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2 weeks Ago

The law is a backstop

Published by marco on

 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

1 month Ago

The High Road and the Low Road

Published by marco on

“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

Published by marco on

“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

Published by marco on

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

Capital punishment is first-degree murder

Published by marco on

 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)

2 months Ago

An equal-opportunity comrade

Published by marco on

 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

Published by marco on

“[…] 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

Published by marco on

“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.
 

Mind Control

Published by marco on

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

3 months Ago

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

Published by marco on

“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

Published by marco on

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

At least it’s entertaining

Published by marco on

“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.”

4 months Ago

A good habit indeed

Published by marco on

“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.

Published by marco on

“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

Published by marco on

“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]”

5 months Ago

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

Published by marco on

 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]”

8 months Ago

Where do your loyalties lie?

Published by marco on

“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.”

Limiting the View

Published by marco on

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”

Oligarchs of War

Published by marco on

 The real power in America is held by a fast-emerging new Oligarchy of pimps and preachers who see no need for Democracy or fairness or even trees, except maybe the ones in their own yards, and they don’t mind admitting it. They worship money and power and death. Their ideal solution to all the nation’s problems would be another 100-Year War.”
Hunter S. Thompson

9 months Ago

Demons

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“My demon is on my butt. My demon talks to me in profanity like a seller, and my demon tries to knock me down, and my demon tries to put me on a hell ride.”

The order of things

Published by marco on

“Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
James Baldwin

Uncertainty beats incorrect certainty every time

Published by marco on

“I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we’re here. I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any... [More]”
Richard Feynman (What Do You Care What Other People Think?)

11 months Ago

Concision takes time

Published by marco on

“I apologize for such a long letter—I didn’t have time to write a short one.”
Mark Twain

Artists and Revolutionaries

Published by marco on

“The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through the vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.”
James Baldwin
“Ultimately, the artist and the revolutionary function as they function, and pay whatever dues they must pay behind it because they are both possessed by a vision, and they do not so much follow this vision as find themselves driven by it”
James Baldwin

1 year Ago

The Catch-22 of the mind

Published by marco on

“If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.”
Emerson Pugh

We are a shoddily designed experiment

Published by marco on

“Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name!

“Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature.

“Yet, how can any one speak of it today, with every soul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed? John Burroughs has stated that... [More]”

Lies capitalists tell themselves

Published by marco on

“We have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor—both black and white, here and abroad”


I learned this from the post Kingmaker by Mr. Fish (Scheer Post).


 

Teleportation, of a sort

Published by marco on

“To fly is the opposite of traveling: you cross a gap in space, you vanish into the void, you accept not being in a place for a duration that is itself a kind of void in time; then you reappear, in a place and in a moment with no relation to the where and when in which you vanished.”