Ich hatte ja Sorge, dass die Sprachbarriere Europa und insbesondere Deutschland zurückhält. Jetzt bin ich froh darum. Wir haben selber ne Wagenladung voll Probleme, wir müssen nicht noch importieren. https://silvan.cloud/@gersande/115647757482315486
Series D, Episode 02 - Power
VILA: Oh yes. I just don't know what it's for.
PELLA: And they didn't teach this in, ah, Academy? [laughs] There's a switch. When the door is closed, every forty-eight hours Dorian must say a code word to reset the timing.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/402/150
I just woke up from a dream. For every parent there is a time when, with shame, we have to explain how the world actually works... when they become a little too old to keep saying, "I'll explain it when you're older."
Amsterdam is full of reminders of the occupation, of the Holocaust. It's impossible to pretend there hasn't been a great evil here... One that's not in the past, but still very alive in the present.
At some point things will have to change because fascism can't last forever. It is a thing which necessarily contains its own downfall. We will, at that point, have an opportunity to make the world one that we can be proud to tell our children we created. We can stop short and reestablish the status quo that got us here, or we can build a world that we will no longer have to explain to each new generation in shame.
What would it look like?
(Shout out to the comrade who prompted me to be thinking about this.)
There was also a sign in my dream that said, "we created the bike, therefore we can do anything." This may or may not be related.
So my car has been complaining I should put some exhaust emissions neutralizing fluid in it. A thing they call AdBlue I believe.
Bought a big 10l drum of the stuff ready to fill up.
But when I look at where I expect to find the hole for filling it, I just find a capped off tube and a warning sticker "See the GM Citreon Berlingo Blaze manual" for the adblue refilling hole.
Only user manual I have is the one telling me to expect it there.
The car was converted for wheelchair access at some point in its life. I think they are referring to the wheelchair-adaption manual, which the seller did not give me.
🤔
Have been looking around the car as much as I can for a couple of hours this morning to no avail. Where have they hidden this hole to fill up adblue?
Maybe it's under the engine or something now and you have to put the thing on stilts to find it?
🤷
Asked my mechanic about it and he says to bring it in on Monday. Gonna be a pain if I have to rip up the floorboards or something every year to refill that.
#mechanic #car #diesel
An #earworm popping up in my brain lately. A poem I was made to memorize when I was 14. It re-emerges every couple years, for no reason I can figure. tbh, I usually only remember verbatim the first few lines or so, and have to look it up again. It’s one of those things, like advertising jingles from many years ago, that have lodged in my memory. 🎶You’ll wonder where the yellow went when you brush y…
Belated #MountainMonday ... Ever been in a place which made you feel you're maybe walking in dream (and it's not a nightmare)? This picture absolutely summarizes why I love the mountains the most in October...
(Had to de-saturate the colors because of polarization filter used, otherwise only slightly cropped and minutely raised shadows)
from my link log —
International maps of cities coloured by street/road/ave/etc.
https://erdavis.com/2019/09/20/the-beautiful-hidden-logic-of-cities-worldwide/
saved 2019-10-21
Feeling the Dad energy here. Pretty darn cool!
"Facing the possibility of winning the World Series, Steve says the title was never even on his radar when Davis was growing up. He just wanted his son to earn a college scholarship. Then, when Davis got drafted, Steve focused on him getting called up some day.
"He's just beaten all the odds every place he's stopped, so, this is just another stop along the way. And if this happens, it's just going to be incredible," he said.
"It's just unreal. I still just can't believe it's happening.””
#Dad #Baseball #BlueJays #MLB #Dodgers
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/davis-schneider-home-run-dad-9.6959789
Some leftists have criticized #NoKingsDay2 as useless. Though it was the largest protest in US history, it didn't change anything. I would go further to say that protests like these generally won't change anything. Dictators aren't forced to step down by 2% of the population coming out for one day. If they're forced to step down by protests, those protests are sustained. They are every single day. They are accompanied by general strikes.
We've been watching that happen all over the world. Portland in 2020 gave us a taste of that in the US. The George Floyd Rebellion was the type of resistance that actually brings down dictators like Trump. Occasional protests, no matter how large, can simply be ignored. That is precisely the reason the US developed a militarized police force in the first place. You need more, more than the largest protests in US history, more than Occupy, more than the resistance of the 60's and 70's, more than, and different from, anything we've seen in our lives.
And yet... Each protest has grown, and grown bolder. Some have grown more persistent. If you think of protest as the path to achieve change, you will lose. It is not. But it is a path to escalate. Some people, some otherwise comfortable white folks, came out for their first time. Some people got pepper sprayed for the first time. Some people questioned authority, stood up for the first time, and have had an experience that will radicalize them for the rest of their lives.
Protest is not useful in and of itself. It is training. It's making connections. Authoritarian regimes rely on the illusion of compliance, so visual resistance does actually undermine their power.
Liberals like to teach that non-violence is all about staying peaceful no matter what, that there's some way that morality simply overwhelms an enemy. I remember reading Langston Hughes' A Dream Deferred in high school. I said it was a threat. My teacher said, "you're wrong, he was a pacifist." Pacifism is a threat. If you can spit at me, beat me, shoot me, and I will not move, if I have the strength to absorb violence without flinching, without even rising to violence, what will happen when you push me too far?
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
For peaceful resistance to work, there must be ambiguity. It must not be clear if or when the resistance will stop being peaceful. Peaceful resistance with no possibility of escalation is just cowardice.
My critique then is not so harsh as some other anarchists. If you think that protest alone will work, you're probably going to lose. If you are prepared to escalate, if you are prepared to absorb violence without flinching, then it could be possible for protest alone to topple the dictator. The cracks are already beginning to show.
And then what?
The problems that lead to the George Floyd uprising were never resolved. The problems that lead to Occupy where never resolve. The DAPL was built, protesters were maimed, it leaked multiple times (exactly as predicted). Segregation never went away, it only changed forms. The fact that immigrants have different courts and different rights means that anyone can be arbitrarily kidnaped and renditioned to an arbitrary country. We never did anything about the torture black site. FFS, people can still be stripped of their voting rights and slavery is still legal in the US. The people who control both parties in the US are killing our children and grand children with oil wars and climate change.
Toppling the dictator does nothing to resolve all of the problems that existed before him.
No, #NoKingsDay was absolutely not useless. #NoKings and related protests are extremely useful but they aren't sufficient. But, I think we still need to challenge the movement on two points:
How do you escalate after you're ignored or brutalized?
What do you demand after you win?
#USPol
i bet the pundits are going to let openai get away with these implausible plans far longer than seems reasonable
https://www.wheresyoured.at/openai400bn/