online is real
everything online is real. there have been decades of cultural mythologizing about the internet that place it in contrast to reality--the internet is framed as immaterial, as ephemeral. the internet is 'just data', it's weightless and abstract. things taking place on the internet are 'just online', they're not 'really' happening. this isn't true.
of course, there's the elementary fact that many things that are immaterial with no physical form are still real. monetary value is real, even if you cannot find me an atom of it. the german border is real even where it is not physically demarcated. they are real and physical in that they shape real and physical human interactions. but the internet is in fact far more real than that: every single piece of data on the internet exists physically on a disk somewhere as a pattern of magnetic charges. 'the cloud' sounds like it's a weightless and fluffy thing, but 'the cloud' is this:
this is the cloud--a google data center, to be exact. amazon web services is not an immaterial or abstract thing; it is over 26 million square feet of data centers, of physical computers inside physical buildings where data is physically recorded. access to the internet is provided by cables, including the thousands of miles of undersea infrastructure which make the global internet possible. 4G, 5G, wifi, these are all made possible by physical apparatuses sending out radio waves.
all computer infrastructure everywhere is made possible by cobalt and lithium and gallium and so on--mined out of the ground, by an extractive mining industry which exploits the people and resources of the global south. estimates for how much electricity 'the internet' uses vary wildly, but it's at minimum measured in gigawatts--and so coal and nuclear power plants and wind farms and hydroelectric dams and the coal and uranium and bauxite mining which builds them are inseparable from 'the internet'. google programmers do not live in the astral plane, they work from buildings (and outsource work to india) which need to be cleaned and maintained and worked in and driven back and forth from.
youtube videos are 'online' but of course if you film something happening and upload it that thing still really happened. if a physical action, whether that be a terrorist attack or a protest or a sexual hookup or an act of ethic violence, is mediated and planned online, that thing really happens in the real world. the idea of 'just online', this platonic real divorced from a cleanly delineated 'outside' or 'real world' is just wrong. it is wrong in more or less every single way. every program or function your computer has or video or picture or word you see on the computer is the result of people doing actual physical things. you are seeing it by grace of miles of cable and tons and tons of machinery and power plants and the guy who sweeps the floors at the indian IT firm facebook outsources. online is real.
Hugo Simberg, The Garden of Death, 1896.
Every time I see this I always wonder what the painter’s intended message was. It looks so pleasant, that middle skeleton looks so happy with its work.
Maybe it’s supposed to be a memento mori, but a comforting and encouraging one.
This is one of the most famous paintings in Finland. There are multiple interpretations of it but they all share the same base idea:
“According to Simberg, the flowers represent people’s souls, the skeletons are aids to Death, and the Garden of Death is a purgatory of sorts for souls waiting for entrance into heaven. This artwork invites the viewer to consider the afterlife, to take comfort in his or her own passing, and to not fear what happens after the body fails to function.”
“It depicts Simberg’s thoughts on afterlife, which is not run by angels but skeletons who take care of the heavenly garden with a gentle hand, while waiting for more “gardeners” to arrive. It is derived from the medieval belief that the dead sleep in a blooming garden.”
“In Simberg’s garden the humble Death-like figures struggle against harsh conditions; the landscape around the garden has burnt yellow, it is dry and barren. The cherished flowers grow in exotic shapes, slowly, requiring constant care. The black-clad figures love their nurslings. The garden is a place where Death is allowed to realize its feelings of affection. The Garden of Death can be seen depicting the impossibility of this love; maybe the flowers are tender and fragile because they can not handle the love of Death. Love has two faces: one of them is the face of devastation.”
wait what? the fuck? this is the first time I'm hearing about this. christians have a Make New Minecraft World event?
man what the fuck?
Like I've said before they believe the Antichrist will take over the world specifically by creating world peace and paradise so that everyone will trust him as a global dictator. This is why they called Obama the antichrist, because he said he wanted to end war. They believe the world is meant to fall into ruin and anyone planning to end violence or poverty is working for the devil.
they injected like 100 gallons of demon and wizard blood into me and now i can see things slightly better than ever before
"After suffering a severe illness in 1776, the Friend claimed to have died and been reanimated as a genderless evangelist named the Public Universal Friend, and afterward shunned both birth name and gendered pronouns."
Lmao no
gotta say just cuz i havnt seen it brought up anywhere; HUGE fan of this new era we are entering here. of unions and blackouts and attempts at criminalizing transness failing.
like yes obviously all of these only arise because situations are getting ridiculously bleak. but there are victories happening. people are taking stands. and right now a lot of it seems like hopeless shouting at deaf corporate ears but people are still shouting yknow.
thing will probably still get worse before they get any better, but the ground work for that better is being laid right now and im excited to see where it goes
Anonymous asked:
As an Indigenous person, millitant vegans drive me nuts, especially in their trying to stop seal hunts/whaling up north. Like, okay, I just wanna lock one of these fuckers in a freezer with a 20$ bill, a cell phone with no signal, and a piece of seal meat and see how long they last. And the soonest they can get a head of lettuce is 6 weeks from now, for 38$.
I've legit seen the argument that indigenous people in the far north should go to growing crops and i'm like
how
On the fucking ice?????
Point to where in this image people are supposed to grow things, kthx
Its still so funny that they even thought to put this in the game in the first place. Yeah sure to get 100% completion you have to actively break the terms of service on purpose. This is normal
I've decided to use the term "convenience food" instead of "junk food."
I think it's more honest, and less loaded. It's all food, some of it is more appropriate when you don't have the spoons left for food prep. It takes slightly more energy to peel a banana than to open a bag of chips.
We try to save the convenience food for days when we need something easy, so eat a banana.