no. 1133

 "Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower" 

– Albert Camus

Painting by Robert Moore - "Autumn Joy" 

(5 x 4 ft, oil on canvas - 2017)

no. 1132

A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.

Thomas Paine

no. 1131

from They Knew by Sarah Kendzior

 

no. 1130

“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”

André Gide

no. 1129

 "When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set." 

Lin Yutang, writer and translator (10 Oct 1895-1976)

no. 1128

“The Trump administration isn’t just failing Americans. It’s failing MAGA, too.

The proof is in the data. And once you see it, you’ll wonder how a single Republican still supports Trump, and why Trump hasn’t fired every member of his cabinet for negligence and incompetence. Because they’re the ones whispering loyal-sounding lies into his ears.

First, right now his primary focus is:

Invading blue cities and states with the National Guard,

Spending billions to chase undocumented immigrants with no criminal record, while 78% of Americans believe undocumented immigrants with no criminal record should have a pathway to citizenship,

Forcing indictments of James Comey and Leticia James, and pursuing people like Adam Schiff to inflict criminal consequences built on superficial emotional grievances,

Forcing tariffs down our throats—not just on China, but on our best trading partners like Canada, Mexico, and Brazil,

And firing not just federal workers who aren’t loyal to him, but allowing Hegseth fire members of the military who aren’t loyal to the Trump agenda.

Now let’s go back to a Pew Research poll from November 2024 where Trump voters were asked how he should govern. You know what they said?

And please remember, this is only Trump voters.

58% of them said it would not be acceptable to fire any federal workers, at any level, for not being personally loyal to Trump,

58% also said it would not be acceptable for Trump to pardon friends, family, or political supporters who were convicted of crimes,

42% said it would not be acceptable to govern with executive orders if he can’t get his policies through Congress,

and 46% said it would not be acceptable for Trump to order federal law enforcement to investigate democratic political opponents.

And I cannot emphasize this enough: these are only people who had just voted for Trump.

But because of his brain rot advisors, his entire first year has been nothing more than a laundry list of everything no one wanted, while we bleed good jobs, while prices continue to climb, while Russia does whatever they want to our allies, and while states’ rights are under attack by the federal government.

If you’re one of these Republicans, don’t let them gaslight you.

You were right.

They were terrible ideas then, and they’re even worse now, because his incompetent administration, focused more on loyalty and cruelty than prosperity, finds a way to make bad ideas even worse with its circus sideshow execution.

I remain convinced that millions of Republicans just wanted lower prices and better pay. Just like all of us.

They just got conned. Because Trump surrounded himself with fools and monsters, and because he doesn’t have the judgment to know when to fire them, or how to function without them.”

John Good

no. 1127

 “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”

André Gide

no. 1126

 For living beings like us who live for only around 100 years and die, there’s the need for something that connects the past and the future.

Fortunately, people have writing.

When only relying on passing it down orally, there’s always the fear of turning it vague and changing the past and thinking it is the reality. 

By recording it in books, a lot of knowledge can remain into the future. 

That’s why books must not be disposed of like old tools and unnecessary things, and the people who are in charge of them must be specialists.

Therefore, libraries and librarians are necessary, and even librarians shouldn’t be choosing which books are useful and which are useless.

But well, it is true that there’s a limit to how many books a library can hold.

So there will be selectiveness by necessity though.

If reality could be ignored and we could take ideals, librarians would definitely want to have an infinite collection.

It goes without saying, but the action of deeming a book unnecessary or burning it because it is of a specific genre or ideology is not a good thing.

Azumi Kei, from the web novel Tsuki ga Michibiku Isekai Douchuu

no. 1125

 "We've got a great percentage of our population that, to our great shame, either cannot or, equally unfortunate, will not read. And that portion of our public is growing. Those people are suckers for the demagogue."

Walter Cronkite (1916 - 2009)

no. 1124

 "A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It is a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting & rashness & other signs of insecurity." 

President Jimmy Carter

no. 1123

 “It actually doesn’t take much to be considered a difficult woman. That’s why there are so many of us.”

 Jane Goodall

no. 1122

 "I keep reading that film studios are contemplating replacing writers and actors by using Artificial Intelligence to mimic their talents."

"Surely it would be easier and more efficient to replace executives, since they have no talent at all."

John Cleese

no. 1121

 "It is part of the price of leadership of this great and free nation to be the target of clever satirists. You have given the gift of laughter to our people. May we never grow so somber or self-important that we fail to appreciate the humor in our lives."

Lyndon Blaine’s Johnson responding to an apology from the Smothers Brothers. 

no. 1120

 “Political satire is one of the oldest and most important forms of free speech. It challenges those in power while using humor to draw more people in to the discussion. That’s why people in influential positions have always targeted it for censorship.”

Brendan Carr, just 3 years before he became FCC chair and censored Jimmy Kimmel

no. 1119

 "Laws are like ice cream: easily melted"

A line from the film “The Wannsee Conference”

no. 1118

 

no. 1117

“A reminder that one of my favorite ways to frame the economy for most people is that they are *never* three good months away from being rich, but *always* three bad months from being homeless.”

John Roger’s (@johnrogers.bsky.social)

no. 1116

My daughter came home from school and said,

“Mom, you’re not going to believe what happened in history class today.”

Her teacher told the class they were going to play a game.

He walked around the room and whispered to each kid whether they were a witch or just a regular person. Then he gave the instructions:

“Form the biggest group you can without a witch. If your group has even one, you all fail.”

She said the whole room instantly lit up with suspicion.

Everyone started interrogating each other. Are you a witch? How do we know you’re not lying?

Some kids clung to one big group, but most broke off into smaller, exclusive cliques. They turned away anyone who seemed uncertain, nervous, or gave off even the slightest hint of being guilty.

The energy shifted fast. Suddenly everyone was suspicious of everyone.

Whispers. Finger-pointing. Side-eyes. Trust dissolved in minutes.

Finally, when all the groups were formed, the teacher said,

“Alright, time to find out who fails. Witches, raise your hands.”

And not one hand went up.

The whole class exploded. “Wait! You messed up the game!”

And then the teacher dropped the bomb:

“Did I? Were there any actual witches in Salem, or did everyone just believe what they were told?”

My daughter said the room went dead silent.

That’s when it hit them. No witch was ever needed for the damage to happen. Fear had already done its work. Suspicion alone divided the entire class, turning community into chaos.

And isn’t that exactly what we’re seeing today?

Different words, same playbook.

Instead of “witch,” it’s liberal, conservative, vaxxed, unvaxxed, pro-this, anti-that.

The labels shift, but the tactic is the same.

Get people scared. Get them suspicious. Get them divided.

Then sit back while trust crumbles.

The danger was never the witch.

The danger is the rumor. The suspicion. The fear. The planted lies.

Refuse the whisper. Don’t play the game. Because the second we start hunting “witches,” we’ve already lost.

Unkown

no. 1115

 

no. 1114

 From someone who teaches AP US History: 

If you are confused as to why so many Americans are defending the confederate flag, monuments, and statues right now, I put together a quick Q&A, with questions from a hypothetical person with misconceptions and answers from my perspective as an AP U.S. History Teacher:

Q: What did the Confederacy stand for?

A: Rather than interpreting, let's go directly to the words of the Confederacy's Vice President, Alexander Stephens. In his "Cornerstone Speech" on March 21, 1861, he stated "The Constitution... rested upon the equality of races. This was an error. Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."

Q: But people keep saying heritage, not hate! They think the purpose of the flags and monuments are to honor confederate soldiers, right?

A: The vast majority of confederate flags flying over government buildings in the south were first put up in the 1960's during the Civil Rights Movement. So for the first hundred years after the Civil War ended, while relatives of those who fought in it were still alive, the confederate flag wasn't much of a symbol at all. But when Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Lewis were marching on Washington to get the Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965) passed, leaders in the south felt compelled to fly confederate flags and put up monuments to honor people who had no living family members and had fought in a war that ended a century ago. Their purpose in doing this was to exhibit their displeasure with black people fighting for basic human rights that were guaranteed to them in the 14th and 15th Amendments but being withheld by racist policies and practices.

Q: But if we take down confederate statues and monuments, how will we teach about and remember the past?

A: Monuments and statues pose little educational relevance, whereas museums, the rightful place for Confederate paraphernalia, can provide more educational opportunities for citizens to learn about our country's history. The Civil War is important to learn about, and will always loom large in social studies curriculum. Removing monuments from public places and putting them in museums also allows us to avoid celebrating and honoring people who believed that tens of millions of black Americans should be legal property. 

Q: But what if the Confederate flag symbol means something different to me?

A: Individuals aren't able to change the meaning of symbols that have been defined by history. When I hang a Bucs flag outside my house, to me, the Bucs might represent the best team in the NFL, but to the outside world, they represent an awful NFL team, since they haven't won a playoff game in 18 years. I can't change that meaning for everyone who drives by my house because it has been established for the whole world to see. If a Confederate flag stands for generic rebellion or southern pride to you, your personal interpretation forfeits any meaning once you display it publicly, as its meaning takes on the meaning it earned when a failed regime killed hundreds of thousands of Americans in an attempt to destroy America and keep black people enslaved forever. 

Q: But my uncle posted a meme that said the Civil War/Confederacy was about state's rights and not slavery?

A: "A state's right to what?" - John Green

Q: Everyone is offended about everything these days. Should we take everything down that offends anyone?

A: The Confederacy literally existed to go against the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the idea that black people are human beings that deserve to live freely. If that doesn't upset or offend you, you are un-American. 

Q: Taking these down goes against the First Amendment and freedom of speech, right?

A: No. Anyone can do whatever they want on their private property, on their social media, etc. Taking these down in public, or having private corporations like NASCAR ban them on their properties, has literally nothing to do with the Bill of Rights. 

Q: How can people claim to be patriotic while supporting a flag that stood for a group of insurgent failures who tried to permanently destroy America and killed 300,000 Americans in the process? 

A: No clue.

Q: So if I made a confederate flag my profile picture, or put a confederate bumper sticker on my car, what am I declaring to my friends, family, and the world?

A: That you support the Confederacy. To recap, the Confederacy stands for: slavery, white supremacy, treason, failure, and a desire to permanently destroy Selective history as it supports white supremacy. 

It’s no accident that: 

You learned about Helen Keller instead of W.E.B, DuBois

You learned about the Watts and L.A. Riots, but not Tulsa or Wilmington. 

You learned that George Washington’s dentures were made from wood, rather than the teeth from slaves. 

You learned about black ghettos, but not about Black Wall Street. 

You learned about the New Deal, but not “red lining.”

You learned about Tommie Smith’s fist in the air at the 1968 Olympics, but not that he was sent home the next day and stripped of his medals. 

You learned about “black crime,” but white criminals were never lumped together and discussed in terms of their race. 

You learned about “states rights” as the cause of the Civil War, but not that slavery was mentioned 80 times in the articles of secession. 

Privilege is having history rewritten so that you don’t have to acknowledge uncomfortable facts. 

Racism is perpetuated by people who refuse to learn or acknowledge this reality. 

You have a choice. 

Jim Golden

no. 1113

 I'm turning a corner...but...my path is in my heart.

Marcel Proust, The Swann Way (transl. Brian Wilson)

no. 1112

 “No man has the right to dictate what other men should perceive, create or produce, but all should be encouraged to reveal themselves, their perceptions and emotions, and to build confidence in the creative spirit.” 

Ansel Adams

no. 1111

 “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

Desmond Tutu.

no. 1110

 

no. 1109

 ”For my part, the thing that I would wish to obtain from money would be leisure with security. But what the typical modern man desires to get with it is more money, with a view to ostentation, splendour, and the outshining of those who have hitherto been his equals.”

— Bertrand Russell , The Conquest of Happiness (1930), Ch.III: Competition, p. 49

no. 1108

 I have attended several CPR classes over the years, but was never told this…..

When you are alone and have a heart attack. What are you gonna do then ?

A rarely good post that can't be shared often enough:

1. Take a 2 minute break and read this:

Let's say it's 5:25 pm and you're driving home after an unusually hard day's work.

2. You are really tired and frustrated.

All of a sudden your chest pains. They are starting to radiate in the arm and jaw. It feels like being stabbed in the chest and heart. You're only a few miles away from the nearest hospital or home.

3. Unfortunately you don't know if you can make it..

4. Maybe you've taken CPR training, but the person running the course hasn't told you how to help yourself.

5. How do you survive a heart attack when you're alone when it happens? A person who is feeling weak and whose heart is beating hard has only about 10 seconds before losing consciousness.

6. But you can help yourself by coughing repeatedly and very strongly! Deep breaths before every cough. Coughing should be repeated every second until you arrive at the hospital or until your heart starts to beat normally.

7. Deep breathing gives oxygen to your lungs and coughing movements boost the heart and blood circulation. Heart pressure also helps to restore a normal heartbeat. 

8. Cardiologists say if someone gets this message and passes it on to 10 people, we can expect to save at least one life.

9. FOR WOMEN: You should know that women have additional and different symptoms. Rarely have crushing chest pain or pain in the arms. Often have indigestion and tightness across the back at the bra line plus sudden fatigue.  

Instead of posting jokes, you're helping save lives by spreading this message.

❤️ COPY (hold your finger, click on the text and select copy, go to your own page and where you normally want to write, select finger again and paste)

Unknown

no. 1107

 “In all classes, from the lowest to almost the highest, economic fear governs men's thoughts by day and their dreams at night, making their work nerve-racking and their leisure unrefreshing. This ever-present terror is, I think, the main cause of the mood of madness which has swept over great parts of the civilized world.”

― Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays (1935), Ch. VII, The Case for Socialism, 3. Economic Insecurity, p. 90

'In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays' is a 1935 collection of essays by the philosopher Bertrand Russell. The collection includes essays on the subjects of sociology, philosophy and economics. In the eponymous essay, Russell proposes that a balanced allocation of labour, yielding shorter workdays, would decrease unemployment and heighten human happiness through expanded leisure time, consequently encouraging greater involvement in artistic and scientific pursuits.

no. 1106

 "The founding fathers mistrusted government power, and they had very good reason to, as do we. This is why they tried to institutionalize the separation of powers, the right to think, the right to speak, to be heard, to assemble, to complain to the government about its abuses, to be able to vote or impeach malefactors out of office.

John Stuart Mill talked eloquently in his essay "On Liberty" on the importance of free speech, of vigorous interaction. Let me just make one quote here from On Liberty:

"The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generations, those who dissent from the opinion still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth. If wrong, they lose what is almost as great a benefit: the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with error."

Despite our best efforts, some things we believe are probably wrong. We certainly are very keen on recognizing the errors of past times and other nations. Why should our nation, why should our time, be different? If there are things that we believe, if there are institutions in our society that are in error, imperfectly conceived or executed, these are potential impediments to our survival. How do we find the errors? How do we correct them?

I maintain: with courage, the scientific method, and the Constitution. Sooner or later, every abuse of power must confront the Constitution. The only question is how much damage has been done in the interim."

Carl Sagan "Science and Civil Liberties" (ACLU of Illinois Lecture, 1987)

no. 1105

 “When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it.”

-Justice Sonia Sotomayor

no. 1104

 “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That is Fascism: ownership of the government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling power.”

 Franklin Delano Roosevelt

no. 1103

 "The issue of government has always been whether individual men and women will have to serve some system of government and economics, or whether a system of government and economics exists to serve individual men and women." 

FDR, 1932

no. 1102

 So long as they continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern. Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.

George Orwell, 1984 

no. 1101

 

C. S. Lewis,  “The Screwtape Letters”

no. 1100

 "We humans are newcomers, arising only a few million years ago. Our present technical civilization is just a few hundred years old. We have not had much recent experience in voluntary interspecies cooperation. We are very devoted to the short-term and hardly ever think about the long-term. There is no guarantee that we will be wise enough to understand our planetwide closed ecological system, or to modify our behavior in accord with that understanding." 

Carl Sagan ; Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium

no. 1099

 “Books won’t stay banned. They won’t burn. Ideas won’t go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost.”

A. Whitney Griswold

no. 1098

 “Every society honors its live conformists, and its dead troublemakers.” 

Mignon McLaughlin (1963)

no. 1097

 "The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality."

- James Baldwin

no. 1096

 A New Declaration of Independence from Tyranny: Effective July 4, 2025

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to break from a leader who governs with cruelty, contempt, and corruption, a decent respect to the opinions of humankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all people are created equal, endowed with inherent dignity and unalienable rights—among these are life, liberty, equality, and the pursuit of justice.

That to secure these rights, governments derive their power from the consent of the governed. When a leader becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right and duty of the people to refuse allegiance and to stand united in the defense of their freedoms.

The current holder of high office has shown himself to be unfit to lead a free and just society.

* He disrespects women, mocking survivors of violence and stripping away their rights.

* He fuels racism and white supremacy, scapegoating communities of color and denying their equality.

* He assaults free speech, attacking the press, punishing dissent, and spreading disinformation.

* He exploits public office for private gain, enriching himself and the billionaire class while abandoning the poor and working people.

* He undermines justice, ignores the rule of law, and places himself above accountability.

* He disregards science, endangering lives in times of crisis and sacrificing the planet for profit.

* He fans division and incites violence to maintain power, wielding fear as a weapon against the people.

Time and again, we have protested peacefully, spoken truthfully, and appealed to our shared humanity. We have been met with indifference, hostility, and violence. A leader who governs through hatred and greed is unfit to govern at all.

Therefore, we, the people of conscience and conviction, do solemnly declare our independence from this tyrant and all he represents.

We withdraw our consent.

We refuse to be complicit in cruelty.

We reject the abuse of power for personal gain.

We stand for dignity, truth, equality, and justice for all people.

With firm reliance on each other and unwavering hope in our collective strength,

We pledge to resist oppression in all its forms,

To uphold the rights of the vulnerable,

And to build a future grounded in compassion, courage, and shared humanity.

Let this declaration be both a breaking and a beginning.

Andy Borowitz

no. 1095

 "There is no guarantee that the universe will conform to our predispositions. But I do not see how we can deal with the universe both the outside and the inside universe without studying it. The 'best way to avoid abuses is for the populace in general to be scientifically literate, to understand the implications of such investigations.

In exchange for freedom of inquiry, scientists are obliged to explain their work. If science is considered a closed priesthood, too difficult and arcane for the average person to understand, the dangers of abuse are greater. But if science is a topic of general interest and concern if both its delights and its social consequences are discussed regularly and competently in the schools, the press, and at the dinner table we have greatly improved our prospects for learning how the world really is and for improving both it and us."

Carl Sagan ; Broca's Brain 

no. 1094

 "There is a generation of men and women for whom, in their youth, the planets were unimaginably distant points of light, and the Moon was the paradigm of the unattainable. Those same men and women, in middle life, have seen their fellows walk upon the surface of the Moon; in their old age, they will likely see men wandering along the dusty surface of Mars, their journeys illuminated by the battered face of Phobos. There is only one generation of humans in the ten million-year history of mankind that will live through such a transition. That generation is alive today."

Carl Sagan ; The Cosmic Connection 

no. 1093

 "We have a kind of fear of science and part of the reason is that science is able to show what constitutes a wrong, and unlike some other fields where no matter what you say might be right, here in science you can actually make a mistake and have to defend your view to other people who can actually draw upon facts to disprove it. So it makes some people nervous, the people who want the world to conform to their wishes rather than to the universe's own internal reality."

Carl Sagan (Talk of the Nation : Science Friday NPR)

no. 1092

 "What surprises me most about humankind is that we get bored of our childhood, rush to grow up, and long to be children again. That we lose our health to make money and then lose our money to restore our health. That by thinking anxiously about the future, we forget the present, such that we live in neither the present nor the future. That we live as if we'll never die and die as though we've never lived."

~Anaïs Nin, Delta of Venus

no. 1091

 “There could be a happy world, where cooperation was more in evidence than competition, and monotonous work is done by benevolent and beneficent machines, where what is lovely in nature is not destroyed to make room for hideous machines whose sole business is to kill, and where to promote joy is more respected than to produce mountains of corpses. Do not say this is impossible: it is not. It waits only for men to desire it more than the infliction of pain. There is an artist imprisoned in each one of us. Let him loose to spread joy everywhere.”

— Bertrand Russell, Last Essay: 1967

no. 1090

  “The only freedom left in the 21st Century is to be incommunicado.”

James Marden in a voiceover from a deleted scene in the movie Interstate 60.

no. 1089

 

no. 1088

 “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

Anne Lamott, from Bird by Bird.

no. 1087

 “Do not leave the pursuit of creativity in your heart up to the whims of capitalism.”

Jason K. Pargin

no. 1086

 “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are thepeople of these United States, at this very hour.”

Frederick Douglass

read the full speech here

no. 1085

"Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events."

Winston Churchill

no. 1084

"Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about." 

Mark Twain

no. 1083

  “Police are to control your people through laws. The military is to control your enemies. When the military becomes the police, your own people become the enemy. That never ends well.”

Timothy Ellis in “Undead”

no. 1082

 “The next time someone says ‘Not everything's about you’ ask yourself the last time they allowed ANYTHING to be about you. If you can't think of a single time... it's a tactic to shut you up and make everything about them.”

Nicole Filippone @sensorystories.bsky.social

no. 1081

 

no. 1080

 “Life hack: there is no way to make people love you by bombing them, and if they did love you bombing them will fix that.

Because, you see, there's no such thing as an attack on someone's life so legitimate that they say ‘yes, I had that coming, thank you, father.’”

@pymundgeneology.com

no. 1079

 

no. 1078

“When cruelty is seen as patriotic, compassion is seen as treasonous.”

Rev. Benjamin Cremer

no. 1077

“I have this private schema that I have never offered up for scrutiny that biology is information contained in life, culture is information created by life, and technology is information contained in things created by life.”

Hank Green

no. 1076

 

no. 1075

 

no. 1074

 

no. 1073

 Isaac Asimov

no. 1072

 “Socrates said, ‘The misuse of language induces evil in the soul.’ He wasn't talking about grammar. To misuse language is to use it the way politicians and advertisers do, for profit, without taking responsibility for what the words mean. Language used as a means to get power or make money goes wrong: it lies. Language used as an end in itself, to sing a poem or tell a story, goes right, goes towards the truth.

A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

no. 1071

 “Old George Orwell got it backward. Big Brother isn’t watching. He’s singing and dancing. He’s pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s busy holding your attention every moment you’re awake. He’s making sure you’re always distracted. He’s making sure you’re fully absorbed. He’s making sure your imagination withers. Until it’s as useful as your appendix. He’s making sure your attention is always filled. And this being fed, it’s worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what’s in your mind. With everyone’s imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world.” 

 ​Chuck Palahniuk

no. 1070

 “Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.”

Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays (1928), Essay, XIII: Freedom in Society, p. 103

no. 1069

 “Hey Trump voters! Yesterday Trump had a press conference in the Oval Office. He said,  ‘You know, our country was the strongest, believe it or not, from 1870 to 1913. You know why? It was all tariff-based. We had no income tax. Then in 1913, some genius came up with the idea of let's charge the people of our country, not foreign countries that are ripping off our country. And the country was never relatively—was never that kind of wealth. We had so much wealth, we didn't know what to do with our money. We had meetings. We had committees. And these committees worked tirelessly to study one subject. We have so much money. What are we going to do with it? Who are we going to give it to?’

Did you know that you know an actual expert on the period of 1870 to 1913? 

It's me. I am. 

I've been studying this time period for two decades and I don't mean reading a Doris Kearns Goodwin book every few months. I am a trained scholar of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. 

There's a lot of us actually who study this period.  In fact, I was in a room with many of them over the weekend. We stared at Trump Tower in Chicago while we met.  It was... motivating. 

Do you know what happened between 1870 and 1913? There were two economic panics. Huge ones. Deep, scarring panics where many working people went hungry and jobless. Do you know who was ‘rich’ in that period? The Carnegies. The Vanderbilts. JP Morgan, who almost singlehandedly controlled the nation money's supply. Wild swings occurred in the stock market. Working people were paid pennies. Middle-class people made money, bought homes, and lost them with regularity. There was no economic stability. 

There was no regulation. Between 1880 and 1905 there were well over 36,000 strikes involving 6 million workers. Do you know what they were striking for? The biggest ask was an 8 hour work day. 

Do you know what Congress focused on instead? Passing obscenity law, obsessing about sex and white women's purity. Creating instability in the Phillipines, the Carribbean and Latin America via colonialist, eugenic-based projects. Enriching themselves on kickbacks from industries like the railroads. Rejecting appeals for women's suffrage and anti-lynching laws. State governments doubled-down on segregation law and passed laws to try to control what was taught in classrooms.

Sound familiar?” 

Lauren Thompson

no. 1068

"Today I have grown taller from walking with the trees." 

Karle Wilson Baker

no. 1067

 “If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” 

George Washington

no. 1066

 “The world is sick & yes it can be cruel, but it would be a whole lot sicker and a whole lot crueler if it were not for painters & filmmakers & songwriters, the beauty-makers, wading through the blood & muck of things, whilst reaching skyward to draw down the very heavens themselves.” 

Nick Cave

no. 1065

 “Graveyards are libraries. Lots of people there reading. Born when, died then, and all that comes between. Short stories. Large print.”

John Paul Lyon, The Time and Place from With Ravens Passing the Moon

no. 1064

 “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

no. 1063

 “Self-identifying as a centrist is perhaps the most cynical and amoral political identity you can have because you're just openly admitting your beliefs aren't really beliefs they're just strategic positions that only exist relative to others in the room you happen to be in.”

Gillian Branstetter   (@gbranstetter.bsky.social)

no. 1062

 “A recent episode of @thewaroncars.bsky.social introduced me to the very useful term "pluralistic ignorance" for a situation in which people mistakenly believe that others predominantly hold an opinion different from their own, often because the minority is loud.”

 < en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plurali... >

Erika Hall (erika.hall.bsky.social)

no. 1061

 “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”

Carl Sagan, Cosmos

no. 1060

 “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

 The Great Gatsby (1925)

no. 1059

 Dedicated to my mother, who passed on May 4th

no. 1058

 "The door of the human heart can only be opened from the inside.” 

William Holman Hunt

no. 1057

 "Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness - and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe. The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling - their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability."

~Arundhati Roy

no. 1056

 “Be suspicious of simple answers, that shit’s for fascists and maybe teenagers.”

-Frank Turner

no. 1055

 

no. 1054

 "If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. If some one maintains that two and two are five, or that Iceland is on the equator, you should feel pity rather than anger, unless you know so little of arithmetic or geography that his opinion shakes your own contrary conviction.

The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion. So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants!”

~Bertrand Russell, An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish (1943)

no. 1053

 

no. 1052

 

no. 1051

I have to agree with this statement 

no. 1050

 

no. 1049

 

no. 1048

 Socialism is what they called public power.

Socialism is what they called social security.

Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations.

Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.

-Harry Truman, 1952

no. 1047

“The Internet was touted as “the information superhighway” but is actually a stupidity distribution system”

Andy Borowitz

no. 1046

“It is said the power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.”

David Brin

no. 1045

 Toad sat on the edge of his bed. “Blah,” said Toad. “I feel down in the dumps.” 

“Why?” asked Frog. 

“I am thinking about tomorrow,” said Toad.

no. 1044

 “Show me a budget and I’ll show you who you think matters.”

-Senator Raphael Warnock

no. 1043

 "Things don't have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What's the function of a galaxy? I don't know if our life has a purpose, and I don't see that it matters. What does matter is that we're a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass." 

~Ursula K. Le Guin, from ‘The Lathe of Heaven’

no. 1042

 “It was the worst of times, it was the even worse than that of times.”

Ed Solomon @edsolomon.bsky.social 

no. 1041

 "If you can purchase US citizenship for $5 million, the ‘illegals’ are only guilty of being poor."

 Feminist News

no. 1040

 

no. 1039

 

no. 1038

 Ursula K. LeGuin’s opinion of the first Harry Potter book:

no. 1037

25 platforms where you can read books for free:

1. Project Gutenberg  

2. LibriVox  

3. Internet Archive  

4. Open Library  

5. Google Books  

6. ManyBooks  

7. Bookboon  

8. Smashwords  

9. Wattpad  

10. Free-EBooks  

11. Read Print  

12. Feedbooks (Public Domain section)  

13. HathiTrust Digital Library  

14. PDFBooksWorld  

15. Bibliomania  

16. Classic Reader  

17. Loyal Books  

18. Library Genesis  

19. Trove  

20. Authorama  

21. DigiLibraries  

22. Europeana Collections  

23. Wikisource  

24. Project Gutenberg 

25. International Children's Digital Library

Not a quote, but still a worthy post. And maybe a source of future quotes?

no. 1036

 “There is in fact no way to make a case for a moral or political obligation to have children that does not degrade the status and dignity of women by claiming ownership their bodies as instruments for collective use.”

Moira Donegan (@moiradonegan.bsky.social)

no. 1035

 “America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves... It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters.”

- Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007)

no. 1034

 “Why is there always money to bomb children in Gaza, but not enough to make sure every kid has a safe place to sleep in this country. We don't have a budget crisis. We have a crisis of our values.”

Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez

no. 1033

 “The Long Neolithic's shadow infects with a continuing need to erect stones. Modern monuments marking our ongoing desire to speak the lithic language, to enter into conversation with the land itself.”

Dr. K. Brophy 

no. 1032

“Every man is afraid of being a queer. I get a little tired of it. maybe we should all become queers and relax.”

Charles Bukowski, Notes of a Dirty Old Man

no. 1031

 My cousin

who is young and angry

tells me at this point

she is waiting for the crash,

she is hoping for the crash,

she can only see a better world

built on the wreckage of this one,

so sympathetically

I try to remind her

that many of us

will be buried in that wreckage.

Plague Poems by @plaguepoems.bsky.social

no. 1030

 “The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so that they believe they are as clever as he.” 

Karl Kraus (1874-1936), journalist, critic and satirist

no. 1029

 

no. 1028

 "The true horror of existence is not the fear of death, but the fear of life. It is the fear of waking up each day to face the same struggles, the same disappointments, the same pain. It is the fear that nothing will ever change, that you are trapped in a cycle of suffering that you cannot escape. And in that fear, there is a desperation, a longing for something, anything, to break the monotony, to bring meaning to the endless repetition of days."

Albert Camus, The Fall

no. 1027

“I will say this until I die: You long for the "good old days" because you were too stupid to understand what was actually going on back then.“

Dennis Detwiller @drgonzo123.bsky.social 

no. 1026

 “Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.”

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison DBW Vol 8

no. 1025

 "Seldom in recent times, it seems, has a social system offered scope so openly and so brazenly to people willing to support anything as long as it brings them some advantage; to unprincipled and spineless men, prepared to do anything in their craving for power and personal gain, to born lackeys, ready for any humiliation and willing at all times to sacrifice their neighbors' and their own honor for a chance to ingratiate themselves with those in power. In view of this, it is not surprising that so many public and influential positions are occupied, more than ever before, by notorious careerists, opportunists, charlatans, and men of dubious record; in short, by typical collaborators"

Václav Havel, “The Power of the Powerless”

no. 1024

 “Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.” 

- Haile Selassie I

no. 1023

 

no. 1022

Harpo Marx Family Rules

1. Life has been created for you to enjoy, but you won't enjoy it unless you pay for it with some good, hard work. This is one price that will never be marked down.

2. You can work at whatever you want to as long as you do it as well as you can and clean up afterwards and you're at the table at mealtime and in bed at bedtime.

3. Respect what the others do. Respect Dad's harp, Mom's paints, Billy's piano, (son) Alex's set of tools, (son) Jimmy's designs, and Minnie's menagerie.

4. If anything makes you sore, come out with it. Maybe the rest of us are itching for a fight, too.

5. If anything strikes you as funny, out with that, too. Let's all the rest of us have a laugh.

6. If you have an impulse to do something that you're not sure is right, go ahead and do it. Take a chance. Chances are, if you don't you'll regret it - unless you break the rules about mealtime and bedtime, in which case you'll sure as hell regret it.

7. If it's a question of whether to do what's fun or what is supposed to be good for you, and nobody is hurt whichever you do, always do what's fun.

8. If things get too much for you and you feel the whole world's against you, go stand on your head. If you can think of anything crazier to do, do it.

9. Don't worry about what other people think. The only person in the world important enough to conform to is yourself.

10. Anybody who mistreats a pet or breaks a pool cue is docked a month's pay.

no. 1021

 

no. 1020

 

no. 1019

 

no. 1018

 “The opposite of diversity is uniformity. The opposite of equity is inequity.  The opposition of inclusion is exclusion.”

@petebuttugieg.bsky.social

no. 1017

 

no. 1016

 “Wherever law ends, tyranny begins"

 John Locke

no. 1015

 

no. 1014

 

no. 1013

 "No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power." 

P. J. O'Rourke

no. 1012

 “Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets and mesmerizing video displays, let me remind you that information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight. Each grows out of the other, and we need them all.”

Arthur C. Clarke