Posts Tagged ‘comic strips’
“Our poetry is courage, audacity and revolt”*…
One of your correspondent’s daily delights is Rusty Foster‘s Today in Tabs, a newsletter that informs and provokes as it, inevitably, amuses. Take for example this excerpt from Monday’s installment, subtitled “Today in Fascism”…
“Could the end of the AI hype cycle be in sight?” asked TechBrew’s Patrick Kulp and precisely on time today here’s a doorstop of LinkedIn-brained crypto-(but-not-too-crypto)-fascism from Egg Andreessen titled “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto.” It’s very long, and you should absolutely not read it, but it’s useful for finally making explicit the fascist philosophy that people like Brad Johnson have long argued is growing steadily less implicit in Silicon Valley’s techno-triumphalism.
“Techno-Optimists believe that societies, like sharks, grow or die,” writes Egg, and Rose Eveleth was already like 🤔:
But before going fully mask-off, Andreessen has some crazy things to say about AI.
There are scores of common causes of death that can be fixed with AI, from car crashes to pandemics to wartime friendly fire.
But AI can surely help us kill the right people in war much more efficiently, yes? Still, he needs to make a pseudo-moral case to keep pumping cash into the AI bubble, so we get this:
We believe any deceleration of AI will cost lives. Deaths that were preventable by the AI that was prevented from existing is a form of murder.
Got that, Untermenschen? Regulation == murder. [Followed by the photo at the top]
But let’s get to the good stuff, in the section titled “Becoming Technological Supermen” (I swear I’m not making this up).
We believe in the romance of technology, of industry. The eros of the train, the car, the electric light, the skyscraper. And the microchip, the neural network, the rocket, the split atom.
We believe in adventure. Undertaking the Hero’s Journey, rebelling against the status quo, mapping uncharted territory, conquering dragons, and bringing home the spoils for our community.
To paraphrase a manifesto of a different time and place: “Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Technology must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.”
The first two paragraphs here are just bonkers. He’s horny for trains? I guess he saw North By Northwest at an impressionable age. But that last paragraph contains the only quote in the whole piece that isn’t attributed to a specific source, and it turns out it’s not really a paraphrase, it’s a direct quote from Filippo Marinetti’s 1909 “Futurist Manifesto” with “technology” substituted for the original’s “poetry.” I wonder if Marinetti wrote any other famous manifestos?
In case we somehow still don’t get it, Andreessen specifies that “The Enemy” is “the ivory tower, the know-it-all credentialed expert worldview, indulging in abstract theories, luxury beliefs, social engineering, disconnected from the real world, delusional, unelected, and unaccountable…” and then drops an extended Nietzsche excerpt. You know who else hated the ivory tower and loved Nietzsche?…
“Industrial Society and Its Future (Are Gonna Be Great!),” from @rusty.todayintabs.com. Do yourself the favor of subscribing to Today in Tabs— it’s marvelous.
* Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Manifesti Futuristi
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As we reprioritize prudence, we might recall that it was on this date in 1896 that Richard F. Outcault‘s comic strip Hogan’s Alley— featuring “the Yellow Kid” (Mickey Dugan)– debuted in William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal. While “the Yellow Kid” had appeared irregularly before, it was the first the first full-color comic to be printed regularly (many historians suggest), and one of the earliest in the history of the comic; Outcault’s use of word balloons in the Yellow Kid influenced the basic appearance and use of balloons in subsequent newspaper comic strips and comic books. Outcault’s work aimed at humor and social commentary; but (perhaps ironically) the concept of “yellow journalism” referred to stories which were sensationalized for the sake of selling papers (as in the publications of Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, an earlier home to sporadic appearances of the Yellow Kid) and was so named after the “Yellow Kid” cartoons.
“Then we got into a labyrinth, and when we thought we were at the end, came out again at the beginning, having still to seek as much as ever.”*…
On the heels of Wordle‘s extraordinary success, there have been a rash of variations: e.g., Crosswordle, Absurdle, Quordle, even the NSFW Lewdle.
Now for the National Gallery of Art, another nifty puzzle: Artle.
Enjoy!
* Plato, Euthydemus
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As we play, we might recall that it was on this date in 1934 that Mandrake the Magician first appeared in newspapers. A comic strip, it was created by Lee Falk (before he created The Phantom)… and thus its crime-fighting, puzzle-solving hero is regarded by most historians of the form to have been America’s first comic superhero.
“I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it people like me”*…
The Cummings Center for the History of Psychology has a large collection of some of the most important apparatus and objects related to psychological science and practice covering the past 150 years. There are brass chronoscopes from the 1800s that measured reaction time in one-thousandths of a second. There are a variety of rat mazes, tachistoscopes, and Skinner boxes. The “shock” machine used by Stanley Milgram in his famous obedience studies is in the Center’s collections as are a Bobo doll from Albert Bandura’s research, guard uniforms from Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison study, a surrogate monkey head from Harry Harlow’s studies of love in monkeys, and one of B. F. Skinner’s air cribs. The Center is always looking to add to its collections, including items that were of questionable scientific value. One such item is the Psycho-Phone [pictured above].
Similar in principle to audio devices today that play messages during a person’s sleep, for example, alleging sleep learning, the Psycho-Phone was the invention of Alois Benjamin Saliger (1880-1969) who patented his machine in 1932 as an “Automatic Time-Controlled Suggestion Machine.” The device was essentially an Edison-style phonograph with a timer that played the contents from a wax cylinder during the period of sleep. Saliger believed that the messages delivered during sleep would enter a person’s unconscious and have a powerful influence on the individual’s behavior…
The machine was quite expensive, selling for $235 in 1929. That would be the equivalent of $3,250 in 2017. It came with several wax cylinders, each with messages relating to a different theme; one was labeled “Prosperity”, another “Life Extension,” and a third “Mating.” Eventually Saliger expanded the record library to more than a dozen titles, even one in Spanish. According to a story in The New Yorker in 1933, the message on the Mating recording included the following statements: “I desire a mate. I radiate love. I have a fascinating and attractive personality. My conversation is interesting. My company is delightful. I have a strong sex appeal.” Saliger was convinced of the effectiveness of the Psycho-Phone noting that 50 of his customers reported finding a mate…
From the annals of self-help: “The Psycho-Phone.”
[TotH to Ted Gioia (@tedgioia)]
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As we get better every day, we might recall that it was on this date in 1934 that Mandrake the Magician first appeared in newspapers. A comic strip, it was created by Lee Falk (before he created The Phantom)… and thus is regarded by most historians of the form to have been America’s first comic superhero.
“A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety”*…
What should a woman do when her husband chooses to spend time with his new pet monkey, rather than sleep with her? How does one counsel the mother who is so concerned about her daughter’s girlfriend that she’s considering casting a spell as a last resort? What about the wife who walks in on her husband of 23 years having sex with her brother? And what of the more mundane issues? Say, family squabbles over coarse behavior, or an ambivalent heart?
For more than half a century, Dear Abby—America’s longest-running advice column, first penned by Pauline Phillips under the pseudonym Abigail van Buren, and today by her daughter, Jeanne—has offered counsel to thousands of worried and conflicted readers. Syndicated in more than 1,200 newspapers at the height of its popularity, it offers an unprecedented look at the landscape of worries that dominate US life. The column has been continuously in print since 1956. No other source in popular culture has elicited so many Americans to convey their earnest concerns for so long…
The good folks at The Pudding have pored through 20,000 letters to the advice columnist tell us about what—and who—concerns us most: “30 Years of American Anxieties.”
For another fascinating example of the work at The Pudding, see “A brief history of the past 100 years as told through the New York Times archives.”
* Aesop
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As we agonize over anguish, we might recall that it was on this date in 1933 that Blondie Boopapdoop (her surname derived from the 1928 song “I Wanna Be Loved by You”) and Dagwood Bumstead were married in Chic Young’s comic strip, Blondie.
The strip had started in 1930 as a chronicle of the adventures of Blondie, a carefree flapper who spent her days in dance halls along with her boyfriend Dagwood, heir to a railroad fortune. Dagwood’s parents strongly disapproved of the match, and disinherited him, leaving him only with a check to pay for their honeymoon. Thus, the Bumsteads were forced to become a middle-class suburban family. As the catalog for a University of Florida 2005 exhibition, “75 Years of Blondie, 1930–2005,” notes:
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Blondie’s marriage marked the beginning of a change in her personality. From that point forward, she gradually assumed her position as the sensible head of the Bumstead household. And Dagwood, who previously had been cast in the role of straight man to Blondie’s comic antics, took over as the comic strip’s clown.
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