Society is in the gutter

i also enjoy that when presented that way it seems discursive and confessional rather than what it is, which is purely quantitative data

i think that twitter account would be useful for novelists and screenwriters

definitely. this is part of the reason i love it.

I love that census Americans account, though I haven't followed it. I actually think I prefer to read it as a long list in one spell, rather than one at a time, periodically. the repetitive effect combined with the great number of individuals really gives you a feeling of the paltry insignificance of a person

this is the other reason. i was tweeting about this last night so apologies to repeat myself to some of you, but i get a weird feeling from these kind of information abysses. like, there's such a sense of depth to them, it feels like standing on a height, almost dizzying. so while it does make me think of human irrelevance, it also kind of wows me at the collective force of that irrelevance, or the quantity of it, the number of us.

the other two things like this, that i can think of.

1. the wikipedia random button. actually terrifying to just bounce through everything that has ever been deemed to have existed. like simultaneously humbling and sort of ridiculous.

2. at work, there's a big tv screen which has a live ticker of every search that people are doing on gov.uk (basically a site where people look up how to apply for a passport or take their dog on holiday or whatever million other things covered by british law) - everytime i walk past i can't help but crane my head towards it for as long as possible, then again on the way back. it's just like boggling - "holiday safety", "visa for chinese student", "form 210k", "how to set up limited company" etc etc etc. the other day i was walking past and "when a child dies" appeared and just flew by in a hail of other search results, some in caps, some badly spelled, some long, some short, some definitely done by people without a lot of computer skill who think they're googling.

it's

oops, meant to say, it's really interesting. if anyone has any more stuff like this then please pass it on.

http://gizmodo.com/this-nsfw-live-scroll-shows-global-porn-search-terms-in-1530061824

lol ty

Its like an Oulipo writing exercise.

was just learning about oulipo recently, pretty interesting.

I quite fancy doing a really pointlessly difficult oulipo exercise just to see how shit my writing will be. like writing a story with no Es or something.

i did one where the words had to to ascend and descend in syllables from 1-5. they are pretty cool, i can imagine writing a story based on the outcome of one. they stop you thinking too much and correcting yourself as you go along. a blank page is much more scary than an oulipo exercise.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cfwz4OZWIAAqrOe.jpg:large

makin u think

i have mostly good will towards howard marks but that seems a bold claim

these people are right to say that society is in the gutter. the problem is, they use the past as a benchmark, when really society was if anything deeper in the gutter back then. society only comes up short when we measure it against human potential.

so what you're saying is: the gutter is actually in society???

these days it's hard to tell which is society and which is the gutter. and of course we're not allowed to speculate.

we're the gutter. society is the sewage.

or vice versa.

either way, the metaphor works.

https://undergroundherald.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/human-brain-facts.jpg?w=350&h=200&crop=1
http://www.pjfarmer.com/bimages/blown.jpg

http://cdn.zmescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Power-of-metaphors.jpg

;-)

A sharp blow to the head is worth 1000 metaphors.

TS: figurative language vs. the cleansing power of violence

These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy...in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Philip_Sousa#Hostility_to_recording

https://scontent-ord1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/13096112_10156771991695702_4916796237005775438_n.jpg?oh=59de1a05407f66dd3659a7ef9802ab13&oe=579E212B

the fast food metaphor is a lynchpin in "society is in the gutter" rhetoric.

some nice condescension to women in that one

tbf if a guy is hitting on u while ur in the voting booth, that's grounds enough to kick him to the kerb

recently moved to a new place and there are flies when i open the window. like 4/5 different ones flew in today. big fat house flies. bold as brass. in my old place i barely saw a fly. what attracts them? nearby water or parks?

i was actually going to post this in a thread called "flies" but nobody has read that thread for a long time, seems the rest of you have no need for a thread about flies.

how to kill them humanely? everything humane today of course.

most humane way to kill a fly is to swat it, as opposed to pulling off its wings and legs then dropping it on a hot griddle or anything of that nature

yeah i suppose i don't actually want to kill them.

Just escort them off the premises.

give them a bit of a beatin'

I am mates with my house spiders because they're mint and they deal with the flies

Send them away with a flea in their ear... if they've got ears.

You need to identify the alpha fly and let it know you will liquidate it's whole family if it doesn't buzz off.

I can't negotiate a sit-down with such a senior fly.

An Australian over how wondering just how bad Irish flies could be. When we turn on the reverse cycle A/C in summer the back screen door is literally thick with them.

I don't kill them either. The ones that get in the house I just catch and evict.

i imagine we are currently at the most flyless point in human history, what with our walls and buildings and sophisticated plumbing/sewage systems and AC and lack of corpses on public display.

still, flies like water, and they like organic matter, so they linger on. they may be with us until death is conquered. nowadays we can achieve distance from flies through the application of technology and willpower.

flies like sitting water, anything from our standard yard/road puddle to condensation on our iced drinks to the water mysteriously leaking from our refrigerator.

some puddles you can control, some you cannot.

god bless you who tame the savage fly.

We get flies, and ants, periodically. Reason One is probably that we have a toddler who wanders about everywhere, spilling sugary drinks and flinging his snacks about. If we got rid of the toddler we'd have a lot fewer bugs in the house. Also it's an old house, and therefore basically porous.

I don't like bug spray (cf. small children who touch everything and put random things in their mouths), but I do generally kill the flies. They're too nimble to catch and release, and generally very good at flying. So I spray them with something innocuous (water, glass cleaner, air freshener), not to kill them but to make them temporarily bad at flying. When they stop to clean off whatever it is, then I swat them. I may feel slightly bad, but I feel this is morally preferable to allowing them to breed in the house and thereby making more flies, who would lead frustratingly short indoor lives before needing to be killed in some ignominious manner.

Society in general gets a C+ in my estimation. It has a ways to go, but so do I. There is a lot of evil about - as there always has been - but decent people are getting better every day about recognizing it and calling it out.

The different types of flies behave in quite different ways. The bigger ones seem to just want to get out of the house back into the open air, and they usually find their way out pretty quickly. They actually seem quite clever in finding their way around, but if they have trouble, I'll draw curtains and direct them towards a door, where there's light, and beyond that an open window. Smaller ones seem more intent on staying inside and looking for things to feed on. They seem to be most attracted by sugary things, like the rims of glasses of wine or beer. They just keep coming back, and they fly fast, so they are difficult to capture. They seem to like resting on walls rather than horizontal surfaces, so I wait until they settle on a wall, approach slowly and catch in a glass, then release out of the window.

The worst flies are the tiny ones that congregate in huge clouds anywhere near sewage plants, or rivers and streams receiving cleansed water from sewage plants.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/opinion/narcissism-is-increasing-so-youre-not-so-special.html?WT.mc_id=2016-JUNE-FB-MC8-AUD_DEV-0610&WT.mc_ev=click&ad-keywords=AUDDEVGate&_r=0

My teenage son recently informed me that there is an Internet quiz to test oneself for narcissism. His friend had just taken it. “How did it turn out?” I asked. “He says he did great!” my son responded. “He got the maximum score!”

http://images.forbes.com/media/lists/53/2010/jay-leno.jpg

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump
Another horrific attack, this time in Nice, France. Many dead and injured. When will we learn? It is only getting worse.

you know you're not going to change the world by running over random people with a truck. there was a time when you could do that, but that window of opportunity is closed.

― the event dynamics of power asynchrony (rushomancy), Thursday, 14 July 2016 23:48 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tbt

trucks used to contain local goods

is this really the right thread title to talk about this under

no, it isn't, sorry

i was going to bump this yesterday with a quaint and wistful observation about how when young people used to throng the parks and streets, it was with a ball to kick, an ice-cream cone. now the only ball is on a screen, the ice-cream cone a virtual monster that isn't really there. they will never see the birds

https://www.uber.com/promo/ice-cream/