-BORABORA-

I believe in gossip. I believe in talking about people behind their backs. I believe in complaining about bad movies and bad music. I think, like cigarettes and fast food, these are things best enjoyed without overindulgence or only when inebriated, but still largely harmless so long as they are kept in small, infrequent doses. I think it is possible to be mean without being cruel just as it is possible to be nice without being kind. Talking with your friends about someone you don’t like is meant to build bonds between the shit-talkers more than it is meant to tear down the shitted-on. Posting a picture of a stranger on the internet to make fun of—for doing something mundane or actively embarrassing—is meant to create an othering cruelty towards another person, reduce them to a spectacle. There is no communal bonding over this person’s shame, just a momentary sense of reassurance that viewers and commenters are not the Freak of the Day.

In today's state of hyperactivity, where boredom is not allowed to emerge, we never reach the state of deep mental relaxation. The information society is an age of heightened mental tension, because the essence of information is surprise and the stimulus it provides. The tsunami of information means that our perceptual apparatus is permanently stimulated. It can no longer enter into contemplation. The tsunami of information fragments our attention. It prevents the contemplative lingering that is essential to narrating and careful listening . . . In the process of digitalization, . . . information acquires an altogether different status. Reality itself takes on the form of information and data. For the most part, we perceive reality in terms of information or through the lens of information. Information is an idea—that is, a re-representation. When reality takes the form of information, the immediate experience of presence withers. When digitalization gives everything the form of information, reality is flattened.

I haven’t talked about The Sweater on here, which is a travesty. It’s gonna take me FOREVER but I adore it already. I found an all-over colorwork pattern I was already kind of obsessed with, and then I realized I could swap out the existing charts for anything I wanted~

like so much of Everything today is premised on the idea that the earth-shattering catastrophe which happened within living memory of everyone older than a third grader has had no meaningful material or psychological effects on the general public and i don't think that's good, lol.

"why is everyone so angry and paranoid now?" "why is politics so dysfunctional now?" "why is [x] [y] and [z] now? blah blah blah"