viceroy
1mo ago
Definitely making bootleg fireworks as a teen, it was an experience just on the border of delinquency in that way that perfectly suits a certain stage of growing up, and one that isn't really replicable once the, figurative or not, frontal lobe is fully developed.
There were these whistling fireworks with a few different names, and the truly delinquent kid across the street who later became a cop clued me into a practice wherein you hammered the whistling side down and this would create enough back pressure that the whole thing would detonate. Pretty soon this turned into hammering out the powder from dozens of these and sealing them in various containers. Later there were garnishments of other firework components to create after effects, or staged fireworks where they'd smoke up and then explode.
But one year in high school my friends and I laid in a field across from the area of the football stadium where the annual display was staged. I hadn't realized until then that aerial fireworks were spheres, and laying directly underneath them was like being in an altered state of consciousness.
viceroy
3mo ago
I think that they're an honest effort to imagine post-scarcity space liberalism and not hand-wave every peculiar question away, like the first iterations of Star Trek would. That the culture "society" (in quotes because Banks constantly reminds us that using words like society or law don't really apply to this rule by "loving" machines) is better than ours in some ways (liberty, pleasure, information) seems obvious, but esthetically it's less certain, and morally or metaphysically even the stories themselves seem to be often ambivalent.
I would certainly find them more utopian than dystopian, I think either of those are easy to define by answering "would you like to live here?" 1984-- no. The Player of Games-- Maybe, it seems a lot like 2026, I have gender ambiguous friends and get my dick busted by machines but at least I live on a ring world with a nice estate and can find interplanetary applications for my autism. I'm free but not really when you think about it, etc etc.
viceroy
7mo ago
That's funny, I also had a pixel that I'd loved the dimensions of, and ended up replacing it with an iphone 13 mini which was even better. Now, since there is apparently no market for what I (dating myself) consider the "normal" smartphone size, I'm basically hoping that the future foretold by the apple exec ("you may not need an iphone in ten years") has a sneak preview offering in 3-4. Something literally like Joaquin Phoenix's little makeup compact device in Her would be -great-.
viceroy
8mo ago
Learning an instrument is primarily about having fun while sucking and embarrassing yourself. This continues once you start playing with other people, and then is given a new form and scope when/if you perform in front of an audience. There's also a lot of discomfort along the way. Yet I'm compelled to continue doing it, it's really unusual.
What is a gent zombie?
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