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Smile or Die
Via Lenin’s Tomb.
Now try Naomi Klein…
As we have all discovered, after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on 20 April, the company had no systems in place to effectively respond to this scenario. Explaining why it did not have even the ultimately unsuccessful containment dome waiting to be activated on shore, a BP spokesman, Steve Rinehart, said: “I don’t think anybody foresaw the circumstance that we’re faced with now.” Apparently, it “seemed inconceivable” that the blowout preventer would ever fail – so why prepare?
This refusal to contemplate failure clearly came straight from the top. A year ago, Hayward told a group of graduate students at Stanford University that he has a plaque on his desk that reads: “If you knew you could not fail, what would you try?” Far from being a benign inspirational slogan, this was actually an accurate description of how BP and its competitors behaved in the real world.
Iggy Pop is angry and Johnny Rotten is Sigmund Freud.
I happened across this while doing a little research. I’m trying to get to the root of what separates the labels New Wave and Post Punk. Obviously they’re useless as a means to segregate music, but I think the way the labels are used and by who is significant.
In this interview, it’s hard to get past Iggy Pop’s intentional, passionate naivety, but I think the point he’s trying to express is strong, if cloudy and overtly confrontational. Which could also be said of the new popular music of that (and possibly this) era. More on this later.
Nick the Stripper
He’s in his birthday suit. He’s in his birthday suit. He’s in his birthday suit. He’s in his birthday suit.
You Spin Me Right Round
Amazing—though you have to wait until about the 1:35 mark for it to get good, but once it does, it’s totally worth it. Via Anthony Paul Smith’s Twitter.
Stereo by Cronenberg
I’m amazed by how imagistic directors like Cronenberg and Lynch develop a very strong sense of cinematography and tone in their early short films and then don’t bother to bring in plot until later. It seems like movie conventions are afterthoughts to their ideas rather than the other way around.
Via @caketrainpress.
What Does It Mean to be a Revolutionary Today?
Slavoj Žižek’s speech at the Marxism 2009 conference:
Please Say Something
Please Say Something is a short animated feature from David O’Reilly. It’s about cats and mice, spousal abuse, the horror of writer’s block, and other stuff. It won the Golden Bear for best short film at the 2009 Berlinale.