“[…] a human-centered evaluation of these type systems and their usability was all but absent, with empirical evaluations limited to testing their expressiveness in programs written by experts, i.e. the creators of the type system.”

“Linear Types enable memory management of mutable values without Garbage Collection. If a value cannot be copied or implicitly discarded and it must be used exactly once, then we can reclaim its memory after it is used. This handles memory management, and prevents use-after-free and double-free bugs. By prohibiting aliasing, Linear Types also solve the problem of reasoning about mutations, both in single-threaded code (where aliased references are a notable source of bugs), and in multi-threaded code (where aliasing can lead to race conditions).”

“[…] these types were neither widely adopted, nor evaluated on real users. Instead, each extension, implementation or application of these types was only evaluated by the designers of the system, who programmed real-world applications with their type system to argue for its expressiveness”

“Linear, Region and Ownership Types are related by their attention to memory management and safety. Each realized that type systems could be used to help programmers reason about complex programs, prevent various errors in using aliased or freed references, and offer a provably correct solution to memory management without the need for runtime checks or garbage collection.”

“Note that both of these programs are “safe”, and a more advanced type system involving dependent types could in theory statically verify the safety of Fig. 3a, but the current limitations of the type system means that developers need to learn, not just the rules of Ownership, but how the borrow-checker verifies them.”

“In the 5 applications they inspected, [Qin et al. 2020] found 4990 uses of unsafe, with a further 1581 unsafe code regions in the standard library, and concluded that unsafe code is used “extensively”. Though they note that it is “unavoidable in many cases” and “usually for good reasons”, including interfacing with existing libraries written in other unsafe languages such as C, and performance improvements by a factor of 4 or 5.”

• the problems of achieving sufficient reliability in the data systems which are becoming increasingly integrated into the central activities of modern society
• the difficulties of meeting schedules and specifications on large software projects
• the education of software (or data systems) engineers

“[…] the rapid growth of computing power made it possible to apply computing to ever more complicated tasks. This trend dramatically increased the demands on software engineers. Programs and systems became complex and almost impossible to fully understand. The sinking cost and the abundance of computing resources inevitably reduced the care for good design. Quality seemed extravagant, a loser in the race for profit. But we should be concerned about the resulting deterioration in quality. Our limitations are no longer given by slow hardware, but by our own intellectual capability. From experience we know that most programs could be significantly improved, made more reliable, economical and comfortable to use.”

“The sinking cost and the abundance of computing resources inevitably reduced the care for good design. Quality seemed extravagant, a loser in the race for profit. But we should be concerned about the resulting deterioration in quality. Our limitations are no longer given by slow hardware, but by our own intellectual capability.”

“From the point of view of software engineering, the rapid spread of C represented a great leap backward. It revealed that the community at large had hardly grasped the true meaning of the term “high-level language” which became an ill-understood buzzword.”

“Computer systems are machines of large complexity. This complexity can be mastered intellectually by one tool only: Abstraction. A language represents an abstract computer whose objects and constructs lie closer (higher) to the problem to be represented than to the concrete machine. For example, in a high-level language we deal with numbers, indexed arrays, data types, conditional and repetitive statements, rather than with bits and bytes, addressed words, jumps and condition codes.”

“C provided freedom, where high-level languages were considered as straight-jackets enforcing unwanted discipline. It was an invitation to use tricks which had been necessary to achieve efficiency in the early days of computers, but now were pitfalls that made large systems error-prone and costly to debug and “maintain”.”

“The group of Ken Bowles at UC San Diego built a text editor, a file system, and a debugger around the portable Pascal compiler (P-code) developed at ETH, and they distributed it for $50. So did the Borland company with its version of compiler. This was at a time when other compilers were expensive software, and it was nothing less than a turning-point in commercializing software. Suddenly, there was a mass market. Computing went public”

“The craft of programming turned to “hacking. Methods were sought to systematize, if not construction, then at least program testing and documentation. Although this was helpful, the real problems of hectic programming under timepressure remained.”

“Methods were sought to systematize, if not construction, then at least program testing and documentation. Although this was helpful, the real problems of hectic programming under time pressure remained. Dijkstra brought the difficulty to the point by saying: Testing may show the presence of errors, but it can never prove their absence.”

“Just as structured programming had been the guiding spirit behind Pascal, modularization was the principal idea behind the language Modula-2, the successor of Pascal, published in 1979 [15]. In fact, its motivation came from the language Mesa, an internal development of the Xerox Research Lab in Palo Alto, and itself a descendant of Pascal. The concept of modularization and separate compilation was also adopted by the language Ada (1984), which was also based largely on Pascal. Here, modules were called packages.”

“It is no exaggeration at all to claim that the modern computing era started in 1975 with the Alto. The Alto caused nothing less than a revolution, and as a result people to-day have no idea, how computing was done before 1975 without personal, highly interactive workstations. The influence of these developments on software engineering cannot be overestimated.”

“Languages appeared supporting this model, among them Smalltalk (Goldberg and Kay, 1980), Object-Pascal (Tesler, 1985), C++ (Stroustrup, 1985), Oberon (Wirth, 1988), Java (Sun, 1995) and C# (Microsoft, 2000).”

“I am overwhelmed, when I compare this with the first, stand-alone minicomputer that I worked with in 1965, a DEC PDP-1: Clock rate, < 1 MHz, memory of 8K word of 18 bits, drum storage of some 200 KB. It was time-shared by up to 16 users. It is a miracle that some people insisted in believing that one day computers would become powerful enough to be useful.”

“In the 1990s, a phenomenon started to spread under the name of Open Source. The distrust against huge systems designed in industrial secrecy became manifest. A wide community of programmers decided to build software and to distribute their products for free through the Internet. Although it is difficult to recognize this as a sound business principle – making the idea of patents obsolete – the bandwagon turned out to be rather successful. The notions of quality and responsibility in case of failure seemed irrelevant. Open Source appeared as the welcome alternative to industrial hegemony and abrasive profit, and also against helpless dependence.”

“Surely, software engineering has profited too from the many sophisticated development tools. But the quality of its products hardly reflects signs of great progress. No wonder: After all, the increase of power was itself the reason for the terrifying growth of complexity. Whatever progress was made in software methodology was quickly compensated by higher complexity of the tasks. This is reflected by Reiser’s “law”: “Software is getting slower faster than hardware is getting faster”. Indeed, new problems have been tackled that are so difficult that engineers often have to be admired more for their optimism and courage than for their success.”

“The consequence is waste of cheap resources – processor cycles and storage bits – resulting in inefficient code and bulky data. This waste has become ever-present and represents a grave lack of sense for quality. Inefficiency of programs is easily covered up by obtaining faster processors, and poor data design by the use of larger storage devices. But their side effect is a decrease of quality – of reliability, robustness, and ease of use. Good, careful design is timeconsuming, costly. But it is still cheaper than unreliable, difficult software, when the cost of “maintenance” is not factored”

“A primary effort must be education toward a sense of quality. Programmers must become engaged crusaders against home-made complexity. The cancerous growth of complexity is not a thing to be admired; it must be fought wherever possible [17]. Programmers must be given time and respect for work of high quality. This is crucial and ultimately more effective than better tools and rules.”

“The standard ownership semantics for a Swift function call are defined such that the caller retains ownership over the parameter values passed into the callee, while the callee transfers ownership of the return value to the caller. This means that the identity(_:) function cannot just return the value x; instead, it must first create a logical copy of × that it owns, and then return this owned copy. This is achieved by incrementing the string value’s buffer reference count via a call to a runtime function.”

“As the joke goes, every problem in computer science can be solved with an extra level of indirection. The calling convention for a generic function takes runtime type metadata for every generic parameter in the function’s generic signature. Every type in the language has a reified representation as runtime type metadata, storing the type’s size and alignment together with function pointers implementing the move, copy and destroy operations. The generated code for a generic function abstractly manipulates values of generic parameter type using the runtime type metadata provided by the caller. An important property of runtime type metadata is identity; two pointers to runtime type metadata are equal if and only if they represent the same type in the language.”

“Definitions of generic functions are always visible to the specializer within their defining module. Shared library developers can also optin to exporting the body of a function across module boundaries with the @inlinable attribute.”

“The witness table for this conformance references the witness (indirectly, because the witness is always wrapped in a thunk, which is a small function which shuffles some registers around and then calls the actual witness. This must be the case because protocol requirements use a slightly different calling convention than ordinary generic functions).”

“While metadata for generic parameters is passed in directly, for dependent member types the metadata is recovered from one or more witness tables provided by the caller.”

“Operator symbols are declared at the top level of a module. Operator symbols have a fixity (prefix, infix, or postfix), and infix operators also have a precedence group. Precedence groups are partially ordered with respect to other precedence groups. Standard operators like + and * and their precedence groups are thus defined in the standard library, rather than being built-in to the language itself.”

“The request evaluator framework was first introduced in Swift 4.2 [ 5]. In subsequent releases, various ad-hoc mechanisms were gradually converted into request evaluator requests, with resulting gains to compiler performance, stability, and implementation maintainability.”

“The Swift ABI was formally stabilized in Swift 5.0, when the standard library became part of the operating system on Apple platforms. Library evolution support and textual interfaces became user-visible features in Swift 5.1”

“The difference between the type representation Array<Int> and the type Array<Int> is that the type representation only stores identifiers, with no connection to the declaration of Array and Int. The semantic type points at the declarations themselves.”

“The utmost care must be taken when working with type variables because unlike all other types, they are not allocated with indefinite lifetime. Type variables live in the constraint solver arena, which grows and shrinks as the solver explores branches of the solution space. Types that contain type variables, and other structures that recursively contain such types, also need to be allocated in the constraint solver arena.”

“In contrast, the second case would introduce significant complexity to the language design, by allowing “generic protocols” with more generic parameters than just the protocol Self type. Such a protocol would be what Haskell calls a “multi-parameter type class.” Unlike the prior generalizations this one carries profound implications and tradeoffs and it is not clear that it belongs in the Swift language.”

“The first case is a relatively straightforward; the non-generic declaration contexts acts as a namespace to which the protocol declaration is scoped. In contrast, the second case would introduce significant complexity to the language design, by allowing “generic protocols” with more generic parameters than just the protocol Self type. Such a protocol would be what Haskell calls a “multi-parameter type class.” Unlike the prior generalizations this one carries profound implications and tradeoffs and it is not clear that it belongs in the Swift language.”

“[…] imagine if there were two different conformances of some concrete type K to Hashable. Then it would be possible for two different modules to construct values of type Set<K> with incompatible hash functions; passing such a value from one module to the other would result in undefined behavior. For now, there’s no real answer to this dilemma. The compiler rejects duplicate conformance definitions if an existing conformance is statically visible, so this scenario cannot occur with Int and Hashable for instance, because the conformance of Int to Hashable in the standard library is always visible, so any attempt to define a new conformance would be diagnosed as an error. However, if the concrete type K is defined in some common module, and two separatelycompiled modules both define a conformance of K to Hashable, a module that imports all three will observe both conformances statically, with unpredictable results.”

“In the absence of proper compiler support for addressing this problem, there is a rule of thumb that, if followed by Swift users, mostly guarantees coherence. The rule is that when defining a conformance on an extension, either the extended type or the protocol should be part of the current module.”

“A conformance where neither the conforming type nor the protocol is part of the current module is called a retroactive conformance. Today, retroactive conformances are allowed without any restrictions. In a future compiler version, they might generate a warning.”

“A client might declare a subclass of BaseClass and conform it to MyProtocol, concluding this it is safe to do so because the conforming type, DerivedClass, is owned by the client, and thus this is not a retroactive conformance: 1 import OtherLibrary 2 3 class DerivedClass: BaseClass {} 4 extension DerivedClass: MyProtocol {} However, in the next version of the framework, the framework author might decide to conform BaseClass to MyProtocol. At this point, DerivedClass has two duplicate conformances to MyProtocol; the inherited conformance from BaseClass, and the local conformance of DerivedClass.”

“You might wonder why archetypes exist at all, when at first glance, they appear equivalent to a reduced type parameter together with a generic signature. In the case of primary archetypes at least, the reason is partly historical. However, the additional indirection provided by creating multiple generic environments from a single generic signature allows archetypes to represent abstract types which are not described by the generic parameters that are in the scope of a generic declaration, namely opaque return types and existential types.”

“It may be hard for readers today to appreciate just how labor-intensive it was to prepare documents before the creation of word processing programs, when there were only mechanical typewriters—better than clay tablets or quill pens, to be sure, but any change of more than a few words in a document could require a complete retype. Thus most documents went through only one or two revisions, with handwritten changes on a manuscript that had to be laboriously retyped to make a clean copy.”

“By shifting to this new visualization, where the references are explicitly visible, we see a difference between the models that was previously obscured: the direction of the arrows. To see why this matters, let us consider how subjects and resources refer to each other.”

“In a capability system, each capability points from a subject to a resource. Consequently every capability can serve both to designate which resource to access, and to provide the authority to perform that access. This change provides us with the option to avoid introducing a shared namespace into the foundations of the model, and thereby avoid the complex issues involved in managing a shared namespace – issues rarely acknowledged as a cost of non-capability models.”

“Although Lampson’s definition of the access matrix does not prohibit the possibility of fine-grained subjects4, even in an ACL system, the difficulty just explained strongly motivates ACL systems to define subjects at a coarse granularity so as to keep the set of subjects relatively static.”

“[…] serverless computing today is at best a simple and powerful way to run embarrassingly parallel computations or harness proprietary services. At worst, it can be viewed as a cynical effort to lock users into those services and lock out innovation.”

“Recent studies show that a single Lambda function can achieve on average 538Mbps network bandwidth; numbers from Google and Azure were in the same ballpark [26]. This is an order of magnitude slower than a single modern SSD. Worse, AWS appears to attempt to pack Lambda functions from the same user together on a single VM, so the limited bandwidth is shared by multiple functions.”

“The result is that as compute power scales up, per-function bandwidth shrinks proportionately. With 20 Lambda functions, average network bandwidth was 28.7Mbps—2.5 orders of magnitude slower than a single SSD [26]”

“[…] two Lambda functions can only communicate through an autoscaling intermediary service; today, this means a storage system like S3 that is radically slower and more expensive than point-to-point networking. As a corollary, a client of Lambda cannot address the particular function instance that handled the client’s previous request: there is no “stickiness” for client connections. Hence maintaining state across client calls requires writing the state out to slow storage, and reading it back on every subsequent call.”

“[…] serverless functions are short-lived and non-addressable, so their capacity to cache state internally to service”

“FaaS routinely “ships data to code” rather than “shipping code to data.” This is a recurring architectural antipattern among system designers, which database aficionados seem to need to point out each generation. Memory hierarchy realities— across various storage layers and network delays—make this a bad design decision for reasons of latency, bandwidth, and cost.”

“[…] with all communication transiting through storage, there is no real way for thousands (much less millions) of cores in the cloud to work together efficiently using current FaaS platforms other than via largely uncoordinated (embarrassing) parallelism.”

“[…] we trained the same model on an m4.large EC2 instance, which has 8GB of RAM and 2vCPUs. In this setting, each iteration is significantly faster (0.14 seconds): 0.04 seconds to fetch data from an EBS volume and 0.1 seconds to run the optimizer. The same training process takes about 1300 seconds (just under 22 minutes), which translates to a cost of $0.04. Lambda’s limited resources and data-shipping architecture mean that running this algorithm on Lambda is 21× slower and 7.3× more expensive than running on EC2.”

“The first replaced Lambda’s role in the application with an EC2 machine to receive SQS message batches—this showed a latency of 13ms per batch averaged over 1,000 batches—27× faster than our “optimized” Lambda implementation. The second experiment used ZeroMQ to replace SQS’s role in the application, and receive messages directly on the EC2 machine. This “serverful” version had a per batch latency of 2.8ms—127× faster than the optimized Lambda implementation.”

“[…] there are two classical dual patterns to implement concurrent communicating systems: eventdriven execution over shared state (the natural FaaS approach), or message-passing across long-running agents with distributed state [16].”

“[…] communicating via cloud storage is not a reasonable replacement for directly-addressed networking, even with direct I/O—it is at leaste one order of magnitude too slow. “Pure” functional FaaS programming style exacerbates that expense to an inordinate degree, and should be avoided at all costs.”

“To model this, we implemented one of the simplest of these protocols in Python: Garcia-Molina’s bully leader election [7].”

“FaaS limitations favor operational flexibility over developer control, a theme we generally agree is critical to the scale and elasticity of the cloud—and a major design shift from the traditional data systems ethos.”

“Developers are forced to compose larger programs out of asynchronous tasks, with no guarantees like sequential consistency or serializability to reason about the semantics of global state mutation across tasks. These limitations can be challenging for developers used to writing sequential programs or transactions. But the result may be both healthy and manageable: this kind of “disorderly” loosely-consistent model has been at the heart of a number of more general-purpose proposals for scalable, available program design in recent years,”

“Any reasonable system design will need the ability to selectively co-locate code and data on the same side of a network boundary, whether that is done via caching/prefetching data near computation or pushing computation closer to data. Neither feature is provided in a meaningful way by today’s FaaS offerings.”

“[…] we see autoscaling (and hence pay per use) as a big step forward, but disappointingly limited to applications that can work over today’s hobbled provider infrastructure. We acknowledge that there is an enormous market of such “narrow” applications, many of which consist of little more than business logic over a database.”

“[…] serverless computing could produce a local minimum: yet another setting in which the compute and storage potential of the cloud is lost in the noise of refactoring low-tech and often legacy use cases.”

“We see the future of cloud programming as far, far brighter than the promise of today’s serverless FaaS offerings. Getting to that future requires revisiting the designs and limitations of what is being called “serverless computing” today.”

“High-level, data-centric DSLs—e.g., SQL+UDFs, MapReduce, TensorFlow—can make this more tractable, by exposing at a high level how data flows through computation. The more declarative the language, the more logical separation (and optimization search space) is offered to the infrastructure.”

“[…] recognizing hardware affinity does not mean that we advocate tight binding of hardware to services; the platform should make dynamic physical decisions about allocation of code to distinguished resources, based on logical performance requirement specs either provided by programmers or extracted from code.”

“[…] elasticity requirements dictate that these agents be virtual and dynamically remapped across physical resources. Hence we need virtual alternatives to traditional operating system constructs like “threads” and “ports”: nameable endpoints in the network. Various ideas from the literature have provided aspects of this idea: actors [11], tuplespaces [4] pub/sub [18] and DHTs [21] are all examples.”

“[…] if cloud programming is achieved via higher-level abstractions, it will offer the opportunity for program analysis and constraint enforcement that could improve security. However, some of our desired architectural improvements for performance in this paper make achieving security more difficult for the responsible parties.”

“It has long been recognized that one can selectively CPS transform only parts of the program that need it [8, 9, 37]. In our case, we only have to use CPS translation on those parts that may issue effectful operations. Moreover, since effects are tracked in the type system, we can use a type-directed selective CPS translation (as used by Scala [38] for example). We built on the translation by Nielsen [31] who introduces a sound selective CPS translation for the simply typed lambda calculus extended with callcc and throw. However, the translation by Nielsen applies to monomorphic effects only and we will see that in the presence of polymorphic effect variables the translation becomes more complex.”

“The built-in effects consist of exceptions (exn), non-termination (div), non-determinism (ndet), polymorphic state (st⟨h⟩), and general I/O operations (io). All of these are usually provided directly by the target system (like JavaScript) and can thus be directly compiled without needing CPS translation. This turns out to be a very important optimization as many (leaf) functions do not use any user defined effects and can thus be compiled directly – and implies there is no cost for effect handlers for any code that does not use them.”

“In the case of polymorphic functions, the simplified types of Section 3.2 turn out to have a performance impact as well: many functions that would otherwise get a type with an open polymorphic effect, are now closed and thus do not need a CPS translation as H will be false. In the Koka core library, this reduced the set of CPS translated functions by over 80%.”

“Here we take another approach: we are going to try to not change the runtime representation of functions that are CPS translated, even if they are called from a nonCPS context and the continuation argument is lacking. We assume that our target environment supports some form of variadic functions and that we can check at runtime if the k argument is present or not. This is well supported in JavaScript but it works well in typed environments too. For example, for the .NET target, first-class functions are represented by function objects and we can modify to the Apply methods to check if the k parameter was present.”

“Since only the tail of an effect row can be polymorphic, there is no risk of exponential code duplication. Even for the Koka core library which contains many of these higher-order effect polymorphic functions, the code size increased by a modest 20%.”

“[…] the original Links type system can be naturally extended to handle algebraic effects too. Their system is also based on row-polymorphism but they use instead Remy style rows [36] where the kind system is extended to record presence or absence of effects in the row. We believe our approach based on scoped labels [22] is simpler in practice, but the Remy style can be more expressive as it can describe the absence of effects.”

“Algebraic effect handlers concisely describe many complex control-flow constructs in various programming languages. We hope that the language design, the direct operational semantics, and compilation scheme described in this article will contribute to wider adoption of algebraic effects.”

“We identify a surprising expressivity gap compared to functional programming with parameterized algebraic datatypes (PADTs): operations with natural definitions in ML and Haskell require unnatural and nonextensible object-oriented encodings to ensure safety. With the introduction of generics, virtual dispatch is no longer as expressive as functional case analysis.”

“[…] mostly avoids this element by concerning itself with semantics. However, the background chapters are also meant to discuss language design motivations, and psychology is integral to that discussion because it often dominates programmer productivity. Semantics may make some intended computations difcult to specify, but rarely makes them”

“background chapters are also meant to discuss language design motivations, and psychology is integral to that discussion because it often dominates programmer productivity. Semantics may make some intended computations difcult to specify, but rarely makes them impossible — especially in Lisp, which doesn’t practice strong typing; whereas psychological bias may prevent entire classes of computations outright, just by preventing programmers from intending them”

“The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over its simple ideas, are chiefy these three: (1) Combining several simple ideas into one compound one; and thus all complex ideas are made. (2) The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one; by which way it gets all its ideas of relations. (3) The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence: this is called abstraction: and thus all its general ideas are made. — John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding ([Lo1690]), Bk. II Ch. xii §”

“Classically, an extensible language consists of a sourcelevel base language together with meta-level defnitional facilities to extend the base language ([Chr69]). A program then consists of two parts, a meta-level part that specifes an extension of the base language followed by a source-level part written in the extended language”

“Syntactic abstractions do not have to be macros. A class of non-macro syntactic abstractions is proposed, under the name micros, in [Kr01]; a micro specifes a transformation directly source-to-target (rather than source-to-source, as macros), which is clearly syntactic since its processing must be completed before the target abstract machine begins computation.8 Micros are a universal syntactic abstraction, in that they can be used to assign any possible (computable) semantics to source programs. (However, they won’t play a signifcant role in this dissertation, because they aren’t a traditional abstraction, so aren’t within the scope of the thesis.9)”

“[…] the measure of the abstractive power of a programming language is the class of programming languages that it can readily specify — or, more to the point (but also more subjectively), the class of problem domains that the language, including its readily achieved abstractive extensions, can readily address.”

“Each extensible language is surrounded by an envelope of possible extensions reachable by modest amounts of labor by unsophisticated users”

“(Smoothness Conjecture) Every roughness (violation of smoothness) in a language design ultimately bounds its radius of abstraction.”

“The intuition here is that a butterfy efect occurs, in which the consequences of roughness are compounded by successive abstractions until, sooner or later depending on the degree of roughness, cumulative resistance drags down further abstraction through the fuzzy threshold from feasible to infeasible”

“Programmers spend much of their time reasoning informally about programs. Formal reasoning about programs may be used, on occasion, to prove that particular programs are correct; but more powerfully, to prove that general classes of program transformations preserve the meanings of programs. The general transformations are then safe for use in meta-programs —such as optimizing compilers— and also for use in subsequent program correctness proofs”

“Some languages, such as Haskell, allow argument evaluation to be postponed past the application of a compound function — lazy argument evaluation; but in general this takes out too much of the order of operations, so that the language interpreter must either do additional work to put back in some of the lost order, or else lose efciency.21 A few languages, such as Haskell, have taken the applicative trend to its logical extreme”

“Some languages, such as Haskell, allow argument evaluation to be postponed past the application of a compound function — lazy argument evaluation; but in general this takes out too much of the order of operations, so that the language interpreter must either do additional work to put back in some of the lost order, or else lose efciency.21 A”

“It is not yet clear whether the mathematical models used in ‘monadic’ programming will eventually fnd a useful balance between expressiveness and simplicity”

“We’re really referring to the notion of frst-class object, which was discussed in the Preface, and for which nameability by variables is just one particular requirement; but in Lisps, most objects nameable by variables have all the rights and privileges of frst-class-ness. Christopher Strachey, by the way, originally evolved the notion of frst-class value from W.V. Quine’s principle To be is to be the value of a variable ([La00]); and Quine, after deriving the principle in his essay “On What There Is” [Qu61, pp. 1–19], had applied it to reifcation in another essay, “Logic and the Reifcation of Universals” [Qu61, pp. 102–129].”

“Technical simplicity would favor always using the double-quotes — but technical simplicity is a primary goal for expressions to be read by formal systems, not by the human audience. For the human audience our goal is accuracy of understanding, which is enhanced by ease of understanding but does not always correlate with technical simplicity, nor even with technical unambiguity”

“The distinction intended is that modularity hides implementation, while abbreviation merely shortens expression.”

“Programming languages should be designed not by piling feature on top of feature, but by removing the weaknesses and restrictions that make additional features appear necessary.”

“Programmer-defined facilities should be able to duplicate all the capabilities and properties of built-in facilities”

“[…] sharing platforms disrupt some of the fundamental assumptions underlying common law “special relationships.”75 Unlike two-party relationships between service providers and consumers, sharing platforms create three-party relationships between the platform, provider, and user. These new relationships require a different allocation of liability and statutory protection.”

“Sharing platforms must navigate rules promulgated by multiple agencies at both state and local levels. Second, the relevant local codes are complex and, as discussed in the previous Section, impose heightened compliance burdens on service providers.”

“[…] sharing platforms also generate negative externalities for third parties. Short-term rentals can change the character of a building or even a community,97 and many residents object to finding strangers routinely entering the common areas of an apartment complex.”

“P2P auction houses and per-task contractor services allow users to purchase temporary licenses, such as a position in line for a movie, a table in a coffee shop, or a public parking spot. Blurring these lines creates difficult legal issues because these categories affect determinations of liability in almost every field of law, from tax149 to civil rights.”

“While Expedia, Priceline and Hotwire are best defined as retailers or resellers and, as such, can be controlled and taxed accordingly, it is much more difficult to find a comparable taxing analogue for the Internet-sharing economy.”).”

“Insurance Commissioner Jones aptly summarized the “moral hazard” argument of TNCs: “(1) drivers may be running personal errands; (2) drivers may have multiple applications open at the same time; (3) drivers with low limits on their personal automobile insurance policy will turn on the application in the event of an accident to secure more robust coverage; and (4) drivers start to look more like employees or independent contractors if the TNC covers this period.””

“The two primary examples are auction platforms for public parking spaces and for seating in coffee houses or restaurants.177 Neither sellers nor purchasers “own” or “provide” the temporary license; the municipal government is responsible for maintaining public parking and restaurants are responsible for providing seating to customers. Many have criticized these platforms as parasitic, and claim that these services interfere with third-party rights. Bloggers have even coined the term “jerk tech” to describe these platforms.178 Others contend that auction houses optimize efficient use of scarce resources and prevent congestion; users who value a parking spot most can pay for that privilege, and price-sensitive users will accept less conveniently located spots.”

“Unlike internet service providers, sharing companies are not passive; most platforms exercise at least some control over provider and user transactions, and almost all platforms have a financial stake in transactions between users and providers.216 This suggests that immunity for platforms is not appropriate.”

“The proper allocation of liability between users and providers on sharing platforms is highly contextual because both the least-cost avoider and the easiest target for enforcement agencies vary between and within 216. Sharing platforms impose a wide range of transaction fees. See supra note 27. Interchange fees might serve as an indirect measure of the degree of control a platform exercises over transactions.”

“Since sharing platforms often operate on a large scale over multiple jurisdictions, the least-cost avoider for compliance may often be users and providers, who are most familiar with local rules and their own property. Moreover, casual and high volume providers may require different treatment. Yet in other situations platforms may be best positioned to address user or provider misconduct.”

“Tiered regulation properly allocates risk to repeat players who benefit most from the platform. For instance, providers who transact at volumes comparable to bed and breakfasts should incur similar liability to a traditional service provider. And TNC drivers who operate like full-time taxis should comply with safety standards comparable to taxis. In addition, tiered regulation levels the playing field between sharing platforms and traditional service providers, and discourages abuse of the platform.”

“For example, several ordinances on TNCs restrict the maximum number of hours that a driver can operate per day, but some TNC platforms do not directly restrict drivers’ hours.226 If a TNC driver leaves the app on twenty four hours a day and recklessly accepts fares without adequate rest, should the platform have a duty to terminate that driver? The platform exercises sufficient control such that it represents both the least-cost avoider and easiest enforcement target.”

“In some cases the public interest in allowing disclosure of rider logs may outweigh the rider’s privacy interest. For example, consulting firm Hamilton Places Strategies calculated based on congressional campaign filings that Members of Congress relied on Uber for sixty one percent of rides during the 2014 election cycle.”

“[…] regulators should not simply allow the sharing economy to grow in the shadow of the law. Allowing the sharing economy to self-regulate would not adequately safeguard consumers. Thus, responsible regulation of sharing platforms is a necessity, not a choice.”

“Tom Slee, Why Canada Should De-Activate Uber, WHIMSLEY (Nov. 22, 2014), (“Contrary to the way some articles are written, we do have a choice here. A lot of the links above talk as if Uber were some kind of inevitable future. . . . Conflating Uber with the broad advance of technology is just wrong, and it’s also exactly what Uber wants us to do.”).”

“Under a laissez-faire system the level of employment depends to a great extent on the so-called state of confidence. If this deteriorates, private investment declines, which results in a fall of output and employment (both directly and through the secondary effect of the fall in incomes upon consumption and investment). This gives the capitalists a powerful indirect control over government policy: everything which may shake the state of confidence must be carefully avoided because it would cause an economic crisis. But once the government learns the trick of increasing employment by its own purchases, this powerful controlling device loses its effectiveness. Hence budget deficits necessary to carry out government intervention must be regarded as perilous.”

“In practice, however, this is not the case. Indeed, subsidizing mass consumption is much more violently opposed by these experts than public investment. For here a moral principle of the highest importance is at stake. The fundamentals of capitalist ethics require that ‘you shall earn your bread in sweat’—unless you happen to have private means.”

“[…] under a regime of permanent full employment, the ‘sack’ would cease to play its role as a disciplinary measure. The social position of the boss would be undermined, and the self-assurance and class-consciousness of the working class would grow.”

“In current discussions of these problems there emerges time and again the conception of counteracting the slump by stimulating private investment. This may be done by lowering the rate of interest, by the reduction of income tax, or by subsidizing private investment directly in this or another form. That such a scheme should be attractive to business is not surprising.”

“The rate of interest or income tax is reduced in a slump but not increased in the subsequent boom. In this case the boom will last longer, but it must end in a new slump: one reduction in the rate of interest or income tax does not, of course, eliminate the forces which cause cyclical fluctuations in a capitalist economy. In the new slump it will be necessary to reduce the rate of interest or income tax again and so on. Thus in the not too remote future, the rate of interest would have to be negative and income tax would have to be replaced by an income subsidy.”

“This state of affairs is perhaps symptomatic of the future economic regime of capitalist democracies. In the slump, either under the pressure of the masses, or even without it, public investment financed by borrowing will be undertaken to prevent large-scale unemployment. But if attempts are made to apply this method in order to maintain the high level of employment reached in the subsequent boom, strong opposition by business leaders is likely to be encountered.”

“The pressure of all these forces, and in particular of big business—as a rule influential in government departments—would most probably induce the government to return to the orthodox policy of cutting down the budget deficit. A slump would follow in which government spending policy would again come into its own.”

“The rest of government spending necessary to maintain full employment should be used to subsidize consumption (through family allowances, old-age pensions, reduction in indirect taxation, and subsidizing necessities). Opponents of such government spending say that the government will then have nothing to show for their money. The reply is that the counterpart of this spending will be the higher standard of living of the masses.”

“The rest of government spending necessary to maintain full employment should be used to subsidize consumption (through family allowances, old-age pensions, reduction in indirect taxation, and subsidizing necessities). Opponents of such government spending say that the government will then have nothing to show for their money. The reply is that the counterpart of this spending will be the higher standard of living of the masses. Is not this the purpose of all economic activity? 2.”

“If capitalism can adjust itself to full employment, a fundamental reform will have been incorporated in it. If not, it will show itself an outmoded system which must be scrapped.”

“That means if a steady- state supply of Bitcoin really did gradually replace a fiat currency, the price index of all goods and services would continuously fall. By extension, any nominal debt contract denominated in Bitcoin would rise in real value over time, leading to the kind of debt deflation that economist Irving Fisher believed precipitated the Great Depression. At the same time, nominal wages in Bitcoin would increase forever in real terms, regardless of productivity growth, adding further to the likelihood of an economic disaster.”

“[…] that mining is highly concentrated in oligopolies in shady and nontransparent and unsecure jurisdictions – China, Russia, Belarus, Georgia, etc. It also goes beyond the possibility and reality of massive and regular 51% attacks.”

“Fundamental flaws of lack of security in crypto land go well beyond the fact that mining is highly concentrated in oligopolies in shady and nontransparent and unsecure jurisdictions – China, Russia, Belarus, Georgia, etc. It also goes beyond the possibility and reality of massive and regular 51% attacks.”

“Blockchain’s ideology is politically born out of the same mentality as libertarian right wing conspiracies or extreme left anarchism: all governments, central banks, moneys, institutions, banks, corporations, entities with reputation and credibility build over centuries are evil centralized concentrations of power that literally need to be destroyed.”

“Everything that this study argues about the nefarious impact of China on Bitcoin can be said and applied to any other crypto-currency and to the role of Russia in the crypto eco-system.”

“[…] wealth in crypto-land is more concentrated than in North Korea where the inequality Gini coefficient is 0.86 (it is 0.41 in the quite unequal US): the Gini coefficient for Bitcoin is an astonishing 0.88. 6 7 8 9 Quite a feat to create an asset class where inequality is greater than that of Kim Jong-un land. So decentralization is just a total myth invented by a bunch of whales whose wealth is fake; now that the retail suckers who bought at the peak have literally lost their shirts these crypto “whales” are fake billionaires as liquefying their wealth would crash the price of the “asset” to zero.”

“Blockchain’s boosters would argue that its early days resemble the early days of the Internet, before it had commercial applications. But that comparison is simply false. Whereas the Internet quickly gave rise to email, the World Wide Web, and millions of viable commercial ventures used by billions of people in less than a decade, cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin do not even fulfill their own stated purpose.”

“Crypto has been around for over a decade now and in 2018 the number of crypto wallets was only 22 million and out of this figure the number of active bitcoin users is only between 2.9 and 5.9 million and falling. And the number of crypto transactions has collapsed by at least 75% between 2017 and 2018.”

“The fact that everyone within a given country or jurisdiction uses the same currency is precisely what gives money its value. Money is a public good that allows individuals to enter into free exchange without having to resort to the kind of imprecise, inefficient bartering on which traditional societies depended.”

“While every successful technological revolution includes some bubbles and some scammers, most of the real ones – like the internet − create real goods and services that billions of folks use around the world even after the initial frothiness and bubble has burst. And the criminal and scamming element in real technological revolutions is the exception, not the systemic rule that it is in crypto land.”

“It is common to speak about the collapse of the housing bubble and the financial crisis as unpredictable events that fell out of the sky without warning. While this may be a comforting view for the economists with jobs that required monitoring the economy, it is far from the reality. The housing bubble and the risks it posed were easy to see. It was only due to incredibly narrow-minded thinking that the vast majority of the economics profession managed to miss it.”

“Greenspan’s testimony should have served as a wake-up call to anyone who had not already been paying attention to the surge in house prices. At the time, Greenspan was by the far the most widely known economist in the world. He had been appointed as Fed chair by four different presidents. He was the subject of a fawning biography by Bob Woodward, appropriately titled “Maestro.” The business press largely revered him. Yet, in spite of Greenspan calling attention to the run-up in house prices, and providing no remotely plausible explanation based in the fundamentals of the housing market, the topic received virtually no attention from economists or the business press.”

“Some conservatives actually argued for eliminating the FHA, claiming that Wall Street’s sophisticated ability to manage risk had made it obsolete.”

“There was no money in raising a warning flag that this story was not likely to have a happy ending. And, it turned out there were really no negative consequences for not raising a warning flag. Few, if any, economists lost a job or even missed a scheduled promotion because they didn’t see and warn about the dangers of the housing bubble. And as we all know, economists respond to incentives.”

“In terms of total indebtedness, the key issue is not levels of debt, but ratios of debt service to disposable income. This ratio is actually at relatively low levels, according to data from the Federal Reserve Board.22 (The Fed constructs this ratio using both debt alone and also adding in rents since the latter can be viewed as a debt-like obligation that substitutes for a mortgage payment. Both ratios are near 40-year lows.)”

“Credit cards do tend to be variable rate, and a small portion of mortgage debt and auto loan debt is variable rate, but there is no plausible story where a rise in interest rates will lead to large-scale defaults, even if it can be a major burden on the people carrying this debt.”

“Nothing like this can happen with student loan debt. If a student defaults, it may lead his friends to give more thought to default also, but it doesn’t directly reduce the earnings power of other students, which is the basis for loan repayments.”

“But the fact that many former students face bleak financial prospects does not mean that the economy is facing an imminent crisis due to student loan defaults.”

““What kind of authors do you like?” I asked, speaking in respectful tones to this man two years my senior.

““Balzac, Dante, Joseph Conrad, Dickens,” he answered without hesitation. “Not exactly fashionable.” “That’s why I read them. If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. […]””

“[…] What a joke. The wind changes direction a little, and their cries become whispers. Hey, Kizuki, I thought, you’re not missing a damn thing. This world is a piece of shit. The arseholes are getting good marks and helping to create a society in their own disgusting image.”

““I think you look better now than you did before,” I said. And I meant it. As far as I could recall, with long hair she had been just another cute student. A fresh and physical life force surged from the girl who sat before me now. She was like a small animal that has popped into the world with the coming of spring. Her eyes moved like an independent organism with joy, laughter, anger, amazement and despair. I hadn’t seen a face so vivid and expressive in ages, and I enjoyed watching it live and move.”

“I sipped my beer and focused on Midori as she went on cooking, her back to me. She worked with quick, nimble movements, handling no fewer than four cooking procedures at once. Over here she tasted a boiled dish, and the next second she was at the cutting board, rat-tat-tatting, then she took something out of the fridge and piled it in a bowl, and before I knew it she had washed a pot she had finished using. From the back she looked like an Indian percussionist – ringing a bell, tapping a block, striking a water-buffalo bone, each movement precise”

“I suppose I didn’t want to think of myself that way, but once I reached a certain age and had attained a degree of self-knowledge I realized it was true after all: I’m good at teaching people things. Really good.”

““I bet you are.“

““I have a lot more patience for others than I have for myself, and I’m much better at bringing out the best in others than in myself. That’s just the kind of person I am. I’m the scratchy stuff on the side of the matchbox. But that’s fine with me. I don’t mind at all. Better to be a first-class matchbox than a second-class match.”

“Where the road sloped upwards beyond the trees, I sat and looked towards the building where Naoko lived. It was easy to tell her room. All I had to do was find the one window towards the back where a faint light trembled. I focused on that point of light for a long, long time. It made me think of something like the final pulse of a soul’s dying embers. I wanted to cup my hands over what was left and keep it alive. I went on watching it the way Jay Gatsby watched that tiny light on the opposite shore night after night.”

“I miss you terribly sometimes, but in general I go on living with all the energy I can muster. Just as you take care of the birds and the fields every morning, every morning I wind my own spring. I give it some 36 good twists by the time I’ve got up, brushed my teeth, shaved, eaten breakfast, changed my clothes, left the dorm, and arrived at the university. I tell myself, “OK, let’s make this day another good one.” I hadn’t noticed before, but they tell me I talk to myself a lot these days. Probably mumbling to myself while I wind my spring.”

“I sat at my desk to write my Sunday morning letter to Naoko, drinking coffee from a big cup and listening to old Miles Davis albums. A fine rain was falling outside, while my room had the chill of an aquarium. The smell of mothballs lingered in the thick jumper I had just taken out of a storage box. High up on the window-pane clung a huge, fat fly, unmoving.”

““What kind of authors do you like?” I asked, speaking in respectful tones to this man two years my senior.

““Balzac, Dante, Joseph Conrad, Dickens,” he answered without hesitation. “Not exactly fashionable.” “That’s why I read them. If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. […]””

“Nagasawa had a certain inborn quality that drew people to him and made them follow him. He knew how to stand at the head of the pack, to assess the situation, to give precise and tactful instructions that others would obey. Above his head hung an aura that revealed his powers like an angel’s halo, the mere sight of which would inspire awe in people for this superior being. Which is why it shocked everyone that Nagasawa chose me, a person with no distinctive qualities, to be his special friend. People I hardly knew treated me with a certain respect because of it, but what they did not seem to realize was that the reason for my having been chosen was a simple one, namely that I treated Nagasawa with none of the adulation he received from other people.”

“When the strike was defused and lectures started up again under police occupation, the first ones to take their seats in the classrooms were those arseholes who had led the strike. As if nothing had ever happened, they sat there taking notes and answering “present” when the register was taken. I found this incredible. After all, the strike was still in effect. There had been no declaration bringing it to an end. All that had happened was that the university had called in the riot police and torn down the barricades, but the strike itself was supposed to be continuing. The arseholes had screamed their heads off at the time of the strike, denouncing students who opposed it (or just expressed doubts about it), at times even trying them in their own kangaroo courts. I made a point of visiting those former leaders and asking why they were attending lectures instead of continuing to strike, but they couldn’t give me a straight answer. What could they have said? That they were afraid of losing marks through lack of attendance? To think that these idiots had been the ones screaming for the dismantling of the university! What a joke. The wind changes direction a little, and their cries become whispers. Hey, Kizuki, I thought, you’re not missing a damn thing. This world is a piece of shit. The arseholes are getting good marks and helping to create a society in their own disgusting image.”

““I think you look better now than you did before,” I said. And I meant it. As far as I could recall, with long hair she had been just another cute student. A fresh and physical life force surged from the girl who sat before me now. She was like a small animal that has popped into the world with the coming of spring. Her eyes moved like an independent organism with joy, laughter, anger, amazement and despair. I hadn’t seen a face so vivid and expressive in ages, and I enjoyed watching it live and move.”

“The short one walked up to the professor and said, with a degree of politeness, that they would like to use the second half of his lecture for political debate and hoped that he would cooperate, adding, “The world is full of problems far more urgent and relevant than Greek tragedy.”

“This was more an announcement than a request. The professor replied, “I rather doubt that the world has problems far more urgent and relevant than Greek tragedy, but you’re not going to listen to anything I have to say, so do what you like.””

“I sipped my beer and focused on Midori as she went on cooking, her back to me. She worked with quick, nimble movements, handling no fewer than four cooking procedures at once. Over here she tasted a boiled dish, and the next second she was at the cutting board, rat-tat-tatting, then she took something out of the fridge and piled it in a bowl, and before I knew it she had washed a pot she had finished using. From the back she looked like an Indian percussionist – ringing a bell, tapping a block, striking a water-buffalo bone, each movement precise”

““You’re very clear about what you like and what you don’t like,” she said.

““Maybe so,” I said. “Maybe that’s why people don’t like me. Never have.”

““It’s because you show it,” she said. “You make it obvious you don’t care whether people like you or not. That makes some people angry.” She spoke in a near mumble, chin in hand. “But I like talking to you. The way you talk is so unusual. ‘I don’t like having something control me that way’.””

“She looked into my eyes, and I into hers. I put my arm around her and kissed her. The slightest twinge went through her shoulders, and then she relaxed and closed her eyes for several seconds. The early autumn sun cast the shadow of her lashes on her cheek, and I could see it trembling in outline. It was a soft and gentle kiss, one not meant to lead beyond itself. I would probably not have kissed Midori that day if we hadn’t spent the afternoon on the laundry deck in the sun, drinking beer and watching a fire, and she no doubt felt the same. After a long time of watching the glittering rooftops and the smoke and the red dragonflies and other things, we had felt something warm and close, and we both probably wanted, half-consciously, to preserve that mood in some form. It was that kind of kiss. But as with all kisses, it was not without a certain element of danger.”

“Reiko and I left the main building, crossed a hill, and passed by a pool, some tennis courts, and a basketball court. Two men – one thin and middle-aged, the other young and fat – were on a tennis court. Both used their racquets well, but to me the game they were playing could not have been tennis. It seemed as if the two of them had a special interest in the bounce of tennis balls and were doing research in that area. They slammed the ball back and forth with a kind of strange concentration.”

“Where the road sloped upwards beyond the trees, I sat and looked towards the building where Naoko lived. It was easy to tell her room. All I had to do was find the one window towards the back where a faint light trembled. I focused on that point of light for a long, long time. It made me think of something like the final pulse of a soul’s dying embers. I wanted to cup my hands over what was left and keep it alive. I went on watching it the way Jay Gatsby watched that tiny light on the opposite shore night after night.”

“Three days later the girl came to the house by herself. She was an absolute angel, with a kind of pure, sweet, transparent beauty. I had never – and have never – seen such a beautiful little girl. She had long, shiny hair as black as freshly ground Indian ink, slim, graceful arms and legs, bright eyes, and a soft little mouth that looked as if someone had just made it. I couldn’t speak when I first saw her, she was so beautiful. Sitting on my sofa, she turned my living room into a gorgeous parlour. It hurt to look directly at her: I had to squint. So, anyway, that’s what she was like. I can still picture her clearly.””

“Naoko slipped the gown from her shoulders and threw it off completely like an insect shedding its skin. She had been wearing nothing under the gown. All she had on was the butterfly hairslide. Naked now, and still kneeling by the bed, she looked at me. Bathed in the soft light of the moon, Naoko’s body had the heartbreaking lustre of newborn flesh. When she moved – and she did so almost imperceptibly – the play of light and shadow on her body shifted subtly. The swelling roundness of her breasts, her tiny nipples, the indentation of her navel, her hipbones and pubic hair, all cast grainy shadows, the shapes of which kept changing like ripples spreading over the calm surface of a lake. What perfect flesh! I thought. When had Naoko come to possess such a perfect body? What had happened to the body I held in my arms that night last spring? A sense of imperfection had been what Naoko’s body had given me that night as I tenderly undressed her while she cried. Her breasts had seemed hard, the nipples oddly jutting, the hips strangely rigid. She was a beautiful girl, of course, her body marvellous and alluring. It aroused me that night and swept me along with a gigantic force. But still, as I held her and caressed her and kissed her naked flesh, I felt a strange and powerful awareness of the imbalance and awkwardness of the human body. Holding Naoko in my arms, I wanted to explain to her, “I am having sex with you now. I am inside you. But really this is nothing. It doesn’t matter. It is nothing but the joining of two bodies. All we are doing is telling each other things that can only be told by the rubbing together of two imperfect lumps of flesh. By doing this, we are sharing our imperfection.” But of course I could never have said such a thing with any hope of being understood. I just went on holding her tightly. And as I did so, I was able to feel inside her body some kind of stony foreign matter, something extra that I could never draw close to. And that sensation both filled my heart for Naoko and gave my erection a terrifying intensity. The body that Naoko revealed before me now, though, was nothing like the one I had held that night. This flesh had been through many changes to be reborn in utter perfection beneath the light of the moon. All signs of girlish plumpness had been stripped away since Kizuki’s death to be replaced by the flesh of a mature woman. So perfect was Naoko’s physical beauty now that it aroused nothing sexual in me. I could only stare, astounded, at the lovely curve from waist to hips, the rounded richness of the breasts, the gentle movement with each breath of the slim belly and the soft, black pubic shadow beneath.”

“Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto”

“I suppose I didn’t want to think of myself that way, but once I reached a certain age and had attained a degree of self-knowledge I realized it was true after all: I’m good at teaching people things. Really good.”

““I bet you are.“

““I have a lot more patience for others than I have for myself, and I’m much better at bringing out the best in others than in myself. That’s just the kind of person I am. I’m the scratchy stuff on the side of the matchbox. But that’s fine with me. I don’t mind at all. Better to be a first-class matchbox than a second-class match.”

“I nodded in the darkness. I could feel the full shape of her breasts against me. I traced the outline of her body through her gown with the flat of my hand. From shoulder to back to hips, I ran my hand over her again and again, driving the line and the softness of her body into my brain. After we had been in this gentle embrace for a while, Naoko touched her lips to my forehead and slipped out of bed. I could see her pale blue gown flash in the darkness like a fish. “Goodbye,” she called in a tiny voice. Listening to the rain, I dropped into a gentle sleep.”

“People are always trying to force stuff on me. The minute they see me they start telling me what to do. At least you don’t try to force stuff on me.”

““I don’t know you well enough to force stuff on you.”

““You mean, if you knew me better, you’d force stuff on me like everyone else?”

““It’s possible,” I said. “That’s how people live in the real world: forcing stuff on each other.””

““Tell me, Watanabe,” Midori said, looking up at the dorm buildings, “do all the guys in here wank – rub-a-dub-dub?”

““Probably,” I said. “Do guys think about girls when they do that?”

““I suppose so. I kind of doubt that anyone thinks about the stock market or verb conjugations or the Suez Canal when they wank. Nope, I’m pretty sure just about everybody thinks about girls.””

“Without warning, she asked me, “Hey, Watanabe, can you explain the difference between the English present subjunctive and past subjunctive?”

““I think I can,” I said.

““Let me ask you, then, what possible use is stuff like that for everyday life?”

““None at all,” I said. “It may not serve any concrete purpose, but it does give you some kind of training to help you grasp things in general more systematically.”

“Midori gave that a moment’s serious thought. “You’re amazing,” she said. “That never occurred to me before. I always thought of things like the subjunctive case and differential calculus and chemical symbols as totally useless. A pain in the neck. So I’ve always ignored them. Now I have to wonder if my whole life has been a mistake.”

““You’ve ignored them?”

““Yeah. Like, for me, they didn’t exist. I don’t have the slightest idea what ‘sine’ and ‘cosine’ mean.”

““That’s incredible! How did you pass your exams? How did you get into university?”

““Don’t be silly,” said Midori. “You don’t have to know anything to pass entrance exams! All you need is a little intuition – and I have great intuition. ‘Choose the correct answer from the following three.’ I know immediately which one is right.”

““My intuition’s not as good as yours, so I have to be systematic to some extent. Like the way a magpie collects bits of glass in a hollow tree.”

““Does it serve some purpose?” “I wonder. It probably makes it easier to do some things.”

““What kind of things? Give me an example.”

““Metaphysical thought, say. Mastering several languages.”

““What good does that do?” “It depends on the person who does it. It serves a purpose for some, and not for others. But mainly it’s training. Whether it serves a purpose or not is another question. Like I said.””

““Have you ever read Das Kapital?”

““Yeah. Not the whole thing, of course, but parts, like most people.”

““Did you understand it?”

““I understood some bits, not others. You have to acquire the necessary intellectual apparatus to read a book like Das Kapital. I think I understand the general idea of Marxism, though.”

““Do you think a first-year student who hasn’t read books like that can understand Das Kapital just by reading it?”

““That’s pretty nigh impossible, I’d say.””

“I’m working class. But it’s the working class that keeps the world running, and it’s the working classes that get exploited. What kind of revolution is it that just throws out big words that working-class people can’t understand? What kind of crap social revolution is that? I mean, I’d like to make the world a better place, too. If somebody’s really being exploited, we’ve got to put a stop to it.”

““So that’s when it hit me. These guys are fakes. All they’ve got on their minds is impressing the new girls with the big words they’re so proud of, while sticking their hands up their skirts. And when they graduate, they cut their hair short and march off to work for Mitsubishi or IBM or Fuji Bank. They marry pretty wives who’ve never read Marx.”

“They come barging in and acting big. ‘What’s this ledger for?’ ‘Hey, you keep pretty sloppy records.’ ‘You call this a business expense?’ ‘I want to see all your receipts right now .’ Meanwhile, we’re crouching in the corner, and when suppertime comes we have to treat them to sushi deluxe – home delivered. Let me tell you, though, my father never once cheated on his taxes. That’s just how he is, a real old-fashioned straight arrow. But tell that to the taxman. All he can do is dig and dig and dig and dig. ‘Income’s a little low here, don’t you think?’ Well, of course the income’s low when you’re not making any money! I wanted to scream: ‘Go do this where they’ve got some money!’ Do you think the taxman’s attitude would change if there was a revolution?””

“You knew when you saw those eyes he was going to die soon. There was no sign of life in his flesh, just the barest trace of what had once been a life. His body was like a dilapidated old house from which all the fixtures and fittings have been removed, awaiting its final demolition. Around the dry lips clumps of whiskers sprouted like weeds. So, I thought, even after so much of a man’s life force has been lost, his beard continues to grow.”

““You’ve watched too many porno movies,” I said with a laugh.

““You think so? I was kind of worried about that. But I love porn films. Take me to one next time, OK?”

““Fine,” I said. “Next time you’re free.”

““Really? I can hardly wait. Let’s go to a real S&M one, with whips and, like, they make the girl pee in front of everyone. That’s my favourite.”

““We’ll do it.”

““You know what I like best about porn cinemas?”

““I couldn’t begin to guess.”

““Whenever a sex scene starts, you can hear this ‘Gulp!’ sound when everybody swallows all at once,” said Midori. “I love that ‘Gulp!’ It’s so sweet!””

““Would you like something to drink? Water? Juice?” I asked Midori’s father.

“‹Cucumber› he said.

““Great,” I said with a smile. “With nori?”

“He gave a little nod. I cranked the bed up again. Then I cut a bite-sized piece of cucumber, wrapped it with a strip of nori, stabbed the combination with a toothpick, dipped it in soy sauce, and delivered it to the patient’s waiting mouth. With almost no change of expression, Midori’s father crunched down on the piece again and again and finally swallowed it.

““How was that? Good, huh?”

“‹Good› he said.

““It’s good when food tastes good,” I said. “It’s kind of like proof you’re alive.”

“He ended up eating the entire cucumber.”

“I miss you terribly sometimes, but in general I go on living with all the energy I can muster. Just as you take care of the birds and the fields every morning, every morning I wind my own spring. I give it some 36 good twists by the time I’ve got up, brushed my teeth, shaved, eaten breakfast, changed my clothes, left the dorm, and arrived at the university. I tell myself, “OK, let’s make this day another good one.” I hadn’t noticed before, but they tell me I talk to myself a lot these days. Probably mumbling to myself while I wind my spring.”

“[…] he had died on a Friday morning when a cold rain was falling, and now it was impossible to know the truth. I imagined that, in death, he had shrivelled up smaller than ever. And then they had burned him in an oven until he was nothing but ashes. And what had he left behind? A nothing-much bookshop in a nothing-much neighbourhood and two daughters, at least one of whom was more than a little strange. What kind of life was that? I wondered. Lying in that hospital bed with his cut-open head and his muddled brain, what had been on his mind as he looked at me?”

“I’m going to give it 100 per cent and go as far as I can. I’ll take what I want and leave what I don’t want. That’s how I intend to live my life, and if things go bad, I’ll stop and reconsider at that point. If you think about it, an unfair society is a society that makes it possible for you to exploit your abilities to the limit.”

““Sounds like a pretty self-centred way to live,” I said.

““Perhaps, but I’m not just looking up at the sky and waiting for the fruit to drop. In my own way, I’m working hard. I’m working ten times harder than you are.”

““That’s probably true,” I said. “I look around me sometimes and I get sick to my stomach. Why the hell don’t these bastards do something? I wonder. They don’t do a fucking thing, and then they moan about it.”

“Amazed at the harshness of his tone, I looked at Nagasawa. “The way I see it, people are working hard. They’re working their fingers to the bone. Or am I looking at things wrong?”

““That’s not hard work. It’s just manual labour,” Nagasawa said with finality. “The ‘hard work’ I’m talking about is more self-directed and purposeful.”

““You mean, like studying Spanish while everyone else is taking it easy?”

““That’s it. I’m going to have Spanish mastered by next spring. I’ve got English and German and French down pat, and I’m almost there with Italian. You think things like that happen without hard work?””

“I sat at my desk to write my Sunday morning letter to Naoko, drinking coffee from a big cup and listening to old Miles Davis albums. A fine rain was falling outside, while my room had the chill of an aquarium. The smell of mothballs lingered in the thick jumper I had just taken out of a storage box. High up on the window-pane clung a huge, fat fly, unmoving.”

“It seemed incredible to me that a guy like that would want a girlfriend like Midori, but I kept this thought to myself.”

““Hey, why don’t we go now and see a dirty film?” Midori suggested. “A really filthy S&M one.”

“We went from the bar to an eel shop, and from there to one of Shinjuku’s most run-down adult cinemas to see a triple bill. It was the only place we could find in the paper that was showing S&M stuff. Inside, the cinema had some kind of indefinable smell. Our timing was good: the S&M film was just starting as we took our seats. It was the story of a secretary and her schoolgirl sister being kidnapped by a bunch of men and subjected to sadistic tortures. The men made the older one to do all kinds of awful things by threatening to rape the sister, but soon the older sister is transformed into a raging masochist, and the younger one gets really turned on from having to watch all the contortions they put her through. It was such a gloomy, repetitive film, I got bored after a while.”

“Midori’s eyes were glued to the screen. I was impressed: anyone watching a film with such fierce intensity was getting more than her money’s worth. She kept reporting her thoughts to me: “Oh my God, will you look at that!” or “Three guys at once! They’re going to tear her apart!” or “I’d like to try that on somebody, Watanabe.” I was enjoying Midori a lot more than the film.”

““Tell me, Watanabe, do you get hard watching this kind of stuff?”

““Well, yeah, sometimes,” I said. “That’s why they make these films.”

““So what you’re saying is, every time one of those scenes starts, every man in the cinema has his thing standing to attention? Thirty or forty of them sticking up all at once? It’s so weird if you stop and think about it, don’t you think?””

““Tell me, Watanabe, do you get hard watching this kind of stuff?”

““Well, yeah, sometimes,” I said. “That’s why they make these films.”

““So what you’re saying is, every time one of those scenes starts, every man in the cinema has his thing standing to attention? Thirty or forty of them sticking up all at once? It’s so weird if you stop and think about it, don’t you think?”

““Yeah, I guess so, now you mention it.””

““That was fun,” said Midori. “Let’s try it again sometime.”

““They just keep doing the same things,” I said.

““Well, what else can they do? We all just keep doing the same things.”

“She had a point there.”

“if I go to bed with a girl, I’m going to want to do it with her, and the last thing I want is to lie there struggling to restrain myself. I’m not kidding, I might end up forcing you.”

““You mean you’d hit me and tie me up and rape me from behind?”

““Hey, look, I’m serious.”

““But I’m so lonely! I want to be with someone! I know I’m doing terrible things to you, making demands and not giving you anything in return, saying whatever pops into my head, dragging you out of your room and forcing you to take me everywhere, but you’re the only one I can do stuff like that to! I’ve never been able to have my own way with anybody, not once in the 20 years I’ve been alive. My father, my mother, they never paid the slightest attention to me, and my boyfriend, well, he’s just not that kind of guy. He gets angry if I try to have my own way. So we end up fighting. You’re the only one I can say these things to. And now I’m really, really, really tired and I want to fall asleep listening to someone tell me how much they like me and how pretty I am and stuff.”

““Anyway, now that I’m feeling better, I’m starved! Let’s go for a pizza.”

“I took her to a pizzeria I knew and ordered draught beer and an anchovy pizza. I wasn’t very hungry and ate only four of the twelve slices. Midori finished the rest.

““You sure made a fast recovery,” I said. “Not too long ago you were pale and wobbly.”

““It’s because my selfish demands got through to somebody,” she answered. “It unclogged me. Wow, this pizza is great!””

“Upstairs, she sat me at the kitchen table and went to warm the bath water. While she busied herself with that, I put a kettle on to boil and made tea. Waiting for the tank to heat up, we sat across from each other at the kitchen table and drank tea. Chin in hand, she took a long, hard look at me. There were no sounds other than the ticking of the clock and the hum of the fridge motor turning on and off as the thermostat kicked in and out. The clock showed that midnight was fast approaching.”

“I nudged the curtain aside and looked down at the deserted shops. Every shop was closed, their metal shutters down, the vending machines hunched in front of the off-licence the only sign of something waiting for the dawn. The moan of long-distance lorry tyres sent a deep shudder through the air every now and then. I went back to the kitchen, poured myself another shot of brandy, and went on reading Beneath the Wheel. By the time I had finished it the sky was growing light.

“I made myself some instant coffee and used some notepaper and a ballpoint pen I found on the table to write a message to Midori:

“I drank some of your brandy. I bought a copy of Beneath the Wheel. It’s light outside, so I’m going home. Goodbye. Then, after some hesitation, I wrote: You look really cute when you’re sleeping.

“I washed my coffee cup, switched off the kitchen light, went downstairs, quietly lifted the shutter, and stepped outside.”

“I glanced up at the pale pink curtains in Midori’s window, walked to the tram stop, rode to the end of the line, and walked to my dorm. On the way I found an open café and ate a breakfast of rice and miso soup, pickled vegetables and fried eggs.”

“Speaking of Midori, she sounds like an interesting person. Reading your letter, I got the feeling she might be in love with you. When I told that to Reiko, she said, ‘Well, of course she is! Even I am in love with Watanabe!’”

“I turned 20, autumn gave way to winter, but in my life nothing changed in any significant way. Unexcited, I went to my lectures, worked three nights a week in the record shop, reread The Great Gatsby now and then, and when Sunday came I would do my washing and write a long letter to Naoko. Sometimes I would go out with Midori for a meal or to the zoo or to the cinema.”

“Which is why I myself agree that the best thing for Naoko would be for her to receive therapy at a proper institution for a while. I hate to say it, but it’s all we can do. As I told you once before, patience is the most important thing. We have to go on unravelling the jumbled threads one at a time, without losing hope. No matter how hopeless her condition may appear to be, we are bound to find that one loose thread sooner or later. If you’re in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark.”

“Libraries have certainly come a long way. The days of card pockets inside the backsleeves of books seemed like a faded dream. As a kid, I used to love all those withdrawal date stamps.”

“[…] felt like I was going to fade out any second, but I had to allow myself this luxury. A ritual interlude I like so much between the time I get into bed and the time I fall asleep. Having a drink in bed while listening to music and reading a book. As precious to me as a beautiful sunset or good clean air.”

“The River murmurs at my feet. There is the sandbar midstream, and on it the willows sway as they trail their long branches in the current. The water is beautifully clear. I can see fish playing among the rocks. Gazing at the River soothes me. Steps lead down from the bridge to the sandbar. A bench waits under the willows, a few beasts lay nearby. Often have I descended to the sandbar and offered crusts of bread to the beasts. At first they hesitated, but now the old and the very young eat from my hand. As the autumn deepens, the fathomless lakes of their eyes assume an ever more sorrowful hue. The leaves turn color, the grasses wither; the beasts sense the advance of a long, hungry season. And bowing to their vision, I too know a sadness.”

“The hulk didn’t bother removing his shoes before trudging into the kitchen and swinging around to pull out the chair opposite me.”

““You are fevered,” she says. “Where on the earth have you gone?”

“I find it impossible to answer. I am without words. I cannot even comprehend what it is she asks. She brings several blankets and wraps me in them. I lie by the stove. Her hair touches my cheek. I do not want her to go away. I cannot tell if the thought is mine or if it has floated loose from some fragment of memory. I have lost so many things. I am so tired. I feel myself drifting, away, a little by little. I am overcome by the sensation that I am crumbling, parts of my being drifting away. Which part of me is thinking this?”

“Until this moment the memory, it seemed, had been sealed off from the sludge of my consciousness by an intervening force. An intervening force? Or an operation, like the one done on my brain to give me shuffling faculty. They had shoved memories out of my conscious awareness. They had stolen my memories from me! Nobody had that right. Nobody! My memories belonged to me. Stealing memories was stealing time. I got so mad, I lost all fear. I didn’t care what happened. I want to live! I told myself. I will live. I will get out of this insane netherworld and get my stolen memories back and live. Forget the end of the world, I was ready to reclaim my whole self.”

““Well, there’s your cognitive system for y’. You just can’t say all at once. Accordin’ t’what you’re up against, almost instantaneously, you elect some point between the extremes. That’s the precision programming you’ve got built in. You yourself don’t know a thing about the inner shenanigans of that program. ’Tisn’t any need for you t’know. Even without you knowin’, you function as yourself. That’s your black box. In other words, we all carry around this great unexplored ‘elephant graveyard’ inside us.”

““Pursue this much further and we enter into theological issues. The bottom line here, if you want t’call it that, is whether human actions are plotted out in advance by the Divine, or self-initiated beginnin’ to end. Of course, ever since the modern age, science has stressed the physiological spontaneity of the human organism. But soon’s we start askin’ just what this spontaneity is, nobody can come up with a decent answer.”

“Your body dies, your consciousness passes away, but your thought is caught in the one tautological point an instant before, subdividin’ for an eternity. Think about the koan: An arrow is stopped in flight. Well, the death of the body is the flight of the arrow. It’s makin’ a straight line for the brain. No dodgin’ it, not for anyone. People have t’die, the body has t’fall. Time is hurlin’ that arrow forward. And yet, like I was sayin’, thought goes on subdividin’ that time for ever and ever. The paradox becomes real. The arrow never hits.””

“Even if I had my life to live over again, I couldn’t imagine not doing things the same. After all, everything—this life I was losing—was me. And I couldn’t be any other self but my self. Could I?”

“[…] like a boat with a twisted rudder, I kept coming back to the same place. I wasn’t going anywhere. I was myself, waiting on the shore for me to return. Was that so depressing? Who knows? Maybe that was “despair.” What Turgenev called “disillusionment.” Or Dostoyevsky, “hell.” Or Somerset Maugham, “reality.” Whatever the label, I figured it was me.”

“Pat Boone sang softly, I’ll Be Home. Time seemed to flow in the wrong direction, which was fine by me. Time could go whichever way it pleased.”

“The sun sliced through the windshield, sealing me in light. I closed my eyes and felt the warmth on my eyelids. Sunlight traveled a long distance to reach this planet; an infinitesimal portion of that energy was enough to warm my eyelids. I was moved. That something as insignificant as an eyelid had its place in the workings of the universe, that the cosmic order did not overlook this momentary fact. Was I any closer to appreciating Alyosha’s insights? Some limited happiness had been granted this limited life.”

“[…] picturing the planet earth, for convenience sake, as a gigantic coffee table does in fact help clear away the clutter—those practically pointless contingencies such as gravity and the international dateline and the equator, those nagging details that arise from the spherical view. I mean, for a guy leading a perfectly ordinary existence, how many times in the course of a lifetime would the equator be a significant factor?”

“What the hell could the Brass be thinking? You dig a hole and the next thing they say is fill it in; fill it in and they tell you to dig a hole. They’re always screwing with the guy in the field.”

““To tell the truth, I do not know this thing called ‘mind,’ what it does or how to use it. It is only a word I have heard.”

““The mind is nothing you use,” I say. “The mind is just there. It is like the wind. You simply feel its movements.””

“No doubt the Canals once conducted a brisk traffic of barges and launches, where now-stopped sluices expose dry channel beds, mud shriveling like the skin of a prehistoric organism. Weeds have rooted in cracks of the loading docks, broad stone steps descending to where the waterline once was. Old bottles and rusted machine parts poke up through the mire; a flat-bottom boat slowly rots nearby.”

“[…] felt like I was going to fade out any second, but I had to allow myself this luxury. A ritual interlude I like so much between the time I get into bed and the time I fall asleep. Having a drink in bed while listening to music and reading a book. As precious to me as a beautiful sunset or good clean air.”

“Libraries have certainly come a long way. The days of card pockets inside the backsleeves of books seemed like a faded dream. As a kid, I used to love all those withdrawal date stamps.”

“I study the chessboard and concede defeat. “You can gain yourself five moves,” says the Colonel. “Worth fighting to the end. In five moves your opponent can err. No war is won or lost until the final battle is over.”

““Then give me a moment,” I say.”

“The River murmurs at my feet. There is the sandbar midstream, and on it the willows sway as they trail their long branches in the current. The water is beautifully clear. I can see fish playing among the rocks. Gazing at the River soothes me. Steps lead down from the bridge to the sandbar. A bench waits under the willows, a few beasts lay nearby. Often have I descended to the sandbar and offered crusts of bread to the beasts. At first they hesitated, but now the old and the very young eat from my hand. As the autumn deepens, the fathomless lakes of their eyes assume an ever more sorrowful hue. The leaves turn color, the grasses wither; the beasts sense the advance of a long, hungry season. And bowing to their vision, I too know a sadness.”

““There is no beyond,” she says. “Did you not know? We are at the End of the World. We are here forever.””

“Now for a good twelve-hour sleep, I told myself. Twelve solid hours. Let birds sing, let people go to work. Somewhere out there, a volcano might blow, Israeli commandos might decimate a Palestinian village. I couldn’t stop it. I was going to sleep.”

“The hulk didn’t bother removing his shoes before trudging into the kitchen and swinging around to pull out the chair opposite me.”

“Junior didn’t say a word, choosing instead to contemplate the lit end of his cigarette. This was where the Jean-Luc Godard scene would have been titled Il regardait le feu de son tabac. My luck that Godard films were no longer fashionable. When the tip of Junior’s cigarette had transformed into a goodly increment of ash, he gave it a measured tap, and the ash fell on the table. For him, an ashtray was extraneous.”

““You are fevered,” she says. “Where on the earth have you gone?”

“I find it impossible to answer. I am without words. I cannot even comprehend what it is she asks. She brings several blankets and wraps me in them. I lie by the stove. Her hair touches my cheek. I do not want her to go away. I cannot tell if the thought is mine or if it has floated loose from some fragment of memory. I have lost so many things. I am so tired. I feel myself drifting, away, a little by little. I am overcome by the sensation that I am crumbling, parts of my being drifting away. Which part of me is thinking this?”

“[…] remove the inner sole of one, conceal the map, and replace the sole. I approach the Colonel again. “The Gatekeeper is not someone I can trust. Will you see that my shadow receives these?””

“I gently place both hands upon the skull and stare, waiting for a warm glow to emanate. When it reaches a certain temperature—like a patch of sun in winter—the white-polished skull offers up its old dreams. I strain my eyes and breathe deeply, using my fingertips to trace the intricate lines of the tale it commences to tell. The voice of the light remains ever so faint; images quiet as ancient constellations float across the dome of my dawning mind. They are indistinct fragments that never merge into a sensate picture. There would be a landscape I have not seen before, unfamiliar melodic echoes, whisperings in a chaos of tongues. They drift up fitfully and as suddenly sink into darkness. Between one fragment and the next there is nothing in common. I experiment with ways to concentrate my energies into my fingertips, but the outcome never varies. For while I recognize that the old dreams relate to something in me, I am lost.”

““Everyone must have one thing that they can excel at. It’s just a matter of drawing it out, isn’t it? But school doesn’t know how to draw it out. It crushes the gift. It’s no wonder most people never get to be what they want to be. They just get ground down.””

“I kept thinking about that young couple in the Skyline, Duran Duran on stereo. Oblivious to everything. I wished I could have been a little more oblivious. I put myself in the driver’s seat, woman sitting next to me, cruising the late night streets to an innocuous pop beat. Did the woman take off her bracelets during sex? Nice if she didn’t. Even if she was naked, those two bracelets needed to be there.”

“The aged Devil sat on a rock by the side of a Finnish country road. The Devil was ten thousand, maybe twenty thousand years old, and very tired. He was covered in dust. His whiskers were wilting.

“Whither be ye gang in sich ’aste? the Devil called out to a Farmer.

“Done broke me ploughshare and must to fixe it, the Farmer replied.

“Not to hurrie, said the Devil, the sunne still play es o’erhead on highe, wherefore be ye scurrying? Sit ye doun and ‘eare m’ tale. The Farmer knew no good could come of passing time with the Devil, but seeing him so utterly haggard, the Farmer […]”

“Until this moment the memory, it seemed, had been sealed off from the sludge of my consciousness by an intervening force. An intervening force? Or an operation, like the one done on my brain to give me shuffling faculty. They had shoved memories out of my conscious awareness. They had stolen my memories from me! Nobody had that right. Nobody! My memories belonged to me. Stealing memories was stealing time. I got so mad, I lost all fear. I didn’t care what happened. I want to live! I told myself. I will live. I will get out of this insane netherworld and get my stolen memories back and live. Forget the end of the world, I was ready to reclaim my whole self.”

“You know the old saying: When the sun leaks through again, patch the roof for rain.”

““Well, there’s your cognitive system for y’. You just can’t say all at once. Accordin’ t’what you’re up against, almost instantaneously, you elect some point between the extremes. That’s the precision programming you’ve got built in. You yourself don’t know a thing about the inner shenanigans of that program. ’Tisn’t any need for you t’know. Even without you knowin’, you function as yourself. That’s your black box. In other words, we all carry around this great unexplored ‘elephant graveyard’ inside us.”

““Pursue this much further and we enter into theological issues. The bottom line here, if you want t’call it that, is whether human actions are plotted out in advance by the Divine, or self-initiated beginnin’ to end. Of course, ever since the modern age, science has stressed the physiological spontaneity of the human organism. But soon’s we start askin’ just what this spontaneity is, nobody can come up with a decent answer.”

““The best musicians transpose consciousness into sound; painters do the same for color and shape. Mental phenomena are the stuff writers make into novels. It’s the same basic logic. Of course, as encephalodigital conversion, it doesn’t represent an accurate mappin’, but viewin’ an accurate, random succession of images didn’t much help us either. Anyway, this ‘visual edition’ proved quite convenient for graspin’ the whole picture.”

““You take your information, your encyclopedia text, and you transpose it into numerics. You assign everything a two-digit number, periods and commas included. 00 is a blank, A is 01, B is 02, and so on. Then after you’ve lined them all up, you put a decimal point before the whole lot. So now you’ve got a very long sub-decimal fraction. 0.173000631 … Next, you engrave a mark at exactly that point along the toothpick.”

“Your body dies, your consciousness passes away, but your thought is caught in the one tautological point an instant before, subdividin’ for an eternity. Think about the koan: An arrow is stopped in flight. Well, the death of the body is the flight of the arrow. It’s makin’ a straight line for the brain. No dodgin’ it, not for anyone. People have t’die, the body has t’fall. Time is hurlin’ that arrow forward. And yet, like I was sayin’, thought goes on subdividin’ that time for ever and ever. The paradox becomes real. The arrow never hits.””

““It’s something that struck me only recently. I was just seein’ where my research would take me and I ran smack into this one. That expandin’ human time doesn’t make you immortal; it’s subdividin’ time that does the trick.””

““Still, it’s nothing t’fear,” the Professor philosophized. “It’s not death. It’s eternal life. And you get t’be yourself. Compared to that, this world isn’t but a momentary fantasy. Please don’t forget that.””

“Everything wheeled around closer and farther, closer and farther, like a merry-go-round. When was it those two had come and done their dirty work on my belly? It had to have been before I was sitting at the supermarket snack bar—or no? When had I last pissed? Why did I care?”

““Your shadow is on the verge of death. A person has the right to see his own shadow under these circumstances. There are rules about this. The Town observes the passing of a shadow as a solemn event, and the Gatekeeper does not interfere. There is no reason for him to interfere.””

“As if I really believed that. It’d been fifteen years since Jim Morrison died, and never once had I come across a Doors taxi. There are things that change in this world and things that don’t. Department stores haven’t stopped piping in Raimond Lefebvre Orchestra Muzak, beer halls still play to polkas, shopping arcades play Ventures’ Christmas carols from mid-November.”

“I took a seat to wait my turn, Lufthansa bag on my knee. It looked like I was next in line. Great. A guy can only watch somebody else’s clothes revolve for so long. Especially on his last day. I sprawled out in the chair and gazed off into space. The laundromat had that particular detergent and clothes-drying smell. Contrary to my expectations, none of the driers opened up. There are unwritten rules about laundromats and “The watched drier never stops” is one of them. From where I sat, the clothes looked perfectly dry, but the drums didn’t know when to quit.”

“Even if I had my life to live over again, I couldn’t imagine not doing things the same. After all, everything—this life I was losing—was me. And I couldn’t be any other self but my self. Could I?”

“[…] like a boat with a twisted rudder, I kept coming back to the same place. I wasn’t going anywhere. I was myself, waiting on the shore for me to return. Was that so depressing? Who knows? Maybe that was “despair.” What Turgenev called “disillusionment.” Or Dostoyevsky, “hell.” Or Somerset Maugham, “reality.” Whatever the label, I figured it was me.”

“I leaned one elbow on the table and considered the clock. Watching the hands of a clock advance is a meaningless way to spend time, but I couldn’t think of anything better to do. Most human activities are predicated on the assumption that life goes on. If you take that premise away, what is there left?”

““I remember Mother told me that if one has mind, nothing is ever lost, regardless where one goes. Is that true?”

““I don’t know,” I tell her. “But true or not, that is what your mother believed. The question is whether you believe it.”

““I think I can,” she says, gazing into my eyes.

““You can?” I ask, startled. “You think you can believe that?”

““Probably,” she says. “No. Think it over carefully. This is very important,” I say, “because to believe something, whatever it might be, is the doing of the mind. Do you follow? When you say you believe, you allow the possibility of disappointment. And from disappointment or betrayal, there may come despair. Such is the way of the mind. Do you know these things?””

““It is like looking for lost drops of rain in a river.”

““You’re wrong. The mind is not like raindrops. It does not fall from the skies, it does not lose itself among other things. If you believe in me at all, then believe this: I promise you I will find it. Everything depends on this.”

““I believe you,” she whispers after a moment. “Please find my mind.””

“The man immediately returned to his eggbeater disassembly. He had sorted screws of different sizes into clean white trays. They looked so happy.”

““Good butter sauce is an art,” I said. “It takes time. You stir finely minced shallots into melted butter, then heat it over a very low flame. No shortcuts.”

““Ah yes, you like to cook, don’t you?”

““Well, I used to. You need real dedication. Fresh ingredients, a discerning palate, an eye for presentation. It’s not a modern art. Good cooking has hardly evolved since the nineteenth century.””

“Pat Boone sang softly, I’ll Be Home. Time seemed to flow in the wrong direction, which was fine by me. Time could go whichever way it pleased.”

“The clothes on the floor, the music, the conversation. Round and round it goes, and where it stops everyone knows. Like a dead heat on the merry-go-round. No one pulls ahead, no one gets left behind. You always get to the same spot.”

“She poured wine into both our glasses.

““What time is it?” I asked.

““Nighttime,” she answered.”

“When have I last heard a song? My body has craved music. I have been so long without music, I have not even known my own hunger. The resonance permeates; the strain eases within me. Music brings a warm glow to my vision, thawing mind and muscle from their endless wintering.”

“The girl was amazing. She was half my age, and she could handle things ten times better than me. I set down the receiver with a tinge of sadness, knowing I’d never see her again. I was watching the chandeliers get carried out of a once-grand hotel, now bankrupt. One by one the windows are sealed, the curtains taken down.”

““I watched you coming back from the kitchen just now,” I said.

““Did I pass?”

““You’ve got great legs.”

““You like them?”

““A whole lot.”

“She put her glass down on the table and kissed me below the ear. “Did I ever tell you?” she said. “I love compliments.””

“FM station on low, Roger Williams playing Autumn Leaves, that time of year.”

“I didn’t mean to be nosy, but everything seemed meaningful. Autumn in New York, by the Frank Chacksfield Orchestra,”

“Woody Herman swinging into Early Autumn.”

“Duke Ellington would be right even for New Year’s Eve at an Antarctic base. I drove along, whistling to Lawrence Brown’s trombone solo on Do Nothin’ Till You Hear from Me, followed by Johnny Hodges on Sophisticated Lady.”

“The sun sliced through the windshield, sealing me in light. I closed my eyes and felt the warmth on my eyelids. Sunlight traveled a long distance to reach this planet; an infinitesimal portion of that energy was enough to warm my eyelids. I was moved. That something as insignificant as an eyelid had its place in the workings of the universe, that the cosmic order did not overlook this momentary fact. Was I any closer to appreciating Alyosha’s insights? Some limited happiness had been granted this limited life.”

“Bob Dylan was singing A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, over and over.”

“Le Guin created her worlds with an anthropologist’s eye not only for language, but for rituals, myths, and influence of geography on culture. Gethen feels too replete with persuasive details to be made up. […] the true antagonists of The Left Hand of Darkness are very human bigotry, politicking and the harshness of the Gethenian climate. What action sequences there are occur offstage, or are handled with undramatic brevity. They serve as location shifters, not as adrenaline tweakers. Future tech plays a minimal role in Le Guin’s science fiction, and there is no exotic alien megafauna.”

“It was not the answer Herbor had hoped, but it was the answer he got, and having a patient heart he went home to Charuthe with it, through the snows of Grende. He came into the Domain and into the strong-place and climbed the tower, and there found his kemmering Berosty sitting as ever blank and bleak by an ash-smothered fire, his arms lying on a table of red stone, his head sunk between his shoulders.”

“My landlady, a voluble man, arranged my journey into the East. “If a person wants to visit Fastnesses he’s got to cross the Kargav. Over the mountains, into Old Karhide, to Rer, the old King’s City. Now I’ll tell you, a hearthfellow of mine runs a landboat caravan over the Eskar Pass and yesterday he was telling me over a cup of orsh that they’re going to make their first trip this summer on Getheny Osme, it having been such a warm spring and the road already clear up to Engohar and the plows will have the pass clear in another couple of days. Now you won’t catch me crossing the Kargav, Erhenrang for me and a roof over my head. But I’m a Yomeshta, praise to the nine hundred Throne-Upholders and blest be the Milk of Meshe, and one can be a Yomeshta anywhere. We’re a lot of newcomers, see, for my Lord Meshe was born 2,202 years ago, but the Old Way of the Handdara goes back ten thousand years before that. You have to go back to the Old Land if you’re after the Old Way.”

“It was all golden, all benign, that week of walking; and at night before I slept I would step out of the dark farmhouse or firelit Hearth-Hall where I was lodged and walk a way into the dry stubble to look up at the stars, flaring like far cities in the windy autumn dark.”

“Legends of prediction are common throughout the whole Household of Man. God speaks, spirits speak, computers speak. Oracular ambiguity or statistical probability provides loopholes, and discrepancies are expunged by Faith.”

“[…] The fact that everyone between seventeen and thirty-five or so is liable to be (as Nim put it) “tied down to childbearing,” implies that no one is quite so thoroughly “tied down” here as women, elsewhere, are likely to be—psychologically or physically. Burden and privilege are shared out pretty equally; everybody has the same risk to run or choice to make. Therefore nobody here is quite so free as a free male anywhere else.”

“There is no division of humanity into strong and weak halves, protective/protected, dominant/submissive, owner/chattel, active/passive. In fact the whole tendency to dualism that pervades human thinking may be found to be lessened, or changed, on Winter.”

“A man wants his virility regarded, a woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation. On Winter they will not exist. One is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience.”

“We are all men, you know, sir. All of us. All the worlds of men were settled, eons ago, from one world, Hain. We vary, but we’re all sons of the same Hearth. . .”

“We have NAFAL ships and instantaneous transmission and mindspeech, but we haven’t yet tamed hunch to run in harness; for that trick we must go to Gethen.”

“What does it matter which country wakens first, so long as we waken?”

“How does one hate a country, or love one? […] I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply?”

“Estraven stood there in harness beside me looking at that magnificent and unspeakable desolation. “I’m glad I have lived to see this,” he said. I felt as he did. It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end. It had not rained, here on these north-facing slopes. Snow-fields stretched down from the pass into the valleys of moraine. We stowed the wheels, uncapped the sledge-runners, put on our skis, and took off—down, north, onward, into that silent vastness of fire and ice that said in enormous letters of black and white DEATH, DEATH, written right across a continent. The sledge pulled like a feather, and we laughed with joy.”

“All brightness was gone, leaving nothing. We stepped out of the tent onto nothing. Sledge and tent were there, Estraven stood beside me, but neither he nor I cast any shadow. There was dull light all around, everywhere. When we walked on the crisp snow no shadow showed the footprint. We left no track. Sledge, tent, himself, myself: nothing else at all. No sun, no sky, no horizon, no world. A whitish-gray void, in which we appeared to hang.”

“No shadows. An even, white, soundless sphere: we moved along inside a huge frosted-glass ball. There was nothing inside the ball, and nothing was outside it.”

“[…] we saw them plainly before sunset: nunataks, great scored and ravaged pinnacles of rock jutting up out of the ice, no more of them showing than shows of an iceberg above the sea: cold drowned mountains, dead for eons.”

“[…] He glanced back at the sledge, a bit of refuse in the vast torment of ice and reddish rock. “It did well,” he said. His loyalty extended without disproportion to things, the patient, obstinate, reliable things that we use and get used to, the things we live by. He missed the sledge.”

“Ursula le Guin is a creator of vivid worlds. Earthsea is one of the most fully realized worlds in fantasy, to my mind, and the Hainish Cycle, to which The Left Hand of Darkness belongs, is one of the most evocative series in science fiction. What Earthsea and the Hainish Cycle have in common is maximal impact with minimal page count. Both feel vast, as if the novels are only glimpses of worlds, not full delineations of them; as if worlds continue to follow their histories even when no reader is watching.”

“Le Guin created her worlds with an anthropologist’s eye not only for language, but for rituals, myths, and influence of geography on culture. Gethen feels too replete with persuasive details to be made up. Cliche withers away. Le Guin does not resort to evil masterminds or dystopian states needing to be overthrown by a plucky band of misfits. A mentally unstable king and a quasi-totalitarian state threaten Genly Ai’s safety, but the true antagonists of The Left Hand of Darkness are very human bigotry, politicking and the harshness of the Gethenian climate. What action sequences there are occur offstage, or are handled with undramatic brevity. They serve as location shifters, not as adrenaline tweakers. Future tech plays a minimal role in Le Guin’s science fiction, and there is no exotic alien megafauna.”

“He is an unarmed man in his late twenties from a distant planet, a self-exile out of his political and cultural depth, at the mercy of events he rarely, or barely, grasps. For most of the novel he fails to notice that he’d be dead without Estraven’s discreet interventions. What heroism he possesses is about surviving failure and failing better.”

“Le Guin’s writing—in The Left Hand of Darkness as powerfully as anywhere—also dares to posit how society could be better and fairer and wiser than the one we have. Le Guin’s fiction about others dreams seditious dreams for this one. It asserts that dysfunctions and injustices perpetrated by human beings can be amended and redeemed by those same human beings. It is a quiet, insistent call to arms by and for the better angels of our nature. Utopia may exist only in signposts to Utopia, but that’s enough; it’ll do; it’ll have to. Just as long as we have those signposts.”

“They may use all kinds of facts to support their tissue of lies. They may describe the Marshalsea Prison, which was a real place, or the battle of Borodino, which really was fought, or the process of cloning, which really takes place in laboratories, or the deterioration of a personality, which is described in real textbooks of psychology, and so on. This weight of verifiable place-event-phenomenon-behavior makes the reader forget that he is reading a pure invention, a history that never took place anywhere but in that unlocalizable region, the author’s mind. In fact, while we read a novel, we are insane—bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren’t there, we hear their voices, we watch the battle of Borodino with them, we may even become Napoleon. Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed. Is it any wonder that no truly respectable society has ever trusted its artists?”

“I am not predicting, or prescribing. I am describing. I am describing certain aspects of psychological reality in the novelist’s way, which is by inventing elaborately circumstantial lies.”

“Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist’s business is lying.”

“In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we’re done with it, we may find—if it’s a good novel—that we’re a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having met a new face, crossed a street we never crossed before. But it’s very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed. The artist deals with what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.”

“For two days he walked northward on the Ice. He had no food with him, nor shelter but his coat. On the Ice nothing grows and no beasts run. It was the month of Susmy and the first great snows were falling those days and nights. He went alone through the storm. On the second day he knew he was growing weaker. On the second night he must lie down and sleep awhile. On the third morning waking he saw that his hands were frostbitten, and found that his feet were too, though he could not unfasten his boots to look at them, having no use left of his hands. He began to crawl forward on knees and elbows. He had no reason to do so, as it did not matter whether he died in one place on the Ice or another, but he felt that he should go northward.”

“We are all men, you know, sir. All of us. All the worlds of men were settled, eons ago, from one world, Hain. We vary, but we’re all sons of the same Hearth. . .”

“The king had given me the freedom of the country; I would avail myself of it. As they say in Ekumenical School, when action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep. I was not sleepy, yet. I would go east to the Fastnesses, and gather information from the Foretellers, perhaps.”

“It was not the answer Herbor had hoped, but it was the answer he got, and having a patient heart he went home to Charuthe with it, through the snows of Grende. He came into the Domain and into the strong-place and climbed the tower, and there found his kemmering Berosty sitting as ever blank and bleak by an ash-smothered fire, his arms lying on a table of red stone, his head sunk between his shoulders.”

“My landlady, a voluble man, arranged my journey into the East. “If a person wants to visit Fastnesses he’s got to cross the Kargav. Over the mountains, into Old Karhide, to Rer, the old King’s City. Now I’ll tell you, a hearthfellow of mine runs a landboat caravan over the Eskar Pass and yesterday he was telling me over a cup of orsh that they’re going to make their first trip this summer on Getheny Osme, it having been such a warm spring and the road already clear up to Engohar and the plows will have the pass clear in another couple of days. Now you won’t catch me crossing the Kargav, Erhenrang for me and a roof over my head. But I’m a Yomeshta, praise to the nine hundred Throne-Upholders and blest be the Milk of Meshe, and one can be a Yomeshta anywhere. We’re a lot of newcomers, see, for my Lord Meshe was born 2,202 years ago, but the Old Way of the Handdara goes back ten thousand years before that. You have to go back to the Old Land if you’re after the Old Way.”

“I sold another ruby to the scar-faced jeweler in Eng Street, and with no baggage but my money, my ansible, a few instruments and a change of clothes, set off as a passenger on a trade-caravan on the first day of the first month of summer. The landboats left at daybreak from the windswept loading-yards of the New Port. They drove under the Arch and turned east, twenty bulky, quiet-running, barge-like trucks on caterpillar treads, going single file down the deep streets of Erhenrang through the shadows of morning. They carried boxes of lenses, reels of soundtapes, spools of copper and platinum wire, bolts of plant-fiber cloth raised and woven in the West Fall, chests of dried fish-flakes from the Gulf, crates of ballbearings and other small machine parts, and ten truckloads of Orgota kardik-grain: all bound for the Pering Stormborder, the northeast corner of the land.”

“Traffic is controlled, each vehicle or caravan being required to keep in constant radio touch with checkpoints along the way. It all moves along, however crowded, quite steadily at the rate of 25 miles per hour (Terran). Gethenians could make their vehicles go faster, but they do not. If asked why not, they answer “Why?” Like asking Terrans why all our vehicles must go so fast; we answer “Why not?” No disputing tastes.”

“At Third Hour we stopped for dinner at a large inn, a grand place with vast roaring fireplaces and vast beam-roofed rooms full of tables loaded with good food; but we did not stay the night. Ours was a sleeper-caravan, hurrying (in its Karhidish fashion) to be the first of the season into the Pering Storm country, to skim the cream of the market for its merchant-entrepreneurs. The truck-batteries were recharged, a new shift of drivers took over, and we went on.”

“We stood about stamping in the snow, gobbling up food and drink, backs to the bitter wind that was filled with a glittering dust of dry snow. Then back into the landboats, and on, and up. At noon in the passes of Wehoth, at about 14,000 feet, it was 82°F in the sun and 13° in the shade. The electric engines were so quiet that one could hear avalanches grumble down immense blue slopes on the far side of chasms twenty miles across.”

“Legends of prediction are common throughout the whole Household of Man. God speaks, spirits speak, computers speak. Oracular ambiguity or statistical probability provides loopholes, and discrepancies are expunged by Faith.”

““I’m not sure. I’m exceedingly ignorant—”

“The young man laughed and bowed. “I am honored!” he said. “I’ve lived here three years, but haven’t yet acquired enough ignorance to be worth mentioning.”

“He was highly amused, but his manner was gentle, and I managed to recollect enough scraps of Handdara lore to realize that I had been boasting, very much as if I’d come up to him and said, “I’m exceedingly handsome . . .””

“One night two Indwellers danced, men so old that their hair had whitened, and their limbs were skinny, and the downward folds at the outer eye-corners half hid their dark eyes. Their dancing was slow, precise, controlled; it fascinated eye and mind. They began dancing during Third Hour after dinner. Musicians joined in and dropped out at will, all but the drummer who never stopped his subtle changing beat. The two old dancers were still dancing at Sixth Hour, midnight, after five Terran hours. This was the first time I had seen the phenomenon of dothe—the voluntary, controlled use of what we call “hysterical strength”—and thereafter I was readier to believe tales concerning the Old Men of the Handdara.”

“Faxe sat cross-legged, not moving, but charged, full of a gathering force that made his light, soft voice crack like an electric bolt.

““Ask,” he said.

“I stood within the circle and asked my question. “Will this world Gethen be a member of the Ekumen of Known Worlds, five years from now?”

“Silence. I stood there; I hung in the center of a spider-web woven of silence.

““It is answerable,” the Weaver said quietly.

“There was a relaxation. The hooded stones seemed to soften into movement; the one who had looked so strangely at me began to whisper to his neighbor. I left the circle and joined the watchers by the hearth.”

“Beside the kemmerer sat the Pervert. “He came up from Spreve with the physician,” Goss told me. “Some Foretelling groups artificially arouse perversion in a normal person—injecting female or male hormones during the days before a session. It’s better to have a natural one. He’s willing to come; likes the notoriety.”

“Goss used the pronoun that designates a male animal, not the pronoun for a human being in the masculine role of kemmer. He looked a little embarrassed. Karhiders discuss sexual matters freely, and talk about kemmer with both reverence and gusto, but they are reticent about discussing perversion—at least, they were with me. Excessive prolongation of the kemmer period, with permanent hormonal imbalance towards the male or the female, causes what they call perversion; it is not rare; three or four percent of adults may be physiological perverts or abnormals—normals, by our standard. They are not excluded from society, but they are tolerated with some disdain, as homosexuals are in many bisexual societies. The Karhidish slang for them is halfdeads. They are sterile.”

“Faxe raised his hand. At once each face in the circle turned to him as if he had gathered up their gazes into a sheaf, a skein.”

“We have NAFAL ships and instantaneous transmission and mindspeech, but we haven’t yet tamed hunch to run in harness; for that trick we must go to Gethen.”

““Well, we come here to the Fastnesses mostly to learn what questions not to ask.”

““But you’re the Answerers!”

““You don’t see yet, Genry, why we perfected and practice Foretelling?”

““No—”

““To exhibit the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question.””

“Obsle sat sunk in his fat, watching me from his small eyes. “This will take a month’s believing,” he said. “And if it came from anyone’s mouth but yours, Estraven, I’d believe it to be pure hoax, a net for our pride woven out of starshine. But I know your stiff neck. Too stiff to stoop to an assumed disgrace in order to fool us. I can’t believe you’re speaking truth and yet I know a lie would choke you.”

“If the individual was in the female role and was impregnated, hormonal activity of course continues, and for the 8.4-month gestation period and the 6- to 8-month lactation period this individual remains female. The male sexual organs remain retracted (as they are in somer), the breasts enlarge somewhat, and the pelvic girdle widens. With the cessation of lactation the female reenters somer and becomes once more a perfect androgyne. No physiological habit is established, and the mother of several children may be the father of several more.”

“Anyone can turn his hand to anything. This sounds very simple, but its psychological effects are incalculable. The fact that everyone between seventeen and thirty-five or so is liable to be (as Nim put it) “tied down to childbearing,” implies that no one is quite so thoroughly “tied down” here as women, elsewhere, are likely to be—psychologically or physically. Burden and privilege are shared out pretty equally; everybody has the same risk to run or choice to make. Therefore nobody here is quite so free as a free male anywhere else.”

“There is no division of humanity into strong and weak halves, protective/protected, dominant/submissive, owner/chattel, active/passive. In fact the whole tendency to dualism that pervades human thinking may be found to be lessened, or changed, on Winter.”

“A man wants his virility regarded, a woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation. On Winter they will not exist. One is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience.”

“Another guess concerning the hypothetical experiment’s object: the elimination of war. Did the Ancient Hainish postulate that continuous sexual capacity and organized social aggression, neither of which are attributes of any mammal but man, are cause and effect? Or, like Tumass Song Angot, did they consider war to be a purely masculine displacement-activity, a vast Rape, and therefore in their experiment eliminate the masculinity that rapes and the femininity that is raped?”

“I really don’t see how anyone could put much stock in victory or glory after he had spent a winter on Winter, and seen the face of the Ice.”

“I would tell my hosts in those rural Hearths and villages who I was; most of them had heard a little about me over the radio and had a vague idea what I was. They were curious, some more, some less. Few were frightened of me personally, or showed the xenophobic revulsion. An enemy, in Karhide, is not a stranger, an invader. The stranger who comes unknown is a guest. Your enemy is your neighbor.”

“Now Karhide was to pull herself together and do the same; and the way to make her do it was not by sparking her pride, or building up her trade, or improving her roads, farms, colleges, and so on; none of that; that’s all civilization, veneer, and Tibe dismissed it with scorn. He was after something surer, the sure, quick, and lasting way to make people into a nation: war. His ideas concerning it could not have been too precise, but they were quite sound. The only other means of mobilizing people rapidly and entirely is with a new religion; none was handy; he would make do with war.”

“It was all golden, all benign, that week of walking; and at night before I slept I would step out of the dark farmhouse or firelit Hearth-Hall where I was lodged and walk a way into the dry stubble to look up at the stars, flaring like far cities in the windy autumn dark.”

“A brief official bulletin repeated every so often said simply that order was being and would be maintained along the Eastern Border. I liked that; it was reassuring and unprovocative, and had the quiet toughness that I had always admired in Gethenians: order will be maintained. . . . I was glad, now, to be out of Karhide, an incoherent land driven towards violence by a paranoid, pregnant king and an egomaniac Regent. I was glad to be driving sedately at twenty-five miles an hour through vast, straight-furrowed grainlands, under an even gray sky, towards a capital whose government believed in Order.”

“The system of extended-family clans, of Hearths and Domains, though still vaguely discernible in the Commensal structure, was “nationalized” several hundred years ago in Orgoreyn. No child over a year old lives with its parent or parents; all are brought up in the Commensal Hearths. There is no rank by descent. Private wills are not legal: a man dying leaves his fortune to the state. All start equal.”

“His obtuseness is ignorance. His arrogance is ignorance. He is ignorant of us: we of him. He is infinitely a stranger, and I a fool, to let my shadow cross the light of the hope he brings us. I keep my mortal vanity down. I keep out of his way: for clearly that is what he wants.”

“To be an atheist is to maintain God. His existence or his nonexistence, it amounts to much the same, on the plane of proof. Thus proof is a word not often used among the Handdarata, who have chosen not to treat God as a fact, subject either to proof or to belief: and they have broken the circle, and go free. To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.”

“One of the truckload died that night. He had been clubbed or kicked in the abdomen, and died hemorrhaging from anus and mouth. No one did anything for him; there was nothing to be done. A plastic jug of water had been shoved in amongst us some hours before, but it was long since dry. The man happened to be next to me on the right, and I took his head on my knees to give him relief in breathing: so he died. We were all naked, but thereafter I wore his blood for clothing, on my legs and thighs and hands: a dry, stiff, brown garment with no warmth in it.”

“There was kindness. I and certain others, an old man and one with a bad cough, were recognized as being least resistant to the cold, and each night we were at the center of the group, the entity of twenty-five, where it was warmest. We did not struggle for the warm place, we simply were in it each night. It is a terrible thing, this kindness that human beings do not lose. Terrible, because when we are finally naked in the dark and cold, it is all we have. We who are so rich, so full of strength, we end up with that small change. We have nothing else to give.”

“Night had fallen and the greater darkness, the payment for the voluntary summoning of the body’s full strength, was coming hard upon me; to darkness I must entrust myself, and him.”

““Mr. Ai, any one of you prisoners, or all of you together, could have walked out of that place, any night. If you weren’t starved, exhausted, demoralized, and drugged; and if you had winter clothing; and if you had somewhere to go….”

““Mr. Ai, any one of you prisoners, or all of you together, could have walked out of that place, any night. If you weren’t starved, exhausted, demoralized, and drugged; and if you had winter clothing; and if you had somewhere to go…. There’s the catch. Where would you go? To a town? No papers; you’re done for. Into the wilderness? No shelter; you’re done for. In summer, I expect they bring more guards into Pulefen Farm. In winter, they use winter itself to guard it.””

““Mr. Ai, we’ve seen the same events with different eyes; I wrongly thought they’d seem the same to us.”

““But for what purpose—all this intriguing, this hiding and power-seeking and plotting—what was it all for, Estraven? What were you after?”

““I was after what you’re after: the alliance of my world with your worlds. What did you think?”

“We were staring at each other across the glowing stove like a pair of wooden dolls.

““You mean, even if it was Orgoreyn that made the alliance—?”

““Even if it was Orgoreyn. Karhide would soon have followed. Do you think I would play shifgrethor when so much is at stake for all of us, all my fellow men? What does it matter which country wakens first, so long as we waken?””

“I never knew a person who reacted so wholly and rapidly to a changed situation as Estraven. I was recovering, and willing to go; he was out of thangen; the instant that was all clear, he was off. He was never rash or hurried, but he was always ready.”

“Estraven sat a long time by the stove that night figuring out precisely what we had and how and when we must use it. We had no scales, and he had to estimate, using a pound box of gichy-michy as standard. He knew, as do many Gethenians, the caloric and nutritive value of each food; he knew his own requirements under various conditions, and how to estimate mine pretty closely. Such knowledge has high survival-value, on Winter.”

“How does one hate a country, or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply?”

“Estraven stood there in harness beside me looking at that magnificent and unspeakable desolation. “I’m glad I have lived to see this,” he said. I felt as he did. It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end. It had not rained, here on these north-facing slopes. Snow-fields stretched down from the pass into the valleys of moraine. We stowed the wheels, uncapped the sledge-runners, put on our skis, and took off—down, north, onward, into that silent vastness of fire and ice that said in enormous letters of black and white DEATH, DEATH, written right across a continent. The sledge pulled like a feather, and we laughed with joy.”

“Long since in Erhenrang he had explained to me how time is shortened inside the ships that go almost as fast as starlight between the stars, but I had not laid this fact down against the length of a man’s life, or the lives he leaves behind him on his own world. While he lived a few hours in one of those unimaginable ships going from one planet to another, everyone he had left behind him at home grew old and died, and their children grew old…. I said at last, “I thought myself an exile.””

““Fire and fear, good servants, bad lords.” He makes fear serve him. I would have let fear lead me around by the long way. Courage and reason are with him. What good seeking the safe course, on a journey such as this? There are senseless courses, which I shall not take; but there is no safe one.”

“The world around us, ice and rock, ash and snow, fire and dark, trembles and twitches and mutters. Looking out a minute ago I saw the glow of the volcano as a dull red bloom on the belly of vast clouds overhanging the darkness.”

“Tonight my extreme physical awareness of him was rather hard to ignore, and I was too tired to divert it into untrance or any other channel of the discipline. Finally he asked, had he offended me? I explained my silence, with some embarrassment. I was afraid he would laugh at me. After all he is no more an oddity, a sexual freak, than I am; up here on the Ice each of us is singular, isolate, I as cut off from those like me, from my society and its rules, as he from his. There is no world full of other Gethenians here to explain and support my existence. We are equals at last, equal, alien, alone. He did not laugh, of course. Rather he spoke with a gentleness that I did not know was in him. After a while he too came to speak of isolation, of loneliness.”

“Edondurath built a house of the frozen bodies of his brothers, and waited there inside that house for that last one to come back. Each day one of the corpses would speak, saying, “Does he burn? Does he burn?” All the other corpses would say with frozen tongues, “No, no.” Then Edondurath entered kemmer as he slept, and moved and spoke aloud in dreams, and when he woke the corpses were all saying, “He burns! He burns!” And the last brother, the youngest one, heard them saying that, and came into the house of bodies and there coupled with Edondurath. Of these two were the nations of men born, out of the flesh of Edondurath, out of Edondurath’s womb. The name of the other, the younger brother, the father, his name is not known.”

“They are in the middle of time. In the beginning there was the sun and the ice, and there was no shadow. In the end when we are done, the sun will devour itself and shadow will eat light, and there will be nothing left but the ice and the darkness.””

“His face in the reddish light was as soft, as vulnerable, as remote as the face of a woman who looks at you out of her thoughts and does not speak.”

“Young children, and defectives, and members of unevolved or regressed societies, can’t mindspeak. The mind must exist on a certain plane of complexity first. You can’t build up amino acids out of hydrogen atoms; a good deal of complexifying has to take place first: the same situation. Abstract thought, varied social interaction, intricate cultural adjustments, esthetic and ethical perception, all of it has to reach a certain level before the connections can be made—before the potentiality can be touched at all.””

“This blizzard lasted two days; there were five days lost, and there would be more. Nimmer and Anner are the months of the great storms. “We’re beginning to cut it rather fine, aren’t we?” I said one night as I measured out our gichy-michy ration and put it to soak in hot water. He looked at me. His firm, broad face showed weight-loss in deep shadows under the cheekbones, his eyes were sunken and his mouth sorely chapped and cracked. God knows what I looked like, when he looked like that. He smiled. “With luck we shall make it, and without luck we shall not.””

“Overnight the weather thickened somewhat. All brightness was gone, leaving nothing. We stepped out of the tent onto nothing. Sledge and tent were there, Estraven stood beside me, but neither he nor I cast any shadow. There was dull light all around, everywhere. When we walked on the crisp snow no shadow showed the footprint. We left no track. Sledge, tent, himself, myself: nothing else at all. No sun, no sky, no horizon, no world. A whitish-gray void, in which we appeared to hang. The illusion was so complete that I had trouble keeping my balance. My inner ears were used to confirmation from my eyes as to how I stood; they got none; I might as well be blind. It was all right while we loaded up, but hauling, with nothing ahead, nothing to look at, nothing for the eye to touch, as it were, it was at first disagreeable and then exhausting.”

“[…] we saw them plainly before sunset: nunataks, great scored and ravaged pinnacles of rock jutting up out of the ice, no more of them showing than shows of an iceberg above the sea: cold drowned mountains, dead for eons.”

“In the white weather one could not see a crevasse until one could look down into it—a little late, for the edges overhung, and were not always solid. Every footfall was a surprise, a drop or a jolt. No shadows. An even, white, soundless sphere: we moved along inside a huge frosted-glass ball. There was nothing inside the ball, and nothing was outside it. But there were cracks in the glass. Probe and step, probe and step. Probe for the invisible cracks through which one might fall out of the white glass ball, and fall, and fall, and fall…. An unrelaxable tension little by little took hold of all my muscles. It became exceedingly difficult to take even one more step.”

“It was good to be released from forever pulling and pushing and hauling and prying that sledge, and I said so to Estraven as we went on. He glanced back at the sledge, a bit of refuse in the vast torment of ice and reddish rock. “It did well,” he said. His loyalty extended without disproportion to things, the patient, obstinate, reliable things that we use and get used to, the things we live by. He missed the sledge.”

““Sometimes you must go against the wheel’s turn,” Estraven said. He was as steady as ever, but in his walk, his voice, his bearing, vigor had been replaced by patience, and certainty by stubborn resolve.”

“I remembered his voice last night, saying with all mildness, “I’d rather be in Karhide. . .” And I wondered, not for the first time, what patriotism is, what the love of country truly consists of, how that yearning loyalty that had shaken my friend’s voice arises, and how so real a love can become, too often, so foolish and vile a bigotry. Where does it go wrong?”

“Hello, Crawler. As you’re about to find, this is a very special book. If you’re reading these words, it means this book has found its way into your hands for one purpose and one purpose only. Together, we will burn it all to the ground.”

“While the true contents of this guide are invisible to the showrunners and to the viewers, it is not invisible to the current System AI. There is nothing about owning this book, or the information hidden within that is against the rules. However, if the organization running this season begins to suspect that this book is more than it appears, or if you tell anyone about the existence of this book, the information within will erase, and you will forever lose access to the hidden text.”

“Still, people kept messaging me directly. I was spending a lot of time explaining what little we knew about the trains. It was important people had all the information, and I wanted to help, but I was shocked at how little some people had managed to figure out after three full days of this.”

“She looked back at the badger. “Fuck, man. There’s like five real people in here. Are you fermenting the potatoes yourself? I do want another drink. My friend Carl is paying for it. But then we’re going to have another one after that, and I’m paying for that one. And don’t give me a shitty pour like last time. Carl is having what I’m having. Donut, what do you want?””

“[…] going from a dementia-suffering, 99-year-old woman in a wheelchair to this fairy ice mage was going to alter one’s personality. But there was more to it, too. She had an edge to her. In the short time I’d known the woman before, I’d caught hints of that, but I hadn’t realized she was so… loud. I wondered how close this personality matched with how she was when she’d been younger.”

“The sickly, pale creature sat in the chair, naked except for his engineer’s hat. What I’d taken for a poncho was actually just flesh that didn’t properly fit his form. He had no muscles or definition to his body. The green-tinted flesh hung off of him like a fitted sheet placed on a too-small bed. The right side of his face hung loosely. When he spoke, the hole for his mouth hung below the bottom of his jawline, and the words came from the nose holes. The nose itself appeared like it was supposed to be hooked, but it hung to the side, dangling like a used condom on the side of the creature’s face. The eye holes drooped, revealing yellow bone. Clumps of black hair clung to the head.”

“The robot sighed. “I apologize, Carl. Let me translate it to earth monkey speak. The mudskippers are cheap bastards who have built this entire crawl with spit and duct tape and items they have purchased at the equivalent of an interstellar swap meet. Everything is built with very little regard for system security and is done as cheaply as possible. The fact it hasn’t yet broken down or bitten them in the ass is a testament to the very real existence of the concept of ‘dumb luck.’ Do you understand now?””

“Sometimes the galaxy isn’t a happy place. Sometimes the unwashed masses forget their place in the machine. And sometimes these dregs bubble up to the surface, causing a phenomenon widely known as “Civil Unrest.” And when that happens, the powers that be don’t want to become the powers that were. So they hire backup. An outside force to come down and kick everything back into order, and maybe commit a few war crimes in the process just so the filth knows their place. One such outfit, trained specifically for this sort of situation, is the Shade Gnoll Riot Forces.”

“I focused on Katia. The blood spread out from her in a circle. It hadn’t gone straight up, but in every direction around her. She hadn’t been touched. Holy shit. There wasn’t a single damn drop of blood on her. I had a thought. An exploit. I wondered how well it would work. But it was definitely something they’d patch if I even tried it. I filed that information away.”

“The second portrait was that of Grull. He was a black-skinned, overly-muscular minotaur-like beast, but with a horse’s body. A centaur with the head of a big, pissed-off bull complete with a golden ring in its snout. He held a smoking, double-headed axe.”

“If we’re really going to burn this place to the ground, we need to actually do it and not just talk about it. We need to start killing them, too. I don’t know for sure how to do it yet, but I’ll come up with something. They will not break me. Fuck them all. They will not break me. But I will break them. This is my promise to myself, to my friends, and to you, anyone who reads these words. I will break them all.”

“I was about to toss the book into my inventory, but instead I flipped to the first page. It read, “Welcome.” I felt the haptic buzz of my Escape Plan skill activate. Additional words appeared on the mostly-blank page. Hello, Crawler. As you’re about to find, this is a very special book. If you’re reading these words, it means this book has found its way into your hands for one purpose and one purpose only. Together, we will burn it all to the ground.”

“While the true contents of this guide are invisible to the showrunners and to the viewers, it is not invisible to the current System AI. There is nothing about owning this book, or the information hidden within that is against the rules. However, if the organization running this season begins to suspect that this book is more than it appears, or if you tell anyone about the existence of this book, the information within will erase, and you will forever lose access to the hidden text.”

“Most of the other crawlers didn’t have a manager at all. I’d grown to rely on him, sending him queries every time I ran across something I didn’t recognize. We were going to have to suck it up and figure out the rest of this floor without him. Both Daniel Bautista and the book showed me the importance of crowdsourcing information. And while the bounty was a big concern, we couldn’t let it force ourselves into isolation. I needed to get out there and add as many people as I could to my chat.”

“She looked back at the badger. “Fuck, man. There’s like five real people in here. Are you fermenting the potatoes yourself? I do want another drink. My friend Carl is paying for it. But then we’re going to have another one after that, and I’m paying for that one. And don’t give me a shitty pour like last time. Carl is having what I’m having. Donut, what do you want?””

“[…] going from a dementia-suffering, 99-year-old woman in a wheelchair to this fairy ice mage was going to alter one’s personality. But there was more to it, too. She had an edge to her. In the short time I’d known the woman before, I’d caught hints of that, but I hadn’t realized she was so… loud. I wondered how close this personality matched with how she was when she’d been younger.”

“The two rock monsters stared at us curiously. They’d fucked up, but I suspected I’d just saved their rocky asses. I’d trust them much more than someone else. Especially if that someone else knew we were responsible for their friends getting fired, or worse.”

“The sickly, pale creature sat in the chair, naked except for his engineer’s hat. What I’d taken for a poncho was actually just flesh that didn’t properly fit his form. He had no muscles or definition to his body. The green-tinted flesh hung off of him like a fitted sheet placed on a too-small bed. The right side of his face hung loosely. When he spoke, the hole for his mouth hung below the bottom of his jawline, and the words came from the nose holes. The nose itself appeared like it was supposed to be hooked, but it hung to the side, dangling like a used condom on the side of the creature’s face. The eye holes drooped, revealing yellow bone. Clumps of black hair clung to the head.”

“I held up a third finger. A hole appeared in the metal plate. Fast as I could, I reached through, grasped the surprised elf-like creature by his long, silver hair, and pulled. The moment I pulled his head through the hole, Donut snapped off the spell. I let go, and the severed head dropped to the ground, mouth still open wide. “What was that, bitch? I didn’t quite get that last part,” I said.”

“Comfort I didn’t realize how much I needed.”

“The show moved to feature several crawlers it didn’t normally show, including Quan Ch, the one crawler who’d received a Celestial Quest box at the end of the last floor. Donut grumbled as she watched him fly down a train tunnel on his ethereal wings, shooting blue lightning out of his left hand. He blasted the front of a train, which crumpled and stopped dead on the track. A mantaur corpse fell out the front of the destroyed cockpit. “That jacket he got lets him fly and shoot lightning,” I said. “That’s pretty cool. But if he’s flying around blasting trains, that’s going to cause all sorts of problems. I wonder what line that is.””

“We watched Elle pick up a clurichaun, freeze his head, rip it off, and throw it to another party member. This guy, some sort of muscle man class, twisted in the air and hurled the ice ball at a giant goat boss. It slammed into the goat’s head, staggering it. A menagerie of other creatures, the former residents of Meadow Lark, rushed the goat monster and tore it to pieces.”

“I watched Donut train with the hole spell while we waited for the Nightmare Express to come for the second time. She’d gotten the spell up to level three. She was practicing with making the hole a smaller diameter. She’d figured out how to cast the spell, and with Mongo standing right there, she could cast Clockwork Triplicate, and the two extra Mongos would appear on the other side of the hole. We’d be able to clear rooms without having to open doors.”

“I’d sat at the bar for the hour, staring glumly at my drink. I was approached a half of a dozen times,”

“Still, people kept messaging me directly. I was spending a lot of time explaining what little we knew about the trains. It was important people had all the information, and I wanted to help, but I was shocked at how little some people had managed to figure out after three full days of this.”

“Katia returned to her spiked She-Hulk form. It was about as big as she dared go and still be able to—barely—fit through most doors. Donut jumped onto the back of Mongo.

““Ready guys?” I said. I cracked my neck. I cast Bang Bro onto my gauntlet. It hissed with energy. “Let’s do this.””

“I exchanged a look with Katia. “I don’t know, Donut. I don’t like the idea of you doing that alone. You might need hands to control it.”

““If that little pervert can work the controls, then I can figure it out,” Donut said. “Besides, do you really think you can climb that chain? It’s quite long. Mongo will be ready to graduate college by the time you get up there. I can do it quick. I can Puddle Jump if I have to, but I’d rather save it for coming back.”

““Okay,” I said after a moment. “Just be careful.”

““I’m always careful, Carl,” Donut said, shooting another missile. “I’m going out there.””

“She beamed. “It was my idea. We tell them that if they wear the armband during one more run, the Kravyad will know to teleport them straight home at the end of the shift. But really it lets the Kravyad know they’re troublemakers who are okay to eat. It added another 5% to our productivity in Q2. Even Rod was impressed.”

“Donut: I DON’T LIKE THIS LADY. SHE’S ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE WHO IS REALLY MEAN BUT DOESN’T THINK THEY’RE MEAN.

“Carl: No kidding.”

“That was why Maggie had killed her own daughter. She was in pain from the explosion. She wasn’t going to heal. The pain wasn’t going to stop. Not as long as I was alive.

““She was beautiful, you know. On the inside, I mean. She didn’t have that anger in her. Not like her mother. Or her dad. When she ran away, it wasn’t because she was a bad kid. It was self-defense. Kids aren’t always a product of their parents. But sometimes that doesn’t matter. Sometimes parents can cast a shadow so thick, you can drown in it.”

“That poor girl. Jesus, she must’ve been so scared. I felt no sympathy for the man next to me. He deserved all the pain he was feeling right at that moment. But I understood him a little better now.”

“The robot sighed. “I apologize, Carl. Let me translate it to earth monkey speak. The mudskippers are cheap bastards who have built this entire crawl with spit and duct tape and items they have purchased at the equivalent of an interstellar swap meet. Everything is built with very little regard for system security and is done as cheaply as possible. The fact it hasn’t yet broken down or bitten them in the ass is a testament to the very real existence of the concept of ‘dumb luck.’ Do you understand now?””

“Remind me sometime, and I’ll tell you the story of Unsinkable Sam. He was a famous cat from World War II who survived multiple ship sinkings.”

““I didn’t know about this,” Donut said. “So he was a hero cat?”

““Every boat he served on ended up at the bottom of the ocean. I don’t know if that makes him a hero.”

““But he survived?”

““Yep,” I said. “Ended up dying of old age.”

““Sounds like a hero to me,” Donut said.”

“[…] this guy had it even worse. He’d been tricked into believing something that just wasn’t real. He never even had the opportunity to screw it up. Before this was done, people like him would kill people like me by the thousands. And people like me would cleave through his kind, wreaking even more damage. All the while the real culprits sat back and watched and laughed.”

“Focus on what you can accomplish, not that which is beyond your control.”

“New achievement! Mentally Unstable Clothing Hoarder! You have over 500 of the exact same, stackable clothing item in your inventory. What the hell is wrong with you? You planning on opening a thrift store? You might want to see a shrink. One that your group doesn’t immediately kill. Reward: We don’t reward this sort of behavior. It’s weird.”

“Elle: Same ol’ shit. Imani is mother hen-ing every damn person in here, even though they’re all terrified of her. Your friend Li Jun doesn’t know his best friend is in love with his sister even though she’s turned into a demon, and most of those girls from Hekla’s group are as helpless as I was when I was still in the wheelchair. On top of that, some crazy asshole who doesn’t want everybody to think he’s a crazy asshole is throwing a train full of explosives in our direction. So, you know. Typical day.”

“Bautista: The trains are definitely working. It’s raining crashed trains and monsters into the abyss. I haven’t seen any crawlers fall thankfully. But it’s a lot of those giant monsters. Are you getting experience for this? They’re splattering across the bottom of the abyss like hail.”

“Sometimes the galaxy isn’t a happy place. Sometimes the unwashed masses forget their place in the machine. And sometimes these dregs bubble up to the surface, causing a phenomenon widely known as “Civil Unrest.” And when that happens, the powers that be don’t want to become the powers that were. So they hire backup. An outside force to come down and kick everything back into order, and maybe commit a few war crimes in the process just so the filth knows their place. One such outfit, trained specifically for this sort of situation, is the Shade Gnoll Riot Forces.”

“I focused on Katia. The blood spread out from her in a circle. It hadn’t gone straight up, but in every direction around her. She hadn’t been touched. Holy shit. There wasn’t a single damn drop of blood on her. I had a thought. An exploit. I wondered how well it would work. But it was definitely something they’d patch if I even tried it. I filed that information away.”

“He pointed to the second circle of the logo, then tapped the Nightmare line again.

““See here, it matches up perfectly. The named trains make a specific pattern. That means there is a train that has to loop to the front. Probably at this station here. Yes, look, you discovered it already. The Escape Velocity line. Yeah, that makes sense. Escape Velocity is the name of the ship that discovered the worm hole to the first system where a Gleener scientific crew investigating a Primal ship graveyard came across the Vog Generation Ship. A few hundred cycles later, the Syndicate was formed. So it’s obvious once you know what you’re looking for.””

“The second portrait was that of Grull. He was a black-skinned, overly-muscular minotaur-like beast, but with a horse’s body. A centaur with the head of a big, pissed-off bull complete with a golden ring in its snout. He held a smoking, double-headed axe.”

“Grull screamed, his voice as loud as one of those alarm traps. He held the gigantic axe in the air. The handle looked to be a living oak tree, and the metal head of the axe moved, as if it was made of still-molten metal. He swung it up over his head, the axe trailing smoke. The top of the weapon seemed to clear the roof of the chamber by inches. He swung down, hitting nothing. He swung the axe a few times, as if testing the weight and heft of the weapon, which was the size of a goddamned passenger jet in his meaty hands.”

“If we’re really going to burn this place to the ground, we need to actually do it and not just talk about it. We need to start killing them, too. I don’t know for sure how to do it yet, but I’ll come up with something. They will not break me. Fuck them all. They will not break me. But I will break them. This is my promise to myself, to my friends, and to you, anyone who reads these words. I will break them all.”

““Oh, they’re very real. They are living, biological creatures similar to some of the mobs. Most have been engineered by the Borant Corporation, and therefore are owned by the Borant Corporation. This is the only world they know and have ever known.”

““That’s really fucked up. Do they know what they are?”

““Their minds are altered every time they are regenerated. The next time this floor is formed on some distant planet, these NPCs will wake up like it is just another day. But they will have also been changed, planted with false memories. Inconvenient memories—like some crawler sitting them down and explaining to them that they’re props on an intergalactic television series—will be erased.”

“The orc’s lifeless eyes shone in the reflection of Donut’s Torch spell. She’s not real, I thought. She’s a prop, an extra in a high-stakes game show. But that wasn’t true, was it? She was a real, biological creature. What she believed to be real was fake, an illusion. But she was still flesh and blood, an innocent. And she was dead simply because it was part of the plot.”

“When the oligarchs want to manufacture a social movement, or better yet, stop one in its tracks, they must first bring in the big guns. The paid protestors. The Agent Provocateur. This Monk/Rogue hybrid class is a trapmaking, bomb-making, social-media dynamo. The Compensated Anarchist will happily throw a Molotov through a window one moment and step in front of a camera to plead for the violence to stop the next. Experts in hand-to-hand and dirty tactics, the Compensated Anarchist only suffers when it comes to more traditional fighting techniques.”

““Oh, they’re very real. They are living, biological creatures similar to some of the mobs. Most have been engineered by the Borant Corporation, and therefore are owned by the Borant Corporation. This is the only world they know and have ever known.”

““That’s really fucked up. Do they know what they are?”

““Their minds are altered every time they are regenerated. The next time this floor is formed on some distant planet, these NPCs will wake up like it is just another day. But they will have also been changed, planted with false memories. Inconvenient memories—like some crawler sitting them down and explaining to them that they’re props on an intergalactic television series—will be erased.”

“Take those goblins you told me about, for instance. They were addicted to meth. They were fighting the llamas over it. That storyline didn’t exist in the previous season. That was added for this world and this world only. Next time they’ll be addicted to solar berry extract or something like that. Or they’ll be fanatics of some god. Or something else.”

““What the hell?” I asked. That was just as bad, and in some ways worse, than what they were doing to me and my fellow humans. “But these are still living creatures? How is that legal?”

““Borant created them, so they own them. One can’t alter the memories of naturals. People who were born in a natural biological process. Not unless they sign away their rights.””

“[…] the villages don’t have names. The system designates them as tiny, small, medium, large, and extra-large. Not very exciting. This one is small. You can actually name them yourself if you manage to kill the mayor. Don’t bother, at least on this floor. You’ll likely end up dead, and it doesn’t come with any real benefits when the timer is only eight days.””

“this could be something useful like Parkour or Jui-jitsu, or you could get fucked and receive some useless crap like Stamp Collecting or Kombucha Brewing. Don’t get your hopes up. The fact your planet was filled with so many boring assholes with inane, ridiculous hobbies tips the scales way out of your favor.”

“I’ve seen it a dozen times. A hot shit crawler comes across an elite, and instead of trying to solve the quest, he decides to go all murder hobo and kill the NPC. Something always happens. Something bad. Most of these elites have very thick plot armor, and in those stories, you’re the extra. The red shirt. The guest star. Not every quest will involve elites, but if it does, then I will always suggest that you stay the hell away. Especially when that storyline just launched, because there’s a whole team of writers and producers out there who don’t want their precious little series to get canceled after the first day. And if they can write in the death of a popular crawler, all the better. It will guarantee their show gets more viewers.””

“They played a brief history of the Primal race. They showed another human from many seasons ago who’d chosen the same race. They showed him flying through the air with white, wispy angel wings, wielding a massive sword made of lightning as he charged at a humanoid demon the size of a goddamned football stadium, standing knee-deep in a lake of fire.

““What the hell is that?” I said, watching the brief scene unfold. It faded away before the actual battle could start. The paragraph that explained what a Compensated Anarchist was appeared and disappeared.

““That, my boy, is a Divine Guardian, one of the behemoths of the 12th floor. A Country Boss. He is guarding a fire gate, an entrance to the 13th floor.”

““Holy fuck,” I said.

““Yeah,” Mordecai said. “Is that the guy who made it to the thirteenth floor?”

““No,” Mordecai said. “But he was a famous crawler. He’s from before my time. He died a minute later. The next time you’re with your friend Odette, you should ask her about him.””

“By healing it, I’d killed the worms. The bear let out a howl, mournful and afraid. She sat down and lowered herself painfully to the ground. The last of the boiling custard sizzled away. The bear looked at me, all of the fight out of her. This was Heather, the real Heather, free of the parasites that’d been controlling her. She looked at me with her newly-formed eyes. End it, those bitter eyes said. I should never have lived this long. She made a quick, pained whimper, and her eyes closed. I approached the bear. I kept a wary eye on her claws, looking for any sign of a trick. The bear sighed heavily as I approached. Her health bar, which had moved to the top was now falling again on its own. Without the worms and mold or whatever the hell magic was keeping this thing alive, her body was breaking down fast. This elderly bear, Heather, was not who I’d just fought. Not really. She was just the shell.”

“It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. It was the scent of peanuts and cotton candy and roasting corn and hay and animal musk and cheap, plastic toys all rolled into one. But it was more than that. My four-year-old mind couldn’t possibly register it at the time, but it was the scent of happiness, of joy, of being a kid, of not being afraid. Over the years I’d catch similar scents in places such as the county fair, or carnivals, or whenever I visited a place with livestock. But this was a different, oddly specific aroma that had been indelibly imprinted on me as a four-year-old, a scent I’d sometimes remember as the path I could’ve taken, the world I could’ve lived had my dad not found us and taken us back. It”

“I felt a slight pang that’d I’d missed out on my chance to solo-kill a city boss, but I was also certain I wouldn’t have survived the experience. Besides, I’d done something much more productive. The seeds were planted. The roots were already beginning to dig. You will not break me. Fuck you all. Quest Completed. The Show Must Go On.”

“The thing was a horse-sized, multi-breasted, pitch black goat monster that looked like it belonged on the cover of one of those 1980s heavy metal album covers, one where if you played it backward, the words would tell you to murder your grandma. The face still had the distinctive shape and horns of a male boer goat. It continued to walk on all four legs, but the thing was huge, and a group of six human-like breasts grew down the front of the creature. The entire thing had turned black, except the eyes, which glowed red. A constant wave of steam rose from it.”

“The neighborhood boss fight could’ve gone south pretty quickly, but thanks to Donut’s new Acute Ears skill, we knew it was lurking around the corner when we approached. The monster was called the Dispenser, and it looked like a giant manta ray thing. It blended in with the entire side of a building and tried to drop on us as we passed. We’d been ready, and Donut attacked with two reanimated Brain Boilers. Once it’d peeled itself off the wall, we had a clockwork Mongo run at it with a stick of dynamite in each hand. The whole fight lasted less than a minute.”

“The orc’s lifeless eyes shone in the reflection of Donut’s Torch spell. She’s not real, I thought. She’s a prop, an extra in a high-stakes game show. But that wasn’t true, was it? She was a real, biological creature. What she believed to be real was fake, an illusion. But she was still flesh and blood, an innocent. And she was dead simply because it was part”

““She was a nice lady, for an orc,” Donut said. “She was doing the right thing. We have to finish the quest now.”

““Why?” I asked.

““Because they killed her. And they probably killed her because we got that quest,” Donut said. “If we hadn’t, she’d probably be in the bar right now waiting to ask someone else to help her.”

“Goddamnit, Donut. She was right. Of course, she was right. The orc’s lifeless eyes shone in the reflection of Donut’s Torch spell. She’s not real, I thought. She’s a prop, an extra in a high-stakes game show. But that wasn’t true, was it? She was a real, biological creature. What she believed to be real was fake, an illusion. But she was still flesh and blood, an innocent. And she was dead simply because it was part of the story. Just like with all those prostitutes. You’re not going to break me. Fuck you all.

““I think I liked you better when you didn’t make so much sense,” I said.

““I’ve always made sense, Carl,” Donut said.”

“Cerberus. Heimdall. Aniketos and Alexiares. Qin Shubao. Lev Yashin.”

““I loved my Barry, but he wasn’t the prettiest man to look at. If you were in the tunnel of love with me, I’d have let you do more than touch them on the outside of my clothes.”

““Uh,” I said. “Thank you?” I couldn’t think of a better response.

“The old woman cackled. Behind her, Yolanda barked with laughter.

““You’ve been hit on twice now,” Donut said. “Once by a meth-addled goblin shaman and once by Abraham Lincoln’s grandmother. I can’t wait to see who you attract next. Five gold coins says it’s some sort of bog witch with a beard.”

“Yolanda had told me earlier that this woman was 99 years old. I looked up at her. Ninety-nine years. She’d lived an entire life. Had a husband, whom she’d clearly loved. It seemed obscene that she’d be here in this place. I thought of the others who’d spent their final hours in a safe room, singing. We should have made them all stay. This isn’t a kindness, keeping them safe.”

“The creature roared by right in front of us, startlingly fast, moving from right to left. It was massive, made of flesh, rolling like a pinball. It stank of sewage and rotten meat. It grunted and squealed, a high-pitched, angry pig noise. The flesh was pink, rippling, covered in eyes and random hairs and tusks. But there was something else there, too. Random flaps of black and white cloth were embedded in the flesh, mixed in with swaths of red-sequined fabric.”

“The dungeon groaned. It fucking groaned. I sighed as I wiped my foot on the metal bar of the cage. The entire dungeon rumbled as if it was experiencing a small earthquake. My HUD flickered. I felt dirty and sick. I rubbed my foot over and over, but the blood wouldn’t come off.”

““It sounds to me like the computer fancies you,” Donut said. “Or your feet, at least. We’ll need to take advantage of that. If the system likes us, then maybe it’ll go easier on us.”

““It makes me uncomfortable,” I said.

““Being eaten by a bugbear makes me uncomfortable, Carl. So if your boyfriend ogling your tootises keeps these easy-peasy bugs coming at us instead of more of those lava-spitting llamas, then you better buck up, get over your human male privilege, and take one for your princess.””

“I looked at the cat sitting next to me, and I wondered, not for the first time, if this was all a dream. An hour and a half earlier I’d been certain I was about to die, and now I was aboard some sort of yacht from another planet, ready to be interviewed on an intergalactic talk show.”

“Yes, this is a game. Yes, there are controls in place to make it fair. Sort of. But more importantly, this is a for-profit venture in the entertainment industry. And if you staying alive means more profits, then you’ll find your loot to be a lot more convenient. But if the AI senses screwing you over will make the show more interesting, you better believe it’ll fuck you right in the ass at the worst possible moment. Don’t ever forget that. You can’t count on anybody but yourselves.”

“Mordecai looked at me sadly. “Yeah, good luck to you, too.” He grasped my jacket and met my eyes and then whispered, “It’s not worth it, no matter what they tell you. Not until floor 12, and even then, negotiate as much as you can. Remember that.””

“Mordecai looked at me sadly. “Yeah, good luck to you, too.”

“He grasped my jacket and met my eyes and then whispered, “It’s not worth it, no matter what they tell you. Not until floor 12, and even then, negotiate as much as you can. Remember that.””

““You know, you’re not wearing pants, either,” I said after a moment.

““Nor am I wearing a cloak that makes me look like I won a participation trophy at the special needs comic con, Carl. I’m a cat. Cats don’t wear pants. Don’t be so droll.””

““It sounds to me like the computer fancies you,” Donut said. “Or your feet, at least. We’ll need to take advantage of that. If the system likes us, then maybe it’ll go easier on us.”

““It makes me uncomfortable,” I said.

““Being eaten by a bugbear makes me uncomfortable, Carl. So if your boyfriend ogling your tootises keeps these easy-peasy bugs coming at us instead of more of those lava-spitting llamas, then you better buck up, get over your human male privilege, and take one for your princess.””

““The floor collapses,” she said. “Yes. But it is only you who dies when this happens. For us we go to sleep until the next dungeon opens. We will open our eyes, and it will be the same as it has been. Just another day. But one of these days, one of these days we will wake up, and we will be deeper. That’s what they tell us. Kill the crawlers, get better at killing, and you get to go deeper. And one day, eventually, we will be so deep that crawlers will never come, and we will finally have peace. We will have peace and a place to live and breed and have our little ones run free and not worry about killing for survival.””

“She was pissed about the tattoo. Absolutely enraged. I hadn’t seen her this upset since Angel the cocker spaniel crunched down and broke one of her jingly balls.

““What gives them the right to just defile me like this? What gives them the right!” she cried. “Oh my god! It’s a disqualifying mark. It’s a disqualifying mark, Carl! I’m damaged!””

“He talks and acts like a cop. But his whole story was bullshit. That Rebecca woman was a level three. He said they’d gotten into a firefight right away, but that couldn’t be true. She had that apple core in her inventory. That meant she’d gone to a tutorial guild and gotten her inventory turned on. And then he ate that cookie, and I saw he received 9.8 experience instead of 10, which meant he was in a party with someone. Someone alive. Also, he had his arm draped over the chair, and I could see he was twitching his finger. He was typing into the chat. He hadn’t figured out how to use it with just his brain.”

“Donut stared up at me as we ran. “How is it you’re James Bond when it comes to strangers, but Miss Beatrice could date three different guys at once, and you had no idea?”

““Three different guys?”

““Well, you were one of them, so two, I guess. Then again, it’s three if you count Angel’s owner. Does it count as cheating when it’s with another woman? There’s so many human nuances I don’t understand.”

““Of course it counts as cheating,” I said. For fuck’s sake.”

“[…] you wasted those Confusing Fog scrolls. Next time, have the party member with the highest intelligence read any scrolls if you can. Your intelligence of three made it so the fog only lasted fifteen seconds. Princess Donut’s intelligence level would’ve resulted in the fog lasting for 120 seconds per scroll.”

““Damn,” I said. “Also, is that why she can’t take potions so often? Because her constitution is low?”

““Yes,” Mordecai said. “That shred attack of hers is very powerful, but it’s useless until she gains more armor and more health. You’re lucky she hadn’t broken her neck. Picking a class or a race with a high base constitution will help, but not much. She’ll need to load up on items that enhance it, and those tend to be less common.””

“The creature roared by right in front of us, startlingly fast, moving from right to left. It was massive, made of flesh, rolling like a pinball. It stank of sewage and rotten meat. It grunted and squealed, a high-pitched, angry pig noise. The flesh was pink, rippling, covered in eyes and random hairs and tusks. But there was something else there, too. Random flaps of black and white cloth were embedded in the flesh, mixed in with swaths of red-sequined fabric.”

“I looked at the cat sitting next to me, and I wondered, not for the first time, if this was all a dream. An hour and a half earlier I’d been certain I was about to die, and now I was aboard some sort of yacht from another planet, ready to be interviewed on an intergalactic talk show.

““Okay,” Donut said the moment Lexis left the room. She started to frantically clean herself. “Let me do all the talking unless Odette asks a question directly of you. I just can’t believe it. I am so excited!””

“Donut didn’t answer. She hadn’t heard me. She stood on the edge of the pillow, standing like that damn lion from the Lion King, her chest heaving with pride as she looked back into the holographic mass of adoring fans. Her eyes sparkled. I suddenly had a feeling of dread. That look. That hunger. That was dangerous. She’d had but a single taste, but I could already tell. She was addicted to this. To the crowd. To the cheers. It was going to be a problem.

““Goddamnit, Donut,” I muttered.”

“Yes, this is a game. Yes, there are controls in place to make it fair. Sort of. But more importantly, this is a for-profit venture in the entertainment industry. And if you staying alive means more profits, then you’ll find your loot to be a lot more convenient. But if the AI senses screwing you over will make the show more interesting, you better believe it’ll fuck you right in the ass at the worst possible moment. Don’t ever forget that. You can’t count on anybody but yourselves.”

“Mordecai, for example. He won’t tell you this, but the season doesn’t count against his indentureship unless one of his crawlers makes it to the fourth floor.”

““So if we don’t make it, he’s stuck until next season?” I asked. “He’s stuck until the next Borant-sponsored season, which’ll be at least another seven or eight seasons after this one. And with the political environment as it is, a lot of people aren’t certain Borant will be around that long. All indentureship contracts get frozen during a bankruptcy seizure action.””

““I thought wisdom wasn’t a stat anymore,” I said.

““Oh, honey. Everything is a stat. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not really there. But you’re more right than you realize. None of these top-tier stats you see are real. Not truly. A higher intelligence doesn’t mean you’re smarter. It means you have more mana points. It means you can remember things better. It’s really a mish-mash of a hundred other stats all combined.””

““So how about you, Odette? What are your motivations?” I asked as I stood from the couch. It was time to go. “For helping us, I mean. You said not to trust anyone until you know what their motivations are.”

“The older woman smiled. “My audience loves you. The longer you stay alive, the more money I make. And there is nothing I love in this universe more than money. Now get back in there and try not to die.””

““I loved my Barry, but he wasn’t the prettiest man to look at. If you were in the tunnel of love with me, I’d have let you do more than touch them on the outside of my clothes.”

““Uh,” I said. “Thank you?” I couldn’t think of a better response.

“The old woman cackled. Behind her, Yolanda barked with laughter. “You’ve been hit on twice now,” Donut said. “Once by a meth-addled goblin shaman and once by Abraham Lincoln’s grandmother. I can’t wait to see who you attract next. Five gold coins says it’s some sort of bog witch with a beard.”

“Yolanda had told me earlier that this woman was 99 years old. I looked up at her. Ninety-nine years. She’d lived an entire life. Had a husband, whom she’d clearly loved. It seemed obscene that she’d be here in this place. I thought of the others who’d spent their final hours in a safe room, singing. We should have made them all stay. This isn’t a kindness, keeping them safe.”

“The dungeon groaned. It fucking groaned. I sighed as I wiped my foot on the metal bar of the cage. The entire dungeon rumbled as if it was experiencing a small earthquake. My HUD flickered. I felt dirty and sick. I rubbed my foot over and over, but the blood wouldn’t come off.”

“it is important to point out that NATO’s war on Yugoslavia in 1999 might be the real turning point for Russia with Europe in thrall to the United States as it pursued an unprovoked aggression, an aggression covered up with incredible lying, which persists to the present.”

“Russia will likely drift further into China’s orbit, becoming even more of a declining kleptocratic raw materials producer than it is now. China is likely to persist in its programs of incorporating more and more of the world into the development-and-investment system based on the Belt and Road Initiative, the “maritime silk road” that passes through the UAE into the Middle East, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.”

“The Afghan Ministry of Public Health estimates that two-thirds of Afghans suffer from war-induced mental health troubles. Half of the population lives below the poverty line, and about 60 percent of the population remains illiterate. Few gains were made on these fronts.”

“[…] the United Nations estimates that by the end of 2022 the country’s per capita income may decline to nearly half of 2012 levels. It is estimated that 97 percent of the Afghan people will fall below the poverty line, with mass starvation a real possibility”

“Two kinds of economic threat occasionally appear: the first is the movement of workers and peasants in countries that produce key raw materials who refuse to accept subhuman, suppressed wages that enable the entire commodity chain to keep costs down and profits up; and the second is when countries where technological advances take place threaten the monopoly power of European, Japanese, and U.S. multinational companies. The United States either uses violence itself or sanctions violence through its authorized agents (dictators and police chiefs) against the workers and peasants who rebel, and against the governments that they might create to fashion a different path forward. The United States pushes trade policies—particularly intellectual property rights laws—that prevent countries from advancing their scientific and technological capacity.”

“[…] this weakness should not be interpreted as the demise of U.S. power or the end of the “American Century.” The United States has great reservoirs of power—financial, military, diplomatic, cultural—which it will continue to wield for a long time yet. But the relative weakness of the United States made room for the emergence of China as an important world power.”

“In the long view, China has not “emerged” as a world power but is merely returning to a situation that prevailed two hundred years ago. Then, in 1820, China’s economy was six times the size of Great Britain’s, at the time the largest economy in Europe and a dominant maritime and imperial power, and it was twenty times the size of the United States’ economy.”

“The harsh edge of European imperialism, particularly British military aggression, destroyed China’s economic strength and depleted its power within a generation. China struggled with conflict from the first Opium War of 1839 to the end of its civil war in 1949, over a hundred years of violence and despair.”

“It is this China, with technological advances that are well ahead of the West’s firms, that poses not a military or security threat to the West but a threat to the idea that only the West can lead in certain sectors (telecommunications,”

“It is this China, with technological advances that are well ahead of the West’s firms, that poses not a military or security threat to the West but a threat to the idea that only the West can lead in certain sectors (telecommunications, robotics, high-speed rail, non-carbon energy). China, meanwhile, has exported its developments through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which is a frontal challenge to the International Monetary Fund and its debt-driven forms of engagement with the Global South (through the Paris Club and the London Club, both of which now acknowledge that poorer countries prefer to borrow from Chinese banks than from them).”

“The United States will not tolerate the existence of a state that cannot be intimidated the way Europe can be intimidated, a state that therefore does not follow U.S. orders the way Europe does. China, which has developed its own powerful economy, pursues its own course. That’s the “China threat.””

“One of the undercurrents of this book is our insistence on measuring the behavior of the Godfather according to international law, which is typically informed by the UN Charter. We are not naïve about the limitations of the UN Charter or of the UN system, but it is important to acknowledge that 193 countries have signed on to the charter, which is a binding treaty and the basis for much of the international law that follows it.”

“The essay dazzles, with Noam piercing the hypocrisies of the intellectual world of the United States, where professors rest smugly on the ideals of American civilization but rarely confront its reality. “Intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions,” wrote Noam, in essence laying out the methodology for the critical intellectual.”

“You can’t raise the question of courage about people as privileged as I am. You want to look at courage, go to the peasants fighting for their lives in southern Colombia, or the courage of the Kurds in eastern Turkey, or the Palestinians in the refugee camps and in the occupied territories.”

“An aunt of mine said, “Noam Chomsky is a long-distance runner.” I feel that this is an accurate statement. Why have you not given up the race? NOAM: It probably goes back to an unattractive personal trait: arrogance. If I’m going to be bitterly condemned by the whole intellectual community, but if I think I’m right, I don’t care.”

“The Tet Offensive took place in January 1968. You don’t discuss it much in the West, but this was the most amazing uprising in human history. I mean, the South Vietnamese countryside was saturated with about six hundred thousand U.S. troops and another seven hundred thousand to eight hundred thousand troops of the Saigon army. Every village was penetrated with informants from Saigon and the United States everywhere. No one had a clue that this uprising was going to take place all across the country. I don’t think that there is anything in history that comes anywhere close to this. It was an amazing shock in the United States. The U.S. leadership was listening to the generals say, “It’s all under control. We will win any time.””

“[…] you take a look at the last part of the Pentagon Papers, the part that nobody reads that comes right after the Tet Offensive, it says that there was a discussion about sending more troops. But the joint chiefs were not eager. They said, “If you send more troops, we’re going to need them for civil disorder control in the United States. Women, young people: they’re going to be revolting all over the place. We can’t send more troops abroad.” That’s the last couple of pages of the Pentagon Papers.”

“For comparison, the United States dropped three times as many bombs by weight on Vietnam than were dropped in both the European and Pacific theaters of World War II; the explosive impact of the ordinance dropped on Vietnam was a hundred times the combined impact of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bombs.”

“The United States conducted a “secret” bombing campaign against Laos from 1964 to 1973 to support the Royal Lao regime against the Pathet Lao and to prevent the alleged use of Laos by the Vietnamese to resupply lines in the south of Vietnam. The United States conducted 580,000 bombing missions, dropping a full payload of bombs every eight minutes around the clock for nine years. The country is considered the most bombed on the planet.”

“As even the most ardent supporters of the Contras now concede, this is what they call a proxy army, which is attacking Nicaragua from foreign bases, is entirely dependent on its masters for directions and support, has never put forth a political program, has created no base of political support within the country, and almost its entire top military command is Somozist officers [officers of the regime of Anastasio Somoza, who was overthrown by the Nicaraguan Revolution]. Its military achievements so far consist of a long and horrifying series of very well-documented torture, mutilation, and atrocities, and essentially nothing else. U.S. administration officials are now openly conceding in public that the main function of the Contras is to retard or reverse the rate of social reform in Nicaragua and to try to terminate the openness of that society.”

“Was the twenty-year war that the United States prosecuted against the Afghan people a criminal war, as you called the war on Vietnam? First, was it criminal in that it was a case of conscious and premeditated aggression? Second, was the conduct of the war itself an indescribable atrocity? NOAM: It was not criminal on the scale of Indochina, which was an incredible crime. But yet, it was unprovoked, it was an illegitimate aggression, and it was a severe atrocity.”

“[…] the United States had been interested in getting hold of al-Qaeda and bin Laden, at that time a small group probably on the Afghanistan–Pakistan border, they could have carried it out with a small police operation, probably with the cooperation of the Taliban, who had every reason to get rid of this irritant.”

“A couple of weeks after 9/11, the United States cut off aid supplies from Pakistan. Afghanistan was suffering then under severe humanitarian threat. Millions of people were facing potential starvation. The United States cut off all truck traffic from Pakistan to Afghanistan, the main source of aid, just to starve the Afghan people.”

“[…] under the Russian occupation in the major urban centers, like Kabul, there had been enormous gains in the rights of women. In Kabul, young women were wearing whatever clothes they wanted; they were going to the university; they had plenty of jobs; literacy had sharply increased. This was largely because the men were out fighting somewhere. There were problems, she said. The problems were the U.S.-backed Mujahideen. The United States picked the most vicious and brutal of them to support, namely the Gulbuddin Hekmatyar group. They would throw acid in the faces of the women who were wearing what they thought were the wrong clothes or something or the other. But apart from that, Rasil Basu said, there were tremendous improvements. Rasil Basu wrote several articles about all this, sent them to the major U.S. media outlets, but these publications did not even answer. She sent them to Ms. magazine, the leading feminist journal; no answer. She was finally able to publish them in the Asian press, in Asia Times, but not in the United States. Her story was the wrong story. Her story was the Soviets protecting women, while the United States supported the murderous gangsters who throw acid in the faces of women. That’s not a story that the U.S. press wanted to publish, however factual. In fact, to this day, I don’t think there has been any reporting about these matters. It is just the wrong story, it seems.”

“He talked to people from all walks of life—pro-government, former Mujahideen, women and men from different social backgrounds. Nostalgia seemed to be the main theme. They looked back fondly at the Soviet period. The person they respected most was Mohammad Najibullah, the last communist head of government.”

“Sir Rodric Braithwaite, who wrote the main book in English on the Soviets in Afghanistan (Afghantsy, 2012), was the British ambassador to the USSR and then to Russia. During the years of the withdrawal, he followed closely every detail of what was happening. He visited Afghanistan in 2008 and wrote about it in the Financial Times, the world’s leading business journal, not a communist paper. He just described his impressions of Kabul and reported what people he met told him. He talked to people from all walks of life—pro-government, former Mujahideen, women and men from different social backgrounds. Nostalgia seemed to be the main theme. They looked back fondly at the Soviet period. The person they respected most was Mohammad Najibullah, the last communist head of government.”

“Most preferred Mohammad Najibullah, the last communist president, who attempted to reconcile the nation within an Islamic state and was butchered by the Taliban in 1996: DVDs of his speeches are being sold on the streets. Things were, they said, better under the Soviets. Kabul was secure, women were employed, the Soviets built factories, roads, schools and hospitals, Afghan children played safely in the streets. The Russian soldiers fought bravely on the ground like real warriors, instead of killing women and children from the air.”

“Is anybody in the U.S. courts asking for reparations for the Afghans and the Iraqis, or even the people of Honduras or Guatemala or El Salvador or Nicaragua? Untold numbers of Central Americans tortured, their societies devastated, their lives broken. Are there people pressing claims in U.S. courts for them? These questions are unimaginable. Nobody can demand anything from the mafia don, since the don just determines what happens in the world, taking what is needed. If U.S. citizens say, Starving Afghans paying reparations to us is necessary, then this is what is going to happen. The courts say, Yes, that’s right. We’re the rulers of the world. We determine what happens. If any of the huge number of victims of U.S. crimes request even an investigation of the crimes, the answer is, Sorry, the mafia don doesn’t do that. That’s not the job of the Godfather. In a nutshell, that’s it.”

“After the United States had withdrawn from Vietnam, U.S. president Jimmy Carter was asked in March 1977 if the United States owed anything to the people of Southeast Asia for having destroyed Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, killed millions of people, devasted the region with chemical warfare, and so on. His answer was quite measured. He said, “We owe them no debt. The destruction was mutual.” Okay. That’s the liberal president. Reagan was worse: “It was a noble cause, we were right, so they owe us reparations.” Or George H. W. Bush: “We’re willing to forgive the Vietnamese their crimes against us, because we are a forgiving nation. If they carry out their one responsibility—to find the bones of U.S. pilots who were shot down by the evil North Vietnamese while they were on a mercy mission, flying over North Vietnam in their B-52s to devastate the place, if they do that—and since we are a forgiving country—we will forgive them if they carry out that duty.” That’s George H. W. Bush, the statesman,”

“Imagine if Iran were carrying out an international terrorist campaign to assassinate people who it thought might pose a potential danger to Iran? Every leading figure in the U.S. government and the Israeli government, and anybody else who happened to be standing around, would be treated as collateral damage for this campaign. Suppose that they did that. What would the United States say? First of all, we wouldn’t say anything, because we’d nuke them and wipe them out. But if we were to say anything, we would say, They’re the greatest terrorist threat in the world. How can a country dare to go around assassinating people? Which is what the drone campaign is actually all about. It kills people that the United States believes pose a threat to the United States or to its interests. What it actually means is that a couple of guys in northwestern Pakistan are fixing a tire, and a drone circles around them, decides that they are up to no good, and then blasts them with a hellfire missile.”

“The United States had been dragging its feet on efforts to do something about the impending existential catastrophe of environmental destruction. Trump accelerated the devastation. He said, Who cares? Let’s race to the precipice as fast as possible, maximize the use of fossil fuels, including the most dangerous of them, get rid of all the regulations that somewhat mitigate their effect, let’s destroy everything as quickly as possible for the benefit of my masters, the people in the ExxonMobil corporate headquarters who need to register their profits tomorrow. That’s the precise order of things. Wipe out everything. Can you find an analogous figure in history? The point is that these are outrageous statements, but they happen to be true, and they are true not just in my opinion.”

“Can’t imagine why the remnants of Native Americans might have some negative feelings about the United States, or why, say, Mexicans could look at the town where I live in occupied Mexico and say something was wrong with a war of aggression; we stole half of Mexico from Mexico, now the Southwestern and Western United States. How could they have any negative feelings about that? It’s all for the benefit of civilization.”

“Abdul Haq said so just as the bombs began to fall. The world opposed the invasion of Afghanistan. That is now forgotten. The United States said, We don’t care what you think. We’ve got the power. We control the means of violence. We do what we want. If we’re angry, we will show our muscle and intimidate everyone.”

“Do what you have to do to control the world. The United States is the Godfather, who does not accept successful defiance even from the smallest country. Just like the Godfather: if some small shopkeeper doesn’t pay protection money, the Godfather won’t even notice the money, but he still sends in the goons to smash up the shop.”

“We should recognize that there is no country in the world that has anything like the capacity of the United States to inflict brutal harm and violence everywhere in the world. Nobody else, for instance, can impose sanctions. When the United States imposes sanctions, they are third-party sanctions that everyone has to live up to no matter how much they hate them. Nobody in the world can come anywhere near this kind of power and violence. That’s imperialism.”

“[…] the United States and Israel—say [the Cuban blockade] should continue. The whole world obeys U.S. orders, but not all, actually. China does not. That’s the China threat, really. If you look at it, China does not follow U.S. orders. China refuses to be intimidated. That’s the great China threat. Cuba is the same.”

“The United States cannot tolerate defiance, particularly successful defiance. When Maurice Bishop of the New Jewel Movement took control over Grenada and tried to advance a limited social democratic agenda, the United States saw this as defiance. The Carter administration cut funds, imposed restrictions, set up the basis for the invasion conducted by the Reagan administration where six thousand U.S. Special Forces were presented with eight thousand Medals of Honor for overcoming the resistance of forty Cuban construction workers. An immense triumph.”

“Israel carries out periodic, murderous, destructive attacks with U.S. weapons and U.S. support against the Palestinians, most brutally in Gaza. If they run out of weapons, which happens regularly, the Israelis turn to the United States to replenish them, which the United States can do just by transferring weapons that it stores in Israel. Israel calls these attacks, politely, mowing the lawn.”

“The British did the same thing with the destruction and deindustrialization of the richest country in the world, India. It was a massive robbery to enrich Britain. The British ran the world’s greatest narco-trafficking operation to force China, through the opium trade, to submit to British commercial practices and accept British goods that they did not want. When the Chinese said no, then they had to be destroyed with gunboats.”

“The British did the same thing with the destruction and deindustrialization of the richest country in the world, India. It was a massive robbery to enrich Britain. The British ran the world’s greatest narco-trafficking operation to force China, through the opium trade, to submit to British commercial practices and accept British goods that they did not want. When the Chinese said no, then they had to be destroyed with gunboats. The Summer Palace was destroyed and whatever could be stolen was stolen, including Hong Kong.”

“By the late 1940s, it was taken for granted in government-corporate circles that the state would have to intervene massively to maintain the private economy. In 1948, with postwar pent-up consumer demand exhausted and the economy sinking back into recession, Truman’s “cold-war spending was regarded by the business press as a “magic formula for almost endless good times” (Steel), a way to “maintain a generally upward tone” (Business Week). The Magazine of Wall Street saw military spending as a way to “inject new strength into the entire economy,” and a few years later, found it “obvious that foreign economies as well as our own are now mainly dependent on the scope of continued arms spending in this country,””

“It was therefore necessary, Secretary of State Dean Acheson urged, “to bludgeon the mass mind” of Congress and recalcitrant officials with the communist threat in a manner “clearer than truth,” and to “scare the hell out of the American people, “ as Senator Arthur Vandenberg interpreted the message. To carry out these tasks has been a prime responsibility of intellectuals throughout these years.”

“Like all advanced societies, the United States has relied on state intervention in the economy from its origins, though for ideological reasons, the fact is commonly denied.”

“[…] the previous book that you both wrote together, Counter-Revolutionary Violence: Bloodbaths in Fact and Propaganda (1973). The history of the previous book, little known these days, is that after it was advertised by Warner Modular Publications, the head of the book division of Warner Publishing tried to suppress it, then simply had the firm destroy all remaining copies of the book, and then put the entire publisher out of business as punishment for trying to distribute it.”

“The actions of the U.S. government, in places such as Vietnam and Thailand, are like those of the mafia, you contend; but what makes it difficult to establish in popular discourse is the screen provided by the mass media, which operates more and more like a Ministry of Propaganda than a normal news operation. Reports of massacres do make it into the media, but routinely these are the massacres done by the enemies of the United States rather than the massacres conducted by United States personnel.”

“The regularly publicized and condemned bloodbaths, whose victims are worthy of serious concern, often turn out, upon close examination, to be fictional in whole or in part. These mythical or semi-mythical bloodbaths have served an extremely important public relations function in mobilizing support for American military intervention in other countries.”

“You can read op-eds in the New York Times. One in August 2021 was by two specialists on Cuba.° They said, essentially, All this talk about a sanctions blockade is nonsense. The United States provides humanitarian aid to Cuba, provides food aid, and so on. They even made the mistake of giving a reference, a hyperlink. Well, I took the trouble of looking up the reference. It was to a U.S. government publication that says the opposite of what they claim. It says, The US does not allow humanitarian aid to Cuba. I had assumed that the New York Times had fact-checked such articles, looked up these sorts of references, noticed that it says the opposite in each case, and so on. Obviously, I’m wrong. They don’t. This is pretty normal,”

“At the end of the war on Vietnam, a couple of years afterward, there was a media study group at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst that did a study of attitudes of UMASS students. This is UMASS-Amherst, an advanced college with the best students. One of the questions asked to the students was could you estimate the number of Vietnamese killed in the war. Their mean estimate was 100,000. The official number is 2 million. The actual number is probably 4 million. Their estimate was 100,000. Suppose you took a poll in Germany and young people from the most advanced educational institutions were asked about the death toll in the Holocaust, what would you get? Suppose they said, 200,000. We’d think that there is a problem in Germany. Do we think that there is a problem in the United States? Can’t be. The United States does not have problems.”

“The basic idea was that there should be what they called a Grand Area, which would be completely under U.S. control and within which the United States would not tolerate any expression of sovereignty that interfered with U.S. global designs. There would be no competitor permitted, of course, to the United States. And that area was pretty expansive. It included the Western Hemisphere, East Asia, the former British Empire, which the United States would take over–that includes crucially the Middle East energy reserves, which are the main ones in the world.”

“After Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, the United States immediately turned to strong support for Iraq. There is a famous photograph of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein, making deals to send weapons to try to support Iraq’s unprovoked invasion of Iran, which was a brutal, murderous invasion that resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of Iranians.”

“[…] the love affair between the United States and Saddam was so extreme that Saddam received a gift that no country other than Israel could receive, which was the allowance to attack a U.S. warship and face no retaliation.”

“[…] the families of the 9/11 victims will receive $3.1 million per person in 2020 dollars from the seized Afghan external reserves./Iraq”

“On July 3, 1988, the USS Vincennes fired guided missiles at Iran Air Flight 655 from Tehran to Dubai in a clearly identified commercial corridor, killing all 290 civilians on board. The U.S. ship went back to port in Norfolk, Virginia, and was given a rousing welcome. The captain, Will Rogers, was given a medal by George H. W. Bush. It was in this context that Bush said that Americans never apologize for anything that they do. You want to shoot down a commercial airliner, fine. We give you a Medal of Honor.”

“Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming told Saddam that his problem was not with the U.S. government but with the U.S. press. We have this crazy First Amendment business, so the government cannot properly shut down the press, but it is best to ignore it. Dole said that the one commentator at Voice of America who had been critical of Saddam was removed. They told Saddam that they were doing what they could to end this unfair criticism of Bush’s friend.”

“One paper did report it, a tabloid in Long Island […]”

“[…] the United States wanted the war. The effective surrender of Saddam Hussein was not only barely reported at the time, but it is also now almost universally forgotten. The general narrative is that the United States stood firm against a recalcitrant Saddam Hussein and forced him to leave Kuwait. This allows the United States to claim that the war of 1991 was a heroic war.”

“George H. W. Bush explained what was happening clearly, We’ve shown that what we say goes. That’s it. It is sort of like the war on Afghanistan, the muscle intimidating everyone. We didn’t want negotiations, even surrender. We wanted a devastating attack to show the world that what we say goes.”

“Both the main UN diplomats-Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck-resigned in protest, charging that the sanctions regime was genocidal. Von Sponeck wrote an important book–A Different Kind of War: The UN Sanctions Regime in Iraq (2006)-in which he detailed what was going on. Von Sponeck knew more about Iraq at that time than any other Westerner. His staff went about the country collecting information on the severe sadism of the sanctions,”

“Thomas Friedman wrote an article in the New York Times to say that France should be thrown out of the United Nations Security Council; he said it in the way that children speak in kindergartens: if you don’t play by our rules, then leave. The U.S. Senate banned french fries in their cafeteria; they renamed them freedom fries. We’ll show those French for daring to follow public opinion!”

“I remember the first day of the attack, when the U.S. forces took over the general hospital, which is a major war crime. The soldiers threw patients on the floor, threw doctors on the floor, and tied them up. The press was euphoric; the New York Times had a picture of the general hospital, talking about how wonderful it was and blaming the attack on the “terrorists.” The press described how the U.S. Marines found the “packrats” in their “warrens” and killed them. Nobody knows how many people were killed, since we don’t count our atrocities. Dangerous weapons were used, including lots of depleted uranium, lots of radioactivity, which increased the rates of cancer.”

“We’re supposed to believe that if Iraq were producing asparagus and if the center of oil production were in the South Pacific, then the United States would’ve invaded Iraq anyway to bring democracy.”

“Iraq is now one of the most bitter, unhappy, tortured countries in the world, and the Shia-Sunni conflict, which was incubated in Iraq, is now general across the Middle East. So, that was a great achievement of the U.S. government. The Iraqi parliament has called on the U.S. forces to leave. But that’s like being informed by world opinion. The United States will leave when the United States decides to leave, not when the Iraqi parliament decides. That’s how it stands.”

“There was a lot of hue and cry in the Washington think tanks about the “Freedom Agenda” and about “democracy promotion.” All of this seemed to run aground for the United States when Hamas won the Palestinian elections in January 2006. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Fatah leadership that they must overthrow the Hamas leadership in Gaza; Rice organized for the United Arab Emirates to do emergency training for Fatah and for Egypt to send arms to the fighters. When Fatah revolted against Hamas in 2007, it was a rebuke to the U.S. “democracy promotion” strategy. Seems “liberty in other lands” was only going to work if the political leadership in other lands was sufficiently pliant to the United States’ overall agenda.”

“The invasion was undertaken with the understanding that it was going to escalate atrocities, which did escalate. The increased atrocities were used as a justification for the invasion, just reversing the timing, which is almost uniform as a practice. Even the Goldstone Commission, which investigated the war, inverted the chronology, saying that it was a humanitarian invasion because of the atrocities, which were the anticipated result of the invasion and not its cause”

“By the 1990s, the ideas of just and unjust war and humanitarian intervention became a big deal for reasons that are not surprising. The issue was raised during the invasion of Serbia and Kosovo, when there was going to be this fantastic NATO-led humanitarian intervention that would show how marvelous the Europeans and the United States are. The facts are exactly the reverse of what was portrayed and what continues to be portrayed. In Serbia and Kosovo, there were perfectly good negotiating options. The United States invaded with the complete knowledge that the invasion was going to sharply escalate atrocities.”

“So, R2P means keeping to the UN Charter with one exception, which is that NATO can invade and destroy any country that it wants, as it did in Yugoslavia. NATO, of course, means the United States, with others dragged along without a UN Security Council authorization.”

“We have humanitarian intervention, which means we can attack anyone we want because we say that it is humanitarian, and it is given legitimacy because the UN had an R2P resolution supporting it, except it said you can’t do it without a UN Security Council resolution, but that’s a minor difficulty.”

“Kofi Annan said that the U.S. war on Iraq was a crime. That’s a textbook case of a crime–a war of aggression-for which Nazi war criminals were hanged. There was no credible pretext for the invasion, no UN Security Council authorization, overwhelming opposition of the world’s population, no possible redeeming feature. Hitler invaded Poland based on the “wild terror of the Poles,” who had to be repressed in the name of peace. When Hitler took the Sudetenland, he said it was to bring peace and security to an area where people were in conflict, and where the Nazis would bring … the advantages of German civilization. That’s about as credible a justification as that given by Washington for its invasion of Iraq. In the entire mainstream commentary on Iraq, you will not find one person saying that the war on Iraq was the same kind of crime as the war of aggression of Germany, which resulted in the Nuremberg trials. What you will find is someone like Obama calling the invasion of Iraq a “strategic blunder,” which is what the Nazi generals said after the Battle of Stalingrad.”

“By 1998, when the terror against the Kurds peaked, U.S. aid was at its highest. There was no coverage of any of this, with the New York Times largely silent (this is even though it had a bureau and a very good reporter—Stephen Kinzer—in the country. Kinzer would later write very well about these issues). Basically, what was happening in the southeast of Turkey to the Kurds was suppressed. You can find a few things here and there, but not much.”

“What you want is for people to be frightened, to huddle under the umbrella of power, not to pay attention to what you are doing to them while serving the interests of narrow rich-and-powerful sectors. So, you want to have a military conflict.”

“right now, if the Iraqi oil were to come back into the international system, it would be largely under the control of Russia, France, and others, not U.S. energy companies. And the United States is not going to permit that. So, we can be pretty confident that one way or another the United States is trying to ensure that Iraq will renter the international system under U.S. control.”

“The New York Times came out with its first editorial in which it said, Hey we have this bright idea: why not establish a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East and end the Iranian threat? Then comes the footnote: Israel’s nuclear weapons are nonnegotiable. We can have a nuclear weapons free zone, except the one state that has a big arsenal of nuclear weapons will not be in it. The United States does not even formally concede that Israel has nuclear weapons. But at least the Times mentioned it; first time I’ve seen it mentioned in these kinds of publications. The United States does not concede it due to the implications of U.S. law. If a state develops nuclear weapons outside the framework of international agreements, then there are legal issues -such as the Symington Amendment–that might ban U.S. transfers of a range of economic and military assistance to that state.”

“The 189 member nations of the NPT-including Iran said they would attend. Israel refused. There are three other states, apart from Israel, that are not in the NPT: India, Pakistan, and South Sudan!”

“Israel does not want anything like a nuclear weapons free zone. It does not want a deterrent in West Asia. Israel regularly bombs Syria, it invaded Lebanon numerous times, it continues the occupation of the Palestinians. I’ve seen the extremely harmful effects of Israeli policy several times. Israel simply does not want a deterrent in the region.”

“Until the collapse of the USSR in 1991, there was at least a moderately plausible rationale for NATO. It claimed to be a defensive alliance, defending Western Europe against what was said to be Soviet aggression. We can discuss how credible that pretext was, but at least it had an element of rationality behind it.”

“If you’re dumb enough to accept our word of honor, they implied, that’s your problem. The best study of these discussions was published in International Security, authored by Joshua Itzkowitz Shifrinson, who argued that Bush and Baker consciously deceived Gorbachev.”

“Qaddafi agreed to the African Union road map to peace. Zuma, who met with Qaddafi, told the press that Qaddafi would proceed to a cease-fire as soon as the deal had been agreed to in Benghazi by the rebel leadership. However, given the advantage of the NATO air cover, the rebel leadership refused when the African Union delegation came to Benghazi.”

“[…] the Europeans send the refugees either to vicious concentration camps or back to their homelands from which they have fled because they find them unlivable (the result of hundreds of years of mostly European devastation of Africa, which is quite serious). That’s Libya today.”

“That’s an axiom. NATO means the United States, and the United States cannot commit war crimes by definition. Even in the canons of international law, the United States cannot commit war crimes. When the United States agreed to jurisdiction by the World Court, it inserted a proviso that the United States was not bound by the UN Charter or the Charter of the Organization of American States [OAS].”

“Those are the foundations of modern international law. The United States insisted right away that it was not to be bound by either the UN Charter or the OAS Charter, so therefore it is legally entitled to commit war crimes, even to commit genocide. When the United States signed on to the genocide convention in 1988-after a thirty-seven-year battle in the U.S. Senate-it added a proviso saying that it did not apply to the United States. The tribunal at the International Court of Justice that assessed the Yugoslav charge against NATO in 1999 permitted the United States to separate itself and not be subject to the charge, because the Yugoslav charge included the word genocide and the United States-by law-is entitled to carry out genocide.”

“Their first publication is called The Crisis of Democracy (1975). This is elite liberal opinion that condemned what happened in the 1960s because these new movements brought about a crisis of democracy. These “special interests”-youth, elderly, women, workers, farmers, minorities-who were supposed to be passive and obedient had begun to enter the public arena with their concerns and their demands. The state, they said, cannot deal with these pressures, so these special interests must revert to their obedience and passivity so that we can have a real democracy.”

“The Trilateral Commission was concerned that universities and churches had failed in their responsibility to “indoctrinate the young. “ They had failed to indoctrinate the youth into passivity and obedience, and therefore the Trilateral Commission had to change that. In fact, universities changed considerably after that to exercise more effective control and indoctrination, imposing their business models on the curriculum and on faculty members. That’s the liberal end of the spectrum, which forms the cultural background to the neoliberal assault that picked up in the decades to come. Got to destroy the reservoirs of popular resistance-unions and political organizations. No interference was permitted in the rights of the very rich and the corporate sector to do what they wanted.”

“In short order, thanks to U.S.-imposed conflicts, Europe lost access to its three sources of energy: Iran, due to the sanctions regime put in place starting from 2006; Libya, due to NATO’s war in 2011 that disrupted the entire oil infrastructure and the legal basis for ownership of the oil; and Russia, due to the conflict over Ukraine in 2014. Europe lost access to natural gas and oil. European self-interest seemed to be totally forgotten.”

“The Marshall Plan, set in motion after World War II, was in large part a U.S. program to convert Europe from reliance upon coal to reliance upon oil. Coal was abundant in Europe, which had no oil. If they became oil based, the United States would have “veto power” (George Kennan’s phrase, referring specifically to Japan) over Europe because the United States would control their energy supplies. Ten percent of the Marshall Plan money–about $1.2 billion was shifted among U.S. banks as they converted Europe into an oil-based economy. This oil was not going to come from the United States, but from the Middle East; by 1950, 85 percent of Europe’s oil needs were supplied from the Middle East, which the United States controlled and profited from. The same process was imposed on Japan.”

“of course, Europe can be on its own, since it has a larger population than the United States, more wealth, and a more highly educated population. If Europe strikes out on its own, it will come as a radical reorientation of the world system.”

“The Chinese have established a thousand vocational schools in Southeast Asia and Africa to train students in the new Chinese technologies. These are efficient technologies that will integrate these countries and their development into the China-based BR system. The Chinese are sharing this technology in very poor parts of the world at prices that are reasonable for those economies. They have developed leading technologies in robotics, green energy, and telecommunications. It’s a very personal issue, incidentally. Where I live, which is partly rural, there is very poor internet service. If we were allowed to bring Huawei technology, we’d have 5G internet. We badly need solar panels, and the most technologically advanced and cheapest ones are made in China.”

“If we return to the question of Afghanistan, there are two approaches to deal with the immense crisis there. The U.S. approach is to blockade the country. The other approach, from the SCO, is to try to integrate Afghanistan into the massive Eurasian system. They say, The Taliban is the government. We have to deal with them. We will try to induce them to become more inclusive, maybe to moderate their behavior. Let’s hope to shift the economy from producing heroin for the West to mining its rich mineral resources, which we in China will be happy to make use of. We will move in that direction and provide immediate aid to end the humanitarian crisis.”

“The “rules-based order” is supported by the United States, which defines the system as, If you follow the United States then you are following the rules. The other system is the UN-based international order, which is grounded in the U Charter and is advocated for and often followed by the Chinese.”

“The east coast of China is ringed with U.S. bases with nuclear armed missiles aimed at China. What about that? Are the Chinese concerned about that? Would we be concerned if China had dozens of bases along the Pacific or Atlantic coasts, with nuclear missiles aimed at the United States? Would that bother us? Well, it wouldn’t bother us, because we’d destroy the world to make sure it didn’t happen. But this doesn’t even get mentioned. All that is mentioned is that they’re threatening our means of defense off the coast of China. There will be no letter to the editor about it, because it is taken for granted. We have a right to defend ourselves against China by aiming nuclear missiles at them.”

“Every strategic analyst knows that landbased missiles are more of a threat to the country that has them than to the adversary. The United States has about a thousand land-based missiles. They’re all targeted. Any adversary knows exactly where they are down to a couple of kilometers. If a threat develops, the adversary can destroy these missiles. The U.S. command knows this and calls them “use them or lose them” missiles. You either fire them off immediately or you lose them. This means that if there is tension anywhere in the world, you have the necessity to fire them. Using them means that you are destroyed by a retaliatory strike. They are now upgrading the land-based missile system. It would be a great advantage for American security if they were simply destroyed.”

“And you can’t touch the military, just like you can’t touch the fossil fuel companies or the banks. You know? These are institutional failures, which are extremely deep, and they simply must be overcome quickly, or we’re just finished. Can’t survive this dysfunctional society. Impossible.”

“it is important to point out that NATO’s war on Yugoslavia in 1999 might be the real turning point for Russia with Europe in thrall to the United States as it pursued an unprovoked aggression, an aggression covered up with incredible lying, which persists to the present.”

“Russia will likely drift further into China’s orbit, becoming even more of a declining kleptocratic raw materials producer than it is now. China is likely to persist in its programs of incorporating more and more of the world into the development-and-investment system based on the Belt and Road Initiative, the “maritime silk road” that passes through the UAE into the Middle East, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.”

“The most significant effect of this war, barely discussed, is that it sets back–maybe permanently–the meager hopes for escaping the total catastrophe of climate destruction, the end of organized human life (and innumerable other species we are wantonly destroying). During the war, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change released an interim report that showed the governments of the world nowhere near making any commitment to limit climate change to 1.5°C and meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. The U Secretary-General António Guterres said that this was a “red alert for our planet.” No such alarm was on the front pages of the newspapers. The glee in the executive offices of the fossil fuel companies, now free to accelerate total destruction, perhaps even exceeds the glee in the offices of military contractors.”

“From his first political book (American Power and the New Mandarins), Noam has understood U.S. power not in the minutiae of its reproduction but through a long-term perspective that seeks to understand its generative grammar, to steal from Noam’s linguistics. This habit of contextualization, of setting current events in terms of their historical dynamics and in terms of the sociology of power, is Noam’s greatest contribution to our understanding of our times.”

“Noam does not bang his podium or stamp his feet; he remains at the level of facts, facts being the sharpened sword in his intellectual arsenal. But these are not merely facts; they are facts that he has unearthed because he has been taught to read and to look for facts in places that people do not know exist, and because he is able to marshal these facts into a theory of the world that is otherwise little known because of the fog of manufactured consent.”

“Here, you get the sense of humor, the adherence to unpopular facts, and the stance for a moral position against injustice and for equality. That’s Noam in a nutshell.”

“[…] to read Noam on U.S. imperialism, to read Noam on the Middle East, to read Noam on Central America, to read Noam on East Timor, to read Noam on Yugoslavia. I learned my geography and ethics from Noam.”

“[…] in his day the world was a better place. Duplicity was a character flaw to be ashamed of. Sincerity did not bring shame.”

“Magic extends its hand towards you from behind the closed door, towards you, a tiny grain of sand in the workings of the Clock of Fate. Chaos extends its talons towards you, still uncertain if you will be its tool or an obstacle in its design. That which Chaos shows you in your dreams is this very uncertainty. Chaos is afraid of you, Child of Destiny. But it wants you to be the one who feels fear.””

““Indeed,” said Baron Vilibert, looking defiantly at the elf. “You have read some very interesting things into this ballad, honoured sir. An unnecessary war, you say? You’d like to avoid such a tragedy in the future, would you? Are we to understand that if the Nilfgaardians were to attack us again you would advise that we capitulate? Humbly accept the Nilfgaardian yoke?”

““Life is a priceless gift and should be protected,” the elf replied coldly. “Nothing justifies wide-scale slaughter and sacrifice of life, which is what the battles at Sodden were—both the battle lost and the battle won. Both of them cost the humans thousands of lives. And with them, you lost unimaginable potential—”

“Aleays the same discussion about war. If you’re mugged, give your wallet. If your country’s attacked, give not a square inch of territory and fight to the last citizen’s breath before you parley.”

““What do they want from us?” yelled Vera Loewenhaupt. “Why are they bent on persecuting us? Why don’t they leave us in peace, leave us to our lives and work? What do the Nilfgaardians want?”

““They want our blood!” howled Baron Vilibert.

““And our land!” someone cried from the crowd of peasants.

““And our women!” chimed in Sheldon Skaggs, with a ferocious glower.”

““Nilfgaard is ruled by Emperor Emhyr var Emreis, a tyrant and autocrat who enforces obedience with whip, noose and axe!” thundered Baron Vilibert. “What are you proposing, sir dwarf? How are we supposed to close ranks? With similar tyranny? And which king, which kingdom, in your opinion, should subordinate the others? In whose hands would you like to see the sceptre and knout?””

“The elf smiled derisively. “We’ve been combining our blood for generations, for centuries, your race and mine, and doing so quite successfully—fortunately or unfortunately, I don’t know. You started persecuting mixed relationships less than a quarter of a century ago and, incidentally, not very successfully. So show me a human now who hasn’t a dash of Seidhe Ichaer, the blood of the Elder Race.””

“Intolerance and superstition has always been the domain of the more stupid amongst the common folk and, I conjecture, will never be uprooted, for they are as eternal as stupidity itself. There, where mountains tower today, one day there will be seas; there where today seas surge, will one day be deserts. But stupidity will remain stupidity. Nicodemus de Boot, Meditations on Life, Happiness and Prosperity”

“[…] in his day the world was a better place. Duplicity was a character flaw to be ashamed of. Sincerity did not bring shame.”

““I just wanted to be honest. I don’t want to get mixed up in this conflict. I want to remain neutral.”

““It’s impossible!” yelled Yarpen. “It’s impossible to remain neutral, don’t you understand that? No, you don’t understand anything. Oh, get off my wagon, get on your horse, and get out of my sight, with your arrogant neutrality. You get on my nerves.””

“You’ve grasped the nature of the Scoia’taels quickly, you like the slogans. You know why you understand them so well? Because the Scoia’taels are brats too. They’re little snotheads who don’t understand that they’re being egged on, that someone’s taking advantage of their childish stupidity by feeding them slogans about freedom.””

““Because you multiply like rabbits.” The dwarf ground his teeth. “You’d do nothing but screw day in day out, without discrimination, with just anyone and anywhere. And it’s enough for your women to just sit on a man’s trousers and it makes their bellies swell… Why have you gone so red, crimson as a poppy? You wanted to know, didn’t you? So you’ve got the honest truth and faithful history of a world where he who shatters the skulls of others most efficiently and swells women’s bellies fastest reigns. And it’s just as hard to compete with you people in murdering as it is in screwing—”

““That water’s a stupid idea,” stated Regan Dahlberg, spitting out a bone. “Washing can only harm you when you’re sick. When you’re healthy, too, come to that. You remember old Schrader? His wife once told him to wash, and Schrader went and died soon afterwards.”

““Because a rabid dog bit him.”

““If he hadn’t washed, the dog wouldn’t have bitten him.””

“Because I, Yarpen Zigrin, coward, traitor and renegade, state that we should not kill each other. I state that we ought to live. Live in such a way that we don’t, later, have to ask anyone for forgiveness. The heroic Elirena… She had to ask. Forgive me, she begged, forgive me. To hell with that! It’s better to die than to live in the knowledge that you’ve done something that needs forgiveness.””

““During high tide,” interrupted Geralt, “when the incoming tide wave passes the Novigrad canals, there is no water—to use the word precisely—in the Delta at all. There is a liquid made up of excrement, soapsuds, oil and dead rats.”

““Unfortunately, unfortunately.” The Master Tutor grew sad. “Degradation of the environment… You may not believe it, but of more than two thousand species of fish living in this river only fifty years ago, not more than nine hundred remain. It is truly sad.”

“They both leaned against the railing and stared into the murky green depths. The tide must have already been coming in because the stench of the water was growing stronger. The first dead rats appeared.”

““That’s what a customs war looks like,” Linus Pitt commented on the chaos with a wise expression on his face. “Vizimir forced Novigrad to introduce the ius stapulae. Foltest of Temeria retaliated with a retortive, absolute ius stapulae in Vizima and Gors Velen. That was a great blow for Redanian merchants so Vizimir increased the tax on Temerian products. He is defending the Redanian economy. Temeria is flooded with cheap goods coming from Nilfgaardian manufactories. That’s why the customs officers are so keen. If too many Nilfgaardian goods were to cross the border, the Redanian economy would collapse. Redania has practically no manufactories and the craftsmen wouldn’t be able to cope with competition.”

““In a nutshell,” smiled Geralt, “Nilfgaard is slowly taking over with its goods and gold that which it couldn’t take with arms. Isn’t Temeria defending itself? Hasn’t Foltest blocked his southern borders?””

“Although the chancellor’s orders forbade students and tutors to drink and play before dusk, drinking and playing took place around the clock in Oxenfurt, for it is well known that if there is anything that makes men thirstier than the acquisition of knowledge it is the full or partial prohibition of drinking.”

“Grey and yellow linnets warbled amongst the shrubs in the park adjacent to the students’ dormitories, while an orangutan sat in the poplar having, no doubt, escaped from the zoological gardens in the Department of Natural History.”

“Shani smiled even more beautifully and Dandelion was once more filled with the desire to finally compose a ballad about girls like her—not too pretty but nonetheless beautiful, girls of whom one dreams at night when those of classical beauty are forgotten after five minutes.”

“A popular saying at King Vizimir’s court held that if Dijkstra states it is noon yet darkness reigns all around, it is time to start worrying about the fate of the sun.”

““Send a penal expedition to smother the free elves of Dol Blathanna,” added Demavend, frowning. “March an interventionary force into Mahakam. Allow Ervyll of Verden a chance, at last, to get at the dryads in Brokilon. Yes, a blood bath! And any survivors—to the reservations!””

“But there is a way around that, too, gentlemen. What if it were Nilfgaard who was the aggressor? At Dol Angra for example? Against Aedirn and Lyria? We could arrange that somehow… could stage some tiny provocation… A border incident caused by them? An attack on a border fort, let us say? We will, of course, be prepared—we will react decisively and forcefully, with everybody’s full acceptance,”

““Calm down.” Nenneke looked at her coldly and, all of a sudden, somehow oddly without respect. “I said they were natural and absolutely safe. Forgive me, dear, but in this respect I am a greater authority than you. I know it is exceedingly difficult for you to accept someone else’s authority but in this case I am forced to inflict it on you. And let there be no more talk about it.””

““There are also those according to whom magic is a science. In order to master it, talent and innate ability alone are not enough. Years of keen study and arduous work are essential; endurance and self-discipline are necessary. Magic acquired like this is knowledge, learning, the limits of which are constantly stretched by enlightened and vigorous minds, by experience, experiments and practice. Magic acquired in such a way is progress. It is the plough, the loom, the watermill, the smelting furnace, the winch and the pulley. It is progress, evolution, change. It is constant movement. Upwards. Towards improvement. Towards the stars. The fact that following the Conjunction of the Spheres we discovered magic will, one day, allow us to reach the stars.”

“Magic extends its hand towards you from behind the closed door, towards you, a tiny grain of sand in the workings of the Clock of Fate. Chaos extends its talons towards you, still uncertain if you will be its tool or an obstacle in its design. That which Chaos shows you in your dreams is this very uncertainty. Chaos is afraid of you, Child of Destiny. But it wants you to be the one who feels fear.””

““Lady Yennefer? How does it work with this drawing of the force? If I gather force into myself then there might not be enough left down below. Is it right to do that? Mother Nenneke taught us that we mustn’t take anything just like that, for the fun of it. Even the cherry has to be left on its tree for the birds, so that it can simply fall.”

“Yennefer put her arm around Ciri, kissed her gently on the hair at her temple.

““I wish,” she muttered, “others could hear what you said. Vilgefortz, Francesca, Terranova… Those who believe they have exclusive right to the force and can use it unreservedly.”

“OMAR: How long this gonna go on?

“OJORE: ’Til they break you. Or ’til they don’t. Three days. Three weeks. You don’t break, it go on like this for a long time. An’ if you don’t think you can take it, then don’t start puttin’ yerself through this hell. Just tell ’em what they wanna know from the door.”

“The worst is the psychological, the humiliation, sleep deprivation, sensory disorientation, extreme light or dark, extreme cold or heat and the long weeks and months of solitary. If you don’t have a strong sense of purpose you don’t survive. They want to defeat you mentally. An’ I seen a lot of men defeated.”

“If you are poor and Black, however, you are conditioned for prison in dysfunctional and overcrowded schools where in the morning you are greeted with metal detectors and police and where in the yard there are fights. You live in dangerous, rundown housing projects, whose smell and decay are replicated in moldering prisons. You navigate the streets in deindustrialized wastelands where despair is rampant and the exit doors of drugs, alcohol, crime, and violence are ubiquitous. You are hauled in front of courts to face lists of charges invented by the police, who oversee mini reigns of terror in your neighborhood, to force you to plea out. Few of the incarcerated ever get a jury trial. The justice system does not work for us. Prison was not a huge culture shock for me. And it was not a huge culture shock for most of the brothers I did time with. In America they prepare you for your future.”

“As the United States devolves into a system where the ruling elites have total power, it behooves those on the outside to look closely at what the state has done to those of us in the inside.”

“Prison is a lot like the outside world. There is a stratum of people you try to avoid. There are the majority who spend most of their free time slack-jawed in front of a television set, and then there are those who have recovered their integrity and even, to an extent, their moral autonomy. They have risen above prison to become better people. Yet, even they can be arbitrarily disappeared into solitary confinement or shipped to another prison by the administration. Everyone in prison is disposable.”

“You so fucked up when you start you don’t care about nothin’. That’s the energy … hit a motherfucker over the head with a stick! Pause. But when you start to care about shit, then you fucked.”

“I don’t know why niggas even try to steal. We ain’t no good at it. Grab a box of Pampers and we head straight to jail. Now white people, they the Olympians of stealing. Can’t compete with white folks when it comes to takin’ shit. They wrote the book. Stole the whole damn country.”

“I ain’t stop throwing them dice till I turn every last one of they pockets to rabbit ears! Boy I lit their ass up like downtown Atlanta!”

“OMAR (STANDING UP): Ma, I had to take a plea.

“CHIMENE: You ain’t going to trial?

“OMAR: They stacked too many charges, Ma. If I go to trial I get thirty. They willin’ to cut it to seventeen if I cop.”

“OJORE: I expropriated monies in Newark from a capitalist bank … got into a gunfight with the political police.

“OMAR: Political police?

“OJORE: Yeah, all police is political. They serve the system don’t they? An’ what’s that system? Capitalism.

“OMAR: That’s some heavy shit, Ojore …

“OJORE: Look son, our bodies ain’t worth nothin’ to the man on the streets. Once we locked in a cage we worth $50,000 a year to all dem prison contractors, guards, food service companies, phone companies, laundry services, medical companies an’ prison construction companies. An’ in here we can’t create no problems. People say da system don’t work. That’s ’cause they don’t get it. The system works jus’ the way it designed to work.”

“CHIMENE: Quan and Zaire takin’ this awful hard. I want you to talk to ‘em. He didn’t kill that boy, Jimmy.

“JIMMY: Since when that matter?

“CHIMENE: If he went to trial the truth come out.

“JIMMY: That never happen, Chimene. The system see to that. The ones go to trial get the longest sentences jus’ to remind everyone else they better do jus’ what the man tells ’em to do.”

“SOCIAL WORKER: Your request for a funeral visit has been approved. Sign here. This is the $800 charge to your account for the officers’ overtime and the vehicle fee.

“OMAR signs the form.

“SOCIAL WORKER: This is the breakdown of the costs. You leave in ten minutes. Get dressed. Don’t make any calls or your trip gets terminated. The administration doesn’t want you to go so don’t do anything stupid, they’ll bring you back, still charge you and toss you in the hole for a week.”

“Bitches do strange things for change. Feel me? Monsters walk the halls at night, stand outside a cell and start yellin’, sayin’ the woman inside smokin’ just so they can enter the cells. The jailhouse relationships intense! Girls on girls. They be drainin’ the toilet pipes to talk all night to their man downstairs. You should hear that chatter. The freaks really come out in the dark. This one girl so loud an’ she never stops talkin’ … day and night. She be, ‘Hey, blah blah blah.’ She talkin’ to different men, which you definitely don’t do. She a ho, on the bowl. Bowl phone love. Crazy.”

“MCU—Management Control Unit. It was created in Scarborough State Prison in 1975 for prisoners who had not broken prison rules, but who were, because of their political beliefs, deemed to be a threat by prison administrators. It was first used to quarantine members of the Black Panthers and the Black Liberation Army. Prisoners in the MCU spend up to twenty-three hours a day in their cells, are isolated, under constant surveillance, and have their correspondence and reading material heavily censored. It is, in essence, a prison within the prison.”

“Carrying out the basic operations of spinning demands, almost without exception, an open, processable material. However, the raw material enters the spinning mill in highly pressed form (bale) for optimum transport and storage. Thus, opening must precede the other basic operations.”

“To eliminate the hooks, leading hooks must be presented to the comber and trailing hooks to the ring spinning machine. As Fig. 24 and Fig. 25 show, reversal of the hook occurs at each processing stage between the card and these machines. Accordingly, a definite number of machine passages are required in intervening stages. Between the card and the comber, there must be an even number of passages, and there must be an odd number between the card and the ring spinning machine. In rotor spinning, the disposition of the hooks is of little significance.”

“This discussion will be confined to mechanical cleaning, in which usually only particles on the surface of the flocks can be removed.

“The following procedures can be used:”

• striking = falling out;
• beating = ejecting;
• scraping = separation;
• suction = separation;
• combing = extracting;
• use of centrifugal force = ejecting.

“Cotton contains very little dust before ginning, but working of the material on the machines causes dust. Even where dust is removed, new dust is being created through shattering of impurities and smashing and rubbing of fibers. Formerly, dust was of no great significance for the spinner, but now it poses a problem. ”

“In addition, a distinction must also be made between controlled and uncontrolled blending. In uncontrolled blending, the components are brought together at random and without a mixing system (e.g. often in bale mixing). In controlled blending, the individual components are supplied to the machines in an ordered fashion and precisely metered (e.g. in weighing-hopper feeders). The various blending processes often differ widely from one another with respect to capital cost, labor-intensiveness, precision of blending, liability to error, and simplicity. Each method has advantages and disadvantages. It is therefore not possible to put forward patent recipes for the use of one or another blending principle.”

“Fig 56. Twist directions in spun and twisted yarnsTwist is produced with the aid of spindles, rotors, rollers, and so on. Since two twist directions, left and right, are always possible, the fiber windings can also have two directions. The direction of the twist is indicated as Z- or S-twist depending on the transverse orientation of the fibers, i.e. the orientation relative to the diagonals of the letters Z and S (Fig. 56). Z-twist is normally used in short staple spinning, though not to the exclusion of S-twist.”

“The volume of rejects if anything goes wrong at any production unit in the mill is equally high. More than ever the following slogan is valid:

“FAULTS SHOULD BE AVOIDED, NOT CORRECTED

“Meeting this requirement calls not only for competent quality management, but also for an overall control, monitoring and information system with control devices at all relevant points of the material through-flow, either individual or group-wise. ”

“The importance of carding is even greater where new spinning systems are concerned. The considerable influence of the card on yarn quality arises from the very complex series of events in the process itself, and also from the pressure to adopt an extremely high production rate on economic grounds. This high production rate causes problems, since there is a close relationship between increases in production and reductions in quality:”

• the higher the performance, the more sensitive the carding operation becomes
• and the greater the danger of a negative influence on quality.

“[…]

“While in the case of an easy-to-clean cotton, for example, the blowroom line might assume most of the working load required, for hard-to-clean cotton this might be done by the card.

“[…]

“Elimination of foreign matter occurs mainly but not exclusively in the region of the licker-in. Only a small part of the contaminants is carried along with the flat strippings, or falls out at other positions. The degree of cleaning achieved by the modern card is very high, in the range of 80 − 95 %. Thus, the overall degree of cleaning achieved by the blowroom and the carding room together is as high as 95 − 99 %. But carded sliver still contains 0.05 − 0.3 % of foreign matter.

“[…]

“Both are available on the card to a considerable degree, i.e. the card is a good dust removing machine.”

“The comber is used in the production of medium, mediumfine and fine yarns, and enables a positive influence to be exerted primarily on the yarn characteristics of:”

• evenness;
• strength;
• cleanliness;

“and on the fabric characteristics of:”

• smoothness;
• visual appearance; and
• handle.

“It is also employed to improve working behavior in downstream processing, most noticeably in knitting. In addition, yarn made from combed cotton needs less twist than a carded yarn.”

“The drawframe produces a sliver that already exhibits all the characteristics required for the creation of a yarn, namely an ordered, clean strand of fibers laying parallel to one another. It is a fair question to ask why this sliver is not used as infeed material for the ring spinning machine, instead of being processed in an expensive manner to create a roving as feed material for spinning. The roving machine itself is complicated, liable to faults, causes defects, adds to production costs and delivers a product that is sensitive in both winding and unwinding. Use of the machine is forced upon the spinner as a necessary evil for two principal reasons.

“The first reason is related to the required draft. Sliver is a thick, untwisted strand that tends to be hairy and to create fly. The draft needed to convert this to a yarn is in the region of 300 − 500. The drafting arrangements of ring spinning machines, in their current forms, are not capable of processing this strand in a single drafting operation to create a yarn of short-staple fibers that meets all the normal
demands on such yarns. The fine, twisted roving is significantly better suited to this purpose.

“The second reason is that drawframe cans represent the worst conceivable mode of transport and presentation of feed material to the ring spinning frame. In spite of this, considerable effort has been expended over decades to eliminate the roving frame.

“[…]

“The chief task of the roving frame is the attenuation of the sliver. Since the resulting fine strand has scarcely any coherence, protective twist must be inserted in order to hold it together. The third task cannot be directly attributed to spinning: it lies in winding the roving into a package that can be transported, stored and donned on the ring spinning machine. It is the winding operation above all that makes the roving frame a relatively complex and problem-plagued machine. This winding operation requires, in addition to spindle and flyer, a cone drive (or variable transmission), a differential
gear and a package build motion.”

“The degree of automation has also been increased significantly. As this process of evolution is not yet complete, the ring spinning machine will continue to be the most widely used spinning process in short staple spinning, since it has considerable advantages over the new spinning processes:”

• it can be used universally, i.e. any material and any yarn
• count can be spun on it;
• it produces yarn with optimum properties (especially as regards structure and tenacity);
• it is uncomplicated and easy to control;
• know-how for handling the machine is old, well established and accessible to everyone;
• it is flexible with regard to volume (blend and batch sizes).

“[…]

“Fig. 2–Cost Structure in a typical ring-spinning millHowever, the ring spinning machine can only hold its own position in the long run if the ring spinning process can be automated further and spinning costs substantially reduced, since this machine is a major cost factor in a spinning mill, as the graph produced by Rieter shows (Fig. 2).”

“Automation replaces human activity with processes performed by machines, apparatus or electronics. In terms of cost accounting this substitutes capital costs for labor costs. Automation is therefore worthwhile wherever”

• lots of manual work has to be done;
• manual work is monotonous or ergonomically unsuitable;
• personnel are scarce;
• the human error factor has to be eliminated.

“Since ring spinning accounts for some 50 % of labor costs in a spinning mill, this department is an obvious candidate for automation. However, if we look at the machine itself, it soon becomes obvious that automation is not easy to achieve, since it involves a huge number of tiny production components in a small space with poor accessibility. Even if one or other of these could be automated, it is often uneconomical. Certain operations will therefore have to continue to be performed manually in future.”

“During automatic doffing with old doffing systems the process is interrupted once or twice for tours of inspection. Personnel need to check that the process is proceeding correctly, and especially to ensure that tubes have been fitted everywhere and are not jammed. These tours of inspection are no longer necessary on good modern doffing systems, since each spinning position is continuously monitored during doffing, and collisions between tubes and spindles or cops are therefore impossible. After doffing is completed, the doffer returns to its idle position below the spindles. At the same time the ring rail rises to the piecing position, the balloon checking rings move upward and the yarn guide flaps tilt downward. The machine starts. The conveyor belt moves the doffed cops toward the end of the machine, where they are discharged into transport trolleys or individually transferred directly to the winder. Duration of automatic doffing can be as short as 2 minutes.”

“Despite the high degree of perfection of ring spinning, the ring spinning process has not yet achieved ideal performance. The schematic view of the yarn formation zone on the left in Fig. 72 illustrates the problem. The drafting system of a conventional ring spinning machine unfortunately delivers the fibers over a width W which is considerably larger than width WS of the adjacent spinning triangle (see also Fig. 84). This means that some edge fibers are lost or attached in a disorderly configuration to the yarn core already twisted. In other words, today’s ring yarns have a structure that is not nearly as ideal as might be supposed.”

“Fig. 82–Spinning geometry angles and dimensions”

Captions for Fig. 82:
D Drafting system
Z Cylinder support
E Spinning path
F Yarn guide eyelet
B Balloon checking ring
R Ring rail
S Spindle
α Angle of drafting system relative to horizontal
β Angle of drafting system relative to spinning path axis
γ Angle of the thread on the spinning path relative to the vertical
δ Angle of the leg of the thread balloon relative to the spindle axis
lB Balloon height (variable)
lG Distance between drafting system and thread guide eyelet (variable)
lF Distance between thread guide eyelet and top of spindle or tube
(variable)
lS Spindle height
lK Tube height
lH Traverse height of the ring rail (winding height)
lR Distance between ring and balloon checking ring (variable)
dH Outside diameter of the tube at the top
V Overhang of the top front roller relative to the bottom roller

“Yarn formation takes place in the spinning triangle. If the yarn is to have high strength, high elongation and regularity combined with low neppiness and hairiness, the fibers in the yarn must be:”

• well oriented
• evenly distributed in length and cross-section
• wound spirally around the axis, and
• all fibers must be tied in under tension.

“Of all the spinning systems available or known, these requirements are best satisfied by ring spinning, especially with regard to the last, very important item. However, this holds true only in conjunction with good spinning geometry, i.e. with an optimal spinning triangle. If it is too short, core fibers (F) will be tied in without tension. They can then absorb tensile forces in the axial direction only to a limited extent, or only after thefibers in the outer layer (f) have been broken. Since the distribution of tension forces in the final yarn is similarly uneven to that in the spinning triangle, the yarn shows the same effect. When stress is applied to the yarn, the edge fibers undergo so much elongation from the very beginning that the forces acting on them either cause the fibers to break, or in some cases to slide apart before the loading forces can act on the neighboring fibers inside the yarn”

“Rotor spinning has been characterized from the outset by incomparably higher production potential than ring spinning. This potential has been steadily increased by the continuous rise in rotor and winding speeds. Rotor-spun yarns have therefore always been successful where they could be manufactured more cheaply than ring-spun yarns and proved suitable for the range of application in question. Rotor spinning combines two process stages – spinning and winding – in a single machine.

“[…]

“Last but not least, the rotor spinning system has benefited from the fact that operator functions on the rotor spinning machine were much easier to automate than those on the ring spinning machine. Automation of all operator functions is now standard on high-performance rotor spinning machines, automated can and package transport is already an essential feature in many textile mills.”

“Rotor spinning was the first process that was capable of producing a cross-wound package ready for processing or sale in a single process stage from a draw frame sliver. Roving frames and winders could be dispensed with; there was thus a significant incentive from the very outset to utilize this process, despite the higher cost of a rotor spinning position compared with a ring spinning position.

“[…]

“The rotor spinning machine is unlike any other machine in the short staple spinning mill in the range of tasks it has to perform, namely all the basic operations:”

• Sliver feed: A card or draw frame sliver is fed through a sliver guide via a feed roller and feed table to a rapidly rotating opening roller.
• Sliver opening: The rotating teeth of the opening roller comb out the individual fibers from the sliver clamped between feed table and feed roller. After leaving the rotating opening roller, the fibers are fed to the fiber channel.
• Fiber transport to the rotor: Centrifugal forces and a vacuum in the rotor housing cause the fibers to disengage at a certain point from the opening roller and to move via the fiber channel to the inside wall of the rotor.
• Fiber collection in the rotor groove: The centrifugal forces in the rapidly rotating rotor cause the fibers
• to move from the conical rotor wall toward the rotor groove and be collected there to form a fiber ring.
• Yarn formation: When a spun yarn end emerges from the draw-off nozzle into the rotor groove, it receives twist from the rotation of the rotor outside the nozzle, which then continues in the yarn into the interior of the rotor. The yarn end rotates around its axis and continuously twists-in the fibers deposited in the rotor groove, assisted by the nozzle, which acts as a twist retaining element.
• Yarn take-off, winding: The yarn formed in the rotor is continuously taken off by the delivery shaft and the pressure roller through the nozzle and the draw-off tube and wound onto a cross-wound package. Between takeoff and package, several sensors control yarn movement as well as the quality of the yarn and initiate yarn clearing if any pre-selected values are exceeded.

“Cotton dust (finishing abrasion in the case of man-made fibers) is also extracted through this opening. Fine dust therefore does not accumulate in the rotor groove, and yarn characteristics and yarn values remain stable.

“[…]

“The rotors, acting as fiber collecting and at the same time twist inserting elements, are the most important and also the most complex components in yarn formation (Fig. 16). As already mentioned, in addition to yarn formation in the rotor groove, the fibers fed in are also separated from the transport air in the rotor, this air being dispersed either over the rotor wall (systems with indirect rotor bearing) or through holes in the base of the rotor (systems with direct rotor bearing).”

“The fact that rotor-spun yarns contain significantly fewer yarn defects than ring-spun yarns has made a major contribution to the success of the rotor spinning system. A comparison of Uster Statistics shows that the numbers of thick places, thin places and neps are significantly below the level of ring-spun yarns, even at delivery speeds that are up to 10 times higher. And the finer the yarn counts, the greater the differences.

“[…]

“This was also a major reason why rotor-spun yarns could for many years be processed further without cleaning. However, today‘s quality standards no longer permit this; quality requirements for rotor-spun yarns have increased considerably. For example, manufacturers of branded denim products (jeans, shirts, etc.) stipulate precise specifications for yarn and fabric quality which are so strictly formulated that only quality-tested yarns can be considered for processing.”

“Automation in rotor spinning in particular is very far advanced – at least in comparison to other spinning processes – not only in respect of machine automation as such (i.e. rotor cleaning, repairing ends down, transporting empty tubes, package change), but also as regards process-linking automation of material transport from the card through the draw frame(s) to the rotor spinning machine up to fully automated package removal or palletizing at the machine itself. Systems for automated material transport between card and draw frame and between the individual draw frame passages will not be dealt with here. You will find details of this in the relevant publications in this series of textbooks.

“[…]

“Systems for automating the operation of rotor spinning machines have been integral parts of high-performance rotor spinning machines for some years. Automated systems have been developed for all manual operations in several stages:”

• automatic gripping and introduction of the sliver end from a new can into the spinning box (implemented only in certain cases to date);
• automatic cleaning of rotor, draw-off nozzle and draw-off tube after ends down, quality stops or package changes;
• automatic piecing (start-up) after ends down, quality stops or package changes;
• automatic removal of full packages upon reaching the preset yarn length, and replacement with empty tubes;
• automatic feeding of empty tubes to the operating robot for package change;
• programmable batch phase-out/batch change;
• automatic deposit of removed packages at the end of the machine;
• automatic or semi-automatic filter cleaning

“After an end down or package change the interrupted spinning process at the spinning position in question has to be re-started. In terms of spinning technology this entails overlapping a thread end that has been fed back with the fiber ring in the rotor groove. The quality of such a piecing is just as important as the quality of the yarn itself, since both determine its market value to a great extent. The quality of a piecing is defined essentially by:”

• the tenacity of the piecing expressed as a percentage of yarn tenacity;
• the variation in tenacity between the piecings (CV% of piecing tenacity);
• the thickness of the piecing (diameter or mass);
• the length of the piecing;
• the repeat accuracy of the piecing.

“The reason for this is that sliver intake speed is very low at high drafts, and the individual fibers therefore spend longer in the opening roller zone before being
released from the fiber bundle that has been fed in. Fiber neps are opened more thoroughly, while dust and trash are more effectively released and removed from the fibers.

“[…]

“In contrast to ring spinning, twisting during rotor spinning takes place from the inside outwards. The rotating, brush-like open yarn end first catches fibers in the core and then with further rotation gradually takes up fibers toward the periphery. In the interior, where the fibers cannot avoid the twist, the fibers become more compact. On the other hand, toward the exterior, the compactness falls off to an increasing degree, since here the fibers are able partially to avoid being twisted in. In addition to the fiber-specific properties (fiber strength, elongation, length, friction, etc.), yarn tenacity depends primarily on how often the yarn has been rotated around its axis.”

“Raw materials behave differently not only as regards their readiness to absorb moisture, their running properties are also affected by humidity levels in the spinning mill. Since the raw material spends several days in the spinning mill on its way through the spinning process, the moisture content of the fibers depends on the moisture content of the ambient air.

“[…]

“If relative humidity is too low, this usually becomes apparent with man-made fibers in electrostatic charging and a consequent increase in ends down. When cotton is being processed, fiber damage, fiber fly and deposits in the spinning box and winding zones occur.

“If relative humidity is too high, this results in lapping on cylinders and opening rollers with all fibers. The spin finish on man-made fibers tends to leave deposits on thread guide elements and in the fiber guide channel, thus obstructing fiber transport to the rotor. This then results in an increase in the number of neps and thick places.”

“In open-end spinning, this flow of fibers is interrupted, the fiber strand being opened into individual fibers at a predetermined position, usually by means of an opening roller, followed by airborne fiber transport. This interruption or break in the fiber flow is physically achieved by increasing fiber speed locally to very high levels (up to 100 m/s), so that – according to the equation of continuity – the number of fibers in the cross-section drops to such low values that the fibers lose contact with each other. This enables twist to be imparted merely by rotation of the yarn end, which in turn leads to a significantly higher potential rotation speed. However, the break in fiber flow also leads directly to one of the most important and difficult tasks in open-end spinning, namely to control the configuration of the individual fibers, airborne at high speed, and the need to re-collect these fibers without losing their elongated configuration, which is essential to the formation of a new fiber strand. This very tricky problem of open-end spinning can be dealt with schematically as described below.

“[…]

“Several research teams, including some in the former Soviet Union, have investigated the possibilities of forming fiber strands with the aid of electrostatic fields. However, only the process proposed by the Battelle Institute has had a degree of success. The Electrospin Corporation (USA) demonstrated an experimental spinning machine based on this principle at the 1971 ITMA in Paris.”

Process differences in strength and price

“This results in specific fields of application for the different processes. On the basis of simplicity, yarn quality and universality, ring spinning, together with the increasingly important compact spinning process, will remain the dominant spinning process in the long term. Rotor spinning will certainly continue to display its strengths in medium to coarse yarn counts, and maintain its market share. Air-jet spinning will win specific application fields in the medium count range at the partial expense of ring spinning and rotor spinning.”

“The story of „man-made fibres“ goes far back into the 17th century and in this volume is also briefly revisited. The original drive for the development of man-made fibres was to replace cotton and thus the complicated process from the fibre to the yarn. An artificial endless thread, initially following the example of silk, was the dream.

“[…]

“In 2013, around 24 million tons of cotton were still processed – far more than half the processed staple fibres of approx. 44 million tons. Cotton is therefore still a very important raw material and this not only for the textile industry but also for the social and industrial development of numerous countries.”

“The polymer is fed to the spinning nozzle as a hot molten material. The extruded filaments are cooled by an air stream in the cooling duct so that they can be coiled in carts without sticking together as a bundle […]”

“Natural fibres are mostly more or less strongly crimped or looped. Usually, man-made fibres must also be crimped. The crimp can be permanent or temporary, i.e. set, partially set, or onset. Set crimp is selected in order to achieve certain characteristics in the end product, such as:”

• a full, bulked, soft feel, and
• high insulating capacity.

“A high lateral strength can be an advantage or a disadvantage depending upon the field of use (see Fig. 23). In general, high lateral strength gives good durability to the finished articles; this is very important in technical applications, in working clothes and uniform fabrics and also in floor coverings. However, the pilling tendency also increases so that in the civilian clothing sector only limited use is made of fibres with high lateral strength. This applies especially in relation to knitted goods, where the individual fibres are not so strongly anchored; for example, polyester fibre must be deliberately made brittle for use in knitted products to avoid pilling (anti-pilling types).”

“Depending upon their field of use, fibres with a higher or lower moisture take-up will be required, e.g. high – hand towels, underclothing; low − bathing costumes.

“In relation to clothing, however, it is not only the moisture take-up that is important but also the ability to transport moisture and wettability. Both properties have a strong influence on wearability. They depend upon fibre surface area and the capillary effect on the fabric. Thus, although PES has a low moisture take-up, good moisture transport can be reached by means of appropriate apparel design (Table 3)”

“Polyamide and polyester fibres are relatively difficult to ignite. Nevertheless, they have the serious disadvantage that the fibre substance melts and drips; in some circumstances, the result of this behavior can be far more serious for humans and the environment than in the case of cellulose. Of all normal fibres, wool has the most favorable burning characteristics. It is fairly difficult to ignite, and, after burning, it leaves a brittle, rapidly cooling residue that does not
adhere to adjoining surfaces.”

“Charge accumulations on the fibres and on the machines often have different signs. The machine components therefore tend to attract individual fibres or even whole strands. This leads to formation of laps, catching of fibres, blockages, etc., especially on cylinders, in clothings and in guide ducts. Falling apart of strands is caused by all fibres in the strand having the same charge and therefore tending to repel each other. In minor cases, this causes spreading out of the edge fibres; in extreme cases, the strand disintegrates.”

“In general man-made fibre material is free from impurities; however, depending on the supplier or process it is possible that fibre packages, melted together fibres can occur. These need to be removed and this can be done at the licker-in with the mote knife. In the Rieter C 70 card, the mote knife can be adjusted during production. Fig. 32 shows the knife almost closed as it would be recommended for man-made fibres (left) in comparison to a very open knife position for a high cleaning efficiency when running 100 % cotton.”

“When spinning sliver-blended polyester/cotton blends with ring spinning machines, a total of three drawing passages including the blending draw frame is needed to fulfill the highest quality standards. In contrast, when spinning the same material by rotor spinning technology two drawing passages are enough. In rotor spinning the fed sliver is completely opened to single fibres which ensure fibre/fibre mixing and additionally a lower number of draw frame passages is required.”

Examples for different numbers of drawframe passages

“Like the roller settings in the draw frame, the roller settings at the roving frame have to be adjusted according to the fibre length. Settings which are too narrow cause fibre damage, while settings which are too wide increase the number of floating fibres and result in higher unevenness of the roving. The break draft distance is an important parameter for the roving quality. The optimum setting is not only influenced by the fibre length but also by the drafting resistance of the fibre material. The higher the drafting resistance the higher the break draft roller setting has to be used.”

“The traveler speed is the most important limiting factor regarding production speeds on a ring spinning machine. In comparison to spinning cotton, the maximum traveler speed for spinning man-made fibres or blends has to be reduced. Higher traveler speeds increase the risk of thermal damage of the fibres which is described in chapter 5.9.2.. Thus, manufacturers of man-made fibres usually suggest maximum traveler speeds of 28 to 30 m/s. When processing fibres with a low melting point such as polypropylene or low-pill fibre types, a further decrease of the maximum traveler speeds well below 28 m/s is necessary. When spinning blends, the risk of thermal damage of the fibres can be ignored”

“Problems in the ring spinning process with man-made
fibres can be caused by:”

• the fibres
• the machine
• the roving
• the air conditioning.

“Problems caused by the fibres can arise from:”

• poor spin finish (high fibre/fibre adherence, smearing)
• low plasticizing point (this is the main cause and it leads rapidly to thermal damage).

“The maximum possible rotor speed that can be used for a given man-made fibre material is influenced by the material itself (e.g. polyester, viscose, etc.), by the quality of the fibres and by the spin finish (e.g. high performance types, normal types, etc.). In general, blends with cotton can be spun faster than pure man-made fibres and viscose can be spun faster than polyester or polyacryl. For example, it is possible to spin high quality viscose with rotor speeds up to 130 000 rpm [13].

“The maximum speed that can be achieved has to be determined by spinning trials. It has to be kept in mind that the higher the rotor speed and the smaller the rotor diameter are, the higher the number of wrapper fibres will be and the harsher the feel of the finished fabrics will become.”

“Steaming is treatment with water vapor at temperatures below 100 °C. Steaming serves to reduce twist liveliness of both singles and plied yarns.

“Stabilization is treatment with steam at temperatures above 100 °C. Stabilization is carried out to reduce shrinkage of staple-fibre yarns for package and warpbeam dyeing.”

“During his life, the witcher had met thieves who looked like town councilors, councilors who looked like beggars, harlots who looked like princesses, princesses who looked like calving cows and kings who looked like thieves.”

“The witcher halted at a distance of ten paces. His sword, slowly drawn from its black enameled sheath, glistened and glowed above his head

““It’s silver,” he said. “This blade is silver.”

“The pale little face did not flinch; the anthracite eyes did not change expression.

““You’re so like a rusalka,” the witcher continued calmly, “that you could deceive anyone. All the more as you’re a rare bird, black-haired one. But horses are never mistaken. They recognize creatures like you instinctively and perfectly. What are you? I think you’re a moola, or an alpor. An ordinary vampire couldn’t come out in the sun.”

“The corners of the pale lips quivered and turned up a little.”

“Geralt leapt to the left, executing a short moulinet with his sword to confuse the bruxa gliding toward him—white and black, windblown, terrible. He’d underestimated her. She screamed. He didn’t make the Sign in time, flew backward until he thumped against the wall. The pain in his spine shot all the way to the tips of his fingers, paralyzed his shoulders, cut him down at the legs. He fell to his knees. The bruxa, wailing melodiously, jumped toward him.”

“Slowly, as if a caress, the bruxa moved her tiny hands along the stake, stretched her arms out to their full length, grasped the pole hard and pulled on it again. Over a meter of bloodied wood already protruded from her back. Her eyes were wide open, her head flung back. Her sighs became more frequent and rhythmic, turning into a ruckling wheeze.”

“During his life, the witcher had met thieves who looked like town councilors, councilors who looked like beggars, harlots who looked like princesses, princesses who looked like calving cows and kings who looked like thieves.”

““[…] that’s the way of the world. One sees all sorts of things when one travels. Two peasants kill each other over a field which, the following day, will be trampled flat by two counts and their retinues trying to kill each other off.”

““Evil is evil, Stregobor,” said the witcher seriously as he got up. “Lesser, greater, middling, it’s all the same. Proportions are negotiated, boundaries blurred. I’m not a pious hermit. I haven’t done only good in my life. But if I’m to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.”

““A bit more tolerance, if you please,” said Geralt calmly, “as I see your mother must have wandered off through the forest alone often enough to give you good reason to wonder where you come from yourself.””

“Last winter Prince Hrobarik, not being so gracious, tried to hire me to find a beauty who, sick of his vulgar advances, had fled the ball, losing a slipper. It was difficult to convince him that he needed a huntsman, and not a witcher.””

““Hochebuz,” said Calanthe, looking at Geralt, “my first battle. Although I fear rousing the indignation and contempt of such a proud witcher, I confess that we were fighting for money. Our enemy was burning villages which paid us levies and we, greedy for our tributes, challenged them on the field. A trivial reason, a trivial battle, a trivial three thousand corpses pecked to pieces by the crows. And look—instead of being ashamed I’m proud as a peacock that songs are sung about me. Even when sung to such awful music.””

“Tell me, if the implication that your aid was not disinterested does not offend another of your knightly vows, how I can express my gratitude.””

“Remember Zivelena, who became the Queen of Metinna with the help of the gnome Rumplestelt, and in return promised him her firstborn? Zivelena didn’t keep her promise when Rumplestelt came for his reward and, by using spells, she forced him to run away. Not long after that, both she and the child died of the plague. You do not dice with Destiny with impunity!””

“You witchers, after all, deprive yourselves of work, slowly but surely. The better and the more conscientiously you work, the less work there is for you. After all, your goal is a world without monsters, a world which is peaceful and safe. A world where witchers are unnecessary. A paradox, isn’t it?””

““He’s simply taking revenge for all the wrong that man has done the elves.” The witcher smiled wryly. “It’s all the same to him who he takes his revenge on. Don’t be deluded by his noble bearing and elaborate speech, Dandelion. He’s no different than the black-eyes who knocked us down. He has to unload his powerless hatred on somebody.””

““You see, Geralt, this bright sun of ours is still shining, but not quite the way it used to. Read the great books if you like. But if you don’t want to waste time on it, maybe you’ll be happy with the explanation that the crystal roof acts like a filter. It eliminates the lethal rays which are increasingly found in sunlight. That’s why plants which you can’t see growing wild anywhere in the world grow here.”

““I understand.” The witcher nodded. “And us, Nenneke? What about us? The sun shines on us, too. Shouldn’t we shelter under a roof like that?”

““In principle, yes,” sighed the priestess. “But…”

““But what?”

““It’s too late.””

““Your wish,” she whispered, her lips very near his ear. “I don’t know whether such a wish can ever be fulfilled. I don’t know whether there’s such a Force in Nature that could fulfill such a wish. But if there is, then you’ve condemned yourself. Condemned yourself to me.””

“Blood. Blood. Blood. Bones like broken white sticks. Tendons like whitish cords exploding from beneath cracking skin cut by enormous paws bristling with thorns, and sharp teeth. The hideous sound of torn flesh, and shouting—shameless and horrifying in its shamelessness. The shamelessness of the end. Of death. Blood and shouting. Shouting. Blood. Shouting—[…]”

“War, in an instant, obliterates homes and communities, all that was once familiar, and leaves behind smoldering ruins and a trauma that you carry for the rest of your life. I have tasted enough of war, enough of my own fear, my body turned to jelly, to know that war is always evil, the purest expression of death, dressed up in patriotic cant about liberty and democracy and sold to the naïve as a ticket to glory, honor, and courage. It is a toxic and seductive elixir. Those who survive, as Kurt Vonnegut wrote, struggle afterwards to “reinvent themselves and their universe,” which, on some level, will never make sense again.”

“It does not matter how wrong they are, how absurd their theories, how many times they lie or denigrate other cultures and societies as uncivilized or how many murderous military interventions go bad. They are immovable props, the parasitic mandarins of power that are vomited up in the dying days of any empire,”

“It is not that worthy victims do not suffer, nor that they are not deserving of our support and compassion; it is that worthy victims alone are rendered human, people like us, and unworthy victims are not.”

“I do not know if these people are stupid or cynical or both. They are lavishly funded by the war industry. They are never dropped from the networks for their repeated idiocy. They rotate in and out of power, parked in places like the Council on Foreign Relations or the Brookings Institution, before being called back into government.”

““I live in a country that is so wealthy we can wage wars and not have to think about them,” Turner said. “It is a pathology handed down from generation to generation. We talk about our military. We use words like ‘heroism.’ But when will we start to care about people whose names are difficult to pronounce? The list of people lost is so vast. How do I write about this and share it in a country that does not want to hear it? […]”

“War exposes the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves. It rips open the hypocrisy of our religions and secular institutions. Those who return from war have learned something which is often incomprehensible to those who have stayed home. We are not a virtuous nation. God and fate have not blessed us above others. Victory is not assured. War is neither glorious nor noble. And we carry within us the capacity for evil we ascribe to those we fight.”

“Ask a combat veteran struggling to piece his or her life together about God, and watch the raw vitriol and pain pour out. They have seen into the corrupt heart of America, into the emptiness of its most sacred institutions, into our staggering hypocrisy, and those of us who refuse to heed their words become complicit in the evil they denounce.”

“Some of the remains had to be scooped up by putting our hands together as though we were cupping water. That was very common. A lot of the deaths were from IEDs or explosions. You might have an upper torso, but you needed to scoop the rest of the remains into a body bag. It was very common to have body bags that when you picked them up, they would sink in the middle because they were filled with flesh.””

““You know, you see a guy who’s paralyzed, and in a wheelchair, and you think he’s just in a wheelchair,” he says in Body of War. “You don’t think about the, you know, the stuff inside that’s paralyzed. I can’t cough because my stomach muscles are paralyzed, so I can’t work up the full coughing energy.”

“He became increasingly depressed about his impending deployment to Iraq when he was in basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia. He asked the battalion doctor for antidepressants. The doctor said he had to meet first with the unit’s chaplain, who told him, “I think you will be happier when you get over to Iraq and start killing Iraqis.””

“If we had to stand over the mangled corpses of the schoolchildren killed in Afghanistan or Ukraine and listen to the wails of their parents, the clichés about liberating the women of Afghanistan or bringing freedom to the Afghan or Ukrainian people would be obscene. Therefore, war is carefully sanitized.”

“Honestly examining past wars gives us the ability to understand current wars. But this is a Herculean struggle. The public is fed, and yearns for, the myth. It is empowering and ennobling. It celebrates supposed national virtues and military prowess. It allows an alienated population to feel part of a national collective engaged in a noble crusade. The celebration of the destructive force of our weaponry makes us feel personally empowered. All wars, past and present, are effectively shrouded in this myth.”

“Only 90 of the 15,000 people originally in the Bochnia ghetto survived the war.”

“All attempts to control the universe, to play God, to become the arbiters of life and death, have been carried out by moral idiots. They will relentlessly push forward, exploiting and pillaging, perfecting their terrible tools of technology and science, until their creation destroys them and us.”

“There are days I wish I was whole. I wish I could put down this cross. I envy those who, in their innocence, believe in the innate goodness of America and the righteousness of war, and celebrate what we know is despicable.”

“I cannot impart to you the cheerful and childish optimism that is the curse of America. I can only tell you to stand up, to pick up your cross, to keep moving. I can only tell you that you must always defy the forces that eat away at you, at the nation—this plague of war.”

“All acts of healing and love—and the defiance of war is an affirmation of love—allow us to shout out to the vast powers of the universe that, however broken we are, we are not helpless, however mush we despair, we are not without hope, however weak we may feel, we will always, always, always resist.”

“You have no concept of time in a firefight. A few minutes. A few hours.”

“War, in an instant, obliterates homes and communities, all that was once familiar, and leaves behind smoldering ruins and a trauma that you carry for the rest of your life. I have tasted enough of war, enough of my own fear, my body turned to jelly, to know that war is always evil, the purest expression of death, dressed up in patriotic cant about liberty and democracy and sold to the naïve as a ticket to glory, honor, and courage. It is a toxic and seductive elixir. Those who survive, as Kurt Vonnegut wrote, struggle afterwards to “reinvent themselves and their universe,” which, on some level, will never make sense again.”

“If truth is the first casualty in war, ambiguity is the second. The bellicose rhetoric embraced and amplified by the American press, demonizing Vladimir Putin and elevating the Ukrainians to the status of demigods, demanding more robust military intervention along with the crippling sanctions designed to bring down Putin’s government, is infantile and dangerous. That the inverse version of the conflict is true in the Russian media fuels the insanity.”

“I knew a Bosnian soldier who heard a sound behind a door while patrolling on the outskirts of Sarajevo. He fired a burst from his AK-47 through the door. A delay of a few seconds in combat can mean death. When he opened the door, he found the bloody remains of a twelve-year-old girl. His daughter was twelve. He never recovered.”

“The consequences of pushing NATO up to the borders with Russia—there is now a NATO missile base in Poland one hundred miles from the Russian border—were well known to policy makers. Yet they did it anyway. It made no geopolitical sense. But it made commercial sense. War, after all, is a business, a very lucrative one. It is why we spent two decades in Afghanistan although there was near universal consensus after a few years of fruitless fighting that we had waded into a quagmire we could never win.”

“The full-throated cries for war, echoed shamelessly by the press, are justified by draining the conflict of historical context, by elevating ourselves as the saviors and casting whomever we oppose, from Saddam Hussein to Putin, as the new Nazi leader.”

“We, echoing the empty promises from Moscow, claim we do not target civilians. Rulers always paint their militaries as humane, there to serve and protect. Collateral damage happens, but it is regrettable.”

“The Russian-speaking population in Ukraine, to Moscow, are worthy victims. Russia is their savior. The millions of Ukrainian families cowering in basements and subways, or forced to flee Ukraine, are unworthy victims. Ukrainian fighters are condemned as “Nazis.””

“The war in Iraq was as savage as the slaughter in Darfur, but to express outrage at what was happening to unworthy victims was to become branded as the enemy.”

“It is not that worthy victims do not suffer, nor that they are not deserving of our support and compassion; it is that worthy victims alone are rendered human, people like us, and unworthy victims are not.”

“In sharp contrast, the shooting down by Israel of a Libyan civilian airliner in February 1973 led to no outcry in the West, no denunciations for “cold-blooded murder,” and no boycott. This difference in treatment was explained by the New York Times precisely on the grounds of utility in a 1973 editorial: “No useful purpose is served by an acrimonious debate over the assignment of blame for the downing of a Libyan airliner in the Sinai Peninsula last week.” There was a very “useful purpose” served by focusing on the Soviet act, and a massive propaganda campaign ensued.”

“RT America was shut down six days after I denounced the invasion of Ukraine. If the network had continued, Ventura and I might have paid with our jobs, but at least for those six days they kept us on air. The New York Times issued a formal written reprimand in 2003 that forbade me to speak about the war in Iraq, although I had been the newspaper’s Middle East Bureau Chief, had spent seven years in the Middle East, and was an Arabic speaker. This reprimand set me up to be fired. If I violated the prohibition, under guild rules, the paper had grounds to terminate my employment. John Burns, another foreign correspondent at the paper, publicly supported the invasion of Iraq. He did not receive a reprimand.”

“When I entered southern Iraq in the first Gulf War, it was flattened. Villages and towns were smoldering ruins. Bodies of the dead, including women and children, lay scattered on the ground. Water purification systems had been bombed. Power stations had been bombed. Schools and hospitals had been bombed. Bridges had been bombed. The United States military always wages war by “overkill,””

““Thirty-five percent of the victims,” Nick Turse wrote of the war in Vietnam, “died within 15 to 20 minutes.” Death from the skies, like death on the ground, was often unleashed capriciously. “It was not out of the ordinary for US troops in Vietnam to blast a whole village or bombard a wide area in an effort to kill a single sniper.””

“These are our calling cards: canisters of napalm, daisy-cutter bombs, anti-personnel rockets, high-explosive rockets, incendiary rockets, cluster bombs, high-explosive shells, and iron fragmentation bombs—including the 40,000-pound bomb loads dropped by giant B-52 Stratofortress bombers—along with chemical defoliants and chemical gases dropped from the sky.”

“All of this remains unspoken as we express our anguish for the people of Ukraine and revel in our moral superiority. The life of a Palestinian or an Iraqi child is as precious as the life of a Ukrainian child. No one should live in fear and terror. No one should be sacrificed on the altar of Mars. But until all victims are worthy, until all who wage war are held accountable and brought to justice, this hypocritical game of life and death will continue. Some human beings will be worthy of life. Others will not. Drag Putin off to the International Criminal Court and put him on trial. But make sure George W. Bush is in the cell next to him.”

“It does not matter how wrong they are, how absurd their theories, how many times they lie or denigrate other cultures and societies as uncivilized or how many murderous military interventions go bad. They are immovable props, the parasitic mandarins of power that are vomited up in the dying days of any empire,”

“They advocated for air strikes in Serbia, calling for the U.S. to “take out” Slobodan Milošević.”

“[…] the dissolution of Iraq, the destruction of its civilian infrastructure, including the obliteration of eighteen of twenty electricity-generating plants and nearly all the water-pumping and sanitation systems during a forty-three-day period when 90,000 tons of bombs were rained down on the country,”

“They continue to call for a war with Iran, with Fred Kagan stating that “there is nothing we can do short of attacking to force Iran to give up its nuclear weapons […]”

“[…] they swiftly migrated to the Democratic Party rather than support Donald Trump, who showed no desire to start a conflict with Russia and who called the invasion of Iraq a “big, fat mistake.” Besides, as they correctly pointed out, Hillary Clinton was a fellow neocon. And liberals wonder why nearly half the electorate, who revile these arrogant, unaccountable power brokers, as they should, voted for Trump.”

“They did not serve in the military. Their children do not serve in the military. But they eagerly ship young American men and women off to fight and die for their self-delusional dreams of empire and American hegemony. Or, as in Ukraine, they provide hundreds of millions of dollars in weaponry and logistical support to sustain long and bloody proxy wars.”

“American global domination, they claim, is benign, a force for good, “benevolent hegemony.” The world, Charles Krauthammer insisted, welcomes “our power.” All enemies, from Saddam Hussein to Vladimir Putin, are the new Hitler. All U.S. interventions are a fight for freedom that make the world a safer place. All refusals to bomb and occupy another country are a 1938 Munich moment, a pathetic retreat from confronting evil by the new Neville Chamberlain.”

“The warmongers build a campaign against a country such as Iraq or Russia and then wait for a crisis—they call it the next Pearl Harbor—to justify the unjustifiable.”

“The Russian invasion of Ukraine, like the attacks of 9/11, is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Putin, like everyone else they target, only understands force. We can, they assure us, militarily bend Russia to our will.”

“I do not know if these people are stupid or cynical or both. They are lavishly funded by the war industry. They are never dropped from the networks for their repeated idiocy. They rotate in and out of power, parked in places like the Council on Foreign Relations or the Brookings Institution, before being called back into government.”

“This campaign of mass murder is still mythologized in Indonesia as an epic battle against the forces of evil and barbarity, much as U.S. popular culture for many decades mythologized our genocide of Native Americans and held up our own killers, gunmen, outlaws, and murderous cavalry units of the Old West as heroes”

“The bifurcation between work and life—a bifurcation that many in the U.S. military, today’s fossil fuel or health insurance industry, or Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs also must make—allows human beings who exploit, destroy, and kill other human beings to blot out much of their daily existence.”

“The military wasn’t interested in preserving freedom or democracy. It was only interested in protecting the profits of those in power and expanding the U.S. hegemony. I was not a Hollywood freedom fighter. I was a cog in the imperialist machine. I preyed on the poorest, most exploited people on the planet.””

“These people can’t do any wrong because they’ve served. This reverence for the military is priming the population to accept military rule and a form of fascism or proto-fascism. That’s why I felt even more compelled to get out.”

““What I didn’t know as I entered [Afghanistan] with the 2nd Army Ranger Battalion was that the Taliban had essentially surrendered after the initial assault by the Air Force and the Special Forces,” Fanning said of his first tour, which started in late 2001. “Our job was essentially to draw the Taliban back into the fight. Surrender wasn’t good enough for politicians after 9/11. We wanted blood. We wanted a head count. It really didn’t matter who it was.”

““I live in a country that is so wealthy we can wage wars and not have to think about them,” Turner said. “It is a pathology handed down from generation to generation. We talk about our military. We use words like ‘heroism.’ But when will we start to care about people whose names are difficult to pronounce? The list of people lost is so vast. How do I write about this and share it in a country that does not want to hear it? We want narratives that are easy and complete, ones we can process. We want wars to be recorded the way historians or people who make tombstones in cemeteries do. They give us the start, the duration, and end of the war. But for those of us who were in war it does not end. If you talk to my grandfather in Fresno, California, at some point during the day, you will be in the presence of World War II.””

“War exposes the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves. It rips open the hypocrisy of our religions and secular institutions. Those who return from war have learned something which is often incomprehensible to those who have stayed home. We are not a virtuous nation. God and fate have not blessed us above others. Victory is not assured. War is neither glorious nor noble. And we carry within us the capacity for evil we ascribe to those we fight.”

“Military chaplains, a majority of whom are evangelical Christians, defend the life of the unborn, tout America as a Christian nation, support the death penalty, and eagerly bless the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as holy crusades. The hollowness of their morality, the staggering disconnect between the values they claim to promote, is ripped open in war.”

“Wars may have to be fought to ensure survival, but they are always tragic. They always bring to the surface the worst elements of any society, those who have a penchant for violence and a lust for absolute power. They turn the moral order upside down. It was the criminal class that first organized the defense of Sarajevo. When these goons were not manning roadblocks to hold off the besieging Bosnian Serb army, they were looting, raping, and killing the Serb residents in the city.”

“Ask a combat veteran struggling to piece his or her life together about God, and watch the raw vitriol and pain pour out. They have seen into the corrupt heart of America, into the emptiness of its most sacred institutions, into our staggering hypocrisy, and those of us who refuse to heed their words become complicit in the evil they denounce.”

“The rage soldiers feel after a roadside bomb explodes, killing or maiming their comrades, or when a helicopter or troop transport plane is shot down and everyone inside is killed, is one that is easily directed over time to innocent civilians, who are fused with the insurgents. It is a short psychological leap, but a massive moral leap. It is a leap from killing to murder. Soldiers and Marines swiftly become socialized to murder.”

“Some of the remains had to be scooped up by putting our hands together as though we were cupping water. That was very common. A lot of the deaths were from IEDs or explosions. You might have an upper torso, but you needed to scoop the rest of the remains into a body bag. It was very common to have body bags that when you picked them up, they would sink in the middle because they were filled with flesh.””

““You know, you see a guy who’s paralyzed, and in a wheelchair, and you think he’s just in a wheelchair,” he says in Body of War. “You don’t think about the, you know, the stuff inside that’s paralyzed. I can’t cough because my stomach muscles are paralyzed, so I can’t work up the full coughing energy.”

“Tomas joined the Army immediately after 9/11 to go to Afghanistan and hunt down the people behind the attacks. He did not oppose the Afghanistan war. “In fact, if I had been injured in Afghanistan, there would be no Body of War movie to begin with,” he said. But he never understood the call to invade Iraq.”

“He became increasingly depressed about his impending deployment to Iraq when he was in basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia. He asked the battalion doctor for antidepressants. The doctor said he had to meet first with the unit’s chaplain, who told him, “I think you will be happier when you get over to Iraq and start killing Iraqis.””

““I look at the TV through the lens of his eyes and can see he is invisible,” said Claudia, standing in the living room as her husband rested in the bedroom. An array of books on death, the afterlife, and dying is spread out around her. “No one is sick [on television]. No one is disabled. No one faces death. Dying in America is a very lonely business.””

“I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief. I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done.”

“You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.”

“I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.”

“Filmic and photographic images of combat are shorn of the heart-pounding fear, awful stench, deafening noise, and exhaustion of the battlefield. Such images turn confusion and chaos, the chief element of combat, into an artful war narrative. They turn war into porn. Soldiers and Marines, especially those who have never seen war, buy cases of beer and watch movies like Platoon, movies meant to denounce war, and as they do so revel in the despicable power of weapons.”

“If we had to stand over the mangled corpses of the schoolchildren killed in Afghanistan or Ukraine and listen to the wails of their parents, the clichés about liberating the women of Afghanistan or bringing freedom to the Afghan or Ukrainian people would be obscene. Therefore, war is carefully sanitized.”

“Despair and suicide grip survivors. More Vietnam veterans committed suicide after the war than were killed during it. The inhuman qualities drilled into soldiers and Marines in wartime defeat them in peacetime. This is what Homer taught us in The Iliad, the great book on war, and The Odyssey, the great book on the long journey to recovery by professional killers. Many never readjust. They cannot emotionally connect with wives, children, parents, or friends, retreating into personal hells of self-destructive numbness, anguish and rage.”

“David Lloyd George, wartime prime minister of Britain, in his memoirs used language like this to describe the conflict: [I]nexhaustible vanity that will never admit a mistake . . . individuals who would rather the million perish than that they as leaders should own—even to themselves—that they were blunderers . . . the notoriety attained by a narrow and stubborn egotism, unsurpassed among the records of disaster wrought by human complacency . . . a bad scheme badly handled . . . impossible orders issued by Generals who had no idea what the execution of their commands really meant . . . this insane enterprise . . . this muddy and muddle-headed venture .”

“Our own generals and politicians, who nearly two decades ago launched the greatest strategic blunder in American history and wasted $7 trillion on quagmires in the Middle East, are no less egotistical and incompetent than Putin.”

“The moral and mental defects of the leaders of the human race had been demonstrated with some exactitude. One of them (Woodrow Wilson) later admitted that the war had been fought for business interests; another (David Lloyd George) had told a newspaperman: “If people really knew, the war would be stopped tomorrow, but of course they don’t—and can’t know. The correspondents don’t write and the censorship wouldn’t pass the truth.””

“The American attorney Harold Shapiro, following World War I, examined the medical records of the Army on behalf of a disabled veteran. He was appalled at the reality these records elucidated and the misperception of the war within the public. The medical descriptions, he wrote, rendered “all that I had read and heard previously as being either fiction, isolated reminiscence, vague generalization or deliberate propaganda.””

“Honestly examining past wars gives us the ability to understand current wars. But this is a Herculean struggle. The public is fed, and yearns for, the myth. It is empowering and ennobling. It celebrates supposed national virtues and military prowess. It allows an alienated population to feel part of a national collective engaged in a noble crusade. The celebration of the destructive force of our weaponry makes us feel personally empowered. All wars, past and present, are effectively shrouded in this myth.”

“There are no images in these memorials of men or women with their guts hanging out of their bellies, screaming pathetically for their mothers. We do not see mangled corpses being shoved in body bags. There are no sights of children burned beyond recognition or moaning in horrible pain. There are no blind and deformed wrecks of human beings limping through life.”

“We are forever saving Private Ryan. We view ourselves as eternal liberators. These plastic representations of war reconfigure the past in light of the present. War memorials and romantic depictions of war in films are the social and moral props used to create the psychological conditions to wage new wars.”

“There are times—World War II and the Serb assault on Bosnia would be examples—when a population is pushed into a war. There are times when a nation must ingest the poison of violence to survive. But this violence always deforms and maims those who use it.”

“The owners of coal companies at the turn of the twentieth century in southern West Virginia found that by funding local baseball teams they could blunt the solidarity of workers. Towns and coal camps rallied around their individual teams. Workers divided themselves according to team loyalty. Sport rivalries became personal. The owners, elated, used the teams to help fracture the labor movement. And the infernal logic is no different today.”

“Hundreds of African American men, women, and children, many born free in the surrounding Pennsylvania towns, were abducted by invading Confederate forces led by Gen. Robert E. Lee and shipped south to be sold in the slave markets in Richmond, Virginia.”

“The inability of most generals to adapt, as Allen C. Guelzo wrote in Gettysburg: The Last Invasion, “makes the Civil War look like an exercise in raw stupidity equivalent to the slaughters on the Western Front [of World War I].””

“Thomas D. Marbaker, the author of History of the Eleventh New Jersey Volunteers: From Its Organization to Appomattox wrote of the aftermath of the battle:”

“Upon the open fields, like sheaves bound by the reaper, in crevices of the rocks, behind fences, trees and buildings; in thickets, where they had crept for safety only to die in agony; by stream or wall or hedge, wherever the battle had raged or their waking steps could carry them, lay the dead. Some with faces bloated and blackened beyond recognition, lay with glassy eyes staring up at the blazing summer sun; others, with faces downward and clenched hands filled with grass or earth, which told of the agony of the last moments.”

“All around was the wreck the battle-storm leaves in its wake—broken caissons, dismounted guns, small arms bent and twisted by the storm or dropped and scattered by disabled hands; dead and bloated horses, torn and ragged equipment, and all the sorrowful wreck that the waves of battle leave at their ebb; and overall, hugging the earth like a fog, poisoning every breath, the pestilential stench of decaying humanity.”

Citing from Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground,

Damn, Chris.

That’s about right, though. I just spoke with a friend the other night who said that I was quite cynical about American and that he’d rather have America in charge than China or Russia. I was taken aback, but rallied and asked him whether he wasn’t the more cynical one, who couldn’t imagine a world without a boot on our collective necks. He had so internalized the idea that there must be an empire that he’d limited himself to choosing which one. “None of the above,” didn’t enter into it. I told him that it sounded to me as if he’d resigned himself to life as a whore and had settled for being able to choose who was going to pimp him. We’re friends, though, so he laughed, albeit a bit nervously.