[-] SoyViking@hexbear.net 8 points 13 hours ago

I like pistachios but they're kind of pricey. I would accept donations.

[-] SoyViking@hexbear.net 23 points 14 hours ago

With the way people are using AI as a magical fairy that will answer all questions, making sure it has a fash bias makes excellent sense for them as a propaganda and agitation tool.

[-] SoyViking@hexbear.net 35 points 15 hours ago

Moral of the story: Don't be a landlord.

[-] SoyViking@hexbear.net 103 points 3 days ago

They gave the bullshit generator access to the production database? Are these people mad?

[-] SoyViking@hexbear.net 27 points 4 days ago

"We have liberated Europe from fascism, but they will never forgive us for it." - Georgy Zhukov

[-] SoyViking@hexbear.net 26 points 4 days ago

Nothing will fundamentally change

[-] SoyViking@hexbear.net 16 points 5 days ago

Yes, we can't have state institutions voicing support for a vulnerable demographic's right to exist. We could risk that bigots would not feel welcome.

[-] SoyViking@hexbear.net 13 points 5 days ago

I recently talked to two guys who works in management positions in medium sized business in the maritime industry. As expected they were both excited about the new business opportunities but they were also both at the same time cynical and delusional about the process.

They told about how years ago the Danish navy had invited industry representatives to begin the process of building new patrol ships. Lots of highly paid people have been holding lots and lots of meetings ever since. Recently, it was announced that instead of just buying new patrol ships, the entire Danish navy should be replaced, and the entire process started over from scratch. Not a single piece of steel has been welded together yet.

These industry people were very well aware that the industrial capacity to do what the regime wants simply isn't there. The infrastructure isn't there and they already have a shortage of skilled workers. These two guys were talking about sci-fi hail Mary's like AI robotics shipyards as the solution but it seemed like neither understood what they were talking about and it sounded more like wishful thinking than actual predictions.

This was just the maritime and ship building industry but I'm sure other military and dual purpose industries look the same. There will be no rapid industrial mobilization, simply because they're is no industry to mobilize. To do what they want would require decades of deliberate industrial policy, of explicit economic planning and would require a break with the neoliberal model of a deindustrialized imperial core that has proven extremely profitable for oligarchs.

[-] SoyViking@hexbear.net 45 points 6 days ago

What is even the point of having prisons when nobody is going to see the inside of one because of this?

[-] SoyViking@hexbear.net 33 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

If the internet had been overflowing with pictures of zionist stormtroopers torturing cats and dogs and bombing pet hospitals the way we have seen them do to human beings, the "state of Israel" would have been nuked off the map by now.

[-] SoyViking@hexbear.net 56 points 6 days ago

Could you imagine any western leader openly talking about "addressing the problem of pretending to understand when one doesn't"? It is a sound and sensible idea to realize your own limitations but western leaders would consider admitting this a weakness.

61
submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by SoyViking@hexbear.net to c/art@hexbear.net

You rarely have to count fingers when you go to an art exhibition — but here we are.

We had been invited to an exhibition titled The dragons are coming, with the breathless tagline Unleash your inner dragon. It even had a space where kids could build their own Lego dragons. I didn’t do my homework beforehand, but it sounded harmless enough. I like dragons. Dragons are cool.

The man behind the spectacle is Jim Lyngvild: fashion designer, writer, flamboyant Viking cosplayer, and media personality. He lives in a fake Viking castle and likes to dress up as an extra from a History Channel hallucination. He doesn't dwell too much on how someone as flamboyantly queer as himself would have fared in actual Norse society. He also happens to be best buds with fascist icon Pia Kjærsgaard.

I have survived another of Lyngvild’s exhibitions a few years ago, when someone at the National Museum had a stroke and invited him to make a Viking exhibition that was as historically accurate as a plastic horned helmet. It was Lyngvild playing dress-up with real artifacts, peddling the tired Hollywood myth of tattooed barbarians.

This time, though, he had pivoted to dragons. A perfect fit. After all, dragons are imaginary so no killjoy historians will be around to fact-check your fantasies.

The exhibition occupied a converted factory space, the kind of raw, industrial hangar every Western town now uses as a Hail Mary to gentrify the deindustrialized old working-class bones. It’s the same formula: slap some art into a disused warehouse and pray the microbreweries and gallerinas will follow. And you know what? Those places can be fine. It doesn’t have to be the Louvre to be a nice way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

We arrived, dragon-hopeful. The gift shop at the entrance was a Lyngvild emporium: You could buy his book about dragons (more about that later), his book of made-up Viking tattoos (so you too can look like a neo-nazi!), his Norse mythology-themed craft beer, and any number of chintzy branded items. If nothing else, Lyngvild is a hustler, milking his personal brand for everything it's worth.

The Fog of Meaninglessness

We entered to find what the website generously called "Lyngvild’s artworks". Huge framed prints of dragons stared down at us, flanked by fake “infographics” about dragon species. Okay. We’re playing make-believe: dragons are real. I can get behind that. I can suspend disbelief and have fun with it.

But something felt off. The dim, plasticky images crawled under my skin in a way I couldn’t quite place.

We went up a staircase and were treated with reproductions of stained glass windows, mostly of a crucified Christ. What was that about?

Then we entered the big room: huge prints of giant dragons attacking cities were plastered wall-to-wall. In a corner, a wooden Christ sculpture, seemingly nicked off a crucifix somewhere, lay face-up on the floor. Smoke machines wheezed, speakers bellowed dragon roars. The ambience was there. Lyngvild has a talent for the aesthetic. But there was no deeper meaning under all that roar and fog.

There was no story, no emotional arc, no big idea beyond "here are some Lyngvild-branded dragons". It was as empty and self-promoting as his Viking exhibition.

That whimsical “What if dragons were real?” premise from the start of the exhibition had disappeared into the mist, never to be heard of again.

At one point I peered through a slit in the wall — a leftover feature from the building's previous life as a factory — and peeked down on what looked like a giant head sculpture, submerged in smoke. Curious, we descended the metal stairs into the next room

Sure enough, there it was: a giant head on the floor, ghostly and inert, surrounded by more fog. What did it have to do with dragons? Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe Lyngvild just thought it would look good on Instagram.

Above the head were more close-up stained glass images of a crucified Christ’s bloodied face. Nearby, a few mannequins wearing white costumes, presumably meant to evoke something — anything. They did not.

I stood there, blinking at this potpourri of religious symbolism and cinematic dragons, trying to piece together what I was seeing. But sense was a guest who had long since left the party.

Midjourney to the Abyss

I turned to go into the hallway leading to the next room. We had been promised Lego dragons but on a side table stood a Lego owl — not a dragon, not a wyvern, not even a half-assed basilisk. An owl. Above it, a framed picture of the same owl in a still life. A scrap of paper in the corner read Hogwarts.

We had apparently stumbled into the Harry Potter Room. Yes, you read that right. From dragons to Jesus to Harry Fucking Potter.

On the next table was a Lego model of the Hogwarts Express, complete with a matching picture of that Lego train hanging above it. I squinted at the photos. Something was wrong. That unnerving, plasticky gloss. Those details that felt almost right, but slid into the uncanny valley. An utter, chilling lack of human intentionality. A profound emptiness behind the pixels. It wasn’t just bad art. It was soulless. It dawned on me in a hot, nauseating wave:

We were inside an AI art exhibition.

All these “Lyngvild artworks”, the dragons, the cities, the Hogwarts owl, none of it had been touched by a human hand beyond typing a few words into a prompt bar. Lyngvild hadn’t spent sleepless nights at the studio, hadn’t spilled paint on his clothes, hadn’t even stayed up wrestling with Photoshop layers. No. He’d simply typed "Dragon attacks city in dramatic foggy lighting, hyperrealistic," hit "Generate", and accepted whatever digital diarrhea the slop machine spewed forth. Then he framed it. And charged people money to see it.

Suddenly, the nagging familiarity snapped into focus. That glossy, over-rendered, conceptually hollow aesthetic that is the visual equivalent of fast-food styrofoam. The signature style of every talentless hack with a monthly subscription to Midjourney, flooding Instagram with derivative garbage. Lyngvild was just the hack with the gall and the brand recognition to put it in a museum and call it art.

That room full of dragons attacking cities from before head been the Game of Thrones Room, I now realized.

We descended into Harry Potter's Chamber Of Bullshit.

Lyngvild had splurged on some thrift store dark wood furniture for set dressing. One of the chairs still had the price tag on it. In the corners he had placed mannequins wearing Catholic liturgical vestments and rhinestone-covered peaked caps. I assume Lyngvild had a ball hot-gluing sparkly rhinestones onto headgear like a deranged RuPaul contestant — but what did it have to do with Harry Potter, dragons, or literally anything?

The walls were covered in garish, dull prints of AI generated characters from the Harry Potter IP. Some were missing fingers. Others were holding bizarrely deforming magic wands. Signage in the background contained what looked like lettering at first but turned out to be meaningless noise on closer inspection.

The dragons, the supposed main characters of the exhibition, were conspicuously absent from the Harry Potter Room. Not a single mythological reptile were to be seen. Perhaps Lyngvild intended us to Imagine Dragons?

We progressed to the next cabinet of horrors: The random Disney Character Room. Because of course. What dragon exhibition would be complete without famously draconic characters such as Cinderella, Pocahontas, and Snow White? It was like watching someone scroll through their Midjourney history on a head injury.

Here, under brighter lights, the slop was even more horrifying and the sheer, staggering ineptitude of Lyngvild’s quality control was mercilessly exposed. If he had spent even five minutes touching up this algorithmic vomit, it didn't show anywhere. Images were full of artifacts, lovecraftian anatomy and bizarre details that made no sense. And how could it make sense? No human thought had been involved in the process of making any of these abominations. The images were riddled with errors that screamed, “Nobody could be arsed to look twice.”

This wasn’t art as an expression of an inner world. It was branding spam. A hollow sugar high of pop culture keywords arranged into vaguely impressive shapes for five seconds of dopamine.

Humbug

Finally, we arrived at the kids’ section, the “build a Lego dragon” wonderland we had been promised at the start turned out to be two sad, shallow pits of random Legos, looking like the leftover pile after a yard sale. There were no signs that anyone had ever built anything remotely draconic there. My son built an airplane. It was on fire. His small plastic conflagration was the most perfect, unintentional review of the entire Lyngvild experience imaginable.

There was also a table with paper and crayons where kids could draw. On the wall, their drawings were pinned up and these drawings exhibited more originality, more discernible skill, more human intentionality and infinitely more heart than the entire multi-room, smoke-machine-pumping, dragon-roaring, AI slop fest we had just endured.

On the table, copies of Lyngvild’s fantasy-themed coloring book were scattered. Surprisingly, these were actually decent. it looked like they had been drawn by actual humans who gave a damn. The lines were confident, and the themes coherent. In this cesspit of brand-chasing, the coloring book was the only artifact that suggested a real artist might have existed somewhere upstream.

Later, I learned that Lyngvild’s dragon book — the one anchoring this entire dumpster fire — was likely ghostwritten by ChatGPT. Of course it was.

I left feeling insulted by Lyngvild's AI humbug. Swindled.

I’m no Luddite. I’m not here to wag my finger at new technology, or say that “AI bad, brushes good.” Art is agnostic to medium. Artists have always used new tools, and neutral networks might have valid artistic applications. But when you have the unmitigated gall to charge the public admission to see your "art," you’d better put in the goddamn work and make an actual effort. You’d better give a shit about what you're doing.

What Lyngvild presented wasn’t an exploration of new tech. It was a cynical cash grab, a soulless brand extension masquerading as a journey into the mythic. The exhibition reeked of staggering laziness. He started out chasing dragons, got bored halfway, said “fuck it,” and started gluing rhinestones on hats while the slop machine vomited forth enough derivative pop culture garbage to fill the walls.

Lyngvild is a man who desperately needs a brutal editor, someone to tell him “no” when he's being ridiculous. But when you’re too famous, too deep in your own reflection, no one dares.

Maybe AI is the perfect medium for Lyngvild: shallow, lazy and devoid of substance.

Is this a meta-commentary? A sly wink at the gullibility of a cultural establishment that will let a famous name get away with anything? Maybe. But I doubt it. I suspect it’s simpler than that.

Lyngvild isn’t satirizing us. He’s a charlatan cashing in on us. Peddling algorithmic schlock to an audience he seems to hold in contempt, assuming we’re too dazzled, or simply too dumb, to notice the utter, crushing emptiness at its core.

And so we shuffled out, counting our fingers, thankful they were all still there, unlike in those images.

46
Happy New Year! (hexbear.net)

May 2025 be a year where the libs are seething, the fash are crying and the reds are laughing.

soviet-heart

138

I hope we all get communism this year.

soviet-heart

32
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by SoyViking@hexbear.net to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net

Following Chairman Mao's call to go down to the countryside, I spent a day connecting to the dark heart of whiteness and avoided revealing military secrets in the process.

I had never heard of that village until the day that a friend of us called and told us that they had an annual market going on there and asked if we wanted to go. There would be stalls where you could buy all sorts of crap, beer on tap and rides for the kids. So me, my partner, our kids and our friend loaded up our cars and left the multicultural wokery of the big city behind to spend a day among the hardworking salt of the earth people who constitutes the real Denmark.

The market was organised by the village citizens' association in order to raise funds for local amateur sports and similar activities. Upon arrival, we were greeted by members of said association dressed in yellow vests who directed us to park on the muddy patch of grass that was the parking lot for a seven dollar fee. People there still follow the old ways, so when our female friend drove up to them with our queer short-haired teenage daughter on the front seat, they assumed she was the man in charge of the vehicle and tried to solicit payment from her, until our friend insisted that she, as the adult driving the car, was going to pay.

Then we went to the market, a mix of tents, caravans and rides put up on an empty field outside the village. A road divided the grounds into two and we went to the left where we quickly found a beer tent with wooden benches and a stage in front. We bought pints for the adults and sodapop for the kids. The beverages were cold and refreshing as we sipped them from the disposable plastic cups that are ubiquitous whenever beer is sold in a field. Nearby, a stall sold fried pork sandwiches, and we had the dubious pleasure of having direct view of the stand of a fascist party adorned with a big banner airing their latest grievance: "Save Danish agriculture!" Apparently, farming is about to be ended by an upcoming carbon tax.

The police had sent the two youngest and blondest female cops they could find to the market to mill around and smile at people. In police lingo, this is called "safety-creation." You have to hand it to the fuss on this one, the marketgoers were exactly the kind of people who would feel reassured by the sight of cops. Apart from a Native American guy selling pan pipes and dreamcatchers, we hadn't seen a single non-white person among the guests and merchants. We would soon find out why.

A bearded man in his 60's, wearing glasses and a baseball cap, went on stage singing and playing a Stratocaster. He was covering popular 1980s and 1990s pop songs, the kind anyone coming of age in Denmark during those years would know. Was he any good? Certainly not. Was he good enough for the job? Absolutely. He even had the courtesy to move his head away from the microphone whenever there were notes his voice couldn't reach. A few older people were dancing in front of the stage, the sun was shining, and the mood was good.

We browsed the stalls to see what was on offer. The shopkeepers' attitude towards taxation was best described by the "We love cash!" sign prominently displayed at one stall. The goods fell into two categories: old stuff and new stuff.

In the old stuff category, items ranged from garage sale junk to what you’d expect in low-tier antique stores. Several stalls sold old hand tools in varying states of disrepair. One stand's inventory looked like the going-out-of-business sale of a 1995 hardware store teleported to the present day.

The new stuff category offered goods you can't find in proper shops: the world's fakest football jerseys, cigarette lighters with skulls on them, a live poodle, cigarette lighters shaped like guns, supplies for dog and horse ownership, USB-charged cigarette lighters, 20 dollar Gucci watches, and cigarette lighters shaped like muscle cars with watch movements in them. There was also an abundance of food products of inscrutable provenance that were either disgusting health and safety hazards and/or much better than anything you would ever get in supermarkets.

As we browsed the stalls my partner noticed that shopkeepers were treating her weirdly. Being born and raised in Denmark and having a name so stereotypically Danish that JK Rowling could have come up with it, she has also inherited her stunning black hair and slightly darker skin tone from an Italian grandparent. People often mistake her for being Turkish or otherwise non-white. In the immigrant-run stores at home, this usually results in nice discounts, but here, it was a different story.

The shopkeepers clearly didn't like her. When I or our friend looked at the goods, they were nice or indifferent. But when my partner did the same, they immediately stopped what they were doing to closely watch her, as if she might steal their old silverware or porcelain figurines. They had decided she was one of "them." One shopkeeper directly asked her to leave, while another angrily told her to "talk Danish" when she spoke Italian to our kid.

We were deep in the heart of whiteness, so it wasn't surprising to see the Home Guard had set up a stall. The Home Guard is a Cold War relic of civilians LARPing as soldiers a few weekends a year. They offer the easiest way to get a gun and a uniform in Denmark, accepting those too fat and out of shape for the police or military. They hold a special place in the hearts of chuds, some of whom fantasize about being the white vanguard in an upcoming race war.

Their stall featured a jeep and an assortment of rifles, all firmly secured to the table with chains, that the public could hold. We were greeted by a woman in military uniform who looked the exact opposite of how you imagine the ideal elite soldier. "Come in!" she said, immediately trying to recruit me for the defense of the fatherland by enthusiastically mentioning that they had enlistment forms inside. I smiled and nodded.

Unlike me who have not even been a boyscout, my partner over spent a few months as a recruit and she is familiar with military hardware. "Do you have an M/75 in there?" she asked, referring to the long-time standard-issue rifle of the Danish military. "We have all sorts of stuff in there!" The Home Guard woman said, clearly confused. I am not sure if her confusion was caused by the technical nature of the question being above her expertise or if she was thrown off by the question coming from my partner and not from me.

Our kids had great fun holding the guns and my partner reached for her phone to take some pictures. "You can't do that!" the Home Guard guy overseeing the stall said. If pictures of children holding guns was posted to social media it could "hurt the image"of the Home Guard, we were told. The guy explained to my partner that "we don't have child soldiers in Denmark", as if that needed clarification.

We didn't want to stay after this visit to the people keeping us safe from Putin. The vibes in that area were nasty and my partner felt unsafe. We went across the road to the other hand of the grounds and things were a lot better there. We began to see other skin colours than pig pink and people were noticeably less nasty. Signs of civilization like kebab stalls and Asian grocers emerged.

We went to the area where the kids could try different rides. The rides were mostly operated by seasonal workers from Eastern Europe and each ride was blasting it's own playlist of either current hits or 1980's Eurovision songs into the air. As the kids were having fun in a bouncy castle next to the employees' restrooms I noticed how the restrooms were segregated with one reserved for Danish and Polish workers and the two others for Romanian workers.

After the kids had finished their rides we needed refreshments so we went into a big beer tent and sat down at an empty table scattered with the remnants of several of the giant hot dogs, giant burgers and giant kebabs offered for sale nearby. You don't buy normal-sized food at events live this. We looked at the beverages offered, a few sodas, beer by the buckets and lots of moronic shots sold in tiny tubes, and decided that we had had enough for today and that we would grab something to drink from McDonalds. On our way home instead. As we exited the grounds I noticed how someone had been so overjoyed by the selection of beverages offered at the market that they had emptied the contents of their stomach beneath the sign at the entrance.

Spending a day like this, connecting to my cultural roots, was an educating experience and I am happy to report that I had so much authentic Danish folkishness that I will not need to go again any time soon.

99
submitted 1 year ago by SoyViking@hexbear.net to c/pets@hexbear.net

They're so fluffy! They lick your face with their little tongues when you pet them!

36

I hope 2024 becomes a great year for you reading this, for the Hexbear community and for working class liberation all over the world.

soviet-heart

24

And a normal merry time to those who don't.

73
Happy 9/11 (hexbear.net)

I would like to extend my best wishes to all, even the haters and losers, on this special date, September 11th

1

It's a red flag with a steam train on it. How cool is that?

The picture is from a recent visit to a railway museum where they had an exhibit about the cold war. Being written by western libs the text next to the flag talked about how civil defence at places like the railway workshops was complicated when "everybody didn't agree on who the enemy was" and called the communists a "fifth column". Apparently, as all workers had to take part in civil defence still and know about plans in case of war, authorities were worried that the large communist presence at the workshop meant that they would tell the USSR about the plans or use their knowledge to sabotage the railways in case of war.

1
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by SoyViking@hexbear.net to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net

I know this makes me a lib, I just think it stands for better values.

1

I work in tech. I like the work itself and my coworkers are all nice and polite people. But their views on politics, economics and the world in general is complete dogshit.

Elon Musk? The world's biggest brain genius. Demanding fees for healthcare? Very reasonable and necessary. Inheritance tax? An unspeakable injustice. Jordan Peterson? An insightful intellectual. Learning a second foreign language in school? Waste of time when you could have programming classes instead. Learning ancient history in high school? Stupid and useless when you already know you want to work in tech. STEM? The pinnacle of prestigious human knowledge. Humanities? A ridiculous and useless waste of time. Trades? Probably okay if you're too stupid to do something better. Unions? Outdated and useless. Arts? Does not compute.

All they seem to care about is learning how to code, getting a job or starting a business and succeeding at that by being a lone Randian superman. They have no sense of broader solidarity or for the existence of something of value beyond the hamster wheel of the grindset.

I think these people are a product of an educational system that is set up to produce good employees rather than good citizens. University level education will include a few token classes on broader subjects like history or philosophy but staff and students treats them like something to get over with so you can do the important stuff rather than something of importance. And you can hardly blame them, the dog eat dog world of capitalism doesn't reward an engineer for writing sonnets or knowing labour history and consequently students focus their attention on learning stuff that will make them less likely to end up on the bottom of the hierarchy.

In essence generations has been raised to be very skilled in a few practical technical fields while being completely illiterate about everything else.

How do you deal with these people in daily life? With their idiotic reactionary beliefs and their stubborn refusal to acknowledge any form of culture beyond the handful of IP rights white western cishet males are expected to enjoy?

And how do we prevent STEM lord bullshit under socialism?

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SoyViking

joined 4 years ago