josh blog
Ordinary language is all right.
One could divide humanity into two classes:
those who master a metaphor, and those who hold by a formula.
Those with a bent for both are too few, they do not comprise a class.
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'For Searls, translators "don't translate words of a language, they translate uses of a language."'
1. The party system sustains the illusion that a democracy decides between winners and losers
2. when actually it is we, collectively, who are always winners or losers
3. only we do not know now, or perhaps ever, whether this is so
4. and the agony of each election is usually just that we have to confront our suspicions or have our hopes bolstered
5. and go on without ever standing firm in this knowledge;
6. likewise the democratic system encourages the illusion that it's people and candidates working to beat other people and candidates
7. with plenty of blame to shift around depending on how we think things are going and how we find out they've gone
8. — an illusion which rests on the construal of a vote as an action with consequences.
9. it would be better to think of a vote as an admission:
10. we imagine that there might be elections where our vote could be an action because we imagine that admitting our support for a candidate would confirm everything the candidate has said they stand for and would do its small part to realize everything the candidate has said they will do, that is, we imagine the vote not as an admission but as an affirmation with power.
11. Generally elections are not as we imagine because our politics are not as we imagine:
12. our politics are not as we imagine because we live mostly private lives, joining with others sometimes in conspiracies of fear, hardly ever in real encounter with others and their needs, hardly ever in successful realization of how we in fact live;
13. because of this, we live from failure to failure, continuously, most days
14. — elections merely punctuate this.
15. Until we change our politics by living differently, elections will do little.
16. This is why it's better to think of votes as admissions: they are admissions of failure.
17. it is a collective failure not to have done more, yet, to have changed anything about how we live enough that voters in general (not just the contingently happy voter who might now and then think the candidates offer them a real choice for a true affirmation) might be able to vote affirmatively, as an act, freely, in a belief that the system and the candidates are not merely coercing a choice for what is for the time being the least worst;
18. so when you vote strategically, vote on a single issue, vote to reduce harm, vote dutifully with little expectation that it will change much, etc., you're far from doing nothing:
19. what you're doing is admitting failure.
20. The most serious response to this would be to do more in the interim to change things so that next time, you won't have to admit failure
21. — so that no one will have to, and we can all believe that by electing someone to govern, no matter who wins, we will have won.
22. Not to vote at all is, from this perspective, not to refuse to grant something that must be earned, or to withhold something so as to secure one from complicity, or to deny a sanction to something that deserves censure, all things that properly depend not on your vote but again, on what we collectively do to change how we live;
23. it's simply to evade admission of our collective failure—
24. which does not serve to exclude one from that collective,
25. nor exempt one from our collective responsibilities for one another.
(22 October 2024)
'Nothing survives transcription, nothing doesn't survive transcription' / 'Against Access' (h/t LH)
2024 ALBUMS
Abhorration, Demonolatry (Invictus)
Autechre, AE_2022 – (Warp)
Bootlicker, 1000 Yd. Stare (Neon Taste)
Lia Bosch, Polar Code (Glacial Movements)
Cave Sermon, Divine Laughter (self-released)
Chat Pile, Cool World (The Flenser)
The Chisel, What a Fucking Nightmare (Pure Noise)
Coffins, Sinister Oath (Relapse)
Convulsing, Perdurance (self-released)
Darkthrone, It Beckons Us All…… (Peaceville)
Dissimulator, Lower Form Resistance (20 Buck Spin)
Doechii, Alligator Bites Never Heal (TDE/Capitol)
Tashi Dorji, We Will Be Wherever The Fires Are Lit (Drag City)
Fake Fruit, Mucho Mistrust (Carpark)
Floating Points, Cascade (Ninja Tune)
Glassing, From the Other Side of the Mirror (Pelagic)
Godspeed You Black Emperor!, ”No Title as of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead” (Constellation)
gum.mp3, Black Life, Red Planet (Gum Studio)
Boldy James / Harry Fraud, The Bricktionary (Boldy James/Srfschl)
Julie, My Anti-Aircraft Friend (Atlantic)
Kendrick Lamar, GNX (PGLang/Interscope)
Kneecap, Fine Art (Heavenly)
LL Cool J, The Force (Def Jam)
Low End Activist, Air Drop (Peak Oil)
Roc Marciano & The Alchemist, The Skeleton Key (Pimpire International/Marci Enterprises)
Mk.gee, Two Star & The Dream Police (R&R)
Moin, You Never End (AD 93)
Oneida, Expensive Air (Joyful Noise)
Othismos, Sottrazione (self-released)
Oxygen Destroyer, Guardian of the Universe (Redefining Darkness)
Jeff Parker ETA IVtet, The Way Out of Easy (International Anthem/Nonesuch)
Paysage d’Hiver, Die Berge (Kunsthall Produktionen)
Prisoner, Putrid | Obsolete (Persistent Vision)
Tim Reaper & Kloke, In Full Effect (Hyperdub)
Zaho de Sagazan, La symphonie des éclairs (Le dernier des voyages) (Virgin)
2nd Grade, Scheduled Explosions (Double Double Whammy)
Shellac, To All Trains (Touch and Go)
Nala Sinephro, Endlessness (Warp)
Skee Mask, Resort (Ilian Tape)
Sumac, The Healer (Thrill Jockey)
Suzi Analogue, ONEZ (Never Normal)
Thirdface, Ministerial Cafeteria (Exploding in Sound)
Thou, Umbilical (Sacred Bones)
Ulcerate, Cutting the Throat of God (Debemur Morti)
Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats, Nell’ Ora Blu (Rise Above)
Underworld, Strawberry Hotel (Virgin)
Water Damage, In E (12XU)
Jim White & Marisa Anderson, Swallowtail (Thrill Jockey)
Wormed, Omegon (Season of Mist)
Xylitol, Anemones (Planet Mu)
REISSUE, ARCHIVAL, & LIVE
Bardo Pond, Melt Away (Matador)
Horse Lords, As It Happened: Horse Lords Live (RVNG Intl.)
Tsunami, Loud Is As (Numero Group)
Even the Forest Hums: Ukrainian Sonic Archives 1971–1996 (Light in the Attic)
Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Fu##in’ Up (Warner/Reprise)