wake blake

As a Gen Xer, I’ve been sold a steady diet of Boomer crap since I was born. At this point, I know more about Boomer pop culture than I do Gen X pop culture. All the classics — the classic bands, the classic movies — everything from the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s — that’s all Boomer shit. Gen X basically got one decade, the ’90s. Boomers have The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Monkees, The Kinks, The Who, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Jackson Browne, The Eagles, Michael Jackson, Wham!, The Cure, even R.E.M.  Gen X has Nirvana. And Beyoncé. The one place that Gen Xers have excelled is making tech billionaires. We have Sergey and Bezos, Musk, and Jack Dorsey — and a bunch of other guys, mostly guys. Boomers have, like, Larry Ellison, some Waltons who inherited stuff, some Mars people who inherited stuff, and I don’t know — is Bloomberg a Boomer? He might be older than a Boomer.  Millennials are doing all right on th...

On our modern gods The other day my brother and I were talking about current events. Somehow, the old notion of "tv is the new god" came up.  That was a popular idea a few years ago, that television had replaced religion as the place where we get our values. But TV has been dethroned by the phone, so the question came up, is the phone the new god? But then there's the old god, which isn't the oldest god, and seems to be holding strong as the meter for what's appropriate behavior for some people. A lot of people. And that line of thinking gave me some fresh insight into our current world.  See, here's the thing. Let's set aside right/wrong/true/untrue for a minute, and examine mind control through the ages. In the forgotten past, that may have looked a lot like some tribes still alive now, we were hunter-gatherers and lived in family-esque groups. Those groups had various beliefs about the world, that were handed down by ...

Two blog posts in a week? What's happening?  Well, to be honest... I'm reading a paper book. And right now I'm lying in bed next to my wife in the dark. At this time, I might normally read an ebook. But I'm reading a paper book, which requires a light. So instead, you get to look at my old screenshots.  Let's start with framing. Framing is one part of propaganda. At top, a literal demonstration of framing, or cropping, really.  Here's another one. This is how Fox News covered the depraved drug party called BurningMan: And here's how an attendee captured their arts festival in the desert: Same event, same day and weather, even.  What else is in my phone?  (Why we see homeless camps piled high with trash.) (Oh, plus it's hard to get trash service with no address.) Sometimes you don't have to say much to get your point across.  Um, see what you will in this g...