Doubts about the rulers’ right to rule and what it is they are in fact defending, have been raised ever since it became impossible for the king (or any ruler) to rely divine right. When God granted the King his right to rule, the requirement of total obedience had its natural explanation. The…
DREAD: State of Alarm (is Edward Snowden in Elgaland-Vargaland now?)
Read more "DREAD: State of Alarm (is Edward Snowden in Elgaland-Vargaland now?)"Read moreMuch of the time, the towering Georgian and Victorian terraced houses of Belgravia now have only servants living in them – their masters and mistresses are drifting around the world, from yacht to schloss to Park Avenue apartment, in search of pleasure or tax avoidance. Drive round the area at night, and it’s often only the lights in the attics and the basements – the servants’ quarters – that are on.
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The 20th-century culture of housewives doing everything for themselves – armed with an avalanche of labour-saving devices – was a brief blip in British history when servants went out of fashion. From the Middle Ages until the First World War, whole armies of traditional servants were employed in this country. One of the reasons the castles and country houses of Britain were so huge was that they were designed to accommodate a vast staff. When Sudeley Castle was built in 1442, there were two big courtyards: one for Lord Sudeley and his family; the other just for his servants.
For the next half a millennium or so, domestic servants were run of the mill, not just for peers of the realm, but also for the lower middle classes. In 1851 there were 115,000 women between 15 and 20 living in London and the suburbs; 40,000 of them were in service.
Read moreMohammed graduated from North Carolina A&T State University with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1986. It’s not clear whether Mohammed was interested in designing a better vacuum or had ulterior motives. He might have intended to use the plans to conceal secret information or trick his jailers.
In Graham Greene’s spy thriller “Our Man in Havana,” a vacuum salesman in Cuba agrees to work for MI6, the British spy service. He dupes the British into believing his vacuum designs are military installations. The AP was unable to determine whether Mohammed ever read the famous novel.
It remains a mystery how far Mohammed got with his designs or whether the plans still exist. The secret CIA prison in Romania was shuttered in early 2006 and Mohammed was transferred later that year to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base prison, where he remains. It’s unlikely he was able to take his appliance plans to Cuba.
Mohammed’s military lawyer, Jason Wright, said he was prohibited from discussing his client’s interest in vacuums.
“It sounds ridiculous, but answering this question, or confirming or denying the very existence of a vacuum cleaner design, a Swiffer design, or even a design for a better hand towel would apparently expose the U.S. government and its citizens to exceptionally grave danger,” Wright said.
But Wright added that he often discussed “modern technological innovations” and the “scientific wonders” of the Quran with Mohammed. He called Mohammed “exceptionally intelligent.”
“If he had access to educational programs in Guantanamo Bay, such as distance learning programs, I am confident that in addition to furthering his Islamic studies, he could obtain a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, and very likely patent inventions,” Wright said.
The CIA won’t discuss the Mohammed’s vacuum plans, either. The AP asked the CIA for copies of the vacuum designs or any government records about them under the Freedom of Information Act.
The CIA responded in a letter to the AP that the records, “should they exist,” would be considered operational files of the CIA — among its most highly classified category of government files — and therefore exempt from ever being released to the public.
Read moreThink, for example, of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in west London, or of Edward Snowden, the Prism whistleblower currently in his Hong Kong hotel. Both are now in exceptional spaces, holes in the continuum of globalised digital space. These strange anomalies are perhaps the only escapes from the ever-present digital backdoor, the only respite from the colonisation of earth by digital culture.
Since unbroken after protest this is perhaps the best metaphor for how the future corp cops world is reaching back to the now via the highly regulated devices of Apple inc. In which you own nothing and have the right to protest… just.
Yes… the strike is over and nothing was won by symbolism. Especially since, attentive tumblerors, I never stopped updating the several other tumblrs I contribute to.
Now, if you want better timey wimey corporate police future now drama, catch up on transhuman time travel political tv that is Continuum. Thank you Canada!
Read more#5 StackThink becomes Unthink
Attention: nobles of the nu feudalism.
Don’t let the stackification of reality perpetuate the stratification of society.
When we say “rise above", we don’t mean catch a copter over the unwashed masses. We don’t mean secretly funding the creation of Elysium in our time either.
If you must be entitled, try out Noblesse Oblige. It’s very atemporal and eternally recurrent and might save your ass when it’s pressed again the wall.
Try investing your spoils from the User Generated Content Wars in local infrastructure. Build a bridge with the user base who’s eyeballs you’ve mined and clicks you’ve monetized by BUILDING A FUCKING BRIDGE.
This is why we strike.
Startup to SF: Just Avoid that Pesky Transit Strike via Helicopter!
Read more "Startup to SF: Just Avoid that Pesky Transit Strike via Helicopter!"#4. Diplomatic relations are opened with your rival Feudal Stack Overlords at Facebook, for the free flow of goods and services.
Newt appears to be offering himself for the role, shown here promoting Google Glass to Republican 2.0 set on Facebook’s recently acquired hipstergram territory.
Read more "Borgchic @newtgingrich"
Attention: TUMBLR OVERLORDZ
I am going on strike until the following demands are met:
Read moreA study Toma conducted this year found that admiring one’s own Facebook profile has palpable self-affirming effects, and that people naturally gravitate to Facebook for a boost when their ego has been knocked. Her unwitting participants were asked to carry out a public speaking task, only to receive crushingly negative feedback. Half of the subjects were allowed to peruse their own Facebook profiles before receiving the feedback, and this group turned out to be way less defensive than the others. Instead of accusing their evaluator, for example, of incompetence, they said: “Yeah, there’s some truth to this feedback. Maybe there are things I can do to improve my performance.”
Toma asked yet more participants to give the same speech, only this time she gave them either neutral or terrible reviews. They were then presented with a choice of five (fake) further studies to take part in – one involving logging on to Facebook, and four decoys. “We were excited to find,” she says, “that when participants’ egos were threatened, they chose Facebook at twice the rate than the others” – evidence of what she calls “an unconscious mechanism to decide to repair feelings of self worth. This is why people spend more time on Facebook after a hard day or something bad happening – because it reassures you that you’re connected, that you have interesting activities and hobbies, photographs, etc.”
The Committee to Nuke Elysium 