Maybe I just have a different perspective than you; it's not a mistake to disagree with you - or vice versa. Unless we're interested in the world outside our perspecitve, how will we learn anything new?
> Did you just compare modern art and rock and roll to the few letter “tag” sprayed in 10 seconds again and again hundreds of time throughout a city?
Yes! That's what rock'n'roll is at its core, three chords (or fewer) and the truth, and that's how it was characterized - artless noise, etc.
People try to put us d-down
Just because we get around
Things they do look awful c-c-cold
I hope I die before I get old
Much modern art is constantly ridiculed - 'I could do that myself!'
> Because that’s what 99.99% of graffiti is, simple tags and doodles [0][1] anyone can make.
If everyone with flaws is disqualified, or is equal to everyone else with flaws, then it all loses meaning.
I'm not certain those were flaws in forsight, or necessarily even in hindsight. Regardless, those leaders did not preach or lead on the basis of fear, hatred, an ignorance.
> this is bog-standard MAD that’s been a big part of the US strategy since the Cold War.
That's not MAD as I understand it: The essential challenge of international relations is to create non-escalatory situations - situations where parties won't be compelled or tempted to engage in a escalatory cycle that lead to warfare, which is often unwanted by all parties to it but unavoidable. Obviously, that can't be allowed to happen with strategic nuclear weapons.
Parties that are 'scared to death' tend to escalate; they are human; they panic, they imagine things and act on their fears. It's the warmongers and basement generals who imagine 'scared to death' tactics.
MAD was designed to create a stable, non-escalatory, trusted situation. There were treaties limiting weapons and their deployment, hotlines, verification. Weapons were spread out, including in the triad (at sea, in air, and on land), to reduce the ability of the enemy to knock them all out, and thus to disincentivize a surprise attack.
MAD is only used with nuclear weapons afaik, and only with Russia and now, probably, with China.
I think it's a strawperson, a distraction, to take it literally and criticize it. That's not the main issue or point of the article. They can't flesh out every point in detail.
The kids painting street art have no power to consent or not consent to anything. If they had access to art supplies, a loft, and a gallery, they'd probably use them.
> It’s always a struggle for me to accept that many people actually like graffiti.
It's a struggle for everyone to accept different perspectives on art and aesthetics, but we need to accept that others' perspectives exist and are as legitimate as our own.
In a way you are just debating who gets the power, and saying the people you like should have it. The fact that you or I like someone isn't a reason to give them power.
The buildings have a lot more impact then the graffiti, and arguably should have more community voices involved.
It's usually on public property, or sometimes on corporate property. I don't think I've seen much graffiti on some private individual's property. It's not on the front of people's houses.
> Most graffiti is just trash
People say that about modern art, and about that crazy 'rock'n'roll'!
People tend to apply such hard-core legal standards to those they don't like. As the corrupt dictator says, 'For my enemies, the law! For my friends, everything!' Law-and-order leaders almost exclusively mean it for people they dislike.
Let's apply some strict law-and-order to the wealthy and powerful, to corporations, to government officials. Then to all adults. Then I think it would be reasonable for kids with spray cans.
People do lots of illegal things. When some tech titan does it, many on HN decry the laws, the government, etc. Painting graffiti is relatively, completely, harmless.
I know it's commonplace, but let's consider whether extreme expression has any rational substance to it, whether it's somehow more meaningful than an argument with actual reasons.
Outrage is a weapon. Do we want it to be? I think (apologies to the parent comment) it should be disqualifying, shunned, excluded. It's a demonstration that they have no reasoned basis and will not contribute.
> It always baffles me that people are in such a defeated state of mind that graffiti is just simply accepted and seemingly nothing is done about it.
As usual, the answer is found by examining assumptions: 1) It's somehow bad, and 2) People strongly want it removed. (And by accepting those two assumptions as true, and it's also true that the street art remains, that argument infers despair.)
I and many people don't think it's Bad (avoiding a specific definition, an endless discussion). I don't mean it's always Good or never Bad, but generally IMHO it ranges from easily ignored to decent to some really inspiring stuff.
And I find it generally inspiring that some kids have the spirit, creativity, initiative, and determination to do it; to express themselves and not be suppressed by society. Adults have so much agency; it's great to see kids seize some, and in a harmless way (they aren't injuring people, risking anything, etc.). I see the suppression of graffiti as telling kids to be 'seen and not heard'. People embrace billionaires who break rules and then kill and impovrish on a mass scale; all these kids are doing is painting something.
I'd almost advocate that kids have free reign to paint public property (that would seem to get out of control, and any announced limit may be an invitation to break it). It's their city too, and adults should have to live with what the kids have to say. (Still - how could that work? Any undecorated or unfinished surface?)
I understand you may not agree; we need to find a balance.
> it’s not something everyone can stick their heads in the sand about because it makes them uncomfortable.
That's a strawperson and you know it; IMHO that argument is sticking one's head in the sand to avoid the unconfortable issues raised in the article and by others: Many extreme warmongers are out there now; there's a powerful tide of embracing violence and hate, and we know where that leads.
That's really looking for problems. The Palantir CEO said things much more extreme:
As the moderator asked general questions about the panelists’ views on the future of war, Schmidt and Cohen answered cautiously. But Karp, who’s known as a provocateur, aggressively condoned violence, often peering into the audience with hungry eyes, palpably desperate for claps, boos or shock.
He began by saying that the US has to “scare our adversaries to death” in war. Referring to Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel, he said: “If what happened to them happened to us, there’d be a hole in the ground somewhere.” Members of the audience laughed when he mocked fresh graduates of Columbia University, which had some of the earliest encampment protests in the country. He said they’d have a hard time on the job market and described their views as a “pagan religion infecting our universities” and “an infection inside of our society”.
> That is explicitly an Artemis mission purpose.
Where does it say that?