Friday links! This modern world edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 0 Comment

Minds more astute than mine have pointed out that the time machine must be impossible, because if it will have been* invented, we surely would have had visitors from the future by now. Maybe, though, they just don’t want us to bore them with arguments about how especially crazy everything is now. Surely our present moment constitutes an ordinary broomstroke in the sweep of history, but it seems crazy and futuristic. Ours is an age shocked by its own novelty. Whether we’re lauding the world-changing potential of Twitter or decrying the precipitous fall of old-fashioned morality, we seem to be a nation out of time, blithely declaring each day the turning point we’ve all been waiting for or the final goodbye of the world we once knew. As Bob Dylan once said, the times, this is going to be a really short concert because I am super old. In preparation for the last weekend of the beginning of our lives, Combat! blog presents links to stories that indicate the onset of a new age, if only by our panicked resentment of the change. Won’t you turn a little of the future into the past with us?

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It’s hypocritical to expect privacy from Facebook

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas 6 Comments

This tactic also worked on Iraq.

The increasingly hungry uroboros that is the World(-)Wide Web has been aglow with anger this week over Facebook’s new policy of sharing user information with third-party websites. The social networking site has propagated its “Like” button to a number of partners, including the Washington Post, whose users immediately took exception to their friends seeing a list of articles they’ve shared with their friends. Facebook has also made all the bands, movies, hometowns and whatnot on its users “About Me” pages into active links that point to other pages—a move which, as of this writing, has led to the creation of fanpages for the movie, TV show, book and activity “fuck you.” If you clicked on that link, you probably saw not only the groups but also a list of your friends’ status updates containing that phrase—the top of my list was a picture of my friend Aaron saying, “Fuck you, Broncos,” which was enormously satisfying—followed by, disturbingly, a scrolling list of people you don’t know who’ve used “fuck you” in their various posts.* Herein lies the problem. If I can see everybody who wrote “These Banana Republic chinos totally kick/accentuate my ass!” on Facebook today, then so can Banana Republic. The idea that Facebook has compiled my likes and interests and favorite bands for ready sale to whatever weird marketing ghosts are constantly trying to drag me into their fashion spirit world seems like a betrayal. That’s my life, Facebook! Except, of course, that’s what Facebook has been doing all along. Their entire dang raison d’etre has always been to aggregate marketing data and serve online ads. The new linking and information-sharing policies are objectionable for only two reasons: first, they put it out in the open, and second, it forces us to confront the reason why we all signed up for Facebook in the first place.

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Now we feel bad

By Dan Brooks in Public Discourse, Uncategorized 1 Comment

Violent J, who only wants you to feel dead on the outside

A couple of weeks ago, Combat! blog may have kind of made fun of the heartfelt artistic expression of Insane Clown Posse, the earnestness of whose “Miracles” suggested, among other things, that while they may be an evil-clown-themed rap act, they are not an evil clown-themed rap act.  Since then—and, if we’re going to be completely honest, before then—”Miracles” has become something of a popular culture punchline, culminating in a parody on last week’s Saturday Night Live. The song expresses a certain, um, childlike innocence, both in its awe for the sublime in everyday experience and in its ignorance of basic science. The problem with “Miracles” is that when you listen to it, you are torn between your somewhat surprised approval of Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J’s essential message—that we should preserve our appreciation for wonder in an increasingly callous world—and your desire to mock their demand to know how “fuckin’ magnets” work. Yes, these men are idiots. Yes, the premise of the video appears to be that two Pep Boys employees died on Halloween and are now passing through the screen savers that defined their lives. And yes, we are all dicks for making fun of them. If you don’t think so, read this editorial from Violent J in The Hatchet Herald, in which he points out just how happy we all were to satirize the hard target that is two dudes in clown makeup rapping about miracles. Props to Marryin’ Megan Mahan for the link.

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Combat! blog is sick

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 1 Comment

Combat! blog is sick today and will spend the next several hours lying very still, so as not to disturb the delicate lattice of vomit molecules that comprises our brain. We’ll be back tomorrow, with terrible breath. In the meantime, enjoy this video about dogs and bears playing together as god intended.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE-Nyt4Bmi8

Game day for financial reform

By Dan Brooks in financial reform 1 Comment

D–fense! D-fense!

It’s Monday, and politics nerds across the nation are waking up and shouting, “Let’s get ready to increase federal oversight of financial markets and/or ruuuuuummmbbblllllllllllleeee!” directly into the ears of their spouses or cats. It’s go time, motherhumpers, and Broadway Chris Dodd is going to throw the long bomb (regulation of derivatives markets) down the sideline (gray area separating conventional banks from hedge funds they operate) to hit Chuck Schumer in a curl route (narrative of Republican obstructionism) in the hopes that he can run it into the end zone (future in which Argentinian-style currency collapse has not forced us all to do weird Japanese pornography to pay our electric bills.) It seems like the game day metaphor is breaking down now—not least because the Patriots have decided not to show up. You know who the Patriots are, right? They’re the Republican party, defenders of Real America, whose concern for Main Street has led them to promise a filibuster against the attempt to regulate Wall Street. And the Combat! blog staff has been tailgating since 6:30, too. Put your shirts back on, interns.

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