 5 bus from leightonstone to bethnal green everybody else in line senses will never turn up like godot we just stare at these two mobile phone catalyzed dummkophs and steam is slowing rising out of our ears at no point do they turn and say something like 'sorry about the wait' - to which one would of instantly replied 'no problem' aka bs politeness uk 101 finally they left having purchased absolutely nothing and having learnt even less note this isn't one of those reactionary nets rants blaming younger people for everything one suspects these two would be rude inconsiderate fools without 'the phones' twisting their limited neural matrices as chuck says - giving the baby anything the baby's been told it wants - for a price of course the price of course is often one's soul neural capacity and common humanity === # regarding the l8est am waiting for the new nosfeartu movie the secret level series and shinichiro watanabe's lazarus anime in 2025 dang turned out only the warhammer segment in secret level was straight fire it's like they forgot how to tell an engaging story - or that videographic arcadians only work best as 'playspaces telling stories through play' in fact they did that awful "look you're just meant to read it as meaning x" thing and i can't stand that === # the rsi in my arm neck and back have returned sitting here typing these words is painful enough i don't have a nice ergonomic chair to sit in and have been slumping on this sofa for three unhealthy years thing is this automatically generates a reactionary conservative / capitalist response i immediately start to state that "if only i had enough money than i could afford on of those slick ass overrated herman miller aeron office chairs" when in fact capitalism is the more actual root cause of my rsi - and my lack of decent chair and the high cost of the chair itself if i wasn't forced to sit here for countless hours like a schmuck typing bs and had an actual life then things would be a lot easier and my arm wouldn't constantly be on slow burning fire that is if daily grim meathook capitalist reality (simulation) were structured entirely differently and we lived in an actual society where people helped each other instead of being entirely out for themselves then i could afford (find) a friendly chiropractor to pop my shoulder back away from constant pain and toward health note that's not 'optimal' health - because the body is only ever seen as just another system to be optimized and exploited in the algorithmic sense for maximum roi capitalism forces people to be capitalistic in their social misrelations towards others - every encounter becomes a greasy money grubbing opportunity of capitalistic 'exchange' ie 'so what do i get out of it' this is of course utterly insane cruel and of course impossibly stupid beyond words look i'm not afraid to say capitalism why don't you try it too say it out loud three times dear fellow researcher: "capitalism capitalism capitalism" while noting its innate dull horror i'm not only financially poor but also culturally because the dominant culture forced down my neck belongs to sociopathic rich owners of whiteness(tm) i've no choice but to find my own collective tribe of equally alienated bored frustrated and hungry artists and thinkers and help create a better reality for all === # i regularly enjoy making french press coffee the ground italian stuff they sell in the local co-op isn't half bad i walked into my partner's mini office this morning with a fresh mug o' hot black oilslick she was listening to a presentation on her company's lousy 1080p laptop screen i only caught a glimpse of it but experienced such a strong pang of terminal boredom i was forced to retreat to a safe existential distance back inside my skull force myself to imagine anything remotely more interesting and vital before i died from total soul death implosion the presentation was something to do with managing receipts and payment procedures my beloved works in the tiresome backwater world of publishing and is one of a billion exploited females forced to do endless lousy underpaid paper pushing bs job lozenges nothing would please both of us if she had the opportunity to live life far away from screens screens screens indeed life in front of light exuding rectangles isn't living at all but merely a drastic undeadness i know for a fact she'd rather be tending and riding horses composing piano music and making jewellery - maybe all at once who knows currently she works from around 8:30 to 10:30 at night and regularly skips lunch - all so the white male underworld of dead academia can skip publishing's endless small bureaucartic mundanities and get on with being real important it's long been my life goal to help her out of this awful soul destroying situation but how is the question; after several years trying unsuccessfully to get any attention whatsoever to 'my' often shed art i think the answer is to bypass the notion of 'making money' entirely and instead focus on finding and building *community* the hoary cliche that it's not what you know but who is interesting - yet 'community' i want to emphasize means 'going in every possible opposing direction to that of money' that is people first and foremost - 'love over gold' as dire straits put it all hail imaginary lifestyle 'republic of bob' === # just realized again this ain't something else no this is it baby - life repeating one impossible moment at a time this isn't me with life on pause this is and always it - the naked lunch nowhere to go and nothing to wait for except right here right now - but where's that exactly nowhere a positively charged nondual light void questioning how to for instance 'best utilize existing information overload in a way to tangibly produce effective outcomes' ala productivity cult non-thinking yet what does when one is dealing with digital intangibles with little but virtual dream fragments === # arm and neck still hurt somehow got to get /to a standing desk that is to say in actuality: got to somehow find and help build a community of like minded artists creatives and critical thinking left-field oddballs pool our resources and form a non profit anti-organization in which there happen to be standing desks to spare === # probably the most dire day this year barely hanging off at the tail end of storm darragh jebus is socalled life in the uk ever bleak wet streets and grey skies without end it's no wonder 'the national character' appears to be a bunch of desperate professionally miserable loner nerds deep into books tea and board / bored garmz oh for a song that speaks directly and through my hollow soul one that feels like a warm comfy breeze on a cold winter night while sitting inside in a nice yet empty house overlooking the megacity walking against the wind and whizzing rain toward the local co-op (where apparently no grown man over 30 washes their armpits the dirty stinkers it's often so bad i wanna gag puke) every time i go in there for a sandwich and the awful in-shop radio is playing and i see the utterly miserable lined face of the old mean woman with the bad back who works behind the counter and i hear the psychotic space hum of the overhead florescents beaming and buzzing down on quality low quality edible mass produced merchandise i get an urge a desperate barely concealed urge to sprint out of there and keep running right into the remains of the setting sun oh to never look back on this old tired and aggressively nondescript anti-life inna endland you know that scene regularly inserted into the comedy series father ted where he suddenly imagines himself at a casino busy winning and cheering while surrounded by beautiful woman - yeah well that's my media spirit animal right there a terminally useless dream of wrong headed escape to a new allegedly far more interesting dynamic and exciting realty full of mystery and hyper adventure or at the very least a couple more quid in my pocket for those bad three quid cyberpunk ebooks i love to collect like magic literary beans === # you deleted your social media platform account again it's getting to be a habit hey much like surfing interwebs while you saw interesting people and projects there all your attempts at conversation were based on false social assumptions and soon turned sour without any more actual context other than being online that is actually meeting real people and not staring at icons on a screen getting to know them over several months say understanding their unique existential position all chat quickly devolved into talking at cross purposes making bold narrative plays and moves where none were needed henry swanson's tendency to show off when he doesn't know jack shed was a sight to behold he quickly annoyed people and wouldn't shut up see that's just it isn't it being online forces researchers to be artholes they're forced to falsely feel that if they aren't continually talking about themselves dominating the conversation and repeatedly pushing their personal ego-brand forward to the front of the line then they're somehow missing out that nobody will notice them not sempai not digital arts mommy not fellow researchers the great shed liquid interlol nets positively mutates egos into influencers showboaters garish carnival barkers and brand ambassadors for themselves all of which are pathological unsustainable ugly stupid unnecessary and terminally boring sure one answer is to state this internet process of shouty egotistic arthole-ization a formal danger that one doesn't to continually act like a performing salesmen for some nonsense lifestyle brand that is themselves isn't this called main character syndrome or something where one lives their entire life online which means immediately turning into a fictional character that happens to be called one's self === // *imaginary pastime republic of bob*