nihil architecture blogs

In 2001, Flight Simulator became a reality; two aëroplanes just flew into the Manhatten WTC, people died, our WTC in South Amsterdam is still standing, but then again, that’s built more horizontally than vertically given our lousy soil. But that doesn’t change that people died there, but aëroplanes are still the safest way to kill it seems as it’s about 1/10th of yearly US motor vihicle deaths. [source, source] So George II of America wouldn’t just let his honour be disputed, the global war on terror had begun. And if you’re not with them, then you’re against them, you know it.¹

As far as wars go, it has been going on for quite some time. But then again, many would argue it to be a cold war, after all, the US and all those with them haven’t really yet formally declared war upon this ‘terror’. Kind of explains why both parties don’t really uphold any international conventions regarding captured soldiers if there’s no formal wartime going on? What the hell are those with them fighting any way?

That’s more or less the point? Has any one ever asked the self in that administration under what conditions this ‘war’ is actually won? You’re not fighting a sovereign entity that can just surrender itself at some point and say ‘Okay, we stop fighting’. You’re fighting an ideology, there’s no centralized leadership that has the ability to command the rest to stop fighting and sign some treaty.  If you crush one organisation the rest is still going strong, if you crush them all, new ones will be put into place. They’re not defending a land which at some point becomes a lost cause to defend, you’re not invading to gain access to resources (no really) that you at one point have secured. They’re just flying planes into your towers because they don’t like you, and they aren’t affiliated with any government you can just go and kick butts of to get them to stop. And to begin with it’s not a war, skirmishes at best, which entity have you declared war upon any way?

And then there’s the added complication that you live in the world and not some idealized piece of fiction your mind makes up where every thing is nice and simple. The truth of the matter is that—indeed—violence is not always the answer and some things actually do grow stronger if you hit them. One kill a ‘terrorist’, one create him a martyr; then another will join his cause. They aren’t in it because they get paid for it, or to defend some land for their children, they’re simply in it because they hate you and want to bug you. And they’re doing a fine job there, don’t they?

Reverse is also quite true, you’re bugging each other like a bit of immature children. I still can’t really get my head to just how that invasion of Iraq passed through, he allowed weapon’s inspection, he complied with all demands, they still invaded half way during the inspection. And nothing was found of any substantiality later on, without sanctioning of the United Nations.

And even though officially the invasion of Iraq and martial time are over. There have been more deaths after the war to now than in the war, [source, source] pretty much showing why you can’t beat an ideology. They just don’t like you and are going to attack you, not because they’re paid, not because some one orders them, not to protect some land for their children. But simply because they don’t like you. Also, Iraq hasn’t really become that much of a safer place, people die sooner there now then before the war. [source]

I fail to see how this man got a second term, of course, a lot of people would say that he never won the first term, so more how he got elected after a coup d’état. The rest of the world probably isn’t any better, they just don’t have the army to back them up.

1: I can’t fathom how any serious politician could say this  with pride. It so echoes Darth Vader in Revenge of the Sith, or rather the reverse perhaps…

One invent a hamburger, make it as flavourless as possible, just some salt, little ketchup and pickles that really doesn’t taste like any thing at all. But that’s good, because then no one will really hate it. Then one launch a huge advertising campaign behind it and abacadabra, not only will people buy it, people’ll also magically believe it’s some how very high standard stuff. Of course, it has to be neutral and flavourless, you can’t have it that some porition of your target group finds the taste not to their very subjective liking. It’s called fashion-maffia, and it’s a viable tool in marketing.

So, let’s say one take an MP3 player, makes the design totally cl.. lacking in detail, just a plain white thing so featureless in design, so much lacking in any detail, that no one can possible find it a pain to the eyes. Then you launch a gigantic marketing campaign and you’ve some how made people believe that that featureless little thing devoid of any detail is ‘design’, by calling it clean, and every one swallows it, some evolutionary psychologists might say this is to do with people’s subconscious evolutionary desire to swallow the white cum of the alpha-male like Steve Jobs. I’d just keep it on human stupidity. And more so, people’ll start to believe it’s some how technically innovative.

No it isn’t, high end MP3 players used to be a niche market, but they were already there, they were targeted at technical geeks, not cool, stupid, brain dead people that crawl behind Steve Jobs. And iPod’s models aren’t very technical brilliant either. I’m not going to name any brands so the only way you can confirm this is just see if this exists (good exercise for the apple fanatics, to search) but what I’ve got for years has:

• 32 GB space (so 30 or some thing, but hey, it’s better than 28)
• SD card reader
• Microphone for memorecording
• FM radio
• Connects to any computer without the need to install software via a standard USB cable, the computer sees it as an external volume and you just copy your file to, or from the ‘Music’ directory. Keeps your file system-hiërarchy as it is.
• Plays videos, but not al lot of formats.
• Pictures
• Audio, but alas no FLAC or Ogg Vorbis
• Thinner than an iPod
• Smaller
• I’d call the sound a lot better
• A mantual hardware reset, you poke a paperclip into a hole and simply manually cut the power.

The equivalent iPod at that time had:

• The need to install iTunes for it
• Can only connect to one PC, you have to clean it out before you connect to another
• Pictures
• Videos
• And music of course
• 30.. 28 GB storage
• Why don’t iPods have a manual reset? If the OS is jammed a software reset is pretty useless, and it’s a common problem.
• Scratches, but only after a couple of hours, be patient.

And the iPod is more expensive, how? No, of course the iPod is more expensive, do you think advertisement is free? It adds to the production costs, but not to the quality of the product and Apple has to make it back some how…

Next on the line is the Macbook Air… you thought katana were lethal? Think again, this baby is so thin you probably need to own a weapon’s licence to take it to Starbucks because you’re so stylish you might kill people from agony. Naturally, hardware takes up volume. So you can kiss your DVD Drive and eighty per cent of all the things that came into computers since 1994 goodbye. It does have a whopping one USB port… damned, you can connect your CD Drive externally to it, kind of defeats the purpose of looking lethally stylish in Starbucks. But shit, you have to have your iPod on display to connected to it, what do you do then? You can’t double-front that USB port, so you have to bring in a hub to Sandwitch her. Oh basted curses… then you have three appliances already with wires between them where normal, not stylish people had one. It’s like a corset; oh: mouse.

And the iPhone, oh dear. The revolutionary most feature-rich phone one the planet, this pH-one will burn on the retinae of all your cool friends as the epitome of style. And indeed, it’s the one of the most feature-rich phone around I’d reckon, and expensive mobile phones are for cool kids remember? Except that if you simply call it a PDA; it’s the lousiest most over-expensive shit PDA around that only recently could copy-paste… it doesn’t even have an expandible keyboard. My mother has a better PDA she never uses and just got for her work, she’s profoundly technically illiterate. It’s not revolutionary, they just call a bad PDA a phone and wash it into their trademark ‘design’ and the fashionably stupid elite just goes for it like bees go for nuclear power plants. Because PDA’s are utterly nerdy and for geeks but expensive phones are stylish business for some reason.

It’s every where, even the layout of this blog has recently been updated to featureless white. Oh mother of all gods… Apple’s entire marketing technique seems to be based on trying to get once-geeky stuff to the masses under a different name and make them believe it’s 1: revolutionary and 2: ‘design’. I’d take Alienware design over this Britney McOscars shit any day. That’s true design, it has features and as any proper art it will displease a lot of people, if clearly go in a direction with your design, a lot of people aren’t going to like it. I don’t consider a flame on my eyes, they’re just… uninterestingly-looking. Throw a shitload advertising campaign behind it and you’ve created fashion.