Running 100% on Caffeine

The thing you practise is the thing you get good at.

You may not intentionally be practicing “being grumpy” but if you don’t put effort into practicing “not being grumpy” then I’m afraid that’s what you’re doing. It’s hard! It’s really hard! Sometimes, for some things, it’s pretty much impossible and that sucks!

It’s wild to me that everybody knows about Karl Marx and “The Communist Manifesto”, but so many people think that capitalism is just like… the natural order of society or something.

Both systems are made up, and both are relatively new, when you consider all of history.

Like, our entire economic system is an experiment. The National Reserve was created in 1913. Mortgages were invented in 1946. Credit cards were invented in 1955. The world shifted away from gold standard to fiat currency in 1971. Credit scores were invented in 1989.

In fact, one historian said that the only truly unique thing in that book is Smith’s concern for the poor and the fact that he didn’t blame them for their situation but instead looked at the structural factors keeping them impoverished.

Smith saw commercialism as the best way to improve the lives of the poorest people! This is in comparison to feudalism and mercantilism, and using only the evidence he had at the time (which, ofc, he’s a white dude from the 1700s, there’s some pretty important perspectives he’s lacking, disclaimer that he is of course a problematic fav).

He fully acknowledges that there are major problems with the system he lays out, especially for workers! He’s, in fact, specifically opposed to “men of system” who don’t readjust their worldview when new data becomes available - and a lot of new data has become available since he was alive. I’m not saying he’d agree with everything Marx wrote, but his writing contains a lot of the same concerns!

Please be aware that not very long ago (before 2000 or so) the default standard for journalistic photos was black and white, because that was what newspapers and magazines could reproduce in a cost-effective manner. Only Sunday papers or glossy high end magazines routinely had any colour photos at all. The same goes for things like textbooks or academic works - if they had to reproduce a lot of photos, black and white was much cheaper and easier, so that was standard.

Nobody is "making" photos from 30/40/50 years ago black and white - for the most part, they were shot in black and white because that was the standard then. That was what most 'serious photography' looked like. If you were developing and printing your own photos (as many photographers did), black and white processing was easier to do - hell, I learned it in high school in the 1990s.

Colour photos, although they existed, were harder to reproduce in mass media - they required colour correction, so things didn't look weird depending on the lighting or the printing, and it was more expensive, time-consuming, and needed different equipment. That's why Sunday papers were more expensive, and only put out once a week. As well, the colours didn't always hold up well over time - if you've ever seen colour photos from the 1970s where everything looks oddly yellow, that's the colour processing deteriorating over time. Black and white film and prints were more stable long-term, cheaper, and more easily distributed, so they were typically used for journalism, art, and other situations where you wanted your photos to be taken seriously, last for a long time, and potentially be widely distributed and reproduced over and over consistently.

MAMMA MIA! (2008)

Concept of mini videos for Spotify

my brain:

Allow me to add a collection of Team Rocket casually sleeping on each other, because this is the only reason I’m alive

For the rest of my life With all that I have