inferno (on seeing)

[spaceoperafeerie]

—Adrienne Rich, “What Kind of Times Are These”

[aliceunderscores]

PewDiePie is a symptom of a majority illness, but because he accidentally got rich, we seem content to let the buck stop with him. His downfall feels anti-capitalist, it feels nonconformist, it makes us feel all the things we love to feel when trying to prove we’re better than. But the truth is that the soil this stuff grows in is the reality of our country and world, and we will go on encouraging this behavior, and these thoughts, until they bear their fruit.

BuzzFeed: https://www.buzzfeed.com/jacobclifton/pewdiepie-isnt-a-monster-hes-someone-you-know

[becausebirds]

Fairy pigeons?

edit: for those concerned about the colorful birds, I was able to find this:

They are dyed and fed a special diet. These are pigeons located in Pearl City Hawaii and the Humane society has certified that they are treated humanely and are not in any danger from the process that changes their coloring. Their keeper (Doug Beter) has been recognized by the humane society for his best practices and his care for the birds.

[aliceunderscores]

Also pigeons.

[aliceunderskies]

Pencil & crayon drawings by James Edward Deeds, Jr., who was placed in Missouri’s State Hospital No. 3 in the 1930s, at the age of 28. He lived there for 37 years, and died in a nursing home in 1987. (for more see http://www.electricpencildrawings.com/index.html)

[aliceunderscores]

It isn’t just all about worrying about the linguistics and rhetoric of political discourse / how that interacts with the internet / our slow-motion paradigm shift over here in my Inferno.

Right now I am also interested in: “outsider art” especially created by institutionalize individuals Ekphrasis / trauma trees / lungs / 18th century gardening Translation History of law(/religion), especially ‘truth’ and reliability of witnessing, testimony. The word “eye-witness.”

[bogleech]

Researchers "Translate" Bat Talk. Turns Out, They Argue—A Lot

A machine learning algorithm helped decode the squeaks Egyptian fruit bats make in their roost, revealing that they

The four most common sounds roosting bats make at each other are apparently:

Disputes over food

Disputes over roosting position

Disputes over “unwanted male advances”

Disputes over being too close together

[flowersinoctober]

me

[aliceunderscores]

[aliceunderscores]

[aliceunderscores]

[aliceunderscores]

[aliceunderscores]

"The term “the media” was first used as a singular, collective noun around 100 years ago, meaning “an intervening agency, means, or instrument.” The instrument (or medium) of the time was the printing press. People in the business of operating printing presses were a distinct group. Now mediums abound—many like Twitter and Facebook are still known as social media, even though the platforms have faded toward something closer to personal printing presses. At the same time, traditional media institutions are publishing on these platforms—and others like Medium and YouTube—alongside non-journalists. Everyone plays a role as an intermediary to some degree, an intervening agent in each news story, choosing what to share and how to frame it. As the term was originally conceived, many people would now qualify as part of “the media.'"

[aliceunderscores]

Macomb v media: voters who read little news think Trump had a great first week: "It’s not that people are living in their own media bubbles so much as they are actively choosing to ignore news that they do not want to hear, or even more alarmingly, receiving no news at all."

[artuhmes]

these (and many more) are some of the Twitter accounts of federal science agencies that have gone “rogue”. I can not believe this is real and that we are living in this moment in time. https://twitter.com/ericholthaus/status/824389711170932736

[aliceunderscores]

Fascinated by this, and also with the obsession in the subtweets over whether they are REALLY actual TRUE gov’t employees or just people “in their basements.”

Would twitter verification bestow legitimacy on the promised facts? Who wants to do an over/under on how long it takes for them to be outed?

[aliceunderscores]

I need a tag to categorize these internet/society (anxiety) thinkpieces because they are, as the kids say, my problematic faves and I want to collect them all.

[hyenabutter]

Someone showed me a picture and I just laughed dignity ain’t never been photographed

[biblioklept]

phol: to make slide; hence, to trick, to deceive

From Joseph T. Shipley’s The Origin of English Words: A Discursive Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.

[aliceunderscores]

“[Obama’s] administration has twisted the meaning of existing authorizations of force to justify this illegal warfare, and his officials have even denied that the U.S. was engaged in hostilities in Libya when our planes were bombing that country’s government. The U.S. is now once again bombing targets in Libya with no debate or authorization in response to the problems that the previous unauthorized Libyan intervention helped to create. Congress has scarcely ever been less involved in the decisions about where and when the U.S. goes to war overseas. That is the gift that Obama gives to his successors, none of whom is likely to be any more scrupulous about Congressional war powers than Obama has been.”

I fell into a pattern of reading very extremely opposed news, so I spent today catching up some classical conservatives. I fundamentally disagree with some of Daniel Larison’s conclusions, but he is intelligent and measured and–I fear–prophetic. As progressives and liberals rush to demonized trump as an aberration, an extreme evil, a disjunction, it is important to remember how Obama set precedent for and normalized extralegal use of force.

I also appreciate Larson’s attention. to Yemen and foreign policy, which many of my demographic peers prefer to ignore.

[poetsandwriters]

“Let me tell you, world, / I—do—not—believe! / If a thousand challengers lie beneath your feet, / Count me as number thousand and one.”

—Bei Dao, from “The Answer,” translated by Bonnie S. McDougall (1988/1990)

[aliceunderscores]

Relevant to alt-facts & post factuality.