Over the course of the 20th century, capitalism preserved its momentum by molding the ordinary person into a consumer with an unquenchable thirst for more stuff.

The notion of human beings as consumers first took shape before World War I, but became commonplace in America in the 1920s. Consumption is now frequently seen as our principal role in the world.

People, of course, have always “consumed” the necessities of life — food, shelter, clothing — and have always had to work to get them or have others work for them, but there was little economic motive for increased consumption among the mass of people before the 20th century.

Quite the reverse: Frugality and thrift were more appropriate to situations where survival rations were not guaranteed. Attempts to promote new fashions, harness the “propulsive power of envy,” and boost sales multiplied in Britain in the late 18th century. Here began the “slow unleashing of the acquisitive instincts,” write historians Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and J.H. Plumb in their influential book on the commercialization of 18th-century England, when the pursuit of opulence and display first extended beyond the very rich.

This article is adapted from Kerryn Higgs’ book “Collision Course: Endless Growth on a Finite Planet.”

But, while poorer people might have acquired a very few useful household items — a skillet, perhaps, or an iron pot — the sumptuous clothing, furniture, and pottery of the era were still confined to a very small population. In late 19th-century Britain a variety of foods became accessible to the average person, who would previously have lived on bread and potatoes — consumption beyond mere subsistence. This improvement in food variety did not extend durable items to the mass of people, however. The proliferating shops and department stores of that period served only a restricted population of urban middle-class people in Europe, but the display of tempting products in shops in daily public view was greatly extended — and display was a key element in the fostering of fashion and envy.

Although the period after World War II is often identified as the beginning of the immense eruption of consumption across the industrialized world, the historian William Leach locates its roots in the United States around the turn of the century.

In the United States, existing shops were rapidly extended through the 1890s, mail-order shopping surged, and the new century saw massive multistory department stores covering millions of acres of selling space. Retailing was already passing decisively from small shopkeepers to corporate giants who had access to investment bankers and drew on assembly-line production of commodities, powered by fossil fuels; the traditional objective of making products for their self-evident usefulness was displaced by the goal of profit and the need for a machinery of enticement.

“The cardinal features of this culture were acquisition and consumption as the means of achieving happiness; the cult of the new; the democratization of desire; and money value as the predominant measure of all value in society,” Leach writes in his 1993 book “Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture.” Significantly, it was individual desire that was democratized, rather than wealth or political and economic power.

The 1920s: “The New Economic Gospel of Consumption”

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/a-bri...r-culture/

#truthsocial #twitter #trump #covfefe #elonmusk 

A Gooey and Delicious History of Mac and Cheese, a Meal Once Fit for a King




Ever heard of the fabled land of Bengodi, where they roll macaroni noodles down a mountain of parmesan cheese, straight into your mouth?

https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/hist...and-cheese

Dust to dust, heya?! lol

Don't forget all that water.  

Referred to in English as The Witches or Witchcraft Through the Ages, Häxan is a Swedish-Danish film, a curious and groundbreaking mix of documentary and silent horror cinema, written and directed by Benjamin Christensen. Whereas most films of the period were literary adaptations, Christensen's take was unique, basing his film upon non-fiction works, mainly the Malleus Maleficarum, a 15th-century treatise on witchcraft he found in a Berlin bookshop, as well as a number of other manuals, illustrations and treatises on witches and witch-hunting (a lengthy bibliography was included in the original playbill at the film's premiere).

https://publicdomainreview.org/collectio...-ages-1922

Häxan - Benjamin Christensen
Genres: Documentary | Fantasy | History | Horror
Year: 1922

Director:  Benjamin Christensen
Writer: Benjamin Christensen

Country: Sweden | Denmark
Language: Swedish | Danish

Häxan, (English titles: Haxan, The Witches or Witchcraft Through The Ages) is a 1922 Swedish/Danish silent horror film written and directed by Benjamin Christensen. Based partly on Christensen's study of the Malleus Maleficarum, a 15th century German guide for inquisitors, Häxan is a study of how superstition and the misunderstanding of diseases and mental illness could lead to the hysteria of the witch-hunts. The film was made as a documentary but contains dramatized sequences that are comparable to horror films.

With Christensen's meticulous recreation of medieval scenes and the lengthy production period, the film was the most expensive Scandinavian silent film ever made, costing nearly two million Swedish kronor. Although it won acclaim in Denmark and Sweden, the film was banned in the United States and heavily censored in other countries for what were considered at that time graphic depictions of torture, nudity, and sexual perversion.

https://youtu.be/N5ZyFuDznZU

https://www.bitchute.com/video/BnMDCloZKrcT

The Possibilities of Mass Communication

<span style="font-weight: bold;" class="mycode_b">This thread will explain the possibilities of propaganda.</span><br />
<br />
Here we will breakdown communication media to its most basic levels.<br />
<br />
These ideas are not new...<br />
<br />
We’ve been through these concepts through and through.<br />
We’ve seen its re-birth, its pseudo-life, its resurrected death.<br />
You might recall all the rest….<br />
Did you have a good world when you cried?<br />
Enough to base a story on?<br />
All these are possibilities in propaganda.<br />
<br />
Interpreting what the is is is the key to understanding how to spin a fact.<br />
<br />
<img src="https://thefilmstage.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/posterizedpropaganda.04.2021.jpg" loading="lazy" alt="[Image: posterizedpropaganda.04.2021.jpg]" class="mycode_img" /><br />
<br />
<a href="https://communication-breakdown.com/category/possibilities-propaganda/" target="_blank" title="propaganda" class="smartlink_2">\#propaganda</a> <a href="https://gettr.com/hashtag/%23communication" target="_blank" title="Communication" class="smartlink_3">\#communication</a>  #psychology #socialmedia #internet #meta


https://communication-breakdown.com/mybb...munication

America’s First Movie Studio – the Black Maria

The newly developed features of the studio that was covered in black tarpaper, were a roof that could be opened to admit sunlight for illumination, and the building itself was mounted on a revolving pivot so that the structure could be constantly repositioned to keep it aligned with the sun, which by the time the best available source of lighting and because early films required a tremendous amount of bright light. Although the first produced movies were rather short, they were of course subject to copyright. The first motion pictures shot in the Black Maria were deposited for copyright by W. K. L. Dickson at the Library of Congress in August 1893. The earliest copyrighted film that still survives is Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze, January 7, 1894, also known as Fred Ott’s Sneeze, which records Fred Ott, an Edison employee, sneezing comically for the camera.

http://scihi.org/edisons-black-maria/

Edison and Black Maria Studio 1893

https://youtu.be/9MZjjMeDOCc

Put the screws into the screwers. BTW, sometimes the screws are hidden under little plugs. 
 
https://youtu.be/g2f-MX5uCeo
 
https://youtu.be/g2f-MX5uCeo
 
:cool:
 

When Atari’s video game designers were stiffed on credit for their work, they expressed their dissatisfaction through hidden messages.

These days, video games require extensive work from dozens of people with varying specialties. But Atari 2600 games were not nearly as complex. A single designer typically built an entire game from scratch:

    They generated the idea
    They wrote every line of code
    They created the graphics and sound effects

The process involved a difficult mix of left brain and right brain and the ability to build a world that felt expansive, despite dealing with a limited amount of memory. 

One day in 1979, Atari’s marketing department circulated a memo listing the top-selling games of the previous year and the amount of money they had brought in. The purpose was to inspire designers to make similar games.

But the takeaway for Crane and other designers was that Atari undervalued them.

    The memo stated the company had made ~$100m on game cartridge sales in 1978 ($420m in today’s money and ~10% of Warner’s total revenues). Because individual designers were responsible for individual games, several designers saw they drove millions in sales.
    Yet most designers made salaries between ~$16k and ~$25k ($67k-$105k today), regardless of how much revenue they drove. Meanwhile, Kassar made ~$3m a year ($12m today) and had use of a corporate helicopter and Rolls-Royce. 

According to former designers, Atari promised bonuses and a royalty system that never came to fruition under the control of Kassar and Warner, who engaged in “Hollywood accounting” to make profitable projects appear worthless on paper.   

The secret room

Atari was Robinett’s first job after graduating with a master’s degree in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.

He liked the creativity and independence of being a designer. What he didn’t like was the compensation and the lack of recognition. Besides not paying royalties, Atari refused to credit designers in any public fashion.

This practice perplexed the designers, who felt they were similar to authors of books or directors of movies. Robinett believes Atari didn’t want its designers to become recognized, lest the company be forced to offer higher salaries.

“The idea of putting our names on (the games) was foreign to them,” Crane says, “any more than they would put the designer’s name who designed a towel on a towel.”

Crane and fellow designers Larry Kaplan, Alan Miller, and Bob Whitehead protested their compensation to an unswayed Kassar after the memo circulated. They left in October 1979 and founded Activision, where they promised credit and fair pay for designers.

Robinett had an escape plan, too, but he wanted to try something on his way out the door.

After starting in 1978, he designed “Slot Racer” and was working during most of 1979 on “BASIC Programming” and “Adventure.” In “Adventure,” he realized he could insert his name into one of the game’s many rooms.

Robinett didn’t tell anyone about it, and nobody discovered the secret room while testing the game.

https://thehustle.co/the-first-easter-eg...rebellion/

Careful you may be accused of illegal use of brain cells or other nonsense. Any independent thought or question is immediately insidious. By current logic we should all stay in bed wear a couple masks, stop driving and consuming meat to save the environment.

Logic does not belong in the thought process being pushed. This control and domination has been discussed by many thinkers for well over a century. Its roots have plagued humanity since the beginning of known history.

We are all useless eaters which need to be exterminated like animals.

I find it rather odd we, the people have not been presented with peer reviewed scientific fact that masks are effective. This could easily be logically deduced by doing basic experiments with super high resolution cameras, measuring equipment and controlled environments.

Somebody please show me the proof of this simple thinking being put into action.

Why haven't basic simple questions of this nature been asked and totally ignored by all mainstream news? Sorry I know questions offend many these days.

Florida has been a shining light in this entire weaved web. Disney is assaulting the very fabric of American family values to say the least. This entire so called "don't say Gay" social distortion is another twisted example of everything wrong. 

Family is future and legacy, religion and thought is hope and possibility. This begs the question, why are they under attack? No answer required we are fully aware.
Thank you Florida for taking the right side of the way things should be. History speaks for itself. What's at stake here is far more important than money. Those blind to this basic element are lost.

Coming soon breathing mandates?




On the positive side, at least we had the Winter Olympics right?



Mockery of humanity? There goes that thing called "thinking" again. Don't worry there's going to be a cure for that. Coming soon chip implants right?

Welcome to machine!