May 2013
12 posts
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“Every car pulls in its own way. A good car presses very pleasantly against your...”
– Zoo or Letters Not About Love, Viktor Shklovsky (1923)
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Stetson, Age 11 →
Stetson, age 11: Vanilla and balmy with an undercurrent of musk, probably just like what the Electric Horseman smells like I think as I wrap the last of the Christmas tree lights around my Huffy Pro Thunder bike.
I’ve been walking these streets so long, singing the same old song
Fourteen strands of light run from the handle bars down to the front wheel guard, across the center bar,...
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Postfeminist Dystopias →
all ideologies are contradictory, impossible, unlivable, and impossible to replicate in real life. But we still like to consume things that suggest that they are achievable — hell, that’s how aspirational, capitalist-based media culture works.
oh, and this
But she’s a bitch because ideology is fucked: she’s done what her culture, her media, her resultant ideals told her to do — and it...
“There are no answers, only cross references.”
– Norbert Wiener (1894-1964). (via speciesbarocus)
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“The question Plato raises in Gorgias is whether or not practicing rhetoric is...”
– making good bread is an art. so is fixing my bike. so is composing a really charming email. and they’re all ethical acts too. fuck anyone who tries to put limits on my art or anyone else’s. also fuck anyone who tries to obscure the ethical dimensions of the quotidienne.
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April 2013
22 posts
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“We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love...”
– Charles Bukowski (via sea—-legs)
oh god, yes.
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i don't believe in freedom →
“In his statement on Monday, Colonel House said the prisoners would not be allowed to die.”
Anonymous asked: can i take you up on your offer for the David Graeber article? bleutrane on Gmail
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careers, academia, and david graeber
Mr. Graeber is a star in the left-academic world. Indeed, it’s possible that, given his activism and his writings, he is the most influential anthropologist in the world. He played a part in establishing the nonhierarchical “organization” of the Occupy movement, in its early days in Manhattan, and his 500-plus-page Debt: The First 5,000 Years (Melville House, 2011) struck...
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The Bitcoin Bubble and a Bad Hypothesis →
… It might seem that Bitcoin is just like a fiat currency issued by governments. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Jack Hough says precisely that it’s a purely online currency with no intrinsic value; its worth is based solely on the willingness of holders and merchants to accept it in trade. In that respect, it’s not so different from fiat currencies like the dollar or Euro, but whereas...
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variations on a theme: res nullius
From the rhetorical tradition, we understand that the idea of occupation is derived from occupatio. For Cicero’s De Officis, occupatio identified both the acquisition and ownership of property by taking possession of—that is, by occupying—that which had no previous owner. This notion of ownership and property leads to concepts of res nullius: physical things that do not have or never had owners....
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Nauru, a place of portent and wonder →
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/En-us-Nauru.ogg
Nauru is a phosphate rock island with rich deposits near the surface, which allow easy strip mining operations. It has some phosphate resources which, as of 2011, are not economically viable for extraction.[3] Nauru boasted the highest per-capita income enjoyed by any sovereign state in the world during the late 1960s and early...
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March 2013
32 posts
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More Detroit Dreaming... →
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neoliberalism & postmodernism
the aesthetics of post-modernism might reflect, in turn, new economic and financial structures. The problem of reference, from this angle, is not restricted to the image and aesthetics, but leads back to the economics of capitalism itself… as finance capitalism flourishes, and ‘money makes money out of money’, producing profit outside the exploitation of the labour power of the...
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"good" or "selfless" art
so a couple of weeks back, a wonderful woman who i really enjoy making music with asked me a very simple question: can art be selfish or selfless? as a person who is often motivated as much by guilt as by genuine enthusiasm, it is a question i have asked myself on numerous occasions and thus felt inspired to respond to. here are some of my thoughts:
i think maybe all art is selfish, but...
