#leigh phillips

[argyrocratie]

"Waste, Logistical Chains, “Economies of Scale” — and Aesthetics.

My suspicion that Phillips seriously underestimates the degree of waste production in existing capitalism is further confirmed by the fact that a book he co-authors, The People’s Republic of Walmart, celebrates many of the most inefficient aspects of existing capitalism as exemplars of efficiency. In particular he admires Walmart’s and Amazon’s extended logistics networks, a sentiment he also celebrated in a direct tweet to me:

I kinda love those worldwide supply chains. They are deeply humanising and constructing of a global culture. I cannot wait until all of subsaharan Africa is more integrated.

(...)

It’s useful to contrast this with Seymour Melman’s observations, in The Permanent War Economy, on the tendency towards cost-maximization in bureaucracies like the Pentagon and regulated public utilities. Any entity that’s guaranteed a profit under the terms of a procurement contract or regulation has every incentive in the world to maximize its cost, in order to maximize profits that are calculated on a cost-plus basis.

And this is true not only of entities that are formally guaranteed profits, but of entities whose oligopoly power enables them to engage in administered pricing (what Paul Goodman called the “great kingdom of cost-plus”).

According to William Waddell and Norman Bodek, under the rules of the management accounting system developed by Donaldson Brown at Du Pont and General Motors (what Waddell and Bodek call “Sloanist” accounting), overhead and waste is treated as the creation of value — a lot like GDP, in fact. Inventory is counted as an asset “with the same liquidity as cash.” Regardless of whether current output is needed to fill an order (...) In other words, the expenditure of money on inputs is by definition the creation of value. The more bloated and bureaucratic the production process, the greater the total book value of all that inventory sitting in the warehouse. So the large corporations that dominate our economy have an incentive to maximize waste and overhead that’s similar in kind, if not degree, to that prevailing in the Pentagon.

These giant corporations celebrated by Phillips and Rozworski appear “efficient” only because they exist within an ecosystem which has been modified to suit their needs. The state provides subsidized material inputs and socializes risk, and it enforces monopolies and entry barriers and regulatory restraints on competition. Corporate bureaucracies survive because of cost externalization and economic rents.

And that’s built into the basic structure of capitalism from its earliest days. From the beginning, capitalism has pursued a model of growth based on the extensive addition of new material inputs, rather than the more efficient use of existing inputs, because land and natural resources — thanks to enclosure and imperial looting — were artificially cheap.

In Europe peasant land was stolen and consolidated via enclosure and given to the propertied classes. In settler societies like the United States, both Indigenous-occupied and vacant lands were preempted by states, which gave preferential access to capitalists. States subsidize the extraction of fossil fuels and fight wars for access to them, making energy inputs artificially cheap. They subsidize highway transportation and, by making long-distance shipping artificially cheap, make firm sizes and market areas far above the point of diminishing returns artificially viable.

This is why the much-vaunted “efficiency” of factory farming — vaunted by its court propagandists, that is — is in output per labor-hour, not per acre. Soil-intensive techniques like raised bed horticulture are actually more efficient, in terms of output per acre.

In the specific case of logistic chains, Walmart is efficient at minimizing costs within a distorted framework in which transportation inputs are artificially cheap. Walmart’s logistics networks, and its network of offshore suppliers, are both enlarged at the expense of smaller-scale production for local markets, which would be more efficient if all costs were fully internalized. This means that the scale of Walmart’s logistics networks is actually an example of the amount of waste production under capitalism.

(...)

To the extent that Walmart’s just-in-time model is intended to match supply to demand, it is a sub-optimal application of lean principles. Walmart just replaces the warehouses full of inventory (under the Sloanist mass production model that Waddell and Bodek critique) with warehouses on wheels or on container ships. The ideal application of lean principles, in contrast, would be siting production as close as possible to demand, then scaling the flow of production to demand and scaling machinery to the flow of production — something like the high tech job shops of the Emilia-Romagna industrial district, with production oriented even more toward local consumption than is currently the case.

So while Phillips may consider those long logistic chains to be “deeply humanizing,” what they actually are is deeply inefficient. There is nothing “agile” about using many times the transportation inputs that are actually necessary because you’re producing stuff in one place to be shipped to retail shelves on the other side of the planet, when it would be produced much more efficiently where it’s being consumed."

-Kevin Carson, "We Are All Degrowthers. We Are All Ecomodernists. Analysis of a Debate" (2019)

[brokehorrorfan]

Joker: Folie à Deux will be released on Steelbook 4K UHD, 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD on December 17 via Warner Bros. The 2024 sequel to 2019's Joker will first be available on Digital on October 29.

Todd Phillips (Joker, The Hangover) returns to direct from a script he co-wrote with Scott Silver (Joker, 8 Mile). Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga star with Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener, Zazie Beetz, Steve Coogan, Harry Lawtey, and Leigh Gill.

The film is presented in 4K with Dolby Vision/HDR and Dolby Atmos audio. Special features are listed below, where you can also see the full Steelbook layout.

Special features:

Everything Must Go: 4-Part Documentary • Can I Have A Cigarette? • Finding Lee • A Hundred Films In One • King of Nothing

The Character Of Music

Live! With The Joker

Colors of Madness

Crafted with Class

Joker: Folie À Deux finds Arthur Fleck institutionalized at Arkham awaiting trial for his crimes as Joker. While struggling with his dual identity, Arthur not only stumbles upon true love, but also finds the music that's always been inside him.

Pre-order Joker: Folie à Deux.

[milliondollarbaby87]

Joker: Folie à Deux (2024) Review

Failed comedian and murderer Arthur Fleck is struggling with the dual identity as he is incarcerated at Arkham State Hospital while he is awaiting trial, meeting the love of his life in Lee Quinzel will change everything. ⭐️⭐️ Continue reading Joker: Folie à Deux (2024) Review

[moondustbooks]

October JOMP Day 14 - Orange Books

[slashdementia7734]

CARDS // LEIGH-ON-SEA // 1992 // #GNARBUCKET

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[thebuhonerodazorrow]

Superman: Action Comics #1054 (2023)

Home again: part four

Dawn of dc

DC

[thedestinysunknown]

[watchingalotofmovies]

Joker: Folie à Deux

Joker Folie a Deux    [trailer]

Struggling with his dual identity, failed comedian Arthur Fleck meets the love of his life, Harley Quinn, while incarcerated at Arkham State Hospital.

I can't says I enjoyed it. I didn't particularly liked the first movie either.

But on some level I admire Todd Phillips' audacity of turning a billlion-dollar comic book franchise into a musical and giving the fanboys the finger.

[jmunneytumbler]

'Joker: Folie à Deux' … or Deuxn't?

'Joker: Folie à Deux' … or Deuxn't?

What a joke! (CREDIT: Warner Bros. Pictures/Screenshot) Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener, Harry Lawtey, Bill Smitrovich, Zazie Beetz, Steve Coogan, Leigh Gill, Ken Leung, Jacob Lofland, Sharon Washington Director: Todd Phillips Running Time: 138 Minutes Rating: R Release Date: October 4, 2024 (Theaters) Whenever they weren’t singing in Joker: Folie à Deux, I…

[notesonfilm1]

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 429 – Joker: Folie à Deux

2019’s Joker, which gave the iconic supervillain an all-purpose mental health disorder, a tragic origin story, and a name – Arthur Fleck – was never meant to have a sequel. But it made a billion dollars, so Joker: Folie à Deux is here. And, being a jukebox musical based primarily on show tunes from the mid-20th century canon, we ask who it’s for. The first film took risks in eschewing so many…

[graphicpolicy]

Action Comics #1054 shows the heart of Superman

Action Comics #1054 shows the heart of Superman with a needed dose of positivity #comics #comicbooks #ncbd #superman

As Superman and Natasha Irons race to save Steel from the newly transformed Metallo, the Super-Twins are lost–and alone–against the nightmarish threat of the Necrohive! How will Lois and the House of El find them? There’s something rather quaint and relaxing about Action Comics #1054. While the comic is full of action, it also is very positive getting to the heart of what makes Superman…

[lornacrane]

OH YEAH MAYBE SO bc they look like they’re looking at a film monitor so if it was during Last Supper filming that would make a lot of sense!!

[liamlawsonlesbian]

what book I would give each current formula one driver to introduce them to the joy of reading

an intellectual exercise no one* asked for

Max Verstappen: Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond - if you are nd and have read this book, you may understand me. otherwise just trust me. the impetus for this post

Checo Perez: The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White - this is an excellent read-aloud book for Sergio Jr.'s age, and there is nothing as wonderful as reading a compelling book to a kid you love, imho

Charles Leclerc: The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman - he is on the record as a Potter enjoyer. also, I think he would enjoy having a little animal friend

Carlos Sainz: Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood - okay yes this is partially a joke about the title, but this is a hilarious and wonderful memoir, about weird families and Catholicism, and I think Carlos would enjoy it.

Lando Norris: Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett - in my mind Lando is a little bit like @bright-and-burning but less cool, so this fits. also, the combination of high number of jokes/page + action/mystery seems like a good fit

Oscar Piastri: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie - this book has the kind of mystery that really draws you in, plus I think Oscar would dig the questions about AI it digs into. I choose to believe with zero evidence that he would be interested in the funky gender stuff

Fernando Alonso: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell - look me in the eye and tell me this book wasn't written for Fernando Alonso

Lance Stroll: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card - yeah

Lewis Hamilton: Die Trying by Lee Child - Lewis deserves to read mildly trashy thrillers <3 plus there's a Tom Cruise movie

George Russell: Changing My Mind by Zadie Smith - as a proud Brit, George should be reading one of the premiere English authors of the 21st century. her first book of essays is a fun and readable place to start

Yuki Tsunoda: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel - I don't have a Yuki-lore explanation, I just want to give him one of my favorite books

Daniel Ricciardo: The Gunslinger by Steven King - The Dark Tower series is Lord of the Rings-esque in scope but Western-inflected in aesthetic and written by The Horror Guy, I think DR would enjoy

Alex Albon: The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee - I say this with so much love in my heart, but Alex wants to be seen as smart. this book is brilliantly written pop science

Logan Sargeant: Bloomability by Sharon Creech - yes this is a book for tween girls, but it's about boarding school in Switzerland, and Sharon Creech is a genius. if I could convince him to read it, I think he would love it

Valtteri Bottas: The Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkien - what are hobbits if not humanoid moomins?

Zhou Guanyu: Piranesi by Susannah Clarke - a fun, exciting, stylishly written book for a stylish guy

Kevin Magnussen: Watership Down by Richard Adams - rabbit warfare <3

Nico Hulkenberg: A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles - Hulk SEEMS like a Dad Who Reads Historical Fiction, even if he isn't yet

Pierre Gasly: Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo - I almost said A Game of Thrones but I don't think that would be good for him. so, Six of Crows. he likes heists!

Esteban Ocon: City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty - a superhero origin story of sorts for Mr. Spiderman

Bonus: Liam Lawson: Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir - lesbian from New Zealand. let me have this

*ro asked for it, take it up with them @oscarpiastriwdc

[moondustbooks]

July JOMP Day 13 - From an Angle

[geryone]

Any poetry recommendations that make you crazy like in that post?

Here’s a quick list!! These are the ones that come to mind immediately when I think of things that absolutely floored me when I first read them.

1. The Renunciations by Donika Kelly. I had to pace around my room when I was reading this one + stop and stare at the wall for an hour when I finished it.

2. Kingdom Animalia by Aracelis Girmay

3. Sick by Jody Chan

4. I Will Tell this Story to the Sun Until You Remember that You are the Sun by Erin Slaughter

5. Bianca by Eugenia Leigh

6. Erou by Maya Phillips

+ Every poetry collection that Traci Brimhall has put out