Day: August 7, 2015

Note: forgot to post this one…

Sam Esmail’s Mr. Robot is one of a handful of shows to hold my attention this summer. There are great moments of self-awareness that start with the episode names themselves. As we watch this neurotic/psychotic hacker unravel we are often left with the idea of what is real and what is merely his perception of what the hacker life should/could become. In fact, there is a near 4^th wall moment where one of the hackers remarks that some TV guy is gonna come along and define how the world perceives the next generation of hackers. Touché. Only, that isn’t the only thing defined by the actions of the show. In truth the portrayal of the villain, the aptly named Evil Corp, the show also defines the corporate rat race. Where Mr. Robot seeks to create a hacker identity it instead develops a compelling corporate identity that feels all to real and accessible.

As an only child I was pretty proud of the stuff I had. As mentioned here before, I owned several G.I. Joe figures, a doll house, a Hulk Hogan (why, Hulk? Why? Sucks that they snatched your job though) action figure, and a complete metal model of the Five Lion Voltron. I mention the last one to afford an air of cool to an otherwise cool-free childhood. The rest of the stuff made me feel like I made it. My points of comparison were few and far between, however. Once I started going to friends houses, I recognized that my made it was in fact quite minimal. That, my friends, is the corporate rat race. It doesn’t matter how much you have in comparison to those below you. Corpers are never graded on that. It matters how much more you have than those who should be considered your equal in some measure. In truth, you haven’t made it at all until you discover you have no equal in the hierarchy.

That is the vision that Mr. Robot puts forward, and one I intend to further in my own writings about capitalism.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. The website will be back sometime tomorrow. That’s a good thing.

So, the site is back, Stewart is gone, and the strange reality show that is the Trump campaign rolls on. Life is a very interesting miracle and one that has brought many new things to think about and consider. I failed to watch the debate tonight, but I saw the highlights and the resulting discussion on the news channels. What is interesting about the entire situation from a sociological perspective is the role of ‘buzz’ and black and white thinking in the political election system. The news heads are talking about who won and whether or not Trump looked presidential and failing to capture the real story, which is the fact that this entire situation is about popularity and how to ‘look’ presidential. What are the good sound bytes? Who delivered them? How were the candidates able to explain away or make up for earlier guffaws? How long did it take for 9/11 to be dredged up?

The winner of that last one is Christie who talked about his famous hug with Obama by saying he remembers hugging the families of the victims of 9/11. He was largely applauded by the media (and crowd) for this bit of slickness. I think the better bit of news head work would’ve been to ask why hugging Obama matters one dang bit. ‘Optics’ I guess, something we’ve come to appreciate in the new political world.

Moving away from politics, I have little to say about the last Daily Show. I haven’t watched it yet. I’m waiting for the right time. I do think it is interesting to live in an era between shows–where so many iconic bits of entertainment are ending and so many more are only beginning. Letterman, Leno, Stewart.. they are an important part of the American cultural makeup. For many they served as rallying points for ideas and interests. I wonder who that role falls to now?

 

I’ve encountered no less than a dozen highly publicized wrongful death cases involving police officers this year. Not once did I make or even hear a call for the national defunding of the police force. Recently some damning footage has surfaced showing a Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast exec basically selling harvested tissue. This is wrong on every level, but it doesn’t match what happened as a result. The senate moved to defund Planned Parenthood. Now I’m clearly not giving the whole story—Repubs have been pushing for a PP defund vote for a long time, but the fact is this polarized environment allows everything to serve as a catalyst for absolute response.

 

What ever happened to moderation?

 

I remember being raised under the banner of ‘don’t throw the baby out with the bath water’. The core philosophy of my youth was nuance. Nothing existed under a black and white dichotomy, yet now everything exists in the vein. If you have a problem with something, destroy it. We are a disposable society in that way…

 

Some Thoughts:

1. There is something really wrong with Ted Cruz’s appearance. I’m not sure if it is bad plastic surgery or what, but the dude makes me very uncomfortable.
2. Since we are on the subject of the political realm, the Trump thing doesn’t seem real to me, but it is. In fact, I have a real fear that Trump has the sort of ‘it factor’ to draw a new demographic to the polls and use that to catapult into a legitimate candidacy. The base has flipped. Today I heard a republican pundit call Jeb Bush ‘almost hispanic’ because he has a Hispanic wife. They are reaching for anything that draws in enough people to break the Hillary-hold.
3. Recently I published a story that features flooding in India. I short sold the conditions. Today I heard about two trains swept off the road by flooding out there. Conditions in many parts of the world are so bad that it makes me feel very guilty to have space and comforts…. This laptop is a comfort.

Preface: The following blogs cover a brief period of poverty during which I was unable to restart my site. Instead I wrote offline and gathered the files with hopes of posting them shorty. This is shortly…

 

I woke this morning to discover my website was down. This is an unusual occurrence, which is usually predicated by weather or nuclear strike. This time the culprit was cold hard cash. I run the talislegger website on a biennial subscription and as it turns out it is time to pay the piper. That raised an interesting question: Do I actually need to own a piece of a server in order to effectively run a website?

 

Short answer: No. I picked up the server space around the turn of the century when I masqueraded as Djmalik and had a lot of proprietary data housed at djmalik.com. I had kids in triplicate and retired from the biz (though I feel a mixtape coming on). Djmalik died out alongside thoughtwired.com and a handful of other websites I maintained for various purposes.

 

Today I don’t have those sites or any real need for server space. The 10 Minute rule is more or less the extent of my web presence, so I’m basically parking a domain name with limited use. No, don’t go hack my extra storage. Bad hacker. Bad! The truth is the server remains as a promise and an opportunity for growth. I did more on the web once, and one day I could do more again.

 

Once I figure out what exactly I want from the Interwebs…