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sophaeros · 8 months

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arctic monkeys for q magazine, june 2011 (x) (x)

ARCTIC MONKEYS: Inside Alex Turner's Head

Words Sylvia Patterson Portrait John Wright

The day Arctic Monkeys moved into their six bedroom, Spanish-style villa in the Hollywood Hills, where the first-floor balcony looked over the patio swimming pool, they knew exactly what to do.

"From the balcony, you could get on t'roof and jump in't pool," chirps the Monkeys' most gregarious member, drummer Matt Helders, in his homely Yorkshire way. "We looked at it and said, That's definitely gonna happen. So by the end, we did a couple of 'em. Somersaults in t'pool, from the roof. At night time."

In January 2011, as Sheffield and the rest of Britain endured its bitterest winter in a century, Arctic Monkeys capered among the palm trees, eschewing hotels for a millionaire's Hollywood homestead as they recorded and mixed their fourth studio album, Suck It and See.

The four Monkeys, alongside producer James Ford and engineer James Brown, lived what they called the "American man thing": watched Super Bowl on giant TVs, played ping-pong, hired two Mustangs, cooked cartoon Tom And Jerry-sized steaks on barbecues on Sundays, had girlfriends over to visit, all cooking and drinking around the colossal outdoor kitchen area featuring a fridge and two dishwashers. Living atop the Hills, they could see the Pacific Ocean beyond by day, the infinite glittering lights of downtown LA by night.

Every day, en route to Sound City Studios, they'd travel in a seven-seater four-by-four through the mountains, via bohemian 60s enclave Laurel Canyon, blaring out the tunes: The Stones Roses, The Cramps, the Misfits' Hollywood Babylon. For the sometime teenage art-punk renegades whose guitarist, Jamie Cook, was once ejected from London's Met Bar for refusing to pay €22 for two beers, the comedy rock'n'roll life still feels, however, absolutely nothing like reality.

NICK O'MALLEY: "It were really as if we were on holiday. When we came back it's the most post-holiday blues I've ever had!"

JAMIE COOK: "It's hard to comment on that. It were just really good fun."

MATT HELDERS: "We always said, As soon as things like that feel normal, we're in trouble. But it's just funny. You might think it would get more and more serious as you get older but it's getting funnier. We've done four albums now and I'm still only 24, I'm still immature to an extent. So who cares?"

Alex? Al? Are you there?

ALEX TURNER: "Yeah, it were good times. But we were in the studio most of the time. So there's no real wild Hollywood stories. Hmn. Yeah."

Wednesday, 16 March 2011, Strongroom Bar, Shoreditch, East London, 11am. Alex Turner, 25, slips entirely alone into an empty art-crowd brasserie looking like an indie girl's indie dream boy: mop-top bouffant hair which coils, in curlicues, directly into his cheekbones, army-green waist-length jacket, baggy-arsed skinny jeans, black cord zip-up cardigan, simple gold chain, supermoon sized chocolate-brown eyes.

Almost six years after I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor became the indie-punk anthem of a generation (from the first of Arctic Monkeys' three Number 1 albums), and nothing prepares you for the curious phenomenon of Alex Turner "in conversation". Unlike so many of the Monkeys frenetic early songs, he operates in slow motion, seemingly underwater, carrying a protective shell on his back, perhaps indie rock's very own diamond-backed terrapin. The most celebrated young wordsmith in rock'n roll today talks fulsomely, in fact, only in shapeless, curling sentences punctuated with "maybe... hmn.. yeah", an anecdotal wilderness sketching pictures as vague as a cloud. He is, though, simultaneously adorable: amenable, gentle, graceful, and as Northern as a 70s grandpa who literally greets you with "ey oop?".

"People think I'm a miserable bastard," he notes, cheerfully, "but it's just the way me face falls." Still profoundly private, if not as hermetically sealed as a vacuum-packed length of Frankfurter, his fante-shy reticence extends not only to his personal life (his four-year relationship with It-girl/TV presenter Alexa Chung, whom he never mentions) but to insider details generally. Take the Monkeys’ Hollywood high jinks documented above: not one word of it was described by Turner. Before Q was informed by his other Monkey bandmates, Turner’s anecdotal aversion unfolded like this:

Describe the lovely villa you were in. AT: "Well... we certainly had a... good view."

Of what? AT: "Well, we were up quite high."

The downtown LA lights going on forever? AT: "I dunno. It was definitely that thing of getting a bit of sort of sunshine. Is it vitamin D? If you can get vitamin D on your record, you've got a bit of a head start. So we'd get up and drive to the studio."

What were you driving? AT: "Nothing... spectacular. But yeah, we'd drive up the studio, spend all day there and sort of, y know, get back. To be honest... we had limited time. So we spent as much time as possible kind of getting into it, like, in the studio.

So your favourite adventures were what? AT: "Well, they were really… minimal. We were working out there!"

Any nightclubs or anything, perhaps? AT: "You really want the goss 'ere, don't you?"

Yes, please. AT: "I could make some up. Nah!"

And this was on the second time of asking. It's perhaps obvious: Alex Turner, one of the most prolific songwriters of his generation (four Monkeys albums and two EPs in five years, The Last Shadow Puppets side-project, a bewitching acoustic soundtrack for his actor/video director friend Richard Ayoade's feature-length debut Submarine), is dedicated only to the cause – of being the best he can possibly be. He simply remembers the songs much more than the somersaults.

Throughout 2009, Arctic Monkeys toured third album Humbug – the record mostly made in the Californian desert with Queens Of The Stone Age man-monolith Josh Homme – across the planet. While hardly some cranium-blistering opus, its heavier sonic meanderings considerably slowed the Arctic Monkeys' live sets and on 23 August 2009, Q watched them headline the Lowlands Festival, Holland and witnessed a hitherto unthinkable sight – swathes of perplexed Monkeys fans trudging away from the stage. With the sludge rock mood matching their cascading dude-rock hair it seemed obvious: they'd smoked way too much outrageously strong weed in the desert.

"Heheheh, yeah," responds Turner, unperturbed. "That's your theory. You probably weren't alone."

Back in the Strongroom Bar, Turner's arm is now nonchalantly draped along the back of a beaten-up brown leather sofa. He ponders his band's somewhat contrary reputation…

"I think starting the headline set at Reading with a cover of a Nick Cave tune perhaps was a bit contrary. D'youknowhat Imean?! But to be honest, that summer, at those festivals, we had a great time. And I know some fans enjoyed those sets 10 times more. And you can't just do, y’know, another Mardy Bum or whatever. Because how could you, really?"

With Humbug, notes Turner, "I went into corners I hadn't before, because I needed to see what were there," but by spring 2010 he wanted their fourth album to be "more song-based" and less lyrically "removed". He was "organised this time", studied "the good songwriters" (from Nick Cave, The Byrds and Leonard Cohen to country colossi Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline), discovered "the other three strings" on his guitar, and wrote 12 songs through the spring and summer of 2010, mostly in the fourth-floor New York flat he shared with Chung before the couple moved back to London late last summer (the New York MTV show It's On With Alexa Chung was cancelled after two seasons). The result: major-key melodies, harmonised singing and classic song structures.

At the same time he revisited the opposite extreme: bands such as Black Sabbath and The Stooges ("we wanted a few wig-outs as well"); he was also still heavily influenced by the oil-thick grinder rock of Josh Homme, who is clearly now a permanent Monkeys hero. After four months' rehearsals in London, on 8 January the Monkeys relocated to LA for five swift weeks of production and Homme came to visit, singing backing vocals on All My Own Stunts. Tequila was involved.

"Tequila is probably me favourite," manages Turner, by way of an anecdote. "But it takes a certain climate... It's not the same... in the rain. Yeah. [Looks to be contemplating a lyric] Tequila in the rain."

Vocally, he developed the caramel richness first unveiled on The Last Shadow Puppets' Scott Walker-esque The Age Of The Understatement, finding a crooner's vibrato. "Everything before was so tight,” he notes, clutching his neck. "Probably just through nerves. That's just not there any more." Suck It and See contains at least four of the most glittering, sing-along, world-class pop songs (and obvious singles) of Arctic Monkeys' career: the towering, clanging She's Thunderstorms, the summertime stunner The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala, the heavenly harmonised title track and the Echo & The Bunnymen-esque jangly pop of closer That's Where You're Wrong.

Elsewhere, in typically contrary "fashion", there's preposterous head-banger bedlam (Brick By Brick, the rollicking faux-heavy rock download they released in March "just for fun", featuring vocals by Helders; Don't Sit Down 'Cause I've Moved Your Chair, and Library Pictures). News arrives that the first single proper will be Don't Sit Down 'Cause I've Moved Your Chair. Q is perplexed. Brilliantly titled, certainly, but arriving after Brick By Brick, the new album will appear to the planet as some comedy pastiche metal album for 12-year-old boys.

You've got all these colossal, summery, indie-pop classics and you've gone for... The Chair? AT: [Laughing uproariously] "The Chair! I'm now calling it The Chair, that's cool. Well for once it weren't even our suggestion. It was Laurence's (Bell, Domino label boss). And I were, Fucking too right! He's awesome. It'd be good to get a bit of fucking rock'n'roll out there, won't it? It's riffs. It's loud. It's funny."

If you don't release The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala as a single I'm going round Domino to kick Laurence's "awesome" butt. AT: "I think it'll be the next one!"

The record's title, meanwhile, could've been more enigmatically original than the un-loved phrase Suck It and See. The band, struggling with ideas due to the opposing sonic moods, invented an inspiration-conjuring ruse: to think of new names for effects pedals in the style of Tom Wolfe, Turner being long enamoured with the American author's legendarily psychedelic books The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, "cos that just sounds awesome".

"There's the Big Muff pedal," he elaborates, "That’s the classic. I've got the Valve Slapper. And there's the Tube Screamer. So we came up with the Thunder Suckle Fuzz Canyon. And… wait till I assemble it in me mind… em… it'll come to me… The Blonde-O-Sonic Shimmer Trap. So we were going for summat like that."

A wasted opportunity?

"Nah. Because some of those things ended up in the lyrics anyway. Suck It and See was just easier."

Alex Turner, rock'n'roll's premier descriptive art-poet, still writes his lyrics long-hand in spiral-bound notebooks. "Writing lyrics is a craft that I've practised a bit now," he avers. "In me notebook it looks like sums. Theories. There's words and arrows going everywhere. There's always a few possibilities and I write the word 'OR' in a square."

For our most celebrated colloquial sketch-writer of the everyday observation (all betting pencils, boy slags and ice-cream van aggravations) the more successful he becomes, the less he orbits the ordinary. "I'm not struggling with that, to be honest," he decides. "In fact I'm enjoying writing lyrics much more than I did. Stories. Describing a picture. Um. There's quite a bit of weather and time in this one. Which is probably not reassuring. 'Oh God, he's writing about the weather.' Maybe leave that out!"

There are also some direct, funny, romantic observations: "That's not a skirt, girl, that's a sawn-off shotgun/And I only hope you've got it aimed at me..." (from the title track).

Some of your romantic quips, now, must be about Alexa. AT: "Right. Yeah. Definitely. Well... there's always been that side to our songs, when we weren't writing about... the fucking taxi rank. It's kind of inevitably... people you're with." [At the mention of Chung's name, Turner is visibly aggrieved, head sliding into his neck, terrapin-esque indeed.]

It must have been very grounding being in a proper relationship through all this madness. Because if you weren't, girls would be jumping all over your head. AT: "Em. Hmn. Well, of course that helps you to... I don't really know.. what the other way would be."

Does Alexa wonder if the lyrics are about her? AT: "Oh there's none of that. Yeah, no, there's no looking over the shoulder."

She must be curious, at least. "Maybe."

Did you ever watch Popworld? AT: [Nervous laughter] "Em! Now and again."

Did you ever see the episode where she helps Paul McCartney write a song about shoes? AT: "Ah, yeah I think so, maybe I did see that."

Well, if I was you, I'd have been thinking, "She's the one for me." AT: "Well. Yeah... maybe that would've... sealed the deal! Hmn. But maybe that wasn't when i got the ray of light. When was? Nah [buries head in hands]. I might have to go for a cigarette..."

Q can't torture him any more and joins him for a snout. Turner smokes Camels from a crumpled, sad, soft-pack and resembles a teenager again. As early song You Probably Couldn't See For The Lights But You Were Staring Straight At Me says, "Never tenser/Could all go a bit Frank Spencer…”

In January 2006, when Arctic Monkeys' Number 1 album Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not became the fastest-selling debut in UK history, inadvertently redefining the concept of autonomy and further imploding the decimated music industry (& wasn't their idea to be "the MySpace band", it was their fans': the Monkeys merely kick-started viral marketing by giving away demos at gigs), the 19- and 20-year-old Monkeys were terrible at fame. They weren't so much insurrectionary teenage upstarts as teenage innocents culturally traumatised by the peak-era fame democracy.

To their generation (born in the mid-'80s) fame was now synonymous with some-twat-off-the-telly a world of foaming tabloid hysteria where renown and celebrity meant, in fact, you were talentless. Hence their interview diffidence and receiving awards via videos dressed up as the Wizard OfOz and the Village People. Which only, ironically, made them even more celebrated and famous. (“That were a product of us just trying to hold onto the reins," thinks Turner today. "Being uncooperative.")

Q meets The Other Three one morning at 11am, in the well-appointed, empty bar of the Bethnal Green, Bast London hotel they're staying in (all three live in Sheffield, with their girlfriends, in their own homes). First to arrive is the industrious, sensible and cheerful Helders, crunching into a hangover-curing green apple. He has recovered from last year's boxing accident at the gym, which left his broken arm requiring a fitted plate. Now impressively purple-scarred, the break felt "interesting" and the doctor couldn't resist the one-armed drummer jest: "D'you like Def Leppard?"

Currently enjoying an enduring bromance with Diddy, he still doesn't feel famous, "it just doesn't feel that real, there's no paparazzi waiting for me to trip up." He and Turner, during the four-month rehearsals last year, became an accomplished roast dinner cooking duo for the band. "I reckon we could have us our own cookbook," he beams. "Pictures of us stirring, with a whisk."

O'Malley, an agreeable, twinkly-eyed 25-year-old with a strikingly deep voice and a winningly huge smile, is still coyly embarrassed by the interview process. A replacement for the departed original bass player Andy Nicholson in May 2006, he went from Asda shelf-filler to Glastonbury headliner in 13 months and still finds the Monkeys "a massive adventure". His life in Sheffield is profoundly normal – he's delighted that his new home since last October has an open-hearth fireplace: "Me parents had electric bars." He has also discovered cooking. “I’m just a pretty shit-hot housewife, most of the time," he smiles. "I cook stews, fish combinations, curries, chillies. I made a beef pho noodle soup the other day, Vietnamese, I surprised meself, had some mates round for that."

Recently, at his dad's 50th birthday bash, the party band, made up of family and friends, insisted he join them onstage "for ...The Dancefloor. So I were up there [mimes playing bass, all sheepish] and it were the wrong pitch, they didn't know the words or 'owt, going, Makin eyes... er..." He has no extra-curricular musical ambitions. "I'm happy just playing bass," he smiles. "I've never had the skill of doing songs meself. It'd be shit!"

Cook, 25, is still spectacularly embarrassed by the interview process. He perches upright, with a fixed nervous smile, newly shorn of the beard and ponytail he sported in LA: "Rockin' a pone, yeah, because I could get away with it." With his classic preppy haircut and dapper green military coat (from London's swish department store, Liberty), he looks like a handsome '40s film star. (Turner deems Cook "the band heartbreaker" and had a word with him post-LA: "I said to him, Come on, mate, you've got to get that beard shaved off. Get the girls back into us. Shift some posters.")

His life in Sheffield is also profoundly normal. He still plays Sunday League football with his local pub team, The Pack Horse FC (position, left back), remains in his long-term relationship with page-three-model-turned-make-up-artist Katie Downes and "potters about" at home, refusing to describe said home, "cos I'll get burgled".

A tiler by trade, he always vowed, should the Monkeys sign a deal, that he'd throw his trowel in a Sheffield river on his last day of work. "I never did fling me trowel," he confirms. "Probably still in me shed." He's never considered what his band represents to his generation. "I'd go insane thinking about it, I'm pretty good at not thinking about it… Oh God. I'm terrible at this!"

Back in the Strongroom Bar, Alex Turner is cloudily describing his everyday life. "I just keep meself to meself," he confounds. He mostly stays indoors and his perfect night in with Alexa is "watching loads of Sopranos. And doing roast dinners".

No longer spindle-limbed, he attends a gym and has handsomely well-defined arms – "You have to look after yourself."

Suddenly, Crying Lightning from Humbug rumbles over the bar stereo. "Wow. How about that? I was quite happy the other morning cos Brick By Brick were on the round-up goals on Soccer AM. It's still exciting when that happens. It was like Brick By Brick is real."

He spends his days writing music, "listening to records", and recommends Blues Run The Game by doomed '60s minstrel Jackson C Frank ("who's that lass?... Laura Marling, she did a cover recently), a simple, acoustic, deep and regretful stunner about missing someone on the road.

Lyrically, he cites as an example of greatness the Nick Cave B-side Little Empty Boat [from ‘97 single Into My Arms ], a comically sinister paean to a sexual power struggle: "Your knowledge is impressive and your argument is good/But I am the resurrection babe and you're standing on my foot."

"I need a hobby," he suddenly decides. "I'd like to learn another language." Since his mum is a German teacher (his dad teaches music), surely he can speak some German? "I know how to ask somebody if they've had fun at Christmas." Go on, then. "Nah!"

Where Turner's creative gifts stem from remains a contemporary rock'n'roll mystery; he became a fledgling songwriter at 16, after the gift of a guitar at Christmas from his parents. An only child, did his folks, perhaps, foresee artistic greatness? "I doubt it!" he balks. "Cos I didn't. I wasn't... a show kid." Like the others, he doesn't analyse the past, or the future.

"You can't constantly be thinking about what's happened," he reasons, "it's just about getting on with it." The elaborate pinky ring he now constantly wears, however, a silver, gold and ruby metal-goth corker featuring the words DEATH RAMPS is a permanent reminder of he and his best friends’ past. The Death Ramps is not only a Monkeys pseudonym and B-side to Teddy Picker, but a place they used to ride their bikes in Sheffield as kids.

"Up in the woods near where we lived," he nods. "Just little hills. But when you're eight years old they're death ramps." The ring was custom made by a friend of his, who runs top-end rock'n'roll jewellery emporium The Great Frog near London's Carnaby Street. Ask Turner why he thinks the chase between his writing and speaking eloquence is quite so mesmerisingly vast and he attempts a theory.

"Well, writing isn't the same as speaking," he muses. "Not for me. I seem to struggle more and more with... conversation. Talking onstage... I can't do it any more. Hmn. I'll have to work on that."

The ever-helpful Helders has a better theory.

"Since he's been writing songs," he ponders, “It seems like he’s always thinking about that. So even when he’s talking to you now, he’s thinking about the next thing that rhymes with a word. Even when he’s driving. We joke he’s a bad driver, his focus is never 100 per cent on what he’s doing. Which is good for us cos it means he’s got another 12 songs up his sleeve. I think music must be the easiest way for him to be concise and get everything out. Otherwise his head would explode.”

The Shoreditch.com photo studios, 18 March. Alex Turner, today, is more ethereally distracted than ever, transfixed by the studio iPod, playing Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, a version of I’d Rather Go Blind. Occasionally, he’ll completely lose his conversational thread, “Um. I’ve dropped a stitch.”

The first to arrive for Q’s photoshoot, he greets his incoming bandmates with enormous hugs (and also hugs them goodbye). Today, Q feels it’s pointless poking its pickaxe of serious enquiry further into Turner’s vacuum-packed soul and wonders if he’ll play, instead, a daft game. It’s called Popworld Questions, as first posed by someone he knows rather well.

“Oh, OK. Let’s do it,” he blinks, now perched in an empty dressing room. He then vigorously shakes his head, “Um…I’ve gotta snap back into it.”

Here, then, are some genuine “Alexa Chung on Popworld” questions (2006-2007), as originally posed to Matt Willis, Amy Winehouse, Robbie Williams, Pussycat Dolls, Kaiser Chiefs and Diddy.

Why do indie bands wear such tight jeans? AT: “Um. I supposed they do. They haven’t always. When we first were playing I was definitely in flares. You need to be quite tall to get the full effect, though. So, that's why this indie band wears such tight jeans, cos we've not got the legs for flares."

What makes you tick in the sexy department? AT: "Wow. Pass. What do I find most attractive in a woman? Something in the head? That's definitely a requirement. Well... Hmn. I'm struggling."

Tell us about all the lovely groupies. AT: "No!"

If dogs had human hands instead of paws, would you consider trying to teach them to play the piano? AT: "Absolutely. I'd teach Hey Jude."

How many plums d'you think you can comfortably fit in one hand? AT: "They're not very big. [Holds small, pale, girly hand up for inspection] It's a shame. Probably three. Diddy only managed two? Maybe not then. I can carry a lot of glasses at once, though. If they're small ones I can do four."

Are you cool? AT: "Not as much as I'd like to be. There's this clip where Clint Eastwood is on a talkshow and he gets asked, Everybody thinks of you as defining cool, what d'you think about that? And he gets his cigs out, takes one out, flicks it into his mouth, lights it and says, I have no idea what you're talking about."

Here, Turner locates his Camels soft-pack and attempts to do a Clint Eastwood. He flicks one upwards towards his mouth. And misses. Flicks another. And misses. "Third time lucky?" He misses. "I'll get it the next time." And succeeds. "Hey. Fourth time. Don't put that in! So there you go. I'm four steps away from where I wanna be."

Thank you very much for joining me here on Popworld, here's my clammy hand again. There it is, let it slip, hmmn. You can let go now. AT: "OK! Were you a Popworld fan, then? It was funny. Cool. What were we talking about, before?"

Blimey, Alex. What must you be like when you're completely stoned out of your head? AT: "Stoned? What d'you mean, cos I seem like that anyway? Yeah. A lot of people... tell me I'm a bit... dreamy. But I like the idea of that. Of being somewhere else."

Two days earlier, Turner had contemplated what he wanted from all this, in the end. Many seconds later he gave his deceptively ambitious answer.

"I just wanna write better songs," he decided. "And better lyrics. I just definitely wanna be good at it. Hmn. Yeah.”

—

RUFUS BLACK: AKA Matt Helders, on his ongoing bromance with Diddy

Matt Helders has known preposterous rap titan Diddy since they met in Miami in 2008. “He goes, Arctic Monkeys! Then he said summat about a B-side and I was like, He's not lying! I just thought, This is funny, I'm gonna go with this for a while." Last October Diddy texted Helders, suggesting he play drums with his Diddy Dirty Money band on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross, to give his own drummer a day off. “I were bowling with me girifriend at the time. In Sheffield, on a Sunday." On the day of recording, says Helder, "We had a musical director. That were one of the maddest times of my life. Next day Diddy said, Why don't you just stay? Come along with me. So I went everywhere with him." Diddy had "a convoy of cars" and made sure Helders was always in his. "He'd stop his car and go, Where's Matt? You're coming with me! So I'd get in his car. Just me, him, his security, driver." Diddy, by now, had given him a pseudonym - Rufus Black. "He kept saying, I don't wanna fuck up your image. And I'm, I don't think it's gonna do me any harm!" He stayed in Diddy's spectacularly expensive hotel. Some weeks later, Helders almost returned to the Dirty Money drumstool for a gig in Glasgow. "But we were rehearsing in London. I were like, I might come, how are you getting there? And he were like, Jet. Jump on t’jet with me. But I had to stay in Bethnal Green instead.”

Love’s young dream: Diddy (left) with Helders

#arctic monkeys #alex turner #matt helders #nick o'malley #jamie cook #sias era #interviews #q magazine #my image id #bands #this is such a funny interview honestly shfjwjs #self proclaimed housewife nick my beloved......#also why did the interviewer describe alex's hands as small pale and girly HELPME #btw im missing page 93 it's probabky just a photospread but yeah #i managed to find the dead links' images on vk #eye contact #not my scan

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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 months

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Monopoly is capitalism's gerrymander

For the rest of May, my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) is available as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!

You don't have to accept the arguments of capitalism's defenders to take those arguments seriously. When Adam Smith railed against rentiers and elevated the profit motive to a means of converting the intrinsic selfishness of the wealthy into an engine of production, he had a point:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

Smith – like Marx and Engels in Chapter One of The Communist Manifesto – saw competition as a catalyst that could convert selfishness to the public good: a rich person who craves more riches still will treat their customers, suppliers and workers well, not out of the goodness of their heart, but out of fear of their defection to a rival:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/19/make-them-afraid/#fear-is-their-mind-killer

This starting point is imperfect, but it's not wrong. The pre-enshittified internet was run by the same people who later came to enshittify it. They didn't have a change of heart that caused them to wreck the thing they'd worked so hard to build: rather, as they became isolated from the consequences of their enshittificatory impulses, it was easier to yield to them.

Once Google captured its market, its regulators and its workforce, it no longer had to worry about being a good search-engine – it could sacrifice quality for profits, without consequence:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

It could focus on shifting value from its suppliers, its customers and its users to its shareholders:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/15/they-trust-me-dumb-fucks/#ai-search

The thing is, all of this is well understood and predicted by traditional capitalist orthodoxy. It was only after a gnostic cult of conspiratorialists hijacked the practice of antitrust law that capitalists started to view monopolies as compatible with capitalism:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/20/we-should-not-endure-a-king/

The argument goes like this: companies that attain monopolies might be cheating, but because markets are actually pretty excellent arbiters of quality, it's far more likely that if we discover that everyone is buying the same product from the same store, that this is the best store, selling the best products. How perverse would it be to shut down the very best stores and halt the sale of the very best products merely to satisfy some doctrinal reflex against big business!

To understand the problem with this argument, we should consider another doctrinal reflex: conservatives' insistence that governments just can't do anything well or efficiently. There's a low-information version of this that goes, "Governments are where stupid people who can't get private sector jobs go. They're lazy and entitled." (There's a racial dimension to this, since the federal government has historically led the private sector in hiring and promoting Black workers and workers of color more broadly.)

But beyond that racially tinged caricature, there's a more rigorous version of the argument: government officials are unlikely to face consequences for failure. Appointees and government employees – especially in the unionized federal workforce – are insulated from such consequences by overlapping layers of labor protection and deflection of blame.

Elected officials can in theory be fired in the next election, but if they keep their cheating or incompetence below a certain threshold, most of us won't punish them at the polls. Elected officials can further improve their odds of re-election by cheating some of us and sharing the loot with others, through handouts and programs. Elections themselves have a strong incumbency bias, meaning that once a cheater gets elected, they will likely get re-elected, even if their cheating becomes well-known:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/gold-bars-featured-bob-menendez-bribery-case-linked-2013-robbery-recor-rcna128006

What's more, electoral redistricting opens the doors to gerrymandering – designing districts to create safe seats where one party always wins. That way, the real election consists of the official choosing the voters, not the voters choosing the official:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REDMAP

Inter-party elections – primaries and other nomination processes – have fundamental weaknesses that mean they're no substitute for well-run, democratic elections:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/30/weak-institutions/

Contrast this with the theory of competitive markets. For capitalism's "moral philosophers," the physics by which greedy desires led to altruistic outcomes was to be found in the swift retribution of markets. A capitalist, exposed to the possibility of worker and customers defecting to their rival, knows that their greed is best served by playing fair.

But just as importantly, capitalists who don't internalize this lesson are put out of business and superceded by better capitalists. The market's invisible hand can pat you on the head – but it can also choke you to death.

This is where monopoly comes in. Even if you accept the consumer welfare theory that says that monopolies are most often the result of excellence, we should still break up monopolies. Even if someone secures an advantage by being great, that greatness will soon regress to the mean. But if the monopolist can extinguish the possibility of competition, they can maintain their power even after they cease deserving it.

In other words, the monopolist is like a politician who wins power – whether through greatness or by deceit – and then gerrymanders their district so that they can do anything and gain re-election. Even the noblest politician, shorn of accountability, will be hard pressed to avoid yielding to temptation.

Capitalism's theory proceeds from the idea that we are driven by our self-interest, and that competition turns self-interest into communal sentiment. Take away the competition, and all that's left is the self-interest.

I think this is broadly true, even though it's not the main reason I oppose monopolies (I oppose monopolies because they corrupt our democracy and pauperize workers). But even if capitalism's ability to turn greed into public benefit isn't the principle that's uppermost in my mind, it's what capitalists claim to believe – and treasure.

I think that most of the right's defense of monopolies stems from cynical, bad-faith rationalizations – but there are people who've absorbed these rationalizations and find them superficially plausible. It's worth developing these critiques, for their sake.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/18/market-discipline/#too-big-to-care

#pluralistic #capitalism #feudalism #too big to care #market discipline #graceful failure modes #gerrymandering #impunity #unaccountability #regulatory capture #monopolies #trustbusting

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giuseppe-yuki · 2 days

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I just had a stupid thought, just imagine somwone maybe new at Mercedes was bitching at kimi and hia huge tiger girlfriend sitting behind them just waiting for them to finsih and everyone around them snickering

no thought is a stupid thought! i love to receive asks from readers :)

lord help the soul who thinks he’s “better” than kimi just because he’s older and has more “experience” in the field of racing.

kimi nods, trying to be be polite as the man in front of him elaborates on his skill and practice on the sim brig.

“…since i was literally a baby,” the engineer points out, exaggeratedly gesturing with his arms. “that’s why i know for a fact that you should not be turning like that on turn 4- you should take the outside line.”

scrunching his eyebrows in confusion, kimi blinks at the man in confusedly. “um…okay.”

your boyfriend swivels around on his chair in the garage, trying to end the conversation. however, being too polite to just walk away, he has no choice but to sit there, enduring the ‘words of wisdom’ from this newly hired engineer that everybody knew gave out the most bullshit advice. several long-term engineers shoot him looks of pity at their desks after seeing him trapped in the impractical conversation.

that’s why he brightens up like the sun peeking out behind a cloud when you flounce into the garage in the following moments, pressing a kiss onto his cheek when you reach him.

“hi kimi,” you giggle, ruffling his curls with your hand. “working hard?”

he smiles at you, nodding. “yep! i’m designing mercedes’ next championship winning car,” he jokes.

you laugh, before a voice behind you speaks up. “do you mind? i was just giving him tips on how to drive better out there. it’s simple, really.”

whipping around, you come face to face with a rather young looking lad, who you suppose to be the infamous new-hire that everyone despises.

“oh, sorry,” you say, not feeling sorry at all. “did i cut you off from your conversation with kimi?”

“yeah,” the engineer says, with an air of confidence around him. “i was informing him on the many things he should do better on next time on track. i’ll have you know i have years of experience.”

the gall of this man, you think. that’s no way to talk to my boyfriend.

and when you thought the engineer could be even more repulsive, he opens his mouth yet again.

“by the way, i don’t know how you even got in the garage, but fans are supposed to stay in the paddock,” he sniffs, as if repulsed by the thought of a random kimi enthusiast in the mercedes garage.

even the nearby merc employees raise an eyebrow to the overly-cocky engineer’s comment. it was pretty much common knowledge of your position as kimi’s girlfriend in the paddock, showing up to nearly every event to support him. besides, you literally just gave your boyfriend a kiss on the cheek- a fan couldn’t have possibly done that.

your boyfriend jumps off of his seat, ready to defend you.

“hey! this is my-“ he begins, but you cut him off, squeezing his arm gently.

“really?” you gasp, eyes wide with faux surprise. “i am so sorry! i just wanted a signature from kimi- i had no idea!”

giving you a look of disgust, the engineer gestures behind him towards the exit. “yeah, yeah, dumb mistake, whatever,- just go that way, and make sure to read the signs next time.”

ignoring kimi’s look of surprise and the snickers of knowing engineers, you take your leave from the garage. behind you, you hear the engineer snort. “eugh, fans these days…always so overeager to meet their idols, am i right?”

yeah, someone should really stop you before you bit his head off.

you pad back into the garage several minutes later, in your tiger form. you had to teach this stupid guy a lesson. gingerly stepping around tires and spare parts, you weave your way through groups of merc employees and engineers. of course, being used to your presence, they give you a few pets on your head.

you hear the engineer’s voice before you see him.

“i also want to say, your tyre management is- how do i put this nicely- horrible.”

turning the corner, you spot a miserable looking kimi picking at his fingernails as he half-listens to the arrogant man in front of him.

at the sight of your aggressive figure- a total 180 from your usual shyer demeanor, the employees surveying the scene start to quietly snicker again.

hearing the laughs, the engineers mistakenly believes that they are laughing with him instead of at him.

“see, even they agree with me,” he chuckles at kimi. “you really should be working on managing your tires on track.”

unable to take it anymore, you sprint towards kimi, purposely nudging the engineer’s chair, knocking it off balance by a little. you nudge your large head underneath kimi’s hand, demanding pets.

the egotistic engineer yelps, almost falling off the tall stool. somehow being the only one not having seen kimi’s ’pet tiger’ before, he stutters out, “a-a-a- tiger!” before fleeing to the opposite of the garage.

you growl at him, purposely flashing your sharp canines at him. it makes you feel smug when he shrinks back even more, cowering behind a spare tire.

kimi rolls his eyes at the man’s extreme reaction. “maybe,” he says pointedly to the engineer while stroking your fur, “instead of you giving me pointers on how to do my literal job, i should be giving you pointers how to control your emotions. like, what are you so scared of? it’s just a tiger!”

when you roar again at the engineer to emphasize kimi’s point, you are pretty sure the engineer nearly pees himself.

#anais talks🎙#f2 x reader #kimi antonelli x reader #f2 x y/n #f2 x you

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honorarysimp · 3 months

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1: Another Case, Another Small Town

series masterlist

Typical.

The winding, twisting roads of the California Coast Range mountainside were treacherous in the midnight hours as the vehicle’s headlights sliced through the pitch black night. The dense forest along the roads cast shadows that seemed to dance and shift with each turn, a constant reminder of the eerie unknown that lay on the path ahead.

Tendrils of cigarette smoke emitted from the ember burning at the end, filter loosely fitted between lips that no longer craves the nicotine high.

A hand reaches into the backpack sitting in the passenger seat, digging out a tape recorder. One finger smoothly hits the red button on the top, and the internal wheels of the device begin to spin.

Your voice crackles through the tape recorder, speaking into the microphone built into the device.

"I believe I’ve finally hit the outskirts of this damned town, so far it's not what I expected," you say, voice a mixture of exhaustion and skepticism. "It took me longer to get here than I thought, due to getting lost in those mountains on the way. The trees and darkness were suffocating, twisting in on themselves like something out of a Lovecraft novel."

You pause, running a hand through tousled hair from the windows being cracked just the slightest, else the smoke lingers within the vehicle.

"And those disappearances I've been hired to investigate... they're the strangest part of it all." You continue to mumble around the cigarette, plucking it from your lips and tossing it through the small space between the window and frame of the car door.

You sit back in your seat, adjusting the tape recorder on the dashboard.

"I've dealt with a lot of weird cases over the years, but this one takes the cake," you mutter to yourself. "From what I've gathered, several townsfolk have gone missing over the last few months. No bodies, no clues, just vanished into thin air. The locals claim it's the work of some paranormal entity, but I'm not easily swayed by local myths."

You pause, the faint glow of the GPS on the dashboard screen illuminating your tired face.

"But there's something about this town... it's like the air is thick with tension, like something is lurking just out of sight," you continue. "The people are tight-lipped, refusing to discuss the disappearances in any detail over the phone. It feels as if they're hiding something, or perhaps they're just as terrified as the rumors suggest."

You chuckle wryly, rubbing at the back of your neck, which feels a bit stiff and crick from the long drive.

"As for the claims of some kind of paranormal entity being responsible... I doubt it," you say, skepticism evident in your voice. "I've dealt with my fair share of strange cases, but superstition and fear often cloud people's judgment. I'll need more than just rumors and local folklore to prove that there's anything otherworldly at play here..."

The car rolled to a stop at the first red light within town, you take the moment to look around. The air was eerily quiet, but admittedly so at such a late hour, the only sound the soft hum of the engine and the occasional rustle of leaves. The town itself seems small, the buildings cramped together as if huddled against the darkness of the surrounding forest.

As you observed your surroundings, you can’t shake the feeling that something was off about this town. There was an oppressive atmosphere that weighed heavily on the air, an ever impending wait for any who dare pass through.

You continue to consult your GPS, following the directions to the hotel booked for your stay until further notice. The road twisted and turned, taking you past dilapidated houses and overgrown lawns until you finally reach the hotel.

The building was old and worn, with peeling paint and a flickering neon sign that read "Vacancy". The parking lot was mostly empty, with only a few other cars scattered about.

As you step out of your vehicle and head towards the hotel's entrance, you can’t shake the feeling of being watched.

Grabbing your backpack and duffle, you don’t dally and stand about in favor of a bed to fall onto.

As you walk into the lobby, the sound of your footsteps echoing off the worn wood. At the front desk stood an older woman, her expression stoic and unreadable.

As you approach the desk, she offered a curt nod of acknowledgment. "Can I help you?" she asked in a dry, raspy voice.

"I have a room booked under the name of (Y/N) (Y/L/N)," you replied, adjusting you grip on your duffle.

The woman eyes you for a moment before checking her records. "Room 34," she said, handing you a key.

You thank the woman and make your way down the hallway towards your room. Despite the late hour, the hotel wasn’t so bad, the only sounds being the faint creak of floorboards beneath your feet and the muted hum of the few lights still on.

As you reach your room, you unlock the door and step inside, flicking on the switch to illuminate the small, modest room. The room was dimly lit, the only light coming from a lamp on the bedside table.

You dropped your bags by the door with a weary sigh, shoulders slumped from the long drive and stress of the case you are undertaking. You kick off your shoes and flopped down onto the bed, not even bothering to change out of your clothes.

The bed was uncomfortable and lumpy, but it was better than nothing after a long day on the road. You close your eyes and let out a deep breath, the tiredness seeping into your bones.

"This town better be worth it," you mumble to yourself before drifting off into a fitful sleep.

#tara carpenter x y/n #tara carpenter x you #tara carpenter x reader #tara carpenter

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galaxygolfergirl · 5 months

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Watcher's Expenses

I didn't major in accounting: I took three classes and it grinded my brain to a fine powder. However, after graduating with a business admin degree, being a former eager fan of their videos, and from a cursory glance over their socials, there's a lot to consider in their spending behavior that really could start racking up costs. Some of these things we've already noticed, but there are other things I'd like to highlight, and I'll try to break it down into the different categories of accounting expenses (if I get something wrong, let me know. I was more concentrated in marketing 🤷‍♀️). I'm not going to hypothesize numbers either, as that would take out more time than I'm willing to afford-- you can assume how much everything costs. Anyways, here's my attempt at being a layman forensic accountant:

Note: All of this is assuming they're operating above board and not engaging in any illegal practices such as money laundering, tax evasion, not paying rent, etc.

Operating Expenses

Payroll: 25+ staff salaries and insurance

Overhead Expenses

CEO/founder salaries

Office space leasing or rent (In L.A, one of the most expensive cities in the US)

Utilities (water, electricity, heating, sanitation, etc.)

Insurance

Advertising Costs

Telephone & Internet service

Cloud Storage or mainframe

Office equipment (furniture, computers, printers, etc.)

Office supplies (paper, pens, printer ink, etc.)

Marketing costs (Social media marketing on Instagram, Youtube, SEO for search engines, Twitter, etc. Designing merchandise and posters, art, etc. )

Human Resources (not sure how equipped they are)

Accounting fees

Property taxes

Legal fees

Licensing fees

Website maintenance (For Watchertv.com, Watcherstuff.com, & Watcherentertainment.com)

Expenses regarding merchandising (whoever they contract or outsource for that)

Inventory costs

Potentially maintenance of company vehicles

Subsequent gas mileage for road trips

Depreciation (pertains to tangible assets like buildings and equipment)

Amortization (intangible assets such as patents and trademarks)

Overhead Travel and Entertainment Costs (I think one of the biggest culprits, evident in their videos and posts)

The travel expenses (flights, train trips, rental cars, etc. For main team and scouts)

Hotel expenses for 7-8 people at least, or potentially more

Breakfasts, lunches and dinners with the crew (whether that's fully on their dime or not, I don't know; Ryan stated they like to cover that for the most part)

Recreational activities (vacation destinations, amusement parks, sporting activities etc.)

The location fees

Extraneous Overhead costs (not sure exactly where these fall under, but another culprit, evident in videos and posts)

Paying for guest appearances

Expensive filming & recording equipment (Cameras, sound equipment, editing software subscriptions, etc.)

The overelaborate sets for Ghost files, Mystery Files, Puppet History, Podcasts etc. (Set dressing: Vintage memorabilia, antiquated tech, vintage furniture, props, etc.)

Kitchen & Cooking supplies/equipment

Office food supply; expensive food and drink purchases for videos

Novelty items or miscellaneous purchases (ex. Ghost hunting equipment, outfits, toys, etc.)

Non-Operating Expenses

These are those expenses that cannot be linked back to operating revenue. One of the most common examples of non-operating expenses is interest expense. This is because while interest is the cost of borrowing money from a creditor or a bank, they are not generating any operating income. This makes interest payments a part of non-operating expenses.

Financial Expenses

Potential loan payments, borrowing from creditors or lenders, bank loans, etc.

Variable Expenses

Hiring a large amount of freelancers, overtime expenditure, commissions, etc.

PR consultations (Not sure if they had this before the scandal)

Extraordinary Expenses

Expenses incurred outside your company’s regular business activities and during a large one-time event or transactions. For example, selling land, disposal of a significant asset, laying off of your employees, unexpected machine repairing or replacement, etc.

Accrued Expenses

When your business has incurred an expense but not yet paid for it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(If there's anything else I'm missing, please feel free to add or correct things)

To a novice or a young entrepreneur, this can be very intimidating if you don't have the education or the support to manage it properly. I know it intimidates the hell out of me and I'm still having to fill in the gaps (again, if I've mislabeled or gotten anything wrong here, please let me know). For the artistic or creative entrepreneur, it can be even harder to reconcile the extent of your creative passions with your ability to operate and scale your business at a sustainable rate. That can lead to irresponsible, selfish, and impulsive decisions that could irreparably harm your brand, which is a whole other beast of its own.

My guess at this point is that their overhead and operation expenses are woefully mismanaged; they've made way too many extraneous purchases, and that they had too much confidence in their audience of formerly 2.93 million to make up for the expenses they failed to cover.

It almost seems as if their internal logic was, "If we make more money, we can keep living the expensive lifestyle that we want and make whatever we want without anyone telling us we can't, and we want to do it NOW, sooner rather than later because we don't want wait and compromise our vision." But as you can see, the reality of fulfilling those ambitions is already compromised by the responsibility of running a business.

And I wrote this in another post here, but I'll state it again: Running a business means you need to be educated on how a business can successfully and efficiently operate. Accounting, marketing, social media marketing, public relations, production, etc; these resources and internet of things is available and at your disposal. If they had invested more time in educating themselves on those aspects and not made this decision based on artistic passion (and/or greed), they would have not gotten the response they got.

Being a graphic designer, I know the creative/passionate side of things but I also got a degree/got educated in business because I wanted to understand how to start a company and run it successfully. If they’re having trouble handling the responsibility of doing that, managing production costs, managing overhead expenses, and especially with compensating their 25+ employees, then they should hire professionals that are sympathetic to their creative interests, but have the education and experience to reign in bad decisions like these.

Anyways, thanks for coming to my TedTalk. What a shitshow this has been.

#watcher #watcher entertainment #ryan bergara #shane madej #steven lim #watcher tv #watchergate #accounting

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queenlua · 1 year

Text

A student of mine did a rather good thesis on de-clouding. In the process she discovered the term "cloud repatriation" a fair bit of literature on the movement to bring control of data and hardware back 'on-prem'.

She also noted that when you search on these terms the main engines (all run by cloud service providers) return poor results not congruent with the scale of the phenomenon. They are dominated by the opposite message obviously heavily SEO'd up to the top, plus shill pieces pushing cloud services but presented as "critical". Dig deep if you want to find the real scale of the "anti-cloud" issues.

Her main conclusion was very interesting though. That the big issue is not finance, reliability or control - but de-skilling.

As companies move their operations out to the cloud it's not the disappearance of hardware from the premises but the loss of skill-sets. Later they don't even know who to hire or how to write the JD to bring people back in.

A good example was the broadcast industry. Entire branches of that industry doing post-production, colour, transcoding, and whatnot moved it all out to AWS. After price hikes, they wanted to go back to running their own services. But they can't. Because nobody knows about how to set-up and run that any longer - especially specialist things like buffers and transcoders. I mean, try finding a sys-admin who can just do simple tasks like set up and properly configure a mail server these days.

sometimes hacker news comments are interesting

#filthy hacker shit #this will pair interestingly with me rant-y essay about the quote-unquote handmade manifesto in programmerland #when i. uh. actually finish it. someday

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yekokataa · 1 year

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Pale lore in Sacred and Terrible Air

I pulled together some of my favorite descriptions of the Pale from Kurvitz's novel. All excerpts are from the excellent fan translation by Group Ibex, which I think really nailed the style of the game in these quotes.

Warning: Full of SPOILERS and extremely LONG!

The Pale, up close:

The main characters take a road trip to the Lemminkäise zone of entroponetic catastrophe in Katla. They hire a racecar driver and drive to the very edge of the disaster zone, where matter is actively dissolving into the Pale.

The border point disappeared behind them, along with the invisible boundary of winter’s orbit, beyond which is eternal winter. The asphalt also disappeared over time; they encountered rural families on sleds along snowy gravel roads. It is their great privilege to have seen the pale with their own eyes, where it has towered behind the silo since childhood.

Kenni sees the black mass of the forest slowly drifting into the sky. The earth crunches and cracks as the spruce trees tear themselves out of it, roots and all. The wood screams, and the frozen earth too, like they’re in a dentist’s chair. A cloud of limestone gravel flies into the air, and far above in the dark, the first trees are subsumed in the pale.

Tereesz, Khan, and the mad Suruese driver look outside, their heads tilted back, as the pale approaches from behind the house. Inside, the bass drum thumps robustly, and outside, behind the silhouette of the building, the dark mass of the forest rolls up into the sky across the entire visible horizon. The pale rises vertically from the spruce forests like a wave, from the mountain ranges above the expanse of the world. Its horror moves slowly, humming over the world, but the world is made of matter, and matter is evergreen, ancient; it sustains itself with surprising dignity even at the moment of disappearance.

The pale can lift up entire houses! Holy shit! Our boys make a narrow escape from the edge of the encroaching pale as a house is torn away from its foundation.

In the yard, where the wheels of the motor carriage have drawn a loop in the snow, Inayat Khan looks up at a farm building that hovers above him like a ghost. Electrical wire entrails hang out of the rotating object, black against the expanse of the starry sky. It drifts on into the pale with a self-evident calm. Up above, a trail of its furniture and crumbling foundation remains. In the yard in front of him, Khan watches how a startled Tereesz and Kenni follow the object’s path, their heads tilting back until they hit the wooden fence behind them. In a strange, panic-free concern, they all look in the direction of Ulv’s crumbling house. It seems as if every little crack comes from its limestone foundation. Soon it will rise up. But nothing happens. The pale freezes in place far away, behind the house; the creaking of the forest stops, and the music in the house also stops. Somewhere in the perceptible distance, on the edge of the frozen pale above, the farmhouse falls apart and disappears. […] The engine revs up and the carriage’s wheels spin in the snow. The mass of the pale can no longer support its phantom weight. It breaks down. The vast clearings crumple under it in an instant, exploding with powder snow; a collapse like a shock wave whirls over the world. Spruce trees bow under the blow, and the pale blasts open the windows of the old decaying manor house. It arches around the edges of the house, as if hesitating for a moment, and then explodes together, encompassing it. The pale grabs the manor in its lap, and somewhere inside, in a room with a low ceiling, the young man puts on his headphones. He reads the sweeping pale like a magnetic reader reads a Stereo 8 tape. […] The pale blows across the fields, on both sides of the village road. Its avalanche crashes onto the gravel; the rumbling wall approaches, glowing crimson from the motor carriage’s tail lights.

Travel through the Pale:

Floating magnet trains seem common, and they even go through the Pale. There's a brief mention that Tereesz once spent a week on a magnet train and was then told he wasn't allowed to travel for a year afterwards due to the dangers of pale exposure.

Outside on the platform, giant buffers are being pulled off the train. The umbilical cord is cut and thus, freed from the connecting bridges, the entire weight of the train with its five-fold carriage slats sinks onto the magnets. They howl at full power below the train cars. And then the flight begins. The magnetic support splits the North Sea under it in two. It’s quiet inside, the generators humming as the train whizzes by fifty metres above the water. The three of them stand together, laughing. Tereesz extinguishes his smoke in a bronze ashtray, and they turn their back on the observation windows. Ahead, the pale awaits, and past it begins a big world. […] Through the windows, all that’s left of the city behind them is the light pollution, a golden glow in the distant darkness of the snowstorm.

This floating train station has an illustration Rostov by the way.

For a historical travel example: the famous disappearance of the airship Harnankur. This airship was referenced in the game in the form of the 50-real vodka in the special edition commemorative bottle! Rostov's illustration from the novel is here, showing a model of the ship in Khan's basement.

One hundred and fifty years ago, on another isola—the Graad isola—it snows in the city of Mirova. It’s a midwinter evening, but thousands of people have gathered in the harbour. The quay bustles with them. In the background lies imperial Graad—church steeples and chimneys. The crowd is waving, bidding farewell to the airship rising into the sky. A swan made of wood and nickel rises into the blizzard, and the passengers of the world’s first interisolary flight wave to the crowd from its balcony baskets: well-dressed boujee people, with a never-before-seen adventure ahead of them. It’s the pale—terrifying, but at the same time such an upbeat and unforgettable experience. Modern technology, in the form of a luxuriously upholstered airship, now makes such an experience possible for an ordinary, if perhaps slightly better off, citizen. And on the other side of the pale—oh mystical pale!—the land of Katla awaits, with its royal capital of Vaasa. […] Two days later, the interisolary flight enters the pale, and then, barely six hours later, a deviation occurs in the airship’s course. “Harnankur” has gone missing with fifteen hundred passengers on board. The flight is believed to have drifted into an uncharted entroponetic mass, the pale superdeep.

Sound

The pale makes a hissing sound. Here Khan receives a phone call from one of the missing presumed dead girls, who may be a ghost or part of the pale, it's all left very ambiguous. It reminds me of the part in the game where you can call Slipstream SCA and hear a ghost trapped in the phone.

He picks up the receiver, and the hallway fills with the hiss of the pale. It grates in his ear. “Hello?” asks Khan. But no one answers. “Hello, who is it? Please tell me who you are!” he repeats, more and more pleading each time. The hissing becomes louder and louder, until finally it deafens him, the pressure in his inner ear goes awry, and only that vibration from who-knows-where remains, its centre. The silence goes through his flesh and bones like waves. It’s cold.

Later, we learn that the pale can actually come through the phone lines?? Creepy!

The speaker switches to a long-distance call; the pale seeps into the hall air from the fabric-covered ziggurat. The signal runs as an entroponetic sequence through the Great Unknown, from Katla to Graad. Relay stations clear the call from the noise of history along the way, but something always creeps into the wires—a ghost radio station. Its quiet voice in its unintelligible language reminds us what it’s here for. To end life.

It's also similar to the sounds of the pale latitude compressor! During a long distance call through the pale, a voice is heard spelling things out using an “international alphabet” like the real-world NATO phonetic alphabet.

This is how matter degrades, drop by drop, like an analog rhythm running from red through the colourless world. The international alphabet is hidden in the low-frequency waves, “... Nadir-Ellips-Gamut-Azimuth...” and so on, to the border of the settlement.

Culture, ideology

Zigi as a teen is a total edgelord when it comes to talking about the pale:

But above all, Zigi is still a nihilist. He reads dia-mat [dialectical materialism], says that animals are automatons, is a fan of behaviourism, and adores the pale and the nihilistic innocence of Mesque, Ambrosius Saint-Miro. […] The geography teacher sent him to the principal’s office, and Zigi stopped at the door, the zippers of his leather jacket jingling. “See you in the pale,” he said, and ran his index finger across his throat. Back when entroponetics was not discussed at school, many people gathered around Zigi during recess, and the corridor echoed with his half-truths: “The pale is made of the past,” he said. “All the lost things are jumbled up there, sad and abandoned. The pale is the world’s memory of the world. It accumulates matter and sweeps away everything in its path. This is what’s called entroponetic collapse.” “But when will it happen, Zigi?" “Yes, Zigi, when?” “It will happen in your lifetime, little Olle. At least, I hope so. History swallows the present; the world of matter disappears, desaparecido... That’s why there’s no point in our generation going to school. There will be no future. When you grow up, don’t have children like your underdeveloped bourgeois parents did. You’ll get to see them die, and that’s it. Compared to the pale, there’s only a small amount of the world left! In the end, the isolas will sink, dozens and hundreds of square kilometres of land mass, can you even imagine? Like a ship keeling over into the pale. Fwooom...” Zigi makes a sinking ship gesture with his hands, the zippers of his leather jacket jingling; the children gasp. “Don’t worry, Olle, this will be the peak of humanity.”

In the game, Zigi's brand of entroponetic nihilism gets two very brief (and kind of hidden) mentions, where it's named as entropolism. I've got those quotes saved in my post here.

Waves

The pale seems very wave-like in that scene where it lifts a house, and apparently it's also like a wave according to science:

“It’s an oceanographic myth. The Killer Wave.” Little Khan points in the direction of the body of water. The four of them watch from the safe warmth of a beach towel. Insects buzz in the dark, around the gas lanterns. “For a long time it was just that—a myth, a sailor’s tale. Arda even has a mythological name for it: ‘halderdingr’. But now they’re a scientifically documented phenomenon, they really exist, you understand? This explains the dozens, hundreds of missing ships. […] “And you know what’s the most fucked up thing about it?” Khan asks slyly. He wipes his diamaterialist glasses and then puts them back on. His almond eyes squint behind the magnifying lenses, filled to the brim with popular science mystique. “The same effect—don’t ask me how, I don’t know—but the same non-linear effect also explains the pale. They use it in entroponetics. This is how the pale behaves when it sweeps over the world.”

Mold

I've heard that in Estonian the word used for Pale is Hall, meaning both frost and mold, like a pale gray film that covers the surface of things. As the Pale takes Vaasa, fruits begin to grow mold. Some people choose to stay rather than leave the disaster zone.

The panic has cooled. In the strange indifference of the evacuation, whole families stay behind in Vaasa. There they play board games, in their houses, in their spacious apartments. They love vitamin-rich food, and when the pale is only a few days away, it’s always signalled by the same beautiful event. Fruits go mouldy. It grows vigorously on them. Children listen to oranges crackling on the table. Spores sprout from the pulp, apples are hairy with it. If you try to touch them, they crack open. No one knows why it’s like that. But few can muster the energy to be afraid of that time, and that’s why I say it’s beautiful.

And later, when Zigi is living in a forest that's been taken by the Pale, even the animals have been consumed by it although they're still alive:

And to the dark forest, to the museum of natural history, where mould grows on the horns of the males and puffs of steam no longer rise from the kids’ nostrils. They still breathe—not oxygen, but pure pale.

Turning into a protein mass

The mother of the missing girls sits in her home, waiting for the pale to take her:

Ann-Margret Lund also sits there somewhere in her kitchen, in the middle of the pale; her rooms are quiet and clean. The former teacher wears a beige jacket and an above-the-knee skirt, and watches the moulding apricots. […] Like everyone else, she can’t do anything in this extended stay, where one’s sense of the present slowly drifts away. But whereas the others dissolve into their memories, she simply disappears. It’s as if her life had never happened. The past is not awaiting her return. She just wanders around the rooms, adjusts her grandmother’s lace doily and bedspreads, arranges the curtains on the rails. And thus, tastefully, she refuses to indulge in those ecstasies which visit the human spirit when the world is disintegrating. Nothing leaves her hands, and nothing returns. When Katla finally sinks into the pale, Ann-Margret Lund turns, without the slightest pleasure, into a protein mass.

Hanging out in the Pale with the ghost of Ignus Nielsen

Years later, as an adult, Zigi has become immune to the effects of the Pale, and even stays in the middle of it in a tent, hanging out with the cytoplasmic spirit of a dead communist.

Human speech sounds out of place in the silence of the pale. It echoes in the gloom of the trees as Zygismunt trudges through the snow. There’s an old trick coined by the great entroponaut K. Voronikin, that you have to shout in the pale. Otherwise, you start to feel gloomy, and the past comes up. But Zygismunt needn’t be afraid of that. When he first entered the pale, he discovered to his great dismay that he couldn’t return like everyone else. Or rather—he could, but not where he really wants. This makes him indispensable to Mazov’s idea. The disappearance of the Lund children has literally given Zigi special entroponetic powers.

He goes hunting for pale-poisoned ibexes. The phrase ‘protein mass’ comes up again. It seems that any human or animal in the pale for long enough eventually turns into a protein mass.

The entroponaut shakes himself. Snow falls from the shoulders of the anorak coat. He goes on alone. An hour of frozen machine tracks and hoofprints in the snow run along in the flashlight beam. And when a herd of ibex finally emerges from the darkness, they are frozen in place in the middle of the road, like an exhibit in a natural history museum. Some of the females sometimes jerk in place, sneezing; this is a nervous impulse, a muscle tremor. The backs of the stuffed animals are already covered with snow, but their snouts are still steaming, they’re still breathing—some for a few days, some for a week. An anorak-clad figure moves through the herd with the indifference of a professional until the beam of his flashlight casts the alpha male’s crown of horns as a shadow on the wall of spruce trees. Zygismunt looks into the animal’s glazed eyes. Its sense of time has broken down. An automaton’s primitive fragment of a brain strays in the pale faster than that of a human. This is how hunters from the outskirts go hunting in the entrokataa. Of course, they’ll eventually go mad from it as well, and one day they won’t return. But not Zigi, he has special abilities. He takes a pocket knife from his belt and slits the protein mass’s throat.

#disco elysium #Püha ja õudne lõhn #sacred and terrible air #the pale #pjõl #de meta #disco elysium lore

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