3,725 karma · joined December 15, 2012
That kind of stuff is around but maybe not evenly distributed or legible to large demographics.
Unfortunately, so is the rest of the vicious horrorshow, equally illegible and equally uneven in distribution.
I always forget how geeked out these folks probably are and so I appreciate the reminder here.
About two days a month of my time is spent handing out bubbles and points to folks to get them to better manage their habits (in addition to other street medicine stuff). Stimulant culture is very foreign to my own chemistry, but yeah, the idea that most of these folks are just gakd up all the time certainly lines up with my experiences debraiding hobo feet.
I'm similarly not personally familiar with ketamine, but i've been doing first aid at festivals this year and understanding that most of the folks running the stuff in the US are on some spectrum of chemical impairment has been very helpful.
I don't miss drinking, but it was helpful in understanding the mindset at least.
If folks are interested in an ivy league business education but can't afford the tuition and life changes, I suggest that they can learn much of what it's like to be around a bunch of folks with poor impulse control and who are on a bunch of stimulants by volunteering with their local street medic group. The aesthetics are different but the general decision making processes seem very similar to me.
the idea that we can have something that so deeply ingrained into my practice as a human just kind of tossed out there easily as if it's no thing at all,
with no real cultural context, no material situation in history, no connection to a place or a time, denuded of anything that would make mark it as art of a time or place, or even of a specific individual person much less of some localized scene, work created without any specific need being filled to be immediately and unconsciously forgotten.
In my life I have come to understand that almost all the things I -like- about music and my practices of it might seem so marginal to the work-in-itself as to be inconsequential:
this band played this song on this day this way because this person heard that guy play it, and then they played it in these clubs for a while, and it was recorded and someone over there liked it and that's why "Mighty Might Bosstones".
Like, for instance,
remembering the Slim Richey chainsaw statue in the Starlight bar in Terrlingua and recalling how he replaced Karen Abrahams in the Jitterbug Vipers and wishing that I'd gone and played that gig for $30 in Austin with her and Richie Bowden when I could have, and then thinking how I'll never get to play with Augie Myer or Jon Inmon either and then understanding that the JV are why Dr Sick of the some dumb throwback band brings coked up New Orleans musicians to a last-Sunday concert at the Kerrville Folk Festival, and knowing that the fact I have played on that stage and stage managed both those bands sutures me into a history and a community far larger that I can fully understand much less put into something intelligible to other folks who haven't stood with a giant family tree of musicians on stages smaller than drum risers.
The idea that you can make "music" totally a-historically, ex nihlo, and some folks would listen to it and not be able to taste the difference or even understand the weight of what they are saying when they say "this is that, this dumb shit is the same as what all yall do".
That's what I hate the most.
It's like they've invented zombies (in the 1932 film sense) and are proud of that instead of horrified, and I find it repulsive.
I sometimes wish I believed in god so I could say if this is the kind of disgust that believers feel when folks are casually sacrilegious.
It's felt somewhat unique to WP for sure, though maybe there are other examples where swaths of communities get big mad when people suggest distributing GPL software for free. I found it a little repellent, but lots of folks scraped together micro-scale businesses selling plugins and themes.
I believe I made a lot better living building stuff for clients and then not caring about what they did with the software, but hey, I'm not the boss of folks trying to make a living supporting a $10 lifetime membership to an image size selecting plugin.
Anyhow, my point is that there is at least a little nuance to be found when thinking about WP and open source software.
I very much can and do read for a lot of instruments. In some situations (I played cello in string quartets for a couple of years) deviation from the written notes is limited to phrasing and dynamics and if you're playing weddings, the form gets shoved around a lot (eg don't re-start the cannon when the bride's mother is cued up to walk).
In most of the situations I've played in over the last couple of years, reading more like a teacher running off of "lecture notes" and less like an actor performing Shakespere- deveation is not just expected but required.
However, my memory and ear isn't so good I can predict the future or play a melody or form I have not heard- being able to read an idea and play it is important in the places I play.
And that's my point: standard notation never really catches all the facts about music, even in classical situations. But it's still a lot easier for me personally to read than some weird grid or table (though I have had to play charts that were almost that bad).
I've been using DAWs since Logic was owned by E-Magic. Much my early 2000s was spent writing music on a piano roll in Fruity Loops.
The reason I prefer to read standard notation is precisely because I know what the other alternatives are- in reality, it's not "piano rolls" or tracker data, but simple memorization or, like, chord charts- which works fine in a lot of places.
If you don't understand what I mean, then fine, but you might find the world a more interesting place when folks tell you how they have different experiences.
To use a common phrase among directors, I can indeed "read not write" (if you know you know). Playing a notated part as-written is super common in a lot of places and I do that, but you might find it interesting to know that this notation isn't the only way that standard notation is used in the world.
As a human who plays a lot of instruments for money in front of people, it is far easier for me to read and understand directions written in standard notation than it is to decode whatever the fuck is going on with a piano roll or, god forbid, guitar tab.
I'm sympathetic to that view; I spent all evening writing electronic music by programming it into a sequencer and spent a lot of my early career (starting in about 1999) programming using a piano roll.
But "easier for what purpose"? It'd be really tough to read at a gig off a piano-roll.
It took a long time to become comfortable with the fact that standard notation is mostly a suggestion that doesn't contain the years of context I need to get through a big band gig on double bass... but once I realized that my ability to sight read got good enough that I stopped wishing there were some other kind of notation to read.
I don't think rote memorization is super useful for me as a player- I've heard a lot of analysis that sounds "accurate" but often it doesn't follow my own thoughts and understandings.
If folks are playing, that raises questions about "why this here" and it's nice to have vocabulary for to understand. But I see a lot of folks (there are several in this thread) who think that is a bit backwards- that somehow folks could start with an abstract rule set and learn much. If that's the view on what is happening then I agree that "teaching theory is impossibly hard".
But if learning to play comes before the theory about why we play what we play the situation is a lot easier.
Almost all the theory I have comes from applying the stuff from "theory" books to what I do.
I learned what a secondary dominant sounds like by learning I should stay in an A chord instead of an Am in the turn around in G major blues songs long before I got the concept of what that C# might do to the local tonicity of the tune from whatever theory book.
And I think that's a reasonable way to learn: start playing whatever, try to pick up something you can read for (I read double bass and clarinet pretty well) take up a lot of piano (weather you read it or not), play a bunch with musicians, and eventually the arbitrary facts about your practice sort themselves out.
Maybe consider my conciliatory rhetoric ("folks here think") in the original post as statement about what I think the vicious and hyper-authoritarian tech bros here believe, namely everything from obviously dumb crap ranging from
- "it's ccp propaganda"
- or "you don't have a right to provacy in public"
- or "the environmental concerns are overblown"
- or "you already have a cellphone so why you bitchin"
- or "it's a private company so you don't have to worry about the gov"
to less arguable but widely held neoliberal premises like "the state has a perogative to do what it wants so if you're not able to participate in the [typically closed] {city council|senate|NSA} decisions that lead here then you have no right to take direct action".
Thus you might understand what I am writing here is an attempt to not trigger the VC bros and to get them to consider that all us unwashed masses might have some kind of point?
I am often not the clearest writer, but the first sentence literally is about what I understand a lot of people on the site to believe, not a statement about what I belive.
People on this site have a highly propagandized view of what (they think of as) the proles think, and I'd like the folks of the site to consider that people really do understand the vicious ends to which these technologies are put, hence the rhetoric.
To be clear, on some level, I think my average no-kings/Tucker-Carson-stan-ing friends can accept the argument that cops will use this tech to give worms to ex-girlfriends. While that should be enough of a reason to reject the tech it really doesn't go far enough into why that tech is objectionable: forcing warrants for the mass-survellience network aren'r really sufficient to remedy my own worries.
From my position, that idea of tech/policy-as-solution is indeed misguided because my deeper worry is that the state will use it for "counter-insurgency". Considering oneself a potential insurgent is foreign to about anyone in US mainline politics. It is, however, what I feel deeply when think about how folks might indeed be "misguided", and I am not sure if you'd agree with that or not. I can read that into a lot of the posts responding above. But that more radical concern not what I wrote about when I wrote that post.
So sure, you're 100% correct and I agree with your point.
I do not think the idea that "folks undrstand the survellience aspect of all this tech" is generally legible to the fascists and other anti-leftist US "centrists" who populate this specific message board- I think the conversation in this thread supports that view.
It's hard to make that point into something they are able to read. I'd still like them to consider it.
It's likely projection on my part but I have a deep suspicion that people understand that mass surveillance by the state is the main use case for all these LLMs, camera systems, and increasing large data centers.
That certainly is my own worry, at least.
Maybe a bit over the top for a lot of situations. I assume folks would acquire these things over a long period of time depending on their projects or what they are repairing. I have a 2-ch function generator coming because after 20 years of bodging stuff together and fixing minor things, I am tired of using the super cheapo one I got back in the day. It takes a while to amass all that crap, but it's fun.
A couple other thoughts: used hemostats are super helpful for a lot of things. for a lot of years I avoided getting any kind of "3rd hand" because I would use combinations of hemostats.
Or jigs- I have a very old piece of wood that has hole drilled for m and f XLR and 1/4 audio connectors with notes about which pin is which. Making tools like that is quite satisfying.
I really enjoy having a stack of stainless steel condiment cups to put screw in- I stack them up during a disassembly and then unstack them as I reassemble.
Also I will say that while I thought building one of those cheap-o oscilloscope kits was a pretty fun practice and I can recommend that, I don't fine them easy enough to use for beginners... the 2-ch Rigol scope I got was not super expensive and felt like the cheapest thing I'd be recommending to folks.
Finally, I have had a lot of mixed successes with desoldering pumps. It took me a long time to figure out that I can only get desoldering braid to work if I put liquid flux on it, but that made it a lot cleaner for me than the solder suckers.
Also, good tools and supplies- kester solder and liquid flux.
It took me quite a while to figure out that my preferences are for desoldering braid that's been soaked with liquid flux- if I use a manual pump it's going to be rough. I am hoping to get a hot air station at some point but I haven't been doing enough work to justify it over my ancient hakko.
He is a tech guy, though.
But he keeps having to go to oil production facilities on site in Wyoming to maintain IT infra. It pays okay but it's not the kind of stuff I would do now that I'm mostly able to retire into audio/music work and the minimal amount of festival EMT/ free clinic volunteer stuff I do.
He's a genuine and kind person and has spent a lot of time doing nice things for folks because he likes doing those things. For instance, he was running the makerlab here in the sticks for a couple of years. He got the American legion hall setup so there is now a space for local artists to play.
That's how I know him, at least.
There are a lot of folks in this world who've gotten to some degree of comfortability some way or other, usually some combination of "the old fashioned way" (my parents passed on and left me their IRA) or the more usual way of working for several decades at some tedious skill that pays well in some circumstances.
Folks like my buddy have made a rational decision to just "kind of do whatever"; he has what he needs, he's not super old, and if you've managed to secure a spot out in the middle of nowhere and figure out not-too-annoying-but-inexpensive ways of maintaining that lifestyle, then a lot of options open up.
According to him, he brings a lot of generator equipment and tools (including a welder) and spends his time out there fixing stuff for folks or maintaining stuff like the poorly-configured mesh network equipment other, similarly minded nerds bring out. He troubleshoots folks' generators or vehicles.
Does that sound fun?
It sounds fun to me, to just go somewhere and help folks when I can.
Even if a lot of those folks are spun, or dumb, or party people trying to social climb or whatever. I am certain that given the fame and the proxemity to SF-style wealth there are plenty of well off folks trying to party with folks while networking, but I am equally certain that there are a whole rainbow of other ways that folks are being out there.
I don't like being at events that large, so that rules it out for me, in the same way that I have spent a lot of time at Kerrville Folk Fest but have avoided the Rainbow Gathering.
And to be clear, he's going to a party and it's an easy place to find "unique" substances or people to have fun with.
But I do see how there has to be some amount of community there, given how many folks are going to be with people and not just be tourists.
I am likely projecting to a small degree, but my impression is that largely that's the vibe out there, folks enjoying doing things because they find them satisfying rather than because they can monetize the behavior somehow.
Maybe that satisfaction is dressing up fancy and doing many days worth of drugs. Maybe that is running a bar for strangers, maybe that's making art for other folks to enjoy, maybe it's fixing busted bicycles, maybe it's getting a generator running again.
Having been "involved" with a certain amount of off grid raves and other kinds of gatherings, that's my general understanding of that culture. I'd assume it is in play out there as well.
Look, I get that folks in the US and other colonial projects feel a-okay in genociding the folks who were living there previously. I also get that you can't understand the different connection to specific pieces of land that folks such as the Ute, Navajo, and Hopi folks I live around have compared to my own connections to place and people.
But you'd be way less annoying if you'd just state your (almost-certainly-inhuman-if-plainly-stated) argument instead of trying to "hah gottem"ing yourself.
The idea that they can find the folks organizing and funding these "cells" is a big part of the US gov's premise on how it is going to "fight" these "cells".
It's not stated as explicitly as that, so it's not surprising that folks don't pick up on that distinction between "distributed groups who agree on principle but don't have any material connections" and "top down, hierarchical structures funded by singlular sources".
But the folks running the US gov don't even see the folks who disagree with them as human, much less as having a legible and understandable grievance. So it's not surprising to me that they just project their own authoritarian and top-down organizational preferences onto other groups of humans doing stuff.
So sure, "antifa" exists. But it's categorically different than how the US government is trying to say it exists, and that's an important distinction.
The obvious problem is that when the same group is committing vicious crimes and horrors, it's very hard to look at about anything they do and be like... well, at least folks were getting laid during Midnight Climax.
"Oh, hey, that's cute: the vicious monsters who torture people to death in a global network of black sites are manipulating us again by exporting pleasant videos of puppets teaching children".
It took about 20 years for my philosophy and literature degrees pay off.
I know more now, but I had to start -somewhere- even if it was hard to get the whole context.
Much of that time between putting in all that work and feeling like it was worth it was spent reading a lot of other things and amassing life experience, raising my kids, and working in unrelated professions.
However, having that context for the experiences I was getting is probably why it feels useful in retrospect.
Even though I didn't really understand Sartre or Kirkegaard or whoever (and I suspect that they don't have the best ideas all the time), having them available to me was helpful.
To me, even if I didn't totally get the context of "Pride and Prejudice" or "The Mayor of Casterbridge" or "Ulysses" or "Pamela" or "Borderlands/La Frontera" or "The Sun Also Rises":
a) knowing that these were things people do deeply explore was helpful and
b) the little bits that did resonate have stayed with me.
Further, it's been very useful to re-visit these texts as I've gotten older has been supremely interesting.
So yeah, education is wasted on the young and all but it set me up well.
As a not-super-old 48-year-old with adult children, I'm quite pleased that I can review the texts from my 20s and will be able to do the same if I get to be in my 70s or 80s.
I know them pretty well. It actually has been quite difficult to extricate my thinking from that culture which raised me and I still struggle to do that work.
I know they are incredibly violent.
Hoping that you could take their firearms manufacturing and get them to shoot flowers isn't just dumb, it's a dangerous misreading of the structure.
F35s aren't going to start dropping aid packages. Thinking they might is dangerously naive because it misses the structural forces that create them in the first place. And further, that kind of "the miliitary could be used for good if we just use the power of our minds to levitate the pentagon" style thinking is what leads folks to develop vicious technology without worrying how it may be used.
The folks with the guns and the empire often hold a belief that the technology that they produce has not underlying system or ethical structure that produced it, so it could be use for "good" just as easily as the violence to which it will enviably be put.
The US liberals and conservatives who hold these views generally think that if we just have more [trans/well-trained] bomber pilots or [black/class-transitioning] billionaires, all the violence in the world could be put in the bottle and chucked into the sea.
When I write that the person who is creating all this text is a fucking nut, this is the kind of thing that I am talking about:
"de-weaponization means, disconnecting the user from using technology in destructive ways".
You can't.
Thinking that you can is dangerous and just hides the problems.
Thinking that somehow the teleology of the technology can be reduced to a single person's motivations for using it is the exact same structure that the folks who are using it for violence think.
It destroys any hope of understanding the social structures that lead to folks using technology for violence.
It's what has led to the IMF, World Bank, and WTO doing so many crimes. It's lynch pin that allows folks in the US to think somehow their thoughts and prayers for how all the tech they produce just needs to be tweaked a bit and somehow that will stop the ecocide of the planet. "Sorry we destroyed your economy and caused massive instability, but you were holding it wrong".
I mean, I have in the past "expanded my mind" to understand that none of the terrible violence inflicted by this empire is necessary- you're right that it is not, but the problem is that anything I do after that is "all in my head".
The material reality, though, is that either we're not doing anything material at that point (which is certainly a kind of narcissism in its own right) or more typically we don't fully understand the deep violence maintained by something such as the US capitalist world order, which is (as far as I can tell) even more narcissistic and violent.
Just pure, unadulterated bat-shit craziness.
There is no world where the globe-spanning, petroleum based colonialist empire that produces F35 is going to somehow, out of the goodness of it's oil-pumping heart go swords to plowshares.
I mean, of all the many folks displaying cluster-b disorders on this site, you're quite expressive of certain trends. You're unable to look past your own identity within the hegemonic order to understand how absolutely out of touch with the material world your positions are.
Congratulations or outdoing so many other folks here in expressing the most radically contradictory and simultaneously un-self-aware positions.
Historically the way white folks have squared that circle has been to say that those folks aren't really people and simply don't know the joys of Christian city dwelling.
I can't make the math work, though.
I understand that the unspoken assumption is that (unlike internet randos such as myself) LEOs and your local government and every other jerk to whom they decide to grant access are universally "good and well intentioned".
But I am always astonished that folks really believe that assumption when stated as such.
If you give up on that assumption, though, the actual reality is that there isn't a difference between only letting literally everyone who has or knows someone with a .gov address access who comes and goes from your house and letting every random dumbass such as myself access that information.
The amount of assumptions about what it might mean to "think" coupled with a seeming obliviousness to those assumptions is quire masterful.
The dumbest people making the most confident statements about thinking...
I love it.
I am going to print it out so that when my great-great-grand kids are hunting angus beef on the plains of what used to be the US they will have some understanding of how the late 21st C version of a Butlerian Jihad came to be.
This is beautiful and I hope that all you folks actually do stop thinking even harder than you already have, because it might liberate the rest of the humans from the Torment Nexus v3.0 you folks seem so dead set on rolling out post haste.
To be fair, US political culture (and capitalism in general) contain deep, deep contradictions so it's going to require a whole lot of glue and squinting to say that there is any coherence to any US political party...
The person you're responding to has it correct, though, that there was an important cultural shift around Johnson and Nixon and the Southern Strategy and all that... not that these cultural politics could ever touch the materialist facts of capital.
If you're not familiar with the concept... https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=lmgtfy