Satan. It all leads back to Satan.
That’s all.
Batfort
Style reveals substance
Month: February 2019 (page 2 of 3)
Starting to feel meme energy again.
Maybe it’s AOC. She certainly sparked a fire.
Maybe it’s the return of characters from the past, like Baked Alaska here.
Oh look it’s Sam Hyde
Maybe it’s the steam that rolls off the internet when Trump retweets a meme.
Or maybe it’s just confirmation bias.
Artist: Owen Cyclops
But when I see seeds that were planted by certain memelords years ago grow into might, towering, fake-news oak trees,
I look at the Accelerationists, and think
“What if they were right?”
I had one of those days. Nothing went wrong, but nothing really went right, either. At work, every 1 task on my to-do list spawned 10 smaller sub-tasks, all vexing. Like finding a weed in a garden—a small looking little guy—and reaching down to pluck it. But instead of coming out cleanly, the roots are part of an underground network that is now disturbed. As you pull up the weed, you pull up three sets of roots that disturb the grass and the flower beds within a three-foot radius. Even when you finally get the weed out of the ground and shake the soil off its roots, you wonder if there are bits left in the ground that will grow other weeds in the future.
Somebody remarked that I describe things very well and make good analogies. That made me feel good.
This afternoon I received notification that my application was accepted to help crowd-edit Nir Eyal‘s new book, Indistractable. It’s set up as a Google doc, and a bunch of people have access to read and comment on everything from typos to high-level concepts. I’m intrigued by this idea, this crowdsource of edits.
I’ve bought in to a different kind of experiment before, where I paid a small amount to have access and provide feedback on a book while it was being written. I should be receiving a copy of the book once it’s finalized, as well. That experiment isn’t over—the book is still a WIP because the author underestimated the time it takes to write a book—but it’s been an interesting way to experience a book.
I haven’t (yet) read Nir’s first book, Hooked, I’ve read many of his articles on habit-forming technology. I appreciate that he’s taking an opposing approach to a subject that he knows well, arming people against it.
More to come on this.
In higher ed news, it appears that the Saudi Arabian government is helping their students flee from the US justice system. This is appalling, but I can’t say I’m surprised, based on my experiences working with the Saudi government and its students.
In at least four of the cases, according to the Oregonian‘s reporting, the Saudi government paid the accused students’ bail and legal fees. In the case of Abdulrahman Sameer Noorah, a Portland Community College student charged in relation to a hit-and-run that killed 15-year-old Fallon Smart in August 2016, U.S. law enforcement officials also believe the Saudis provided him with a fake passport to escape the country, likely via private plane, two weeks before his trial.
What bothers me more about this story is that I didn’t know about it before today, and I feel like I should have. Made clear in the comments section: “Thank you, IHE for finally covering this story which has been in the news elsewhere since December.”
Obviously, reading higher ed news is not an adequate source of information about higher ed. (Hindsight: DUH.)
It’s been a while since we checked in on Melania’s style. The fashion media refuses to cover her, so somebody’s gotta do it. Enter yours truly, an amateur style blogger.
I like style. I’m not always the best practitioner of it (I loves me some sweats), but I’m more stylish than the average cubicle-dweller. I’m interested in how style sends a rhetorical message, and how outward style reflects inward personality.
Anyway. Melania. Style. Specifically, coats.
Melania usually deploys a good coat.
This coat, however? I’m not so sure. The shape is okay, and the fur detail at the cuffs is FAMAZING, The bright pink is not her best color, and the nude pumps seem like an afterthought—like she didn’t know what other shoes to wear.
That said, her look is 10x more cohesive than the First Lady of Columbia’s, which is all over the place with blocky shapes that fight for visual attention.
Every time I see Melania in a traditionally “feminine” color like pink or light blue, I’m not convinced she’s presenting her best self.
Bold, on the other hand, is something she does well.
I love this outfit on her. Clean lines, very little texture, and bold accessories. Of course, the drama of the lighting in this pic helps to frame the effect.
Moving on, we have my favorite version of Melania: Military-inspired Melania.
Here, on board the USS George H.W. Bush, Melania pulls out the utilitarian accessories and aviator sunglasses. Leather gloves add a nice jolt of texture to this look without going tweedy like the pink coat above.
She looks, well, fierce. And not a bit out of place onboard.
I’m not convinced that the asymmetrical buttons on that coat are doing her any favors, but this is not the worst thing I’ve seen her wear. And the coat echoes traditional Navy uniforms, so it’s understandable.
As much as I love the idea of her wearing a beanie, this one is a little severe.
This is, perhaps, not the reaction they wanted to engineer.
But it’s the reaction they got.
Taemin’s new single, “Want,” expands the theme of Dark 80s. It’s delicious. The video is lush, complex, and visually pleasing—obviously showcasing Taemin’s physical beauty and otherworldly skill in dance.
What I find curious is how my reaction changed.
Yesterday, when the video was first released, I watched it. It’s sexy (can’t deny it). The beat and the lyrics work in tandem to, well, basically to seduce. Add that dance on top of it? It’s an incantation that’s nearly impossible to break.
Today, I decided to put in headphones, close my eyes, and listen. No visuals, no choreography, just the audio. “Want” isn’t the most musically complex song in the world, but it’s lovely to listen to. There are just enough aural easter eggs to keep things interesting through a hypnotic beat and bass line. The engineers did a good job of keeping the instrumental at a different timbre than Taemin’s voice, helping it to stand out. He’s not the strongest singer in the world, but well suited to this type of song.
My reaction? Nostalgia.
Pure utter longing for a time in music that I didn’t know—the 80s and early 90s. Back when synths and recordings were analog, and the bass riffs were played by human beings instead of a digital sample.
When musical recordings were fuzzier, not as sharp and bright as they are now.
I want to find a club with zero lasers and an analog turntable.
(They certainly don’t exist in my part of the world.)
Anyway,
“Want” is well-executed.
I’m waiting for the choreography videos.
I’m having difficulty writing about Hoaxed in much the same way I had difficulty writing a review of Scott Adams’ Win Bigly or Dangerous by Milo Yiannopoulos. So difficult that I didn’t post a review of either of those books.
Because I keep my eyes open to what’s going on in the “new right,” there was very little “new” information (for me) in those books, which makes me think they’re not relevant and therefore not worth passing on.
What I forget is that while something may not be new to me, it can still be new to others.
That’s why I’m writing about Hoaxed.
Hoaxed focuses on fake news—hit pieces, media manipulation, rhetoric.
“All media is narrative,” states Mike Cernovich to open the documentary, “And we’re in a war of narratives.”
For the next 2 hours, Cerno takes us on a tour of the underbelly of the media: talking to the subjects of media hitpieces (“I know all about the rotting cadaver that is Washington”—Anthony Scaramucci), exposing tactics of manipulation (“All photographs are accurate, and none of them are the truth”—Peter Duke), and providing historical accounts (such as the utter lie that led to the first Gulf War).
During this guided tour, Mike (or others speaking for him—such as a great segment with Ryan Holiday) also shows us how he himself uses media tactics to get attention and influence. The “funhouse mirror” effect.
But the spotlight isn’t limited to Mike. “New media” plays a big role in Hoaxed as the hero—the people who are out taking action with what Tim Pool describes as an “entrepreneurial attitude.”
When Tim describes how he runs a one-man shop, doing the work that would take 4-5 people in the mainstream media, I can understand why they hate the new media so much.
It brings to mind another new media figure who is also hated by the mainstream media: Pewdiepie. His segment “Pew News” gets more views than any mainstream media show. He beats them at their own game while mocking them mercilessly (“But I’m not supposed to share my opinion!”), and they can’t do anything about it. The more hitpieces they write about him, the higher his credibility grows.
Speaking of YouTube, the visual style of this documentary owes a great debt to it. In fact, for a documentary about the news, it feels much more like a YouTube videoessay than a ponderous 60-minutes style news show. I’m going to bet that’s deliberate.
The visual style bounces all over the place, switching emotional tone as we are guided through the movie’s narrative. The directors (Scooter Downey and Jon du Toit) use a myriad of clips from media sources to frame each topic—using newscasters’ own voices to convict them.
I especially like the tactic of layering a voiceover onto completely different footage. This can be used for comic relief—talking about an “artful dodge” over a clip of George W Bush ducking out of the way of a flying shoe—but also for dramatic effect—layering someone else’s recitation of a Trump comment over footage of Trump himself speaking, breaking the “spell” that’s normally cast when voice and image go together.
This technique is used to great effect in the comic version of Watchmen to advance multiple narrative threads at once, and it works well in Hoaxed.
My main issue with Hoaxed is that it feels a little bit like preaching to the choir. The film does highlight media hoaxes that pertain to other tribes—like Black Lives Matter and the abominable treatment of Bernie Sanders at the 2016 DNC—but the treatment of each subject feels covered with a veneer of MAGAism. (Almost like the film is trying to wake up the MAGA crowd more than reach across the aisle.)
Back in college, I took a mass media course from an acerbic long-haired hippie who brought in his guitar to demonstrate resonance and taught us about yellow journalism and how the media acts as a PR machine for the government (or, to be more precise, the deep state). Far left guys like him have long been critical of the establishment media, and their voices would have added depth to this film.
I would have loved to hear from someone like Caitlin Johnstone, for example.
But that’s okay. Hoaxed is still a worthwhile movie. It’s one that you can watch with friends, and have a meaty conversation afterwards. I watched it with my brother, and we stayed up half the night talking.
One of the reasons for that is the ending. Hoaxed ends on a perfect note—Stefan Molyneux’s telling of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.” Stefan weaves a beautiful story, and the directors shot compelling cave footage that illustrates the point beautifully.
Never before had I connected the “Allegory of the Cave” with the life and death of Jesus Christ, but this film—without explicitly stating it—illuminated a little bit more of how Christ, a man, is also the logos, the Truth, the Word.
So that leaves us with…the most despairing of all happy endings? I struggle to describe this. I love the ending, because it’s so hopeful. We can leave behind our chains and embrace Truth. We can turn away from the darkness of the cave to the Light of Life.
Yet we cannot force others to see, or to leave behind the shadows of the cave.
Where we cannot change minds, we can plant seeds. Provide little off-ramps from groupthink. Poke holes in accepted narratives. Reach out to people who are questioning.
And Hoaxed provides a way to do this.
Disclosure: I backed the Hoaxed project on Kickstarter.
That color palette!
I just finished addressing my Valentimes cards for the year. Here in the PNW, the entire winter decided to dispense in one size-large serving, it’s been extra cold and snowy around these parts (my pipes even froze last week!). A spot of cheesy Valentines goodness warms my heart. I hope it will warm the hearts of my friends and family, too.
» Reality matters. Mindset matters, too. Possibly even more—these researchers found that belief trumps genetics.
In fact, it turned out that the physical impacts on endurance and fullness were often more substantial among the volunteers who believed they had the gene variant and did not than among those who actually harbored it.
These findings suggest that “people tend to attribute more power to genes than they probably should,” says Bradley Turnwald, a doctoral student at Stanford who conducted the study with the senior author, Alia Crum, and others.
Our mind-sets, or mental expectations about ourselves, seem to play an equal or even greater role than does our DNA in shaping some of our bodies’ reactions to diet and exercise, Mr. Turnwald says.
» The Cul+++ure website is now open for business.
» How Fashion Lost its Meaning:
Style and fashion have collapsed into each other. But being stylish and being fashionable used to mean two different things. One did not require having money to buy designer clothes; the other did. One required a certain sensibility; the other one did not. That’s why you could be called a “fashion victim,” but no one would call you a style victim.
The signs that we are in a postmodernist era of fashion — where fashion has become unmoored and lost its original meaning — are everywhere: the rise of streetwear, a tsunami of product collaborations, normcore, dad sneakers, the ugly-made-pretty aesthetic, the erasure of concern for the quality of both materials and construction.
» YA Fiction’s Online Commissars
» Inside the Secret Facebook War for Mormon Hearts and Minds. It’s a battle, and it’s really, really difficult to get through to people who want to believe something else.
» In that vein—if you’re ready to have your worldview challenged, watch Hoaxed.
Hellboy is my second favorite comic in the entire world (after Tintin).
Mike Mignola’s art is a large part of the reason why.
Detail from the cover of Hellboy covers
This week, Dark Horse Comics announced a forthcoming book of Hellboy covers (which happens to have a beautiful cover itself).
Mignola’s art style perfectly compliments the tone of the comic—any Hellboy that’s not drawn by him feels less like Hellboy—and I’m looking forward to this.
The interplay of light and dark is just perfect.
Apparently I now live in a part of the world where it’s nearly impossible to buy printing supplies IRL. Fortunately for me, there are ways of making prints without any formal printing supplies.
Anyway, one of my personal challenges for the year was to make my own Valentimes cards—or to be more precise, to print my own Valentimes cards. Last year’s cards were cross-stitched. For this year, I wanted to up my game since I started experimenting with printmaking last year.
Mission accomplished!
I’m pretty happy with how these turned out, considering the materials I used. It’s a cheap, jury rigged block print using cheap stamp-pad ink on cheap craft store card blanks. But the point was to make prints—not to stress myself out over making the perfect prints.
Love is the point, anyway.
Step 1: figuring out what you want to print. The trick to this, as with any artistic medium, is to limit your design to something that can be executed with your materials. (This is a good thing to keep in mind when you’re tasked with making good-looking documents in Microsoft Word.)
For this card, I took inspiration from vintage playing cards—the type where the image mirrors itself over the center line. I was especially inspired by these vintage zodiac playing cards.
Step 2: translating the sketch into a print block. This is when I discovered that my sketch was a liiiiiiitle bit ambitious for my print medium and the size of my cards. That’s okay, we just simplified the sketch.
This is a really easy block to make—it’s craft foam white-glued onto foam core. $4 worth of supplies, and I can make 10 more print blocks with the leftovers. Definitely use sewing scissors for this, as they’ll get you more precision (but don’t ask the craft foam to be super-precise; it won’t happen).
Step 3 (not shown): let the print block dry for an hour. Otherwise the white glue will just slip-slide itself off the print block.
Step 4: print! I used a cheap rubber stamp ink pad as my “brayer” since I don’t have one yet. The flat surface of the stamp pad made it easy to swipe ink onto the print block without getting too much onto the backboard.
To make the print, I used a French rolling pin and some elbow grease. It wouldn’t be my choice for bigger prints, but for my purpose and materials it worked just fine.
Step 5: voila, the finished product! I may add some accents with gold acrylic paint to add some fun details.
I love that I have a Valentimes card that I designed and made. I’ll be sending these babies out to friends and family next week—and hopefully put a smile on a few faces.
You know how some people put on music to influence their mood? Like, they want to feel happy, so they play songs that evoke happiness.
I am not one of those people.
Usually I’m the type of person who has to find the exact music that matches my mood, especially if it’s a bad one. If I try to listen to peppy music whilst in a bad mood, I descend rapidly into an ultra-bad mood.
There are, however, a few exceptions to this rule. One of those is G-Dragon and Taeyang’s “Good Boy.”
It makes no sense. This is the opposite of a song I’d usually like. It’s an absolutely stupid song (as in, “get stupid”). Repetitive beat. ‘Dudes in a club’ lyrics. Autotune.
And yet, it never fails to put me in a good mood.
Maybe it’s because the choreography perfectly matches the beat and the cadence of the lyrics.
Maybe it’s the swagger.
Maybe it’s all the weird little sound effects.
Maybe it’s because G-Dragon used one of the live performances to diss the M-net Asian Music Awards on their own broadcast.
Regardless of why, “Good Boy” can turn the day around for me. I appreciate that.
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