valium_aggelein [none/use name]

one of the most consistently informative podcasts

Ghost Stories for the end of the world (podcast) has a good series on this. if i recall correctly, i think one of their theories implicates South Africa

nice, glad you’re enjoying it! i think east of eden is his “best” book but grapes of wrath is so endlessly quotable it’s insane. you will definitely like it if you already fuck with his writing style

there are a lot of different readings on the narrator in east of eden. the narrator is a character in the book (though it is also supposed to be steinbeck since the steinbeck family is related to the arc in some way that i cant remember). some of what the narrator says is supposed to be satirical or ironic. i think there is some sense of irony in this quote. at least that is how i always interpreted it since its so obviously a “rugged individualism” jerk off which does not really reflect Steinbeck’s own philosophy. 100% steinbeck was critical of the USSR at this point and even worked with the CIA around this time but he was still engaged with the american “left” which even at its lamest was going to have some small degree of collective spirit. the american dream is an obvious theme in east of eden and one that steinbeck has complicated thoughts on. he takes it pretty literally in that it is a dream and not a reality but the fact that it is still a widespread dream makes it have a huge impact on the lives of americans and i think he finds that admirable. east of eden is an incredible piece of literature and like any good piece of literature, i think it contains a lot of different layers but of course understanding steinbeck’s own opinions around this time is important for interpreting it.

by the end of his life his views definitely got worse and worse though. awful opinions on the vietnam war, for example. grapes of wrath is still one of the best pieces of proleterian literature out there however.

At the last few large protests in my city, three or four different high school kids spoke about the large school walkouts they organized at their high schools for the jan 20 and jan 30th strikes. These were significant walkouts. A couple of them even made the connection between the genocide in Gaza and oppression at home (one of them was a Palestinian-American, so obviously, conditions make it a lot clearer to them, but still). idk some of these kids are a lot more tuned in than I was at their age.

the vanguard will be led by Tim Heidecker and Greg Turkington

yeah, it’s embarrassing this was posted here

Hm I should definitely revisit it then. It’s totally possible for me to imagine a situation where he is able to write well on the writing process and provide good info while himself not being a writer I’d really give much credit. Stranger things have happened haha

Upper New England can be affordable and then you are mostly limited to Vermont and specific parts of Maine for progressive pockets. If you are in rural Maine or Vermont the winters are absolutely no joke though. Vermont does rock, I love visiting. Lack of jobs is the main reason why people I know leave. Every time I go to New Hampshire I feel like it gets worse and worse public politics wise. Obvi there are progressive pockets though and it’s still an enjoyable state depending on ur interests. Lower New England is definitely not affordable though (but significantly more progressive on average and of course way more job options). Metro Boston is one of the most expensive cities in the country but I can’t leave because I need walkable city life. Providence is still relatively affordable however and is a really great and underrated city. Very progressive, alternative, walkable in a lot of areas. I do have a bit of a nostalgic bias towards it but it’s a place a lot of people don’t want to leave when they settle in long enough and I go there often. CT I have nothing to say about.

I loved him as a kid but reading his stuff as an adult is not easy… I remember thinking Pet Sematary was so fucking good and scary when I was around 10. But I just read it again last week and it does not hold up much at all. He’s just a straight up bad writer. Like I felt second hand embarrassment from his writing style at points. Funny how many point to his essay on writing as a good reference for someone trying to learn how to be an author. I think he sometimes comes up with good story ideas and that can be enough to sit through and finish the occasional one but it is 100% slop as the writing itself has zero artistic merit but he thinks he has the chops to go on for 500+ pages. I actually do kinda enjoy the shining from an entertainment perspective and it’s so far the only one I’ve liked that I’ve revisited as an adult but it’s still wicked far from an impressive piece of writing.

The Boston PSL gets pretty large showings to their events as they are quite active and there are plenty of people in the city interested in some sort of vague radical politic. A lot of people I know attend the rallies but don’t know really what the PSL is. They just show up cause of the messaging and it getting shared on social media. And it’s not like they talk through the full party program at each rally. So I can kinda see the senate run as maybe a good PR move to really put the name of the org itself out there more to turn the attention they get from rallies into membership or more dedicated followings. Idk how successful it’ll be. Obviously I hope it works. The Boston PSL does a lot of great stuff

“Before you get too excited” yeah can’t say I was

I want to get out of this industry so fucking bad but I don’t know HOW. I do also have a music degree but that’s even less useful for $$ haha

Building a completely local library for music was one of the best moves I made. I ended up using plex with plexamp (an astoundingly good player). What’s outlined in this article is definitely a good idea too though

For those who may find this daunting, you might want to start building ur collection by switching to Apple Music. Obviously, eventually you should move off it but Apple Music is a good stepping stone because it allows you to integrate local files into the library pretty seamlessly in a way Spotify just does not support. So you can continue to use streaming while building out your library and then make the transition to a completely self hosted service with much less effort.

I did this a couple years ago. It was definitely a huge task. I split it up over the course of a few months. Downloading albums I didn’t already have from slsk, tagging them with music brainz, putting them up on a plex server (I bought a tiny cheap PC and a hard drive for this purpose alone). I’m very glad I did it and now I can stream the library anywhere but it’s definitely a mammoth task

the way people listen to music nowadays is awful and has made the average person wayyyy less capable of talking about music. It’s actually very sad. Constant drive to consume new tunes without any context of deep listening to an album or looking at the evolution in a bands discography. I hope streaming services die for this reason alone. Being more deliberate about what you listen to is a good thing for your artistic mind. So hopefully some people do actually switch to pirating again and spend time building out a library of their own

Congrats on the initial exercise goal! What is the long term one??

Reading before bed is key. Dual benefit of getting more reading done and makes you sleepy in a way staring at your phone just doesn’t

Kind of an off week for me so was far less productive than usual. Combination of a frustrating period of work and some hard to pin down stresses. It was a relatively social week however, so gotta take that as a win at least.

I did accomplish some things however:

• baked bread for the first time
• 7 months without drinking
• did some reading on imperialism and feel like I got a better grasp on it now as far as it being the “highest stage of capitalism” instead of just the more popular use definition
• made some progress on two songs I’m writing for a folkish side project
  • one I’m pretty excited about as it uses Reich’s phasing ideas but it’s the first time I’ve done that with guitar. Results are turning out cooler than what I imagined in my head :]
• now actually halfway through Infinite Jest (yes, I know har har whatever it’s actually a good book though)

Things I majorly fell off on:

• exercise went WAY down. I think I only exercised like once this week and zero yoga
• daily instrument practice skipped three days in a row
  • I’m usually okay with one day skipped now and then but three is a legitimate progress problem
• only went for a walk a few times this week so did not get outside nearly as much as I want to
  • this prob didn’t help with my lack of motivation
• had an unexpected high medical expense which SUCKED

For this week:

• get back into my exercise/yoga schedule
• planning to read a bit more on China to get just slightly familiar with things like socialism with Chinese characteristics, Chinese Dream, etc… just like a rough overview of the guiding values of the Xi period
• want to get to at least page 600 of infinite jest as I need to finish it by the end of August so I can move on to other stuff on my backlog
• want to come up with some more exercises for guitar that can be done away from a guitar (on vacation from home this weekend)
• want to continue trying out some new stuff for my hair as I’m kinda embracing the curly girl journey lifestyle at the moment (I am a man lol)

Tits are right wing. Ass is left wing. Literally everyone knows this