Bongmaster Dylan

@fuckoe_ @gmoult I think so too, altho i can’t remember the exact whereabouts

@BongmasterD @gmoult I think I’ve seen others in Colorado alone

today not a single one of the thousands of coal breakers is still standing

@fuckoe_ @gmoult Yeah i was thinking, all of them? I swear I’ve seen one before and it’s this one lol

@gmoult Idaho springs co

@53gaDr3amca5t Wouldn’t the Witchfinder be a Calvinist?

... It's not an Atun-Shei bit with his Witchfinder-General character?

BIG PICTURE REASONS WHY "CHOCOLATE RAIN" WENT VIRAL: • With no algorithms, the Internet was driven by novelty, not loyalty. Weirdness wins novelty. • Myspace was #1 in social media. YouTube was unproven and Facebook had just opened up beyond colleges. YouTube needed a "model home" for what its cultural real estate meant. • One person uploading a video that thousands of strangers parodied became YouTube's behavioral "model home." No other platform had that social dynamic. • Soulja Boy, Chris Crocker, and other talented creators had viral YouTube videos that got widely parodied. "Chocolate Rain" became identified with a type of "shareholder safe" virality. YouTube's human editors promoted it on the front page. • YouTube was an unproven business for both Google and creators. The idea of creators earning Internet money was not mainstream. I was added in round two of YouTube's experimental Partner Program. I believe round one had about thirty creators. • Television remained the eight-hundred-pound media gorilla. Viacom's billion-dollar copyright lawsuit was an existential YouTube threat just as the first YouTube videos went viral. The fact that "Chocolate Rain" began on YouTube and transitioned to me being on CNN, Jimmy Kimmel, discussed by Carson Daly and dozens of other celebrities... came at a time when YouTube needed a Rosetta Stone. They needed to translate a massively subsidized, high-risk venture into understandable cultural value. "Chocolate Rain" became a stenographer of YouTube crossing over. I got parodied on South Park, Saturday Night Live, nominated for a People's Choice Award, sang with Boyz II Men on Tosh.0 etc. HOW DID "CHOCOLATE RAIN" GO VIRAL?: • "Chocolate Rain" was rushed to completion in April of 2007 since I had another song ("Love," made with Kooby) featured on YouTube's front page and wanted other new content. It sat at around 30,000 views until summer. • "Chocolate Rain" got posted on Digg in July of 2007, an early Reddit-style social bookmark site. Someone saw it there and posted it on 4chan. • 4chan worked to meme "Chocolate Rain," "Numa Numa," Rick Astley, and other things. In 2007, 4chan was dominantly "Howard Stern liberal." Being offensive, outrageous, and highly speech-tolerant used to be identified with leftist, avant-garde identity. My first inkling that "Chocolate Rain" was going viral was 4chan prank-calling Tom Green's self-produced show and the caller busting out singing "Chocolate Rain!" MORE FACTORS IN "CHOCOLATE RAIN" GOING VIRAL: • YouTube had no stereo sound in early 2007. I posted a free "Chocolate Rain" MP3 download, with a giant video banner announcing it, purely to circumvent this. I wanted my songs heard in stereo. • "Chocolate Rain" begins with an instrumental and loops. This, combined with the MP3 download, made parodies easy. This was totally unplanned luck. It's like it was made to be parodied. • I looked like Janet Jackson, moved like Mr. Bean, and sounded like Barry White. Not trying to mean-girl myself, just being blunt. I was a unique combination of attributes but also not self-aware. Social internet video of everyday life was a new experience. Like, "If that guy is singing 'Chocolate Rain,' what's MY neighbor doing?" Everyday life was transforming into a democratic video content frontier nobody had given much prior thought to. • It's worth noting that 2007 was before mainstream mobile Internet video consumption. YouTube was overwhelmingly consumed on desktop computers and laptops. The later shift to engagement-optimized and loyalty-optimized social video was heavily influenced by phones. PERSONAL FACTORS WHY "CHOCOLATE RAIN" WENT VIRAL: • I built a bedsheet box in my living room to sing "Chocolate Rain" in because I'm agoraphobic. That's the opposite of claustrophobic. Boundaries supercharge me. It also turns out that lots of people have bedsheets to hang up. • I moved stiffly and sang "Chocolate Rain" with elongated vowels because of dyspraxia, a neurological movement difficulty tied to me being autistic (first diagnosed at age sixteen). • "Chocolate Rain" musically captured my tendency towards echolalia and echopraxia — repetition and reinvocation of speech and behavior. These are adaptations to being a partially verbal autistic who has to blend-in with speaking society. They also help in making catchy songs.

@VautismSpeaks @hecubian_devil Maybe true of Beverly Hills i know that’s your experience but theres a lot more of non vacuous non trash heap parts of this city

@hecubian_devil LA is an enormous, vacuous trash heap so nobody feels the need to gatekeep

Why does NYC have their weird “who is REALLY a New Yorker?” discourse but in Los Angeles you can call yourself an Angeleno after living there for 9 months and no one cares

@souljagoyteller If you want to ease into Ulysses, you can start with Portrait of the Artist as a Young man, it gives a good introduction to Joyce’s writing

My five most embarrassing “haven’t read yet”s: Hamlet War and Peace Crime and Punishment Ulysses Pride and Prejudice

Los Angeles is tired of being beaten down, ignored, and told to think smaller. We are the west coast metropolis —and it’s past time we claimed that crown. Not the Bay. Not SD. LA is the future: the metropolis of the 21st century. Let’s build it. We deserve it.

We finally found it: the first argument as to why Talarico might when that actually is smoke and mirrors and doesn’t hold water at all

Why is Karen Bass boosting the campaign of a MAGA right-winger for Mayor of LA? @nithyavraman

@bhangbhangducx Not in terms of quality cuz i’ve never tried it but the conservationist in me says we should eliminate Shark Fin soup lol

Feel like there's an obvious answer to which one should go

@jaketropolis @atlanticesque We all just some egg fr fr

@atlanticesque "Look at these European-Americans. One Polish and one German." "Yes bro." "Now we look at their houses in Milwaukee and see what they actually are." "No difference bro! They are same."

I can’t tell you people apart

That’s not a fair critique of Zelensky. Mehdi’s post is problematic, but so are many of the replies to it. Both over-moralise wartime decision-making. Mehdi over-moralises hypocrisy. His critics over-moralise Ukraine’s right to retaliate because Iran helped Russia. A right to retaliate does not mean it is advantageous for Ukraine to use it. In reality, Ukraine is a politically fragile state in an anarchic international environment. It depends on powers whose conduct it cannot control. Trump’s war with Iran is not good for Ukraine. But Zelensky still has to react to it. And whatever he does, he loses. Endorsing Trump’s war is damaging. Rejecting Trump’s war is dangerous. Ukraine’s case before the world rests on the norm against aggressive war. But that norm has largely collapsed. Ukraine still depends on it, but it is too fragile to help restore it. That is the tragic dimension of politics. Zelensky’s choices, even if they are wrong, are driven by necessity, uncertainty, and survival.

Because I'm old and was of an age to be sentient when the Prequels were released, I can tell you that, until The Clone Wars was released and redeemed the series, the hatred for the Prequels was incandescent and pervasive and much worse than the hatred for the Sequels, although the Sequels (IMO) are much worse. You have to understand, the Prequels were not "nerdy" when they began releasing in 1999. They were as mainstream as Jurassic Park or Titanic. Everyone watched them. You would be made fun of if you didn't, actually. Back then, we had a distinct monoculture, where everyone was expected to know of certain things. We did not have the fragmentation of the market into niches or gatekept streaming services. The Prequels were absolutely one of those things. Picture the cultural event of the Barbie movie, except ten-fold. The Phantom Menace was released in 1999. The hype was absolutely massive. However, this was then met with almost uniform backlash. Most people, even famous standups or talk show hosts, were making fun of how incredibly annoying Jar Jar Binks and young Anakin were. This was extremely mainstream, it was not consigned to just fans. While the podracing and Obi-Wan's duel with Darth Maul were praised, the rest of the movie was considered childish, with stupid dialogue, and bad CGI. While Ewan McGregor, Liam Neeson, and Natalie Portman were sparred, the voice actor for Jar Jar, Ahmed Best, and the child who played Anakin, Jake Lloyd, faced such severe harassment that they later admitted in a documentary to suffering severe, long-landing mental health issues. Attack of the Clones came out in 2002, and this was was considered not as childish as the Phantom Menace, but still very stupid. Everyone harassed Hayden Christensen for his wooden dialogue. The cultural consensus was that he was a pretty boy that lacked talent. This took its toll, as after the Prequel series, Christensen left mainstream Hollywood entirely. People really started concluding, around this time, that Lucas himself was to blame for how bad the Prequels were, citing the incredibly unconvincing romance between Padme and Anakin, and the ridiculousness of the dialogue in those scenes. However, Ewan McGregor remained very popular, Natalie Portman grew in popularity, and the key action scenes (e.g., Kenobi versus Fett, Yoda versus Dooku, and the Battle Of Geonosis sequence) were praised. Outside of the action scenes, people still criticized the CGI. Revenge of the Sith is what this sequence was from, and it came out in 2005. This was, far and beyond, the most well-received of the Prequels. People liked the dark tone, increased action, and how it finally linked the Prequels to the Original trilogy. However, Padme's death sequence was the subject of mainstream and late night talk show ridicule, and people still noted Christensen's poor performance, melodrama, and stilted dialogue. There were some slap fights among fans whether this was on par with any installment of the Original trilogy, with people who had spent the last six years despising the Prequels extremely loud and insistent that it was still unredeemable garbage. None of these movies were at all safe to admit that you liked until The Clone Wars, nostalgia, and the poor quality of the Sequels redeemed them in retrospect. However, what is interesting is that the action sequences in the Prequels were always its strongest point, and most reasonable haters could admit that they were quite good. In contrast, the action sequences in the Sequels were always noted to be lackluster in comparison, and were criticized at release. However, the Sequel hate did not reach anything like the volume of the Prequel hate. Even The Last Jedi, the most controversial installment, was criticized only in niche circles. It wasn't the topic of mainstream jokes. When The Rise of Skywalker bombed, we all collectively winced and agreed it was bad, and moved on. There was little of the overwhelming monoculture discourse that accompanied the Prequels. Remember, the Prequels were released at a time when the monoculture was relentless in immiserating pop stars it deemed fair game. That dynamic of the culture no longer existed by 2015.

Star Wars is inspired by like 0-3% of Dune and would still exist without Dune. If we are powerscaling cultural impact, there is no argument. Darth Vader’s breathing alone mogs any iconography from Dune. Lets be serious

@itiswattles Especially older versions, pre beta 1.8, imo

is minecraft the most liminal game of all time?

@TheronAlvord @alexshams_ And battlefield 3s weird ass plot somehow makes more sense than whats happening now

@alexshams_ Also one of the most popular Battlefield 3 maps.

Kharg Island isn't just a military target It is home to a medieval Portuguese fort, religious tombs, and the ruins of one of the oldest Christian monasteries in the world It also is home to 8,000 people and flocks of wild gazelles This is what Trump just bombed:

Doom for you It's 2029. Maduro, Khomeini, and Diaz-Canel are gone. Venezuela is still a dictatorship. Cuba is a failed state ran by Miami exiles. Iran is in the middle of a multi-year civil war with millions dead. Europe has largely fallen apart following far right victories in most of its major states - France, Netherlands and the Visegrad Group have all left the EU, and NATO no longer exists. AfD Germany, Vox Spain and FdI Italy lead the dying union. Ukraine, exhausted, agreed to cede all territories Russia desired after nukes are dropped on Lviv, and becomes a de-facto puppet state. The Balkans are embroiled in war, the Baltics are occupied by Russia, while Western Europe deals with constant religious and separatist terrorism. PRC has retaken Taiwan. Tens of millions have died in the latest Indo-Pakistani war and in wars across Africa. Trumpism is triumphant. Vance/Carlson ticket is elected in 2028 in elections widely deemed as unfree as tens of millions of votes are discarded. By the end of January, the Democratic Party is declared a terrorist organization and banned, its members arrested. Plans for mass denaturalization and deportations are being drawn up. A new world order takes shape, as a more violent world forces countries into endless wars over resources and ever-shifting alliances of convenience. Everyone pretends they never supported liberalism nor socialism. The sun sets.

@9mmballpoint For me it was mispronouncing Arnold Schwarzenegger as a kid and then that being the launching point for a lecture about the word lol

This has made me genuinely curious about something: if you're white, and you didn't grow up in an explicitly racist household, how did you first learn about the n-word? I can't imagine there's a standard procedure for that sort of thing.

@lalovestrump @LethalAidMan Oh no!!!! Taco stands!!!!

@LethalAidMan In case you missed it ..

The reality in la at all hours now .. no rules or enforcement for some …

@DomainDead Thats a parody account fyi

Yeah you people just need to watch more movies and shut the fuck up until then.