• happybadger [he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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    2 days ago

    The fourth stage is pure simulacrum, in which the simulacrum has no relationship to any reality whatsoever. Here, signs merely reflect other signs and any claim to reality on the part of images or signs is only of the order of other such claims. This is a regime of total equivalency, where cultural products need no longer even pretend to be real in a naïve sense, because the experiences of consumers’ lives are so predominantly artificial that even claims to reality are expected to be phrased in artificial, “hyperreal” terms. Any naïve pretension to reality as such is perceived as bereft of critical self-awareness, and thus as oversentimental.

    I love the All Lives Matter Spartan helmet Punisher skull. That style is the most hyperreal bumper sticker I’ve seen in person, but in my case they had “LIVE FREE OR DIE” written across it. There’s so much going into it that it’s the purest form of Politics as Psychosexual Pathology. Especially on a minivan. Dark gods begin humming beneath the earth when you slap this on an older-model minivan, conjuring entirely new kinds of Guy.

    • happybadger [he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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      2 days ago

      I think that’s digital compression from a shitty phone camera. It’s having the same issue my phone does with the trees above the van, trying to make an AI-ensloppified rendering from a shot that had some kind of motion blur or lighting/focus issue obscuring the details.

  • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    2 days ago

    Reminder that while flocks of birds may be fun to hunt, in Minecraft, there are plenty of other birds that you need to watch out for when sneaking up on them. Florida, for example, often has birds perched up by traffic lights 🚦 watching traffic come and go.