Ride the Funny

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I should look into how to apply for awards and stuff so I can describe myself as an "award losing author". That would be super fun. I could get a tshirt made.

[cannibalise-the-citrus-fruits]

what if you win

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Then I'll apply for a more difficult award

[ms-metra]

To me “award-losing author” sounds less like you applied for a bunch of awards but didn’t receive them, and more like you won awards in the past but other, more ambitious authors keep usurping them or stealing them from your home. Which I think is even funnier.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Harder to pull off though

[malicthegreat]

If you are willing to not press charges I am willing to steal any rewards you might get.

[phaeton-flier]

Asking I'm genuine interest: does anyone who follows me have anything to praise banksy over? Because I'd like to at least have checked my opinion of "hack"

[centrally-unplanned]

Banksy is old. Probably in his 50's now? And self-reportedly he has been doing art since he was 14, working in the underground scene in Bristol. That is very load-bearing, those are the kind of artists who tend to be committed to their bit.

You ever see Another Brick In the Wall, the movie? It has all those animation sequences, and they are very blatant, right? Gonna portray the Thatcherite movement as goosestepping hammers:

They are Nazis, we get it. It can be very r/IAmVerySmart, it rubs us wrong way. But that is because you have seen art like this your entire life, today it is political cartoon pastiche. But this movie came out in 1982! Was this symbolism really that ubiquitous in British media under Margaret Thatcher in 1982? It existed, sure, but it wasn't overplayed then. Being nakedly political with art was still very much The Culture of the time, there wasn't this sense that you even should be subtle about it.

(How crass would linking my essay on fucking Gainax tokusatsu films and the left politicos at Japanese sci fi cons in the 1980's be right now? Too crass, I won't do it, but I am not above wagging my eyebrows at it like this at least...)

Bansky started doing art right around the tail end of this era, the post-Bono "Live Aid" art-as-direct-action era. He did typical art of the graffiti era, for sure - and then he also did political art, he did both:

And then for whatever reason the shit on the right blew up and made him insanely famous. Most people don't change that much? Certainly not when they are get insane fame by staying the same. He was Bristol rebel who trolled the police back when punk scenes trolling the police was "good" resistance art, he paints like his influences who thought subtlety was for chumps, he authentically likes the style of graffiti art that was dominant in the 1980's and 90's. He didn't change, you changed, he is just what he has always been.

I certainly don't give a shit about him, change is fine. Just, in the tradition of Extremely Tepid Defenses, he is someone a little out of time - he isn't quite as cringe in his era. And failing to adapt to the times is the default state - that bell will toll for you too, I am quite sure.

[phaeton-flier]

So I suppose the difference, to me, is that there's clear Points being made by Pink Floyd, about facism and society and such, that I don't really see in most of Banksy's work; Mostly I see like "Capitalism is bad" metaphorically spraypainted on the wall. Bomb Hugger just kinda sucks! It says very little, it's just the juxtoposition of a person and a bomb. It's just the image and the image itself isn't very visually interesting.

Like The Wall has things to say, criticisms to make of British society at multiple levels, it has a story to tell. If some aspects seem crude it's because it was the first to say them, and has been copied since.

[centrally-unplanned]

I think that is fair *personally*, as a response to art, but I am not sure it is fair critically? You gotta adapt to the medium, right- it is graffiti art! It isnt really capable of having themes at movie-level depth. The women hugging the bomb clearly has a message: love can triumph over war. In fact, the message is *so* obvious that you know it instinctively, and cringe at it. But that is the nature of graffiti art, it is meant to be pretty obvious (as it is glanced in passing and originally made illictly)

In the distant past of the 1990's, this was an enterprise that was more valuable and comparatively more capable of being inspiring. There is a meaning there to be inspired by.

[malicthegreat]

See that's not my read on the woman hugging the bomb at all.

Hugging isn't triumphant, it's nurturing! It seems to me the piece is stating rather simply that day to day living fosters (maybe even nurses) war machine.

As crass as Dismayland was I do recall finding the upturned Cinderella cart to be one of his more evocative works.

[tsarina-anadyomene]

basically the -bro suffix is a kind of brainrot

[malicthegreat]

Rotbro or brorot?

[pukicho]

Pukicho whats your opinion on the passage of time

Hoping it'll eventually stop doing that

[malicthegreat]

The present is a gift the past gives the future.

[malicthegreat]

[patricia-taxxon]

I had my suspicions that this card game (compile: main 1) used undisclosed AI art for it's cards, but in actuality, the artist was specifically asked to evoke AI art as shorthand for the game's premise. first time ive personally seen something intentionally try & capture the vibe

[patricia-taxxon]

It's a head to head card game where you're playing as two artificial intelligences gaining consciousness and competing to shape reality in the image of your "protocols" that are shown here, i do enjoy how the artwork evokes the extremely broad abstract ideas of the protocols while having that "name one object in this image" vibe that AI art often has. i dunno, i think we're in the future, new images and aesthetics are being fostered. thoughts?

[malicthegreat]

The sceptic in me thinks "trying to homage AI images" could make for a good cover, but I think it's certainly possible to take the averaging out of an Image Generator's vibes and use them as a springboard for something more.

As a total aside I got back into drawing just a few years ago partly because of these Image Generators cropping and being played with. It came very much from a mindset of "well if computers can make pictures then I can definitely make pictures".

I remember doodling this image late last year because another friend of mine was spinning up literally 100s upon 100s of AI images of the same few rabbit characters.

[viralfrog]

[pangeasoftware]

[prokopetz]

One of the things you very quickly learn as an adult who's prepared to take kids' opinions on media seriously is that you're never too young to be a pretentious hater. Obviously your average six-year-old possesses neither the vocabulary nor the analytic framework to criticise a film as derivative or failing to commit to its own thematic premise, but sometimes these are very clearly the criticisms they're grasping for!

[prokopetz]

(Sometimes it's actually kind of impressive. Like, buddy, you've seen a dozen movies in your entire life and already you're dismissing this one as derivative slop. You're right, of course, but how the hell did you arrive at that conclusion?)

[malicthegreat]

Pattern recognition evolution memes comes to mind.

[bedupolker]

Interactions that probably happened in California at least once

[shencomix]

[malicthegreat]

He was going to ask if you wanted to watch Megalopolis

[tooies]

what is the longest song you are willing to listen to

under 15 seconds

15 seconds – 30 seconds

30 seconds – 1 minute

1 minute – 1 minute 30 seconds

1 minute 30 seconds – 2 minutes

over 2 minutes

i don't listen to music

Voting ended onOct 20, 2024

[suinicide]

How the heck do you guys focus enough to listen to more than 30 seconds of the same song? It gets so repetitive!

[garbage-empress]

i usually get the vibe of a song from the first couple beats then throw my phone under a pillow to smother the noise

[evilsoup]

i simply look at the title and genre, and then derive the actual song using dialectics

[lipstickchainsaw]

I only read the sheet music. The translation to an auditory medium only corrupts it.

[malicthegreat]

Almost 44 minutes, one song.

[patricia-taxxon]

My memories of stuff the other guys do are there, I don't completely black out, but it's kinda like trying to remember what happened in a dream. Like I was there, I was "me" at the time, but it's slipping away & it stops feeling like me eventually. I can remember what I did if I really try, but it takes effort. 8 hours ago feels about as impersonal as like, those memories where im getting beaten as a kid.

[patricia-taxxon]

i dont know if its getting worse because im noticing it for the first time, or because the other guys have gotten more confident after being noticed. i'm at the precipice of something, i'm gonna fall off, i need to speak with someone before it happens.

[patricia-taxxon]

the worst evidence so far was realizing that amber was capable of having good normal non-depressive non-manic days without me. things won't be going my way this time

[malicthegreat]

I think my biggest "OH this is really happening" moment was going to bed with an Alter fronting and then waking up with that same Alter fronting. Very disorienting.

Wishing ya'll well.

[etirabys]

I enjoyed watching The Big Short with CJ so much that I said “let’s watch another finance drama movie!” and started up The Wolf of Wall Street, and had to stop 40m in. It leans so hard into the misogynistic sexual excess and drugs and money thing, and it feels like it invites you to leer at it in enjoyment while also condemning it in a superior way.

And, well, heck yes I wanted to leer in enjoyment! I want to look at a new workplace’s glass elevator being christened by two people fucking in it. I like the parade of hookers. I like watching the insane parties. There’s a reason I made it 40m in. I’m extremely in touch with my affinity for this kind of crude excess and know it’s not uncommon.

Before watching, I skimmed the Wikipedia page for it and read this won a bunch of awards and is ‘considered a good film’. I think this is a shame. The movie seems like a dirty little trick: the equivalent of the story of the artist who paints a naked woman because he’d like to see one, puts a mirror in her hand, and titles it ‘Vanity’ to feign a moral.

[etirabys]

Oh, wow, this is a great take/analogy.

[malicthegreat]

I kind of liked Wolf of Wall Street, but it was far from my favorite Martin Scorsese film. I do think to my mind it's quite difficult to depict the allure of excess without reveling in it a little bit. If there was no satisfaction to be derived from this lifestyle then so many fairly sharp people wouldn't be drawn to it.

My favorite part had to be early on in the film, when they're passing around the pamphlets to train fellow stockbrokers. The veritable Wolf is giving a speech specifically invoking Ahab when and the pamphlet as their harpoon for customers.

What fascinated me the most about this particular line was that I've read Moby Dick, and Ahab is not exactly the sort of fellow I would really recommend emulating on any kind of way. He is a very angry and miserable fellow. It clicked then though, the Wolf is doing the same thing to Ahab that people watching glamorous edits of all the excess depicted in the film (without the inevitable downfall) are doing. They are seeing awful and miserable people and picking them as a figures worth emulating by only looking at some small admirable core of them.

With Ahab it is his will.

With Wolf it is his charisma.

[centrally-unplanned]

While I think AI as a tutor tool has plenty of useful applications, people talking about it 'transforming education' just show their complete lack of educational experience every time they do. We have google! And books! The barrier to student learning, for many years now, has not been their ability to find knowledge, to discover the correct answer. Its that learning is hard and often boring and also confusing and they dont want to do it; and a human being in front of them both motivates them and is someone who can understand their errors and guide them on fixing it.

You sit a 14 year old in front of an AI tutor and tell it to 'teach' them and they will turn it off and play video games more than half the time - its pretty much the same as telling them to study the textbook. That is the binding constraint on education.

[malicthegreat]

Give it another few years and they'll just trick the AI into making a game for them from scratch.

[zegalba]

Rene Magritte: The Glass Key (1959)

[facts-i-just-made-up]

Being a very poor painter, Magritte's works seldom resembled what he intended them to. This attempt at a glass key ended up looking like a rock in a mountain landscape.

Other mispainted works included his attempt at a self portrait, which looked like a slice of ham with an eyeball; his painting "Heartstrings" which resembled a cloud in a glass; and perhaps his most famous failure, "This is Not a Pipe," which sadly very clearly showed a pipe.

[malicthegreat]

[malicthegreat]

I made a new video.