Plenty of room up the bottom - Richard W. Feynman
You Can't Quietly Park at 0.1c - Samir Varma
These aren’t cranks on Reddit. They are Kochsucking morons from a Rightwing Stinktank. Ferengi in a word. This Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light-years across. Time we ditched the old religious calendars. Yes?
Silence is taken as assent.
The king of Thailand is head of state, Highest Commander of the Royal Thai Armed Forces, adherent of Buddhism and upholder of religions. This kingship is said to be based on two concepts derived from Hinduism and Theravada Buddhist beliefs. The first concept is based on the ancient Indian Kshatriya (Thai: กษัตริย์ RTGS: Kasat pronounced [kà.sàt]), or warrior-ruler, in which the king derives his powers from military might. The second is based on the Buddhist concept of Dhammaraja (Thai: ธรรมราชา RTGS: Thammaracha pronounced [tʰām.má.rāː.tɕʰāː]), Buddhism having been introduced to Thailand around the 6th century CE. The concept of the Dhammaraja (or kingship under Dharma) is that the king should rule his people justly, ethically, and in accordance with the Dharma (Buddhist teachings).
These concepts were briefly replaced in 1279, when King Ram Khamhaeng ascended the throne. Ramkhamhaeng departed from tradition and created instead a concept of "paternal rule" (Thai: พ่อปกครองลูก), in which the king governs his people as a father would govern his children.[3][4] This is reinforced in the title and name of the king, as he is still known today, Pho Khun Ram Khamhaeng (Thai: พ่อขุนรามคำแหง)[5] meaning 'Father Ruler Ram Khamhaeng'. This lasted briefly. By the end of the kingdom, the two old concepts returned as symbolized by the change in the style of the kings: "Pho" was changed to "Phaya" or Lord.
The junta that took power in 2014 was aggressive in jailing critics of the monarchy.[26][27] In 2015, it spent US$540 million, more than the budget of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on a promotional campaign called "Worship, protect and uphold the monarchy." The campaign includes television commercials, seminars in schools and prisons, singing contests, and competitions to write stories and films praising the king. "This is not propaganda," Prayut Chan-o-cha, the leader of the junta, said. "The youth must be educated on what the king has done."[28]
In its fiscal year (FY) 2016 budget, the ruling military government has increased its expenditure for "upholding, protecting and preserving the monarchy" to 18 billion baht (US$514 million), an increase of 28 per cent for this budget line item since 2014 when it took power
In other words, those who are ‘anti-capitalist’ may have the wrong ultimate target if what they are implicitly advocating is a more beneficient state. The deeper challenge of our time may not be to end capitalism, whatever that would mean, but to free ourselves from dependence on the state.
Why the anarchic net is so important. Why anarchic money and markets online are so important. God and the State are revolutionary anarchists priority. Later for capitalism.
Most political reformers have some part of the unfree system they wish to abolish Republicans would abolish the monarchy, Secularists would abolish or disestablish the Church, Socialists would (or used to) wish to abolish the apparatus of exploitation; pacifists would abolish the Army. Anarchism is unique in wishing to abolish all. The only true definition of an Anarchist is one who wishes to believes it desirable to abolish all; who believe it possible to abolish all, the sooner the better; and who works to bring such abolition about.
The Police are the cornerstone of the State (though sometimes, in extreme cases, the Government of the day needs to use the armed forces in lieu of, or in addition to the police — in some countries this has led to replacement or control of the Government by the army so long as the officers are tightly in control).
Only Anarchism believes in abolition of the Police
BUT DARLING your violence! There is always a shadow side to idealism. The notion of ripping up and starting again terrifies me.
It’s not about wilful destruction, nor even starting from scratch. It’s about noticing how institutional power constrains the human spirit and our collective capacity to live well, and finding countervailing forms of power through solidarity. The Czech dissident Vaclav Havel was not an anarchist, but his famous samizdat essay - The Power of the Powerlesss - is anarchism-adjacent, and there he writes:
A better system will not automatically ensure a better life. In fact, the opposite is true: only by creating a better life can a better system be developed.
This is a variant on Buckminster Fuller’s widely quoted injunction to build a new model that makes the old one obsolete, and informs the political injunction to “invite people to a better party”. In practice that kind of purposive experimentalism can mean, for instance, withdrawing consent from unjust laws, replacing dependency on authority with mutual aid, taking decisions as far as possible outside of established structures, providing services through gift exchange, and creating new forms of cultural legitimacy through socialising good collective habits. Understood in this way, anarchism is fundamentally a praxis and a political artform, and it’s experimental in nature. It can and should be fundamentally about persuasion through a critical mass of people demonstrating another way to live.
This dirty old town. Searching for nickels and dimes. Times are tough and I can't get enough to buy me a bottle of wine.
Distinctively Dionysian › New Issue: Distinctively Dionysian / New Website: Bacchus EditionsThe sort to make a spiritualist kick in a stained-glass window
Blond Ambition – Bookforum Magazine
Marilyn Monroe was the world's most photographed woman, and among its loneliest. To be wanted is not to be loved. And in related news Cryptoeconomics without Assassination Markets is not cryptoanarchy and the excellent is often the enemy of the good.
LIKE CRYPTOANARCHY SHE WAS ALWAYS LATE. Crew members and other actors would wait around for hours, wondering when—or if—Marilyn Monroe would show up. Some days, especially toward the end of her life, she never made it to set at all.
Unlike cryptoanarchy her voice was pitched high and cutie-pie. Everyone had to wait for Elizabeth Taylor for the real deal in audio. Now the audience is listening and the suspense is rising. From a theatrical point of view the situation is excellent.
But enough about Arseholes News . . .
There is a tide in the affairs of all that taken at the cryptoanarchist flood leads on to good fortune
Nonfiction book sales have been in decline for the past four years, and are now the most challenged segment of the print book market. Publishers say certain types of books still fare well—including celebrity memoirs and religious titles. But in recent years, print sales in such categories as biography, current affairs and business and economics—what publishers refer to as “serious nonfiction” and which tend to resonate especially with men—have fallen considerably.
Sales of nonfiction print titles were down nearly 8% through May 9 this year, and sales of books about politics and current affairs were down 19%, according to book tracker Circana BookScan.
Publishing has long been subject to cyclical changes, with trends in format and genre taking over bookshelves in grand sweeps. (Remember the adult coloring-book craze? Or the stratospheric rise of romantasy?) But many in publishing believe the decline in serious nonfiction is more existential.
“The trend couldn’t be clearer,” said Jonathan Karp, the former chief executive of Simon & Schuster and publisher of the new Simon Six imprint. “This is a sea change and people should wake up and realize we’re living in a new world.”
Dad Books Are a Dying Breed - WSJ
WE MUST TAKE THIS ANARCHIC TIDE AT ITS HEIGHT LEST WE LOSE OUR DENTURES
audiobooks have gained steam. Add to that an endless supply of Substack newsletters, Netflix documentaries, YouTube videos and podcasts that offer the kind of fresh reporting, sharp analysis and historical perspective once limited to doorstop-size books.
