#8 Entrance to the rodeo where we begin to noclip
Devoted to the explorers of the zones of values of exchanges
Everyone is welcome at the Rodeo!
⍀ Weekly Link Rodeo
To noclip thus means to go through the gameable space and, as a result, end up outside of the map and its reality altogether
From an early age, my mom took me to the library. She would drop me off, and maybe attend to my siblings’ sports practices or other things. I cannot recall certain circumstances, except for a few brief snippets of physical objects: large-ass children’s books accompanied with audiobook-on-cassette; Other times just browsing the Internet. This had to have been around 1996 or 1997.
But we are where we are, and today China controls a key communications platform globally in the U.S. This line of thinking ends in the idea that TikTok must be sold to the highest bidder. Again the ban on TikTok seems to align data about American citizens with groups who share a similar ideological aim, according to Matt Stoller.
None of that really matters though. Matt Stoller ends one paragraph with a juicy quote about governing social infrastructure as only governed by we the people. Stoller claims in the article that TikTok mimics U.S. tech firms model, which is an addictive endless feed and surveillance advertising. That’s an untrue statement, but irrelevant that multiple of tens of news sources between 2022 and 2023 state Facebook or Instagram falters in their mimickry of TikTok. That factual inaccurracy and jingoistic rhetoric shows that Stoller thirsts for a boogeyman.
Liminal spaces have been talked to death. Perhaps what matters is the internal logic found in these spaces. A striving for perfection or trudging forward always progressing. The article argues that when liminal boundaries noclip that a inhabitable space is created without an exit. A fatal glitch, an impossible exit. The linked article mentions Nick Land, who often times is linked with people like Ray Kurzweil, Marc Andreeson in terms of accelerationism and it’s newest semiotic viral variant: effective-accelerationism. The article does not mention accelerationism by name, nor does it have anything to do with it other than looking at temporal variance, which originally accelerationism started as a philosophical nugget in discussion with temporal musings. Osmanthus is not interested in accelerationism or any other viral strain; I am interested in the work of Mark Fisher though, which the article mentions alongside Land.
Accelerationism is akin to Charles Manson and the Helter Skelter movement.
“When the concept of threshold,” the limen in liminal spaces, “meets that of noclip, a simple boundary line can turn into a habitable place. The glitching threshold might lengthen to generate a space, and this space could switch from a transitory moment into a permanent prison.”4
To noclip and get out of the gaming space of capitalism, then. In addition to images and video, the Backrooms are further accessed through simulation video games where players are able to explore and interact with the surroundings. To noclip away from empty offices and shopping centers into what are now only bleak spaces. “No clipping through reality” reads the intertitle of a simulation video game of the Backrooms.
Noclip through the hyperreal. Exit the gaming space and its hyperrealism. Enter noclip mode. Collision detection is disabled. The player is altogether outside of the authorized map and within the same gaming space: the code-cheaters are always already more than players and non-players. There is no difference between function and error anymore. All that was closed by function is now opened to critical errors. Follow the bugs after the end of the world. Noclip into another map. The critical race to whatever is after the end. That is the fascination of the closed system against the allure of the open system.
Later, the error is fixed. The software is debugged. A new patch is installed. The command line is shut down. The imaginary is returned to the reproduction of more signs. Restart. Try again. Find a new cartography.
Cyberpunk is out and solarpunk is in, according to Figma’s CEO. Figma, for those unfamiliar, is proprietary design software for assisting in user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design. The software places an emphasis on real-time collaboration.
On September 15, 2022, Adobe announced an agreement that they planned to acquire Figma for about $20 billion in a cash and stock deal. Criticism bellowed regarding breach of antitrust regulation and that $20billion was perhaps a bit of an overvaluation.
He’d [The architect] never heard of the Solarpunk movement before even though he’s clearly one of the people who helped inspire it all - Emma Watson on looking at an architect’s sketchbook and seeing Solarpunk designs.
Comparing Solarpunk, rather placing it in a historical lineage with Cyberpunk only discusses aesthetics. It’s an easy way to brush the problem under the rug, and ogle at the pretty building with trees and plants and community gardens.
Originally I came across Solarpunk after the podcast Behind the Bastards and It Could Happen Here started to invite Andrew on as a regular guest. That was a few years ago. Looking through Andrew’s YouTube channel, : a shared economy, or a sharing economy. Recent videos discuss ideas about Third Places, Libraries as representative of the sharing economy, and other anti/capitalist ideas. Maybe it’s possible to argue that the reduction of shared economy ideas into the umbrella term solarpunk is a fine work of Moloch’s tentacles ensnaring the ideas of libraries and other social spaces.
Kody Cava wrote an essay on language and using different terminologies to manipulate a lived experience or entrap someone in specific material conditions. He expresses it better than me that manipulating language does not help anyone:
Improving material conditions helps people. You can argue (and I do) that improving material conditions for people requires the advancement of certain ideas (I argue for socialist ideas), and ideas are composed of words. So yes, words matter. “The future of this world depends on to what extent, and by what means, we liberate ourselves from a vocabulary which now cannot bear the weight of reality,” James Baldwin once said (but he did not mean by “vocabulary” a mere glossary of terms). If our ideas cannot stand the “unwavering, unflickering brightness” of reality, as W.E.B. Du Bois put it, then those ideas must be changed. And we can go about that process of change, partially, by choosing our words carefully. But going from homeless to houseless, insane to mentally ill, mentally disabled to mentally spicy (give me a goddamn break), debilitatingly autistic to neuro-divergent, a piece of shit to problematic, suggests to me a set of ideas that wish to pervert reality in order to comport with an illusory liberal ideology that serves to — what, exactly? Soften the edges of a sharply decaying society? Smother me with a nice down pillow instead of strangling me with a rough hemp rope? These aren’t humanizing words, they are words of absolution. “Poor people used to live in slums! Now the economically disadvantaged occupy substandard housing in the inner cities,” George Carlin said. “Smug, greedy, well-fed white people have invented a language to conceal their sins, it’s as simple as that.”
×/⍳ Writing Prompt
Write a response to “Questions About Angels” by Billy Collins:
Of all the questions you might want to ask about angels, the only one you ever hear is how many can dance on the head of a pin. No curiosity about how they pass the eternal time besides circling the Throne chanting in Latin or delivering a crust of bread to a hermit on earth or guiding a boy and girl across a rickety wooden bridge. Do they fly through God's body and come out singing? Do they swing like children from the hinges of the spirit world saying their names backwards and forwards? Do they sit alone in little gardens changing colors? What about their sleeping habits, the fabris of their robes, their diet of unfiltered divine light? What goes on inside their luminous heads? Is there a wall these tall presences can look over and see hell? If an angel fell off a cloud, would he leave a hole in a river and would the hole float along endlessly filled with the silent letters of every angelic word? If an angel delivered the mail, would he arrive in a blinding rush of wings or would he just assume the appearance of the regular mailman and whistle up the driveway reading the postcards? No, the medieval theologians control the court. The only question you ever hear is about the little dance floor on the head of a pin where halos are meant to converge and drift invisibly. It is designed to make us think millions, billions, to make us run out of numbers and collapse into infinity, but perhaps the answer is simply one: one female angel dancing alone in her stocking feet, a jazz combo working in the background. She sways like a branch in the wind, her beautiful eyes closed, and the tall thin bassist leans over to glance at his watch because she has been dancing forever, and now it is very late, even for musicians.
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