Notices by Rasmus Fleischer (rasmusfleischer@tldr.nettime.org), page 14

@rasmusfleischer Or with your example, how to measure the value of a threatened species that do very little "ecosystem services"? Many of the vulnerable insects in our region honestly do not really have any "utility". People always mention pollination, but the evidence doesn't hold up for many of them and it all seems forced. It's because the only value modern humans can imagine is utility. It's almost as if the butterfly didn't "work" for us, it doesn't have a reason to exist.

@malte Indeed! The metaphysics of "utility" is still at the bottom of economics, most visibly in calculations of stuff like "ecosystem services" or "quality-adjusted years of living". It's really Bentham all over.

Everyone should read the farewell letter from Russian anarchist communist Dmitry Petrov (Ilya Leshy). He died last week near Bakhmut, fighting in the Ukrainian army against the Russian aggression, and was also deeply involved in solidarity with Rojava against the Turkish aggression, among many struggles.

It is a very inspiring letter and also (I thing) the first time that a named individual steps forward as a member of the militant group БОАК. Rest in power, Dima.
🏴🌻✊

https://www.anarchistfederation.net/our-comrade-dmitry-petrov-died-fighting-for-freedom-in-ukraine/

Maybe I should just learn Interslavic/Меджусловјанскы 🙂
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interslavic

Now I had to look up if the surname "Žižek" was a diminutive of something but as far is I now understand that thought was more of a west-Slavicizing misreading of the south-Slavic use of the suffix -ek...

I appreciated this interview with Žižek in Deutschlandfunk Kultur because of the format: kurze, qualifizierte Fragen auf Deutsch and then Žižek gives his long answers in English, yet ofc trying sometimes to be über-German in his references but he is also sometimes interrupted which is, well, necessary.
https://pca.st/episode/b8f50da3-8693-4401-898f-f13d0be4a672

"Apple Music Classical in its current form has an adjective problem. /.../
Apple bought the Western classical streaming service Primephonic in 2021. /.../
For too long we have let only Western classical music own the 'classical' label everywhere."
https://www.wired.com/story/apple-music-classical-name/

A couple of nights ago Armenian police brutally raided the night club #Poligraf in #Yerevan. It all looks very similar to previous attacks on #Bassiani in neighbouring Georgia. Right-wing forces using fabricated drug charges as a pretext for attacking the few safe spaces for LGBTQ people in the Caucasus.
#DefendDance #Armenia
https://www.change.org/p/defend-dance
https://ra.co/news/78883
https://djmag.com/news/brutality-humiliation-and-trauma-yerevan-armenia-club-poligraf-raided-police-petition-support

@eibart If only workers could ignore their own very real costs of living and instead be so rational that they only relate to the "overall price increases" i.e. the statistic abstraction that includes luxury items they don't even consume!

The way this is written is so hilariously out of touch, like the working classes are simply observing these price increases, rather than feeling the very real hit to their material conditions.
(via r/StupidpolEurope)

Oh yeah, this episode sounds very good:
"Paris Marx is joined by Aaron Benanav to discuss OpenAI’s claims that generative AI will take our jobs, how previous periods of automation hype haven’t resulted in mass job loss, and why we need to ensure it doesn’t further empower employers."
https://techwontsave.us/episode/164_chatbots_wont_take_many_jobs_w_aaron_benanav

I (a raver) was just exposed to a fucking disgusting Youtube commercial for "Rave rebels" which is apparently some fucking "indoor rave festival" in Belgium and if you'd be a such a fuckhead to buy a ticket, you'd get the fucking honour to choose between two fuckproducts: either a "Raver Ticket" (€ 59.95) or a "Rock Star Rebel" (€ 149.50), the latter "incl 50 euro bar spend / private parking / separate entrance / separate lockers / private toilets / access to the comfort deck with extra seating".

I'm not fucking joking, btw, keep raving the fuck out of these fuckers. Wish them #Fyre.

@stylo_the_unicorn Interesting anyway that #KoheiSaito engages with #RobertKurz; until a few years ago very few mainstream Marxists outside of Germany did so.
Please share more thoughts on the book! I haven't read it but I'm like a third way through "Marx in the anthropocene".

*** The accumulation of sovereign debt is indeed illustrative of the long-term crisis of value, but I also think it's important to stress that monetary debt is not the root of the crisis but rather a surface phenomenon. It might not be entirely impossible that the debt problem could be "solved" – but then only by creating even worse problems at some other level.

@transworld in a "world" context, Georgia is the name of a Eurasian nation ?? unless stated otherwise ?

Yes, we need regulation. But as we said:

"It is indeed time to act: but the focus of our concern should not be imaginary "powerful digital minds." Instead, we should focus on the very real and very present exploitative practices of the companies claiming to build them, who are rapidly centralizing power and increasing social inequities."

https://www.dair-institute.org/blog/letter-statement-March2023

>>

Sunday morning music:
The Piano Behind The Curtain w/ Astrid Øster Mortensen | NTS
https://www.nts.live/shows/astrid-oster-mortensen

"Much of the current revolution in AI is powered by shadow libraries" (Anna the Archivist).
It seems intuitively right that all those fancy chatbots have been training on the entirety of books and articles made available by Sci-Hub, LibGen and other pirate/shadow libraries. This makes me curious. Has anybody stumbled upon any further speculation about the significance of this AI/pirate nexus?

Listening to Olive Kimoto's lovely tribute show for Ryūichi Sakamoto (1952–2023) on NTS:
https://www.nts.live/shows/liquid-mirror/episodes/liquid-mirror-3rd-april-2023

So archeologists made a drug test on someone who lived in the Balearics 3000 years ago and found traces of both central stimulants (ephedrine) and deliriants (atropine, scopolamine).
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/hair-europe-oldest-evidence-drug-use

Taking a few days off my mp3's again, this time for binge listening to NTS radio, mostly live. Strongly feel that the current amount of good internet radio available for free is enough to eliminate any need to deal with any "music service" on an everyday level.