On a more positive note re: Donnie Darko, I was impressed with the efficiency of the writing in this exchange:
Rose’s Friend: And so his tapes have me realize that for the last 39 years I have been a prisoner of my own fear.
Rose Darko: Fear?
Rose’s Friend: Rose, you have got to meet this Jim Cunningham. I can’t believe he’s single.
So, first of all, this is funny. Second, it helps solidify an element of the plot that could be confusing – that the guy in the “fear and love” videotape Donnie has to watch in class is also going to appear onscreen as a character (and hence is someone the other characters might meet). And third, the last line – which is also key to the humor – foreshadows the coming revelation that the character is a pedophile (that’s why he’s single).
I don’t think this kind of “efficiently functional” writing is necessarily always the best kind of writing. Once you notice the gears turning behind it, it can feel artificial, unreal. But it takes craft and reflective deliberation, which is surprising coming from the guy who would later write Southland Tales.
Why does Amazon’s ascent matter? Aren’t lower prices and greater efficiencies better for everyone? They are, in all the obvious ways, but that’s not a complete picture. Amazon’s seemingly boundless growth forces us to wrestle with difficult questions about the reasons for its dominance.
For one, Amazon, unlike any other firm its size, has changed the basic compact with financial markets. It has replaced the expectation for profits with a focus on vision and growth, managing its business to break even while investors bid up its stock price.
This radical approach has provided the company with a staggering advantage in free-flowing capital. Google, Facebook, Wal-Mart and most Fortune 500 companies are saddled with expectations of profits. Many firms would be much more innovative if they were given a license to operate without the nuisance of profitability. Amazon has thus had enormous capital on hand to invest in delivery networks, especially the crucial last link for getting goods to the doorsteps of consumers, without having to worry that they don’t yield immediate profits.
[…]
Because Amazon is more efficient than other retailers, it is able to transact the same amount of business with half the employees. If Amazon continues to grow its business by $20 billion a year, the annual toll of lost jobs for merchants, buyers and cashiers will be in the tens of thousands by my calculations. Disruption in the U.S. labor force is nothing new—we have just never dealt with a company that is so ruthless and single-minded about it.
I recently spoke at a conference the day after Jeff Bezos. During his talk, he made the case for a universal guaranteed income for all Americans. It is tempting to admire his progressive values and concern for the public welfare, but there is a dark implication here too. It appears that the most insightful mind in the business world has given up on the notion that our economy, or his firm, can support that pillar of American identity: a well-paying job.
(Scott Galloway, Amazon Takes Over the World)
small, dimly-lit brain: Amazon vindicates Marx because it has the qualities he attributed to late-stage capitalism (tendency of the rate of profit to fall, creation of a reserve army of labor, etc.)
galaxy-spanning brain composed of pure light: Amazon vindicates Marx because it’s ushering in a new, better, post-capitalist mode of production, all hail comrade Bezos
marx/engels masterpost
beginner texts
primary literature:
- the communist manifesto - karl marx & friedrich engels
- socialism: utopian and scientific - friedrich engels
- value, price, and profit - karl marx
secondary literature:
- the revolutionary ideas of karl marx - alex callinicos
- why marx was right - terry eagleton
- formation of the economic thought of karl marx - ernest mandel
- an introduction to marxist economic theory - ernest mandel
- unravelling capitalism - joseph choonara
intermediate texts
primary literature:
- a contribution to the critique of political economy - karl marx
- the german ideology - karl marx & friedrich engels
- the origin of the family, private property, and the state - friedrich engels
- the condition of the working class in england - friedrich engels
secondary literature:
- state and revolution - vladimir lenin
- reform or revolution - rosa luxemburg
- marx’s ecology - john bellamy foster
- moneybags must be so lucky - robert paul wolff
- marx’s concept of man - eric fromm
- the theory of capitalist development - paul sweezy
- monopoly capital - paul sweezy & paul baran
- marx on money - suzanne de brunhoff
- marxist economic theory vol 1 - ernest mandel
- marxist economic theory vol 2 - ernest mandel
- contending economic theories - richard wolff & stephen resnick
- seventeen contradictions and the end of capitalism - david harvey
- an introduction to the three volumes of karl marx’s capital - michael heinrich
advanced texts
primary literature:
- capital vol 1 - karl marx
- capital vol 2 - karl marx
- capital vol 3 - karl marx
- theories of surplus value - karl marx
- grundrisse - karl marx
secondary literature:
- the production of commodities by means of commodities - piero sraffa
- capitalism: competition, conflict, crises - anwar shaikh
- reclaiming marx’s capital - andrew kliman
- marx’s theory of price and its modern rivals - howard nicholas
- essays on marx’s theory of value - isaak rubin
- money and totality - fred moseley
- late capitalism - ernest mandel
- marx’s economics - michio morishima
- marx beyond marx - antonio negri
(via hamiltonianflow)
There was a whole lot of goofy stuff in the Donnie Darko Director’s Cut and the voice commentary track for it, because Richard Kelly apparently planned a whole lot of sci-fi comic book logic “explaining” why everything happened, and (fortuitously!) had to leave it out of the original cut
Anyway, the one thing that sums this up best, for me, is that in the Director’s Cut commentary for that scene where Drew Barrymore’s edgy English teacher character says “sit next to the boy you think is the cutest,” Kelly clarifies that she didn’t say this because it’s the sort of thing the character would say (even though it is), but because a transhuman AI god from the future manipulated her mind so as to encourage the budding attraction between Donnie and Jena Malone’s character, since they both had important roles to play in its cosmic plan
I just blew my own mind with the realization that everything about Rebecca Black’s “Friday” video would make perfect sense if it were a tech demo for the world’s first robotic pop star
The so-autotuned-it-sounds-synthesized voice, Black’s unnaturally motionless smile, her unconvincing attempts to convey enthusiasm – the lyrics themselves even, you could imagine an AI coming up with them and everyone being impressed while also laughing at how computers still don’t get all the nuances of language and of pop music
Professor Francis W. M. R. Schwarze of th Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology has succeeded in modifying the wood for a violin through treatment with special fungi, making it sound indistinguishably similar to a Stradivarius.
Oh, oh! But that’s not all.
So in modern taxonomy there’s a concept called a “type specimen.” This is a preserved corpse, image, or detailed description which defines a type (species or genus). All the other attributes of a type definition basically amount to “is this close enough to Type Specimen XYZ to be called the same thing as it?” In the event that thinking on where the boundaries are set changes (and that happens ALL THE TIME) whatever’s on the same side of the new boundary keeps the old type; anything placed on the other side needs a new name. (And a new type specimen is selected for that new group.)
Now, this is a fairly recent innovation– older taxonomical systems going back to Linnaeus thought things would be more static than that, so they didn’t feel the need to have a system for what to do in the event of changes. Now, the rule for type specimens is that they have to be one the person who originally came up with the species knew / got to examine. For most of the species Linnaeus described, he’d worked from a specific specimen anyway, and at least a detailed description was preserved, so that was OK.Problem was Homo sapiens. His description of us amounted to, well, “dis us.” So the modern taxonimists trying to retrofit THAT to up-to-date standards had to sit down and have a good think. And what they came up with was “Well… There’s one specimen of humanity we know for absolute certain Linnaeus examined in great detail. And there are images preserved, and we know where the remains are.”
So Carl Linnaeus is not just human… Carl Linnaeus is the one person who, no matter what the heck weird changes may happen in taxonomy, is human by definition.
(via shabbytigers)
Let’s say you and I are discussing what we did for our birthdays, and I mention that I trapped a caribou, dressed it up in spandex and legwarmers, and taught it to perform a routine to the song “Flashdance … What a Feeling.” If you are a scientist, your first question is going to be, “What do we mean when we say ‘caribou’?”