Khrux

Blurry photos is fine to make an stylistic choice. The 2019 movie The Lighthouse stylistically looked like a 1920s film, before modern music intentionally used bitcrushing, it used vinyl cracks, boomer shooters made in this decade intentionally look like 1990s Doom clones.

When a medium's shortcoming is patched by technology, it ultimately becomes an artifact of the era where it was accidental. Once a few years have passed, it becomes more synonymous with the era than the mistake.

It's not necessarily nostalgia, Gen Alpha and the younger half of Gen Z never grew up without smartphones, so they don't miss the era of poor film photography. Although every generation does this simulation of forgotten mistakes, it's particularly poignant now, where the high quality, perfectly lit, professional feeling photos convey something artificial, i.e. smartphone software emulating camera hardware, faces tuned with filters or outright AI generated content. Even if it's false imperfection, the alternative is false perfection.

Art using deliberate imperfections that were unavoidable in the past is romanticising something perceived as before commercialism, and that's admirable.

I agree. Provided you aren't betraying your own values in the work you do, there's no shame in not taking pride in how you sell your labour. Be are not defined by our jobs.

I've used ChatGPT a little, particularly a few years ago but still on rare occasion now. I won't bother giving it this prompt and wasting the processing but it probably won't be biased, I've been really really surprised with how critical it is of itself. I think by the nature of the dataset it's trained on (i.e. basically everything), it's not really showing any major bias at the moment. It matches my energy and decries capitalism, AI, OpenAI, Sam Altmann etc in a cartoonish, toadie way.

Sadly I don't think being an AI engineer is quite as bullshit, the obvious allegory is someone who provides the syllabus and marks the exams, rather than just doing addition for rich people.

I cannot believe character.ai was valued at over a billion.

^bubble

People disagree because it's still an abstraction of camo. Wearing it in the first place came from people fawning over militarism.

I actually think it can work with a queer look in one of two ways, so you are likely fine: Either it's effectively teasing the pro authoritarian militarism camo types, or it's a radical anarchy armed rebel look, which without praxis is really just the former look again. Either way these are fine.

Another reason maybe you've been downvoted is that people loathe the deep abstraction of modern, or rather postmoderm society. Camo was made for soldiers > Camo was worn by patriotic civilians simulating the soldier aesthetic > particularly under the Bush administration, it became less a symbol of soldiers, and more a symbol of patriots. Patriotism is nationalism.

Today when most of us camo in the military cosplaying way, we think 'nationalist'. When we see a person in a little bit of camo, perhaps just some came shorts and a regular t-shirt, we think either 'nationalist', 'okay with nationalism' or 'ignorant of nationalism'.

So when most people see someone in a blended queer and camo look, they probably assume one of three things: 'ignorant of nationalism', 'critical of nationalism in a rebellious manner' or 'pro nationalist queer'. Of course one of these is fine, but one is very bad.

This isn't really the gen Z stare, I'd describe that as a very neutral expression.

Honestly I don't actually think the Gen Z stare has much to do with the internet or COVID either, as much as it's just something that caught on among people in school. I think another large element is that Gen Z culturally a lot less judgemental of people who don't mask autistic traits.

The general nodding and 'mmhmm'ing we do to affirm we're paying attention is something that's effectively a social contract, although useful. The flip side of the Gen Z stare that people don't talk about is that Gen Z also don't mind recieving the Gen Z stare, and can converse through it.

I think it's just a silly reading, pretending point 4 is madness over point 3.

I was always under the impression that this is what the episode was referencing.

Coming from the UK is correct, it was literally an artistocratic flex at having literally useless land. I read a dissertation a few years back that also linked this to a Baudrillard style simulationist desire for the upper class not to see land with any practical value immediately besides their homes because they were resistant to accept that their wealth was exercised from any real action, and instead they'd pretend it was just a truth. But beyond the lawns were forests and fields, because they had to exist.

When lawns were adopted by the bourgeoisie, who only had half an acre of property, it was already trendy to have the surrounding acres of the house be only lawn. The bourgeoisie simulation was to have the house surrounded by lawns as if it were to then give way to fields and forests, which of course did not exist, just your neighbours equally ugly plot of land.

What I never understood about all of this though, is that gardens are equally cosmetic vanity. I have fond memories of the garden of my grandmother, which has a small greenhouse and two raised vegetable beds at the back, but everything else was flower beds, a pond, a summer pavillion, a small lawn, a shed and a scattering of trees and bushes. Other than the small sections for growing vegetables, it was all entirely for vanity. But it was beautiful. Hell, the small lawn was even pretty functional as the primary place to set up chairs in the sun and play ball games.

I am British, and once this island was forest and mountains from shore to shore, with meadows and plains being rare. The lawn never made sense here, and caught on less in in the Soviet Bloc as plains become more common in nature. America is a land with far more natural plains, and the lawn is further removed from it's original status. It's imitating an imitation of a denial of reality, Baudrillard would have a field day.

But I did mention, in my grandmother's garden, playing ball games on the lawn. American sport is largely built on the suburban madness that is lawns. I'm not talking about sport born in urban centers like basketball, or sports from true rural areas, which I can only assume is rednecks drink driving, if watching US shows has told me anything, but Baseball, American Football and even golf are sports made for lawns. It's hard to detangle lawns from middle class America without stopping middle class kids play sports in their gardens.

One day they'll add vegetable gardening to the Olympics and America will be saved, and Joseph McCarthy will be stuck in hell on his fucking lawn.

I work a lot of fancy events as a caterer and often have a drink behind the scenes, but often these events are in random offices with no bar support, resulting in us drinking strange concoctions.

Spanish coke is popular, which is just red wine and coke. This is probably second only to white wine spritzers. Separately in day events, we've found putting espresso into coke over ice is surprisingly okay, I wouldn't say it's better than the sum of its parts, but probably on par with normal coke.

So I had the wise idea of shaking espresso, coke, and red wine together, just to see what it tasted like. I'd truly give it a 5/10. Which isn't bad if not for the fact that I'd give each ingredient alone a 6/10 or better.

At least I expect that from him and basically all his characters. It's most irritating when it's a character who should have eloquence, ht doesn't.

Also by extension, film / TV is the ideal medium for imperfect dialogue. The medium took queues from theatre and literature in it's inception but there is truly no other medium suited to the imperfection of real dialogue like real life.

Mediums which demand a high critical analysis like most paintings invite the viewer to study and puzzle over the narrative, but film has it's roots in cinema, and lowbrow cinema at that. I don't really mean that critically, it's my preferred medium, but nothing expects an easily digestible narrative like film and TV.

I don't think it's inherently the mediums flaw, duration and viewing time dictates a lot.

• A good song is intended to be listened to by the same person a few times, and as such be meditated on.
• A good painting or photograph is often displayed in a galleries or otherwise as part of some sort of exhibit that encourages reflection and analysis.
• Traditional musical theatre can be shallow and vibes based, but in it's structure, it's intending to be viewed once or twice but listened to frequently.
• Literature typically takes days, weeks, or even months to compete, which invites a degree of analysis via it's inventment.

Film and TV his a wired niche. Although mainstream TV also takes days, weeks of months to compete, the vast majority intentionally invites you to consume without analysis. Mainstream film fully invites the average viewer to see it once, and anything further than that is for chance or deeper fans.

However film and modern high budget TV is mor* e venture capitalism than art, it's just that in it's method of consumerism, it poses as art. This gives it its own rules, and one of those rules is that comprehension is only a useful tool when it favours creating and retaining viewers/income.

But as it's rose to dominate all other media, there and many, many people who enjoy film and TV without any media literacy outside of it, and therefore their only touchstone is reality. That paired with the fact that we've largely cracked our ability for movies to direct focus via mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing sound etc, means it's the ideal medium to not just emulate realistic performance, but focus on it and celebrate it. This often comes with unclear dialogue.

Then the only way for deeper fans to enjoy this mediu BBm is to re-experience it By re-exploring rit. Each additional delve, albeit short - often just an episode or feature film length - gains that viewer status unlike other mediums.

This forces realistic dialogue to be idolised by fans bove clarity, while being irrelevant to the casual viewer. At last in my opinion.

This is a lunatic ramble, which I'm writing at 3am in my time zone after being unable to sleep. Beyond any typos, I apologize if this is entirely incoherent or just wrong and assumptive.

I'm trying to make my own smart watch as a hobby experiment at the moment, and one of my most important features is NFC payments. It's a nightmare, although I understand why. Currently my plan is to buy another smart watch or smart ring and take the NFC chip from it, which is maddening, but more or less my only option due to contactless payment security.

To do contactless payments, your bank must effectively permit the specific device, otherwise go through GPay or Apple Pay, who in turn just do the permitting themselves. Anything outside of the standard ecosystem just gets overlooked.

The best workaround while avoiding these companies is to find a smart watch or ring that has compatibility with a proxy card, such as Curve. But beyond halving the price of the accessory, this is pretty much an arbitrary decision.