aeolianblues

THIS. SO MUCH THIS. To use "content" elides the massive range of skills required to create art and write stories and frame a great shot. It flattens nuance and obscures what is unique and beautiful about a single work.

I was meaning to just leave this in the tags, but actually this explanation ^ is important. Calling it 'content' removes art from so much of its context. It makes you forget the time, effort, training, equipment and thought that goes into creating and expressing yourself! It makes people think of content generation mills, faceless people, churning out '5-minute crafts' videos for the facebook masses, pointless, mindless AI-generated rubbish that has no meaning to express, made simply as a revenue generator for a company. It lets you allow people to devalue art. It lets you allow people like Daniel Ek (Spotify CEO, net worth $5 billion) say things like this:

Which, inevitably leads to things like this:

"Art is dime a dozen! Why should we pay those lazy fuckers more? Less funding for the arts! Less money to go around! Let's invest it in buying football teams. Let's invest it in military tech!"

And so inevitably, more and more money drains out of the arts, underfunded to the point where artists cannot afford the time or means to make art, art hubs are diluted and broken up because the cultural centres of a city are no longer affordable to artists, bands get downsized to one person with backing tracks—to the detriment of everyone's live music experience—and everything becomes a cheapened version of itself. Soon, only those already well off are able to afford to live out any sort of life as artists.

It probably goes without saying that when you stop being able to have people from all walks of society making art, holding up a mirror to the world, making astute observations and reflecting our realities with their pens, brushes, strums; when only the rich can afford to make art, it loses its ability to reflect on society at all.

Art, poetry, music is the tongue of revolutions. To make sense of the world around us and present it clearly, or romantically, is the job of good art. I would also bundle journalism into this effort. If there is no one left to reflect society, we have fewer words to express, reflect and affirm our own life experiences. When a journalist has to work those two extra jobs to make ends meet, what happens to time-consuming, quality and considered journalism that is able to independently investigate and critique, while also being able to feed themselves?

You might think I'm reaching too far, but it is all connected! Ripple effects, if you will. And it begins with the devaluing of art.

#I feel there's some greater commentary here about consumers being disconnected from the means of production (@exalteranima)

Just remembering (misquoting) that line from the Martian—which I’m aware could be fictional but the line stands: ‘3% is too damn high a margin of error!’

What’s the fucking point huh. What’s the point in spending all the money to even go to space, travel for three whole days, reach the fucking moon! and then fail. On purpose. What’s the fucking point. These money-minded companies will put us on Mars? Not a fucking chance. Capitalism breed innovation indeed. Clowns.

Absolutely wild that this is presented as something the drug companies are doing and not a law that the Biden admin passed.

The only reason they're doing this is that Biden threatened to seize their drug patents.

i got rickrolled today but it didn't work because i have adblocker installed, so youtube just told me i violated the terms of service. yesterday i was trying to edit a picture as a joke for my girlfriend, and google made me check a box to prove i'm human because i wasn't "searching normally".

it isn't just that capitalism is killing fun and whimsy, it is that any element of entertainment or joy is being fed upon by this mosquito body, one that will suck you dry at any vulnerability.

do you want to meet new friends in your city? download this app, visit our website, sign up for our email list. pay for this class on making a terrarium, on candlemaking, on cooking. it will be 90 dollars a session. you can go to group fitness, but only under our specific gym membership. solve the puzzle, sign up for our puzzle-of-the-month-club. what is a club if not just a paid opportunity - you are all paying for the same thing, which makes you a community.

but you're like me, i know it - you're careful, you try the library meetings and the stuff at the local school and all of that. the problem is that you kind of want really specific opportunities that used to exist. you are so grateful for libraries and the publicly-funded things: they are, however, an exception - and everything they have, they've fought tooth-and-nail to protect. you read a headline about how in many other states, libraries have virtually nothing left.

do you want to meet up with your friends afterwards? gift your friends the discord app. you can choose to go to a cafe (buy a coffee, at least), a bar (money, alcohol) or you can all stay in and catch a movie (streaming) or you can all stay in bed (rent. don't get me started) and scream (noise complaint. ticket at least).

you want to read a new book, but the book has to have 124 buzzwords from tiktok readers that are, like, weirdly horny. you can purchase this audiobook on audible! your podcast isn't on spotify, it's on its own server, pay for a different site. fuck, at least you're supporting artists you like. the art museum just raised their ticket price. once, they had a temporary exhibit that acknowledged that ~85% of their permanent art galleries were from cis white men, and that they had thousands of works by women (even famous women, like frida! georgia o'keefe!) just rotting in their basement. that exhibit lasted for 3 months and then they put everything away again.

the walmart down the street proudly supports this strip of land by the street! here are some flowers with wilting leaves. my friend once got fined by the city because she organized a community pick-up of the riverfront, which was technically private property.

no, you cannot afford to take that dance class, neither can i. by the way - i'm a teacher. i'm absolutely not saying "educators shouldn't be paid fairly." i'm saying that when i taught classes, renting a studio went from 20 bucks an hour to 180 in the span of 6 months. no significant changes to the studio were made, except they now list the place as updated and friendly. the heat still doesn't work in the building. i have literally never seen the landlord who ignores my emails. recently they've been renting it out at night as an "unusual nightclub; a once-in-a-lifetime close-knit party." they spent some of those 180 dollars on LEDs and called it renovating. the high heels they invite in have been ruining the marley.

do you want to experience the old internet? do you want to play flash games or get back the temporary joy of club penguin? you can, you just need to pay for it. i have a weird, neurodivergent obsession with occasionally checking in to watch the downfall and NFT-ification of neopets. if i'm honest with you all - i never got into webkins, my family didn't have the money to buy me a pointless elephant. people forget that "being poor" can mean literally "if i buy you that toy, i can't afford rent."

you and i don't have time to make good food, and we don't have the budget for it. we are not gonna be able to host dinner parties, we're not made of money, kid. do you want some kind of 3rd space? a space that isn't home or work or school? you could try being online, but - what places actually exist for you? tiktok counts as social media because you see other people on it, not because they actually talk to you.

there was a local winter tradition of sledding down the hill at my school. kids would use pizza boxes and jackets and whatever worked, howling and laughing. back in september, they made a big announcement that this time, rules were changing, and everyone must pay 10 dollars to participate. when im not scared shitless, i kind of appreciate the environmental irony - it hasn't gone below 40. so much for snow & joyriding.

i saw a bulletin for a local dogwalking group and, nervous about making a good first impression, showed up early. the first guy there grimaced at me. "sorry," he said. "there's a 30-dollar buy-in fee." i thought he was joking. wait. for what? the group doesn't offer anything except friendship and people with whom to walk around the city.

he didn't know the answer. just shrugged at me. "you know," he said. "these days, everything costs money."

All useful things turn to shit when you privatize them.

Basically, any politician talking about privatization of any public service should be taken as a glowing neon sign reading “I’M CORRUPT AND I WANT TO MAKE MY CRONIES RICHER AT YOUR EXPENSE”

“In order to improve performance and lighten the load on the public coffers, I propose to privatize-” [gunshot]

This is gonna be a very American-centric rant, sorry, but any politician who says that government should be run “more like a business” should be immediately barred from serving in public office, because they’re either an idiot who doesn’t know how government works or they’re a grifter who is planning on ripping the copper wiring out of the walls of public infrastructure and selling it to their rich friends. Possibly both. Probably both.

Governments are not businesses. A business’s number one goal is to make a profit. That’s it. A government’s role is, ideally, to collect an amount of resources that its citizens collectively decided was fair, then use those resources (usually taxes) to provide services the People decided was necessary. Water, roads, electricity, busses, trains, libraries, education, and (if you’re not American) medical care.

Public services are exactly that: a service. Their sole mission is to provide said service to the public. Full stop. Profit isn’t a factor because their goal (ideally) isn’t to make money, it’s simply to provide the service for which they were created.

The post office is not a business. The library is not a business. Public transportation is not a business. K-12 schools are not a business. Any money you pay them outside what is given to them by taxes is to help cover costs. That’s why using the printers at a public library is cheaper than printing the same amount of pages at a for-profit print-shop. It’s why there are some places in the United States, such as communities in Alaska, where private companies like DHL, UPS, and Fedex simply refuse to make deliveries because it makes zero business sense to ship parcels at great expense to isolated, low-population areas.

The Post Office however, has a Constitution Mandate that every American is entitled to mail service. It is, in the parlance of conservatives, a God-Given Right. Thus, they are the only ones that deliver things out to those isolated communities. When you take profit motive out of the equation and focus purely on the service it was created to provide, you have a system that is built to work for everyone.

Are these institutions perfect? No, of course not. They’re large, bulky, aged, bureaucratic behemoths that are constantly underfunded and are making due with the bare minimum of resources to stay functional.

There’s a reason that the United States Postal Service for years has been actively sabotaged by conservatives who had a financial interest in private package carrier companies and are hostile to the idea of mail-in voting. There’s a reason that libraries and schools for years have been struggling for funding, and why they’re now targets of “culture war” fanatics who think privately run but tax-funded schools should teach kids more about Jesus and librarians offering free books to children is “grooming”

There’s a reason Americans pay the most for healthcare but have some of the worst healthcare outcomes of any western country.

School cafeteria workers used to be unionized, directly-hired employees of a school district. My best friend’s mom raised three kids and could afford a house on the salary she used to make doing that job. Now most cafeteria workers are contractors that get paid much less to do the same work, serving lower-quality food. Your taxes still pay for it, but their employer - the private third-party service company - is the one pocketing the difference. Janitors and cleaning staff are also a heavily “outsourced” occupation.

Taxation is theft? No, taking public infrastructure that was built by unionized employees and paid for by public tax revenue only to sell it off to private corporations so they do a shittier job, pay the workers less, and charge us all more for the privilege is fucking theft.

“Just run it like a business,” says the businessman who didn’t build it, never used it, doesn’t depend on it, and will make money from dismantling and selling it.

There's some company, blackstone, blackwater, something like that, buying up houses that go on sale for 30k above asking price. Immediately outbidding anyone who tries to buy. Corporations are also buying property all across america.

Fuck...

Nobody comes to my tumblr for this, but Americans need to understand that THIS is why my generation can't afford to own a house outside of Smallest-Town USA. THIS is also why people my age in bigger cities struggle to find decent apartments that don't consume half of our monthly income.

Housing Speculation is when rich folk, corporations, and wannabe landlords buy up property and sit on it like dragons hoarding gold. The Dutch have a dragon-adjacent term for this because speculation devastated their housing market in the 70s-80s leading to some gnarly Dutch squatting culture. They let homes sit empty, good as money in the bank and watch the value increase as everyone else competes for the remaining houses. That's value they can borrow against, that's a few hundred-thousand dollars if you need some quick cash, that's a property you can rent out for regular income while charging tenants for repairs or maintenance and fining them for wear and tear. If property values go up and laws prohibit raising the rent by a certain degree, in many places they can find shady ways to evict that tenant, make no changes and charge the next renter more. It's probably illegal but if you rent to people below a certain income, you can be assured most can't afford to take you to court.

I live in Chicago. Many of the properties that used to house students, small families, single parents, older people, low-income folks have been gobbled up by little airbnb barons who colonize previously well-established neighborhoods and price out families who've lived there for generations because they can't keep up with the artificially inflated property values. The airbnbs spread like cancer until a handful of people can dominate the "affordable" housing for an entire neighborhood. It's gentrification on meth, but without the kind of localized money circulation or community improvements you get when people live and work and spend within their neighborhoods. It pushes residents further and further from services and resources until all that's left is the locked-in commodififation of an exploitable renting class.

If that wasn't bad enough, it also means that when large areas of habitable property are being hoarded by investors with portfolios of empty houses and airbnbs, that reduces the number of actual residents, which can spoil legislation on a community level. When all the storefront space in a neighborhood like mine is controlled by 4 people, you find the number of businesses and services that catered to lower income families start to become whiskey bars, boutiques, vintage shops, and upscale chain retail, businesses that bring money into the property owners at the expense of community accessibility, turning a once largely Hispanic neighborhood community into a posh little destination for travelers, tourists, and other aspiring business speculators who see every empty building as their next revinue stream. Gut a block of apartments with attached commercial space and build half as many luxury condos above a combination tapas bar and day spa and you've instantly got half as many tenants on that block to vote against your expansion schemes. Replacing low-income residents with higher-rent folks also bakes in support for future "improvements" that further contribute to the commodification of communities.

Property ownership has always been a tool of the most privileged class to extract value from the working class because the only options become rent, move, or live on the street for all they care. At which point, the police will sweep you further and further into the gutter until they have an excuse to send you to prison. This kind of speculation and consolidation allows people with excess resources to buy up the things the rest of us require to function and sell it back to us forever.

These are the same people that invented the fairy tale about how if we work hard enough and save and spend like smart people, then we can be landlords too! We can own businesses, raise families, chase dreams and be happy if we are smart like they are. But if we can't it's because we're lazy little parasites who need to have our lives portioned out to us lest we waste time that could be earning money for the landlord.

I hate these fuckers so fucking much.

It got so bad in Atlanta that in 2022 they passed a law limiting Airbnb-type operators to two physical addresses, and the owner is required to live in one of them. In addition to that, they are charged an annual permit fee + additional taxes.

It’s an excellent start, but only applies to the city of Atlanta -- not any of the kazillions of Airbnbs in the surrounding greater metro area.

"This kind of speculation and consolidation allows people with excess resources to buy up the things the rest of us require to function and sell it back to us forever."

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

Weibo article that dives into the origin of the trend and provides a perspective from the other side:

Image text: "White people food"

OP's tweet reads: "This is my coworker's lunch. A few carrots and some spinach. They already have the ability to produce their own energy without eating food."

Comment 1: "I think since they like suntanning so much, they must be using photosynthesis"

Comment 2: "They depend on therapists to keep them alive"

OP's tweet reads: "My Danish coworker brought something new again. No spinach today, just two carrots and a pepper. They're evolving."

Comment: "Why do they eat like they're putting gas in their cars. Pour it in to be able to go"

OP's tweet reads: "my coworkers lunch is a whole cauliflower! First time I've seen a whole cauliflower eaten with a knife and fork after being cooked. He was even surprised that I'd never seen that before. These people haven't lived"

OP's tweet reads: "The simplicity of Australian white people food. Everyone knows that Australian white people food is super simple, but when I saw my coworker's lunch I was still shocked. Mushrooms from the supermarket, straight from the box, added directly to a wrap. I asked him whether mushrooms can be eaten raw. He said he'd been eating them raw for years and was doing fine."

Comment: "Pretty normal. They even eat green beans raw. 20 years ago, the people at my bro's place even ate yuanxiao [glutinous rice dough dumplings] uncooked. Anyways, I feel like foreigners don't like eating food unless they're about to starve. If they could live on alcohol, they definitely wouldn't eat at all"

Image text: "Lunch: a head of raw lettuce wrapped around some ham with mustard drizzled on top"

OP's tweet reads: "I guess I've seen the pinnacle of white people food today. The locals always come up with new moves to surprise me"

OP's tweet reads: "Re: about my lunch shocking my white coworkers. Everyone knows that white people don't have taste buds, they only eat to stay alive. "Coworker A: porridges. Oats + honey + milk + salt + microwave for 3 min. "Coworker B: some kind of canned rice + canned tuna, microwave for 2 min. "Coworker C: pita bread with dip; with a couple of cherry tomatoes/cucumber. "Coworker D: mini pizza: base + sauce + cheese, baked "I've been here for most of one year, these guys eat the same thing every day. But today was different, today everyone brought food, a boxed proper meal: pasta. But I'm the undefeated mystical Oriental lady, made a whole table [of food] appear in the blink of an eye."

OP's tweet reads: "After entering a state of 'eating to stay alive', I found out white people food is actually good. Ate the same thing every day and didn't puke. I just play on my phone a bit and the food is ready. It's sustenance, that's all."

Commenter: "After you give up on the pursuit of flavor, the world will open up to you. Cold vegetables + chicken breast are so good."

Additional context:

The perspective of western cultures is a good one.

So let me add a perspective of white culture. This phenomenon is 100% a mixture of diet culture and hustle culture.

If they're eating literally 2 carrots and a pepper or cauliflower plain. It's because they're trying to diet and for some reason white people think a diet is raw veggies NO SEASONING.

They think cooking them or adding seasonings make it unhealthy.

If its just not much food like a sandwich. That's hustle culture. White people will literally avoid their lunch break at all costs because they're "too busy" or some bullshit. They'll most certainly always have food that they can eat while they work.

They won't eat anything that'll get their hands dirty or anything that takes more than 5 minutes to eat because they don't see having a full lunch as worth the time.

I think it's sweet when western cultures find white cultures adorable, but like this shit is really out if a sense of self-hate.

(Also if you ever wonder why white people are so much more overweight. It's literally because of their concept of what I diet is. They know their 2 carrots and a pepper is disgusting, but they think that's the only way to have a diet. And so dieting is HARD for white people.)

-fae

You know all this shit about tech companies laying off thousands of people, publicly of stealthy, that has been going for some months?

What the press is not talking about is the all this is happening because the high management of those companies had hired thousands of extra people in 2021 and early 2022. Because their companies, internet companies that need people to spend time on the internet to use their products, boomed in 2020 and 2021. Their business thrived. Their revenue soared. And... They made financial projections based on the results they were achieving in 2020.

You know, THAT 2020. Without taking into account there may be some small extra factor that were making their products to get twice the usage than in previous years. They made very serious slides promising investors to get to the moon and back, based on how well they did in 2020.

And when people stopped being literally locked at home, the numbers of the internet business went back to above the 2019 numbers, but far below 2020/21, panic ensued. Maybe those companies weren't actually doing so bad, but holy fuck they were underperforming badly if compared with the projections and the promises made to investors the previous year.

So the same high management that was so smart to make projections based on 2020 data, now decided they needed to cut costs. Because they can't do anything to increase revenue to the same level, saving for creating a new pandemic, so if they wanted to take profits back to the crazy 2020 levels and fulfill their word with investors, the only thing on their hand is too cut costs by firing people, cutting wages and benefits, etc.

In a nutshell, stupid decisions creating awful outputs. For everyone, of course, but the people who believed their business were booming in 2020 because they were amazingly smart and brilliant and not because half the world was locked at home without nothing to do but browsing internet. For them there are not consequences of taking decisions any random 13 years old could have told them were stupid. They will still get their millionaire bonuses, their business class trips, their stock options.

Yeah, no, but "capitalism is the best way to allocate resources where they are needed". And meritocracy is real and those tech geniuses are there because how smart they are. Meritocracy, meritocracy all way down, meritocracy all around.

If you've been hanging around alt/indie spaces online this week you may have come across bands discussing the double-edged sword of playing showcase festivals, particularly South By Southwest, SXSW that happened this week. The band Wednesday posted their account of expenses and payments they had on their current tour and they concluded that doing SXSW left them around $100-200 in the hole, and theirs was a case of being better off than some.

Given that showcases aren't for or about larger bands that could afford to do them anyway, that leaves basically everyone doing the gig in the red.

SXSW gets talked about as one of those festivals that is a dream to do if you're able to afford it, but most of the time it's an out-of-pocket festival.

I remember the breakthrough Bristol, UK-based post punk trio Grandmas House on Bandcamp a month ago, who were invited to play SXSW, and they had to set up a crowdfund for it, because getting to Austin, TX from Bristol isn't cheap + you need accommodation and other odd sorts, and the festival doesn't cover all that.

But before you, like the maaany, many wise old folk on twitter turn into a bad version of Martin Lewis on me, going, oh but here's how you can save money on the tour!**, or start arguing with me about why the festival can't afford to pay them (according to Wednesday, they play five shows and are paid for one), or preaching your high morals about why musicians are actually lazy bums who shouldn't demand to get paid a reasonable amount (and especially fuck you if you're a category 3-er), here's the thing.

SXSW, and many other showcase festivals, were virtual last year. There was a lot of chatter last year about hybrid showcases and the advantages they could have in the future. It would cost bands a lot less to take part, and the ability to have multiple channel in place (standing in for stages) lets the festival spotlight more artists, without visitors having to abandon sets midway and dash across to another stage.

Especially for showcases, where the point is mainly to briefly showcase your music and announce yourself, why not have a hybrid model? Let bands that deserve their spots but can't afford the trip, play remotely. Let those who are already on tour, planning their dates, or simply able to travel out of their way, play it live. Put up a giant screen and a camera so people can catch the virtual stages together.

What matters at these showcases is the platform, more than a certain lineup or vibe. The last two years were hell for musicians, but we can learn and implement one of few good findings, yes?

**Wednesday were criticised for booking accommodation, some folks going, well why didn't you just sleep in the van? Well that stops being easy when you stop being a three piece. Wednesday are five. Also, I noticed every single person pushing the sleep in the van advice, even from experience, was a dude. Sometimes it's easy to forget when you don't have to think about it all the time, but a lot of women wouldn't feel safe doing that. Especially when you're in a car or a van and people can just see you through the windows! I know, it sounds irrational if you've never had to think about it before, but you worry about violence and harassment. And it's not "just in our heads", I wish it was. It's not the sort of situation you'd want to put yourself into unnecessarily.

Hey, remember this? Here's more, and specifics.

Wednesday played 7 shows at SXSW, got paid for one, and were handed $250. That's literally not money you can justify touring for. Add to that the fact that streaming pays zilch, and musicians are expected to make up the losses from recording by touring and people buying merch... how on earth is anybody in this field supposed to even make a day's wage?