Quick (page 1)
I’m lazy, so instead of writing long, introspective posts about my feelings, I prefer to just link to funny video clips of kittens or people falling off things, and other such worthwhile entertainments. This is them.
4PM Thu
The Story of Your Enslavement is a ten minute look at the illusion of freedom. It speaks of modern nation-states as farms for humans, designed to harvest our productivity in the same way a dairy farm harvests cow-milk. This is, I fear, all too accurate.
Iceland’s democracy is still paralysed while the bankers carry on exactly as they were before the crisis. Wall Street bonuses rose another seventeen percent last year—a slightly lower figure than the current effective unemployment rate in the US.
A democratic society, in theory, is one where every citizen has some sense of ownership and influence in their government. Yet every democracy in the world appears to be owned not by all citizens but by a wealthy political class, who are now themselves all but owned by corporate interests.
Corporate ownership of the political class is no real surprise when one looks at the figures involved. BP’s annual revenue (for example) is more than double the entire GDP of New Zealand. This should suggest a certain frightening imbalance of power, given that BP’s sole mandate is economic profit.
This is going to end badly. 0 Comments
11PM Tue
Within the span of a couple generations, we abandoned a durable, finely textured, life-affirming set of living arrangements characterized by self-sufficient family farms intermixed with small towns that provided commerce, services, and culture. Worse yet, we traded that model for a coarse-scaled arrangement wholly dependent on ready access to cheap fossil fuels. Then we ratcheted up the madness to rely on businesses that use, almost exclusively, a warehouse-on-wheels approach to just-in-time delivery of unnecessary devices designed for rapid obsolescence and disposal.
I just can’t quite register this one, but I’m trying:
In 2002, as I edited a book about global climate change, I concluded we had set events in motion that would cause our own extinction, probably by 2030. I mourned for months, to the bewilderment of the three people who noticed. About five years ago, I was elated to learn about a hail-Mary pass that just might allow our persistence for a few more generations: Peak oil and its economic consequences might bring the industrial economy to an overdue close, just in time. If we abandon the industrial culture of death, we might persist until your children are old enough to die a “normal” death. But the odds are long and the time short.
7PM Sat
It cannot be taken lightly that white men are in control of the record industry as a whole (even with a few black entrepreneurs), and control what images get played. Young white suburban males are the largest consumer of hip-hop music. So performance of black masculinity (or black sexuality as a whole) is created by white men for white men. And since white men have always portrayed black men as sexually dangerous and black women as always sexually available…
11AM Fri An email I received:
I am capt.Mark Bennett of the US Army base in Iraq for peace keeping i found your contact detail in a address journal am seeking your assistance to evacuate the sum of $5,000,000 to you as long as i am assured that it will be safe in your care until I complete my service here in Iraq. This is not stolen money and there are no dangers involved.
SOURCE OF MONEY: some money in various currencies was discovered concealed in barrels with piles of weapons and ammunition’s at a location near one of Saddam’s old palaces during a rescue operation, and it was agreed by all party present that the money be shared amongst us, this was quite an illegal thing to do, but I tell you what? No compensation can make up for the risks we have taken with our lives in this hell hole. The above figure was given to me as my share, and to conceal this kind of money became a problem for me, so with the help of a German contact working here and his office enjoys some immunity, I was able to get the package out to a safe location entirely out of trouble spot. He does not know the real contents of the package, and believes that it belongs to an Asian American who died in an air raid, and before giving up, trusted me to hand over the package to his family. I have survived 2 suicide bomb attacks by the special grace of God. get back to me in my person email: [email removed]
Capt Mark Bennett
One of the more intricate back-stories I’ve heard. 5 Comments
10AM Thu
I am actually serious about “Be Slightly Evil” as a corporate value. I’ve had this theory for a while that allowing a little bit of misanthropy and sociopathy into your soul actually makes for a stronger moral compass than adopting godly values no human being could live up to. Call it inoculation. Or Defense Against the Dark Arts.
11AM Fri A freed slave replies to his former master:
Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you are sincerely disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future.
Kickass.
8PM Wed
You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
— Ranier Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet
8PM Wed
He appeared and disappeared like a ghost whenever there was fighting, wherever desperate, generous, mad, courageous, despicable Latin Americans were destroying, rebuilding and destroying reality, in a final bid that was doomed to failure.
– Roberto Bolano, Distant Star
8PM Tue
Irony: Don’t let yourself be controlled by it, especially during uncreative moments. When you are fully creative, try to use it, as one more way to take hold of life. Used purely, it too is pure, and one needn’t be ashamed of it; but if you feel yourself becoming too familiar with it, if you are afraid of this growing familiarity, then turn to great and serious objects, in front of which it becomes small and helpless. Search into the depths of Things: there, irony never descends – and when you arrive at the edge of greatness, find out whether this way of perceiving the world arises from a necessity of your being. For under the influence of serious Things it will either fall away from you (if it is something accidental), or else (if it is really innate and belongs to you) it will grow strong, and become a serious tool and take its place among the instruments which you can form your art with.
— Ranier Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet
7PM Thu
The idea of “planning” a career is now garbage. You can only improvise one. Listening dutifully to old-economy career counselor types at ages 18 and 22 and “first layoff” is now the stupidest thing you can do. To a large extent a) your career picks you, not vice-versa, and b) It isn’t about what you want to do, but which one of the things you like doing achieves a “product-market fit” with the labor market.
(Most of the post is about entrepreneur-ing and startups; skip to the bottom for the “Your Life as a Lean Startup” section.) 0 Comments