Russian pricks, leave Banksy alone.....
meh. Banksy violated the street artist ethos by becoming big. He is now a shock artist in the tradition of Marcel Duchamp.Russian pricks, leave Banksy alone.....
i'd like to think that Banksy did realize how big he/her was gonna be.....wasn't Marcel a big influence to him/her? idkmeh. Banksy violated the street artist ethos by becoming big. He is now a shock artist in the tradition of Marcel Duchamp.
There was a documentary about street artists called Exit Through The Gift Shop. At the time, Banksy shared the leading edge of street art with other misteriosi such as Space Invader.i'd like to think that Banksy did realize how big he/her was gonna be.....wasn't Marcel a big influence to him/her? idk
Thanks man, I'm looking forward to paying closer attention again.
There’s a clip going around featuring Malcolm Trumbull, the former prime minister of Australia, describing for a home audience the few times he witnessed Donald Trump interacting with Vladimir Putin. He said: “When you see Trump with Putin, as I have on a few occasions, he’s like the 12-year-old that goes to high school and meets the captain of the football team – ‘my hero!’ It is really creepy. It’s really creepy. … It struck everybody. You could touch it. The creepiness was palpable.”
I’ll leave it to worthies steeped in international relations to discuss the ramifications of a former leader of one of America’s closest allies defenestrating Trump’s great claim that all the world respects him.
For me, I’m interested in that adjective, “creepy,” and its cognates – “strange,” “weird,” “not normal,” and so on – because I’m going to suggest two things. One, that we are hearing those words applied to Trump and the Republicans with greater frequency by Americans rooted in mainstream culture. And two, that the more their behavior is called “creepy,” “weird,” etc, the more they are going to appear, to Americans rooted in mainstream culture, to be virtually foreign.
When you think about it, that makes sense.
As I said in yesterday’s edition, the Russian government has, more or less, been waging nonstop information warfare against the United States since at least 2015. During that time, Donald Trump and the Republicans have eaten, digested and metabolized practically all of it.
Their views are nearly indistinguishable from Vladimir Putin’s. State governments run by Republicans are increasingly Russian in practice. (“They have banned books, censored speech, outlawed history, suppressed individual expression and, therefore, individual liberty,” I said. “If they have not used the power of the state to control their populations, they have empowered snitches and vigilantes to reach the same goal.”) The heart of the GOP’s impeachment inquiry is a Kremlin lie. “Basically, the Republicans have become synonymous for [the] Russians at this point,” said Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett.
I called this the transmogrification of the Republican Party. To see how thorough, complete and total that process has gotten, watch this clip. An MSNBC reporter asked Trump supporters for their thoughts on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Vladimir Putin’s threat to democratic Eastern Europe. After watching it, you may be reminded of this piece I wrote in September summarizing the Russo-Republican perspective:
'According to the rightwing view, Ukraine is not a democracy. It is a corrupt regime undeserving of aid. Moreover, it’s an enemy. Among other things, it colluded with Democrat Hillary Clinton in a scheme to undermine US sovereignty and defraud the American people in the 2016 election. The plan was thwarted by the victory of Donald Trump.'
'The rightwing view insists, moreover, that Donald Trump, as president, attempted to expose Ukraine’s corruption in 2019 when he demanded an investigation into then-former Vice President Joe Biden. Biden, according to this view, abused his office and corrupted US foreign policy in 2016 in order to enrich himself and his son, Hunter Biden.'
That’s upside down, backward and prolapsed.
It’s also weird.
Consider that the president ordered and ate an ice cream cone recently. In response, Fox host Jesse Watters suggested not only that Biden has dementia, on account of people with dementia enjoying the taste of ice cream, but that he’s unmanly. “A grown man, especially the president, should not be licking ice cream in public.” (Watters also said a grown man should not eat soup in public. “It’s not a good look.”)
On the one hand, this was an attempt to “infantilize” the president. Jennifer Mercieca, an expert on authoritarian rhetoric, said last night it’s “another way of saying he’s weak and not a Übermensch. He’s not trying to be an overlord strongman. He’s trying to be a president. Ice cream is delicious and eating it is democratic. Fascists gonna fash.”
On the other, this is just weird. “I've said it before: rightwingers are the biggest weirdos,” one person said on Twitter. “It truly sounds awkward, like ‘decadent Westernized male degrades manhood with frozen treats,’” another quipped. James Surowiecki, formerly of The New Yorker and currently of The Yale Review, put the ice cream thing in context. “In the past four weeks, high-profile rightwingers have come out against adults eating ice cream, IVF, recreational sex, Taylor Swift, and the NFL. They're so in tune with mainstream Americans.”
Surowiecki was joking, of course. The Republicans and their media allies are not in tune with mainstream Americans. They don’t like people having abortions. They don’t like in vitro fertilization. They don’t like birth control. They don’t like a self-made female billionaires dating Super Bowl-winning football players. And they don’t like grown men eating ice cream cones in public. (Or soup). They, like Mother Russia, don’t like things that don’t fit into a human society ordered vertically – with straight white Christian men dominating the top.
These people are so far outside mainstream American culture that those on the inside might legitimately ask: “Wait, you’re not from around here, are you?” “The creepiness was palpable,” Trumbull said.
He’s right.
I think it is time to set up basically the Federal Reserve system for the American internet. They should just buy up Google and make it a regulatory body to make sure that everything that we do online is as safe and free of propaganda as possible. It will be hard with the Republicans using disinformation as their means for reelection, but it is not like the rich in congress in the 1920s were not also the ones making bank every time they caused economic crashes by withdrawing their gold from banks causing them to go bankrupt and vacuuming up all the distressed companies/homes/towns left in their wake.they're at it again.....
The US is bracing for complex, fast-moving threats to elections this year, FBI director warns
McLEAN, VA. (AP) — The United States expects to face fast-moving threats to American elections this year as artificial intelligence and other technological advances have made interference and meddling easier than before, FBI Director Christopher Wray said Thursday.apnews.com
I don't think even John Wick would be able to pull this off, and even if it could be done - it should be quite frightening to think of government controlling the internet in the name of safety and controlling propaganda. How can propaganda even be defined?I think it is time to set up basically the Federal Reserve system for the American internet. They should just buy up Google and make it a regulatory body to make sure that everything that we do online is as safe and free of propaganda as possible. It will be hard with the Republicans using disinformation as their means for reelection, but it is not like the rich in congress in the 1920s were not also the ones making bank every time they caused economic crashes by withdrawing their gold from banks causing them to go bankrupt and vacuuming up all the distressed companies/homes/towns left in their wake.
The beauty (and why the wealthy would be dictators hate it so much) is the checks and balances that maintain the power of the citizens who use it with the companies that fund it and the politicians that appoint the people who run it. By doing something similar with google, internet companies could pay into the system (like banks do into the federal reserve) to fund it and we would be able to vote in people to make sure the best interests of our citizens are being met by the internet we use and stop all the companies relying on bots and trolls brainwashing our population for profit.
I wouldn't think of it as 'controlling the internet' as much as knowing that when on their server(?) there are at least certain regulations being followed on them. I don't fall for all the government scary stuff very often, not that it can't happen of course, but that is the reason to have checks and balances. There were deep recessions/depressions every two years before the Federal Reserve system was used to stabilize the system, and ever since they are relatively rare. I wouldn't trust politicians to come up with a control for it, because they are too slow and clumsy to changes. And it can't be the people who own the sites, because they have not been doing shit mainly. Which is why I think it needs to be a regulatory body that has the people who understand what it is that they are seeing in real time to combat the issues that arise with the new technology that is currently causing us so many issues.I don't think even John Wick would be able to pull this off, and even if it could be done - it should be quite frightening to think of government controlling the internet in the name of safety and controlling propaganda. How can propaganda even be defined?
I can see the need for rules to be modified, but following China and Russia with censorship of the internet doesn't protect freedom in a democracy.
Watching how everything is playing out with TFFG has erased faith in checks and balances when it comes to the US government, which causes concern thinking about any/every government.I wouldn't think of it as 'controlling the internet' as much as knowing that when on their server(?) there are at least certain regulations being followed on them. I don't fall for all the government scary stuff very often, not that it can't happen of course, but that is the reason to have checks and balances. There were deep recessions/depressions every two years before the Federal Reserve system was used to stabilize the system, and ever since they are relatively rare. I wouldn't trust politicians to come up with a control for it, because they are too slow and clumsy to changes. And it can't be the people who own the sites, because they have not been doing shit mainly. Which is why I think it needs to be a regulatory body that has the people who understand what it is that they are seeing in real time to combat the issues that arise with the new technology that is currently causing us so many issues.
Similar to the Fed not being in control of the banks, they can still screw up and fail, but the money that we have invested in them is insured (up to $250k last time I checked) and that they have to maintain certain balances to stay as safe as possible without stifling their ability to invest for profit.
As for what to define propaganda as, I am sure there are far better ways to describe it than a couple paragraphs of some idiot (me) can do online, but when you see things like radicalized idiots sporting guns shooting up, well shit everything, and suicide rates of kids skyrocketing since social media became popular, and all the nonstop scams fleecing our population, doing nothing can't continue.
. I actually have had my faith in them solidified. The point of the Fed and the way appointments are made was that the citizens are voting in the politicians that appoint people who will be around for a couple years after those politicians are out of office so that they can do the right thing when needed outside of any political pressure. And while I might disagree with Powell on a few things, he held strong against Trump's bullying tactics while he was in office.Watching how everything is playing out with TFFG has erased faith in checks and balances when it comes to the US government, which causes concern thinking about any/every government.
I think of all the ways that google would be helpful if they were no longer reliant on making a profit for our important institutions like our schools. If we had a entity that would be able to ensure that any actual account we encountered online was a actual person/American and not just a free account trolling us would change everything.I agree that changes need to be made, and somehow laws written in a manner that can adapt quickly to address change that rapidly occurs with technology. State sponsored propaganda, especially in regards to meddling in another countries election, may need laws written specifically to address that.
THis is why a quasi-government agency is needed. I just tossed Google out there as a example, even if a good one IMO, as a company that would be able to operate outside of political whims but still have accountability to them while we hold our politicians accountable.I'm not usually fearful of government, but I'm also a heterosexual white guy that hasn't had to deal with government trying to hold me back; I'm thinking about BLM protests, LGBT+ protests, religious minorities, etc, and how they could be affected with regulations around propaganda.
The same could have been said about the director of the FBI, until you couldn't. The President has the ability to remove members of the Federal Reserve Board, including the Fed chairman - "for cause". Previous to the last administration, it was relatively easy to believe in keeping political pressure to a minimum in policy decisions that are not intended to be partisan/biased for the most part. We now live in a world where tariffs on aluminum and steel based on national-security grounds is justified; point being that giving control over what is essentially speech while thinking it is possible to insulate from nefarious actors such as TFFG is (IMO) reckless.. I actually have had my faith in them solidified. The point of the Fed and the way appointments are made was that the citizens are voting in the politicians that appoint people who will be around for a couple years after those politicians are out of office so that they can do the right thing when needed outside of any political pressure. And while I might disagree with Powell on a few things, he held strong against Trump's bullying tactics while he was in office.
This is why the 'quasi-government' entities like the Federal Reserve system work so well, the checks and balances have held in them because they are really outside of total control of politicians, even ones as powerful as the POTUS.
I don't disagree, but at the same time I see lots of potential danger in it as well. Getting rid of trolls and bots that push misinformation or disinformation would be great, but even that goes back to defining what that means in an alternative fact world. I think of people that don't have the same privilege that I do when it comes to speaking with other people in real life, I can go birding in a park and not worry about police brutality when asking a white lady to leash her dog. Does having an entity that has the ability to connect a persons online presence with offline/in person presence silence/suppress people that don't have the ability to openly voice their opinions in their communities right now?I think of all the ways that google would be helpful if they were no longer reliant on making a profit for our important institutions like our schools. If we had a entity that would be able to ensure that any actual account we encountered online was a actual person/American and not just a free account trolling us would change everything.
I don't mind talking to crazies in real life, because they are actual people and don't get beaten (like slaves working in troll farms would) if they break character and actually try to communicate with others. And would be able to out people catfishing other citizens for nefarious means.
I hear ya, but then look towards the US Supreme Court - and shudder (I know it's slightly different as it's a lifetime appointment). Knowing that the President has the ability to remove the chairman of the Federal Reserve for cause, are you confident that if TFFG gets elected again - that it will still be protected from political interference?THis is why a quasi-government agency is needed. I just tossed Google out there as a example, even if a good one IMO, as a company that would be able to operate outside of political whims but still have accountability to them while we hold our politicians accountable.
They should also allow free access to all Americans to excellent sources of information like the Washington Post and actual (non nazi funded) journals, etc. Give people from outside our nations a way to get actual information about our immigration process that is not being pushed by dictators looking to destabilize our nation, on and on.
Without this everyone going online to find information is really shit out of luck of actually knowing what they are seeing is not just bullshit.
Gives stochastic parrots too much credit.