Sunday, September 12, 2021
What the caves are trying to tell us
Is this writing? Is it language? Clearly it has to mean or do something; these enigmas must have been put there for some kind of a reason. Were our ancestors just playing, with a child’s hesitancy, at the perilous game of turning bits of pigment into an abstract form beyond space and time? Or had they, long before we realized, found a way to make dead objects speak? This is what I’ll ask James Damore, pressing his face into the cold rock, shouting with an increased frenzy that echoes shrilly in the sacred dome, spittle flying in mad rage as I scream. You think you’re smart, do you? Then what does this mean?
Slavoj Žižek: Last Exit to Socialism
When we say that the rise of average temperature has to be kept below 2°C (35.6°F), we talk (and try to act) as general managers of life on Earth, not as a modest species. The regeneration of the earth obviously does not depend upon “our smaller and more mindful role” — it depends on our gigantic role, which is the truth beneath all the talk about our finitude and mortality.
(Reddit discussion)
What It’s Like To Be Cancelled
But recognizing my experience as trauma helped me find the tools to heal from it. I learned that, when you remove the massive scale and severe implications of my specific situation, lots of people could relate to the experience of having their voice taken away, of being shunned from a community that was dear to them over a misunderstanding. I realized that that trauma is much less unique than it felt.
A Way Out: An activist with an ulcer asks, “Why do nonprofits exist?”
The generous answer is that society is imperfect: people have needs that the government cannot meet (and that corporations refuse to meet). But the cynical answer is that there’s money to be made in nonprofits. Not for the people actually working at them, of course; they make very little. But for their extremely wealthy patrons, the rich people who want to protect their capital from being taxed and expropriated by the government, nonprofits are not only lucrative—they’re an effective way to provide legitimacy to the ruling class.
[…]
How can you sit there and tell me the working class isn’t interested in wonky economic policies, you might ask, and then shove a 150-year-old book in my face? But Marxism gives you the tools to pry the system apart and see how it works.
The author’s podcast, Trillbilly Worker’s Party, has my highest recommendation.
i have a backlog of single link draft posts that i haven’t gotten around to fleshing out to a state that is publishable by my minimal standards. you would think i was busy. hah.
i’m going to go ahead and post this video though because what it describes is very close to my own philosophy, if only i would make good on it.
https://youtu.be/sg3h3gy2IE4
Saturday, November 23, 2019
This economist has a plan to fix capitalism. It’s time we all listened
“It wasn’t just early research, it was also applied research, early stage finance, strategic procurement,” she says. “The more I looked, the more I realised: state investment is everywhere.”
Why I’m A Squishy Leftie
This isn’t scary socialism. This is self-protection by protecting the social contract within which we live, and just giving a damn about people.
just read Harry August this summer and it was very good.
