#1241
[account deactivated]
#1242
Post rating: ~
For Chinoise I remember my take away was that it wasn't a parody of the kids or of the movement or Maoists per se but I thought the take a way was the danger of trying to duplicate revolutions from certain historic conditions in different environments. I thought it was poking a bit of fun at the fact that the students were obsessed about reproducing the imagery of Maoist China, and then the scene with the Professor on the train was like a "hey, remember, conditions are different, here, if you just try to you know, shoot a minister or something, that's a little wrongheaded" But I was even less developed in understanding then, and my recollection was hazy so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
#1243
Post rating: ~
one of the only dudes i've heard of to more or less disown a well loved early film of his as 'fascist'
#1244
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: +
La Chinoise is about a group of cool kids who wear cool clothes. Together they go on a journey of discovery and learn a little something about life, love and, just maybe... themselves. 3 out of 5.
#1245
Post rating: +
i found la chinoise kind of misogynist, like not dramatically much more than goddard's contemporaries and other works, but it was 60s france so lol still really fuckin misogynist
#1246
Post rating: +

Petrol posted:

i watch a bit of UK tv via internet magic and i noticed that not only are most of the ads for online casinos and payday lenders, but the small print for the latter mentions APR upwards of 1300%. more than one company does this. i had to rub my eyes and do an exaggerated double take like in a 1950s cartoon



I worked in a bank in the UK and the best thing about payday lenders, aside from their comically big APR and preying on the poorest and most vulnerable, is the fact they pre-authorise the repayments on people's cards. So people could take the loans thinking if the money wasn't there to pay it back it would just bounce, but it wouldn't. It would take them hundreds of pounds overdrawn, which was then compounded by exhorbitant unauthorised overdraft fees, forcing them to take out another payday loan with massive APR, resulting in a spiral of debt they couldn't get out of. Hang payday lenders tbh (and obviously bankers)

#1247
[account deactivated]
#1248
[account deactivated]
#1249
Post rating: +

Caesura109 posted:

been wondering why the Blade runner universe even has replicants, a class of people forced to labor against their will and lead revolts to free themselves, when the rest of that society already consists of wage laborers living in squalid urban conditions on a dying planet, surrounded by momuments to the ruling classes and their private enterprises.


its probably because its not a universe but a work of art, and hence things in it have been placed there by its creators for meaningful and symbolic value rather than because they literally fulfil functions in a world

#1250
[account deactivated]
#1251
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: +
given the Greek gods' power levels in established canon, how is Goyaverse-Saturn able to devour them so easily without suffering at LEAST 9999 damage per round from thunder/water elements against which titans are NOT immune in lore? Please sign my petition to the government of Madrid
#1252
[account deactivated]
#1253
Post rating: ~
Really good episode of Atlanta this past week. Be surprised if they top it. It's been a good season so far though the changes in tone and pacing from episode to episode have been disorienting at times
#1254
Post rating: ~

Caesura109 posted:

Yes, my point is that the symbolic value is undermined by the fact that every one in that society might as well be a replicant


just wait until you learn about DNA

#1255
Post rating: +
I tried to watch that Netflix series on the Rajneeshees because I’m a sucker for everything about cults. I tapped out halfway through. It’s a seriously deficient documentary in a lot of respects IMO, but it definitely provides a look at different fragments of the settler-colonial superstructure splitting off and flying around and smashing into each other inside the hellish particle accelerator that is Amerika. Like on the one side you had the white Oregonian retirees upset about “their land” being taken over, and on the other side you have that insufferable Rajneeshee lawyer explaining how they used an Oregon law that lets you incorporate your own town with 150 people to create Rajneeshpuram. “It’s a fundamental constitutional right!” or whatever it was that he said.

I don’t have the fortitude to really dig into the segment where the Rajneeshees bus in thousands of homeless men to rig the local elections, basically buying their vote for the price of a hot meal and a mattress, other than to note how heartbreakingly cynical it was. The government response was also completely predictable. The way these two entities (the state and the cult) fed off each other just makes my head hurt if I think about it too much. Anyway. That’s my non-review of a documentary I didn’t finish.

e: still waiting on the Definitive Synanon Documentary

Edited by Ruzbihan ()

#1256
Post rating: +
I think it's nice to have such a clear cut example on television to point at which shows 1) The US is explicitly a settler state and still has active laws to empower the practice 2) those laws are explicitly Not For You if you're not a rich white dude

I didn't watch it, but it's made for good conversation with friends who did.
#1257
Post rating: +
A good quick watch about those 'identity europa' idiot fuckers. Spoiler: they are idiot fuckers
#1258
Post rating: +
Got around to watching The Spook Who Sat By The Door last night. I feel like a lot of people here have probably seen this movie (I notice marimite posted an embed of the whole film on Youtube a page back), but for those who haven’t, the basic rundown is that the first Black CIA agent uses his training to start semi-focoist revolutionary cells of Black lumpen across the country and ignite a guerrilla war. Sam Greenlee, who wrote the source novel, co-wrote the screenplay, and the score is by Herbie Hancock, which was a nice surprise. I understand that Greenlee himself was originally a Foreign Service propagandist, and wrote the book after he started having second thoughts about his choice of career.

Unsurprisingly, for a film of this subject matter, and where the main character describes the Black nation as a colony under foreign occupation, the FBI destroyed every print they could get their hands on, and for a long time you could only find this movie as a bootleg. Even if this film wasn’t very good (and it is, despite its minuscule budget), it would be worth recommending solely on the strength of a certain scene involving the National Guard commander, involuntarily applied blackface, and LSD-laced coffee. 5 bags of popcorn out of 5.
#1259
Post rating: +

Petrol posted:

A good quick watch about those 'identity europa' idiot fuckers. Spoiler: they are idiot fuckers




People are gonna watch this and be like "oh, see, we knew these racists couldn't be real veterans!" and completely miss the point.

#1260
Post rating: +
Eh. I think for a piece of liberal journalism it did a good job of exposing these people as the LARPers they are. i also liked that it was (mostly implicitly) critical of the role social and mainstream media plays in granting something like identity europa far more cultural importance than it deserves. a movement like this has no roots in the community, is totally artificial, is nothing without a pliant media happy to follow its cues and whip up outrage on its behalf.
#1261
Post rating: +
Classical Liberal Professor DESTROYS Disrespectful SJW

#1262
Post rating: +
i am already smoking cigarettes all of the time
#1263
Post rating: +

Petrol posted:

As you all know by now i take pleasure in watching the most terrible garbage and so it is that i have started watching The Looming Tower, the hulu melodrama about how petty rivalry between FBI and CIA led to 9/11. Partway through episode 2 now and i doubt the series will top this moment, when slow motion footage of a al qaeda guy escaping a bombing, a fbi agent on the streets of london, and another fbi guy fucking his mistress are cut to a dubstep track with extremely generic arabic samples



this was every bit as good as you said it would be

#1264
Post rating: +

Parenti posted:


The first time I saw this documentary I was like 16 years old and high on dxm, I must have played this part back a dozen times trying to figure out what the fuck was going on. I’m still mystified by Lacan’s response and honestly at this point I prefer it that way.

#1265
Post rating: +
I saw the whole version of this lecture. What a bunch of crap.. all those post WWII philosophers thought they contribute something very special to the world. Truth is, they were just coming up with completely subjective, unverified, personnal opinions ,which tried to mask with complex language and pseudophilosophical posse. They were lucky they were born in an era that people were just naive , shocked by the war and were looking for some direction with such need that they believe any bullshit someone would sell them as long as he had the title of sociologist, philosopher or anthlopologist.

I believe contemporary science soon will completly wipe out all this crap and nobody will care about "philosophers" mumbling with attitude full of self-importance about the "being", "express authentically" or "subjective will". Philosophy has nothing else to offer anyway, all it's accomplishments were materialized with the creation of contemporary, free democracies. The world cannot become any better through philosophy, so human beings could be better off to invest all their money, time and brain capital in technology. We can survive without Heidegger,Lacan and Chomsky.

And young students , instead of venerating them like in this lecture they will be like "dude did you invent anything, cured cancer or made up an entertaining app for my iphone? If not shut up, why should I listed to you?". And then Lacan's theories will sound as dead and as unscientifc as phrenology sounds today.
#1266
Post rating: ~
I've watched that video often enough to know that's from a comment under the video Gssh. I watched the entire lecture the other day, and to be honest I'm doing it mostly just to practice my French. There are definitely gaps in my understanding because of that, but maybe even if I did understand it all I still wouldn't get it. There's something about the name "Lacan" anyway that invites a pleasant sort of not knowing what's going on, the name echoes "lacuna," and he's so perfectly impenetrably French that the lack of understanding isn't a drawback.
#1267
Post rating: ~
That is to say, and to quote Badiou who I also don't really get: "the structure of situations does not, in itself, deliver any truths. By consequence, nothing normative can be drawn from the simple realist examination of the becoming of things."
#1268
Post rating: +

Caesura109 posted:

Yes, my point is that the symbolic value is undermined by the fact that every one in that society might as well be a replicant


That's the entire point lol

#1269
Post rating: +
**reading moby dick** The symbolic value of the whale is undermined by the fact that it's a vehicle for Ahab's vengeful desire
#1270
Post rating: +
moby dick sounds so dumb. who wants to read a book about a big fish lol
#1271
[account deactivated]
#1272
Post rating: +
did moby dick ever catch the whale?
#1273
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: +
take a look. it's in a book
#1274
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: +

Gssh posted:

dude did you invent anything, cured cancer or made up an entertaining app for my iphone?



catchphrase

#1275
[account deactivated]
#1276
Post rating: +
Just finished The Looming Tower. Really needed to be punched up with a few more jokes. Even the final episode, which was about 9/11 itself, they managed to turn into a fairly somber affair
#1277
Post rating: +

fucked up that after ten years no one ever posted a better video on line
#1278
Post rating: +


There's a small community of youtubers who painstakingly draw out these animated maps of various regions of the world during different periods of history. While in many cases the depiction of borders and territorial land ownership is anachronistic, in others it provides a great visualization of how space was organized and partitioned under different modes of production. This video here shows post-Roman Western Europe and the parcellization and infeudation of land, the subsequent crisis of feudalism and centralization of landownership and the aristocracy under the Absolutist regimes during the 15th-18th centuries, the bourgeois revolutions proper with the construction of nation states, the ascendancy of proletariat power, and finally the current post-Soviet epoch of counterrevolution. I think it's really interesting to see how the momentum of social change continues to quicken over the long run of history, especially noticeable once the forces of production under capitalism reached their zenith.

Edited by dimashq ()

#1279
Post rating: +
WWE John Cena Announces Osama Bin Laden Death at WWE Extreme Rules in tampa 5-1-2011
#1280
Post rating: ~
googled that and was not disappointed