apriorion

I’m sure this has been done, but I was wondering about when ‘zine’ wasn’t just a monosyllabic word, when it was, you know, like the good old days in America and we called them MAGAzines... im sorry; I’ll show my self out...

Yes! Also like the link to Martin's ongoing cancer research funding project. I was literally just thinking about this the other day, while listening to "Parts in the Post", hoping there would be another similar compilation of their many more recent remixes. Any word on physical releases? If so, formats? NVMND: should have clicked the link first. Cool: a picture disc and a CD comp. NICE

That NYer video was some of the best distilled raw footage I've seen yet. Thanks for sharing. I know this comparison might seem to make too much light of a gravely serious subject, but I can't help but wonder every time I see video of the crowds descending on the Capitol Building if Trump intentionally fed these creatures after midnight.

I thought it was a bit too speedy for them to appear on the no-fly lists already. But the facial recognition software/FBI crowdsourcing campaign will get them there soon enough. When that happens, that sort of scene as in the video above will be common enough soon, and I'm looking forward to it.

Not quite: we're going to catch 'em by setting traps so enticing that they'll taze themselves in the balls to death. You know, the sort of "traps" that include the prospect of stealing priceless American artifacts while violently raiding a sacred democratic landmark. What true patriort could resist?

Oh, yessssss. I was hoping someone would be so stupid as to admit the planning days in advance. Unfortunately, these people are experienced at weaseling out of culpability, so I don’t actually think this is likely to result in convictions in court, but at least we see them talking about it.

I understand this to some extent, but I must pause every time I find myself entertaining this line of thinking. Just to highlight the specific proposition we're discussing (the same one Colbert brought up the other day): (M) The individuals in the mob are not to blame in the Capital Riots on Wednesday, 6 January 2021. The reasoning behind this claim is (a) Leaders of the political party that individuals in (M) belong to manipulated those individuals into their own actions. (b) If (a) is true, then (M) is true. I object to (b), primarily, although I do so with some serious hesitation. The primary reason for objecting to (b) is because we're supposed to belong to a sort of democracy. Granted, ours is a representative democracy, but it's still a sort of democracy, right? If so, then rule by the people means that the people need to take responsibility for their actions, which includes their behavior at protests, rallies, and even their voting results. The problem is, if (b) is true, then we absolve those individuals of their responsibility in much the same way that we absolve children of full culpability for their actions, even in some extreme cases (e.g., harming another child). As I said, I object with hesitation in part because I've thought a lot about Confucius's general paternalistic attitude toward common people, or the public at large. He says that political leaders must think of the public whom they serve as kind of like children, and it is therefore very important for political leaders to set good examples for their constituents. On the other hand, the problems for a functioning democracy when we take such an attitude are very clear, for the reasons I spelled out above. Therefore, if we take seriously that we live in a democracy (of any sort), Colbert was wrong to casually dismiss the significance of those people's roles in Wednesday's events. They are adults, and if democracy means that the people are steering the ship, then those people must be held accountable for their behavior. That said, I want to be very clear that I think the GOP leadership ought to be held accountable for their role in allowing five years of virtually unchecked incendiary rhetoric lead up to these events, and the general increases in hate crimes all around the country all throughout that time. I will stress, though, that I largely agree with you, as my post yesterday basically expressed the same disgust with the GOP leadership. I just had this slight quibble with Colbert when I heard him say that the other night.

I've said something along these lines a couple days ago, but it strikes me as even more unnerving how none of these people seem capable of the self-awareness needed to recognize (a) how inarticulate their leaders are, (b) how inarticulate they themselves are, and (c) just how generally dumb they all are. I mean, look around and listen, for Christ's sake. It would make me really worried that I'm backing the wrong horse if all I see when I look around at one of my rallies (I never go to rallies because they creep me out, but we're talking about a counterfactual conditional with an extremely improbable antecedent here) and all I see are people incapable of any sort of nuanced thought, who say really very confused things like that one guy from Jersey who witnessed the dumb navy girl get shot (the one who literally had blood on his hands and insisted, with no clear sense of why and for what purpose, something needed to be done). I mean, it would make me want to go home and start re-evaluating things, at the very least. I've actually been in this position before, and I think I've made major improvements in my life based on these moments of clarity. None of these people seem capable of that sort of self-reflection, though. And that is one of the few core reasons why I find it very hard to relate to these people. And we have good reason to think that there are so many more of these people than even this event lets on.

Thought of this as soon as I saw ignatius's post:

I’m confused: why is that the question?

And now Elaine Chao (McConnell's wife, incidentally) has resigned as secretary of transportation. She says the events yesterday have "deeply troubled me in a way that I simply cannot set aside." Oh boo-hoo. It was all entirely foreseeable to anyone with the reasoning powers of an average adult, and yet she and her husband and the GOP at large sat by because they did their deal with the bumbling incompetent obese orange devil and now that the shit has come to their door, they're all upset. Fuck you people. What about the rest of us who aren't fucking mega-wealthy assholes who can't afford protection, who get assaulted by the emboldened MAGA morons for the past five years because we might look even vaguely ethnic? Or because we have jobs that basically make us targets of conspiracy mongering jackasses who hangs on this assholes every Tweet. Oh, and it was bold of Twitter and Zuckface to ban the Commander-in-Chief today, even though he's just been doing the same shit he's been doing the whole fucking time. Real proven leadership, you pieces of shit.

Does anyone else also have the feeling that we are in a situation analogous to that Simpsons episode when the passengers realize (after seeing that Tom Arnold was on board with them) that they are in the B-Ship full of rejects, not on their way to safety at all but instead plunging straight toward the sun?

The next couple weeks are going to be scary, I fear. Too many morons emboldened by this shit now.

Goodness. This is so very sad. And I've been an annoying doom-and-gloom guy, telling all my friends to brace for this sort of thing for about five years now. Expecting this for so long surprisingly doesn't mitigate the sadness, at least for me.

Correct. Contrast this with Rep. Nancy Mace's statement "This is not who we are." Sorry, but it's always a kinda pathetic thing to say. Whether you're a blackout drunk who hit your significant other or a political leader witnessing mobs of idiots lashing out violently with no clear plan or evidence or vision for a productive future (as I said in this thread a couple days ago, this is not the "civil war" some of these meatheads claim to want; this is fucking baby-style temper tantrums). If you're saying "This is not who we are", it's very likely to be a statement of sad denial. It is how a significant portion of our population is. We really are, in significant proportions, this fucking stupid. We're not going to fix any problems with lame ass denials. EricaJoy has it right: we all must look hard in the collective mirror and think really long and hard about how to move forward, given our current state.

I remember seeing a constitutional law theorist talk about this possibility a little while back. Are they trying to tear the country to shreds? I can't imagine that the public will take such a result peacefully. Not that I want to see such a violent turn of events, but it's just implausible that things won't turn out that way, provided that enough congressional Republicans vote with Hawley. The thing is, such a turn of events wouldn't be anything nearly as orderly as a second civil war, which is what some of these vile Trump supporters are predicting or coveting. I would just expect there to be unconstrained proliferation of mass violence of civilian against civilian. That would be horrific. Am I missing something? I had to be committing a causal slippery slope fallacy, but it strikes me that Dobbs and friends would be seriously naive to not expect a serious civilian catastrophe, should congressional Republicans go down that path. Am I being a worry-wort? I've been accused of that many times, though to be fair to myself, I'm often right about my worries (not even close to 100%, admittedly, but I've been right often enough to not shake the disposition). *hate to be (ugh, typos)

Agreed. It was a good time.

Speaking of Cydonia, I've always been meaning to ask: is that bit at the end of "terminus" where the woman is counting and that guy sounds disappointed at her shift away from "69" supposed to be a nod to BOC's "Aquarius"?

What patriots. Calling for the destruction of the union just because their ‘80s business villain reality-TV show one-term president didn’t get the electoral votes, even though he lost the popular vote (again). And they can’t even spell their calls for treason correctly. Of course.

Correct.

I've been meaning to jump in here to say that after some time with the album, I like it. I probably won't be my go-to OPN (Rifts has been in the spot from the start, though Returnal was and remains a close-second to that), but I think it's up there with r+7. This album more than the previous two (not counting the Safdie bros. soundtracks) seems to realize his alt-take on pop music for Hot Topic kids. Since his move to Warp, OPN albums have struck me as the Wacky Packages/Garbage Pail Kids of my favorite sort of electronic music. That's not supposed to be a knock against this stuff; quite to the contrary. But I can't shake that association. Maybe it's because of this breakfast joint I went to in Denver CO with my brother once where the bathroom was covered in those stickers and I felt an OPN track come into my head and it clicked from that point forward for me in this way. I remember reading in an interview once that he doesn't mind being Warp's appropriations artist (that's not quite the phrase he used, but that's a vague echo of the memory). I know he probably didn't mean to be quite as crass as my analogy, but that's what it makes me think of, to some extent. I also recall that in an interview he said he really wants to sell to those gothy teens or something. I guess like the kid in that video who plays guitar really loud because he's mad at his mom and dad. Well, a little not-subtle. If I remember correctly, he said he was going for that target audience when he made Garden of Delete. I think this one is more obviously reaching for that crowd. The performance of that Pixies-esque song on Jimmy Kimlon's Late Show, I think he has a better chance than ever to achieve that goal. And I think that will be great. It would be really cool to see a whole bunch of disillusioned middle-schoolers getting into OPN the way kids did with Nirvana when I was in 8th grade. I realize this might sound like I'm being sarcastic or negative, but I'm really not. It makes me wonder, though: I saw him open for NIN and Soundgarden a few years ago, and I remember how much the crowd was harsh on him at that time. I was actually there just for his opening act (though I was with someone who was there for the NINs.). A few people near me were like "WTF is this shit?" and "I dunno, I guess he's some DJ". This was around the time he was doing shows for the Museum of Modern Art and shit, and I really liked how his music felt like a take on some fucked-up portal from another dimension. That's one of the reasons why Rifts had such pull on me instantly. This new turn since signing to Warp, on the other hand, reminds me a bit of how Aphex did this reach-out to the MTV crowd with "Come to Daddy". That's all fine and good. But it makes me wonder: is this some intentional decision to usurp that crowd or at least that crowd's children, almost as a vindictive move because he was angry at how the crowd treated him on that tour? He had this more artsy thing going, then promptly switched after that tour. It reminds me a bit of how Trump's efforts at running for office seemed to get really serious after how harshly he was treated at that one White House Correspondent's Dinner (the one where Seth Mayors and Obama were really harsh to him and the whole room laughed and even CSPAN was like "look at this shit" with their lengthy, uncomfortable long shots on Trump's weird hair). I know that Trump was already running before that, but it seemed like it strengthened his resolve. Is that what happened here with Danny lOPatiN? Oh and one last thing: I liked all the videos he's released associated with this video, but I'm a bit uncomfortable with the footage of that kid actually getting his arm chopped off (the one that teenager was watching on his phone). I'm kind of torn about the morality of including things like that in a pop video. I was wondering what other folks were thinking.

Yeah, I keep wondering about him. I remember he was really kind negative toward the orb for a while after his departure, to the point that he wrote a bunch about it. Just seemed kinda petty, at a certain level, the way he was talking shit, and maybe a little crazy. But the dude's stamp on the orb was undeniably great. I vaguely recall hearing some solo output of his about ten or so years ago that I quite liked. Really weird, and that was some of my favorite stuff about the orb back in the day, like the Pomme Fritz and Orbus side-roads. I recently revisited Orbus for the first time in a while and was instantly reminded about why that was my favorite album for so many years. As for this collection, I've had it on in the background while I've been working and doing stuff around the house, and it's pretty good. I'd say it's not nearly as adventurous as the first compilation, and not nearly as cringe-y as some moments in the second collection, but it also lacks some of the genius moments that the second collection has, too. It's like a less-offensive, mellow follow-up to the second collection. But hey, if it doesn't make me cringe (the way, say, the Metallic Orb featurin' Davey Gillsmore does), then I'm happy to add it to my very large Orb CD collection.

Shhh... Oh, and I wanted to clarify really quick: I realize I sound really grumpy, but it isn't directed at any of you. I always enjoy chatting with fellow WATMMers, even about non-music stuff. It's just that I guess I do have a little part of me that wants there to be some mega, Earth-shattering revelation of something really cool, but all we get are these tantalizing things that sound cool at first and get our hopes up a bit but that fall apart under two seconds of scrutiny. It's just that I want these people to shut up with it all unless they've got something really credible to show us. So far, we've got "the DoD has released videos of fast moving tic tacs from a guy who has admitted on Joe Rogan's show that he loved fucking with people when he was a pilot".

Ha, man you are always on it with those pics. Thinking about this again, and how alternative explanations just make way more sense. Again, what's more likely? An 87 year old man wants to get attention by making shit up because he's senile and lonely, or that there's a Goddamn Galactic Fucking Federation? So stupid. I'm done listening to these stupid pieces of "evidence" or claims to authority until we use this purported contact to build a giant Whirly-Dirly contraption or something comparable.

I don't entirely disagree. The animals we didn't create are rightly distressed, and the ones we did are in various forms of hell. We can understand this much. I've always thought the Wittgenstein line was overstated (it was in the larger context of his investigations into language and mind), but there is something that's probably partly right about it, as is the case with most good works of philosophy. My point is just that we have a hard enough time learning to appreciate the various forms of life on this planet, which are basically close relatives of us, given the shared evolutionary timeline, genetics, etc. Now we're to believe that political leaders in the US and Israel have been in communication with intelligences greater than our own, from a completely different evolutionary background from the Earth's? Fuck, these people can barely communicate with other humans effectively. Okay, one additional point to add to my list, while I'm here. Fifth, Carl Sagan was so excited about potentially communicating with non-human intelligent aliens. You would think that he would have revealed something to the public, especially as he was slowly dying of lukemia and he had nothing else to lose. He worked so hard on making pictographs that could be understood by non-Earth language users, on astrobiology, on SETI stuff. Too bad no one told him about these communications that have been happening in the government. This guy was arguably a world expert on speculations concerning extraterrestrial intelligences. But apparently Trump and his cronies and other sub-intellects have been able to communicate with aliens so effectively that they learned of a Galactic Fucking Federation. You know how complicated of an idea that would be to get across? And these idiots have some proof of it? What's more likely: that they jump to conclusions based on some blurry pictures of fast-moving tic-tacs, or that they can speak Alien-ese and are working closely enough with the aliens to know that humanity "isn't ready", or some Jeff-Bridges Movie Ending Scene Hollywood bullshit? Actually, the horribleness of an actually intelligent guy who worked really hard to accomplish this and not get it while a failure '80s businessman throwback reality TV show president actually communicates with aliens is so horrible that it's probably true. I change my mind. Fuck it. Fuck this world. I have more points but now I've bummed myself out.