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The SERENE Shelburn Falls
in the swarm
Wrestling with my addiction to and loathing of the Internet, I’ve been taking notes from In the Swarm, a pamphlet by Byung-Chul Han, a Korean-born German philosopher, published by MIT Press in April. “Sovereign is he who commands the shitstorms of the Net,” Han declares. Sound timely? Han believes the Internet is “a narcissistic ego machine” that cashiers traditional democratic politics. Once upon a time, it may have been possible for rage to inspire the people of a nation into action, but that was because mass media, like radio, taught citizens how to surrender their individuality and become a people. Today, online, there is no collective soul but only a swarm of isolated individuals, through whom political indignation ripples like a wave—and dissipates. Some of Han’s aphorisms sound very translated from German—“The new man will finger instead of handling”—and he’s a bit too orphic for a pragmatist like me to take him without a grain of salt. But his pessimism feels salutary. —review by Caleb Crain (“Envoy”)
...Byung-Chul Han counters the cheerleaders for Twitter revolutions and Facebook activism by arguing that digital communication is in fact responsible for the disintegration of community and public space and is slowly eroding any possibility for real political action and meaningful political discourse.
DEEP! BOOM! I am reading this summer!
bad joke?
Florida man –
>>Associated Press: "Authorities in Florida say they arrested a man who robbed a bank, stripped naked and ran down the street throwing stolen money — a spectacle that he somehow thought would jump-start his career as a comedian." Naturally, "the FBI says 25-year-old Alexander Sperber is charged with bank robbery."
the next time
SOOOO... the next time a game show host wants to be president, I think we should pass...
war-mongers
A wise person once said to me "War makes money for some people (war-mongers) but those people aren't the ones fighting and dying..." Let that sink in.. we're talking military empire here folks. In the good ol' US, it seems the war-mongers are winning.
***
"The trillion-dollar national security budget" –> At TomDispatch, (and also reprinted at our site) William Hartung writes, "you wouldn’t know it, based on the endless cries for more money coming from the military, politicians, and the president, but these are the best of times for the Pentagon. Spending on the Department of Defense alone is already well in excess of half a trillion dollars a year and counting. Adjusted for inflation, that means it’s higher than at the height of President Ronald Reagan’s massive buildup of the 1980s and is now nearing the post-World War II funding peak. And yet that’s barely half the story. There are hundreds of billions of dollars in 'defense' spending that aren’t even counted in the Pentagon budget."
READ
***
"The trillion-dollar national security budget" –> At TomDispatch, (and also reprinted at our site) William Hartung writes, "you wouldn’t know it, based on the endless cries for more money coming from the military, politicians, and the president, but these are the best of times for the Pentagon. Spending on the Department of Defense alone is already well in excess of half a trillion dollars a year and counting. Adjusted for inflation, that means it’s higher than at the height of President Ronald Reagan’s massive buildup of the 1980s and is now nearing the post-World War II funding peak. And yet that’s barely half the story. There are hundreds of billions of dollars in 'defense' spending that aren’t even counted in the Pentagon budget."READ
it's real
trippy Leckey
Inspired by the 90s rave scene, the artist has filled the Queens space with footage of sweaty nightclubs, trippy images and soundsystems blasting fart soundsSWELL read: Mark Leckey: the raving artist goes large at MoMA PS1 in New York | Art and design | The Guardian (2016)
How Mark Leckey became the artist of the YouTube generation.(audio)
Mark Leckey in the x-room at Statens Museum for Kunst
Talk with artist
we already knew
"He's crazy" –> "At the end of a Senate subcommittee hearing on Tuesday morning, someone sitting near Chairman Susan Collins (R-ME) didn’t switch off a microphone," reports Philip Bump at The Washington Post. What followed was a rare behind the scenes look at Collins chatting with Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee. In one exchange, Reed says he worries that Trump is "crazy," and adds: "I don’t say that lightly." Collins doesn't disagree, but appears more concerned that nobody in the White House seems to know the first thing about governing.
human interest
Rodeo Good Stuff
I’m following a truck with a gun rack
and the bumper sticker reads, Take the migrant
out of immigrant, and I think
I’m an immigrant. I think
of the time José forgot Shangxin’s name
and called him foreigner,
and I said, I’m a foreigner
then laughed on the inside, but José
laughed out loud bahaha
because he thought
I was in on his joke. Once,
a young woman on a bus
shot up the aisle
to get a better look at my face
before asking, What ethnicity are you?
But before I told her, I said
on the inside, I’m American.
I run red lights, tail old ladies,
honk at texters while texting.
I have four American flags on the roof of my car.
How many do you have?
from Human Interest by Valerie Bandura
here
I’m following a truck with a gun rack
and the bumper sticker reads, Take the migrant
out of immigrant, and I think
I’m an immigrant. I think
of the time José forgot Shangxin’s name
and called him foreigner,
and I said, I’m a foreigner
then laughed on the inside, but José
laughed out loud bahaha
because he thought
I was in on his joke. Once,
a young woman on a bus
shot up the aisle
to get a better look at my face
before asking, What ethnicity are you?
But before I told her, I said
on the inside, I’m American.
I run red lights, tail old ladies,
honk at texters while texting.
I have four American flags on the roof of my car.
How many do you have?
from Human Interest by Valerie Bandura
here
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