Walter Ostanek

Yes, the same Tony Banks who's in Genesis and who my mum used to fancy. Is it just confirmation bias or are there Genesissy leitmotifs in there?

I thought the 2nd and 3rd both had some fantastic ideas in them. Detailed dives into drastically different forms of intelligence. I found the end of the 3rd one crushingly depressing though and, well, almost pointless, after seeing how much the Enkidu crew suffered, only for it to turn out that *spoilers*. Ditto the deference to some kind of Prime Directive ethic in parts of the 3rd book just seemed weird, given that the first two books were about as antithetical to that as possible. I get that the "we're going on an adventure" fellas didn't want to homogenise cultures/civilisations out of existence, but I struggled with the leap from that to "let's just watch them die" Not read any of his other series, it's kinda daunting seeing how many books he pumps out. Feel like I'd enjoy the Tyrant Philosophers, though.

Honestly I know very little about the bloke, having religiously avoided anything to do with Apple for my whole life so far. But the manner of his death alone tells you he was a cunt. Remember kids, alternative medicine is a fascist gateway, always was, always will be.

Fuck me that was a solid read. Have you read the other two? Really hope Tchaikovsky keeps things going in that series, though I understand it runs the risk of turning into a "hyperintelligent creepy crawly of the week" thing

holding the down arrow down in Excel to see how fast i can get to the bottom

any guesses as to which songs relate to richard dreamshagging which celebrity?

Ah yes Russophobia But yeah fuck Nuland for general neoliberal bullshit, tho the coup stuff is just cringe

Catch the same bloke in a few weeks and he'll probably be boasting about being lavishly wined and dined at some swanky client event

Shit, I used to plod down the street in my first year of uni back to halls listening to that on my 256MB MP3 player. Don't think I've even thought about it since. Lovely little bunch of traxxx

what was he thinking

the only person i've ever had to sack is also the only person IRL i've known who's been a self declared JP fanboy. Sacked him for joking about rape one too many times in front of female coworkers, alongside all the typical woman-o-phobic comments

And linking those two things, if you ever wonder why the Indian media/online community is so pro-RU, and why India is now home to so many troll farms, look at who in India profits from Putin's war: Ambani, Adani, the Birla clan: all of the Modi oligarch groupies, getting very rich off of cheap russian oil. You could possibly make a coherent argument that this internet-borne fascist revival is being conducted by and for the oil industry specifically

It's not speculation at all, the actions of troll farms have been reported on, and you can even watch this stuff happen in real time - two very recent mask-off moments were the "Wagner Gap" when all sorts of pro-RU troll activities suddenly went dark while they waited to see what happened to their boss, and the almost comically inept pro-Indian trolling on Canadian subreddits in the wake of the Hardeep Singh Najjar hit job (they were still clearly learning the ropes at the time). The other big tactic you didn't touch on is reputation laundering, where some made-up gobshite will get referenced through a handful of opinion blogs in order to mask a lie as part of a factual narrative I agree that the yanks are utter amateurs at this, they're being massively outgunned in the information realm (ditto cyberwarfare) - at least, the democrats and/or liberal establishment are. They had it down in the TV era, as anyone who even skimmed a US news channel will have noticed during the war on islamterror, but they never adapted to new media. Unsure if the (now ascendant) fascist wing of the GOP have a good handle on it, or if they mostly benefit from russian efforts

Ol' Jack when he was young on vocals there - and produced by Andy Partridge of XTC fame. Fascinating track, you can hear influences from both of them

No, but real information will be so utterly drowned in a tsunami of deepfakes that the internet will become impossible to use Hard-hitting Owen Jones vid. Thing is, he argues from the perspective that what is happening in Gaza is unusually horrific, but really it isn't. Even just in my lifetime, all of this stuff already happened in Bosnia, and most of the outside world only gave a shit if it impacted their strategic interests - and if it didn't, well: "it didn't happen, and if it did, they deserved it". Ditto Palestine half a dozen other times, Chechnya, Yemen, Syria, Ukraine (not least Mariupol). Etc etc etc. This utterly horrific dehumanisation, apathy and hypocrisy is actually the norm, right across the geopolitical chessboard. My wife is of Palestinian background, and consequently so are lots of my family, and one of my in-laws is an activist who's prominent enough to have been the target of shit stirring articles in the rightwing blogosphere. Obviously we were out at protests a bunch over the last few months. But even they, in a moment like this, where some of their (my!) extended family have been killed and they appreciate every scrap of support - they're still seriously weirded out by a fair number of the others who they march alongside at protests. Because they know that these people are campists, supporting Palestine not for innate humanitarianism but because it tickles their geopolitical fancy, and if the geopolitical winds were blowing a different way, they'd be totally fine with this. There has never been a time when any world power, or "the international community" at large, has cared about the value of human life. Only the life of those humans whose suffering impacts their power

All this time I've never managed to get into it, I find it staggeringly depressing, which isn't surprising based on the (inferred) subject matter

You never know whether it's irony-poisoning or whether the irony is always a facade (fascade?) from the beginning. Either way, when fascists tell you that they want to do fascist stuff, believe them. Because if they can, they will. That goes for the Trumpeteers, the Putin-lovers, Modi, Orban & dozens of others.

I never really know what to think when it comes to systems science approaches. Limits to Growth was the first big one, and it was a lot cleverer than most people make it out to be (most of the common criticisms don't actually reflect what they actually did, if you read it - e.g. unlike Ehrlich they do take into account that the resource base could increase considerably). The focus on trends and flows rather than things means it meshes nicely with ecology and dialectical approaches, but the downside that comes with that is that its complexity and methodology offers a great excuse to not bother to codify/quantify it properly, and you can easily wish away the need to seriously think about social/political/economic consequences because you can just say that everything will be magically fixed in the inevitable Hegelian quantum leap, god-of-the-gaps-style - thereby letting you indulge in terminally vague, arm-waving lunacy. Plus, the moment you get anywhere near degrowth or depopulation it's very easily co-opted by far-right bash-the-poor and/or racist shit

strikes me as the kinda bloke who'd pretend he didn't notice you if you bumped into him down the shops

unironically watching old Robot Wars with the missus and getting wrecked on what passes for cider round these parts

did i do it right

Reminds me of the DNR propaganda vids that show Donetsk city as a happenin' place where you can stock up on groceries and get your car detailed (and yet, incredibly, this is the very same city that they claimed Ukraine govt forces were genociding the locals at the exact same time. But who ever said propaganda needs to be logically consistent?)

The day musk bought twatter was the day i stopped ironyposting about fascism making a comeback and realised that it is genuinely happening I regret having a kid. I mean, I already did because of climate change. But more now. Not sure what is worse, losing sleep thinking about my kid dying in near-future fash wars/violence, or thinking about her boiling to death in her own sweat in the coming superhumid heatwaves. I guess the former is theoretically a faster death?

almost forgotten album but what a beast of dadtronica

what i meant was