Anthony Bourdain's Lost Li.st's

bourdain.greg.technology

339 points by gregsadetsky 7 days ago

I read through the years about Bourdain's content on the defunct li.st service, but was never able to find an archive of it. A more thorough perusing of archive.org and a pointer from an Internet stranger led me to create this site. Cheers

fredoliveira - 4 days ago

One of the few people that has a voice (written and otherwise) so distinctive that even reading those lists, I read them in his voice. I miss that guy.

potatonagger - 3 days ago

[flagged]
- popalchemist - 3 days ago
  
  What is your implication? Out with it.

deeptishukla22 - 7 days ago

Bourdain had a way of writing that made even throwaway lines feel meaningful, but so much of that era of content is basically disappearing. It’s nice to see someone do the unglamorous work of gathering the fragments before they fade completely.

t0lo - 4 days ago

It's funny because his, and Chuck Palahniuk's (fight club, etc) way of seeing the world- that brand of anti corporate- pro human- enjoy the waste- cynicism seemed so permanent and authentic- and like nothing could take it away from you- it felt like a staple of the human experience that was a place you could go to in your mind.
It's amazing to see how quickly that all got shovelled away and replaced with productised, streamlined, sterile groupthink- and one in which authentic sexuality and sex jokes are shunned. I think in some part he knew which way this world was heading and made a decision based off of that.
As a young person who stakes a lot of my headspace in the former, it's definitely an interesting, ridiculously two faced and contradictory cultural moment we're in right now.
- jasonwatkinspdx - 4 days ago
  
  If you're lumping together Bourdain and Palahniuk I think you've completely failed to understand Bourdain.
  And then diagnosing his suicide as a result of your apparent culture war grievances over sex jokes is just revolting behavior.
  - coldtea - 2 days ago
    
    Seems more possible that you failed to understand Palahniuk.
    What the parent wrote is spot on.
    >And then diagnosing his suicide as a result of your apparent culture war grievances over sex jokes is just revolting behavior.
    This quote is a fine example of the cultural decline the parent talks about, and which weighted heavily upon many people. Bourdain lamented this changes and celebrated the past rebellions time and again. So did others, including DFW.
  - CPLX - 4 days ago
    
    I’m a dyed in the wool GenX-er and I think the comment you’re responding to has insight.
    For those of us that grew up in the punk-rock anti-corporate adbusters rage against the machine WTO protest era the current culture around commerce and wealth is a disorienting hellscape.
    The boomers and their children, the millennials, were wrong in their belief that fashion choices and good vibe thinking by the affluent set would lead to a better culture.
    Should have listened to the Nirvana generation a little more. Turns out the cynicism was justified.
    
    builtawall - 3 days ago
    
    It was amazing how fast the anti-globalization/anti-corporate attitudes evaporated away in the wake of 9/11.
    100,000 mostly normal people traveled to Quebec City to protest the FTAA in April 2001.
    By the end of that year that kind of thing was anti-patriotic, and very much a taboo subject, at least in the mainstream culture.
    
    coldtea - 2 days ago
    
    And by the 2010s what passes for "rebellion" is just things co-opted by corporate interests and established parties.
    
    lurk2 - 3 days ago
    
    Anti-corporate attitudes were completely normalized in the 2000s and arguably only really lulled during the mid-2010s. There were several films from that period that featured countercultural messaging:
    Disney’s Incredibles had allusions to Kafka
    Monster’s Inc. is a commentary on corporate vampirism.
    Kingdom of Heaven was if not a commentary on the Global War on Terror at least a bold film to have released 4 years after 9/11.
    The second Pirates of the Caribbean film was a (childish) commentary on global empire and rationalization eliminating places for the human person to live freely.
    The Corporation, Capitalism: A Love Story, and Supersize Me were all released post-9/11. They screened Supersize Me in elementary and high schools when it was released.
    Anti-globalization as a movement completely collapsed during the Occupy Wall Street protests. These movements had attitudes towards international mobility rights that completely undermined organized labor. Most of them recognized what impacts illegals were having on these industries but took the position that labor solidarity would somehow make everyone better off. This could have worked in theory except that they had no operational plan to enact this solidarity and the illegals were never interested in it to begin with.
    Once the bankers realized that they could just pay off the OWS leadership with fake email jobs, you started to see the conventional partisan divide on globalism that we observe today, with liberals being in favor of it and conservatives opposed to it.
    
    CPLX - 3 days ago
    
    > Anti-globalization as a movement completely collapsed during the Occupy Wall Street protests.
    Not quite. Anti-globalization as a movement completely collapsed during the Obama administration and it's more accurate to call those protests the dying gasp.
    The blame for taking the momentum away from the anticorporate left has to come most directly from the corporate and neoliberal left.
    If you want to pick one thing to zero in on, as an example, pick the complete lack of consequences for the bankers and other architects of the great financial collapse, which was a direct decision by the Obama administration.
    It's the direct antecedent of the culture of complete and total elite impunity that has poisoned American politics today.
    
    lurk2 - 3 days ago
    
    > Anti-globalization as a movement completely collapsed during the Obama administration and it's more accurate to call those protests the dying gasp.
    Occupy occurred in 2011; Obama was in office from 2009 to 2017. If anti-globalization sentiment had completely collapsed at some preceding point during the Obama years, there wouldn’t have been a dying breath.
    > The blame for taking the momentum away from the anticorporate left has to come most directly from the corporate and neoliberal left.
    Hence “realized that they could just pay off the OWS leadership with fake email jobs.” The neoliberals were openly in favor of globalization. People left of the neoliberals were nominally opposed to it up until they got paid off. This has shifted in recent years; most neoliberals are starting to realize they need to pump the breaks, whereas most left of them are saying things like “No one is illegal.”
    I agree that impunity has its origins during the Obama era, but I’m not sure how much you can blame the administration for that. If financial crimes had occurred, they would have been handled by the judiciary, not the executive.
    
    jghn - 3 days ago
    
    As someone who is of the appropriate age & resonates with what you say: this doesn't account for the fact that Gen-X is the most MAGA generation.
    
    coldtea - 2 days ago
    
    Does quite well. MAGA wasn't just the classical Bush-era gun-loving redneck shit, it brought some elements of sticking it to the bipartisan complacency, cynicism, and anti-corporatism. Which is also why big chunk of Gen Z also got on board with alt-right for example
    
    awesome_dude - 3 days ago
    
    At the risk of stepping into USA POL (which is quite polarised)
    MAGA is a Right wing response to corporates - they put all their faith into someone who they thought was going to take to the "elites" who they believed were responsible for the corporates being able to r*pe and pillage through society.
    The Left wing response was Occupy Wall street and such.
    On a similar note skinheads had a far left branch and a far right branch (the far right is what skinheads are now primarily seen as)
    
    jghn - 3 days ago
    
    On paper, yes. But just like the tea party, and how "libertarian" has been completely coopted, they're really just tools for the same corporate interests as before.
    
    awesome_dude - 3 days ago
    
    I mean, yes, that's where things are ending up (IMO), but I am only talking about why people chose that pathway.
    
    ErroneousBosh - 3 days ago
    
    > MAGA is a Right wing response to corporates
    No, it's a cynical marketing exercise designed to make people think that.
    They're just selling hats. Hats that are costing way, way more than the sticker price, especially for the people who buy them.
    
    lurk2 - 3 days ago
    
    > No, it's a cynical marketing exercise designed to make people think that.
    The grandparent comment is referring to MAGA the demographic, not MAGA the political machine. How could the political machine have sold hats (or immigration policy, or tariffs) if no one in the broader movement wanted to buy them?
    
    ErroneousBosh - 3 days ago
    
    Marketing. They've got to sell the idea somehow.
    Otherwise how would a serial failed businessman get so much traction? It's all marketing.