earthli News 3.7 https://www.earthli.com/news/ 2026-10-18T15:23:39+02:00 https://www.earthli.com/news/icons/webcore_png/app/news_100px.png https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=6277 2026-10-18T15:23:39+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes about the designations for various types of "slop", pointing out how no matter how hard people try to retain the negative connotation of the word "slop", it worms its way out until the purveyors have commodified the protest. "If “slop” is the precipitate of" ... ]]>

writes about the designations for various types of "slop", pointing out how no matter how hard people try to retain the negative connotation of the word "slop", it worms its way out until the purveyors have commodified the protest. "If “slop” is the precipitate of optimization, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of slop. Suppose you want to make your interests undiscoverable, so you prioritize illegibility. Now you’ve incentivized me to produce ambiguityslop (which is arguably why the word “vibe” became a buzzword last year). Or perhaps you want to gatekeep your interests—now we’re back at tasteslop. "Slop realism is the understanding that, like capitalism, “slop” is a Moloch—a structure we are forced to participate in, which worsens society. While there is still something to be said for actual authenticity, whimsy, and taste, even your personal preferences are being measured and targeted in a way that will only generate more slop with time." This reminded of "On Advertisers and Marketing" by Bill Hicks from his 1997 album Arizona Bay. [media] By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing…kill yourself. It’s just a little thought; I’m just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day they’ll take root – I don’t know. You try, you do what you can. (Kill yourself.) Seriously though, if you are, do. Aaah, no really. There’s no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan’s little helpers. Okay – kill yourself. Seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good. Seriously. No this is not a joke. You’re [going], “There’s going to be a joke coming.” There’s no fucking joke coming. You are Satan’s spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It’s the only way to save your fucking soul. Kill yourself Planting seeds. I know all the marketing people are going, “He’s doing a joke…” There’s no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a Yank friend – I don’t care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking machinations. I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too: “Oh, you know what Bill’s doing? He’s going for that anti-marketing dollar. That’s a good market. He’s very smart.” Oh man, I am not doing that, you fucking, evil scumbags! “Ooh, you know what Bill’s doing now? He’s going for the righteous indignation dollar. That’s a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We’ve done research – huge market. He’s doing a good thing.” Godammit, I’m not doing that, you scum-bags! Quit putting a goddamn dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet. “Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market. Bill’s very bright to do that.” God, I’m just caught in a fucking web. “Ooh, the trapped dollar, big dollar, huge dollar. Good market – look at our research. We see that many people feel trapped. If we play to that and then separate them into the trapped dollar…” How do you live like that? And I bet you sleep like fucking babies at night, don’t you? “What didya do today, honey?” “Oh, we made, ... we made ... arsenic a childhood food now, goodnight.” [snores] “Yeah we just said, you know, is your baby really too loud? You know?” [snores] “Yeah, you know the mums will love it.” [snores] Sleep like fucking children, don’t ya. This is your world, isn’t it? [image] ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5971 2026-01-20T21:32:44+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5973 2026-01-20T21:24:23+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

and should have been excited about, I wrote, "[...] so many of the characters are two-dimensional [...] The plot is pretty simplistic, the battle scenes are much too long (without adding suspense or additional pathos) but the graphics are stunning, even if some of the stuff is just too colorful and cutesy-looking for my taste." I saw the second one in "2023" -- which I only remembered was called "The Way of Water" just now -- but I liked the second one more. I read a lot more into the second one, started that review with, "James Cameron hates people and capitalism and plundering and piracy and globalism and hypernationalism and he probably hates the U.S. of A. more than a bit but, most of all, he hates colonialism. He fucking hates colonialism. He hates it so much that he’s made two giant blockbuster movies about it and he’s going to make three more just to drill the point home that there is nothing respectable about colonialism, that there is no justification for it, that it is always morally wrong, that it is always extractive, that it is about taking what you don’t think you have to pay for, about denigrating entire species and races and animals as fodder for your egocentric machine." [media] The Critical Drinker writes about the new Fire and Ice movie. "Fire and [ice] is abusively long. Especially when you realize the plot could be easily condensed into like half that time. I'm not kidding. At least 50% of this movie is nothing but a wanky tech demo. Just endless landscape and wildlife shots that go on forever and accomplish absolutely nothing. A flamboyant $400 million screen-saver that adds nothing to the story or characters and bogs down what's already a frustrating and repetitive narrative. I kid you not. Here, characters get captured and taken hostage and have to be rescued on like four different occasions." "Visually it looks fantastic and all that, but it does suffer from the same problem you always get with CGI. There's basically no weight or impact to anything that happens because, you know, it was all just rendered on a computer. Also, the scenes with Spider do kind of make me laugh. One, because the actor's so fucking wooden, you can make a log cabin out of him. And two, because he's the only physically real thing on screen, it's pretty obvious when everything else around him is fake. As for the other characters, they're the usual one-note walking cliches you'd expect from these movies. Generic protagonist is still just a generic good guy trying to hold his family together and do the right thing. Evil fire lady is evil and likes fire because the movie needed another antagonist. I guess the kids are all a bunch of nothing-burgers to the point where I struggle to even remember who was who." "Here's a fun little drinking game you can play at home, kids. Have a careful look at the human characters in Avatar. the brutal soldiers, the cruel whale hunters, the evil corporate types, all the people you're supposed to hate, and take a shot every time you spot a non-white actor on screen, even in the backgrounds. I can pretty much guarantee you'll be stone cold sober by the end of the movie. Why? Because there's none to be found here. And it's strange because normally you can't move for the on-screen diversity in Disney movies, which are determined to reflect the world we live in today. I wonder why they dropped the ball so suddenly with this particular film. I wonder why they chose to have this violent, destructive, expansionist, capitalist, militaristic dictatorship represented almost entirely by one ethnic group. Well, I couldn't possibly solve this mystery. Can you?" I dunno. My review of the first one lined up with this one. My review of the second one doesn't. Maybe I need to waste three hours of my life and see what's up with the third one. ]]>