Words are of course fluid, but I'm just reading a book that refers to the costco hotdog as being resistant to capitalism, in that its price has stayed the same for a long period. This is a kind of fascinating usage! I don't know if this is the common sense, but what's amazing is that of course costco is extremely capitalist, if by capitalist you mean the more traditional sense of not-socialist, meaning "you can own a business and buy equipment and hire people and make profits."

Been enjoying "The Price of Time" by Chancellor. One thing discussed is obvious but really interesting, which is the idea that when a price bubble pops, it doesn't destroy value - it reveals the capital that was destroyed. Stuff like this puts into perspective things like NFTs, crypto bubbles generally, vast spending on AR/VR setups nobody really wants. The bubble around the idea isn't just goofy - it harms everyone by taking a bunch of people and making them work on pointless bullshit all day.

So I was at a big grocery store yesterday and a robot was taking inventory. I talked to the cashier about it, and she found it interesting but also said "it's sad, isn't it?" What was interesting is everyone knows taking inventory sucks. Robot's doing at least some of it now. And the response from a person doing blue collar customer service was to be bummed. Not fighting it, nor excited for it, just found it sad.

I'm way late to this but I didn't realize ThinkGeek had died! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkGeek

What a bummer - I have strong associations between them and that in between period when geeks were finally being catered to a little, but it hadn't all gone mainstream. One kinda subtle thing about the Internet I was thinking about recently is how the culture around novelty items has changed? Like, it used to be a decent amount of work to make a Weird Thing, but the process has gotten soooooo much easier, and that changed the landscape.

I've been mulling over why Kate Beaton's work, and especially her character art floors me so much, even though there are now lots of artists with similar styles. Here's what I think it is: what's astonishing in her work is that it somehow sneaks a massive amount of subtlety into characters who are ludicrous.

Consider this classic:

Weird connection:

The direction twitter has taken under Musk reminds me deeply of way back when I used to read screenplays for talent agents. Let me explain: The people I worked for had a lot of clients in comedy. Comedy has a lot of different but fairly standardized formats, e.g. sketch comedy, comedic screenplays, sitcoms, standup comedy. These are of course related but what you have to do in each format is verrrry different.

You know what the best Stan Rogers song is? Forgarty's Cove. Why? There are lots of Stan Rogers songs about how the best things in life are toil and boats. This is to my knowledge the only one specifically about avoiding your loyal and attractive wife in deference to a boat. I think if Rogers had 20 more years to develop we'd be into the erotic boat period by now. Alas. Let's enjoy what we can:

Offhand thought:

So, early in webcomics, the feeling was that we were really pushing the medium. I think that was partially true, but part of what was going on is the creators and consumers were largely young men making content for young men. This gave it the illusion of novelty, when actually it was just that particular form of humor getting shared more widely. In fact, all along, there were lots of people who wanted to read more traditional comic stuff, but they weren't online yet. Now they are.

An allegory for what's happening with facebook right now:

Imagine you sell paintings. You have a little shop. Business is pretty good. Then, a big mall offers you a space. The mall is shiny and nice and lots of people and other sellers are going. So, you relocate. At first, it works really well. You and all the other sellers promote the mall because everyone wins when the mall is busy. You reach a new audience, they have a good experience. The mall is making money, you're making money.

But the mall decides it wants *more* money.

I need to read more on AI image stuff and clarify my own thoughts, but more and more it seems to me that this is like when photographs started replacing portrait painting. It's just going to happen. The market wants it. It's hard to imagine regulation that isn't insanely onerous. But the basic deal is that some jobs, like stock footage modeling, background art, maybe the job of illustration generally, just go away. They're replaced style creators and by people summoning their own visual dreams without spending years learning to draw.

Lukewarm take:

Having read way too much about the Soviet space program, I've become more and more convinced that part of why people believe autocracies are dynamic and smart is that autocracies promote developments in tech that doesn't matter, but which dazzles people. 1957, the US is the leader in microelectronics - the technology that will define the future. But, the Soviets put a dog in space, so... they're ahead, right? Actually, the main reason they could do that is that their nuke warheads weren't miniaturized, so they had big boosters.

Do you think there'll eventually be (or is there already?) a back-to-nature movement against the rise of corporatized media (this time for Internet), similar to 19th century transcendentalism or the 20th century hippie movement?

Today I learned there are twitter ghostwriters. Like, I'm perfectly willing to buy that this is just me not understanding the modern Internet, but the dominant shift for me is that it's less... real? Like 1990s Internet was mostly trash, but when you talked to someone you were actually talking to that person.

I was in an old library in England when I found a piece of parchment wedged in a brick. It's in (I think?) 6th century Old English. I did a loose translation:

Hwaet!
Hear of how, home upheaved.
I went west, well-fated wanderer,
To my sister’s brother, in gold-bright Bel Air. By the rime-cold sea, cub of the cod-path,
I spent my days sporting, sparring friends,
Waxed under welkin, weaving peace,
Behind the book-house, besting friends in the ball-clash.

Good morning, friends. It's time to announce the project that @Bouletcorp and I have been keeping secret for several years. Bea Wolf.

Preorders here: smbc-comics.com/bea/ (and it really helps us get the word out if you buy a preorder!) What is Bea Wolf? It's Beowulf, but it's about kids fighting an evil adult. It's even got a little Beowulf explainer at the back.

But.

It's more than that.

I enjoyed this article: theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

I think I've experienced a similar thing in comics. One possibly straightforward explanation is that there's a non-linear equation for douchebaggery in any endeavor. Let me explain: In the late 90s, lots of us were working on comics online. Not that many people - maybe a few hundred. We were not perfect and frankly were very bad at our craft, but/and there was no money to be made. So, anyone present was a believer in the medium.

An interesting thing, reading about the history of ethereum is that it reminds me very deeply of reading the history of 60s back-to-the-land communes as well as early work on PCs and networking in the 70s and 80s. Here's how: You have a bunch of young people, and many of them (if not all) or motivated by the idea of perfecting the world.

For communes the idea is often to create a new way of living (more equal, more loving, more environmental etc) that they hope will spread throughout the world.

A lot of people are writing "MILFs," but the proper plural is Milves. "MILF" comes from the Old English gomelfeax, meaning "gray of hair." It enters Middle English in near-modern through (who else?) Chaucer:

Dark was the night as pitch or as the coal,
And at the window she put out her hole,
And Absolon him fell ne bet ne werse,
But with his mouth he kiss'd her milven erse

Weird history question:

What's the deal on activism merging with university culture? I was just noticing today that when you read essays by old socialists who did a lot of work in the 30s/40s, they hardly do any academic-speak. It could be just an overall cultural thing - more people in general go to college and maybe our essays and ways of speaking now just involve more talking about big abstract notions. But, I'm listening to elderly activists talk about the old days, and they are refreshingly direct.

Weird thing: During 1969-1970 Norman Mailer, the famous author, was hired to write a series of essays about the Apollo program, and Apollo 11 in particular.

And they are awful. I think there is just a certain type of writer that cannot accept that a man might genuinely want to give his life to flying cool planes and studying spacecraft rendezvous. And that that's it. No angst or complex philosophy. They love the thing because it's hard and interesting.

Incredibly niche gripe:

I think a lot of essays trying to re-invent education via comparison to the arts are basically founded on a misunderstanding of the arts as being some sort of non-stop act of joy. Here's my correction: The idea is, in short, that in the arts people learn by doing, not by rote memorization or endless grind, as we inflict on kids trying to learn, e.g. algebra. The problem is that this just isn't true.

In painting there is a lot of incredibly boring work painters have to do.

When my daughter was 7 I tried getting her to listen to a PG Wodehouse novel. Funny thing: I think she would've had no problem with the plot or characters. Characters and motivations are simple and child-like. Plot is intricate, but no moments are confusing. BUT, The actual barrier was the language! Frequent literary allusions, wordplay, French & Latin. This is kind of unfortunate, because I think intricate plotting (in the sense of many simultaneous motivations and chapters that repeatedly overturn things) could work just fine for kids.