Astral Codex Ten

Disneyland

4 min read

Disneyland

Article

Disneyland is a recurring venue in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between February 24, 2021 and September 18, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as “visit Disneyland (and accept its mystique at face value)”; “So, you merge the idea of a park with the skill of building model trains and out comes Disneyland, the world’s first theme park”. It most often appears alongside America, California, Jeff Bezos.

Metadata

  • Category: Venues
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: February 24, 2021
  • Last seen: September 18, 2023

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Book Review: Fussell On Class
February 24, 2021 · Original source
Proles do wage labor. High proles are skilled craftspeople like plumbers. Medium and low proles are more typical factory workers. They have a certain kind of freedom, in that they don't have status anxiety and do what they want. But they're also kind of sheep. They really like mass culture - the more branded, the better. These are people who drink Coca-Cola (and feel good about themselves for doing so), visit Disneyland (and accept its mystique at face value), and go on Royal Caribbean cruises. When they hear an ad say a product is good, they think of it as a strong point in favor of buying the product. They feel completely comfortable expressing their opinions, but their opinions tend to be things like "Jesus is Lord!", "USA is number one!", "McDonalds is so great!", and "Go $LOCAL_SPORTS_TEAM!". They are weirdly obsessed with cowboys (Fussell says cowboys represent the idea that poorer people are freer and more authentic than rich office-worker types, plus the West is the prole capital of the USA) and with unicorns (Fussell: "I've spent six months trying to find out exactly why, and I'm finally stumped"). When they have unique quirks, they tend to be things like "collecting lots of Disney memorabilia" or "going powerboating slightly more often than the other proles do". There's also a sort of desperate prole desire to be noticed and individuated, which takes the form of lots of "Personalized X" or "Y with your name on it", and also with making a lot of noise (see: powerboating). Fussell describes the most perfectly prole piece of decor as "a blue flameproof hearthrug with your family name in Gothic letters beneath seven spaced gold stars and above a golden eagle in Federal style".
Highlights From The Comments On Elon Musk
September 18, 2023 · Original source
Musk's hands-on learn-how-it's-done practice reminds me a bit of Walt Disney, of all people. Do you know how Disneyland came about? During WWII Walt became interested in (obsessed with) model railroads. So he went into the company's machine shop and learned how to use the equipment to build his own models from scratch. Then, after the war, he had the idea that his employees needed a park where they could relax with their families. That much I learned from two biographies, a thick tome by Neal Gabler, and a somewhat more sympathatic one by Mike Barrier (and, I believe, a bit deeper). So, you merge the idea of a park with the skill of building model trains and out comes Disneyland, the world's first theme park and, some have said, a masterpiece of urban planning.