My friend said they went to a Zizek talk and eventually the moderator interrupted him saying “I think it’s time for questions” and Zizek was like “Ok. I will ask the first one. ‘Professor Zizek what would you say if you had more time?’ and then he proceeded to continue the talk as if nothing happened
we gotta get back to torrent distribution, i just watched someone eat eight grand in bandwidth charges because they ran a direct-download piracy site with local file hosting through cloudflare. torrents were invented literally for this exact reason
i have a file or folder on my pc that i want to share with other people. let's call it gayshit.mp3
unfortunately gayshit.mp3 is 750mb and im not paying for discord nitro so i need another way to send it
i put it into qbittorrent and it makes a torrent file. this is essentially a very small file that points to gayshit.mp3 so other computers can find it. kinda like a treasure map
i send this tiny file to my friend, who loads it into qbittorrent. their computer takes a moment to find mine over the vast expanse of cyberspace and then (as long as my pc is running and the file is still where it should be), it gets copied from my hard drive to theirs
this is the cool part: if somebody else loads that tiny file, they can download it from both of us. if i'm offline but my friend is on, the third person can still get it. this also means that if two people have separate halves of the file, they can download the other half from each other. as long as some combination of people have the pieces between them, they can all have the whole thing.
crucially this does not require a server!!! you can just upload the file to a few people and as long as they keep it, it's still accessible. as long as somebody, somewhere is still connected, it's available forever. the only way it goes away is if everybody disconnects from it.
Further context: Durham city council (Reform UK) cut funding and support for Pride. The Durham Miner's Association and other trade unions raised enough money for Durham Pride 2026 to go ahead - a direct call back to when Lesbian and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) raised money for mining communities when Margaret Thatcher seized union funding during the miner strikes of 1984-85.
At the 1985 Labour party meet, the motion to support LGBT rights as a party was passed due to a block vote from mining unions.
Stephen Guy, the chair of the Durham Miners’ Association, said that when it became apparent Durham Pride was under threat, he took it upon himself to “encourage the trade union movement to step up and do the right thing, and stand shoulder to shoulder with the LGBT+ community […] They not only raised funds for us, but came to our communities, uplifted our spirits when they were down, and showed their solidarity.”
Boo hoo i'll be able to add more physical storage to my phone and be able to change out batteries if they degrade as well as all these other optional features I won't have to touch
I love how they add totally absurd things no one is asking for to make the idea look crazy. And still, I must emphasize, failing to make this look like a bad idea.
"Is this what you want? Is this ugly stupid bullcrap what you want??" the biggest loudest idiot in the room asks, holding up a picture of the hottest looking shit I've ever seen
ok sorry to double reblog BUT I just looked him up and he does these fantastic videos where he breaks down HOW he actually mimics the other artists’ styles. Like for ed Sheeran, he explains how he brings his voice forward in the mouth, while Adam Levine sings in the back of the mouth, stuff like that. It’s SO COOL, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone actually break down how to do this sort of thing, as a skill, instead of just treating it like a neat trick they just happen to be good at.
https://www.tiktok.com/@justinjmooremusic
In honor of this guy's passing let me once again tell the story of my favorite piece of art ever - Tilted Arc.
Commissioned by the US government in 1979 the work was made up of a 12x120 foot sheet of cor-ten steel which bisected Foley federal plaza in Manhattan. That's it. Just a sheet of metal in a plaza between several government buildings. It doesnt do anything. But it made people So Angry and also made the best argument I've ever seen for the worth of public art.
Foley square is the sqare around which the NY County courthouse, US Court of appeals, and several international ans national seats of law are positioned, which makes it a very important governmental spot in the US. These are the courts that don't send billionaires to jail and rule in class action suits against the prosecution.
The sculpture was installed after a lengthy period during which Serra carefully watched the way people interacted with and moved through the space. His artwork was as much a piece of participatory performance as it was a piece of sculpture, using the general public as part of the piece itself.
Of course everyone fucking hated it.
Because of the way the structure was positioned, lawyers and government employees had to walk around the structure, not only disrupting their habitual path of movement and allowing time for contemplation, but also making them contend directly with the people they were supposed to be working in the best interest of. The sculpture became a site of impromptu games of soccer between neighborhood kids, a makeshift arena for buskers because of the accoustics, and a windbreak under which the homeless could take shelter. It was a sculpture which made one intensely aware of their trajectory in space and thereby the world. While, granted, not as good as the park which had been initially considered (and which is there today) it did function as a living community space in ways it previously had not.
There were multiple hearings at which artists such as Claes Oldenburg, Joan Jonas, and Keith Harring argued in support of keeping the piece. But to no avail. After a protracted legal battle -- during which Serra stated his right to free speech and that the government itself had greenlit the commission and the government argued that the curvature of the piece would cause bomb blasts to ricochet into the courthouse (what?)-- the piece was dismantled in 1989 and is stored in a warehouse somewhere in Brooklyn to this day.
Ultimately the commission and subsequent censorship of the piece triggered long running debates over Institution vs. Public, general poor urban planning, public perception of art, and the creation of environments as art which continue to rage within sectors from public policy to architecture to art. It really shifted the discourse and formed the basis of a lot of my own academic inquiry.
Public art should not (and arguably can not) be just pure aesthetic frosting on the cake of life. It needs to activate a space, and, more importantly, activate people within that space. Contemporary art should make you uncomfortable, should make you think, and this piece really speaks to the general societal fear of anything that disrupts our routines or makes us think about our environment too much. It was a wakeup call and a community space and a free speech argument and an example of the stupidity of the US government all wrapped up in one thing and I love it so so so very much.
Anyway, RIP Richard. You made so many people so mad and so many people so happy. Hope you're frolicking in a field of rusty steel monoliths as was your happy place.
i think we should be ridiculing them more for this. you don't get to try and go all "queer website" when your staff likes to go on nuking sprees targeting the trans fem users
would be remiss not to mention that the rainbow notably straight up just removed the trans flag colors from it. like they’re gone. it’s the progress flag minus the trans flag colors.
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