Tag: Culture Wars

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Media Politics

Day 1635 and Slop Doctrine

Yesterday we enjoyed the uncomfortable tension of a cease fire announcement in the Israeli-Iranian conflict that America had just entered that no one was sure was real.

Sure the president had said so inside the heaven ban built to purpose social network Truth Social, but we had no basis for belief in that without hearing from Iran or Israel.

Newspapers sent out alerts that resolved into “unconfirmed” once you hit the landing page. Thanks guys but maybe cool your jets on the alerts?

I read Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine when it came out in 2007 with a mix of skepticism and head nodding. Her thesis was that disasters are used to push through unpopular market reforms. I remain skeptical of presenting neoliberalism as exclusively disaster capitalism.

But after resistance to the Iraq War did nothing, and having recently graduated from an alma mater whose reputation in Latin American economies was shall we say mixed, I was somewhat receptive to her thesis.

I alas myself lack the crucial qualification for being a fan of Klein’s work as I am not a socialist. I like the market reforms and doubt chaos is the only vehicle through which they can be passed. At this point in our history, chaos is leading us more towards statist solutions

Nevertheless I remain skeptical of the narratives from state power no matter what solution the state is pushing. I like a market based solution as much as the next bourgeois pig, but I’m no fan of the state overriding its people or its businesses.

The problem we have now isn’t just Shock Doctrine or disaster capitalism driving outcomes. It was mostly disaster authoritarianism in my opinion.

The reason it is so unsettling to have no source of reliable information or institutional trust in our information is because we are now living in the age of Slop Doctrine. You can take it if you like Naomi.

It’s impossible to sort out what reality is winning even when it’s coming from a head of state. A million competing narratives from untold decentralized sources of information now compete to confused and unsettle us. The psy-ops aren’t even run by humans anymore.

I’d love for us to collapse that state of uncertainty that comes from multiple entangled competing realities into consensus reality.

Alas when I searched for quantum reality collapse terminology all I found was a LiDAR imaging company for architectural documentation. Their website doesn’t suggest much of anything invoking quantum states except insofar as one hopes that by using their imaging your buildings won’t do so.

And so we are left swimming in the slop doctrine confusion in which old ways of validating information are entirely useless to us. Slop Doctrine is here and it sucks.

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Aesthetics Culture

Day 1623 and a Costco Birthday

Today is my husband’s birthday. He genuinely is a very low key guy and when his birthday falls on a weekday he isn’t into big to-dos. But he said he’d be up for a Costco date.

No surer sign of enjoying middle age than loving the finest buyers club values of Cost. But to be honest we’ve both always loved Costco. And you can really get into Costco when you have a multiple barn freezers and backup power so no apologies for our love of a practical Costco date.

Bounce house for sale? Birthday win

Though it didn’t go entirely to plan. If it means anything to the pulse of America the Bozeman Costco was a chaotic in a “concerning operational decay” way.

Now we noticed a lot of categories completely out. No lemons. Several steak cuts we’d been hoping to get for a birthday dinner. Produce in general was pretty bad. Enough to make you wonder if they were affected by the United Natural Foods hack.

But other things were off. Staffing wise you had to wonder if they fired half the staff or no one planned for managing checkout flow for June in Montana high season? Nothing is as predictable as tourists going to Yellowstone if you’ve got a manager with any tenure or common sense. but maybe they don’t. I have a Twitter mutual who burned out on a Costco job so two strikes guys. Talent is part of the Costco brand.

Alex works New York hours so we got there around 2:30 or so which you’d think would be quiet but is not in midsummer in southern Montana. It was summer high season traffic you’d expect on a Saturday though.

We walked every aisle and there was a lot of fun oddities. Japanese toilets, water bottle drying racks, sound absorbing wall panels. And there were some less fun selections.

We usually do a better business with bear spray

There was a disturbing amount of slop packaging products and rapidly prototyped TikTok trends follow ons. Dubai chocolate ice cream bars? The zoomers will enjoy their summers up here I’m sure.

Lots of grouchy Boomers and exhausted families were looking for basics in the middle of the store as we perused the sides of the store for fun. Everyone is in Montana it seems. As we waited checkout I heard discussion of how JD Vance meeting with the Murdoch family at their ranch in Dillon.

We had intended to go end it with a hot dog and pizza slice respectively but it was so intense at the checkout area we didn’t even try. The lines were unmanageable which is how we got so much gossip. Montana isn’t so big that you can fly Air Force 2 to Butte without chatter about which ranch you are visiting.

I hope Costco has made some margin on selling gold bars to happy men like my husband. We also found a few other things

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Politics

Day 1620 and Yes Minister

I enjoy British comedy for all the usual reasons. Witty, acerbic, and dry cynicism make for a good laugh even if it seems like a challenging culture to actually live in.

Nerds of my elder millennial era were introduced to Monty Python by our parents but there are many others perhaps more worthy of constant quotation. It’s a diverse genre and helps manage stress about politics.

And sure every week has a “come see the violence inherent in the system” moment these days but it takes a really special kind of stupid to mount a four stages of a crisis narrative campaign in a matter of days. Political satire Yes Minister delivers an excellent example of this tactic.

To set the scene, Sir Humphrey Appleby the bureaucrat (excuse me, civil servant) and his elected minister who eventually fails up to Prime Minister Sir Richard Wharton. The episode is called “A Victory for Democracy” which as you can imagine it is not.

The stages of a crisis are as follows

  1. Stage One:
“Nothing is going to happen.”
    1. Stage Two:
“Something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it.”
    2. Stage Three:
“Maybe we should do something about it, but there’s nothing we can do.”
    3. Stage Four:
      “Maybe there was something we could have done, but it’s too late now.”

It’s a very fast set of news cycles when you resign yourself immediately to stage four. Things pop off and escalate and soon we are faced with an ambivalent leadership response that shrugs blame as easily as it did responsibility.

Categories
Politics

Day 1616 and All Hell Broke Loose

Well, I don’t even know how to begin explaining the public fight between Elon Musk and Donald Trump. I’ll say that it was the best afternoon on Twitter, maybe ever? But it was a sad day for America.

Group chats were popping off like it was holiday weekend and absolutely pandemonium reigned on every newsfeed. Major newspapers were maintaining timelines updated tweet by tweet. These are the WSJ and the New York Times late afternoon mountain time.

Today will take time to dissect and I’m sure the Wikipedia page for Thursday June 5th 2025 will be chaotic. So much ridiculous fighting and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. It was an ugly spat and a public display of contempt for the millions of Americans who just want our government to function.

But holy shit is it funny to see grown men lose their absolute minds publicly when the stakes are literally our government and the most important currency in the world. Honestly I’m so disappointed I can’t even take comfort in being at the very edge of the empire.

Categories
Aesthetics Reading

Day 1613 and Minority Opinion

Being disagreeable has a lot going for it. It’s frowned on when women do it even though it is usually coded as a feminine trait. Traditionalists say they want agreeable wives and iconoclast lords.

Despite this call to the past, it’s not hard to argue that this amenable feminine and chaotic masculine is itself a bit subversive. Fractious independent goddesses and agreeable brotherhoods are archetypes too.

I am fearful in this moment that we have less patience for disagreements among humanity just as our capacity for loyalty and reciprocity dims with atomization.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease has a bit of a “both sides of the bus” meme quality to it. Attention can build you up and tear you apart.

The eye of American’s elite class has many competing stories about which ideas must be celebrated, which are taboo and which are too dangerous to be discussed. And that’s just the last couple of days of essays at the New Yorker.

Categories
Aesthetics Politics

Day 1612 and Netrunner Molotov Bang Bang Summer

Being a mere node in a large but influential network I transmit as much as I receive. I intake and reroute information as part of my own synthesis process and I appreciate that it benefits me and others. But it also does damage and today was a rough start to June by any measure.

I saw a lot today and I only pass some of it along with the thought it’s going to be netrunner bang bang Gibsonian “who respects the nation state” asymmetrical energy Summer of 2025.

Any utopian dreams of a human noosphere of higher collective intelligence must reflect upon quotidian horrors showing our baser impulses daily and summer is war season for good logistical reasons.

Ukraine appears to have blow up a number of Russian fighter jets with drones smuggled in with trucks. Let’s recall the below image from last year. Ukrainian Netrunners vaping while flying FPV drones stepped up their game hardcore today.

Ukrainian FPV drone operator smoking a vape circa summer of 2024

believe this is the first ever direct attack on any nation’s nuclear triad in history, and it succeeded – @antroyn

Twitter is awash in footage of this drone attack on Russian fighter planes being drone bombed

Operation Spider Web showed the power of asymmetrical warfare and scared the shit out of deterrence war planners as drones versus air superiority is a worry that has now become persistent reality. Nuclear triad theory needs an update.

In other closer to home news, an older white gentleman firebombed a protest along Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall in what appears to be a kind of Molotov cocktail incident over Hamas hostages. It’s my hometown so this is upsetting beyond the wider context of terrorism over the situation. I fear for further tensions in liberal college towns.

Aesthetically, because it’s going to be a high volatility volume time on Wall Street, I am enjoying to see this Twitter account picking beautiful brutalism and “80s cocaine design aesthetics” out of the ether.

If one is to survive a summer of netrunners and volatility, this look will appeal to the sorts who want hyper focus, class & glass. While no one would recommend uppers, it’s clearly part of the overall vibe of managing nervous system input for anyone looking to do violence.

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Community Media Politics

Day 1611 and Ridiculous Remnants

I am sympathetic utopian communities of all flavors. I myself have many dystopian worries because I’d prefer those utopias. I believe we are capable of more when we work together. America is a strange coalition even when we strain at the boundaries of pluralism.

It feels so hard to do this right now as we come up against our alienation from each other. Everybody is in pitched battles for control of the narrative of our future while so many of us battle individual nightmares in the here and now. We can do so much better in reaching for a future for each other but it’s all politics up and down.

The podcasting tech right are three years late to the effective altruists versus effective accelerationist meme wars (EA vs e/acc) as we we are subject to yet another round of Anthropic fear mongering over its potential power as a developer of artificial intelligence. Screaming its the end of white collar jobs tends to rattle.

If I had 3 billion in revenue, the horniest model on the planet and some weird Benthamite fetish I’d probably say less catastrophic shit personally but Anthropic is battling the eye of Sauron SaaS brotherhood of OpenAI’s aggressive financialization needs.

Meanwhile even the most determined of religious nationalist Rod Dreher is experimenting with transhumanism. Or he let an artificial intelligence write an essay in his style responding to the New York Times. Or that is how much he respects David Brooks. The professional pundit class might be listening to the doomers but they experimenting with optimism.

This is a funny way of getting into the New York Times having a panic attack as an institution as its way through various forms of nationalist and revanchist thought.

The least capable morale vehicle imaginable in establishment thought David Brooks took a swipe at Patrick Deneen and VD Vance for their nationalism. Because neoconservatives really understand why Americans in the abstract feel a duty to each. I’m sure during the global war on terror he advocated for it was all very philosophical.

I myself am not very sympathetic to many veins of nationalist thought I was intimidated to be seated on a panel with Deneen this spring as he is a formidable scholar. Speaking on the aims of technology he is much more of the academy and the Citadel than I am.

I feel I have an obligation to engage with all types of political thought as technologists have found themselves with power in America on where. We have to consider how we build and to what benefit. I feel in some way that technologists (especially the optimists) are a political constituency but also a worldview and we coexist among others.

The diverse array of opinions and different constituencies in America are battling over what constitutes the good. America is the land of some degree of diversity and we cannot only serve a narrow band of interests. I am often afraid of the other parties in that debate because I do understand that it is power at stake but I engage because we all have the power to do so. Even if it seems ridiculous sometimes.

Categories
Culture Politics

Day 1606 and Woody Allen Panopticon

The internet loves to have fights over which intellectual, religious, artistic, or political views are discredited by the sins of its people. We have to police all kinds of things lest the youth get the wrong impression.

If you dig into any serious gathering of humans you will be shocked by human nature. You shouldn’t be but Americans have it pretty good so we often are. This despite us living in a Woody Allen panopticon where we cannot separate the man from the work. We are forced to look at others sins constantly.

And it’s upsetting I won’t lie. Way more people than you’d like fall into the pederast camp. I didn’t even know that was a word till I met some Italians. Blessedly free of this knowledge in lived experience. Woody Allen, Michel Foucault (he gave us the panopticon) and Socrates were all committing sins against children. I’d argue you can skip Annie Hall but you shouldn’t skip Plato or Foucault.

Depending on whose authority you crave you the real danger to watch out for is different historical flavors of Marxists and fascists and where they settled.

Plenty of academics and journalists dislike understanding humans for who they were in their time and judging them in context of their output.

That’s dangerous according to more than a few scolds in the media and the academy. Drop the term Straussian and see how it goes over at a dinner party. Dangerous truths ahhh!

There are lots of little shibboleths for discerning which Hegelians took a turn with the Italian futurists. Have you heard of Russian Cosmism?Also dangerous. Don’t even get me started on what it means that JD Vance may or may not be an Ulster Scott and what that does or doesn’t mean to certain sects of reactionaries.

I honestly can’t keep up despite being as relatively close as one can come to being expert weird future fixated movements while not being a historian or a journalist.

Guilt by association in the process of living through history is both a horrifying and sticky business if we look too closely. I have a shelf full of Modernist Marxists which I’m certain wouldn’t have allowed me to survive the Red Scare despite my intense dislike for communism. So beware the Woody Allen panopticon. It comes for everyone. But also leave them kids alone.

Categories
Internet Culture Media

Day 1605 and No Blackpilling

We get regular reminders of how chaotic things are in our new hypersphere networked world that we have entire memes categories and full influence campaigns dedicated to blackpilling people into nihilism.

No blackpilling meme

The fatalism and determinism expressed on the internet is the experiences reality for plenty of people and it’s probably not limited to a few radicals. The presumption that any of these pills are limited to incels misogynists racist cranks is comforting but incorrect.

I’ve written about blackpilling before as it’s a common theme in overcoming the exhaustion of an unsettled era. Chaos is emotionally and physically debilitating because of our biological experience of it.

She thought something had gone wrong with us physically too. “Endocrine systems get fried. There’s too much cortisol, you’ve been running on adrenaline, eventually you tap out. Everyone feels nuts right now,” she said, “because what on earth are we supposed to do with the fact that we’ve had this incredible rate of change for so long. We think we’re keeping up with it, but our bodies are like, ‘Oh, actually no. We have no idea what’s going on.’ ”

Dissident Fringe

I also believe it’s a deliberate strategy by virtually every player in the great games of power and influence to make us feel nuts. Everything is a conspiracy. Everyone is a villain except your in-group. Except it’s not.

It’s always crazy in Philadelphia
Categories
Politics

Day 1601 and Decades Not Days

It can be really hard to know if you are doing the right thing on any given issue. American politics is fraught. Technology is changing faster than our culture is able to metabolize it.

And we have to make choices without false the security of safetyism. We are building the infrastructure of a future that isn’t yet entirely clear.

My husband and I had a moment last night where we lamented that if was hard to know if we were doing any good. We try to be considered and support policies that enable us to live amicably even if we don’t share the same beliefs. Especially then!

Libertarians catch a lot of flack but in a pluralistic democracy it’s best what we’ve got. Watching the battles for who can debase themselves most with populism is a great advertisement for small government.

But in any large system it’s hubris to think any one thing can set us right or wrong. We are the accumulation of our decisions and America has made a few bad ones. But if you can contribute in anyway you might be the extra nudge that pushes the system in a better equilibrium. Civilization is made of decades and not days.