Author: m1k3y

What, then, is work for? Aristotle has a striking answer: “we work to have leisure, on which happiness depends.” This may at first seem absurd. How can we be happy just doing nothing, however sweetly (dolce far niente)? Doesn’t idleness lead to boredom, the life-destroying ennui portrayed in so many novels, at least since “Madame Bovary”? Everything depends on how we understand leisure. Is it mere idleness, simply doing nothing? Then a life of leisure is at best boring (a lesson of Voltaire’s “Candide”), and at worst terrifying (leaving us, as Pascal says, with nothing to distract from the thought of death). No, the leisure Aristotle has in mind is productive activity enjoyed for its own sake, while work is done for something else. We can pass by for now the question of just what activities are truly enjoyable for their own sake — perhaps eating and drinking, sports, love, adventure, art, contemplation? The point is that engaging in such activities — and sharing them with others — is what makes a good life. Leisure, not work, should be our primary goal.

What Work Is Really For – NYTimes.com
Read more

Imagine, then, in 20 or 30 years’ time, a very rich, very old man, in his dying breath, undocking his penis and releasing it to roam among the stars, where it prints off new copies of itself from lunar soil and asteroid ore, rubbing itself across the face of the very cosmos.

The future’s kind of funny-looking, but it’s probably the future you deserve.

Read more

wildcat2030:

This is one piece of ‘gum’ that’s going to be allowed in Singapore. As you might already know, the country is famous for its many rules to keep the country clean and orderly. The ‘no gum’ rule is just one of those, but the Chewing Gum Battery is exempt from that.That’s because this concept isn’t really chewing gum. Each pack actually contains sticks of paper batteries that can give your devices a boost when it’s running low on power. The packs of batteries would actually be kept charged at solar-powered dispensing stations so you can just go and grab a couple of sticks when you need them. (via Chewing Gum Battery Concept Promises Instant Power on the Go)

Read more

“I’m the highest form of life on earth. I’m a combat magician…”

tribeofthestrange: Well, listen. I’m the highest form of life on earth. I’m a combat magician.There’s a long tradition of us… the Druids, for example. Merlin. The early shamen. The warrior goddess figures. Loads of us.And we have a responsibility to life as well as to war. Sgt-Major William Gravel, 22nd Battalion Special Air Service (retired)

Read more "“I’m the highest form of life on earth. I’m a combat magician…”"

bravenewwhatever:

Untitled
Temporary tattoos, binary code, Walter Benjamin
2012 

[Commission for the group show “Business Innovations for Ubiquitous Authorship”Higher Pictures, 980 Madison Ave, NY]

For this exhibition each artist was asked to create a new work using an existing print-on-demand or customized printing service. The following phrase, translated into binary code and separated out into 8-digit strings, was realized as 126 unique temporary tattoos, to be worn on the forearm or wherever. 

The growing proletarianization of modern man and the increasing formation of masses are two aspects of the same process. Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves. 

[Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”]

#businessinnovations #fascism #expressurself

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Read more

Ales Kot: Love, love, LOVE writing ‘Change’. Would make it an ongoing series if…

aleskot:

Love, love, LOVE writing ‘Change’. Would make it an ongoing series if it felt right, but it wouldn’t. Morgan’s doing brilliant things with the art – cutting up what I deliver, adding/reducing beats as we see fit. The cover sketches we had for #2 alone are incredibly strong. All four of them, small…

Ales Kot: Love, love, LOVE writing ‘Change’. Would make it an ongoing series if…

Read more "Ales Kot: Love, love, LOVE writing ‘Change’. Would make it an ongoing series if…"

This is because we look at the present day through a rear-view mirror. This is something Marshall McLuhan said back in the Sixties, when the world was in the grip of authentic-seeming future narratives. He said, “We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.” He went on to […]

Read more

A character called John Titor appeared on an internet forum in the Year 2000 (when else?), claiming to be a visitor from the year 2036. He spent several months chatting to the forum and answering questions about his time period before disappearing entirely. These are some pictures he supplied them with – his time machine, […]

Read more

What looks like machine intelligence is actually only a recombination of human intelligence… The secret to this success isn’t, as you might expect, Google’s facility with data, but rather its willingness to commit humans to combining and cleaning data about the physical world. Google’s map offerings build in the human intelligence on the front end, […]

Read more