The problem is that it’s not “real”. Under capitalism your grief doesn’t count for anything it might as well not exist, it’s reasons might as well not exist. In as such a character who is experiencing grief without knowing why and only exists within the context of work is the most abstract presentation of humanistic grief under a capitalist system. Our relations are so alienated this feeling itself might as well be alien itself.

They’re trying to make a point. It’s a show to make the viewer feel smart for “getting it”. They could have made a much better one if they took the concept seriously and weren’t so small minded. Mark S is going thru it in the show. That’s an obvious emotional element, but it’s squandered.

You’re basically asking for solidarity movies: They Live is a classic one. Sorry to Bother You. Hackers. Planet of the Apes Trilogy (the 2010’s version). O Brother Where Art Thou. Ip Man 1. Stalker.

I think just to clarify. Capitalist realism doesn’t necessarily doom these shows to being bad. The thing that dooms these shows is the combination of capitalist realism and the need to appeal to the broadest possible audiences in a simplistic way. You can have a show trapped in capitalist realism and still have a good show. Squid Game Season 1 (I’m avoiding Season 2 it’s irrelevant, there’s nothing more they can say) was perfect in that sense. It was a great critique of capitalism where victory is hollow. Your characters in the story can get crushed by the system! It’s a real thing that happens, it has emotional weight and it’s a human understanding of the problem. Writers rooms avoid this shit because Americans love treats not art, they simply want their treats to pretend to treat them like adults who can handle art. So you get these “high concept” things that run into a brick wall fairly quickly.

For example: The Good Place could have explored Kiirkegaardian ethics where Kiirkegaard says that humans in aggregate are responsible for the systems under which they live, and they can be punished for it in aggregate. The Good Place character arcs could have explored that within how to live with being in a position where you’re constantly being unethical in a way you have no real choice in, and how the characters deal with it.

Severance never faces the fact that the flaw in its own conceit is much more salacious than anything the show does. The main flaw in Severance’s concept is that we’re biomechanical machines and not electronic robots. So the side effects of grieving a wife will still severely affect the performance, mood, and mental health of your “innie” because their chemical and structural precursors are all there. Which is literally more horrifying of a personal story than the “omg we’re doing slavery as an evil cult but we won’t say wink” that Apple TV writers do in this shit.

Imagine that your only existence is 9-5 and for whatever reason you’re always ill, you never feel good, you wake up like this and you go to sleep like this. You have no way to improve this situation because you cannot leave your prison, you have no way to even figure out what’s going on. Instead it’s a big old “who dun it” with all the ChatGPT style hallmarks of hack modern writing. The real horror is that not only can this go horribly wrong, someone might attempt it because they’re stupid enough to think it will go right.

The concept of Severance is literally a torment nexus in and of itself, not because it’s done by an evil cult. That’s why you’ll see a bunch of libs on BlueSky and Twitter praying for Severance IRL like people prayed for Squid Games. This is the exact hack lib writing problem that the US Office, the Good Place and Lovecraft Country had – that it’s capitalist realism.

The Office and The Good Place are obvious. The Office becomes flanderized cuteness about how work is quirky and not an unstable arbitrary constructed system made by morons, unlike the UK version. The Good Place discovers capitalism and then pretends that there’s no reason that humans should be responsible for it’s creation and existence in the view of cosmic justice.

Lovecraft Country is actually one of the worst fucking ones. What’s the central conceit? “Lovecraft was racist.” It doesn’t go any deeper than that. Yes Lovecraft was racist. Yes cosmic horror as a genre has it’s roots in fear of the unknown other. We know that applying that to races is bullshit. That’s a baby brained thing. But guess what, the fear of a group of people whose intentions are unknown, unknowable, capricious, and they wield great power to affect your life – yet you have seemingly no way to fight them. You know who that is? I’ll give you a hint:

But no we have to remind everyone how good and liberal and virtue signalling we are as a writers room of an HBO TV show. Channel Zero Butcher’s Block for all its faults at least presented a clear interesting story and didn’t shy away from, “oh yeah these people are interdimensional beings who are extracting value from this community and are literally eating its members because they owned a factory once but it stopped being profitable.”

By the way Lovecraft Country was literally written by a white guy. He even looks like Bradley Whitford’s character in Get Out:

Stock prices are not a perfect reflection of real value. The price can easily be distorted by the beliefs of people with money, who can spend that money on Tesla stock to own the trans. This doesn’t translate to wider market dominance or profitability of Tesla’s bad products.

This is because capitalism is actually a bad price discovery mechanism for securities. In commodities markets corrections are quick because there’s a real input-output happening to the commodity. A security’s value is literally greater fool theory. You could rig a commodity market but you effectively need a near monopoly/monospony/cartel to do it over a long period of time. There is no “running out of stocks” because stocks aren’t used for anything. So there’s effectively no real floor for any security. This is exactly why they were able to do financial fraud for such a long time in 2008. The securities system crashes based on speculation and technicalities not realities, reality can help get it there but it’s not guaranteed.

What does this even mean practically for the technology right now? Are the Trump failson appointees to the nuclear security groups in National Labs asking chat gpt to do their homework for them???

cursed prediction: proprietary headphones get sound quality privileges on their manufacturer’s devices… users pay a subscription fee for “compatibility” with non-proprietary headphones

This is already partially true, Galaxy Buds and Pixel Buds have better support/features on their vertically integrated Android flavor compared to others.

At this point if I want the best audio quality I’m sitting down and using my Hifiman Sundaras thru my Schiit Amp and Dac stack. When I’m mobile I am usually not paying enough attention.

What happens is that they actually measure this shit. Walmart has an entire system that tracks how much staffing affects customer attrition in order to keep staffing at minimum levels without losing too much in sales.

You can do a true wireless IEM with the Schure True Wireless Adapter. I’m running Linsoul 7Hz Timeless off of mine. Bigger box than fully integrated true wireless buds, but it does allow you to drive MMCX IEMs and it has a very good battery in comparison. The 2 pin options are worse than the MMCX options only FIIO and KZ makes them.

The only good (tech wise) true wireless buds are typically the flag ships from tech brands (Sony/Apple/Beats/Samsung/Google) but the audio quality is typically average compared to wired IEMs or a Schure True Wireless setup, the Sony flagship WF-XM1004/5’s are better, but the battery basically thins out too much over time.

I’ve had Galaxy Buds / 2 Pro / WF-XM1004s/ Schure True Wireless, and the glitchiest ones have honestly been the Sonys. Maybe the momentum 4 TW are just a bit janky in terms of wireless hardware and sound hardware, because I have had a good time with the Schure True Wireless adapters.

Many new phones don’t even have a digital audio converter built in anymore, so the basic USB C to 3.5mm pass through dongles don’t work. You have to get a dedicated DAC dongle and many can’t even charge the phone while they are in use, it’s insane.

Ah so Adams has Billions’d himself out of this huh.

Meanwhile Chris Murphey went on PodJohnsPodJohnHour and said that Democrats are quiet because people keep calling them on the staffer office lines and telling them to kill themselves.

The US Opposition is hilarious. These people really thought they’d defeat fascism in 2016.

In practice they’ll wholly generate things and lie through their teeth in court and to the copyright office – the government will take them at face value.

I am in software so it’s the least bad option. Software options are like:

• Scams
• Waste
• Terror
• Neoliberal Helping

This one of those things that seems anachronistic but it’s not. Much like the complaint tablet of El Nasir

Yeah people tabulated data thousands of years ago, crazy. In fact you probably do less personal accounting than people 200 years ago let alone ~5000.

This is one of those America brained things where you don’t realize that there are these things called seasons that affect resource extraction and in societies where you didn’t have the global imperial might to cajole resource trade in off seasons and have the logistical technology to deliver it, you had to actually plan for winter or die.

It’s why almanacs were a thing for centuries, here’s a Roman one inscribed on a stone pillar:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menologia_rustica

As a person who has had many neoliberal paradigm helping jobs and currently has one: my brother in christ we are the anomie.

The way the helping from a neoliberal paradigm works is creating anomie by carving out and privatizing what should be public services.

The example machines in the first picture are type AT-101 SM which meant they had the glass rinser which is true. The problem? No soap. So you’d often find lipstick on the glasses, not really a “wash”.

But the risk of infection is minimal and nobody really got sick from them in any noticeable way, it’s just icky. Drunks stole the glasses all the time tho.

Here’s a museum talking about the soda machine inside of the GES-2 power plant.

Imagine a Coke Freestyle Machine that only serves seltzer, but instead of plastic cups you have 2 glasses. This machine is a vending machine that’s just installed on the street. There is nowhere to wash the glasses.

This is an older design, but it shows the glasses well.

This is the “classic” design that’s Sovietana

This is a modernized replica that you’d use with paper cups

This is retaliation in every state.

Nah it’s actually a real thing, it was a real thing in the United States too. My mom’s side of the fam hated the public soda fountains because they thought sharing cups with half the city was gross.