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Scratchmonkey
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Joined: 02 Mar 2005
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 Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 1:45 pm Post subject: |
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| So you mean people who say things that they absolutely won't do just so they can "properly" voice their indignation? |
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dhex
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| Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 3:47 pm Post subject: |
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yes.
ps. "If the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms insists upon a firefight, give them a firefight. Just remember, they're wearing flak jackets and you're better off shooting for the head."
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dhex
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| Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 9:22 am Post subject: |
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best dumb awesome idea i've heard in a while - fuck this "libertarian" shit, we're taking back "whig"!
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dhex
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dhex
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ryan
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Joined: 20 Feb 2005
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| Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 10:57 am Post subject: |
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I imagine the conversation went like this:
Boss: I will give you a million dollars to be a woman for me.
Man: Yes.
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dhex
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Scratchmonkey
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| Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 11:34 am Post subject: |
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| Moral Absolutists couldn't have asked for a worse advocate than Lofton. |
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kirkjerk
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Joined: 12 Apr 2006
Posts: 1227
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| Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 11:44 am Post subject: |
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WOW that is fantastic
| Quote: | LOFTON: But I'm talking about this in the sense you spoke of in your 1949 poem "Bop Lyrics," when you wrote: "I'm so lucky to be nutty."
GINSBERG: You're misinterpreting the way I'm using the word.
LOFTON: No. I'm asking you a question. I'm not interpreting anything.
GINSBERG: I'm afraid that your linguistic presupposition is that "nutty" as you define it means insanity rather than inspiration. You are interpreting, though you say you aren't, by choosing one definition and excluding another. So I think you'll have to admit you are interpreting.
LOFTON: Actually, I don't admit that. |
I just love anyone who is so self-assured of the objectiveness of their opinion.
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dhex
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| Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 1:00 pm Post subject: |
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it works in both ways though; i.e. ginsberg's closing statement.
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Scratchmonkey
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Joined: 02 Mar 2005
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| Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 1:25 pm Post subject: |
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| dhex wrote: | | it works in both ways though; i.e. ginsberg's closing statement. |
In a way, that's why I said what I did about Lofton. Somebody more clued-in could have been effectively calling out Ginsberg on certain issues. |
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Dracko
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Joined: 10 Oct 2005
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| Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 1:27 pm Post subject: |
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I don't know, dhex. I'm not a moral relativist, but the idea that things are strictly right or wrong still bothers me.
Have you read The Yage Letters?
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dhex
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| Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 1:59 pm Post subject: |
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i have read yage letters. they're an interesting portrait of unrequited love. (not quite as bare as queer, though)
morality may be an illusion, but it's a helpful one. i'm ok with the whole non-aggression principle as a starting point, at least for bold basics. (i.e. no murder, rape, theft, etc)
the creepiest part though is when lofton was basically "i want to run you over with a truck."
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Scratchmonkey
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| Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 6:47 pm Post subject: |
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| My inclination is that while things may not be precisely black and white, at a certain point gray gets close enough to black that pointing out that it's not is mainly just being pedantic (the idea of inherent human rights, say). |
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dhex
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| Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2008 12:20 pm Post subject: |
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see y'all in two weeks!
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Swimmy
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Joined: 16 Sep 2005
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| Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 12:55 pm Post subject: |
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| Scratchmonkey wrote: | | My inclination is that while things may not be precisely black and white, at a certain point gray gets close enough to black that pointing out that it's not is mainly just being pedantic (the idea of inherent human rights, say). |
Yeah. Even if nothing's black-and-white, neither is everything a single shade of gray. Yudkowsky has an entry on this. He's talking about knowledge and certainty rather than morality, but it still holds. (Boy, I sure link that site a lot.)
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Redeye
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kirkjerk
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Joined: 12 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 7:14 am Post subject: |
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So, thinking about what I saw in March in Japan;
Nothing that neccesarily refutes the article, but I would point out that the sense of the doldrums is not all external, its kind of ingrained to the self-image now.
Also, the government was thinking about raising the sales tax from like around 5 to around 20 percent, which was scaring the bajeebers out of my (ex-pat) host...
In Japan it is striking how many people are assigned really menial, small jobs. My favorite was TWO flagmen warning pedestrians and bicyclists away from a manhole where work was being done, I could see one guy, but seeing the thing flanked by two fellas for the lenght of the fix seemed like overkill. Or all the small maintenance projects (like new elevators in the subway for their Olympic bid) with a person with a megaphone warning poeople, even when there was no work being done then, just a new shaft safely behind plastic-y wrap.
Whether that's the sign of an economy that will never quite recover with that ineffecient crap going on, or if its the sign of an economy powerful enough to take it in stride, I dunno.
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Swimmy
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Joined: 16 Sep 2005
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| Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 1:02 pm Post subject: |
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The first thing to note is that the dude makes a whole shitton of claims without citing a single source in-text. He just leaves a bunch of books for us to read at the end, with not even so much as a page number for us to check what he's talking about. So when he says, "The Japanese government is centralized, elitist, and quite capable of fudging statistics if it wants, particularly since there are few Westerners who understand Japanese accounting," I expect to see an immediate footnote to something either proving that none of the other hundreds of peer-reviewed papers about Japan's economy have taken differences in accounting into account, or something proving that the Japanese government has fudged its statistics, which is a pretty bold claim not the least backed up by the word "capable." Pretty much every major world government is "centralized and capable" of fudging their statistics for the World Bank, but they don't.
So keep that in mind. I'm not sure a single claim in this entire article is true. Many of them probably are, but it would take ages to research, because he doesn't make a single goddamned proper citation.
Ok, so, central thesis: Japan is not an example of working neo-liberalism because it is a centrally-planned economy. Admitted false within his own article. His discovery of how central banking works within the Japanese economy does not have the social-scientific breadth he imagines. So when he says,
| Quote: | The natural question a neoliberal economist asks at this point is, how can the MOF make rational capital-allocation decisions? Isn’t it an article of faith, vindicated by years of experience, that governments are bad at this and markets good?
Well, yes, which is why the MOF intervenes at only the very highest levels of this process, most of the work being done by banks and the large corporations beneath them in this hierarchical system. Banks in Japan are attached to large industrial groups called keiretsu, meaning that they are both tied into sophisticated networks of industrial expertise and have several layers of administration below them to do the detail work. |
He seems to think this is somehow overwhelmingly significant. So private industry does pretty much everything at the occasional manipulation of the treasury? Has this guy ever heard of a thing called the Federal Reserve? In the United States, the Federal Reserve has the power to collapse our economy in an instant. Really, it does. All it has to do is cut the money supply by 1/3rd, just like it did during the Great Depression. Does this mean the United States has a centrally planned economy? Uh. . . no? Does this mean all the private interactions, manipulated though they may be, aren't the important part? No again. Does this mean a computer couldn't do the exact same job and we'd only notice during the occasional recession? Nope, nope, nope. Japan is one of the most robust market economies in the world, and a little manipulation by a bank doesn't change that any more than it does for the United States.
Meanwhile, looking around for, you know, actual sources about the Japanese Minister of Finance, I can't find any evidence whatsoever that they are primary in capital allocation. The official english site has nothing more than standard government treasury / central bank things, nothing any different than you'd find in the United States.
The rest is just a bunch of fawning that doesn't really revolve around the main thesis, but I'll make fun of it anyway, because damnit if I'm gonna waste so much time reading such a terrible article, I deserve to get to make fun of it!
First of all! The Tokyo Stock Exchange is not driven by bureaucrats, and I don't know where he gets that goddamned idea. Private securities companies, including several foreign ones, duke it out.
The bit about savings is realllllly funny:
| Quote: | How do they do it? The architects of the Japanese system understood that the socialist and communist way to produce high savings, i.e. outright confiscation of wealth, is destructive of people’s incentive to work (not to mention its other problems) so they did not implement it. They understood that by definition, savings = production – consumption, so they focused on repressing consumption.
This means, for example, deliberately restrictive zoning policies that keep Japanese houses small, and it means not having the various devices in place by which America subsidizes borrowing and makes debt easy to assume. As a result, the populace of Japan is forced to save a far higher percentage of its earnings than Americans do.
It is a mistake to attribute Japan’s savings rate, or many of its other key aspects, to “culture,” as Japan had the same culture before WWII, when her savings rate was low. It is the interaction of culture with deliberate state policies, not culture itself, that is key. The use of “culture” as a catch-all explanation by foreign analysts of Japan is an evasion of serious analysis. |
First, I don't buy that Japan's culture hasn't changed since WWII for one second. Second, he doesn't cite (because he doesn't have) any evidence that zoning laws in particular increase saving rates. Third, America does not subsidize borrowing, even though debt is easy to assume. The closest we come is bankruptcy, which is only a subsidy if you forget about that whole ten-year-credit-score thing. Fourth, motherfucking Japan doesn't have a consumer society? What the fucking fuck is he talking about?
It's even funnier when he talks about alienation:
| Quote: | Lifetime employment helps nourish the emotional bond between the worker and the company, which is also expressed by such things, which seem silly to Western eyes, as company songs. These make perfect sense within the context of Japanese culture.
Americans tend to forget that Marx wrote so much about alienation, (which we tend to associate with teenagers with purple hair, not with serious economic questions) for a reason: he saw this as the key psychological phenomenon, in the head of the individual proletarian, that makes him a revolutionary. Alienation is important.
The Japanese were acutely aware of the Marxist challenge to capitalism, and they internalized this problem by taking seriously the elimination of alienation. The West really has not, choosing to smother it with consumerism while doing nothing about the phenomenon itself, resulting in the central weirdness of Western culture since the 1960s: the fact that our culture, from rock music to academia, is centered on the institutionalization of rebellion.
Unsurprisingly, Japan had no “60s” on our scale, and maintains levels of traditional morals (their traditions, remember, not ours) and deference to authority that remind most Americans and Europeans of the 1950s. This achievement is under certain stresses, as Japan is not immune to the corrosive forces of modernity any more than any other society, but it remains intact to a remarkable degree. |
Right. Because they sing company songs, this is evidence that every Japanese person lives a happy little bubble life, rather than evidence that companies are doing their damnedest to keep their employees from offing themselves.
I know it's hard to have evidence on this point, since such a nebulous concept as "alienation" is hard to measure. (Even harder since the author is using it wrong. Alienation in Marx is not a general feeling of malaise or enui.) HOWEVER! Happiness research is our best bet. I'm not familiar with how Japan ranks on international happiness surveys, but if you're going to devote three paragraphs in your triumphant article to it, you might want to look it up yourself, rather than assume that company songs automatically mean Japanese people are all hunky dory.
He's really obsessed with the idea that the Japanese are sort of psychic visionaries, or something:
| Quote: | | Few American corporations think more than 5 years ahead; the Japanese routinely think 15 years ahead and the architects of the system obviously thought 50 years ahead. Because capital is allocated, at the end of the day, by MOF bureaucrats and not impatient shareholders and mutual funds, there is no pressure for short-term returns. MOF bureaucrats know they will be judged by whether they succeed in building up Japanese industry in the long term, so this is what they aim for. |
All Americans are short-sighted idiots! All Japanese are long-sighted geniuses! I HAVE A LOT OF EVIDENCE FOR THIS, SOMEWHERE!
Somewhere. Just not in this paper.
Same thing with lifetime employment:
| Quote: | | Japan’s famed lifetime employment system for core workers seems to the neoliberal eye inefficient, as it supposedly interferes with efficient hiring and firing. But it has a key benefit in a system designed around maximizing long-term rather than short-term success: it aligns the interests of the worker and the company to a much greater degree than under a hire-and-fire system. (Of course, Japanese companies have ways of disciplining bad employees short of firing them.) And since their long-term orientation leads to an emphasis on maintaining sales, not profits, in slack times, they tend to avoid the layoff cycles that Western companies endure. |
Yes, I'd say when it's illegal to fire people, you'd avoid layoff cycles kind of by definition, right? In fact I'd say it has nothing to do with an "emphasis on maintaining sales" at all! In fact, that makes absolutely no sense, if you can't fire people of course you're going to try to make up for it by maintaining sales. It's when you can't do either (like, say, during a recession, when people aren't buying as much) that it becomes inefficient, and that's what neoliberals are talking about you clueless idiot!
AND THEN HE PRAISES MONOPOLIES!
HOLY SHIT!
| Quote: | f one’s objective is a strong competitive position for the industry as a whole, cartels immediately recommend themselves as a means to this end. Cartels are a device of industrial policy that has essentially been repudiated by neoliberal economics, for two reasons:
1. Within a neoliberal framework, profits from a cartel will just be captured by private interests, so there is no public interest in allowing them.
2. Neoliberal economics has an a priori obsession with vindicating free competition as the best policy.
Because the Japanese system, as noted above, forces the profits of monopoly industries into either paying its workers well or building up the industry so it can do so in future, reason #1 is inoperative, and reason #2 simply never interested them. Once one has these two factors out of the way, the many benefits of cartels can be tapped into:
1. They enable the individual firms in a monopoly industry to avoid fratricidal competition that would only benefits foreign customers, not the Japanese producers.
2. They enable the extraction of additional investment capital from the domestic consumer market by imposing higher prices.
3. They enable scale economies in research and development and standards-setting, crucial advantages in high technology.
4. They enable Japanese industry to avoid bidding wars in buying foreign technology and raw materials.
5. They enable Japanese industry to share out scarce sales in times of recession, avoiding bankruptcy of weaker firms. Naturally, these firms will pay a price in terms of losing control and will be whipped into shape, but they, and their workers, will not incur the traumas and layoffs of bankruptcy.
6. By enabling government-led control of prices and profits, they enable the government to pump in subsidies to favored industries with the confidence that these will go to building up the industry and not simply “wasted” as private profits to the shareholders.
Naturally, the Japanese are wise enough to the benefits of some competition that they don’t simply agglomerate entire industries into “national champions,” as several European nations have sometimes tried to do. A regulated cartel delivers the best of both worlds. |
AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!
A:
1) Within a neoliberal framework, private cartels cause deadweight loss. This is bad for consumers! It makes people poorer! Government cartels are captured by private interests. This is undisputable. There is a mountain of evidence for this proposition.
2) Tell that to Paul Krugman.
B:
1) Why don't you care about foreign customers? What does it mean for domestic customers? Why oh why should we care only about producers? Isn't that, uh, neoconservatism?
2) This is a bad thing. We want investment to go where it's most efficient. We don't want it to go into industries that cause enormous deadweight losses for the entire economy.
3) They do not enable scale economies if their government-protected status is keeping more efficient industries out. It's not even clear that so-called "natural monopolies," granted such status because of their economies of scale, are good for the consumer. "Economies of scale" is an argument for American-style corporatism, not cartelism.
4) Bidding wars are good if it means you get lower prices or if it means the goods go to where they're most needed.
5) Sighhhhh. So because the government bails them out during recession, they're good? You know, uh, it takes taxpayer money to do that, right?
6) "Private profits going to shareholders" and "building up the company" are not mutually exclusive. See: every successful corporation ever. Shareholder investments build up the company, and they do it without all the horrible deadweight loss that cartels and monopolies bring about.
. . .
Ok, I think that's enough. This article is idiotic, and he doesn't cite evidence for anything he says. His understanding of the neoliberabl economics he criticizes throughout is practically nil. And, frankly, the Post-Autistic Economics Review is one of the most ignored journals in the profression for good reason. It's not that there's absolutely nothing to be gleaned from schools of heterodox economics, it's just that they're so desperate for material they'll approve an article by any old schmuck.
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Last edited by Swimmy on Sat Jun 14, 2008 1:47 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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seryogin
JRPG Kommissar
Joined: 14 Oct 2004
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| Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 1:16 pm Post subject: |
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Damn, Swimmy, and that article sounded so cool! Why'd you have to ruin my enjoyment.
Having said that, I might as well admit that I know next to nothing about economics. If hex were around, he'd chime in with something good as well. Anyhow, I must ask you about what books you'd recommend I read about economic theory. I have no idea how one goes about studying the topic.
I'd like to know more about the economies about China, Japan, and Korea, but I have no idea where to start and who to believe. Or how to read these things, in general.
To me the economy is just some magical juice that's either good or bad, when it's bad people's lives start to suck, such as mine in the early 90s in Russia.
I hear a lot of terms bounced around "peal oil" and shit like that? What's all of it mean?
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Swimmy
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Joined: 16 Sep 2005
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Location: Fairfax, VA
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| Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 1:18 pm Post subject: |
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Actually, you know what? I'm not quite done.
When you actually hunker down and try to qualify "economic freedom," as in the goal of neoliberal policy, you find something quite different than this goof's at-a-glance-Japan-is-really-socialist! analysis. According to the 2008 Index of Economic Freedom, Japan is the 17th most economically neoliberal country in the world (72.5 rating, highest Hong Kong with 90.3). The Economic Freedom of the World Index has ranked it as the 22nd most free (7.5 rating, highest Hong Kong with 8.9). Even if Japan is less free than, say, the United States, it's still way, way more neoliberal than most countries. And there's still no questioning, unless you want to attack the very validity of these two studies (and some do, I think unfairly), that economic liberalization is positively correlated with economic growth.
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Swimmy
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Joined: 16 Sep 2005
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Location: Fairfax, VA
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| Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 1:32 pm Post subject: |
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| seryogin wrote: | Damn, Swimmy, and that article sounded so cool! Why'd you have to ruin my enjoyment.
Having said that, I might as well admit that I know next to nothing about economics. If hex were around, he'd chime in with something good as well. Anyhow, I must ask you about what books you'd recommend I read about economic theory. I have no idea how one goes about studying the topic.
I'd like to know more about the economies about China, Japan, and Korea, but I have no idea where to start and who to believe. Or how to read these things, in general.
To me the economy is just some magical juice that's either good or bad, when it's bad people's lives start to suck, such as mine in the early 90s in Russia.
I hear a lot of terms bounced around "peal oil" and shit like that? What's all of it mean? |
Peak oil is the idea that all of the oil reserves on earth are going to run out soon, and when we do we will have very bad times ahead. It's more of a geographic forecast than an economic one, but if it's true, man, the world's economy is gonna suck for a while.
It's hard to say where to start with economics books. Textbooks are boring. I don't want to recommend anything too biased, because even though I think Milton Friedman's a great read, I don't want to turn you off to economics in general if you find his extreme free-marketism offensive. But if you don't mind that, his Capitalism and Freedom is available for free online. A slightly less radical but still conservative book that's easy to understand is Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics.
But really, economics books are pretty much unreadable until Carl Menger. I wouldn't recommend reading any of the classics, and post-Menger they're still mostly unreadable until Schumpeter and Keynes, and even then still sorta technical.
Um. . . there are a lot of pop-economics books these days. Freakonomics, The Armchair Economist, More Sex Is Safer Sex, The Undercover Economist, Discover Your Inner Economist. They're all kind of about applying economic analysis to common problems. You won't learn much standard theory there, but you'll get a grasp of the particular way of thinking.
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dark steve
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Joined: 17 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 1:38 pm Post subject: |
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When the hell did a priori turn into a buzzword?
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Redeye
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| Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 3:53 pm Post subject: |
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| dark steve wrote: | | When the hell did a priori turn into a buzzword? |
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Last edited by Redeye on Sat Jun 14, 2008 11:09 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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ryan
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Joined: 20 Feb 2005
Posts: 999
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| Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 8:47 pm Post subject: |
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| Swimmy wrote: | | But really, economics books are pretty much unreadable until Carl Menger. I wouldn't recommend reading any of the classics, and post-Menger they're still mostly unreadable until Schumpeter and Keynes, and even then still sorta technical. |
A book that isn't so much technical as it is dry is The Ordinary Business of Life. There are also New Ideas from Dead Economists and The Worldly Philosophers. The problem is that I've yet to read one truly great book on the subject, like Swimmy said, most aren't overly pleasant. They also proclaim to focus on economics but always slant to either the theory, the importance of the theory at the time, the importance of the theory today, the figures who came up with the theories, the history of the figures, and so on. The Ordinary Business of Life isn't a bad primer, but it's still dry and goes crazy with the condensing; but the same can be said about the others as well.
I'm not sure about specific countries as a lot of material outside of journals is pretty general. You either get really narrow articles in a journal or sweeping histories in the more general writings. Most colleges have journals to read for free, if you have any nearby. And keep in mind that the journals are often ridiculously fluffed up with jargon and boring as hell. Even if you find the topic interesting, the contributors have a way of making you fall asleep.
I also enjoy Adam Smith, despite the archaic spellings (fyre!), and found The Theory of Moral Sentiments a lot more enjoyable and a necessary read for the inevitable tackling of the Wealth of Nations.
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Redeye
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Joined: 02 Oct 2006
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| Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 11:43 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks for the responses, I was just fishing. (Not trolling.)
I had no idea that there would be such a complete answer.
The guy does admit that Japan has a consumer culture, but contradicts himself.
The idea of the economy in general being a national enterprise is interesting, but also generic. Every country does that to some extent one way or another.
Japan has more pride about it, maybe because they're not allowed to have the old military culture. If the samurai become businessmen, then all of business becomes the VA.
So you get two guys guarding an open manhole cover instead of just one.
I know zero about economics.
I'd put those extra workers into a civil defense reserve.
"Kobe militia".
(more like a national guard without guns. They can temp the rest of the time.)
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dhex
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Location: brooklyn, Nev Yiork
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| Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 2:54 pm Post subject: |
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glad to see everyone was productive while i was gone!
http://daridgely.blogspot.com/2008/06/father-son.html
i found that touching.
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/sex/dn14146-gays-brains-structured-like-those-of-the-opposite-sex.html?feedId=online-news_rss20
this stuff is interesting for the field of neuroscience, and helps benefit the entire human race, even if only obliquely or as a stepping stone to further research.
it is dreck in the hands of politics. i am unsurprised, and yet, disappointed.
it is somewhat interesting to see people like that baptist dipshit whose name i cannot remember basically say "well, we don't like bioengineering at all as it is an offense to god but if it can get rid of the sin of homosexuality maybe gene therapy isn't so bad after all."
actually, dipshit isn't the word i'm looking for. neither is horrible human being. maybe he's joking. maybe it's kultur war turned up to 11.
fuckface? heinous little fuck?
i don't know what the correct term is.
jerkoff in question:
http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=891
for the most part most pro-choice folk are consistent, in that even if someone is aborting their child because it has xyz % chance of being gay, it should still be legal like any other reason one might choose for abortion.
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Dracko
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| Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 4:16 pm Post subject: |
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The term you're looking for is "arrant hypocritical turd".
But how would this apply to bisexuals?
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seryogin
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| Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 7:49 pm Post subject: |
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While you were away, mike, the exile was closed down.
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dhex
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| Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 8:14 pm Post subject: |
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what happened?
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kirkjerk
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| Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 8:27 pm Post subject: |
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| dhex wrote: | | what happened? |
and is it worth trying to contribute or is it a lost cause?
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seryogin
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| Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 9:55 pm Post subject: |
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http://www.exile.ru/blog/detail.php?BLOG_ID=19265&AUTHOR_ID=
That's pretty much the whole story.
Frankly, I don't know what to expect at this point. I can't imagine the mag coming back after this, unless they launch it as a war nerd only site.
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kirkjerk
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| Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2008 7:51 am Post subject: |
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| seryogin wrote: | http://www.exile.ru/blog/detail.php?BLOG_ID=19265&AUTHOR_ID=
That's pretty much the whole story.
Frankly, I don't know what to expect at this point. I can't imagine the mag coming back after this, unless they launch it as a war nerd only site. |
It's funny but it's a little unclear what it really is-
is its core an English-only print publication in Moscow, and the website just is a copy of that?
Do they do anything in Russian language?
It sounded like they were aiming for a web-only model, but I don't know how the rest of it stands up.
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seryogin
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| Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2008 8:26 am Post subject: |
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The Exile was a lot of different things at different times. When Taibbi was still around, it was mostly a Russia-centered pub: they did stories almost exclusively about Russia and the local expat scene that no one outside of Moscow really cared about. Eventually they branched out and started doing shit in other countries and hit a kind of peak when John Dolan was co-editor.
After Taibbi and then Dolan left (three years later), things turned to shit a bit. Ames went to work on TV and the only draw left for international audiences was the War Nerd. He still is, pretty much, which is why he's the one that wrote their appeal for money.
They started a Russian-only site last year, which just has copies of their articles translated into Russian, though their type of humor doesn't work that well in my mother tongue (it confuses people most of all; many Russians left insulting comments on the War Nerd's articles, thinking he's some provincial Russian hick).
Though one has to remember that the big draw for readers in Russia, of the print version, was its club guide, which ranked clubs and bars according to how easy it was to get laid.
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dhex
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| Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2008 8:31 am Post subject: |
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so basically all of their "oh the economist is a tool of western elitists for suggesting putin is a dangerous dickhole" schtick was tossed in their faces to eat like a hamburger made out of tears?
oh hey welcome to police brutality corner:
http://www.wmctv.com/global/story.asp?s=8515744
"i'm on probation, so i'd better go hold down some suspects so cops can punch them for not answering to bigoted belittlement."
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dhex
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kirkjerk
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| Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2008 1:41 pm Post subject: |
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Come to think about it sometimes it was hard to tell when the eXile was being serious and when it was being sarcastic.
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dhex
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Dracko
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| Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2008 9:15 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | I'm a large man. I'm 6'4, about 315. I'm bouncing at a club to pay the rent and everyone else shows up to work like they're going to be partying instead of working and then they change into their work clothes, whereas I roll in in my workshirt and a pair of jeans. No big deal. So all these guido spiked hair motherfuckers I work with talk all sorts of shit about all sorts of shit. They talk about how they're going to slay bitches and other macho shittalk like that and when we're on the clock, they're out in the crowd flirting and buying chicks drinks and I'm at the door doing crowd control.
Last week, essentially the same scenario comes up - I'm the only one doing my job while all these other fuckups are jacking off in each other's hair. Some dipshit comes into the club to sell drugs. Honestly, not a huge deal, just don't let me see you do it because I have to kick you out. That whole "be smart" thing. Well, I catch him selling some blow and start to take him out the back, just saying to him that he just can't do that shit in front of me. We get outside and I turn around to go back in and the fucking bitch stabs me in the back like a fucking coward.
I go fucking red. I lock his arms and get the knife to the ground and throw him into the building wall across the alley. I pick up his knife and fucking punt him in the stomach while he's getting up. I start to stab him. I stab him in the chest, the neck, the upper arms and legs, I just go nuts on him trying to remember every single artery I can think of. I get up and I'm fucking soaked.
From behind me I hear "holy shit". Turns out the entire security crew came out to see what was going on, so I'm standing, blood drenched and bleeding from the back and I just look at them and say "Just pretend this didn't happen and everything will be fine". The same mouthy fag says "Fine, how the fuck can things be fine?" So I say, "Well for one thing, I had Reese's for breakfast." And they say "You had candy for breakfast?"
NOT CANDY, IT'S REESE'S PUFFS CEREAL! IT'S A BLAST OF CHOCOLATE AND PEANUT BUTTERY TASTE IN EVERY MOUTHFUL! IT'S REESE'S... FOR BREAKFAST! |
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dhex
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| Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 8:05 am Post subject: |
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that was entertaining.
| Quote: | Possibly the Most Depressing Sentence Ever Uttered
Frat boy #1 (about crowded train): This reminds me of a 311 concert.
Frat boy #2: Every day of my life is a 311 concert.
--1 Train |
hail satan!
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dhex
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| Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 8:50 am Post subject: |
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bonus!
| Quote: | HIs Whole Body's a Treasure-Trail!
Hipster girl #1: I usually don't mind, but this guy was like... I mean, basically you couldn't tell if his shirt was on or off, he was that hairy!
Hipster girl #2: Yeah, I used to date a guy like that. You know those hair removal ads for men with the before and after pictures, where they basically take like the hairiest man that ever walked the earth? That was him. Chest, back, shoulders, ass... Covered.
Bear guy: Aw, come on. That's just plain hot!
--Pink Pony, LES |
at least someone out there appreciates me.
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dhex
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| Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 2:47 pm Post subject: |
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for the second time this week i've had someone say to me "oh, you don't like the war on drugs, you should watch the wire!"
i know they mean well, but c'mon. that's like 40 hours of tv or something, right? and it's not even a cartoon.
it's like they don't even know me. (and let's not get into my well meaning libertizzles who cannot detach themselves from that buffy guy's hog long enough to think their dedication to space soap operas may not be shared by everyone they know. like me.)
to be fair, i suppose they feel the same way every time i recommend a book for something.
ps i really enjoyed road warriors one night in ireland when i could not sleep. it was hilarious. british kid tries to rob a cab using a hoe. awesome.
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Dracko
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| Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 3:11 pm Post subject: |
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dhex, I think you would enjoy The Wire, and I don't think they plan to turn it into an animated series any time soon, sadly. 
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dhex
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| Posted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 7:49 am Post subject: |
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yeah but it's soooooooooooooooo long. sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo long.
catching up on episodic tv is generally more trouble than it's worth.
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dhex
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Dracko
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| Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2008 7:31 pm Post subject: |
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Do these people not read books or something?
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dhex
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| Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2008 7:07 am Post subject: |
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probably?
it's another shot in that category "i'm real! i'm real! the things i love are real, too!"
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kirkjerk
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| Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2008 7:10 am Post subject: |
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The other thing is this kind of an odd recasting of the old "not art because games lack artistic intent" trope... the implication they are MORE art when they refuse to proceed unless the player does something.
This all reminds me of this poem:
| Code: |
Orpheus hesitated beside the black river.
With so much to look forward to, he looked back.
We think he sang then, but the song is lost.
At least he had seen once more the beloved back.
I say the song went this way: *O prolong
Now the sorrow if that is all there is to prolong.*
--Donald Justice, from
"There is a Gold Light in Certain Old Paintings"
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Swimmy
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| Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2008 8:09 am Post subject: |
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| Dracko wrote: | | Do these people not read books or something? |
1) No, a lot of them don't.
2) Engagement's a powerful thing. I found The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle completely delightful even though, in retrospect, Seryogin is 100% right about Murakami's general hackiness. As in politics, Getting Sucked In is a straight path to stupidity. It's also what makes so much art enjoyable. So, eh.
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Dracko
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| Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2008 9:53 am Post subject: |
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Also, I still stand by my impression that the Halo series has more to do with the classics than BioShock's pretentious and abortive name-dropping ever has.
But yeah, it's all quite silly regardless. I don't see it profits the medium's lack of confidence as to its relevance at all.
Modern Warfare is still tops, though.
Also: These people should read a book!
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