@kurtsh@mastodon.social2025-11-17 09:06:51
@kurtsh@mastodon.social2025-11-17 09:06:51
@hex@kolektiva.social2025-11-03 10:16:54
Adding another post. This one is a bit less polished, but I want to get it out. As things get harder for everyone, I'm seeing a greater tendency to want to grasp onto revolutionary fiction such as #Andor. I think there's value in that, but it has to come with an informed critique.
> We are so thirsty for hope that we will drink it up, even when that hope comes from a fiction and the truth behind the hope is poison. In Andor, we see the worst elements sacrifice themselves for some of the best. The revolution goes through a process of purification, the complicated elements weeding themselves out to make room for the simplified good, as the rebellion unifies. In reality, this tends to be the opposite how things actually work.
> [...]
> [The Urban Guerilla movement of the 60's through the 80's] centered militant revolution. In doing so, they omitted or cut themselves off from the logistic support needed to sustain such revolutionary activity. The trauma of carrying out violence further isolated and radicalized them. Lacking infrastructure for trauma healing, their decay escalated and became unrecoverable. Ultimately, their revolutionary movements both emulated and reinforced the status quo they were trying to resist.
> There emerges a strange historical parallel that is difficult to see from within the dominant paradigm. The competitive politics of electoralism derives from heroic competition, where people (typically men) compete (often violently) for control over a territory or people. Thus the insurrectionary enters into the very same competition as a challenger, not against the system of domination but for control over it. The success of the revolution, then, does not abolish the system of violent domination but changes rather replaces its management.
> Many modern anarchists will be quick to point out the disconnect between ends and means. While authoritarian projects often assert that "the ends justify the means," and Andor implies the same, anti-authoritarian projects assert the ends and the means are not only united but are, in fact, the same.
This is still very much something I'm actively editing, but I'd still love feedback to help me refine it to it's final form. Typo catches and clarifying questions welcome.
#USPol
@kurtsh@mastodon.social2025-11-27 06:02:59
"Emperor... will free our hands in all manners of surveillance, search & seizure."
"Why can't they just leave us in peace?"
"It's going on everywhere."
Sounds familiar.
▶️ Andor: The Death of Truth
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Q4cVBVSS9f
@kurtsh@mastodon.social2025-10-25 06:52:48
Retracting their financial commitment to original content, streamers simply aren't spending money on series like this any more.
▶️ Alan Tudyk on why ANDOR was such a special show & why it will be so hard to replicate
https://youtube.com/watch?v=999tjKh1y5g&s…
@hex@kolektiva.social2025-11-21 14:40:06
Content warning: Loss and grief
I keep thinking that I should text a friend of mine, tell him how much I've been writing, tell him I mentioned him in something I wrote. Then I remember he died like 4 years ago.
Edit:
It must have been more like 6 or something now that I'm thinking about it. It was part of the way through the first Trump administration. He would have really appreciated the way Trump is unraveling now. One of the last times we talked he was like... "You know man, You used to play 'Baby, I'm an anarchist' and I'd think... ' don't want to throw a brick through a Starbucks window. I kinda like their coffee sometimes.' But the way things have been going lately, I'm kind of looking around and thinking you might be right. Fuck Starbucks. Where's that brick?"
At least I won the SRV vs the Hendrix version of Voodoo Chile debate. Hendrix is just better.
We used to talk about music, especially punk (and rockabilly, and ska, and 2 tone), and poetry, and beer. He liked hop stupid, but I always thought it didn't have the body to match the hops and I always preferred Racer 5. Of course, this time of year we'd be shifting in to red and stout season, and I'd be excited for Lagunitas Russian Imperial and this year's Bourbon County Stout batch.
He was really big in to Star Wars. He missed all of Andor, which is probably the best thing to have come out since the original 3. But I guess he also missed the new trilogy, so maybe it balances out.
He would have really liked all the good music I've run across in the last few years. He had a music blog for a bit.
Yeah... I don't know why it's hitting me so hard now, other than maybe I never had time to really process it before.
@kurtsh@mastodon.social2025-10-02 22:56:51
@arXiv_csDS_bot@mastoxiv.page2025-10-08 08:49:49
Efficient Heuristics and Exact Methods for Pairwise Interaction Sampling
S\'andor P. Fekete, Phillip Keldenich, Dominik Krupke, Michael Perk
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.05955
@kurtsh@mastodon.social2025-10-18 09:32:24
For those heading out to their local No Kings Protest tomorrow, here's something to focus one's thoughts:
"Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear."
▶️ Andor: Nemik's Manifesto
https://youtube.com/watch?v=…
@arXiv_physicschemph_bot@mastoxiv.page2025-10-07 10:30:32
Mixed-precision ab initio tensor network state methods adapted for NVIDIA Blackwell technology via emulated FP64 arithmetic
Cole Brower, Samuel Rodriguez Bernabeu, Jeff Hammond, John Gunnels, Sotiris S. Xanthea, Martin Ganahl, Andor Menczer, \"Ors Legeza
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.04795
@kurtsh@mastodon.social2025-11-13 06:10:05
Battlestar Galactica is one of my all-time favorite sci-fi TV series ever, along with:
▫️Twilight Zone
▫️Firefly
▫️Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
▫️Mr. Robot
▫️The Expanse
▫️Star Wars: Andor
▫️Fallout
▶️ The Controversy of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (2003)
https://youtub…
@kurtsh@mastodon.social2025-12-07 01:14:25
From a franchise that's lost its way, comes a new tactic for winning back its shattered fan base...
Make.
Something.
Good.
▶️ Honest Trailers | Andor (Season 2)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=vAKMEcVcoFQ&si=77QfXomZxMnERzrb