Reminds me of Serial Experiments Lain, an anime released in 1998 that talks about the power of social networks and how companies will compete to gain control of the internet. Some of the predictions are outstandingly good.
Yeah it’s not about the Internet and virtual reality or fax machines etc, it was about overpopulation and ecological collapse among other things.
The song was inspired by a trip to an underground city in Sendai, Japan if you read Wikipedia. In the late 90s Japan was a gadget obsessed place with neon signs and screens packed into places like Sendai. Japan had industrialised rapidly over the 20th century and gave the impression of a thriving technology and manufacturing industry.
It was seen as a futuristic place by people from the rest of the world when they visited. Of course in reality Japan was in the first of its “lost decades” of stagnation that’s run from the early 90s to now.
Besides not meeting its capitalist expectations, how have Japan’s “lost decades” impacted its people, and how does that impact differ from that within comparable nations that had continuous economic growth during that same time (e.g. the US, Europe, Australia, and South Korea)?
Overworked, or refusing to work at all. No one’s having sex. Their economy is further collapsing, their population is converging to the point of a death spiral. No one can afford to have a family.
They still like tech in Tokyo and pump out anime, though.
That just sounds like South Korea, which AFAIK is doing worse than Japan on most quality-of-life metrics - they work longer hours, have even less sex, population is shrinking even faster and AFAIK the common Koreans aren’t exactly getting rich off it, either.
political radicalization. in the past 100 years Japan has seen:
- hypermilitarization
- hyperfascism
- hyperbombs
- hyperdepression
- hypercolonialism
- hyperindustrialization
- hypercapitalism
- hyperrecession
and a lot of people want to know if there will ever be an end to everything being so damn extra all the time, or if Japan is simply expected to burn itself out working. and as is always the case when the people start askrng these questions, there’s a rightwing reaction promising to restore Japan to the glory of an imagined past
Is hyperfascism like regular fascism with neon lights or what?
overt fascism. it contrasts itself from fascisms that hide themselves by claiming to be something they’re not.
hyper fascist regimes:
- italian fascism
- national socialism
- sharia
- christofascism
- israeli zionism
- japanese imperial militarism
- post soviet russia
covert fascist regimes:
- neoliberalism
- feudalism
- republicanism (the roman concept, not the us political party, they actually fit into the above)
- bolshevism/stalinism/marxist-leninism
- anarcho-capitalism
- technocracy
You’re not at all worried about the phenomenon of diluting definitions of powerful words until they lose their power, are you?
it’s more like if we don’t talk about how these schemes of oppression hand off to eachother, pass the baton, now, the knowledge becomes lost to everyone but the academics who study ur-fascism. i work to be very considered in how i phrase things because words have meaning. i also come at it from the angle that a lot of people living in the imperial cores of America, Russia, and China don’t even recognize that they live in the hellscape outlined in George Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four and that talking about capitalism v communism is not the fight most of the world at large is having, they’re talking about fascism v anarchy.
The problem is if everything becomes fascism, then nobody cares about it. I remember in high school people calling Obama a fascist. So now they have nowhere to go when Trump showed up.
That kind of vague academic language screams of “word salad”, of people using big words to make themselves feel smart and feel like they’ve said and done a lot without doing anything at all. Like this Calvin and Hobbes comic:
Yeah, sure. I suppose next you’re gonna say that The Return of the Space Cowboy is not about the movie Serenity.
Underground city in Sendai? Did they get radicalised by visiting a shopping center connected to the subway?
Cheeba cheeba is a helluva drug
Maybe I’m gonna have to get high just to get by
It’s Jamiroquai.
Don’t forget Radiohead releasing Planet Telex in 1995, then OK Computer in 1997.
I see you have good taste.
I remember the that summer. Always wanted a Jamiroqoi hat
Always wanted a Jamiroqoi hat
You’ll have to be way more specific than that.
Went down a rabbit hole bc of this (thank you) and found out JK is a twinkess twin and so is Elvis
Not sure what that means but I saw him live a few years back and I was shocked how extremely British he is, both in accent and great sense of humour. Also the whole band is now a bunch of old dudes. I guess that shouldn’t be surprising but it was very different from the picture I had in my head since my childhood.
Except the music. The music was just as good as ever. It was awesome.
Original post made me search for jamiraquoi, which led to me listening to their music, then finding a yt about their music video which led me to the jk wiki page, which had the term twinkess twin, so then I started on that etc. Internet Rabbit hole.
Im glad he’s still robustly british.
It’s “twinless” with an L.
Did he actually have canned meat in his heels when you saw him?
Then your mind will literally explode if you listen to “Computer Love” by Zapp & Roger, released in… 1985!
Also, System Addict by 5 Star was 1985 IIRC
i don’t know who this is
waits
walks away
I miss the old internet. Usenet was magic.
ASCII pr0n anyone? [nsfw]
Magic
Ah, convergence. In retrospect, it seems obvious that the Web would just get extended to do all that stuff. The part that was harder to predict was corporations taking over all the platforms. I guess I just waited to believe that everything would stay democratized.
Check out the gemini protocol and the small web.
Or … you know, the Usenet?
I don’t know that I’ve ever actually registered any of the lyrics within this song, save for “vurchahwuhh insayynatyy!”
Same, I’m not a native speaker though …
We tried to cover it with my band, but it sounded really boring. Upon listening closely to it, I was surprised by how minimalist it actually is. I mean there’s barely anything on the track! Some piano, some strings, and drum and bass of course.
It was a happy surprise to find that it’s one of those songs that are carried by the pure energy of the vocalist, which makes it very tricky to cover unless you go a very lateral route and “re-genre” it.
It starts minimal, but it does progressively fill out.
TIL “gaff” is UK slang for your house or home.
And a fuck up.
Gaffer is a boss.
That’s gaffe though.
I don’t know why people say that English is hard it all makes perfect sense.
