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Jurgan posted:I’m not sure that’s the correct reading of 451. It was pretty explicit that the state wasn’t trying to keep people ignorant, so much as the drat kids today spend all their time watching the TV and don’t care about what’s going on around them. The state didn’t take books away, people willingly gave them up to avoid thinking about challenging ideas. I don’t remember any sense of the government being totalitarian in that sense; it was more a matter of the state responding to mass, ignorant hysteria and blundering into ever-worsening situations. Maybe there are some other aspects I’m forgetting, but I know Bradbury himself got very annoyed with people interpreting it as being about a tyrannical government. Bradbury was, in many ways, your crotchety uncle who forwards you an email about what’s wrong with your generation. Montaug is literally part of a government crew that shows up at the houses of people who have books and burns them down. 451 was interpreted as being about a tyrannical government for decades and Bradbury only started getting pissy about that when people directed that into criticism of Bush, because Bradbury was a lifelong libertarian conservative. (He apparently loving loved Ayn Rand.)
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Feb 15, 2019 04:54
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The best version of Farenheit 451 is still Equilibrium.
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Feb 15, 2019 05:27
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Rose wants Pelosi and Trump to gently caress. Besesoth posted:Montaug is literally part of a government crew that shows up at the houses of people who have books and burns them down. 451 was interpreted as being about a tyrannical government for decades and Bradbury only started getting pissy about that when people directed that into criticism of Bush, because Bradbury was a lifelong libertarian conservative. (He apparently loving loved Ayn Rand.) Eww, I didn’t know that last part. I haven’t read 451 in a while, so the exact relationship between the government and the people isn’t super clear in my memory. But I do remember thinking that it was more condemning the people for not fighting back and being dumbed down. There’s a whole monologue at one point about how the firemen evolved gradually because of people wanting to get rid of offensive ideas. The majority of people in the society happily allowed their books to be destroyed so as not to cause offense, and there are a lot of riffs on how vapid the popular TV shows are. It’s not the deepest of dystopian literature, but there’s a little more going on than “censorship bad.” (Not that anyone in this thread said that exactly, just that’s how it’s commonly interpreted.)
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Feb 15, 2019 05:28
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First Dog on the Moon: This is literally the biggest news story in the world
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Feb 15, 2019 06:08
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Jurgan posted:I’m not sure that’s the correct reading of 451. It was pretty explicit that the state wasn’t trying to keep people ignorant, so much as the drat kids today spend all their time watching the TV and don’t care about what’s going on around them. The state didn’t take books away, people willingly gave them up to avoid thinking about challenging ideas. I don’t remember any sense of the government being totalitarian in that sense; it was more a matter of the state responding to mass, ignorant hysteria and blundering into ever-worsening situations. Maybe there are some other aspects I’m forgetting, but I know Bradbury himself got very annoyed with people interpreting it as being about a tyrannical government. Bradbury was, in many ways, your crotchety uncle who forwards you an email about what’s wrong with your generation. People giving up books to avoid challenging ideas and are glued to gigantic TV screens feeding them bullshit while a tyrannical government gains ever more power sounds very 2019 to me where we are ruled by someone who has never read a book in his life and spends most of his waking hours glued to a TV screen feeding him bullshit
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Feb 15, 2019 06:19
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Feldegast42 posted:People giving up books to avoid challenging ideas and are glued to gigantic TV screens feeding them bullshit while a tyrannical government gains ever more power sounds very 2019 to me where we are ruled by someone who has never read a book in his life and spends most of his waking hours glued to a TV screen feeding him bullshit Yeah, but the criticism is broad enough that it could easily be turned on, for example, college kids protesting Nazi sympathizers speaking on their campuses. Or worse, this: https://twitter.com/classiclib3ral/status/1096035721654296576?s=20
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Feb 15, 2019 06:24
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Jurgan posted:Yeah, but the criticism is broad enough that it could easily be turned on, for example, college kids protesting Nazi sympathizers speaking on their campuses. Or worse, this: There isn't a  big enough for this.
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Feb 15, 2019 06:26
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Trapezium Dave posted:First Dog on the Moon: This is literally the biggest news story in the world This stuff is just plain mentally unhealthy.
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Feb 15, 2019 06:30
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Jesus christ.
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Feb 15, 2019 06:32
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Feb 15, 2019 07:07
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Are you for real? Are you actually serious right now Tinsley? You're mad about moving pictures?
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Feb 15, 2019 07:13
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 Ya know, by comparison, Rall isn't quite as bad as a rainbow-haired anime directly defending paedophilia. 2024 read-along: Not as bad as open pedophilia  Rallston goes to the gym, because he is very wide and enjoys exercise, and while exercising he remembers facts. Facts like Amalgamated Papers taking over all of Manhattan, or who won a particular presidential race, or if specific people went to jail. They're all just 2001 name drops that don't loving matter. And now we come to the core of the wrongness of the future: Everyone can change history. Wikipedia is literally all of the knowledge in the world, and anyone can be anyone. In theory, this is a pretty decent heart to throw dystopian blood down cracked and weary veins; in practice, it is entirely wrong for 1984 fanfiction. History gets rewritten, rules get adjusted, and no-one can remember what happened. Note that in the real world, the Wayback Machine launched less than six months after this book was published. Also in the panel where that's revealed people in Ralltopia talk about history having versions which kind of shoots the whole thing in the face because holy poo poo have you met nerds there would be dozens upon dozens of full backups of every version from 0.1. Version control software has existed, in various forms, since the early seventies. Full changesets would be a thing. This is dystopian fiction about computers written by someone who has only ever interacted with the user side of a computer. Which would be fine if Rall was careful to make sure that no-one but The Party had access to the backups, or no-one but Indietek could see the version history, or the backups were explicitly being changed as well, or no-one knew about the loving version that they were looking at or any number of dozens of other ways around the problem that he could have put in place if he had just done his loving research before he picked the method of his dystopia's madness. GAH. Anyway, we hit a bit more of a break from 1984 on the next page, where Rallston officially finds his first bit of old world stuff. Despite working with paper as a child and being affected by the fact that it doesn't exist anymore he doesn't recognise the word when it's told to him. We don't know why he is sent to "the old pulp morgue" which is apparently full of loving paper which is being made into pulp aaaaaaaaaaaargh okay steady, steady. Rallston finds out that the President was once corrupt! He also doesn't apparently know what "federal government" means, or doesn't understand how those words go together, so I don't know why he would care about a president of an organisation he doesn't understand. Rall name-drops AltaVista (eaten by Yahoo! in 2003, dead as of 2013; Google was founded in 1997) as Rallston searches for the history of this guy, and then finds that literally all of over two hundred thousand biographies don't mention that he may have been corrupt. We'll just allow that either AltaVista is capable of summarising all of this off-screen or Rallston is a super-reader, fine, whatever. Rall's giant numbers are once again rendered meaningless by a total lack of context- do people just get lots of biographies? Does this particular president merit such overwhelming coverage? Are those "bios" just articles? Is the president in any way related to the populist party? No idea. Anyway, he just dismisses the whole thing because it can't be a conspiracy, too hard, and apparently info just gets deleted from time to time. From all of the places. At once. In a decentralised dystopia where people are constantly making copies of everything to the point where there are "official" bootlegs and then bootlegs of those bootlegs. And I have no idea what "Just to be safe, I've uploaded the blank file in case anybody upstairs checks" means because Rallston wasn't looking at a loving file he was looking at a piece of paper in a place called "the pulp morgue" you can't upload paper Rall what was he doing there what are you doing here none of this actually matters. I'll remind you that just the previous day, Rallston had a man sent to the thought police for the crime of sending him books. You know, the thing he's now marvelling about. History books exist. Histories exist. Actual non-fiction books about actual people backed up by other books and sources. Also movies! And video! And audio recordings! And photographs! Those are also things! There are more ways of permanently recording things than just loving ink on paper, and in a place as centre-less as Ralltopia they would be loving everywhere. Also, in a world without paper, where being told the word "paper" makes Rallston goggle, the fact that all of Manhattan is now something called Amalgamated Papers and his work knows about a building called the pulp morgue where It's a real consistent world, gang. E: Also riverside health is really clearly some dude's apartment with a couple of treadmills in it, one of 'em's half as long as the other and it ain't even plugged in lol what is that perspective Somfin fucked around with this message at 07:29 on Feb 15, 2019 |
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Feb 15, 2019 07:17
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It begins 
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Feb 15, 2019 07:24
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Imagine feeling this way. The world must seem like a terrifying place.
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Feb 15, 2019 07:55
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CuwiKhons posted:Are you for real? Are you actually serious right now Tinsley? You're mad about moving pictures? Since the comic is in gif format I'd like to think he was reading his Tinsley's insanity and finally snapped. Edit: Jurgan posted:Yeah, but the criticism is broad enough that it could easily be turned on, for example, college kids protesting Nazi sympathizers speaking on their campuses. Or worse, this: Soooooo anime avatar guy outed himself as a pedo. That's what I get out of his rant. KillerJunglist fucked around with this message at 08:00 on Feb 15, 2019 |
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Feb 15, 2019 07:57
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Do I look like I know what a jpeg is?! I just want a picture of a got-dang hot dog!!
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Feb 15, 2019 07:59
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If I ever get this old, someone please just put me out of my misery.
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Feb 15, 2019 08:00
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All Geralds suck, even liberal ones. This cartoon is trash.
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Feb 15, 2019 08:20
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Somfin posted:
So far his drawings have added nothing. Not even decent colour commentary or some immersion. If the text blocks were just one single slab as a preface it would be improved because at least the constant contradictions of his drawings would disappear. I imagine this is what the entire
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Feb 15, 2019 08:52
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Jerry Cotton posted:The proles are running the show. They invented the party and all the trappings to keep the idiots out of general society. You joke, but the Proles have a pretty decent life. They get beer, pornography, sporting events, and an actual market economy. In 1984 the Proles are where you go for basic poo poo like razorblades. They are the hope for the future.
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Feb 15, 2019 09:06
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Didn't the posh middle class women make porn for the proles to help keep them from becoming unruly?
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Feb 15, 2019 09:20
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KillerJunglist posted:Soooooo anime avatar guy outed himself as a pedo. That's what I get out of his rant. That sounds about right, though I imagine he would scoff and adjust his katana before informing you that it is either a. Ephebophilia, and how that is more than merely technically different or b. Ok because she's actually 1,000 years old and only LOOKS like she's 12.
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Feb 15, 2019 09:26
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This isn't just an Old Crank Take, this is an over a century old Old Crank Take. I mean, I'm assuming this is just more "You kids with your twitters and your tumblrs and your smartphones and your hula-hoops and the dungarees, and aaaarhghgh!," but .gif files are just animated pictures. Moving pictures. Which have technically been a thing since 1878. Even GIFs are old as poo poo, they've been around since 1987. Also, Steve Wilhite. Wikipedia says he led that team that created the first GIF standard. So Steve Wilhite is the person you want to meet. Yesssssssssss I knew the Coffee Man would show up in Prickly City sooner or later! Now, how will he be represented; or are you just going to mention his name in the first panel every day? KillerJunglist posted:Since the comic is in gif format I'd like to think he was reading his Tinsley's insanity and finally snapped. As an aside, any time I post the MF in this thread I convert it to png first. Just because. At the same time I resize it down from its native resolution of 1440 by 456 Somfin posted:Rall name-drops AltaVista (eaten by Yahoo! in 2003, dead as of 2013; Google was founded in 1997) I had a sensible chuckle when I got to Rallston doing an AltaVista search. Shoulda thrown Lycos in there too. 
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Feb 15, 2019 09:27
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 Ted Rall posted:Vote Centrist to Keep Things Exactly as Awful as They Are
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Feb 15, 2019 09:27
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He should've left off the "Also, I'm a woman." line.
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Feb 15, 2019 09:35
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a banal point that anyone on the left would agree with, presented in the most obnoxious manner imaginable: the Rall guarantee like this is basically a Lubchansky toon but with 1000% more hitlers
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Feb 15, 2019 09:38
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Raised By Birds posted:He should've left off the "Also, I'm a woman." line.
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Feb 15, 2019 09:53
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AltaVista. Pfft back in my day we used Evreka. Evreka was so easily gamed that the first 3 pages of results were just unrelated ads and after that you might have your search result.
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Feb 15, 2019 09:53
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:I'm sorry but your post reminds me of something that people always seem to forget about 1984. I want to make the pedantic point that in the book, 85% of the people who live in Airstrip One are Proles who have tons of privacy and live very unregulated lives. They don't have to use Newspeak or do morning exercises or wear uniforms or any of the other crap Winston has to deal with. That's just for party members! The vast majority of people in the world of 1984 actually have a lot more privacy than people do in many places in real world 2019. Oh yeah I was actually going to bring it up but thought it might dilute the point somewhat - the proles section of 1984 is fascinating because Winston has this kind of romantic view of them (from memory he writes the line "the only hope we have is the proles") and is thrilled at one point to hear an old washer woman who has taken a mechanically generated "folk song" and somehow turned it into something genuine and "human". At one point he goes among them hoping to find somebody old enough to remember what things were like before The Party, some semblance of actual real, undoctored truth etc. What he finds is a populace that has easily and effectively been distracted and kept under thumb by stuff like the lottery and the promise of wealth to raise up out of their day to day - his attempts to talk with an older guy demonstrate that they might as well be speaking different languages, they talk past each other based on their perception of what the other is like. The proles are "free" insofar as they don't need to be worried about by The Party, because they lack any cohesive force or rallying call - they struggle and don't have easy lives but they're kept uneducated enough/distracted enough it isn't a problem. The problem for the Party is the middle class/Party Members, people like Winston who by necessity need some level of education to perform their functions in society but which also creates the ability to see a wider scope and a potential peek behind the curtain. The proles can't save Winston, and he's used them as an excuse for his own apathy/unwillingness to buck the system. Now you'd think something like this would be right up Rall's alley for 2024. A chance to poo poo on the working class for not rising up in the glorious Rallvolution lead by Rallston? But as far as I can remember, he barely even touches on the proles at all, or if he does it is with that same frustrating sense mentioned earlier where he just takes individual scenes from 1984 and gives them a Rall "twist" before moving on and forgetting what came before and bearing no mind to what comes next.
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Feb 15, 2019 10:10
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I can't read 2024. I appreciate the effort put into the summary but I my eyes just slide right off Rall's work. I'm also willing to bet that nobody outside of this thread has ever actually read this thing.
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Feb 15, 2019 11:01
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Raised By Birds posted:Yesssssssssss I knew the Coffee Man would show up in Prickly City sooner or later! Now, how will he be represented; or are you just going to mention his name in the first panel every day?
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Feb 15, 2019 11:03
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Raised By Birds posted:He should've left off the "Also, I'm a woman." line. Ha, Rall never passes up a chance to poo poo on the idea of diversity as a positive, especially if said diversity is a woman.
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Feb 15, 2019 11:10
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JFC it's not like gifs have been a thing since the Internet became a thing. gently caress off drunk rapist duck quote:
I like this a lot.
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Feb 15, 2019 11:40
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Jerusalem posted:Oh yeah I was actually going to bring it up but thought it might dilute the point somewhat - the proles section of 1984 is fascinating because Winston has this kind of romantic view of them (from memory he writes the line "the only hope we have is the proles") and is thrilled at one point to hear an old washer woman who has taken a mechanically generated "folk song" and somehow turned it into something genuine and "human". At one point he goes among them hoping to find somebody old enough to remember what things were like before The Party, some semblance of actual real, undoctored truth etc. What he finds is a populace that has easily and effectively been distracted and kept under thumb by stuff like the lottery and the promise of wealth to raise up out of their day to day - his attempts to talk with an older guy demonstrate that they might as well be speaking different languages, they talk past each other based on their perception of what the other is like. The proles are "free" insofar as they don't need to be worried about by The Party, because they lack any cohesive force or rallying call - they struggle and don't have easy lives but they're kept uneducated enough/distracted enough it isn't a problem. The problem for the Party is the middle class/Party Members, people like Winston who by necessity need some level of education to perform their functions in society but which also creates the ability to see a wider scope and a potential peek behind the curtain. The proles can't save Winston, and he's used them as an excuse for his own apathy/unwillingness to buck the system. Oh he touches on the proles. Oh they're in there. Oh they're comin'. They've just been recast.
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Feb 15, 2019 12:05
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Internet Kraken posted:I can't read 2024.
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Feb 15, 2019 12:25
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Internet Kraken posted:my eyes just slide right off Rall's work. Appropriate, considering this was made during Rall's old art style when everyone's eyes were offset vertically. 
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Feb 15, 2019 12:36
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Somfin posted:Oh he touches on the proles. Read that last line as "They've just been racist"
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Feb 15, 2019 13:13
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Republicans have an unhealthy lustful obsession with Ocasio-Cortez, AGC
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Feb 15, 2019 13:16
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Jerusalem posted:The problem for the Party is the middle class/Party Members, people like Winston who by necessity need some level of education to perform their functions in society but which also creates the ability to see a wider scope and a potential peek behind the curtain. And modern society has solved this problem by simply eradicating the middle-class, in favor of the so-called "hourglass economy" where people are either miserably poor or absurdly rich.
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Feb 15, 2019 13:26
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Shazback posted:So far his drawings have added nothing. Not even decent colour commentary or some immersion. If the text blocks were just one single slab as a preface it would be improved because at least the constant contradictions of his drawings would disappear. His drawings detract from the text because they don't add anything and aren't laid out in a comprehensible pattern. At least First Dog On Moon puts the panels in a normal order and they're similarly sized so you know which one comes next.
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Feb 15, 2019 14:02
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