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Two Days Ago

Predatory capitalism is inevitable, until it isn’t – pass it on

Published by marco on

 We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”
Ursula K Le Guin

The greatest lie those that benefit most from capitalism ever told you is that you can’t defeat capitalism.

2 weeks Ago

It was true forty years ago; it’s true today

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“The United States is also a one-party state, but with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.”
Julius Nyerere in 1982 (Wikiquote)

3 weeks Ago

Take off everything that’s not the damned fiddle.

Published by marco on

William Gibson 'The Peripheral' by Politics and Prose (YouTube)

 The PeripheralAt about 38:40 or so, someone asked about his process,

Lady: Do you know where you’re going when you set out?

Gibson: No, I don’t. And it’s when you ask me now, you’re asking somebody who’s been doing it for like 30 years or a little bit more, and I no longer know how I’m doing it. I just don’t. I don’t think of it. It’s like the story of the the old fiddle-maker and people said, ‘how do you make those fiddles?’ and he said, ‘I start with this block of wood and I take off everything that’s... [More]

1 month Ago

Seek the less-convenient truth

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 I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.”

Clear as an azure sky of deepest summer

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“I’d rather vote for something I want and not get it, than vote for something I don’t want and get it.”
Eugene Debs

2 months Ago

They’re fighting for control of the Thunderdome

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 It is a grave error to imagine that the world is not preparing for the disrupted planet of the future. It’s just that it’s not preparing by taking mitigatory measures or by reducing emissions; instead, it is preparing for a new geopolitical struggle for dominance.”
Amitav Ghosh (The Nutmeg’s Curse)

3 months Ago

The purpose of books

Published by marco on

“[…] ein Buch muß die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns.[1]
“[…] a book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.”


[1] The full quote is
 Ich glaube, man sollte überhaupt nur solche Bücher lesen, die einen beißen und stechen. Wenn das Buch, das wir lesen, uns nicht mit einem Faustschlag auf den Schädel weckt, wozu lesen wir dann das Buch? Damit es uns glücklich macht, wie Du schreibst? Mein Gott, glücklich wären wir eben auch, wenn wir keine Bücher hätten, und solche Bücher,... [More]”

Bad people, unworthy of love

Published by marco on

 We have become a civilization based on work itself. We have come to believe that men and women who do not work harder than they wish at jobs they do not particularly enjoy are bad people unworthy of love, care or assistance from their communities. It’s as if we’ve collectively acquiesced to our own enslavement.”
David Graeber

7 months Ago

Freedom as a means of control

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“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
Frank Zappa

8 months Ago

A society without oppression is an illusion…

Published by marco on

“Around the mid-1800s humanity began to notice it doesn’t make sense for a small group of rich people to own everything and for everyone else to continually give that group labor, rent and expenses just to stay alive, and ever since then the media, the mainstream culture and the foreign policy of the ruling class have been intensely devoted to aggressively erasing this realization from humanity’s memory.”

Gore Vidal’s Storm Warning in 1961

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“Ayn Rand’s ‘philosophy’ is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society. Moral values are in flux. The muddy depths are being stirred by new monsters and witches from the deep. Trolls walk the American night. Caesars are stirring in the Forum. There are storm warnings ahead.[1]
Gore Vidal in 1961


[1]

Bonus Gore Vidal on Ayn Rand (from the attached image):

“[Ayn Rand] has a great attraction for simple... [More]”

9 months Ago

The law is a backstop

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 It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.”
Martin Luther King

The High Road and the Low Road

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“There are two way of constructing a software design. One is to make the program so simple, there are obviously no errors . The other is to make it so complicated, there are no obvious errors.”
Tony Hoare

Understanding should come before expression

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“To some, complexity equals power. […] Increasingly, people seem to misinterpret complexity as sophistication, which is baffling—the incomprehensible should cause suspicion rather than admiration.”
A Plea for Lean Software by Niklaus Wirth in 1995 (cr.yp.to)

There’s nothing for it

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“As we say in Ireland: If we fight, we might win. If we don’t fight, we’ve lost already.”

10 months Ago

Capital punishment is first-degree murder

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 Reflexions sur la guillotine

“But what then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared? For there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.”
Albert Camus (Reflections on the Guillotine)

An equal-opportunity comrade

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 I don’t like to commit myself about heaven and hell – you see, I have friends in both places.”
Mark Twain

Lock it in so it works for me

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“[…] most minimalists want to keep exactly the economic and police system that keeps them privileged. That’s libertarians for you − anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.”
Kim Stanley Robinson in 1993 (Green Mars)

Practice makes perfect

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“There is no secret. Just practice twice as much as you think you need to.”
When asked 'the secret to his playing.' by Steve Vai

Steve Vai − For the Love Of God − Live in Bristol 6-2022 by MP Music (YouTube)

Needless to say, this is pretty much always the answer. Talent makes practice rewarding; it doesn’t replace it. See Wisdom and challenging God.
 

11 months Ago

Mind Control

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“Propaganda is the art of moving people’s thoughts and opinions in a desired direction for reasons they believe to be entirely their own.”

Oppression => Occupation => Resistance...epression => Terror => Counter-terror

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“Our right to defend ourselves from extermination does not give us the right to oppress others.

“Occupation entails foreign rule. Foreign rule leads to resistance. Resistance leads to repression.

“Repression leads to terror and counter-terror. The victims of terror are mostly innocent people.

“Holding on to the occupied territories will turn us into a nation of murderers and murder victims. We must leave the occupied territories immediately.”

Shimon Tzabar on September 22, 1967 (Ha'aretz)

This was three months after Israel’s six-day war.

The inexorability of the machine

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“Every revolutionary ends up either by becoming an oppressor or a heretic.”
Albert Camus

1 year Ago

At least it’s entertaining

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“Se non è vero, è ben trovato.”
Giordano Bruno on 1582 (Wiktionary)

I heard Slavj Žižek use this phrase in a recent interview. It translates in English to “Even if it is not true, it is very well-invented,” or, perhaps a bit more colloquially, “Even if it ain’t true, it’s a good story.”

A good habit indeed

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“A habit of basing convictions upon evidence, and of giving to them only that degree of certainty which the evidence warrants.”
Bertrand Russell

Why you so exercised? This is why.

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“Justice will not come until those who are not injured are as outraged as those who are.”
Solon in 560 BC

A state has no conscience, no sense of justice

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“Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.”
James Baldwin

C-Beams

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“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe… Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion… I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain… Time to die.”

Blade Runner − Final scene, 'Tears in Rain' Monologue (HD) (YouTube)

The Wikipedia article describes the origin of these few, sparse lines.

“[…] the original script, before Hauer’s rewrite, was:”
“I’ve seen things… seen things you little people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion bright as... [More]”

Misplaced priorities

Published by marco on

 What calls itself modern civilization is obsessed with convincing people that they should try to live forever and no-one demands to know why it doesn’t care about making those lives worth living.”

History doesn’t care about justice

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 History has no mercy. There are no laws in it against suffering and cruelty, no internal balance that restores a people much sinned against to their rightful place in the world. Cyclical views of history have always seemed to me flawed for that reason, as if the turning of the screw means that present evil can later be transformed into good. Nonsense. Turning the screw of suffering means more suffering, and not a path to salvation. The most frustrating thing about history, however, is that so... [More]”

Where do your loyalties lie?

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“My loyalties will not be bound by national borders, or confined in time by one nation’s history, or limited in the spiritual dimension by one language and culture. I pledge my allegiance to the damned human race, and my everlasting love to the green hills of Earth, and my intimations of glory to the singing stars, to the very end of space and time.”