Saturday, February 3, 2024
Lex Anteinternet: Two random items. Andy Griffith and Taylor Swift
Wednesday, January 31, 2024
Lex Anteinternet: Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 54th Edition. The swift and the not so swift edition.
Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 54th Edition. The swift and the not so swift edition.
- Twitter has banned searches for Taylor Swift.
This tells us something about the danger of AI, as what they were searching for is AI generated faux nudes of the singer.
It also tells us something about entertainers we already knew. Yes, their art counts, but part of their popularity, quite often, is that they're a form of art themselves. Which leads us to the next thing.
Everything about this is wrong on an existential level. AI, frankly, is wrong.
And once again, presented with the time, talent, and money to be sufficiently idle to do great things, we turn to the basest.
- There's a creepy fascination going on with Tyler Swift
People who don’t understand why I have been commenting on Taylor Swift and Barbie are completely missing the point and NGMI These are mascots for the establishment. High level ops used as info warfare tools of statecraft for the regime.
Newsmax host Greg Kelly:
They’re elevating her to an idol.
Idolatry. This is a little bit of what idolatry, I think, looks like. And you’re not supposed to do that. In fact, if you look it up in the Bible, it’s a sin!
The Democrats’ Taylor Swift election interference psyop is happening in the open … It’s not a coincidence that current and former Biden admin officials are propping up Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. They are going to use Taylor Swift as the poster child for their pro-abortion GOTV Campaign.
I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month. And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall …
And if all of that isn't weird enough for you, a host on the right wing OAN claims the Swift football dating is a deep state psy op, because sports brainwash kids when they should be focused on religion.
- Celebrity endorsements.
- Jay Leno is seeking to be the guardian and conservator for his wife, Mavis, who is 77, and has dementia.
- The National Park Service reports a 63-year-old man died on a trail in Zion National Park. Heart attack.
This headline tells us something, too. 63, we're often told, isn't old. But then we're not too surprised when a 63-year-old dies hiking, are we?
- A concluding thought. We're getting scary stupid.
Last Prior Edition:
The Lost Cause and the Arlington Confederate Monument. Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 53d Edition.
Wednesday, September 13, 2023
Lex Anteinternet: Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLVIV. Fatigue.
Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLVIV. Fatigue.
U.S. Rep. Cory Mills, R-Florida, and articles of impeachment, and issue/culture fatigue
Apparently, Rep. Mills has nothing to actually do. Perhaps somebody can find something for him, so he has real problems to work on.
Most people are tired of this. And by that, I mean a Congress that is monkeying around with bills that aren't going anywhere and are of the nature of throwing gasoline on a fire. We know that this impeachment is going nowhere. We know that a recent bill to do away with the Department of Education isn't either. We know that shutting the government down, which is going to happen soon, just causes the government to lose money.
Some people out in the audience of society may believe that all of this serves to get something done, but it sure isn't obvious. Most people are simply tired. Of course, this helps whip up a pre convinced base even though nothing is actually going to happen on a lot of these things.
Relating to fatigue, on another topic I posted on, that being the upcoming Synod on Synodality, I suspect a lot of Catholics are tired of this topic:
Dread and the Synod on Synodality.
There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."
Indeed, something of this type, although not quite of this type, lead commentator Amy Otto, in an Op Ed written some years ago, to maintain "Men Did Greater Things When It Was Harder To See Boobs". The caption on the article, which was flippant but which addressed a serious topic, if not idential one, not too surprisingly went viral.
Also not too surprisingly, this is a topic that's been pretty widely studied and the entire observational nature of this is hard-wired into men. That some don't get this is another defiance of science.
And one putting all the burden, I'd note, on men. I don't really want to be in the position of taking note of some 20-year-old woman's bare breasts, and I don't want to be seeing something that only a spouse should. But now I have, and I can't get that back, nor can she, nor can the probably hundreds of men, most with fewer reservations than me, that saw her on Saturday and whose thought went where every they let them go.
US Suicide Rates at all-time high
US suicides hit an all-time high last year
- By MIKE STOBBE - AP Medical Writer
- Updated
- 0
About 49,500 people took their own lives last year in the U.S., the highest number ever. That's according to new government data posted Thursday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not yet calculated a suicide rate for the year. But available data suggests suicides are more common in the U.S. than at any time since the dawn of World War II. Experts caution that suicide is complicated, and that recent increases might be driven by higher rates of depression or limited availability of mental health services. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention says a main driver is the growing availability of guns.
A horrific story, to be sure.
It occured to me for some reason that all things being equal, a record number would likely to be set every year, as the American population continues to grow. Having said that, the rates are very high, which is referenced in this article.
Predictably, the reporter blames it on the "growing availability of guns", but firearms have been easy to get throughout American history. Availability has grown from the mid 20th Century, which saw a lot of gun control provisions come in which have later faded, in part due to being found unconstitutional, with the 1970s probably the high watermark of that, but if we go back prior to the 1930s, we'd find that things were, in most places, wide open. Even children could buy firearms in most of the US prior to the 1950s.
What has really changed is a society within any kind of foundation whatsoever. In the entire Western World, the culture built on Catholicism, but heavily impacted by the Reformation, has seen the foundation attacked and dismantled to be instead one that's now centered on radical individualism. It's not healthy, and it's killing people. Added to that, the increasing corporatist culture work in a box life throughout the developed world, that removes people radically from nature, is levying a toll. The combination of both is deadly.
Everyone claims to want to do something about this, which seems to amount to doing something about it sort of clinically, rather than existentially.
Storm Warning
At least 55 people died on Maui. Residents had little warning before wildfires overtook a town
- By TY O'NEIL, CLAIRE RUSH, JENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER and REBECCA BOONE - Associated Press
- Updated
- 0
Maui residents who made desperate escapes from oncoming flames have asked why Hawaii’s famous emergency warning system didn’t alert them as wildfires raced toward their homes. Officials have confirmed that Hawaii emergency management records show no indication that warning sirens were triggered before devastating fires killed at least 55 people and wiped out a historic town. The blaze is already the state’s deadliest natural disaster since a 1960 tsunami. The governor warned the death toll will likely rise. Hawaii boasts what the state describes as the largest integrated outdoor all-hazard public safety warning system in the world. But many of Lahaina’s survivors said in interviews that they only realized they were in danger when they saw flames or heard explosions nearby.
I really have to wonder how long a large segment of American society, and the official leaders of the GOP, are going to continue to pretend there's nothing going on climate wise. It's extremely difficult to grasp why they won't face reality on this, unless of course it's an example of worshiping money as if it was as religion.
People are now dying. Shouldn't this be taken seriously?
Without fail, one of our state's Congressional delegation comes on television or other media to promote fossil fuels and at least two out of the three like to talk about "Biden's radical climate agenda". Keeping a natural climate isn't a "radical agenda" and simply refusing to discuss this topic is foolish.
Speaking of the Maui fires, some real goofballs are claiming that it was caused by a "direct energy weapons", which they also claim the last devastating California fires were.
It's scary to realize that people who believe something so idiotic have the right to vote.
Lil Tay is not dead.
I'd never heard of Lil Tay, aka Tay Tian, aka Claire Hope, aka Claire Eileen Qi Hope, but this line from her Wikipedia entry says a lot:
Tay's father and manager sought for Tay to become more focused on professionalism, suggesting a music career for her, though her mother and half-brother encouraged her to continue her original boastful character.
Keep in mind, she hit the music scene as a foul-mouthed rapper at age 9.
That's frankly sick, and not "sick" in the good pop culture lexicology way. Her parents deserve a dope slap for letting that happen in the first place.
Whatever her legitimate name is, her story illustrates the poverty of values in the Western World. Her parents were simply shacked up over a prolonged time, never married. At some point, they separated and shared custody of the child. Somehow, they allowed her to enter into the world of hip hop, which is marked for its celebration of criminal culture and high death rate. That made the stories of her death seem pretty credible. Hardly a week goes by without some hip hop artist with a made up name dying young, in all the ways that tragic young deaths occur. Just this week, it might be noted, one such artist was sentenced for shooting another, the victim of the shooting being Megan Thee Stallion (yes, that's a made up name).
When it was revealed she wasn't dead, I wondered if it was a PR stunt. I'ts being claimed her social medial was hacked. I see I'm not the only one who was speculating on the stunt possibilities, however.
Regarding Tay, even at age 9 to 14 she's an interesting example of a certain public pseudonym phenomenon.
Entertainers have always affected false names, often due to being required to do so by reporters. Actors with Jewish names, for example, almost had to take another name early on. Paul Newman, an exception to so many rules in the acting community, is notable here as his real name actually was Paul Newman.
That's pretty much stopped as cultural prejudice of that type diminished. A peculiar modern phenomenon has been people, particularly women, of mixed Asian and Euro-American heritage adopting their Asian mother's surname as a stage name. It seems clear enough that Chinese American Tay was given the name at birth of Claire Eileen Qi Hope, i.e., Clair Hope, a pretty generic European name, and when she was drop-kicked into hip hop she became Tay Tian, or at least around there somewhere she did, taking her mother's last name. Priscilla Natalie Hartranft, a Korean American, took her mother's name Ahn, becoming Priscialla Ahn for the stage. The surprising exception is the very successful Michelle Zauner (Michelle Chongmi Zauner) a Korean American born in Korea, who has kept her given name. Zauner is the front for Japanese Breakfast, which is eclectically named, however, as Koreans are not particularly fond of hte Japanese.
I guess that takes us to Asian Pop, or maybe K Pop. It's bad, but seems huge. I don't know why. Like a lot of Japanese group, K Pop tends to be very Kwaaii
But not all Japanese music actually is:
While I should not note it, by the way, I'm going to note it anyhow. And what I'm going to note is that the children of European ethnicity people and Asian ethnicity people look very Asian as a rule.
It's simply an observation. But as a genetic observation, the genes that contribute to appearance are obviously dominant for the contributing Asian partner.
When I was in college, I knew a student whose father was British and mother Japanese. He looked very Japanese. Zauner looks Korean (and yes, I've been to Korea). Ahn also looks Korean, and Tay looks Chinese. This is merely an observation.
Last Edition:
Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLVIII. Library withdrawals.
Lex Anteinternet: Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 66th Edition. A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer up your pants.*
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