Breaking News: hipsters use faulty logic to criticize, produce meta-ish criticisms of selves

This is why I hate hipsters.

From: Bees!
To: Median Hater
Sent: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 4:33 PM
Subject: Don't you really like Downeaster Alexa?


From Slate.



From: Median Hater
To: Bees!
Sent: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 5:29 pm
Subject: extremely meta


Wow. That little essay captures all of what I hate about hipsters....or it at least draws a line of demarcation between hipsters and non-hipsters (or just me). Hipsters have taken a stand on earnestness...believing it either not to exist naturally in the wild, or to be some product of delusion or socialization. Non-hipsters (or just me) step aside and say, ok fine hipsters if you want to come up with some decent ideas or critiques or art or lifestyle choices or whatever, but your entire platform is probably the number 1 example of that which you criticize about the outside world. Hipsters are like academia, they cannot exist without reference to themselves.

Earnestness might not be the exact concept I'm going for...I'll think on it. It might be authenticity...with earnestness thrown in. But I know the authenticity thing is a well-worked criticism of hipsters, so I would actually have to engage my brain to put my finger on what I'm thinking of.

-MedianHater

P.S. re: Subject question: maybe... :-(



From: Median Hater
To: Bees!
Sent: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 7:51 pm
Subject: Re: extremely meta


Nope, I got it! It's bigger than this! It's people who claim that their criticism of something is related to what they see as a flawed process (standard go-to is hypocrisy, but authenticity and pretentiousness are used also)....when in fact the main driver of their criticism is the outcome. Case in point, the exact same article could have been written about Johnny Cash. Go through and substitute ever BJ reference for Johnny Cash, change song names and alter context only imperceptibly, and the article would still make sense. And yet, this writer would not do such a thing because she and her ilk like Johnny Cash. Billy Joel got stale, was married to Christie Brinkley, lived on Long Island, made boppy music that appealed to lame adults...whatever such criticism would make sense coming from someone our age. But oh no, they have to couch it as if its based on principle.

Second case in point...those fuckers who go on and on about the great hypocrisy/malice/manipulations of people like Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, but don't recognize that Keith Olberman employs the exact same (or mirror image) logic toward his pet issues. The two camps follow the same process (much like BJ and Cash), yet I must admit that I like where Keith Olbermann comes out on the issue most of the time and I don't like what the wingnuts say.

I could go on and on. And the worst part is that these opinions are formed almost entirely (except possibly by the some of the true, hardcore founder hipsters who I will admit probably exist) in consultation with what all the other hipsters think. Let's throw Jackson Pollack in there too. These opinions about what is an authentic, real, worthy, etc. get formed in some self-referential crapcyclone. Yet the whole stupid attitude cannot ultimately be reduced to a logically ordered set of preferences, free of feedback loops or circular logic. The vanguard has to constantly update whats cool or not in an attempt to kick out what becomes blase or obviously hypocritical...and that is how it feeds itself. The first X number of kids are permitted to wear the DARE tshirt ironically...after that it approaches danger zone and the practice must be excommunicated. Until of course it cycles back around again and one can wear it irreverently, thumbing ones nose at the van guard...who fell out of step. Ahhhhhhhhhh.

If someone did the MIB butt dildo to the writer so she forgot that BJ ever existed and then plopped her down in front of BJ himself performing all his old favorites at an Austin dive AND someone who looked cool told her it was good...she would like it.

-MedianHater



From: Bees!
To: Median Hater
Sent: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 8:08 pm
Subject: Don't you really like Downeaster Alexa?


Meh.

-Bees

The misguided rationality of Kim Jong Il

Shinzo Abe says Kim Jong Il is a "rational" man. Ok, let's analyze two of his major positions, one of which he has recently considered changing:

1. keep his country poor as shit by following a defunct economic plan
2. pursue nuclear weapons

Ok, as for the first one, a command economy obviously doesn't work. Now, that's not to say it's bastardized opposite, neolibtardation (World Bank, IMF, and the Chicago School) works either. I'm not going to get into the development economics here, but in general, protected capitalism with incremental openings and free-trade agreements mixed with MORE money devoted to education than to pensions works (see Asian tigers, esp South Korea) and the headupass (NK, Cuba) and IDBwhore (HIPC) approaches do not work.

But let's focus more on the second one. Consider countries that have nuclear weapons and countries that don't have them:

That's a graph I made recently when I was writing a paper about the escalation into militarized conflict. I used logit to analyze 95 cases where a challenger state threatened a defender state with invasion. The Y-axis shows the probability that war starts and the X-axis shows the ratio of the challenger's military capabilities to the total military power of the two states. So like if it is .5 they are evenly balanced and if it is 1 then the challenger has all the power and the defender has nothing. The blue line shows what happens when the defender state does not have nuclear weapons--the likelihood of dispute escalation rises in proportion to the challenger's relative military strength. If the challenger is much tougher and the defender doesn't have nukes, the challenger will invade. The purple line shows what happens if the defender has nukes. Basically, if you have nukes nothing else matters--YOU WILL NOT GET INVADED.

So yeah, this data has been around for years. I assure you that all of the mad scientist dictators bent on world domination have seen regression results just like this. Pursuing nuclear weapons works. (Ok, it's September 12th, who should we invade? Afghanistan or Pakistan?)

Kim Jong Il recently told the US, China, Japan and South Korea that he was going to lay off the nukes in exchange for some money. His economy is so fucking retarded that he's broke and he can't sustain a dictatorship for much longer, so he's going to sell out the nuke program for some quick cash. Now THAT is irrational.

Even though I hate hippies, I do agree with them that nuclear proliferation is prolly a bad thing for the world. But I'm not talking about what is good or bad, I'm talking about what's rational. If Kim Jong Il had half a brain he'd stick with the nukes and start making the compromises on the economy! Then he could get some cash, continue to pay for the nuke program and the soulless dictatorship of evil, and guarantee that no one fucks with him or his country ever again.

So if you're the leader of a country and whenever you go to the United Nations you get a sneaking suspicion that everyone is talking shit, ask yourself, Do the popular kids think I'm a weasel-fucker? (you know who you are) Now, to be honest only 3 of those pariah states have any chance in hell of getting together the cashmoney to buy or develop some nukes, and only 2 of them ever would. So really, Sudan and Somalia, sorry no one cares about you until you can produce some decent terrorists. Cuba, we all know what's going to happen to you on prom night...and yes, by wearing all that spandex you ARE asking for it.

As for the 3 real contenders, you've got Iran, NK and Venezuela... Yes, Venezuela actually could get their act together and hunt down some nukes, but I GUARANTEE you that they will never do it. (I will save my "Venezuela is NOT a threat and Latin America is NOT turning left" speech for another post) Ok, so Iran and NK you're our only real players. So AhmadRashad and Lil' Kim, I'm sure you already got this memo, but if you were rational you would:

1. invest in education and make some trade alliances to build up your economic base and
2. hit the turbo jets on your nukes programs before the COW fucks you up.