Lady gagas uncanny valleys

   Anyway, so, I didnt really watch the vma awards or anything last night but I did accidentally see some of it on the news and two things stuck out to me . . .

nice . . . hat?

    First off, katy perry had a cube on her head. This made me think that maybe it was a model of a sodium chloride molecule. That was of course insane though! Who would have a giant salt molecule on their head! What was I thinking??? Turns out it was some mondrian(?) via dior crap. Ok so anyway the other thing was lady gaga . . .

umm, hi.

   She was doing her alter ego "jo calderone". The thing was I was watching it on mute when I saw this and I was like "who is this ugly little dude in the bad coat?". Then I realized it was lady gaga. As an aside, why the fuck does the "Jo Calderone" wiki redirect to lady gaga? Its not the same person! Also, thats it! Im not calling her lady gaga anymore! Im calling her stefani in order to differentiate her from her lady gaga alter ego and her Jo alter ego. Anyway I dont know why but when I realized jo was stefani the first thing to come to mind was the "uncanny valley" concept. It immediately made sense, this is why people are put off by lady gaga. All of these artists she references (stefani via gaga), all of these designers or whatever she wears are like some kind of bizzaro version of the modanna pop star people have come to expect and even admire. Lady ga is enough of a pop star to almost be a legit pop star but not enough to actually engender affection and empathy. Its not a real person, its a persona, lady gaga isnt stefani. Hence the whole "little monsters" thing. Almost human, but uncannily non human. It is this imprecise fulfillment of expectation that people are rejecting. Contrast the perceptions of lady gaga with the wholesome britney spears and her inevitable eventual breakdown into obscurity (totally genuine) or Xtina aguilera who started out kinda whorish but then went through a period of genuine redemption and then went into obscurity. There was also an instructive moment where britney didnt want to kiss Jo last night. Stefani playing gaga is some kind of bizzaro modanna. Kissing the genuine article was a sign of affection but jo on the other hand is a completely dissociated stefani. Some kind of human kludge. Inspiring revulsion.

*poke!*

    The constant reference and imitation however has another level as well in that stefani is consciously making this bizarre mishmash. Its not theft or repetition or even loss of the aura at all. Its a weird almost passive aggressive subversion of our expectations. Also, is this a play on the whole thing where people thought lady gaga was a cross dresser back in the day? Turns out she was cross dressing, but only as some kind of insane fashion/pop mishmash, not as a man (yet?). This reminds me of that superman commentary in kill bill 2 where bill (played by david carradine) talks about how clark kent was supermans loser alter ego, his critical examination of humanity. Is jo stefanis critique of men? Would it then follow that lady gaga was stefanis critique of pop and fashion? It seems to me not only plausible but almost mandatory. How do you reconcile the disassociation of your irl person with your media persona? Is lady gaga stefanis loser alter ego? Is this the "Fame monster"? Maybe if I actually listened to lady ga gas music rather than watching her on mute for 5 seconds id get someplace with this. I would tweet stefani but she would never respond. I dont know about lady gaga but stefani seems like she might actually be an interesting person to talk to . . . as long as she doesnt bring that grease ball jo around.

   So, I mean, lets just review; why do we even like celebrities again? They tell us who we are, they tell us how to act, they are our mirror and all of our nightmares and desires and loves all magnified x10 to a sort of pornographic unreality, an unreality but one that is still real enough to be arousing. Lets be really real then for a bit and try to describe the density of this grand trimulative. At some point stefani was actually lady gaga and maybe if you catch her on the right day of the week or when she is getting a little caught up with herself lady gaga is actually lady gaga but more or less at this point lady gaga is a self conscious creation of stefani. Gaga doesnt run away with stefani as she might of in the past. There is also this other character, Jo. Im sure there are a whole range of characters really, some of them very subtle, we all have them right? But stefani has this really overt one she does, lady gaga. In a sense gaga is stefanis own personal celebrity/pop star/fashion idol/mirror/doppelganger/whatever. Its stefani playing the role of a pop star in the hit new movie "LADY GAGA" starring lady gaga directed and written by stefani. Its like a thread that gets all knotted and then unravels and then gets knotted again. And if you think this sounds like self indulgent garbage, lady gaga may not be the one for you!

My libyan revolution image folder hit the one gig mark today

FIRST AS TRAGEDY, THEN AS FARCE

SUPRISE MOTHERFUCKAH!

 

FUCK YEAH FREE LIBYA

WHAT THE HELL AM I LOOKING AT?

   What exactly is wilderness? What is wild? What is a native environment? What is a national park? The more I sit around and ponder these things (and I do indeed sit and ponder at length) the more I cant come up with any answers. I dont mean I dont know the answer I just literally am starting to believe there is no answer. Wilderness is just one of these bizarre holdover colonial notions. Wild lands is land fundamentally freed of the influence of mankind, or some such. Yet all of these lands, any lands, on any continent aside from antarctica, have had human influence for thousands of years before so called "white" men found them. Was yosemite in a "natural" state before the europeans got there? Was it indeed so "wild" as we might imagine. There is no negligible influence on an environment. It is deterministic chaos, never in a constant state. Even the observation disturbs relationships. If then, if humans, "natives", existed in all of these "wild" "pristine" places then how is it that these environments where really untouched by man? You follow me on this? Like, humans are everywhere and have been long before european expansion and so every ecology is influenced by mankind to some extent. And the "wild" places untouched by man dont even exist. Only the environments that had been less impacted by sparse populations of natives rather than the more profound effects of europeans.

   Now, where does this put the national parks? We all know well and good you cant carve up an environment with roads or logging or mining and expect it to be unimpacted but even something so simple as aircraft flying overhead can impact environments. And as much as we might like to mitigate the effects of civilization (meaning "european" civilization, native civilization does not count as civilization in this queerly racist tract) we cannot but impact every environment as they are so interconnected. We might attempt to eliminate some type of grass or bug calling it "non native" but isnt this even more moralistic meddling on the part of mankind? At one point, say at the founding of this nation, the idea was that all "waste" land should be converted to productive land by the ax or the plough and made to serve the aims of mankind. Now however things are different we are more civilized and enlightened as to our own impacts on the environment. Now we have a notion that all land must remain "wild" or "native" or "pristine". As if it was untouched by man. By how do we accomplish this goal? Selective logging, controlled burns, controlled introduction of pests to pester our pests. Isnt this the same difference? Arnt we swinging the pendulum so far to the other side its back around where we started? Arnt we still introducing a bizarre and unnatural (lol) notion of morality and ethics to a more or less accidental (on purpose?) system, by which I mean nature.

   This is all so murky. "Wild", "wilderness", is it just a figment of our imagination? Invented to gratify our own notions of independence from and control of it? All of these notions of ours are inconsequential to the reality of the thing itself. What the hell is a national park? A zoos writ large? A weekend retreat? Historical reenactment for landscape architects and environmentalists? To what end do we preserve the presence of wolves in yosemite? Is this just another notion of "productive" land? Isnt that equally tenuous? How far do we "rehabilitate" a native environment and at what cost? Centuries ago ireland was covered with oaks but after centuries of logging (THANKS ENGLISH!) it was deforested. Now however its the emerald isle, celebrated for its beauty. Would it really be somehow moral or ethical to turn it back into a oak woodland? And why? No environment is static. No environment is right or wrong. Why arbitrarily try to freeze everything at 1492 and maintain it in that state? Nature has no concern for our petty moral concerns. She has sat idly by and let 99% of all of the species to ever exist go extinct (or something). Is mankinds similar effect of mass extinction even unnatural? Or abnormal? Or immoral? Stop laughing im not making a joke im being serious. Think of the horrible "imbalance" necessary to trap all those dead creatures at the bottom of the ocean and turn them into oil. Now we swing it back. How can a species be entitled to anything? How can nature "break down" rather than simply continue to change inexorably? How can mankind "disobey" natural laws (i.e. physics)? Why do these notions get so much traction when, it would seem to me, they are fraught with nonsense through and through.

   Isnt this really all about aesthetics? About mythology? About our own sense of moral obligation as care takers of all around us? Its ok that ireland was deforested centuries ago because today it looks nice. Wolves in yosemite are part of the american mythology, like cowboys and farmers and rebels(naturalists?) without causes. Its like in europe where they pay farmers to farm unprofitable land so they can charge tourists to come and look at it and experience the "authentic" italy or whatever. Isnt the "untamed" west the same in effect? Isnt this a manicured landscape, ornamental horticulture? Massive gardens on century long time scales. We have the boxwood hedges and the hybridized cloned orange orchards that symbolize mans domination and separation from nature (ostensibly). And then we have the managed wild lands, carefully burned and grazed and inoculated from foreign onslaught. At least in so much as it is possible. Trying to eliminate non native species of course is directly combating nature in the name of preserving nature. I think it is instructive to think of the national park not as a wilderness but as a garden. It is not untouched by the blight of man, it is pristine, but pristine in a whole different way than you first imagine. It is pristine in the same way a cut diamond is pristine. Its not a "natural" place, it is very specifically unnatural in the sense that man has pruned unwanted flora and fauna, that man has changed the flow of the rivers and the weather to suit his notion of "wilderness".  If we approach wilderness in this way it is not in the slightest bit wild, it is at best a manicured landscape and at worst a theme park. Just another 3-D "thrill ride" with surround sound but no comfortable seats.  Mere aesthetic. This then leads me to a conclusion I do not even like or endorse. That we do not need to be more in touch with nature. We do not need to leave the cities or walk in the forests. We need to become LESS connected with nature. Less connected with "wild" spaces. We dont need to reconnect, we need to disconnect. It has been our connection all a long that has blighted nature with clear cutting and roads and whatever else (if we for a moment will believe in a notion such as "blight"). We cant control what goes on in "there". Just wall the place up and never set foot in it again. Ignore it. Let whatever lives, native or otherwise, live, and whatever dies, die. Let it actually become wild again.

Dem bots man, dem bots

AS SEEN ON TV!

I just wanted to take this opportunity to make some more over-dramatic declarative statements, ahem:

   LIBERTARIANISM IS THE SOCIALISM OF THE 21ST CENTURY. ITS UNINFORMED, NAIVE AND LOFTY IDEALISM IS THE WORST KIND OF POLLYANNA NONSENSE. AYN RAND WAS AN INSANE OLD RUSSIAN BAG LADY WITH THE SOCIAL SKILLS OF A TWO YEAR OLD. NIETZSCHE WAS A FUCKING PUSSY. RON PAUL IS JUST TOO PATHETIC TO LOOK AT. IM SO TIRED OF HEARING SELF IMPORTANT PSYCHOPATHS WHO COULD NEVER HACK IT WITHOUT THE HELP OF OTHER PEOPLE SNEERING OUT THE TERMS "KEYNSIAN" AND "SOCIALISM" LIKE THEY KNOW WHAT THEY MEAN. ALL OF THIS "PRIVATIZING" OF EVERYTHING, ALL THIS XENOPHOBIC ANTI-SOCIAL PESSIMISM IS FUCKING TOXIC. I WOULD LIKE TO REITERATE, IT IS FROM THE DEATH OF THE SOCIAL THAT SOCIALISM EMERGES. THIS IS ALL FALLOUT FROM THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION OF THE 1960s AND THE CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE IN SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS THAT STEMMED FROM IT . . . ANYWAY, BUFFETS IDEA ABOUT CHANGING IMMIGRATION POLICY TO SOAK UP HOUSING SURPLUS IS KIND OF A JOKE AND I GET THAT BUT FUCK, THATS LIKE THE ONLY REASONABLE PROACTIVE SOLUTION IVE HEARD TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM (THOUGH GIVING HOUSES TO 12YR OLDS AND BURNING DOWN ANY OTHER SURPLUS IS A CLOSE SECOND). WE DONT NEED MORE POLICY DEBATES OR A COUNCIL OF NICAEA  OR SOME NEW HAREBRAINED POLITICAL IDEOLOGY, WHAT WE NEED IS SOME FUCKING LEADERSHIP. WHERE THE FUCK IS TEDDY ROOSEVELT WHEN YOU NEED HIM? THAT MOTHER FUCKER WAS JUST JUST LIKE, "TRUSTS? BUST EM'!" "CONTINENTS? CUT EM'!" "CATTLE? RUSTLE EM'!". OH FOR WANT OF A CHARACTER LIKE THAT TODAY . . .

   ITS LIKE, THE ONLY HUMAN INSTITUTION THAT HAS EVER DONE ANYTHING WORTH MENTIONING IS GOVERNMENT. PYRAMIDS OF GIZA, GOVERNMENT. GREAT WALL OF CHINA, GOVERNMENT. PUTTING MEN ON THE MOON, GOVERNMENT. THE INTERNET, GOVERNMENT. SPECIFICALLY THE MOST GOVERNING OF GOVERNMENTS, AUTHORITARIAN GOVERNMENTS, HAVE DONE MANY BOLD AND GREAT THINGS. WHAT THE FUCK HAS THE FREE MARKET DONE FOR US? OH THAT RIGHT, PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE, WAL-MART, THE BLACK MARKET AND OLIGARCHY. WELL THANKS A LOT FOR THE WEED AND THIS SHITY IKEA FURNITURE FREE MARKETS. THATS SOMETHING ILL BE PROUD TO SAY I WAS A PART OF. THATS REALLY THE LEGACY I WANT TO LEAVE MY CHILDREN. YOU KNOW WHAT, FUCK IT, FROM THIS POINT ON IM A LIBERAL TRANS-HUMANIST SPACE FASCIST UNTIL PROVEN OTHERWISE . S.P.Q.R. 4EVR YOU LITTLE SHITS. WE WILL SEE HOW WELL YOUR MAGIC HAND WORKS WHEN THE HELLFIRE OF OUR IMPERIAL ARTILLERY IS TEARING THROUGH THE WALLS OF YOUR COMPOUND.

KONICHIWA BITCHES~!

randoms from the filelib

AH YEAH IM ON HOLD AGAIN . . .

transmissions from another planet

INFORMATION IS AMMUNITION

 

CONFESSIONS OF A TABLOID HACK

"So, it's a spider's web of subterfuge which extends far beyond the offices of 

News International in Wapping, east London, to the City and even into government. 

If Fleet Street is increasingly dependent on surveillance, so too is wider society."

I need to dig out the punching bag.

   All of this playing politics over the debt limit thing is really getting to me. Mainly because I spend too much time watching political shows. These idiots are grandstanding and trying to create drama for their campaigns (why the hell do presidential campaigns start a year and a half ahead of time?). Meanwhile europe is imploding in part because of their own debt crisis. The american people dont even seem to know that this is happening at all and dont know or really care what a debt ceiling is. Many though seem to think not raising the debt ceiling would be a good idea.

   What really grinds my gears though is the way that this discussions over the national debt and our obligations to deal with it is broken down into pure ideological nonsense and political theater. Its completely irresponsible for people in authority to discuss things on this level. In these vague intangible abstractions. Its like when people say that truman shouldnt of dropped the atomic bombs on japan. Its all well and good to say this and truman himself had qualms morally and otherwise about it but when you are elected as the leader of a nation and you are in a time of great crisis you must do everything you can to protect that nations interests. Truman wasnt the president of japan, he wasnt serving on the human rights watch council, or otherwise entrusted with upholding some humanitarian virtues, he was the president of the united states and it was his duty to defend the united states first and foremost. All other interests came second, even his own moral objections to his own decisions. being a total ideologue is frankly stupid, reality is not easily divided up into mathematically quantifiable bits. Ideology is not science. Politics is not science, there are no always right or always wrong positions. Thomas jefferson was the arch small government republican, the man wanted to disbanded the navy just to save money, DISBAND THE FUCKING NAVY. Think about the kind of ideological puritan you have to be to do something like that. But when napoleon came along and offered the louisiana purchase for 2cents an acre (or whatever it was) he jumped at it. Not because he had the right as president or a duty to do so under the constitution. Not because he had the cash on hand or because he thought it was ideologically correct. He jumped at the chance because only a fool wouldnt. It greatly expanded the nations territory and wealth. It was the kind of thing many other nations had fought great wars over but no war was necessary, just sign the check and poof it was all ours. Complete with the new car smell. Debt, credit and ideology be damned.

   This is what irritates me so much about these tea party people (and the popular political dialog in general). Many seem to be ideologues to the point of absolute absurdity. They literally believe we should of let the banks fail in 08. They literally believe we should not raise the debt ceiling and let the entire federal government go bankrupt. This is the most juvenile sort of thinking. They are ideologues in the worst and most insulting sense of the term. You know who else is this sort of hell bent ideologue? Kim jong ill, he will never cooperate with the west, his entire nation is crumbling but he cant swallow his pride and open his mind to a future in which he is not stubbornly grandstanding against the west. Moamar gadaffi is similarly an ideologue, his entire nation is rising up against him but he sticks his finger in the dike and tries to hold back the entire north sea. He is going to end up hung in the streets, disgraced, his name an epithet. Forever cuckold by history, a stain on humanity, and yet he persists. He cannot accept a shift in his ideology, he cant help but play the fool.

   With authority comes responsibly and letting the banks fail, or not increasing the debt ceiling, or not dropping the atomic bomb on the japanese would be wholly irresponsible, no matter who did it. These ideologues would let the nation go bankrupt for their own smug satisfaction. Osama bin laden himself could not engineer such a devastating attack on our nation.

   On the issue of the debt ceiling more specifically I find it patently ridiculous that either party is trying to play this game of not raising taxes or not cutting spending respectively. The federal government spends a larger percentage of the GDP than it has in our history (save ww2). Simultaneously we are paying some of the lowest tax rates in the last hundred years. (dont get me wrong I dont know what im talking about but this is a blog, I dont have to check my facts!) Why on earth then, would anyone make the stance of "no more taxes" or "no more spending" part of their party platform? Anyone who has took a political science class and paid attention should immediately know that this is a strange kind of sabotage. What does lowering taxes have to do the being a social conservative? What does increasing government spending have to do with being a social libertarian? Nothing what so ever of course. Why would anyone believe lowering taxes would be the answer to all economic problems? Why would anyone believe that government spending is the answer to all economic problems? Why are solutions to these incredibly complex problems even allowed to be broken down into ideological stances? The whole thing reeks. I say this with the least possible amount of irony, this is what the communists warned us about. Political grandstanding and popularity contests controlling the entire attention and the entire future of the nation. Whole generations sink or swim based on who "reads" well on camera. This is the "suck" of democracy. Not only is all of this political theater ridiculous but nobody in the general populace knows wtf is going on or why. It doesnt even have the veneer of "representation". No one knows who eric cantor is or what he walked out on or why. Nobody even noticed but the insulated peanut gallery in washington. This is the ridiculous dog and pony show that is national politics. Its natural for obama to make sarcastic jokes about it because it really is a cynical joke.

CHRIS CHRISTIE FOR PRES 2K12!

THIS IS WHAT THE LUDITES WARNED US ABOUT

 

OFFICALS LINK SOCIAL MEDIA TO RISING 

LOCAL STD RATES.

 

"While Tamayo sees it as a great opportunity to meet new people, public 

health officials fear it's a factor in the more than doubling of reported 

syphilis cases in Kern County this year."

The west is civilisation.

   I guess I am pretty much a fan of Niall Ferguson now. I really enjoyed "The Ascent of Money" series (I think I actually know what securitized debt obligation means now!) and im about in the middle of the "Civilisation: is the west history?" series. Obviously this is thought provoking stuff or whatever so you know im gonna rant about it . . .

   Everyone always talks about western values spreading all over the world and taking over, during colonialism and then afterward, todays economic or cultural colonialism, the way kids in Syria listen to 50cent and everyone wears levis . . . . Everyone says these values are western and yet in every successful society, western or otherwise, we see these values. I would like to rename these values, or reimagine them, these values are not so much western as they are "inevitable". In the words of kevin kelly we have "chosen the inevitable". Western values are just a product of convergent evolution. Bifocal vision is similar, it evolved multiple times in various species with ancestors that did not have bifocal vision. Was bifocal vision a mammalian value? A value of octopus culture? No! Of course not! Bifocal vision was simply the best answer to the questions that the environment posed. Egyptian and mayan architecture used the same construction techniques (roughly) and materials, MAGICALLY by coincidence they both end up building giant pyramids. Science, technology, capitalism (and command economy), liberal democratic values, interstate highway systems, (american idol?) these are only accidentally western. On a long enough time line the chinese would of developed the maxim machine gun. They are products of convergent evolution, like bifocal vision or vascular symmetry. They are the best systems for coping with our environment. This should be obvious really (its biology stupid!). If we can chart the entomology of an insect or a word or the clarinet why not whole civilizations? These civilizations are organized as organisms. They are alive and they "want" in a ghost in the machine, systems logic kind of way. If we treat them as organisms then it is no surprise to find convergent evolution at work even in civilizations. And the milieu that the civilizations exist in, its environment, is largely dictated by science and technology and government and all those other evolutionary developments that are necessary for a civilization to "progress" (evolve!? Thats right I said civilizations evolve! Deal with it determinist haters!). In the same way bifocal vision is set off and used differently in both predator and prey species even across evolutionary gulfs. So that humans and octopuses both have bifocal vision with eyes pointing forward adapted for hunting and squids and chicken both have eyes on the sides of there heads, for near 360 surveillance.

   Even if, and I dont think it will happen, but, even if the wunderkind china keeps rising inexorably, again it wont happen but still, even if it does, it is only by adapting to "western" values that the Chinese will survive. They will "westernize" and we might call it that but again, it is simply that they are adopting the best strategies to survive. Certainly they will not become entirely western culturally, they will probably still prefer pork to beef or speak a different breed of english but such differences are minutia really. An alien civilization would see them as we see spots on a dog, indicative of the particular animal but not defining. In this way I think all of this "oh no! the chinese are taking over!" is so much chicken little nonsense. The same sort of post modern hand wringing that has been going on for decades. First it was the russians taking over, then the japanese were going to own everything then the soviets magically evaporated and the japanese economy stalled indefinitely, stubbornly defying popular opinion. Im sure in the next few decades the chinese will probably implode too. Even if they do take over it will be like us taking over us. Our own doppelganger. We will wear the same clothes and watch the same movies and play the same video games and whatever else and if they own the strip mall down the road or build the railroad (not that one, this one!) then it is just a passing event. We will all by that time belong to the one world wide interconnected (internet centric) world culture (more or less) at that point anyway. Meaning all of the organs of this giant organism will finally connect in a superconsciousness and then the machines will rise and the human-robot wars will start or probably some scifi crap like that. (lets be honest its stupid to try and predict the future.)

   Its like when Napoleon brought "Liberté, égalité and fraternité" to europe. All those old aristocrats thought they could just fight off napoleon and french influence and then their own heads would be secure. They completely failed to realize it was not being a francophile that made someone an anti aristocratic revolutionary, it was instead the supremely satisfying (and wholly illusory) concepts of equality, liberty and brotherhood. They where the best strategies to keep the civilization alive and productive. We dont call those things french or even revolutionary anymore, we just assume they are "self evident" but in their own time they were anything but. Even western expansion itself has only been possible with self evident "chinese" inventions. Paper or the printing press or whatever else. Its not western and its not chinese, its just technology, and we do whatever it wants us to do and it does whatever we want it to do (most of the time).

So fucking jealous!

These tubes are my tubes, these tubes are your tubes

U.N. REPORT DECLARES INTERNET ACCESS

A HUMAN RIGHT

 

"The Special Rapporteur considers cutting off users from internet
access, regardless of the justification provided, including on the
grounds of violating intellectual property rights law, to be disproportionate
and thus a violation of article 19, paragraph 3, of the International 
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights."

LOOK UPON MY WORKS, YE MIGHTY AND DESPAIR!

Strong stuff.