T-Bone Slim, born on this day in 1880, was an IWW member, working class songwriter, and author. Due to his popular, labor themed tunes, Slim was dubbed the "laureate of the logging camps".
Born Matti Valentin Huhta to Finnish immigrant parents in Ashtabula, Ohio, Slim became an itinerant worker after leaving his wife and family in 1912. It isn't known when Slim became a Wobbly, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), but he first appeared in the IWW's press in the 1920 edition of the IWW Songbook.
Slim became one of the IWW's most famous writers during the 1920s and 30s, and many people would buy the "Industrial Worker" just to read his articles - one ad from the paper read "there's a lot more in Industrial Solidarity and Industrial Worker than T-Bone Slim's columns".
Slim did not presume his working-class readership to be unintelligent people, making use of complex wordplay and experimental writing techniques, playing with ambiguity, satire and surrealism.
Slim was also well-known for his songs, such as the "Lumberjack's Prayer", a parody of the Lord's Prayer about the poor quality of food available for the working class, and "The Popular Wobbly", which experienced a revival among civil rights activists during the 1960s.
In spite of his renown in radical circles during his lifetime, many details of Slim's life remain unclear. During the mid-1930s, he settled in New York City, where he worked as a barge captain on the docks.
In May 1942, Slim's body was found in the East River. His cause of death remains unknown and has been subject to speculation. Following his death, Slim largely faded into obscurity, especially compared to more famous IWW-associated writers such as Joe Hill.
Slim's songs have been preserved, however, re-published in editions of the Little Red Songbook and covered by musicians such as Pete Seeger, Utah Phillips, and his own great-grandnephew, John Westmoreland.
Until recently, there was thought to be no surviving photographs of Slim, however, in 2019 two photos were discovered and published by Working Class History in a Newberry Library collection.
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Damn, I just realized, in the last scene of GITS 96, the tank's autocannon shreds the entire tree of life bottom to top, symbolically showing that humanity has evolved towards ever more horrible and refined forms of violence, culminating in the Major as the ultimate weaponization of the human form. Motoko's last act as a human is an act of extreme violence to her superficially human body, the culmination of the theme of her alienation from humanity - In destroying her body she abandons her humanity, not to become less than human, but to explore becoming something else, something new and potentially wonderful. I guess there's also something in the contrast between the tank, a non-human weapon, and Motoko, a seemingly human weapon, and how even Motoko as the pinnacle of human violence can't overcome this non-human shaped weapon. When the tank-pilot is trying to crush her super-strong skull her face is totally indifferent, either because she feels no fear or remorse, or because she has lost control of her face.
I saw it similarly but more that the symbolism is showing that the Major is the next step of human evolution. We've been killing eachother all through out that evolutionary tree but Motoko survives by adapting and becoming something new when she merges with the AI. I think it's a transhumanist message about how technology has already changed us, that the existential threat to "humanity" isn't AI becoming too human but actual humans beings becoming so compatible with technology that they merge and evolve into something no longer human, and that that scenario might be inevitable.
Legit. I've often thought that trying to build a thinking machine from first principles is a bit silly when we have thinking machines in our head, and wouldn't it be easier to reverse-engineer a working example and then change it to better suit our needs? I like the idea that the Puppetmaster wasn't created, but instead evolved from the ever increasing and unintelligible complexity of the net.
There's a short book called The Age of Spiritual Machines that talks about the slow integration of computer components into the human brain. The thought of a "Ship of Theseus" transfer of consciousness from biological to digital is kind of interesting.
I really appreciate reading an actual interpretation of that evolutionary tree getting shot scene because when my 16y/o ass watched it I was like "damn that's some kind of.... symbolism...... very powerful!"