@fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe
@fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe avatar

fifilamoura

@fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe

I write and think about culture (for fun and to pay my rent). My obsessive interest is people and how we work, individually and collectively, which makes me interested in most things, with a particularly keen interest in cogsci and psychology (I grew up around medical science). I studied painting and drawing at uni and I used to play in bands and work in the music industry. Maybe I'll switch to using my real name here eventually.

Photo description: White woman with black hair and saxophone

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Loukas, to random
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

The conspiracy theories that say "the elites are doing [this] as a distraction" are actually touchingly naive.

They think that people are so casually powerful that if we weren't 'distracted' we could stop the plans of the elite before teatime. Using the power of friendship, the united Captain Planet rings, or what?

fifilamoura,
@fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe avatar

@Loukas Yes and no. Recycling was definitely a distraction used by the petrochemical industry, as is the Pink Ribbon campaign. There are definitely things used as misdirections by industry that channel people's activist and emotional energy into non-productive activities that give the appearance of being activism (it's a sort of commodified cargo cult activism that's largely thought up by people in the marketing/advertising industry, and a systemic issue at this point really, but it is distracting people from the real issue and giving them something useless to do that feels useful in the doing).

fifilamoura,
@fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe avatar

@Loukas Oh, you mean the false flag people who think disaster training exercises are evidence of false flag operations? And who think school shootings are fake, etc?

fifilamoura,
@fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe avatar

@Loukas My conspiracy theory is that these sorts of AlexJones/QAnon conspiracy theories are actually a conspiracy to hide real things being done and they tap into the real distress of people in denial about some of the institutions they trust. Satanic Panics and sex trafficking pizza parlor nonsense? The first Satanic Panics were quite aligned with the first real efforts to expose systemic Catholic sexual abuse of children in the media and to hold them legally accountable, for instance. The Prosperity Gospel/super patriarchal religious circuit is also rife with sexual abuse of all kinds so projecting it outward both distracts believers and serves as a way to direct their fears and doubts onto an outside target. This is why legislation around these things is always about "save the children through sexual repression of adults"...which is exactly the religious approach to sex and not an evidence based one about how to stop sexual exploitation (which always has to do with empowering women and children and disempowering authoritarian men and institutional transparency and accountability).

jeffjarvis, to random
@jeffjarvis@mastodon.social avatar

Right-wing "media" are foreign agents....
Qatari royal invested about $50 million in pro-Trump network Newsmax https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/03/26/qatar-newsmax-investment/

fifilamoura,
@fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe avatar

@jeffjarvis Not unrelated... https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/mar/21/uae-backed-bid-for-telegraph-group-dead-in-water-after-new-legislation

fifilamoura, to random
@fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe avatar

"Historians do not get to decide what to memorialise, or how, or where. The way societies choose to mark history depends on whose stories can command material support and whose sensitivities must be treated with care. As the Brazilian historian Ana Lucia Araujo has put it, “public memory is about power relations”. People fight over history not just to know the truth, but because stories about the past continue to shape the present. All over the world, how the past is understood influences everything from how governments allocate healthcare and welfare to how business opportunities are distributed and who gains admission to universities."

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/mar/26/historic-revolt-forgotten-hero-empty-plinth-jamaica-slavery-chief-tacky

inquiline, to random
@inquiline@union.place avatar

About to unfollow one of the big covid posters here. This just isn't a problem with individual-level solutions and to the extent that their posting is ONLY about that, it's basically doing a disservice IMO (even if the research-sharing is good)

fifilamoura,
@fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe avatar

@inquiline It's the hysterical framing and cherrypicking of science i see from the people who are forming what's starting to amount to a cult around this. At a certain point, it's no more cult-like and unscientific in approach than the deniers (I get it that most people aren't that educated about science and that a lot of people have found community via this, so I try to be kind about it, but the refusal to not be pseudoscientific gets a bit much and negates their whole message eventually.

*I say this as someone who still masks in public most of the time and who masked up for friends with autoimmune disorders before the pandemic too. If they're making me exhausted with them, I can only imagine how other people see them as being not terribly credible.

StillIRise1963, to random
@StillIRise1963@mastodon.world avatar

All the people who work for MSNBC and contributed to bringing the network to this place are now mad? Really? Whatever with you fucks.🙄

fifilamoura,
@fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe avatar

@StillIRise1963 I suspect that particular hire made it harder for them to all hold onto their illusions/delusions about where they work and who they work for....

ned, (edited ) to random
@ned@mstdn.ca avatar

"I think rich people who don't agree [with taxing the rich] just don't want to grind, and would prefer to play life on easy mode. Skill issue tbh." - Sydney Sweeney

EDIT: Not a true quote, see https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sydney-sweeney-reveals

fifilamoura,
@fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe avatar

@ned Gotta love this. Not that I think any of us should have to "grind" or endorse that (but it's a sick burn nonetheless). We should definitely be taxing the rich until they bleed so nobody really has to grind and we can live our short little human lives without being ground down to nubs of human beings by stress and misery.

dyckron, to random
@dyckron@mstdn.ca avatar

Activity is not productivity. It’s time to try a slower, more sensible approach at work
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/careers/management/article-activity-is-not-productivity-its-time-to-try-a-slower-more-sensible/

Unpaywalled https://archive.ph/o5y6u

fifilamoura,
@fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe avatar

@dyckron But then it will be quickly revealed how much work done in the corporate world is actually bullshit busywork and bureaucratic paperwork! (This is also one of the reasons the managerial and CEO class hate WFH so much, all their busywork that hides how little they do involves monitoring lower employees to make sure they're all doing busywork of some kind so there's the charade of "getting things done.")

fifilamoura, to random
@fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe avatar

Really interesting study on brain fog in long Covid (and some good news for people recovered from Covid or with Long Covid without brain fog).

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/long-covid-brain-fog-blood-brain-barrier-damage

muiren, to random
@muiren@sfba.social avatar

To be European, or born of the Colonial Diaspora, is to be born into a racialized class hierarchy based on the so-called Enlightenment Era pseudo-science of phrenology/phenomic racialization—physical deviations from idealized European stereotypes—a deliberate system the majority deny exists.

This Ponzi scheme of “whiteness,” its illusion of meritocracy, of European exceptionalism, of hyper-individualistic competition, and mutually assured failure for all but a few, is an appeal to vanity, subsidized by the blood sacrifice of Indigenous peoples of every continent.

Orchestrated from behind a mask of civility and presumed innocence, the construct of “whiteness” is defended by a tactical foil of physical and socioeconomic violence, obfuscating the more powerful strategic weapons of mass perception.

fifilamoura,
@fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe avatar

@muiren I think of it as clinical narcissism and sociopathy as an ideology/social system. It's also necessary to traumatize "white" people to ensure they in turn are abusive enough to keep the system going.

aral, to acab
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

ACAB: All CEOs Are Bastards.

fifilamoura,
@fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe avatar

@Outpatientzero @aral pretty much, most of them are pocketing very high salaries. Philanthropy is one way rich people give each other money. There are always ongoing scandals about this and corruption and massive executive salaries at orgs like the US Red Cross. Trump started one as a scam ffs. https://www.charitywatch.org/nonprofit-compensation-packages-of-1-million-or-more

pvonhellermannn, (edited ) to random
@pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green avatar

My discipline, anthropology, is not seen as a “growth" discipline, and departments are being closed down. But the world needs Anthropology and Anthropologists now more than ever!

Here are my 8 reasons for this:

  1. POSSIBILITIES
    At a time of polycrisis, when the destructive fallouts of capitalist modernity are ever more apparent, anthropology highlights that there are myriad alternative ways of thinking and living; that there is so much to learn from other peoples in the world. 1/n
fifilamoura,
@fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe avatar

@kofanchen @urlyman @pvonhellermannn It's not overly cynical to realize that these reasons why anthropology is useful are also exactly why they're cutting anthropology but keeping business. It's all art of the right wing war on thought and real knowledge, while the basically religious beliefs of "business" get promoted. All hail capitalism and our machines run on oil, blood and children's bones.

mondoweiss, to Palestine
@mondoweiss@social.mondoweiss.net avatar

Canadian foreign minister says country will stop arms sales to Israel

Canada’s parliament voted to stop future arms sales to Israel. “This appears too good to be true,” CJPME Vice President told Mondoweiss. “We need to make sure that Canada stops the transfer of all military exports, period, without any loopholes.”

https://mondoweiss.net/2024/03/canadian-foreign-minister-says-country-will-stop-arms-sales-to-israel/


@palestine @israel

fifilamoura,
@fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe avatar

@mondoweiss Unfortunately the Canadian Liberals watered the NDP's bill down so much it's pretty much just reiterating the status quo of Canada's current policy. @palestine @israel

StillIRise1963, to random
@StillIRise1963@mastodon.world avatar

I don't believe in hierarchy. I believe in a cooperative work environment.

fifilamoura,
@fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe avatar

@sidereal They don't actually like their families. Also, they think grinding out hours is the same as actually doing work (it isn't and is often counterproductive when it comes to actual work that requires any concentration or intellect). @StillIRise1963 @asbestos @benroyce

skinnylatte, to coffee
@skinnylatte@hachyderm.io avatar

me on /r/coffee: why is every post about glitch coffee in tokyo

someone gives me coffee beans from glitch coffee: holy shit i want to post on every social media about it

#Coffee

fifilamoura,
@fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe avatar

@skinnylatte My personal preference for lightly roasted beans is slowly being vindicated! (Not here to argue with anyone, like what you like, we all taste things differently, I'm just happy that it's getting easier to find lighter roasts. I find they often have more subtlety of flavor than dark roasts, your palate's mileage may vary.)

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Why is anti-vax content so popular. Looking at places like Fox news, Rogan, others who fed into that content (and made it more legitimate seeming to many people) the only reason I can detect to make such content is that it's popular with a segment of the population.

So, that explains why people make it. To make money.

But why is it "popular" ?

fifilamoura,
@fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe avatar

@NatureMC Germany has a HUGE alt med community and history of this kind of thing because it's where quite a bit of this nonsense started!

Homeopathy, for instance, was invented in Germany 200 years ago. The whole Nazi health and physical purity thing is not unrelated to this (for people interested in the links between this kind of pseudoscience and fascism). Much like "traditional" Chinese medicine as we think of it in the West was really an invention of Mao to sort of paper over the lack of available evidence-based medicine available in China at the time.

It's more than a tiny bit ironic that the homeopathic idea of "like cures like" is almost but not quite like the reality that inoculation with cowpox protects from another pox....vaccines were "invented" in Europe, the concept and practice of inoculation far predates Europeans and modern medicine, shortly after Hahnemann's death. But, then again, most people into "homeopathy" don't even understand the difference between homeopathy and herbalism (which is just using herbs and is not unrelated to pharmaceutical industry and most definitely isn't homeopathy). @petealexharris @funkula @futurebird

fifilamoura, to random
@fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe avatar

Behind the Bastards Steve Jobs episodes are wild in how they expose just how much of a deluded (and stinky) hippy grifter cultist and sociopath Jobs was. And, yes, he literally ran Apple as a cult and using cult abuse dynamics. But the big reveal is really how bad Jobs was at even at aesthetics and making smart marketing choices.

But, also, can we talk about how often the superficial trappings of esoteric and exotic seeming religious bullshit gets wrapped up in politics and tech because sociopaths literally operate by imposing their narrative (reality) on others and convincing people they are enlightened/gods. It's the god-king of yore and a lot of people are still incapable of calling out the emperor's nakedness (partly because it will expose the lies they too have garbed themselves in and live to perpetuate).

ChrisMayLA6, to Unions
@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us avatar

The collective action issue in capitalism:

collective action by workers: bad, disrupts labour markets, undermines competitive pricing of labour.

collective action by investors, via stock markets & shareholding: vital to the workings of capitalism & must be protected & fostered at ever step.

It doesn't have to be this way, but it is.

fifilamoura,
@fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe avatar

@ChrisMayLA6 Except when that collective action by shareholders is an attempt to get a corporation to make responsible environmental choices, then shareholders are "activists" and the enemy of the industry. Even the power of shareholders is largely illusory.

fifilamoura, to random
@fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe avatar

The fact that these "private rockets" keep exploding, wasting resources and polluting our planet even more, is such priapic end stage capitalism, it's the viagra ravaged dry thrusting of billionaires who can't come unless they're strangling
Gaia and, when they come, emit a pathetic fizzle fueled by the pettiest of frustrations. There is no sex, let alone seductive love, only death masquerading as vitality.

rysiek, to random
@rysiek@mstdn.social avatar

I've been struggling recently with the question of why AI-generated memes are not funny to me.

And I think I finally got it.

Basically, they are not much different from someone describing the joke. Not telling the joke — but describing it.

Telling a joke, or making a meme, requires care and effort to make it work. Dropping a prompt into image autocomplete really doesn't.

To me, there is just nothing there to relate to, nothing to anchor the humor, so to speak.

fifilamoura,
@fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe avatar

@rysiek also, overly polished things are only really funny if they're making fun of an overly polished thing. The Yes Men's satire is funny because it looks like what it's imitating. Memes are funny because they're crude, throw away riffs (that can echo and also be riffed/ripped off of). Memes are slapstick, basically.

blogdiva, to random
@blogdiva@mastodon.social avatar

it's the year 2024 and USA media still doesn't get there are negros latinoamericanos and that our negrura and negritud are not less than African American blackness and negritude.

fifilamoura,
@fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe avatar

@blogdiva I think White people in America kind of don't think Black people exist anywhere except in America and Africa. A bit like some White people in North America seem to think there are no Black people in Europe and that White Supremacy doesn't exist in South America. Or how White liberals get confused when immigrant communities vote for conservative or right wing politicians because they think all immigrants are poor refugees (when immigrants are often actually quite well off, that's how they can afford to leave and get accepted as an immigrant....money buys citizenship almost everywhere).

fifilamoura, to random
@fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe avatar

Of course they do, remakes and franchises are the GenX version of nostalgia fueled desires for things of our childhood and are a form of generational cultural oppression (being forced to endure endless Beatles nostalgia was what the Boomers did to my generation and most of us learned absolutely nothing from it).

https://www.thewrap.com/tubi-the-stream-2024-report/

BigAngBlack, (edited ) to random
@BigAngBlack@fosstodon.org avatar

Black market meat growing it's portfolio

Some states are now trying to ban lab-grown meat

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/some-states-are-now-trying-to-ban-lab-grown-meat/

David Marshall, Arizona Republican
''It’s because of organizations like the FDA and the World Economic Forum, also Bill Gates and others, who have openly declared war on our ranching.”

Pepin Tuma
''There are plenty of foods that are not healthy for us that aren’t banned,” Tuma said. “The question is: Should government be the one to come in and tell us what we can or can’t eat?”

fifilamoura,
@fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe avatar

@BigAngBlack Black market meat already exists, there's a very big trade in things like bush meat.

mekkaokereke, to random
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io avatar

The people that vote for the Oscars, don't look like the people that watch the films. The Academy is much older, whiter, and dude-ier*. Oscar winners, are the inevitable outcome of Oscar voters.

The question isn't "Has the Academy changed enough to where filmmakers from marginalized backgrounds have the same chance to win an Oscar yet?"

The question is "Will the Oscars have the same relevance to society 10 years from now, that they do today?"

(*In 2022, 81% white, 67% men.)

fifilamoura,
@fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe avatar

@icastico Yep, it was a bit "for people new to feminism/into "you go girl, lean into it, up with girls" type feminism. Enjoyable enough fluff but not about to actually get too radical in any way. It wasn't intersectional feminist Barbie but that's okay, it's still pretty entertaining considering what the big studios are churning out these days.

The studio/production house that keeps releasing phenomenal movies is A24. The work they release is almost always great storytelling, fosters genuine diversity instead of tokenism, and it's Incidentally, one of the few studios/production houses that met striking workers demands so got a waiver to continue filming during the strikes. We need more of this kind of integrity, creativity and love of filmmaking. They do exactly what studios are meant to do, they support and nurture talent and get really extraordinary films made (EEAAO was one of theirs, and more recently the very remarkable The Zone of Interest, they're both remarkable films that really use film as a creative medium and not just "a visual book" type filmic storytelling). @mekkaokereke

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