Deutsche Bahn introduces "MetaWindow" • Hacker News Board

Re: Deutsche Bahn introduces "MetaWindow"

#381

Post by helboi4 » Fri, May 17, 2024, 1:57 PM UTC

kalaksi wrote: post #342

helboi4 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, they have the right to have that taste and you have the right to hate it. You both should have equal ownership over the wall. Therefore you should also have the right to paint something they don't like on the wall. Or paint over their art. Or paint a different wall in a way you like. Nobody should be prosecuting anyone for the case of a minor disagreement over personal artistic taste.

What if I'm not skilled enough to paint it back to how it was? Or don't want to break the law. Or some other barrier. My point is that if given equal rights, it isn't clear cut if you should paint at all. For example, on dedicated graffiti walls the situation is different since people generally agree how they should be used. Sure, one way to solve a conflict is to let everyone do what they want and see what happens,…

If we decided on all public use of space collectively, then yeah sure that would probably be better since it would be fairer. Unfortunately, this is not the system we live under. Therefore graffiti is a legitimate way for the community to express themselves in the face of undemocratic rule.

Re: Deutsche Bahn introduces "MetaWindow"

#382

Post by tsimionescu » Fri, May 17, 2024, 1:59 PM UTC

vasco wrote: post #365

tsimionescu wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is completely wrong. If we own a public structure together, then neither of us has any right to change it except if we both agree to the change. You can't take individual actions on shared goods: you need a process of attaining the consensus of everyone involved (such as voting).

I wonder how you think this works in practice. Do you think the public structures we have and how they look are not just basically whatever aesthetic taste the people we elect have? Sometimes councils put up several designs to be voted on by the public, but they will largely follow a bunch of design norms that will be whatever the architecture firms they hired think is trendy, for example. And how many election progr…

While I agree that public control of public buildings is relatively vague in modern times, it still exists to some extent. If a mayor wanted to tear down a beloved building and replaced with an ugly one (as judged by the esthetics of the public in the town), they would face significant backlash and may lose a future election based on that: people in certain places care a lot about the look of their town (and in others, only vaguely).

Even beyond electoral politics, many cities have public NGOs and other organizations that seek to shape this sort of thing from an early stage through various legal means (and sometimes even through civil disobedience, like tying themselves to a building to protect it). If they are broadly in line with the tastes of the people, they tend to thrive; if they are not, they will often die out.

And yes, in certain cities and towns, people actually like the way grafitti looks and are bothered when someone goes and whitewashes a beautifully painted wall. That's perfectly fine, and is a part of the culture and esthetics of that place (and here, destroying the art that people enjoy is an act of violence against the public and/or the artist). But it's also perfectly fine for other places to want neat walls with clean textures, and marring their beautiful walls with grafitti would be an act that goes against the public.

Re: Deutsche Bahn introduces "MetaWindow"

#383

Post by helboi4 » Fri, May 17, 2024, 2:03 PM UTC

subjectsigma wrote: post #330

helboi4 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have nieces and nephews and if I walked past a wall with them that reads FUCK i'd probably laugh and tell them its a bad word and move on with my life.

Would it still be funny if it was a swastika? Or the n-word? Is that also a part of your glorious fight against evil capitalists? If not, why is it any less legitimate? Clearly the “community” must want it there if it was left up.

If it was a swastika or the n-word I would be very concerned about the nature of the community in that neighbourhood and if I'm in danger. But in terms of how i'd deal with kids seeing it, I'd take it as a teachable moment. I don't have to hide my kids from everything I don't believe in (besides they probably see crazy shit online anyway), I just need to teach them how to deal with it. Anyway, theres a wall near where i live where someone has made a massive mural making a political statement. People keep defacing it with the opposite opinion, and people keep painting back over that. If you really need the authorities to tell your community that swastika graffiti should make them angry and call them to action, then your community is screwed already. Either way, yeah just as we have laws to deal with incitement to violence and hatespeech we can have that with walls if you'd prefer, it just has to be sth actually extreme and targeted.

Re: Deutsche Bahn introduces "MetaWindow"

#384

Post by amenhotep » Fri, May 17, 2024, 2:08 PM UTC

usrusr wrote: post #152

TallTales wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fascinating comment. How would you define violence?

If I smash your car, is that violence or not? What if I take care to smash your car only so much that it will still be able carry you to work and back?

Not. Was this supposed to be a hard question?

Re: Deutsche Bahn introduces "MetaWindow"

#385

Post by nicolas_t » Fri, May 17, 2024, 2:17 PM UTC

broken-kebab wrote: post #333

nicolas_t wrote: post #283

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The nice thing is that in democracies you can influence what is done against graffitis. Don't like graffitis? try to push your local representatives etc to be stricter on them or move to a country that has no graffiti like Singapore. One of the most sterile, boring city in the world. For whatever reasons, Germany is rather lenient towards graffiti artists which, in my eyes, makes Berlin more enjoyable than it would b…

>or move to a country that has no graffiti like Singapore. One of the most sterile, boring city in the world. People who pretend to make art on walls are absolute minority compared to those who'd prefer to keep walls clean, or painted, or whatever (there are plenty of options between gray, and wannabe artists spraying smileys). But somehow you offer the majority to leave. I don't think that's how it can work really

I don't offer the majority to leave. Like it or not, currently in most European countries, the law and application of laws is done so as to either encourage or at least not discourage graffitis. A lot of cities even give space to graffiti artists to paint and try to entice them.

If the actual majority wanted to get rid of this problem, then it would be stopped, I'm not the one making the laws or deciding whether to apply them.

As for grey walls, there are plenty of gray boring walls in any city in the world, usually those tend to be painted on, in my experience, not colorful walls nor brick walls nor older buildings.

Re: Deutsche Bahn introduces "MetaWindow"

#386

Post by yodsanklai » Fri, May 17, 2024, 2:35 PM UTC

damsalor wrote: post #169

yodsanklai wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My city is filled with horrible graffitis. Some types of ugly signatures, even on historical buildings. It takes only a few weeks after walls are cleaned up to see new graffitis reappearing. It's really sad.

The money would probably be better spent in community outreach than cleaning services

It's not clear to me the profile of the people making these graffitis. At least some of them are made by left-wing anarchists given the slogan. Also, I suspect it's a very small number of people who are responsible for most of them: when paying attention, it's clear that a lot of these "signatures" refer to the same groups or persons.

So not sure community outreach would help with those.

Re: Deutsche Bahn introduces "MetaWindow"

#387

Post by nonrandomstring » Fri, May 17, 2024, 2:35 PM UTC

amadeuspagel wrote: post #371

nonrandomstring wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish more people would work on noise pollution Absolutely agree. It's one of the most insidious kinds of pollution that has big effects on mental and cardio-vascular health, and is accumulative. Everything from aircraft, to emergency vehicle sirens, to construction and poor housing, is slowly killing people. In Europe we've actually made big leaps forward with regulation, building standards for isolation, and aba…

Contrast with John von Neumann, who "could not work without some noise or at least the possibility of noise. Some of his best work was done in crowded railroad stations and airports, trains, planes, ships, hotel lobbies, lively cocktail parties or even among a bunch of shrieking very minor minors whooping it up."

A very good point. I find myself helped by having the radio (quietly) on for certain tasks. But for others, only silence will do. I'd love to see more modern and detailed cognitive studies of this sort of thing. Many years ago my audio/acoustics students did some bachelors final projects on "distraction" (focus, concentration and annoyance of noises) and that was interesting. Some people scored higher on SATS style tests while pumped up on drum'n'bass, others were totally destroyed by it, IIRC the most devastating soundtrack was random cartoon SFX :)

Re: Deutsche Bahn introduces "MetaWindow"

#388

Post by reportgunner » Fri, May 17, 2024, 2:37 PM UTC

smokel wrote: post #305

reportgunner wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just sit at home and stare at a video of the scenery at that point.

The (highly recommended) Belgian television series "In de gloria" [1] had a teleshopping sketch in which one could order VHS tapes of their favorite tracks. The target audience was pensioners who had traveled the same boring track for years. The irony is that some years later a television channel started broadcasting railway videos all day long. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_de_gloria

I had to read like 5 times to understand that "favorite tracks" is the train tracks haha.

Re: Deutsche Bahn introduces "MetaWindow"

#389

Post by wodenokoto » Fri, May 17, 2024, 2:38 PM UTC

amadeuspagel wrote: post #371

nonrandomstring wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish more people would work on noise pollution Absolutely agree. It's one of the most insidious kinds of pollution that has big effects on mental and cardio-vascular health, and is accumulative. Everything from aircraft, to emergency vehicle sirens, to construction and poor housing, is slowly killing people. In Europe we've actually made big leaps forward with regulation, building standards for isolation, and aba…

Contrast with John von Neumann, who "could not work without some noise or at least the possibility of noise. Some of his best work was done in crowded railroad stations and airports, trains, planes, ships, hotel lobbies, lively cocktail parties or even among a bunch of shrieking very minor minors whooping it up."

I’m more impressed if his best sleep was done in noise areas.

Re: Deutsche Bahn introduces "MetaWindow"

#390

Post by nonrandomstring » Fri, May 17, 2024, 2:39 PM UTC

helboi4 wrote: post #325

nonrandomstring wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to read this conversation about graffiti happening on a hacker forum, yet it seems stuck in a polarised stand-off around aesthetics and ownership rights. That's a shame, because the root issues are in information warfare, the battle to control information spaces. To the extent The Internet is still considered a "public space"; Is spamming and trolling not a form of digital graffiti? Is the creation o…

Yeah I'm deeply disappointed that these so called "hackers" are so united on such a tired, pro-authoritarian view on the use of public space.

TBH I didn't really mean to situate the remark on an authoritarian-liberal axis, rather to comment on the congruence between meat-space and cyberspace in regard to these themes.