Read moreOne interesting thing about the 1960s was how many people in that period were actually reading books from the 1940s. I was always told that the 1960s were a rebellion, that they overthrew this kind of gray, bureaucratic, mass-mediated era. What I discovered was that on the contrary, they embraced a whole series of collaborative, wild, socially benevolent ideals from the ‘40s
Quotes
Read moreSo much of the world is casting around for a new map of reality, as this materialist/banking/spook/hydrocarbon warfare one has been found extremely wanting. The majority of the population is punchdrunk from the last twelve months of revelations of things you and I have always known. If you do or say nothing at this juncture, then eventually their drunkenness will wear off, replaced by the sobriety of the old materialist map.
Read moreIt’s 2014, these debates are SETTLED for smart people:
1: Marijuana
2: Evolution
3: Gay marriage
4: Climate change
5: Hard G gif
Only psychos and shamans create their own reality.
Terence McKenna (via originalgiantcontent)
Read more
The water restrictions were imposed Thursday when it was discovered about 7,500 gallons of a chemical used to clean coal — 4-methylcyclohexane methanol — had leaked out of a storage tank located a mile upriver from the water plant.
What kinda third world failing state with corrupt officials allows this sort of thing to happen?! Seriously, how much are Big Oil paying these fu – wait, it’s where? West Virginia… The You Knighted States? In 2014… Not, like… 1814.
Oh. Um… Okay then. Good luck there guys.
Quote source: http://www.thewire.com/national/2014/01/watch-west-virginia-man-set-tap-water-fire-after-local-chemical-spill/356920/
More: West Virginia Residents Enter Fifth Day Without Water and No Clear End in Sight – http://www.thewire.com/national/2014/01/west-virginia-residents-enter-fifth-day-without-water-and-no-clear-end-sight/356935/
The more enlightened man will become, the less he will employ compulsion and coercion. The really civilized man will divest himself of all fear and authority. He will rise from the dust and stand erect: he will bow to no tsar either in heaven or on earth. He will become fully human when he will scorn to rule and refuse to be ruled. He will be truly free only when there shall be no more masters.
Alexander Berkman (via wolvensnothere)
Read more
Mission Statement
Read moreBelieving in history is easy enough—we have little choice, as it turns out, because regardless of what you care to think, history is believing in you. But suggesting the possibility of belief in the future seems to be a major revelation for some. As if I told you that yesterday happened. It is big business for some, to assure others that the future will happen. There are profitable Churches of the Fact of the Future, whose only function is to verify the existence of the cosmology of history in general. Their scam is encouraging you to believe that knowledge of history in general is enough to let you know your own personal future. But specific questions of a personal future are not the real issue here.
…
The question to ask of the future is not what, but why? The future, as I have seen it, is the future. There were new technologies, new triumphs, new tragedies. There were new occurrences of the continued existence of humanity in the future, with all the suffering and bleeding and spitting and gushing and moaning in pleasure and pain. All the time and thought given up to reassuring ourselves that we are experiencing something, and that we will likely go on to experience something different. All of that navigating, to assure ourselves that we are standing where we stand. But to ask why, would take up all those precious resources with a much more difficult question. Why was the future the way it was? How did the future get so fucked up, and despite the fact that we could remember that the future would be the way it was, we still watched it occur with barely a shake of our heads? We know the facts of history, and yet we seem to merely remark upon them. We spend so much time confirming the obvious fact, we barely pause to think why.
The answer isn’t a simple existential theory. If only it were as simple as mere eschatological motive or rationale. If only the sidewalk and the roadway were a grand plan. Shoes and cars would be angels. But there’s no skill required here. There is little talent to learn. I remember the future of driving and walking, and it is very much like walking and driving in a car. There is always more street, and all the street is now connected. The future is visible in these streets, and it looks like streets, full of dust, blown up to obscure where street signs might exist
For these troubled humans, the easy emotional satisfaction gained from technology is so gratifying that everything can be sacrificed on its behalf, including the autonomy of their inner lives. That is the nightmarish economic vision of Her: the distinction between production and consumption is meaningless, affective labor has spread from the office to the most private realms, and technology has become so sophisticated that the brutality of that economy vanishes into air. […] Just because there aren’t any killer robots around doesn’t mean you’re free. In Jonze’s all too plausible dystopia, we are enslaved not to robots but corporations, and the invisibility, even desirability of that enslavement is what makes Her so chilling.
Jason Farago, “‘Her’ is the Scariest Movie of 2013” http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116063/spike-jonzes-her-scariest-movie-2013 (via aeromenthe)
Read more
Read moreCyberpunk genre (and post-cyberpunk) is frequently centered on the transitional inter-periods between Type-0 and Type-I status. While frequently focused on how the concepts of “Transhumanism” and “Singularity” will eventually overcome the problems that have, up until now, been endemic to human nature, Cyberpunk subverts this to describe the Dystopian side should a civilization “self-destruct” in the process of achieving Type-I status. In such fiction, most current world problems are local in warfare, local in culture, and usually mono-cultural, and theistic; further aggravated by various groups trying to retain a Type-0 monoculture through religious fanaticism and opposition to technological progress, and others trying to move forward to a Type-I global civilization through technological advances and institutional change.
A lot of the sci-fi stuff in Orwell and Huxley, and cyberpunk too, looks “eerily similar to what’s real” because it was built to look that way, on purpose. It was science fiction, but derived from events that were genuinely going on in real life. Only people didn’t talk about them much in polite society. The readers hadn’t caught on yet.
Bruce Sterling qna on /. – http://m.slashdot.org/story/195971
The Committee to Nuke Elysium 